Pre-Vegans: Inspirational Stories to Help You on Your Vegan Journey

PRE-VEGANS

Copyright © 2022 by Sean Russell

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Lesaruss Media, Fort Lauderdale Lesaruss.com

Vegans Explore

Edited and design by Vegans Explore www.vegansexplore.com

Cover design: Sean Russell

Editorial: Kelsey Stobbs

Photo: Xavier Russell / ZayRuss Photo LLC

ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9862630-0-7

ISBN (e-book): 979-8-9862630-1-4

ISBN (kindle): 979-8-9862630-2-1

ISBN (kindle): 979-8-9862630-3-8

First Edition

PRE-VEGANS

A Beginner’s Guide for Going and Staying Vegan

Lesaruss Media

SEAN RUSSELL

For South Florida

This book is dedicated to all of the vegans and pre-vegans in my home region of South Florida. If we can make veganism mainstream here, we can make it happen anywhere.

FOREWORD

Susan Hargreaves

Susan has been an activist for over four decades, a cruelty investigator, author, and educator and is the founder of Animal Hero Kids.

Hail to the Pre-Vegans!

The time is perfect for a book aimed at the pre-vegan mainstream. In 2016, Forbes stated that in the United States forty-nine percent of households had almond milk in their refrigerator. This aforementioned gem of a factoid may seem unremarkable to you, however, to me this figure causes a streamers flying, trumpets blowing, Irish jig dancing form of unfettered joy type reaction.

If you would have told me in the early 1980’s, when the only type of vegan cheese I could find tasted not unlike a bar of soap, that we would be in the midst of a vegan product revolution, I would have reacted on a delighted jumping up and down level. We are currently benefiting from an unprecedented ease of removing animal-based products with scrumptious, available and affordable replacements. Combine this fact with a world of information, films, books, images, and undercover

footage at our fingertips and we are looking at a significant groundswell of potential vegans.

Yes, we still have a long way to go, including the cessation of subsidies using our tax dollars to prop up animal based-agriculture industry losses. We need to foster, aid and strategize for economic opportunities to a sustainable plant-based future.

Who better to write this book than the man behind the Ronnie V Cow ‘‘vegucator’’ costume mask? A man who questions, a man who helps others to market game changing ideas, Sean Russell.

Fortune smiled on me when a total stranger agreed to embody the Ronnie V Cow character by wearing a large cow costume to assist in my presentation to empower youth to compassionate action at a veg fest in Fort Lauderdale. It was five minutes before my time to be on stage at a veg fest when this kind man who was passing by the stage agreed to step up. Who knew that six years later I would be writing this introduction to Sean’s book, with a subject whose time has arrived?

In Sean’s book are endearing, enlightening, eye-opening stories from a diverse mix of people who experienced epiphanies, and personal life changing anecdotes. They also serve as a reminder we were all prevegans once; we weren’t born knowing about the cruelty and negatives surrounding animal-based agriculture, we all discovered and learned. More people are realizing animal flesh and their secretions are rife with a hellish history of animal abuse. When you mix in an increased concern about climate change and human health and bam…It’s hail to the pre-vegan’s time.

PREFACE

Why did I decide to write Pre-Vegans? I've been involved in the vegan community since early 2014 after taking over a Meetup group called South Florida Vegans. If you're not familiar with Meetup, it's a great platform for you to discover new people, events, and hobbies in your city. I highly recommend you check it out. Before I go into the birth of SoFlo Vegans and what led me to writing this book, I think it makes sense for me to share my own vegan origin story.

My story begins back in 2006. During this time I wanted to improve my health. I wasn't happy with my physical appearance, so I started exercising…I wasn't seeing the results that I wanted. I’ve always heard that diet is a big part of losing weight, so I found a program online called Beyond Diet. The program provided pages and pages of PDF documents explaining in detail how different foods affect your body. I was able to break down and understand what I was putting into my body. As a result, I started eliminating certain foods from my diet. I had stopped drinking milk and eating cheese. I was still eating meat and poultry. After I went through an online course, I stopped eating red meat and slowly but surely introduced more fruits and vegetables.

I wasn’t eating very much poultry or seafood once I did. I had a work associate that was vegetarian and one day she told me about her lifestyle.

That conversation is when I decided I wanted to be vegan. It wasn't because of the animals or the environment, it was because I wanted to challenge myself. That was my initial reason for going vegan. I'm sure you'll hear in this book, there are a lot of different reasons people decide to go vegan. Fast forward six to eight months from that initial conversation and I'm rocking and rolling. I have a routine down, and it was easy for me because I'm the type of person that can eat the same thing every single day and not get tired of it. I was consistent until summer 2009 when I took a trip to Los Angeles.

At the time I was running an organization called Anime 3000. I remember it vividly because this was the same summer that Michael Jackson died and the convention center was right next to the Staples Center where they were holding his funeral. Seeing a circus of people dressed in cosplay alongside a swarm of news vans and thousands of distraught MJ fans is a sight I’ll never forget. So here I am in Los Angeles, away from my creature comforts, and I end up falling off the wagon. In hindsight, it's pretty funny if you consider how big of a vegan destination Los Angeles is. I didn't know that at the time, just that I had to buy food from the supermarket because I didn't know which restaurants had vegan options. I wasn’t a good cook, and I struggled to eat whole fruits and vegetables. If Happy Cow existed in 2009, I didn't know about it. The iPhone had just come out two years prior. I fell off the vegan wagon. I always joke that I’m probably the

only person that has ever ceased being vegan after a trip to LA. I came back to South Florida and fell back into old habits until 2013 when I decided to go vegan again. This time I wanted to arm myself with knowledge, so I decided to join an online community on Meetup called South Florida Vegans that held local potlucks for its 400 members.

In 2015, the organizer of the group decided to step down. I saw this as an opportunity because it was at the time I’d been thinking about forming my own vegan community. Building and growing organizations came second nature to me because I’ve done it for wrestling, anime/manga, music, and education. I wanted to do the same thing for veganism, and call it Vegan Cartel. This initial concept would eventually become SoFlo Vegans. Over the next two years, I ramped up SoFlo Vegans and launched officially in the Spring of 2017. Since then we've gone on to host over 300 plus events, worked with several nonprofit organizations and supported countless businesses and festivals in the region.

This book is to showcase the various reasons why people go vegan, and to drive home the fact that the best thing you can do to ensure your success in this lifestyle is to be clear on your why. Whether it's for your diet or the animals, be clear on your why. This will strengthen your own beliefs, and reinforce the support system that’s growing around you. The best advice I can give you is community, community, community. Surround yourself with likeminded people that are going through the same journey as you and have fun. Connect with people and don't be so hard on yourself!

I hope this book will provide you with insight, and will provide you with ideas. At the end of this book, we provide different resources you can access. We have a guide to get you started, an online guide where you can watch videos and tips, and other resources that will make your journey a little easier, and a lot more enjoyable. Thank you so much for purchasing this book and I look forward to connecting at an event near you!

CHAPTER 1

INGRID NEWKIRK

Alongside her partner, Ingrid Newkirk founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. You might recognize this group better as PETA. The organization has been around under Newkirk’s leadership since 1980. It is the world’s largest vegan organization and serves to advocate for and defend the rights of animals. They oppose speciesism and shed light on animal suffering in the food industry, laboratory testing, the clothing industry, and entertainment. The organization is big on activism and bringing publicity to the pain and suffering animals face at our hands. Ingrid has written many books that reflect her stance on animal cruelty and provide solutions to combatting it.

PETA President Newkirk wasn’t always an animal rights activist. A British American, she grew up in England and later lived in Florida and Maryland. Her formal introduction to animal rights took place during her twenties when she became an animal protection officer, and later head of the animal disease control division in DC for the Commission of Public Health. After her awakening, she dedicated her

life to dissolving the horrific abuse animals face across a multitude of industries, and advocating for veganism.

I was a very slow learner and so I have a lot of understanding for people who don't get it initially. It took me a while. I grew up with a father who was a gourmand and together, we basically ate our way through the animal kingdom. I have to tell you that liver and onions, I would go anywhere for it; I used to take a raw steak and put a raw egg in it and mix it up and eat it. So, I am not somebody who grew up as a vegan or a vegetarian, or anything near that. But a series of events changed me, and it was one at a time. The very first thing was snails. I used to eat snails. I'm a bad cook, but I bought some live snails in a market, this Italian market, they said, "Oh, they're easy. You can just take them home. You soak them overnight. And then you sauté them in some Chablis and garlic." And I thought, "Well, I can do that."

