What Makes Your Vegan Fashion

Coming very shortly, Vegan Era will be releasing their latest e-book Vegan Fashion. We are very, very excited as this has been something that we have been wanting to do for a very long time. We also feel that there is a whole, amazing, colorful fashionable vegan fashion world out there that no one seems to know about it.

It is pretty similar to making the transition with your food. We have been raised for such a long time on a traditional diet that it is in-grained in us. When we grow older we eat without thinking. The same can be said for what we wear.

Vegan Era is hoping to change all that with their latest e-book that goes in to detail about the fashion industry and what exactly goes into making our clothes. Not only that, our beautiful Mandy will be giving a few extra tips and hints on ways that you can Vegan-ise your wardrobe.

When you take a look at the fashion magazine, blogs and papers you are seeing more and more celebrties are making the compassionate choice and choosing to wear no fur.
A large thanks has to go to PETA who do an amazing job in attracting celebrities to take a stance against animal cruelty in the fashion industry.

We are noticing people like Ellen, Pamela Anderson and Pink take a stance not only against fur but also promote vegan fashion. Plus the world has the amazing talent of Stella McCartney, whose line is always inspiring. Due to the increase publicity of this beautiful movement toward a compassionate lifestyle, many celebrities are stepping out on the run way waring faux fur.

No we are also seeing people like Gisele Bundchen (model) take an interest in eco fashion as well as Summer Rayne Oakes who not only promotes earth friendly choices, but actively promotes this in schools and the community.

So, on this topic the CREW at Vegan Era would love to hear your thoughts on your Vegan Wardrobe.

Why We Love Bill

Bill Clinton

We only have a couple of words for this, 'how cool!' The CREW at Vegan Era were so amazed to hear this news. For some time we had heard the rumor that Mr. Clinton had gone vegetarian, however, when we heard the news that it was no longer a rumor and an actuality that Mr. Clinton was Vegan....WOAW we were simply blown away.

For those out there that are new to being Vegan, and adopting the Compassionate lifestyle let me shed some light on to why this is so big.

For those of us, that have been actively promoting this way of life, it can sometimes seem like we are bashing our heads against a brick wall. The message is there, but for some reason it just doesn't seem to be reaching the wider audience. The CREW at Vegan Era have spent much of their time researching why this is the case. Simply put, we don't really know. There are factors in the past that we can differently see why it would be hard to break through, perhaps those barriers are still up. However, when such an influence public figure makes it public that he advocates a Vegan diet, it feels like a barrier has come down.

One of the biggest barriers that we find is the regulations that are in place by government agencies. An example of this is recently in Australia, the Prime Minister placed a halt on Live Export Trade. It soon got lifted, and not long after they passed a bill in Parliament that saw Live Export could continue.
When governments around the world are still dictating such policies, it makes it difficult to get a message heard that differs from this.

The public view is essential in helping to turn the point of view of the government. When a influential public figure such as Mr. Clinton speak out promoting a Vegan lifestyle, this assists the whole cause of promoting a compassionate lifestyle. It is like a ripple effect, when this gets into the media you soon hear more and more coming out advocating the same message. As this continues, it grows strength and you soon find that a tidal wave has been created and is covered in all media. Then when we, who are watching the news see this, it no longer seems like such an abstract vision. Rather a very real possibility.

There is a beautiful quote from Mother Theresa. A person asked, 'Why will you not come to our Stop War rally?' Mother Theresa replied with 'When you hold a Pro Peace rally, I will be there.'

There are very effective methods in spreading the compassionate message. Through powerful, public figures like former President Mr. Clinton does this, it holds great gravity in promoting any campaign.

Create Your Own Seminar

The Vegan Era CREW were very blessed to have conducted their very first seminar. YAY! We had such a magnificent turn out, and it seemed that everyone really enjoyed being together and talking to like minded people.

On this point, we thought it only fitting to share all that we have learnt and a few things that we could improve on.

Know Who You Are?
For us, we had very little expectations. I guess, as long as it wasn't Mandy and I talking to each other we were very happy.
Along with this, we are two very relaxed people. Hence, we thought our presentation should reflect that. We made it our point to be very free and relaxed when talking and if people had questions they could ask them there and then.

Upon reflection, we found that this was the one thing that people loved about our presentation. The fact that they could relate to us and they felt comfortable. That was a real bonus. When you stand up and talk in front of an audience you all feed of the energy, so if they are relaxed, you are relaxed.

Set It Up
Although we did not intend for this to happen, the relaxed atmosphere just flowed. Perhaps this had to do with the fact that we were delayed with technical difficulties so I had the time to meet people before hand and they could all get together to have a little chat.

This actually leads me on to my next point, try your best to have all the technical issues ironed out before the day. We use apple computers, and they did not work with the hard ware available to us. luckily we had a back up computer, however a lot of the software we were using for the presentation did not work. We were able to get around it, however, if had of tested everything a couple of days before hand we could have been more prepared.

