“No thank you, I’m Vegan!”
That’s the sentence I had to repeat more than twenty times during the past week. And surprisingly, I received all types of responses, from “Oh, why are you doing that to yourself?” to “That’s awesome!”. At some point, it started becoming fun to interpret and sort out the different reactions I got.
I was particularly surprised by how supportive my flat mate, Nadine was. We have been friends for more than ten years now, and I know for a fact that she had never even considered the idea of becoming vegan. However, she adopted her eating habits to mine; we have been cooking vegan meals every night, and she tries to find for vegan snacks every time we go grocery shopping together. Nadine has a mild lactose intolerance, but was never too cautious about it. When I started drinking my morning latte with almond milk, she tried it out of curiosity, and realized it made her feel less bloated. She decided that she wouldn’t make her coffee with cow milk anymore. Her meat consumption also decreased unintentionally, and she said that she doesn’t crave it as much as she did before. It made me extremely happy to have contributed to her changing of habits, even if minor, and it also made my challenge easier and more fun. I have been looking forward to dinner time and to getting creative with ways of increasing variety into my diet.
On the other hand, I realized that I wasn’t being taken seriously by everyone, which made my challenge difficult in some cases. Going to restaurants, for example, wasn’t as easy as I expected, not because of the lack of choices, but because of people’s reactions. When doublechecking with the waiter if a meal was vegan, he would sometimes roll his eyes and act bothered by the question. And people sitting with me at the table would make comments like, “What do you care? Just eat!”. I got offended by those responses at first, but then I understood that this matter can easily be taken for granted. I personally wasn’t aware of its consequence and the urgency for change, before making the effort of getting informed about the issue. There is a very obvious lack of awareness about intensive animal farming, its effects on the environment, and how unethical it is.
How can people change their habits, when they are unaware of the problem in the first place? Veganism is perceived as a trend, rather than a solution.
