this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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Frankly, I think your comment exemplifies how correct this article is.
"Cooking vegan is hard" - no, it isn't. 90% of non-vegan recipes can be made vegan by leaving out or substituting non-vegan ingredients. You don't need any different cooking methods to make pasta sauce without meat or fried rice without eggs. Dairy is slightly more complicated because milk does very particular things to the texture and chemistry of food but you can find guides to non-dairy replacements in literally 30 seconds on Google.
"I will be a social pariah/I can never eat out again" - that's catastrophizing. If you personally live in a food desert where no vegan food exists, or you personally have relatives who will emotionally abuse you for eating vegan food - I'm not saying this doesn't happen, in the age of Trump there are some conservatives who think eating tons of red meat (and smoking cigars and rolling coal) virtual signals their loyalty to conservatism, and I hope they enjoy the heart disease they're giving themselves - then eat non-vegan food in public. That's okay. Veganism is about avoiding animal products as far as is reasonable and practical.
But what I see a lot is people saying "I can't be vegan because there are no vegan restaurants in Kansas" when they live in California. I see people saying "I can't be vegan because people at church give vegans the stink eye" when they don't attend church. I see people saying "veganism is wrong because there's tons of land useless for agriculture that can only be used for grazing" when the meat they eat comes from soy fattened factory farm feed lots. I see people saying "veganism is wrong because hunting is a traditional lifeway of Native American people" when they are not Native American.
How does a lack of vegan restaurants keep you from cooking vegan at home? It doesn't.
Will you actually get criticized at family reunions if you bring a potluck dish without meat in it? As if there are food inspectors going through all the side dishes to make sure the required quantity of animal product is in it? Even for conservatives, that's ridiculous.
What I see over and over again is people bringing up reasons why other people can't go vegan in order to explain why they don't go vegan, even though the reasons that apply to those other people don't apply to them at all. And that is deflecting. And that's exactly what the article calls out.
I'm going to pick this sentence specifically to respond to, because. With all due respect.
If you said "I torture animals for pleasure and I'm not going to stop" we would consider you a sociopath.
But you're saying "I pay other people to torture animals for my pleasure and I'm not going to stop", and we're supposed to, what, smile and nod and agree how hard it is to not torture animals for pleasure?
Look. Torturing animals is wrong. You know it's wrong. You are admitting it's wrong. It hurts your feelings to be reminded that you are doing wrong.
That's a fair and understandable feeling and I don't care. Because you are torturing animals, and if you feel bad when someone reminds you, it's because you should.
There is value in gentle persuasion. And there's also value in ranting about the sheer fucking hypocrisy of carnists. This article is the latter.
You said that I said:
False. I said BEING vegan is hard. It is morally correct, but it can be difficult. Later you compare eating cheese to being a sociopath. I'm pretty sure that even sociopaths can feign compassion in public when someone explains how they are having trouble achieving their goals.
You said:
This is where I know you are not serious. 90%? Please. My mom visited from out of state a few weeks back. At restaurants and her friend's house where she stayed (she won't stay with us), she ate: eggs, bacon, buttered toast, coffee, lox and cream cheese on bagels with red onions and capers, oysters, lobster, calamari, moussaka, hummus, baklava, general tso's chicken, sushi, sashimi, gyoza, chicken tandoori, saag paneer, vegetable pakora, roast beef in aus jus, brussle sprouts with bacon, pepperoni pizza, deviled eggs, macaroni salad, a black and bleu burger with onion rings, and so on. I don't know how to make eggs and bacon without eggs and bacon. I don't know how to make lox without fish. I CAN make moussaka with veggie crumbles instead of meat, but I don't know how to get that eggy quality without the eggs in there. I do make vegan hummus. Baklava without honey? How? Sashimi? How? Gyoza? How? Saag is vegan. Paneer is not. I've never been able to make Indian food properly despite repeated tries, so while in theory I could make a Saag without paneer, the reality is it would be awful regardless of the animal content. I have to stick with whatever the restaurant has.
Yes to both counts. I am saying, "I pay people to torture animals for me and despite my regrets about that, I am not going to stop until there is another way to get a similar joy-of-food experience." AND I am saying that YOU should say, "I know it is hard for you to stop paying people to torture animals for you."
Do you also yell at depressed people for bringing everyone down? Do you think people are unaware of their failings? What sort of juvenile ego tripper gets off on yelling at people during their confessions?
I deleted most of this comment because it wasn't as civil and understanding as I wanted it to be and it's probably better off lost to history 😆
But let me summarize my thoughts: your mother, and presumably you, eat a lot more meat than the average person. The 10% of human foods that aren't plant-based and can't easily be made plant-based are overrepresented in your meat heavy diet.
And meat heavy diets are bad for your personal health and for the health of the planet, for reasons we both know very well.
Which is to say: you are universalizing your personal experiences. It's not difficult to go vegan. It's difficult for you to go vegan, because your diet and lifestyle are so heavily focused on animal products. That's not an indictment of veganism; it's an indictment of the Western diet, and big agriculture, and capitalist food science that studied what flavors and textures trigger dopamine release so they could pack food with them and sell more product, and the whole vicious capitalist PR mechanism that convinced Westerners to eat a meat heavy, highly processed, unhealthy diet and convinced Western governments to subsidize it. And, to a much lesser extent, it is an indictment of your personal choices.
It's difficult for you to go vegan. But that's not on veganism. That's on you.
And we're back to my complaint about the article. For some people, veganism is hard. Obviously it isn't hard for everyone, and I never said everyone, but for some people it is.
Articles like the one posted created a divide and encourage the belittlement of people trying to do better rather than suggesting anyone try to help people get closer to veganism.
Thank you, this is the kind of measured response I wish I could give every single time people reach for the fly swatter of petty objections (the "what about these dozen hypotheticals that don't even apply to me") when really the answer is, if you agree veganism is a good way to behave, then try. Just do your best.
Also I brought veggie dogs to a conservative family cookout on a dairy farm and survived, AMA lol.
EDIT whoops replied to the wrong person oh well close enough