Our story It began in a foreign country in Western Europe. It was the summer of 2018. We made a move and later, another decision that would change our lives f o r e v e r. The city was Berlin. The year was 2017, in the … Read more...
Articles on Vegan ed. showcase what it means to be vegan; thriving without animal products and getting all your nutrition from plant-based foods. Tips on how to start, maintain and improve yourself the journey. For those who are living or want to live a compassionate life. Read the following articles to nourish your brain!
Oven-baked sweet potatoes, bright green broccoli and roasted garlic.
Being vegetarian before vegan is unnecessary
Being vegetarian? How come I wasn’t aware of the word vegan?
As a teenager, I worked at a grocery store near my house and I was a cashier. I remember being at the first belt near the door, the worst position when it was winter. There, at the shortest belt, I would cash out customers with 1 to 8 items. Guess how many of those 1 to 8 items were meat? Probably just half the time and yet carved in my brain is the nightmare of scanning meat products, especially raw flesh which would often be cold and leak through the thin plastic wrapping unto my clean belt.
My face is expressive so I couldn’t hide my disgust. I would disapear from view for a second (wishing to disappear from there) as I grabed the spray bottle and tissue in the lower cupboard under the cash register all the while screaming internally, and wipe the belt clean before serving the next customer. I was a fast scanner, so the disruption of my work was probably evident but forgiving. It was in those moments that I one, wanted another job, and two wanted to never see or touch meat again. It was awful…
Vegetarianism – here I come!
In the summer of 2006, I graduated from Highschool. Before starting University in the fall, I went camping as a counsellor. Our meals are prepared for us to meet our specified dietary needs. It was there that I decided I was a vegetarian. I was away from home, a high school graduate and nearly a first-year uni student, so WHY NOT?!
When I returned home, I didn’t have the same ease to choose vegetarian because there was no such thing in an African household. I began to cool for myself. Of course, my parents were shaken and worried that I didn’t eat meat which was a cultural necessity with most meals. My mom tried to tell me to eat it and failed so she enlisted my calm Dad to do the job. He told me it would be my last day being vegetarian and I was calm and silent. I was vegetarian for 10 years.
Learning about my health
Years earlier, the doctor confirmed that I was lactose intolerance so I stopped drinking milk, although sometimes I would chance it with ice cream… I know, I know… I went through a period of buying lactase enzymes to help me digest milk products. They were expensive and I hated standing in the aisle reading all the labels, trying to get the most out of my money and so I stopped buying them and accepted my digestive intolerance.
I enjoy researching different topics so vegetarianism was exciting. I looked up what the body needs and substitutes for my favourite foods. Still, I ate pasta, rice, and noodles, starches that turn to sugar once digested. I enjoyed beans as it was a part of my cultural cuisine and I ate vegetables too. My mom would buy many vegetables and put me in charge of eating them so they wouldn’t go to waste (sometimes I failed).
Beans make me
Hello, world – I am vegan!
I became vegan in 2016 and although in the past I was envious of those who could carelessly eat creamy cakes and sweets, I had no temptation being day-dreaming for a split second about a carefree reality. I wanted my own vegan version and I have become somewhat of a seasoned baker since being vegan.
Why did it take me so long to make the leap to veganism?
Like my wife, I also thought being vegan would be much harder and limit my options even more. I say often that I was about 98% vegan
I never imagined I’d be married to another vegetarian, let alone vegan. We were both vegetarians when we met so we never had an issue of where to eat, I would pack us a plant-based meal and we’d be out and about!
Being vegan has blessed me in many ways. First, I am open to more vegetables and foods. I never run out of inspiration to create new meals because of the lovely vegan/plant-based community. Secondly, I am more creative with food. I eat colourfully and it’s tamed my sweet tooth. Lastly, it made me question other areas of my life that I wasn’t being so conscious about such as food waste and plastic craze. Even the products that I used reflect my lifestyle. I actually started wearing my natural hair before being vegan. The natural beauty from within shines out!
Current goals?
I am working on getting my water intake up again! And regularly exercise as my dopamine instead of social media and sweets!
Read more on veganism and plant-based living:
What is Being Vegan All About?
Let’s chat: What’s your vegn story? How did you make the leap?
How to appreciate the environment?
As I wrote in my earlier post, I became vegan mostly for animals. I didn’t want to participate in their killing, but while as a vegetarian I was seemingly okay with the trauma, misfortunes, and death happening to fish, cows, chickens. I still consumed seafood and the bodily fluids and products made from them. Also, I wasn’t thinking so much about the environment.
Vegan for all
More than 10 years, I didn’t think of the environment, just the pain of animals. However, as a vegan, I became really awake, environmental protection really came to my mind. I am not an avid user of social media, but Instagram has been a really great tool for me on educating myself. At first, I following Peta, James Aspey and Animal Liberation Front and later many vegan individuals all around the world.
