Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Veganuary 2026: Mark's Vegan Journey (Originally released 2025)
62 Plays22 hours ago
This January we are re-releasing all eighteen of our 'Going Vegan' series, to shine a spotlight on the huge variety of everyday normal folk who choose to avoid animal expoitation through choosing a vegan lifestyle.
In today's rerun, we hear from regular Falafeller & all around animal hero, Mark!
For the original shownotes for this episode, visit Episode 138 directly https://zencastr.com/z/9o8pke8u
****************
Enough of the Falafel is a community of people who love keeping on top of the latest news in the world of veganism & animal rights. With our podcasts, we aim to keep listeners (& ourselves) informed & up-to-date with the latest developments that affect vegans & non-human animals; giving insight, whilst staying balanced; remaining true to our vegan ethics, whilst constantly seeking to grow & develop.
Each week we look through news stories from the past 7 days in the world of veganism & animal rights, as well as picking a 'timeless' vegan or animal rights issue, and discussing it in more depth.
If you spot any news stories that might catch our fancy, or have an idea for a discussion topic, get in touch via enoughofthefalafel@gmail.com.
*******************
Thanks everyone for listening; give us a rating and drop us a message to say "hi"; it'll make our day!
Mark & Ant
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Enough of the Falafel Collective
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi there, this is Anthony from the Enough of the Falafel Collective. We're a group of just everyday vegans who for the last two and a half years or so have been releasing two podcasts a week bringing you vegan and animal rights news as well as philosophical discussions. And many of the contributors on the show have released a special episode in the past where they've talked about their journey of going vegan.
Re-releasing Past Episodes for Veganuary 2026
00:00:26
Speaker
And for Veganuary 2026, we are re-releasing all of those episodes and the episode you're about to listen to now is one of those so it's been recorded at some point in the last three years and it features one of our contributors we really hope you enjoy it and that you continue to join for other episodes that we release over the course of 2026
00:00:50
Speaker
rather than the pink or the black that the normal shows have. So, Mark, go back as far into the past as you can with the first kind of little kernels of possibility that living in a vegan way or a way that avoided any kind of animal use might be a possibility. What's the furthest back you could trace those origins?
Discovering Vegetarianism in the 80s
00:01:16
Speaker
Furthest back, I can remember any mention of, say, vegetarianism, which is where it was at back in the, I suppose, early 80s when I was coming coming of age, if you like, would probably have been Paul McCartney from the Beatles. And there'd been a reference made to him.
00:01:33
Speaker
in probably every interview he ever did around then, that he was a vegetarian. And i i was triggered by the idea that people would have this interest in other species to such an extent that they were willing to forego what was clearly a very tasty, convenient food and be and be the subject of At the very best, a curiosity. At the very worst, worst ah hostility, I suppose.
00:02:04
Speaker
um and why would And why would anyone do that when it wasn't expected of them? There was no demand being made of them externally to do so. In fact, there was probably demands being made to not do so, I guess, really, if you if you were to analyze it. yet Yet they
Cultural Background and Speciesism in Ireland
00:02:20
Speaker
still did it. And then, okay, so I was brought up in Cork City in Ireland, coming of age in the early 1980s before the Catholic Church and began to disintegrate, which which was another sort of 15 years away, really.
00:02:34
Speaker
and So it was a ah Catholic dominated a society that had ideas around a concept called dominion. which is the explained in Genesis, which is the first book of the Old Testament, which ah is all about the um superiority the superiority of the human species above everything else and that we are masters of everything we see, that crawls, swims, or flies.
00:03:03
Speaker
And the implication in that was that we we could do anything that we wanted with them More or less for any reasons, there was obvious, there there was sort of a common consensus around that you wouldn't be cruel to your or anyone else's pet.
00:03:17
Speaker
But if you didn't have a personal relationship with an individual animal, then all bets were off, really. You know you could you were could do anything to it. And referring to them as it was a huge part of this syntax and language approach.
00:03:34
Speaker
is symbolic, but it's hugely symbolic. And how we use the word it when we refer to other beings that are clearly male or female is odd, especially when a lot when a lot of people often to refer to boats as she's and other inanimate objects as he's or she's and all all non-human animals despite them clearly having a gender, as always, was it's. So i was I was brought up, I was marinated in a soup of speciesism,
00:04:05
Speaker
since I came out of the womb, trickles of an alternative have began to seep through when we first got BBC in in Ireland. Up to then, it was a state broadcast and network called RTE, e which was highly conservative.
Influence of 'The Animals Film' on Veganism
00:04:21
Speaker
It still is. ah Very parochial, very religious, even even now. And very cheap TV as well, because they had hardly any money. So it was very cheap, easy TV, very boring, and very right-wing. And then the BBC came on air over in Cork around the same time that Channel 4 started up.
00:04:41
Speaker
And once I got exposed to stuff that Channel 4 were playing, in particular the movie called The the Animals Film, which was made in 1982. When I saw that, it just it blew my mind in terms of the up-close, personal, loud nature of the imagery. I mean, ah I knew it was happening all around me. It wasn't that I wasn't aware of that.
00:05:02
Speaker
The ham I was eating or the chicken i was eating had once been moving around and wanted to stay that way. I you know i wasn't naive to that extent, but seeing it seeing it happen in front of you, even if it's just through a screen, was I found it horrifying, absolutely horrifying. I could possibly have accepted that as a reality of the world I lived in. What I found found harder to accept probably was that there was nothing being done about it, really, of any significance.
