There’s a deeper meaning to the relationship we have as a society with the food we choose personally. The show’s guest today is Jasmine Leyva, the director of the film The Invisible Vegan. In this enlightening episode, Jasmine shares with Elliot Begoun how one of the reasons why people think it’s okay to treat black people this way is because we normalize treating animals a certain way. As long as it’s okay to be cruel to one being, that can be used as justification as to why it’s okay to be cruel to another being. Do you want to learn more about how our food choices have far-reaching effects on our society? Then tune in and absorb this mind-nourishing content to your heart’s desire.

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Listen to the podcast here

The Story Behind “The Invisible Vegan” With Jasmine Leyva

I’m excited about the conversation we’re going to have. It’s timely and appropriate for the audience of this show to investigate the deeper meaning of the relationship we have societally with food personally. It’s going to be a super cool conversation. A bit of housekeeping before we jump, remember it comes to life through your questions. We’re going to tip it over to Jasmine and we’ll introduce her and tell you a bit about her background and we’ll dive right in. Jasmine, thank you so much for joining. I’m thrilled to have you. Please share with those reading to a little bit about you.

Thank you so much for having me. My name is Jasmine Leyva. I am the director of the film The Invisible Vegan and I’ve worked in TV for years, over a decade. I hit a point where I finally decided, “Let me use my skills to do something for myself.” Around the same time, I developed an interest in plant-based eating. A lot of my friends in the black community were not here for it. They didn’t understand my choices and they racialized it. They thought it was a white thing which led me to dissect, “Why do they think that? How can I shift the narrative a little bit?” Which is the premise for my film was born out of.

Why is the title The Invisible Vegan for those who haven’t seen the movie?

I chose the title based on the novel, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. In the intro, he talks about feeling invisible when he’s in all white spaces but feeling equally invisible when he’s in all black spaces because he doesn’t conform to certain stereotypes. That is exactly how I felt as a black vegan. Layering that with when I looked at the mainstream vegan community, I didn’t see myself represented. It’s better now since we’re working towards inclusion and diversity. Years ago, that wasn’t the case and usually, when you saw a vegan, it was a white girl, a blonde ponytail, yoga pants that were the poster child which looks nothing like me or people I grew up with. That’s why I chose the name, The Invisible Vegan.

It’s a big step from thinking about this and being on one side of the camera to going on the other and taking a whole project like this. What compelled you to do that? That’s a big thing to do, a little bit crazy on the surface.

People always say that you have to do it yourself if you want something done. That’s pretty much what I did. I wanted my films to be relatable to people like me, to people who grew up like I grew up. I felt I can be that voice. A lot of times we turn to people on the expert level, like the doctors, the scientists, which serve their purpose and we need their voice. At the same time, those voices aren’t always palatable to say someone who only has a sixth-grade education or someone who might get bored listening to that two narratives told in that style. I’m a pretty plainspoken, casual, relatable person. I thought that it’d be perfect to use my experience as the foundation for this project. I had my expertise in the film and TV world. It seemed perfect.

We talk about this a lot with entrepreneurs and talk about the risk of taking on something uncharted or difficult. To the casual observer, it seems risky to do it. What I have found most often is that it’s a different view of risk. There’s the risk of doing which is what most of us feel and the risk of not doing. The risk of the inaction, of wondering, “What if I’d done that? What if I didn’t talk myself out of it? Could I have made a bigger impact? Could I have had a better way to tell the story?” Do you think that aligns with your mentality? You saw the risk but the bigger risk to you is not speaking up and doing something.

Exactly. I went into and knowing that it would be a sacrifice at the time. I had to sacrifice my life savings, which is scary when you’re young, you’re in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. I want my life to mean more than just working on someone else’s vision every day of my life and never created one of my own. I know I would be on my death bed regretting that. That’s why I had to do my project.

That is that difference in risk. I thought it was a fantastic movie. The way it was approached and you described yourself as casual and relatable. That’s exactly how I would describe the movie given the time we’re in. For all the founders reading, you’re at the crossroads of many inflection points when you’re in the natural product space, be it food, beverage, personal care, etc. We are meeting our tribe in moments where culture and family and social economics, all of those things come into play.

