red_flanders said:
So to Boonen's question above, I'm wondering what your reasons or goals are around changing your diet. For me, "Vegan" is kind of a hot-button word, when you say you're a vegan people make all kinds of assumptions about your motivations, ethics, and start grilling you about it. Basically a mild form of interrogation meant at exposing some flaw in your philosophy. Apparently people find it threatening as you discuss, for one to reject the societal norm of eating meat. Now "plant-based diet" is a bit of a mouthful, but it doesn't have the same baggage socially. Don't get me wrong, when people figure out you don't eat meat they still have questions and still feel threatened, but the reaction is milder.
Personally my goal when switching was health. From everything I can glean from the science, there really is no healthier way to eat. Given that, I don't really worry about the little details you mention above, like chocolate, or the ingredients of every food. What I do is eat whole plant foods 95% of the time 'and not worry about the rest. Now that won't work for an ethical vegan, but it's not clear to me that's your reason for choosing this path. But for me it works fine. I get a huge health benefit and massively reduce my carbon footprint. I don't try and eat foods that mimic animal products, they never satisfy. I just eat plants.
Try reading "Eat to Live" by Joel Fuhrnan. Fantastic stuff.
Great post.
I particularly like where you talk about doing it for your own health. And to focus more specifically on the “I” factor here. Because the vast majority of people who go vegan do so because it is more convenient/beneficial, or at least potentially so, for them to do so. They are not doing it “for the animals”, which is a claim that one will often see made from Vegans, and which – as I will attempt to explain – is mostly false.
People go vegan for human reasons, mostly. It might be for social/human relations reasons, for personal health reasons, and it may also be for better non-selfish reasons such as environmental (vegans still kill animals via agricultural means, however, since the livestock that we eat has to consume far more plants than a human on a plant based diet, then a meat eater is still killing more plants – making the “plants have feelings” argument rather void – and more animals that die during harvesting), or for the better treatment of females (once one becomes aware of what a cow really has to go through to give us our dairy). These less selfish reasons don’t mean that we’ve gone vegan in a not for ourselves way though. That all comes back to when you stopped eating meat. You can’t be a meat eater in your mid-twenties and claim to be unaware that what you are eating was not once a living being who feels, both pleasure and pain. If you really, genuinely cared about cows, pigs and chickens, then you wouldn’t have still been consuming them well into adulthood. Therefore, the reason for stopping – or at least reducing – this consumption must have been for selfish reasons.
Much discussion is often unsaid on public forums – and probably largely because people don’t have time to read long posts and explanations – and we end up with just us against them rants, with still many good points being made, but ignoring a lot of what is underlying. It becomes an “I am a vegan” and an “I am a meat eater”, as if these two humans are vastly different creatures, when in fact in many cases it is simply a matter of convenience. It was a little less inconvenient for one to go vegan than the other. But the other might get there one day.
This is why many meat eaters are put off by some holier than thou type of attitudes that some – certainly not all – vegans can put on display, and they are probably not even aware that some of the reasons for being put off are actually justifiable. I don’t watch vegan videos all the time, but have watched them occasionally. One of the more prominent vegans is “Earthling Ed”. Now this guy certainly knows his stuff. And he’ll do on the street discussions with random humans, raising awareness. It’s not only to raise awareness though, but to raise his own ego. I don’t know too much about his personal history, but on this very pro vegan video and comments discussion, one vegan questioned the way that he was talking down to some people, and whether he had the right, or whether it was right, to present the topics and his opinions in this way. He pointed out that Earthling Ed had only been vegan for a few years, so that not too long ago, he was just like them. I think he jumped straight from meat eating to Veganism also, at the age of twenty-one. So again the question of when do we properly develop our moral compass comes into question. Surely he knew that when he was sixteen, that eating animals was wrong?
What Earthling Ed has done, and is doing, is great. I am just questioning the motives behind it. It is rarely just because you are an animal lover.
How much ego, how much “I” is there in this bio”?
https://www.earthlinged.com/
Well, it already begins with, What I Do.
Once people allow themselves to look into Veganism, then most will go Vegan, or at least greatly reduce their consumption of animals/animal products. It is a win/win in so many ways (which is also why vegans can become frustrated about meat eaters not even considering it). Let’s look at why people don’t go vegan.
