The vegan diet has many advantages – but also risks. We explain what you have to consider if you eat vegan, what the rules are and how the environment and your health can benefit from them.

Many people label a vegan diet as “radical” or “extreme.” For them it is often not clear why people eat vegan. After all, if you don’t want animals to be slaughtered, you can also eat vegetarian food.

Vegans, on the other hand, not only do without meat and fish, but also all products of animal origin. This also applies to eggs and dairy products, for example.

Why are vegans so strict? Because products other than meat also kill animals. For example, only female animals are necessary for the production of eggs. When the offspring hatch, the male chicks are often gassed or shredded directly. The female chicks are used as laying hens.

The situation is similar with male calves: Since they cannot give milk, they are often slaughtered prematurely. The killing of the young males is closely linked to the production of milk and eggs.

In addition to the killing of many animals, the husbandry conditions are also a common reason for eating vegan. Most farm animals experience suffering and stress when they are kept and raised in factory farms. Many animals are also injured during transport.

Is a vegan diet healthier?

It is not easy to make statements about how healthy a vegan lifestyle is. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that vegan nutrition has not been researched for long. On the other hand, vegans may generally pay more attention to a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle. What we know:
According to the German Society for Nutrition (DGE), vegans have a lower risk of diseases caused by poor nutrition. Examples include obesity and diabetes.
A plant-based diet can lower cholesterol. This can prevent heart disease, for example.
A vegan diet can help treat obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
The World Health Organization has confirmed that red and processed meat increase the risk of developing cancer. That’s why you should avoid it.
For whom a vegan diet is suitable and for whom it is not depends on the individual. The most important aspects:
A vegan diet in children is controversial and associated with risks. If you want to feed your children vegan, you should inform yourself in detail beforehand and preferably speak to a doctor.
Veganism can also be risky during breastfeeding and pregnancy because nutrient deficiencies can harm your baby. In these phases of life, you should therefore only eat vegan after consulting a doctor.
Eating a purely plant-based diet does not affect performance. Many competitive athletes eat vegan, for example the American professional boxer Mike Tyson.
Like everyone else, vegans must ensure that they eat a varied and balanced diet. The vegan food pyramid can help you with this.

Vegan diet: prevent deficiencies

Certain nutrients occur more often or only in animal products. If you decide to follow a vegan diet, you should find out exactly which plant sources you can get these nutrients from – otherwise you may develop deficiency symptoms. This applies in particular to the following nutrients:
Vitamin D,
essential fatty acids,
calcium and
Iron.
Under the linked articles you can read about the foods in which the substances are found.

It is more difficult with vitamin B12: The vitamin is mainly found in fish, but also in dairy products and eggs. Therefore, if you follow a vegan diet, you may need to take vitamin B12 supplements. Clarify this with your family doctor.

Environmental balance of a purely plant-based diet

A vegan diet requires significantly fewer resources than one that includes animal products. An example explains why this is so:
In order to grow vegetables and grains, the crops must be grown, watered regularly and finally harvested after a few months.
The situation is different with meat or animal products: an animal needs water and feed regularly for years, which in turn has to be cultivated first.
For example, one kilogram of beef contains:
about 5 kilograms of grain,
approx. 15,000 liters of water (for the feed and also for the animal itself)
a usable area of ​​27 to 49 square meters.
The digestion of the cow also produces 22 kilograms of greenhouse gases per kilogram of meat. With a vegan diet, on the other hand, you can reduce your carbon footprint.

Many vegans are accused of polluting the environment by consuming soy products. For this it can be stated:
In fact, the cultivation of soy is often not ecological. According to the WWF, soybeans are mainly imported. 80 percent of the soy used as animal feed in Germany comes directly from South America.
Parts of the rainforest are cleared for cultivation. After the soy has been harvested, the areas mostly lie fallow.
But it is also a fact that most of the soy (98 percent) is used as feed for animals in factory farming. The beans are a popular feed for fattening animals because they gain weight particularly quickly.
Only two percent of the soy grown worldwide is processed into tofu or soy milk at all.
The soy that is processed into food for humans usually grows in Europe. Organic soy often comes from Germany.
Factory farming thus contributes significantly to the deforestation of the rainforest. This is driving species extinction and we are losing an important carbon store on earth.

Nevertheless, not every vegan product is automatically sustainable:
Vegan foods generally cause fewer greenhouse gases than animal products. However, if you buy fruit and vegetables out of season, the environmental footprint of your vegan diet will deteriorate. Because the food has to travel long distances by plane or is grown in heated greenhouses.
For example, when tomatoes (PDF) are grown in a heated greenhouse in winter, they emit ten times more greenhouse gases than locally grown tomatoes during the season.
Even heavily processed meat substitute products are not very ecological. They are processed in many energy-intensive steps and cause packaging waste. Therefore, you should not eat such products too often. In addition, meat substitutes often contain a lot of fat, sugar and unhealthy additives.
Caution is also advised when it comes to trendy superfood: avocado, chia seeds and the like are healthy, but are often flown in from far away. As a rule, there are regional alternatives for these foods, such as flaxseed or hemp seeds.