I thought the movie did a good job of bringing that to light more than a lot of the other documentaries which focus on vegan documentaries which would have focused on either the dietary benefits like forks over knives or game-changers or the environmental or animal welfare side. This was much more of a holistic view of it. I wanted to call that out. As you started working on it and sensed the movie, what have been some of the surprises? What have you learned about people’s relationship to food, to the environment, to diet, to an animal? What are the a-ha moments you’ve had along the way?

One of the biggest a-ha moments is I’ve learned about the psychological influences that affect what we eat. Diet is a big conversation and trying to get people to eat a certain way but you don’t find a lot of people paying attention to why do people eat the way they eat? Why is that relationship important to them? I’m working on a new documentary about food but it’s in the food disorder space and even changing the way we look at disordered eating. It has opened my eyes to how important food is and how important when we approach these topics, how much sensitivity you should have that we don’t.

I don’t want to spend all the time on the movie but I’m curious about a few things. How did the experience change your views? You went into it already vegan. I’m trying to understand how it fits in what it means but I’m sure some things adjusted and changed as you went through the process in terms of your perspective and view.

My view of Animal Rights Cause changed dramatically. When I went into this project, animal rights were last on my list of concerns as far as why somebody should go vegan. I still had animosity in my heart toward Animal Rights Movement because I did view them as a group that cares more about animal welfare, than the welfare and conditions of human beings that look like myself. That was my initial relationship but when I did this film, I got to talk to black people about the Animal Rights Movement and they gave me a different entry point into the animal rights community that resonated with where I was socially and politically. They helped me understand why it is important that we fight for animals in a way that the mainstream movement didn’t do.

Some of my research and learnings, I would admit to being a total neophyte. People like Dick Gregory and others moved towards first vegetarianism and becoming vegan because of Dr. King’s message around non-violence. That was the leaning in approach and you speak to that a bit in the movie. I’m curious as to, is that what you mean in terms of active? Is that it’s another form of non-violence?

One of the things about people at the end of the day even me, I was young, I started working on this film years ago. At that time, I was very self-involved. I was still very self-centered. It’s hard to talk to someone with problems about helping someone else like, “I have my own problems with my race. We have problems that we have to worry about.” A lot of black activists helped me see that the reason why, or one of the reasons why people think it’s okay to treat black people this way is because we normalize treating animals a certain way. In a lot of ways, a lot of people view black people as animals. As long as it’s okay to be cool to one being, that can be used as justification as to why it’s okay to be cool to another being. That was my entry point into the animal justice community.

I find that the entire topic resonates with me. I grew up culturally Jewish. I had relatives that were survivors of the holocaust. From a very young age that fascinated me. As to why, and what I’ve learned over my life, it’s whenever we other somebody in something or groups, when it’s us, them, others, we begin to disassociate, dehumanize and you’re correct. It’s no different from animals, and cruelty is cruelty. It’s when we separate that because, by nature, human beings have compassion. The only way we can distance ourselves from compassion and empathy is to make something less attached to us or a little bit more distant.

You have this movie out there and suddenly, Jasmine, you’re an activist. Everybody’s talking about you as an activist and a leader. How is that? The reason I asked that is we try to talk to founders and those reading about the fact that when you build brands when you build products that people like you can influence and a responsibility to influence and lead change and do all of those things. How has that been since you found yourself suddenly being viewed as such?

Initially, it was a title that I had trouble accepting because of my view of an activist as someone who’s standing in front of hoses, or they’re in the trenches. I felt I’m creating films in the comfort of my home. I don’t belong in the same category as Harriet Tubman and Cesar Chavez. When I thought about it, even though a film is a gentle art project. Something gentle like that can still influence a lot of people. I started feeling more comfortable taking ownership of being an activist. I could have used my art for a lot of things, I could have done a lot of more socially popular topics. The fact that I did say, “To hell with my life savings,” because I want to tell the story of health and compassion. I feel comfortable accepting that title.

