Erik Gorton

What is your ‘go­ing ve­g­an’ sto­ry?

My sim­ple guid­ing phi­lo­so­phy in life has al­ways been to treat others how I’d like to be treat­ed. Pret­ty much ev­ery­thing else flows on from there.

I’ve felt a bond and em­pa­thy with an­i­mals for as long as i can re­mem­ber. When I was 5 years old I ap­par­ent­ly walked in­to the lo­cal butch­ers and told him he was a bad man who hurts an­i­mals, then did a protest in our front yard ask­ing peo­ple to read my hand-drawn pla­card (which no one could read) that said “You re­ly (sic) should be kind to dogs. You re­ly shoud let them in­side”.

Once I un­der­s­tood that meat came from an­i­mals I didn’t want any­thing to do with it, but my par­ents told me I’d get sick if I didn’t eat it and so af­ter a while I stopped ques­tion­ing the ori­gins of pork chops and lamb roasts.

Like most of us, I was con­di­tioned not to think about it, so it wasn’t un­til my ear­ly 20s and the in­flu­ence of a veg­e­tarian friend that I re­alised i could eat great tast­ing food and still live a per­fect­ly healthy life with­out eat­ing an­i­mals.

Af­ter 4 years as a veg­e­tarian I be­gan to be aware of the cru­el­ty in­her­ent in all an­i­mal in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing dairy and eg­gs. Sud­den­ly dairy foods didn’t seem all that im­por­tant when I was ef­fec­tive­ly pay­ing some­one else to enslave and abuse an­i­mals for the plea­sure of cheese on toast!

Was it an easy pro­cess for you, or have you en­coun­tered hic­cups along the way? If so what were they and how have you dealt with them?

Re­al­ly noth­ing im­por­tant. Once I made the de­ci­sion to be ve­g­an it was just a mat­ter of ex­plor­ing al­ter­na­tives to re­place the foods I liked.

If I’m go­ing to a mate’s house or fam­i­ly gather­ing I’ll of­fer to take food for my­self so it’s easy for them, and when go­ing to a non-veg res­tau­rant I’ll give them a call be­fore­hand to let them know.

What has the re­ac­tion been like from your fam­i­ly and friends?

My fam­i­ly wor­ried at first that I’d keel over from mal­nu­tri­tion within a few months, but 15 years lat­er I’m healthy as an ox and rare­ly get sick. My brother once told me to stop look­ing so god-dam healthy be­cause it makes the rest of them look bad ha­ha.

You run a web and graph­ic de­sign busi­ness that fo­cus­es on work­ing with non pro­f­it or­gan­i­sa­tions and so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble busi­ness­es, can you tell us a lit­tle more about that?

My busi­ness part­n­er and I were dis­il­lu­sioned with work­ing in an in­dus­try that seemed to re­quire us to com­pro­mise our ethics and help busi­ness­es ex­ploit others.

We both firm­ly be­lieve that the best way to cre­ate change is to be­come an ex­am­ple of it and so our cre­a­tive agen­cy, Eth­i­cal De­sign, is our mod­el for a suc­cess­ful busi­ness that doesn’t need to com­pro­mise on its core be­liefs.

This means there have been times when we’ve had to tell clients we can’t work with them. For ex­am­ple, com­pa­nies that sell goods us­ing an­i­mal prod­ucts or an­i­mal test­ing, re­ly on sweat­shop la­bor, or are par­tic­u­lar­ly da­m­ag­ing to the en­vi­ron­ment. Thank­ful­ly there are a grow­ing num­ber of like-mind­ed com­pa­nies out there who re­fuse to com­pro­mise on their ethics.

Sad­ly it’s a lit­tle known fact that many web de­sign com­pa­nies are now out­sourc­ing work overseas to be able to of­fer ridicu­lous­ly low prices. The end con­sumer of­ten has no idea they’re help­ing to ex­ploit for­eign work­ers and make it in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for lo­cal busi­ness­es to sim­p­ly make a liv­ing. There’s a great deal of art, ex­pe­ri­ence and a need to con­s­tant­ly ex­pand tech­ni­cal know-how that goes in­to qual­i­ty de­sign work.

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

Be­ing ve­g­an has im­proved my health on ev­ery lev­el. Grow­ing up I was lit­er­al­ly the fat kid at school so I had the le­ga­cy of years of poor eat­ing habits. I now think in terms of peo­ple hav­ing an ad­dic­tion to meat and dairy – foods they’ve been trained to crave since child­hood that cre­ate most of their health problems.

It didn’t take long be­fore I start­ed to no­tice I rare­ly got sick any­more. I was al­ways a sick­ly kid who got ev­ery cold and flu go­ing around, but now I ma­n­age to avoid al­most all of them. My fat de­creased and mus­cle in­creased and I had the en­er­gy to ex­cer­cise. Th­ese days it’s noth­ing for me to swim a kilome­ter at the pool 5 times per week in ad­di­tion to 3 gym ses­sions.

