new monday

On Saturday I saw a facebook post by a friend from high-school - a video of a talk by Gary Yourofsky about being vegan - which I thought I'd watch for a few minutes before I flipped to something else... An hour later I was still watching.

Gary's talk was entertaining and informative, touching on many topics, including: health and disease, the food industry, world hunger, environmental issues, and animal rights.

There were some disturbing parts I didn't want to see - and if you're considering watching the video you may want to skip these parts. I'm not one of those people who will tell you you 'should' watch something. I will say, however, that I think it's always best to make conscious choices - so if you don't know what's going on in the industry and how animals are being treated, you may want to become better informed so that you know just what your lifestyle is costing someone else...

Here's the link, if you're interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es6U00LMmC4

I haven't eaten meat other than fish since I was 12 years old. And I've been back and forth with seafood... And I gave up dairy for Lent last year, but by and large dairy always seemed 'harmless' (and delicious) to me. Not so much anymore... Maybe someday if I have my own cow I'll go back to dairy...

For the moment I have no interest. I just went out and stocked up on alternatives... I'm currently doing a taste test on all the different 'milk' products out there (so far I like almond milk and coconut milk - soy is ok, rice is pretty good, but too sweet... and the jury's still out on hemp - because the container I bought had gone bad, so it was pretty gross.)

I'm not calling myself a vegan at this point - I've only just started, and I'm not sure I want to be labeled in that way anyway. But this is where I find myself at the moment.