I want to take a show prerogative and say, “I view diet very much like a religion.” We tend to be tribal about it. We tend to believe in it and believe it’s the best path but we have to acknowledge that there are other paths and other ways that can potentially promote whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s compassion, whether it’s environmental, and being plant-based is one of them. There are a lot of other causes. There are a lot of other things that the readers here are involved with. One of the words you used which I thought was telling was that this was a gentle approach to activism. What’s your feeling about the difference between being more subtle and more gentle versus more in-your-face extreme and how that works?

Both forms have a time in place but when I’m dealing with people on a personal level, I go the gentle route because gentle means I’ve taken the time to learn about the concerns of whoever I’m talking to, which facilitates more growth. For example, there was an eating program. They were trying to help people with their diets. One of the things that they shamed was eating rice and beans. If you have people who come from the Latin culture in this group, you’re shaming of food that they have a cultural connection to, that their mom used to make.

When you don’t think about stuff like that, you end up not only offending a person on an individual level but you’re attacking their culture, even though you mean to attack the food, the food is tied into that person’s identity. When we start being more conscious of these things, we can have more enlightened conversations that people are more likely to listen to. We can also learn to meet people where they’re at and build there instead of trying to force something on someone.

Even me, the way I operate is if you force something on me if you tell me what I need to do, if you take the position to educate me or lecture me when I didn’t enroll in your university, you’re already creating friction and it turns me off. I’ve been around people like that so I try not to go that route because it doesn’t matter. Even if you do turn people, you get people to go vegan or whatever, you get people to conform to your way. How many people did you turn off that now have a stigma about veganism or plant-based eating because of the way you approached it? We have to think about that too because that’s important. If we want to save the planet, if we want to save the animals, we have to think about those things.

I want to ask you about being an activist and about showing up as a leader and a voice. I want to first finish off this thought and say two things. One is people usually make an iterative change. People rarely go from point A all the way to point Z. If you make point Z, the only acceptable destination, then you’re demotivating them to take the smaller step to B. That’s a wasted and missed opportunity in my opinion and experience.

The other thing is that we’re in a time in our history that we have to learn to have different opinions and be able to talk with an actual interest in trying to understand the other perspective. To engage in conversation in a way that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone has to agree or that everybody has to go to plant-based eating or everybody has to do certain things. We should learn how to understand through empathy, the perspective of others and embrace it rather than push back against it. What’s interesting to me is that you said you started working on this movie years ago but we’re in this moment in history, this moment in time where I can imagine this movie being more important in opening more dialogue. How has that been in terms of using the movie not only to talk about diet and veganism but also to talk about race and culture?

One thing that I like to do in my normal life is I like when people tell me not only what I’m doing great, and patting me on the back. I like when they tell me what am I doing wrong. A lot of times I feel like I’m doing wrong. Those are the comments that helped me the most. In my film, that’s another thing that I chose to do. What critiques do I have of veganism in the vegan movement? What do I see where the mainstream is going about things a little bit wrong?

I use race as a playing field for that to pay attention to if you are a white person in the United States, even if you are the person that doesn’t see race, the reality is there are lots of black and brown people in this country who see race. When you approach a white person approaching a black person, telling them, “You need to conform to my way of doing something.” Not being aware of the baggage you might be bringing to that conversation just because of the color of your skin.

Not knowing things like that can trigger people. That’s what creates stigma. I liked that I found a gentle way to relay that message and open people’s eyes up to the full picture. Even when you think you’re doing something great, sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’m glad that I was able to point out some nuances so that when people are going forward in their vegan journey, and they’re talking to people outside of their culture. They can take the time to learn about the culture that they’re trying to promote their message to.

I suggested that my kids watch the movie. They’re all in their twenties and none of them are vegan. They all gave me that, “Dad, we don’t want to watch a vegan movie. It’s a pain in the ass. Why do you keep doing that?” My comment to them was, “It’s told from that perspective but it’s a movie in my mind. I’m curious as to your thoughts about it.” It’s a movie about compassion and compassion crosses all boundaries and so forth. One of the challenges that we face is that there is natural compassion and there is a natural desire to have this conversation.

