The United States of America - the third
largest country in the world. It's a loud and strong nation and sets the standard
in nearly all areas - especially in the west. Almost every Trend finds its origins in
pioneering America. But is this really always a good thing? The USA has an incredibly
High GDP of almost 24 trillion US-Dollars. The United States is the market leader
particularly in the meat industry. 99% of the meat comes from factory farming. Around
23 million land animals are kil
led every day. That's 266 animals per second.
The greenhouse gases that are produced contribute significantly to climate
change. The result in events can be seen for example in the extreme heat waves in
Los Angeles in 2022. Animals are reduced to simply being food or property. But there is
a way of life that opposes this exploitation veganism and with it committed people who
carry the ideas and ideals of veganism into the world in a variety of ways. Today we
meet six of them in Los Angeles
California my name is Chanel and I run the
vegan as [ __ ] food truck in Los Angeles So we specialize in loaded eggrolls. I wanted
to create a different type of vegan food so I wanted to focus on the street food culture. The
reason being because people typically hear the word "street food" and they don't think of the
word vegan behind it. For me VEGAN EXCHANGE is more of like a cultural experience because it's a
place every single Sunday that you can gather with your fellow peers and serve
vegan food. it's like
a One-Stop shop, so you can get vegan desserts you got me you got vegan chicken there so it's
a weekly meet up for people that are non-vegan and vegan to come together and try some amazing
vegan food. I love that Festival, the owners are really amazing. When my truck launched, the owner
reached out and was like: "Hey we got to have you at our first Festival coming up!" I signed up and
I've been there every single Sunday. I actually launched it last year in June. I mov
ed to Los
Angeles from My Hometown Chicago in the middle of the the pandemic and when I immediately moved
here I noticed one thing: A lot of the vegan food in Los Angeles was the same or a similar concept
so I wanted to create something totally new, totally out of the box and as you can see
the truck is bright pink you can't miss it. Everything served in this pink box with a pink
fortune cookie. Because I want it to be original and I want it to be different and think outside of
the box. I'
ve actually been vegan for 9 years now, which is insane, but time has flewn by. Growing
up in a black family family you don't hear the word vegan too often, so it was definitely hard
for me to transition and kind of leave a little bit of my culture behind. But it's been an amazing
journey. Pretty much Los Angeles has everything that you want as a vegan. Whether it's Pizza,
whether it's Burgers, whether it's tacos. You can go and get it and I love that I'm very spoiled
living here as a vegan
. So we're going to try to have somebody try this one as a sample. We have
our Philly-roll. Your name? - Ezra - I'm Sequoia. And are you guys vegan? "oh yeah!" How long you
guys been vegan? I've been vegan for 6 years and then I turned HIM vegan when we met. you know
what? A little less than a year! Listen! That's why you need her in your life, all right?! Don't
let her go! You hear that? She got me hooked, for sure! Got you hooked ?All right! you guys
are trying the vegan as [ __ ] Philly-
roll and you got to dip it in the sauce. I know okay and
let us know your genuine reaction! cheers baby! cheers oh oh [ __ ] you're overwhelmed, huh? I'm so
happy! So good! This is our first time here it's [ __ ] amazing. We're literally from
this like sort of small town. Yeah, we're all humble they have no vegan restaurants at all so
enjoy it, that's the Philly-roll. Once again, thank you so much! We saw it on the Instagram,
we were like: I need to stop here. All right, well you guys got t
o try it. I'm so happy, thank
you so much! I tell them I can eat anything that I want. I can eat anything that you eat, but
there's no animals that had to die for. And every time they say that like: So you can eat
sushi? - yes I can eat vegan Sushi. Can you eat pizza? yes, I can eat vegan pizza! I could
eat vegan soul food, I can eat vegan tacos, it's everything that you eat, but no animals died
for mine. I knew that I wanted to be healthier, I knew that I wanted to take control of
my life
and I knew I wanted to go vegan to protect animals, and do my part, so that was
kind of all the motivation that I need and over the course of me being vegan these nine years
