Tommy Tepper and I were housemates at a vegetarian and eventually vegan co-op house in Austin, Texas together. If I remember right, he was there for the transition, helping to increase the vegan vs. vegetarian ratio in the house so we could finally get that organic milk and those free range eggs out of there.

Tommy is easily one of the nicest guys I have ever met, but he was ruthless when it came to his vegan cooking career. Though it took me about a year and a half of on-and-off volunteering at Casa de Luz (Austin’s macrobiotic restaurant) to get a job there, Tommy was hired after only a few volunteer shifts. Well, it’s easy to see why they’d want him around - the man oozes positive ch’i.

Once I finally got hired too, we were vegan co-workers as well as fellow vegan co-op dwellers, but it wasn’t a huge shock for me to recently learn that Tommy was no longer vegan. Actually, the only shock was that he was still vegetarian!

What inspired you to first start giving up animal products?

I had to do a persuasive speech for a college class on being vegetarian, and while I was researching the topic, I learned all this stuff on veganism and I just thought to myself, “I have to stop eating all animal products right now.” And so I did.

Even though you had previously been vegetarian, once you were vegan, did you tend to look down on vegetarians and all their inconsistencies?

Yes, I did judge vegetarians a bit at first. It felt to me that being vegan separated you from others and that one must be 100 percent about it, or not at all. But after a while I realized that being vegan was not for everyone, and that it was perfectly okay if it worked for me (at the time) and not someone else.

How long were you vegan, and how long have you been vegetarian overall?

Eight years being vegan, twelve years overall as a vegetarian.

What were your main reasons for being vegan - health, the environment, the animals, or all three?

At first it was solely for the animals and the environment. Later, health became an additional factor.

Though you worked at a macrobiotic restaurant, I’m not quite sure how into macrobiotics you were; were you interested in macrobiotics before you got the job?

I knew very little about macrobiotics before I worked at Casa, but I was interested in learning more about it.

Did you believe that brown rice, as a perfect balance of yin and yang, was the ideal food, as George Ohsawa says in You Are All Sanpaku?

I believed it was an ideal balanced food, but that you needed other food besides just brown rice.

That’s good, since someone died from trying to live on an all brown rice diet. It seems that the dogmatic nature of macrobiotics sometimes attracts very fervent followers. In my experience, a lot of vegans (if not most) are not members of an organized religion. I was raised without religion, and I think that’s one reason that macrobiotics appealed to me, as an audacious philosophy with a lot of answers. Do you think veganism can work as a substitute religion? Or is there something else to explain the atheist/agnostic vegan connection, like that vegans tend to be more liberal, and liberals are often less religious?

Although veganism can be considered a way of life/a belief system, I don’t think that it is a substitute for religion, at least it was never for me. I think it is more that, yes, vegans tend to be more left-leaning and with that, less religious/dogmatic, and to some extent more open to varied experiences, lifestyles, and change than people who are set on tradition and religion.

Did you have any problems with veganism when it came to traveling, or not having food to eat at social gatherings, or feeling alienated from non-vegans?

No, not really, I usually tried to not make it that well known that I was vegan…meaning I wanted people to know I was someone named Tommy, before being just some vegan guy. I did have some trouble eating in Mexico (outside of Mexico City), but otherwise traveling and/or social gatherings went well as long as I planned ahead a bit.

While you were vegan, did you ever think you wouldn’t be vegan one day?

No, I thought I would be vegan for the rest of my life.

What made you start thinking that you might want to start eating animal products again? Did macrobiotic leader Michio Kushi getting colon cancer shake your faith?

Kushi had nothing to do with my personal decision. It all started when I was planning on hiking the Appalachian Trail (which I still have not done yet) from Georgia to Maine, and I realized that it would be really hard to be vegan on the trail and possibly very unhealthy to hike for six months without eating animal products. So I decided to start eating dairy and eggs in preparation for the hike. And although I ended up not going on the adventure, I stuck with just being vegetarian because I felt good eating that way. Actually, I feel better and have more energy since adding dairy back into my diet.

Vegans often find the idea of an ex-vegan incomprehensible. How could someone who once believed so strongly in animal rights suddenly forget all that and go back to eating animal products? Well, how could you? Did you stop believing in veganism? Or did you feel like veganism was still right but you were no longer up to the challenge?

I stopped believing in it, yes. It was hard at first because it was such a change of thinking on one level, but yet it seemed logical to me at the time and I came to believe (as I still feel currently) that just thinking about the food you eat and where it comes from is what’s important. For example, I started feeling that people becoming more aware of their food choices and understanding that they don’t have to eat meat every day or with every meal is more critical than being strictly vegan. Plus, the idea of being so one-sided on an issue started feeling really wrong to me.

How did you break your veganism? Was introducing animal products back in a bit of a process?

I just thought about it and did it, really. I started with just cheese and yogurt at first and then eggs a few months later. The first thing I ate was a slice of NY Pizza at this amazing pizza place near Yonkers, and it was so good! I ended up getting two slices, even though I thought that I might get sick, but I felt great afterward!

Since the site is called “Let Them Eat Meat,” I have to ask… Just as vegetarianism can be a way to transition into veganism, vegetarianism can be a way to transition out of veganism to eventual omnivorism. Why have you stuck with vegetarianism? Could you ever see yourself eating meat again?

I am vegetarian mainly because I love to grow and cook the majority of the food I eat and I still can’t see myself growing turkeys (for example) and raising them for their meat and then killing them, cooking them, and then eating them. I actually have no desire to eat meat and especially since I cannot (at least at this time in life) kill an animal for food, I choose not to eat them. Although I don’t think it will ever happen in my lifetime, I don’t completely rule out the possibility of eating meat one day. Again, being so one-sided is not really for me.