From shame to harmony

It all started when I was at my first Barnum and Bailey Ringling Brothers Circus demonstration in 2012. I was there to protest the cruel treatment of circus animals. My partner and I had discussed becoming vegetarian in order to change our eating habit to a healthier one, but we hadn’t yet made the leap. 

While I was at the circus demo, I met many vegans and I mentioned to them that I was considering going vegetarian, but at the moment I was still eating fish, some dairy and certified “humane” chicken. I thought I was being more humane towards animals with my diet, but they started talking about the hidden truth of what certified humane meat is and the horrors of the dairy industry. I listened to all of the information, but deep down, I was a nervous about becoming vegan. I thought, “Wow, that’s a hard thing to do.” 

On the second day of the protest as I was holding a sign showing a chained elephant, a few circus-goers walked by me and said, “I bet you still eat meat!” It felt like a big slap in my face. I was ashamed. Here I was telling people to be more humane to animals while I was going home to eat a dead animal that had suffered. That was my wake up call. I went straight over to the vegans that had been telling me about veganism the day before, and I asked them to give me more information on what I can eat and what to do. We talked for two hours. I received the information I needed, and I was ready. 

Food shouldn't make you sick or feel bad

My mom told me that when I found out meat was an animal when I was around 6 years old, I was never the same. From that point on, my beef consumption was minimal to none. And, luckily, I've always hated fish or anything seafood, with a violent passion. Violent in that if I tasted it on accident, it would induce a serious gagging reflex and sometimes vomit. So, I've always eaten a primarily vegetarian diet. Except for chicken, which I ate sparingly and in phases. Dairy, on the other hand, didn't have the same affect on me, given that it didn't require killing an animal. It was a huge part of my diet until a little over a year ago. Throughout my life, I've consumed ice cream and ranch dressing in frighteningly large quantities.

As I grew a little older, and became more aware of how food made my body feel, I started to think that there was something wrong with eating dairy. It just didn't feel right anymore. Cheese especially began to make my stomach ache and made me so lethargic after eating it. So, I've known for maybe 5-7 years that I would eventually be vegan. I knew it was something I wanted and that it would happen because it just made sense. I've read enough about nutrition and the human body throughout my life to know that a plant based diet has been scientifically proven, over and over, to be the key to a healthy and disease-free life. I also just knew how I felt after eating a plant based meal vs. a meat based, cheesy meal. There was always a world of difference. So why did it take me so long to make the decision and take the leap? Human behavior is to blame, I suppose. Habit, fear of change? Probably both. Also, I've never in my life been able to be on a 'diet'. The psychological implications of certain foods being off-limits or a restriction of how much I could eat just made me obsess about it, resulting in failure. I didn't want to do this until I knew I could be successful. It was very important to me and I didn't want to try and fail over and over again and create negative associations.

The slow road

The story has been told that a piece of beef was the first solid food my little paws reached for. And up until about 10 years ago, I didn’t think a meal was complete without a big, honkin’ piece of cooked flesh. I honestly thought that in order to survive, one had to consume animal protein. That is what we have been programmed to believe. However, this is clearly a myth proliferated by ______ (fill in the blank with any industry driven by profits from meat and dairy consumption). This “myth” has been countered by science. Not a bunch of hemp-wearing, kumbaya-singing, paint-splashing, hippies. Science. In fact, the ‘protein myth’ should be referred to as the ‘protein scam’ because not only do you not need animal protein, it is unhealthy and dangerous. But this essay is not about that. I’ll leave that up to the China Study. This is about my long, ever-winding, sometimes backtracking, still-in-progress, road to veganism.

If you would have told me eight years ago that I would ever utter that previous sentence, I would have laughed at you and then snapped-into-a-Slim-Jim just to spite you. I grew up on meat in central Oklahoma in the 80’s and 90’s. Bologna, salami, hot dogs, pork chops, KFC, steak, jerky, nuggets, burgers, chili, Spam, you name it. I don’t recall hearing the word “vegetarian” until at least high school and “vegan” was just another word with the same meaning…Crazy-ass, tree-hugging, hand-holding, weirdos. You get the picture. Eating meat was “normal” and everyone else was cuckoo. 


The first time I actually met (and liked) a vegetarian was my best friend in graduate school (and still to this day – Hi Leslie!). I remember interrogating her FBI-style on many occasions about this lifestyle choice. I was shocked to learn she made this decision sometime in high school (High school! The biggest decision I made in high school was what to wear on a daily basis). Leslie would entertain my litany of questions with the patience of saint. And I, being the tried and true devil’s advocate that I am, would pose every argument possible. She never budged. I never budged…or so I thought. 

