With issues like climate change its also easy to point the finger at government or big business, aka someone else. Veganism shnes a light on the questionable morality of individuals, which most people cant handle so they react angrily.
I don't mean "everybody" but people are influenced by media and media is influenced by powerful commercial interests.
There are plenty of people that aren't, I'd say close to 50%, but there's huge swathes of the population that can be manipulated to pounce on things they don't understand.
On the contrary, In India, there's been a recent surge of mocking @ Non-Vegans (or) Should I say regular dieters?
This trend is not only on Rise but also gaining a cult-status that declaring "I'm a Vegan" seems to be a social status. I don't disagree the Veggies have got all sorts of Nutrients that Humans need but not sure it has to be a thingy of shame if someone eats Meat.
I always tell my non vegetarian friend to give up meat but I don't ever recall this being a social mocking or something anywhere. NVs do mock vegetarians about eating grass and not real food all the time though :D
There are strict vegetarians in India who do not want any non vegetarians living alongside because of the smell and all that. I am not sure if I belong in that category but I have never experienced it being cooked near me, only served.
Part of it is because it reflects something you know you could be doing.
Part of it is because anything that is not on the center of the Gauss curve tingles our brain.
Part of it is because they do weird sh* and it's good sport to make fun of that.
As a veggie geek meditator that spends time in the gym, I certainly understand how goofy this stuff is. Better laugh at it.
I mean, come on...
This morning I ate spirulina, watched a Paul Stamets conf on psylo, took a Wim Hof style cold shower, stored away my vibrams five fingers and took 20 minutes of Vipassana meditation on a red dedicated cushion.
You could write a TV show episode with less material.
I have the feeling, people don't like others to have the moral higher ground.
I don't know if it's especially threatening when they think it's undeserved or if they just try to frame it as undeserved so they can keep to their morally suspicious ways.
You know when you cross a beggar on the street, and you don't give money ? Then sometime, you feel irritation toward the poor guy ?
It's the same thing. You are not a bad person for not giving, but your brain notices a problem, and you do not act on it. Whether it makes sense or not makes no difference: it makes you feel bad, and your mind associates this unpleasant sensation with the person you crossed path with at that moment. Then you react: mocking, irritation, etc.
We all do it all the time. It's not about being veggie, or giving money. The topic has no importance at all. In fact, morality has no importance at all. It's the same thing when you don't take the garbage out or have a huge pile of emails, except you got a person to blame other than yourself.
I don't like the moral policing of any group. But there is always a choice to politely say no and go on with your live. Everyone has there own values.
I don't agree on the moral witch hunt that followed either. Take his private email, reframe it in the media. It destroys a person and I think that is very wrong.
There's a difference between veganism and say racism. Racism isn't a leading cause of climate change, while meat consumption is most definitely. It must be ended if we want to survive. Period. There's no ambiguity about it. I love filet mignons and bacon, but they're directly harmful to the planet so I cannot morally eat them and recommend that they should be banned as soon as possible. It is unlikely to happen because people are unwilling to change their lifestyles or their habits, even if it leads to the deaths of countless billions. They won't change without the necessary force.
The environment would benefit dramatically if we ate half the meat we did. That's not nearly so distressing a concept. Let's start there.
You can still have your mignons and bacon as a treat every now and again, for fun, or to top up your iron levels, and everybody will be happier and healthier.
I used to share a flat with a militant vegan - used to give us leaflets with part dismembered pigs at breakfast time. Not sure this achieved very much as none of the rest of us ate bacon/ham for breakfast.
I was quite impressed when he got a very painful dental condition and refused painkillers because they might have been tested on animals.
In my bubble (Belgium) I've not experienced this actually. But I'm not an 'advocate' for a vegan lifestyle though. I just eat vegan most days and vegetarian on the other days. I don't really care what other people do or eat, I'm not bothered by going to a restaurant with non-vegetarian/vegan friends. I'm fine if we bbq together and I get a meat replacement.
I get that people might be upset if someone tells their choice of eating meat makes them a horrible person. I mean, you can replace "eating meat" with anything and you'd offend someone by calling them horrible :P
Why are we so obsessed with mocking groups? Is it really a necessity to deligitimate and derrogate the claims of an entire class of people for the sake of some laughs? If that is the case, I'd rather not laugh at all.
Every comedian mocks vegans eventually. It's the same stupid jokes over and over with every comedian when it comes to how people eat. It's on television, it's even a joke is Scooby Doo. It's lazy comedy. There are entire YouTube channels dedicated just to mocking vegans. Yes, vegans are legal to make fun of, doesn't mean they aren't beating a dead horse at this point. First it's about how weird they are, then usually something about bean sprouts, then about how the vegans claim it tastes just like the real thing, when no vegan would want it to. Then end with how the vegans are dicks and the comedian will just enjoy their burger thanks. I've seen this routine verbatim by at least 5 different comedians.
I personally find the mockery puzzling. In Singapore and other asian countries, plenty of people are vegetarians (out of choice or for religious reasons).
Flexatarianism is for people who do it for health reasons. It allows for a mostly plant based diet without the strict no animal products like gelatin, red 40, and other common animal products as well as occasional meat consumption. If you eat no meat just for preference and stick to it then it's vegetarian. There's no moral or ideologic obligation with vegetarianism/veganism, it's just what you eat.
