Phil Rasmussen

How and why did you go ve­g­an?

Be­fore go­ing veg­e­tarian I was ini­tial­ly a big pro meat ad­vo­cate, didn’t like many veg­eta­bles, and was very ig­no­rant to top it off, which is nev­er a good com­bo. I can re­mem­ber all through my school years and teens walk­ing around eat­ing raw meat in shop­ping cen­tres, eat­ing my mother’s mince raw be­fore it even made it to the fry­ing pan, and even suck­ing the in­sides out of raw sausages at BBQs, much to the dis­gust of my fam­i­ly and friends. So it’s al­ways amus­ing when peo­ple ask me if I miss meat, and I ex­plain to them that i’ve eat­en meat in ways that would tru­ly re­volt them and no I ab­so­lute­ly don’t miss that at all.

My ini­tial switch to veg­e­tarian­ism was sole­ly be­cause of my first girl­friend who was a long time ve­g­an and huge in­flu­ence on my de­ci­sion through her pa­tience and com­pas­sion. Then af­ter years of cont­in­u­al drum­ming about the dairy in­dus­try and its in­her­ent cru­el­ty, I fi­nal­ly sat down and watched the doc­u­men­tary Earth­lings and sub­se­quent­ly de­cid­ed I would nev­er touch an­i­mal prod­ucts ev­er again in my life, it had that big of an im­pact on me. So the mo­ral of the sto­ry is, if I can go ve­g­an any­one can!

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

Not re­al­ly, be­cause the years of be­ing veg­e­tarian and con­sum­ing soy milk and mock meat prod­ucts had al­ready made my tran­si­tion to ve­g­an­ism far easi­er, and when I fi­nal­ly dropped the eg­gs and cheese it wasn’t dif­fi­cult at all. I do tend to en­joy the mock meat prod­ucts a great deal as I was nev­er a huge fan of eat­ing lots of veg­gies and I still like to have a meat-like prod­uct like to­fu/tem­peh/mock meat in my meals. It was a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult when out and about to find food though. Cer­tain­ly eat­ing out is al­ways pain­ful un­less you are lucky enough to live in Mel­bourne where the ve­g­an op­tions are plen­ty. Trav­elling in­ter­s­tate a lot for work I of­ten find my­self at air­ports try­ing to find some­thing sub­s­tan­tial I can eat. My sav­ing grace th­ese days is to al­ways keep a stash of Clif Builder bars and lara bars handy for those mo­ments.

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

My fam­i­ly for years thought I was go­ing through a fad be­ing a veg­e­tarian and nev­er took it se­ri­ous­ly no mat­ter how many ar­gu­ments we had over the din­n­er table, and how many times I ex­plained the re­al­i­ty of where their food comes from. Then when I went ve­g­an I was sud­den­ly con­sid­ered ‘ex­treme’, though my fam­i­ly now is at least ac­com­mo­dat­ing of ve­g­an meals and will eat them around me and try the food. Fun­ni­ly enough af­ter go­ing ve­g­an my sis­ter fol­lowed suit and has been ve­g­an now for 3 years, though my pres­sur­ing her to watch earth­lings con­s­tant­ly may have had a part in that.

I have in­flu­enced sev­er­al of my long time friends over the years to go veg­e­tarian and some have even gone ve­g­an and re­mained that way. The best part is that my fam­i­ly and friends have al­ways en­joyed the food op­tions I have giv­en them to try, and stat­ed that if is was easi­er to find them they would have no is­sue eat­ing ve­g­an more of­ten. My work col­leagues have al­ways been very un­der­s­tand­ing and will gen­er­al­ly eat veg­go meals around me when we go to lunch, and my boss has even changed her lifestyle around to raw ve­g­an­ism in the last cou­ple of years which I like to think i had a part in.

