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 >