Good morning! First things first: Today in my I Eat Plants column on LoHud.com I share my experience making vegan butter and explain why some vegans avoid products with palm oil. I will be anxious to see the response (please consider leaving a comment!)
Day one of the Main Street Vegan Academy was fantastic! We learned about health coaching, animal rights, how to work with the media and to do presentations, and how to be persuasive vegan activists. I’m loving Victoria Moran so much and the academy instructors are phenomenal. I have promised to share one thing I’ve learned each day – because the long days simply do not allow for long blog posts this week – and here’s a gem I really love. Our last speaker of the day was Nora Kramer of Mercy for Animals and Youth Empowerment Action Camp.
“Be prepared to answer frequently asked questions and to debunk myths about veg’ism and appreciate every opportunity to do so. Instead of resenting being asked the same “stupid” questions, appreciate these great opportunities to raise awareness.”
You know what she means, right? We vegans like to roll our eyes and often get annoyed by these types of questions or comments:
- but where do you get your protein?
- I couldn’t live without cheese
- humans are designed to eat meat, look at our teeth
- etc.
As a vegan lifestyle coach I need to reframe and be thankful for these comments and questions because then I get to debunk the myths and misinformation!
In the middle of the day, after Victoria’s media skills presentation, academy students had the opportunity to watch the live premiere of Victoria and Adair’s, new radio program on Unity.FM.
Victoria and Adair selected two academy students to interview for the premiere episode.
Adair, Victoria and JL
Gary and I had so much fun! You can download to the interview here.
We ended our day with dinner at the new Candle Cafe West. I had the great pleasure of meeting and dining with the brilliant Dr. Richard Twine. We both ordered this:
The grilled seitan burger with coleslaw and fries. Aw, Candle, you never disappoint!
Back to the advice from Nora on being persuasive vegans – what are your thoughts on reframing the response to “annoying questions”?
See you tomorrow with a brief report on day two of the academy!
8 thoughts on “Day 1: Main Street Vegan Academy”
Comments are closed.
hi, JL, i clicked on the link for the vegan butter article, but it takes me to your article from 6/14. maybe lohud hasn’t uploaded the newest column yet? just curious. thanks!
The direct link works1 http://food.lohudblogs.com/2012/06/21/i-eat-plants-make-delicious-homemade-vegan-butter
I commented!
And SO glad you’re enjoying Vegan Academy!
Thank you x 2!
Vegan Academy looks like so much fun!! I think reframing is really interesting. For those who are asking questions solely to be pains, I’m not sure there’s much of an opportunity for activism, but perhaps I’m being pessimistic. For those who are truly curious, though, it makes perfect sense to joyfully answer these questions with the hope of changing some minds!
Kaitlyn, I agree. And I think that I plan to reframe my comments for the snarky folks, too. Nothing is better than people seeing a joyful vegan joyfully answering questions about their fabulous vegan life! 🙂
Thank you for including the video on the orangutans and the Palm oil. I had no idea. This will definitely make me a more conscious shopper.
I’m so happy for this feedback! Thank you!