If you envision a vegan as pale and malnourished and wearing flood pants, think again. From B.C., we have Bif Naked, Pamela Anderson and hunky triathlete champion Brendan Brazier — poster people for sexy and robust.

Further afield, there’s businesswoman Belinda Stronach, Avril Lavigne and k.d. Lang. And consider the ultimate poster boy — Brad Pitt. (Partner Angelina Jolie is a lapsed vegan.)

Although the vegan population is small (surveys suggest under two per cent), it’s a fast-growing segment. In New Westminster, Karmavore, a totally vegan grocery and lifestyle store as well as deli, café and bakery, signifies fast-changing times in the vegan world.

Owner Salim Jamal stopped eating meat and fish when he was 12 years old. “In Grade 7, I did a debate on vivisection and had to watch a lot of video. It opened my eyes to animal exploitation,” he says. “I didn’t want to contribute to that any more.” Ten years later, he took the next step, becoming a vegan, and has been animal-product free for 14 years.

Jamal, an IT security consultant for his “bread and butter,” opened Karmavore three years ago (two years at its current 610 Columbia St. location). He wanted to simplify life for vegans and provide them with some of the culinary pleasures of their pre-vegan days. He discovered so many vegan foods on his travels to Europe and the U.S., he started an online store as a side business.

“My goal was never to make a profit but to put a lot of product into the (regional) market. I’ve been a vegan for a long time and I know how challenging it is to find comforting food people might have eaten before becoming a vegan,” he explains. And yes, products he began importing are now are being distributed to other stores.

Alongside meat and cheese alternatives (wild mushroom loaves, hazelnut herb en croute, smoked tomato deli slices, raw food options such as pizza, kale chips and lasagna), there are also “treats.” And they look every bit as appetizing as ones made with eggs, butter, shipped cream, cream cheese and all those taste-enhancing ingredients that start with animal life. Cakes, pies, cupcakes, croissants, chocolates, soft ice cream cones, sundaes, “double chocolate ‘smacaroons’ ” — Karmavore has ’em.

People love the convenience of the shop, or as someone described it in an email, the “mini-vegan mall.”

“Customers don’t have to read labels,” he says. Many processed foods on grocery store shelves have animal ingredients. “Even sugar can be filtered through animal bone char,” he says. “Vitamin D 3 is sometimes made from sheep’s wool.” Gelatin, lactose, lipase, rennet, stearic acid, tallow are animal-derived. Even vitamins and condoms can be made with animal ingredients.

Veganism, Jamal says, is based on the ethics of not exploiting animals but many have switched for health reasons. “A huge proportion of the population is lactose intolerant. Personally, I know three people whose cholesterol levels were normalized within a few weeks of becoming a vegan.

“Because of things like factory farming and personal health, people are following plant-based diets but not entirely vegan lifestyles.”