I haven't heard about flexitarianism before. Thanks!
> Flexatarianism is for people who do it for health reasons.
Isn't it just about being less strict? It is not clear to me whether someone can call itself vegetarian, if as a guest at a religious holiday eats a traditional dish, or licks a gelato on holiday in Italy?
> There's no moral or ideologic obligation with vegetarianism/veganism, it's just what you eat.
I agree, and I wish more people would share your opinion, but as a person who wears formal shoes and have leather earpads on his headphones, I am not brave enough to call myself vegan these days.
Generally it's about being less strict, but it's typically done for health reasons. I mean pushing every into a box is hard. Intentionally eating any kind of meat or meat byproduct, including fish means you're not following a vegetarian lifestyle. It's not a knock on the person it's just in the definition, an example would be a professional sports player. If they are no longer playing the sport in the big leagues they are no longer a big league sports player. It doesn't mean they couldn't be one again, just that they aren't even they aren't. If they move to the minor leagues they are a minor league player. Veganism with it's stricter requirements would be like a big league player, vegetarian which is a bit easier to maintain minor leagues, and people who only play sometimes would be pick up players or adult league players. The problem comes when people confuse the issue for those unfamiliar with the lifestyle. Someone who occasionally eats meat around their family might confuse their family into thinking that all vegetarians are comfortable with this when most aren't. I'd personally prefer that people that do this use the flexatarianism name to avoid that confusion.
Strictly speaking veganism does generally include clothing as part of the definition, I typically dress vegan but eat vegetarian. I have no problem stealing honey from bees as I view it as a generally cobeneficial relationship. I plant flowers for them specifically, set up housing for them, and protect them from their enemies, all ensuring a higher survival chance and more production. Same with pets. I feed them, take care of them, provide them love, and mutually we have a relationship of family. Our pets are given every opportunity to be the animals they are with the benefit of free food and protection, just for being part of the family.
If you're looking for leather style formal shoes that aren't leather, look for things like PU (not PU leather) or vegan leather. It's all just a way of saying PVC clothing. You can also look for the tag "all man-made materials". Your headphones are generally not real leather unless they explicitly state it and are very high end. Couch guitar straps makes some great vegan belts from recycled car vinyl, clickbelts make some vegan ones too, mooshoes has only vegan shoes, and searching vegan shoes on Amazon will bring up tons in all difference price ranges. All of these are just suggestions if you're looking for them.
It slices across complex societal issues, like free speech and employment, hate, internet phenomena, social media amplifying, slaps some veganism elevator pitch on it and calls it a day. I don't think much of value can be extracted from it, since the length just doesn't do the complexity justice.
Also, this comment section is already mostly derailed and is degrading into anecdata and people discussing guessing what the article isn't about. Come on HN, you can do better!
Here (in Turkey), the distinction between being a vegan, vegeterian, having a gluten free diet or just trying to lose some weight is sometimes so blurry that even some restaurants sometimes make crucial mistakes in their menus or marketing campaigns. So when everyday Jane/Joe mocks a person with a special diet, she often thinks that person is trying to lose some weight without succeeding ever for years.
People feel as thought it’s a moral judgement when someone just exists and is a vegan. They feel as though they are being judged, a finger is pointed at them.
I, and the people around me, mock vegans because 50% of vegans I've encountered are hypocritical.
They don't eat meat or animal products, because of the "environment", but then eat fruit and vegetables that were imported from thousands of miles away by air. On a weekend, they drop pills, the trafficking and cultivation of which costs lives every single day. And never mind their flights halfway around the world for vacation twice a year, which do more to harm the environment than a year of not eating animal products.
Vegans make an earnest attempt who practice what they preach, across their entire lifestyle, have my utmost respect.
I want to see stats, that vegans consume more drugs and go on vacation more than the meat eater of the same social status. Me and my vegan friends actively try to avoid flying as much as possible.
We probably eat more fruit, but it's still orders of magnitude more environmentally friendly than meat and dairy.
At no point did I say more vegans do this than non-vegans. I would say the proportion of people who engage in this behaviour is broadly the same regardless of diet.
My point is that being a vegan in the name of the environment and animal cruelty, and still engaging in drugs and long-haul travel, which is far more harmful than a diet change, is hypocritical.
If you’re truly a vegan for environment and ethical reasons, abstain from travel.
You sound like one of the exceptions who practices what you preach.
So, you're saying that incremental positive change is pointless? Would you call someone who fixes one bug in a codebase a hypocrite because they didn't fix all the bugs?
For yourself, no.
Proselytising is though, effectiveness compared to time required is miniscule compared to organizing and pressuring businesses and politicians directly.
People mock vegans because of the sanctimony you often hear as the justification, and because of perceived superficiality.
If you hear someone is vegan because of some religious reason, there's a long cultural tradition behind that and there's a degree to which people cannot escape their culture.
But the vegans that are mocked are typically the upper middle class urbanites who
- Have no idea what they are actually eating instead of not eating meat
- Would like to signal to the world how good they are
- Have no real time / money / convenience constraints on whatever ethical choice they decide to choose
- Seem sort of juvenile in that their deeply felt convictions may quickly change to some other deeply held position
This is not to say all vegans are like this, or that veganism itself is actually wrong, but the caricature is the stuff of comedy. Who doesn't have a friend that's dabbled in some ethical choices that only they could see the necessity of?
