Resources Mentioned

What The Health

Nutrition Facts

Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine

Dr. McDougall’s Health & Medical Center

TrueNorth Health Center

Lightlife Goes Vegan

Impossible Foods

273 Million Thoughts On Why We Must Stop Eating Fish

010 | What The Health Documentary Review was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

NASA recently discovered seven Earth-like planets that orbit a dwarf-star named Trappist-1. Some of these planets are within a habitable zone, meaning not too far from, and not too close to, their sun, making this the most realistic opportunity for life beyond our planet thus far.

“Are we alone?” is the age old question that’s been whirling around human brains — stumping philosophers, scientists and everybody in between — since the beginning of time. It’s natural for all of humanity to perk up at this possible opportunity to eventually answer that question.

Needless to say, in our latest podcast we’re gettin’ spacey, and launching ourselves into this question, and many more.

We ask why it is that our society puts so much value into the potential for water on other planets, and for life in general outside of our planet, when we cannot seem to value our own resources here on Earth. While we tune into NASA’s mission to find water on the Trappist planets, we have Water Protectors here on Earth being shot down and kicked out of their sacred lands. We have our own American people in Flint, Michigan whose water is poisoned, and has been contaminated with lead since 2014.

What would happen if we did find life similar to our own in the Trappist system? If we had the means to reach it, could we trust ourselves to protect it? As far as life on Earth, anytime humanity interacts with other species, that species tends to be worse off. Could we expect to value and respect other planets’ life forms better than we do our own?

Of course, this podcast is light-hearted, but the questions presented are important to our own humanity. Thank you to everyone who listened and please do let us know what you think!

008 | Life on Other Planets was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Civil rights advocate and scholar of critical race theory, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 to describe how multiple forms or types of oppression combine to affect people differently depending on their various social identities.

In our latest podcast we discuss our own experience learning about intersectionality in activism, including: what first sparked our conversation, our months-long debate about (and subsequent better understanding of) our own privilege, some uncomfortable truths we discovered, and our current understanding of how intersectionality relates to veganism.

After months of reading, researching, learning, and challenging our own ideas, we’ve come to understand that intersectionality is crucial to ensuring the longevity and efficiency of our vegan activism. We created this podcast to map out our thoughts, but also because a discussion as complex and important as this one shouldn’t just reside in one-on-one conversations. Hopefully we can create a spark of conversation, even if just between two more people.

In this podcast we mention:

Kimberlé Crenshaw; here’s an awesome Ted talk she recently did.

Black Vegans Rock and Aph Ko

Vegan Warrior Princesses Attack podcast.

Unlocking The Cage

What The Health

Youth Take on Trump in Climate Case

Germany’s Meat Ban and the Enforcement of ‘Belief’

Vegans in prison

The Invisible Vegan

13th

007 | Intersectionality & Veganism was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are days that feel hopeless in our fight for nonhuman animals. Days when we wake up to another horrific undercover investigation at Tyson Foods. There are days we see yet another, “but bacon though” commented below a Toronto Pig Save video that has us choking back tears at our desks. As vegans, we know these days well — the victories seem too small, the violence too great, the apathy level of humanity at an all time high.

I was there last week, saturating in that state of being while sitting at work. A recent headline about finding piglets crushed to death at a factory farm had me feeling a bit, hmm, upset? Perhaps that’s why, when my co-worker mentioned wanting to get a ham sandwich after work, my face twisted into a strange pinch — a failed attempt to hide my annoyance.

Our conversation went as follows:

Co-worker: “Ok, ok, why shouldn’t I get ham?”

Me: “Well, I grew up with a pig so I guess I just feel particularly sensitive to people eating pigs.”

Co-worker: “Because they’re smart?”

Me: “They’re so smart! They can learn to play video games! But beyond that, they’re genetically similar to humans.”

Co-worker: “Hmm, ok I won’t get ham. I’ll go for turkey.”

