Vegan Posse

Looking for a living example of initiative and self-determination? Look no further! In May of 2013, Paul Chatlin was diagnosed with heart disease and presented with two options: bypass surgery or something called "plant-based nutrition." He opted for the latter. The very next day, Paul consulted with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who gave him the lowdown on whole-food, plant-based eating. Incr...

For many of us, 2023 was messy, gritty, and all too real -and boy, does Dr. Jen Howk get real about her own challenges and "growth opportunities" over this past year. Never one to rest on her laurels, Jen continues to push new limits. In this, her epic encore appearance on the Posse, Jen lays it all out on the table, including her tumultuous 2023; her new podcast, The Face of the Deep; h...

Chef AJ has been devoted to a plant-exclusive diet for over 46 years. She was the host of Healthy Living with CHEF AJ on Foody TV. She's the author of three bestselling books, The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss , Own Your Health, and The 10th Anniversary Edition of Unprocessed. Chef AJ was the Executive Pastry Chef at Santé Restaurant in Los Angeles where she was famous for her sugar-, oil-,...

SoCal native and longtime vegan Rich Rees started his music career as a professional drummer and  concert producer. He went on to become a successful booking agent, working \with such artists as Colin Hay, Wynonna Judd, Michael McDonald, Alan Parsons, Human League, English Beat, Dave Davies, and many more. Rich was the assistant to the music director for President Bill Clinton's Arkansas Ball...

Harold Brown is a former beef and dairy farmer. He was born on a cattle farm in Michigan and spent over half his life in agriculture. After a personal health crisis forced him to confront the incidence of heart disease in his family, Harold began eating a plant-exclusive diet. Living in great health as an herbivore and seeing his triglycerides plummet led him to reexamine all of his previous assum...

The holidays can be tricky for us vegans! In this special holiday episode, I share my top seven LUCKY Tips for navigating the holidays with ease, grace, and plain old vegan fun. Resources: Gingerbread cake - FYI I find it easiest to order gingerbread spice online since grocery stores may not have it, or you can make your own: https://thevegan8.com/vegan-gingerbread-cake/ Pumpkin cornbread (FYI, I...

Lee Hall has been vegan for almost 40 years! Lee worked for many years as a legal officer, a board member for several nonprofits, and an adjunct animal law and environmental law professor at Rutgers Law School and Widener-Delaware Law School. Lee even wrote the entry for the Encyclopedia for the UN Sustainable Development Goals titled "Nonhuman Rights and Human Sustainability." A frequen...

Alyssa Almond began her career with Teach For America as a third-grade bilingual teacher in Washington Heights, New York City. Her fascination with languages and language learning called her to specialize in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). She helped immigrants acquire the language skills necessary for them to succeed in the U.S. Alyssa worked both as a middle school ESOL...

An award-winning chef, educator and authority on plant-based cuisine, Chef Mark Reinfeld is the founding chef of the Vegan Fusion Institute, with over 25 years experience preparing innovative vegan and raw food cuisine. He has written eight acclaimed books and conducts virtual and in-person culinary trainings around the world. Chef Mark was inducted into the Vegetarian Hall of Fame. He was the fou...

Special Thanksgiving Day Episode! JH Burnett of Wilderness, South Africa, is an ex-farmer who is now a full-time vegan activist and author. He has been plant-based for five years and fully vegan (for the animals) for two and a half years. He's got a unique story that I guarantee you don't want to miss. Resources: Website:  www.veganismhaswon.com Ex-Farmer Goes Vegan eBook: https://mailchi....

Jenn Friedman is a therapist, writer, musician, and vegan from New York City. She is the author of  Veganism and Eating Disorder Recovery  (Routledge, 2022), a book that aims to improve the discourse about veganism in   eating disorder recovery. Jenn has presented on eating disorders at treatment centers, universities, and mental health conferences. She also writes, records, and performs music, wh...

The Vegan Posse welcomes its first mother-daughter duo! Zina Znayenko and her daughter Tatiana Znayenko-Miller are both long-time vegans and living examples of the power of plant-based eating. In this super special episode, they discuss their overlapping vegan journeys, whcih include their own respective real-life "medical miracles!" First-generation Ukrainian-American Zina was a fat veg...

