Join me on my Vegan Journey…

I will have been vegan for 30 years this year (2025) and apparently haven’t wasted away, felt weak, tired all the time… in fact the opposite is probably true. I generally have had a lot of energy, used to work 12 hour days ( retired now) and get to the gym 2-3 times a week.

Is this unusual? I can’t say. I know quite a few vegans and we are all different.

Why Vegan?

I became vegan for ethical reasons, not just to eat a plant based diet. In fact back in the 1990s no-one used the term ‘plant based diet’ – you were either vegetarian or vegan… or not.

So what convinced me to go vegan? I was already vegetarian and although I knew a few vegans it seemed a bit ‘hardcore’ at the time. I mean, I really liked cheese… how could I give it up?

Then one day on my way to work, listening to BBC news on the radio, there were reports coming in about animal rights protests at Dover docks, old women being arrested etc. I had to find out more!

The protests were about the shipping of live animals to France (and beyond) – these were male calves, not wanted in the dairy herd, and destined for a short life in a veal crate / hut. Why so many calves? Then the realisation dawned on me… in order for cows to keep producing milk for the masses, they had to be constantly producing calves.

Despite having grown up in a village, with a small dairy farm nearby, I knew little about the process of how milk is produced. Ok I knew it’s cows’ milk, but thought no further when I was young.

Now, in my forties, I was better equipped to understand the industrial scale of this milk production and the animal exploitation behind it. So it was a no-brainer- I decided to stop drinking milk, eating cheese, and veganism here we come!

30 years later…

Still vegan, with no desire to have a ‘bacon sarney’ but I am probably less of an active campaigner now. Society here in UK has changed a lot especially in the last 5-10 years. Most supermarkets have a ‘free-from’ section where vegan food is readily available and clearly marked as suitable for vegans. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good wholesome food, but it is vegan. It is important to have a healthy nutritious diet whether you’re vegan or not – but more on that elsewhere on the site.

Other issues on the site include

• Ethics
• Consumerism
• Recycling

If I get the blog up and running, we can discuss these topics!

If you’re thinking of going vegan, do some research. Get some recipe books and join this growing community.