Welcome to Small Bite Sound Bites, a midweek segment of food for thought podcast where I,

your host Colleen Patrick-Gudrow, share short, succinct, thoughtful responses to typical

questions, myths, and misconceptions related to plant-based eating, veganism, and animal

protection.

You can support this podcast today by going to joyfulvegan.com slash donate.

If you're vegan and you want to demystify what it means to be vegan, even if you're

not vegan, and you want to demystify what it means to be vegan, here's a tip, stop overusing

the word vegan.

Because the words we use, all of us, vegans, vegetarians, non-vegans, doesn't matter.

We have this notion that there's regular food and normal food over here, and quote-unquote

vegan food over here.

And in reality, vegan food is food.

We're already familiar with, it's vegetables and fruits and beans and nuts and seeds and

grains and mushrooms and herbs and spices, foods we already know and already love when

it comes to baked goods, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa, chocolate, yeast,

again, things that are already in our cupboard and things we're already familiar with, it's

just food.

We don't say, can I have a vegan banana or a vegan apple, it's just a banana, it's just

an apple.

We know it's vegan or plant-based because it's a plant food.

So when we take food out of the box called vegan, we go a long way in normalizing the plant

foods we eat.

...