into each other - whether it was working
with cows to get the milk then taking the
calf to make veal. You can’t really just kind
of support bits and pieces of it... I didn’t
find any other way around it other than just
boycotting the entire industry altogether.So you really did it for the animals?
Yeah, definitely. I actually gained a fair bit
of weight when I first went vegetarian; I
wasn’t very active at the time. I’d always
done a lot of sport growing up. I was
always running track or playing soccer,
and had given it up to start playing in
bands. I pretty much just replaced
everything that was meat with some kind
of fried potato or mock meat. I basically
made pretty poor food choices and gained
roughly 20 kilos.
When I went vegan, I started feeling a
little bit better. It’s a little bit trickier to get
junk food being vegan. I got into cycling
and then I just noticed that all the cyclists
were – power to weight was a very big
thing. So I started looking into ways to
drop the weight. I started looking at the
best vegan athletes and it was guys like
Michael Arnstein [raw food diet athlete]
and Rich Roll [vegan triathlete]. I started
looking at what they were eating.
And even someone who has become
pretty controversial now, but at the time
was a big deal to me, Harley Johnstone,
Durian Rider, [vegan cyclist]. What he was
doing back then – eight, nine years ago- was just eating fruits and vegetables, a
little bit of protein, and a little bit of fats.
[The athletes] just had energy for days.
They were lean and fast and they were
succeeding. After trying a few different
things, I kind of settled into a fruitarian-
esque kind of thing and was eating maybe
one cooked meal per day, but besides that,
it was mostly just fruits. Then after that, I
got into doing half ironmans, a couple of
marathon runs, and long-distance cycling...
I just had tonnes of energy; you lose all the
weight. It seems like a natural progression
to start moving and then you don’t stop.
Then, I hung up the triathlons and gave
martial arts a go; just martial arts and yoga
and running. That’s what I do - getting
close to a decade now.
When did you go vegan and why?
I first went vegetarian when I was 18
and then I went vegan a year later. I was
debating with a friend... and we went
back and forth - we were into a lot of the
same stuff except for that. It was probably
the only political, social thing that we
felt differently on.
At the time, I thought animals were
below us on the food chain, none of that
really mattered or was irrelevant. I thought
that it was just the natural order of things.
And [my friend’s] point was - if the death,
pain and the torture is unnecessary, then
why take part in it? That was the thing
that got me. It seemed so arbitrary and
pointless in my head that it just made
sense to me. That’s what changed me. I
had no response to that. Are we smarter
than animals? Sure, maybe but... Do we
have the power over them? Sure, maybe,
but is [the killing and torture] necessary?
The answer to the question was no, no
it’s not necessary.
If you were stranded on a desert island,
I’m sure most people would do whatever
they needed to survive - if it came down to
it. Or, if an animal charged at you, would
you defend yourself? Of course you would.
But is the slaughter of billions of animals
a year necessary? At the farms, [with the
animals suffering so much], is it necessary
when you can get nutrition and adequate
calories just as easily from the same store
that you buy your animal products? Yeah,
you can. So it’s just as simple as you
buying a different product when you go to
the same place.
From there, it just all seemed pretty
useless to me. I went vegetarian first, just
kind of trying to figure it all out. After [my
friend] said that, every time I looked at my
plate I just saw meat differently. I just saw
a thing, I saw a being - something that
was alive. I didn’t really just see food -
that cognitive dissonance - I made that
connection. I just stopped eating meat.
And then slowly, over the course of about
12 months, I just ended up cutting out
[dairy and eggs], then I just dropped it
altogether.
The more than I learned, it seemed
apparent to me that all those industries fed
With the band’s third album Now That I Have Seen I Am
Responsible recently released, VICES frontman and
personal trainer, John McAleer, talks athletics and
how unhealthy vegans give the movement a bad name.celebrity profile
IT’S ALL UNNECESSARY