Veggie Visa is a vegan website devoted to helping you live a cruelty-free life! The site contains content and articles meant to inspire and educate anyone interested in living a vegan lifestyle.
You’ll find topics geared to vegan lifestyle, vegan eating and cooking, and vegan travel to help you out in every aspect of your vegan life.
About Me
Hi! I’m Randi, the creator of Veggie Visa. I’ve been vegan since 2014 and have been traveling the world since then. I actually became vegan during my travels in Asia.
I have a BA in Communications and Media from the City University of New York, have a Culinary Diploma from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, and a Certified Health Coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
My written work has been featured in Marie Claire, XOJane, A Women’s Thing, and the Huffington Post.
I recently moved to Barcelona, Spain after living in Prague, Czech Republic for the past 10 years. In 2014, I left my job in marketing and life in NYC to travel the world. Since then, I’ve been to over 30 countries and have sampled vegan food in every single one!
My Vegan Story
I used to hate the idea of veganism and vegetarianism. Now when I try to figure out why I felt that way I can’t come up with a good answer.
I guess I really believed that eating animals was something we needed to do to be healthy. I was very closed minded about the topic until one day a friend, whose opinions I respected, told me he was about to become vegetarian (over a big plate of osso buccco I’d made for him, no less).
Something clicked. I couldn’t deny that I was repulsed by the way animals were treated in factory farms, so I decided I’d stop eating those animals.
Something clicked. I couldn’t deny that I was repulsed by the way animals were treated in factory farms, so I decided I’d stop eating those animals. This decision quickly steered me down a path where I devouring facts about the realities of animal slaughter regardless of the size or type of farm they were being raised on.
Within a few months I became vegetarian but there was still something pulling at my conscious. I learned more and more about the cruelty that existed as a result of the dairy and egg industry. Over the next year or so I weaned myself off of milk products but continued to eat eggs.
When I was traveling throughout Thailand in 2014 I came face to face with animal cruelty on a regular basis. On my last day in Thailand, before crossing the border to Cambodia, I decided to make the final step and go vegan.
Now, I can’t even imagine eating animal products. It’s a strange and foreign concept now.
Non-Preachy Veganism
My site is devoted to people who want to learn about veganism. Not convincing non-vegans to go vegan. I’m the last person in the world that you’ll hear preaching about veganism.
I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in southeast Texas. As you can imagine, that environment involved a lot of preaching and pulling on heartstrings “for god”. Something that, now as a non-believer, I realize was extremely harmful to my mental health. This is one reason that you won’t find me screaming at people who are eating a steak or wearing leather jackets.
Secondly, I think I’m a fairly intelligent person. I really don’t believe that fear mongering, throwing horrific images in people’s faces, or constantly discussing this lifestyle in an anger-based way is effective in the longterm. I, rather, think that rational thinking and informative discussions (or content) on the topic of veganism is far more effective when it comes to promoting this cause.
So yeah, while I may sometimes get a bit grouchy and express my thoughts in a sarcastic way, it will be to those of us who are actually vegan already.