I have been re-evaluating my own dietary choices lately (I recently went back to vegetarianism after three + years of veganism, also for health reasons). I like (and mostly but not completely agree) with what you wrote here, and I think these are interesting counter-arguments against those who have vegan-or-bust attitudes. This entry has given me some more ideas to think about, thanks for that!

i heard you ate meat. true / false?

I ate a few pieces of meat on Canadian Thanksgiving. It was the first time I'd eaten meat since going veg. RUMOR CONFIRMED.

this is so bogus

god, I love you Mike.

your number 5 is really good..


but to be honest burger king has a way better chicken sandwich

veganism is a sham.

some points so you may reconsider:

2. Can't you be a vegan without consuming or buying any vegan products? Do you know anyone who has a vegan diet and doesn't spend money on food? Anyways, how can you collective struggle with other beings if you are systematically slaughtering the other beings you are supposed to be collectivizing with? Or can you only imagine collectivizing struggle amongst humans?

3. If you dont define yourself by what you don't do', how are you going to define yourself?

4. "About 85 percent of the world's soybean crop is processed into meal and vegetable oil, and virtually all of that meal is used in animal feed. Some two percent of the soybean meal is further processed into soy flours and proteins for food use... Approximately six percent of soybeans are used directly as human food, mostly in Asia."


5. Is a vegan diet really a life of "repenting and suffering"? Have you put this into perspective of the suffering of less privleged beings? If you could help alleviate the suffering of others, would it be worht it? Is a vegan diet really destroying your life? Is it really 'something your species has done' which is what you should feel guilty of, or is it the fact that YOU ALONE are making the choice to eat meat? Isn't saying "veganism is the product of guilt" a semantic argument? How is veganism not a product of affirmation?

I tried to write this with as a little hostility as possible, but to say that you are '100%' ok with eating a chicken sandwhich, and'100% in support of animal liberation' makes you seem pretty fucking stupid. Hey yeah- i support your freedom, but i mean... if you're already between two buns, i mine as well eat you right?

I've been trying to put a lot of things into perspective recently in reckoning with whether or not I should turn my vegetarianism into veganism.

Your number one is something I can have no grasp/opinion on because it's a personal situation that you should and must deal with based on your own feelings of what's best for you. One major problem I have with veganism is that from what I know it's simply not possible to get significant amounts of omega-3s and complex fatty acids without consuming extremely processed and/or globalized food sources. To me, that brings up the question of how important it is to oppose a culture of excess, waste, and impracticality with a diet that ultimately requires all three things, unless you commit yourself to a waste free existence in general.

I can't and won't preach to you about veganism. And I can't dispute motivations that stem from wanting to feel healthy again.

What I can say is that all of us collectively struggling while eating meat has about the same face value level of productivity as all of us collectively struggling to not eat meat does. We can all go back on any ethical but unpopular decision with the explanation that its better to subvert from within. Sure, buying/consuming is self-perpetuating and even when you're doing it selectively, you're still buying/consuming. The chicken sandwich you ate from McDonalds isn't really more evil than an organic, free-range chicken you bought at Whole Foods.

But, that chicken is still the product of years of butchered and inefficient genetic engineering. That chicken was still de-beaked, fixed without painkillers, force-fed dangerous levels of antibiotics and hormones, forced to endure non-stop pain and terror for its entire life, and then slaughtered in either a quick or slow and lingering way, but indiscriminately without mercy. And no matter where you got it from or what you paid for it, when you ate it, you became responsible for all of that.

If this matters less to you than the reasons you have for revoking veganism/vegetarianism, then that is fine. But nothing you said in your post rebukes the facts in that previous paragraph.

This is toni. I'm adding you. And I really like this entry.