In 1990, at the height of her corporate career, Nancy James was diagnosed with a life-threatening chronic and systemic auto-immune respiratory disease which was supposedly “incurable." The doctor who diagnosed her was so cold and dismissive as he issued the diagnosis sarcoidosis that she decided, “I don’t trust him. I don’t believe a word he says”. That decision saved her life. Nancy went to...

While earning her degree in English Literature, Sandra Nomoto published poetry in literary journals and posted online film reviews. At 25, she founded Conscious Public Relations Inc., an award-winning virtual agency certified as a B Corporation. After a decade in business, she authored and self-published  The Only Public Relations Guide You’ll Ever Need  in 2019. Living vegan since 2018, Nomoto is...

Shelley Watts, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is a retired high school home economics teacher. Arrogant about what and how much she could eat, Shelley started gaining weight in her late 20s by overeating sugar, salt, and fatty foods. Over the years, she gained 65 pounds and developed multiple health issues, including type 2 diabetes. She knew things were bad. Despite a lifelong aversion to needles,...

Some people think of us vegans as uptight, didactic, and humorless - and they can think again! Comic, filmmaker, podcaster, and longtime vegan Graham Elwood honed his comedic skills in comedy clubs and colleges to become a sarcastic hipster who can make light of anything and anyone including himself. In his new comedy special "Manifest It", Graham calls out Boomers for hating on Millenni...

Dr. Doug Lisle is an evolutionary psychologist and co-author of The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health and Happiness. His research and clinical interests include health and wellness, self-esteem, relationship satisfaction, the treatment of anxiety and depression, the genetics of individual differences, and optimizing achievement motivation. In addition to his work wit...

Judy McCoy Carman, M.A., earth, peace, and animal activist, is the author of  Peace to All Beings: Veggie Soup for the Chicken’s Soul  and the new book , Homo Ahimsa: Who We Really Are and How We're Going to Save the World.  She is also co-author of  The Missing Peace: The Hidden Power of our Kinship with Animals.  In addition to animal rescue work, Judy's current projects include the Anim...

Nerma Frieden came to the United States as a refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996, having survived a years-long war where she was terrified not of being killed but of being tortured, being captured, being raped. In 2014, after watching an ethical eating presentation at her Unitarian Universalist Church and seeing what was happening to farmed animals, she realized that they were living her w...

Vangile Makwakwa is a full-time entrepreneur and the founder of wealthy-money.com, a company that helps women of color heal ancestral money trauma so they can fall in love with their bank accounts, increase their income, and live their best lives. Vangile hosts two podcasts: The Money Magic Podcast and The Property Magicians Podcast. She is also the author of three books: Heart, Mind & Money:...

After a life-changing health experience, Nathan Gershfeld changed careers, from being a numbers-focused electrical engineer to a person-centered chiropractor. Following an internship under Dr. Alan Goldhamer, he joined the staff doctors at the world-renowned True North Health Center from 2011 to 2014. Dr. Gershfeld then moved his practice to Orange County in Southern California, where he founded ...

In this special interview on Chef AJ Live, Vegan Posse host Chrissy Benson tells all! You'll hear all about my CRAZY food history, my decade-plus in the "medical mill," and my journey to health, veganism, personal autonomy, and - of course - self-love, as epitomized in my vegan anti-romance romance novel Marrying Myself.

What would God, Scripture, and/or Divine Wisdom want for us humans when it comes to our diet and health? Author and nutrition educator Cyd Notter argues that it's nothing less than freedom from addiction, healing, and optimal health and wellbeing. In her acclaimed, award-winning book The "Plan A" Diet , she seamlessly intertwines the fundamentals of whole-food plant-based eating with...

How many times have you had to recover from your vacation? Cruises tend to be a time of decadence and over-indulgence in booze and junky food, with a whole lot of lounging in between. But Mike Young is flipping that paradigm on its head with the upcoming Health Optimization Cruise, which features ALL vegan, SOS-free food plus one totally raw meal a day - and exercise classes, health workshops, and...

Why do vegans hurt so much? And why do so many vegans cease their questioning after they reject our horrific animal-based food system? Freedom-loving vegan existential psychologist Dr. Clare Mann ponders these and other big questions in this, an episode for the ages! Dr. Mann has termed the mental and emotional burden that we vegans carry "Vystopia." She discusses how we can use our Vyst...