And I'm and Welcome to Food for Thought. My name is Colleen Patrick Gudreau from Compassionate Cooks.

I founded Compassionate Cook cooks to empower people to make

informed food choices, to debunk myths about vegetarianism and animal rights, and to

encourage people to live according to their own values of compassion.

You can learn more about who we are and what we do by visiting our website Compassionates.com.

First and foremost, before we get started,

as you know, I'd like to thank my listener sponsor first today.

That listener sponsor is Caitlin Jones.

Who wrote an email to us saying, hi Colleen, my husband and I have started

listening to your podcast and bought both of your cookbooks and have had so much fun

cooking with them.

When I was about 11 years old, I became vegetarian.

After my older sister told me about something

she had read, about how they slaughter cows. I was completely devastated and became a

militant vegetarian. A few years later my mom met a man who was vegan and who

preached veganism to everyone in the area and after hearing from him

that animals were mistreated for dairy and egg products we both became vegan.

She was 54 I was 13. For about nine years I was vegan and then in college I started getting away

from the vegan culture and my mom's friends so I started to eat some animal secretions.

Yuck. That's her yuck, not my yuck. I stayed

vegetarian but I let myself be convinced by my other family members and

college friends that I would never find someone to marry if I stayed vegan.

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