Askew - Generation V: the complete guide to going, being, and staying vegan as a teenager

DISCLAIMER: Though this book has been thoroughly researched, the opinions herein are offered for educational and entertainment purposes only. Before any change in diet, readers should consult a physician or nutritionist. Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information contained in this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein.

Generation V: The Complete Guide to Going, Being, and Staying Vegan as a Teenager Claire Askew 2011

This edition PM Press 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-60486-338-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927787

Cover design by Tofu Hound and John Yates/stealworks.com
Interior design by JBHR

PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org

Printed by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Printed in the USA on recycled paper.

This book is dedicated to every vegan
teenager out there. Keep living, keep loving.
Were going to change the world, you know.

My wonderful parents, for letting me be vegan in the first place, driving me to meet-ups, buying and cooking vegan food, changing their diets, countless meals and hugs, and being all-around supportive even when they dont understand me.

Bob and Jenna Torres for encouraging, supporting, and making this project possible, as well as for always providing inspiration, energy, and peace of mind through their vegan media empire (and for introducing me to the Dead Kennedys).

Every member of VegKC and some of the finest vegans in all Portlandia for support, activism, friendship, and lots of really great food.

Vegan teens everywhere for inspiring me to write this book. As cheesy as it sounds, we are the future of the movement, so lets make it a good one.

Exceptional humans in Oregon, Kansas, Utah, Colorado, and beyond for believing in me ferociously, filling my day-to-days with happiness, and being my people.

Wow. Thats all I can say right now, wow. When I started writing this book, I was a starry-eyed sixteen-year-old who lived in Kansas and had been vegan for only a few months. Today, Im twenty and halfway done with college in the most vegan-friendly city in the nation. I wrote this book to help other vegan teenagers figure out how to do their vegan thang as happily as possible, yes, but I also wrote it because I wanted immediately to get my hands dirty, to be part of this movement that transformed the way I thought in a lasting and positive way. I didnt give a crap that I was in high school, I wanted something and I did it anyway. I hope that being vegan gives you some of that same fire. Dealing with unsupportive parents and asinine classmates can be frustrating, but trust meyou are on the right track. If you want to live your life as a big screw you to injustice and apathy, as a celebration of delicious food and health and awesome people doing awesome things, you are on the right track. Through this book and through being vegan Ive met some of the coolest people and had some of the most awesome opportunities of my life. Believe me when I tell you that you can have the same experience.

That said, after several years my perspective has widened. Especially when youre a new vegan, its easy to think that your experience of veganism now will be your experience of veganism forever, and thats often not the case. Like everything, veganism is a process of growth and it changes alongside you. Wherever you arewhether youre just kinda-maybe-thinking about going vegan, whether youve been vegan for years and years, whether you dabbled in it for a while and want to see if you can do more than dabble nowI hope that this book gives you a sense of peace and purpose. It may seem complicated and hard to others, but thats really all being vegan isa vision of a peaceful world, and a drive to make that vision a reality, no matter how young or isolated or unsure you might be.

Maybe you just went vegan. Maybe youre contemplating going vegan, but are wondering a few things, likewhat do vegans eat, especially teenage vegans who are still living at home and may lack cooking skill? What do you tell your parents if theyre against you being vegan? How do you deal with non-vegan friends who just dont get it? How do you stay healthy as a vegan? Why should you be vegan, anyway?

When I went vegan, I didnt know anybody else who was vegan, much less a vegan my age who was wise with all the ways of the vegan world. This created a lot of feelings, first of all, loneliness. The very beginning of your veganism, I think, tends to be the loneliest if you dont have a vegan mentor-type person. Suddenly, just about everything is new and different, and it can be tough if you have no one in your life who knows how that feels. Being vegan as a teenager is drastically different than being a vegan adult, so even if you have vegan friends older than you, its slightly alienating. Youre a little set away from adult vegans because youre a teenager; youre a little set away from other teenagers because youre vegan.

Well, my hope is that this book brings you closer to both sets. Generation V is for all the teenagers out there who wander around just-adding-water to boxes of vegan food, trying their hardest to defend their choices to their friends, and thinking theyre the only vegan teenager in the world. Things can be so much better! Read this and go forth spreading the vegan love, filled with knowledge and yummy food like the crazy vegan you are.

Love, Claire

The process of going vegan is like the experience of being vegan: although there may be a lot of common ground, it really is unique to every person. I dont mean that vegan by definition means different things to different people but that everyones experience of going vegan and how veganism fits into the rest of their life is different. Its easy to see going vegan as the end of a journey, but for me, it was a prologue to another journey that I hope will never be over.

In June 2005, at the tender age of fourteen, I was talking to a friend of mine. Nicole was a vegetarian, and, although we had been friends for some time, I didnt know this. It came up casually, and we didnt really talk about it in detail. But since she was the first vegetarian Id met, I became curious as to why anyone would have problems with eating meat. I have a habit of researching every part of something I get interested in, and this was no different. I went online, determined to find out why ethical vegetarians are ethical vegetarians. I read a thing or two. I watched a thing or two. I started suspecting that vegetarians might actually have good reasons for passing up meat. Before I could really get started, though, my mom called me for lunch. It was chicken. I ate it slowly, with a sneaking suspicion that this would be the last meat I would eat. I didnt like looking at it and had no idea how I would tell my parents I wanted to be vegetarian, so instead of eating something else, I just read while I ate, picking around the meat. When I was done, I went back to researching, and the more I found out, the more I was convinced that there was no possible way I could continue eating meat. Then I watched Goldfingers music video for their song Free Me, and that was it. It hit me: meat is dead. Meat used to be part of a living body, and now its on my plate, and I support that with my money. I became a vegetarian.