Coming in May 2018 is the world’s first vegan parenting magazine! Raise Vegan Magazine is a resource dedicated to giving the plant-based and health community information such as nutrition, scientific research, mental health, cruelty-free beauty and contributions from vegan parents. Six month and Yearly subscriptions are available for order.
The magazine launched digitally in December 2017, and will continue being available online and on Apple and Google apps to subscribers. Check out an excerpt of their January 2018 with vegan father, John Lewis, known as Bad Ass Vegan! Over to Raise Vegan:
It isn’t every day that you get to sit down with an inspiring vegan, and it was incredible to snag some time out of his busy schedule. A lot of people know John Lewis as ‘Bad Ass Vegan’, yet may not know that he is also raising his own vegan family.
You mentioned that when you went vegan, it was taboo, you didn’t have any friends or family by this point in your journey, have some of those people come around?
Yes, it’s so interesting how many emails and texts I get these days. I get messages ‘so you know, that vegan thing, so how do I start?’
Twelve years ago when I went vegan, there was no social media to make a big announcement on, so I was lucky in that I had no haters to try and talk me out of it. (Yet) We keep eating food, the fried chicken, collard greens, all of that, that is slowly killing us. We have dogs and cats with type 2 diabetes now, because of what we are feeding them.
I think that’s something we need do – make it personal. Like look man, you’re killing your kids. People don’t always care so much about themselves, but you talk about their kids and what they’re doing to them.
You know, it kind of goes in to why we want to make this magazine and it’s so important to be able to feature people like you and people who are making an impact in raising the next generation vegan and raising them to, at least think more about their choices, what they put in their mouths, what they give their children, what they’re teaching their children.
We have to think about it, think about what you’re doing to your kids. Once you get addicted to something, it’s tough to break it down. People think alcohol or drugs are the only addictions you can have, but food is the most addictive thing you can ever put in your body.
Yes, and scared to raise vegan children! Another reason why we need to bring more awareness to this. It’s received and spread around the world that it’s dangerous.
Yes, I tell people, ‘When you get to the cash register, does your child say, no Mom look, I got this.’ No. So until that day, they have no say. Put it this way, if you reverse the roles or reverse the situation, you were eating what you didn’t know was bad for all those years but you didn’t have a say in that either. You can’t worry about what you’re going to do when you give them the good stuff!
As you move forward with your businesses, your documentary, entrepreneurship and parenting through all this – how is it going, how are you feeling with all of that and raising a family?
It’s amazing because when I am home, my daughter is with me all day. And because I work from home, I get to spend a lot of time with her. She’s 19 months and when I see her she shouts ‘Poppy!’ She has her own little language going on. Seeing her helps me work because I know I’m doing this for her sake as well and any other child in the world. I was doing it before she got here and now I have more of a reason to do it. It makes me keep going.
The documentary is really the biggest project we have now and just received the funding. The name of it may change from Hiphopcrates. That name is very well known in the vegan community but outside of that, he is not as well known. The thing is, as much as we love vegans, the documentary isn’t so much for vegans as it is for people to learn to transition to become vegan. We looked at two different titles and one of them was flat out “They’re Trying to Kill Us” and the other one I came up with was “Lethal Ingestion”. The premise of the film is to take a look at food injustice and nutrition deserts through the lens of hip hop and urban culture. So now we have Stic from Dead Prez, Jermaine Dupri, Mya, Waka Flocka.. Stay tuned!
For more visit their website!
Top photo: Amy Neunsinger
