Going Meatless with Kristie Middleton (vegan) - Transforming the Way You Eat and Live, Part 1 of 4

Kristie Middleton is the Vice President of Business Development at Rebellyous Foods, and former senior food policy director for the Shining World Benevolence Award recipient, Humane Society of the United States. Certified in Plant-Based Nutrition, she is also a nationally renowned speaker. “After starting to do some research into factory farming, that's when I learned that, despite what I thought when I was a little girl, the real problem with eggs was that we factory farm hundreds of millions of animals, confining egg-laying hens in what are called battery cages. These are cages where there are 6 to 8 birds confined in the space that's about the size of a standard desk drawer where they can't do any of their natural behaviors. I didn't know that to produce pork, we confined mother pigs in what are called gestation crates. They can't even turn around for the duration of their existence.”

For several years, Kristie was the senior food policy director at the Humane Society of the United States. “There we worked with institutions like colleges, universities, hospitals, the military, essentially anyone that serves a lot of food, to help them identify opportunities to add more plant-based options to their menus.”

Not only a working professional, Kristie is also the author of “Meatless: Transform the Way You Eat and Live ‒ One Meal at a Time.” “For example, if you want to become vegan, then maybe trying to designate a certain food that you typically enjoy and swapping out a plant-based option for that instead. Another thing is to actually articulate your goals. We’re 42% more likely to meet our goals if we share that with somebody, whether it's a friend or family, or we even write it down.”

“We can make a tremendous impact on the world by going meat-free, even just one day a week. It would have the environmental savings of taking half a million cars off the road if everyone in the US went meat-free just one day a week. If we ate “meat-free” just one day a week, we will spare 1.4 billion animals from factory farms.”