Today in our latest installment of How Do You Vegan?, we talk with middle school teacher and vegan Christopher Hills. After going vegan himself, Christopher decided to use his position to help teach his students about how their choices affect animals and their health, and other reasons why they should go vegan. Thank you, Christopher, for your inspiring work!

How long have you been vegan, and what made you decide to make this change?

I became vegan on April 1, 2015, but it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. That day just happened to be the day after I watched “Earthlings” for the first time. Back in 1991, when I was a high school sophomore, for some school reason I researched farm animal treatment, and upon seeing some horrific videos, I stopped eating meat. I had always been leery of meat and found it generally gross, and I stayed largely meat free after that. Over time, I rationalized that eating fish was good for me and I “needed the protein.” Trainers I worked with lamented that I was hard to create menus for with my limited diet, so for the past several years I ate fish on a regular basis. Now, as an enlightened vegan, I know that plenty of protein is to be had from meat free sources.

You are married with children. Has your family joined you in this change? If so, what are some positive results or experiences you’ve had?

Since I do the majority of the food shopping for the household, the other family members get very little in the way of animal products. My wife is lactose intolerant, and she tried to eat vegan for a while, but backslid pretty quickly. She suffers after eating ice cream but deems the pain worth the experience. Whether she means her pain or the pain of the animal who had to produce the milk for her, I don’t know. My kids still eat meat and dairy when they can, but I won’t cook it for them. My wife still will cook them meat and eggs, but if they eat my food, which they love by the way, it will be vegan.

Why is Vegan Outreach an organization that you support?

I believe that creating awareness surrounding nutrition and food sources is crucial. Vegan Outreach is local and has a mission that I believe in. Vegan Outreach also differs from other vegan groups in that they think that any step toward veganism is better than no step at all. Some vegan groups can be pretty militant in their approach, and offer only all or nothing as choices. Something like “Meat-free Monday,” while untenable in the long run, is a step in the right direction. Yes, it means that you are contributing to the suffering of animals, polluting the planet, and poisoning yourself six days out of seven, but it’s still positive movement.

What inspired you to make the leap from being a vegan in your personal life to creating a club for the students at your school?

I work with an interesting group of students. I teach intervention classes, and have some of my middle school students for 4 and a half hours a day, so I get to know them pretty well. Also, I’m pretty approachable to my students, so they ask me a lot of questions. After I watched “Earthlings,” I told my students about this mind-blowing documentary that transmitted to me this information that everyone who eats should know. They all knew I was a pescetarian, and I informed them of the change I made in my life to becoming a vegan. Because the disgusting manner in which animals used for human purposes was forefront on my mind after watching that documentary, I worked random facts and figures about animal mistreatment into my daily teaching. After a few days, some students came to me and told me that they had watched the documentary at home (I explicitly told them that they needed parental permission before watching it) and wanted to be vegan. At our school at the beginning of the school year, teachers are encouraged to sponsor lunch time and after school clubs. Sometimes teachers are interested in a particular thing so they create a club about that, other times kids come to teachers with ideas and ask them to support their ideas. I asked some kids if they’d be interested in this club, and got enough interest to move forward with it. We started our meetings in October 2015.

Has creating this club resulted in any push back and/or support from students, the school itself, and/or parents?

Our activities director has been very supportive of the Earthlings Club, ordering shirts for us and encouraging us to engage in lunchtime activities, and I haven’t had any response, negative or positive from the administration. The only response I’ve heard from any parents is when they come into my classroom and see the vegan posters or comic books I got from PeTA. They have asked a few questions about what they’re for, but once I inform them that they’re for a lunchtime club, they seem OK with it.

What is the purpose of the club? Do you host or participate in any events?

The purpose of the club is to inform students and the school about the benefits, both personal and world-wide, of practicing a vegan lifestyle. We meet once a week and we poll the student body at lunchtime. We may ask them true/false questions about veganism, or we may ask them if they’d be willing to support a petition to get more vegan/vegetarian items on the lunch menu. We wear our shirts when we’re out there so we’re pretty visible.

What has been the most rewarding experience thus far as a result of creating this club?

What I have most enjoyed about the club is interacting with the student body in a way that I don’t usually get to as a teacher. In talking to the students, I find out about their dietary preferences and tolerances. So many students are open-minded about changing their diets, and many of them are genuinely interested in wanting to change our planet for the better.

Can you offer any helpful advice to those who might be interested in doing something similar in their school or area?

Just go for it. I get a lot of playful (maybe?) kidding from other teachers about imposing my views on the students, but if we don’t make some pretty drastic changes as a society, and do it pretty soon, the Earth will make the changes for us. Nobody who is thinking rationally could have any issues with someone who promotes a vegan lifestyle.

