🌱 My Vegan Journey
From omnivore to vegan. The people and events that shaped my convictions.
It all began with a potluck.
In 2007 I accepted a summer job with the Human Resources department at Power to Change (then Campus Crusade for Christ). This required moving to British Columbia. For accommodations, I rented a room in a big house with several other young men as flat mates.
One of the guys was mostly vegetarian. He was against factory farming, but wasn’t against hunting and fishing. One day we all had a potluck. I decided to make a pasta dish that I had made before, but I left out the meat so everyone could try it.
I found out that I really didn’t miss the meat. I had my own homemade sauce, which tasted great regardless (IMHO).
So began my first experiment with a vegetarian diet.
Vegetarian Experiment #1
I wasn’t earning a lot of money while working at a non-profit. So I decided to try eating vegetarian meals for a month in order to save some money. 💸
One of my colleagues was also vegetarian. Her reasons were for the animals, for her health, for the environment and climate change. Yes, back in 2007. I don’t think she was ahead of her time. It’s just that everyone else was behind. 😅
At the time I didn’t know much of anything about nutrition, much less climate change, deforestation, factory farming, and the like. Late into the experiment, I learned that canned vegetable soup contains chicken stock! 🤦🏼♂️ That’s how naive I was – not even reading the ingredients.
After the month was up, I switched back to my previous omnivore diet. I wasn’t yet ready to commit to being vegetarian long-term. My misconceptions around protein were part of that decision. But it was a positive experience – the food and the savings.
Vegetarian Experiment #2
It was 7 years (2014) before I switched to vegetarian again.
One of my colleagues was Jewish, and due to the lack of Kosher options, he would eat vegetarian whenever we grabbed lunch.
Another colleague had previously worked in refrigeration before going into computer science. During one of his previous jobs, he had seen a large-scale chicken farm in Alberta. That experience was his reason for being mostly vegetarian, but he too was okay with hunting and fishing.
So again there were some vegetarians in my life, and if they can do it, so can I.
This time my reason was weight loss. I figured if I was vegetarian and ate a lot more salad, 🥗 I would lose some weight. The idea has some merit, but it was ultimately ineffective because of all the other foods I left in.
After a few months I gave up and transitioned back to an omnivore diet.
Unsweetened
It was January 2016, and I was eating the many homemade sweets that I received for Christmas. I also happened to be tracking my weight every day, which went up and up. This made sense to me, as many years earlier (2001), I had cut out soda pop and lost weight. Maybe sugar was the culprit?
I learned a lot that year. Watching lectures, reading books (e.g. FAT Chance), and paying attention to the nutrition labels on food. I cut free sugars from my diet and lost 70 lbs in a year.
Whole fruit was okay but juice was out. Ketchup was swapped for salsa without added sugar. And certain foods were just gone from the menu. By cutting out sugar, I also cut out a lot of fat. Think pastry, ice cream, and so forth.
It was a year when I developed some social fortitude. Sitting around a table while everyone else ate birthday cake made my dietary choices feel socially awkward. But I was on a streak, and I wasn’t going to break it for anything!
So there I was. I felt like I finally cracked the code to a healthy weight, and without being vegetarian at all.
But there was a wrinkle. There was one food that didn’t contain sugar but still had a dramatic impact on my weight. If I bought a block of cheese, I would gain weight that week. If I didn’t have cheese, my weight would continue down. So to reach my target weight, I had to cut out cheese too.
Whole Food Plant-Based
Later that same year, I went to California on a business trip with several colleagues, some whom I had never met in person (remote work). Every morning we had breakfast together before getting to work. One colleague ordered avocado toast with his meal, whereas I had the standard whipped butter.
We got to talking about food over the course of the trip and he introduced me to the Whole Food Plant-Based Diet (WFPBD).
I had reached a healthy weight and was trying to determine what to do next. I certainly didn’t want to reintroduce loads of sugar or cheese and regain that weight. Whole food meant cutting out ultra-processed foods, which aligned well with cutting out sugar. Plant-based aligned with my vegetarian experiments and leaving out cheese.
It’s essentially the restrictions of a vegan diet, but with an emphasis on health.
It resonated with me, so I asked for recipe and cookbook recommendations. We returned to our respective cities, and that Christmas I invited some family over for a plant-based meal. That experiment was a success.
Over the following months I fully adopted this diet. I began to consume documentaries, lectures, and books written by doctors. I enjoyed learning new recipes and never looked back.