00:05:30
Speaker
Some people might have been talking about it and Paul McCartan was a vegetarian. But in terms of people challenging this consensus, the status quo, there was nothing happening in Ireland really of of of any significance. When I say nothing, I mean, there was one or two organizations that were a single issue that were ban hair coursing, which is a particularly gruesome so sort of blood sports, or there was an anti-vivisection society that spent most of their time condemning the ALF over in the UK.
00:06:00
Speaker
than they did drawing attention to the atrocities being carried out on animals in in Ireland. So I i found myself coming of it really sort of coming of in in a world where um I felt there was nothing being done to address this ah
Journey from Vegetarianism to Veganism
00:06:16
Speaker
horror at all. And i didn't want to live in a world or and I didn't want to be in a society where nothing was being done about this.
00:06:24
Speaker
So the only option I had was to do something about it. So I won't go into humus to to too much detail about all of that, but um I ended up in the Hans Saboteur Association.
00:06:36
Speaker
But you were you were asking about the ah the vegan journey specifically. I went vegetarian when I was 13. The concept of veganism wasn't around, wasn't in my head until...
00:06:49
Speaker
I think I was 15 or 16 and I began to get exposed to anarcho-punk, prass, rudimentary, penile, conflict, ah Flux of Pink Indians and these sort of bands who banged on about animal rights and and veganism and had ah contact addresses to the Vegan Society in London on the backs of their albums.
00:07:10
Speaker
So I wrote to them. I got a load of stuff back in the post. Obviously, this is pre-World Wide Web. So the World Wide Web was the post office. So things took longer, but you know the information was more at the same.
00:07:22
Speaker
And I devoured this. And i've I've never been a huge animal person. I don't stop ever at every cat. i I walk past to stroke them and talk to them for 20 minutes. I might do that the odd time, but I'm not... you know i'm not um an animal lover in the traditional sense of the word. I do love animals and in the same way as I love people.
00:07:47
Speaker
And then also I hate some people and I've come across animals that I hate. Police dogs. We've mentioned this in a previous episode, I believe. I don't like police police dogs. Police dogs don't like me. This is fair enough, given the dynamic that I find myself in when I'm interacting with with with with these animals. So animals, non-human animals, are people in a sense. They have personalities, typically.
00:08:08
Speaker
So it made complete sense to me. The whole vegan thing, I was just born, i was born sort of facing in this direction, basically. I don't know how or why. It happened. It was a chance. was it was ah Was I exposed to things at a certain point in time that I made sense ah out of them in a particular way that landed me in this ideology?
00:08:29
Speaker
I don't really know, but I do know that it's it's it's made more and more sense to me as I've been vegan and I turned vegan when I was 18. But that wasn't always a straight journey either. okay i went back to being vegetarian when I was 30.
00:08:45
Speaker
for about eight years to my great shame, I must say now. And it's it's a head scratcher. We're all products of the society that we're in. When I went vegan, I went vegan as soon as I left home. As soon as I could, I went vegan. When I left home about 18, moved from Cork to Limerick to go to our college, had a wonderful three years. I started vegan day one there. And I moved in with another guy who was vegan. And I haven't looked back since, except then when I was 30, I went to India for three months on my own.
00:09:16
Speaker
and And that wasn't the plan. I was meant to go with a friend of mine, Phil, and um that fell through. And I ended up there and on my own. And as I was there for three months and about a month in, I was so weak.
00:09:30
Speaker
I found it hard to get out of the bed the of the hotels I was staying in. The heat was killing me. The bizarre nature of the society there was really throwing me off. And I felt weaker and weaker by the day. And I convinced myself that I must be lacking protein.
00:09:48
Speaker
or something like this. and the And the propaganda from the opposition that I've been hearing all my life, that veganism has to be bad for you, and you'll feel weak, and you'll feel this and all that, I thought was was coming to fruition.
Challenges Faced in Maintaining Veganism
00:10:01
Speaker
Apart from that,
00:10:03
Speaker
Many years later, i was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which, don't know if the listeners are familiar with this condition, but it's where muscles in your tongue weaken when you're asleep, causing your your tongue to slide back over your esophagus, causing you to essentially start to suffocate yourself.
00:10:23
Speaker
until your brain kicks in and suddenly flips your tongue back into position again and you you breathe again suddenly. It's going to be a ah pauses in breathing that can last for and up to half a minute. So I was diagnosed with this condition, as I say, many years later, but because I was getting such poor quality sleep every night because I didn't even know I had this condition at the time, and this also added massively to my exhaustion. Because I didn't know I had sleep apnea, believed the propaganda all around me and assumed that and maybe I do need calcium from eggs and and things like this in order to get my energy back.
00:11:10
Speaker
And I said, I've got to see if if ah if I go back to being vegetarian, if that helped. helped Because i was I was on my own. and oh i wasn't in danger or ah ill or anything but i was I was very weak and I couldn't i couldn't concentrate. i couldn't it It was actually the heat really more more than anything else that was throwing me out but I i didn't realise this. I'd never been out of Europe before. So I started to eat eggs.
00:11:36
Speaker
ind India is is easy to be vegetarian in. Very easy to. In in fact it's geared towards that. Much harder to be vegan in because they use ghee which is a type of butter oil in loads of things, right? It's it's almost an in an indiscriminate use. It's a bit like sort of fish paste in Thailand. It's increasingly easier to be vegan, but back then it it really wasn't. And so I started to eat eggs and cheese again. And then when I arrived back in the UK, which is where I was living at the time, I carried it on until for about four or five more years. And i was I was halfway between being vegetarian and vegan. I dropped out of being involved in animal rights.
00:12:16
Speaker
I was ah working as a psychiatric nurse, pretty pretty busy during, yeah and I was, ah I didn't, ah I never drank milk again, and I've never touched meat since I was 13.
