Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Veganism

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Veganism isn’t just a diet, it‘s not just a lifestyle, it’s a whole identity, aesthetic, community, religion, and even a career for some people… like our special guest, Lauren Toyota, creator of “hot for food,” a vegan blog, YouTube channel, and series of cookbooks. Veganism has a cultish reputation, but with Lauren’s help, Amanda and Isa unpack all the upsides and downsides of this seemingly “extreme” way of life to determine what the cultiest aspects of veganism really are (especially in the age of social media) and what they say about us all.  Check out Lauren's Blog: https://www.hotforfoodblog.com/   Go to DailyHarvest.com/cult to get up to $40 off your first box! 

This is Sounds Like A Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week here on our show we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from peloton to theater kids, to try and answer a big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeACultPod. I'm on IG at Issa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A.

And I'm on IG at Amanda Underscore Montell. And for bonus materials, juicy cult discussions, and more, feel free to hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. Now let's get right to this week's delicious little topic. I am terrified to do this topic, which I think means we need to do it. Yes, and do you think you're terrified because you are this topic? I used to be, and that's the problem. So we're talking about the cult of veganism this week.

Controversial, because food and diet are always a contentious subject, you know, food is not just nutrition, it's family, it's culture, it's socioeconomic status, it's identity. And veganism has historically had this reputation of making people feel like really attacked about the way that they consume food, and no one wants to feel like a bad person. But at the same time, I don't think veganism is culty for the reason that meat-eaters think it is. Yeah, I feel like it's also this idea of exclusivity and us versus them very much so. I think we're going to talk about how it's culty in different ways.

It's almost like meat-eaters are kind of what make it culty. That's actually a great point. I mean, I think that outsiders, as we'll call them, meat-eaters, non-vegans, tend to think that vegans are culty because they talk about it nonstop. It's like, how do you know that someone is vegan? They will tell you about it. But literally no one talks more or more passionately about food than people who are super into meat.

Think about barbecue culture with the fucking pig on a spit and the chest beating. I thought you were going to say, then, people who are hungry. I was going to be like, yes, that's me. The cult of hangar. Oh, my God. I'm a hangary person. Oh, I am an evil cult leader who would exploit anyone when I'm hungry. Yeah.

Anyone who knows me knows that I need to be fed a snack every two hours or else I will explode. They have good snacks here at All Things Comedy. Yeah, they do. I love the pretzels. But yeah, I find that meat eaters can be just as fanatical as vegans. It's just that we don't notice it or think of it as culty because it's mainstream. It's the default.

Meat eating is the default. Yeah, it is. It's like when you go to a restaurant with a friend who happens to be vegan, it only comes up because the menu is mostly default non-vegan or meat adjacent, I don't know. Even if the meat eaters are being respectful, they're the ones who are often calling attention to it. Yeah. Is there something you can eat?

Oh, are you? That I think has cheese on it. Yeah, exactly. A lot of vegans that I know don't really identify really with the word vegan anymore because it's so strict and they don't want to be called out by meat eaters. I'm going to say this a lot today, but I am one of those people who I call out vegans a lot because I feel insecure that I'm not a vegan because for environmental purposes, it's like love animals, but that is not why I would go vegan if I did.

For me, it's truly the environment that gives me a lot of anxiety. I feel like meat eaters call out vegans because they feel insecure that they're not doing enough. 100%. Vegans know that, and I think that's one of the reasons why they sometimes come across as radical because it is hard to be vegan. Most of our culture is still not set up for veganism being easy, so you have to be evangelical about it sometimes to keep yourself motivated to do it.

I personally do believe in going vegan for the planet. Going clear. Going clear. No, going vegan for the planet and the animals and not so much for your health because I was completely a junk food vegan, but I also think that if the goal is really, really to have everyone consume less animal products, then shaming people is not the way to do it because that's where you get your us them divisions. This is what I think is cultier about veganism than people talking about it.

