And I'm and Welcome to Food for Thought. My name is Colleen Patrick Gudro from Compassionate Cooks. I founded Compassionate 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. We have a lot of ground to cover in today's episode

but before we get started I want to thank today's

listener sponsors to incredibly generous people who also sent me incredibly

lovely emails. The first sponsor is John Chan from Hong Kong, who wrote, Dear Colleen, I stumbled

on your podcast by chance. I downloaded several, listened to them, and am stunned by your eloquence, your intelligence, your

compassion, neutrality, the grounds you covered, the mission you're on and

I want to spread your word throughout my circle of friends and relatives.

Your podcast is so encompassing, so direct, that there's no escape for non-vegans with a speck of

compassion in them, not to wake up to the truth. Thank you, thank you.

You've answered many questions in my heart

that I hadn't been able to address or didn't want to.

You've addressed the very impediments I had

from becoming vegan this far where I started to refuse to eat

mammals since the death of my parents in 1985 while I hypocritically continued

eating fowl and fish. For what I did, nieces and nephews were influenced by my action

and some have become vegetarian.

You've started me thinking

and planning a vegan life from now on.

I will try to overcome those social situations

...