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

I founded Compassionate compassionate cooks to empower people

to make informed food choices and to debunk myths about vegetarianism and

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

www. Compassionate cooks.com.

Hello everybody it's good to be here. First of all, before we get started

I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Krista Hitema.

I hope I'm pronouncing that right, Krista.

One of our Canadian listeners, Krista wrote, I am so truly grateful for your podcast. Thank you,

sincerely and deeply. Your podcast speaks to me and I'm so very grateful not only

for the knowledge you provide, but also for the kinship. I found you a few months ago after having avoided the iPod world for so long.

Then one of my clients gifted me with an iPod and the very best part of joining the iPod

culture was your podcast. I'm a long time vegetarian 20 plus years and recent

vegan who read Diet for a numerical one day and that was that.

One of your podcasts that I found particularly touching was the one on teen college-age vegetarians and

I remember distinctly that I saw the topic line and I thought to myself that I would not likely listen as it did not seem relevant to me.

Then I was cooking in the kitchen one day and I put it on.

There were two stories that literally moved me to tears. The first

was the young girl whose parents would not buy her vegetarian food and who went to

sleep at night while hugging her dog and listening to your podcast. The second was the story of the

teenager whose parents were aghast at their vegetarian son yet understanding

of their smoking son. After 20 plus years of being vegetarian, my mother thinks it's still a fad and

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