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42% vegan

Writing a half-baked post on how I eat helped me clarify my relationship with food. Other than that, I suspect that article is mostly useless to most people.

I hope this write-up will prove more helpful, especially if you like to reflect on the impact of your food-related choices and your actions in general.

Now, before we get started: “vegan” is an overloaded word. I don’t like it much, and I usually avoid it. But here it can be useful, if we agree on its meaning.

Eating vegan vs. being vegan

To me, you can’t really be vegan. That’s just a label referring to food that does not come from animals. It doesn’t define you, me, or anyone as a person.

On the other hand, you can choose to eat vegan. And this can have a massively positive impact on yourself, on others, and on the environment at large.

We are blessed to live in a time of great abundance. We are far from starving, and have the privilege of choosing our own food. We better not squander it.

It’s not all-or-nothing

Many people think “going vegan” is too extreme for them, because they just can’t give up [insert non-vegan food here]. The good news is, you don’t have to.

I, for one, am not a masochist. A plant-based diet makes me happier, but there’s nothing I can’t eat. Nobody is forcing me to live in deprivation and be miserable.

It’s not a sacrifice. It’s a preference. That’s the whole point of this article.

It’s a bit like smoking cigarettes. Everyone knows how it negatively affects:

If you still prefer to smoke, that’s fine by me. I am no social justice warrior, nor fucking thought police. You already know how bad it is for you (and others).

Sure, every action has consequences. There will be collateral damage. But the way I see it: your actions, your choice (and responsibility).

It’s so much better

Contrary to smoking, more often than not vegan food will positively affect:

Just a couple of days ago I came across this carefully crafted “elevator pitch”:

A vegan lifestyle prevents a tremendous amount of animal slaughter and suffering. It offers a potent way to shrink our environmental footprint, especially in regard to climate change. And a well-planned vegan diet can fuel the highest levels of fitness, while reducing our risk of various chronic diseases. Plus, the food is insanely delicious and it becomes more plentiful every year.

I’m not extremely qualified to explain all of these in detail, so I defer to the rest of Erik Marcus’ essay: Why Go Vegan? The Top Reasons Explained.

(Be warned: it’s a long read, and things may spiral out of control. I sure did tumble down the rabbit hole and spent several hours on that website.)

It’s not necessarily better

It just so happens that cheap non-vegan food is usually junk food, while cheap vegan food is usually a potato. Except… junk food can be vegan, too.

Packaged potato chips, anyone?

Food won’t get any healthier or tastier (or less tasty) just because it’s vegan.

Even if you steered clear of junk food altogether, it’s only natural to have preferences. There will always be something you just don’t like, vegan or not.

It doesn’t make sense to lump everything together, you should judge on a case-by-case basis. The simple trick is to try new stuff and decide for yourself.

But here the question gets deeper: what’s behind your food?

For you to have a steak, animals must be killed. For you to have eggs and diary, animals must be exploited (and then killed, too).

Also, these animals are systematically treated worse than objects. Factories have strong economic incentives against doing better than this.

It’s not nice, but these are the facts. The more demand we create, the more this will go on. The less demand we create, the more likely this will be to change.

It’s your choice – choose wisely!

Time for a quick test of character.

If you like having tasty meals but you also don’t particularly enjoy torturing poor and defenseless animals, you are a completely reasonable human being.

On the flip side, if you don’t mind bad food but you like the torturing… you’re a sadistic piece of shit. Get the fuck out of here immediately, you sicko!

Ok, sorry about that. Now that we’re back among us fine people, let’s examine a more interesting scenario.

Imagine you are given a choice between a good pizza and a somewhat decent pizza. Unfortunately, to get the good one you’ll have to personally kill a puppy.

What would you choose?

If you’d rather have the inferior pizza, you’re basically ready to go vegan.

Yes, I know that’s not the same. To most people, killing a dog feels different than killing a chicken. And it’s easier to have others do the killing anyways.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but these are deep philosophical quandaries that I don’t even want to begin to tackle. Also, I don’t need to convince anyone.

But if you do feel that your actions don’t exist in a void, I invite you to take a moment to think about your (food) preferences deeply and more consciously.

Besides, this was just a thought experiment. In the real world, you can have your vegan cake and eat it too. And to be sure, it won’t be inferior in taste.

A practical piece of advice

Let’s say you’re interested in a healthier and, whenever possible, cruelty-free diet for yourself. Or maybe you want to quit smoking.

You can do it cold turkey. But you could also go about it more gradually. No approach is ultimately better than the other, but one is usually harder.

More importantly: one implies either success or failure, while the other allows for flexibility and improvement – even if you don’t eventually reach your goal.

I mean, who could argue that going down to 2 cigarettes a day when you used to smoke 40 is a small feat? You (and your lungs) will definitely be better off.

Incidentally, this is also my take on most ethical matters. It’s so simple.

Granted, stealing 100 apples is worse than stealing 10. But why stealing at all, if we can help it? As it turns out, most of the time we can help it.

Who would’ve thought!

And sure, thieves may have more responsibility than accomplices. Accomplices may have more responsibility than passive bystanders. And so on and so forth. But I’d rather play no role in the crime scene, if I can help it.

So… what if I can’t help it?

Well, that’s a horse of another color. But before blaming bystanders and accomplices, why don’t we make sure we’re not thieves ourselves?

Before digging into the subtleties of ethical honey or eating dead animals by accident, why don’t we eliminate the self-evident (and gratuitous) suffering?

If you want to contribute to this lofty goal, however little, you can.

Next time you want to try new food, make a deliberate choice. Eat vegan.

Wrapping up

You don’t have to go vegan overnight. You don’t have to feel guilty about what you eat. You don’t have to give anything up. But you can choose for yourself.

Eventually, maybe, you’ll find such great vegan food that you like better than some non-vegan food. And you’ll become, say, 42% vegan.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll notice that everything tastes better when it’s aligned with your values, and you’ll just prefer vegan food to anything else.

(But you’ll still be able to eat whatever you want, because you’re not on a fucking regime – and surely not a totalitarian one).

Now… to really wrap it up, allow me to recap:

We divide the world to stop us feeling frightened
Into wrong and into right and
Into black and into white and
Into real men and fairies
Into status quo and scary
Yeah we want the world binary, binary
But it’s not that simple

—Tim Minchin - The Fence (there was a wonderful live performance of this song, with a hilarious preface – but it has been taken down apparently. Bummer!)