When asked how long I’ve been vegan, I base it on early 2017, but that’s not the end of the story.
Dominion
In 2018 I attended a screening of the documentary Dominion. Whether an animal is raised on pristine pastures, in confinement (CAFO), or a mix of both, the last few minutes are much the same.
It’s a documentary about the slaughter. While the entire film was difficult to watch, there are two scenes that stuck with me, even 7 years later.
Due to their graphic nature, I am marking some paragraphs as ⚠️ NSFL. Skip past them if you need to.
Egg laying hens are a different breed than the chickens bred for meat. Hens are replaced as needed, which means some eggs are hatched. But what about the hatched chicks that are male? 🐣 Very few males are needed by the egg industry. The rest are disposable. I find this disturbing in itself. I wouldn’t be too happy if I were killed for being male.
⚠️ NSFL: The documentary showed a macerator – think giant blender – that grinds the fluffy little guys to bits. They flapped their wings furiously in an attempt to escape, but it was no use. Though filmed predominantly in Australia, a person at the screening informed me of students seeing a macerator while studying agriculture in Alberta – a student even rescued some baby chicks. 🐥
Animal agriculture and industrial fishing are the largest causes of animal suffering, but by no means the only source.
⚠️ NSFL: For me, the most haunting scene was of a little fox having the worst day of their life. Skinned alive because it was “more efficient”. Presumably so someone can have fancy trim on a jacket. 😫
This film left a mark. It shifted my identity from plant-based to vegan. Extending beyond diet to other areas. I began to consider the materials used for my clothing, whether personal care products used animal testing, and so on. Minimizing harm more broadly and as much as reasonably possible.
The Yard
When I bought my first house, I didn’t consider all of the downsides of having a yard. Cleaning up cigarette butts and litter that people leave, but also the unfortunate dead animal.
Occasionally there’s a thump on a window as a bird flies right into it. Sometimes they get back up and fly off. 🙏🏻 I had only lived here for 3 months when I woke up to a dead pigeon on my lawn. I didn’t know what to do. So I asked the Internet, bought some disposable gloves and figured it out. No proper respectful burial, unfortunately, but I managed.
What happened in 2023 was traumatic. There was a stationary shape in my backyard that I couldn’t identify from my window. So I went out to look.
“Oh my God,” my voice trembled.
There was a dead cat in my backyard.
⚠️ NSFL: It wasn’t just dead. It was lunch for something. Ribcage in full view, intestines scattered about, bugs buzzing around. The poor thing. How long had it been there? How did this happen in my fenced backyard? Did a coyote get under my gate or maybe it was attacked by a large bird?
As with the pigeon before, I found out what I should do, made a plan, and got it done.
But it left a scar on my soul. It haunted me. Every missing cat sign, every unrecognizable shape in the backyard. My grass grew longer and longer. I avoided the backyard entirely for weeks, afraid of what else I may find. Whenever I walked past the meat aisle at the supermarket, I would flinch.
Yet that day, in the midst of it all, I found two reasons to be grateful.
- As unhappy as I was about the whole ordeal, at least it was happening to me, not the children who play next door. Who knows, maybe I do have a father’s heart?
- My decision to be vegan years earlier somehow made it ever so slightly less awful. At least I didn’t have the flesh and bones of a different dead animal thawing on the counter for a BBQ. That would’ve been dreadful.
There are far worse things happening in the world all the time, I know. I’m not looking for sympathy, but I also don’t want to make light of how it impacted me.
Pillars
I didn’t become vegan overnight. It took me several experiments over many years. I changed my diet for my own benefit. First financially and later for health.
Whether or not I was fond of animals or aware of their plight, my decision decreased the demand for animal flesh and secretions. Less artificial insemination. Less suffering. Less death. Fewer slaughterhouse workers with PTSD, and more workers in greenhouses and gardens.
Animals are full of personality and wonder, but they are inefficient as a food source. They consume far more calories and protein than produced. Every new vegan lowers the demand for grazing land and animal feed. Less deforestation, less biodiversity loss, less climate change.
It makes a difference. We make a difference.
Resources
Are you vegan, vegetarian, veg-curious, or omnivore? No matter where you’re at or where you’re going, I want to thank you for reading my vegan journey.
If you’d like to learn more about plant-based diets or try out some recipes, there are many documentaries, books, and cookbooks available. Here are some of my favorites:
Until next time.