About Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World

learning to love your inner vegan freak

To correct a misunderstanding that many people had about the first edition of this book before having even bothered to read it, we don’t think that all vegans are freaks, and we don’t think you have to be a freak to be a vegan. However, it is patently clear that if you consciously separate yourself from others through everyday choices about food and other aspects of your life, you’re going to be viewed differently by those around you. This difference isn’t something you should run from. On the contrary, you should embrace this freakdom, be at home with it, and fully own it, not only for your own sanity, but also for the efficacy of building a vegan social movement as a whole. This ownership of your vegan freakdom is also the first and most critical step towards keeping you a happy vegan and building genuine vegan community. Whether you’re a new vegan or whether you’ve been a vegan for the last decade or more, recognizing this vital aspect of veganism is essential not only to your own long-term mental health but also to the long-term success of veganism as a community and movement of people who collectively decide say “enough already!” when it comes to the use and abuse of animals for human ends.

—from Chapter One of the Second Edition

Sometimes being vegan is harder than it should be. Usually, you’re just minding your own business, when out of nowhere, it seems like everyone is giving you static in some way or another because you’re vegan or you mentioned that you might, at some time, in some distant future, possibly contemplate going vegan. When you mention the dreaded V-word, normally rational people go a bit off the deep end and act like you’re getting ready to follow a charismatic leader with dark sunglasses to some humid South American jungle where you’ll be mixing up some poisonous Kool-aid for the eventual day that the “outsiders” will parachute in on you and take your babies away.

Okay, perhaps it isn’t quite that extreme, but most people do seem to go a bit irrational when you mention veganism. By going vegan, or even contemplating it, you are, after all, making a decision that runs contrary to the way our meat-eating cultures operate, and like defying any other cultural norm, you should expect some push-back. In this book, we give you the tools not only to understand where that resistance comes from, but also to work with it constructively, so that you can diffuse difficult situations without flipping over dining tables in anger. Over our many years of working on these issues, we’ve found that being true to the ethics is – contrary to the expectations of many – the easiest part of veganism. What tends to be the most annoying thing is dealing with the rest of the world who expects you to eat dead aniamls just like they do.

Considering that we all live in a world full of meat-eaters, we vegans are in the minority. Trust us, that’s not how we’d prefer it, but we’re not naive enough to imagine reality as anything that it’s not. Being in the minority makes us a group under a sort of cultural and social seige, and we think that unless you understand this situation, you’re never going to really be as effective as you could be in dealing with the rest of the non-vegan world. Truth is, we want you to recognize and get comfortable with the idea that the great meat-eating masses of the world think we’re freaks, and that that’s okay for the time being. We want you to embrace your vegan freakdom, because what veganism needs is more vegan pride. Veganism is something to be proud of, not something to hide from or apologize for.

In our book, we encourage you to look at veganism as an empowering personal choice that has the potential to form the foundation of a broad-scale social movement that will change the way the world sees animals. By going vegan, you can be at the center of this movement. And in all honesty, the time has never been better to go vegan.

We wrote this book because we want to entertain you. We wrote this book because we felt like we had something to offer. We wrote this book because we want you to go vegan. And in this book, we show you how to do it, from your first day as a vegan, onward to the rest of your life. Whether you’re a new vegan, or whether you’ve been a vegan for years, we believe that this book has something to offer you. And we hope you’ll pick it up and join us in the vegan journey.

vegan freak is resourceful

Besides helping you to learn to love your inner vegan freak, there’s also a wealth of information and resources in the book designed to make your vegan life as easy as possible. In the appendix, we include huge lists of suggested reading, cookbooks, websites, and more. In addition, throughout the book, we give you advice about how to handle the many social and personal situations that you’re apt to find yourself in, ranging from business and family outings to travel, to what to order in restaurants so you don’t end up going insane.

If you’re not sure what to eat, how to cook, or what ingredients to watch out for now that you’re vegan, we’ve got advice on how to approach shopping and dining so you can stay both happy and healthy in addition to being ethically consistent. And of course this goes beyond food – we also address clothing, personal products, and other things you might put in your mouth. ; )

On top of all of this, there’s also a chapter on animal rights theory that’ll help you argue your ethics from a logical standpoint. From here, you can easily move into more reading so that you can deepen your understanding of this essential component of veganism.

2nd. Edition Fortcoming!

We’re hard at work on our 2nd. edition, which will be out in Fall 2009. For more details, please see our publisher’s page for the 2nd. edition of Vegan Freak.