All these conversations about things that are race, food, culture, all of those, and the environment. These are all hotbed issues and people are afraid to have these conversations because they’re afraid for a few reasons. One is they’re afraid to misspeak and say something out of ignorance. They’re also afraid because it may challenge or change their views. What do you say to that? How would you recommend that person who doesn’t want to engage? Somebody who meets you and wants to engage with you in that conversation to learn to grow but is going to have to confront some of their vulnerability to do it, how do you help them over that?

One, I would say don’t be afraid to announce your ignorance. I had to teach a screenwriting class in 2018 and the micro-politics around gender were different when I grew up versus now. When I spoke to my class, one of the things I said on day one was, “I’m still learning the new gender landscape. If I say anything, please feel free to correct me. I want to engage but know that I wasn’t brought up this way.” I owned my ignorance from day one but I didn’t cower to conversations because when you stray away from certain topics out of fear, then you render the person that you’re talking to invisible, and that’s not fair to them. Get over your fear, announce your ignorance, and if you make a mistake, apologize. Know that mistakes will be made, and if they are made, offer a sincere apology. Some people tell you to do your homework, that’s hard because there’s much information on the internet that it’s debilitating sometimes.

It’s hard to get on the internet and learn how to be culturally competent. That’s not a thing but to be culturally competent, you have to engage, you have to listen. Ask people questions and let people know, “I want to learn.” If you run into someone who’s like, “It’s not my job to teach you,” which you can run into that. Say, “Maybe not that person.” Try someone else with who maybe you have a better relationship with.

First of all, I love the phrase, own your ignorance. The only shocking part is when I have a conversation like this with a middle-aged white dude like me. I’m going to have some blind spots, and so is everybody on the other end of the conversation, no matter who we’re talking to about what topic. We have our perception. I spent a lot of my editorializing here but I spent a lot of my life trying not to be vulnerable.

What I realized is that real growth comes from vulnerability. It comes from being willing to say, “I don’t know this, I don’t understand this. I’m uncomfortable with this.” If you do that first of all, it diffuses the whole conversation. Two, it opens you up to real growth. Jenny has a question and it’s an important one. How would you recommend entrepreneurs or anyone looking to become many activists gets started? How do you go from being somebody who feels something to somebody who does something?

I use my art as my activism. Whatever space you’re in, I’m sure there’s some way where you can promote plant-based eating or you can promote compassionate living in what you do. One, you’re going to live by example. Two, if you have social media, something as small as showing people like, “This is what I eat. These are the shoes I wear. These are the belts I wear.” Using social media as a tool even promoting sustainability in whatever products like I bought the tennis shoes. They use solar energy and they use recycled plastics and they make sure to make a point of putting this in most of the ads. Just injecting your message wherever you can unapologetically.

I couldn’t agree more and I’m going to add a couple of comments to that. First of all, we have to get over the fact that in this space and the folks listening to this podcast, that we’re dirty capitalists. When commerce and businesses harnessed for good, it’s the most powerful change agent. Many of the brands in our community came together earlier to watch a new movie called Seeding Change. It’s about how brands can show up and lead change. This happened to be more focused on environmental change.

My personal belief is that you have a platform that is the brand that you’re creating. The intention in which you show up in the world are things that you place as values and be willing to risk the short-term financial gain for the long-term commitment to doing what’s right and what’s important to you that is being an activist. There are a lot of good activist brands that we see out there whether you talk about brands like Patagonia or others, you can use the power of the brand to be an activist. We didn’t talk about how you transitioned or vowed into being vegan. What was the reason that you became not only you started eating that way but you became such a big part of who you are, why, and your message?

Some people have those noble stories like, “I want to save animals. I wanted to save Earth.” No, I saw a middle-aged woman wearing booty shorts and a tank top. Her body looks extremely good. I saw her and I was like, “I want to look like her.” I asked her about her habits and she told me that she was completely vegan, 70% raw. I adopted a vegan diet so I could look like her in booty shorts. That was the whole motivation.

