And I'm and Welcome to Food for Thought. My name is Colleen Patrick Gudro 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.

I would first like to thank our listener sponsor today is Mariana Rosenzweig,

if I'm saying that correctly Mar. I've had the pleasure of meeting

Mariana a couple of times. She's come to California a couple times and she's an

absolute gem. She lives in Brazil, but she visits the US pretty frequently to visit family and friends

and she was out in California a couple years ago. We met for brunch and my husband and I

saw her last year when they returned again to California and

Marianne is a long-time podcast listener she's a longtime supporter and she's an

amazing mom which is why I chose her as the listener

sponsor for this particular episode. Her most recent email to me reads as

follows, I just renewed my membership to the Compassionate Cook's Club in honor of my son.

He deserves to be recognized for his amazing effort at the age of six to be the only vegan

kid in his American school here in Brazil. You met him briefly in

Oakland last summer. His name is Mathias but we call him Matt. He's an activist

already and says he wants to grow up fast to spend his life traveling around the

world telling people to become vegetarian. Yesterday he told me a kid in his

class had received an award for being the most respectful kid in first grade, and he

asked me, how can he get this award if he's not even vegetarian, mom?

Then he said, I guess they mean being respectful with people, but respect means a lot more

...