By Kirsty Coleman-
Do you think you could go vegan? Your answer is probably, “no, I could never give up cheese!” or, “what about my Christmas dinner?” This, is exactly what I used to say, before I opened my eyes. Transitioning to a vegan isn’t that difficult.
My vegan journey slowly started in April 2018, when myself and my partner decided we would first, go vegetarian. Previously, we had been buying our meat from a butcher in Scotland, thinking it was more ethical. Looking back, I don’t see that there is a huge difference. I thought it was more ethical sourcing meat from a “quality butchers” because everybody says the animals are cared for better. They may be cared for better, but apart from what I have been told, how do I know that? Because the meat tastes better? Either way,I was still contributing to innocent lives being taken for my own selfish desire to eat it. As humans, we have settled into this habit of eating meat every day, without even a thought as to how it got to the shelves in the supermarket, before dolloping it on our plates. We are not cavemen and women in the wild hunting animals for survival anymore, we have other choices.
The hardest part about going vegetarian for me was the inability to grab something ready made from the bakers, or something in the hot section in the supermarket. I soon got used to that, stopped looking, and enjoyed cooking more inventive meals at home. We got a bit hooked on eating out at ASK Italian and Indian dishes, as they have a fair selection of vegetarian dishes and ASK Italian also offer a vegan menu! At this point in time, I was still in the mindset of, “I could never go vegan.”
Fast forward to December 2018, and there had been a lot of changes in our lives. They left us pondering all sorts of questions about the current lives we were living, including, “what am I eating?!” It suddenly felt half-hearted of me to be vegetarian and not vegan, because animals still had to die for me to enjoy eating a bag of Haribo sweets at the cinema! Again, we made a decision together that we both wanted to go vegan. We decided to use up any animal derived food products we had left and not buy anymore; once all the animal products were gone, we would be completely vegan.
However, I found myself clearing out the pantry only a few days later and desperately trying to get rid of food items which would take a long time to use up, because I just didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. I don’t know exactly how long it took us to adopt a completely vegan diet, because that wasn’t my focus, but I would hazard a guess at 2 weeks; a pretty impressive time-frame I think, for such a drastic change in diet.
Would I have been so quick to get rid of these animal-derived food ingredients if I was doing it solely for health reasons and for my own benefit? No. I know I wouldn’t. I would be enjoying baking whilst I still could and topping my cupcakes with icing sugar which is processed using bone char, before committing to a new diet, which would most likely phase out soon enough, as most diets do. My sole reason for becoming vegan was, and still is, to stop contributing to the mass farming, exploitation and death of innocent animals.
I hear people say…
“It is so hard to go vegan…”
“You can’t eat anything when you are vegan…”
“Animals are there to be eaten….”
“It’s natural to eat meat…”
“I can’t go vegan, I need my protein…”
A couple of those statements, I used to say too, because I was uneducated in this field. I was ignorant; I had never actually looked into adopting a vegan diet before this, I made a presumption.
Personally, I didn’t find the transition from vegetarian to vegan hard at all. I researched vegan recipe ideas, I researched substitutes for the foods which I liked and could no longer have, I researched what food types I needed to consume in order to attain the correct nutrients. The thought of consuming anything which contributed to the exploitation of one single innocent animal, made me feel physically sick, and therefore, I do not miss consuming animal-derived products. I swapped cows milk for plant-based milk. I swapped milk chocolate for dark chocolate. I swapped dairy yoghurt for soya yoghurt. I cook with vegan wine. There is always a way and there are so many people scattered about in the world, who are trying to share this message and help make the transition easier.
EASIER
Veganism is on the up, which means if going vegan is something you were interested in previously, but you doubted whether you could do it or not, it is worth looking into again. It is getting easier by the day. This does not make it any less noble to do it now, as opposed to the last time you thought about making the change, it is just another opportunity to make that change. Supermarkets are stepping up their game and they are all competing against each other to stock an awesome vegan range, because it is on the rise, massively. Only nine months ago, I found it difficult to find a ready-made bite to eat whilst out and about, but now, everywhere I look, more companies are producing vegan food for when you are on-the-go. The UK is becoming very vegan friendly, and although I am not one for being a follower of “new data”, or “recent surveys”, as such, I have recently read that the UK is the second most vegan friendly country in the world, closely following Australia as number one.
ILLUSION
A lot of people have this illusion that we sit eating raw vegetable sticks, eating nuts and fruit and slowly depleting our bodies of essential nutrients with no energy to do anything. It is nonsense! Lentils, pulses, beans, seeds and soya products are just a few more food types that we can eat aside from fruits and vegetables; we are far from limited. Whilst I did not become vegan for the health benefits, I have certainly noticed them. I have never felt more cleansed and energised, and cooking has never been so interesting. Not only does it cleanse your body, it cleanses your mind in a whole new way. I have always loved cooking and baking, but this has been a learning curve for me, and I have had to change the way I cook and bake for the better. My food tastes so awesome now! It was a massive help that we both wanted to go on this journey together, as there were no debates about how far we were going to take veganism; we were going all guns blazing. Veganism does not have to be boring, unless you make it boring.
The only part I have found difficult about going vegan, is the negativity directed towards me by so many people. Sometimes, it is as though it isn’t socially acceptable to be vegan, it is awkward to cook for vegans, it is difficult to find a restaurant serving vegan food, it is an inconvenience that I am vegan. The looks I get sometimes when I say I am vegan, are looks of disgust. Yet why is it socially acceptable to eat an animal? We are all animals. The only difference is, we have a voice, they don’t. And that is why I found it so easy to go vegan.
To conclude the answer to my own question, ‘is transitioning to a vegan diet really so difficult in the UK?’ my answer is no, especially not if you are doing it for the righteous and moral reasons. Give it a go!