Transition from vegetarian to vegan

[Jennifer]

Hi so I'm a vegan newbie and I have a couple of worries and concerns.
I have made the transition to vegan in the categories of food, clothing, make up, toiletries and cleaning supply's. However my worries and concerns are what products could be non vegan that I'm not thinking of. I'm worried that I'm going to buy something to later find out that in fact it is non vegan.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated
(I also have never used a forum so I'm not sure if I'm doing this correct)

 

[winter.frost]

Hi Jennifer, and welcome to the forum. We are thrilled you chose us as your first forum!

I think I can probably speak for every vegan when I say that we have all made a mistake at least once. When I was new to vegetarianism/veganism I made quite a few in the first months. I say the same to everyone when this happens, and when they come to the forum feeling guilt and shame - don't make yourself feel like the sky has fallen. It was a mistake, and honest mistakes happen; just embrace it as part of your learning curve. Forgive yourself.

So I commend you for wanting to avoid this but I also want you to be prepared: it will happen, someday and somehow. You might be at a restaurant, they take your order wrong and it takes you a few mouthfuls to realise... it could be anything. Maybe you're tired and in a rush at the supermarket and you don't look twice at a new product. Who knows.

But now that we've got the slightly unpleasant (but truthful) reality to one side, there are so many areas of our lives we can veganise that we possibly don't consider in the beginning. For instance there's transportation (that's a big one!) though not everyone has the practical means to veganise their getting from A to B and we don't expect everyone to buy electric cars overnight. There's our home utility bills (can you switch from gas to electricity etc. how green is your package?) but, again, not every can switch this as easily as they can their diet (and not everyone has control over what services they use!). There's what we feed our pets (if we have pets, or foster animals, or co-habiting animals - whatever you want to call them) since these days there are healthy vegan alternatives (if that's what you want to do; there are other threads here on the forum about the ethics of enforcing other diets on animals). There's your bedding and upholstery (feathers? leather?). It all depends on how far you want to take it. Only this week another thread was calling leather-bound books into question so it really depends. Adhesives are often not vegan, as well as some paints and colourings. You can even get certified-vegan condoms now. Yep, many condoms are not vegan (pretty gross, if you ask me).

The crux of the matter is that you're committed to doing as little harm as you can and, in that, the vegan community will support you as you go forward.

 

[Jennifer]

Hi Jennifer, and welcome to the forum. We are thrilled you chose us as your first forum!

I think I can probably speak for every vegan when I say that we have all made a mistake at least once. When I was new to vegetarianism/veganism I made quite a few in the first months. I say the same to everyone when this happens, and when they come to the forum feeling guilt and shame - don't make yourself feel like the sky has fallen. It was a mistake, and honest mistakes happen; just embrace it as part of your learning curve. Forgive yourself.

So I commend you for wanting to avoid this but I also want you to be prepared: it will happen, someday and somehow. You might be at a restaurant, they take your order wrong and it takes you a few mouthfuls to realise... it could be anything. Maybe you're tired and in a rush at the supermarket and you don't look twice at a new product. Who knows.

But now that we've got the slightly unpleasant (but truthful) reality to one side, there are so many areas of our lives we can veganise that we possibly don't consider in the beginning. For instance there's transportation (that's a big one!) though not everyone has the practical means to veganise their getting from A to B and we don't expect everyone to buy electric cars overnight. There's our home utility bills (can you switch from gas to electricity etc. how green is your package?) but, again, not every can switch this as easily as they can their diet (and not everyone has control over what services they use!). There's what we feed our pets (if we have pets, or foster animals, or co-habiting animals - whatever you want to call them) since these days there are healthy vegan alternatives (if that's what you want to do; there are other threads here on the forum about the ethics of enforcing other diets on animals). There's your bedding and upholstery (feathers? leather?). It all depends on how far you want to take it. Only this week another thread was calling leather-bound books into question so it really depends. Adhesives are often not vegan, as well as some paints and colourings. You can even get certified-vegan condoms now. Yep, many condoms are not vegan (pretty gross, if you ask me).

The crux of the matter is that you're committed to doing as little harm as you can, and in that the vegan community will support you as you go forward.

Thank you for replying and I'm also very glad I choose this forum I've been reading through all the different topics and I have found it very useful and informative.

I'll keep it in mind that mistakes happen but I do hope that I can take every precaution so that it doesn't happen or I can keep it to the bare minimum.

I didn't even think of most of these areas of life. Most of my transportation is walking and using a bus or train when necessary but I'll know for in the future to look at electric cars and find out more about them. I am still using gas for the central heating however I did get solar panels put in place for powering appliances during the day. So I'll put changing gas to electric on the list to change. It may sound silly but I didn't even think about my pets diets as we had constantly been told that they can only live of a meat diet (of course not including the rabbit) but I'm presuming these people must of not had the correct information? But I'll definitely have a look at the other threads on this topic. My bedding and upholstery is all made of synthetic materials but now I'm curious about the adhesives used for them. As again that was not one of the things I had expected to be none vegan. With starting this lifestyle and researching I have been surprised and disgusted at how many things actually contain animal products.

Once again thank you for replying this is very useful, I am eager to try my best with this lifestyle and change everything that I have the ability to change within it. And I am very glad to have found this forum and so far have found it to be extremely useful, and have seen how supportive the community is