00:12:28
Speaker
But pieces of dairy, some chocolate and some cheeses, I just couldn't drop from from from my diet. i'd I'd gotten back into the swing of it when I was in India, and I couldn't get out of it again when I was back in the UK. And I'm saying all this to you now. ah Sometimes when I'm asked about, oh, how long have you been vegan? And I i have 10 seconds to give the answer. I'll say I turned vegan when I was 18. I don't go on like this because it takes ages.
00:12:53
Speaker
But I want listeners to, they know this already, it's it's it's not necessarily a linear journey. It's not a cult. It's your own journey. And it doesn't necessarily involve only going forward, you might come back again. You're human and you're living in a world that is not geared towards vegans and that has a propaganda against you.
00:13:13
Speaker
And if you succumb to that propaganda from time to time and think that they're right, they're not, they're wrong, but you might think they're right from time to time, that's okay, you're a human. And I've convinced myself that cheese was too tasty to give up and the animal wasn't dying. And I'd cut myself off from thinking about it and just carrying on like this. And it was easy.
00:13:31
Speaker
it was It was easy to not question it because as I say, society doesn't really want you to question this. yeah Yeah. These sort of things. So as long as I wasn't doing it either, then no one was, you know? And then i remember one day i was, I was back in Europe for the first time in years.
00:13:47
Speaker
I was staying campsite in France. This is about seven or eight years into back being a vegetarian. Always at the back of my mind, I was thinking I should really go back to being vegan. I really should. But I was able to compartmentalize that and sort of put it away, really. Then one day I was i was um having a shave in this toilets in a campsite in France. And I was listening to ah an audio book by Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens. I'm not sure. i don't know if you're familiar with this book. Excellent book.
00:14:17
Speaker
And it was it was the it was the audio book. And he was describing an animal experiment that I had read, actually, in Peter Singer's book, Animal Liberation, back when I when i first began that journey, when I was about 13 or 14.
00:14:29
Speaker
It was the same experiment. And it was being ah relayed back to me as I was looking at myself in the mirror as I was shaving. And the experiment was was essentially, I think it's i mean it's quite a famous one. I'll briefly describe it. It's where they took a a baby monkey and put it with a surrogate mother that would produce spikes out of its body on command. It was like a doll that was dressed up to to look a bit like an older monkey. And the baby monkey thought it was thought that this doll was her mother and was hugging the mother and the spikes would come out. And it was to see how ah much and familial attachment can overcome physical pain. okay Now, the guy doing these experiments was probably a psychopath himself. I was going to say, it's like that that that the mind boggles at the things that a human species can come up with.
00:15:21
Speaker
The depths of cruelty. And when I was reading this when I was 14, it had a huge impact on me then. When it was being relayed back to me, by Yuval Noah Harari in his audio book many years later when I was probably about 38, looking at myself in the mirror and he was describing this experiment. and then And then at the end of it, he said, if this experiment disgusts you, then you shouldn't be drinking milk because the same thing happens with the baby calf and mother cow dynamic.
00:15:48
Speaker
It's the more or less the same thing, except with the animal experiment, it happened to one baby monkey once. awful as it was, this happens billions of times every year.
00:16:01
Speaker
And you're paying for it. You're paying for it. And ah why are you doing this? And I just, I was, did the whole sort of, it it just it just came, it just hit me sort of head on again. i must and go go go back to the family who were who were staying in the camper van that we were in.
00:16:19
Speaker
announced that as soon as we're back in in New Zealand, we we were actually on our way to back to New Zealand at the time. We were sort of staying off in France, sort of on the way. As soon as we arrived back in a few days' time, we were all going to go vegan. We had one very young, it was me, my my wife, who was vegetarian as well, who had been vegan, but ah but but but had got really weakened at him. ah had been getting vitamin B12 injections and hadn't got on too well too too ah too well with the diet at the time, many years previous.
Recommitting to Veganism
00:16:45
Speaker
So when we arrived back here, we decided to all go vegan. And we really looked into it and I was as concerned as the next person is where, pray where, where's my child going to get her calcium?
00:16:56
Speaker
Where am I going to get my calcium? All these sort of things. So I was like, it was almost like, ah I was like a novice again, even though I'd been involved animal rights heavily for about 15 to 20 years, taking taking a break for about five, 10 years.
00:17:08
Speaker
Now was getting back into it again. And a reintroduction to veganism was, the start of my rebirth into into activism, which has been going on for about sort 10 years at this stage, maybe 10, 15 years. So that's a really convoluted, long-winded way of asking the question, of answering your question. And I hope I've done, I hope I've answered some bits of it on a way. Yeah, so happy you absolutely have. That's it's some of my journey for you there.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's brilliant. And thank you for your for your honesty and vulnerability there. I'm interested in in and digging into ah ah a few of your things ah that you've said um a little more. um You've described an environment where you made that step towards vegetarianism that wasn't really conducive to it. So there's lots of obstacles there. There's lots of objections potentially from the society that you're in and the culture that you're in. I'm just interested, like you've... You've you've made that step nonetheless. you've got You've also mentioned some of those objections that kind of stayed with you and and sort of, ah you know, for a period did affect did affect your behaviour. Like, what what would you say were the the biggest sort of personal... doubts or worries or concerns about making that step just at the outset because you know it' you know as as a teenager at times you can feel very certain about your actions and and the and your path in the world but but also you you do know that
00:18:39
Speaker
there there are some limitations to what you know and what you have control over. Like what what were the concerns that you had at the time? To be honest, sort of when I went vegetarian, 13, say 13 and a half years of age, I can't remember and I don't recall having...