Fear. For their own fear, mostly. A husband or a wife hears or reads an argument from a vegan, and deep down, very deep down, it makes some sense, but they aren’t even aware of this awareness. Because the possibility of listening to that has been easily overwhelmed by the potential personal problems that looking into such an issue could create. Because for many people, changing their own diet won’t just affect them. It will affect those around them. And this is the case more so for people who are in relationships, who have kids. It is easier for me to stare down this path in the first place, for I am single.
So, to the million-dollar question, what are the reasons or goals for changing my diet?
First point, and probably the most important point. My ex-girlfriend is Vegan. And this isn’t an ex that I despise. No, I still love her. And not in a, “Oh, I cannot go on without you, this is killing me” way, but I love her. I love her heaps. And when you love someone you also admire them. So you will question why they are the way they are. You will question why they have taken on a particular lifestyle.
Particularly when it was for moral reasons.
She wasn’t a ‘stereotypical’ vegan either. She mentioned her lifestyle to me once, and her reason, and that was it. She never mentioned it to me again. She knew that I was a meat eater, and maybe she cared about that, but she didn’t let on that she did. She certainly never made me feel guilty.
Anyway, it was not until about three years after we broke up (most definitely her decision) that I decided to look more into this subject, and I started to cut back on meat. This mostly started with eating more vegetarian meals when I ate out, and pretty soon I wasn’t buying ‘normal’ sausage rolls as often at the supermarket. It was a rather gradual change, which actually makes it definitely less morally based (though perhaps less based on ego….though I am recognising that, so still feeding it….can’t win lol) then saying, “I am disgusted by this!”, and changing your diet immediately. This happened more with a friend of mine on social media, who I could claim as my only vegan friend, who went from extensive meat eater one day, to a vegan the next (about two to three years ago). This to me had a lot more to do with ego, and with social circles, but still, what he was doing was undeniably good. And well, I thought about denying it. Because he kept posting, kept sharing incessantly, pro vegan things, very confronting things. I considered “unfollowing” him often, but I never quite did that, and so his posts would fill up twenty percent of my newsfeed. Going vegan quickly became more and more obvious. Until it was impossible to deny.
But I would never have let myself see all of that if it was going to be too inconvenient for me.
Even when I ate meat, when I on an almost daily basis ate meat; I wouldn’t look forward all day to dinner, with the ironic, “I would die for that!” view and passion. A meal has never been my passion. It has been something that more or less just happens, that has to happen, and so that I can continue to get by, to get on with my life. It has never really been an event, like it is for many.
I can’t say that I have ever cared too much about my own health, and as I have mentioned, I am very thin anyway; I don’t want to lose weight. But eating less animals/animal products is undeniably healthier than a largely meat based diet. And as frugivores we should be, at most, consuming only about 2% of meat in our diet.
Meat consumption actually makes more sense than dairy consumption, which is completely nonsensical. It’s completely crazy, once you see.
Socially I don’t really have any motivations for going vegan, apart from the acknowledging approval of my ex (and she could read this post, but she never really liked cycling; in fact before knowing me she had not even heard of the Giro….I know, that should be grounds for immediate relationship termination

). My parents and brother are meat eaters, as is my housemate, who I have felt an uneasy fork between us with this whole vegan thing, and I think it is all from his side, but then again, that’s what I would think. Anyway, if I am disliked, then I would prefer that it would be for more justifiable reasons.
All of my long-term friends eat meat, as did my recent work colleagues. I haven’t made any new vegan friends. So if I have done this for social reasons then quite simply, this is an epic fail.
“Basically a mild form of interrogation meant at exposing some flaw in your philosophy.”
Very true, but this is very hard to do, in fact probably impossible, against anyone who knows the facts and who knows how to argue properly. Which I don’t really. So I just stay silent mostly.
Here is a video from Earthling Ed. I have watched the first eleven minutes, which seems to cover most of it, and covers it very well. There is no argument against it. And it appears that he didn’t go vegan for some girl
https://www.kinderworld.org/videos/talks/earthling-ed-speech/
Your point about not caring about chocolate is what many vegans would have a problem with, due to it being all about avoiding what is unnecessary. So if you don’t have to do harm to a cow, why do it? For me, I am starting to find more and more chocolate around that is dairy free (though it still is not common). What has surprised me most is ice-cream. I have found some that isn’t just dairy free, but is delicious! As good as ‘normal’ ice-cream. And there are vegan magnum ice-creams being made now to. Looking forward to nomming on one of those!
I like what you guys are saying, with the don’t think about vegan as a title too much. And I am not sure if I could hang out in vegan groups. Maybe I am not an animal lover, but I prefer them to humans
