Thanks for watching the Healthy Traveler. Today we’re in San Diego, California. Great beaches, theme parks, and just a stone’s throw away from Mexico, this seaside city is home to a variety of delicious spots.

Please meet Carolyn Scott-Hamilton. She is the vegan founder of the Healthy Voyager, an umbrella network that is dedicated to helping health-conscious travelers find scrumptious food abroad or even at home. Whether you’re a vegan, vegetarian, or simply have dietary restrictions, Carolyn scopes out the hot spots and casual corners that will make life more enjoyable and delicious.

Supreme Master Television met Carolyn for lunch and a chat at Herbivore vegan restaurant in San Francisco, USA. Today on Vegetarian Elite, we will learn more about the Healthy Voyager, her journeys, visions, and plans.

So Carolyn, I’ve seen some of the episodes of “Healthy Voyager”— it looks really, really fun. How did you begin this and what spurred it on? I’m curious.

Well, basically, I’ve been vegan for over 10 years, and I realized it was incredibly difficult to travel and be vegan at the same time. It’s got a little better over the last 10 years but in the beginning it was really tough. So I started to document all my travels and everywhere I ate, and in 2005 I came up with the show and I pitched it to a few networks and everyone loved it. But they were like, “Oh, we don’t do healthy.” So I said, “All right, I’ll do it myself.”

Ready with courage and a heart that wanted to make a difference by providing a valuable yet entertaining resource, Carolyn launched the Healthy Voyager the same year.

So I started with the blog and we did the pilot episode. And since 2005, I’ve just been travelling the world and documenting it for the show and doing it myself, and the brand has grown a lot since then.

Basically, I knew that if I built the brand on my own and proved that there was a market for it, that they would come to me, and that’s kind of what’s been starting to happen. My fiancé and I have all our camera equipment; we were filmmakers for many years and we thought, “We travel anyway, we can just film while we’re on the road.” And yes, we did it all ourselves. He’s an artist so he created my logo, my design, and I did all the contents – so producing the shows, writing them, helping edit, get everything together.

And I studied holistic nutrition and culinary arts, so I do have a background in it. So, I thought that I could meld all of that together to make a good, resourceful, entertaining product. So, yes, it’s just a two team thing, but we’re doing really well and the brand is expanded. We’ve got a cooking show now and a celebrity interview show; we have a green show, some green tips; I do a lot of event coverage; I have a radio show; I’m writing a few cookbooks, I’m starting my own line of food. So, it grows because I really just love advocating healthy lifestyle.

That’s tomato with sesame salsa…

That looks awesome. Wow, look at that!

We’re going to mix and match. It looks so good!

Welcome to Savannah, a beautiful little city in the deep south, filled with rich history and good ol’ southern charm. Founded in 1733, the city’s peppered with parks, monuments, and squares that paint the picture of this once colonial capital.

With her traveling adventures taking her to places like Savannah, Georgia and Africa’s bushland, Carolyn shares with us her favorite destination thus far, and how easy it was to find vegan options.

Kenya was probably my favorite episode, because I went there with a lot of reservation, thinking, “What am I going to eat there?” So I thought, “All right, I’m going to pack my bags chockfull of my own stuff.” I brought VEGA powders and I brought Luna bars and all kinds of stuff like that just in case I was just eating bread all day. And I was so surprised! All of that came back on the plane with me because I ate like a little piglet.

We were so well taken care of because, really, a lot of Europeans and Indians go visit Kenya in southern Africa and they’re really, really helpful and accommodating to special vegetarian diets. And every morning and every afternoon and every evening in the commons area, or the main dining area, they would label everything that was on the table – “this is vegetarian,” “this is without” – and they don’t use a lot of dairy anyway. So, it was really very simple and it was phenomenal, lots of vegetables and…

And they didn’t do that just for you? They normally do this?

They normally do that. And we were in the African bush in the Masai Mara and it was great. And we went to Nairobi and I ate fine there as well, so I was really surprised. So, not only was it surprising food-wise, it was just such a beautiful country to visit and the people were phenomenal. So that’s my favorite, I have to say.

When we return after this brief message, we will learn more about Carolyn Scott-Hamilton’s other creative ideas for the Healthy Voyager. You are watching Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television and our interview with Carolyn Scott-Hamilton, founder of the Healthy Voyager. Since its inception in 2005, Carolyn has expanded the Healthy Voyager to include many other aspects of the vegan lifestyle, one of which involves celebrities.

And as far as celebrities, we’re launching an episode of, well, a new series under the Healthy Voyager umbrella called “The Healthy Voyager Tour Bus.” And I came up with that because I love music and I love comedians, and kind of under the umbrella of traveling. So many musicians and comedians travel, so they’re on tour so it’s tough for them to remain healthy. And now there are so many vegan, vegetarian, eco-friendly, gluten-free artists. So I thought, “Why not interview them on their tour bus and do some cooking segments and kind of see what their favorite meal is and how they’re able to survive on tour?”

So that’s been something that’s been in the works. And I have people like Ricky Rocket, he’s the drummer of Poison, and Erykah Badu is interested, and looking to get Jason Schwartzman. So there a lot of people on the horizon that are going to pop on the show – either to cook with them or go dine with them and talk about how they survive healthily on tour.

