Food For Thought: The Joys And Benefits Of Living Vegan

When you look at the arc of history in terms of human violence against animals, there is no doubt that things are significantly better than they were in the past. We've still got a lot of work to to, but when we step back and look at it from a broader perspective, we can see the paradigm shifts that took place in terms of how we regard and treat animals. One of those shifts can be traced back to what is called The Age of Enlightenment, and that's what we explore today.   *Today's Sponsor: American Anti-Vivisection Society *Listen and Comment at JoyfulVegan.com *Subscribe to Food for Thought Feed *Support the Podcast  *Music by Gosta Berling

Many of us happen upon wildlife in distress in our daily lives, but we don't often do anything about it. We may be afraid, we may not know what to do, we may be too busy. Today I share my brief story about a little raccoon with distemper whose suffering took precedence over my fear. Today's Tweetable: "One life matters - especially to the one whose life it is." Please share and tag @JoyfulVegan For more information, visit JoyfulVegan.com.

For millennia, humans have engaged in rituals with the intention of achieving a wide variety of desired outcomes: reducing anxiety, alleviating grief, deepening faith, or even making it rain. Though rites and rituals can be used for positive or innocuous effects, they can also disguise discomfort and make unjustifiable actions seem legitimate. They can be meaningless, arbitrary, and archaic. They can also mask cruelty to animals by being shrouded in religious sanctity. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. *Listen and Comment at JoyfulVegan.com *Subscribe to Food for Thought feed *Become a supporter *Music by Gosta Berling    

The 30-Day Vegan Challenge is the ULTIMATE guide for transitioning to a healthy, compassionate lifestyle, and it's the ULTIMATE resource for vegans. Packed with tools, tips, recipes, and menu ideas, it answers every question related to eating, cooking, nutrition, and the social aspects of living vegan, including eating out, holidays, living with non-vegans, etc. We already know the material inspires vegans. Now, we need to get this book in as many hands as possible -- for the animals, both human and non-human. Here's how! Purchase The 30-Day Vegan Challenge book Join The 30-Day Vegan Challenge online program Or do both for a discount

According to a recent study, the majority of people who become vegetarian / vegan go back to eating meat and animal products after a short time. One reason seems to be the lack of support or community. In today's episode, we return to our 10 Stages of What Happens When You Stop Eating Animals / Become Vegan and focus on what I think is the make-or-break stage for people: Stage 6: Finding a Sense of Community and Belonging.  Thank you to all of the listener supporters as well as Leaping Bunny - leapingbunny.org Field Roast - fieldroast.com Learn more about Colleen Patrick-Goudreau at JoyfulVegan.com

Join me today as I discuss the bullhook ban victory in my own city of Oakland, CA and how it is a small step indeed. I believe there will come a day in my lifetime when we see the end of animals in circuses, but until then, we're forced to make frustratingly small, incremental steps toward that aim. I also share a couple phone calls and announce the arrival of The 30-Day Vegan Challenge.    Thank you to listener support and that of American Anti-Vivisection Society and FakeMeats.com.    Music by Gosta Berling. 

Excited to share my trip to Ireland in today's podcast episode, including my meals at vegan (and non-vegan) restaurants, my visits to an animal sanctuary, and everything in between. So, sit back and enjoy! Many thanks to listeners and to American Anti-Vivisection Society and FakeMeats.com for sponsoring this episode.

Excited to share my trip to London with all of you, including my meals at vegan (and non-vegan) restaurants, my visits to animal memorials, and everything in between. In the next episode, I'll take you to Ireland with me, but for now, sit back and enjoy! I'm also including some questions from callers about the sustatainability of salmon, how to buy a car without leather seats, and if it's okay to not pay for non-vegan food when dining with non-vegans. This and more in this week's episode of Food for Thought.  Thanks to AAVS, FakeMeats, and listeners for their support of this episode! Thanks to Gosta Berling for its fabulous music. 

  I’m fascinated by the origins of words in general and how they relate to our perception of and thus treatment of non-human animals in particular. And so today, we take a look at five common English-language words and how they relate to non-human animals. After listening, you'll never again be able to order a burrito without thinking about my favorite animal. I also include some listener calls, which range from a question about honey to what speciesism really means.   Thanks to listeners for their support as well as to The American Anti-Vivisection Society. Music provided and performed by Gosta Berling.

In addition to sharing with you some exciting news (what I just did, where I'm going, and what's to come), in today's episode I feature questions from callers all of which have to do with dealing with real-world issues. Of course, this is what I address all the time on the podcast, but as I was organizing calls, it struck me as a theme for today's episode. We’ve got one caller asking about how to be the vegan family member who's asked by children why you're vegan. We’ve got one caller asking about how to navigate talking to the organizers of an extracurricular outing that her son should be part of but that involves exploiting animals. And we’ve got another caller asking about how to respond to friends who insist that zoos are valuable for animals because they're places of conservation. Listen for my responses. 

The urban agriculture trend is sexy, hot, and extremely popular. It also has the potential to negatively affect thousands of individuals when farming and killing animals is part of the plan. In today's episode, I share my experience working to stop backyard animal farming and slaughter in Oakland and why I think acting locally and politically for animals is imperative in changing the world for animals.  Thanks to listeners and The American Anti-Vivisection Socety for your support.  Please support the podcast at JoyfulVegan.com. Subscribe to the Food for Thought podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud.

