By Lizz Bottrell, Citizen Staff

Over the past couple of weeks, veganism grabbed the spotlight in many media outlets. Much of this attention is attributed to Oprah’s 21-day cleanse, which omits animal products as well as caffeine, sugar, alcohol and gluten.

The cleanse came from Kathy Freston’s book ‘Quantum Wellness,’ which is an instructive book on how to reach the highest level of health and contentment through small, focused changes.

This attention towards Oprah’s new ‘fad diet,’ as some may call it, works in both positive and negative ways for animal rights activists. While it raises awareness as to why people chose to adopt a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, it also portrays the vegan lifestyle as something very hard to maintain.

Oprah experienced very little resistance in changing her food habits, but she also has a professional chef preparing many of her delicious vegan meals. I’m sure everyone could maintain a very healthy and very tasty vegan lifestyle with a personal chef. The very fact that she stated her personal chef cooked most of her meals lent to the preconceived notion that veganism is hard to maintain. I mean, if she couldn’t even cook for herself, how can she expect anyone else to.

However, on the other hand, she likely never cooks for herself so having a personal chef put together vegan meals for her would be no different than a normal day.

Despite some of the negativity Oprah produced with her 21 day vegan experience, she also raised a lot of positive awareness that would make any meat-avoiding person proud.

In Oprah’s blog, she made a very interesting comment the first day, “She [Freston] speaks of “spiritual integrity.” How can you say you’re trying to spiritually evolve, without even a thought about what happens to the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony?”

Gluttony, it’s the perfect word to describe humanity’s obsession not just with animal flesh but with overeating. The eating of meat, especially the overeating of meat, is one the largest causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. In fact, if we put the same energy into growing fruits, vegetables and grains that we put into raising and slaughtering animals, most of the time inhumanely, the current food shortage the world is crying about would not even be a blip on the radar.

On the note of animal cruelty, KFC Canada recently made an agreement with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to only purchase its chickens from companies which use humane slaughtering practices. Further, KFC Canada also decided to offer a vegan “chicken” option on its menu in over half its Canadian locations. On PETA’s side of this agreement, they promised to end their Kentucky Fried Cruelty Campaign, a campaign which raised awareness as to KFC’s inhumane slaughtering practices.

The inhumane slaughtering practices PETA protested against included scalding chickens alive. Over time, KFC plans to phase to purchase 100 percent of its chickens from suppliers that use controlled-atmosphere killing, which is the least cruel form of poultry slaughter ever developed.

This is a great victory for animal rights activists and KFC as animal rights activists get what they want and KFC receives some positive media attention. However, now that an agreement was reached, animal rights activists must do their part by remaining true to the agreement and halting all campaigns against KFC. However, a problem arises because there are a few animal rights activists who won’t be on the same page and won’t rest until the entire world is cruelty free - meaning every single person lives as a vegan.

Sadly, it’s those people who tend to ruin it for every one else. The stories about the extremists are usually the only ones which make the news, giving people the perception that all vegetarians, vegans and animal rights activists are extremists - which is not the case.

So as much as Oprah may have put somewhat of a negative light on the vegan lifestyle in some ways, much of the media attention was very positive. Maybe now people will be a little more open to the idea of vegetarianism or veganism or at the very least, they won’t scoff at those of us who made the decision to adopt a meat-free lifestyle.