But how real is that? What you see happening is this archetype that probably only represents a minority of vegans, and it gets blown up out of proportion and all of a sudden this is what you're talking about whenever you're talking about "vegans". You see it time and again, whether it's coeliacs, environmentalists, vegans, or any other out-group that goes against the grain of established ways of doing things.
Just like I have heard about muslim or black stereotypes a lot.
I've not met any of them.
Sure, I saw them online.
Youtubes and "influencers" on instagrams are a terrible, terrible way to assess a population. Take any topic, soon the algo recommendation will make you cringe.
But IRL ?
A good third of the people close to me are veggies/vegans, me included. I've never seen anybody trying to convert anyone, preach, signal value or guilt trip others. We participate in BBQ, find workarounds and make sure everybody is happy when we invite people at diner.
In the mix I have 2 nurses, a person still paying her student loan, a young couple with a new born and an old person earning minimum wage: they do have "real time / money / convenience constraints".
And we talk regularly about "what [we] are actually eating instead of not eating meat". Recommending products and places, reading product compositions, and adjusting diets according to the new studies we came across.
Now I understand that "the caricature is the stuff of comedy". Vegans are a good topic for laughing. I mean, we do weird stuff, it is indeed funny. Sometime I look at my day and think how much crap my teenage self would have given me if he saw me doing that.
But I've yet to meet the vindictive ignorant proselyte vegans you are describing. I'm sure they exist. There are assholes everywhere, but I don't think eating meat or not conditions it. Statistically, there are smug aggressive idiots, and again, statistically, some of them must be vegan. Correlation. Not causality.
I think this is the key distinction.
I worked with a former coworker that's vegan. Didn't convert anyone, preach, or guilt trip. When I mention that I do like cheese, but can't have it due to lactose intolerance, he told me to try some of the vegan cheese he's got.
Not quite cheese, but tasty. I'd spend money on that.
However, there are also your militant, preachy, virtue signalling bunch that go and protest a rib fest that's more of a small fair for the local suburb. And at least in my life, I've seen more of these protesters than people like my former coworker who chooses to keep a vegan diet.
Just like how I've met far more evangelical bunch trying to convert me to whichever religion they're backing, and has to twist any conversation into some topic about god. But I've only met three highly regarded individuals who are practicing the good of their religion better than any of those evangelical folks, and you wouldn't know they're practicing. They're not there to convert you, or to guilt you, or to signal virtue.
I had the silly thought of attempt to engage in a discussion online, and mention the protest. Most people who actually go to rib fest isn't going there because they have a blood thirsty desire to kill a lot of pigs. They see it as a convenient topic to get a bunch of friends and family to spend time together. To give this person credit, he/she was also engaging in a discussion. However, that particular point of view is that having a rib fest is to meant as an attack on them, as if rib fest created particularly as an affront to vegans.
I knew then, at least with that person, there's only agreeing to disagree.
I don't find veganism weird. I don't find my former coworker to be a good topic for laughing. I don't find the concept of veganism, or vegans to be a caricature.
I do find the evngelical, virtue signalling, guilt tripping people to be a caricature, whether they're under a religious banner or a dietary banner.
You sounds as if you have a very small diversity of people you interact with. I have met just about every stereotype. While they are usually a loud exception to the rule, there are enough commonalities for the trope to be created in the first place. Your entire comment reads like a excersize in ethics oneupsmanship.
I used to date a vegan. They were great. I ate lots of vegan food. Some of it was good, some of it wasn't. I still end up eating vegan meals often, but not intentionally. They suffered no hypocrisies and we often discussed the nature of their beliefs without incident.
There are several flavors of vegan hypocrisy, and they all stem from a lack of philosophical consideration:
* "I won't eat anything with a face."
* "cow farts"
* "Everybody can afford to be vegan."
* Using "The Jungle" as a proxy for modern slaughterhouse conditions. (Heck, thinking about it, even "Fast Food Nation" is starting to become a little dated.)
* Vegans with cats or dogs as pets. Dogs do poorly on vegan diets, while cats must eat meat; there's often a lurking contradiction about animal rights somewhere in there.
* Vegans who crush house spiders.
* Introducing vegans to Jainism is always hilarious; they almost never have heard of Jains and are surprised to learn about people that are even more religious about animals and morality!
That all said, it's been nearly a decade since I've run into anybody like this, and perhaps it is a juvenile form of veganism that only manifests at universities and bars.
Hardly! Hypocrisy should always be examined. Let's take your example. I am currently typing on a computer, it's true, and indeed it likely contains minerals and parts made by slaves. The computer was sold to me by local wage-slaves. The computer was produced not just by humans, but also by robots[0]. We can thus see that slavery is not ended in the world, and that there are several axes (geographic, economic, (in)human) upon which we can still improve our efforts to understand and end slavery.
We become better people by learning, by examining, and by seeking to eliminate hypocritical beliefs within ourselves.
[0] The word "robot" has a fascinating history of its own. This quote is a good portal to the past: "Sulla isn't a person, Miss Glory, she's a robot."
It may be different in different parts of the world, but where I'm from vegans tend to be middle-class/upper-class people who are blissfully unaware of how class barriers dictate the way you eat. And instead of trying to engage with it meaningfully (i.e. understand and propose ways for poor people to live on a vegan lifestyle when $$$ is tight and calorie intake needs are bigger) they just believe that anyone can live the same way they can afford.