I knew I wanted to take what I was learning and cooking at my home and bringing it to the
world and that's exactly what I did with VeganAF. I think the future of veganism is all about
expansion. We're taking over the fast food industry like crazy. We're taking over the
restaurant industry. We're taking over the grocery
stores, so I personally feel like it's
all about expansion. It's all about adding more diversity. We're coming for the meat eaters,
we're changing the game and that's pretty much it. I am Youssef, I go by Youssef Vromage, cuz
my name actually was legally changed from Youssef Fakouri to Youssef Vromage. The reason
I changed my name to Vromage is because I became popular known and people call or come here:
"can I speak to Mr Fromage, Mr Vromage. So I became Monsieur Vromage. So I have been o
pen
here early 2014. I've been making vegan cheese since 2009. I did it just for fun to impress my
lady friend hoping that she fall in love with me, because she was a vegan chef and I continue making
the cheese with the same idea, trying to make, instead of make one lady fall in love with me,
trying to make everybody fall in love with me. My cheese is made with nuts I use whole nuts. I
don't use pieces, I don't use powder of the nuts. Cashew, macadamia, almond. It's all whole pieces,
becau
se you get better flavor, better milk from the nuts when you prepare for fermentation.
You can take off your mask if you feel comfortable. It is my first time here - you're
welcome - I am picking up some stuff for a friend who is a vegan. I know I haven't tasted
anything, give me a couple of suggestions. When you eat dairy, what's flavor you look for. I
like intense flavors. This is made with nuts, so youre okay? And how did you find out about
this place. I've heard about you guys forever a
nd I was asking my brother ,who is a
vegan, - oh - at where should I go to pick up some stuff and he mentioned this.
Were you somewhere else first? no! You're always here? Almost 9 years ago. You want a
softer or you want a harder cheese? Again, I'm open. How about something a little
harder? Little spicy? uhhuh but it's creamy. That's really good. So okay, thank you! I have everybody
coming here. What's interesting: The young people are very conscientious about what to
eat, because they ha
ve compassion and they have, they are aware of animals cruelity toward the
animals so you have... the young people are actually changing the older folks, older
generation in America. Success mean BIG. That means you have to be in stores. NO! Success
is if you're making something delicious and you are making people happy and satisfied.
Well, the future is going to be vegan, that's for sure. But how long it's going to
take? A while, because you cannot convince people to go vegan unless you in
troduce them
with a delicious product. It's all about good product. my name is Tricia Pain and I'm a twitch streamer
and also I've been vegan for almost 10 years. Veganism is definitely a big part of my life.
When it comes to my social media Persona, I don't even want to call it Persona because
I'm just me - I'm Tricia pain everywhere. On Twitch I create content that is - I call it
the mothership. My team is the mothership crew. On my twitch Channel it's pretty much
a community just to hav
e people to have a good safe place to do gaming and to also
talk about topics. I also do light work. It's excited to have him see the trucks and stuff, cuz he's probably seen it and everything
but it's different when you get to like look in their eyes and give them water and
see how stacked they are on top of each other. For oh my gosh and then the last one
dies by the [ __ ] oh my God like the cat with the thing what the [ __ ]. I play Starcraft
2, I play OverWatch. I love doing team games
, I love getting people involved. So my biggest thing
is to: I love getting shy people to talk on the microphone and like play on a team game with me
for a while and like: Hey get on the microphone, get in the chat. So yeah, I love getting just
building Community. Oopsie. I am vegan because it was just an easy decision once I figured out
that there was a lifestyle that was vegan. As a vegan people will usually ask like: Well,
what do you eat? And my dad is usually like: You eat tree buck, T
ricia. What do you eat? In
there's so many different options now for vegans that you can pretty much get the exact same meal
veganized and another argument that I love when people say is like: Oh like, well, what do you
eat? You know like you have to get your nutrients. You have to get you know your omegas, get your
