Do you exclusively date vegans? why or why not? how did non vegan partners work out? is there anyone here currently in a long term relationship with a non vegan? how is it going? do you ask them to switch? is it fair to ask people? need advice
How would you convince someone who doesn't care about animals much to go vegan for life? 100%, no "cheat days"/"non-vegan days". What would motivate them?
How are you supposed to convince your family to go vegan when your mom is overworked and trapped in an abusive relationship, your dad is a narcissist and sometimes buys bags of animal body parts, and you still live at home where questioning anything just makes you look “ungrateful”?
A lot of vegan foods are labelled as the vegan version of their meat equivalent (vegan bacon, vegan burgers, cheesy slices etc), why are products not given their own names? Like everything is labelled as a sad equivalent of something else rather than being a product in its own right and I think the names reflect this.
I had a discussion with someone about Tofu and they were trying to argue it's cheese due to it having the same production process and that supposedly it's commonly referred to as vegan cheese (I found one source of that from a but like, it's called tofu, it has a name, it doesn't need a western one?
Similarly seitan gets called seitan, like there's no fluff around it, it is what it is and that's how (I think) it's meant to be.
When stuff is called vegan bacon/burger/sausage the prefix is always vegan or plant based, not soy/seitan/falafel/whatever, what's up with that?
And I guess additional question, would you prefer labels to state 'vegan burger' or 'ingredient burger' + plant based as a label?
They say vegans should not live by example and instead should be loud about veganism with friends and family.
This only for vegans who are vegans because they view eating animals as wrong. Which I’m sure is most, if not all vegans. Anyhow it just makes no sense to me as to why you would want to eat something that looks like what you are against? To me it’s like someone saying they are not a pedophile but they only go for people who are freshly 18.
The answers I have seen from vegans are usually because they like meat but hate how meat is prepared for us. That answer makes no sense to me.
There doesn’t seem to be many studies on this.
naturally as a long term vegetarian i tend to refuse to go to places like mcdonald’s, kfc, or burger king, even though i only eat the vegetarian options anyways. this is because i don’t want to support the business and industry of meat and it makes sense not to buy from them as it would further make them profit. on the other hand, if more people eat plant based foods then the demand for those will go up. either way it still indirectly supports the meat industry and the exploitation of animals so where do you draw the line, like only eating at vegan places, or not going to fast food/meat heavy reastarwnts with vegan options? sorry if it’s phrased badly it’s just that i started going vegan a week ago after being vegetarian my whole life so i’d love to get some insight on how you personally see it all. thanks!
TLDR: does consuming vegan food from non vegan companies indirectly supports the meat industry, or increase demand for more vegan products?
I'm at a loss. I don't want to kill the mouse in my house. It doesn't deserve to die for my comfort.
However, I can't see a solution to this problem. House mice aren't native to my island state, so releasing them is a little problematic.
Here are my options:
A) release it in the wild. This means, it has a high potential for a slower, more painful death. Either from starvation, other animals eating it, or the weather. Also, this isn't a native species.
B) I release it in a human populated area. This is just putting the problem onto other people, with a high likelyhood it will be killed by other people, or face the same problems as option a.
C) keep the mouse living in my house. This runs risks of significant illnesses to me, with mouse droppings and pee all over my carpet, and it is doing bad things for my allergies. It's also socially weird to just let a mouse live in your house.
D) kill the mouse. I don't love this, because he doesn't deserve to die just because I can't think of a better solution, but I'm not sure there is a valid alternate here.
Can you think of anything I've missed?
no need to read this post body unless if you want to, the title is the main point and question.
i'm vegan and left wing btw. im mostly speaking from that point of view but i will try to include the right wing vegans in consideration.
we usually assume that left wing people are more open to either the ethical animal rights message or the (also technically ethically motivated) environmental plant based/animal free message. i think veganism can be arrived at from both left wing and right wing values but does seem to align more with progressive liberal politics and follows naturally from other past rights based and abolitionist movements that began on the left. but the recent Billie Eilish saga (Billie calling out the hypocrisy of most people who claim to love animals and care about the environment while "exploiting animals and destroying the planet" or words to the effect, enraging much of her leftist fans and losing over a million followers) and many experiences have made me question if it could be the opposite - for now, but i think once the left resolve this cognitive dissonance they will support veganism ultimately. im just talking about current reality and how we can approach it. should we communicate the messages differently to the left vs the right, how do we get through to them?
