Nothing Tastes Like Vegan Feels
I live in America — but I was born in Switzerland. And as any self-respecting Swissy I am a frenzied cheese & chocolate lover. Recently I had a crazy idea… I dared to participate in the 1-month Vegan challenge! Already in the first few days I noticed entirely unexpected changes — but the true surprise came only afterwards.
I had always had a craving for cheese. It was more than love: it was a passion. Gruyère, Parmigiano, Feta, Mozzarella; you name it. Everything tastes better with cheese, right? I would have even eaten cheese atop of cheese (and many times I have). I think I had cheese on every single day of my entire life, no matter where I was in the world. After all, you can take the girl out of Switzerland — but you cannot take Switzerland out of the girl.
Only one thing was on a culinary par with my obsession with cheese: chocolate. Swiss Lindt milk chocolate, to be exact. I ate every day one entire bar as dessert after dinner, accompanied by a tall, cold, wonderful glass of milk. What a divine combination! I always awaited the eventide with certain impatience, lusting for that unrivaled high that you get from a fine chocolate kick.
A well-nigh nightmare
Then June rolled around, and it washed ashore the Vegan challenge. I had been a vegetarian for 28 years, and you would think that the step from a vegetarian life to a vegan month would be an easy one. You err! I thrived on cheese and chocolate, on eggs and milk. They were firmly grounded in my quotidian diet, and missing these staples was unthinkable. So yes, giving them up seemed a huge sacrifice to me — but simultaneously, I have a highly auto-competitive mindset, so of course I was up for that challenge.
In it to win it!
I expected the month to be nothing short of awful. Annoying on its best days, outright torturous on its worst. Even better!, cheered the fighter within gleefully. And as we are already at it, why not make it even worse? Let us kick sugar off the table too! The month would be a well-nigh nightmare! Hoorray!
Jackfruit steak, y’all?
So I sat down and started planning. In order to distract myself from my looming misery, I had to come up with a strategy. If I just ate in exactly the same way that I had before, the loss of cheese and chocolate would be too painfully prominent. Yet what if I would not give up things — but gained some?
So I set out to search the absolutely insanely amazing-most vegan recipes out there. And thus, being on that mission, the first few days of June rushed over with the eruptive change in diet hardly noticed. I delved deep into vegan foodie sites, scrolled through massive amounts of mouth-watering Instagram photos, ran up and down the aisles of our local supermarket and bought things I did not even know existed (jackfruit steak, y’all?).
I cooked up a storm. I basically lived in the kitchen the first week, and I loved it. I ate the most extraordinarily creative dishes, and it blew my mind.
Then that first crazy cooking hype calmed down, and I opted for simpler versions. More wholesome in its literal as well as figurative sense; a whole-foods, plant-based diet, additionally steering more and more away from processed, oily and salty foods and more towards natural foods in all their glorious grandeur. Slowly my palate started changing. My taste sensations grew richer.
And that was the moment when a magical thing happened.
Already deep amidst the animal-free month of June, I woke up one morning in utter amazement, because all of a sudden I noticed it: I had not missed cheese! More so: All these days so far I had completely forgotten about it. The craving for the Swiss milk chocolate, on the other hand, never slowed down. It raged in full force, unabated. Concerning the chocolate, I was definitively counting the days until that June madness was over!
I ran my 5k record
And then something else happened. It was equally unexpected, and subtly it snuck in on me: I felt really, really good. How so exactly? I could not pin it down at first. Was it the feeling of lightness, because I had lost weight? Was my energy level during the day constantly higher, my sleep at night deeper? Had my skin cleared up?
It was indeed all those little things, but mainly I just felt truly healthy.
Inside out a profound, hearty healthiness.
I had never felt sicklish in my life, I had always maintained quite a sound diet; a solid amount of fruits and vegetables, sporadically even grains and rice instead of pasta and potato, not too many processed foods.
But this was an altogether different level. A strength that powerful, it just blew my mind. As a professional dancer, I felt my movements gained elegance and fluidity. As a black belt Karateka, I felt my kicks got sharper, my punches gained impact. Unrivaled, that new-found state of mind and state of body! It surprised and excited me in equal measures.
Thereby roaming the streets frolickingly, one day in June I happened to walk through downtown — and right into a 5k race that was about to begin. I signed up spontaneously, 4 minutes before the start — and I ran my record time with no previous training at all. Soaked in sweat I looked into the mirror, puzzled, stunned; incredulous.
What is this? What was happening to me? And most of all… how the hell could I keep it?
And so, as unnoticed as the cheese addiction had faded away, a new addiction filled its place: the lust for that feeling of fabulousness. I was flowing on a new high, hair in the winds — and thus I sailed right into the end of June.
Has the chocolate gone bad?
And then the big day arrived. July 1st. Mission completed! All June I had gone animal-free. And I had not only survived the vegan month, I felt I have actually thrived. The cheese addiction had fully vanished — but something else lurked for me in the shadows of July’s first rosy dawn… The Swiss chocolate, of course.
