Stephanie Rodda

Can you tell us how you came to be ve­g­an?

I’ve al­ways had a love of an­i­mals and when I was younger my Dad would al­ways lec­ture me about the way an­i­mals were treat­ed in the meat in­dus­try, as he has been veg­e­tarian for as long as I can re­mem­ber. So as I start­ed to get old­er and more aware of the things that go on in this world it got me think­ing about what I was re­al­ly con­tribut­ing to.

As I be­came a more con­s­ci­en­tious per­son I na­t­u­ral­ly be­came a veg­e­tarian. And then af­ter see­ing Earth­lings, a doc­u­men­tary about our treat­ment of an­i­mals, I was com­plete­ly changed for­ev­er. I knew I would be ve­g­an from that day on and nev­er look back.

Was go­ing ve­g­an easy for you?

Go­ing ve­g­an was the easi­est thing I’ve ev­er done. It was se­cond na­ture re­al­ly. At first of course I need­ed to do a bit of shop­ping around and talk to other ve­g­ans to find all the de­li­cious ranges of foods need­ed to re­place the prod­ucts I used to eat that con­tained dairy or egg. I even find that non leather shoes are al­ways nicer than the re­al leather de­signs. And cheap­er of course!

What sort of re­ac­tion did you get from those close to you?

My fam­i­ly were great about me go­ing ve­g­an! And I’ve defi­nite­ly in­flu­enced my Mum, grand­par­ents and a few friends too. Ev­ery­one knows how I am so they weren’t sur­prised when I made the change.

Have you no­ticed any changes in your health since go­ing ve­g­an?

The first thing I no­ticed was I had more en­er­gy. I nev­er get sick any­more, my skin’s clear­er and I defi­nite­ly feel lighter, so it’s easi­er to main­tain a healthy weight.

Have you en­coun­tered any ab­surd stereo­types or neg­a­tive at­ti­tudes?

The first thing peo­ple as­sume is that all I eat is let­tuce. No one has been mean di­rect­ly to me or made rude com­ments, they re­al­ly just don’t un­der­s­tand. They ba­si­cal­ly be­lieve its ‘na­t­u­ral’ to eat meat so I al­ways end up hav­ing to ex­plain ve­g­an­ism, and the rea­son be­hind it, to them. It does get frus­trat­ing some­times but i love mak­ing peo­ple think twice about their food choic­es.

Is there any­one who has par­tic­u­lar­ly in­spired or helped you?

An­i­mal rights groups have been ex­treme­ly help­ful in giv­ing me all the in­for­ma­tion i need­ed to make the change. And just see­ing an­i­mals in gen­er­al be­ing hap­py and liv­ing the life they were meant to live in­spires me to keep try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence for them.

What are some of your favou­rite meals?

Veg­gie stir fry with pas­ta in black bean or Mon­go­lian sauce, Veg­etable Pael­la, Veg­gie roast, and I love all types of ve­g­an cho­co­late cakes and cup cakes, es­pe­cial­ly the home made ones. This ba­sic (ve­g­an) Cho­co­late Oreo Cup­cake is won­der­ful.

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

Ve­g­ans should not just as­so­ci­ate with other ve­g­ans. It’s im­por­tant to al­so have non ve­g­an/veg­e­tarian friends, as other­wise we be­come too se­parat­ed from main­stream so­ci­e­ty’s way of think­ing. I know it’s hard to sit with some­one while they eat a steak, but if we don’t min­gle with peo­ple like that they will na­t­u­ral­ly de­vel­op their own stereo­type of what ve­g­ans are like and what type of peo­ple we are ie. emo, hip­pie etc. And I’m cer­tain­ly nei­ther of those! Th­ese are the types of stereo­types that make peo­ple in main­stream so­ci­e­ty as­sume you must be like that in or­der to be a ve­g­an which is so un­true and wrong.

 

• Helmut Gensen

  29th

  September

  2010

  Hi Stephanie – your cousins Jahmila (12) & Mahalia (15) also dance. Working in Health, I’m mostly vegetarian and think we all should be – for the sake of the planet as well as for reducing the suffering of animals. Good on you.