(At this point I let out a genuine chuckle, knowing that I was about to trap my kind coworker in a conversation with a particularly sassy-feeling vegan at the end of the work day.)

Me: “Well, if we’re being frank, turkeys, or birds in general are the most abused animals in our food system so…”

Co-worker: “Oh god, so what do I choose?”

Me: “Ha! Well, that’s the eternal question now isn’t it?”

We let the conversation go with a silent acknowledgement that, although we ate differently, we could both appreciate the conundrums we face as we begin to question the ethics of our food. We said goodbye for the day over jingling keys and the sound of the blinds hastily falling to meet the window sill.

About an hour later, my phone chimed. I slid the lock bar over, revealing this text from my co-worker:

We don’t get large victories every single day but, sometimes, acknowledging the little wins can help those hopeless feelings fade. If we’re lucky, a simple conversation we didn’t think much about can give us that little jolt of energy to keep showing up, doing the hard work, and to keep fighting.

One Conversation, One Small Win was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On Tuesday morning I found myself skipping my actual job and trudging up the steps of the courthouse in a deluge of rain. I was there to witness 21 youth take on the federal government in a court case that seeks to win major action to reverse climate change.

It’s all happening in Eugene, Oregon, about five minutes from my doorstep where last year, Judge Coffin upheld the plaintiff’s initial case against the US government.

So what exactly are these 21 kids upset about?

Nothing serious.

Just the future of humanity on planet Earth, specifically whether basic human rights such as clean air, water, and a stable climate can actually be considered basic human rights.

In attempt to follow through with my established theme for 2017 — “show up” — I attended a press conference where the 21 plaintiffs, aged 9–20 years, were joined by climate scientist, James Hansen and their attorneys.

The plaintiffs claim that the government is denying their constitutional rights by failing to act on climate change, thereby putting their future at risk.

Oregon Judge Thomas M. Coffin also named the fossil fuel industry (specifically, three trade associations making up nearly all of the country’s oil and natural gas companies) as another defendant alongside the federal government, when they moved to intervene into the case. The fossil fuel industry originally filed for intervenor status after claiming that the lawsuit was a “direct threat to [their] business.”

The conference meeting I attended sought to set deadlines, clarify the case, and make sure all parties were aware of what needed to be done to move forward.

By 10 A.M. I was packed into a somewhat small courtroom with around 80 other Oregonians who showed up to support the trial’s young plaintiffs. As everyone rustled around, shoving wet rain jackets under the courtroom benches, we quickly realized that we wouldn’t have enough seats for everyone. One of the courtroom attendants happily made the decision to move us to a larger courtroom to accommodate the overflow of people.

Sitting in a courtroom with the federal government, the fossil fuel industry, and a grassroots non-profit organization proved to be fraught with tension.

A handful of the 21 plaintiffs sat together in the courtroom. Before the meeting officially began, they chattered to each other excitedly, but during the hour and a half meeting, they were all completely silent. Some of the younger kids twiddled their thumbs and looked at the clock; I imagine being a nine year old in a courtroom with the federal government quickly loses its magic. The two older plaintiffs — a slender young man with thick, long hair tucked into a ponytail, and a dark-haired girl with a nose piercing that perfectly represents the Eugene aesthetic — seemed to follow along quite well with the case, exchanging glances depending on what was discussed.

Perhaps it was just the formality of this particular meeting, but it seemed to me the youth taking on the government stand for much more than teens in court. They seem to be symbols of everything this upcoming generation holds dearly. Will their diverse, hopeful faces show up in American history textbooks in 50 years, symbolizing dissent and due process?

I’m unsure of what their actual role in the official trial will be, whether they will be questioned or not. What I do know is that they serve as the figureheads for the press. “Meet the 11 Year-Old Taking On The Trump Administration” certainly makes for an engaging headline.

It’s also easy to gain public support when children seek to sue for their futures. They’re backed by the non-profit, Our Children’s Trust, where you can read all the court documents as they are made available. Having a wide range of youth act as the representatives for the case and for our planet immediately forces people to ask, “What will the lives of these kids look like in 10 years?” Or how about 30? 50?