On this day, I am vegan for all – for animals, for the planet, and for health. I really love the way I feel without eating any animal products. I am not in a haze, nor do I feel overstuffed after rich meals and I am definitely a smarter shopper, as I make wiser decisions, taking into consideration planet Earth.
Since there are more vegans, actually the number of vegans has increased 160% over the past 10 years. Because of that, there is a higher demand and shops are responding to the changing needs. Many big supermarket chains all over the world have created special vegan range of foods and also free-from items such as in Tesco’s in the UK. If you haven’t noticed them, then I guess you really haven’t been looking for them in your home store.
Support local products
A great place to start is looking more closely at where most fresh produce and many packaged foods come from. When entering supermarkets to get our fresh produce, we oftentimes do not think from where these items have traveled from. But we should consider the environmental impact, and what we are supporting while buying these items. The foods that travel from the other side of the world, are not so environmentally-friendly as the produce coming near where you live.
Our eating habits can affect other countries’ economics and well-being. Exporting is good for any country’s well-being, but of course only to an extent. If we exploit a country and its resources, the people who live there cannot eat the products we demand from them. Then, this is a problem caused by us, for instance, quinoa and avocados are known to cause such problems in their country of origin. Kenya, for example, has banned the exporting of avocados, because the country’s supply is at risk. There is little room to think about what this means for the environment. More forests are cut down, oftentimes illegally, so more avocado trees can be planted.
Being vegan is definitely a better choice for the planet. Balance is the key to everything and also educating yourself. The long-haul produce traveling is not disappearing, but perhaps we do not have to eat quinoa and avocados every day. Maybe there are other people who do the same. I haven’t been a follower of popular food items. I have had quinoa, every now and then, but I haven’t bought it for years myself. What we should keep in mind is that there are products we can buy and therefore support small country economics. So the idea is not to boycott everything that comes from far away.
Choices and needs?
It all comes down to our choices and needs. We do not have to eat products shipped from far away when we could eat the locally grown food variety instead. Not only eat, but we should grow more of the nutrient-rich foods, like beans, millet, peas, and hemp. What is good about pulses, is that they do not require nitrogen inputs and carbon emissions. Also, they are insect-pollinated thus boosting wildlife and biodiversity.
We basically have to grow more food locally for us, not to grab the food from other countries half the world away. Growing plant food is better for the land as well, because of the increased diversity, a grower doesn’t have to control so much the diseases, as usually happens when growing wheat from year to year.
Writing this article was heavily inspired by the Independent article, which you can read here.
Berlin Vegan Summerfest & The Official Animal Rights March Berlin 2019
To be precise, this weekend was an amazing experience!!!!!!!!! All things that matter to a vegan came beautifully together during Berlin Vegan Summerfest!
Day 1: inspiring lecture, AFTW and burger time
Being our first vegan festival outside of Estonia, where we attended the Tallinn Vegan Fair in October of 2015 and July 2019 at Tallinn Vegfest, it was a welcomed third experience. Berlin Vegan Summerfest was booming with countless conscious organizations spreading awareness. I have to mention Pro Veg, who organized the festival. The annual festival was full of businesses selling countless vegan products, from cheese, never-ending handouts of Made with LUVE ice-cream bars, and Palmyra, Nature’s Delights which offers the freshest and best dates in town (dates better than Tinder dates!) and of course we can’t forget about the RESTAURANTS! We were constantly salivating!
Inspired by That Vegan Couple
On Saturday afternoon, we scurried out in time to catch the last of the English lectures, the last being by That Vegan Couple. They are Australian activists whose videos I’ve seen on YouTube. At the end of their lecture, they said that Anonymous for the Voiceless is holding their demonstration in an hour. Imagine a group of wonderful vegan activists with the goal to educate the public at a vegan fair!
As we waited for the much anticipated demonstration, we approached one half of That Vegan Couple for a chat. She shared that they are on a vegan activism tour, and even visited Toronto! Unfortuntely, they gave a similar lecture in my home-city, but it was not received there with the same energy as it was Berlin. My excuse was that awareness in Toronto is already strong. Check out our stories on Instagram to hear a snippet of the lecture, which was impactful.
Anonymous for the Voiceless – our new calling
In our mind, these are local celebrities for justice from AFTW, giving voice to many issues that to us contribute to the Can’t Human Properly feeling that founded this site. To my surprise, Anonymous were just ordinary people who had joined the movement. Their shirts presented proudly ”vegan, environment, and health” division. After seeing them in action, we wanted to become part of them.