Most of the vegans I know are chill. You would not know they were vegan because they're quiet about it. You don't know about the quiet vegans. When we first met, you were a vegan, but I don't think I learned until two years later when we were ordering pizza or something. Yes, that's how most of the vegans I know are, but the extremists are always going to create a bad reputation for the rest of the population. That I think is what non-vegans think is cultie about veganism.

They're constantly talking about it, but what I think is cultie about veganism is, first of all, the transcendent promises that a lot of vegans, particularly on social media, make about the diet, particularly vegan influencers will say things like, going vegan will make you beautiful and it will help you overcome your eating disorder. It will cure your digestive problems. It will cure the environment. Yes, this idea that just changing your diet is going to solve all of your problems, that's telling someone that they're going to reach euphoria by joining your club.

That's not going to happen. Clearly. Yes, and I first went vegan because of vegan YouTubers. They were eating abundantly. They have these beautiful assaibles and just looked happy and I was like, I want to be that. I want to be happy like that. I thought that I watched one documentary, like Cowspiracy, and I tried to go vegan for

a week and it was like, oh my God, it's going to fix all my problems because I have a really bad memory. I was like, if I stop eating meat, I'm going to have an amazing memory, but that's not how that works. It's not how that works. It's not singularly going to cure climate change, etc. What's funny about the vegan influencers that originally inspired me to go vegan five or six years ago was that, well, first of all, of course they didn't create a realistic

portrait of veganism, shocker social media as a lie, but also a lot of them are not vegan anymore and there's a lot of shame surrounding that. I think the lifestyle they were portraying and that they were following was not sustainable, but also when they decided to introduce more animal products and I went vegetarian in the pandemic, my boyfriend and I split the difference in the pandemic. Life was hard. Yeah. Frankly, my bandwidth is limited.

I think I do more things that are good for the environment now than I did five years ago when I was more vegan. It's all about balancing. It really is. It's almost better to do something in moderation than not to do it at all. And I feel like it took me trying to go vegan a couple times to realize that I don't need to stop eating meat and dairy entirely. I just need to reduce my amounts.

Well, think of if 80% of the world were 50% vegan. That would be so much better than 1% of the world being 100% vegan. Being 100% perfectly vegan, which by the way, people who claim to be perfectly vegan are probably shopping on Amazon, buying fast fashion. Nobody is perfect, but regardless, being 100% flawlessly vegan, if that's even possible, is not accessible for most people, sustainable for most people. It doesn't always fit culturally with every family, especially in pandemic life, where things were already so challenging and inaccessible.

So up next, we have a very special guest, Lauren Toyoda. She has a food blog and a food Instagram, hot for food, and oh my god, look it up right now. It is so delicious. It makes me crave vegan food, and I'm not a vegan. She was one of the vegan influencers that I followed back in the day, almost like my guilty pleasure vegan influencer, because everyone else was like a skinny Australian blonde, like eating nothing but patella.

Are you okay? No. I feel like your past is traumatizing. Yes, you are correct. Yes, cult of blondes, but and she and Lauren was making like vegan burgers and fries and mac and cheese, and I was like, damn. For our listeners who don't know who you are, could you start by introducing your yourself and your work to our listeners?

Yeah, I'm Lauren Toyoda. I am the owner or creator of a blog called Hot for Food. I started doing it in 2015 kind of like on YouTube. So I started my YouTube channel then, and that's kind of where things sort of grew and took off leading to doing cookbooks, so I have two cookbooks now. I call myself an online content creator, but you're probably going to call me a vegan influencer. Yeah, we actually were talking with someone in the kitchen of all places, and they were

like, oh, who are you interviewing today? That was like a vegan influencer. I do have to confess, I'm not a vegan, but I watched like Cowspiracy, obviously, and was like, I'm never having meat again. I went vegan for like seven days in Charlottesville, Virginia of all places, though, so not a lot of access to like alternative foods. So it was so hard, but Instagram accounts like yours or like cookbooks like yours like help you slowly get yourself into vegan spaces or even just eat less meat because you're

