Moby

Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965), known by his stage name Moby, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, DJ and photographer. He is well known for his electronic music, vegan lifestyle, and support of animal rights. Moby has sold over 20 million albums worldwide. All music considers him "one of the most important dance music figures of the early '90s, helping bring the music to a mainstream audience both in the UK and in America".

Moby lives a vegan lifestyle and supports animal rights, says the plant-based diet has kept him healthy and fit since his early twenties, when he first converted to veganism.

“I’ve been a vegan for 24 years, with two lapses,” Moby, 47, told the NY Times. “I had yogurt in 1992, and I have to say, it was really good. And then I was at a friend’s restaurant in Portland, Oregon, a few years ago, and they made me some vegan sushi, but they accidentally brought me crab sushi."

While Moby's veganism is rooted in his love for animals (he's a vocal animal-rights activist), he says a vegan diet is phenomenal for its healthful, age-defying qualities. The trim 5-foot-7 Moby doesn't count himself as an example of a particularly youthful-looking vegan, but says all his vegan friends look at least a decade younger than they are.

“I was out to dinner last night at a Japanese vegan restaurant downtown, and most of my friends were in their 30s and 40s, and I was looking around and to some extent I felt they had all discovered this fountain of youth,” says Moby,

“I’m not even going to include myself in this, because I think I look kind of old and homeless. But the people I was eating with, they all looked at least 10 years younger than they actually were. And all of them had been vegetarian or vegan for at least 20 years.”

Moby concedes that the strict diet, which excludes meat, eggs and dairy, can be off-putting to some and is well aware of the militant image that some vegans have, but says this has changed a lot.

“If we go back 25 years, there was a lot more intolerance in the vegan world,” he says. “There was a lot more militant us-and-them approach. And that, to a large extent, seems to have fallen by the wayside, both from a vegan perspective and from the non-vegan perspective.

"Vegans are perfectly happy now, for the most part, to hang out with people who don’t agree with them 100%. And maybe one or two nights a week, carnivores seem pretty happy to go to a vegetarian restaurant."

Moby says the attitudinal shift is also be due to maturity. "When you’re 18, that means throwing fake blood on people wearing fur," he says. "And when you’re 40, it means opening a really nice vegan restaurant with great food, and being tolerant and welcoming, and not judging people even if they disagree with you.”

Moby (vegan Grammy nominee) interviewed by HappyCow's Ken Spector at the THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES 2013 GENESIS AWARDS BENEFIT GALA - INSPIRING CHANGE FOR ANIMALS