Choosing vegan, to honor everything I believe in

Last month I finally chose to walk the vegan road. I use the word ‘finally’ because I feel it has been a slow and gradual progression over the last 15 years.

In 1995 I read the book Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond and was introduced to the fact that humans are the only other animal that drink another animal’s milk. This totally grossed me out and my thoughts immediately drifted to how disturbing and incorrect it is for humans to suck on cow teets. Just because someone has packaged it up in a bottle or carton makes no difference. It’s still milk that has been squeezed from a cow, and in my opinion should only be used for one thing … feeding baby cows. So my milk drinking days ended abruptly. For some odd reason though, I didn’t put cheese in the same category. Strange, I know.

Over the next five years my taste for meat declined. Correction, not so much the taste of it, but more so the flesh component. Have you ever bitten in to a piece of meat and visualized biting in to the arm, leg or torso of an animal, and that the chewy bits of meat is too closely associated with chewing your way through the flesh of that animal? Those type of visualizations also grossed me out and ended my meat eating days, with exception to mince meat in lasagna, spaghetti bolognese and carpaccio (the paper thin raw beef), as these styles of meat required no tough chewing and melted in my mouth.

My fascination for food, health and wellbeing led me to study a 3 year Diploma of Nutrition and it was during those classes that I was exposed to the horrifying documentaries about chickens in battery farms, their ghastly diet, abnormally unhealthy living conditions and outrageous cruelty and suffering. Add to that, the accounts of negative health effects that the consumption of these chickens and eggs were having on the human population. I was so appalled by this information that I have never eaten a piece of chicken since, but somehow I remained an egg eater, as long as they were the biodynamic organic free-range variety.

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).

The enlightened diet

My path to a meat free diet has been long. I grew up on a farm where we raised much of our own food, including beef and chicken. Ours was a hobby farm that my Grandfather bought in the 1940’s (probably to relive his overly romanticized childhood) and was not our main source of income. However, it was still a working dairy farm and my playground as a kid and animal lover.

Our farm animals were both treated well and well loved. For that reason, I never gave much thought to modern day farming until I became pregnant with my daughter and began to obsess about what I would allow into my body, and the bodies of family.

As I educated myself I switched to organic and free-range. For me it was a slow leaning toward vegetarianism, slowly cutting out meat strictly for health reasons. At that time I was still under the delusion that all farms were like ours. I had no moral motivation.

At a certain point in my personal development I intensely desired a big leap in my growth. I wanted to take myself to a new higher level, mentally, physically, and spiritually. It was Kathy Freston’s book Quantum Wellness that was the tipping point for me.

She clearly outlines three compelling reasons for not eating meat:

1.     Physical health – I read about the adverse health effects of sugar, caffeine, gluten, alcohol, and last but not least, animal products.

2.     Environmental impact – I read compelling facts about the amount of grain and water needed to produce even small amounts of edible meat. Grain and water that would be better allocated to starving people in the developing world. Additionally the greenhouse gas produced from so much farming, “A UN report says that almost a fifth of emissions that contribute to global warming come from livestock, including chickens, pigs and sheep, in addition to cattle”. (Quantum Wellness p. 114)

3.     And finally, I read about the absolute horrors of modern day factory farming. We’ve all heard of mad cow disease, which is the result of feeding herbivores a diet of animal byproducts, (disgusting!) and hopefully we’ve all heard about the incredibly abusive ways in which chickens and other animals are raised for our consumption.

A quiet vegetarian

Always being a supportive yet concerned parent, my mother made an appointment with my pediatrician when I suddenly declared myself a vegetarian at age 11 in 1984. I felt victorious when I heard my doctor respond, “Well, she’ll be healthier than the rest of your family.” On the way home, my mother stopped by the local bookstore and purchased Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. Despite my physician’s professional opinion, she was terrified that my new diet would be gaping with nutritional holes.

Admittedly, my self-imposed dietary restrictions meant I would subsist on Morningstar Farm’s “Grillers” (the original veggie burger) and cheddar cheese—lots and lots of cheddar cheese—which wasn’t the best way to eat. But I was swearing off meat because I couldn’t stand the thought of eating anyone, not because it was a healthier diet.

It came easily to me. I found that all I had to do was think a little bit harder about what I was putting into my mouth. I started reading food labels and navigating restaurant menus and that was that—I never looked back. However, I quickly discovered that no matter how comfortable I was with my dietary decision, others around me were not. In fact, I was regularly interrogated and challenged by anyone who discovered I was a vegetarian, despite the fact that I was a quiet one.