During that journey, I started reading up about veganism. I started watching all the vegan documentaries and my reason for wanting to go vegan evolved. It went from there to wow. When I started eating a certain way, I noticed my health started going up. All these problems that I thought were growing pains started going away. My skin started clearing up, digestion was fabulous. I was like, “This is important for health reasons.”

When I did my film, I was like, “I learned about the animal component and why that’s important.” Even from a holistic spiritual direction, I learned why that’s important. I’ve heard people within the vegan community lash out against people who promote veganism with health. I would say because health is someone’s entry point doesn’t mean that’s where they’re going to stay. You want to meet people where they’re at because people evolve. A lot of times, sometimes people can be a little self-centered where they want to be vegans for reasons that benefit them, and honestly, it’s okay. That’s how I started but that’s not how I finished.

That’s crosses over to one of the things that’s interesting to me, in general, is that, as a society, we tend to be very tribal. We tether certain things to self-identity. It becomes emblematic of who we are, becomes part of our story. It’s very interesting to me that there are different gateways and there are different ways people come in and sometimes that causes controversy. It’s that what you described is not in all that different from me, although it wasn’t my intent ever.

Thanks to everybody reading, to fit into a pair of booty shorts and knocking in my future. It was around my lifelong battle with weight and it started with that and It became the health aspect. As I did that, I started saying, “I don’t want to screw this up. I need to be motivated. I don’t want to ever go backward. I don’t want to go through this again. I’m going to try to read about the environmental impact and study animal welfare, and study it so that it reinforces it.”

I have multiple prongs of motivation to keep this lifestyle going. That’s how I went. It was completely the same way it started with vanity. There’s nothing wrong with vanity being a motivator if it leads you down the right path. The other one leads you down the wrong. Most people, when they’re making a big change, it’s easier to make a big change when they can see what’s in it for them. Once they grasp that scene how it can impact others, that’s more the norm than people being selfless. I wish it weren’t but when we see the opportunity of selflessness, that is reinforcing.

One of the questions that came in as somebody who is very diet aware and in the crosshairs of all of this from a nutrition standpoint, from a cultural standpoint, from all the things we discussed. When you go shopping and look for products and see packaging, what are some of the things that either turn you onto an item or turn you off? You’re not going to be looking through hamburger packages but in general, in terms of when a brand shows up to you and you discover it, what do you see? What are you looking for? That’s always a question of curiosity.

One thing I like about ingredients is I can pronounce them. I know what’s in them. I grew up eating a lot of food from cans and in a box and then plastic. A lot of the foods that I eat now are just foods. If I’m making a bowl for lunch, it’s rice, beans, brussels sprouts, kale, it’s all things which I know exactly what it is. That’s a major thing I look for. I do look for organic for the most part. If I can’t find it or if I’m in the store without it, I will get an inorganic version but look for the organic label. Those are the main things because I don’t buy a lot of food in boxes and cans.

Let me broaden it beyond the food and brands you engage with. What are you looking for in a brand that you engage with as a gentle activist on social media? The way they show up in the world. What do you expect from the brands you engage with?

When they mention that their workers are paid fairly. I buy Angela Roi purses. They’re not super cheap, they’re a little pricey but I like the fact that I know I’m paying someone who pays her workers fairly, who uses recycled products. People whose products contribute to sustainable ways are products that I like to support.

What about things like dealing with race and culture and social justice? For instance, when the tragedy of George Floyd happened, a lot of brands were paralyzed with how to show up on social media. Do they talk about it? Do they speak to it and look potentially disingenuous or bandwagon-like because they’re trying to jump on the messaging? Do they go dark and not participate at all? One of the things I suggested is sometimes going back to that vulnerability as a brand. Showing up on social media saying we want to hear, we want to listen. We want to hear what people are feeling and doing in moments like that or issues like that. Do you expect the brands that you interact with to be voicing and doing things or is that not important to you?

I want brands that I interact with to be genuine. When George Floyd’s situation happened, one thing that I saw is a lot of brands that were mostly all-white brands had all-white advertisements. If they have, it’s all-white speakers. All of a sudden, George Floyd happens and you have all this Black Lives Matter stuff on your page. To me, that’s not genuine. What would be a little bit more genuine to me is if brands that did that acknowledged that. How people are voicing, how things should be.

