Jennifer Heyes

How and why did you go ve­g­an?

As an avid an­i­mal lover, I turned veg­e­tarian when I was 8. Then, when I was in high school my doc­tor told me to start eat­ing white meat “for the pro­tein”, so I obliged. About two and a half years ago I was do­ing some soul search­ing (as I guess you tend to do in your mid-twen­ties) and re­alised I had lost touch with the things I felt so pas­sio­nate about.

I had stopped be­ing ac­count­able for my ac­tions; I still adored an­i­mals but had ra­tio­n­alised that it was OK to eat white meat sim­p­ly be­cause a doc­tor had told me so eleven years ear­li­er. That’s when I start­ed to re-eval­u­ate things and start­ed tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the choic­es I was mak­ing. The more I learnt about ve­g­an­ism, the more it made sense to me.

Since em­brac­ing the ve­g­an lifestyle, I fi­nal­ly feel I am liv­ing the life I was al­ways meant to; it may sound cliche, but I’ve nev­er felt more at peace with my­self. I feel re­ward­ed and full­filled ev­ery day.

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

I ac­tu­al­ly found the tran­si­tion to be very easy. I think once you un­cov­er the hor­ri­ble truths about the in­ten­sive live­s­tock, dairy and egg pro­duc­tion in­dus­tries, the knowl­edge you have ac­quired and all the hor­rif­ic im­ages that you have seen re­main cen­tre stage within your con­s­cious­ness. That pas­sion ends up in­flu­enc­ing your ev­ery de­ci­sion, and sud­den­ly, you find that that glass of mi­lo or toast­ed cheese sand­wich doesn’t seem so ap­peal­ing any­more.

Ini­tial­ly I found some dif­fi­cul­ty deal­ing with peo­ples at­ti­tudes; it’s amaz­ing how de­fen­sive and ag­gres­sive peo­ple turn just from over­hear­ing a con­ver­sa­tion you might be hav­ing. It’s as if your pos­i­tive choic­es are a re­flec­tion on their neg­a­tive ones, and so they feel the need to pa­tron­ize and at­tack you to make them­selves feel bet­ter. When you feel com­fort­able and con­fi­dent in your own con­vic­tions, ex­ter­nal neg­a­tiv­i­ty can’t shake you; if any­thing it builds you up.

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

My fam­i­ly and friends have been re­al­ly sup­por­tive; I’m lucky to have such amaz­ing peo­ple in my life. Ini­tial­ly there was a con­cern that I might spend my days read­ing the in­gre­di­ents on the back of box­es, and of course there were the “but how will you get enough pro­tein?” queries, but once they saw how hap­py, healthy and full of life I was, those wor­ries were dis­missed. My 74 year old Dad of­ten com­ments that I’m in the best form of my life.

A few of my friends have since turned veg­e­tarian/ve­g­an, in part from the chats and dis­cus­sions we have had.

That be­ing said, you can’t sit across the din­n­er table with your nose turned in dis­gust at the meat on your friends plate, preach­ing sanc­ti­mo­nious pro­pa­gan­da and then ex­pect them to be open to what you have to say. If peo­ple feel they are be­ing vil­i­fied, they will shut off. Self-righ­teous­ness won’t get you any­where.

You are more like­ly to open up a friend­ly dia­logue about ve­g­an­ism and fa­cil­i­tate pos­i­tive change when you show peo­ple that you are pas­sio­nate, well-in­formed and speak straight from the heart.

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

I am with­out a doubt the healthi­est I have ev­er been in my life. From a phys­i­cal per­spec­tive, the ben­e­fits are im­mense. From an emo­tio­n­al per­spec­tive, to know within your­self that you have made a con­s­cious de­ci­sion not to con­tribute to the un­ne­ces­sary suf­fer­ing of an­i­mals, th­ese beau­ti­ful, sen­tient crea­tures that bond with their young, that reg­is­ter pain, that can look you in the eye; that knowl­edge in it­self keeps me com­plete­ly and ut­ter­ly con­tent.

What are some of your favou­rite meals?