I had them in a paper bag in my car. I was driving through the countryside to my house and I got the feeling I was being watched. And I thought, there's no one here. I looked over and the snails had forced open the top of the bag, in my book I talk about this in another way. But they came to the top of the bag and pushed open the top. And they were all up there looking at me with their little horns, you know, looking. So I took them and let them go in the bottom of my garden.

I probably violated some federal law, but I wasn't going to eat them, so that was the end of snails. Next came lobsters. Somebody took me for

a gorgeous dinner for my birthday. I think I was 19, in Philadelphia, a lobster restaurant. And they brought two or three lobsters to the table on a silver platter, alive. You had to pick your lobster, and I did. The lobsters were waving their antennae at you. And I said, "I'll have that one." and they said, ‘‘grilled or boiled?’’ Back then I was so oblivious, I had no idea that if you say broiled in a restaurant like that, they slit open the live lobster's back, put butter all through it, salt and pepper and shove it under the grill.

I said broiled. That lobster came back. We were having a great time. We had some beautiful wine and it was a lovely event. I took that first bite of lobster and something must have triggered, something must have hit me subconsciously. I burst into tears, because I realized the only method of communication those lobsters had was to waggle their antennae. They didn't speak English. They don't have voices like anybody else. And I had taken his life for my birthday. That was the end of all shellfish, of molluscs, that is gone. And the next thing I'll just leave you with the one, because this is the slow learner's story.

I was a law enforcement officer in Maryland and I went to a farm where the people had moved away and they had left the animals behind. The animals had starved. They'd had a party and they had broken glass in the stalls and the animals were cut up, but they were all dead except for one little pig. I took that little pig outside and I put his head under the water pump and held up his head so he could drink, and he made these little sounds of gratitude. That's all you can say. And then I sent him off to the veterinarian. I was going to prosecute those people for failure to pay rent, for abandonment, and so on. Driving home that night, and

this was before we had microwave ovens, I thought "Oh, I'm starving. What have I got to eat?" and then I thought, "Oh great. I defrosted the pork chops."

Then, ding, ding, ding. I thought, ‘‘hang on a minute.’’ I'm going to prosecute those people for what they did to that little pig. And yet I know in my heart, and now I know with my eyes from later, as we all do, that a slaughterhouse is a hideous place. The pork chops came from a slaughterhouse, from a pig who couldn't have wanted to die, so that really was the beginning of that. And later, somebody razzed me terribly and said, ‘‘what are you putting in your tea?’’

Every morning I had a cup of tea with condensed milk in it. So I said it was condensed milk. And he said, ‘‘Well, you don't eat veal, do you?’’ I said of course not. I would never take a baby cow away from his mother for veal. He said to me, ‘‘So how do you think you get the milk?

Don't you have to take away the baby cow, isn't there a bit of veal in every glass or drop of milk?’’ And I said, but they don't kill the cow, do they? They kill the cow. Oh, how mortifying. And today, if someone says that to me, I always say, "Oh, really where is this massive retirement home for cows, because I've never seen one." They all get kicked and prodded down the ramp to their deaths. The same as the beef cow does, except those mother cows are in worse condition, so that was the end of the milk.

CHAPTER 2

EARTHLING ED

Ed Winters, famously known as Earthling Ed, is a renowned vegan Youtuber, content creator, public speaker, and activist. He is most famously known for his debates and public speeches, where he challenges arguments against veganism and delivers educated addresses. Earthling Ed is author of the best-selling This is Vegan Propaganda (and other lies the meat industry tells you). He is also founder of Surge Sanctuary, an animal sanctuary for rescued animals that’s spread across eighteen acres in England, and Unity Diner, a not-for-profit restaurant in London where all proceeds are donated to helping animals.

His passion for educating and activism led to the growth of his career, and the growth of the vegan community. Earthling Ed’s website is home to a wide scope of vegan information, education, and resources. You can watch Ed’s debates, read his free ebook, and most of all find answers to the question ‘‘why vegan?’’ His impact on the vegan community has been grand, and he continues to produce content created to continue the community's growth.

Let's go back to May 2014. This is when the first kind of main thing triggered in my head about veganism. I came across this story basically. It was about this truck full of chickens on the way to the slaughterhouse. It crashed on the motorway. It was in BBC News. I was reading about it and the journalist was saying that, I think it was like fifteen hundred of these animals, had died on impact of the crash. And there were hundreds more that were mutilated. They had broken wings, broken bones, they were dying on the side of the road. And even more so what disturbed me was, there were some running for freedom, running into nearby fields and even running into oncoming traffic. It really disturbed me and shook me. And I remember thinking how horrible it must be for these animals. They must be suffering terribly and the ones that are alive must be so scared and so full of fear. But I realized that, well, actually in my fridge, just over there, there's some dead chickens. And the only reason they were in that truck is because I was paying for them to be there. And it was hypocritical of me to feel sorry for these animals when I was the one that sentenced them to that situation. If anything, the ones that had died in impact had a more pleasant death than the ones that would make it to the slaughterhouse because their death would've been instantaneous. But the ones that have been taken to the slaughterhouse had to fear as they've been hung upside down and dragged with the electric water before having their throats cut.

So I went vegetarian after that because… I couldn't sit comfortably with myself knowing that the animals that I ate had emotions like fear and pain and suffering. And it was interesting because it was the first time that I actually recognized that these animals did suffer. It's funny because it seems so obvious that, of course these animals are alive, they suffer, but we never think about it. I acknowledged very easily that dogs and cats felt pain and wanted to live and had a preference to live. But the animals on my plate, for some reason, I didn't think they had those same abilities or those same ones. So it forced me to reevaluate how I view the animals that I would normally see on my plate. I realized actually, these animals are just the same as me or the animals that I love and they want to live, and because they want to live, how do I justify taking their life? There was no justification because there isn't one. So that was what made me go veggie. And then my partner, this is about eight months later, she says we should watch Earthlings. I said to her no, I'm not going to watch that. I mean, I knew a little bit what it was about. I'm like, there's no way I'm going to watch that. I'm a vegetarian. Animals don't die for me. Right? That thought that many of us have had as vegetarians. There's no need for me to watch Earthlings. I even said veganism is extreme. I said that myself.

One day she put it on. I thought, okay, let's just watch it. So I watched it and it was after that I was like, oh, this is serious. This is far bigger than just meat. In fact, it's far bigger than just the animal products that we eat. This is everything. Clothing, cosmetics, animal testing, entertainment, the magnitude of it, it dawned on me in that moment. It’s so huge and so vast that simply being vegetarian didn't come close

to being enough. So that was what triggered me then to look up the environment and the health and go vegan.

I was in secondary school in year eight, I don't know what that equals in the US. But I would've been about, I guess, twelve maybe. It was an English literature class, and I don't really remember why but for some reason the topic of vegetarianism came up, and we had a vegetarian. And I remember I raised my hand in the air and the teacher was like ‘‘Yes, Edward.’’ And I went, all vegetarians are weak, pale and skinny. And I remember this vegetarian girl in my class was so angry at me. She was furious at me. But in my head, I didn't understand why she'd be angry because I thought I was just stating the truth. It was kind of really ironic because I was pale, weak and skinny myself. The irony was totally lost to me, but I'm saying that vegetarians are pale, weak and skinny. I ate meat and I was also pale, weak and skinny. It was kind of funny, but I didn't understand why she was angry at me. And I think that's what kind of thought went through my head. ‘‘Well, am I not just stating facts?’’

Now see vegetarianism, the only time it was ever brought up in my family was when it was being mocked and when it was being judged. And for whatever reason, my family wasn't very tolerant to the concept of vegetarians. It was a joke, and I think that societal conditioning had been so installed in my head that it was just an automatic reaction for me to say that that's what vegetarians were like. I didn't even register whether it was a good thing to say or a bad thing to say, I just blurted it out because that's what I've been told.

Her being angry at me caused this reaction which made me think, well actually, why is she angry at me? And I looked at her and I thought, well, she's not pale. And she's certainly stronger than I am. So maybe there's something about this vegetarianism. But obviously I went home and continued to eat animal products without ever questioning it. But I think that was a little bit of the moment.