Most responded as if I had attacked them personally, as if my taking advantage of meat-free food options was a direct comment on their carnivorism, despite the fact that I never (ever!) broached the subject without invitation. I suspect the judgment they were feeling was from within; and if I could make even one person stop and consider the way they were eating, I was willing to have that uncomfortable conversation.

I am still a vegetarian, but I have evolved beyond Grillers and cheddar cheese. It has been a process, a natural progression. I stopped eating animals when I was a kid because I love animals. I have recently stopped eating animal products because I could no longer talk myself into believing that nobody has to die in exchange for a glass of milk and that eggs could never become chickens because they are not fertilized. The health factor is still an added benefit for me, a freebie.

I don't care if the animal dies, I just can't metabolize it

My title comes from a Far Side cartoon - meat packing sign read 'we only kill depressed cows' and a picture of cows saying 'kill me, eat me'.

In 1987 my 15 year-old daughter became a vegetarian. I believed she did it only to inconvenience me. Ten years later she had the pleasure of hearing me say 'you were right'.

In February 1996 my doctor told me to just go home, dial 9-1 and wait for the stroke/heart attack to hit before I dialed that last 1. I was 47 years-old, 40 pounds overweight, and my cholesterol was 427. Serendipity rules, and at home I had a newly purchased book by Dr. Dean Ornish, HEART DISEASE REVERSAL in which he professed 'no meat, no fish, no chicken, no eggs, no oil, no cheese'. He recommended 'cold turkey' so to speak, as drastic steps bring drastic positive results so I went that route. I did miss meat and chicken for a year or so, but the immediate increase in energy, well being, and feeling clean were big payoffs.

I would never, could never, go back to eating meat, fish or chicken. I did not last long without eggs and cheese, but today I'm at a healthy weight and my cholesterol is (drum roll, please) 156.

One person can make a huge difference

I became vegan almost two years ago. I skipped the vegetarian bit (although I’d given up red meat some years earlier) and dived straight into the vegan pool, to realise I’m a strong swimmer. But to swim well, I’ve discovered, you need to have reasons for doing it. In my pool, there are plenty of sharks to keep me on task. The more reasons you have for becoming vegan, the less it feels like a diet. The more reasons, and being vegan simply becomes a fabulous way of life.


Growing up in a regional Australian town where the main industries were (and still are) meat and dairy, it was just a given that my parents would serve up animal products at every meal. Being allergic to dairy from birth still didn't stop me from eating ice cream and drinking chocolate milk. I constantly see-sawed between slim and chubby. Regardless of my weight, I felt I carried a toxic layer of fat around with me. Although I couldn't explain it back then. I just knew my body wasn't quite right. The real me was somehow hidden underneath a layer that wasn't meant to be there. No matter how much weight I'd lose, I just didn't feel right.


It wasn't until I moved to Los Angeles in early 2007 that I began to explore and immerse myself in the vegan culture there. I became vegan after completing my Reiki I certificate (an energetic healing modality). I turned vegan the very next day and gave up a two-year addiction to coffee.


Since leading a 100% vegan lifestyle for the past two years, it's not only my body that has changed shape. I'm mentally clear and find I don't have nearly as much mental chatter going on as I would have in my pre-vegan days. I feel more connected to source, or God, if you will. I have a life purpose that drives me like nothing has before. I also have a spiritual connection to the food I eat. Dinner is no longer just a meal to stop the hunger pains. It's a conscious action that affects my life in countless wonderful ways.

Diving into veganism

Last night I told a friend that if someone told me a year ago that I’d become a vegan, I wouldn’t have believed them. Just a little over a month ago, I was eating cheese, yogurt, eggs, chicken and fish regularly, and red meat on a less frequent basis.

But this past October, I read something that made me reconsider the way I eat. Specifically, it was an excerpt from Jonathan Safran-Foer's book Eating Animals. His widely recognized assertion that animal agriculture is responsible for more environmental devastation than any other factor made me basically sit up and take notice.

I do consider myself an environmentalist. I drive a hybrid car, I recycle everything, I try to be thoughtful about what I purchase and how I consume. Except I hadn’t yet made the connection, or more aptly, the disconnection - between continuing to eat animal products (even though I was eating mostly organic) and helping to repair or stop the destruction of the environment. Until that article. At that point, I started to investigate things a little further.

I discovered that turkeys raised for meat (and poultry altogether) are one of the least humanely treated animals and are also extremely dissimilar from their natural genetic form. I insisted that my family get a free-range, organic, “heritage” turkey for Thanksgiving. But honestly, I felt a little bad and guilty about eating the turkey on Thanksgiving. I didn’t wholeheartedly enjoy it.