Pete has reached the end of his vegan journey.

I’m sorry to say that he has gone back to eating meat and cheese for the time being. He’s insisted that he must eat up the meat and cheese that we have in our house. He says it would be wasteful to throw this food he’s already paid for away. Anyone want some free food? You don’t have to make a donation to any cause. I will even bring you the food!

Pete says that once the meat/cheese laden food is gone he will resume his mostly-vegan diet. Pete can see doing this for moral and compassionate purposes regarding the animals. I believe my internship at Mercy For Animals and also my vegan journey has helped him along his journey to get where he is today. If you’ll remember back when I went vegan, this was the man that told me, “I certainly hope you don’t stay vegan. You’ll never be able to go out to eat anywhere.” I think it’s safe to say Pete has been proven wrong!

I’ve never told anyone this but I’ll tell you now. I liked the vegan diet when I tried it as a project for my blog but I was on the fence about staying with that lifestyle choice. To go from eating meat, dairy and eggs one day and to drop it all the next is a pretty big change. And if you think about it, doing it in only one week is a huge step. It was the words that Pete said to me about not staying vegan that pushed me over the fence. So I have Pete to thank for my veganism and where it brought me. My journey through veganism to now becoming an animal rights activist has been a great one and I have Pete and his challenging words to thank for it.

I’m glad that Pete got a chance to try eating for a week without any meat or cheese. It opened his eyes to the struggles I sometimes face at restaurants. It also forced him to do some label reading to see what was really in his food.

The best part of the project for me was at the very end when Pete went to Costco on Saturday while I was at the Renegade Arts Festival. I came home and he said he had some surprises for me. He said that he found three vegan things at Costco: fruit snacks, pasta sauce and some designer potato chips. Then he broke down and told me he ate ALL of the samples. For Pete’s sake he ate everything! And he enjoyed it of which I’m really glad!

 So there you have it: another successful project completed. The subject will eat up all of the leftover meat in the house and then will resume a mostly vegan diet (some cheese will be included apparently). I’ll take that….for now.

Sara Sawochka