David Carroll

How and why did you go ve­g­an?

I start­ed off Ve­go but am lac­tose in­tol­er­ant so the switch to ve­g­an wasn’t too big a step. See­ing as my main mo­ti­va­tion for not con­sum­ing meat was cru­el­ty to an­i­mals as well as sus­tain­a­bil­i­ty, I start­ed to re­alise that boy­cott­ing meat wasn’t re­al­ly enough. If I’m still eat­ing eg­gs, no mat­ter how free-range the chick­ens are, near­ly all the male chicks are killed when they’re born. I don’t think we have the right to dic­tate what spe­cies live and die and what con­di­tions they ex­ist in.

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

My main gripe is be­ing a fussy eater. I nev­er have been, I was raised to eat ev­ery­thing and I hate that now I could be classed as such. I hate hav­ing to ask what the in­gre­di­ent of things are. But that’s my hang up that I’m slow­ly deal­ing with.

The other is the lack of speedy fast food, I eat HEAPS and of­ten on the go and there’s on­ly so many sal­ad sand­which­es a boy can eat. Plus gett­ing away from the CBD op­tions are slim­mer. That and veg­etable soups in su­per­mar­kets. It is ridicu­lous how many an­i­mal in­gre­di­ents are snuck in­to th­ese.

And while I’m on the top­ic, the con­s­tant ‘eat meat’ and ‘eat dairy’ adds out to brain­wash peo­ple. Th­ese are mil­lion dol­lar in­dus­tries on­ly con­cerned with mak­ing mon­ey. Sam Neil you are a sell out for your filthy com­mer­cials scar­ing kids in­to eat­ing red meat! I don’t push my val­ues on your kids!

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

My fam­i­ly all had mixed re­ac­tions, there are a fair few of them. I have copped some flack from some that I thought would be more sup­por­tive. It is ex­haust­ing when I am forced to de­fend my choic­es when I nev­er abuse them for choos­ing to eat a steak for lunch. And I’m al­so frus­trat­ed when there is no ef­fort made to cater for me as a ve­g­an, we are quite easy to cook for and I will eat ANY­THING that does­nt come from an an­i­mal. Hav­ing said that my mum has quite en­joyed the chal­lenge and has whipped up some cre­a­tions that I my­self haven’t even at­tempt­ed.

I’ve had a few friends who were veg­e­tarian who orig­i­nal­ly in­spired me who I in turn have in­spired to go the next step to ve­g­an. It’s nice to re­turn the favour! And I’ve had many car­ni­vore mates who’ve hap­pi­ly tagged along to a ve­g­an eatery with me and re­al­ly en­joyed the ex­pe­ri­ence!

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

In a big way and for me com­plete­ly pos­i­tive. I have much more en­er­gy than I used to, I have be­come very aware of what I eat and made sure I eat a va­ri­e­ty of fresh and healthy foods. I have much more ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the foods I cook with and it has lead me to ex­perie­ment with dif­fer­ent flavours and syles and to make sure I re­ceive all the nu­tri­ents I need from ve­g­an sources.

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

I’m not one to fol­low recipes, there­fore I can nev­er cre­ate the same meal twice. how­ev­er one of my all time easy and nu­tri­tious favou­rites is my pas­ta, as fol­lows:

Splash some olive oil in­to to a hot pan. Add sliced onion and gar­lic and cracked pep­per. Af­ter a cou­ple of min­utes add or­gan­ic brown len­tils and kid­ney beans or a four bean mix. Then add ei­ther a can of chopped to­ma­toes or a pun­net of cher­ry to­ma­toes (th­ese are heaps fun cos once they are roast­ed you can smash them open when you’re eat­ing).

Stir through a heap of ba­by spi­nach and a splash of bal­sam­ic. Once the spi­nach has slight­ly wilt­ed pour over penne pas­ta or stir thru spaghet­ti. Yum.

Serve with home-made gar­lic bread…gar­lic cloves and ve­g­an mar­garine are your friends here. No rules, just make it up as you go.

Another one is ve­g­an cheese cake, I dont have an ex­act recipe for this ei­ther but if you whip up equal amount of firm silken to­fu and ‘fake’ cream cheese (such as the To­fut­ti prod­uct Bet­ter than Cream Cheese) add some fruit and pour over a bis­cuit base then heat and cool you can’t go wrong.

As far as take-away goes I pre­fer to cook, but when I’m feel­ing lazy some of the Asian mock meat res­tau­rants are very hard to beat. It feels a bit wrong or­der­ing chick­en, fish and sweet and sour pork, and even a lit­tle wronger eat­ing it, but amaz­ing flavours and just goes to show us ve­g­ans ain’t miss­ing out on nothin!

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

My favou­rite re­ac­tion is when peo­ple say I look way too healthy to be ve­g­an. They ex­pect me to be scrawny and pas­ty. That’s a stereo­type I’d love to break. But when I talk to peo­ple about my choic­es most of them have been quite in­ter­est­ed. I hope to show peo­ple an al­ter­na­tive choice rather than shove an opinion down their throat.

Is there any­one who has par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spired or helped you?

My dog Mis­ty and my horse Salem. Both have now passed on, but two amaz­ing self­less an­i­mals who made my world a bet­ter place, showed me how much we can learn from other spe­cies and made the idea of in­flict­ing suf­fer­ing on any other crea­ture stupid­ly un­bear­able.

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

I think for all venues to have at least one ve­g­an op­tion on their menu, and to la­bel this would be a good start. th­ese days peo­ple are very health con­s­cious and many peo­ple suf­fer a va­ri­e­ty of al­ler­gies. A ve­g­an meal is of­ten one that can cater to most peo­ples di­e­tary re­quire­ments.

Apart from that, I feel it’s up to us ve­g­ans to ed­u­cate our mates as to what be­ing a ve­g­an is in a non-threat­en­ing way, so peo­ple feel com­fort­able to learn more and have a crack at eat­ing what we eat. The ben­e­fits speak for them­selves!

Dave is cur­rent­ly ap­pear­ing in The Art of Be­ing Still at the Me­chan­ics In­sti­tute in Mel­bourne.