You're Vegan?! What Do You Eat?

Welcome to Being Animal. This newsletter explores the intricacies of human-animal relationships. Through personal stories, commentary on current events, and thought-provoking debates, I hope to challenge your assumptions and deepen your understanding of how animals are treated in our society. How we treat animals matters— for our own health, for our planet, and for our sense of morality and humanity.

I want to make the world a better place for animals. To do this, we have to change how we think about animals. Most of us interact with animals three times a day on our plates. But there is another way…

A woman squeezed past me into the middle seat and set down a greasy bag of food.

“I hope you’re not a vegetarian or anything,” she said, as she opened the bag and pulled out a burger and fries. I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so I was starving. The rich smell of her food curled around our seats.

“Actually, I’m vegan,” I admitted.

“Oh my god,” she said, clearly embarrassed. “Really?” After I nodded she asked simply, “what do you eat?!”

“Plants!” I responded, with a polite smile on my face.

I’ve heard this question countless times. My old boss asked me what I eat when I told him I was vegan. A former art teacher asked me the same question. Family members have posed it, too.

It’s a question borne out of a combination of curiosity and genuine ignorance: people really don’t know what vegans eat. Some assume we only eat raw broccoli. Others assume are only vegan in order to cut calories and diet. Still others genuinely cannot fathom a meal without meat holding it down.

So what do I eat? I’ll tell you what I told the woman on the airplane.

I eat a lot of the same foods I ate when I was still eating animals and animal products. Almost anything can be made vegan, if you are creative and think ahead. Some of the “gateway meals” I’ve encouraged people interested in eating less meat to try include tacos (made with tempeh or seitan meat and beans), chili (either just with beans or with vegan meat crumbles), soups, curries, pasta dishes, and more. I’ve made vegan orange “chicken” using tofu. I’ve made mac & cheese with a homemade butternut squash “cheese.” The list goes on.

Anytime you are craving a meal, you can google it and the word “vegan” and come up with dozens of recipes to approximate the flavors and consistency of the original.

Here’s an average day, if we were to cook everything at home:

• Breakfast: two pieces of sourdough toast with peanut butter, hemp seeds, and cinnamon, plus coffee with oat milk.

• Snack: a bowl of oatmeal with flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, a banana, and granola.

• Lunch: a sandwich with homemade chickpea salad and avocado, or a smoothie with frozen fruit, protein powder, and almond milk.

• Snack: an english muffin or protein waffle toasted with almond butter, or if I haven’t had any fruit yet, a kiwi, an apple, or half a grapefruit.

• Dinner: so many options! Maybe a grain bowl with quinoa, glazed tempeh, and roasted vegetables, or a coconut curry with cauliflower, chickpeas, tofu, mushrooms, and kale. Maybe we’ll just have leftover soup from the night before, or an easy protein pasta with some roasted vegetables tossed on top.

• Dessert: lately we’ve been making chocolate chia pudding, with oat-based whipped cream, shredded coconut, and cut up strawberries on top. Sometimes I’ll make a more decadent option like chocolate cupcakes. If we’re feeling lazy, we’ll just have a Justin’s or Unreal peanut butter cup or scoop of vegan ice cream.

But like everyone else, sometimes we get take out, too. There are amazing vegan take out spots in every city I’ve ever lived in. In Washington D.C., Hip City Veg has amazing vegan chicken sandwiches, wraps, salads, and burgers, and Pow Pow has incredible Asian bowls. In Boston, Life Alive and Plant Pub were our go-to spots. In Phoenix, we regularly ordered from Veggie Village and got vegan pizza from Pizza Heaven Bistro.

And many restaurants now have some vegan or vegetarian options, too, making it easier than ever to go out. Mediterranean places are usually safe bets if you’re looking for a way to enjoy date night without eating animals. And searching “vegan” in GoogleMaps will pull up amazing hidden gems no matter where you are. On the Outer Banks, we found a fantastic spot called the SaltBox Cafe for a gorgeous dinner (tofu curry). In Anchorage, Alaska, we found great vegan food at The Rustic Goat (Moroccan cauliflower with chickpeas). In Monterey, California, Julia’s Vegetarian Restaurant offered delicious food in a lovely atmosphere (we got a mushroom pizza and a curry). In Dayton, Tennessee, the Screen Door Kitchen makes a great rice and bean bowl for lunch.

None of these restaurants is purely vegan, but they all have a great vegan option. And all you need is one.

To put it simply, I eat a lot like you do, but I only eat plants.

When I finished my answer, the woman who sat next to me in the airplane held up her burger and asked me, “but do plants taste this good?”

This is always a hard question for me to answer. Taste was never why I stopped eating animals and animal products. I used to love a good cheese pizza, a crab cake, and a burger, like everyone else. I just decided something as simple as my taste wasn’t more important than hundreds of animal lives. So I’ve changed my tastes, and I’ve found foods that satisfy me even more than before. Now I know the food I’m eating hasn’t resulted in any animal suffering. Now I think far more carefully about what I eat in a day, in order to make sure I’m getting everything I need.

Sometimes, especially when traveling, it’s truly harder. The reason she got to eat her burger on this flight while my stomach rumbled until we landed was because I couldn’t find anything vegan in the terminal. Instead, I’d have to drive a few minutes out of my way after getting my rental car to pick up some vegan food late at night. But the benefits outweigh the momentary personal sacrifice. Instead of eating a quick and empty meal from a chain in the airport, I got to try and support a local spot in a new city. It was delicious and nutritious. And I went to bed feeling good in my body and in my mind.

“You can make plants taste however you want,” I answered truthfully.

This week, I encourage you to think about ways to reduce your animal consumption. Maybe it’s just for one meal a day, or one meal a week. Maybe it’s not even making any changes, but just thinking about what you would do if you were to veganize a meal. The journey to eating less meat doesn’t have to be zero-to-a-hundred—it wasn’t for me. I slowly started cutting things out that I didn’t love. I stopped eating pork and red meat, then chicken, and much later, fish. I slowly learned how to replace the flavor of flesh with spices, mushrooms, and herbs. I strengthened my resolve to eat vegan out of the house over time, too.

I think the word “vegan” can seem so much like an end state, or like a foreign concept taken on only by radicals. That’s why people so often don’t know what vegans eat; we are assumed to be like aliens who have abdicated some fundamental social customs of our world. But I wish the word reflected the journey that it actually is for many people. Being vegan is just about making a series of choices, one after the other, meal after meal. It’s not out of reach; it just takes one meal to start.

Because vegans eat just like you.