Vegan Intelligence is a personal project dedicated to exploring vegan nutrition beyond common assumptions. Based on years of experience and continuous research in areas such as health, nutrition, animal care, food preparation and psychology, the aim is to provide educational content, challenge common beliefs and approach veganism from a more thoughtful perspective.
The project is based in Europe and connected to a broader network of people interested in veganism and animal welfare.
All content on the vegan-intelligence website is original and protected, including all images and photographs used. No large language models are used to create written content.
The Vegan Intelligence Author
Sonja
Writer & Publisher
I first went plant-based in 2012 as a result of in-depth research about the connection between dairy consumption and allergies. Without having been vegan or even vegetarian before, I decided to have a one month trial of strict veganism. Jumping in at the deep end without any preparation, cooking skills or ideas what to eat, it was potatoes only for several days. What I years later found out to be called โpotato cleanseโ or โpotato resetโ helped me to jumpstart my health and got me excited about discovering new foods and ways of preparation.
It was very quick that I ended up deep inside the whole food plant-based (WFPB) realm. I got my hands on any nutritional medicine book I could find and followed online lectures of several well-known plant-based physicians. Over the years I learnt as much as I could about nutrients, optimal diet and disease prevention. At a specialised college in Bristol, England, I completed a one-year course in Biomedicine with a focus on anatomy, physiology and pathology. This equipped me with knowledge of all the basics needed for Naturopathic Nutrition.
My journey into veganism started a lot later after crossing paths with my now husband Levent in 2016. He was neither vegan nor plant-based when we met but very curious about everything related. Despite his growing interest into the health factors of a plant-based diet, for him it was the animal suffering that made him switch. It was him who opened my eyes to this aspect of food choices. So while I may have made him go plant-based he has made me vegan.
More than a decade later from where I started I can now say that being plant-based and vegan is an unshakeable part of my identity. When I look at animal-based products I donโt perceive them as food or even an edible item. But pretty much the same way Iโd perceive a mouldy block of wood. My goal at Vegan Intelligence is to produce educational content with a main focus on health and psychology.
The Cat Crew
Cats entered our life in 2020. Today they are very much related to the Vegan Intelligence concept. Project 833 Cats started in Southern Italy where we found ourselves inundated by starving stray cats. It was our mission to stop the growing problem of an uncontrolled cat population at least in that tiny part of the world where we happened to stay for a while. Instead of โtrap-neuter-releaseโ, we started a โgain trust-neuter-adoptโ programme.
In collaboration with local vets and an adoption shelter in Northern Italy we managed to find homes for dozens of formerly feral cats. Not all of them stayed as temporary guests for domestication. A bunch of them became family and will forever stay with us.
They inspire us to keep working for a better planet with kinder people and less animal suffering. They make everybody fall in love with them and each of them has an incredibly unique character and lifestyle. Vegan Intelligence and 833 Cats are therefore closely intertwined and one wouldnโt exist without the other.
