ThanksLIVING Weekend Brings Vegans Together

 

 A vegan potluck dinner brought many vegans to Optimist Park Monday evening to celebrate Thanksgiving without animal products.

Meaghan Marton, 26, hosted about 45 people for dinner, completely without animal products. This was Marton’s fifteenth vegan potluck this year. 

Marton is the founder of The Sweet Life of Being Vegan on Facebook, and Coordinator at Charlotte’s Freedom Farm. 

She asked others to bring their own reusable dishes and utensils to the dinner, to combat the amount of waste they produced. 

“Everything is vegan, which contains no meat, no eggs, no dairy, no honey. I don’t have people sign up. The idea is for people to bring what they want to make,” Marton said.

While many follow the tradition of cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving, Marton and her friends said they find it is unnecessary.  Marton said that she ate meat for 22 years of her life and did eat turkey for Thanksgiving before going vegan. 

“I have been vegan for four and a half years. I think it’s unfortunate that some of these animals are killed every single year for celebrating our thankfulness, and I don’t believe we need to celebrate our gratitude over another beings life,” said Marton.

Recurring guests and new ones all say they enjoy the tasty food without the need for meat. Some members of the vegan community experience health benefits from going vegan, such as improving heart diseases and dietary restrictions.

“Turkeys are just like cats. They’ll come up to you, they’ll greet you, they love to be pet. To me, I’m not eating a cat for Thanksgiving,” said Brittany Robinson, a vegan guest who has been vegan for two years. 

There are multiple vegan potlucks of this nature throughout the year and local vegans hope that more will attend.