These companies need to take responsibility like, “This was an eye-opening event and it caused our company to reflect that up until now we haven’t even been promoting people of color and that’s a problem. We’re going to use this moment to start showing up the way we should have showed up decades ago.” To me, that’s more genuine than what I saw happened during the George Floyd occurrence.

You say that because to say it far less eloquently, it’s sometimes showing up and saying, “Our shit does stink. We got to clean it up. We’ve got some work to do,” is a far more transparent, authentic way to show up than anything else. You said it. In my opinion, it’s spot on. Be genuine. Don’t be opportunistic or jump in because that’s what you think you should do. People engage with brands, it’s an emotional relationship. We don’t engage with brands. We don’t make those decisions linearly, logically, we make them remotely. That’s why we pick brands.

It’s not the most rational part of our decision-making process. It’s because they’re our friends, it’s because it’s tied to our self-identity. It’s because maybe it’s aspirational. We want to be seen as such, and it’s important to recognize that and show up. Bobbi with Read The Ingredients has a question. She said she’s excited to see you. She believes you tried their products. She said, “In the role of an activist, how do you approach people who are ‘not interested’ or get defensive about the problem the industry is creating on our planet, etc.? I’m super careful about not preaching but if I were in the mindset that you are every day of your life that would be harder.”

One thing that I do whether it’s food or anything, I take responsibility for the energy that I bring into every situation. If I’m at a dinner table, I think, “You know what? Some of these people might’ve had a stressful week. This dinner might be the one beautiful thing that they have this week.” I don’t know what this dinner means to this person. This might not be the moment for me to try to push objectives on them that might discomfort them at this moment, maybe dinner’s for laughing and joking.

I tend to go for people who are interested. When people come to my home and I cook good food. I’ll make some jackfruit barbecue or even the buffalo cauliflower. Afterward, I’ll have people who ask me for the recipe or people can tell me how good the food is. They get interested in veganism. They want to ask me questions and they want to learn more. I shifted my focus to educating people who want to be educated instead of lecturing people when they didn’t sign up for my lecture. That’s the way I approach it.

I would also say when I made my film, one of the things that helped me make my films was listening. You look at my phone, it is a response to every reason that someone said they can’t go vegan, “It was too expensive.” I narrowed that, “I have a problem with impotence.” I found something for that, “I don’t get down with animal rights.” I found a reason why you should. Listen to the reasons why people don’t want to be vegan. Go home and do research so the next time you talk to someone who does have hiccups about it, you can come at them in an evolved way because you would have taken the time to understand their perspective. I would honestly listen to them.

Listening is such a powerful tool alongside empathy and being able to see it through their eyes and from their perspective. Bobbi, I’ll speak to you personally, knowing you as I do, you couldn’t be viewed that way if you tried. The word that you used and your question was preaching. That’s where challenges occur. Two things happen. One is that if we take an argument from a moral high ground, or that there’s a moral imperative.

We’re going to turn people off because we’re not giving them any room to feel okay with their decision. We’re not giving them any latitude, it’s binary. When you confront people with a binary choice between what they’re doing now and what you want them to do, they’re going to choose to be defensive about that. If you allow them to slowly evolve the way they’re doing things or show them and give them some room to make it iterative, you’re naturally going to see more.

I do a couple of things to give you my perspective. One is I don’t share unless they engage in a question. I might mention something personal to me, whether it’s my spiritual joy, whether it’s my dietary choice. If it opens up to dialogue, then I share and I use words in my experience, in my opinion, or my research or what I’ve learned or what I believe instead of it being absolutes. I’m trying not to talk in absolutes, which is a major challenge I have because I do speak for the most part in absolutes.

The other thing I try to do is make sure to ask them questions. How come you feel the way you do? What are you doing? In general, one of the biggest risks we have is this ability for conformational bias. If you believe in something, it doesn’t matter if you’re a vegan, if you’re keto, if you’re paleo. If you have this information, these sources, and so forth, that reinforce your why. They reinforce that decision and become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so to speak.

