Choosing to change your diet and your lifestyle supporting and protecting our planet is possible

Introducing Arianna: A Courageous Wanderer Embracing Veganism and Solo Travel.

In the vast and diverse community of adventurous souls, one remarkable individual stands out – Arianna. Hailing from the picturesque town of Bergamo in northern Italy, this 24-year-old girl possesses an insatiable thirst for exploration and a deep-rooted love for the planet’s creatures.

Embarking on an unforgettable solo trip through the enchanting landscapes of Central and South America, Arianna’s journey is a celebration of more than just wanderlust. Recently, she marked a significant milestone by completing her first year as a committed vegan. This transformative experience has ignited a passion within her to share her story and motivation for embracing a plant-based lifestyle with the world.

Meatless Movement recently had a chat with her.

With a heart full of wanderlust and compassion, Arianna is determined to make a positive impact on the world, one step at a time. Her story exemplifies the power of conviction and the resilience of the human spirit. As she continues her journey, she hopes to spread awareness, ignite inspiration, and prove that embracing a compassionate lifestyle can lead to extraordinary experiences and a profound connection with our planet and its inhabitants.

Tell us more about yourself, please

Hello beautiful community, My name is Arianna, I’m a 24 yo girl from Bergamo, a town in northern Italy, close to Milan.

At this moment of my life I’m on a solo trip in Central and South America, where a few days ago I celebrated my first year being vegan. That’s what mainly pushed me in writing this article for Meatless Movement, I’d love to share my story and my motivation on embracing a plant-based diet but mostly I’d love to inspire more people who are afraid to solo travel to discover new amazing corners of this wonderful world, I’ll start from the beginning 🙂

As a special little girl, since I was 7 I almost refused to eat meat because I didn’t like the taste, but unfortunately I was forced by my father who thought as almost all of our parents at that time, that meat was very important for my growth and full development (not blaming him for that, now he is happily a strict vegetarian).

Then when I was 15 I saw many videos of the actual killing of animals for the food industry and I felt so bad that I decided to try removing animals from my diet, sadly without success because I was training two sports and my intake of protein was not well balanced so I felt really tired and weak and I was convinced to step backward and keep on following an omnivore diet. So when I was 18 I finally had a part time job, I finally moved out and had more time and money to dedicate to myself and since that 18th of April I didn’t eat a piece of meat anymore!

After that I spent 4 years proudly vegetarian, partly with a fantastic argentinian guy who turned vegetarian for me and we started cooking amazing recipes, growing a few vegetables in our tiny garden in Tenerife, Canary Islands.

Then something again changed in me, I met Tahlia who was a really important person for my growth and my passage in becoming 100% vegan. She is an amazing vegan dancer from Australia; when I met her she was 19 and she was volunteering with me in the hostel in Tenerife baking vegan delicious cookies and cakes for guests’ breakfast, at the same time giving pilates classes and working at a vegan restaurant (Tierra café, highly recommended <3) and yet full of energies to dance and party and talk all night, simply an incredible example!

So after that I told myself: “alright, it is possible, you can do it if she can, there’s nothing difficult, no need of hours and hours cooking, no need of hundreds of euros for the shopping and no need of renouncing of life’s pleasures for lack of energies and all the lies and myths that people go around telling without actually knowing what it feels like on their body!

So I quit eggs which was easier than I expected and then after watching many other documentaries, I quit cheese containing animal rennet, then all kind of cheese and honey too; I would say my process was quite slow and progressive but that’s the reason why now, I’m more convinced than ever that I’m doing the best choice for my body, my soul and planet Earth.

As an Italian, I suppose you know how important is food and eating together for us, as a spiritual, social, cultural moment, during this year being vegan, it has been really difficult to keep on going out with my omnivore friends, not only for little variety of options or not being able to share good aperitivos with them but especially seeing their taste for meat and their lack of care, attention and education on environmental issues, it made me feel like I was different and for that I didn’t belong there. I went through a rough period, I lost many friends, I cried for stupid things (like when my favourite cafè had finished vegan croissants on a Sunday morning), but also for serious matters like eco-anxiety and animal suffering, wrote several emails complaining, argued with so many restaurant managers, and as consequence I became very introspective and silent for a while.

So for 4 months my routine was just going to work and coming back home to study hard (from documentaries and essays showing scientific data on the impact of industrial farming and the derivatives illnesses, to reading books about a plant-based diet and watching loads of video-recipes etc.). After this period I was ready. I felt all the knowledge and self-confidence to face people’s ignorance, prejudice, insensitivity and arrogance about veganism and the natural catastrophe that is going on in front of our eyes.

Without thinking, I had become the example myself, like Tahlia, for many people with different backgrounds and beliefs and I felt sooo proud and unstoppable. My colleagues were not anymore judging me for eating too little or just salads, they started craving my glazed tofu and my pizza Marinara, as I demanded a special menu for me at the hotel’s canteen; my granny and the lady who was hosting me were not complaining or stressing for cooking for me, indeed they enjoyed discovering new products and experimenting new recipes; the guys I dated stopped rolling their eyes when I spoke about veganism, actually they brought me at delicious vegetarian restaurants, one of them quit beef meat, another one started using margarine instead of butter, another one even stopped going fishing… In the end, small things that have a huge impact on a large scale and made me feel fulfilled, proud and strong.

At the end of the working season, In January, I decided I had to make the real big change in my life, I couldn’t keep on contributing to improving the great functioning of the biggest symbol of wealthy and unsustainable tourism as this five starred Hotel is. So I spend all January in Tenerife, Canary Islands, my happy place, where I did a plastic-free month, doing my groceries only at a local farm with zero kilometer veggies and buying loose grains, cereals, seeds and nuts at a sustainable little, @mamma__natura. This was my challenge of living eco friendly while travelling and enjoying the journey.

Finally I was convinced, I decided to buy my one way ticket to Central America, with the dream of spreading my word, transmite my sensitivity and attention to the impact of my daily actions, asking local people to share with me different ways to prepare native fruits and veggies and more than everything showing everybody that living healthy and happy when choosing to change your diet and your lifestyle supporting and protecting our planet is possible even you are always travelling and you don’t have all the comfort as you do at home.

So here I am, after 6 months backpacking from Dominican Republic, through the french antilles, the grenadines until Trinidad and now in mainland (Panamà and Costa Rica heading Mexico), I feel like carrying a huge baggage of experiences, emotions, feelings that changed me as a human being and made me more confident, more prepared to live in very kind of situation and social context. I tried for the first time soo many different fruits I stopped counting, like lulo, kas or breadfruit, I’ve been to many avant-garde plant-based restaurant, like @karma_restaurant_jaco in Costa Rica, met amazing people with their local vegan business, such as @lolafoodrd in Santo Domingo, and other precious souls, worried about this topics as much as I am, like my sister @helena.b_h and lived in uncontaminated environments like communities developing projects for the safeguard of their land and their philosophy, like @sierrecity.

In the end, I’d have so many adventures, crazy stories, positive and negative experiences to tell that this enquiry would be infinite.Thank you then Meatless movement for the opportunity of speaking up and the willing to spread the word and create beautiful connections on our beautiful planet!

A special thanks to my father for always being there, to Marlo for encouraging and cooking for me, to Sara for bearing my craziness and stubbornness, to all the people from Sierrecity for adapting their diet for me for a whole month and to all the vegan community online that helped me feeling strong and encouraged <3