“Time is the enemy of our plaintiffs,” said Julia Olsen, Executive Director of Our Children’s Trust and lead counsel to the plaintiffs. Her statement engages the public and puts pressure on the court to move quickly.

Though the case itself is still in its infancy, the plaintiffs’ position is clear.

They want to prove climate change is real, that it is human caused, AND that the government has known the damages of climate change for decades and still chose to promote harmful industries. If they are able to prove this, they want the government to take responsibility and remedy to the extent that climate change can be remedied. Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit organization representing the plaintiffs, says that the remedy they seek will be stronger and more progressive than goals reached at the Paris talks last year.

The government’s stance in the case is less clear. The government admits to some of the plaintiffs’ stances on climate change. This includes the amount of carbon dioxide currently in our atmosphere and the fact that humans play a role in climate change. I suppose that, if they make these admissions, the only allegation they contest is the government causation aspect of the case. I speculate the US government will deny that they have knowingly caused harm, and they will seek to prove that.

At one point during the conference, the defendant’s attorneys spoke about needing time to determine who their scientific experts will be, to which Judge Coffin responded with something along the lines of, ‘So if you don’t contest the claims, what will the experts rebut?’ It was a good question; Coffin was extremely composed and fair to all parties, but this blatant question did merit a laugh from those of us on the benches.

The government seems hesitant to agree to deadlines which will help the trial to progress quickly. The idea of compiling their experts, getting the climate documents requested by the plaintiffs, and getting a case ready by the fall, was called “unfathomable” “unimaginable” and “impossible” by government representatives due to the amount of logistics. Judge Coffin openly said he didn’t like to hear that type of language in the court, and that all parties would need to work on simplifying the case to avoid those terms.

Not surprisingly, the intervenors — fossil fuel industry representatives — currently are unsure whether the current levels of carbon dioxide are what the plaintiffs AND the government claim them to be. Likewise, the intervenors claim they do not know if climate change is caused by humans.

So…what DO they know? What DO they contest?

In the end, Coffin made it clear that scientific experts will be the basis of the first phase of the trial, and that he will allow science into his courtroom to speak for itself. He encouraged all parties to work together to streamline the proceedings, and encouraged the plaintiffs to simplify and narrow the focus.

The plaintiffs scheduled a target deadline for choosing their scientific experts.

While this court case will undoubtedly prove to be engaging and even potentially history-making, it also serves as a reminder that if young kids can show up and take on the federal government, the act of showing up — in life, in court — may be the very thing we need to do a lot more.

The Art of Showing Up: Youth Take on Trump in Climate Case was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With plastic and one-use materials everywhere we look, it might seem impossible to make any tangible positive impact on our planet. Feeling like you have to change everything all at once can make any change seem daunting, so instead, we’ve come up with 6 easy ways to make small changes with a big impact. Here are our suggestions:

1. Compost at home

In the U.S., about 33 million tons of food ends up in landfills. For the longest time, I didn’t understand how disposing of food in a landfill was any different than throwing food away in your garden/compost. Then I learned that when food is trapped in bags within the landfill, it doesn’t properly break down. Instead, it creates rampant amounts of methane, which is 21 times more potent than C02. According to Waste & Resources Action Programme, every ton of food wasted results in 3.8 TONS of greenhouse gas emissions.

Start simply collecting your food scraps in your kitchen. There is a multitude of different countertop composting bins available for purchase, or you can repurpose old plastic grocery bags to start immediately collecting your scraps while you figure out what to do.

If you have a yard, learning to compost at home can be really fun! Many communities even provide free composting classes. If you live in an apartment, creating a worm bin (which does not smell and efficiently breaks down scraps) is a cheap, fun way to see nature at work! Many local, community gardens are open to accepting food scraps from their neighbors. Contact your city to see how to get in touch with your community gardens so that your scraps can go to great use making soil locally. You can also ask a friend who composts if you can contribute your own scraps to their pile.