00:18:57
Speaker
ah any personal doubts about what I was doing at all. I i heard, from I didn't hear anyone who had anything positive to say, anything think positive about vegetarianism until I met some punks a few years sort of down the line who were themselves actually vegan. Everyone up to that point was either ah confused about my decision, about why I would be denying myself this this thing, theres at this aspect of life, ah or were um ah worried for my for my personal outcomes, for health.
00:19:28
Speaker
and My parents, my GP, the local priests, my sisters, their friends, their brothers, friends, the whole lot, the whole network people, they were practically queuing out the door and saying, you'll be dead in six months, what are they doing? I don't recall. that ah my my My main reaction to all of that was i was perplexed that they were so concerned about my well-being and certain about the outcome. They were all contradicting themselves and each other in their responses to my questions. To be quite frank, I've never had any doubts about about eating meat.
00:20:01
Speaker
It's never been a temptation. I've never missed it. It's been offered to me times I could have eaten and no one would have known It's just, it's it's there's never been an attraction back to that again. Cheese was different.
00:20:14
Speaker
That's because there's drugs and cheese, which didn't realize until sort of years later. I never had a problem giving up meat. I never had a problem and being different in that respect. In fact, that's been one of my...
00:20:28
Speaker
weaknesses, if you like, when I'm campaigning, it it would it it was only when I was writing a book I wrote about three three or four years ago when I was doing the research on that, that I realized how strong fear of standing out is for most people.
00:20:44
Speaker
And I don't have that. And I was just born like that. It wasn't something I tried to attain or anything. i In fact, i didn't root I didn't realize I had that until maybe many years later, about halfway through my life, that I i care a lot less about what people think about me.
00:21:01
Speaker
Probably most other people is what I'm saying, I suppose. And when I was doing research for a book, i am and the Irish government had commissioned a big, huge study in 2018 and followed up again in 2021,
00:21:14
Speaker
a study on why people were drifting why younger people in Ireland were drifting away from traditional affair like ah Beef and dairy and They were going into veganism and why people were taking that up what what attracted them to it and what put them off it what made vegans non-vegans and what stopped non-vegans from becoming vegans and number one on the list was fear of standing out. It was social stigma.
Fear of Standing Out as a Vegan
00:21:41
Speaker
It was ah being the odd one out. It wasn't ah lack of access to good food or worries about health. I mean, all those issues have been done to death now. And all you have to do is go onto your computer and look up a few ah ah facts about nutrition and you can satisfy any doubts you have a ah about the healthiness or the availability or the yeah the tastiness of food, especially these days of vegan food. It's standing out is the thing. And ah it this this really threw me.
00:22:10
Speaker
And did this explains why the movement hasn't been taken up as readily as one would imagine, given the facts that we have on our side. We can have facts come out of our ass, but if people are afraid of standing out, then that would be enough to to put them off.
00:22:28
Speaker
That really hit me for six, that realization. and I didn't realize that there were that many people that were that sensitive about how other people perceived them. Yeah, and I think like people who have listened to to our series as a whole, where we're listening to people's going vegan journeys, that that is ah a common thread, actually. that that a lot of people bring up is that actually, no, I don't care about standing out. And, you know, what i'm I'm the same.
00:22:55
Speaker
I'm the same. it just It just doesn't seem to register as as a problem. It's the biggest hurdle dealt with, perhaps, for most. It is. I think it's it's it's the fear that people have of, oh, if I'm being presented all these facts about switching to a plant-based diet for it's an imperative to cut combat the climate crisis, all these things that are so big that you think it's a must.
00:23:18
Speaker
But what what people are thinking of, I'll go, i'm I'm going out to a restaurant with my work colleagues next week. I don't want to be the guy sitting at the table going, do you have anything vegan? Or is that vegan? And everyone else, all listening in and judging me silently in their head. ah it's that That is the off-putter for so many people.
00:23:39
Speaker
not for everyone and it it varies to some degree you know it's greater or lesser in most people but it is a huge factor in why people are inhibited with veganism in fact i would go so far as to think that a lot of people deliberately eat some bits of some animal produce every now and again so that they aren't fully vegan they're not in one camp of the or the other so someone asks are you a vegan they'll they'll rightly say no because every month i have a bit of cheese yeah But yeah because it's because they don't want to be aligned with what is still considered to be quite a radical, contrarian, revolutionary idea. Yes. Well, I think that the the practicalities of veganism being, on the surface, being centered around food... I mean, in reality, it's not. It's centered around animal exploitation. But just in terms of the practical manifestation of that, you're you're going to come across it when eating yes generally. Yes, it's more visible. Exactly. exactly and and And so to do so secretly... is is quite hard because it's it's very difficult to consume food three times a day without being public about it in some some way, shape or form. I'm interested in terms of the practicalities of um of becoming vegetarian when 13 and vegan when 18 in Ireland. Like, what were were there practical obstacles there? Okay, so there was, I was, I'm from Cork City. So thankfully, there was a place, and it's still there, called the Kiko Op, which is a massive behemoth of a building that was started up in the late 70s by a group of radicals, lesbians, gays, vegetarians, macrobiotics, folk musicians.
00:25:26
Speaker
abortion rights activists so as they all came together and bought this dilapidated building that they turned into a number of things but including a vegetarian ah with some vegan options a cafe health food shop and a bookshop that was all i needed i just needed that socket to plug into i just needed one and it was there and i was lucky enough to be in a city that was big enough in ireland because outside of dublin and belfast there was probably um And this one place in Cork, there was probably nowhere else in the country that really came close to this, you know? So, uh, I could go along to this place and i could buy my, uh, the Linda McCartney frozen, uh, uh, vegetarian sausages. And there was, I think they had a burger type of, um, product as well. Uh, and they had soy milk. So as far as I was concerned, that i mean, looking back, the soy milk tasted like cardboard, the Linda McCartney sausages.
