This week I talked to Hannah Grace Kirkpatrick, my best friend of about six years. We met in gym class, sophomore year of high school, while running the state-mandated PACER test. Our food preferences were always on different ends of the spectrum. When we went out to eat together, she’d order a chicken quesadilla with extra sour cream and I’d ask the waiter to just bring a bushel of kale to the table. She watched my journey to veganism, always with an exceptionally supportive, but skeptical eye. This past summer, she called me on the phone and broke into tears, saying she was “finally on-board.” After doing her own research and meeting with a nutritionist who told her she was on track for Type II Diabetes, Hannah went vegan. This evening, over my bowl of white rice, tofu and cold marinara sauce, I Facetimed her to see what her experience has been like so far.
I asked her to first tell us a little about herself. “I go to the Savannah College of Art and Design. I am an advertising major and a copywriting minor. I’m from the Northeast, you know, I like comedy. I do comedy. I’m a big fan of snacks, and movies.”
When I asked her to talk about why veganism is so important to her, she started off explaining what growing up in her house was like.
“I grew up in almost an exclusively meat-and-dairy household. Those were our staples. I had three or four yogurts a day sometimes. My sister and I grew up as really picky eaters, but we always loved cheese sticks and yogurt and stuff and that was a good source of protein that my mom didn’t have to fight us over. So, that kind of just carried itself through my adult life.”
She continued, “After being at college for two years with just the most irregular sleep schedule, work schedule and eating patterns, I’d gained like 32lbs. I was also having lots of bowel issues, so I went and saw a nutritionist who took everything out of my diet except for like rice, meat and a few vegetables. After two weeks of this ridiculously strict diet, I still hadn’t lost any weight and I was just hungry all the time. Meanwhile, I had seen a couple of documentaries about the veganism and was doing some research on it.”
After researching, everything seemed to click for Hannah. “It it wasn’t until I dove into the health benefits about people being able to get off their medications and resetting their hormones that it really started to make sense. I was on-and-off birth control a lot, eating animal hormones and I was wondering why I was sad all the time. It was like, ‘Oh, my body has no rhythm!’”
Since she’s not on a meal plan, eating out was always a beloved activity. She talked about the initial agony of watching her friends order some of her favorite foods when they went out to eat, knowing she couldn’t enjoy them anymore. When she discovered vegan cooking, however, and invested in a few cookbooks, she realized how easy things really could be. “I was basically eating similar things to when I wasn’t a vegan. I was just making substitutions for things that tasted pretty much the same, but reacted differently in my body.”
I wondered what kind of changes she noticed in her body and mood, if any. She described a slow and steady weight loss without the sensation of ever being starved or deprived. Her skin got worse at the start, which she attributed to her body’s detoxification, and then improved dramatically. She said she’d felt much more alert and is able to focus for longer periods of time. Her hair has also stopped falling out in clumps while showering as it has in that past.
I’m always stunned to discover how many incredible vegan recipes Hannah’s become an expert at making, knowing she’s been vegan for only six months. She makes everything from chocolate chip banana pancakes to pizzas with homemade cashew cheese.
“I make this really awesome vegan pad thai like once a week. I just keep all the ingredients on hand so it’s not hard at all. I also do this really dope tofu scramble. I add turmeric and garlic salt to make it kind of look and taste like scrambled eggs. I’ll usually put all that in a tortilla and eat it like a breakfast burrito.”
Finally, I asked Hannah something I’ve been meaning to talk about with her. I asked her what it was like having her best friend be vegan. She said, “It was really frustrating going out to restaurants with you. I’d have this like delicious-looking, giant thing, and you were like, ‘I’ll have the oatmeal’ or ‘a salad with no dressing.’”
Hannah went on, “I was also mostly frustrated because nothing you were saying was untrue. Which sucked. You know when your mom is like, ‘Bring a jacket, bring a jacket, being a jacket,’ and you’re like ‘FUCK the jacket!’ It was like that. Once I figured it out for myself and realized it wasn’t a deprivation thing, like I wouldn’t be giving up a lot, that was good for me.”
In my last question for Hannah, I asked how she felt that experience of being annoyed by her nagging vegan friend has informed how she interacts with people she care about who are curious about or skeptical of veganism.
“I found that listening to people is a lot easier. I have a friend, she’s literally like 22, and she has arthritis in her fingers and knees. I tell her, ‘I think this is very much linked to food. I feel terrible that you’re in pain and I want to help you.” If they don’t want your help, that’s fine, but yelling at people and shoving it their faces that your life is so much better and that you’re so much healthier is not the way to go. Ever. If they want more information, they know where to find you. You don’t need to keep reminding people. Sometimes they get it much faster than you’d think.”