style="font-size:15px;"> Why is dairy bad for me?How can I do a plant-based diet on a tight budget?
What vegan dishes can I cook so I still feel satisfied?
Why isn’t honey vegan?
And when you’re ready, try searching for the disturbing things like “undercover factory farm footage” or “animal agriculture environmental effects.” There’s a ton of information out there that’s infinitely more important than where Taylor Swift went to high school, but it’s up to you to type it in.
Common Stereotypes and Misconceptions about Vegans and Veganism
I’ll be addressing each of these beliefs in depth over the course of this book, but they’re so prevalent that it makes sense to look at them up front.
We’re judgmental and intolerant.
When you rave about bacon and a vegan gives you a dirty look, they’re thinking about everything a defenseless pig suffers in order to become the topping on your hipster doughnut. It’s true that we occasionally lose our cool and say something hostile, but it’s hard to be patient when we’re so keenly aware of the suffering (and environmental devastation and the nasty effects of meat and dairy on human health) and it seems like no one wants to listen.
We’re too idealistic.
You know how everyone’s so fond of that Gandhi quote, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”? Funny how folks tend to give us a hard time for following that advice.
We live a joyless, ascetic existence.
The complete opposite: I eat anything I want, and I’ve never been happier in my life.
Diet is a personal choice.
Not when your choice promotes the suffering of sentient beings. (This is my response to a privileged non-vegan audience with easy access to fresh produce, nutritional information, and other
resources. As food-justice activist Starr Carrington writes, “[I]t is inherently racist to impose blame upon the Black consumer for failing to consume healthier options without equitable education and awareness of one’s transitioning food environment.”)
Plant-based eating is expensive.
It can be if you buy a lot of faux meats, nut cheeses, and other fancy foods, but not if you get most of your groceries in the produce section and buy your grains, nuts, and legumes in bulk. (Also, keep in mind that government subsidies are behind the low prices for meat and dairy in the US. Ultimately, you may spend much more on healthcare for diseases promoted by the standard American diet.)
Vegans don’t care enough about human rights.
We believe all oppressions are interrelated. The system that tortures and kills innocent creatures for human consumption is ultimately the same system that starves human children all over the world, keeps the truth-seeking journalist in prison, and guns down unarmed Black Americans with zero consequences for the shooters. We need people working to dismantle this system from every angle.
Veganism is a lifestyle for well-off white people.
It’s true that vegan activists of color don’t receive the same level of recognition as white vegans, and privileged vegans must address the racism, classism, sexism, and ableism within our movement. Google “intersectional veganism” (or see suggested reading on page 259), and delve into the vital work of vegans from marginalized communities.
A compassionate lifestyle is an all-or-nothing proposition.
You’re not vegan if you’re occasionally eating dairy cheese or buying wool sweaters, but you’re still living more ethically than you were before. When you know better, you do better, and it’s like any other good new habit: if you slip up, just start again.
If you’re tired of feeling chronically anxious and depressed and wish there were something besides medication that might help you, if you feel an affinity for animals and the natural world, if you’ve ever felt disgust at the sight of meat or remorse for having eaten it, if you’ve ever had the squirmy feeling that there are facts it is safer not to know, if you have ever felt unsettled after a meal that was meant to nourish you, if you’ve tried vegetarianism before but couldn’t find the resources or support you needed, if you’re scared as hell of cancer, heart disease, or diabetes: this book is for you.
Part I
Sticking point #1: “The creative process is often frustrating, but false starts and dead ends are inevitable.”
I used to believe anxiety and frustration were part and parcel of art making, too. But what if I told you it doesn’t have to be that way?
In the spring of 2011, I signed up to volunteer at Sadhana Forest, a reforestation project and vegan community near Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu, India. Founded by Yorit and Aviram Rozin in 2003, Sadhana Forest draws environmentalists from all over the world, and the Ayurvedic vegan food is just as vibrant and varied as the volunteers who prepare and savor it: fruit salads with papaya, passionfruit, and bananas picked just down the road, breakfast porridge with jaggery, warm flavorful yellow dal and other stews and curries, lime-tossed salads of every color and texture. Mealtimes are social and sacred at the same time, with a moment of grateful silence before someone sounds a chime and everyone happily tucks in. Sadhana means “spiritual practice” in Sanskrit, and it’s a fitting name for a place that will change your life, if you let it.
Before my arrival at Sadhana Forest, it hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t actually joking about being addicted to cheese. I’d reached a point where I felt a vague unease whenever I consumed an omelet or my favorite Cotswold cheddar, and I was excited to be joining a vegan community, but I didn’t experience an epiphany until a long-term volunteer struck up a conversation at dinnertime. Jamey gently asked what was holding me back from going vegan, and I said I worried about what would happen when family or friends invited me over for dinner—that I might alienate or inconvenience them.
“I hear what you’re saying,” he replied, “but do you see how small a concern that is compared to the abuse animals suffer for our food, and what animal agriculture is doing to the planet?”
Sitting cross-legged on the reed-matted floor—having scraped the last delicious morsels off my stainless-steel plate, which I would later clean with ashes and vinegar in a basin behind the main hut—I felt a weird and exciting synergy between Jamey and me, as if I’d asked him a very long time ago to meet me here and ask me these questions.
Every creative knows this feeling, even if they haven’t yet experienced it in this context. It’s the click, that achingly perfect moment when the story or image you’ve been fumbling toward for weeks, months, or even years resolves itself into the Legitimate Work you know in your heart it’s meant to be. Artists live for these moments of revelation, or what psychologists call “peak experiences.”
