About Becoming Vegan

It wasn't my intention to become vegan. Really. I thought I was doing just fine with my vegetarian ways (of which I had followed since I was 12, I became vegan when I was 22). I've actually said, straight out, plenty of times, that I would never become vegan, or even consider it. I'm not eating meat, so I'm already saving thousands of animal lives. I also don't wear leather and fur, although I do have a couple pairs of woolen socks... but they don't die from shearing, right? I mean, I've been to county fairs, I grew up in that environment after all, and I never once saw a sheep die while being shorn. The same thing goes for cows being milked, or chickens laying eggs.

While I did realize that many dairy cows and hens are kept in torturous conditions, that wasn't the case where I lived. I knew where I got my eggs and milk from: my next door neighbors. I could look out my window and see the hens roaming around the yard (and often in my own yard, we're very lax about property). In my town, dairy farming isn't a cruel endeavor, and I didn't see the harm in buying eggs and milk from the local farmers, my friends, when I knew they didn't engage in practices that maybe other farmers, way out in the unknown, did.

Then I moved away, but I continued buying eggs and milk, although I slowly weaned myself off of milk (relying more on soy milk, just because I like the vanilla flavor), but didn't really think about the cruelty involved. Then I got involved in the Veggie Board (from here on out reffered to as the VB) on weightwatchers.com, and someone referred me to The Vegan Sourcebook by Joanne Stepaniak. From the first few chapters, I realized that the idyllic town I was raised in was not the norm (I had always really known this, as anyone who grew up there and then ever left it would realize), and the dairy industry is just as, if not more than, cruel as the meat industry. So, from that day (December 1, 2006), I have been making a conscious effort to be vegan.

Some things weren't too difficult. As it was, about 75% of the food I ate was already vegan (considering I'm a longtime vegetarian, and the vegetarian food on campus is actually vegan to accomodate both. I go to a very veg*an friendly school). The things I had to completely replace were actually household and health and beauty products. I thought eggs were going to be difficult to give up. The truth is, I gave myself leniency to "ease into" becoming vegan. That is, I wouldn't just thrown out all my non-vegan food, because that would be a waste and too expensive (I'm a poor college student, plus I already paid for the food, so who would it benefit?). So I would eat the non-vegan food I had, just not buy any more. Except... I had eight eggs (cruelty-free from Trader Joe's) in my fridge when I made this decision. They stayed there until they went bad. I just didn't want eggs! Or the cheese that was sitting in the back of my fridge. I guess reading that book has made more of an impact on me than I thought.

So my advice, for those of you sitting on the fence, would be to first read The Vegan Sourcebook. Reading five chapters of it made a huge difference to me. It starts with the history in the first chapter, which you can skip unless you're a big huge geek like me, and then the second chapter starts on the dairy industry, etc. Then, decide what the best route of action would be for you. For some people, they need to ease into it. This worked for a lot of people on the VB. For others, they went cold tofurkey, threw everything out that wasn't vegan and started right there. It's all in your personality.