A few weeks ago I was sitting under some giant evergreen trees, warmed by the fire next to me, spending my morning just listening to the birds and decided that instead of just writing about something, telling people my thoughts, that I wanted to ask people for theirs. I wrote & posted Explain Why You DO or DO NOT Eat Dead Animals & "Animal Products", offering 20 STEEM in prizes for the best responses, and giving 1% @TribeSteemUp upvotes (worth $0.40 - 0.50) to everyone submitting a valid response (following the guidelines).

A little while after posting, I realized I hadn't really discussed at all my own thoughts/understandings on these topics. My first thought was that most folks who follow/read my work already know where I stand, and my second was that its probably best that I didn't start off by biasing the conversation so much.

After reading the comments though, I realized that I'd need to write a bunch of responses to folks, asking questions and challenging points. I did some of that, but I took so much time off during July that the conversation sort of died off. I think my journey to veganism is probably worth its own post at this point, especially because my journey is very different from most.

The first 25 years

I grew up in a lower/lower-middle class family in Amerikkka, in the 90s and early 2000s. What this means is that we thankfully rarely went hungry, but our food consisted heavily of boxed meals, and we were unknowingly helping test the first runs of commercially available GMOs. My mom had some sense of the need for healthy eating (we didn't ever go to McDonald's for example), but the internet wasn't a thing yet, and so much of the information about nutrition was coming from the State, and completely full of shit (the food pyramid for example).

Up through my early adult years, this same diet pretty much just rolled forward. I started eating less from the box and more from bars & restaurants, but certainly wasn't doing anything for the health. Bacon bleu cheese burgers made up a large percent of my diet for many years, as did flesh-filled burritos, "meat-lovers" pizza, and things of that sort. I would eat salads (though my favorite was chicken caesar), and juice existed almost exclusively as a hangover cure. Somehow I didn't make the connections at the time, but I also spent those many years with terrible acne, daily indigestion, and constipation.

Mindful eating as a way of life

Beginning in early 2012, after meeting @smartair and learning about GMOs, soy, "natural" ingredients, and so much more, I began to be more mindful of what I was putting in my body. This new knowledge, combined with a growing sense that maybe I actually should be alive, led to some drastic changes in my diet (and every other part of my life).

The first thing I did was to cut out processed foods & GMOs, switching to an organic, more whole-food diet and beginning to practice mindful eating. To me, mindful eating is a many-leveled practice, including (but not limited to) considerations like:

Who am I giving money to? Am I supporting humans with shared values or corporations only concerned with profit?
How far did that food have to travel to get to me?
What chemical fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides were used?
How does my body feel after eating it?
Does it contain GMOs, "natural flavors", or anything artificial?
How much processing occurred between the plant and your plate?
What sort of vibration was this food surrounded by? Love & abundance, or Fear, greed, and indifference?
Was the food grown sustainably? Was a forest torn down for the fields?

When I cut out processed crap, I started to feel drastically better almost immediately. My digestion was better, I was sleeping better, my skin cleared up, I had more energy... I also started to notice much more when something wasn't working with my body.

During this time, I was still eating meat, but it had to be organic, free range, antibiotic free, etc. Needless to say, this made meat the most expensive part of my diet, and it went from being part of almost every meal to only being around once a week. Suddenly when I did eat meat, I would feel lethargic, my stomach would hurt, and my general body state would just be one of dis-ease.

About 5 months after cutting out GMOs and such, I also cut out meat (dairy & eggs never being much of a thing, but I cut them out completely at that point as well), and I've been on a vegan diet ever since.

Ever had someone convince you the opposite of their stance?

After shifting to a completely plant-based diet, I did start using the word vegan, simply for ease of communication. I was still running some pretty human supremacist belief systems though, and it only took a couple of conversations (with folks attempting to defend their own meat eating) before I realized that the moral argument for veganism is pretty much bulletproof.

From statements like "But I have these canine teeth", to "Lions kill & eat animals, so why shouldn't I?", and "They're not conscious", it became exceptionally clear just how deep the cultural programming around the consumption of dead flesh really is. As I've learned more and more about nutrition, I've found that all of the claims made in defense of a flesh-based diet are generally non-factual, and some are actually downright the opposite of reality: B-12, "not enough protein", "have to eat too much", etc.

The one that always strikes me funniest is people who think that whole, non-GMO vegan food is more expensive... I can speak for most of north & central Turtle Island when I say that it costs about $1-2 per person, per meal to create the food that I do. Those are meals containing 3-6 separate items (offering a WIDE variety of flavors & nutritional contents), and that price range pretty much scales from 10-10,000 people. That's making vegan, whole food, gluten-free, soy-free meals that contain everything the body needs (and then some).

People like to ask things like "What do you do?", to which I often respond that I'm a traveling chef (easiest of my titles to explain), and then most folks are curious what kind of food I specialize in. When I tell them "vegan food, of every kind, designed to make people feel better", many hear the word vegan and immediately get defensive and start spouted memorized & practiced reasons why enslaving, raping, killing, and consuming animals isn't such a bad thing. There was a long time when I was still living in an anthropocentric enough mind-state that I would usually cut folks off and explain that for me it had to do with nutrition, environmental impact, and basic common sense, not the moral argument.

I heard more and more folks who I considered to be something of philosophers, or who certainly acted like they were, practicing such blatant moral relativism around the most basic foundation of anarchism: respecting the life, body, and freedom of others. Finally this incessant non-logic clicked a switch for me and I realized that there really was no going back, and that I see no separation between anarchy & veganism when both are followed to their consistent ends.

To be clear

As I went over a bit earlier when I was describing what mindful eating means to me, simply removing animal flesh & excretions from our diets isn't really enough in the world we live in today. From the economic & ecological effects of what we're eating to the level of contamination & genetic tampering in most "food" distributed by the corporatocracy, there is a drastic need to shift back to growing our own food, rebuilding food forests, and expanding general knowledge about diet, agriculture, and how to sustain ourselves.

Even now, I really only push the morals & ethics of veganism with those who claim to be extremely moral & ethical, because it is not my place to judge anyone else for what they do. I paid others to murder hundreds or thousands of animals for my enjoyment, out of a combination of apathy, self-hate, and willful ignorance. Generally speaking, I prefer to just teach people about how simple it is to thrive on a whole food plant-based diet and how to use food to heal, all while serving them delicious vegan food; I don't really have to do any "convincing".

How I Became Vegan... or "Meat-Eaters Convinced Me of the Immorality of Eating Animals"

The first 25 years

Mindful eating as a way of life

Ever had someone convince you the opposite of their stance?

To be clear

Further Reading & Viewing

Videos & YouTube Channels

Articles & Sites

Images Sources

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