If you share the typical British appetite, you will have worked your way through more than 1.5kg of meat this week as part of your annual 80kg quota of flesh-eating. Britain is one of the biggest meat consumers in the world, but at the top of the charts, America beats them all. The average American ploughs their way through 125kg of flesh a year. Do we really need to be eating this much meat? Most people in this country and the US eat double the amount of protein they need. Excess is just broken down in the body for energy or stored as fat. Over three years ago, I started cutting down on meat. I can tell you that the benefits are extraordinary, but you won't know until you try it for yourself. Here are a few reasons to give it a try. 1. Better Health The number one reason I started to cut down on meat was because I wanted to improve my health. Animal foods, especially red meat, are among the largest sources of saturated fats in our diet. Meat's fat, cholesterol and cal...

Cave painting in Lascaux, France. Well, this is something I have been avoiding for a while. Actually looking into the dairy industry and finding out what goes on there. I think it's something most of us just put to the back of our minds. We don't really want to know about that stuff, because it makes us feel uncomfortable. Should we really ignore our feelings? If something is niggling at you, saying "this isn't right" then you should stop and listen, for your own peace of mind. Ignoring this does not make it go away. "The dairy cow is also the hardest worked of all farmed animals. To enable a constant supply of milk cows are usually artificially inseminated two to three months after they have given birth and are required to nurture a growing calf inside while simultaneously producing milk. This routine inevitably takes its toll, and many cows are slaughtered in the UK, physically exhausted, before their fifth birthdays." http://www.ethicalco...

Firstly, what does animal testing involve? skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed onto the shaved skin or dripped into the eyes of restrained rabbits without any pain relief repeated force-feeding studies lasting weeks or months to look for signs of general illness or specific health hazards such as cancer or birth defects; and  widely condemned "lethal dose" tests, in which animals are forced to swallow large amounts of a test chemical to determine the dose that causes death. at the end of a test the animals are killed, normally by asphyxiation, neck-breaking, or decapitation. Pain relief is not provided. I have been learning more and more about animal testing and which companies to avoid this year, and I am working on replacing my makeup collection with only cruelty-free products. I have to big up LUSH as one of the best cruelty-free natural vegan choices in the UK. I have been a lover of LUSH ever since I saw their first shop in Poole, D...