still having like delicious meals. Yeah, that was like my MO from the beginning, like because vegan food can appear so bland and gross and unappealing, it can, and especially when I went vegan in 2009-10, it was like, ooh, like you have to eat raw. Like the perception was you had to eat a raw diet, because that's kind of how I started, and I was like, this sucks, like, I don't want to eat like this, and I was getting bored. So it was like, I need to make this stuff look good, be appealing, and that is where that comparison comes from, like, we're making it look meaty, and you can make the comparison

to meat. Like, I think one of the questions you get asked a lot online or you kind of get bombarded with by the haters is like, well, why do you have to call it vegan steak or vegan, or not even, but not even vegan, like chicken, it's like, well, it is chicken, it's just made from plants, but as long as you, if you are mentally prepared to eat a certain thing, and it does end up tasting like what you remember, then you're more, it's more appealing. Totally, yeah. So you mentioned you went vegan in 2009-2010.

Can you talk to us a little bit about how and why you first became vegan and what was your impression of veganism then, and how has it changed over the years? Well, I was very reluctant to go vegan or say I was vegan kind of, publicly, and like the main reason I didn't fully go vegan ever, and I was only a vegetarian is because I didn't, it was the social aspect, like being annoying at the dinner table or going to dinner and like all that stuff. That was like the real reason why I wouldn't do it. I was the annoying person, and I still am, and it's not like to shame people, it's just

like because I'm like so jealous, I think I'm like, how do you do it, what is your motivation? Vegans do trigger meat-eaters just by their very presence. Yeah, and I literally think it's because it's like, VEGOPHOBIA, it's internalized because I want to be a vegan. It's like people who are homophobic have like internalized homophobia because they might be gay. You're 100%, right, and there's also, we know meat is cruel, like there's just no, there's no justifying it, it's just more of a compartmentalization, right?

But I was like real foodie and I wanted to try everything, like I wanted to try all the food and like explore, and I thought if I go vegan, that's really going to limit me. And that was the time, 2009, 2010, I mean, that's still a pretty modern vegan, there are vegans who've been, they've been vegan for 20 years and they had nothing, you know, they had like lentil loaf, and that is it, and tofu. That's how hot for food was born, you know, like trying these things but realizing, okay, all of these recipes are bland, they're not impressive, how can we make them more impressive? How can I make them more impressive, and really it was just trying to cater to my own taste,

cater to those memories of comfort food, I liked cheese, I love all these things, they're delicious, I'm not saying these things aren't delicious. Cheese, that's cheese, it's cheese for me, it's cheese, but it's like, it was like killing me, like it was making me so sick, I'm lactose intolerant, like so in 2009, 2010, there was no good cheese on the market, even the cheeses on the market had castine in them, so they weren't completely dairy free, they were made with soy and then they had the protein from the milk to make them still milky tasting. So you don't see that anymore, you see completely vegan products, when I go to the grocery store,

it's like labeled, it's like bigger than the, like the non-dairy milk and yogurt section is almost bigger than the regular milk and yogurt section at Sprouts for sure, at Sprouts and Whole Foods, even Ralph's, like all the, even just the big box stores like Ralph's and Vaughn's, they have all the products, and they, and it's incredible, there's cashew cheeses, there's coconut cheeses, like everything has become so innovative, it's so exciting, especially as someone who's kind of grown over a decade in this movement or whatever, I know there's still the mental thing, the cognitive dissonance, that whole thing, that's a whole mental exercise, but in terms of like the food, what's available when you're privileged

and you live in a city like LA or most major cities, it's so doable and you don't even have to, you don't have to load your fridge full of these products, like the basics are still, and I'm also trying to, that's the thing, I also try to show in my books, like vegan comfort classics was all vegetable based and it was like how to transform these vegetables into really delicious things, usually you can deep fry them, it's like anything deep fried. Yeah, air fryer has also like changed the game. I mean air fryer, yeah, I didn't even have an air fryer until like, I don't know, two

