Veganism

Better For You, Better For the Animals, Better For the Planet

Hello, thank you for coming to this page! Today we are faced with all kinds of problems on the planet, and one of the biggest impacts you can make quickly, is to go vegan. For the animals, for climate change, for the planet, for you.

We are in a completely new and exciting time! How can we have true peace on this planet if we continue to kill and cause suffering to others? To have true peace for all, means peace for all species as we truly are all interconnected in this great web of life. So what we do with our buying choices and what we do with our food choices affects others. And those others are human and non-human. It’s time to be mindful and caring of others. It’s time to evolve! Once humans depended on animals, and used them for food, sacrifice, divination, clothes and shelter. But today we don’t need to. We have so many choices, and the animals have told me over and over that they are finished suffering. So let’s honour them for their sacrifice and allow them to live in peace in this new era. It’s well and truly time to give them the respect and reverence they so deserve. Let’s champion a world without fear — a world of deep peace for all species.

How can I help, you ask? The first thing you can do is become vegan.

What is a Vegan?

A vegan is someone who has made a commitment to a plant-based diet. That sounds very dry but actually it is really yummy and next to raw food vegan, it is currently the healthiest diet on the planet. You can make dozens of meals with nuts, beans, legumes, veges and fruit and feel fabulous on many levels. This diet is full of wholesome nutrients, you can practically grow it yourself (think of the implications of that for the planet!) and it harms no animals at all. There are many vegan athletes and a 74 year old vegan was voted “Most Beautiful Vegan “. She looked like a woman a third of that age with long blonde hair and great skin.

A vegetarian is someone who has dropped all meat, including fish and chicken, from their diet, but still eats eggs, honey, and dairy.

While being a vegetarian is often a fabulous first step or bridge for people transitioning to an animal-kind diet, we have to today consider the horrors of modern farming practises for the dairy and egg industry. If someone wants to keep a few chickens and with their permission eat the non-fertile eggs, that’s one thing. Personally I reached a stage where my body rejected animal food of all kinds, after being vegetarian for a long while.And I feel better for it. Dairy was never a big part of my diet but at one time in my youth, we had dairy goats who we shared the milk with and turned that into yoghurt, butter and cheese. These goats were our friends and the last died only 17 years ago, at the ripe old age of 21. She came into the house to be warmed by the fire, and in her final days, we slept cuddled up to her, nursing her day and night. She told me I needed goats in my life, and now we have a small herd of rescued poddy goats, who were all raised in the house and continue to delight us with their friendship. None are milked.

Sadly that is not the life of most dairy animals.

Think about the amount of milk which needs to be produced for the all the milk, custard, yoghurt, cheeses, puddings and chocolate that you see in the supermarket shelves today.

Just as I was grateful to be vegetarian forty years ago when my herb teacher started talking about how meat putrifies in the gut creating an environment for disease, I was grateful to be vegan when I heard about the bobby calves, and how they are cruelly ripped away from their mums and slaughtered for veal. Cows are beautiful, kind, intelligent animals who are very maternal and loving and they grieve with a passion that rivals any human. So this treatment is something that we can change with our voting dollars, and our voice.

Further to that, milk is not exactly the health food that the dairy industry claims it to be. We were always taught it created mucous and I made sure my daughter never had it when she was growing up. And without dairy she still managed to get to 20with no cavities in her teeth – so the calcium argument doesn’t exactly fly in my book.

A Loving Kindness Diet and Human Evolution

Veganism is not just a diet, it is a way of life and viewing the world. There are of course different kinds of people eating a vegan diet and not all follow a spiritual path and some are still very angry about the way animals are treated, bless them!

But let’s look at veganism in a broader context.

A model vegan is animal-centric — they think about animals of all species and are filled with compassion and kindness for them. And that extends to their buying choices, including clothes, shoes, drums, cosmetics, make-up, jewellry, hand bags, luggage, furniture and so on.

A model vegan is a fit, healthy, calm, kind, gentle, green, earth-friendly person who extends compassion to all living beings from spiders and ants to cows and sheep and everything in between.

So take this green, earth and animal respecting, peaceful person, and extend this thought to envisioning a vegan world. If killing stopped on the planet , and people evolved to gentle compassion and respect for all of life, there would be peace for all species and freedom from fear.

Thou shalt not kill was a very good commandment that humans have completely ignored and perhaps it is time, in this era of the growing Consciousness, to finally embrace it.

Cat and dogs can also be vegan, and I would advise you to research their nutritional needs (cats are very different to us and dogs at the moment) so they too can transition to a kinder diet healthfully. Please see some excellent resources below.

The Future

When people make a conscious choice not to kill, this changes the collective so that animals are free to make their own choices as well. If the collective thought is kindness, so it will be. We are a world of resonance. We have already seen so much evidence of wild “predators” adopting their prey, befriending their prey or choosing not to eat the flesh of others consciously as in the case of Little Tyke the lioness (see Secret Animal Business). In the future, those who are vibrating at the very high frequency of peace and beyond, will be able to manifest whatever they desire so not even the plant people are harmed. Homo luminous, as we are becoming in this quantum leap of evolution, do not require food like homo sapiens.

So for now, join others in this journey in evolution, and consider going vegan!

Vegan Resources

Vegan recipes and recipe sites

There are some great recipes in the links below, and a fantastic variety of tastes and treats. And once you get to one of the sites, it’s easy to get lost poking around to see what else is there. Happy vegan eating!

Collections

Savoury

Sweet

And of course, a search for “vegan recipes” on your favourite search engine turns up tons of sites. Try it at Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.

