What is Veganuary?

A month-long compassion challenge, Veganuary is your chance to try out the vegan life for the month of January. While it started with just food, Veganuary is broadening its horizons to include vegan beauty, skincare, and fashion. Keep reading to find out:

• Why take part in Veganuary?
• All the ways to participate: food, beauty, and fashion.
• All the resources to get you on your merry, vegan way.

Speaking of Vegan, we're thrilled to be nominated for the @VegNews 2021 Veggie Awards Best of Vegan Beauty! You can vote here - thanks so much for your love and support of our brand! 

Why take part?

The vegan-curious are usually drawn to the plant-based life for one of three reasons: saving the animals, helping the environment, or improving their health. Let’s chat about each of these reasons, and if they align with your own beliefs, consider taking part in Veganuary!  

Love for Animals

If you’re going vegan for the animals, it’s because you believe animals feel love, pain, and fear just like us humans. You choose to eat or shop vegan because you can’t support the exploitation and killing of innocent animals. Keep in mind, even if you don’t go fully fledged vegan, cutting back on the amount of animal-products you eat and wear saves animals too! #progressnotperfection

What Veganuary is NOT about: judgement or guilt against others or yourself. It’s about compassion – for the animals, but also for yourself and others. We can’t all make massive life changes overnight, and this movement is about educating ourselves, making better and more aligned choices, and giving ourselves grace when we don’t do everything perfectly! 

"Vegan is about widening our circle of compassion to include those who are commonly excluded, whether they're humans or non-human animals. It's about understanding that our choices have consequences for ourselves and beyond ourselves.” - Brenda David, RD and Vesanto Melina, MS, RD in the book Becoming Vegan: Comprehensive Edition

The Environment

A recent study from the University of Oxford found that cutting meat and dairy is the “single biggest way to reduce your impact on the planet”. It impacts almost every measure of climate change: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, and global acidification.

So, if you’re looking for a powerful, all-encompassing way to singlehandedly make a difference for the environment, eating plant-based (even partly) is it!

Your health

Eating a balanced plant-based diet can work wonders for your health. Researchers have found that those with more plant-based diets and lower intakes of animal products have a lower BMI and a 32% lower risk of heart disease.

Keep in mind, this is based on eating a balanced vegan diet – junk food vegans may not reap all the same benefits. Follow The Plate Method by Registered Dietician Sadia from Pick Up Limes to ensure you’re eating balanced, nutritious plant-based meals.

DOCUMENTARIES ON CHOOSING VEGAN  

To learn more about animal welfare, how animal agriculture affects the environment, and how a vegan diet can impact your health, tune in to one of these documentaries! 

Earthlings: Focuses on the animal welfare aspect of veganism. Warning, it’s pretty graphic but very compelling.

Game Changers: Focuses on the health and performance aspects of veganism.

Cowspiracy: Focus on the environmental impact of veganism.

How to participate in Veganuary

1. Eat more plant-based meals OR try totally vegan

Whether you’re a takeout queen or a talented home chef, you can make vegan eating work for you! It’s never been easier to find vegan food on the go or cook easy, delicious plant-based recipes at home. Here’s some resources to get you started:

Vegan Chefs, Nutritionists, & Foodies to Follow

Pick Up Limes: the best YouTuber for doable yet delicious vegan recipes. Plus, you’ll fall in love with her super soothing voice and good vibes personality. Every recipe has a free downloadable PDF. 

Avant Garde Vegan: The go-to Youtuber for showstopping, unreal delicious chef-created recipes. Every recipe has a free downloadable PDF. The Chef, Gaz also has multiple vegan cookbooks out if you prefer a physical book!

Chocolate Covered Katie: For decadent and easy-to-follow healthy vegan dessert recipes.

The Simple Veganista: Super simple yet insanely delicious vegan recipes for every meal including amazing desserts!  

Sophia Uliano: A super positive, inspirational health Coach who shares delish plant-based recipes and lots of nutrition and health tips.

Vegan Bowls on IG: delicious looking vegan recipes from all over the IG universe.

Vegan Eating Apps to Download

Is it Vegan? – An easy-to-use app to determine if a packaged food contains animal products.

Happy Cow – An app to find local restaurants with vegan and vegetarian options. Includes user reviews that are usually dead-on accurate.

2. Choose Vegan Beauty Products

A lot of people are shocked when they hear there’s animal-products in their makeup – why would you possibly need animal by-products to make cosmetics? And the truth is, you absolutely do not! But sadly, many companies still use archaic non-vegan ingredients instead of incurring the reformulation costs to replace them.

As a Certified Vegan & Cruelty-Free brand, we ban all animal-derived ingredients from our products. We know from experience that you do not need animal byproducts to create high-performing, incredibly pigmented, luxuriously indulgent cosmetics. In fact, let's be real - there is absolutely nothing glam or luxurious about animal by-products. No being should have to suffer for us to feel beautiful.

Look for the most common animal-derived ingredients like carmine, glycerin, tallow, squalene, stearic acid, lanolin, keratin, and retinol on your beauty and skincare labels. Check out our Ingredient Code for more information about what we leave out of our products, and the vegan ingredients we use instead!

How to find vegan beauty products

• Shop with a vegan filter at Credo Beauty, Beauty Heroes, or Sephora. Keep in mind vegan doesn’t necessarily equal clean (and vice versa), so read the labels to find products that tick all your boxes!
• Look for vegan labels on your product packing by PETA, Leaping Bunny, or Vegan.org.
• Learn ingredient names to avoid animal by-products. Read our blogs ‘The Most Common Non-Vegan Ingredients in Cheek Products’ and ‘Non-Vegan Ingredients Found in Most Eyeshadows’.
• Download Animal Free to check if individual ingredients in your products are vegan.
• Follow bloggers like Ethical Bunny & Logical Harmony who share lots of helpful resources on vegan and cruelty-free beauty
• And of course, all of our products - from our eyeshadows to our blush palettes to our highlighters - are 100% vegan!

3. Shop Vegan sustainable fashion

More than 50 million animals are killed for fashion every year. By choosing vegan shoes, purses, and clothing, you can save lots of animals from the slaughterhouse. And the good news for your style: vegan clothing and accessories have come A LONG way and are oftentimes indistinguishable from their animal-based counterparts.

Some of our favorite vegan fashion & accessories brands:

SHOES: RAFA SHOES

Handcrafted in Los Angeles, every vegan shoe is made-to-order from recycled textiles. They’re a bit of an investment but may be worth the splurge for their incredibly unique, ultra-mod designs made with zero animal materials.

PURSES: GUNAS VEGAN HANDBAGS

Vegan bags made in ethical facilities from recycled, upcycled, and vintage materials wherever possible. They’re PVC-free and seriously stunning.

MUST-HAVE CLOTHING ESSENTIALS: PACT

Sweater, tanks, leggings, and tees made with only certified organic, super-soft cotton and non-toxic dyes. And most importantly, they’re made in only fair-trade certified facilities and Pact offers ways to reuse or recycle your old clothing and other fabric items.

ACTIVEWEAR: GIRLFRIEND COLLECTIVE

Made of recycled plastic water bottles, old fishing nets, and colored with only OEKO-TEX certified non-toxic dyes, these leggings are a sustainable, vegan gal’s dream. And what’s better (and so important in the sweatshop-laden world of fashion), they’re made in an ethical facility where workers receive fair wages, free lunches, and health insurance. Love your leggings, and love the ladies who make them.

Happy Veganuary beautiful people! We couldn’t be happier to be firmly in the first month of a brand new year that’s not 2020 ;)

- ĀTHR Beauty xo