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Learning Curve In Our Vegan / Non-Vegan Household

by Dave Hewitt | January 19, 2019

Is managing a Vegan / Non-Vegan Household complex? Not as much as you’d think.

My forties have been quite eventful. I turned forty in 2010, and in late 2012 I went vegan. In 2015, I emigrated from the UK to the USA. I also married for the first time in 2015, here in the States. Monica, my American wife, went vegan in 2015 and hey, vegan husband and wife teams always help, right?

That same year, I became a British vegan step-father to three American very not vegan teenage boys. The learning curves in our vegan / non-vegan household have been both steep and generally fun. “Nipping to the loo” is now common parlance in our home, even more standout to me when delivered with broad Ohioan accents.

Our Vegan / Non-Vegan Household

The kids can seemingly eat whatever they like, sleep 12 hours a day on a
weekend, and still remain perfectly trim and athletic. I, of course, only have to glance at a vegan menu and my belt writes me a letter of complaint the day after. Captain UK, as my wife fondly teases me with as a nickname, has gotten used to the sight of a standard teenage pose resembling a one-man rugby scrum, bent down delving into the deepest recesses of the fridge for food, posterior pointed skywards.

It prides me to say, that while I can cook a reasonable plant based vindaloo curry, my wife is an incredible cook. But of course, there is the vegan / non-vegan divide in the house. The kids weren’t brought up vegan and Monica and I agreed that we would not impose upon them. So we shop and cook for both the vegan / non-vegan elements of our family unit. I can’t say my wife and I particularly enjoy perusing the meat aisles when we shop and we do try and limit that as much as we can without instigating a teenage mutiny. However, such has been my learning curve as a step-father in general. I can’t say I particularly like the sound of dubstep from four blocks out as I hone in on our house, but that goes with the teenage territory too.

Unsurprisingly, debates about veganism and eating meat take place in our house fairly frequently. We never push it though, as even with our boys, we know the frequent circular nature of arguing with non-vegans. However, through the power of awesome vegan food, the kids are not so exclusively non-vegan as they were before. Regular dairy is less and less in demand and our vegan alternatives are readily sampled, and savored, by the boys.
It’s not a done deal yet, but leading by vegan example when it comes to food (and what is more crucial to any teenager than eating), we’re hoping the kids one day, sooner or later, will make the conversion to full veganism of their own accord.

Does anyone else have a vegan / non-vegan household? Let us know your routine in the comments below.

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Dave Hewitt

An Ohio-based British Masters post-graduate, and ever since I was a little kid growing up in 70s England, I’ve always hated animal cruelty and injustice, and vegan for six years. The sense of sticking up for the voiceless, the persecuted and the powerless remains as strong as ever. Married to Monica, my vegan life partner who works for NASA, we’ve been in Ohio since 2015, and have managed to drive on the other side of the road without incident thus far.

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