years ago. I got one in the middle of the pandemic because it was a dark time. Well, the most, the most delicious flavors are vegan anyway, it's like oil, fuckin' garlic, garlic, shallot, onion, yes, alcohol, alcohol is a good addition to this, alcohol is vegan, that's a good point Amanda, some beers aren't, some beers and wine aren't. How did you find your way into the cult of vegan influencers and how do you think social media has contributed to the idea that vegans are in a cult? Yeah, and I like that now I'm on this podcast, sounds like a cult and you're using the word

cult because that was kind of what your people would say that, oh veganism seems like a cult and I thought that too, right, because I thought if I go, if I say I'm vegan publicly and at this time in my life, I was actually a public figure in Canada, so I had social media and I was like, do I come out and say, yeah, like do I come out and say I'm vegan? It was like, that was scary because of the cultiness of it and there was these kind of old school crunchy vegans that I didn't, wanted to distance myself from 100%, also the activist, hardcore, PETA, like letting rats out of the labs, the protesters, I also wanted to distance myself from that and I think it's that at the same time a lot of people were feeling

that way, this divisiveness in the vegan community has always existed, but social media has really carved out a space to be talking just about good food, art, creativity, photography, video, and kind of use that as the activism, social media allowed us to use that as activism where traditionally it was like you had to be out on the street with a sign or throwing paint on fur coats and this type of thing and that was the image everyone had of a vegan. Which sounds fun, but it's so fringy and it feels really foreign and really extreme to people, social media allowed veganism to feel more relatable and right and more aspirational. And this was all in my vision, it was like when I came up with the name haunt for food,

you know, it didn't have the vegan in it purposefully and it was about food and it kind of had like a sexiness to it I thought, you know, and I wanted to show that like I'm a cool vegan, like that was just what I said, I'm not a crazy person, I'm not like screaming at you, I just live my life the way everyone else does, I just happen to eat plants and make really good recipes and there was other people doing it who were bigger, like the early stage of influencers, like the only person I can really think of was this girl Mary Mattern, her account was Nom Yourself, she was kind of like big and she was posting photos of her food.

I tapped into this little bit of community I saw, like I said, because everyone was foodies and they started seeing the food photos, so it was about timing for sure I got in at the early stage I guess and I did have an aspiration like I want a big account and I want to show people how to do this the right way, like goals. She has goals, I know, I know, so it was an intention in tech, but I knew nothing, I was just like fiddling around, I was just fiddling around, which was the fun of it at the beginning, right? Because you're just into something, you're sharing it, there was no pressure.

It's funny that you mentioned you were like afraid to come out as vegan because there are like those, I'll say there are those annoying people who like don't stop mentioning it, but the funny thing is like when I went vegan for a week I literally could not stop talking about it. It's true. It's a big life change. It's a big life change, it's a very spiritual change and this maybe comes back to the cultiness of it because I do explain it this way in a lot of interviews that it's a mind, body,

spirit transformation. It is undoubtedly going to change your life. I like to say start with the food. Your body resonates differently if you're feeding it different food, truthfully if you're not putting cruelty into your body, how do you think your cells are going to react? That starts teetering into weird woo woo culty territory, but I stand by it because I felt it and people who change their life and go this way, they feel it too and everyone describes it this way.

Totally. Especially when you are going through such a profound change, the country still is not really set up for vegans. It still is hard to be vegan. You kind of like have to go through almost a spiritual change or else you wouldn't stick with it. You just give up. Which a lot of people do.

They say, oh, I did it for three months and I gave up. There wasn't that threshold where it all started clicking and everyone's on their own journey and anytime someone says, I quit after three months, I don't berate them or say, oh, you should have done this or whatever because I feel like once it's sort of entered your psyche, it's bound to just like anything, it's bound to show up in different ways and speak to you and continue to speak to you until you make more change. I also feel like the way you said I quit veganism, I feel like it's also seen as people try to go vegan, they quit veganism, but you're actually quitting meat.

