There are so many good reasons for being vegan that when we’re asked the “why?” question, it is often really quite difficult to know where to start.

Deciding to go vegan is like doing a jigsaw puzzle – for some people, one look at the very first piece of the puzzle is all it takes and they immediately see the big picture, grasp what is required of them and get right on with making the change.I think pin

Most people, however, will file that first puzzle piece away somewhere at the back of their brain – they need to see a bit more of the picture before they can make sense of it.

Over time, you gather more pieces of the go-vegan puzzle, until one day you see something, or read something, or taste something, and suddenly the whole picture falls into place.

When you ask somebody why they are vegan they might (if you’re lucky) tell you what the biggest or most recent piece of the jigsaw was for them, but if you’re missing some of the puzzle pieces that they had earlier along the way, their decision may not make sense to you – yet.

These pages point towards some of the puzzle pieces, but exactly what might take you to your own a-ha moment will depend on what motivates you most:

Maybe you’re interested in better health and preventing disease. Perhaps you’re fed up with battling the bulge and want a permanent lifestyle change that will help you lose weight and feel great? You might be interested in how eating vegan could improve your sporting performan
ce.

Maybe it will be facing up to the philosophical questions about the morality of eating animals, or the grim reality of industrial farming practices that will make you say enough is enough.

Or maybe you’ll see the sense of the basic maths that shows the gross inefficiency of feeding crops to animals instead of eating them ourselves, or the implications of that for the environment or for global food security.

And of course, you don’t have to go vegan to eat vegan – the recipes on Entering Vegan Territory are intended to show even the most recalcitrant carnivore that “but it tastes sooo good” can be reason enough for eating vegan too.