Going Plant-Based is The Best Thing I’ve Ever Done
By: Phoenix Huber
Tags: Animals, Ancedotes, Vegan, Love, Food

Animal Anecdote

Going Plant-Based is The Best Thing I’ve Ever Done

And now I know: Hard feelings are good. They’re the first step to a process we can call the alchemy of compassion! Phoenix Huber Follow Dec 15, 2020 · 7 min read

Photo by Doruk Yemenici on Unsplash

Sometimes the stars align. I find a way to speak plainly.

It’s uncomfortable at first, but feeling better and better to say: Going plant-based for animals 10–16 years ago was the best thing I ever did.

What if people think I’m arrogant? Folks may feel guilty about slaughter when they eat their next meal. There’s a reason I said “plant-based” instead of “vegan.” I was trying to reduce the triggers.

But I’m learning to embrace sounding cliché. If I make readers shift around in their seat, good. The best decisions we make in life usually involve a challenge to the status quo, don’t they?

If the best thing I had ever done was something obvious we all agreed with, it wouldn’t invite others to grow as much.

And my story isn’t a dismissal of others’ stories. One of my friends went vegan and had trouble keeping on weight. She ate animal products again which made things easier. Maybe she still feels vegan was a great choice because at least she tried and she saved some animal lives. Maybe she feels quitting veganism was one of the best things she did because she protected her health while continuing her volunteer work against factory farming and climate change. I’d have to ask her. Who knows, she might go vegan again someday and have better success (secretly crossing my fingers).

I’ve realized the more I make peace with everyone’s mixed experiences and our disagreements over diet and ethics, the freer I feel to share my own ideas.

Because at the end of the day, I believe in nonviolence and compassion. For all sentient beings. Reducing the purchase of meat, dairy, and eggs goes a long way to strengthen those values and make a substantive difference.

Yes, when I stopped eating meat at 12 and eventually eliminated all animal products by 18 years old, it was the best freaking thing I ever did.

Here’s my story. Thank you for listening.

Going vegan was the bravest, most selfless change I made my whole childhood

Going plant-based for animals stood out from the other phases and evolutions of my early years. Most things I did were either:

To help myself. (Like starting a morning routine, or coming out as trans.)

To help others, but it was easy because everyone was doing it. (Like how friends & fam encouraged me to mask up and stay home during COVID.)

Going vegan belonged in a 3rd, more challenging category. I did it to help, but I did it alone.

Turning 12 years old, I saw how eating a pig involved extra pain on their part. I didn’t wish to make any cow, bird, or sea creature suffer. From the popular view though, I was just being sentimental.

People were worried I’d be weak, too. “Plant-based” and “vegan” labels had yet to get so popular in U.S. supermarkets. The American Dietetic Association would later declare well-planned vegan diets healthy for all stages of life. And explain that they help prevent certain diseases. The United Nations in 2019 called for a plant-based diet shift to combat climate change.

My mom was awesome and she let me go vegetarian. But this all went down in a rodeo town in 2004.

Feeling scandalous, I googled to understand what happens to milking cows and egg-layer hens. Did they get slaughtered just like the ones raised for meat? Were different things done to them I’d never want done to my dog?

Yes, I found out. From that moment I aspired to become a teenage vegan. Extra extreme.

Despite the obstacles, I gradually made it happen.

Many times in life, I’ve turned away from things that weren’t cozy, but that needed my compassion.

I’ve hesitated to stand up, till the opportunity passed. I missed chances to be proud of myself and make a real difference.

Yet, by some miracle, my conflict-avoidant, comfort-craving self went full-on vegan for the animals. When no one I knew was doing it! And when I was only a teen!!

I’ve never stopped feeling grateful for how a plant-based diet helped me be step up my bravery and vote for nonviolence.

Not eating animals increased my empathy and compassion for everyone

Going vegan was like an Empathy Spell. By pivoting in that direction while young, I conditioned myself to grow up into a more caring adult.

Not having to eat animals, it was easier to feel for them. There was less motivation to think fishes don’t feel, or that turkeys aren’t so special.