Here’s a challenge to everyone reading. If you find yourself so resolute in a belief, be it about anything. Try to go to an information source that is the antithesis of it. Look into it and try to be open to it. If you’re sitting every day watching MSNBC, spend 30 minutes and turn on Fox News. If you’re reading about all the latest books and science around plant-based eating, how not to die, things like that, go read something about keto or paleo. Be willing to challenge your beliefs and it’ll make you able to have that conversation. There’s nothing wrong with having a strong opinion, just hold it loosely enough to have it be wrong.

To add to that, remember who you are. I’m a filmmaker. That’s what I do. if I’m telling someone to eat, most likely they know, “Jasmine did not go to school for nutrition.” I didn’t go to school for diets. I didn’t go to school for climate studies. If you are going against all the knowledge that someone else has already accumulated, not even taking the time to consider that maybe they were educated. They made an educated choice based on their knowledge. It’s like you’re coming at it from a godly standpoint.

Something that can help is referring people to experts. If someone’s not feeling you, you might not be the right source. “If I bought you a How Not to Die book, would you mind reading it? Would you mind checking out this documentary Forks Over Knives?” Instead of you being the guy trying to tell them what they should do. Their doctors have told them to eat a certain way. Refer them to other doctors who go against that train of thought, instead of trying to battle that train of thought.

Let me switch gears. We’ve talked a lot about how you do things and showing up but let’s talk about the negative aspects of being an activist. That is you wind up facing anger, pushback, consternation, etc. What’s that been like and how have you dealt with it?

The good thing and the bad thing about social media, for example, is everyone has an opinion. What people say to you and how people talk to you can have an impact on you emotionally. There is that need to protect yourself emotionally. Something that helps me is I can’t engage. When there are people who disagree with me, I don’t think it’s my job to force someone into my opinion. It’s like, “I’m going to give you my opinion. If you don’t like it,” I will respond to you, “Thank you for sharing your opinion. We’ll agree to disagree.” Instead of having some long back and forth, which I’ll do now and then. I’ll make a special trip outside of my character for a show.

When you do that, how often do you go, “I wish I hadn’t done that?”

When I do it, it’s in a very constructive way. I don’t have any regrets. Even when I do that, I’m very gentle and I make sure that I acknowledge whatever feelings they have. I do it more for other people on my page, they can see, “There’s a certain level of hatred that I don’t allow to go unchecked if you come on my channel.” It’s important to be able to agree to disagree and know that you are not there to force thoughts on anyone. You’re there to promote that.

Have you gotten some hostile pushback? Have you gotten experienced people who have been strong-worded and even vicious to you online? Are most people have been fairly gentle in response to your gentle approach?

When you open yourself up to the public, sadly, there are a lot of people who went through very harsh childhoods. You can tell that in how they interact with the world. It does happen when but when it happens, I don’t take it personally as a part of this movement. It’s all about compassion. I have deep sympathy for people who have stated an opinion and they’ll have some crazy animosity towards it and send me a negative message. I feel sorry for them. When it gets to that level, that’s when I don’t respond. I block that person on all my channels. It’s going to happen if you open yourself up to people, you don’t say anything personally.

What about the people close to you? Your family and friends that have watched you go through this evolution, have watched the film, and maybe have differing views. How has that been from an experience and relationship side?

It’s been okay because I’ve been understanding. There’ve been times where members of my family like it might be a night where I’m making dinner and like, “I want to make dinner for the family.” Maybe they’ll say, “We’ll eat before we get there.” You can go one route and take that personally and go on some whole crusade. I can say, “Jasmine, I have to have respect for the way they want to nourish themselves. They think that meat is the sustainable diet that they need. It’s not my place. It’s maybe challenged my elders on that. I let them live their life by their constitution.”

My other family members who watched my film. I have one aunt, for example, she was having cholesterol problems and blood problems. She tried the vegan diet and it made her start losing weight. Her blood work started improving, that’s more so my audience. That’s why I did it, not to challenge people in a way that’s going to turn them off but to give people an option and to give people choice. The freedom of choice. This is an option that you might not have known about so some people will take it and some people won’t and I’ve accepted that.

