Ralph Lowe

How and why did you go ve­g­an?

How? I be­came ve­g­an the same way ev­ery­one does, by stop­ping putt­ing an­i­mal prod­ucts in­to my mouth… is there another way? I was veg­e­tarian since I was a young tee­nag­er, but I didn’t turn ve­g­an till my ear­ly twen­ties. I al­ways knew eat­ing an­i­mals was wrong, but I guess I was a bit thick, be­cause it took me a while to re­alise that milk and eg­gs di­rect­ly re­sult in the death of an­i­mals as well… I was al­so held back by my atro­cious cook­ing skills. Then I moved in with a cou­ple of su­perla­tive ve­g­an chefs who set me straight.

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

When I first be­came veg­e­tarian, I was young and knew ex­act­ly ze­ro about nu­tri­tion. The change of di­et was about as poor­ly re­searched and planned as it could have been, but I still worked it out. The tran­si­tion to ve­g­an was seam­less and ef­fort­less. It’s re­al­ly not that hard. I go to the su­per­mar­ket, take some food off the shelves, take it home and cook it, just like ev­ery­one else.

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

Peo­ple treat your di­e­tary habits with the same excite­ment as you do. Since I have nev­er felt be­ing ve­g­an was a par­tic­u­lar­ly big is­sue, no one else made a big deal out of it ei­ther. I sup­pose over the years I have “turned” three or four ve­g­ans, and over a dozen veg­e­tarians. In­ter­est­ing I did not tell even one of them to “stop eat­ing meat”; they work it out them­selves once they have all the in­for­ma­tion.

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

I would like to say that it makes me feel bet­ter, but I haven’t eat­en meat in over twen­ty years, so I re­al­ly have noth­ing to com­pare it to. I don’t think the sci­ence is re­al­ly clear on the health im­pact of ve­g­an­ism un­til you are con­sid­er­ab­ly old­er. In another few de­cades we can pre­dict my lev­el of obe­si­ty and gen­er­al car­dio-vas­cu­lar health will be bet­ter than av­er­age, and my chance of di­a­betes, can­cer and heart dis­ease are all low­ered, which sounds like it might be cool. Some fu­ture me prob­a­b­ly thinks I am do­ing a great job now.

You’ve com­pet­ed in and won sev­er­al Brazilian Jiu-Jit­su com­pe­ti­tions train­ing as a ve­g­an, can you tell us a lit­tle more about that?

I have com­pet­ed in BJJ for over a de­cade, watch­ing it grow from a pret­ty ob­s­cure mar­tial art prac­ticed by half a dozen in­ter­net geeks to the mas­sive four hun­dred com­peti­tor events we have now. I have won me­dals in my weight cat­e­go­ry a few times, both at the State and Pan-Pa­cif­ic lev­el. There are a lit­tle group of veg­e­tarians and ve­g­ans at my acade­my, and I spend ex­tra time teach­ing and train­ing them. I have nick named them “Team Ve­g­it­su”. See what I did there?

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

At home I am a huge fan of the stir fry. Give me an ex­cuse to put large vol­umes of veg­eta­bles, to­fu and mock meat in­to the one dish and I am in heav­en. Change the sauce a few times a week and hey pres­to! Sud­den­ly it seems like you are a skilled cook. For­tu­nate­ly Mel­bourne has lots of good places to eat out for ve­g­ans. I need all the help I can get.

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

Ac­tu­al­ly, very few. Since I don’t tend to wear my ve­g­an­ism on my sleeve, by the time peo­ple find out about it they have usu­al­ly al­ready made up their mind about me. When the top­ic is dis­cussed, I tend to find the short­est, sim­plest ex­pla­na­tions cut through most of the rub­bish. Q – Why are you a ve­g­an? A – (al­ways with a look of in­cre­dul­i­ty) Be­cause I don’t want to kill an­i­mals.

Is there any­one who has par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spired or helped you?

Well, I sup­pose I have al­ready men­tioned the two ve­g­ans who con­vert­ed me with their mys­te­ri­ous baked, stuffed, stir-fried, Hun­garian cap­sicum soups and other crazy yet di­vine food­stuffs. And I should al­so thank my sis­ter who went veg­e­tarian just be­fore I did in high school, and thus bore the full brunt of my par­ent’s dis­plea­sure. When I switched over a few months lat­er she had al­ready won the hard bat­tles for me! Fi­nal­ly, I should men­tion my child­hood ethics idol, Trip­i­ta­ka from the late sev­en­ties TV se­ries ‘Mon­key’.

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

Don’t preach. If peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed, they will ask. Ve­g­an­ism is such an ob­vi­ous mo­ral choice when you have all the in­for­ma­tion, it doesn’t need to be ’sold’ or dressed up as some­thing spe­cial. It can help to have clear­ly worked out what you are go­ing to say be­fore you end up in a the­o­ret­i­cal/mo­ral dis­cus­sion, how­ev­er. I think I could dis­cuss ve­g­an mo­ral­i­ty in my sleep, I have had to ex­plain it to om­ni­vores so of­ten.