Journalist Caroline Moody explains how she made the connection and went vegan at the age of 54, after a life-altering five months in Asia in 2018. Her powerful story illustrates how it’s never too late to change eating habits.

I had a penny-dropping moment in 2018. Normally I scroll past YouTube videos on animal rights but for some reason I clicked on ‘The Food Matrix – 101 Reasons to go Vegan’. The speaker was saying that in the United States 300 farm animals die every second. Every second. So in the time it takes you to read this sentence, that’s about another 1,500 animals slaughtered. (And that’s just the US.) Personally, I find it unacceptable. And it’s not just the killing of sentient beings that bothers me. It is the unimaginable suffering that comes with factory-farming. 

This time last year I was telling my sister (she has been vegan for more than 25 years) that I could never be vegan. So what has changed? Early last year my husband David and I started shifting towards being vegetarian, partly for health reasons as we head towards our mid-50s. But it was also because we were about to embark on a six-month adventure around south-east Asia and we thought it would be prudent to avoid meat.  >>MORE