{"id":13966,"date":"2019-08-07T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=13966"},"modified":"2019-08-05T15:12:36","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T19:12:36","slug":"what-is-it-like-becoming-vegan-in-a-non-vegan-friendly-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/07\/what-is-it-like-becoming-vegan-in-a-non-vegan-friendly-area\/","title":{"rendered":"What is it like becoming vegan in a non-vegan friendly area?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Emily Carter, Vegetarian Resource Group Intern<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in the rural South\/Midwest. I went to high school\nin Sallisaw, Oklahoma, which is where I first heard the word vegan. The way\n\u2018vegan\u2019 was first described to me was uninformed. I was in a Family and\nConsumer Sciences class, in which my teacher was talking about various diets\npeople undertake. When she was talking about vegan and vegetarian diets, she\nsaid \u201cI understand why people choose to go vegetarian, but why vegan? Animals\nare not getting hurt.\u201d At that time, I agreed. It was only after I started\nexercising vegan morals that they truly started to make sense. It\u2019s like a\nmuscle you never knew about until you stretched it past the comfort of its idle\nexistence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people, especially people in the South and Midwest,\ntruly believe that taking milk from cows and eggs from chickens has absolutely\nno negative impact on those animals. In fact some people think it is good for\nthe animals to take their milk and eggs (many think that cows always\nautomatically produce milk and need to be milked even if they weren’t producing\nmilk for their calf after becoming pregnant.) Dealing with this information gap\nis one of the hardest parts about being vegan in an agricultural area, but\nthere is room to educate. Back home, relaying how I feel about animal treatment\nto a non-vegan audience sometimes results in angry reactions. However, when I\nmoved to the Northeast, the reactions I got were completely different; always\nalong the lines of \u201cit makes sense, but I could never do it.\u201d Back home, it\njust does not make sense to people at all. Urban areas in the south are more\nreceptive to vegan philosophy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My area is rural and densely populated with farm animals,\nmostly cows. There are chicken processing plants within a small radius of both\nmy mom\u2019s house and my dad\u2019s house. I saw these animals all the time growing up,\nbut I really saw <\/em>them when I became interested in animal rights. The\ntruckloads full of chickens brings tears to my eyes every time. I pray for them\nwhile I watch their feathers fall onto the sides of the road. I want to protest\nand I want people to mourn with me, but there is no one. I joined vegan\nFacebook groups for Oklahoma and Arkansas, but they are pretty inactive. It is\nhard being a vegan in the rural south, but since no one really knows why people\nare vegan, it is a good place to educate. It can be tiring to explain all the\ntime and get the same reaction, but don\u2019t let it get you down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have noticed that in my small town, people are afraid of\nchange, which is why they have stayed their whole life. Also, it is the Bible\nBelt, so many people think the only reason animals exist is for human purposes.\nI find it best to just mention why I live vegan and what it does for me, and\nthen move on. I think it is better to plant a seed than to get someone feeling\ninsecure and attacked about their diet, because it could result in them eating\na bacon sandwich in front of me and talking about how good the pig tastes.\nPeople will make fun of us, but at least we can live at peace knowing we are\ndoing what is best for our bodies, the planet, and all of those beautiful farm\nanimals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For other articles about surviving as a vegetarian, see: https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/teen\/#friends<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For information about The Vegetarian Resource Group\ninternships, see: https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/student\/index.php<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emily Carter, Vegetarian Resource Group Intern I grew up in the rural South\/Midwest. I went to high school in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, which is where I first heard the word vegan. The way \u2018vegan\u2019 was first described to me was uninformed. I was in a Family and Consumer Sciences class, in which my teacher was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13968,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13966\/revisions\/13968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}