Going Vegan
© iStockPhoto.com / kcline
My life has gotten better since I made the decision to stop consuming meat, eggs and dairy products. I had my eureka moment about nine years ago when I woke up to the fact that my choice to eat meat meant I was actually paying someone to end the life of another living being – a being who, in all likelihood, had spent his or her whole life scared or in pain. I think I must have known on some level the impact that acknowledging that connection would have on my life, which is probably why it took me so long to acknowledge it. Between you and me, I was a cheese addict. I wish I had known that going vegan doesn’t actually make you feel like you’re giving something up (which was what I was scared of) but actually makes you feel more like you’re gaining something – maybe a deeper respect for life or for oneself.
Life is so much more colourful now. Paradoxically, I’ve found that instead of restricting my options, going vegan opened me up to a whole new world of culinary experiences. For the first time, I actually had to think about what I was eating. I ventured down shopping aisles I would ordinarily have skipped right past, and I ended up discovering a world of new tastes and delights. I started learning to cook with ingredients I had never even heard of. Instead of staying a boring routine, dinnertime turned into an adventure that I genuinely felt enthusiastic about.
I now find food really exciting, and when I hear that same old broken-record comment “You’re a vegan?! What do you eat?!” I just laugh, because nine times out of 10, I’ll already be devising my next gastronomic masterpiece.
I know what you mean – I used to love cheese, but I cannot even stand the smell of it now, same goes for eggs. Just knowing where they have come from repulses me. Don’t get me started on the smell of flesh…eugh.
Go vegans!
Recently I made the step from vegetarianism to veganism. I felt I had to after learning from PETA what a dairy cow goes through and the suffering that a laying chicken goes through. For me even if a vegan diet was bland (which it isn’t!) I would still be a vegan because its about altruism, I would eat anything if I could save animals from the torture chamber. Being vegan is the best thing in the world, tasty meals which are good for you but which protects animal life from suffering. Yet being vegan doesn’t quite quench the pain that I feel, knowing no matter how vegan I am millions of other people eat meat which in turn supports the murder of cows, pigs, sheep, fish etc. But I won’t give up, thanks PETA.
Lol @ Defensive Omnivore Bingo! When people say to me “You’re a vegan?! What do you eat?!” I always reply with “The same as you but without the cruelty!”
My friend and I are both large meat eaters, one of us is very skeptical of the claims made about the vegan diet and the lifestyle in general, the other is also skeptical as she does not believe things without seeing hard evidence of it (links to academic studies are welcome). We both also point out the complete lack of the mentioning of free range or non-intensive farming methods in the article. Likewise the claims of comparable intelligence and individuality in animals such as chickens, one of us has worked with animals in the countryside his whole life and believes the article to be incredibly biased and projecting an unfair view, which only leads to ignorance and extremism.
We are both going to go vegan for a week for the sake of experiencing both sides of the argument, we will let you know when we have carried out the experiment and how we feel.
Regards J+T