Bardo Burner

An occasional series in which ordinary people
talk about living a plant-based life

Argentinian traveller Manu, the latest contributor to our series, sees veganism as the next stage in human evolution and is optimistic about its growth

My name is Manu, I’m 25-years-old, and I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Currently, I’m happily settled in Mexico.

I fell in love with the nomadic lifestyle and have been travelling since 2015. I’ve hitched my way up to Mexico and back down to Argentina, only to come back up and stay put for a few years here in Mexico. My wife and I recently purchased an ’87 Volkswagen bus (or Combi) as our first home/vehicle.

I’ve been vegan since early 2015. I never was a vegetarian; I was aware of the horrors of the dairy and egg industries before I went vegan, so, for me, it wasn’t really an option. What led me to a vegan lifestyle was a spiritual growth. I was really into meditation and spirituality at the time – I still am, but I don’t meditate anymore.

I knew veganism was the next step forward towards what I pictured my life to be. As an Argentinian, I was born and bred in a meat culture. I was really into weightlifting before I left home and I’d never heard of the notion of vegan or vegetarian bodybuilders. Chicken and tuna were the diet staples of my gym buddies. Oh, and lots of whey protein.

Really, spirituality aside, it was my love of animals that eventually pushed me into veganism. I say pushed me because, after my experience with the documentary Earthlings, there was absolutely no way I was ever going to eat meat… never again. My love for animals grew massively that day. After you’ve seen for yourself the pain, horror and suffering of these gentle beings, there’s no way your heart won’t expand.

Like I said, I’ll never eat animal products again. Firstly, don’t think it’s healthy at all and these days there’s plenty of evidence to support that claim. Secondly, I don’t see animal products as food anymore. I see dead, decaying flesh, and stuff that comes out of an animal’s ass and tits. To be honest, that doesn’t make me hungry.

Back in my weightlifting days I gained a passion for healthy living. At that point, I wasn’t exactly ‘healthy’ since I was eating so many animal products – but I thought I was. After I went vegan, it all changed. I felt like a new man. My energy levels went up, I slept and looked better, I felt better overall, my mood changed for the positive, and it felt really really good inside not to be directly funding the torture and slaughter of innocent beings.

I still like to keep myself healthy. My wife and I eat mainly a whole-food, plant-based diet, but of course we indulge in unhealthy food every now and then. Mexico has a wide variety of healthy and delicious vegan food. It definitely seems like the most vegan-friendly food culture in Latin America.

Most of our food nowadays comes from local markets. They’re the cheapest places to get food from, and we prefer to support local farmers and shops. We usually avoid packaged foods, although recently we bought two cases of vegan queso from a brand called Heartbest and we absolutely devoured them. It’s been a while since I had a quesadilla with ’actual’ cheese.

To be honest, I don’t count calories or nutrients, especially not protein. There’s protein in fruit; most people don’t know that. There’s protein everywhere, especially in plant foods. I know that if I eat a wide range of veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds and legumes, I’ll be alright for nutrients. And I hardly ever get sick anymore.

Of course, my entire life changed when I went vegan, not only physically, but mentally too. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by good, caring people who were participating in hideous acts of violence, three times a day. It was shocking.

Most of the time, it became a hard thing to cope with; honestly, it still is. We live in a (mostly) non-vegan world. That means sentient, innocent and harmless beings are being treated as mere commodities, Continue reading “‘I found myself surrounded by good, caring people who were participating in hideous acts of violence’”

An occasional series in which ordinary people
talk about living a plant-based life

US police dispatcher Liz, the latest contributor to our series, says that, strangely enough, her evangelical Christian upbringing made becoming a vegan perfectly logical

My name is Liz and I work as a police dispatcher in a decently sized county in Maryland, USA. The job is very time consuming (12 hour days, six days a week, constantly working). We get three days off after every six-day shift but I find that the first day off is usually just occupied with recovery. I am essentially useless until about day three of the days off.

I have so many interests that I cannot possibly keep up with them all. I enjoy yoga, horseback riding, running, crocheting, playing piano, clay modelling, hiking, writing, paddle boarding, travelling, and reading; I’m never bored. I’m also constantly getting involved in new things. I’ve tried just about everything there is to try – fencing, rock climbing, Krav Maga scuba diving, acrobatics, etc. If it seems interesting, I’ll do it at least twice.

