Turns out that I am a vegan. I assure you that no-one is more surprised than me!
I had been thinking about becoming a vegetarian for moral reasons for some time but never quite had the courage to plunge in. My Dad was a butcher (ah, yeah, Dad… I’m now vegan!) so I saw how meat was produced and that it didn’t start off in a nicely wrapped plastic package. Yet, the allure of a good steak, or a juicy roast, kept me omnivorous.
Then a sequence of events happened that led me to where I am now.
I, half-assedly, ordered a “How to become a vegetarian” book from Amazon. My friends joked, “you need a book to tell you how to do it?!” I politely explained to them that it didn’t say “DO NOT EAT MEAT” on every page.
Page One: Don’t eat meat.
Page Two: Don’t eat meat.
Page Three: We are not kidding; no meat!
Page Four: You’re still reading? Haven’t picked up the pattern yet? Meat: don’t eat it.
As the book was winging its way toward me, I heard about the environmental impact of raising livestock. Livestock emit climate changing gases, they use vast amounts of resources, they lead to water contamination, and are directly responsible for a high proportion of deforestation (well, perhaps not directly; I have never seen a cow weilding a chainsaw!).
When I told my youngest brother that I was thinking about giving up meat he looked at me as if I was nuts. For the record, this is the same brother that created this website a few days ago! Curiosity got the better of him so he began discussing it with a co-worker (Amiria) who was vegan. He copied me into their emails and I was informed that dairy leads to 49% of New Zealand’s climate change emissions. Already (mostly) resolved to go vegetarian for environmental reasons (not to mention the cuddly little critters) I decided that vegan was the only way to go!
And here I am four weeks later. A yoga-addicted vegan. If you told me a year ago I would have had you committed!
