posted May 14, 2024
Curiosity prevails about Vegans—you’d think our way of eating and lifestyle would be better understood by now. But let’s welcome any questions to get more people to try it.
I vote for more vegans who are occasionally lapsed than fewer perfect vegans. Even lapsed, you’ve already made a difference to animals, your health, and Earth’s health.
When my daughter recruited me to go vegan 15 years ago, we went full-on, but now I occasionally take a taste something with egg or dairy milk in it, by mistake or sometimes knowingly. And I even have a bite or two of fish each year on vacation.
Vegan-curious people are everywhere and express their curiosity with lots of questions. I’ve adopted vegan-curious from Ruby Warrington’s 2018 book title, Sober Curious, which I read during Covid to decrease my nightly glass of wine. Not sober, but curious about how less alcohol would hopefully improve my daily health, and I found it did.
So, here are some tips when the vegan-curious ask you questions about Veganism:
1. Don’t Take Vegan Eating Too Seriously
Curiosity is an opportunity. When they ask, encourage eating mostly plants for compassion and health, not like a religion. Vegan eating can be an occasional one, by meal or by day or by occasion. Suggest they get comfortable choosing it, however it works for them, not as a fundamentalist edict. It’s an eating discovery likely to result in feeling better, so they’ll do it more.
2. Eat Out
Suggest to the vegan-curious that dining out is a perfect time to eat just plants. It’s been great fun watching menus increase more plant options. And oh, those great side dishes! The new all-plant Kernal restaurant group, started by Chipotle founder Steve Ells, is already adding to its sides menu because diners are willing to experiment with sides. Recommend that home cooking can be simpler, without the need to try more complicated plant-based cooking.
3. Use Your Glow
You are getting these questions because the vegan-curious see you as a dedicated and healthy eater. Use this curiosity to bring them over. Go ahead and validly attribute your energy, health, and glow to the way you eat. Capitalize on it to encourage they try it. Our cars won’t run on sludge, yet many expect their bodies to. Confirm for the curious that plant eating pays dividends. Who wouldn’t want to reap those benefits?
4. Ease the Burden of Getting Old
Remind them science is on our side. Plants have the highest nutritional hit of anything we can put in our mouths. We’ll all get old anyway; but why not make it a little easier and less painful by keeping our bodies healthy with food choices. My parents’ deaths of heart disease and cancer were part of the reasons it was easy for me to decide to go vegan at age 60. I wanted to improve my odds if food could help. So far, so good.
5. Lucky to Get to Choose
By our membership in our Vegan family, we are already so very lucky. We have a choice about how we eat. Whenever food is the subject, use your choices and voices to encourage more food justice in our country. Food and farm programs everywhere give us ways to help the not-so-lucky. We can make choices in how we give back too.
Carol Schneider is a 15-year Vegan, retired from her business career, and a graduate of the June 2012 Main Street Vegan Academy. That year she also earned certification in Cornell University’s online nutrition program. A member of Yoga Alliance, she now teaches yoga in after-school programs for children, teachers, and mentors, occasionally including fun vegan food cooking sessions for mindful eating.