Today I’m writing a non ELT-related post. The title is a question I often get, and since my third anniversary of being a vegan is coming up I thought I put my reasons in writing. I hope someone will read these words and think about going vegan themselves. 🙂

Why I’m vegan

The answer here is pretty simple: for ethical reasons. If you start reading* about how we treat animals that we consider food, and then reflect on how we treat our pets, you suddenly notice the giant purple elephant that’s staring at you, and ask yourself how the heck it is possible that you hadn’t noticed it before.
How can a mistreated dog cause outrage amongts people who are perfectly OK with serially getting cows pregnant, only to take their calves away as soon as they’re born to send them to fatten and slaughter, while attaching the poor mothers to some milk sucking machine? This is beyond any possible reason if you really think about it, and yet it’s absolutely ‘normal’  for our society.
As soon as I noticed the elephant, I decided I wouldn’t ignore it any more.

How I became vegan

In front of a plate of sausage and mash. Seriously.
I was having lunch with my husband, when out of the blue he… popped the question. What do you say we become vegetarian? I had been thinking about it for years, so my first and immediate reaction was YES.
I had been feeling uneasy at eating meat and seeing those awful lorries taking animals to the slaughterhouse. But I had always been lazy and lacked motivation to go vegetarian on my own. But when he said it — and he had apparently been thinking about it since we had lost our dear kitty — it felt like destiny knocking at my door. 🙂
After doing some reading*, we decided that going vegetarian wasn’t going to be enough, so we quickly switched to a completely vegan diet, first at home and then also when eating out.
This happened three years ago, and we are now two happy and healthy vegans. 🙂

* here are the books I think you should definitely read if you are thinking about going vegetarian / vegan:

  • Johnatan safran Foer’s Eating Animals: a father-to-be journey and questions on how to raise his child
  • Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation: ethical and philosophical background for a vegan choice
  • Brenda Davis and Melina Vesanto’s Becoming Vegan: sound health advice on how to make the most of a vegan diet.