Pep talk to anonymous participants:
Outreach should be positive. Your role is to leave people with a good impression, and inspiration to research more about the price of participation in animal agriculture and cruelty. Don’t loose your cool as the person will go home and recall the negative interaction. People will think badly of vegnism or the cause because it was lost on drama and ego. Oh, and if you are holding a laptop depicting animals in slaughter house, and a child approaches without an adult, put your hand up so we can help the child find their guardian. It’s not that we don’t want the child to see the truth, but not without their guardian around, who may choose to share with them or not.
Paraphrase of the part of the pep talk that I heard.
As you can see, it was an insightful time before they finally organized to form a cube. Some clever signs with slogans and others held a laptop playing slaughterhouse scenes. All had the classic white Anonymous masks, with black facial hair, a smile, and pink rosy cheeks, though some rosier than others.
We had a glimpse of the screens but did not watch the videos in full. As we are already vegans, it is not necessarily for us. As That Vegan Couple characterized it, it is meant for ‘not yet vegans’. Besides, I don’t do well when I expose myself to terror and horror. Kerly only needed a few seconds of the Earthlings trailers three years ago to shift from vegetarianism to veganism. Some hearts are open to veganism with glimpses of slaughter houses.
Trying some amazing vegan food
After all the free samples, there was not much room, but we set our eyes on Réger Burger food truck. We ordered two burgers, a classic for Kerly, and a Cheezy for me. All patties were black bean and seitan based, and although the texture was good, the patty was nothing without the delicious toppings. Sadly the cheese was unimpressive, as it was a bright yellow sauce that wasn’t so memorable. Still, we enjoyed it, topping off mouthfuls with swigs of cold Shanghai matte tea, which we were told by a passerby were geschenkt! (given for free).
As we ate and I chatted in Twi with a Ghanaian mother we had met in line, we started a conversation with two vegan girls sitting beside us, both German, but one is half American. The girls were so cool! We exchanged information, and honestly, meeting them changed the whole game of this weekend! We learned so much, which I’ll share in the next part of our weekend at Berlin Vegan Summerfest.
Day 2: The Official Animal Rights March 2019 Berlin
The second day was not planned. In fact, it wasn’t supposed to even happen! And yet, it had to, because it is was the best part of the whole Berlin Vegan Summerfest!!!! We were inspired to come to The Official Animal Rights March Berlin, because of our new two friends we met at the festival.
After getting to bed past 2 AM, we woke up at 10 AM. When my eyes opened, I knew that we had to go to the march. I don’t know how my mindset shifted so fast. The day before, I was still stuck on the idea that perhaps I shouldn’t join this march. I thought if people are fighting against something, then by universal law it is drawn to us. But actually, I found that attending this march was critical. We have reached a crisis point where our actions or inaction will destroy our species, countless others, and the planet whose skin we live on. I felt nothing but positive energy and bliss at the march, and I know that it came from a higher place. It was like it was meant to be, and was supported by the universe.
Joining the march!
Of course, we were a little too late to join the march, as we slept in and it took us an hour to get closer to the march’s start location. Luckily we had our new friends there on time and they shared their location on WhatsApp. So we were able to see in real-time, where they were and we caught the tail of the march in no time after exiting at Eberswalder station in Mitte.
At U Rosenthaler Platz, we all stopped in the center of the wide street, and participated in a mass ‘dying’, to signify the death of the many animals at the hands of slaughterhouses. We literally dropped down on the hot street and laid down on it. It was powerful! The sad drum beat made Kerly cry, while she was thinking of the animals. Of those who have lost their lives, who are in a bad situation or who are abused for human needs at the moment. I and some others wanted to document it, so sat down, but almost all catalysts laid there. Timelessness swept us, and finally, we stopped up and cheered so loudly that we probably woke up she of those
Some of the striking slogans at the march were:
Shout: THERE’S NO EXCUSE
Reply Shout: FOR ANIMAL ABUSE!
Shout: WHAT DO WE WANT?
Reply Shout: ANIMAL LIBERATION
Shout: WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
Reply shout: NOWWWWW!
&
GO VEGAN, GO VEGAN, GO!
We ended each chant with the cheering of course! So glad that the march took place at the same time when Berlin Vegan Summerfest – joining more people for the cause!
Did I say it was hot? Cos the sun of ablaze on us, and we realized on the way home that we had not once felt the need to empty the ol’ bladder all day, till 9 PM when we reached home! Meanwhile, we had had a few liters of liquid.
We weren’t left to entertain ourselves with just our sweet voice, because there was live music, including drums. The march came to a nice halt behind Alexanderplatz, then the speeches began. The one I was totally there for, not that I wasn’t there for the other, but because it was in English, was by That Vegan Couple. They sounded like the day before but on STEROIDS, it was so POWERFUL! I realize now that the high energy of the march made the speech that much more impactful, and it gave me chills/goosebumps in the 32 C sun!