So it's almost like the opposite addiction and it's like how long were you able to last without meat and then having to adjust to it that way? You know what I mean? You know, there's different ways of looking at it because the moral, ethical aspect of veganism, it's a lifestyle change because you now understand the process of making these foods that were basically brainwashed into eating from childhood. That's the spiritual mind psyche aspect. And so if it's not about that, then it's kind of a fad, it's kind of a diet.

Maybe it's stomach issues, mine was a lot of stomach issues, but I still always, from a very young age, had the, I don't like eating animals, eating animals is weird to me, from being a kid. It was a lot from when I was a little kid. It just seemed wrong. But you can see how society make, you know, you get completely wrapped up in just, oh, it's easier to just, because society is set up for you to do that, tells you to do that and says it's healthier and says you need milk for calcium and strong bones, like this

frigging propaganda is like everywhere. It is such propaganda. And so it's like, like anything, peeling back these veils and these layers until you see the truth. Yeah. And that takes effort. There aren't vegan that often think vegans are culty, but not necessarily for the reasons that vegans think vegans are culty.

What do you think are the most common stereotypes that outsiders tend to believe about the cult of veganism? And how do those tropes compare and contrast with what you personally believe are the cultiest things about veganism? I feel like I'm taking an exam with that question. I know. Sorry. I know that was like a math problem.

Yeah. I mean, the main misconception is that it's somehow less than, that it's somehow not satisfying that you're depriving yourself of things, that you live a less than joyous life with food. And it's actually the opposite. It's such the opposite. Like I added so many more interesting things to my diet going vegan because I started branching out and thinking differently because we really are told, you know, this food pyramid is so

limiting actually look at what we're told to eat. We ignore half the produce section when we walk into a store because we're sort of habitually just buying like the things we're used to. But when you go vegan, your mind expands and you start exploring different ingredients and experimenting when it's fun. Like it really is fun. It's not like a deprivation or like a restrictive thing, but that's the misconception that it is that.

Another misconception is that if you're going to be vegan, then you're a militant vegan. It's like all or nothing. And I don't call myself vegan anymore because I genuinely recognize the difference between what I'm doing now and what I'm doing then. And this is not to say that I won't be vegan ever again. It's just like life circumstances have led me to a place where I'm like, I ate a croissant yesterday like so should be. Croissant is so good.

The hardcore vegans, again, because it's a cult like you're saying like it's this purest perfection thing and that's got to go. That's not helping the movement. That's not helping people save more animals. So I'm on the side of like, I just don't care like do what you want. Don't call yourself vegan, call yourself a vegan, but even as someone who calls themselves vegan, my whole career as this vegan influencer, content creator, there has always been moments where if I'm with other vegans, I get nervous because well, what do they believe?

Do they think honey's bad? Do they think I don't eat honey for the record? I was about to ask. It's like I'm wearing a second hand leather shoes. Am I not vegan in there? And there's all these rules. I always forget about objects. What makes, oh, like everything, right?

Yeah. So it's like, what makes you vegan? What doesn't? How do you know how to go? Like people just, people just need to let that go. So it exists 100%. There's content to justify that movement and that perspective of being vegan. I've just been trying to make it not that my whole like time on the internet, trying

to just make it approachable, trying to make people want to come, come over to this side at their home pace, you know. I feel like you like succeeded as like one of like a big name in this space. It's the fact that like people are now, there's so many people I've met in LA that like don't talk about it that way. And I feel like that started with people like you on the internet, like making it approachable. Okay. This leads me to our next question because when I went vegan and I went very militantly

at first. And I think in the beginning, oftentimes people do do that because you're like radicalizing yourself as a way to build passion. Me for seven days. And what I instantly appreciate about you is that you were very different from those like super aspirational, super healthy, assayee bowl type of vegan influencers. And we've been treating really, yes, like freely that and you know, we've been saying that influencer is like a little bit of a dirty word or we've been dancing around it

as a sturdy word. But when I think of like vegan influencers, I in large part think about those people that I followed like five, six years ago who put forth this image that veganism was this miracle that could like cure your life and make you beautiful and perfect. It's so toxic. This is the YouTube community of vegans. So exactly. And like I have even the extreme people to thank for like my vegan education because

that's what led me to it. But what do you think of like that community of vegan influencers and do you think that the people who aren't vegan anymore, did the cultiness of it cause veganism to be unsustainable for them? That's a really good question because it feels like yes, the pressure, especially when you put yourself online and you've got hundreds of thousands, millions of people chiming in on what you're eating, how you look, blah, blah, blah, we're personally and you're trying to uphold this image.