I’m 30 years old now, about to be 31 in February, and at first I felt super old and as if nothing interesting could happen again, as if I’d have to dress like a super-old person, and I got really depressed there for a while. But then I realised that I still have the same energy I had in my mid-20s but I have more follow-through, more experience and more intelligence. So being 30 is the same as being 26 or 27 but better because you make fewer mistakes (and people take you more seriously). I say all this because I have only recently chosen to become vegan but I feel as if I am better equipped to make this a sustainable lifestyle now than I would have been a few years ago.

I’d messed around with vegetarianism in the past, but I never stuck to it (or anything really). I attempted Whole30 a few years back, but caved as soon as someone put some cheesy crab dip in front of me. After that I sort of floated around until I saw the movie PlantPure Nation and really sort of started thinking about why I eat what I eat.

This next bit might sound a bit absurd to some readers, but I grew up in a Baptist household (my dad is a pastor), and so I was taught the Creation story in my private Christian school. In Genesis, God creates everything perfectly and tells the humans that they can eat any of the plants and vegetables they could possibly want. They don’t need anything else, because God gave them the plants and veggies. He never told them to eat animals – they didn’t need to. It wasn’t until after the Fall (when sin entered the world) that humans were given permission to eat animals.

With this as my background, it was not difficult to grasp the concept that people don’t actually need to eat animals. If the original, perfect, humans could survive just fine on only plants, so could I. There is also the story of Daniel, who refused to eat meat for 60 days and insisted on eating only vegetables. After 60 days they compared him with a bunch of other men and he looked and acted the best.

Honestly, having grown up on these stories, it is difficult for me to understand why more Christians aren’t vegan or at least vegetarian.

So I just decided to go primarily plant based and see what happens. My energy got better, my moods stabilised and my periods are much more bearable. Is it a perfect nirvana now? By no means. But my health is noticeably different from how it was before.
I went totally vegan three months ago, though became mostly wholefood plant-based (WFBD) five months before that.

Having lost a lot of weight from November 2017 to about June 2018, I realised that I could not survive calorie-counting for the rest of my life and needed a method of eating that would sustain my new weight but not make eating a chore. Plant-based wholefoods fitted the bill.

I can’t see myself going back to being an omnivore. Any time I look at meat, I just feel grossed out. It’s so greasy, you are eating so many calories for not a lot of food, and I feel tired after eating meat; Continue reading “‘It was not difficult to grasp – if the original, perfect humans could survive just fine on only plants, so could I’”

An occasional series in which ordinary people
talk about living a plant-based life

English chef Amy, the latest contributor to our series, explains how she went from being a meat eater to vegan overnight and what it means to her

I turned 30 this year; my immediate family is now just my brother and my mum. I was brought up in a very traditional family, in which we sat down at the table for meals, we helped cook, and we helped clear it all away. My dad was of the “meat, veg and bread and butter” generation, so meals were typically traditionally English – pies, oxtail, lamb shanks, etc. And I loved that food.

I also loved learning to cook from my mum, who, ironically, is now and was then a vegetarian. Mum was a vegetarian, however, because she didn’t like the taste of meat, so I never questioned the ethics of eating animals. It was genuinely something that I never came across until the last couple of years.

At 21 I fell into the world of chef-ing quite by accident, and it turned out I was pretty good at it. After my first year I was managing a kitchen, and two years into that I received my accreditation. I loved watching Masterchef, and would get really creative with food on my days off, spending all day making dinner.

Most recently I moved to work at a steakhouse. The induction into the job included visiting a slaughterhouse, the farm our cows are raised at, and the “cutting plant” (basically a massive industrial-scale butchers). I still never questioned it.

We all agreed on leaving the slaughterhouse that “it’s not nice to see, but it’s just the way it is, and at least they were calm and it was over quickly for them”. Writing those words now makes me feel cold.

A few of my friends had already gone vegan, and were sharing things on Facebook: videos of the atrocious conditions animals were being kept in; day-old calves being dragged away from their mothers and the mothers chasing after them; messages of “cows’ milk being for baby cows”; videos of male chicks being thrown live into macerators.

I would see them and it would break my heart, but I would think, “that’s awful but I don’t think what I buy comes from there”. It obviously played on my subconscious because my thoughts started to become, “I  would go vegan if I could, but I really like cheese”. Then I found out about vegan cheeses. I tried them and thought… hmmm they don’t taste the same, but they’re still good!

I don’t know if there was a eureka moment as such but I went from being a meat eater to vegan overnight about four months ago. The more I read about the myths of “free-range”, and about the unnatural animals we have created through selective, intensive and over-breeding the more I knew I had made the right decision. I mean, I wouldn’t treat my dog, or any dog, like that, so why did I think it was right to treat an animal with just as much sentience, intelligence, emotions, any differently? The hypocrisy of getting so outraged at cultures eating dog suddenly became very apparent.