Gary Yourofsky (regardless of what you think of him, he has a lot of experience talking to people of all walks of life about this topic) has said that right wing people are usually easier to talk to and convince to be vegan than left wing people. apparently they resisted less and respected him more (although it can also definitely be other way round sometimes). it could be worth noting that while he embraces most left wing principles himself, and used to promote intersectionality, he has taken some more jaded and controversial stances on human rights issues more recently that many leftists don't agree with. he is the ultimate misanthropist and i feel like he almost doesnt fit into any normal political category (neither do we really, although the leftist moral framework and maybe even the right's could certainly adapt animal rights principles). so maybe he is biased, maybe not. but many more hardline left wing vegan activists have said the same or similar.
theres also the fact left wing vegans can end up feeling more frustration with people who almost get it but wilfully avoid facing the contradiction between their actions and values, compared to people whose values are just so different and alien to us altogether (the right), and produce arguments that are honestly hard to take seriously sometimes if they contain many other beliefs we dont agree with beyond veganism, while the left make arguments that are more in line with our values but then take a "hard right turn" when it comes to animal rights and the environment - and honestly sometimes they sound the same as conservatives when it comes to their attitudes around these issues.
but could the sense of hypocrisy and the tension and instability of worldview in leftists make them even more resistant? a lot of psychological research supports the idea that people who agree with vegan ideals more (caring about animals and the environment, having left leaning attitudes) can react more strongly against it. BiteSizeVegan has a good video about the science of why people hate vegans. PlantGeezer recently made a video also arguing that people who have "pets" are more likely to be anti vegan and triggered by vegans. anecdotally, the furry and pokemon (those games are very pro animal exploitation and anti animal rights and environmentalism btw, we are literally depicted as the villains of Black & White 1 & 2) communities, who idolize animals in some kind of abstract way, also tend to get especially outraged about vegans telling them that the harming, killing, exploitation etc of animals inherent in animal farming and industries that use animals is wrong, because it threatens their sense of identity as an "animal loving" person.
most vegans are left leaning, so am I. some of us are right leaning. we all agree on the basic idea that animals deserve rights. i think animal rights can become a bipartisan idea eventually, similar to the abolition of slavery. slavery was originally mostly abolished by the progressive and "radical" left even though in the US they were Republicans because Republicans and Democrats had opposite ideologies to what they do today. but the right eventually embraced abolitionism too. i think that the right will embrace animal rights as will the left, but i wonder if it could end up being the opposite group than we expect to do it first.
recently, a lot of right wing politicians and public figures have expressed their vegan, pro animal values and especially have become vocally against animal testing, seemingly more than the left. and im not just talking about the Trump administration's mostly profit incentivized actions to phase out some instances of animal testing. Although Lara Trump did help with freeing the beagles from Ridgland Farms in a way that cost a lot of money. Vivek Ramaswamy is vegetarian and said he thinks animal cruelty will become a big issue for conservatives in the near future, even supporting Wayne Hsiung. Tulsi Gabbard (who was a Democrat turned independent turned Republican) is vegan and has in the past been quite vocal about vegan animal rights advocacy. Ben Shapiro admitted vegans are right, in 100 years people who ate animals will be looked at as barbaric, and that he is a hypocrite. These are just anecdotes but they do represent a growing trend. veganism and pro animal values are rising on the left and the right. but which will come out first? and if, surprisingly, it turns out to be embraced by the right, could that hurt leftists' willingness to engage with the ideas due to binary tribalistic mentality, and increase their reluctance/resistance to it or provide more excuses and solidify their beliefs that vegans are hypocritical or "dont care about humans" as a way to deflect from their own actions that affect both nonhuman animals, humans and the whole planet?
sorry for the ramble but would love your thoughts
I dont for foods I think are most of the time vegan like rice and fries salad and sauces (if they dont smell eggy) and so on. Juice was a thing I never asked about what it contains because I thought the only non vegan ingredient thats added sometimes is milk and I can tell when juice contains milk. But turns out I was wrong. Sometimes they add honey to fresh juice and even ice cream!