Like I said, it was healthy, but now I feel like shit, like who knows why you're short in some vitamin, like it doesn't matter, right? Oh God, it's definitely weird to see people change who have been like this militant vegan believing in the morals and the ethics, understanding the whole thing and then going back. That doesn't really make sense to me. Of course you can never say never, but I just don't feel like knowing what I know, like I cannot. Like were they faking it for the views?

Like what was that? That's a very bizarre phenomenon, I don't really get it, I think it can cause a lot of damage to the movement, but confuses people and when vegans hear of other famous people going vegan, we want to like, they're in, we bring them in, you see the articles, oh Miley Cyrus is vegan and so every day there's all some celebrity headline about them going vegan or wearing vegan shoes or this and that. We want to like reel them in and capture them and own them and it's like sure, everyone can live their life and make their own decision, like that's fine.

I just don't personally understand how you can understand the argument for veganism fully in yourselves, like I was saying spiritually and then change. That's all just so exhausting, like why can't we just focus on the exciting, tasty parts of this life. That's what's inspiring to people. Yeah. That's what's inspiring. That being said, really has made a lot of people go vegan.

So like, right, it works, it's like anything, you see a fur protest, that might make you go vegan. It has their avenue, but I do feel like what I'm doing and what many people similarly to me are doing and you see that community now more prominently, like that's more influential and more appealing nowadays. I think so. I think maybe in the earlier days of the internet, the sort of toxicity of that was more appealing to people, the drama and everything.

But I think we've kind of moved away from that. I think. I don't spend a lot of time on YouTube to really see what's going on in the media already. What do you think it would take for veganism to be 100% live-your-life level cult and not culty in a bad way? What would it take? Top questions. Yeah.

Is that even, I don't know that it's possible because like you said, it's powered by social media and so many different people in their opinions and everyone's allowed to do that. As a consumer or a person consuming the influencers content, it's not one size fits all and I just want people to be more discerning. I think sometimes people just fall into stuff way too easily and put people like me on a pedestal or something and think we know everything and I can see where it goes off. People do develop orthorexia and eating disorders because of veganism and there's so many, there are these negative offshoots and I guess it can't really be helped because nobody's monitoring

these friggin' airwaves, these friggin' beads, but you're right, we do need the extreme people because like I said, there's just different avenues to the entry points to making these changes in your life. Okay, so we were talking a little bit about the hype surrounding vegan celebrities before so now we're going to play a quick game. It's called which cult followed figure is not a vegan? Not a vegan. Okay, okay.

I'm really going to test your skills. We have three, we have four rounds, okay, so we're going to read you three names and you have to guess which cult followed figure is not a vegan. Okay, gotcha. Round one, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, or Miley Cyrus. Miley. Ding, ding, ding. She went back.

Yeah. Yeah. She turned her back. Yeah, I know Lizzo is a vegan because I follow her on TikTok and she posts like the best few videos. She posts good food. Round two, Pamela Anderson, Gwyneth Paltrow, or Alicia Silverstone. Paltrow.

She's a vegan. Correct. She's not? No. No, she's a goopy fucking weirdo. Okay, she's a capitalist. She's like gotta put a runny egg on every recipe type person. Of course, yeah.

Next round, which cult followed figure is not a vegan? Is it Sting, Morrissey, or Stevie Wonder? Oh, I'm going to say Stevie Wonder is not vegan. It's actually Sting. Damn, that was hard. But here's what's interesting is that- I'm like, I actually had no idea. He does eat meat, but not a lot of it, not a lot of dairy, and he has his own farm where he grows his own food and cultivates his own eggs.

