Bologna, 15th January
I didn’t understand what was on my plate until I was 16. As a child, I always ate meat and animal products, it was the most normal thing in the small Sardinian village where we lived. Growing up, I remember we had rabbits for a while. I was completely captivated by their cuteness but when they ended up on my plate, I didn’t realise it was them.
Where I come from, it’s tradition to eat lamb at Easter. My father would always bring home a little lamb which he would then slaughter for the occasion a few months later. It was a strange situation, because my parents were always very gentle and affectionate with these animals, even if they killed them afterwards.
Very often, the animals I’d been playing with would disappear. Our parents made sure we didn’t make the connection between the lamb we’d bottle-fed until a few days earlier and what we were served for lunch.
I remember there was one lamb in particular that the whole family fell in love with. We had a husky at the time. One evening, he managed to climb over the fence of the pen where the little animal was sleeping and tore it to pieces. We were all devastated, including my father, despite the fact it would have ended up on our plates shortly afterwards in any case.
When I was 16, we had a lesson at school about what goes on on farms, which shocked me to the core. Until then, I had believed that slaughter was a painless process and that farms were happy places. It was a bit like waking up from a dream. After that, I immediately decided to stop eating meat for several months.
Then, at the age of 30, I became a vegan after learning about what happens on farms during the production of animal by-products –the fact, for example, that a cow, like any mammal, only produces milk when she’s pregnant, which doesn’t naturally continue, and that this milk is destined to feed her calf, not humans.
No one in my family opposed my decision or tried to change my mind. They’ve always respected my choice. But it still hasn’t been easy. My sister, for example, is a buffalo farmer and produces buffalo milk for her own dairy. Over time, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that there will always be a colossal difference between our lifestyles, and learn to live with this difference in perspective which divides us.
From a mental health point of view, it’s a burden, because it’s as if others can’t see what you’re seeing on your plate.
When it comes to eating an animal, most people stop thinking about it as an individual being. Unfortunately, it’s hard to change the way we think about food, because some habits are hard to give up. But we could start by seeing plant-based food as an evolution of our culture and culinary traditions, rather than a renunciation.
That’s why, during lock-down, I decided to post a video of myself making a vegan lasagna on Instagram. This gave rise to my Little Vegan Witch page, where I share recipes and tips. A lot of people think that being vegan means giving up on taste. It doesn’t. Vegan eating broadens your vision of cooking, because in addition to reproducing traditional cuisine, you also discover new flavors.
Becoming vegan has really been a source of enrichment for me, as I’ve become interested in other cuisines and cultures. And I feel less guilty about what goes onto my plate, even if, like everyone else, I still have my contradictions. The veganfail is always just around the corner. For example, I’m well aware that most of the pharmaceutical products I use contain lactose. Every human action has an impact on the lives of animals and the planet.
It’s vital to get away from the current food model which is really destructive. Being vegan is a personal choice, however it benefits the whole community, in the sense that it impacts other living beings and our environment as little as possible. Unfortunately, the vegan phenomenon is stuck on a very minor scale, because our governments do little or nothing to make it a collective responsibility. But I’m convinced that, sooner or later, the main source of the world’s food will come predominantly from plants.
