Not many people know this, but my sister recently became a vegan after having a lifelong love for animals. In the fourth grade, she decided she would become a vegetarian, but gave up within one day because my mother had made chicken that night.

So when she told me that she decided to become a vegan at the age of 17, I was shocked.

To me, it seemed clear. She wouldn't be able to do this. She couldn't even be a vegetarian, how could she all of a sudden become a vegan?

But I wasn't being fair to her. I should have given her the benefit of the doubt. For one, she tried to become a vegetarian as a young girl with unsupportive parents. She didn't have a job and couldn't make her own food quite yet, so she didn't have too much of a choice. But it has now been a month, and she has not once fallen off the wagon. Or even thought about it, for that matter. She plans every meal down to a T, checks all the ingredients in everything she eats, and always looks at the menus of restaurants beforehand (and she never goes to McDonald's anymore because [fun fact!] McDonald's serves zero things that vegans can actually eat).

Not only has she given up meat, eggs, butter, milk, etc., my sister has also begun to switch her everyday products with things that are not tested on animals and are animal product-free. She does extensive research and especially orders things online because she can't find them in stores. While it is more expensive to do these things, animals and health are very important to her.

The thing that I found most shocking, however, was that managing and tracking the food wasn't the most difficult part of being a vegan. I found that many people look down on vegans and can't understand why people would give up so many things. I was definitely one of those people, but seeing how passionate my sister has become has shown me that she was ready to make such a big lifestyle change.

However, not everyone has felt that way.

A family member (who will not be named) recently found out that my sister was vegan, and very bluntly called her lifestyle choice "retarded." Not only am I extremely opposed to the use of that word as an adjective to describe negative things, but by using that word, he implied that she was mentally unstable for making such a decision. In reality, her lifespan is sure to be much longer and healthier than his, because his eating habits are the epitome of poor (not to say mine aren't).

While I know that I will never become a vegan, I respect vegans so much more now. Before I didn't give them a second thought, they were simply people who didn't eat any animal products. Now I realize how much thought, effort, and time go into being a vegan.

You don't have to make a complete 180 and give up meat and dairy, but it isn't difficult to do little things in your life to support animal life, like switching to animal-free products. Companies like e.l.f. Cosmetics, Hard Candy, Sonia Kashuk, Too Faced, Wet n Wild, and Zoya are all cruelty-free and vary from drugstore to high-end products.