00:26:19
Speaker
They were all right, actually. they were And there was like stuff like sauce mix, you know that that powder stuff? Absolutely love it, yeah. Brilliant. So I still eat that. And there was a thing like a chew of toothpaste, but bigger. And it was like a pate.
00:26:36
Speaker
And you it was a spread. You put it on toast or whatever. And it was like a hummus. and So it was great. This is Ireland at a time where where hummus probably wasn't sold anywhere.
00:26:47
Speaker
And the the a narrow aisle in the supermarkets of international foods would have stuff like pasta in there. ru it Pasta was considered exotic, barmy, you know, weird food, you know, in a and the 70s. So it was all, it was, Ireland had um rationing, post-World War II rationing.
00:27:09
Speaker
for a decade longer than you guys had it over in ah Britain because we we had depended on you for for our economy. We were still very much hooked onto the British economy. So it took until the British economy was back at its feet for Ireland's economy. So that there was a rationing in Ireland until mid-1950s.
00:27:28
Speaker
And then after that, it was all tin stuff. It was very, it was unhealthy, industrial-oriented food for the masses. Cooking was, all veg was overcooked until it came out like a paste.
00:27:44
Speaker
And every Irish mother was was, all the emphasis was on the roast beef. you know, and the, and the, the blamond dessert. So it was all dairy heavy and meat heavy, uh, where the attention went and the vegetables were, uh,
00:28:02
Speaker
you know, a curiosity to be looked at, a little bit of color on the plate, you know, to be left behind. Brussels sprouts and stuff like this. So, yeah, look, i I wasn't particularly interested in food or my health at this point.
00:28:17
Speaker
I assumed that some of what I was hearing about the negative impacts of being vegetarian, some of that had to be true.
Health Impacts and Ethical Decisions in Veganism
00:28:25
Speaker
And I was willing to take the physical hit because i was driven harder than and with the ideology than was concerned about impacts on my health.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, i I really resonate with that. and And, you know, when I went vegan, I was I was lucky enough to. to be in a relationship with somebody at the time who who did take the nutrition side of things very seriously. And so she'd do all the homework and I'd just sort of go along with it. But yeah, but I think because it's it's never been about that for me, I've sort of just thought, well, do you know what? If push comes to shove and I live a couple of years less than than I would have done it, it doesn't matter. I mean, that the the fact is we know that doesn't have to be the case now. So it's great not to have to make that sacrifice, but I do i do resonate with that. i'm I'm interested, Mark, in in terms of you talked to a lot about your your motivation and and and the lack of certain obstacles in in the way for you. But nonetheless, the preconceptions that we might have about what a certain lifestyle or ah a certain change might look like, that they're always with foresight and we never actually 100% know what it's going to be like. until we do with it. And that that goes for anything, not just veganism.
00:29:39
Speaker
What surprised you, either good surprises or or bad surprises, about what the reality actually looked like? When I realized that ah veganism is actually very good for you, and ah as I was growing older and I was less cavalier about um my my own health and more aware of my own mortality and all the rest of it. And and also more genuinely interested in and what actually is protein.
00:30:06
Speaker
What does it look like? And B12, what makes B12? How does that come about? And one line I read, it was a throwaway comment by some hostile right-wing journalist. And he was banging on about,
00:30:18
Speaker
Greta Thunberg and her veganism. And he he had this this comment where he said her and something like her life-reducing, limiting diet or something. He was...
00:30:31
Speaker
He was implying, he was more or less coming out straight saying that ah veganism cannot be a healthy choice because you will live you will live less healthily and for less long because you're a vegan. And nature doesn't allow food to be vegan because of B12. He was using the idea of B12 or the availability of B12 as his main reason as to why we aren't meant to be vegans.
00:30:55
Speaker
And that really pissed me off. And I did loads of research hint into B12 and I know far too much that I need to know about B12 now. And the reason why it's ah hard to access micronutrient in today's world is because of the wastewater treatments and the amount of cleaning and bleaching and the way everything's hyperinflated.
00:31:14
Speaker
cleansed these days including our food supply and our water supply and is made from bacteria and the bacteria doesn't get a chance to grow in water which is where most animals would get their b12 from drinking slightly dirty water basically and the water we drink out of the tap isn't slightly dirty anymore It's got fluoride and other things in it for good reasons, but it means that B12 is harder to access in the modern world, regardless of whether you eat meat or not. But I had to delve into these things because i was being challenged, subtly or not so subtly. And it was in my own interest when I was getting into debates or drunken arguments with people about this that i would be able to pull out facts.
00:31:52
Speaker
and say, you know, if you get too much protein, it's actually bad for your body. And there's a happy amount here. And your problem is you're getting too much. It isn't that I'm not getting enough. I'm getting the right amount. You're getting too much. And ah to to be able to pull those facts out of my hat was quite satisfying. And I got much more interested in the health aspects of it. So I'm delighted to to know and to report to everyone that veganism is among the healthiest, if not the most healthy diets that we know of today. And that's after...
00:32:22
Speaker
centuries of research into these things. So that was a very happy realization. Yeah, well, well ah especially as as you say, that that's that's not any part of of what's influenced you to to to go down that path at all. I'm i'm interested as to what sort of helpful tidbits or all kind of helpful mantras or or guiding principles, I guess, nav helped you navigate those difficulties, whether they those difficulties were practical ones or whether they were um from family and friend um family and friends becoming strangely concerned about your wellbeing or or things like that. Like what what have been...