If none of those options work, simply collect your scraps in the repurposed plastic produce bag and store in your freezer. Once your bag is full, go for a stroll and dispose of the waste by dumping out the contents of the bag in a wooded or dirt area out of the way of city-life. Of course, this probably isn’t the most recommended strategy, but your scraps will still break down naturally and contribute to making healthier soil!

Composting is a really simple, rewarding way to decrease your footprint. You’ll be amazed once you start collecting your scraps to see just how much food waste was filling up your trash can!

2. Use a reusable water bottle

I’m always surprised to see people still purchasing plastic water bottles every day. Purchasing a reusable water bottle and refilling throughout the day is super easy and keeps plastic out of our oceans! Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, and only a tiny percentage of those even made it to the recycle. There are so many great companies that sell beautiful reusable bottles that are eco-friendly, different sizes, and suitable for all different lifestyles. Take your water bottle with you everywhere and inspire others to do the same! It’s actually more convenient to always have your own rather than having to rely on places to purchase new plastic water bottles each day.

Try these:

Hydroflask

Kleen Kanteen

3. Keep your own mug in your car

My boss is always laughing at me because every day I bring my coffee to work in a tall mug with about 50 of the same picture of my friend and I plastered all over it. It’s quite the conversation starter. I used to always forget to bring a mug or thermos to my local market, which resulted in using tons of disposable cups and creating mass amounts of waste.

Carry Your Cup found that if you buy just one cup of coffee/tea in a disposable cup every day, you create up to 23 lbs of waste in one year — and that’s just from one habit. I now completely avoid the issue by keeping a mug in my car 24/7. I drive to work, use my mug to get coffee, wash it at work, and put it in my car at the end of the day. The trick is to never bring it back into your house!

Disposable coffee cups are one of the most wasted items on the planet. It’s something most people use every single day for less than 20 minutes, and yet they stick around, polluting our landfills, oceans, and rivers for ages.

One of our favorite reusable cups comes from Keep Cup, an awesome company that makes stylish and reusable “to go” cups.

Keep Cup

PROMO CODE: Enter EARTHIX15 at checkout for 15% off your order (excluding their limited Star Wars collection). We recommend the glass and cork, but choose whatever best fits your style!

4. Bring your own reusable tote bags and produce bags

With more and more cities banning the use of plastic grocery bags, the time is upon us to invest in a few reusable totes for groceries. You can find these at the checkout of every grocery store, or you can conveniently order packs of reusable bags off of Amazon.

While reusable totes are becoming more mainstream, many people don’t know that you can bring your own bags for smaller produce items, as well. You don’t have to use the small plastic bags for your greens, cucumbers, etc. There are so many great options for more sustainable produce bags, including these handmade nylon bags, this 3-piece set of organic cotton bags, these green mesh bags, or check out this beautiful, handcrafted bundle made by fellow vegan The Zero Waste Girl on Etsy.

If you want an awesome, full set of various sized grocery/produce bags, this farmers market bundle is on sale right now which makes for an amazing deal and great starter kit.

5. Use bamboo to-go utensils

You can positively impact our environment simply by being prepared with your own to-go utensils. According to EcoWatch, 50% of the plastics we use, we throw away after using them once. Plastic to-go utensils account for a huge amount of this waste and can be easily avoided. Bamboo is an incredibly sustainable, quickly-replenished resource that is all natural and makes for great utensils. You can purchase a plethora of bamboo utensil kits on Etsy that come with everything you need conveniently wrapped in a carrying case. These fit easily into a backpack or purse for convenient use whenever you decide to get take out or eat on the go.

6. Switch to a bamboo toothbrush

Something as simple as switching to a bamboo toothbrush can make an enormous impact on our planet. It’s estimated that over 50 million pounds of plastic toothbrushes are thrown away each year. The worst part is that none of the components that make up a typical toothbrush are biodegradable, which means long after humans have fled to Planet B, our toothbrushes will live on. Bamboo is an extremely sustainable resource, and there are tons of great options out there depending on price and your style preferences! Here are just a few suggestions:

The Goodwell Company

Brush With Bamboo

Bonus points for making your own toothpaste!

