By Michael Parrish DuDell on January 25, 2010
Need some powerful pointers this Meatless Monday? Don’t miss Michael’s 5 Easy Breezy Tips for Transition at the end of his blog!
When I was a baby I would eat frozen peas straight from the freezer. They should have known then.
On Saturday, January 23, 2010, I celebrated my ninth year of vegetarianism, which, as I’m sure you’ve deduced from the title, means I’ve been meat-free for 3,287 days.
The extraordinary part of this tale is not the longevity of the commitment, but rather the fact that I never wanted to be vegetarian in the first place. You see I wasn’t one of those characters who purposely worked towards a more compassionate life because of some ethical uneasiness about eating animals. I was never a truth seeker, but rather a truth-stumbler, a by-the-way do-gooder, an accidental moralist.
My story begins nine years ago at an upscale seaside restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida. The setting was lovely, with freshly starched table clothes and artfully prepared cuisine. It was the kind of restaurant where a big city foodie might dine if he had missed his connecting flight and was stuck in a place like St. Petersburg, Florida.
That particular evening I had chosen a rather pricey dish of chicken bathed in cream sauce to satisfy my hunger. My girlfriend at the time was vegetarian and was therefore subjected to a dreadful medley of over-steamed vegetables nestled in a bed (or rather futon) of desperately uninspired grains.
“Damn vegetarians,” I thought. “They ruin everything.”
When the food arrived, I grabbed my utensils, cut into the succulent breast, raised it to my mouth and…almost threw up? Wait, what?!
This once delicious morsel was no longer a morsel at all. The brilliant dinner had somehow gone from chicken to Chicken. My internal alarm was activated and I immediately began to panic. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t eat this food.
The next morning, in a desperate attempt to reclaim my barbarian ways, I tried to scarf down the heftiest turkey sandwich I could find. No go. Somehow that cute vegetarian girl with the steamed vegetables had gotten through my thick skull. The damage had been done.
I wanted to understand these inconvenient feelings and so I headed to the bookstore to read everything I could about vegetarianism and animal agriculture—a subject I literally knew nothing about.
Oh my God, every minute of every day, a land area equivalent to seven football fields is destroyed in the Amazon basin for animal production? Wait, vegetarians have only 40 percent the cancer rate of meat-eaters? Hold up, in the Unites States alone, 10 billion farm animals are slaughtered each year for food? What the what?!
After only a couple hours of ferocious reading, vegetarianism was no longer acceptable—it was vegan or bust for this guy! I didn’t know how I was going to do it, only that I would do it and I’d be damn good at it. I am nothing if not tenacious.
As I began to eliminate animal products from my diet, I noticed that something pretty miraculous was beginning to happen. The acne I had struggled with throughout adolescence disappeared overnight. My eyes got brighter. My body felt stronger. I started to feel good—really, really good.
Almost nine years later and 85 pounds lighter I still feel absolutely fantastic. The days of chicken and cream have been replaced with tempeh and steamed vegetables. The eye rolls I once so generously doled out to vegetarians have been transformed to grins and good conversation. And perhaps most importantly, the harm I once unknowingly caused has been replaced with compassion and thoughtful action.
After nine years of plant-based living, I can say with crystal clear confidence that adopting a vegan lifestyle is the single best decision I’ve ever made.
You know, Gandhi told me to be the change I wish to see in the world. Well, G, 3,287 days down, thousands and thousands more to go!
Top 5 Tips to an Easy Breezy Transition
1. Patience is a Virtue – “Wait! ‘Whey’ is a dairy product?!!! I had no idea!!!” When you first start eating a vegan diet, you’re going to discover that animal products have many a mysterious name and can be found in the strangest of places. Be patient, dragonfly! Transitioning to a new way of living takes time and a side order of patience will serve you well!
2. Respect the Process - “There’s no way I could ever give up cheese. Not a chance.” OK, so don’t give up cheese…for now. Just because I went vegan almost over night, doesn’t mean you have to! Compassionate eating isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Respect the process and allow yourself the courtesy to transition at a comfortable pace. The destination should be veganism, the roadmap should be your own.
3. Try the Eggplant - Even before I’d ever tasted eggplant I just knew I was going to hate it. And I was right! I think it’s one of the grossest foods on the planet. But the point is: I tried the ugly vegetable. When you begin transitioning to a vegan diet, you’re going to discover an array of foods you’ve never tasted. Don’t be afraid! Even if it’s a little scary, try the dang eggplant (or whatever your version of eggplant is). You just might love it!
4. Self-Educate for Success – You probably didn’t learn about veganism in school or at home, so how are you supposed to achieve success? The answer: self-educate for success. Grab a book or visit a website. Learn as much as you can about your new way of life and incorporate the new information as you go. Knowledge is power and power is rad!
5. Reach Out, Reach Out, Reach Out – I loathe asking for help, but sometimes it must be done. You’re not going to be an expert on vegan living right away, so find someone who is. Ask a friend, contact an organization or reach out to someone new. There’s no such thing as a stupid question, so hang up your pride and reach out, reach out, reach out.