protein and I my argument back to them is: So what what were your omegas today? What what
okay so what was your things of protein today? I had beans and what did you what did yo
u eat? You
ate you know this or what and so it's just like the same thing that most people don't realize
that like well what are they eating?! If I can go back in time and tell little Tricia like:
Hey, when you're older you're going to be eating so many salads and you're going to like love
broccoli I'd be like: No, you're crazy. But yeah, I love broccoli, cauliflower uh pretty much
any most vegetables I I really love them all So one of my favorite spots to eat is Sun
Cafe. I try to go ther
e every year for my birthday to get my lasagna dinner. Recently
I've been getting is a BLT but I add cheese on it. And then I get a side of mashed
potatoes and their sandwiches there are amazing and they swap out the bread with
gluten-free bread which is awesome. For me it makes everything just so much easier
to be able to go to an all vegan ,you know, spot that has gluten-free options and they
also have desserts there that are absolutely killer. The desserts are like insanely insanely
fla
vorful, like when I say like chocolate mousse, oh my gosh, their stuff is awesome and it's also
gluten-free which is great and I am a fiend for cupcakes. So they always have a bunch of selection
of cupcakes and recently I got the lemon raspberry cupcake and oh my gosh. I'm usually such a
chocolate person, but the lemon raspberry: oh my gosh! It was so good. It has like cream
filling too which I didn't know and I was ah yeah filming that I didn't know there was cream filling
on the inside. I
'm like oh my gosh. Just so good. My plans for the future are definitely my Twitch
streaming it's gonna be my Twitch streaming. I'm hoping to be streaming full-time hopefully every
day traveling. I really wanna showcase, you know, vegan food all over the world. That's something
that I really have always wanted to do. A key experience to help me take action when it came
to activism in the vegan community in La was one of my friends took me to a Pig vigil with the
Animal Alliance Network and
the LA Safe Group. vigil is where um a group of activists
we go and we give water to baby pigs as they're about to enter the slaughterous
and usually they're about 3 to 6-month old baby pigs and they're all crammed in a just
terrifyingly gross conditions of a hot like crated truck and usually it's a 90° or freezing
degree weather a lot of them don't make it Thanks for tuning in! Like you could take someone
to a pig vigil and show them the like brutal you know slaughterhouse footage or and l
ike what's
going on with the slaughter houses or you can take them to the Gentle Barn and show them how a
cow should be huged and like pigs can be cute and you know, like the chickens and everything.
They have everything you can imagine there. They even have like a turkey which was great
because, for Thanksgiving I adopted a turkey named Romeo and so it's really great to just
show people you know like turkeys are really sweet. I want people to just see the animals
for the beings that they
are instead of just a product. I feel like that's kind of what got
more into doing the activism for sure. Yeah, my my in my magical world everyone's vegan. That
would be great. The vegan community in Los Angeles is huge, there is a gigantic vegan Community.
There's vegan street fairs, there's small fairs, there's events that they hold. I feel like the
future of veganism in Los Angeles and in the world is going to be a very big breakthrough. I
feel like most places honestly just being vegan
for almost 10 years now just seeing in the past
like 5 years just how many like just being vegan on the menu, you know, just having the little "V
Mark" and everything just even having options on the menu. I feel like I think that most people
are going, the little bit of wake up is going to happen the future is vegan. I feel like definitely
people are going to have to switch no matter what my name is Constantine and they call me Le Fou
in the art world, because my friend Skrillex, he use his
name as the art you know from his
school. So it was how his friends called him so I called they call me Le Fou because of that
crazy, so I used that name and I do street art in Los Angeles. And I also do music for movie and I
also do Gallery Art. I want people to understand that vegan is not something complicated, it
doesn't, you know it doesn't take like a my art trying to simplify it's like 1 plus 1 equal 2.