I think I was more shocked at the egg and dairy industry than I was with the meat industry, although I find both as horrific now.

The fact that hens and dairy cows were going through prolonged suffering, and spending their unnaturally short lives being forced to create something they were not designed to produce so much of or so often, and then died so much earlier than they were meant to because their bodies were exhausted, all so we could eat something that we had been brought up to believe we needed, or something we liked the taste of just seemed ludicrous.

Based on the fact I have made this decision on moral grounds – that we cannot warrant causing harm to others, for sensory pleasure – I honestly cannot imagine a reason I would ever go back to being omnivore. When I see meat and dairy now, I just see everything that goes on behind the scenes to produce it.

When I first went vegan, I ate a lot of meat and dairy substitutes, which I think is quite normal when you’ve first made the decision, as you are still looking for the taste of meat. I would have a smoothie everyday with berries, spinach, and chia and flax seeds, just to make sure I was getting those in my diet at the start of my day.

Obviously you become more aware of what you need and where to get it from as you go, and over time I have realised that meat substitutes are not the best thing to live on, although they definitely have their place. I found my body was craving vegetables, and funnily I started to go off the taste of the vegan ‘meats’.

I am now much more into creating meals with vegetables, pulses, nuts, tofu etc. But being a chef at heart, I am big on flavours and textures so it is important these meals pack both of those in big quantities. Creamy, cheesy pastas, rich smoky mushroom and lentil mince, spicy tangy sticky sauces coating vegetables in Chinese steamed buns… I love cooking and eating things like that.

It has been great for me to experiment with flavours and ingredients, as I certainly could not just live on salads and vegetable curries.

That whole journey encouraged me to look at where I get protein, B12, Omegas and other nutrients from. It’s funny that one of the first things that crops up in discussions with non-vegans is a sudden concern for your wellbeing and where you are getting all your nutrients from, and ironic Continue reading “‘People get upset about other cultures eating dogs, yet do not make the link with any other animal flesh’”

An occasional series in which ordinary people
talk about living a plant-based life

My name is Aaron McMurray and I’m from Northern Ireland. I’m a 29-year-old theoretical physics graduate and PhD researcher studying laser driven ion acceleration, which basically means I shoot high intensity lasers at thin metallic targets to accelerate protons and carbon ions. The hope is that one day this technology might have applications in radiography and cancer radiotherapy. When I’m not writing my thesis I’m travelling, practising karate, scuba diving and writing music.

You’re vegan now, were you vegetarian before? What led to that? How long have you been vegan? What led to that choice?
Eating meat was something I didn’t question. It was “normal,” so I dismissed vegetarianism and veganism as hippy nonsense. Of course, I never seriously listened to what vegans and vegetarians actually had to say. My dismissal was a mental knee jerk reaction to something I saw as strange and different.

Eventually, I realised I was taking some of my beliefs as a given, simply because they had been culturally normalised to the point where I didn’t even notice that was what had happened. I came to realise that if I’m interested in believing things which are true and doing good, rather than believing things I like to believe because they make me feel good, then I should really hear vegans out.

I was lucky enough to witness an atheist vegan debate whether atheists should all be vegan at my university’s debate club. They made some good points, but I was left seriously disappointed by the counter arguments. I thought maybe I had witnessed a bad representation of the anti-vegan argument and the opposition was trying to win the crowd with arguments they knew were technically bad, but sounded convincing. I started researching the arguments for and against veganism and couldn’t any good argument against veganism. Nearly all were subject to basic errors leading to inconsistencies, hypocrisy or absurdity. The best I could find was an argument against veganism in survival situations but I’m not in a survival situation. It seemed clear that veganism was the better position.

As a STEM graduate I went to the scientific literature with a question: what did science have to say about eating meat? Turns out, it has a lot to say about it. Animal agriculture is a major contributor to antibiotic resistance (a serious threat to human health now and in the future); it’s a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; it’s the leading cause of deforestation; it causes land degradation; it aids in the development of oceanic dead zones; and it’s a serious contributor to the loss of biodiversity on this planet. 15,000 scientists from more than 180 countries signed off on a declaratory paper (setting a record for most signatories) warning humanity that nearly all the problems identified above had been exacerbated. Put simply, the current model of feeding people is not only unsustainable, it’s dangerous.

From that point on I was a reluctant vegetarian – accepting veganism was the stronger position but not quite ready to take the plunge, mostly due to all the fearmongering articles written about it in the media.