00:33:05
Speaker
your biggest tools in in navigating both both the change to a different lifestyle, but also being vegan in a world that predominantly isn't vegan? what What's helped you along the way? what What sort of helped me for the first half of that long, long journey was the rage that I had about this issue that was fueled by anarcho-punk, that whole movement. I was fully immersed in that.
00:33:28
Speaker
for for many years and I was carried along on a sea of anger and rage and it was brilliant and it gets so productive if you put that into the ride, if it's a huge energy, it's like lightning and if you can catch that in a bottle and direct it in the right places, it is brilliant and I highly recommend people getting really angry about stuff like this. But that um that was pre-internet.
00:33:52
Speaker
I would say ah now I'm a little bit older and I can't just think about myself ah the way used anymore. I have kids. I've stood back and I'm doing a more sort of a information-oriented role.
00:34:07
Speaker
But where I get my... with with With the internet these days, it's really good and really easy to find people like... And I forget his name now, but it'll come to me. There's a few American doctors that are really, really good that have these podcasts and...
00:34:23
Speaker
ah websites and you go on to them and every aspect of every bit of health, they will cover. Dr. Greger is one of them. And then there's another guy. Neil something or something. Neil Barnard, I think. ah Yeah, that's it, Barnard. And he goes a lot of the ah about dairy. Find a source of a trustworthy information, peer-reviewed science to go
Dispelling Health Myths Around Veganism
00:34:44
Speaker
to. And there's plenty of them out there, but there's Neil Barnard and the fresh guy i mentioned are my two to go to. So that's all your hard and fast facts for any worries you might have about the broader aspects of veganism generally. Second thing I do every year is I get a blood test taken.
00:35:02
Speaker
And I get them to look and analyze and count my numbers of for ah calcium, Bs, all the vitamin Bs, proteins, all the HDLs, all this. And ah i've I've been doing this for a number of years.
00:35:14
Speaker
And I'm always bang in the middle of any range except for cholesterol. and that's and high cholesterol rate at minus ever so slightly high and that runs in the family i like beer too much and i like vegan dark chocolate too much and one of them plus running in the family means i was slightly elevated cholesterol every other ah number is right in the middle. So if the if it should be between five and ten, I'm sort of seven and a half of whatever it is, you know. So I'm right in the middle, happy, sitting there in the spectrum of all the healthy bandwidths for all these different things. So I know exactly my own physical...
00:35:53
Speaker
responses to to my diet and where I stand health wise. So if I'm feeling lackluster of a day or a bit tired or a bit overwhelmed or a bit that's this or that, I know it's just something to do with my immediate sort of goings on. It isn't an ongoing health related issue.
00:36:08
Speaker
Because as a vegan, as you know, and as any other listeners out there who are vegans will know, you will still have people telling you that you you are ah damaging your health because you need to have fish or milk or beef or whatever to survive and thrive.
00:36:23
Speaker
And that is so untrue, it's a joke, but um it might get to you from time to time, but it needn't if you get your blood tests taken. It's free, at least over here and I think over in the and NHS.
00:36:34
Speaker
I phone up my nurse in my clinic, ask ask her to get the doctor to prescribe it, and it's all done and dusted in a day. I go to my clinic. you know It's all free, and the information is there. So I know exactly and where I stand health-wise, and I know I'm in perfect health, and that veganism is great for me. And no matter what I hear the detractors say, i know that's their issue and it's not mine. Yeah, that that that sort of... annual MOT if you like. is yeah, yeah. yeah that's be great thing your nights Nice, nice assurance, isn't it? Yeah, no, no, I get that.
00:37:05
Speaker
I'm interested, Mark, in that, you know, a a lot of people listening to this will be either on their, just starting their vegan journey or they'll be sort of on on the precipice of it. but But either way, you know, they'll be listening to this, you know, when it comes out in in early 2025 or possibly, you know, the way podcasts work, maybe they're listening to it in the very distant future. But were you to be starting your journey now in this cultural context, what do you think would be different for you? Because that that's the context in which those listeners are starting that journey. I just wonder if if there are any sort of time-specific things that you think might make things easier, more difficult, or or just different in any way.
00:37:53
Speaker
It's the vegan journey today is so different from when I started mine and mine are so different from when the earliest pioneers started theirs in the mid 1940s that it's almost like a different planet, but that's a hard realization to actualize in your in your head unless you've experienced
Mental Challenges Against Societal Norms
00:38:14
Speaker
it, right? So vegans starting off their journey today will experience the same feelings and problems as I did but they won't realize that um it was actually much harder back then. So they they will come up again. And again, it'll be the social stigma thing.
00:38:29
Speaker
I'm going to stand out. I'm going to be the subject of conversation. People might wonder about me. Is it really healthy? Am I hearing just a a propagandistic side of you about this? Do we not need all the, as soon as you sort of seriously considering this as a position to take,
00:38:49
Speaker
all the subtle social consensus sort of ideas will start flooding into your head. Like, oh, I heard somewhere that unless there's cows shitting onto the grass, then the grass won't all this sort of stuff. but And it's just a mishmash of nonsense, okay?
00:39:05
Speaker
But it will come out because, I guess, in a way, it's like giving up, giving up a drug is a strong word, but you're breaking with convention. And that takes... um And that will be challenged in your own head by what's being put into your head by the world around you.
00:39:25
Speaker
And no matter where you live, stuff will be put into your head by the world around you. And if you live in a speciesist society, there'll be speciesist ideas of what is normal in there. And that that will be a challenge. And it doesn't matter how much harder it was for me 20, 30 years ago this will still be an equally weighty challenge to newbie vegans today.
