Translator: TED Translators admin
Reviewer: Leonardo Silva What if I told you
that you can change the world everytime you go to the supermarket,
prepare dinner, or visit a restaurant, and even enjoy every bite? Well, if you said that to me
only two years ago, I would have laughed in your face. Back then, if I went to a restaurant,
I would order a big, red, juicy steak. If you say to me, "Choose whatever
you want to eat," I would prefer to sit on a bar
and, with my bare hands, tear a crab apart, bit by bit. I was a restaurant and bar critic, and food to me was an adventure,
pleasure, passion, satisfaction, memories, and home. Changing the world was not on my plate. But as I became a conscious eater,
I discovered I can save lives, improve my health and contribute
to protecting the environment. I put the world on my plate. So, I am changing it
every time I go to the supermarket, prepare dinner or visit a restaurant. And if you're thinking, like I did, that conscious eating means giving up
all the pleasures of food, I have good news for you. I took all these ingredients of taste,
flavors, aromas, textures, and added in values of helping,
giving and protecting. So, food is still an adventure,
still a pleasure, still a passion, and I still enjoy every bite. We're all eating from the moment
we were born throughout our lives. It's breakfast, it's lunch, it's dinner, and personally for me,
it's everything in between. Before I even finish one meal,
I'm already fantasizing about the next. But how do we choose what we eat? Based on advertising?
Your mother's cooking? Habits? Culture? Taste? Most of the time,
we don't make a conscious choice. We eat and eat, and never stop to think about all this food we put
into our bodies. What's in it? How was it made? Where does it come from?
Who suffered for it? Who died? What is its real cost? Two years ago,
although I was writing about food, I didn't know everything about it.
Maybe I didn't want to. But then, as in any good story,
I met a guy. (Laughter) That guy was so different than me. He was actually thinking
about what he eats. He made a conscious choice: he chose to take meat, cheese,
milk, and eggs out of his plate. Why would anyone do something like that? So, I was very curious,
and as a good journalist, I immediately started asking him
all kinds of questions: "What's wrong with milk?
Why don't you eat eggs? Come on, you probably eat
free-range eggs or organic eggs." But, no. Okay, so I asked a lot of questions
and I got a lot of answers. And it was then that I knew
that something had changed, that I will not be able to fantasize
about this next meal, the same way I did before. Who knows the cost of an egg? Who knows? Okay, but I didn't ask for the price.
I asked for its cost. As a child, when I saw
a little, tiny yellow chick, all I wanted to do was to pat him. They are so sweet
with these tiny, little wings, and yellow feathers, tweeting. It would have never crossed my mind
to crush or to choke this little yellow chick to death, but this is exactly
what I was doing by eating eggs. Every day, in Israel alone, 15,000 little chicks are being killed, just because they are males
and cannot lay eggs. Their sisters are being killed
only two years later, just because they don't lay enough eggs. In other words, the egg industry,
in Israel alone, kills 9 million chicks and chickens
every single year. and throw them to the garbage. This is the cost of an egg,
an omelette and a cake. I visited dairy farms many times,
but I never really saw the cows. All I knew was that a cow gives milk.
We all know that. But wait a second, I'm a mother.
I gave birth. I know that in order for my body
to produce milk, I have to be pregnant, and give birth. So does a cow. A cow doesn't give milk. She is impregnated,
and when she gives birth, her baby is immediately
taken away from her, in order to become your next steak. And mother cow is being milked
over, and over, and over again, until her body collapses
and she becomes your meatballs. The dairy industry and the meat industry
are the same industries that enslave and ultimately kill
these innocent feeling beings. This is the cost of cheese, milk, and yoghurt. So conscious eating is saving lives,
but what's in it for me? Well, my body thanks me every day
for not putting into it cholesterol, saturated fats, toxics,
hormones, drug residues, you name it. Some of the leading health and nutrition
organizations in the world already declared
that a well-planned plant-based diet will dramatically reduce your chance
of having a heart attack, cancer, diabetes, cholesterol, kidney diseases. So by stopping hurting others, I got
he huge bonus of stopping hurting myself. By the way, you can stop hurting yourself
and get the huge bonus of stopping hurting others.
It goes the same way. So, conscious eating is saving lives
and it's good for our health, but it's also the best thing you can do
to protect the environment. Actually, you cannot be
an environmentalist while eating meat. It's like sitting on a branch, holding a hamburger in one hand
and sawing it with the other. You know that recently I just heard
that Al Gore had become vegan. He probably knows that. The livestock industry is one of the most polluting
and wasteful industries on earth. It's polluting air more than
all the vehicles in the world together! It's wasting so much water
that, just by going vegan, I'm saving 5 million liters
of water every year. 5 million liters.
Just me. Just one person. The livestock industry
uses 70% of agricultural lands to feed 60 billion land animals,
that humanity eats every year. 60 billion animals!!
That's a hell of a lot! If we take those lands
and use them to grow food for people instead of all these animals that you eat, we would end world hunger. So conscious eating is saving lives,
it's good for our health, and it's very good for the environment. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have
a win-win-win situation here. So, when decided to become vegan, I wanted to do it with the same passion
I had for food before. I opened up my food blog,
"vegansontop.com." (Laughter) Yeah, that's the name.
(Applause) And I thought it would document
my own personal, private journey to "vegan land." But, to my surprise,
a chain reaction started right away. First, my chef friends had to cook for me. Then we had some
amazing vegan tasty dinners in some of the best restaurants in Israel. Then, hundreds of hundreds of people,
vegan-food-loving people, came to eat. I discovered a whole growing,
vivid, involved community of people that wanted the same thing that I did: to make a change
through their choice of food, but to keep enjoying life and stay
the same people they used to be before. My journey had become their journey. So, from being a food writer
that crossed the lines, I became one of the voices
calling for an important culinary change and making it happen. Together with others, we took
this so-called extreme way of living, and put it into the Israeli
mainstream conversation. Two years ago,
I had to explain myself to a waiter not knowing what veganism was all about. Today, when I say I'm vegan, the waiter immediately explains to me
what are my menu options. And I have options,
because today chefs enjoy preparing, and the creativity of making
new vegan dishes for their menus. Through my website, that today has more
than 80,000 views a month, and my vegan workshops,
I teach tens of thousands of people how to enjoy cooking
with no animal products and look at their plates differently. I deeply believe that each and any one
of us can become an agent of change. By simply making
a conscious choice of what we eat, we can have the most direct impact
on the world we live in, more than any other change we make. We can argue whether we humans
are omnivores, carnivores, frugivores, or we can understand
that, in the 21st century, humans have become "choosivores," the only being who can and do choose what
to eat, when to eat, and whether to eat. So, the next time
you go to the supermarket, prepare dinner or visit a restaurant,
think about what you eat, and you too can make a change
to the world. [French] Bon appétit. (Applause)
Aside from all of the good stuff she has to say, wow. That Israeli accent and long curly hair. Wow.