And then I came to university, so now I'm eighteen, and I actually became friends with a lot of vegetarians and they would obviously make a point of being vegetarian. And by that, I mean, when we ordered food, it was always vegetarian. They never cheated on it or anything like that. And I think being around those people influenced me a lot and kind of taught me a lot about being vegetarian and what it was. Now, I didn't know a single vegan. And when I went vegan with my partner, we had never met a vegan in our life. To be honest, I was a bit of a reluctant vegan. I was like, I'm doing it for the animals, but I don't enjoy it. It's like, I want to eat those animal products. And that's kind of how it was at the beginning. I really missed it, and I missed eating things like Halloumi and getting Domino's pizza and stuff.

I think what we often portray ourselves is going vegan and then that's it, we're straight in there. But, it's not quite as true as that. For me, when I first went vegan, I did miss those products. I mean, there was no denying that. And I did crave them and I did want them. And that kind of evolution of my veganism is quite apparent to see that it took me several months before I really felt comfortable with it and I fully understood it. And I thought actually, you know what, now I get it. Now I feel it. And this is something that I'm going to do for life.

Because when I first went vegan, I'd said stuff like one day I'll have a burger again. Or I'll have a fried egg or whatever it was that would keep me going at that time. I'll have Halloumi again. It was kind of like a way of making myself feel better about it because I was really scared that I'm never going to eat those things again. People are going to judge me. I've never met a vegan before. I'm going to go into uni and everyone's going to be like, what are you thinking? So my little get out of jail clause was one day I'll eat Halloumi again or whatever it was. And that kind of stuck with me for the first eight weeks or so. And then I felt, no, now I get it. This is what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing it. I'm never going to go back. It all clicked into place kind of rather suddenly. A little bit off topic [into what you asked], but I can see in my head this progression of how I am today. And it really just feels like these stages of my life.

And I don't know if maybe you feel the same or if anyone [who's listening] feels the same. But I look back on who I was before I was vegan and I just don't recognize myself. And I think who was this person that enjoyed these things and who was this person who loved bacon, and loved chicken flesh, and loved all these things. I don't know who that person was. It doesn't feel like it was ever me. It feels like a different person and those memories have somehow got installed in my head by mistake. It's a funny thing, but I don't know, to see that progression makes me really pleased because I know that it is a journey and the beauty of veganism, the journey never ends. And I know where I'm going to be next year. I'm going to look back on who I am now and

go, who was I back then? This is a different person to the person I am now.

And that's the beauty of it, it's such a journey. And then we meet more people on that journey. We meet more activists, we meet more vegans. The community grows. It gets easier and more accessible to society, and it's a beautiful thing. We're living in a very exciting time. And there's such a massive change, a radical change happening, particularly where I am in the UK and [where you guys are] in the US. There's such a fundamental shift going on that I cannot wait to see where we are in five years’ time, and to see this progression continue.

CHAPTER 3

DR. MICHAEL KLAPER

Michael Klaper, MD. graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and has been a practicing physician for over forty years. Dr. Klaper’s main goal is to help his clients reach their optimum health and wellness, and to do so through vegan, whole food plant-based eating. He witnessed firsthand within himself, and then with his patients, the positive effects that veganism has on the body and disease reversal. This is what guides him in his practice today, and what drives him to utilize plant-based clinical nutrition. In addition to being a physician, Dr. Klaper is an educator, author, and a speaker. He travels to medical schools to speak on the importance diet plays to overall health and wellness, and to promote plant-based nutrition to medical professionals. His Master Class Moving Medicine Forward is another way he teaches on the benefits of plant-based eating. He can also be seen in the documentaries What the Health, Cowspiracy, and Eat This!

Well, I'm a classically trained Western physician. I graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine back in the early '70s. For the first ten years of my medical career, I practiced regular blood and guts medicine in emergency rooms, operating rooms, and urgent care clinics. But nine years into my practice, I had my plant-based epiphany for a number of reasons. I adopted a whole food plant-based diet myself. Within twelve weeks, a twenty-pound spare tire of fat melted off my gut. My high blood pressure went to normal. My high cholesterol went to normal. I felt new waking up in a nice lean body every day. At that point I had left general practice, after a few years, from frustration of not being able to help my patients. At that point, I knew I wanted to go back to general practice and help my patients undergo the same wonderful benefits I had.

So I did that. I was a resident in anesthesiology. I went back to general practice, and for the past thirty-five years now I've been using plantbased nutrition, vegan nutrition, as the foundation of my medical practice. And my patients who follow a whole food, plant-based diet experienced the same wonderful changes now that I've experienced and it's really a remarkable thing to see. Within days of someone who walks in my office, obese and diabetic and hypertensive and clogged up and inflamed, within days of starting to run a food stream full of colorful salads and hardy vegetable soups and big plates of steamed, green, leafy vegetables, and tasty curries, and satisfying chilies based on beans not beef. It's remarkable what happens.

The transformation is just stunning. Within days, obesity starts to melt away. The waistline starts to get smaller. Their arteries relax and open

up. The high blood pressures come down. The inflammation subsides. The sore joints get better. The insulin receptors clear out. Type two diabetes goes away. You can stop these people's insulin, and so many other things. Often the psoriasis clears up in the skin. Acne gets better. Asthmatic lungs stop wheezing when you stop the dairy protein, and migraine headaches get better. It's remarkable. They transform into these leaner, healthier people that don't need a bunch of pills and potions and procedures. And as a result, I'm the happiest doctor I know. My patients get healthy.

When I show pictures to the medical students of the before and after pictures of these ill, obese patients who transform into these lean disease-free patients, I ask the students, what more could you want from your patients? Why are you going into medicine? What greater gift could you help them achieve, help them earn than a healthy body with normal blood pressure and normal blood sugars that don't need the services of people like me. This has been the focus of my medical career for the past thirty-five years. But [as you're nice enough to imply...sorry, I'm rambling on here a bit] we know the power of plantbased nutrition. But, my noble profession totally ignores it.

We go through medical school and we practice medicine daily in the hospitals and clinics. What our patients are eating has no effect on these diseases. And, we ignore them immediately. I say pharmacosclerosis is set into my colleagues' brains, that drugs and surgery are the only treatment. And so immediately, to the operating room, get out the prescription pad when the truth is, doctor, it's the food your patients are eating. There's this gaping hole in medical education

where we just blow past the effects of the patient's daily diet, especially the standard American diet version of the daily diet. What it really does to the body. And so I've been trying to close that hole. With your help and others, I've been going around to medical schools and giving students the lecture I wish someone had given me when I was a firstyear med student.

CHAPTER 4

JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL

Jane Velez-Mitchell is a television and social media journalist. Her journalism is centered around animal rights, addiction, and social justice. Jane is well known for her advocacy and headlining stories. She previously hosted her own show for six years where she would cover high profile cases, and did a weekly segment on animal rights. She’s a graduate of New York University and has anchored for KCALTV LA and WCBS-TV in New York. Having earned several Genesis awards and the Celebrity Animal Activist Award, and other renounced awards for her journalism and activism, Velez-Mitchell has dedicated her career to uncovering injustices. She is author of four books that tackle the subjects of addiction, murder, and the trial of Jodi Arias. Today, she is content editor and founder of Jane Unchained, a multiplatform social media news network where she continues to report on animal rights, veganism, and the like.

Back in New York, I spent eight years at WCBS as a reporter and weekend anchor. Then I got a job as a weekday anchor in LA, and I was working at Paramount Studios. We had a studio on the Paramount lot, and in walks Howard Lyman, the fourth-generation cattle rancher, who had made a pact with God when he got very ill. And he said, "God, if you get me out of this surgery alive, I will reveal the horrors of animal agriculture.’’

He went on Oprah, and it was…in the history of television, a really famous incident where he revealed the horrors, and she said, "That just stopped me cold from eating another burger." I think that was the quote. Cattlemen sued her. She ended up winning that suit, but it turned Howard Lyman, this cattle rancher turned vegan activist, known as the mad cowboy, into a bit of a celebrity. He was doing a tour, and so I interviewed him.

