Being Vegan is a Win-Win-Win | Keane Southard

I was an extremely picky eater as a child, and I was afraid to even taste so many foods. Most dinners consisted of fish sticks and cheese sticks, both dipped in ketchup. Outside of that, I usually ate peanut butter sandwiches (no jelly), cheese pizza (no toppings), bagels, standard junk food (french fries, potato chips, ice cream) and not a whole lot else. Outside of seafood, I didn’t eat any meat. The joke was I could be a vegetarian, but I didn’t eat any vegetables or fruit (outside of carrots but only with ranch dressing, and apples but only without the skin)! I was never overweight, but my philosophy of food was to eat whatever I liked (and I didn’t like much)! If you had told me I’d grow up and not only become vegan but to love the taste of vegetables, fruits, legumes, and nuts, I would have said you were crazy!

It was during college where I learned to think critically and to challenge all of my previous assumptions and values, and one of those was why I ate what I did. I studied abroad in Italy, and before leaving I promised myself that while in this country famous for its food I would taste everything that was put in front of me. And I did, trying foods like sausage, octopus, and calamari. This was a big step for me, as I was finally overcoming my fear of the taste of foods and my taste buds were starting to change. Coming back home, I started to learn more about the impact that livestock were having on the environment and on climate change, and how wasteful raising animals for food was compared to plants. I’d already been an environmentalist for years and have always sought to minimize waste, so I decided to stop eating most meat and become a pescatarian, especially as I didn’t much like eating meat outside seafood anyways.

It was another couple years until I decided to make the switch to being vegan, and even though the massive detrimental impact of animal products on the environment was the biggest factor for me, it was learning about the nutritional impacts of eating animals vs. plants that pushed me to make the change. I remember seeing a PBS program during my first year of graduate school where a man had a plate of cheese pizza in front of him and said “This food is poison!” I couldn’t believe what he was saying, because I always thought that milk and cheese were healthy foods, or at least that is what I had been told by all of society around me! But this planted the seed for me to delve into this claim more, and the more I searched, the more I realized how unnatural and unhealthy eating not only animals but all animal products, including dairy and eggs, was. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) was vegetarian, mostly out of concern for the needless suffering of animals, and it made me realize how being vegan would be a win-win-win for the environment, my own health, and the animals. It was now a no-brainer.

I made the switch pretty suddenly in April of 2010, vowing to never buy any animal products again (although I still ate what I already had at home, as I hate wasting). This just a month after my girlfriend turned vegan (she likes to take credit for me becoming vegan, but I know I would have done it anyways). Now eight years later, I’ve never looked back and it has been one of the most significant and satisfying changes I have made in my life. I’ve become a nutrition buff (mostly thanks to the amazing work of Dr. Michael Greger at Nutritionfacts.org), a decent cook, I enjoy cuisines like Indian, Thai, and Ethiopian that I would have never tried before, and I love vegetables, fruits, legumes, and animals (the last of which I don’t eat, of course)! As a vegan, I survived a year living in Brazil (a country that is crazy about meat), hiked over 700 miles of the Appalachian Trail, and I feel great about what I buy at the grocery store and what I put in my mouth, knowing that I am helping the environment, my own health, and the well-being of countless animals. One thing hasn’t changed though: I’m still a picky eater, but now I have good reasons for not eating certain things.