Small steps?

The factor that has the heaviest impact on the Earth is the production of food, it affects every economy and it is deeply responsible for the over-exploitation of this world resources.

It is demonstrated that one average meat based meal produces 3 times more Ecopoints than a vegan one, with Ecopoints intended as the international measure of the impact of the food over the environment.

It is incredibly clear how a vegan diet is absolutely better for the Earth and obviously for the health (but I leave this for another post).

Shall everybody be vegan? Of course. Will everybody be vegan? Definitely no.

We have to confront each day small achievements against maybe bigger losses, it is impossible that the normally unaware and uncaring human being would drop eating meat and animal related products from one day to another.

So what I look forward on an educational path in everyday life, is to see people stopping and thinking that even reducing the consume of meat, or replacing meat or fish with some soy or corn based products, can improve our life and diminish the impact we have on the Earth.

Would this be a victory? It is hard to say.

Let's take another example: Peta 2 successful campaign to introduce a vegetarian burger option in large fast food chains like McDonald's or Burger King: is this really a success? I mean, besides the vegetarian issue, on an ethical aspect these companies are the worst. They mean profit over everything, over people's health, over employees' rights to be treated decently. I seriously doubt I would eat there even if they had vegan options.

So, is this a victory? Again, it is hard to say.

Many people claim that a too strong and straight approach on these issues would do more harm than good to the cause. On the other side, there's the need to have people standing their ground with strong minds and hearts so that they can set the path.

But at the end of the day it is all about small steps, because that's how we can move towards a possible vegetarian majority. I believe it is anyway better than doing nothing.

Is this utopic goal unachievable? A hundred years ago nobody would imagine that it could have been possible to end the slavery in the world (well, almost everywhere), but still humanity did it.

Can we do it? Just make your steps count.

Matteo