Afterwards he and his publicist, [Mar Nealon], came up to my cubicle where I worked and they said, "We hear you're a vegetarian." I said yes. They said, "Do you eat dairy?" and I kind of hung my head, because he had just described the horrors of the dairy industry. The boy calves being ripped, put in field crates, shot, left on dead piles. The mothers grieving, chasing after their babies, just the whole horror of it. And so I kind of hung my head and I said, "Yes." And they pointed their finger right at my nose and they said, "Liquid meat." And that was the moment I went vegan.

Now, if they had been oh so very polite and said, "Well, you know you really should consider giving up dairy, because it's really not what we...

‘‘I might not have gotten it. I might not have heard their message. They confronted me, and they called me out, because I was thinking of myself as an animal lover and blah, blah, blah; I was contributing mightily to the oppression and suffering of animals by that choice of eating dairy products. And so, I thank them every time I run into either one of them. Mar Nealon is a very fierce activist. Nobody's fool. I always thank her, and I always thank Howard Lyman. From that point on, I realized I'm a vegan. It took me a month to really change my taste buds. They accidentally put parmesan cheese in my salad about a month later, and I spat it out. It tasted awful. Now, I used to love parmesan cheese. So there's a reason why rehab is at least 28 days. It takes 28 days at least, sometimes a lot more, to change a behavior pattern and change your taste buds and change your habits. So, give yourself at least 28 days. You may not love soy milk the first time you taste it or cashew milk, but within twenty-eight days, it'll taste absolutely normal. It takes a while.

CHAPTER 5

TORRE WASHINGTON

Torre Washington is a professional bodybuilder, well known for his vegan lifestyle. He is also an NASM certified coach, and publicly speaks on animal rights. Washington has been vegan since 1998, after he began to embrace Ital and his Rastafarian background. He began competing in 2009 and quickly became known as the ‘‘vegan bodybuilder.’’ He has placed first, second, and third in Musclemania Pro competitions. Torre is also a fitness model and has been featured in GQ, Thrive, and Vegan Health and Fitness. Motivated by his own transformation, he is passionate about inspiring people around the world to pursue their dreams and embrace their power.

I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, and Seventh-day Adventist is a religious belief where they practice worship on Saturdays. Saturday is the Sabbath. It starts from Friday at 6:00 PM, or whenever the sun sets to sunset Saturday night. During this time, you're not supposed to work. You're only supposed to worship and go to church. Typically the

mainstay of the nutrition intake for a Seventh-day Adventist is supposedly vegetarian based on the biblical beliefs from the Bible, if you believe in that. So I'm saying all that to my mother, who raised us strictly with that vegetarian lifestyle. That led me down to this path of the label now known as vegan, because I took from that point when I moved from Alabama to Jamaica, I learned a little bit more about the Rastafarian culture.

Then I moved back to south Florida. A lot of my brethren were Jamaican. We started hanging together in high school and we started to grow our locks, more so for fashion, because we just wanted to be in the now. The fashion was to grow little locks on the top, have like a blow-out of locks on the top and shaved around the sides. But we started reading more, reading more into Rastafari, and one of our friends, his dad, was a Rasta. He didn't have his locks anymore, but he was working within corporate America. So at that time, to have locks in certain countries was considered very evil. It was to the point where they would shoot you on site just because Rasta was considered the type of person that would go against modern man, because Rasta's whole history was not to be oppressed. We're lions. We don't bow down to nobody. Just because you say professionalism is clean-cut, no hair, da, da, da, whose definition of professionalism is it? You've come up with your own definition. We don't agree with that.

Understanding that whole history, studying it and seeing that Rasta live more of an Ital lifestyle. You know, Ital is natural, meaning Ital is vital. We live, we eat from the earth, especially from the Bobo Ashanti Rasta that lived in the bushes in Jamaica. But a lot of what I started to

find out is, although you have the differences with certain Rastas, but you have some Rastas who still ate fish, still ate chicken. Even though they still consider themselves Rasta, they were still Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey and all them things. I didn't want to. When I really found out what ital truly was, to see that Rastas weren't actually following that made me feel more of a hypocrite to actually call myself a Rasta but still partake in items that may contain eggs in it or butter or what have you. They’re still some form of not eating from the earth.

In 1998, I decided to say, you know what, I'm going to cut all of that out. Now at that time, I didn't know what this vegan thing was. Even though vegan has been around since the '70s, or even probably earlier than that, in this country and this day and age, everything has a label. So in order for you to be lumped into a group, we have to label it so that way we can understand it more by giving you a label and then put a definition to it. I feel like that's an asinine way to do things, to always put a definition to a group of people so that you can separate them from everyone else, when in this time, we should be wanting to come together.

I will never forget the first time I really truly got tested for being vegan. I was in Atlanta at a Veg Fest. I was standing at a food truck about to get some food. It's cold. This is Georgia. Alabama's north. It was in September, November timing. I had on my Tims, nice jacket, whatever. And this lady standing next to me in line says, "Are your shoes vegan?" And I was so confused, like, "What are you talking about? I'm not going to eat my shoes." Because to me, I looked at vegan

or that lifestyle as what you took in, what you consumed for your bodily performance.

From that point on, it was just a learning process for me, learning more about the lifestyle, understanding it and taking out the parts that I didn't really agree with, which was people considering it a diet. "Hey man, what's your diet?" Because to me, I look at diet as even if you just break down the word and say it in the way it is, the D-I-E-T, it sounds like you're saying, "I'm ready to die." But die yet? I'm not ready to die yet. I'm ready to just continue to thrive and live.

CHAPTER 6

DR. NEAL BARNARD

Neal Barnard, MD, FACC. is a researcher, author, and president of the Physician’s Commision for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) which he founded to promote preventative medicine. In 2016, he opened the Barnard Medical Center, providing primary and preventative care with a dietary focus. Dr. Barnard is a New York Times best-selling author and has nineteen books under his belt in which he deep dives into the science and research of plant-based nutrition and its role in preventing common healthcare issues. His work has led to him being awarded the Lifestyle Medicine Trailblazer Award in 2016 and 6th Plantrician Project Luminary Award in 2019.

Dr. Barnard Began exploring vegan diets during his time at George Washington University School of Medicine while in training. He is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is a non-practicing psychiatrist, dedicating his career to clinical research. The PCRM provides resources for clinicians, medical students, scientists, and patients alike. Available on their website is curriculum,

continuing education, nutritional breakdowns and information on a considerable number of common health conditions. Dr. Neal Barnard utilizes research to prove the pros of being plant-based and preaches it as a method of prevention.

I grew up in North Dakota and every day of my life it was roast beef, baked potatoes and corn except for special occasions when it was roast beef, baked potatoes and peas. That was all I knew. The year before I went to medical school, I had a job in Fairview Hospital in Minneapolis, in the basement where the morgue was. When anybody died, my job was to prepare… [don't look at me that way] the body for the examination. They were in the cooler, and I'd pull them out, and the pathologist knew that I was going to go to medical school. So he would tell me everything.

One day in particular, there was a guy who died in the hospital of a massive heart attack. And so the pathologist slits open his... you open the skin. Then he ripped out a big chunk of ribs so he could expose the heart and he looked at the heart and it was filled with atherosclerotic plaque. That's in one of the coronary arteries on the surface of the heart, it's just narrowed. It's like rusty pipes. And he showed that to me. And he would say, "This is your bacon and eggs, Neal. This is your pork chops, dah, dah, dah. That's what causes this." At the end of the exam, he left the room. And my job then was to clean up.

And so I’d put all the organs back in the body. I put the ribs, which were on the table, back in the chest. I sewed the skin up and cleaned everything. Then I went up to the cafeteria, and they were serving ribs for lunch. I want to tell you, I did not become a vegetarian on the spot. But it looked like a dead body and smelled like a dead body, and I realized, "This is a dead body."

It's not a human body, but if you're eating pieces of a cow or a chicken, or whatever, you are eating... I know it sounds funny to think of it as a corpse. But that is what it is. I started to reflect on it. I mean, up until that point I had hunted, I had driven cattle to slaughter myself with my uncle. I had a job at McDonald's when I was a kid, and all this stuff. I started to rethink, "This is kind of crazy." and eventually I also discovered the health aspects, the animal aspects, the environmental aspects.