I am one of those peo­ple who live to eat, and I love in­dul­ging in all kinds of cuisines (es­pe­cial­ly Thai and In­dian). Ve­g­an food is ev­ery­where – peo­ple are of­ten sur­prised how avai­l­able and com­mon it ac­tu­al­ly is. There are a lot of veg­e­tarian/ve­g­an places that I vis­it ev­ery chance I get – Veg Out (St Kil­da/Prahran), Vegie Bar (Fitzroy), Soul­ma­ma (St Kil­da), To­fu Shop In­ter­na­tio­n­al (Rich­mond), Veg­e­tarian Nir­va­na Cafe (Rich­mond), Len­til as Any­thing (St Kil­da/Ab­bots­ford), and some new­er ve­g­an-friend­ly favou­rites; Great Flavours (Frank­s­ton), Feed­mee (Bal­a­cla­va), U Cafe (As­pen­dale) and Wild Yam (Mor­dial­loc), just to name a few.

Fry’s Veg Out Cot­tage Pie (avai­l­able form most Safe­way’s) is one of my all-time favou­rites. My friends of­ten cook for me and bake me de­li­cious ve­g­an goodies. My mum cooks me up ve­g­an food ev­ery week (like eg­g­plant lasagne, vegie piz­za and pump­kin ravi­o­li) and my boyfriend makes a great ve­g­an cur­ry.

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

Peo­ple are of­ten shocked to dis­cov­er that my boyfriend is a big meat eater – I think it’s as­sumed that ve­g­ans and meat eaters can’t pos­si­b­ly co-ha­bi­t­u­ate, and that one will have to con­form to the others ide­als in or­der to have a suc­cess­ful re­la­tion­ship. I am not defined by ve­g­an­ism; how­ev­er it it a big part of my life, but nev­er so much as to iso­late all the peo­ple that don’t ne­ces­sary agree with my val­ues.

Prob­a­b­ly the most ab­surd thing I’ve been told is that fol­l­low­ing a ve­g­an di­et will cause your brain to shrink (!)

Is there any­one who has par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spired or helped you?

Fun­ni­ly enough, it was two peo­ple that I had nev­er met be­fore that had a mas­sive im­pact on my tran­si­tion in­to ve­g­an­ism. I stum­bled across a cou­ple of web­sites and mys­pace pages, one be­long­ing to a lo­cal girl by the name of Jamie Yew. Her page was filled with con­front­ing, pow­er­ful words and im­ages, and I was in­s­tant­ly in­spired. It was from there that I start­ed to find out more and more in­for­ma­tion about an­i­mals as com­modi­ties; the dairy in­dus­try is es­pe­cial­ly ap­palling. It’s sad how we have be­come so apa­thet­ic, so con­tent in the bliss of ig­no­rance; amaz­ing how we treat our pets like kings and yet we can’t ex­tend the same con­sid­er­a­tion to all the other “non-do­mes­tic” an­i­mals who end up as a meal, as a hand­bag, or as in­gre­di­ents in sham­poo. The in­for­ma­tion is all out there. It’s just about open­ing your­self up to it.

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

There are so many dif­fer­ent tac­tics, but some­times the most ef­fec­tive meth­ods are the ones that sneak up on you; sub­tle in their ap­proach but pow­er­ful on im­pact.

For in­s­tance, there was a fan­tas­tic ra­dio cam­paign last year, nar­rat­ed by a young girl, de­scrib­ing the cru­el prac­tices of in­ten­sive pig­geries. It was sim­ple, but very ef­fec­tive and quite mov­ing. The mes­sage was clear; it hadn’t been di­lut­ed by over­s­ti­m­u­lat­ing mar­ket­ing tools or gim­micks. I think ap­peal­ing to peo­ple’s mo­ral­i­ty and in­tegri­ty in a non-threat­en­ing man­n­er, sup­port­ed by statis­tics and evi­dence, while out­lin­ing the huge health and en­vi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of a ve­g­an lifestyle is a pos­i­tive way to go.

Its an in­di­ca­tion of de­mand that ve­g­an al­ter­na­tives to al­most ev­ery­thing are not on­ly avai­l­able, but have be­come com­mon­place. We need to keep putt­ing pres­sure on the providers of our con­sum­ables by al­ways ask­ing what ve­g­an al­ter­na­tives they pro­vide and al­ways en­cour­ag­ing them to in­tro­duce more op­tions, in or­der to en­sure ve­g­an­ism cont­in­ues to be­comes more main­stream, and sub­se­quent­ly more ac­cept­able within our so­ci­e­ty.