The other day I specifically told my sibling DONT BUY ME JUICE WITH MILK, buy me regular fresh juice. When he got it, I saw it was creamy and light in color. He told me it didnt have milk. I was like I dont want to keep on interrogating him but this is suspicious. Then he told me "it has ice cream though" 😞
So for context: I am currently a biology student at university, and as that have been confronted with various model organisms that are not only being observed, but also used for various tests, not just for medication, but also in general to progress our fundamental understanding of basic processes going on in cells, tissues and the organism as a whole.
Now I know this is a difficult topic and I personally believe that animal testing should absolutely be avoided if possible, however it is kind of undeniable that a lot of recent breakthroughs in science have been due to testing various things in all types of animals (and plants) from C. elegans to the famous lab mouse.
Of course there are ethical standards for what can and cannot be done and while I do believe most labs do try to follow these standards there obviously will be exceptions to this and even if standards are upheld this obviously doesn't diminish the inherent cruelty of potentially causing major issues to some of these animals. I know this isn't ideal by any means and even if one, as a scientist, tries to do one's best to treat all the animals right, it's just never really going to be enough, it is just that at the moment there aren't really many alternatives in some fields. So to reiterate my question, I'm just in general curious what exactly you think of animal testing in this scientific context and if you know of any alternatives to it!
I personally have fairly recently gotten to know a research team that specifically tries to find ways to avoid animal testing and instead use other methods to further their knowledge within their specific fields, however most biologists and professors I know do end up working with some type of model organism (though luckily mice are actually fairly rarely used compared to yeast strains or C. elegans colonies for example).
I turned vegan beginning of this year and so far it was great, I learned a lot and I’m actually repelled by animal products. But I don’t think there was a month yet where I didn’t eat at least one animal product by accident. Also I went on a seminar last month and the food provided was vegetarian at BEST. It was a small canteen by an old, german couple and the first thing the guy said to me was that he never met a vegetarian or vegan before. I often got served egg as a meat alternative, which I always gave to one of the other students, but I’m 100% sure the sauces weren’t vegan. Also when invited to family events I try to eat beforehand, but sometimes I just forget or it’s hosted by someone who I thought would remember that I went vegan (I‘ve been a vegetarian for most of my life so everyone knows not to serve me meat).
I feel really guilty each time I accidentally eat something with MILKPOWDER MY ENEMY in it. I usually check labels when buying things but sometimes I miss a word. I have ADHD and sometimes I get really impulsive and forget that most sweet snacks aren’t vegan either.
How do you handle eating non-vegan stuff by accident?
Do you ever knowingly eat something non-vegan because there are no other options?
Hi everyone, I am a vegan and I was out to dinner with a neighbor last night who was asking me about being vegan and what I eat... And I was mentioning a bunch of things I've been cooking lately... I personally am obsessed with soy in all forms. So I mentioned some of my favorite recipes.
Anyway, her response was "oh I could never be vegan because I had breast cancer 20 years ago and I have to avoid any foods that have estrogen".
I did not argue with her. I just said "oh that's interesting, and I'm sorry to hear that" ( regarding the breast cancer) and moved on.
My basic understanding is that the fear of estrogen in soy was debunked regarding the estrogen it having any kind of negative impact, and if anything, people who eat more soy are less likely to develop breast cancer or other cancers.
Curious if anybody else has heard the estrogen in soy from someone recently? She's in her 70s, so I'm guessing she is basing this on old information and has not been updated on more recent science.