By Melissa Li

My family and I are very lucky to live in Portland, Oregon, one of the top vegan cities in the country. You may have read articles about the Vegan Mini-Mall, which features Sweet Pea bakery, Herbivore Clothing Company, Food Fight grocery, and Scapegoat Tattoo. Yes, I hate to rub it in, but it’s a great city to live in, and the vegan businesses are continuing to grow in number and popularity. I love living here!

There are too many veg restaurants to list, and far more that offer dedicated vegan options. I’m very comfortable knowing that when I go out to eat, I’ll undoubtedly have a vegan meal.

I’m particularly lucky that I have all this in reach, because I have a really busy schedule with work, soccer (three, and sometimes four teams), and dogs. I find that I don’t really like to cook, nor do I have the creativity. It’s a catch-22–the more I avoid cooking, the more I fear cooking, and then the less likely I will try it.

I have many cookbooks on the counter, all hidden by bags of vegan snacks–I have yet to make a single dish from any of them–I’m hoping the information diffuses into me like osmosis! And believe me, I’ve tried to dumb down the cookbooks, from The 30 minute Vegan to the 4 Ingredient Vegan–anything to make it easier! This has yet to work.

The farmers markets in this city are reportedly amazing, but I have never even gone because I know I won’t cook the vegetables before they go bad. I’m vegan for ethical reasons not for health–and I’m not a foodie–this may explain my lack of enthusiasm in cooking.

My routine is to have breakfast in the cafeteria at the hospital where I work. It has vegan a la carte options such as vegan burritos and roasted potato wedges. For lunch, there is an amazing salad bar, with kale and pasta salads. There is always a meatless soup option and sometimes it’s vegan. At the grill, there is a vegan burger. On Mondays, my the cafeteria participates in Meatless Mondays.

Dinner is the meal that I have to fend for myself, and I’m comfortable eating essentially the same thing every night. Dinner has slowly evolved from just rice and black beans with salsa to including Daiya cheese, cilantro, red and yellow peppers, red onion, and occasionally chopped Tofurky or Field Roast sausage. With steamed rice already prepared, it used to take only five minutes to make dinner—now it takes a full fifteen!

My weekends are a little more challenging, and for breakfast or lunch, I often have a sandwich with Just Mayo and Tofurky deli slices on top of Dave’s Killer Bread.

I have actually devoted more time to my dogs’ diets than my own. They are also vegan and subsist on Natural Balance Vegetarian Formula mixed with a rotating variety of canned food: Halo Vegan Garden Medley, Nature’s Recipe Vegetarian Stew, Natural Balance Vegetarian Formula, or Honest Kitchen dehydrated dog food. I will add water and brown rice to the mix of canned and dried food.

For daily treats, the dogs get an assortment of Whimzees, 3 Dog Bakery Lick’n Crunch Carob sandwich cookies with peanut butter filling, Buddy Biscuits peanut butter, and Wet Noses biscuits.

I like to keep it simple and routine because everything else in my life takes up so much time. However, I continue to make resolutions to strengthen my cooking skills. It would be nice to have a repertoire of meals, to cook for friends, or to bring treats for non-vegan colleagues at work in order to influence them. We’ll see what happens!

By Toni Okamoto

This week Michelle Cehn of World of Vegan and I made the 100 mile trek to Rohnert Park, CA to visit the brand new Amy’s Drive-Thru — created by popular vegetarian food company Amy’s Kitchen! Everything on the menu can be made vegan and gluten-free, it’s all organic, and it is in the cutest, most sustainable building! Check out the video for a peek inside!

(click image to play video)

What vegan finds do you have at YOUR local Dollar Tree?

 

(click image to play video)

By Josh Fernandez, Guest Blogger

Halfway through my Starbucks Protein Bistro Box I realized I was eating an egg. A giant hardboiled egg. “Nope,” I thought. “That’s probably not vegan.”

Hello. My name is Joshua Fernandez and I am new here.

So far, the hardest part of being a vegan is eating vegan food. Yes, that sounds really stupid when I write it down, but it’s true. My first week as a vegan was a series of half-eaten mouthfuls of food and mad dashes to the trashcan.

My office-mates probably thought I was suffering from bulimia because I kept running to the bathroom to spit out my lunch.

“Wait,” I’d say into the bowels of the faculty garbage bin. “Was that granola bar vegan?!”

It turns out it wasn’t vegan. At all.

Because milk chocolate chips aren’t vegan. Because they contain milk.

Neither is cheddar cheese. Because it contains cheese.

Yes, old school vegans are probably reading this and muttering, “Psssht, what a stupid newbie.”

But I don’t care. I am determined to get this right.

I love animals. And I don’t want to contribute to their suffering, only to my own, which is why I have sworn off the most delicious foods on earth. Well, there’s only one delicious food on earth, and that’s cheese pizza (goodbye, my old lover. I’ll see you in hell.)

