By Jon Camp, Vegan Outreach Executive Vice President

Whether you’re new to vegan eating or are a long-time vegan looking to shake things up in your kitchen, eating vegan just got a lot easier, thanks to Lighter, a Boston start-up. Lighter provides a personal nutritionist who creates your custom menus and has all your groceries delivered right to your door. The company is on a mission to make healthy eating convenient, affordable, and delicious.

How it works is: You sign up for a meal plan, and once a week, Lighter delivers a week’s worth of groceries and the recipes for however many meals you selected. You can select which ingredients you don’t wish to be in your recipes, the ideal amount of prep time you’d like, and you can pause your plan for as long as you need.

Around a month ago, I decided to give this a shot. I opted for the plan that provides 9 meals a week. I asked that olives (yuck) not be included in my recipes, but that anything else was fair game, and that prep time for my average meal be 15-30 minutes. I pay $65 a week, and each Monday, a friendly individual knocks on my door with a bag full of fresh fruits and vegetables, grains, legumes, spices, and some snacks. I receive an email with my recipes for the week, and I’m all set.

Some of my favorite meals so far have “Quick Thai Chickpeas,” “Pasta Puttanesca,” and “Zesty Sweet Potatoes & Black Beans.” Not only are these meals more consistently delicious, interesting, and healthy than what I had been eating in my pre-Lighter days, they’re remarkably simple to make and I’m not having to hem and haw over what I’m going to eat or where I’m going to find the recipe. I’m a busy guy, and I’m not known for my culinary creativity. Having a variety of pre-designed healthy meals has been a big boon to my wellbeing; I feel great while on the plan, and I’ve shed a few pounds that I had been wanting to shed.

Lighter now delivers in: Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

To learn more, visit www.lighterculture.com.

Activists Taylor Holman, Brian Alexander, Alix Pulido, and David Pinski are four of this semester’s most prolific Adopt a College leafleters: Taylor has handed out 8,390 booklets at 16 different schools; Brian, 8,101 booklets at 12 schools; Alix, 7,987 booklets at 12 schools; and David, 7,541 booklets at 9 schools!

Above (from left) are David at Cal State Dominguez Hills, and Alix, Brian, and Taylor at Chaffey College.

On February 16, Taylor and Brian teamed up at Los Angeles Pierce College (above) and set a new one-day record for the campus, handing out 1,189 booklets!

On January 27, Alix, David, VO Outreach Coordinator Steven Litrov, and fellow activists handed out 3,370 booklets at Cal State Fullerton. Steven reports:

We heard from several vegans and vegetarians on this bustling day! Alix invited her mom, Gina [above], to leaflet for a couple of hours (she did awesome), and two members of the Herbivore Club on campus joined for about an hour, too. One of the members, Javier Chavez [below], said he was influenced by a leaflet received at Mt. San Antonio College to make the switch!

David, Steven, and fellow activists reached more than 4,100 students at Cal State Northridge on January 25. Steven writes:

Huge day here on the first day of the quarter! Had a ton of volunteer help, including Laura Sanchez [above, left], who stuck it out all day long with a smile despite the weather, aches, and huge crowds. David Pinski [above, right] continues to impress with his persistence and ultra-straight arms and smiles. We were also joined by first-time leafleters Yuliana Miranda [below, left] and Pamela Whistley [below, right, and first from the left with Laura and David], who rocked it for a couple hours towards the end of the day.

We met two students who had been influenced to go veg from leaflets, including our volunteer Yuliana, who was leafleted at this school four to five years ago and initially didn’t read the booklet, because of the frightening images, but later did and did more research. Then Laura met another student in passing who went veg after getting a leaflet – awesome!

Both Yuliana and Javier not only changed their diets after receiving booklets, but also became Adopt a College leafleters! If you’d like to get booklets into more students’ hands, please consider taking part in VO’s Team Vegan campaign.

The more money raised, the more animals spared from suffering. And now through June 30, all donations up to $200,000 will be matched, dollar for dollar!

By Lisa Rimmert, Director of Development

Our Team Vegan matching drive started yesterday (Did you get our email? If not, sign up here!) and every donation to Vegan Outreach will be doubled!

A few generous donors have pledged to match donations up to $200,000! That’s $400,000 we could raise for animals–with your help.

What we raise during this Team Vegan drive will determine the work we can (or can’t) do this year. We depend on your donations to inspire more people to go vegan–people like Antonio.

Antonio received a booklet from VO’s Mexico Outreach Coordinator, Emmanuel Márquez, at Universidad de Guanajuato. Antionio told Emmanuel about how he ate vegetarian for a while but went back to eating animals. Emmanuel gave him a booklet and told him about the Spanish section of the VO website for recipes and nutrition info.

Now Antonio is going vegan!

We hear from people like Antonio all the time, and it’s because of folks like you whose donations make outreach possible.

Now, with our Team Vegan matching challenge, you can inspire twice as many people to go vegan, which means twice as many animals spared!

Please donate right now to keep Vegan Outreach going.

Thank you!