Under her stewardship, the Healthy Voyager has gone international. It’s also leaving a healthy impression on the air waves.

My show is available online on YouTube, on Facebook – kind of everywhere. And I’m syndicated on a bunch of websites. In fact, in the UK, there’s a website called “Veggie Vision” and I’m kind of their American counterpart so they showcase my videos. As well, in Australia, there’s another website called “Lola Berry’s,” so she and I are working together – so kind of internationalizing the show, the “web empire.”

But I do have a radio show that I launched in July, and it can be heard as a podcast on my website on iTunes, as well as Facebook and my blog. But it is heard live in Los Angeles on an AM radio station, AM 1680, but it live streams on the web, on a journal and radio.com, and then you can hear it as podcast on iTunes and my website.

And do you receive any comments via email for example? What’s the public response like?

I have quite a few listeners nationwide, in fact, worldwide now. I know that a lot of people in the UK listen to my radio show because of the Veggie Vision. So, yeah, I get a lot of comments because every show is a different theme and is under the guise of Healthy Voyager, so it’s not just food and dining and cooking – it’s healthy career, healthy finances, healthy relationships, women’s health.

So I run the gamut of health and I’m getting a lot of listeners that normally wouldn’t listen to a vegan show, hearing about overall health and lifestyle; so I throw “green” in there, I do throw doctors in there. I just had…her name is Lissa Rankin – she is a holistic ob-gyn actually, in Marine County – and we talked about women’s health and breast cancer month. So every week is a different show, so I really love covering all kinds of health.

I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth so I’m heading over to Stephanie’s bakery. Every time I’m in San Diego, I pop into Stephanie’s for some take home treats. Stephanie’s in Ocean Beach specializes in organic vegan desserts. The bake their own cupcakes, cakes, pies, cookies, and their house specialty – pizza and cheesecake. Their products can be found in the café, as well as local Whole Foods markets and specialty restaurants around town. They use mostly organic ingredients, as well as no refined sugars, eggs, or dairy. Don’t forget your Midnight Chocolate Cheesecake, Carolyn. Enjoy.

You won’t miss any of those ingredients when you take a bite out of this. I’m heading to dinner downtown so I better get moving.

It’s made me excited for Thanksgiving.

Flavors are great. (Yes.) And the portabella mushroom adds such a nice flavor to the pasta.

Real great, creamy marinara. Which you definitely don’t get to try elsewhere.

No, we don’t. And you can definitely eat vegan and have all kinds of…the colors, the quantity, the flavor…

Texture…everything.

Great food.

Viewers and listeners can expect more countries to be added to the Healthy Voyager show lineup. Carolyn has also created a new feature that will help travelers choose the best products and services wherever their journeys may take them.

We’re going to do UK, France, Spain, and we may be able to do Costa Rica next year, so there’s a lot of travel coming up for the show. And in addition to that, we’re doing more of the cooking shows, holiday baking segments, that sort of thing, so that’s pretty exciting.

And I’m adding… we added earlier this year, it’s called the “Healthy Voyager Food Directory,” which is kind of like my own Good Housekeeping Seal, mixed with a tour guide. So I cover products, hotel services, and restaurants, and I list them according to the categories and special diets that they accommodate. The directory often it’ll say: X product, this is the website where you find it, it’s good for vegans, vegetarians, kosher, gluten-free, whatever, and then my favorite product from that line or the restaurant. And it’s going to be an iPhone app as well as a print guide, like a tour guide so that you can have it with you for travel.

Her heart in the right place, Carolyn always strives to improve and enhance the services of the Healthy Voyager to benefit travelers around the world.

I love what I do. I love to eat, I love to travel, and I do love helping folks that wouldn’t normally venture out and do things because of their dietary restraints. So, like we were saying a little earlier, that it’s tough when you’re in an airport or tough when you’re in a theme park, so I’ve even covered that – I’ve done a theme park article, and I’ve covered all of the national theme parks, and going to an airport, figuring out what you’re going to get at each terminal. And I’ve done, kind of an exposé, which places accommodate the best…

I’m hoping to continue to grow the brand and get bigger and be able to touch more people, whether they’re vegan or not, and show them that it’s delicious, or just healthy in general, like a new type of eating, or help those people who can’t normally go out to eat.

I was floored with what was called the Paris of the Plains. Kansas City, the City of Fountains has a unique collection of over 200 working fountains, second only to Rome. And every place I stopped had healthy choices, and they were more than happy to accommodate me and my crazy ways of ordering. The city is growing, and it’s not your sleepy little town. It has lots to see and do, and so if you’re planning a trip – bring your appetite!

Thank you, Carolyn, for establishing such an invaluable service that truly makes life so much easier and fun for vegans and non-vegans alike. We wish you the best of luck in all your future green and vegan endeavors.

Thank you, open-minded viewers, for your gracious company on this week’s episode of Vegetarian Elite. Stay with us on Supreme Master Television for Between Master and Disciples, coming up next. We wish you a joyous and creative weekend.

Say “Hi” to Carolyn Scott-Hamilton and learn more about the Healthy Voyager at HealthyVoyager.com
For more details, please visit www.SupremeMasterTV.com/VE