Supposedly I wouldn’t get enough protein, vitamin D, omega 3, omega 6 or B12; I would suffer digestive issues within a year; I’d become lactose intolerant; I’d gain weight; I’d lose weight; my mental health would decline; and I’d get diabetes. The list of utterly nonsensical claims about living on a planned vegan diet was astounding but worrying to me, having never tried to change my lifestyle this drastically before, so I stuck to vegetarianism for a while.

Not only did I not suffer any adverse effects from vegetarianism, but I felt better physically. I wasn’t tired after big meals anymore, I wasn’t sleeping as much (which was good because before I overslept consistently) and I was able to be more active for longer. I had originally planned to do a year of vegetarianism but considering all the positives I cut it short and went vegan after six months.

I’ve been vegan for several years now. I’m still active and healthy and I feel better than ever; I’m not protein deficient; I get my omega 3 and omega 6; I get plenty of B12; I haven’t suffered any digestive issues; I’ve no idea if I’ve become lactose intolerant or not and have no interest in finding out; my weight didn’t change; my mental health has marginally improved, rather than worsened; and I definitely didn’t get diabetes.
All in all, it has been pretty good.

Do you see yourself ever going back to being an omnivore?
No chance.

Are you a ‘healthy’ vegan? Often people assume we’re all fitness-obsessed, when the reality is that we come in many flavours and for many people life is an eternal hunt for vegan cake. What makes up your diet?
I’m not fitness obsessed but I am very active. I practice karate and sports karate (kumite) five times a week. I also go swimming once or twice a week and scuba diving once a week and somehow manage to find time to run.

My diet is pretty much what you would expect: a mix of fruit, seeds and nuts, vegetables, grains, beans and lentils and fortified foods.

When I ate meat I often thought it would be impossible to go vegan, I thought it would be too restrictive and that I’d end up eating broccoli feeling miserable. The truth was the opposite. When I went vegan, Continue reading “‘What does science have to say about eating meat? Put simply, it’s not only unsustainable, it’s dangerous’”

An occasional series in which ordinary people
talk about living a plant-based life

The next in our series is Sudip,right, a 36-year-old broker, who lives with his wife and two young daughters.

Bardo Burner: You’re vegan now; were you previously vegetarian?
Sudip: I have been vegetarian my whole life, and turned vegan a few months ago. I realised that being vegetarian wasn’t enough to stop cruelty to animals. A growing awareness of animal welfare made me feel this way and so I became vegan.

BB: How long have you been vegan?
Sudip: It’s been a few months now and I’m planning to be for rest of my life.

BB: Are you a ‘healthy’ vegan? Often people assume we’re all fitness-obsessed, when the reality is that we come in many flavours and for many people life is an eternal hunt for vegan cake. What makes up your diet?
Sudip: I am a very healthy vegan; in fact I have a passion for sports and fitness. I am more than fit at this time being vegan. I feel much better for my new diet. I don’t miss anything: I can get vegan pizza with vegan cheese; I can get vegan cake; I can get vegan chocolate and I can get vegan milk for my coffee.

BB: Where do you shop?
Sudip: In the same stores I always did… where meat eaters and other omnivores buy their food.

BB: Do you consciously think about where you get your protein, etc, from?
Sudip: Not at all. If need be I could take supplements but I don’t need to at the moment. There is enough vegan food which can give you enough protein.

BB: For many vegans, the initial realisation of facts that make us turn to a different lifestyle is pretty life-changing and alienating. We view things differently, from the supermarket shopping experience in a meat-eating world to the people around us. How was that change in mindset… the reality of being an outsider in many situations… for you?
Sudip: For me, it’s not been a big difference as I have always been vegetarian. I honestly feel sick and sad when I see people shopping meat in the store or go fishing or hunting. Veganism is not only about avoiding dairy or meat but also about not buying products where animals have been used – whether it’s cosmetics or clothes, anything really.

BB: Do you mix with many other vegans – does your lifestyle mean that you come into contact with people of a similar outlook regularly?
Sudip: Slowly I do feel people are realising the story behind the meat on their plates, and I hope to see the world vegetarian, if not vegan, in the next 25 years.

BB: Do you seek out vegan groups and forums online?
Sudip: Yes.

BB: Do you live in a meat/dairy eating household? And if so, how tricky is that?
Sudip: My family does have dairy but my wife is considering quitting. I explained to my five-year-old daughter the reasons why I am a vegan and at her age she is like daddy Continue reading “‘If a child gets it, adults should surely more than understand the horrors behind eating meat and dairy’”