The vegan

> Davina Goh hopes to fill the void in awareness for plant-based lifestyles

I N2013, Davina Goh dropped her professional life at an event management firm and travelled to the Jiangsu Province of China. “I was in the same event management company for nine years. My boss’ kids were calling me auntie, and I’m like ‘I don’t know if I want this’. I was getting very comfortable with my work,” Goh explains.

“I had hit a wall and began to feel under-stimulated. I needed to shake things up and scare myself somehow. I was getting older and I realised that I had to get out and do something new.”

For the next eight months, Goh spent her days in a remote area of Jiangsu, training in Shaolin kung fu with monks of the Maling Shaolin Kung Fu Academy.

She reveals this came about due to her fascination with martial arts as a teenager and the exposure to martial arts films and Bruce Lee documentaries she had watched with her father – a martial artist himself and a Bruce Lee fan.

Claiming that the entire experience in Jiangsu taught her much about how people take life for granted, she says, “Our whole life is a blessing here. Over there, you’re stripped down to like ... nothing”.

“You’re wearing the same clothes and eating the same food, week in and week out. You’re punching, kicking and jumping every day. Being in those moments of pure pain taught me more about myself than any moment of bliss has ever taught me.”

The anecdote exemplifies the strength behind Goh, a highachiever with a stacked resume stretching from being a radio presenter all the way into the spotlight of English theatre.

Now an advocate for plant-based lifestyle and veganism, Goh uses her selfdubbed “Davina Da Vegan” brand to promote veganism in Malaysia not only as a healthy alternative, but an affordable and fun take to eating.

Carried out through a myriad of social media and web platforms, Goh provides advice, F&B recommendations, support and even recipes for those interested in literally living greener.

“My recipes are about either veganised plantbased versions of Malaysian dishes, or dishes from global cuisines using local ingredients. These recipes don’t need to be expensive or use ingredients with weird names that are imported from far places that require releasing carbon emission to get there,” she says. Speaking of her own journey towards becoming a full-fledged vegan and the surprising difficulties she faced initially, Goh explains that it all started in 2000. “As a college student, I wanted to explore what it was like to be a vegetarian. My parents at the time didn’t approve, because to them, a perfect balanced diet had to include meat. It was a very difficult compromise I had to make,” she recalls. “As an obedient daughter, I obliged, but I’m thankful that it happened. It led to 12 years of research – reading up on the lifestyle, articles, books, watching documentaries and interviews with plantbased experts.” Through her selfeducation, she elaborated her ins and outs learning about the health and environmental aspects, how she absorbed knowledge and practised taking control in nourishing herself, along with her foray into human rights issues in slaughterhouses. “By the time I made the full transition in 2012, from dropping my meats to becoming vegetarian, I felt a huge burst of health, which I did not expect. Everyone around me was saying that it was not good for me, that being vegetarian was unhealthy,” she explains.

In fact, Goh experienced the complete opposite. “I had so much energy, and I stopped falling ill even.”

Goh became a full vegan in early 2016, something which was very natural to her. “I felt it was the next step and my energy levels just kept going up which inspired me to indulge in more fitness activities. I felt energised and focused and was able to push myself to do really crazy physical things”.

As they say, the proof is in the glutenfree pudding. And brimming with youthful vigour, the utterly expressive Goh reveals that she swam and kayaked a total of 18km around Perhentian Island in the name of marine conservation and on a meatless diet.

“I’m driven by my principles and values, by what is right and what is wrong, what is fair, what feels good to me, what feels just. Being a vegetarian at the time was something I had always strived to become. I just had to have confidence in my decision.”