I graduated from Pizza Hut to Boston Pizza.  I distinctly remember sitting in the parking lot with my then boyfriend, now husband Paul as he dropped me off for my interview.  I sat in the car and said I didn’t want to go to the interview, I wasn’t sure I wanted to work there.  He said I was there so I may as well go in.  Fair.  I remember being asked in the interview if I’d ever eaten at Boston Pizza and what my favourite item was.  I had never eaten at Boston Pizza as it was much more expensive than Pizza Hut so I lied and said pizza, which wasn’t a stretch.

Like Pizza Hut, we got a meal at Boston Pizza.  I felt so lucky to be guaranteed a meal each day but also guilty as I couldn’t always bring food home for my mom and brother. 

By this time, we had decided to become vegetarians.  Paul had read an article in the Calgary Herald which inspired us to make the shift. I wish I had it for evidence that the media actually reported on climate change back then.  I recall there was a picture of a cow on the cover and it talked about the environmental impacts of animal agriculture.  Paul declared he was going vegetarian.  It was also around this time Paul used to attend protests against the Stampede Rodeo. This would have been in about 2000 so I don’t recall even knowing the word vegan at that time, but I agreed to go vegetarian with him.

I promptly became a PETA member and still have a PETA sticker on my filing cabinet that says ‘vegetarians save lives every day’ so I don’t even think PETA was promoting veganism at this time. Dairy cows are ultimately slaughtered for ground beef once milk production declines, so no, vegetarians do not save lives. Nothing against PETA, but I actually despise this sticker alot. I was prime to go vegan at this point, I was seeking information so I could do the right thing, and based on the info. I found, thought being vegetarian was the best option. Ugh.

While I despise exploiting any animal, the dairy industry sickens me the most as the suffering is prolonged (4 years), just like in the egg industry (1-2 years). These animals live in hellish conditions, their bodies altered, denied the chance to be a mother all so we can eat milk and eggs that came from their bodies which they never produced for us to eat in the first place.

Who are we to take what is not ours? The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world’s largest organization of nutrition professionals states that a well planned vegan diet is appropriate for all stages of the life cycle (pregnancy, infancy, childhood, etc.), but they also help reduce the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, obesity and some types of cancer. The updated position paper presents a section on environmental issues which concludes plant-based diets are more sustainable and less damaging to the environment. Win, win, win – for the animals, our own health and the environment which we all should want to thrive for generations to come. While I would like people to stop eating animals because it’s the right thing to do, nothing else matters if we don’t have a planet to live on.

The below chart lists the average age animals are killed for food. While I also despise these stats, the suffering is over faster than dairy cows and chickens USED for eggs. That said, this chart doesn’t depict the MOTHERS who are used for breeding. This article entitled ‘A Lifetime of Confinement‘ states ‘According to the American Meat Science Association, female pigs can produce up to three litters per year. This heartbreaking cycle repeats until the mother pig is slaughtered for meat when she is three or four years old.’

Anyway, I was SO CLOSE and primed and ready to hear the information but the only information I absorbed was going vegetarian was the best thing I could do. As I never made the ethical connection with animals, I was sadly primed to go back to consuming them.

My mother purchased a vegetarian cookbook for me in 2000 (the year I went vegetarian), which I still have.  It is called the Vegetarian Gourmet.  Bless her damn heart for being so supportive!!  While it’s never been easier to eat vegan from an availability of food perspective, going vegan in 2021 has felt a touch hostile and unsupportive from a social perspective. Yet here was my mother back in freakin’ 2000 purchasing a vegetarian cookbook for me!!!  This may have been the first cookbook I ever owned and perhaps it even spurred my lifelong addiction to cookbooks (which is an addiction I love by the way).

Other vegans have asked me how my parents feel about me being because this is unfortunately, a contentious issue among families and our choices can often be met with hostility, lack of support and misunderstanding.  Thinking back to this cookbook moment, I know my mom would have been supportive of my choice to go vegan given she didn’t hesitate to support our choice to become vegetarian.

PETA used to send their magazines to my home and I remember being so sad at how animals were being treated. I think a lot of the coverage was on animal testing and fur.  I don’t recall a lot of factory farming or dairy facts, nor do I recall receiving information on the health benefits of a getting animals off our plates. 

I do remember being disgusted by factory farming in general and not wanting to support it, but like most, didn’t dig too tip and certainly didn’t understand the horrors of the dairy industry so I didn’t think too much about what we were consuming.

I even remember purchasing PETA t-shirts and stickers ‘friends not food’ and ‘I don’t have any spare ribs.’  My good friend Farrah would have us all over for dinner and I’d put place cards on everyone’s plate that said one of the above phrases. Perhaps I’ve always been destined to become an animal advocate. Maybe that’s why it feels so good to finally arrive.

I’ll leave it there for now and will write about part two next week.

 Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 🙂

p.s. I considered myself an animal lover my entire life. From the day I was born, the family dog Sophie was there. I had plenty of opportunities to hang out with all types of animals at my Opa’s small farm and get to know the unique individuals they are and yet animals were also on my plate. I would spend the day hanging with the chickens and geese and then would eat those same animals for dinner. If you have a beloved pet in your life, you know how individual, unique and special animals are. You probably would do anything to ensure they have the best life possible. Animals quickly win over our hearts, they calm us when we are stressed, happily greet us every single time we walk into a room and provide us with endless humor and our natural instinct is to care for them. Someone said to me the other day, I love animals! But this person also eats animals. I was once this person who also thought I loved animals. I ask you this, how can you love animals AND eat them? How can you love animals and pay for someone to mutilate their precious bodies, raise them in unnatural filthy conditions, kill them and chop their body parts into pieces? Either we have a twisted view of love or people only love certain individual animals or certain species of animals, but not all animals. I certainly hope the non-vegans in my life don’t love me like they love animals. Food for thought.