I have to say that you grow up, and in the same way as you learn there is no Santa Claus, there is no normal sane way to keep eating the way we're eating. That's a little bit about what I want to talk about today. The diseases that we suffer from, I'm talking about heart disease, many forms of cancer, obesity, diabetes, hypertension. These are things that are directly related to what we eat, and related to a primarily animal based diet. Now, our bodies are fragile things. You can get sick no matter what. Nothing's perfect. Even a vegan is going to have a health problem here and there. But we are asking for trouble. If you pop a cigarette in your mouth and you light it up, you're asking for trouble, same as if you put a burger or a steak, or a chicken breast on your plate. It took me a long time to figure that out, but it's true.

What we have been doing is what I mentioned earlier, we do research. I don't want people to just take this on faith. We have to prove it. We bring people in who have diabetes, and we put them on vegan diets. And you see their diabetes improving dramatically. Dean Ornish, who is a medical genius if ever there was one, showed that you could do this for heart disease. You bring in a person with narrowed arteries, you put them on a plant-based diet, have them put out the cigarettes, have them handle stress, and have them exercise. Even mild exercise. Put it all together. The arteries start opening up again. It's amazing. So that's the word that we want to get out there. Anyway, that was my journey. It started in the basement of Fairview Hospital in Minneapolis.

CHAPTER 7

JOHN LEWIS ‘‘BAD ASS VEGAN’’

John Lewis, AKA the ''Bad Ass Vegan’’, believes all vegans are cool. A former Division I college basketball player, John has roots in the health and fitness industries. He is a public speaker, entrepreneur, activists, and fitness expert. John is also director and producer of the film They’re Trying to Kill Us, which takes a look at institutional racism and what leads to higher numbers of people of color suffering from chronic diseases. John has created a community for ‘‘Bad Ass Vegans'' where everything from recipes, workout tips, blogs, and more can be shared. His passion for plant-based and passion for sharing knowledge has created an incredibly successful and uplifting community that promotes veganism and provides resources for newbies and veterans alike.

I guess you could say, I did try vegetarian for two years prior. It was when I first moved to Miami, I was going to grad school and I always said, I loved animals. And I always said, I can't do this. I can't do this

anymore. And then when I finally moved away from that impact of home, because everybody knows, peer pressure can come from the family. Sometimes you want to do something, but your family's like, "You're going to go vegetarian, you're gonna die." I fell into that trap. And I was pushed into it… Okay. So actually, I was basically having IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). I come from St. Louis, coming from Missouri. We eat the same thing every day. No change in the diet, every day. When I got down to Miami, I was eating Caribbean food, Jamaican food, Dominican food, Cuban food. I had some of everything. And my stomach was like, "Wait, hold on. This ain't us." I went to the doctor at the University and he was like, "Do you eat a lot of meat?" And of course, we lie sometimes because that's just what we used to do. And I'm like, "No, no of course not." Now, granted I had meat probably on everything, every meal and if it wasn't meat, it was dairy.

He's like, "I want you to try going vegetarian for thirty days." I'm like, "Nah, man, look at me. It's classic. You see how big I am, man, I need..." And he was like, "Just try for thirty days." I didn't do it immediately when I left out there. I want to say that was October 15th. October 31st, I had a good friend of mine slash fraternity brother back home in St. Louis who passed away from sickle cell. I had already done a little bit of reading and I was like, "You know what? This is like an ode to him. I'm going to go ahead and try this for thirty days."

In days, I felt like a million bucks. I was like, "You gotta be kidding me." I was like, "Damn." Just being real. I was a Philly cheesesteak fan

and I was like, "Yo, no more Philly cheesesteaks and no more this and that." So I was like, "Wow." This was sixteen years ago.

"Man, what am I going to do?" We had a couple options like Boca, but we don't have what we got now. Fast forward two years, I was about to graduate from my master's program. I remember getting a call from my brother. He said, "Hey man, we're about to take mom to the hospital. We don't know what's wrong."

I talked to my mom on the phone. She says, "I don't know what's up." My mom was the happiest person in the world and this is the one time I ever heard her just totally out of it. She tells me she feels like shit. We've been through a lot and I ain't never seen her like that. I flew back home, talked to the doctors, everything. They say it’s colon cancer. ‘‘Too much animal protein, fried fatty foods’’’ they told her. I’m shocked. It isn't hereditary?

The doctor says ‘‘No, this is not hereditary,’’ He was just so frank with it. ‘‘This is not hereditary.’’ Wow.

I started doing more research, of course, CDC, World Health Organization, all these websites that aren't even vegan. I just started seeing and connecting the dots, and I'm like, "Wow man…you know what? I'm done with this shit."

I'm a big believer in learning from my mistakes, but I'm a bigger believer in learning from somebody else's mistakes. I just incorporated 100% vegan and it wasn't to start a business. It wasn't even to motivate other people. I was just like, "Yo, I don't think this is right." So I stopped. Then that's when more of the aspects of social justice and

animal rights and the world, the ecosystem, that's when everything else came into play. I honestly did it for health reasons. I know some vegans there, they're all like, "Well, if you don't go for the animals, you'll change back." That's not necessarily true. I did it for that and then it opened me up to a wider range of reasons to stay.

CHAPTER 8

DR.

ANGIE SADEGHI

Angie Sadeghi, MD is a California based doctor who specializes in weight loss and gastroenterology. After going vegan in 2014, her wellness journey influenced her practice and she began to share her plant-based knowledge with her patients. Her goal is to improve the quality of life for her patients through fitness, plant based nutrition, and bio-identical hormone therapy. Dr. Angie is the president and CEO of the Institute of Plant-Based Medicine (IOPB Medicine), and co-founder of Planted In Health. The IOPB Medicine aims to prevent and reverse diseases by utilizing plantbased diets and lifestyle changes. Plant Based Health has a similar mission. It is a non-profit organization that provides education on plant-based nutrition and the evidence to support it.

So, you know, I've always been such an animal lover. As doctors, we tend to be very compassionate people. We tend to want to save lives. No one in the medical field really wants to... [most people, I would say,

wouldn't] kill or harm things. We have this almost obsession with saving lives and helping people and just saving the world. I would say that most doctors and nurses think along those lines where we are just help, help, help. If you ask me, ‘‘why did you want to go in the medical field’’ fifteen, twenty years ago, I knew I was going to be a doctor when I was nine years old. It'd be to help other people and to help take suffering away.

About fifteen years ago, I was sitting with my friend who was a vegan and I was having a meal with her. Her name is Sarah. She was a resident at University of Southern California, where I was getting trained for my internal medicine training. I asked her why she wasn't eating meat and she told me that she was a vegan. I asked her with surprise, well, why are you a vegan? And she said, "Well, because I love animals and I couldn't torture animals." At that moment I made a little bit of a connection in my brain, so I thought, wow, I have this little furry dog at home and she was like my baby. I couldn't imagine anybody harming her or hurting her or I can't imagine killing her to eat her. So then I thought, okay, well, what's the difference between a dog and a cat and a cow or a sheep or a goat, a lamb?

I started making these connections right away and it's because of this love I had for my pets. At that moment I realized that what I was doing didn't make sense. I was being a complete hypocrite, paying someone to slaughter a sentient being who has feelings, who has pain, who feels suffering and I was inflicting pain upon these sentient beings and I realized that I just couldn't do that anymore, so I went vegetarian. This

is about fifteen years ago but the connection between the dairy industry and suffering and pain upon animals did not click until I learned, through listening to podcasts [like yourself and others] talk to other people and so this is why these podcasts are so important, because everybody tells their story and people start making connections. I learned about the cruelties of the dairy industry. I realized that they're ten times worse than the meat industry in what they do.

So at that moment I decided, in 2014, that I wasn't going to consume any dairy at all. Coincidentally, I was trying to get into shape. I had some illnesses and the good karma came my way because of my being a good person and not wanting to inflict harm on animals, I ended up getting so many different benefits by going plant based. I also watched Forks Over Knives. I started really educating myself and I realized that even though I was a physician, I had no idea. I had not made the connection between food and medicine. I had not made the connection between how food can be healing to the body. Then I made that connection and I decided to incorporate all kinds of plant based nutritional factors into reversing disease.

