I personally am not a Vegan, but I know what it’s like to live with/cook for one and I back anyone who decides to make the lifestyle switch to veganism. Here are my pros and cons on Oprah Winfrey’s 21-Day Cleanse, or as I like to call it 21-Day Vegan Straight-Edge Experiment.

Pros:

• If even 100 people from Oprah’s audience become vegan due to her 21-day vegan experiment, those 100 people will “save” 10,000 animals a year. (I say ’save’ because there is always the argument that ‘For every animal you don’t eat, I will eat X more.’)
• “I actually think about how my food got to my plate.” says Oprah on her 21-Day Cleanse blog. If only everyone could adopt this way of thinking in both food and consumer products, our world would become much more environmentally-aware.
• Oprah mentions on her blog multiple times how she still feels satisfied eating vegan. I feel like the thought of leaving cheese and ‘creamy’ dishes in the dust deters many people from becoming, or at least trying a vegan-lifestyle.
• Oprah is introducing her audience to a vegan lifestyle, if nothing else, maybe being vegan will become more wildly accepted rather than a choice that provokes an “Oh I could never do that!” or “What the hell is a vegan?!” response.
• A lot of the vegan dishes Oprah blogs about sound pretty simple to concoct on your own, without help from Tal Ronnen. Kathy Freston, along with providing spiritual cockamamie, has tips underneath each of Oprah’s blog entries, like adding fruit nectar to bland meals like oatmeal to make them more satisfying. I almost like this better than Oprah teaching her viewers delicious vegan recipes.
• Switching to a plant-based diet is much healthier, and in a country where obesity rates are rising I back anything trying to encourage a positive, healthy lifestyle.

Cons:

• Oprah is selling her 21-day vegan lifestyle as a spiritual experience, often relating experiences back to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. Oprah is near-ignoring the entire topic of animal rights, most likely because her audience would not want to hear it (which is a problem in itself).
• Oprah is not committed to veganism, I’m sure she has at least two leather couches in her home or on her chartered jets.
• Oprah has a team of personal Chefs (although her chef, Tal Ronnen only was with her for 2/3rds of her 21-day cleanse). I feel like this could deter people from trying veganism because it makes it seem like it is hard to prepare a great-tasting vegan dish on your own. It makes veganism seem complicated and out of reach for the average person.

All in all I back Oprah raising veganism’s profile in the media, anything to bring it to a larger audience and become a more accepted way of life is awesome. I hope that Oprah publicly debunks the myth about vegans not being able to get enough protein into their diet, I don’t watch the show regularly enough to report back on that. If even a few people switch to a plant-based diet by being inspired by Oprahs 21-day cleanse, that’s great. It benefits not only your health and animals, but also the environment and learning to live a sustainable lifestyle.

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