Vegan's Home www.veganshome.com

Amy's Journey - My Trip To The Vegan Life

 

The Beginning

Although I always had a love of animals, I was not aware of the vegan lifestyle until late in life. My revelation came when I ran across a book by the actress, Alicia Silverstone, titled "The Kind Diet". This book opened my eyes to many things I was aware of, but had pushed to the back of my mind. I resisted facing disturbing facts about how the food industry treats animals.

Then I saw two videos called "Earthlings" (bottom of page) and "Meet Your Meat" (following this paragraph) that shook me to my foundation. They contain the most horrible scenes I have ever watched. They were made mostly with hidden cameras in the slaughter houses of the food industry, the fur industry and pet industry. I learned that, as I write this, 90,000 cows and calves are slaughtered worldwide every day. Meat eaters are aware of where their meat comes from but most ease their conscience by believing these poor creatures are killed humanely. Nothing could be further from the truth. After seeing these videos I vowed that, to the best of my ability, I would never again contribute to the suffering of an innocent animal.

Here is the "Meet Your Meat" video. If you watch this and don't get it...there is nothing I can say that you would understand.
WARNING: Some will be disturbed by this video (any caring adult should be).Viewer discretion advised.
NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN!



My journey began January 2011. My first thought was...O.K., I want to do this but just exactly what is a vegan? Well I found a definition that made sense to me and here it is:
"A vegan is someone who strives to live more compassionately and eliminate cruelty to animals by choosing to consume whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and other plant-based alternatives over meat, dairy, eggs and other animal products. Vegan's also seek to avoid all forms of animal exploitation for food, clothing, entertainment, science or any other purpose, and thereby promote the development and use of cruelty-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment".

I didn't know what to cook or what to shop for so I spent the first few days eating salads while I researched and found out about the vegan foods that are available. Then I went shopping and found there were a multitude of vegan foods available. It took awhile but shortly thereafter I had a stock of vegan supplies and had given away all the non-vegan food.

However, now and then they still throw me a curve. Recently I started to use a packaged gravy mix I had bought long ago. As I started to put it in the pan I decided to check the ingredients. To my surprise it had one of those camouflaged names they use for eggs. And it contained MSG. So I threw it away. I must admit that going vegan was not easy but it has been well worth it and now I am very comfortable with my diet and lifestyle.

Below is the "Earthlings" video.
WARNING!! This video is very graphic! It is real! There are no actors in this film.
Viewer discretion advised. NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN!

This video runs for a little over 90 minutes.
PLEASE, watch when you have the time to view the entire film at one sitting.