One of the reasons I swore off cheese pizza and became a vegan has a lot to do with my friend Toni. We were on our way back from a friend’s house. The trip took about an hour. At that point, I was a happy pescatarian and felt morally superior to most people on Earth for my choice to not eat chicken or beef. I only occasionally ate fish. But Toni started telling me this horrific tale about what farmers do to the chickens that are too old to lay eggs. I don’t want to go into the gross details of the story, but let’s just say it involved live chickens, a big metal vat and fire.

That image stuck out in my head, shattering my vegetarian comfort into a million tiny pieces that I would never be able to reassemble. Even though I tried. Desperately. I’m really good at rationalizing and lying to myself. When I was a vegetarian I had successfully convinced myself that fish was a plant.

“I can find the farms that treat their chickens with dignity and respect!” I said.

The thing is I’m waaaaay too lazy to seek out compassionate chicken farmers. For someone like me, it’s easier to assume that they are all heartless murderers with a lust for dead chickens.

Another problem with veganism is that I’m a marathoner, sometimes clocking in at about 60 miles per week, and I told myself that if I only eat plant-based food I would most likely keel over on mile 25.

I haven’t actually tested that theory yet, but I will find out on December 6, when I run my first marathon as a vegan. And mark my words: If that happens, on my death bed I will write another blog post for Vegan Outreach, entitled, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE, BUTCHER A COW AND EAT IT IMMEDIATELY.”

I’m kidding.

I have this other friend, Dave, who is a vegan and he runs ultramarathons. Sometimes he only eats fruit, which he calls fruitarian, a word that my spell check doesn’t even recognize. Most humans don’t even recognize that word. I don’t even think it’s a word. Maybe Dave isn’t even real. Like he’s just some hallucination I’m having from being so protein deficient.

But that, of course, is another misconception. I get all the protein I need from beans, avocados, fruits and nuts. I’m actually gaining
weight because I eat burritos filled with black beans, potatoes, spinach, onions, garlic, avocados and cashew cheese about 700 times a week.

I suck at being a vegan. I really do. I tried to make vegan lasagna and at once burned and overcooked it while forgetting half of the ingredients. A better name for that dish would be “Black, floppy noodles with some crusty red crap on top.”

Sometimes I feel so hungry and lazy that I’ll just lick almond butter off a spoon for lunch.

Also, I’m sort of a poser. I mean, sure, I love animals and I don’t want them to suffer, but I really want to be a vegan because I want to wear vegan themed clothing. Like, who doesn’t want to wear a shirt of a carrot riding a bike that says, “Go Vegan”?

I also want to be a vegan because people keep telling me not to be a vegan. If there’s one consistent motivator, it’s people telling me I can’t do things. Which, now that I think about it, is probably why I got kicked out of high school.

Anyway, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I have a network of good vegan friends who are helping me—inspiring me to live cruelty-free.

As I sit here in my office, waiting for a student to come into my office hour, I’m writing this blog post and sipping my
–Wait, is this coffee vegan?!

*runs to bathroom*

*regurgitates latte into trash can*

Review by Josie Moody, Office Manager

Project Animal Farm by Sonia Faruqi is not an easy read, but it is an important one. It is painfully and necessarily graphic. There’s no way to sugarcoat the subject matter, and that’s why it is so powerful.

Project Animal Farm is a project Faruqi set about unintentionally after she lost her position as an Investment Banker during the American recession. After lots of reading during her time off, she decided to put her free time to good use by volunteering on an organic dairy farm in Canada. After reaching out to dozens of farms, only one agreed to take her on as a volunteer, and, as they say, the rest is history.

Rudely awakened from her fantasy of what life on a modern farm would be like, Faruqi is disturbed by the mistreatment of the animals at these operations and the apathy of the humans who work there. She then uses her connections and experience at the dairy farm to investigate if this is an isolated incident, or a widespread practice.

Unfortunately she finds the same horrors at the chicken, pork, turkey and veal operations she subsequently visits. By the books end, she has explored agribusiness in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. I have read books, visited websites and seen footage that exposes what happens on factory farms over the past four years, and was distressed to learn of more torturous practices she uncovers in this book that I had been previously unaware of.

Writes Faruqi, “I found that the pattern of factory farming everywhere follows the trajectory of the United States. Chickens and egg-laying hens are confined and commoditized first, followed by pigs, then by cows. It’s as if the industry starts with animals it considers least sentient first, then works its way up the ladder.”

At the end of the book she concludes,“The agriculture industry claims to be strong and healthy, but upon inspection one finds that he is not a vigorous young man bursting with life, but a paranoid and senile old man who lives in terror that any encounter with outsiders will spell his death.”

If you’re interested in reading it, you can buy it here: http://amzn.to/1Ygu5IU

By Toni Okamoto

Michelle and I snagged my family’s Costco card so we could show you all the vegan options they offer! As you can see in the video below, they have TONS of stuff! Everything from a wide selection of non-dairy milks, to animal crackers, Hodo Soy products, frozen foods, and much more.

Different Costco locations carry different products, but the Sacramento one was fantastic! Let us know in the comments below the best scores you’ve found!

(click image to play video)