The old greed had crept right back and was ready to swallow me alive. So on the eventide of July 1st, after a deliberately vegan day, I sat down after dinner, ceremoniously, with a grand bar of Lindt chocolate and a tall glass of ice cold milk. I side-eyed the latter a bit, like an uninvited guest at a party, but the chocolate, alas! I opened it and bit into what I have day-dreamed about for a month — and then the craziest thing happened. It was disgusting! I sat there, completely flabbergasted, and could not believe what I tasted. In sheer disbelief I checked the date, maybe there is such a thing as chocolate that has gone bad?
It was not, of course. I still ate the entire bar, half fascinated, half repulsed. After finishing the dreadful thing I took a sip of milk to calm the waves — maybe the reminiscences of the old divine combination would help? The taste of cow milk flooded my mouth, and the realization hit me like lightening:
I, a grown adult, felt all of a sudden completely bizarre drinking the breast milk of another species.
I shuddered and poured the rest of the glass into the sink and touched neither chocolate nor cheese any further. I live entirely vegan ever since.
The truth is graphic, gory and deeply disturbing
And that was when I got curious. Of course I enjoyed it to the woods and back to feel better than ever before in my life. But WHY?, I wondered. I wanted to understand what was happening here. So I started an extensive search.
I read day and night… science articles, interviews, books, blogs. I watched documentary over documentary. The impact of meat and dairy on our bodies is truly fascinating, and I was amazed to understand what unfolds on a cellular level. Now it all made so much sense, and I delighted in the journey even more. I connected with a wide network of fellow vegans, I reached out to vegan groups on social media, I met for coffee and engaged in thorough conversations.
I learned that there are three main topics when we are talking about veganism: health, environment — and animals. In all three I uncovered things I was entirely oblivious about. Worst of all — I did not realize what factory farms in actuality entail. I had no clue what really happens in the slaughterhouse.
The cheerful, green, idyllically pleasant pasture setting of cows frolicking on grass in front of a picturesque little red farm is a lie.
The truth is graphic, gory and deeply disturbing. l knew fragments about the monstrously cruel meat industry, but the depth of abuse and violence exceeds everything imaginable. As a vegetarian, I had always thought I cause no harm — alas, little did I know.
I learned what the dairy industry is not advertising, I saw what the egg industry is hiding. In those mass industrial halls, behind closed doors, an indescribable brutality unfolds. It left me horrified.
I cried. I felt broken. The utter disgust was devastating. I refused to further contribute to this in any way. And although the turn towards compassion was liberating, the tremendous torment I witnessed, the heartbreaking footage of thousands and thousands of farm animals suffering will haunt me for the rest of my life.
As an old friend and fellow vegan, Karate World Champion Pascal Egger once told me: going vegan is a blessing, but also a curse — for you cannot unsee what you saw. No egg is worth this.
Watch “Earthlings” on Youtube
After that a moral obligation arose. I have gone into animal rights activism, because how could I not, after everything I learned?
Yet a billion dollar industry so brutal and powerful is not overturned easily. Walking down aisle 3 instead of aisle 2 is not enough:
This war is not won in the supermarket.
But I knew I have to do something about it — and, honestly, you do too.
I on my part aspire to educate. To tell people the truth, to make them watch what is uncomfortable to see. To open their eyes to the ones shut behind closed doors; to shed light on those left in the dark to die. For humane meat is a myth. Don’t buy the lie.
Only freedom is humane.
So let me ask just this one thing from you: don’t look away. Ask yourself what it takes to have that steak on the table, that milk in the glass. Do some research. Inform yourself. Start with the documentary “Earthlings” on YouTube:
Challenge yourself to go vegan for 3 weeks or 1-month. And if you do not care to do it for the animals — or for the environment — I beg you: do it for yourself. And for your children.
What I regret
Since the challenge ended in June I felt every single day a tremendous relief having finally become vegan. In retrospective I am surprised how it was so much easier than expected.
One of the greatest unforeseen revelations was that it turned out not to be about restricting or giving up things, but quite the contrary. I welcomed so many amazing new things in my life. I broadened my horizon and deepened my knowledge; I really expanded my world. I had thought I am just doing some simple dietary changes for a month — but all of a sudden I find myself waking up into an altogether new life. It was so effortless… as the effects of that fascinating journey really overwhelmed me. I had never seen it coming, and it hit me entirely unprepared.
I became a better cook, a more compassionate human. I found friends in the community that are some of the bravest souls out there. And I myself?
I feel the best I have ever felt. Quelle joie de vivre!
When people ask me if I do not regret the decision, I tell them that indeed I do: I regret not having it done sooner.
Going vegan had changed my life so profoundly as I would have never anticipated — both as an athlete and an artist. A friend asked me recently: “But don’t you miss your beloved Swiss milk chocolate?”
In response, I just smiled. For nothing tastes like vegan feels.