Here’s our recipe that we absolutely love:

Combine 2 tbsp unrefined coconut oil (if your coconut oil is hardened, heat in the microwave for just a few seconds, until soft enough to stir) with 3 tbsp baking soda. Add 15 drops peppermint essential oil for a minty flavor (or try cinnamon or wild orange!), and a few drops tea tree oil for antiseptic qualities. If you prefer a sweet version, add Stevia to taste. Stir all together and put in a reusable glass jar. Say goodbye to plastic toothbrush bottles!

Remember, even making one small change starting today can keep (literally) tons of waste out of our landfills. We encourage you to try all five of our suggestions and let us know what you learn and discover. As always, please share with your friends, and let us know what little tricks you use yourself to lessen your footprint each day.

6 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Waste was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Below are 6 ‘recipes’ that might be enticing if you, like me, are 1) vegan 2) lazy 3) not an artist 4) interested in minimum effort with maximum results. These aren’t beautiful, they definitely won’t ever be featured in a recipe book, but they taste great, they’re easy, and they’re great for the lazy vegans like me that avoid spending hours in the kitchen.

Breakfast

Slice of fresh bread, thrown in the oven for a couple minutes. Spread with hummus and Sriracha, sprinkle with hemp hearts. Adding some avocado really makes this lit as hell. This is perfect for the snooze-happy vegans of the world that prefer to make breakfast while brushing their teeth and also sending a text to their boss saying, “Gonna be a bit late.”

Snack

Sliced bell peppers with your favorite hummus. My choice: Green Chickpea hummus (made from not-yet-mature chickpeas, which makes for a more apparent flavor). This one may result in your co-workers coming up to your desk, curiously chattering to each other that there are actually people that happily eat vegetables for a snack.

What I like to call “Balanced Bae”

Cook one box of your favorite vegan mac n cheese on the stove (pictured: Daiya Cheesy Mac). While the pasta is cooking, tear a bunch of kale into pieces, mince some garlic, and heat up a pan with a tiny bit of olive oil. Toss in the garlic just until it starts to fill up your kitchen with that amazing smell. At that point, add in the kale with a splash of water and stir until kale is tender. There’s really no need for salt; we all know our favorite boxed mac n cheese has enough sodium for the entire week, maybe more. Put a bunch of the cooked kale at the bottom of your bowl, heap the mac on top, and mix it all together. For added zest, please add red pepper flakes. There ya have your Balanced Bae.

Linner, Or Something

I like to make this when I get home at that weird time, around 2:30–4 PM and it’s not quite dinner, not quite lunch. This Linner is super simple, and might seem boring upon first look, but it is perfectly flavorful. Grab a sweet potato (variety of your choice), wash well, and stab that thing with a fork about 5 times. Set it aside for a moment. Get a steamer basket ready on your stove, toss a few handfuls of green beans in there, and steam for about 7 minutes. Halfway through the steaming time, put your sweet potato in the microwave for 3–5 minutes (I usually have smaller potatoes, but if you have a huge honker, it might take upwards of 8 minutes; start low and add more time if needed). Throw the green beans and sweet potato on your plate, slice open the potato, and adorn with whatever fancy condiments you want. My sister taught me that dijon mustard is amazing to dip your green beans in. For the potato, I usually top with nutritional yeast and add some hot sauce, but please go wild with your own preferences and share what you use!

Carbs & Asparagus Dinner

Bring a pot of water to boil, and dump in a package of vegan gnocchi. Stir a bit at the beginning so that the pasta doesn’t stick. Once the gnocchis begin to float, drain them, put them back in the pot, and stir in some tomato basil sauce from a jar. While the pasta is cooking, steam a hefty amount of asparagus in a steamer basket for 6 minutes, then sprinkle with lemon juice and sea salt. Plate that shit all together and enjoy.

