16 Years as a Vegan...

After getting turned on to vegetarianism in my early teens, I spent my high school and college years waking up to becoming vegan at age 21. Since then, I have never looked back for a second. And that was 16 years ago this fall. I did not really put a whole lot of thought into it at the time, really. Some people decide to join the military. Other people might find a religion. For me, I became vegan. Back in those days, in the mid-1990's, there wasn't a lot of information about veganism, let alone other people who understood or things you could buy that were vegan. What's happened is nothing less than a radical change in our society. I don't have to explain what it means to be vegan anymore - Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres have already done that for me. Even Bill Clinton is vegan. Is veganism winning? Hardly. Among my friends and relatives I find that there are very few who share my views about animals or food. I'm sure that many people I connect with regularly about a variety of other things would prefer to ignore my posts about animals online, let alone understand why I am the way I am. As an activist, I do want to encourage others to become vegan. I don't think I've ever succeeded in doing so - it has occurred to me that perhaps I would be more effective if I posted less about the pain and suffering incurred by animals and more about the positive health and environmental effects that come about through people choosing plant-based diets. I will probably keep posting about both. People change all the time, and you never know what will eventually convince someone to make such an enormous personal sacrifice. For me, it was just seeing a lot of animal carcasses when I lived in China. For you, it might be this blog post.

More info: http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/ and http://www.worldgoveganweek.org/