Important realizations this weekend
Vegans must do more form of direct action to read awareness. People are needed on the front lines and in supporting roles!
It is not enough to be vegan, otherwise, people trivialize it to mean simply what you eat.
Veganism is not a trend.
Veganism is not a personal choice #veganismisnotapersonalchoice
Connecting with other vegans is crucial because when you feel down about the journey, they will lift you up!
Find your vegan friends
After the march, we drank liters of water, indulged inf Made with LUVE ice-creams. Yeah, it was a hot day, so we both had about 10 sticks. The best surprise was a Taiwanese Vegan Street Food in the culinary section, which filled us fully. Though the portions looked small, they were filling and besides vegan, also gluten-free.
As we said earlier our two new friends from Nuremberg were really helpful for informing us about the cool things happening at the festival. One thing they pointed out was Speed Friendling. Which was basically speed dating, but for vegans and for friends. We had never participated in such an event, so we and other 14 people tried it out and it was fun! 45 minutes of talking and asking questions, definitely left our throat sore. But also, in the end, we had 10 people, who kind of stayed around waiting for something to happen.
Something really happened! We can now say that we have a group of vegan friends, and we have a WhatsApp group to prove it! We hope they stick around on the journey to awakening the planet! Trust that we will discuss our passion of giving voice to animals, the environment, and oppressions, over delicious vegan, thus cruelty-free food!
In the end, this is all you need some entertainment, good food, wonderful people and a cause, which makes you move. We found all that in Berlin Vegan Summerfest and we can soon start calling ourselves vegan activists!
What is being vegan all about?
If you have recently heard more and more the words vegan, plant-based, veganism, etc. and you are a bit lost on what it all means or you are looking at the definition of veganism, then by the VeganSociety.com it is:
“A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms, it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”
Sounds simple? On top of it all, vegans do not wear leather, wool, silk or any other fabrics derived from animals and also do not use products tested on animals. Vegans are more environmentally friendly, active, healthier, often avoid smoking, alcohol, and drugs.
All vegans are connected by plant-based food, which is what initially defines. This is also the main reason for heated discussions between vegans and non-vegans. As a plant eater, you just have to understand that your life can be a constant justification of why you no longer eat animal products. I wonder do vegans also always think why carnivores are not vegans instead?
Busting a myth about vegans
Vegans do not only eat salad, but they are very creative. They love eating an array of different vegetables, legumes, nuts, grains, fruits, seeds. Also, a common practice is stuffing themselves (hopefully not every day) with special replacement products. Options are endless: you can choose a variety of mock meat, cheese, milk, and butter. Most processed foods are no longer healthy, so we should not eat such products so often. All in all, it is very easy to ‘
Not all vegans instantly know what it is all about, like me for example. I wasn’t thinking of animal exploitation or being super healthy, I just didn’t eat animal products, when I became vegetarian. Beans, seeds, nuts? I didn’t care much what I was putting into my mouth, as long that wasn’t meat! When I became vegan, I became more, as we here on Can’t Human Properly say, awake and the rest followed in time. Living is learning. If you are thinking of becoming vegan, then know, that there is a lot to discover first, but that is the fun part.
Thinking like a vegan
When people first become vegan, they may only think about food. Once new plant-eaters hunger is taken care of, they may start thinking more about animals and therefore of the environment as well. Not only about the safety of animals, but also that they are individuals and have feelings as well. They have every right to exist in this world
The devastation of animal farming
Animal farming has an overly high impact on planet earth. Vast areas in the industry are dedicated to
We, here in Can’t Human Properly, don’t think that a simple, I love meat and we need to eat meat can justify this. Earth’s environmental situation is not so great and if we do not make changes, we are doomed. The future generations are not going to able to enjoy the world our parents did.
On top of that, the food industry is also a monster. It is creating lots of pollution, waste and is oftentimes abusive to the growers of some particular foods. The food economy is responsible also for the growing waste problems. It happens mostly due to the high production of plastic, which is threatening marine life, waterways. Therefore affecting directly, fish, animals, birds
How did we start eating meat?
Yes, eating meat has been normal for us and practiced quite since the beginning of the humankind. It helped us to grow bigger brains and move out of Africa to colder climates. Still, our first meals were plants, berries, nuts, and seeds. As the human mind developed, we became smarter and learned how to capture animals, birds, and fish and consume all that we could of the catch.
Beyond evolution, we have become “meat hooked”, as Marta Zaraska titled her book ”Our 2.5 million year obsession with meat.” We live in the 21st century, where most things are possible and there are so many options NOT to eat animals. It is maddening that one should question why people are vegans! Yeah, in ancient times there weren’t beans, legumes, tofu, healthy fats, (definitely no avocados), different flours, fruits,
Reference:
Ammonia Emissions and Animal Agriculture, Jennifer G. Becker and Robert E. Graves