My personal pet peeves are that a) some of the arguments for veganism try to convince me that I should not eat animals because they're sentient beings and since the 70s we've started to see evidence that the concept of "sentience" is very very ephemeral and that plants also exhibit intelligent behaviour. I think this argument is incredibly homo-centric and I honestly find it a bit insulting to my own beliefs.
b) the concept of going vegan being environmentally friendly is fine to me, but it's not just about not eating cattle. It's also about reducing carbon footprints of industrialised food production (i.e. going back to eating seasonal veggies!). Most vegans just eat whatever has the "vegan" label (i.e. quinoa) regardless of the fact that for it to get to their hands it had to be transported in a non environmentally friendly way.
c) the biggest environmental offenders are companies. Instead of focusing on who's eating meat I'd rather start prosecuting companies with large carbon footprints.
Most vegans I know are students that live on a very tight budget. The notion that it is expensive to eat vegan is so ridiculous. Sure if you want to eat only beyond burgers or something like that it might be expensive, but nobody does that. Beans, rice, veggies, fruit, there is nothing expensive about that. Sure you don't get heavily subsidized milk for pennies, but you don't realistically need any milk replacements.
As for c, you can do multiple things at once to approach climate change. Especially since they are completly unrelated.
That's why I started my post with "in my part of the world". Beef is not that expensive and it's an incredibly efficient source for both calories and protein, both which are essential for say, construction workers. Students don't need to be doing heavy lifting 9 hs a day.
Well beef is heavily subsidized in most of the world as well. Protein is also not an issue on a vegan diet. I got like 5kg of Saitan (isolated wheat protein) for 10€. I cook with it regularly. It's higher in protein than meat and you can do delicious stuff with it.
I don't disagree that it's easier for most people to just keep the status quo, but it's definitely not impossible to change.
> It may be different in different parts of the world, but where I'm from vegans tend to be middle-class/upper-class people who are blissfully unaware of how class barriers dictate the way you eat.
I disagree: my mother spent her entire life living with the minimum wage or less. She always had a very balanced diet, eating mostly veggie organic food, often from the farmer market.
Several reasons:
- education. Our current generation has zero food education. They have no idea how to cook, choose a product, where to buy stuff, etc. Things like dried beans/peas, full grain rice, sunflower seeds, whole potatoes, green leafs, tomatoes, brassicaceaes, onions, apples, bananas and carrots can all be obtained at a fair price. You can cover a lot with those.
- life choices. She lives in the country side, not in a city. Doesn't have a smartphone or a TV. She takes enormous care of her things (she had the same washing machine and fridge for 20 years, I gave her a laptop 7 years ago, she still uses it). She buys most stuff second hands, including the totality of her clothes. She trades stuff/work with neighbors/friends, and borrows from them. She has free pleasures: going to the library, hiking, etc.
- she lives in France. The US makes it very hard. I went in the valley several times for work, and damn those fruits and vegetables suck. Even the expensive ones. So how do you want people to eat that and not a cheap delicious burrito at the local fast food ? It's hard enough in my own country, but in yours, feeding yourself properly is a part time job.
- people think too much about extremes. You don't have to go full throttle vegan to start making a difference. It's a spectrum. You can adjust depending of your resources.
- priorities. It's not that much a problem of the cost of a vegan diet than a problem of what you think is important in life. It takes a lot of dedication to change what you eat, and if your life is already hard, I understand you don't want to focus on that. As a Python dev freelancer, I have plenty of energy to think about stuff like that. My Levoritox dependent unemployed depressed friend ? Not so much.
Food access is not the same everywhere in the world. If she could buy organic food in her time in her place of the world then more power to her, but don't assume that access to fresh food is the same everywhere in the world.
The rest of the stuff seems to be heavily localized, I don't see a point in addressing points that don't pertain to my culture. Most of my countrymen's generation knows a lot about food and cooking. I knew how to make 6hr dishes at 12. Most of my friends are very capable of cooking. We only eat fresh vegetables and beef/chicken because it's cheaper than anything else.
On the life choices, again, this is stuff that we all do in my country because we're poor. We all recycle, we don't have fast fashion chains, we don't constantly buy phones, etc. I grew up buying things from "dispensaries" i.e. you take a bottle to get refills, and you pay for the content because it's cheaper.
I'm not disagreeing that you can't do anything to be slightly more green. My point is that the reason vegans get mocked is because instead of trying to propose solutions that help other people they make assumptions about other people's (especially the poor) lifestyles instead of trying to work with them to find a good, sustainable solution.
> understand and propose ways for poor people to live on a vegan lifestyle when $$$ is tight and calorie intake needs are bigger
That is a lazy excuse - literally the cheapest diets are vegan. Rice&dal will give you both calorie intake and protein at a cost of less than a dollar a day (which is why a lot of the world's poorest people subsist on it...).
> start prosecuting companies with large carbon footprints
Prosecuting? On what legal grounds?
Easier solution. Companies will immediately stop doing it if emitting carbon gets more expensive than not emitting it. Simple solution, carbon tax.
>That is a lazy excuse - literally the cheapest diets are vegan. Rice&dal will give you both calorie intake and protein at a cost of less than a dollar a day (which is why a lot of the world's poorest people subsist on it...).