Good for Sting. And our last round, which cult followed figure is not a vegan? Is it Colin Kaepernick, Bill Clinton, or Ricky Gervais? Ricky's vegan, Bill Clinton's vegan, or he was. Oh, Colin Kaepernick, I like- Oh, god. I'm going to go with Colin Kaepernick is not a vegan. That was a trick question. They all vegan.

Oh, they're all vegan. Because I was like, yeah, Colin Kaepernick, he's the kneeling I've started. Yeah. I'm totally ignorant to that news. He's the kneeling guy. So I was like, yeah, he probably could be vegan. Yeah. I have no idea he was vegan, but that totally makes sense.

Yeah, he must be new. Maybe he's newly vegan, like, barely new. We don't know. Apparently for six years he's been vegan. Good for him. Yeah. Thank you so much for talking about the cult of veganism with us and for playing our game. Yes.

If folks want to bring us your book. Yes. Oh, my god. I hope you love it. I'm so excited. I'm sure I'll be obsessed. I make your mac and cheese weekly. There's like new mac and cheese in there, like faster one pot and then like five level

up. So you'll be. Snap. I have all of, I have most like vegan staples from that one week. Yes. They're like somewhere in the back of your nutritionally. You're like, oh. Exactly.

If someone wants to be influenced by you, where can they find you? Well, follow my Instagram at hotforfood. I also have a personal Instagram at Lauren Toyota where I've now revealed my pregnancy. Yes. Congratulations. I know. Thank you. I can't believe you still have like three more months to go.

I know. These will be the longest months. Hotforfoodblog.com of course is where all the free recipes are and then I have two books you can find at any, any store book place where you buy books and, and YouTube. I'm not really, I mean, I'm, I'm on YouTube, but I haven't been actively posting, but there's a lots of fun. Oh, there's so many videos on there though. There's so many videos.

Oh, I love watching YouTube food videos. Yeah. So if you haven't found me yet, go look because there's just lots of stuff. And I really show how to make the food and like walk you through it. So it's helpful educational stuff. ESA, out of the three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, or get the fuck out. What do you think about the cult of veganism?

I think it is a live your life. Yeah. I'm afraid of calling anything a live your life anymore because of our cheerleading episode. I think it's a live your life because you should always be feeding yourself to the point where you feel good. And if you're eating and you feel good, then live your life, be a vegan. But you know, I, you always, I don't even think I need to be telling people to watch their back when it comes to the food that they eat.

That's why I think it's a live your life because you should always be eating in a way that makes you feel good. Does that make sense? It does. And I completely respect that, especially when we're talking about something touchy like food, you just want to say live your life. If I hadn't been a member of this cult for quite a while, I'd probably be like, yeah, I know.

Seriously, I'd probably be like, you know what, vegan, veganism's aims are absolutely pure. If everyone in the world were mostly vegan, that really, really would benefit the planet, the animals, like, etc. However, because there are some extremists, particularly on social media, on YouTube who want to take advantage of others who are looking to improve their lives in the way that I was, then it's a bit of a watch your back because it starts to get culty. Yeah.

If you're starving, you're more likely to be convinced by a cult leader to join a cult. So like, when I say live your life, I'm like, live your life not hungry. Yeah, live your life not hungry. Right. And I was hungry sometimes because I had the voices of those vegan influencers in my head being like, you can't have that piece of toast because there is a speck of whey in it. Yeah, that's fucked up. Yeah.

And just so sad. I know, if you're like in a room all by yourself eating vegan food with no one's voices in your head, live your life. Exactly. But if you start to sense that rhetoric informing your everyday decisions about something as important as how you're fueling your body, yeah, that's kind of a watch your back. Yeah. Ooh.

Yeah. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. Sounds like a cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Esa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Kasey Kulb.

Thank you to our intern slash production assistant, Naomi Griffin, subscribe to Sounds Like a Cult wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. If you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.