May 10, 2019
According to SLP Nutrition co-owner Allyson Oman, the local nutrition club that opened in March has seen an increase in visitors, including those who are vegetarian and vegan.
“We do see some people that have restrictions or choose to eat all vegetarian or vegan,” Oman said. “We have a selected protein (for them) because before that, a lot of people didn’t want to necessarily drink the whey protein. This new option is strictly plant-based, so there’s a little bit for everybody.”
Garcia said she was a vegetarian for six months before becoming vegan in order to make the transition smoother and healthier.
“It was way easier and better in my opinion to be vegetarian first. Just to dip your toes in the water and see how it is,” Garcia said.
According to Garcia, the price of veganism was daunting at first, but ultimately turned out to be a cheaper option.
“The price was a really big concern for me because I heard about veganism being really expensive,” Garcia said. “It’s actually way less expensive than when I was eating meat because I mainly swapped out the meat with other forms of protein.”
For students looking into becoming a vegan, Garcia said social media is a great resource to turn to for inspiration.
“I started by going on YouTube and looking at ‘what I eat in a day as a vegan’ videos and that introduced me to a lot of vegan inspiration,” Garcia said. “I followed (vegan influencers) on Instagram, so I knew what to eat as not only a vegan, but as someone who’s very active and wants to keep up with macronutrients.”
Wachutka urges students who want to make the dietary transition to educate themselves and be conscious about the types of foods they are consuming and what nutrients they could be lacking in their diet.
“You have to be better than the average teenager and pay attention to what you’re doing because it is easy to miss out on some very necessary things in your diet, proteins being one of them,” Wachutka said.
