Today we talk about how to deal with non-vegan food temptations as well as how to deal with concerned or unsupportive parents when going vegan at an early age. Plus, you get a fantastically awkward bonus at the end of the video.
In today’s Q&A we’ll be talking about what to do when faced with non-vegan temptation food as well as how to address parental concerns about veganism being “extreme”. Before we jump in, however, I just wanted to check in and update you all. The reason you’re seeing another Q&A so soon is that I just arrived home from a speaking engagement at the Woodstock Fruit Festival and because I wanted that speech to be the very best it could be, and with the time of travel, I felt it was better to provide you today with more of your questions answered, rather than try to throw together some of the important content I have planned in a haphazard manner. I do hope to have the speech up in the next video, so stay tuned for that and prepare to share the message far and wide!
I appreciate all of you sticking with me through this month, which has been a but atypical content-wise as I’ve been gearing up for these two weeks that I’m currently in. I wanted to let you know there are a lot of exciting things coming soon, like more of the vegan kids series, which I am particularly jazzed about, the History of Veganism part three should be arriving in the coming month, I hope, along with opening up some brand new series and continuing to answer your questions through the Q&A format as well as single-standing educational videos.
[Be sure to watch the end of the video above for my “punishment” for lack of super-academic content this month.]
As always, thank you for all of your support—you make this channel and everything I do possible. Now, let’s bring in the Ooby for real and answer your questions! [tweet this Q&A!]
Q: Megan M says, “I’m nearly 100% vegan but I live in a non-vegan household where the vast majority of food is non-vegan. All of the food I love is always staring me in the face, for example ice cream, chocolate and cheese. Do you have any suggestions on resisting these products?” [tweet this Q and its A]
A: So there’s a number of things that you can do and it will again depend on your circumstances. If you–I don’t know your age–if you’re old enough and you have an allowance, or maybe babysit or maybe your young adult and you have a job, then you can buy your own ice cream and chocolate and vegan cheeses and have those there for when you have a snack attack. Or just stock up on vegan foods that you do enjoy so that you can have alternatives there, because not everyone’s going to be able to find vegan cheeses, and they can also be really expensive, so maybe you have some favorite fruits or your favorite dessert.
Banana ice cream is one of my favorites. You can get bananas usually for pretty cheap and freeze them when they get to that nice spotty stage and then use a blender or food processor and have banana ice cream you know obviously I’ve even just eating frozen bananas on their own as lollipops–it’s really good. Ooby loves that. So that can be really helpful is making sure that you have your own tempting snacks to have around.
And another thing that I think that can be helpful in that situation as well as just in general with staying vegan is to kind of write down why it is that your vegan. Write it down, you know it sounds silly, maybe it doesn’t work for everyone, but write it down on a little piece of paper maybe laminate it and keep it with you all the time and when you’re having these temptations you can take it out you kind of remember like, “what is it that I’m doing this for? Why am I vegan?” And that can sometimes take you out of that moment of temptation because when it comes down to it, your reason is going to be more powerful than a cookie.
Q: Elexandra98 who says “I am sixteen years old and trying to live vegan and I’ve encountered a few problems when it comes to my family. I’ve been vegetarian for three years so meat is no problem, but I’m now cutting out dairy and eggs best I can. Some people think this is very extreme and also my parents and other family members as well. My dad likes to compare me being vegan with religion, which annoys me a lot. Is it really a good comparison?” [tweet this Q and its A]
A: I don’t think that religion and veganism is a good comparison. Veganism is a moral stance and it’s an ethical stance, for most people. For some people as a health stance, you never know, but it’s something that is grounded in those beliefs and there are I think parallels that can be drawn. Veganism is looking at the suffering in the world–the suffering of the animals in particular, and and saying that you don’t want to participate in this. And I think that it’s more of an ethical and moral stance. And there is a grey area because of course many if not most religions are based around the set of moral and ethical codes. But there is a separation there, although I would like to say that anyone from any religion can be vegan. There’s no dictate that you can’t be vegan and of any religion or creed out there.
As far as talking to your parents and with it being “extreme“, I think someone else asked about about how to convince their parents that it’s not unhealthy. I think with all of these with parents who are thinking you’re going extreme…maybe they think you’re having an eating disorder develop, or things like that, is to kind of get your facts. You can you can look for actual solid information to bring to them, and I’ll link below but some great resources are nutritionfacts.org and PCRM.org— They also have resources specifically for kids about having healthy the can kids. So I’ll provide whatever links I can bellow to that. You’re free to pour through my website and use like the search box on their or on my channel because I always link to different resources.
I think it’s important to come to them with facts rather than being reactionary and saying “no you’re wrong! I’m right!” because you know then it kind of becomes a personal fight rather than a discussion of the coming and saying, you know, “Hey mom and dad, you know I love you very much. I know that you love me. I know that you’re concerned about me because you love me and you want me to be healthy and you want me to be living a good life and I know that that’s where your concern is coming from and I’m so grateful for that. I’m so grateful for the love and support that I have from you. Here are some resources that I’ve found from different doctors from, you know, whatever about the way that I’m choosing to eat. And I know that you love and support me and so much of my life and I would just hope that you would also support me in this decision, because this is something that’s really important to me and I’m not going into it with my eyes closed. I’ve done I’ve done my research and I’m really doing my best to make sure that this is a conscious and well thought out decision. And I would love to have your support.”
You can vary that for your own parents because you’ll know them better than I do about how they might respond to that, so I hope that’s helpful. If you have more questions feel free to leave them below and I do my best to try to keep track of all the questions, and keep a good log of them. I still have a bunch more from you guys from the first ask that I put out.
I hope that you enjoyed this Q&A and hope it was helpful, and I do intend to do more of these in the future. If you have more questions feel free to leave them below and I do my best to try to keep track of all the questions, and keep a good log of them. I still have a bunch more from you guys from the first ask that I put out so I’ll be doing more of these videos probably more, at least another one next week. I hope that you enjoyed this Q&A and hope it was helpful, and I do intend to do more of these in the future.
If you liked this video and if you like the idea of having more of these give the video a big thumbs up. Please share it around to help others who might have similar questions. If you’re new I would love to have you subscribe to the channel. You can just hit the button on the right hand side of the screen and you can get more awesome vegan content every Monday, Wednesday, and some Fridays. If you want to help support Bite Size Vegan in the educational content that I create, you can check out the support links down below or the Nugget Army icon below.
Hope that was helpful. Go live vegan get some answers, and I’ll see you soon.
— Emily Moran Barwick
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Very good questions to answer. Vegans do have a problem with non vegan relatives. This must be especially hard for young vegans.
I just love Oobe, she is a noisy sleeper but very cute.
I remember being a teen and tossing my plate of food at the wall after a month of being vegetarian, cause my parents just wouldn’t let the meat thing rest. But now I have the complete opposite problem being a mom. My oldest eats meat (sometimes) he’s more lacto ovo than he knows, my youngest doesn’t eat meat or eggs just cheese sometimes. My husband eats meat. And I don’t want to push the vegan diet too hard especially with the kids cause they will go the other way out of spite. I just hope when my kids become teens they will see the light.
By the way Emily your arms are looking ripped! You’ll have to tell us your workout for fab arms. :)