Join me for today's episode filled with wonderful questions from callers, such as what to do when a butcher shop moves in across the street; how to deal with "compassion fatigue": coping with the sadness of our society's rampant institutionalized animal abuse; and one from a doctor who looked for some guidance on how to talk to her patients about plant-based options. The main takeaway from today's episode is how much power compassion has to change the world.   Thanks to today's listener sponsors and Compassionate Business Partners:  American Anti-Vivisection Society  Tofurky Listen to the Food for Thought Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud! Your support is greatly needed and appreciated! Please support the podcast in one of two ways: become a monthly supporter or make a one-time donation.  

Because I shamelessly share photos of my beloved cats on a daily basis, many of which depict them outside with me, I'm often asked how I'm able to let them experience the outdoors in a way that's safe for them and safe for wildlife. In today's episode, I share my experience and emphasize that it's a custom decision based on situation, location, and individual cat.  Thank you to all of the listener supporters and to The American Anti-Vivisection Society for making this podcast possible.  Your support changes lives.     

Today’s episode focuses on the fourth stage of what happens when you stop eating animals: Evangelizing (Vegangelizing?). Join me as I talk about the difference between evangelizing and proselytizing and why we can - and should - fully embrace the true meaning of what it means to be an evanglizer, or a "messenger of good news." Sharing our enthusiasm for something we are excited about is a very natural, human reaction. How other people respond to it is an entirely different story.

In today's episode, I share with you a number of recent scenarios I found myself in where I had the opportunity to represent veganism and chose (choose) to do so in a positive way, whether it's ordering food in a non-vegan restaurant, dropping the "v" word into a non-vegan conversation, or meeting a friend of a friend who is on the Paleo (Pasturbation) diet. I also include a number of "What Would Colleen Do?" phone calls, including one that asks what I (as a vegan) feed my cats, one that asks about how to "be the vegan in the room" - or rather "in the workplace" - from a woman starting a new job, and one from a caller who wants to know how to engage with her mother, who has just been diagnosed with cancer and does want to hear about how a plant-based diet might help.

Public awareness is growing about the relationship between the production of palm oil and the loss of rainforests. And that's a good thing (though much work needs to be done between the relationship between the production of animal-based MEAT and the destruction of rainforests). Grown in tropical regions, palm plantations are displacing rainforests, destroying orangutan habitats and wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. With good intentions, some activists have called for a boycott of Earth Balance, a vegan butter that uses palm oil as its primary fat, even though it doesn't source its palm from native orangutan habitats. Is it possible to source palm oil sustainably? For that matter, is it possible to source any historically unsustainable crop in a sustainable way? In today's episode, I weigh in on this issue and offer some food for thought. Thank you to today's Compassionate Business Partner: Field Roast - makers of delicious grain meats! If you value this podcast, please become a supporter. Perks and rewards ab

Italy is one of my favorite places in the world - the people, the beauty, the language, the art, the history, the music, the food. Listen to this episode in which I share the details of our first international "Vegan Travel with Colleen Patrick-Goudreau" trip, which we premiered in Italy. We ate, we drank, we hiked, we cooked, we toured, we laughed, we cavorted, we met animals, and we reveled in the wonder of this country. By the end of the episode, you'll be wondering why anyone every thought it is "hard to be vegan in Italy." After all, that's where the edible food is. Enjoy!Photos from the trip can be viewed at my Google+ page https://plus.google.com/+ColleenPatrickGoudreauCompassionSupporters who receive the transcript get exclusive details about our journey, including announcements about future trips: http://www.patreon.com/colleenpatrickgoudreauSubscribe to the Food for Thought podcast https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/food-for-thought-joys-benefits/id147907532?mt=2

In this episode, I answer a number of questions from callers who ask: *what do I say to people who bring up abortion when I talk about animal rights? *how do I not make everyone uncomfortable when I talk about being vegan? *is it ever okay to feed birds, squirrels, deer, and other animals outside my home? *how do I handle the fact that family members want to purchase hens in order to eat their eggs. This and more on today's Food for Thought. If you like what you hear, PLEASE: Support this podcast http://www.patreon.com/colleenpatrickgoudreau Subscribe to this podcast http://compassionatecooks.libsyn.com/rss Follow Colleen on Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/colleen-patrick-goudreau    

Many people think of “veganism” as a new reactionary trend against what we call factory farming, but for centuries, men and women have been thinking about, writing about, and expressing distress over the violence inherent in killing animals for human use and consumption. My personal veganism is part of a long continuum of men and women – from ancient times until today – who stopped eating animals (and their eggs and milk) not because they witnessed a modern, mechanized, industrialized factory system but because they didn’t want to be part of the brutal and unnecessary process of turning sentient animals into butchered bodies. PLEASE SUPPORT THIS WORK www.patreon.com/colleenpatrickgoudreau

In today's episode, I talk about my favorite personal care and cosmetics products and how to determine if a company doesn't test their final products or their ingredients on animals. I also discuss the importance of supporting organizations and companies striving to vet this information for us so we, the consumer, can trust that what we buy has not contributed to violence against animals. I also talk about the line we have to walk as compassionate people knowing that - even when trying to make purchasing decisions that don't hurt animals - sometimes we do so because it isn't a perfect world. Thank you to today's Compassionate Business Partners: Beauty Without Cruelty and Arbonne