Again, coincidentally, I realized that about a week after going plant based, there were so many benefits that I was experiencing. Number one, I had debilitating eczema. I had pustular lesions all over my body. I looked like I had chicken pox. My eczema was as severe as it can get. It was like one step... Have you seen patients with psoriasis with plaques all over their bodies? Well, I wasn't far from that… I looked

horrible. I didn't even care about the fact that I looked horrible. I couldn't sleep every night because I was itching.

I was taking Benadryl and Atarax. Atarax knocks you out and I couldn't function very well because I was taking these antihistamine medicines and I was putting tons and tons of corticosteroids on my skin. Not even one single dermatologist I had seen, had ever told me that you may be allergic to dairy because most people are. We're not cows. Why are we consuming cow's milk? Now I didn't have lactose intolerance, so I didn't have the massive diarrhea, bloating, constipation, and GI problems, but I ended up being allergic to it and I had sinus problems from it. I couldn't breathe, blah, blah, blah. I can go on and on. But anyway, within five or seven days, I had zero eczema. You can look at my whole body now, zero eczema. It all went away. Disappeared. I've been able to sleep well at night and my sinuses got better. My cholesterol went down. I had some depression that went away and the most exciting one of all is, If you go back, I got so excited about this… I used to post a ton of my workout pictures because literally within several months my waistline shrank. I was gaining muscle, losing fat and I looked so good suddenly I was looking in the mirror at the gym. I was like, whoa, who's that? People thought I was a fitness model, which was awesome.

I was this doctor at a fellowship, nerdy. I had some fluff on me and then suddenly my body shrunk to where I was muscular and shredded and people came up to me at the gym for fitness advice as if I was a fitness trainer. It was so good. If you have any health problems, I would

highly suggest that you consider this whole food plant-based diet. I know a lot of people are having problems with weight management. I can assure you that if you truly eat whole food plant based you will never gain weight and you will start losing weight and you'll start shaping your body as you have always dreamed.

CHAPTER

9

ROBERT CHEEKE

Robert Cheeke is a vegan bodybuilder and fitness professional. He’s also a motivational speaker, activist, and author. Robert went vegan when he was fifteen, and has since built a vegan fitness community. He is founder of Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness, where knowledge about being a healthy and successful vegan athlete can be shared. Competing has earned him the title of INBA Northwestern USA Natural Bodybuilding Overall Novice Champion in 2005 as well as placements in several other competitions and is one of the most influential vegans according to VegNews Magazine. Cheeke has been vegan for over twenty years, and shares the story of his transformation to inspire others.

For my real story, although this was part of my real story, by the way. I really looked up to those cartoon muscular superheroes, and one day wanted to get bigger and stronger like them and make a difference in the world around me.

I grew up on a farm in Western Oregon. I raised animals and sold animals at the auction, and would bottle-feed baby calves before getting on the school bus to go to school. I had chickens, rabbits, geese, turkeys, goats, horses, ponies and cows. At age fifteen, back in 1995, something just clicked with me. My older sister organized this animal rights week at our high school. She was vegan. I didn't really know what that was. She was vegan and so I thought, out of respect for my sister, I'm going to go check this thing out. I'm going to go listen to speakers talk about veganism and animal rights. I'm going to read some literature about it and watch some videos of factory farming and animal testing, and we'll see how that goes.

Sure enough, that was December 8th, 1995, and I became vegan that week and have been vegan ever since, for more than a quarter century, more than twenty-five years later. That animal rights week has lasted to something like 1,300 weeks, and I keep on keeping on. But one of the questions that I had, or one of the real concerns that I had, was that I wanted to be bigger and stronger. Like I mentioned, I really was a fan of He-Man and ThunderCats and Captain Planet, but also pro wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, and I wanted to get bigger and stronger. I wasn't sure that I could do it without animal protein. That was a real concern of mine as a teenager.

I had to just put it to the test. I had to see, can I actually do this? Can I get bigger and stronger? My older sister gave me some confidence by saying, "Robert, we don't need meat, milk and eggs, we need the nutrition that's commonly associated with those things, protein and calcium and essential fats and proper calories and all that stuff." And

as it turns out, you can get those from all types of plant-based foods, and in fact, in better and higher quality sources. So you can get higher levels of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, water, phytonutrients, just from eating out of the garden. And so, that's what I did. And I eventually went from a 120-pound vegan long distance runner to a 220-pound vegan weightlifter that I am today.

CHAPTER

10

SUSAN HARGREAVES

Susan Hargreaves is a forty-three-year veteran of the animal rights movement. She is a kindness educator, author, speaker, and activist. She has rehabilitated wildlife and investigated animal cruelty in circuses, rodeos, and in the animal-based agriculture industry. She founded the youth-empowering charity Animal Hero Kids to prevent the cruelty she has witnessed by fostering empathy and compassionate choices in youth. Susan has reached millions of people with her Be an Animal Hero education programs for all grade levels and by appearing in global media. Her relentless activism is the subject of the recently released original short documentary by Shaun Monson, the Earthlings director, called The Heart Whisperer. Susan has written three powerful books, Animal Hero Kids Voice for the Voiceless, Veganza Animal Hero, a children's picture book and the Veganza Animal Heroes-Liberation novel.

It was the summer of 1980, a year of questionable hair style choices - a perm just at the top of the head is not a good look for anyone. Yes, it was my year of big hair, big shoulder pads and the start of a big idea stemming from a shocking realization that would shape and inform the rest of my life.

I recall standing on the red shag carpet in mums’ living room, a room with a black glass chrome coffee table and Rorschach test patterned lime green wallpaper.

The tears trailed down my face as I held the Toronto Sun newspaper in my hands. She lay down with round scorched black electro-shock burn marks on her body, her eyes had lost all hope, they were dull and glazed. Her face peered out so dismally from the front-page photo. Horror. This adolescent pigs’ photo was taken in an undercover investigation at a stockyard I would soon visit posing as an agricultural student to document the atrocities. She was just one of billions. Each one an individual with their own personality and perfect little dainty feet.

How could I have contributed to this for so long? Why didn’t I know about this animal cruelty? What was I thinking? I thought I was kind.

Yet, it still took me five or six more years until a blunt, direct comment from a stranger springboarded my step from vegetarian to vegan. ‘‘What, you’re still a cow’s milk baby? You don’t believe in killing animals, just abusing and exploiting them.’’ My conscience couldn’t dismiss the validity of the comment as I drove away from the South Florida Animal Activists potluck picnic. Ironically, he is my very good

friend today, and is never afraid to tell it like it is when it comes to speaking up for other animals. Ron, you know who you are.

It’s vital for everyone to remember their vegan chrysalis-like moment. The set of realizations, the educational tidbits, those learning moments, the film collage of the truth of what is really happening to animals, all culminated into who we are today.

The vegan metamorphous stories we tell around tables filled with all manner of scrumptious vegan fare serve as a valuable reminder, we were not always vegan -in most cases. This is why when I wrote the Veganza Animal Hero Tips Sheet I distribute at free educational programs, and tell the heartwarming stories of courage and compassion, I am always careful to remember the time I was, in fact, a pre-vegan.

CHAPTER 11

GETTING STARTED

Now that you’re inspired by all of these amazing stories, what should you do next? The first place to start is in your pantry. Many of the foods you’re eating now, you will be cutting out in order to achieve a vegan diet. Any food containing animal derived ingredients has to go. Don’t worry, though! You likely won’t have to do a clean sweep and start fresh. We’ve got tips and tricks on how to veganize your pantry.

Be sure to seek advice and support from nutritionists and dietitians when needed.

Eating Whole Food Focused

The simplest way to ensure your diet aligns with your newly adopted vegan lifestyle is to eat whole foods. These are foods that have been processed and manipulated as little as possible. The best place to find whole foods in your grocery store are in the produce section, which has an immense variety of healthy vegan options. Whenever you can, source produce that is organic and not genetically modified. If you

have a green thumb, grow your own at home! A tip for finding whole foods throughout the grocery store is to read the ingredient label. Whole foods will contain very few, and often just one, ingredient. Ensure you’re considering all of the food groups and your nutritional needs when stocking your pantry.