Athena’s Angel Hair Pasta With Veggies

This is one of Athena’s go-to meals for dinner, which usually results in amazing leftovers for lunch. First, add just enough water to cover a good amount of mushrooms and green beans in a pot. Bring to a boil, and cook until tender. Meanwhile, get a pot of water boiling, dump a package of angel hair pasta in there, and cook for about 4 minutes. Once the mushrooms and green beans are cooked to your preference, dump a can of diced tomatoes in that pot and stir. At this point, throw in a bunch of seasoning. Athena usually uses smoked paprika, dried basil, mixed Italian spices, and red pepper flakes — but really, any or none at all will do. Stir in salt and nutritional yeast to taste, and enjoy!

It’s time the lazy vegans come out of the woodwork. Instead of hiding in shame behind the Instagram stars with chia seeds made into mandalas and 127 ingredient casseroles, let’s relish in our laziness, and celebrate our efficiency. If you end up trying any of these, or if you have your own versions of incredibly quick, simple meals please share with us, and help out your fellow lazy-vegans.

So You’re A Lazy Vegan: We Can Help was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ruth Carter Stapleton once said, “Christmas is most truly Christmas when we celebrate it by giving the light of love to those who need it most.” Christmas, and the broader holiday season, has traditionally been seen as the time to love harder and give more generously than we do the rest of the year. Bountiful feasts, glimmering lights, glossy packages with bows sitting beneath a fir tree, the children giggle as their parents send them to deliver freshly baked cookies to the less-fortunate neighbors. When we think of Christmas, we all want to feel that warm sensation in our gut that comes from the satisfaction of doing good for others. Sadly, there is a stark contradiction between our traditions and our treatment of non-human animals during the holidays. When it comes to celebrating Christmas traditions, animals are left out in the cold.

In our latest podcast, we speak to Robin Raven, author of the recently published children’s book, Santa’s First Vegan Christmas. Her delightfully colorful, inspiring poem shines a bright light on Christmas literature’s traditional use of animals, and what a change of heart might look like for Santa.

It all begins when Santa comes to collect a family of reindeer to do the hard labor of his Christmas errands, and Dana, a young reindeer asks him to look at things from her perspective. She convinces Santa to spread the spirit of Christmas by including all beings, uniting holiday values with his actions, and freeing animals rather than using them for his own purpose.

In our podcast we talk with Robin about her initial inspiration for the story (which included an insightful realization about traditional Christmas art), her experience sharing the book with a diverse audience of children, adults, vegans, and non-vegans, and our surprisingly emotional reaction to first reading the story.

Santa’s First Vegan Christmas is a story for everyone, not just for kids (we happened to love it so much we bought it for our mom for Christmas). In the true spirit of Christmas, this beautiful children’s book is the perfect addition to the holiday collection, with stunning illustrations that will inspire the hearts of anyone that reads it.

Resources from this episode:

Find us on “Overcast” from the iTunes store, Soundcloud, or by searching Earthix on iTunes.

Robin Raven

Buy Santa’s First Vegan Christmas

Find Earthix on Instagram, Twitter, and on our website.

We’d like to extend a huge thanks to Conor Porter and his team at Sparrow Insight for their diligent hours of sound editing, for designing and creating the Earthix podcast artwork, and for publishing the podcast on all its platforms. We are so thankful to have Sparrow Insight as a resource.

It was a normal day at work, with a typical salad for lunch, but I found myself captivated. The raw spinach was spectacularly emerald green, the leaves so crunchy that they effortlessly held up the handfuls of sun-gold tomatoes (the nearly candy-like variety that grows in plenitude in summer gardens). I noticed the sprinkle of pumpkin seeds folded into the empty spaces, hiding alongside yellow and green bell peppers. And as I stared down at my plate, I was surprised to feel an obvious sense of warmth that started somewhere near my heart and ended at my tear ducts. As I pondered this new sensation and my unexpected glee, I couldn’t deny the familiar feeling of pooling tears.