We live in a time where it's unnecessary to kill animals to survive you know whe
n you do of course
street art, you have to use common sense that's why my approach okay so for example: Graffiti you
know is not good because you make noise and you know and if they see you, you can remove. So with
the posters I was lucky to although it's not legal I can always remove. So when I get busted they be
like I'm sorry you know I didn't know. But I think with the vegan message is very lucky it's a very
good message. People like it! They connect, so the police sometimes see me: I d
o big posters, you
know, they like Brad Pitt. They like the message. Like you know and I give them some stickers. I
bribe them. I give them! No, but you know I try to be cool you know. I think it's all about being
nice one day I was watching with my ex-girlfriend Fight Club again. She told me after the movie,
I say you know that's a great movie. She like: Oh you know Brad Pitt is vegan.I think after
all I'm like wait a minute that'd be good idea for you know for like like Obey message you k
now
I didn't think of exactly the concept just the red of the Obey you know. So I took the... I was
like: Let me make a Vegan Club and I said her what do you think of that? She was like: That's a great
idea. I thought it was kind of silly. I was like: Vegan Club you know it sounds like you know
a club or whatever and she was like: No, it's great and so I was like I stepped up and I
I was like let me just look into it and I went in the streets and I tested and the response was
immediate and
I think celebrities like I don't know who was first but I think Toby Morse and who
was friend with Moby and then Tony Canal and Davey Havoc. They all start sharing pictures know of
my art and I it motivated to even go further, because I was experimenting and I saw people
liking. I was doing like experiment t-shirt for fun like Brad Ptit with Vegan Club and people
like: Oh my God it's so cool and they were like not vegan. They're like and they were ask me
what is that and I was like and I k
new there was something. I was into you know it's something that
you know everybody wants to belong to in a club that you know is good it's kind like a feminist
movement you know like everybody wants to be in it everybody wants to be vegan, but they don't
know it yet you know I it's kind of we were ahead. When I started doing street art people, some
celebrities you know promoted like Toby Morse and the moby and Tony canal and suddenly people want
to buy you know the posters and um they want
ed this on printed on t-shirts with messages so I
started using vegan club and I collaborate with artists like brandy and I have Mary kolende. I
have many people so this is all you know for sale in store or online veganclub.co I'm promoting.
Like this is with ALF. It's a guy liberating a rabbit from the experiments and I use. I do
collaboration like this you know with company. I do also art like this for gallery. So I have some
political messages. I like to you know play around with you kno
w like this is you know MiniMe a la
politics and this is the River Phoenix & Falling Down - mixed together - veganized. I veganize
messages very pop culture so I take for example like Falling Down, Michael Douglas and change the
head with River Phoenix and I make a V to make a point. This is Billy Eilish. And she's a big
fan of mine. Every time she sees my art in the street she takes a video. So I have different
color this is people like know the hippie. But I have also in gold right there,
Church Saint
to do the right thing you know. I use messages you know positive. It's hard you know, with all
this violence and but you have to be. That's our job as an artist you know. We have to you know
clean the mess. I'm working on a project maybe for Myoko cheese. They want to do a mural. So I'm
trying to make something with superhero and change the faces so I'm trying to you know I'm trying to
experiment and you know and we see the response. I never expect anything, I just have fun an
d we're
not you know we are you know we're experimenting you know it's life you know. we don't know
we just keep going and do the best we can I first saw "Earthlings" or movies like this
in 2000 when YouTube came out and I was like shocked to see that I thought that was that
was not possible. I was like this is rare so I never took it seriously. But I think, one
day I was lucky in quotes to see the reality face to face. I was stuck in traffic and there
were a pig truck next to me and it wa
s very hot in Vegas. The pigs were stuck together the
truck next to me and I be like ah whatever you know and then after a while I saw my dogs
know I had to stop the car wait in the car and I opened the window and then my dogs started
panting and I put water I had to turn on the car put the air condition close the windows and
I was watching the pigs and I was like 1 hour went by 1 hour and a half 2 hours I'm like I'm
like this is not this is not you know this is not joke you know. Those ani
mals are treated
like [ __ ] and of course last but not least I'm going to show off my little Studio. I make
electronic and I use I work with Shaun Monson and I try to do like behind the scene of Blade
Runner was a highlight know what I achieved so far right let's see move move please move is he
moving no he's not moving [ __ ] he's not moving [ __ ] we can go! He pass
him I should have gone that way [ __ ] I it's windy too it's windy yeah God damn Can we go up there? Look! We can get
up h
ere. But it's windy and there's police everywhere - Sunday night. Look how
much light we have, it's so lit. Let's go somewhere else! Somewhere I want to park park
the car here. No no and what? Let go! Me, you, Let's go up!. Look! That's 12 to
15 ft. You have a 10 foot ladder. No no I just do this. You can try it if
you want. I don't. I don't try. let's You guys see any cameras around?
