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

I founded 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 compassionate cooks.com. Today's sponsor is Cassidy Gerber who wrote to me

and told me something I was really glad to hear. She wrote I just

started listening to your podcast a couple of months ago and I really love it. I started down

the path towards veganism almost a year ago now after reading Michael Pollan's book

Omnivore's dilemma. I just thought I'd let you know that since you've mentioned you don't have the highest

opinion of his work so even though he killed a pig he helped to create

at least one new vegan not that it matters much to the pig he killed that was Cassidy's

words anyway I just wanted to thank you for your podcast. I really appreciate the topics you cover.

I'm not very good at defending the vegan lifestyle. I get so frustrated when I'm talking to someone

about why I'm vegan and explaining to them that I don't think an

animal should have to suffer because I feel like eating chicken nuggets.

Being constantly surrounded by people eager to challenge my values, it can be hard not to feel like a silly emotional girl at

times sometimes I don't know how to respond to people and I even feel like

logically their criticism of my beliefs make sense listening to your podcast has been just what I needed to feel more secure in my lifestyle.

Hearing your well-researched and beautifully constructed show keeps all the reasons I've decided

to become vegan fresh in my mind and makes me feel like I'm part of a community of people with the same believes.

It's amazing how tenuous we can all be made to feel about this lifestyle.

It's just amazing the power others can have over us, especially about this issue.

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