If it's about the animal abuse in the food industry then why not just buy from non abusive companies?
I've searched about it and found out that dairy products are not supported by vegans because of the abuse the animals face for people to get their hands on milk. I don't know if there's any other reason.
Same with eggs, but it's way easier to get eggs without causing any abuse because chickens lay eggs daily and don't get emotionally attached to their eggs.
Edit: Got my answers, no need for further comments
Hello all,
I have been seriously considering veganism over the last couple months and I wanted to get some insight from vegans that may have been in my situation.
Here is some background about me and what made me reconsider my views. I am from the US and grew up in a Boy Scout family in the Midwest and the South, so the outdoors, including hunting and fishing, was a large part of my life growing up. I continued to hunt and fish into adulthood, but the longer I did it, the less enjoyable it became. About two months ago, I was gathering my tackle for an upcoming spring fishing trip when the realization hit me: I don't like killing things, and if I'm not willing to kill it, why should I expect others to do the dirty work for me? This threw me for a loop and sent me down a rabbit hole that I never thought I would go down.
I have made the following short term changes in my diet and lifestyle in the last two months as an experiment:
I have avoided eating animal products as best I can. The only animal product I have willingly and knowledgeably consumed has been whey protein powder, I don't have the money to waste food, so I will finish this out and replace it with a plant based alternative. I have an active lifestyle and lift weights regularly, so I aim for about 1.3-1.5g/kg of protein at my goal weight. I am also taking recommended supplements.
I have put all my leather goods in storage, with the exception of my hiking boots that I paid a lot of money for and cannot replace on a whim.
I have not gone hunting or fishing during this time despite being invited out. Catch and release fishing does not appear to be in line with vegan stances as it's still harming the fish.
Aside from my spouse, I have told a few friends that I am trying this out, but I have not said anything to my family because I'm expecting some serious ridicule from them when I bring it up. I already don't see eye to eye with most of them over politics and religion, so I can see this driving the wedge deeper.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and potentially respond, I look forward to hearing about others' experiences. Choosing to be vegan would be a major lifestyle change for me, so I'm feeling somewhat anxious about it all.
Thanks again,
Vegetable Curious
Edit for clarification: I am using a fresh account because several people know my primary account and I'm not ready to discuss this with a couple of them. Please let me know if there is any kind of verification I need to provide.
Edit: Thanks for the insight everyone! I have decided to give Veganism a genuine attempt.
Not specifically to extinction but to stop them from reproducing to a massive amount.
I personally believe that we should and I feel like that's the obvious answer but I want to see vegans' opinions.
Domestic animals such as domestic chicken can't survive in the wild, that means that if there are thousands of them that can't be taken care of by humans, they will die of starvation or be easy targets for predators.
Non-vegans would say that we shouldn't drive them to extinction because we eat them and benefit from them, but to vegans, we shouldn't.
I think that the solution to this would be to try to stop these animals from reproducing till they're almost extinct and only people who are willing to take care of them until their death would have them.
These scenarios are only possible if everyone were vegan tho but I want to understand the povs of vegans because im non vegan and considering becoming one
i’m completely new, i’ve been slowly trying to implement the veganism into my lifestyle. But i’m young and i live with my family who eats culturally meaty food!! so at times i will break my veganism contract, even when i go out sometimes to eat.
My diet is mostly vegan at this point in time but i’m not strict on everything, and im not sure if i’ll ever reach that stage..
Hey fellow vegans. So I go through a lot of almond and soy milk as they're my primary source for calcium and vitamin d past supplements.
Looking to reduce food costs and I'm interested in finding some plant-based powdered milks, but so far all the powders I've found seem low on nutrients. Any recommendations?
I'm gonna be doing a tiktok trend with the audio that goes like, "Do you have magic hair? No, magic hands? No, we're you poisoned? No, kidnapped or enslaved? No! Are you guys okay? Should I call the police?" But with vegan stereotypes, could y'all help me out??? I'll link the tiktok in the comments when I'm done!!!