Out of cu­rios­i­ty I re­cent­ly had my health and vi­ta­min lev­els test­ed and ac­cord­ing to my doc­tor all of my read­ings are in the ide­al range. So if any­one tries to tell you that ve­g­an­ism is un­healthy in the longer term then I’d have to dis­a­gree : )

It’s cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble to live an un­healthy ve­g­an lifestyle – there are so many de­ca­dent desserts and sweets avai­l­able, Lord of the Fries fast-food burg­ers in Mel­bourne, Trip­py Ta­cos Mex­i­can food, Chee­z­ly ve­g­an cheese – the list goes on! All of th­ese foods are great in mod­er­a­tion but I’ve seen some peo­ple try to live on Veg­emite sand­wich­es and 2-minute noo­dles, and un­for­tu­nate­ly th­ese are the peo­ple who give ve­g­an­ism a bad rap, get sick and end up go­ing back to eat­ing meat and dairy by de­fault.

Can you de­scribe some of your favou­rite meals, take­away or home cooked?

I have a range of quick and easy meals I pre­pare for my­self at home as well as more elab­o­rate dish­es when I’m shar­ing food with others. I’ve con­tribut­ed some of the recipes to Up­roar’s recipe pages in­clud­ing Pas­ta Pron­to and Easy Ve­g­an Cheese­cake.

Meet­ing nu­tri­tio­n­al needs is re­al­ly easy and ba­sic – in ev­ery meal I try to have a se­lec­tion of:

A pro­tein source:
to­fu/tem­peh, beans, len­tils, nuts etc
A car­bo­hy­drate:
rice, bread, po­ta­toes, corn etc
Dif­fer­ent coloured veg:
eg. bro­col­li with red pep­per, or as­para­gus and car­rot

That’s ba­si­cal­ly it as far as nu­tri­tion goes.

What that means is if you have a stir-fry and re­place the chick­en with fried to­fu in soy sauce, add bro­col­li and red cap­sicum and serve with rice or noo­dles then you’re done. There re­al­ly is no mys­tery or dif­fi­cul­ty to be­ing ve­g­an.

The on­ly sup­ple­ment I take reg­u­lar­ly is a Mul­ti-B vi­ta­min to make sure I get enough B-12, but I think ev­ery­one re­gard­less of di­et should take a Mul­ti-B be­cause they help to reg­u­late mood and stress lev­els. You’d be sur­prised how many meat eaters have B-vi­ta­min de­fi­cien­cies.

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

Yeh all the time! Just about ev­ery new per­son I meet will com­ment that I don’t look un­der­nour­ished or skin­ny for a ve­g­an. Peo­ple have it in their heads that be­ing ve­g­an means de­priv­ing your­self of some­thing.

The other mis­con­cep­tion is that I sup­pos­ed­ly live on raw let­tuce and boiled veg­eta­bles. I can’t think of any­thing worse when there are so many de­li­cious foods to eat.

Is there any­one who has par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spired or helped you? Have you in­flu­enced any­one else to go ve­g­an?

Many of my friends over the years have in­spired me by the choic­es they make, their com­mit­ment to their be­liefs and em­pa­thy for others.

How­ev­er it’s the an­i­mals who have come in­to my life who have re­in­forced that ev­ery­one feels joy, pain, excite­ment, bore­dom, stress, re­lief, lone­li­ness and com­panion­ship.

I’ve looked af­ter a cat for 19 years now and it’s quite amaz­ing the in­flu­ence he’s had on peo­ple. He has a very dist­inct per­so­n­al­i­ty and de­mands re­spect be­fore he’ll let any­one get close to him. Friends and part­n­ers have start­ed out an­noyed that he doesn’t meet their ex­pec­ta­tions of how an ‘an­i­mal’ should be­have, but then they’ve slow­ly learned how he likes to be treat­ed and seen how af­fec­tio­nate and lov­ing he can be.

More than any­thing else I’ve seen how that ex­pe­ri­ence opens them up to the fact that an­i­mals are in­di­vi­d­u­als just like our­selves, with their own pref­er­ences and emo­tions. It’s on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore they make the con­nec­tion be­tween what is on their plate and who is on their lap.

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

It’s re­al­ly im­por­tant not to se­g­re­gate your­self from the rest of so­ci­e­ty. If you’re in­vit­ed to din­n­er with your meat-eat­ing friends or fam­i­ly then make it a point to go so they can see that be­ing ve­g­an doesn’t mean los­ing your so­cial net­work or on­ly eat­ing sal­ad. It’s amaz­ing how of­ten peo­ple de­cide to try what you’re hav­ing rather than an an­i­mal-meal and it in­e­vitab­ly leads to con­ver­sa­tions about why you choose not to eat an­i­mals.

In all things, lead by ex­am­ple. Be some­one who you can re­spect and do your best not to com­pro­mise what you be­lieve in, which means liv­ing the life you want to, not what you think is ex­pect­ed of you by your fam­i­ly and friends.