The world's poorest people subsist on it but tell of how nutritiously healthy they are solely because they eat rice.
>Prosecuting? On what legal grounds?
You know that any country at any point in time can create any law they want, particularly when they want to preserve the environment. If there isn't legal grounds, one can be created.
(My point here is not that this should be a law - there's better ways to go about getting companies to be a bit more eco friendly than just banning. What I try to say that we should be shifting the focus a lot more on companies rather than people, because they are the biggest contributors to this mess than poor Jose who works at the factory 9-6).
I believe by now that there is something like "childhood wisdom". Things we learn as kids that is explained to us as natural: owning cars, eating carcases, drinking the fluid that is originally intended for babies of another species, breakfast as the most important meal of the day, sitting with wet hair in a breeze gives you the cold, ...
as soon as you question these you have a discussion with their inner 6 year old (using the logic of 6 year old) instead of an rational thinking adult.
Breakfast being the most important meal is a lie that even doctors and nutritionists pass along. It was a lie so well crafted by the food industry that it's hard to convince people otherwise.
People should just mind their own business, that's why.
Eat what you want, sleep with who you want, believe what you want - I don't care.
The moment you start teaching me how to live my live - I have to ask you to fuck off.
This is a general principle: applies to vegans, religion, politics, sex, etc.
Imagine some people didn't try to tell slavers how to live their lives? There needs to be people questioning society's behaviours. Tat's how we adjust our moral compass.
Not vegan but vegetarian, I recognize the anger and I regularly have people getting hostile and telling ‘last week I had a bbq and at 5 kilos of pork in one serving’ as if that would set me off or something. And it happens a lot (at least once a week in the summer). People are so crazy about their meat (I have seen people on HN say they would rather die than never eat bacon again...) and I guess they are afraid it will all end or something or that vegan or vegatarian-ism is contagious. The more educated of my meat eating friends raise their own animals (some slaughter them, some take them to the butcher), or, if they cannot afford that and cannot afford free range meat, when asked about animal suffering, say they just cannot care about that because they cannot live without meat. Same like people who smoke, drink, drive sportscars or gasguzzlers, eat sugar etc; they know it will kill them and/or the world, but they just cannot care about it. But personally (anecdotally) I do not see people so enranged as they are about meat eaters (in vegan circles: like I see in Berlin) or about vegan/vegetarians. I just see the reason vegans are angry about meat a lot more than the other way around.
Ultimately, people don't like what is different, especially if it's proselyte. It creates a "us vs them" situation, the same type that creates xenophobia and racism.
I don't think that it is something that can be overcome without it coming from a central authority (religious or political). Something would have to be done on the same level as demonizing cigarettes to make people reduce / stop their meat consumption. (Lot's of advertisement explaining the moral issue, possible taxation on meat based on origin etc.).
On top of that, traditional cuisine is one of the most fundamental identity concepts. Asking people to stop eating like their ancestors is a hard thing to do, without the value of it being better tasting. Overall, in a country that would have the political will to do so, the following solutions might work:
- Heavy advertisement, like the one against cigarette
- Taxes on meat, based on origin
- Don't try to force people to eat healthily at the same time. While a ceasar salad without real chicken should exist, so should fat hamburgers and pizzas.
- Invest on meat / cheese alternatives so that they become cheaper. Invest on marketing for kids as well for those.
- Don't try to go all in at once. If all of the population reduce their meat based product consumption by 40%, it is a way bigger success than the current vegan movement.
But without doing that, and just by having vegan as a proselyte community, you force people to choose a camp, either vegan or not. They'll chose that based on their relationship with the overall community and own internal moral compass, which is not very efficient and creates a lot of conflict.
The problem with vegans is that there is a small but extremely vocal minority that absolutely, positively just HAS to incessantly preach about it and try to belittle everyone else. As a consequence whenever someone who has heard about militant vegans immediately associates veganism in general with them exclusively simply because non-insane vegans (which I believe are the very large majority of vegans, though I have no data about it) are woefully underrepresented in the public consciousness of veganism.
This sounds more like a problem with people jumping to unfounded conclusions than with vegans, doesn't it? I'll admit I used to be one of those even though I'd never even met a vegan, and now that I have met literally hundreds (used to work in a vegetarian coffee shop) I've yet to meet a single one of these so called militant vegans who won't leave you alone before you've listened to all their arguments about what a bad person you are.
Where I'm at there's a tendency to think of (US) Americans as fat, obnoxious people who will sue their own mother if that will get them some of the money they are so obsessed with, would you say this a problem with Americans or (as I believe) a problem rooted in lazy thinking, stereotyping and general prejudice?
Stereotypes exist whether we like them or not and they're always rooted in a kernel of truth. People form stereotypes based on what they see around them, nobody has the time or patience to figure out whether some dude gesturing in the street waving a bible around with a cardboard cutout saying "chemtrails" actually has a good and nuanced argument about whatever he's talking about, we just assume that they're another looney.
Hell, stereotypes are part of the what made us so successful a species today, we'd have been in trouble had our ancestors decided to figure out whether every sabretooth tiger they saw was actually just a kitten who wanted nothing but cuddles and love so the unconscious creation of them is a pretty deeply rooted defense mechanism.
Indeed. I think the issue is being vegan these days is not just about eating exclusively plant-based food, but a sort of political statement. I wish there would be a short, separate term to distinguish the two.
