Family ‘have lost friends and are blanked on the street’ after turning vegan
Jacqui Robins, a nutritionist, said: There seems to be some kind of divide where people meet vegans with aggression and resistance when you are just trying to raise awareness about practices that people should know about.
LISA LETCHER: ‘Jacqui Robins’ decision to go from vegetarian to vegan recently encouraged the rest of her family; dad John, husband Ryan and their three children, to follow suit. “I saw a video that went into the reality of the dairy industry. I was horrified and straightaway I didn’t want anything to do with the dairy products, because I thought, if I couldn’t cope with watching it happen, but I was buying the product, I was inadvertently funding it,” Jacqui, 44, told Cornwall Live .
“All of the kids have made their own decisions and have recognised why they are vegan. Some parents say ‘you’re not having that and that’, but we wanted the kids to understand why we do it, take on the information and decide for themselves”… But Jacqui, from Probus, Cornwall, conceded people still remain uneducated about veganism and, as a result, she’s “lost friendships”. The mum-to-three added: “When I started posting about it and raising awareness, I lost all of my friendships – because they were telling me to be quiet about it”…
“So for me, posting was the most powerful thing I could do, I could get things out on social media for people to see and read. “I got grief from friends back in the Midlands, where I grew up, saying this is not what Facebook is about, stop with the dead images of animals and share family photos instead”… Jacqui, who is a nutritionist, said: “There seems to be some kind of divide where people meet vegans with aggression and resistance when you are just trying to raise awareness about practices that people should know about.”
The kids have even been bullied at school. Skipp, 14, decided to become vegan after watching The Land of Hope and Glory, a documentary about the UK’s farming practices. The teenager, who claims he regularly has meat waved in his face at school, said: “A dairy farmer’s child argued with me that a calf doesn’t need to be born for milk to be made, and I was made to look stupid because obviously everyone will believe the farmer’s son over me”…
Ryan, 37, admitted it was more difficult for him to make the change… But after Jacqui’s mother was diagnosed with bowel cancer and Ryan’s father passed away, the teaching assistant decided to change his diet. “I went vegan for health reasons initially, I wanted us and our family to live a life as healthy and as nutritiously as possible, so that we could live as long as possible,” he said. “Once we had all watched that documentary, it was far easier for us as a family. “We have united as a family and made that decision”.’ SOURCE…
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