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Vegucated: A Documentary and Experiment in Going Vegan

vegan-experimentA year ago, I went vegetarian for a month-long experiment. And during that time, I came perhaps a touch close to going vegan—in that I didn’t feel totally okay with eating eggs and I avoided cheese. But I certainly didn’t try to not eat animal products in everything—heck, sometimes I had a hard enough time ordering a vegetarian option (I do live in the BBQ capital of the world—Kansas City), let alone a vegan one. And after my experiment, I did go back to eating meat regularly. In fact, these days I eat quite a bit of meat and protein, but I’m super picky about where it comes from. Well, I thought I was picky. That was until I popped the Vegucated documentary into my DVD player.

In this funny yet at times graphic and disturbing documentary, Director Marisa Miller Wolfson follows three meat-and-cheese lovers—Ellen, Brian, and Tesla—as they take on the Vegucated challenge to nix all animal products for six weeks in an effort to lose weight and feel healthy. While you follow along with these three very different people, you also get a crash course in going vegan. From the hidden side of animal agriculture (let’s just say it’s more horrific than you think it is, even if you think it’s terrible) to how eating a fresher, less-processed diet can improve your health to how challenging it is for us to really making lasting changes (while shocked at what they learn, Ellen, Brian and Tesla all struggle with their new vegan lifestyle), it’s an educational film that will make you think twice before you order that steak or cheese-covered anything.
Vegucated is similar in content to Food, Inc., and although it is more hard-core vegan, it’s also funnier. While I couldn’t get the image of dead baby chickens out of my head after watching this, I’d still recommend it. When it comes to food, we should all be more cognizant of what we’re ingesting and where it comes from. At least I think so.
Have you seen this documentary? What did you think? Did it change the foods you eat? Tell us about it! —Jenn

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