If you are hoping to live a life that is as conscious of others as possible, there are plenty of considerations to take on board. One of the most important, however, is always going to be that you aim to cause or be a part of, as little cruelty as possible – whether that means towards other humans or different species around the world. Living this kind of lifestyle requires a strong conscience and no small amount of effort on your part to ensure that you are not encouraging or supporting cruel practices. At first, you might be surprised at how much you need to pay attention to if you are to successfully live a cruelty-free lifestyle. To help you out, we have gathered here just a few of the main concerns that you should pay close attention to ensure that you are living in this mode.
Food
This is probably the first that most people will look to when they are trying to live a more cruelty-free lifestyle, and in many ways, it is the easiest to manage. Nonetheless, it is still a major challenge for many people, especially if you have never even attempted something like a vegan diet before. It is helpful, first of all, to put aside a few of the more common myths about veganism. Despite what you might think, you do not need animal products to have a healthy, balanced diet. There is increasing evidence in the field of nutrition that an animal-free diet is the best for you. Focusing on a whole-food, plant-based diet will reduce your chance of developing all of the major causes of death in the developed world, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and many kinds of cancer. All of these are worsened by eating meat and dairy, so going vegan is the best option for you.
That being said, you must ensure that you plan your meals out, especially at the start of the switch, as otherwise, it can be all too easy to not eat enough, or not enough of the right stuff, or even to eat too much and put on weight. As long as you have a diet plan, however, you will find that you can turn vegan more easily than you might imagine – and help to keep animals safe and unharmed in the process.
Makeup
If you are determined to try and live as cruelty-free as possible, this is another issue that you will probably need to focus on early on, as it is another of the huge problems of animal cruelty worldwide. If you do not currently put much thought into what makeup you use, then you are quite possibly adding to the suffering of animals by doing so. This is due to the simple fact that the majority of the most popular makeup brands use some kind of animal testing on their products. This is not harmless, and will more often than not result in some poor side effects for the animals involved. So the simplest thing you can do here is to simply change your brand – but how do you know which brands to go for and which to avoid?
A good place to start is by looking at the packaging of anything that you buy, as by law they have to specify if they use animal testing or if they have any animal parts in the product. Beyond that, you can hopefully do some research and come across a few brands which you happen to know are cruelty-free, such as doseofcolors.com, and then simply stick to those companies. This is a simple switch to make, but it has a hugely positive ongoing effect and is worthwhile for that reason.
Clothing
It’s always interesting to see how little thought most people put into the clothes they wear. Most of us are only really concerned with whether something looks good on us, and not where it comes from or what kind of practices have gone into its production. However, living a truly cruelty-free lifestyle means that you need to pay attention to these kinds of things and that in particular means knowing what clothes you should wear and which you should avoid. Some of the obvious things you need to avoid are leather and fur, but you would be surprised at some of the other concerns too. Some jeans, for instance, have animal products in them, so you need to be careful and check the label – so that you can support only those who are doing right by the animals of the earth. See onegreenplanet.org for some options here.
