Bakeart and I turned Vegan at almost the same time in March, 2016.
Before March 2016, I was an avid consumer of animal based produce including dairy, eggs, and meat. In fact, I proudly consumed three glasses of milk everyday, ate non-vegetarian food at least once a week and had eggs every day for breakfast. I used ghee for my pooja lamp, proudly shopped leather as a sign of opulence, and generally looked disdainfully at people espousing high morals. Dairy curd formed a part of daily family meals and no festival was conceivable without sweets made especially in ghee.
Around the time I chose to participate in the 4th Holy Cow Festival in 2016, I joined Facebook pages for vegans with an intent to promote the event and vegan products among members there. You can visit these pages here and here.
Through members of these groups, the reality of the dairy, egg, and overall animal industry dawned on me. It left me awestruck that at 35, I never felt the need to question the daily, continuous and copious milk production in a mammal. I was astounded that deep rooted childhood tales of how a cow is a mother because it gives milk remained with me implicitly. The naked truth stood in front of me and I could hardly face it.
Through the Facebook groups aforementioned, I saw a movie called ‘The Herd’.
The movie humanizes the dairy industry by replacing cows with women. As a mother to two beautiful girls whom I nourished for 2.5 years on breast milk, I was heartbroken to see the horrid treatment meted out to cows. It scorched me to the core, to watch newborn male babies getting killed, girl new-borns being separated from their mothers, and mothers being plugged into machines which stole and squeezed out every drop of their precious milk.
Then, I stumbled upon a video by PETA titled ‘Horrors in Indian Dairy’
This was a pivotal moment in this journey as my concerns now were not just about the ethics of food obtained from animals, but the nutritive value and safety of food derived from uncared for, tortured, underfed and chemically pumped animals. Several interesting and shocking facts came to light and I realised that these videos are just a minuscule representation of the reality of animal industries worldwide including, but not limited to, egg, fur, meat etc.
The list is endless.
I discovered the nutritive value of vegan food, and I haven’t looked back.
I feel better than ever before and my energy levels are unbelievable. I started losing weight and became a happier person. I have friends and customers who are non-vegans in their diets but have enjoyed and loved vegan food we made for them.
Give Veganism a chance, for yourself, for the planet and every imprint of life!
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