The Vegan Thread

I met a friend who was vegan; before that, I had honestly had no idea veganism existed. I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to be vegan but it took me four years from going vegetarian to become vegan. What made me finally do it was nothing more than that in the hot summer of 1998 the cow's milk kept going off in my leaky fridge. At the time, I was drinking enormous amounts of cow's milk and was so sensitive to the taste that I could taste the slightest change, and it put me off milk completely. Several times before, I'd tried to first cut out other dairy items like cheese, of which I consumed much less than of cow's milk, but that didn't work; only the big step of dropping cow's milk from one day to the next did the trick. (I was a lacto-vegetarian before that, as I'd read about what happens in egg production and had cut out eggs long before then.)

I like telling this story as it can be the slightest thing, and quite unexpected, that can make you act. While I made the resolution to be vegan as a New Year's resolution in 1999, I have to add that at the time I had no idea that beer could possibly not be vegan and continued to drink non-vegan beer for a few years, so technically wasn't vegan yet, although I plead ignorance.