Mix It Up
The CREW has been lucky to have been to a few seminars previously. In our experience we found most of the them boring and distant. We wanted our audience to feel like they really knew us, and they could relate to the material.

In order to create this environment we changed between power point presentation, video and free talking. After the presentation was complete, we received very positive feedback for mixing things up.

PR/Marketing
You always want as many people as you can to your event. We made sure that we had time up our sleeve to get our message out to as many people as possible. The tools we used were letterbox drop, email outs, cafe posters, local media (newspaper, radio) and social media. We were also fortunate in that our local library (the place where we held the seminar) also promoted us.

To be very honest we found the most effective way to get your message heard was through social media. Set yourself up with as many groups and like minded people as you can. Don't be afraid to ask them to spread your message through their friend network.
You often hear that word of mouth is the best form of advertising. Well nothing has changed....well sort of nothing, it is no longer done through people verbally talking, rather typing on face book.

Give, Give, Give
Not only giving of your time, and of yourself but also give people other treats. People are really appreciative of little gifts especially when you are presenting vegan food. People like to know that they can cook beautiful little treats like cup cakes just as they used to.

At the end of our seminar we gave away books, bags and eats. People were left feeling happy and blissful and all it took was a little love.

Be Happy
Some of the information that we are presenting can be very confronting. We like to keep things very light and happy, however we did present one video that shows how many animals are killed per second around the world. It is confronting, but to finish of the talk we showed a happy video, something fun and light. This helped to uplift the  mood of the room.

What We Learnt
The CREW really enjoyed spreading the message, and as I mentioned we had very little expectations. So to have the outcome that we did we were so happy and motivated to do more.

We feel that we could streamline the presentation so that it flowed better when we changed between video and power point.
Set up a video camera and photographer and streamline the seminar on the web. Our next step is to work out how to get this information straight to you. There is a application on face book that allows for web-inars. It something we are looking into and could greatly improve the reach of your presentation.


We would love to hear what you think, so if you have any feedback please tell us. We love to learn always looking for ways better get the message out to the world.


Later Skaters.

HEALTH & HAPPINESS: Cultured Veggies

I go on a lot about alkaline and acidic foods purely because a diet that is highly acidic makes us more vulnerable to developing chronic disease. Acidic foods promote inflammation within the body and we know that inflammation is the root cause of most chronic disease such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis at al. Eating a highly acidic diet also allows our intestinal bacteria to get out of whack. You've seen those adverts that promote drinking those sugar-laden drinks that help to restore healthy gut flora right? Well, there's a healthier way to do it. Eat cultured veggies! 


Cultured veggies? Yes I know it sounds a little like something that's growing in a petri dish but I'm going to give you some really compelling reasons why they should feature regularly in your diet. But first, here's the lowdown on what the hell cultured veggies actually are.


Here are 8 reasons why you should be eating cultured vegetables:

1. They aid digestion lessening the energy drain on your body (great for anyone that has a weak digestive tract and has a hard time digesting raw foods)

2. They help to eliminate toxins from the body

3. They help to restore a healthy balance of good and bad bacteria within the intestines

4. They help to reduce sugar cravings (hellooooooo this is reason ENOUGH!)

5. Eating animal protein creates toxic by-products in the intestines and by eating the veggies WITH the animal protein, it helps to turn these toxins back into healthy amino acids

6. They are extremely alkalising and cleansing for the body. (They may make you a little gassy to begin with but once you get everything cleaned out then it will all start working nicely!) I had to go there...these things are important! A toxic colon is a toxic body people!

7. They increase your longevity. (As they allow you to reserve your body's own enzymes for digestion, your body is better equipped to repair cells, eliminate toxins, strengthen your immune system etc).


8.They are perfect for pregnant and nursing women as they provide a healthy inner environment for good bacteria and can help alleviate morning sickness! Plus the liquid from the veggies can help relieve the babys colic.



The photo is of some cultured veggies called Kim Chi which is a traditional Korean dish of fermented seasoned cabbage and other veggies. (Fermented just means the chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts or other microorganisms.)

At first you might struggle with the idea of roaming bacteria or yeast in your food but these little dudes are actually a good thing as you can see from the reasons above. Additionally cultured vegetables have had profound positive effects on children with autism.

You can make them at home very easily or you can buy them ready made. If I'm having a good old creativity session in the kitchen I will make it but sometimes I buy it ready-made from Raw Living.

If you are completely new to cultured veggies then I would recommend you buy some first to try and see if you like it. It will be a new experience for you as it has a fairly strong flavour but once you try it, I'm pretty sure you'll like it. It has a kind of tangy flavour and can be eaten on salads, as a side dish or on their own and combines particularly well with a protein or starch meal which can be very heavy on the body.

Raw sauerkraut is also another fantastic source of cultured veggies but don't mistake this for the salted and pasteurised version sold in most shops. (The pasteurisation process destroys the enzymes and the salt is bad bad bad!)
World Vegan - World Peace