I’m not here to rant at you about why you should go vegan. There’s enough evidence for that if you are willing to take it in. I’m talking about my process in ‘transitioning’ and reflecting on how I have been travelling for the last (almost) three weeks with my journey to vegan, the responses from others and the changes I had to make.
Going vegan was a natural transition for me. I’ve been vegetarian, well pescatarian, since the age of 13, albeit apart from a brief red meat-eating stint for six months or so during my triathlon days. After my freediving odyssey in Bali, I became more aware about plastic in the ocean, what fish eat (gross!) and overfishing. I knew too much about it to look the other way.
Over 2017 I gradually stopped eating fish out of cans, and then reduced my fish intake, with the odd crustacean here and there. I no longer felt good about eating fish.
The Christmas holidays saw me reflect on my goals and living intentionally each day making choices based on what I value. This was my word for 2018, “intention”. With this in mind could I really continue to turn a blind eye to dairy and eggs with how I felt about eating animals? The answer was no. I valued the animals more. I’ve firmly believed that chickens are the worst treated animal out of the whole entire cosmos, so why did I think that eating eggs was somehow less bad than eating chicken?
I made such a big deal about it in my head and made many excuses over the last year not to go vegan.
“Will I get enough protein?”
“I hate the taste of almond or soy milk!”
“But I LOVE cheese!” (And I do, indeed love the taste of cheese. But on reflection not as much as I love baby cows.)
And then, the remarks from people when I brought it up.
“Well that’s a bit extreme” or this one that I’ve heard a lot,
“If you lived on a farm and you had your own chickens, would you eat your own eggs?”.
I probably would. But if I lived on a farm, I’d probably grow my own veggies too. But sadly I don’t. I’m stuck with the food choices limited to me and my current supermarket shopping situation. All the labels in the world can’t convince me that ‘free range’ is indeed free range. I might make different decisions if I am on a farm, or if a local catches me fish whilst I am holidaying on an island. But I will cross that bridge when I come to it. For the moment, out of the supermarket choices that I have in Sydney I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as ethical eggs.
The things that I was addicted to or thought I would have trouble letting go of where, eggs in baked goods, plates of cheese and dairy!
None of which were good for me.
So the transition has been fairly easy thus far, replacing milk with almond milk, getting rid of cheese and I even made my own ricotta out of almonds! In the long run I think it will help my overall health, and might even make me a better chef, a win on all counts, and of course for the environment as well.
What about you?
Toyed with the idea of veganism?
Here’s the video that put me over the edge.
Much Love, Ashleigh XXX