I had completed my first act of resistance against the indifference. I started thinking of animals’ needs across the board. Were their interests being considered? Or was everything in society from a human-centric view?

Skipping animal foods increased my feelings of compassion for myself and for fellow humans. We too are but mortal creatures, vulnerable to the elements.

Our bodies are conscious and alive. We breathe in emotions, sensing the world by our unique faculties. We want what bring pleasure and reward. From misery we flee.

Much of what makes up human experience has to do with our bodies and basic feelings. Without our advanced intellect, we’d still matter — and so do animals.

Macken Murphy, the host of Species Podcast, wrote a brilliant thought piece about the ways veganism helps humanity. He cited that animal rights supporters are more likely to support human rights causes too. Surveys and brain scans found vegans had stronger empathetic responses to pain in both humans and nonhumans.

Did health improvements from a plant-based diet deepen my empathy? Or was it all because of my new species-inclusive worldview?

Perhaps, as psychologist Melanie Joy would say, I deconditioned my carnism — the belief system that had once enabled me to “love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows.”

Whatever the reason, I’m not the only vegan or vegetarian who experienced their plant-based shift as a major opening of the heart.

Learning to encourage this powerful way to help animals is the best thing I’m doing now

It’s tricky getting myself to stand for animals and stay standing.

I’ve longed to make a plant-based message central to my life. Veganism goes beyond what’s already popular. It’s a way we can help enormous populations of some of the least protected individuals.

Figuring out what you want to say, and saying it right, takes trial and error. Here are just several of the things I’ve done:

I wrote a few vegan essays in school. When a classmate disagreed, I cried or ran out of the room, feeling overwhelmed and embarrassed.

I joined a Toastmasters club and gave shaky-kneed speeches.

I chanted with hundreds of protestors outside a slaughterhouse.

I handed out leaflets on college campuses. I invited Warped Tour attendees to watch a 4-minute video about factory farming.

I moved to San Francisco to volunteer for a chicken welfare campaign. (I lived in my car to avoid the shy-high rent!)

I was a professional sample-passer-outer for a plant-based meat company. Best job ever!

Now I write online. At first, I tended towards comedy articles and “confessions” poking fun at my activism attempts. But the longer I let my true self spill onto the screen, the more I’m getting straight to the point.

Throughout this journey, I’ve taken time off. I’ve also acted like a “closet vegan,” or let folks think I’m lactose-intolerant.

I’ve worried I’d regret on my deathbed that I didn’t put in more good words for the animals, those ultimate underdogs of our human-dominated Earth.

But today, I am happy to say it plainly, and I hope I keep going: Going plant-based for animals was the best thing I ever did.

There are tons of questions left to ask and answer, and it’s exciting

Yes, praising going vegan can make people uncomfortable. Guilt and sorrow come to the surface. None of us want creatures to be bullied, or to know we’re causing needless massacre.

This topic gives rise to uncertainty too, about what to do. What to eat instead of meat? How will family react? Where do you get your iron?

Plus, we’re powerless to stop all suffering. We could cease buying animal products, but what about Earth’s 55,982 other injustices? And how the heck do we feed our cats?

I don’t know all the answers, but real quick, a few ideas:

NutritionFacts.org or How Not to Die give great guidelines from a doc who reads every study.

Cats are harder to feed plant-based than dogs. Many vegans feed cats meat. Fortunately, scientists are making it possible to grow meat directly from cells. With slaughter-free animal products around the corner, we even have Because Animals and Bond Pet Foods working on the pet food.

Food Empowerment Project gives a holistic picture of food justice. Their essays cover a wide range of human and nonhuman issues. They talk food access, farm worker rights, and culturally appropriate cuisine. They discuss “humane” labeling and commercial fishing impacts.

It’s okay to be triggered. As a teen, I somehow persisted through my remorse, confusion, and helplessness. I turned hard feelings into fuel, into action.

And now I know: Hard feelings are good. They’re the first step to a process we can call the alchemy of compassion!

What was the best thing YOU ever did so far?

What good deed did you do that few agreed with, but you followed your gut?

When we make our bravest choices, we open our hearts to keep making more. ❤

Thank you.