Here’s an example of some whole food staples to include when writing your first vegan grocery list:

Fruits

• Apples

• Bananas

• Avocados

• Olives

• Berries (variety)

• Lemons and limes

• Cantaloupe

• Coconut

Legumes & Lentils

• Chickpeas

• Black beans

• Lentils

• Legumes

• Kidney Beans

• Edamame

Vegetables

• Broccoli

• Carrots

• Green beans

• Spinach

• Kale

• Bell Peppers

• Mushrooms

• Sweet potatoes

Nuts &

Grains

• White/Brown rice

• Quinoa

• Oats

• Almonds

• Cashews

• Walnuts

Mock Alternatives

Mock Alternatives are products that are made in the like of meat, dairy, and other animal oriented foods. They’re made to taste like the foods you’re used to, but are made with completely vegan ingredients. They’re helpful with transitioning and replacing former favorite foods that you can no longer consume, and can satisfy cravings. In this day and age anything non-vegans can eat, vegans can eat too!

Milk alternatives have made their mark by becoming popular not only in the dairy free space, but also among the masses. They typically come in multiple flavors such as unsweetened, sweetened, vanilla, and some even in chocolate or banana! The most common plant-based milks are soy and almond, but there are so many different alternatives! Additionals include cashew, oat, coconut, and pea! Cheese (and dairy) alternatives can be found in many variations and from many brands. You can find yogurt, shredded cheese, and sour cream alongside their animal derived counterparts in larger chain grocery stores. Meat alternatives are great for curbing cravings and making sure your protein intake is where it needs to be. You can find vegan alternatives for chicken, burgers, pork, you name it! By taking a trip to the frozen section, you can usually find a freezer dedicated to plant-based meats and products. More and more plant-based meats are popping up, providing tasty alternatives and making vegan more accessible.

Label Reading

‘‘How do I know what’s vegan when I’m purchasing something other than whole foods?’’ The answer is in the ingredients. It may take a little getting used to, but in order to ensure you aren’t consuming animal products, you’ll have to be sure to read through the ingredients listed on the products you intend to buy. The ingredients section of a nutrition label can be intimidating. There are often long words that are nearly impossible to pronounce. Google comes in handy for any unfamiliar ingredients. A tip you can use before going through the list is checking the allergens. If a product contains milk or eggs, they must be listed in the allergens. It doesn’t mean a product is vegan just because it doesn’t contain milk or eggs, but it’s a great place to start. Another thing you can do is look to see if a product is labeled as vegan, and by locating its Caring Consumer cruelty free logo. These products are labeled with a bunny logo to show that they are 100% cruelty free. By checking labels you can ensure any processed foods you buy are suitable for your vegan lifestyle. You’ll find that many products are accidentally vegan - meaning they’re not labeled as vegan but they don’t contain animal derivatives. Oreos are famously known for being accidentally vegan!

Growing Your Local Community

Connecting with other vegans will allow you to grow your support system indefinitely. You may not know any other vegans right now, but you will soon if you try out some of these suggestions:

• Meetup.com - a great tool to search for vegan events in your city

• Facebook - use Facebook to search and join vegan groups that are located in your community

• Social Media - Follow vegan accounts, pages, and influencers on Instagram (or your favorite social platform)

• Search the word vegan and the name of your city online to see additional local organizations you can support

• Attend events and festivals, or volunteer at them in order to meet new people

• Get involved with your local animal activist groups and attend demonstrations

• No vegan community near you? No problem. Start one!

Supporting Local Vegan Businesses

Supporting your local vegan restaurants, pop-ups, and shops is a great way to not only meet other vegans, but also to build the community near you. Are you familiar with the plant-based businesses near you? Use these tips in order to familiarize yourself with your local vegan vendors:

• Use apps like Happy Cow and Vegans Explore to discover new vegan spots in your area

• Post photos featuring your vegan business buys on social media. Don’t forget to tag! This will boost visibility and help people discover them.

• Vegan festivals and events typically feature local vegan businesses, as well as vegan businesses from all over the country, they’re a great way to find new businesses to support

• If you are looking for work, consider applying at a local vegan restaurant

• Leave a review on Google Maps for restaurants and businesses you enjoy

• If you have a bad experience, consider reaching out directly to the business owner. We all have bad days and one bad review can leave a long lasting blemish on the business or restaurant’s reputation.

CHAPTER 12

POPULAR RESOURCES

There are countless resources out there that you can utilize to guide you on your journey. Instead of scouring the internet to find them, here you will find several lists of popular resources that all contain Information that will prove helpful to your vegan transition.

Be sure to visit Pre-vegans.com to find clickable links to all of these resources.

Podcasts

• Brown Vegan Podcast

• How to Vegan

• No Meat Athlete Radio

• Ordinary Vegan

• Our Hen House

• No Bullsh!t Vegans

• Pre-Vegans

• Rich Roll

• Simply Vegan

• SoFlo Vegans

• That Vegan Couple Podcast

• The Bearded Vegans

• The Chickpeeps

• The Disclosure Podcast

• The Minimalist Vegan

• The Simply Vegan Podcast

• The Vegan Gym Podcast

• The Vegan Transition Podcast

• Vegan Abattoir

• Vegan Hacks

Cookbooks

• 30-Minute Vegan Dinners by Megan Sadd

• Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry

• Bad Manners: The Official Cookbook by Michelle Davis; Matt Holloway

• Cook. Heal. Go Vegan! By Bailey Ruskus

• Fast Easy Cheap Vegan by Sam Turnbull

• Forks Over Knives - The Cookbook by Del Sroufe

• Fuss-Free Vegan by Sam Turnbull

• Isa Does It by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

• Plant Based on a Budget by Toni Okamoto

• Plants Only Kitchen by Gaz Oakley

• Plant Over Processed by Andrea Hannemann

• Simply Delicious Vegan by Caitlin Shoemaker

• The Big Book of Vegan Cooking by Dianne Wenz

• The Effective Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook by Chef Effect

• The Korean Vegan Cookbook by Joanne Lee Molinaro

• The Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon

• Unbelievably Vegan by Charity Morgan

• Vegan Baking for Beginners by JL Fields

• Vegan for Everybody by America’s Test Kitchen

• Vegan Soul Food Cookbook by Nadira Jenkins-El

Documentaries

• Blackfish

• Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

• Dominion

• Eating You Alive

• Earthlings

• Eating Animals

• Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead

• Food Choices

• Food, Inc.

• Forks Over Knives

• Kiss the Ground

• Live and Let Live

• Racing Extinction

• Rotten

• Seaspiracy

• The End of Meat

• The Game Changers

• The Milk System

• Vegucated

• What the Health

Vloggers

• AvantgardeVegan

• Caitlin Shoemaker

• Cheap Lazy Vegan

• Happy Healthy Vegan

• Hot for Food

• Liv B

• Mic The Vegan

• Pick Up Limes

• Rainbow Plant Life

• Rachel Ama

• Sarah’s Vegan Kitchen

• Sweet Simple Vegan

• Sweet Potato Soul

• Tabitha Brown

• The Edgy Veg

• The Happy Pear

• The Vegan Corner

• The Vegan Zombie

• Those Annoying Vegans

• Unnatural Vegan Activists

• Angela Davis

• Christopher Sebastian

• Earthling Ed

• David Carter

• Gary Yourofsky

• Genesis Butler

• Greta Thunberg

• Jake Conroy

• James Aspey

• Joaquin Phoenix

• Joey Carbstrong

• Milo Runkle Organizations

• Animal Aid

• Anonymous for the Voiceless

• Be An Animal Hero

• Food For Life

• Friends of Animals

• PETA

• The Humane League

• The Vegan Society

• Vegan Action

• Veganuary

• World Vegan Organization

Fitness Professionals

• Brooke Sellers

• Dani Taylor

• Dominick Thompson

• Ella Magers

• Karina Inkster

• Fritz Horstmann

• Jaxton Burton

• Jacked Vegans

• Korin Sutton

• Koya Webb

• Layla Luciano

• Luckie Sigouin

• Leif Arnesen

• Lillian D. Aguilar

• Nik Daniel

• Nimai Delgado

• The Vegan Gym

• Tui Van Renterghem

• Scott Burgett

• Tia Blanco

• Torre Washington

For additional support, we recommend signing up for our Pre-Vegan Guide. This is a comprehensive tutorial that features a series of videos, articles, and other tools to help you fully embrace what it means to be vegan. It’s broken down into a series of modules featuring some of the people you’ve read in this book. As a matter of fact, we have an entire section where you can watch and listen to some of these stories!