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

When I switched from a meat to veg­e­tarian di­et around 11 years ago I lost around 8kg in the sub­se­quent months, but this was more due to my poor di­e­tary choic­es at the time and dis­like of many veg­eta­bles. I found the biggest change af­ter go­ing from veg­e­tarian to ve­g­an, much to my sur­prise, was that my weight train­ing wasn’t af­fect­ed, and ac­tu­al­ly got bet­ter. I ma­n­aged to per­form my biggest bench press (150kg raw), squ­at and dead­lift just 2 years af­ter go­ing ve­g­an, while my pre­vi­ous best dur­ing my pow­er­lift­ing (and heavy meat eat­ing) years at uni had al­ways been 142.5kg. I get blood tests done fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly as well and my choles­terol and blood pres­sure are very low, and all other vi­ta­min/nu­tri­ent lev­els are al­so at very healthy lev­els. Over­all i just feel a lot clean­er in­side with­out the dairy and have in­cor­po­rat­ed a lot more fruit and veg­gies in­to my di­et as well in re­cent years.

Can you de­scribe some of your favou­rite meals?

I’m pret­ty sim­ple when it comes to meal choic­es and al­so quite picky which doesn’t help giv­en I am al­ready ve­g­an. Most morn­ings I love a big bowl of oat­meal with soy milk, chia/flax/sun­flow­er seeds, and fresh/frozen ber­ries on top, or al­ter­na­tive­ly i might just have a big sand­wich with na­t­u­ral peanut but­ter along with a green smoothie for an en­er­gy boost to start the day.

Lunch­es and din­n­ers I love most things with mock meats and to­fu, so the Fry’s range of sch­nitzels/burg­ers/sausages can al­ways be found in abun­dance in my freez­er, and I love mak­ing baked To­fu mari­nat­ed in soy sauce and olive oil and sprin­k­led with nu­tri­tio­n­al yeast and us­ing this ei­ther in a burg­er or just eat­ing as a snack cold.

My per­so­n­al favou­rite meal would be chick­pea and len­til sal­ad with olive oil and le­mon juice, a chopped onion, and baked to­fu or tem­peh cubes add­ed for the ex­tra pro­tein kick. Since I’m not on any par­tic­u­lar fat loss train­ing regime, I’m quite lib­er­al when it comes to raw ve­g­an ice-cream and ve­g­an cheese­cake, raw cho­co­late, and any lol­lies that don’t con­tain ge­la­tine I can get my hands on. It al­so doesn’t help that my girl­friend is a fan­tas­tic cook and spe­cialis­es in ve­g­an deserts.

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

Well in the past I was of­ten sub­ject­ed to the stan­dard lines like “where do you get your pro­tein”, “what do you eat”, “all ve­g­ans I have known are sick­ly thin and pale” etc. I guess I am for­tu­nate in that I’ve not re­ceived too much neg­a­tiv­i­ty over the years ex­cept from old school mates who will still per­sist af­ter 11 years with the “get some more pork on your fork” type com­ment in an at­tempt to get a rise out of me. Mind you th­ese are the same friends who over the last de­cade i have con­sis­tent­ly beat­en in bench press and arm wrestling, so they don’t re­al­ly have a leg to stand on with their ju­ve­nile com­ments. On a pos­i­tive note, it’s al­ways worth­while when some­body is gen­er­al­ly im­pressed with your ap­pear­ance and phys­i­cal strength and re-eval­u­ates their pre­vi­ous mis­con­cep­tions about ve­g­ans.

Is there any­one who has par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spired or helped you?

My ex girl­friend had been ve­g­an for over 20 years and was ex­treme­ly pa­tient with me over the years, and to be hon­est if it hadn’t been for her in­flu­ence I may have nev­er end­ed up where I am to­day. I was al­so very much in­spired by Joaquin Phoenix, along with Robert Cheeke, Alexan­der Dar­gatz and Avi Le­hyani from ve­g­an body­build­ing a few years back.

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

Cer­tain­ly pre­sent­ing your­self as an am­bas­sa­dor for ve­g­an­ism through both healthy body and mind to shoot down the stereo­types and help ed­u­cate and in­form the gen­er­al public is a great start. Guys are defi­nite­ly hard­er to win over as there is a huge ma­cho bar­ri­er sur­round­ing the con­sump­tion of meat, and many men feel some­how emas­cu­lat­ed by re­mov­ing flesh from their di­et. The more nor­mal peo­ple per­ceive us to be, the more in­c­lined they will be to lis­ten and ask ques­tions about the ve­g­an lifestyle, and it’s cer­tain­ly a pos­i­tive sign to see an in­creas­ing num­ber of ve­g­an prod­ucts and op­tions ap­pear­ing in su­per­mar­kets and res­tau­rants each year.