oh yeah there is right there. Give the stuff! I'll go check it out! check? The future of veganism is kind o
f
like the future of slavery. This is inevitable you know. You have to
understand like people always learn at the end you know. At the edge
you know they got to push to the limits like the animals suffer so
much. We can do a little bit more. A little bit for them. Nobody you know
those messages might help somebody to convert maybe you know or you know
expose and expedite the process Eating meat I think is better than drinking milk,
because the animal is going to be tortured and then kille
d you know?! so I think it's
worse you know to eat cheese and milk so and I realized! My name is Kacy Franzen and I'm the founder of
Junie and Sprout. We make vegan cheese boards and Charcuterie boards so on certain days of
the week I'll go to the farmers market to get all the seasonal fruits and vegetables.
I tend to make most of my boards in the morning to the early afternoon so that I
have time to deliver them. At the farmers market I buy seasonal produce. We have
amazing seasonal produ
ce here all the time in Los Angeles. So we're coming out
of citrus season which is blood oranges, other oranges. We always have berries for some
reason that are really great. The strawberries are amazing. I get herbs, I get edible flowers
to make the boards really beautiful. Once in a while I do veggie trays so I'll buy just a
whole rainbow of different local vegetables. I started a couple years ago with sort of a
hypothetical business at first. I'm not much of a cook but I like food to be
very beautiful
and I like it to, I like to make things look very beautiful, so I started making these platters and
bringing them to different parties. I remember at one point one of my friends showed me a picture
of a cheese board that she had made she was like: Oh Kacy, I was inspired by yours and she showed
me it - and it was so NOT cute. So I was like: Oh, this is a skill that not everybody could I
thought everyone could just do it. I was like: Okay, so I from there I made it into a busi
ness. My goal is to mostly show people that
you can have beautiful delicious food without causing harm to animals
and doing less harm to the planet. When I'm researching all the latest most
Innovative cheeses I go to BESTIES vegan Paradise. They are this phenomenal all-vegan-store
and they're always super up to speed with all the best new cheeses on the market. And they're very
knowledgeable and informative. So I'll go there and try things out and then I will use cheeses
from all over the
country. So I use a great brand from New York. I have a really great one
called Rebel cheese out of Austin Texas. I get some from Portland Oregon some local from LA and
from Ventura. So yeah, we look far and wide to get those good cheeses. I follow a few rules that I've
set up for myself just I found you know through time what works best. If I do something a certain
way it'll look a certain way so I feel most of the time it's just an art piece. So I'll just
do whatever feels right but there
are a couple staples that I go in a certain order or I put
like the figs here, the rest just kind of happens I try to stay positive because I still
know so many people who aren't vegan and I can't understand why especially in Los
Angeles where it's so easy to be vegan, but the community I think is great and
I was mentioning earlier too that I, since Instagram became invented, when I first
became vegan, I was the only vegan I knew so it was harder. But once I found this community
online of
other vegans and it just it was so supportive and informative. I learned a lot more
and it just made being vegan that much easier. I am vegan because I just realized
one day that it was brought to my attention how animals are treated in
factory farms. And something clicked in my brain where I wasn't okay with
that so that was almost 14 years ago. You got a delivery from Junie & Sprout! Thank you! I think the future of veganism I think it's
unavoidable that the masses are going to be vegan
in the future, because you know: Our planet
can't sustain our appetite for meat and dairy as it is right now. So I think there's already it's
building momentum to becoming vegan and once it reaches a tipping point it'll become so normal
culturally that vegan will just be the default. My name is Alex Buck. I am a SoCal native and an addiction recovery coach. I work here
at a collection of rehab facilities in Southern California and I'm
a plant-based endurance athlete. So when I first got int
o the sport of longdistance
triathlon, Iron Man, distance running I spent a lot of time training by myself, a lot of time
training by myself and that's kind of the nature of the game. I mean you're going to go out for
four or five hour bike rides and you know, you have these long swim sessions and super long runs
and that's just that's the nature of the sport Where do you get your protein huh? It is not hard
in the slightest to be a a vegan athlete as far as I can say from my own anecdotal
experience.