- antibiotic resistance (increases in deaths due to more resistant strains of bacteria)
- pollution of air, soil and water
- poor utilization of resources: water, nitrogen and food
- breeding reactors for pandemics: thousands of animals kept very close together with people cleaning and moving waste within that area enhances pathogen evolutionary jumps
- major contributor to climate change
- yes, obligatory: animal cruelty
In short, if we want to survive and not extinct ourselves because of a desire for $0.99 hamburgers, we're gonna have to go vegan whether we like it or not (it sucks, but I for one already made the change). It might be disappointing to many people, but it's a necessary shift in lifestyle standards, just as keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
Maybe due to the fact that on the internet at least, vegans tend to be the preachy moralistic types that call you a monster for eating meat.
I don't know about IRL, as I haven't met many people that I know to be vegan, as with most groups on the internet, the worst squeaky wheels are over-represented and their brand of squeakiness really gets under many people's skin.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadThere are plenty of people that aren't, I'd say close to 50%, but there's huge swathes of the population that can be manipulated to pounce on things they don't understand.
This trend is not only on Rise but also gaining a cult-status that declaring "I'm a Vegan" seems to be a social status. I don't disagree the Veggies have got all sorts of Nutrients that Humans need but not sure it has to be a thingy of shame if someone eats Meat.
There are strict vegetarians in India who do not want any non vegetarians living alongside because of the smell and all that. I am not sure if I belong in that category but I have never experienced it being cooked near me, only served.
Why do people mock geeks ?
Why do people mock iron pumpers ?
Part of it is because it reflects something you know you could be doing.
Part of it is because anything that is not on the center of the Gauss curve tingles our brain.
Part of it is because they do weird sh* and it's good sport to make fun of that.
As a veggie geek meditator that spends time in the gym, I certainly understand how goofy this stuff is. Better laugh at it.
I mean, come on...
This morning I ate spirulina, watched a Paul Stamets conf on psylo, took a Wim Hof style cold shower, stored away my vibrams five fingers and took 20 minutes of Vipassana meditation on a red dedicated cushion.
You could write a TV show episode with less material.
I don't know if it's especially threatening when they think it's undeserved or if they just try to frame it as undeserved so they can keep to their morally suspicious ways.
It's the same thing. You are not a bad person for not giving, but your brain notices a problem, and you do not act on it. Whether it makes sense or not makes no difference: it makes you feel bad, and your mind associates this unpleasant sensation with the person you crossed path with at that moment. Then you react: mocking, irritation, etc.
We all do it all the time. It's not about being veggie, or giving money. The topic has no importance at all. In fact, morality has no importance at all. It's the same thing when you don't take the garbage out or have a huge pile of emails, except you got a person to blame other than yourself.
I don't like the moral policing of any group. But there is always a choice to politely say no and go on with your live. Everyone has there own values.
I don't agree on the moral witch hunt that followed either. Take his private email, reframe it in the media. It destroys a person and I think that is very wrong.
Way to sell it dude.
The environment would benefit dramatically if we ate half the meat we did. That's not nearly so distressing a concept. Let's start there.
You can still have your mignons and bacon as a treat every now and again, for fun, or to top up your iron levels, and everybody will be happier and healthier.
> New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises "Why then are you not taking part in them?"
I was quite impressed when he got a very painful dental condition and refused painkillers because they might have been tested on animals.
I get that people might be upset if someone tells their choice of eating meat makes them a horrible person. I mean, you can replace "eating meat" with anything and you'd offend someone by calling them horrible :P
There's not many targets of mocking these days that are acceptable maybe vegans are one.
The Vegetarian Society does not explicitly mention the ovo-lacto vegetarians: https://www.vegsoc.org/info-hub/definition/
Thanks for the update!
> Flexatarianism is for people who do it for health reasons. Isn't it just about being less strict? It is not clear to me whether someone can call itself vegetarian, if as a guest at a religious holiday eats a traditional dish, or licks a gelato on holiday in Italy?
> There's no moral or ideologic obligation with vegetarianism/veganism, it's just what you eat.
I agree, and I wish more people would share your opinion, but as a person who wears formal shoes and have leather earpads on his headphones, I am not brave enough to call myself vegan these days.
Strictly speaking veganism does generally include clothing as part of the definition, I typically dress vegan but eat vegetarian. I have no problem stealing honey from bees as I view it as a generally cobeneficial relationship. I plant flowers for them specifically, set up housing for them, and protect them from their enemies, all ensuring a higher survival chance and more production. Same with pets. I feed them, take care of them, provide them love, and mutually we have a relationship of family. Our pets are given every opportunity to be the animals they are with the benefit of free food and protection, just for being part of the family.
If you're looking for leather style formal shoes that aren't leather, look for things like PU (not PU leather) or vegan leather. It's all just a way of saying PVC clothing. You can also look for the tag "all man-made materials". Your headphones are generally not real leather unless they explicitly state it and are very high end. Couch guitar straps makes some great vegan belts from recycled car vinyl, clickbelts make some vegan ones too, mooshoes has only vegan shoes, and searching vegan shoes on Amazon will bring up tons in all difference price ranges. All of these are just suggestions if you're looking for them.
It slices across complex societal issues, like free speech and employment, hate, internet phenomena, social media amplifying, slaps some veganism elevator pitch on it and calls it a day. I don't think much of value can be extracted from it, since the length just doesn't do the complexity justice.
