Nope… I’m not going to ask you if you’ve written your resolutions yet.
It’s almost the end of 2015… have you donated to your favorite charity this year? As the fiscal year draws to a close, it’s a good time to think about whether you’ve given as much as you’d like in 2015.
Where to Give: I wrote a blog post about Rich Roll’s podcast interview of William MacAskill on how to “Do Good Better”. MacAskill spoke beautifully about giving to charities that are the most effective in their outreach, and who use research backed approaches to measure their own efficacy so your money is put to good use. He recommends using the site GiveWell.org to help you find the best charities to donate money to.
How Much to Give: If worrying about how much to give is a barrier to giving at all, stop worrying! Send what you’re comfortable with, or come up with a plan to give next year and start picking out the charity or charities you’d like to donate to; it’ll be added incentive to save.
My Top Charity Pick This Year: …is not on the GiveWell.org list. BUT WAIT! I have a good reason. My favorite charity this year is NutritionFacts.org, which provides updates on the latest research in nutrition via short articles and videos. It’s completely nonprofit, it’s not influenced by corporations or product sponsorships, and it requires no membership and displays no ads. Our donation this year will be added to the many others that help the site with all the associated costs.
Why I feel NutritionFacts.org is effective giving: This site hits three major areas of interest. Human welfare, the environment and climate change, and animal suffering.
- Human welfare: Good nutrition has been shown to prevent and even reverse heart disease, slow and even stop the rate of cancer growth, and significantly reduce people’s chances of suffering from many chronic illnesses. Seeing Dr. Greger’s video, Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death leaves no question that the information shared on NutritionFacts.org has the potential to save and improve lives. We could also more effectively feed the growing world population if we were able to divert some of the crops being used to feed livestock to feeding humans.
- The Environment: I recently watched Cowspiracy, and was shocked and dismayed to learn that animal agriculture is one of the leading culprits in climate change and deforestation of rainforests. It takes a lot more energy to feed people animals than plants. Check out Cowspiracy’s great infographic on this here: http://www.cowspiracy.com/infographic. Since the healthiest diet is a whole foods, plant based diet, NutritionFacts.org may influence people to reduce their consumption of animal products and consequently benefit the planet.
- Animal Suffering: You can watch some videos of what goes on in animal agriculture on the Mercy for Animals youtube channel, but I think this one’s pretty obvious. By eating plants, we reduce the suffering of animals. It’s not just animals who are killed for our food who suffer, the dairy and egg industry cause a lot of harm to innocent sentient beings.
I love that this nutrition information is now accessible to more people.
Dr. Greger’s new book, How Not To Die, begins many chapters with anecdotes about people who saw videos on his site, changed their diet in response to a disease diagnosis, and are living better lives (heck, some of them are lucky to BE alive) because of it.
I want the life-saving information about nutrition’s influence over our nation’s leading killers to continue to be available for free. It has saved people’s lives, and in the process, reduced their environmental impact and cruelty to animals. That’s a swell side effect.
I’m not saying you have to donate to NutritionFacts.org… but I am really excited to have found such an amazing charity that checks off so many boxes in terms of its potential to change this world for the better.
It’s accessible. It’s free. It’s life changing. It’s environmental. It’s evidence-based. It’s awesome.
But go out there and look for yourself. What do you see in this world that you’d like to help change? What has positively impacted your own life, that you’d like to share with someone else? What causes motivate you most?
So, my goal is to stop maintaining my wait and yoyoing with these pounds and get to my goal weight. This is my year to do it! We have a couple of favorite charities – a local food charity that also provides services around health and job finding services – Loaves and Fishes and my hubby and I donate monthly and also volunteer there. We also donate to PAWS – Pets are worth saving – a no kill shelter in Chicago. I would volunteer there but I would want to take everyone home! My cat is a rescue and my next pet will be a rescue too!
I agree with you about wanting to take every cat home! I don’t know how volunteers at shelters do it, but I’m glad they do 🙂
I’m so honored by this impassioned plea!
I consider myself a part of the effective altruism movement and take very seriously decisions as to how to best donate my time and money. That’s why I dedicated my life to doing this work and it’s so heartwarming and validating to have gotten so much support from so many who see the value in spreading thsi message of dietary sanity.
Thank you again so much–I really appreciate it!
Dr. Greger, it warms my heart to know that you read this post and have a small sense of how much I appreciate the work you do.
Reading How Not to Die cover to cover solidified your status as one of my number one heroes of all time. I’m so honored that you took the time to comment here. It’s such a privilege to know you’ve seen my post about how valuable I consider NutritionFacts.org.
I’m truly touched – thank you, and best wishes as you continue to spread life-saving nutrition information with the world.