Dear Almost Vegan,

Photo: Teddy Rawpixel via Rawpixel

Dear Me,

I’m writing to you from the future, surrounded by marigolds and ferns, nestled on a glowing patio under a Midwest sun. There are picture-perfect blue skies in all directions, and I (you) am sipping an underwhelming, yet perfect cup of dark coffee.

Your first question, naturally, is how did we get to The Midwest? Like anyone who finds their way here, I’m not sure. It just sort of happened. I have a conspiracy theory that the Midwest exists to suck in people who are lost or wandering.

You’re about to go vegan, no? A little conflicted, if I remember correctly? Yes, I know. It shouldn’t seem like a big step from vegetarian — a few extra animal products to cut out. You’ve seen the documentaries, and your best friend, who is also going vegan, has of course done all the research.

So, what’s got your nerves?

Well, that’s what I’m writing to you about. It’s been a journey, and while there plenty of articles you’ll undoubtedly read about the health merits of a plant-based diet and the environmental and ethical reasons to go vegan, you just don’t really know what it’s going to be like. And I mean what it’s really like — not the “I feel amazing and save so many animals a year! Veganism changed my life!” perspectives, but an honest look at the real challenges and joys.

Luckily, you have me (you).

The very beginning

By now, you’ve been vegetarian for a while. What a wonderful decision that was, filled with growing pains and awkward family dinners. Going vegan will be a lot like that, except not.

I won’t lie. You’re going to get the shit kicked out of you for the first bit.

What? You’re in high school. Do you have any idea how big a stereotype it’s going to be to be the vegan kid in your school? Let alone the fact that you used to play Yu-Gi-Oh at lunch until that kid stole your deck. Is that still a sore subject? Sorry, but if it’s any consolation it’ll be for the better in the long run.

Anyway, it’s going to be rough. Bullying aside, the start is the hardest. People will tell you it’s a phase. There are some more-or-less immediate physical changes. You’ll feel a withdraw from dairy products. Lucky for you, you never got into ketchup and cheese sandwiches like your siblings, but you will still feel the withdrawal symptoms. In case you aren’t already aware, cow’s milk is physically addicting to humans due to the casein, which is a protein in mammalian milk with addicting properties so that babies develop the habit of breastfeeding.

In other words, it makes you want the tit.

That’s all fine and dandy, except for the fact that, as you can imagine, cow’s breast milk is meant for calves (baby cows), which are larger than baby humans. As such, the casein in cow’s milk is many times more potent than what you find in your mom’s milk.

Many have written about this, notably after so much attention was given to dairy fallout precipitating The China Study. For example, Victoria Moran writes her book Main Street Vegan:

Casein, one of the proteins in milk, crosses the blood-brain barrier and becomes something called casomorphins. Yes’m, that sounds a lot like morphine — because casomorphin is also an opioid. Nature designed it that way so young mammals would enjoy nursing, come back for more, and live to reproduce themselves. Human milk has only 2.7 grams of casein per liter. Cow’s milk has 26. And because it takes, on average, ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese or ice cream, you’re looking at a lot of casein and resultant casomorphin.

And bada-bing bada-boom you’ve got yourself a low-key opiate addiction. There are other reasons why you’ll have withdrawal — taste, trying to figure out what to eat — but that’s the reason for the physical symptoms.

It’s like falling in love: There are peaks and plateaus, but no matter what your life will be changed for the better.

The good news is that after that, you’re going to feel better than you ever have before. I’m not exaggerating, and neither are all of the articles I was mocking a moment ago. There’s no real way to describe it, but know that it’s true. Some people will tell you it’s euphoria from all that goodness you’re doing in the world. Yeah, sure. Believe that if you want. It definitely helps, but there’s more to it than that. Others will tell you it’s your body responding to diet changes, whether that’s eating healthier foods or cleansing your body of years of processed meats, dairy that you can’t digest, or what have you. I think it’s probably a combination.

It will continue to feel good. Others might tell you that it fades, feeling super good all at once and then mellowing out later. But to me, it’s like falling in love: There are peaks and plateaus, but no matter what your life will be changed for the better.

First, you’ll have to talk to your parents

We’re fortunate to have open-minded parents. Not everyone has this privilege, so don’t take it for granted. Mom already makes the best vegetarian dishes you could ask for on a tight budget, and in time she’ll get better at making vegan ones too. I’m happy to say she’s something of an expert these days, so be nice as she’s getting used to the changes. Dad never really understands or cares, but he’ll support it as he does. Eventually, he even starts to like veggie burgers.

Mom will buy you ingredients and even cook for you sometimes, as I said. But you’re going to figure out how to cook for yourself. I don’t even mean just the technical parts of cooking, certainly not the artsy parts of cooking that come later on. You’re going to have to figure out how to eat as a vegan.

This is going to look like spending the time at the grocery to check every single label. You’ll learn what to look for on labels. There are so many “gotchas” of the industry trying to sneak animal products into foods, from dyes to sweeteners, to even vitamin supplements. In time, you’ll be able to speed read an ingredients label with 50 items and know in an instant whether or not it’s plant-based.

Once you’ve got identifying plant-based food down, you can move on to the fun part: cooking plant-based food. It takes time and effort, and both demand patience. You’re going to learn how to feed yourself all over again. Changing your diet from the ground up forces you to critically analyze what you like and why.

Less fortunately, you’ll have to deal with people who, while they rarely think about what they eat and why, have plenty of questions about what you eat. You’ll be riddled with feigned pity. “What do you eat, though? The only thing worse is when someone asks you about protein. “But where do you get your protein in your diet of protein-rich nuts, legumes, and starches?!” They’re concerned about your specific nutritional levels, bless their heart, even though they haven’t paid attention to their own since that time they counted macros for a month in college.

