Vegan Decision: Veganism on a dare

Before totally committing to becoming a vegan back in 1990, I'd tried being a vegetarian a couple of years earlier after reading The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's 1906 expose on the meat-packing industry and the conditions of the wage slave immigrants that worked in that industry and going out with a gal who was a vegetarian.

As the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day approached in 1990, there were more and more magazines and articles on what a meat based diet does to the environment and I read up on this quite a bit. At the same time, I was going through an early mid-life crisis: I was 28 years old and had no real idea of where my life was going, but I wanted to affect a change in my life in some capacity. So now equipped with information about how being a vegetarian could actually change the world (or a small segment of it - one step at a time) I decided I was going to not be a slave to my meat craving palate and commit to making this change.

When I first became a vegetarian, my long time friend Joel (who was also my roommate at the time) asked me why I didn't just go the vegan route instead of just being a vegetarian, and as I had already read some of why being a vegan is even more environmentally helpful (the dairy and egg industry with their factory farms and the horrid conditions they subject animals to) I took his "dare" and went from meat eater to vegan almost overnight (I was maybe a vegetarian for a couple of weeks before becoming a vegan).

If I can be a vegan for 20 years now after being a meat eater for 28 years, anyone can do the same and not have a poorer eating quality of life and not have health deficiencies as a result.

When I first became a vegan and would go out to eat and upon getting a dish, that I requested to have no dairy or cheese, arrive with dairy ingredients, I would go into a crazy scene that I know embarrassed people I was with (just as I did in my former life as a meat eater when I got vegetables when I requested none. I was a dumb not so young angry white guy. It took me several years to get over my dumb angry side, but I've come to the conclusion that being angry is counterproductive to why I became a vegan.

Boca veggie burgers, smart dogs, tofurkey lunch slices and sausages (seriously most people who try these faux meat substitutes are really surprised how good they are and how much they taste like the "real" thing - and these are eaten by vegans such as myself for their protein and because I did like the texture of meat), and or colorful vegetables (raw or stir fried alone or with tofu) and fruits.

This essay has been brought to you by tree hugger and comic book lover (is that a dichotomy?), Ralph, on behalf of Mother Earth, and wants to thank everyone who read this essay and for even entertaining the thought of making more of your eating choices vegetarian / vegan. Just as earth has survived for millions of years without us in the past, so too can it survive without us in the future unless everyone remembers that everything is interconnected and our choices effect not only us, but where we live and will live in the

future.