COLUMN : how i became vegan

one of the most requested columns for sure. so here it is – my going vegan story.

as a kid i always loved animals. like all kids do i guess. that love then became an interest, i wanted to learn more and more about animals and how they thought, what they liked, how they lived. me and my dad used to sit on the porch in the summers and for hours ask each other what’s your top five jungle animals ? what’s your top five animals in the ocean ? and so on.

when my 10th birthday was coming up, i wrote vegetarian cookbook at the top of my wish list. my parents said i was too young to go vegetarian, so i said that ok next year when i’m turning 11, i’ll go vegetarian. year 11 and 12 came and my parents still weren’t ok with it. said i was still growing and they didn’t know enough about nutrition to feel comfortable with it.

when i was 12 my older brother went vegetarian. he saw some factory farm footage and that was it. my sister and mother quickly jumped on the same vegetarian train as well, but i still wasn’t allowed.

so a few weeks after i turned 13, a couple of months after my brother went veggie, i was having lunch at an italian restaurant with my granny and i had pasta carbonara. i felt grossed out by the ham pieces, and i told her that this was going to be my final meal as a meat eater. and she said fair enough, but your mom and dad won’t allow it. but i just thought, what are they going to do, force feed me meat ? so i went on a meat strike. simply refusing to eat meat. after a few days, they finally caved in.

some years passed and at 16, one of my class mates in high school went vegan. she was a radical leftie – you know, boycotting israel, outspoken feminist, incredibly clever, and all of a sudden vegan. that was the first vegan i met and i thought man, i wish i were that cool. but she only ate like cinnamon buns, crisps and chocolate, so my first impression was that being vegan was very practically difficult and taxing. i didn’t have the motivation but made a mental note : one day.

a few years later and me and david are living in a small town in sweden, me studying to be a biologist. an animal behaviour biologist (or an ethologist) to be precise. my interest for the animal mind had never faded. what i didn’t expect was that the education was a lot more focussed on animal protection and animal welfare than i had thought. so at university i got hooked on animal rights.

we went to all these different farms to learn how animals are kept in the animal industry. everything from dairy farms, to mink fur farms, to chicken and fish farms. and also zoos, schools, laboratories and wool sheep farms. anywhere where animals are kept for human profit, we went. and everytime we i saw one of those places, i stopped buying the product they were making. so after a few months at university, i became vegan.

i felt it so strongly – i can no longer support the industry that keep animals this way for profit. i started feeling that everytime i bought cheese, i paid the salary of the slaughterhouse worker killing the cow when she no longer produces enough milk. that i was financially supporting an industry i couldn’t stand.

that was about 8 years ago. and i have never looked back since.
i thought that going vegan was going to be hard. that it was going to be bad for my health, my social life, my tastebuds, and for my wallet. turned out none of that was true. quite the opposite in fact. go figure.
i guess that’s what they call karma.

love // jenny