Why veganism and vegetarianism are gaining popularity

During these recent years, veganism and vegetarianism have been acquiring a lot of new followers and their popularity have increased significantly, either because of people’s concern about their health and the environment, or maybe just as a trend.

Still, I think it’s a good practice that I encourage everyone to try. Going vegan/vegetarian at least for a while and seeing the positive effects it has, not only on themselves but also on the Earth; and ethically speaking it’s a topic that affects everyone who consumes meat. Let’s see how the meat industry affects the environment and how Barcelona has been declared as the first veg-friendly city.

The huge amount of meat consumption worldwide has its environmental consequences.

To produce: 1 kg of beef, 15,415 L of water are needed; for 1 kg of tomatoes, 214 L of water.

Co2 production: for 1 kg of Lamb, 39,2 KG Co2 are produced; for 1 kg of tomato 1,1 Kg of Co2.

Besides, the breeding conditions are abusive and cruel in most cases, especially in factory farms where animals are raised in filthy, small cages with extremely bad situations.

They are treated like products where the only goal is to produce more while minimizing costs. In the end, this is all about a big slaughtering done by the powerful industries just to satisfy people’s taste. We don’t even need to consume these products to survive and I think that we, as humans, are intelligent enough to overcome our nature and chose the right way. This could all be avoided with a bit of effort and consciousness.

You should check out this film called Earthlings that exposes footage obtained with hidden cameras in some of the largest animal industries in the world. I must warn you, it contains really sensitive content.

Barcelona as a veg-friendly city.

Recently Barcelona has been declared as the first veg-friendly city, carried out by the local government. They created the ‘Meat Free Mondays’ where they encourage restaurants to offer vegetarian menus on Mondays.

They created ‘BCNvegPoint’ so that entrepreneurs, NGO’s, and costumers can use it as a meeting point in order to support the local and vegetarian/vegan businesses.

Also a Vegetarian Guide of Barcelona has been created to inform the tourists about vegetarian/vegan businesses in the city. It’s a complete guidebook and I recommend you to use it if you ever visit Barcelona!

As a personal proposal I would suggest Rasoterra. The establishment it’s located in the Gothic neighborhood, the menu is delicious and you can find vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options, and most of the dishes are made with local products. The prices are really fair regarding the quality and diversity of the food. I really liked the fact that they use filtered water instead of serving it bottled and also the daily bread they make.

I hope that by reading this article some of you become a bit more sensitive regarding this topic, and brave enough to try to go vegan or vegetarian for at least a week!

If you like the article, don’t hesitate to share it. Subscribe to my blog to get all the articles we publish on time and, if you follow us on Twitter or Instagram you will be up to date with the latest novelties in sustainable tourism. Contact me for any doubts, collaboration or advice for your next eco-friendly vacation.