Also, this comment section is already mostly derailed and is degrading into anecdata and people discussing guessing what the article isn't about. Come on HN, you can do better!
That is, of course, bonkers.
They don't eat meat or animal products, because of the "environment", but then eat fruit and vegetables that were imported from thousands of miles away by air. On a weekend, they drop pills, the trafficking and cultivation of which costs lives every single day. And never mind their flights halfway around the world for vacation twice a year, which do more to harm the environment than a year of not eating animal products.
Vegans make an earnest attempt who practice what they preach, across their entire lifestyle, have my utmost respect.
We probably eat more fruit, but it's still orders of magnitude more environmentally friendly than meat and dairy.
Also if you are concerned about work conditions in the drug industry, you might also want to look into the conditions of slaughterhouse workers. Many of them are psychologically scarred for life. https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/31/how-killing-animals-everyday-... Paywalled source: https://brill.com/abstract/journals/soan/21/4/article-p395_5...
My point is that being a vegan in the name of the environment and animal cruelty, and still engaging in drugs and long-haul travel, which is far more harmful than a diet change, is hypocritical.
If you’re truly a vegan for environment and ethical reasons, abstain from travel.
You sound like one of the exceptions who practices what you preach.
If you hear someone is vegan because of some religious reason, there's a long cultural tradition behind that and there's a degree to which people cannot escape their culture.
But the vegans that are mocked are typically the upper middle class urbanites who
- Have no idea what they are actually eating instead of not eating meat
- Would like to signal to the world how good they are
- Have no real time / money / convenience constraints on whatever ethical choice they decide to choose
- Seem sort of juvenile in that their deeply felt convictions may quickly change to some other deeply held position
This is not to say all vegans are like this, or that veganism itself is actually wrong, but the caricature is the stuff of comedy. Who doesn't have a friend that's dabbled in some ethical choices that only they could see the necessity of?
Just like I have heard about muslim or black stereotypes a lot.
I've not met any of them.
Sure, I saw them online.
Youtubes and "influencers" on instagrams are a terrible, terrible way to assess a population. Take any topic, soon the algo recommendation will make you cringe.
But IRL ?
A good third of the people close to me are veggies/vegans, me included. I've never seen anybody trying to convert anyone, preach, signal value or guilt trip others. We participate in BBQ, find workarounds and make sure everybody is happy when we invite people at diner.
In the mix I have 2 nurses, a person still paying her student loan, a young couple with a new born and an old person earning minimum wage: they do have "real time / money / convenience constraints".
And we talk regularly about "what [we] are actually eating instead of not eating meat". Recommending products and places, reading product compositions, and adjusting diets according to the new studies we came across.
Now I understand that "the caricature is the stuff of comedy". Vegans are a good topic for laughing. I mean, we do weird stuff, it is indeed funny. Sometime I look at my day and think how much crap my teenage self would have given me if he saw me doing that.
But I've yet to meet the vindictive ignorant proselyte vegans you are describing. I'm sure they exist. There are assholes everywhere, but I don't think eating meat or not conditions it. Statistically, there are smug aggressive idiots, and again, statistically, some of them must be vegan. Correlation. Not causality.
I think this is the key distinction. I worked with a former coworker that's vegan. Didn't convert anyone, preach, or guilt trip. When I mention that I do like cheese, but can't have it due to lactose intolerance, he told me to try some of the vegan cheese he's got.
Not quite cheese, but tasty. I'd spend money on that.
However, there are also your militant, preachy, virtue signalling bunch that go and protest a rib fest that's more of a small fair for the local suburb. And at least in my life, I've seen more of these protesters than people like my former coworker who chooses to keep a vegan diet.
Just like how I've met far more evangelical bunch trying to convert me to whichever religion they're backing, and has to twist any conversation into some topic about god. But I've only met three highly regarded individuals who are practicing the good of their religion better than any of those evangelical folks, and you wouldn't know they're practicing. They're not there to convert you, or to guilt you, or to signal virtue.
I had the silly thought of attempt to engage in a discussion online, and mention the protest. Most people who actually go to rib fest isn't going there because they have a blood thirsty desire to kill a lot of pigs. They see it as a convenient topic to get a bunch of friends and family to spend time together. To give this person credit, he/she was also engaging in a discussion. However, that particular point of view is that having a rib fest is to meant as an attack on them, as if rib fest created particularly as an affront to vegans.
I knew then, at least with that person, there's only agreeing to disagree.
I don't find veganism weird. I don't find my former coworker to be a good topic for laughing. I don't find the concept of veganism, or vegans to be a caricature.
I do find the evngelical, virtue signalling, guilt tripping people to be a caricature, whether they're under a religious banner or a dietary banner.
I used to date a vegan. They were great. I ate lots of vegan food. Some of it was good, some of it wasn't. I still end up eating vegan meals often, but not intentionally. They suffered no hypocrisies and we often discussed the nature of their beliefs without incident.
There are several flavors of vegan hypocrisy, and they all stem from a lack of philosophical consideration:
* "I won't eat anything with a face."
* "cow farts"
* "Everybody can afford to be vegan."
* Using "The Jungle" as a proxy for modern slaughterhouse conditions. (Heck, thinking about it, even "Fast Food Nation" is starting to become a little dated.)
