What’s the first thought that comes to mind upon hearing the term vegan or vegetarian? Hippies? Lentils? Tofu? Stephanie Zevenbergen finds out how some individuals have moved past the stereotype.
Elise Walton gave up meat cold turkey. Pardon the pun. Four years ago, it was the terrible fate of a young shark that made Elise Walton and her husband eliminate meat from their diet. And they’ve never looked back.
The Romsey couple’s decision was cemented after viewing a documentary about sharks in Brazil.
‘‘It showed this awful footage of little sharks being de-finned,’’ she recalls. ‘‘They didn’t chop their heads off or put them out of their misery or anything.
They put them back and there was this vision of this little finless thing just falling in the ocean, with its eyes wide open.
‘‘I cried for an hour I reckon.’’ A week after becoming vegetarian Walton felt healthier and lost weight.
‘‘We’re still really happy with it and we’ll never go back,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s one of those things that I think people who haven’t thought it through look at us as if we’re a bit nuts.’’ So why aren’t they vegan? ‘‘I like that I can sit down and have my lunch and know that nothing has died to bring me this lunch. That’s basically what it comes down to.
‘‘It (vegan) is not something we’ve seriously considered but we make conscious choices when it comes to dairy.’’ Walton explains how they don’t buy dairy products with ‘animal rennet’ in them, which comes from a dead animal’s stomach lining.
They’ve also given licence for their two-year-old daughter to eat meat, if she chooses.
‘‘We’re not going to actively encourage it, but we’re not going to actively discourage it.’’
A weekly menu at the Walton household includes spinach and ricotta cannelloni, roast pumpkin and chickpea curry, vegetarian pizzas and meat substitutes. Being labelled ‘the vegos’ at a dinner party hasn’t deterred them..
‘‘We just get used to that and that’s fine, that’s just part of it, it doesn’t worry me,’’ she says.
‘‘It is strange and it is a label and I think some people must think we’re hippy weirdos for doing it but I don’t mind that either.’’
While the Walton’s haven’t delved into the vegan culture, it seems more and more people are making the choice a priority.
Over in Werribee, Jason Carstens has been a vegan for 24 years. The 42-year-old cut meat out of his diet at when he was a teenager before committing to being a vegan some years later.
For him, it was his morals and beliefs that changed his eating habits.
‘‘I turned vegetarian at 16 because I didn’t like eating meat and I was cooking in the kitchens part time and found out about dairy and gelatine,’’ he says.
‘‘Because I was a vegetarian for animal welfare, once I was armed with information I had to go vegan, or be a vegetarian and be a hypocrite.
‘‘Because if you’re doing it for animal rights then you should be vegan.’’
It was a conversation with his mother that led to his initial conversion.
‘‘I was brought up in the high rise commission fl ats in Prahran, I ate what was given,’’ he says.
‘‘One night mum came home, and we were pretty poor, but she did a good job to feed us, she came home with this chicken and she was really happy and she goes ‘we’ve got fresh chicken tonight’.’’ Carstens responded: ‘‘as opposed to what?’’, only to learn the difference between frozen and fresh chicken.
‘‘I said, ‘so you’re telling me this one was running around this morning or yesterday’ and she said yes and I said ‘I’m not eating that thanks.
And that was it.’’ At family get-togethers Carstens brings his famous vegan lasagne and will often eat prior to catching up with friends for a meal.
‘‘It’s not a part time thing. It’s funny people say to me ‘oh are you still a vegan?’, ‘no it was just a passing fad …’,’’ he jokes..
While he hasn’t deliberately eaten an animal product for 24 years, Carstens believes some may have crept in.
‘‘I’m sure there’s been things in my meals in restaurants and stuff,’’ he concedes.
‘‘I’m sure (chefs) have accidentally put egg in my food, but in my mind if I consciously request it, then so be it but that’s not my intent.
Carstens maintains that killing an animal is wrong, no matter what spin you put on it, especially in regards to the hype over live cattle exports.
‘‘People say you’ve got to kill animals humanely. Killing is killing isn’t it?’’, he asks.
‘‘A rose by any other name is still a rose, it’s killing and that’s it.’’ Jared Shay wakes up to a green smoothie in his Pascoe Vale South home.
The 23 year-old vegan’s morning meal is usually a smoothie containing ice, mango, banana, almonds and spinach.
‘‘The spinach makes it bright green,’’ he says. ‘‘But you can’t taste it.’’ For Shay, being a vegan has nothing to do with animal rights, tree-hugging, or any environmental obligation.
When he fl ew the family coop at 19, he realised buying meat wasn’t mandatory.
‘‘I’m not sure if there was a main reason; when I moved out and started cooking for myself, I stopped having the option. I realised I didn’t have to buy meat.’’
Shay says rather than a vegan diet limiting what he eats, it’s actually expanded his options.
‘‘It’s funny, I guess my diet when I wasn’t vegan was prepared by my parents, my dad is a distance runner and it was always healthy but it wasn’t vegan,’’ he says.
‘‘Being vegan made me look for other things, it’s expanded what I eat, there’s lots of cultures that won’t use meat primarily as a focus on their dishes.
‘‘With any curry or any stir fry, there’s always a variation where you’re not focusing on meat.’’ Gavin Webber has a different story to many. After staring at a big, juicy ham on Christmas day, Webber and his wife Kim decided to reduce their meat intake.
Since then he estimates a 95 per cent reduction in their meat intake.
‘‘I don’t know if we’ll go the whole hog and go totally vegetarian, because I still like bacon,’’ he says.
At their home in Melton, Webber tends to an extensive vegetable garden, growing his own pumpkin, tomato, garlic and capsicums.
He has also planted a small fruit orchard in his front yard. He writes on his blog ‘The Greening of Gavin’, about his family’s meat-free eating.
He says one of the main benefits of reducing his meat intake was the health benefits.
‘‘I was scheduled to go in for a cholesterol test.
My doctor said it was border line and if I didn’t do anything, I would have to go on to the tablets to reduce it,’’ he says.
‘‘And there’s side effects for those sorts of tablets, they cause memory loss, lethargy, nausea, all sorts of stuff and I didn’t want that.’’ A recent blood test showed Webber’s cholesterol and blood pressure had decreased.
So he’ll continue eating bacon and eggs every second Sunday … until it starts to mess with his cholesterol.