For Animals

There is a large amont of material on animal diets in my book Secret Animal Business, including moving animals, especially dogs and cats, toward a vegetarian and vegan diet.
Have a look at my article Food for Thought.
Check out VegePets, which has a lot of information, especially for cats and dogs.
For inspiration, have a look at 100 Vegan-Eating Dogs; An encyclopedia of Vegan Dog Nutrition.
If you can find a copy, I like James Pedan’s Vegetarian Cats and Dogs.
If you have a strong stomach, and want to know what goes into commercial foods, check out Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food by Ann Martin.
For a bit of lighter reading, Obligate Carnivore: Cats, Dogs & What it Really Means to be Vegan by Jed Gillen looks at why feeding animals a meat-based diet runs counter to the ethical position of vegans.
There’s also Todd Metcalf’s Vegetarian Dogs: Toward a World Without Exploitation.
PETA has this page on Vegetarian Cats and Dogs and one on Meatless Meals for Dogs and Cats.
The article Good Nutrition for Healthy Vegan Dogs also has some information for you.
An excellent feature article called Humanely Healthy Diets on plant-based diets for dogs. Also includes an article by James Pedan (mentioned above).
Veganpet has vegan dog and cat food.
A good FAQ from IVU World Vegfest.

“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.” – Albert Einstein

For People and in General

Vegan Starter Kit. A great place to get started, with lots of easily understood information and ideas.
Vegans Are Cool is a book by Kathy Divine, who has generously made it available for free as an ebook download (just click the link on the title to the left, or right-click and Save the file) It is in pdf format, and is 3.2 Mb. You should also check out Kathy’s Vegans Are Cool web site.
People going vegetarian or vegan often worry about getting enough protein. Here are 10 Vegan Sources of Protein.
Please Don’t Think I’m Rude is a booklet by Eve Nguyen, also a free ebook download (pdf format, 6.7 Mb). It is a charming eight-page book about being vegan. Easy for family and friends to digest. You should also check out Eve’s web site Renew Vitality.
Check out Gentle World (“For the vegan in everyone.”).
There’s my article Diet for a New Earth.
The Vegan 101 page on VegWeb has some good resources.
Vegan Action is a non-profit organisation that does education about the benefits of veganism.
Zen Habits has a good article How to Become a Vegetarian, the Easy Way, as well as A Guide to Eating a Plant-Based Diet.
While the answer is obvious to me, you might like argument. In which case, check out Time Magazine’s article from 2002 called Should We All Be Vegetarians? (I like the way they start out giving reasons for eating meat, and then say, “Oh, sorry … those are five reasons to smoke cigarettes.”
For articles, recipes and more, check out the Savvy Vegetarian site. Also, do a search for “vegetarian” and “vegan” on AllRecipes.com. PETA also has a selection of vegetarian and vegan recipes.
Check out this recipe for Chewy Vegan Chocolate Chip cookies from the web site the Daily Garnish.
Here is a list of some Online Resources To Help You Start To Become Vegetarian.
Baking is often an issue for people wanting to go vegan. How do you bake without eggs and milk? It is certainly possible (and yummy). Check out this Ultimate Vegan Baking Cheat Sheet.
Looking for reasons to go veg? 101 Reasons Why I’m a Vegetarian.
Then there’s this: Whole food vegetarian diets reverse and eliminate many serious illnesses.
Care2 have an article about 9 Surprising Items with Animal Ingredients. It is one of those annoying articles where you have to click nine times too see everything, but the info is interesting. Examples: plastic bags, tyres, and glue in woodwork and musical instruments. They also have an article called Cleaning House the Vegan Way.
In the same vein, the BBC did a show called Kill It, Cut It, Use It.
Check out this documentary on YouTube called Peaceable Kingdom, about some farmers who stopped killing animals and adopted veganism as a way of life by creating a farm sanctuary called “Farm Sanctuary”.
Here is a scientific experiment documenting rats showing empathy. Another reason to go from predator to partner.
Vegan Guide gives you everything from basics to foods to hints on vegan baking.
This page describes how Vegan activism is respectful activism.
Eating Animals and the Illusion of Personal Choice, for when people say it is their choice to do so.
31 Iron Rich Foods for Vegetarians & Vegans
Study: Vegan Diet Can Reduce Anxiety and Stress

Raw Food Diets

One of my favourite raw food authors is Ani Phyo. We started with her book Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen, but she has others, including one dedicated to desserts. Here’s a link to search for her on Amazon.
Check out the sites Raw Food LIfe, Raw Guru and Living and Raw Foods (which looks a bit clunky but has a wealth of information).
When I asked my friend Skye what raw food books she likes, here’s what she said:

My ABSOLUTE favorite raw book is Raw Food Real World by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis. A lot of the recipes call for a lot of time in preparation, but they are SO worth it! This wouldn’t be the best ‘everyday’ raw recipe book, but it’s definitely the best in my mind! (They have a restaurant in NYC called Pure Food and Wine, and these are recipes from their restaurant kitchen) A better ‘everyday’ raw book would be Raw: The Uncook Book by Juliano (we went to his restaurant in Santa Monica). For full scale, mind blowing, fine dining raw (even just get this book to be SO amazed and inspired!), get Rawby Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein. You will never BELIEVE what they do with raw food! It is MAGICAL!

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Note that some of the above links, like the ones for Amazon, are affiliate links, which means that if you happen to buy something, we make a small amount on the purchase. Thank you for supporting our work here at the Billie Dean Deep Peace Trust.

Photo credit of Dog and Carrot: andy_carter.
Photo credit: Fruit and veggie platter by Victoria Koh.