[Hobo Renee]

Strict vegans don't eat honey, or refiended sugar--the whitening process uses bone ash from cows to filter the sugar. Also, I don't understand how you can't cope with the fact that wearing or using leather products could somehow conflict with the vegan, or vegetarian lifestyle. If someone is so appaled by the thought and act of eating another living creature's flesh, or using the milk intended for their childern or their unfertilized eggs they most likely would also feel uncomfortable wearing the skin of the same animal that they did not want to die so they could eat it. For vegetarians and vegans the whole issue is making sure that fewer animals die to accomodate humanity's appatite, food or material-wise, since many vegetarians also avoid using leater products. Of course most vegans tend to stay away from wool and lanolin as well since the sheering process can be done in cruel ways. Yeah, I know that sheep need to be sheered so don't even bring that up. Anyway, it's hard for me to explain since each individual has their own set of ethics that they incorporate into their vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. Some vegans will not use film because it contains gelatin in it and thus will only use digital cameras, and then there are people that are vegetarians for the sole purpose of losing weight. I can't really explain why I became a vegetarian. I was reading some vegan cookbooks at the time because the way that ingrediants are substitued fascinated me and the more I read the more I decided that my eating habits were really poor and I needed to change them. At the beginning I was mainly vegetarian to lose weight, which I did, not because I was starving myself, but because I wasn't able to eat the same junk food that I did before, hamburgers and hot dogs, etc. After a while I became more conscious of animal rights issues, which I was more comfortable to look into since I didn't have the guilt associated with eating meat. So now my vegetarianism is for a combination of heath and animal issues. Still, I don't know if I have the detication to both of those causes to move onto becoming a vegan.

Wow, that was quite a rant so the majority of you probably just skipped over it. Good show.