I talk to them about that a lot as it relates to the brands that you can’t necessarily sell or push need. You can be top of mind and be a resource and be there when the need surfaces and give them choice. A strange question, I’m known for those but I’m curious, for reinforcement, the natural products, the industry as a whole has led to lots of change in the world. We’ve led change, environmental change, we’ve led dietary change. We’ve promoted the organic food movement, all of those things. How can the brands, the founders, and the entrepreneurs reading this help you have this conversation with people? I’m not saying that every one of them will embrace every aspect of what you’re suggesting but I do think having these types of conversations are important. How do we help you have an engaged and more productive, gentle activist conversations?

Once again, finding very genuine ways to partner with different activists in the space like ways that make sense, ways that don’t feel forced, and also making sure that you have diverse people on your team. If you’re, say, a white person, and your cultural competency isn’t the greatest. Maybe it will be good for you to have other diverse people on your team to guide you as far as how you should show up in certain spaces and different ideas and partnerships.

Specifically, for you, what can we do to help broadcast your message as an industry about talking about this, whether it’s talking about diet or nutrition, or soon with your next film Disordered Eating, and so forth. These are topics that as an industry we address and confront. Is there a way to broaden that for you through our brands?

Using your brand platforms to promote certain things like the restaurant Cleo’s, they hand over their Instagram stories to different activists and give them a voice. Something as small as that even if it’s once a month, every first of the month. We let someone do a takeover of our Instagram stories and post some short 1 to 2-minute thing. It can be something as simple as that.

Last question. For those who are interested in learning more about you and the movie and all your projects, how best for people to learn more about Jasmine, The Invisible Vegan, and etc.?

I’m on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My handle is The Invisible Vegan. I have a personal Jasmine C. Leyva. You can find me on there as well.

Thanks so much for joining. This was great. I knew it was going to be and it was everything I hoped it would be I appreciate it. I admire what you’re doing. Anyone who is reading, do yourself a favor, watch the movie with some friends or family, and use it as a conversation starter because it does a good job of offering that opportunity to have a productive conversation. Thanks to everyone for joining and look forward to our next episode. Jasmine, thank you and we’ll talk soon. Take care.

Important Links

• Jasmine Leyva

• Invisible Man

• Seeding Change

• Patagonia

• Angela Roi

• Read The Ingredients

• How Not to Die

• YouTube – The Invisible Vegan

• Facebook – The Invisible Vegan

• Instagram – The Invisible Vegan

• TikTok – The Invisible Vegan

• The Invisible Vegan – Twitter

• Jasmine C. Leyva – Instagram

About Jasmine Leyva

Just “Jas” to her friends — she is unapologetically an artist.  With a Bachelor of Arts in TV, Film and Media and a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting, she worked as an associate producer on a NAACP winning docuseries entitled Unsung, and shortly after, was given the opportunity to write and produce on Being, a docuseries highlighting dynamic entertainers in film and music. She’s done court shows, casted for Food Network productions and made strides in front of the camera.

She went on to star in commercials and print ads for major brands like Nissan, Sony, Apple, Uber, American Express, Diesel, BlackPeopleMeet, Credit Sesame, Michelle Watches, Elle magazine and more.  She also starred in the Lifetime show, My Crazy Ex, along with other TV projects.

Happy to be doing what she loved, but simultaneously unhappy about not telling her own stories, she decided to let go of her nine-to-five and focus on her own goals.  Just Jasmine.  No limits and no boss except for her own creativity.

Jasmine and Kenny Leyva produced their own feature length documentary, The Invisible Vegan, a film that chronicles Jasmine’s personal experience with plant-based eating.  The film also explains how plant-based eating is directly linked to African roots and how African-American eating habits have been debased by a chain of oppression stemming from slavery, economics and modern agribusiness. They are currently in pre-production for a few projects.

Not to sound pedestrian, but the sky is the limit and her evolution will be televised!

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