I train a lot and I don't just train you know uh for strength or I don't you know spend an
hour 90 minutes in the gym like the training that I have to embark on to do the sport that I do
requires a massive massive taxing of calories. So I mean I'll go out for a training, run sometimes
and I check my my data and it's like you just burned 3,600 calories. And so it's like: Okay,
well guess who's eating for the next 4 and 1/2 hours. And luckily there's somewhere between
you know 35
,000 to 40,000 edible plants on this planet that we live on. So there's no shortage
of options for things to eat you know and as far as getting your fiber, getting your carbs,
getting your your macros, getting your micros, like a plant-based diet is where you're going
to find the most abundant, the most healing, the most organic options that you can possibly
get. I think, being an athlete and asking my body to do something on a regular basis so, critical
that it's a no-brainer to be plant-b
ased. I mean: What kind of gas would you want to put in your
car if you were racing it? I think the future of sports will be predominantly plant-based. I
mean you know kind of making that reference to what kind of fuel do you want to put in
your car research is you know. Flooding all of the major medical journals of it
being the optimal choice and in the World of Sports you want to win. You want to go one
more, you want to be better. You want to PR, you want to win the game. And athletes ar
e willing
to do whatever it takes to get that win. And so when it becomes common knowledge that plant-based
diet makes you 1% better even you know which we know it's actually the gains are massive. But
even if it was 1% better athletes across the globe are going to be going plantbased and so
when the World of Sports really like you know wakes up to that understanding, I think that's
going to be the future of the game for sure obviously living in Southern California,
living in Los Angeles I
'm aware of the fact that there is a bit of a culture bubble here, you
know, it's a little more progressive. And as far as like things like plant-based restaurants
and having all of the options in our grocery stores and you know every other person you
meet is either vegan or knows a vegan or has been vegan or tried it or whatever. It's
becoming a more common conversation you know. I mean change is happening all around us in
all aspects of social justice. Whether it's animal cruelty or anti-
racism or trans rights.
Like people are getting tuned into, you know, the ability to have a healthy conversation
about a complicated topic, you know, and in a lot of ways like as a society we are
evolving you know and there's certain things that we have done for a long time that aren't
chill and we need to not do anymore. Hold on. When I was 16 I actually decided to go vegetarian
and I spent the next several years like in and out of vegetarian and vegan Lifestyles. So I had
always known ab
out it and known that it was like a core value of mine but I simultaneously was
suffering with some very severe alcoholism and drug abuse through all those years. And
when it got really bad in my early 20s, I started eating animal products again and just
in general was not treating myself or the world around me in in alignment with my real core
values. So it wasn't until my dog Body came into the picture and when he came into my life,
it really cracked open that connection for me with my tr
ue values of not harming animals
and I couldn't sit there and and hold him in my arms and take care of this you know little
baby dog and then go open the fridge and eat another animal. So it was when Body came into
the picture that it really brought everything back around full circle for me to go plant-based
again and it was not too much time after making that choice to you know live in alignment
with my values that I was actually able to finally get sober from those addictions
that I suff
ered from for over 10 years. And I'm dreaming of that sweet kill
me medicine. It's the comforting kiss of an old friend. Just want to pass the
time, in the morning I'll be fine. Well they say it's okay to be afraid. Well
who in the hell are they anyway. You didn't have the shraint to stand or stay.
But it didn't seem to hurt your knees too much to walk away. So I'll make you up
of all the things I know I love to hate. I guess it's my fault I
believed the things you had to say
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