Considering a vegan diet?  Astronomer Barbara Whitney takes us on an inside look into her personal journey and reasons for becoming a vegan.   

What inspired you to choose a vegan lifestyle?

First it was for environmental reasons.  I had read a book called “The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices” put out by the Union of Concerned Scientists and learned that eating meat contributes more to global warming than commuting in your car!  I now think I secretly didn’t want to eat animals, but I didn’t know it at the time, having proclaimed myself an avid meat eater all my life.  However, when I became a vegetarian, I was surprised to find that I really liked not eating meat.   I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.  When I ate meat, I didn’t care much about animals, and it was consistent.  And when I stopped eating meat, I cared more for animals and that was consistent.  I definitely prefer the latter consistency.

What were the biggest challenges of switching to a vegan diet?

Hmm.  That’s a hard one because I actually had a lot of fun learning to change my whole way of preparing food.  I guess that was a challenge, but it was really fun for me.  I spent about a year buying cookbooks, trying recipes, learning what I liked and how to cook it.    I guess the biggest challenges at first were social—explaining to my family and friends that I couldn’t eat the food they took so much care and pride in preparing.  Once they got used to it, then it was easy.  They think I’m weird but they always have so this was just one more thing that made me weird.  So yeah, the biggest challenge was learning to be different in social situations.

How do people respond to your lifestyle choice?  

This took me a long time to learn, but how they respond depends very much on how I present it.  If I present it as just the way it is, with confidence and no excuses and no obnoxiousness either, just matter of factly, then it usually gets accepted matter of factly too.  In my case, not only am I vegan, but I don’t eat oil, sugar, salt or refined grains!   That makes me even weirder!  So most people think I’m weird but still like and accept me, a very few people are a bit obnoxious about it, and a few people are curious to learn more. 

If you could make one statement in defense of veganism, what would it be?

If you want to change the world, this is probably the most effective thing you can do.   If we all cut back our meat/dairy intake by just 50%, it would have dramatic effects on animal suffering (killing 4 billion a year is better than 8 billion!), global warming, and the environment.  If everyone cut back even more, say 75-90%, and replaced their meat, dairy, and refined grains with vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and whole grains, then most obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, auto-immune illnesses and other degenerative diseases would disappear.  We could bankrupt our pharmaceutical and health care industry, and end the health care debate!  Then we could just buy insurance for catastrophic medical expenses caused by accidents rather than diet.

What is your favorite recipe to cook?

That is tough because there are so many!   Lately I’ve been busy and going with my quick and easy recipes.  A favorite of mine is black bean hummus with lightly steamed veggies for dipping into the hummus.
 
Finally, I would like to say that I am anything but deprived on this diet.  I don’t eat less, I just eat differently than most people.  The creations I make with vegetables, fruits, and nuts and seeds are fantastic!