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By Wayne Pacelle on January 11, 2010
Looking for the perfect book to kick off 2010? Check out Wayne Pacelle’s most loved books of 2009 (plus a few from 2010) and have a happy Meatless Monday! Knowledge is power!
I’ve always thought that to be a well-rounded animal advocate it’s important to spend time reading books. Because human-animal questions touch on so many different disciplines—politics, law, culture, history, sociology, and so many different fields of science—it is important not to limit study to just the identified literature within our field. But it has been exciting for me to see an upwelling of substantive writing and publishing in our field.
One of my favorite reads of 2009 was Dayton Duncan’s “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” a companion volume to the inspiring PBS series by filmmaker Ken Burns. I’ve been talking a lot about this book and another 2009 title I have just begun, Douglas Brinkley’s “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.” Both are tied to a big question for me. How do we make sense of Theodore Roosevelt as someone whose historical contributions to public lands and wildlife protection were unmatched and visionary, but who had an unquenchable personal lust for killing wildlife? Understanding Roosevelt’s contradictions is no easy task, perhaps as difficult as our struggles to understand how the nation’s constitutional framers advanced such an extraordinary call to human liberty at the same time that they were personally involved in chattel slavery.
I am sure my friend Meg Daley Olmert has thoughts on Roosevelt’s schizophrenic impulses with animals, and her book, “Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond,” was for me the most stimulating book of the year. She argues that there is a chemical explanation for the human-animal bond, and it’s largely driven by oxytocin. This hormone provides part of the neurobiological explanation for the intensity of the bond between mother and child and other person-to-person relations. But Olmert argues that humans and animals release this chemical in abundance when they interact, and that this is a primary driver of the human-animal bond. Olmert’s work associates her with the path-breaking thinking of E.O. Wilson, who some years ago advanced his biophilia hypothesis to explain our intimate connection to nature.
Charles Siebert is one of the finest writers who devotes his attention to animal issues, and his book, “The Wauchula Woods Accord,” provided a compelling case example of how the human-animal bond works in the real world. Siebert’s entire book, built around a transformative overnight encounter with a captive chimp, leads to a powerful formulation of inter-species solidarity and understanding. Here’s the accord itself: “The degree to which we humans will finally stop abusing other creatures, and, for that matter, one another, will ultimately be measured by the degree to which we come to understand how integral a part of us all other creatures actually are.”
Several books I reviewed on the blog in 2009 focused on farm animal welfare, and Jeffrey Masson’s “The Face on Your Plate,” Amy Hatkoff’s “The Inner World of Farm Animals,” and Nicolette Hahn Niman’s “Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms” all found receptive audiences. Tal Ronnen’s “The Conscious Cook” is a beautiful and hearty cookbook on vegan eating, and after his appearance on “Oprah,” it appeared on the New York Times’ bestseller list. In “The Quantum Wellness Cleanse,” Kathy Freston gives readers a 21-day how-to on eating and living better, and it’s readable and accessible and not the least bit doctrinaire. But it was Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” that was the biggest critical success in the genre of diet and agriculture. Foer wrestled with ethical questions related to his own eating habits and factory farming throughout his life, but it was the birth of his new son that prompted his own life-changing examination of the problems and his commitment to a vegetarian lifestyle. He takes apart factory farming in his account, and his book has provoked an intense and serious public discussion of the many problems associated with industrial animal agriculture.
One terrific wildlife book I blogged about is “Animal Investigators,” by Laurel Neme. Neme’s book offers a great look at the value of forensics to the investigation of wildlife crimes, and has an array of prescriptions for improving wildlife protection and enforcement work in the United States and abroad.
One of my college majors was history and it remains a great passion, so it’s good when I can read animal-focused historical works. I particularly liked Kathryn Shevelow’s “For the Love of Animals,” a history of the English animal protection movement. Her book helps to explain the social and cultural values that made the animal protection movement possible, and underscores the point that the idea of kindness to animals was in great currency before there was a formal movement. Two historical titles I wish I could have read in 2009, and sure to be on my 2010 reading list, are Ann Norton Greene’s “Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America,” and Shelly Fisher Fishkin’s “Mark Twain’s Book of Animals.” Both have received great reviews and have come highly recommended to me. Greene examines the horse as a factor in the history of American technology and a central element in the 19th-century economy. Fishkin brings together some of the animal-focused writing of Mark Twain, one of the most prominent animal advocates of his era.
I’m also eager to read “Inside of a Dog” by Alexandra Horowitz. A psychologist with a Ph.D. in cognitive science, Horowitz explores the natural history of dogs and their evolutionary descent, leading you through a day in the life from a dog’s point of view.
One member of The HSUS family, board member Patrick McDonnell, had a banner 2009 with respect to his creative works. This year Patrick wrote “The Gift of Nothing” and “Wag!,” building on life experiences of his MUTTS’ characters, and with Eckhart Tolle, produced the remarkable “Guardians of Being.”
Nowadays, I do a lot of my reading on the road, in planes, in airports and train stations, and in the homes of friends or the hotels where I stay—whenever and wherever I get a chance. Naturally, I get sent a lot of notices from people about books on animals I should read. Do you have a favorite I haven’t mentioned here? I’m making up a list for 2010, and I’m looking forward to your suggestions.
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