10 years ago today, I went vegetarian.

I had been vegetarian off and on in high school, but when I was a freshman in college, I finally watched the Saw movies (my mom was very controlling. She even thought The Nightmare Before Christmas would give me nightmares.) There was a scene where a “victim” fell into a pool of pig’s blood and I began to think, “Why pig’s blood? What did the pigs do?” And it hit me. The slaughtered animals are completely innocent and animal cruelty is absolutely horrible. In my dorm hallway, they had a calendar with random events/holidays and I remember one of them stating that October is Vegetarian Awareness month and decided on October 1st I would be vegetarian. Obviously, I never looked back and I also quit buying products that tested on animals, since I didn’t want to contribute to animal cruelty (*note that I didn’t know the horrors of the dairy industry during this time as well.)

As time went by, I began to get pretty bad eczema on my hands. I researched what could help my skin improve and discovered eliminating dairy and eggs from my diet would help. So I decided to give it a try, coincidentally October 1st, and noticed a complete difference. A majority of my acne disappeared as well as the severity of my eczema.

Being vegan is very important to me and I don’t ever plan to go back to being vegetarian. It’s part of who I am. It’s also helped me discover those who genuinely care about me (for example, my omni mother in law makes special vegan Greek dishes when I’m at my in law’s house, my best friend made homemade black bean brownies one Christmas, etc.)

I hope this post has inspired some folks :) plant based products have come a tremendous way and Daiya no longer tastes like crap!