Vedge Your Best

Email apnea?

It’s the mostly unconscious habit of holding your breath when you open your inbox, check your phone, or read the news.

Today on Vedge Your Best, Annette and Graham Henry, the Vegan Breathing Coaches, explain how all those tiny breath-holds can keep the body in a state of alert. This episode is about breathing, yes. But it’s also about noticing patterns we don’t realize are shaping our days.

🎧New episode out today.

This week I explore something I’m calling “The Olender Test,” inspired by the Bechdel Test (google it), to look at how vegans are portrayed in the media. Not whether vegan characters exist. Whether they’re allowed to exist as full human beings… without being the joke.

And there’s actually some fascinating behavioral science behind why this matters more than we think.

What films, shows, or books pass the test for you?
And which ones absolutely fail?

I go much deeper into the idea, and why representation shapes perception, in this week’s episode of The Vedge Your Best Podcast. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Are we supporting vegan businesses or grading them on a curve?

After some “underwhelming” meals lately in the US, France and the UK that were relying on reviews that didn’t quite match the experience - I’m asking myself a harder question:

Are we really helping?

If we want vegan restaurants to last or thrive, maybe “nice” isn’t enough. Maybe honest, specific, respectful feedback is part of the support too.

This week on Vedge Your Best, I’m having an uncomfortable conversation about vegan restaurants, HappyCow, lowered standards, and what real support might actually look like.

Oh and apologies for the audio this week - I was on the road.

🎧 Listen now and tell me what you think: have you ever felt this tension too?

What if the thing you’re clinging to… is the very thing you don’t actually need? For Erin, it was eggs. Because she believed she needed them.

Protein carries a lot of weight in our culture. But what happens when you question it—just a little? Not all-or-nothing.
Just: “What if I tried something different?”

Within weeks, the results were there for her. This isn’t about perfection.
It’s about being willing to experiment with your own life.

🎧 Full conversation with Erin Stanczyk - Eat Move Rest on this week’s Vedge Your Best

What if factory farming is hurting farmers too?

This week on Vedge Your Best, Megan Hunter of The Transfarmation Project explains how contract farmers get trapped in debt, lose autonomy, and end up carrying the waste burden of the system. Megan says the average chicken farmer is paid about 25 cents per chicken.

“Transfarmation”, moving away from farming animals and toward growing food directly for people, can offer a very different path. Transition products like mushrooms can bring in about $16 to $20 per pound.

This is not just about farmers and animal welfare.

It’s a story about contracts, debt, pollution, rural communities, family legacy, and what happens when people want a way out of indentured contracts to global corporations.

Share this episode with someone who might not normally listen to a plant based podcast.

🎧 Episode 294 of the Vedge Your Best podcast is out now.