I know, that probably sounds insane, but it’s true. Feeling sentimental about, and spiritually attached to, my food was never something I experienced as a meat & cheese eater.

I had 15 years to weep over the beauty of meat, and not once did I.

I had 22 years to weep over the beauty of cheese, and I may have, but that’s because I was addicted: I wept over the $35 spent on goat cheese the same way a drug addict may (or may not) feel guilty about stealing a television to pay for the next hit. But still, I never felt gratitude towards cheese. Instead, I felt like I was in an unstable relationship; I had to cram in as much time with cheese as I could before it left me.

Turns out, I left it.

Something strange happens a while after you stop eating animal products. You look down at your plate one day and feel this sense of awe. I mean the real, true meaning of awe: with reverence and a mix of wonder and fear.

I remember looking down at a meal I was eating one day at work, and I smiled. I smiled down at my spinach like it was my sweet child, or more than that, like it was my loving Mother. You know, the type of Mother with a capital M. The vivid green on my plate — and the deeper knowledge that I was living, surviving, thriving on food that involved no violence, no death, no flesh or fluid of a living being — started to fill me with this undeniable inner peace.

Again, I know it sounds insane.

When I first became an Angry Vegan (you know, those first few years of being vegan where you want to murder everyone to make them see they could be more compassionate?), I saw this image on Instagram that said, “When you consume violence, you become violence,” and I remember internally doing a fist pump, nodding my head vigorously and saying, “Yaaas!” really obnoxiously.

It was a good motto for an Angry, Yet Compassionate New Vegan. It sounded enlightened. But months after that, maybe a year later, when I was smiling down at my spinach at work, that phrase came to me again, bubbling up from my subconscious, and I felt taken aback. Damn, it’s real! When you consume violence, you become violence. When you stop consuming violence, you find inner healing.

I had spent 15 years of my life eating the bodies of animals that I claimed to love, and never did I feel gratitude for my food beyond a simple, “Thanks for cooking, Dad!” I definitely never felt awe.

But here I was, two years out from having no animal products in my body, and suddenly the thought of spinach growing, someone picking that spinach, and that spinach making up my lunch was making me tear up. It’s beautiful, really, how we can plant a seed in the ground, and it gives us endless food if we just take the time to nourish it, to learn the ways of its growth. We can pick it and it grows again. No blood, no sounds of death, no skinning or boiling or scalding away the hair.

Just Seed. Soil. Water. Sun.

After the teary-eyed spinach incident, that feeling didn’t go away.

Sometimes, when I am cutting up a bunch of kale and watching it sauté with fresh garlic and onions, I feel it again. That warm wave of awe and gratitude sweeping through me. It’s a quiet sensation. I can experience it as I cook, my roommate and I laughing about what Kanye tweeted, and he never knows that inside my mind, it is there — this quiet, calm, buzzing sensation of complete awe at what our planet is capable of.

Let me get something straight: I don’t mean to say this in a way that makes me seem like a new-age yogi that can levitate because I eat a plant-based diet. I don’t think eating plants automatically makes you a better, kinder person. But it does make you experience sustenance is a new way.

When I experience this inner swelling of the heart (like when The Grinch’s heart swells with love, not in a heart disease kind of way), I almost always feel a residual sadness that so many people don’t get to have this relationship with the food they eat. In a time when access to food is so critically linked to socio-economic level, a time when hundreds of thousands of families must feed themselves and their children McDonalds every day, I know that most people are not in a situation to have one single second to consider the miracle of the food they are eating. Because of eating plants I’ve learned one of the most important lessons of my life: food is a pathway to peace, gratitude, and compassion for our planet, but most of our society is systematically blocked from ever experiencing it.

