This past week, I have made the extra effort to search out some of the most well crafted, informative, and entertaining content related to veganism that the internet had to offer me. Below I curated 5 of my favorite finds of the week and broke down what it was that made them stand out amongst the rest.
Unnatural Vegan : Unnatural Vegan is a vegan Youtube influencer. She makes videos pertaining to the science behind veganism, as well as videos explaining when / why vegan diets can go wrong and how to fix them. (This weeks’ video pertaining to valid reasons to eat meat was particularly interesting!)
Medium // Nothing You Eat is All-the-Way Vegan : This article is a good eye opener to the fact that veganism is still not a completely cruelty free diet. Focusing on fertilizers, this article covers what is actually in our fertilizers and why organic is not always better.
@TheVeganSociety // Vegan and Plant-Based Diets Use Less Resources : The Vegan Society is an affluent vegan twitter that shares news, recipes, and original articles pertaining to veganism. The article we are discussing here was shared to their Twitter this past week, and pertains to the benefits a vegan diet has on the use of our earth’s resources.
BBC News // Why the Vegan Diet is Not Always Green : This article published on BBC, a source I often look to for well sourced articles, does a great job at acknowledging how much less harmful a vegan diet is on our environment without making it appear harmless. It includes verifiable statistics pertaining to the environmental impact of our diets, as well as information on the impacts of importing the majority of our fruits and vegetables.
Veg News // These 25 Black-Owned Restaurants Are Redefining Vegan Food : This article posted by Veg News is a well crafted list of black-owned vegan restaurants, including pictures from each place, emphasizing the variety that can be had in a vegan diet. In addition, this article does a good job of showing that vegan food can be made across many cultures and is not just for the stereotypical young, white, and rich character it is often associated with.
My media use this week was much different than it normally is, and I think that is a good thing. While I still spent plenty of my time doing nonproductive things on the internet, beginning my time with a purpose and a goal was really helpful for me. I think knowing that I was searching for items to curate this list made me more apt to search out sources that I felt were trustworthy, and gave my time spent online a purpose rather than something to do mindlessly, or to pass time.
Being someone that has considered themselves to be news avoidant, having to search out news and content relating to a topic I feel passionately about made me realize that news is not all bad when it is gathered from the right places. Previously I have admittedly gathered much of my news from just my Facebook feed, and curating this list made me dive deeper into what the sources I usually favor have to offer. BBC for example is a source I often don’t think twice about when it comes to credibility, and while I still am a large fan of all they have to offer I did realize that there is definitely bias and personal opinion included in much of their content.
In addition to BBC, Unnatural Vegan is one of my favorite sources for content centered around a science based vegan viewpoint and I think that if anything I have become a bigger fan of what she produces. Unnatural Vegan does an outstanding job of coming from a place that is fact based, rather than coming from a place of emotion or passion in her content. While this assignment didn’t necessarily change my sources for news, it did make me realize that news does not have to have such a negative connotation if it is being sourced from reliable and relatable sources.
Aside from just the impacts that this assignment had on my sources, I think the biggest impact it had was giving my internet use purpose. I realized that most of my time online is filled by consuming information that is often negative or just not useful to me, and that I can get a lot more out of my usage if I search out things I am interested in rather than settling for whatever pops up on my Facebook newsfeed.
