Andrew, Amy and Evie

Can you tell us about your­selves?

Me and An­drew are a mar­ried cou­ple in our late 20’s with a gor­geous lit­tle girl, Evie! I am cur­rent­ly try­ing to jug­gle mother­hood and fin­ish­ing my PhD, which is fo­cused on how the public feel about na­tive plants and an­i­mals in ur­ban ar­eas. I love pho­tog­ra­phy, AFL (go pies!) and spend­ing time with my fam­i­ly. An­drew works for 000 as an am­bu­lance dis­patch­er, when he is not do­ing that he is a big kid and loves com­ic books.

How and why did you go ve­g­an?

I went veg­e­tarian at 18 and went ve­g­an 3 years lat­er. I had nev­er re­al­ly thought about dairy un­til I saw some foo­tage on the net about how dairy cows are treat­ed. Right then and there I de­cid­ed to cut ev­ery­thing out be­cause I could not jus­ti­fy sim­p­ly be­ing veg­e­tarian. I think some other veg­e­tarians may be in the place I was be­fore be­com­ing ve­g­an, just hav­ing no idea about the dairy/egg in­dus­try…. so ed­u­ca­tion is im­por­tant! An­drew be­came Ve­g­an af­ter meet­ing me and be­ing in­tro­duced to the cru­el­ty in­volved in eat­ing meat and dairy, he has nev­er looked back!

Did you en­coun­ter any dif­fi­cul­ties? If so what were they and how have you dealt with them?

We have found be­ing ve­g­an quite easy. Al­though eat­ing out at res­tau­rants has been a bit of a pain. We have over­come this by try­ing to al­ways go to veg­e­tarian/ve­g­an res­tau­rants or places where we know we have op­tions. It can be a lit­tle lim­it­ing, but as long as your friends and fam­i­ly are on board and don’t spring the steak­house on you, it’s most­ly fine. And the add­ed bonus is you in­tro­duce non ve­g­an friends and fam­i­ly to some ve­g­an res­tau­rants they would not other­wise have been to.

A hap­py ve­g­an preg­nan­cy

You’ve re­cent­ly giv­en birth to a ba­by girl. Can you de­scribe what that was like and if there was any­thing in par­tic­u­lar you had to be care­ful about rais­ing a ba­by ve­g­an.

Hav­ing a ba­by has been awe­some! We had a problem free preg­nan­cy, I did take a ve­g­an pre­na­tal vi­ta­min, but most wo­m­en take a pre­na­tal any­way so we were no dif­fer­ent. Evie is now one (it has flown by!) and is per­fect­ly healthy in ev­ery way imag­in­able. We are not suprised how healthy she is – we know a ve­g­an di­et is healthy, but you can get some peo­ple who think other­wise. It can help to be able to tell them that the Amer­i­can Di­etet­ic As­so­ci­a­tion says that well planned ve­g­an di­ets are healthy and nu­tri­tio­n­al­ly sound… and may pro­vide health ben­e­fits like the pre­ven­tion and treat­ment of cer­tain dis­eas­es. They al­so say that a ve­g­an di­et is ap­pro­pri­ate for peo­ple dur­ing all stages of life, in­clud­ing preg­nan­cy, breast­feed­ing, in­fan­cy, child­hood, ado­les­cence, and be­yond. Hav­ing said that, we had no is­sues with be­ing ve­g­an and nev­er had to de­fend our­selves, all the doc­tors were very sup­por­tive.

When I was preg­nant I start­ed up a Ve­g­an Par­ents Group (based in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia). This group has been fan­tas­tic for us. We have met so many other ve­g­an par­ents and lit­tle ones and formed some re­al­ly good friend­ships. We are so hap­py that Evie has some lit­tle ve­g­an friends to grow up with and it is great for us to be able to mix with like-mind­ed par­ents. Al­so the birth­day par­ties are great – we can eat ev­ery­thing! The group has a face­book page and meets for­mal­ly ev­ery few months. New mem­bers are al­ways wel­come, so if you are a ve­g­an par­ent, ve­g­an par­ent to be, or plan to be in the fu­ture, feel free to join up!

How have your fam­i­ly and friends re­act­ed to your ve­g­an­ism? Have you in­flu­enced any­one else to go ve­g­an?

We have had pret­ty sup­por­tive fam­i­ly and friends. Al­though An­drew’s fam­i­ly were a lit­tle re­luc­tant at first, they have come around now and An­drews 89 year old na­na now makes ve­g­an ver­sions of dish­es for us at fam­i­ly gather­ings! We have got more ques­tions since be­ing preg­nant and hav­ing Evie, but no criti­cism. It’s al­ways fun­ny when some­one asks… “so are you rais­ing her ve­g­an?” It seems like such a sil­ly ques­tion, like ask­ing a de­vout catholic if they plan to raise their child catholic!

How do you feel switch­ing to ve­g­an­ism has im­pact­ed your health?

For me it was so long ago I can’t re­al­ly re­mem­ber how I felt eat­ing meat. An­drew no­ticed he had more en­er­gy af­ter mak­ing the switch. Ear­li­er in our ve­g­an­ism we were not so aware of all the ve­g­an junk foods avai­l­able, so we were healthi­er. As time has gone on though… we have been se­duced by ve­g­an junk food so are not as healthy as we used to be! Mi­nus the junk food though… a ve­g­an di­et is su­per healthy!

What are some of your favou­rite meals, take­away and/or home cooked?

We love our food, but with a lit­tle one, cook­ing elab­o­rate meals can be hard some­times. For take­away we can’t go past plush piz­za! Our two favou­rite easy foods are pas­ta and baked po­ta­toes topped with corn, pineap­ple, onions and len­tils. If we have more time we love len­til pie and to­fu and veg lasag­na. We re­cent­ly got a copy of the Veg­a­nomi­con, which is an awe­some cook­book full of some quite fan­cy dish­es, we are hang­ing out to have a din­n­er par­ty and show off our culi­nary (or lack of) skills!

Have you en­coun­tered any ab­surd stereo­types, com­ments or neg­a­tive at­ti­tudes?

Noth­ing over the top, but peo­ple al­ways have a lot of ques­tions. One lady at An­drew’s work is con­s­tant­ly ask­ing him “Can you eat this…?” It could be nuts or some­thing equal­ly ab­surd, but she still asks! I do find it amaz­ing that peo­ple are al­ways so sur­prised by the va­ri­e­ty of things we can eat and how healthy we are.

What do you think are the most ef­fec­tive ways of help­ing ve­g­an­ism to be­come more main­stream?

We need to show that ve­g­ans are nor­mal peo­ple (thumbs up for this cam­paign)! Al­so, I think if there were more ve­g­an prod­ucts avai­l­able in main­stream su­per­mar­kets it would help ‘nor­malise’ ve­g­an­ism and en­cour­age more peo­ple. Al­so… have ve­g­an ba­bies, make the next gen­er­a­tion the VE­G­AN gen­er­a­tion!

You can see Amy’s recipe for Len­til Pie here >

 

• Susan

  16th

  April

  2013

  What a great article! Since we having been eating the vegan way we have so many people trying to challenge the lifestyle and telling us how cruel it is for our 4 year old son not to eat meat, dairy etc.. When if fact he has never noticed and loves tucking into all the homemade cooking, it is quite funny when friends say ‘are you still doing that vegan thing’ like it is a diet or short term switch. I hope more ‘normal’ families like us embrace this way of living as we have never been healthier!