Vegan is bodily harm, at least for the meat, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. That is why they are the first to even win over scientists or doctors to present the vegan diet as unhealthy. Lurid headlines serve to distract from the actual content, which then often turns out to be much more harmless than it looks. Of course, this is wanted.

Cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer are among the so-called common diseases, which lead to us being regularly prayed that the health system can no longer be financed. Obesity and its complications alone cost Austrian taxpayers around 12 billion euros a year. These diseases are now so normal that you have to be suspiciously looked at from a certain age if you are healthy. It would be so easy. Out into the fresh air instead of the scent of department stores, more social contacts instead of online frustration and healthy eating. But if it were actually that simple, why would it be misappropriated? Well, it is not completely embezzled, just not trumpeted aloud. Because the problem is that ultimately nobody is interested in healthy citizens. On the contrary, you can only earn money from sick people, whether psychologically or physically. Both are best. But let’s get into the idea that people will listen and change their lives accordingly. What would be the consequences?

The healthy diet would drastically reduce the number of cardiovascular diseases, so that everyone working in the health sector in this area would suddenly be unemployed. Doctors who officially campaign for recovery really want sick people, just sick enough that they can still function, but could not be without their care. Following the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies would find the recovery painfully reflected in their balance sheets, because healthy people need much less medication. Maybe they even remember some of the good old home remedies like onion and garlic, ginger and other herbs that have immense power but can be planted by everyone in their own garden. Then where do you put all the painkillers and antibiotics, the cholesterol-lowering agents and benzos that can be used against depression or borderline, depending on the fashion? Healthy people are the horror of any system based on economic growth from a certain stage of development. Now the pharmaceutical industry could still calm down a bit with the fact that most drugs are not taken by humans, but in intensive animal husbandry, after all, almost 50 tons of antibiotics in Austria alone. However, if people drastically reduced their meat consumption or even stopped it altogether, it would be a hard blow to the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, the chemical industry can expect massive losses, because fewer animals in intensive livestock farming mean less monoculture and accordingly less use of pesticides.

There are only losers on the industry side if people were largely healthy. This makes it imperative that the vegan way of life is demonized, precisely because it is good for people, makes them healthier, more energetic. If you agree with these calls to doom and are neither a meat producer nor a shareholder in a pharmaceutical or chemical company, then you let yourself be turned into the unwilling tool of a corrupt lobby, which does everything to make us sick and keep us. It could also be called the rule and dictate of neoliberal capital. This is the real bodily harm, not only to human beings, but to all living beings, including the earth. They literally go over dead bodies just so that the profit is right. It is high time we got rid of this rule and disempowered the real dictators. It would be that easy. We would just have to stop doing anything that permanently destroys our earth, our fellow creatures and ourselves and do everything that serves life. Of course, it’s a change, but an exciting one, one that makes us bloom and liberates us to true vitality and ourselves.