These, at first, seem like an innocent enough questions. The irony is going vegan is going to make you an expert on what you eat. You’re going to have a better understanding of food than you ever had or hoped to, and it’s because you’re going to have to figure out what you like and how to get it.

This benefit of knowing your food and having a wholesome relationship with what you’re eating is an upside to this whole thing that I cannot stress enough. It will take you time, but it will be worth it.

The first year

There will be ups and downs. Ridicule. Discovery. Absurd questions. Easy questions. The same explanation of why. The rarer, deeper, intimate discussion of why. Threading the needle through uninspired philosophical arguments. Shoving the needle repeatedly into the eye of half-hearted nihilist arguments because “it’s all relative, bro.” The same uninspired, absurdist question about being on a deserted island where somehow the only food source is chickens. Learning. Mistakes. Community.

The first year will simultaneously be the easiest and the hardest.

Hard because it’s new, and easy because it’s new.

It’s a unique time. You’re not jaded about the animal rights movement and its bottomless nuance. You’re still eager to get your hands on every recipe, watch every vegan YouTuber, fail to make seitan look like anything but a brain, and much more.

You’ll learn in your own right, and the spark is already there, but veganism is more than what you eat. For you, me, and many others it’s inherently political. It spans over environmentalism, sexism, animal rights, racial and class injustice, and so much more.

As Aph and Syl Ko present in their radical book, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters, veganism is as much about what we want our future to look like as it is about changing the present. Veganism, especially Black veganism, is the pen with which we write what our ideal world looks like when freed of the injustices in our present one. Aph and Syl help us engage with the taxonomies of power that gave rise to the vegan movement and extrapolate that onto what it means to be vegan at an individual and community level.

Part of activism is finding yourself in a new space of confusion, allowing yourself to step into new conceptual terrain. When you abandon commonly held oppressive beliefs, you might not exactly know what to do afterward, and that’s where more activists need to be.
— Aph Ko, Aphro-ism

Your veganism will become a deep personal connection to yourself and your community, including and especially the non-human community, just as much as it will be to what shampoo you pick out that isn’t tested on animals.

After that

After the first year or two, it becomes second nature. You stop seeing animals as food, and you know what to look for. Now and then, you might make a mistake. That’s okay. As cool as it would be, you don’t lose your vegan card after three strikes like in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

People always ask if it’s hard, or marvel at your commitment. “Oh, I could never do that. Have you had cheese?” For the most part, you tuck these moments away in a folder of immutable interactions you’ve had, occasionally peeking back to wonder how you might have approached a conversation differently, changed someone’s mind, come to an understanding. You will fight your hardest to explain to the curious and the relentless your why and how. And you will revel in the fuzzy magic feeling when you can watch it click for someone else.

But there will be the odd occasion where your light is challenged. It will not be from a sudden craving, which seems to be the stereotype. No, it will come from dealing with the complexities of veganism and the vegan community.

Being vegan is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. There are countless takes on what is and isn’t vegan, how to most effectively save lives, impact the environment, and so on. Many of the most difficult arguments you’ll have aren’t with non-vegans, but rather with other vegans who think their size is the one size.

They’ll tell you if you aren’t doing one thing, then why even bother? They’ll analyze which actions are the most beneficial, and which ones are useless. They’ll make it about themselves, instead of the animals. They may even tell you they were once vegan until they realized that it was an impossible problem. You’ll encounter every kind of doubt and “what if” you can imagine, but the hardest is going to be from people who have spent as much time thinking about veganism as you.

There’s still a lesson to be learned from empathizing with human animals who are trying to figure out what veganism means to them. Don’t misunderstand. You’ll find value in picking at the nuance of the impact of one brand of veganism vs. another, and at dissecting the system with others who have different perspectives than you. Keep your wits about you and your head up. It’s all part of the journey, and I’m happy to report that, in time, it shapes your veganism, which leads to shaping you.

Happily ever after

Your vegan journey will define you.

You will develop stronger opinions, fight against cruelty and apathy, become a chef, and become the kind of person you can be proud of. I am proud of you. Of us.

You will make friends, write recipes, read books, protest, clean up goat shit, organize events, pretend to be lactose intolerant when you can’t afford another stressful conversation, fall in and out of love with communities, and cry at a lot of vegan potlucks.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing, looking back, is the sheer amount of information you’ll accumulate. As you begin to look more and more into the kind of person you want to be, you’ll become an amateur expert on nutrition, food science, philosophy, and public speaking.

This and so much more stems from that seemingly small decision to be conscious of what you’re eating. I can’t give you all of the specifics and ruin the story, but I can promise it’s a worthwhile one.

11 vegan lessons that you can’t find in books

1. No one cares that you’re vegan, except other vegans. They care a lot.
2. It’s probably vegan, or can be made vegan. Use your imagination.
3. If it can’t be made vegan, someone is trying to make it vegan. Figure out how to make it before them. Invest the proceeds in something else you wish was vegan.
4. Item 3 above applies to more than material things.
5. Be hypercritical of power structures within vegan organizations. If they aren’t helping animals, who are they helping?
6. Food really is the fastest way to people’s hearts. Cooking is an act of love.
7. Sometimes it’s right to be wrong, especially when you’re trying to convince someone you’re right.
8. Violence is not vegan.
9. Praise people for doing their best.
10. Raise the good, wholesome experiences. Write about the farm sanctuaries of the world. Post about the cutting edge recipes. Tell your friends you love them. Veganism in the media shouldn’t be all death and celebrities.
11. There are always too many try-hard desserts at vegan potlucks. Be that person who makes a hearty dish or some basic pasta. People will remember.