Gratitude is hard to find in industrialized animal agriculture. We either know the gory details and don’t want to think about them, or we are naive to the truth of our food. We’re always removed from the reality of our food, especially when our food is an animal. Gratitude can only be experienced when we acknowledge the process of what it is we’re grateful for. When our food is a direct result of death — especially the death of animals killed in our industrialized food system — it’s not pleasant to think about the inspiring process that allowed the food to end up on our plates. Undercover footage of how farmed animals come to their end becomes a gruesome monster we know exists but that we never, ever want to see. Our bacon ranch burger tastes much better without images of tortured animals drizzled on top.

Our desire to enjoy the taste of food without acknowledging the underlying process of violence is why it’s extremely rare for people to express amazement at how what’s on their plate came to be. As a society, the majority of us miss the chance to acknowledge that our planet naturally provides what we need and that it is worth protecting, day in and day out.

Edible plants are a spectacular display of Mother Nature, and it is easy to see that the bright, vivid colors of tomatoes, berries, kale, squash, corn, radishes, broccoli and more are made to attract human hands — and hearts.

The Emotional Power of Eating Plants was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. Documentaries are a critical tool for spreading information. In a 2014 study conducted by Humane League Labs, 43% of vegans said that documentaries were the most influential tool to persuade them to decrease their consumption of animal products.
2. Anything Aph Ko (highly prolific author, founder of Black Vegans Rock, and overall badass vegan woman) posts is usually critically important and useful to the vegan movement as a whole.

So when Aph Ko shared a Facebook post yesterday of a documentary focused on the importance of black vegans, I immediately stopped everything I was doing and tuned into the trailer. Now I’m imploring everyone around me to do the same.

The Invisible Vegan is an upcoming 90-minute documentary that addresses the dietary inequality, subsequent unhealthy eating patterns, and historic meaning of food in African-American communities. The film highlights black vegans that use a plant-based diet as a solution to these issues, and as a means to reclaim control and cultural identity for black Americans.

We’re talking food justice, racial oppression, and veganism all in one, which is exactly the type of diverse content that the vegan movement needs to encompass.

When African people were torn from their original homes and enslaved by white Americans, they were forced to sustain themselves on the literal scraps of food thrown out by the slave owners. Their ability to make fulfilling meals from almost nothing, (which later became known as soul food), became a legacy and source of pride for generations to come.

Soul food in African American communities served as a way to create and claim a source of culture for a population of people who were stripped of all identity. Typically, soul food includes large amounts of oil, meat, and dairy, which makes the initial idea of veganism seem contradictory to the pride and identity of African American people. In many black communities, veganism is therefore seen as a ‘white thing’. The problem is, without elevating black vegan voices, trying to argue against ‘veganism as a white thing’ just ends in chaos and misunderstanding on all ends.

By amplifying black vegan voices, we recognize our food system in the US as not only a speciesist construct, but also a weapon used to maintain systemic, racial oppression and discrimination against black Americans.

In the US, white neighborhoods contain an average of four times the amount of supermarkets as predominantly black neighborhoods. In black neighborhoods, access to food outside of packaged convenience store food or fast food is extremely limited, making the rate of otherwise preventable, diet-related diseases exorbitantly higher than in white communities.

With both culture and modern food systems playing a major role in how veganism is perceived within black communities, The Invisible Vegan will shine a much-needed light on how a plant based diet can empower black Americans to take control of their health and reclaim a portion of their rightful heritage.

Boosting the voices of marginalized vegans from all communities needs to be a top priority if we want widely accepted veganism across diverse populations of people. Because veganism is, at least, a moral baseline vested in compassion and empathy, we want it to succeed as a social justice movement instead of being written off as a trendy diet for upper-middle class white populations.

Supporting diverse communities of people as they implement veganism in their own ways — fitting of their various cultures and backgrounds — will propel the vegan movement to previously unseen levels, saving human lives, providing communities with healthier food, and stopping the reliance on animal bodies for sustenance.

The Invisible Vegan Defies Vegan Stereotypes was originally published in Earthix: Ethics for Earthlings on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.