I have always lived by one rule: to ensure that no unnecessary suffering is endured to sustain my own existence.

Now, this is rather idealistic. By simply walking down the street, I am causing suffering to trillions of microorganisms and even ants, if I am not careful, by stepping on them and extinguishing their lives. What I shall define this rule by is my consumption of food.

Till recently, I had neglected to include the animals that live and die painfully to feed me every day. It is easy to shut your eyes to what goes on behind the scenes to produce that slab of steak and yummy drumstick. But I have decided to remove those shutters once and for all.

I have been an animal welfare advocate for more than 10 years through my website No More Cruelty! which was run by my cat Boy and now on hiatus. Since, I have supported animal welfare groups like Cat Welfare Society, SPCA, The Animal Rescue Site, and Animals Asia.

Twice I have tried to go vegetarian. The latter, I succeeded for 6 months till I slowly gave up from being always too weak and tired to do anything due to malnutrition. The one organic vegan store I used to eat at every day had closed down.

Nevertheless, this time I have decided to try again. But this time in baby steps and with a full nutritional analysis.

1. My goal is one meal at a time

Even better when several people share a nice vegan or vegetarian meal together. Friends and family have so far enjoyed my vegetarian pastas, Mexican burritos, and vegan cous cous. I've also bought a couple of vegan cookbooks and will try one vegan meal a week.

2. I will give up one type of food at a time

I have already phased out beef, lamb, deer, pork, and veal, simply because I dislike the taste of them. Chicken I eat sporadically.

It is fish that I have a tough time giving up, but the image in my head of a fish asphyxiating, flopping around in distress for 15 minutes before it dies makes it easier to give it up. I love eggs and have been hunting around for a humane egg farmer. Angie tells me Chew's is actually pretty humane but I'll have to see it to believe it. Hubby has said we'll take a trip to the farm in the near future. The alternative is I'll keep my own chickens and that's a no! :D

So for part 1, I am giving up milk first (cheese a little later because I love cheese with a vengeance). I've tried soya milk, which is okay, and rice milk which tastes kinda like breast milk. The rice milk (Rice Dream) is fortified with B12, so that covers the one thing I'll probably lack as a vegan.

3. Enjoy your meals, whatever they may be

Today at Xmas lunch and dinner, I scoffed down heaps of honey ham, parma ham, roast chicken, and smoked salmon. Heck I have a weakness for all things smoked and salted. But I felt rather ill after all that processed meat.

Key is to allow myself to eat anything I want. Eating is a pleasure. We shouldn't change that. If it becomes a chore, veganism won't become a lifelong habit. The repulsion for meat must come naturally. I remind myself that. I also remind myself no one should suffer so that I live another day.

Still, it is still better to eat only bacon as a treat and never eat any other meat, than to throw in the towel and eat everything again. Hence I will not label myself either vegan or apprentice vegan (funny marketing term I made up), or even vegetarian. This puts undue pressure on everyone and helps no one.

4. Search for humane sources of food

Truly, if I can find a farmer who allows his cows to graze in a field of farm land and have their calves naturally and stay with their mothers for a normal period of time, I would drink milk. Similarly, if I can find a farmer who lets his chickens run freely, do not debeak them, nor stick needles in them, I will eat eggs again.

Angie was telling me that in Malaysia, kampong chickens do exactly that. They run free and they lay eggs the way normal chickens do. That's why they are skinny and muscular, and their eggs are small. While it makes sense, I will have to find out more before I can consider them a humane source.

5. Do whatever I can

Whatever I do, I do whatever I can. Small things add up, like spreading the vegan meme. It has been increasing in popularity over the years and look, now you can get organic vegetarian and vegan stuff in the growing number of organic stores all over the country. Soon it will tip.

I have also continued breastfeeding my baby. Aside from the obvious benefits for both of us, I also save a ton of money in milk powder and remove my share of need from the marketplace. Less cows will suffer if every mother breastfeeds their baby.

So far I have thrown three dinner parties with vegetarian meals that the guests truly enjoyed. Considering they would have probably eaten a meat-based meal elsewhere, those meals helped save a few animals by simply offering an alternative and also great company.

An argument to dispel:

We are top of the food chain, so eating meat (et all) is the survival of the fittest. Plus, look at all the animals on Animal Planet, they toy with their prey. Cruelty is in nature.

We were also evolved large brains for our size and with that, the capacity to think, analyse, and possess compassion. Therefore if we cannot see that our mass production methods of producing food is horrifyingly cruel, we are no better than gnats, intellectually.

We can find options, alternatives. We are smart enough to do that. We're just lazy since we don't have to hunt for our food anymore. The distance between the animals that are slaughtered for our food and the nice sterile packages we bring home has made us apathetic to the process that tortures and kills millions of animals every day.

So what if nature is cruel? It is. And it is also in our capacity to reverse some of that cruelty. We have the power to make this world a better place. Why not do that instead of saying that must be the way things are. Because it is natural?

Stay tuned for more culinary adventures.

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