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Where to Go from Here

If you aren’t sure where to begin your exploration of vegan living, start your journey at the beginning of this book and read every bit until you reach the back cover. On the other hand, if you can’t wait to eat great vegan food, skip ahead to the recipes in Chapters 12 through 15 and start cooking!

The great thing about this book is that you can choose the topics that are most important or interesting to you right now and jump into those areas — you don’t have to read this book from the beginning for it to work for you. This book covers every area of vegan living, but you don’t have to follow the information in order. Skip around, fast-forward, and rewind; do what works best for you. All the information is here for when you need it, in the order that you need it.

Whether you choose to go 100 percent vegan or just integrate several vegan meals a day, Chapters 9 through 11 can help you make better purchases. If you’re already shopping in health food stores, you can still find out more about the different labels given to vegan and cruelty-free products as listed in Chapter 7. You can start snacking and eating vegan meals on the fly with the snacking and shopping lists provided in Chapter 9.

A vegan life is full of fun, passion, and ethical consciousness made real with every meal, purchase, and product. Enjoy the journey of discovery, and take heart knowing that you’ve committed to one of the most responsible paths available in life! Be well, and here’s to your health!

Part I

“Ve-gan” at the Beginning

In this part . . .

If your whole life could be drawn on a map, vegan living encompasses not only the roads, intersections, and detours, it’s also the inspiration for your journey in the first place. Knowing what you’re going to encounter on this trip ensures that you don’t end up in the wilderness friendless and starving!

In this part, you can find the basics on what vegan living means. These chapters explain the solid logic of choosing this lifestyle and how to transition to it, including what you can eat and buy, the health and environmental benefits associated with it, and how to make the necessary changes from your current lifestyle.

Chapter 1

The Lowdown on Vegan Eating and Living

In This Chapter

Making the connection between diet and health

Building a whole vegan lifestyle

Experiencing the spiritual side of veganism

Responding to common questions about vegan living

A vegan is the ultimate, hard-core vegetarian. Someone who follows a vegan diet avoids eating, drinking, wearing, using, or otherwise consuming anything that contains animal ingredients or that was tested on animals. This means a vegan eats pretty much everything except dairy from cows, sheep, or goats, (or horses, if you’re ever visiting Mongolia), cheese, milk, butter, eggs, meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, or honey.

In this chapter, you discover the vast health benefits of a vegan diet, what vegan living entails, and how to deal with the common (and often ignorant) questions that people will likely ask you about your lifestyle choice.

You Are What You Eat: The Health and Food Connection

If you want to be vibrant, healthy, and full of energy, you should eat fresh, healthy, vibrant foods. If you feel bloated, tired, sluggish, and full of aches and pains, you should look to your diet first to see whether the culprits are hiding on your plate. Answer these questions to get a better sense of what’s really going on in your body:

Do you feel tired and unfocused during the day?

Do you use caffeine to help you wake up in the morning?

Do you have sugar, caffeine, or salt cravings?

Do you drink regular or diet soda?

Do you have high blood pressure or high cholesterol (or both)?

Are you overweight or obese?

Do you get bloated or have stomach cramps after eating?

Do you often have headaches, depression, or moody outbursts?

Do you eat most of your food from