00:39:48
Speaker
ah Me saying to them, oh, it was so much harder in my day. We only had Linda McCartney's sausages in cardboard milk and it was all shit and expensive. and I had to cycle for three miles to the only shop in the town that sold it. And now it's so easy and blah, blah, blah. And that doesn't make much of an impact on people when they're when this is going on in their head, right? So I think having a good support network, knowing that their health is in good hands and knowing how to go about it, I think is being presented with sort of a block of tofu just sort of wobbling away in front of you. and not knowing what to do with it, how do you turn that into a tasty, appetizing, protein-rich meal might be a challenge. So ah learning learning how to cook is vital, maybe not vital, but very handy. Fortunately, i'll love cooking.
00:40:35
Speaker
So I like spending time in the kitchen, coming up with new stuff and learning how to cook with stuff like took tofu and turning what looks like an intimidating blob of nothingness into, you know, really tasty meal that people who ah generally eat just chicken will be commenting on how tasty it is. You know, going to be that good, you know So I would say learning the rudiments of vegan cookery, and the rudiments of vegan health and maintain maintaining the anger in your heart is good as well. And I've never had a problem with the anger, but I've never had a burnout, which I'm going to crash when I'm 60. I'm going to crash against the wall. It's so burnt out, but if you won't recognize me. But i' I've been active in Amulet Right since I was about 13.
00:41:19
Speaker
And I'm 53 now. So more or less unbroken, not entirely. And I haven't experienced burnout. And I've been as angry. I'm almost as angry now as was the henry I may or may not be a good thing. I'm not encouraging it or not. I'm just saying that that that's my default position, whether I like it or not, as a most important. Yeah, I think we're richer for it, Mark. I'm i'm glad you're angry. um yeah you've You've mentioned, the with with like I say, at admirable honesty and vulnerability, that the the way that your your journey has progressed and and sort of um turns that it's taken that but now with hindsight you've
00:41:59
Speaker
you know you you did express some ah some shame that that things had had gone in a different way for a a period. I just wonder sort of if if there are things that you wish you had done differently. I mean, from where I'm sitting there's actual incredible value as a whole if if a a movement comprises people who have done what you have done and sort of taken ah a bit of a step off the train for a bit actually because I think it I work with young people um predominantly in my work and very often what will um make them dig their heels in about making a ah new decision is actually that the fear that they can't go back, actually. and And I think in the vegan movement, we can be quite hesitant to to advocate for that because we're we're worried that we're basically advocating for animal abuse or or things like that. But I think as a whole, these stories are quite helpful because actually we can see that actually despite that, you're
00:43:03
Speaker
you know You've now been back on that train for a significant amount of time and and and that's that's still a net win, isn't it? But just just in general, like is there anything that you would change about your journey or or or things that you could have gone about differently or or anything
Struggle with Perfection in Veganism
00:43:21
Speaker
like that? I think given the situation I was in with the resources that i had and have, I've basically ah done as much as I always could. for During my active years, I've always been really sort of full on, really. um If I'd been born in a different country, things would have been different. I was born in a country where there was not much going on.
00:43:43
Speaker
where what was going on was what we were making going on. If I could have plugged into something bigger, things might have been bigger in that sense. and I'm being deliberately coy. um no No, there isn't. No, there isn't. I'm ashamed that I went back to consuming dairy, but i learned i learned from that. People shouldn't think that this is a...
00:44:04
Speaker
This is a black and white demand. that this This is a hard thing. when when i went When I decided to go back to being vegan, when I was listening to that awful story about the monkey being tortured by this psychopath in the name of science and equating that with the dairy industry that I was part of at the time, I said to myself that, okay, look, if once in a while, if I really want to eat a dairy chocolate bar, I will.
00:44:32
Speaker
Otherwise, I'm vegan. Now, to a lot to a lot of vegans, you're not a vegan because you have you you you haven't 100% committed to being vegan. You've allowed this close once in a while in order to maintain the veganism for 99.9% of the time.
00:44:51
Speaker
There'll be a ghetto close for once in a while because I know what I'm like. So I said, ra okay, I and me and my wife and my young child will all do this vegan thing.
00:45:03
Speaker
If once in three months I'm at a supermarket checkout and I see a Mars bar and I really want to eat the Mars bar, I'll get that Mars bar and I'll eat it and I'll eat it really quickly and I won't tell anyone and I'll just do it. And then the the second after it's gone past my mouth, I'm vegan again.
00:45:19
Speaker
Okay. So I made this commitment to myself because I couldn't, commit to 100% veganism, even though I've been active in this movement for decades at this point, this is when I'm in my thirties and I'm so in the French cancer. And even someone with my depth of sort of involvement in this, I can step out of it for a while, back to being vegetarian,
00:45:44
Speaker
be called back into it, but still have to make this pact with a part of my brain that says, okay, look, once in a while, if you really want to have, it would never happen with meat. and that That necessity, that mental hack never was required with giving up meat. That was just instant.
00:46:03
Speaker
That was a black and white thing for me. Dairy was different. Why? Maybe there's a thousand reasons I could. There's it there's a few reasons I can think of easily, but ah it it was. it It was just in my head. i had to have this Faustian pact saying, OK, once in a while. So it's either it's if it's the case of either I'm not going to go vegan because I can't totally commit, or I will go vegan, but once every three months, I'll have the dairy chocolate bar, which is better. it's the It's the latter option. I'll go more or less vegan.
