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Our guest this week is the founder and president of Food Empowerment Project, lauren Ornelas. An animal rights activist of over 30 years, we talk to lauren about F.E.P.'s mission to create a more just and sustainable world by recognizing the power of one’s food choices. In addition, lauren takes us through her beginnings as an activist, why she founded F.E.P. and why her activism doesn’t stop at veganism.

Also in this episode…

• lauren talks about the culinary trials and tribulations of going vegan in the 1980s. Seriously folks, we don’t realise how good we’ve got it!
• “I find college [activism] organisations to be some of the most impactful organisations that are out there” - lauren tells us about her earliest experiences as an activist in high school and college.
• lauren shares her experiences as an undercover activist working with the animal rights charity Viva! USA.
• lauren talks about her frustration with the animal rights movement not working diligently enough on human rights issues that led her to founding Food Empowerment Project.
• “We need to make sure we’re not acting self-righteous when our food might be coming from unjust systems as well.”
• lauren discusses the brutal working conditions in the cacao industry and why, in her opinion, many vegan chocolate companies are not truly vegan.
• lauren explains F.E.P.’s thorough process for ensuring vegan chocolate companies are not using slave labour.
• Is veganism a privilege or a moral obligation?
• “Veganism has given me every purpose I’ve ever had in my life”
• Tylor is shocked to learn about a company that is enforcing a food apartheid in a community he knows very well.
• lauren gives us an example of a vegan phrase that should be retired and tells us why.

Links:

F.E.P.’s all-important Chocolate List.

lauren’s Tedx talk, The Power of Food our Food Choices.

Food Empowerment Project website.

Food Empowerment Project Instagram and Twitter and Youtube.

F.E.P. ‘Eating on a Budget’.

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