Girl Dedicates Instagram Account To Posting Pics Of Ugly Vegan Food (62 Pics)

Lucie herself has become a vegan for a number of reasons. "Firstly, I was hit by a lightbulb moment where I started caring about what I was putting inside my body," she told Bored Panda. "Pre-veganism, I lived off a diet of bread, pasta, cheese and bacon. I [was feeling awful] all the time and decided I'd start to eat a little more consciously so adopted more vegetables and variety into my diet. At this point, I was kind of blind to the ethical/moral side of veganism but was surprised how quickly I felt better and realized pretty quickly that if I was to be so vain to care about what was going inside my body, I should also be caring about the bodies I was putting into myself."

It was then that she started to become more aware of the environmental issues of veganism and quickly turned her back on the dairy and meat industry. "I was pretty much winging this 'diet' and if I could go back in time and seek more nutritional advice, I totally would've but I learned the ropes eventually," Lucie explained. "Not only did I feel like I was making a more positive impact on myself and the environment, I found joy in cooking plant-based meals and seeking adventures to try new things. It made eating, cooking, and trying new cuisines and products fun and sociable for me, and completely transformed my relationship with food."

The woman created Ugly Vegan about 5 years ago, when veganism still had a "super narrow" depiction in society and on social media. "It painted itself as an exclusive 'diet' for yoga-moms, extreme preachy vegans, and people who had enough money to shop in Whole Foods," Lucie said. "My feed was bombarded with toxic diet imagery and language, and all of the vegan 'food' I was looking at was inaccessible, unaffordable and seemed to neglect my idea of veganism. I was vegan because I [really cared] about the planet I live on, and the living beings inside it; I wasn't here to lose weight or do sun salutations or eat seeds and berries I couldn't afford, I was just eating food that was kind, tasted good, and filled my body."

Needless to say, Lucie found the existing vegan pages a little alienating. Ugly Vegan was supposed to be a way of poking fun at them, "using vulgar captions and ugly photography to juxtapose the 'beauty' in everyone elses' buddha bowls while showing a more realistic side of veganism."

"An amazing network of likeminded vegans was quickly formed, and the ugly vegan community was born. Although junk food veganism is more prevalent now, and veganism has a much wider audience, people still find it comforting to discover that this type of veganism exists. I'm still here to put a middle finger up at toxic diet culture on social media, and I'm still here to show that veganism can be silly and fun," Lucie said.

While working on the project, she has learned that veganism is about kindness. "Vegans have had a bad rep since day dot, and is often the reason that people are scared to take the plunge initially. But honestly, [almost all] of the people I've come into contact with through ugly vegan have been wonderful, kind, compassionate and smart human beings ... Although the vegan world has exploded recently, it's hard to forget that the main reason we're vegan is because we're kind and we care."

According to some studies, as many as 84 percent of people who have adopted vegetarianism or veganism at some point in their lives have gone back to eating meat. Lucie, however, said she'd love to think that this statistic has changed. In her opinion, veganism has become much more accessible in the past couple of years. "It's definitely a daunting thing to 'go without' our creature comforts, and for a long time, there were no replacements for these kinds of things but now I can honestly find a direct -- and most importantly, delicous -- replacement for absolutely anything, and new mind-blowing products are coming out on a daily basis.