00:46:36
Speaker
I'll do this dairy thing if I really feel the need to, or I'll allow myself to have that option. was the was the arrangement in my head. And I found after about a year, so I did that in the first year, had dairy confectionery about two or three times in that year, surprise purchases at the checkout. You know where they have all the chocolate and all that, you know? Yeah, I just had to put it in quick and no one's looking and I just eat it quick. And, you know, it was almost like, yeah, it was a weird, weird situation.
00:47:07
Speaker
And I was so underwhelmed by the taste of my mouth. I was like, really? does this she Really for this? Really? You know, fuck it. Just go and head over heels in. so but so And at that point, after about a year, 18 months into the vegan journey, and the second vegan journey, i was like, okay, just it the the taste is so banal.
00:47:28
Speaker
Is this what they mean by the banality of evil here? that there There's hardly anything to this. And people are banging out. Oh, I couldn't give up Mars Mars. I couldn't give up this and that. Really? They're on that much. You know mean? And so... So it was a it was a bumpy journey, you know, it was it was a bumpy road. It wasn't... And i appreciate the um difficulties that people who are less committed and less immersed in the anarcho-punk, direct action sort of milieu and philosophy, which is most of the people, if I'm having these struggles...
00:47:58
Speaker
then other people are having them as well. you know and So what i want to stress to people who listen to this who are considering beginning veganism or beginning veganism is that it's it's it's up to you. It's you. It's not a cult. There's no one judging you.
00:48:13
Speaker
Well, there probably is, but people are always judging each other. But it's not a political party. It's not a religion. It's a personal thing. And you deal with the best way that you know how. you're working against the odds and working in a machine that is anti the way you think, essentially. So there will be compromises, there will be psychological hacks that you might have to trick yourself with.
00:48:37
Speaker
But now I can safely say, this has been decades plus, ah decade plus, I have no interest in consuming these things at all. Industrial capitalism has managed to replicate most of these things in the vegan world. Fantastically, as much as I hate industrial capitalism, they've done a good job of veggie burgers. i So I've never, ever missed meat. The idea of people saying, oh, rashers, though, and all this, it's just an alien. It's like saying, oh, dogs, legs. You know, it's's there's no appeal whatsoever. Even way back in my sort of lizard brain, it's just not there at all.
00:49:12
Speaker
ah Dairy was a bit more difficult. Dairy was a struggle. But now put it down and put it to death. I despise the dairy industry. the The more I learned about them, the the more despised. I despise them even more than the meat industry.
00:49:25
Speaker
They're despicable and what they do is so violent, and violent and so psychologically torturous. Having had kids myself, I have two now, wonderful kids, both vegans, obviously. The idea of separating a mother from her young is such as an evil, Hitlerian thing to do that ah the idea of involving myself in that is just, it's it's it's another planet, it's a different thing. I'm...
00:49:53
Speaker
That's the thing about veganism is that it tends to attract sort of anarchists because we find it easier to sit outside society and veganism, ah whilst it's it's much more mainstream than than it used to be, is still seen by a lot of people as being quite freaky.
00:50:08
Speaker
which I have no problem with, but lot of people do. But um I'm rambling now, Ant. You're great. You're great, Mark. You're great. that Thank you for for all the detail you've gone into. Like it's it's yeah like I say, I'm so much richer for for having for having heard this. And I know listeners will be the same. Just ah if I can paint one final little hypothetical situation to you. And that is, i don't know whether it's the same in New Zealand, but over here, when when people had gone for like their COVID vaccine, they got a little sticker that they would put on saying, oh, I've had my vaccine today. Like they were sort of seven years old or something. Anyway, um I want you to imagine you're you're in a lift and someone's just got in and um they've got a sticker on and it says, um I'm trying Veganuary or I'm just starting to be vegan or whatever. Okay, so you've just got wherever wherever they're going to in the lift, whoever gets out first, you or them, you've got you know just a few seconds to to have some input um to to them. So what what are you going to say? would say to them that the longer that you stay vegan, the more you will see beauty in the world because you stop seeing things and things in the world as being
00:51:22
Speaker
just stuff to eat and you see them for for their own sake and you will realize the beauty of the world as it is and ah veganism is the most important thing that they can do for themselves I think as well for their own health so there is there was no downside to this Nice one. i I really like that. And I yeah like the fact that you've you've covered, even if they're just getting out at the next floor, you've got a nice succinct message there to give them. That's great. Mark, thanks thanks so much for your time. That's been ah a really lovely, really lovely message. And listeners, if this is the first time that you've you've heard Mark speak, do look back at our um archives because he's been featured on the show many, many times, including one where he goes into a lot of detail um about the the topic of his book, which we'll put a link in the show notes for as well. But yes, lots of lots of good Mark content out there on the platform for you all. Thanks very much, Mark.
00:52:21
Speaker
This has been an Enough of the Falafel production. We're just a normal bunch of everyday vegans putting our voices out there. The show is hosted by Zencaster.
00:52:31
Speaker
We use music and special effects by zapsplap.com. And sometimes, if you're lucky, at the end of an episode, you'll hear a poem by Mr Dominic Berry. Thanks all for listening and see you next time.
00:53:02
Speaker
This episode may have come to an end, but did you know we've got a whole archive containing all our shows dating back to September 2023? twenty twenty three That is right, Dominic. There's over 100 episodes on there featuring our brilliant range of different guests, people's stories of going vegan, philosophical debates, moral quandaries, and of course...
00:53:23
Speaker
around a dozen news items from around the world each week. So check back on your podcast player to hear previous episodes. And remember to get an alert for each new episode, simply click like or follow and also subscribe to the show.
00:53:37
Speaker
Thanks for your ongoing support wherever you listen to us from.