Additionally, you can subscribe to the Pre-Vegans podcast where we bring you weekly tips on various subjects as well as answer your questions.

Scan the QR Code to view additional resources.

CHAPTER 13

A TIMELINE OF VEGAN HISTORY

Veganism first made its historic debut between 3300-1300 BCE. Ancient diets that are comparable to plant-based eating today evolved from vegetarianism in Northern and Western India with several emperors, philosophers, and poets advocating for the lifestyle. It wouldn’t be officially coined or turned into a movement until 1945 with the founding of the Vegan Society. The following timeline walks us through the formation of modern-day veganism and its roots.

Please note that any reference to the word vegan before 1944 refers to diet and not the use of the actual word.

Al-Maʿarri (973 - 1057)

One of the earliest known vegans. Based his arguments on health, animal welfare, transmigration of souls, and the view that if humans deserve justice, so do animals.

Roger Crab (1621 - 1680)

Followed a vegan diet from 1641 until his death in 1680. In the later parts of his life, Crab excluded potatoes and carrots from his diet, eventually reducing his intake to only rumex (a type of sorrel leaf) and grass. He also refrained from drinking anything stronger than water. He made a vow of poverty inspired by the figure of John the Baptist.

Johann Conrad Beissel (1691 - 1768)

One of the first reported vegetarians in North America who was motivated by his Christian beliefs. Invented a vegan diet for the Ephrata community that excluded all meat, dairy, eggs, and honey.

Lewis Gompertz (1784 - 1861)

Founding member of the English Society of the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1813)

A poet that published ‘‘A Vindication of Natural Diet’’ advocating ‘‘abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors.

William Lambe (1815)

A London physician that promoted a water and vegetable diet. He believed it could cure anything, from tuberculosis to acne. He called animal food a habitual ritual and made the case that ‘‘milk eating and flesh eating are but branches of a common system and they must stand or fall together.’’

Sylvester Graham (1830s)

Created the meatless Graham Diet consisting mostly of fruits, vegetables, and bread made at home from stone ground flour.

Amos Bronson Alcott (1834)

Opened the Temple School in 1834 and Fruitland in 1844 in Massachusetts.

James Pierrepoint Greaves (1838)

Founded the vegan Concordium at Alcott House in England on Ham Common.

Vegetarian Society (1843)

Members of the Alcott House helped form the UK Vegetarian Society with the first meeting being held in Ramsgate, Kent. A small segment of the group advocated for abstaining from the use of all animal products.

Russell Thatcher Trall (1874)

Published the first known vegan cookbook in America called The Hygeian Home Cook-Book. The book contained recipes "without the employment of milk, sugar, salt, yeast, acids, alkalies, grease, or condiments of any kind."

Mahatma Gandhi (1931)

Gandhi joined the Vegetarian Society while living in London and made the case for a meat-free diet as a matter of morality and not health. This appeal was directed to the majority of the society that still consumed dairy products mainly because of societal norms at the time.

Donald Watson & Dorthy Morgan (November 1944)

Created The Vegan News in August 1944 after several members requested a non-dairy vegetarian section of the Vegetarian Society. The word Vegan was created by Donald Watson and school teacher Dorthy Morgan. The word represents the beginning and end of vegetarianism, taking the first and last part of the word. Other name candidates included allvega, neo-vegetarian, dairyban, vitan, benevore, sanivores, and beaumangeur.

Vegan Society (November 1945)

After the success of The Vegan News, readers met at the Attic Club, 144 High Holborn, London. World Vegan Day is held on the 1st of November to commemorate the founding of the society. The newsletter changed its name to The Vegan and the group had over 500 subscribers. The publication featured recipes and a trade listing of products.

In 1947, the organization rejected the use of animal products for any reasons. Watson wrote, "The vegan renounces it as superstitious that human life depends upon the exploitation of these creatures whose feelings are much the same as our own ..."

Vegan Society Expands (1948)

The first Vegan Society in America was founded by Catherine Nimmo and Rubin Abramowitz in California where they distributed Donald Watson’s newsletter.

American Vegan Society (1960)

H. Jay Dinshah founded the American Vegan Society linking veganism to ahimsa (sankirst for non-harming).

Dictionary Addition (1962)

According to Joanne Stepanik, the word vegan was first published independently in the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary in 1962. It was defined as "a vegetarian who eats no butter, eggs, cheese, or milk".

SOURCES

"Definition of VEGANISM". www.merriam-webster.com

"History". American Vegan Society. Archived from the original on 27 August 2014. Retrieved 14 March 2018.

"Study of Current and Former Vegetarians and Vegans", Faunalytics, December 2014, 4; "How Many Former Vegetarians and Vegans Are There?", Faunalytics, 2 December 2014.

Cornelli, Gabriele; McKirahan, Richard (2013). In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. p. 168. ISBN 978-3-11-030650-7.

Davis, John. "History of Vegetarianism: Extracts from some journals 1842 48 the earliest known uses of the word 'vegetarian'".

International Vegetarian Union. Archived from the original on 18 March 2018. Retrieved 18 March 2018.

Geert Jan van Gelder, Gregor Schoeler, "Introduction", in Abu l-Ala alMaarri, The Epistle of Forgiveness Or A Pardon to Enter the Garden, Volume 2, New York and London: New York University Press, 2016, xxvii.

Leneman, Leah (1999). "No Animal Food: The Road to Veganism in Britain, 1909-1944". Society & Animals. 7 (3): 219 228.

Renier, Hannah (March 2012). "An Early Vegan: Lewis Gompertz". London Historians. Retrieved 22 April 2020.

Team, T., 2016. Starbucks' Introduction Of Almond Milk Is An Investment In The Future. [online] Forbes.

Watson, Donald (November 1944). "Issue No. 1". The Vegan News.

Archived from the original on 13 April 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2019.

Watson, Donald (February 1945). "Issue No. 2". The Vegan News.

Retrieved 13 June 2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adynamic entrepreneur with a knack for building communities, Sean Russell is a multifaceted professional with a vast background in technology, education, journalism, entertainment, and vegan advocacy. His track record as a vocal leader and storyteller includes 25 years of combined experience in public education and multimedia communications.

Sean’s career in education began at Broward County Public Schools where he served in various roles throughout his 16-year stint, including as a teacher, counselor, technology specialist, and administrator. During his tenure, he developed and managed the

county’s first school-operated summer camp program and went on to serve as the district webmaster, coordinating marketing and communication initiatives for the sixth-largest school district in the country.

Pursuing his lifelong dream of entrepreneurship and boasting more than 10,000 hours of experience producing websites, graphics, podcasts, videos, live events, and managing organizations, Sean founded Lesaruss Media in 2007. His first broadcast venture under the Lesaruss flag, Anime 3000, produced six different podcast series focused on anime and manga, airing over 2,000 episodes and garnering one million downloads. He later co-founded music channel TopSpot USA, for which he managed and interviewed more than 300 artists including Neyo, Tyga, Pete Wentz, Fat Joe, and Jeffree Star. Other projects included work with premier entertainment brands such as Nickelodeon, Live Nation, Def Jam, Sony, and Nintendo.

Furthering his work in community advocacy and pioneering a hub for plant-based living in South Florida, Sean managed marketing and event production for FATVillage and the MASS District Fort Lauderdale’s budding neighborhoods for culture, arts, and technology as well as for Animal Hero Kids, a local nonprofit educating kids on animal welfare.

In 2017, Sean launched SoFlo Vegans, a multichannel platform and community with the mission of making South Florida a global hotspot for veganism. In this capacity, Sean has built a network of more than 250 partners and a reach of over 100,000 people each month. As a

result, SoFlo Vegans has helped to propel vegan businesses across the region and has been a key player in producing and supporting over 200 events including Seed Food & Wine Festival, Vegan Block Party, and Heal the Planet Day.

Sean is a sought-after media voice, inspirational speaker, and guest lecturer. His featured appearances include profiles and contributions in outlets such as NBC News, Crunchyroll, Miami New Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, VegWorld Magazine, and more. Recently Sean appeared as a contestant on the hit ABC television show, The Hustler.

Currently, Sean serves as the CEO of Lesaruss Media, merging his expertise in community building, marketing, events, and media production to deliver results for clients in the verticals of veganism, education, and entertainment.

Sean is a graduate of Florida International University, where he majored in television production and minored in education.