Amina Rome is a 20 year old video and recipe creator on YouTube. Her YouTube channel, Mina Rome, has over 247k subscribers. More recently, Mina published an e-book called Why Not Vegan?, which contains 58 easy to follow, unique and tasty vegan recipes. She hopes to inspire more people to change their eating habits and adopt a vegan diet by showing viewers how easy it is to make the switch.

Here is the Shape Your Future Interview with Amina Rome.

As a vegan youtuber with a growing audience, you hold quite an influential role in spreading the word. What would you identify as the main reason you believe in veganism?

Amina Rome: I believe in being kind. To everyone. That includes not just humans but animals as well. Not just cats and dogs but cows, chickens and sheep too. Not distinguishing between pets and farm animals. Being kind is sort of my life’s philosophy and being vegan just goes hand in hand with that.

You’re someone who creates many inspiring, creative and wholesome recipes that are different compared to what the public considers a stereotypical vegan meal. What do you think is the biggest misconception concerning a plant based diet?

A.R. : First of all, thank you! There are so many of those misconceptions. One of the biggest ones is that a vegan lifestyle equals a diet consisting of smoothies and salads only. Veganism really is non restrictive at all when you look into it. New cool plant based products are coming out constantly and the vegan restaurant scene has never looked more exciting. Plus there’s an endless amount of whole foods to cook with. I’ve heard from so many people that once they started to cook vegan a new world opened up for them, grocery – wise. I’d never even heard of tempeh or seitan before I went vegan.

What do you think is the most important reason as to why an individual should consider a plant based diet?

A.R. : Going vegan or simply just choosing to eat more plant based meals is one if the easiest and yet effective ways to help the environment and reduce one’s own carbon footprint by a lot. So if you want to have a positive impact, this can be your first big step.

What inspired you to release your e-book, “Why not Vegan”?

A.R. : I wanted to create something of my own. My YouTube channel obviously holds all my videos (ok not all some of the early ones are deleted thank god) , but in the end they all kind of belong to YouTube or Google I guess.

The book gives viewers the chance to receive extra content next to the videos.

Besides over 50 bonus recipes I talk in detail about why I went vegan and why people choose this lifestyle in the first place.

In relation to our Shape Your Future video series, I would like to ask you one more question, in fact the one to top them all and to guide all of us:

“How do you shape your future?”