* Vegans with cats or dogs as pets. Dogs do poorly on vegan diets, while cats must eat meat; there's often a lurking contradiction about animal rights somewhere in there.
* Vegans who crush house spiders.
* Introducing vegans to Jainism is always hilarious; they almost never have heard of Jains and are surprised to learn about people that are even more religious about animals and morality!
That all said, it's been nearly a decade since I've run into anybody like this, and perhaps it is a juvenile form of veganism that only manifests at universities and bars.
You are yourself against slavery (I hope:)), while typing this comment on a machine with some parts made by slave children.
If you go that way, everybody is an hypocrite, and we are loosing the sense of the word.
We become better people by learning, by examining, and by seeking to eliminate hypocritical beliefs within ourselves.
[0] The word "robot" has a fascinating history of its own. This quote is a good portal to the past: "Sulla isn't a person, Miss Glory, she's a robot."
My personal pet peeves are that a) some of the arguments for veganism try to convince me that I should not eat animals because they're sentient beings and since the 70s we've started to see evidence that the concept of "sentience" is very very ephemeral and that plants also exhibit intelligent behaviour. I think this argument is incredibly homo-centric and I honestly find it a bit insulting to my own beliefs.
b) the concept of going vegan being environmentally friendly is fine to me, but it's not just about not eating cattle. It's also about reducing carbon footprints of industrialised food production (i.e. going back to eating seasonal veggies!). Most vegans just eat whatever has the "vegan" label (i.e. quinoa) regardless of the fact that for it to get to their hands it had to be transported in a non environmentally friendly way.
c) the biggest environmental offenders are companies. Instead of focusing on who's eating meat I'd rather start prosecuting companies with large carbon footprints.
As for c, you can do multiple things at once to approach climate change. Especially since they are completly unrelated.
I don't disagree that it's easier for most people to just keep the status quo, but it's definitely not impossible to change.
I disagree: my mother spent her entire life living with the minimum wage or less. She always had a very balanced diet, eating mostly veggie organic food, often from the farmer market.
Several reasons:
- education. Our current generation has zero food education. They have no idea how to cook, choose a product, where to buy stuff, etc. Things like dried beans/peas, full grain rice, sunflower seeds, whole potatoes, green leafs, tomatoes, brassicaceaes, onions, apples, bananas and carrots can all be obtained at a fair price. You can cover a lot with those.
- life choices. She lives in the country side, not in a city. Doesn't have a smartphone or a TV. She takes enormous care of her things (she had the same washing machine and fridge for 20 years, I gave her a laptop 7 years ago, she still uses it). She buys most stuff second hands, including the totality of her clothes. She trades stuff/work with neighbors/friends, and borrows from them. She has free pleasures: going to the library, hiking, etc.
- she lives in France. The US makes it very hard. I went in the valley several times for work, and damn those fruits and vegetables suck. Even the expensive ones. So how do you want people to eat that and not a cheap delicious burrito at the local fast food ? It's hard enough in my own country, but in yours, feeding yourself properly is a part time job.
- people think too much about extremes. You don't have to go full throttle vegan to start making a difference. It's a spectrum. You can adjust depending of your resources.
- priorities. It's not that much a problem of the cost of a vegan diet than a problem of what you think is important in life. It takes a lot of dedication to change what you eat, and if your life is already hard, I understand you don't want to focus on that. As a Python dev freelancer, I have plenty of energy to think about stuff like that. My Levoritox dependent unemployed depressed friend ? Not so much.
On the life choices, again, this is stuff that we all do in my country because we're poor. We all recycle, we don't have fast fashion chains, we don't constantly buy phones, etc. I grew up buying things from "dispensaries" i.e. you take a bottle to get refills, and you pay for the content because it's cheaper.
I'm not disagreeing that you can't do anything to be slightly more green. My point is that the reason vegans get mocked is because instead of trying to propose solutions that help other people they make assumptions about other people's (especially the poor) lifestyles instead of trying to work with them to find a good, sustainable solution.
That is a lazy excuse - literally the cheapest diets are vegan. Rice&dal will give you both calorie intake and protein at a cost of less than a dollar a day (which is why a lot of the world's poorest people subsist on it...).
> start prosecuting companies with large carbon footprints
Prosecuting? On what legal grounds?
Easier solution. Companies will immediately stop doing it if emitting carbon gets more expensive than not emitting it. Simple solution, carbon tax.
The world's poorest people subsist on it but tell of how nutritiously healthy they are solely because they eat rice.
>Prosecuting? On what legal grounds?
You know that any country at any point in time can create any law they want, particularly when they want to preserve the environment. If there isn't legal grounds, one can be created. (My point here is not that this should be a law - there's better ways to go about getting companies to be a bit more eco friendly than just banning. What I try to say that we should be shifting the focus a lot more on companies rather than people, because they are the biggest contributors to this mess than poor Jose who works at the factory 9-6).
as soon as you question these you have a discussion with their inner 6 year old (using the logic of 6 year old) instead of an rational thinking adult.
But without doing that, and just by having vegan as a proselyte community, you force people to choose a camp, either vegan or not. They'll chose that based on their relationship with the overall community and own internal moral compass, which is not very efficient and creates a lot of conflict.
Where I'm at there's a tendency to think of (US) Americans as fat, obnoxious people who will sue their own mother if that will get them some of the money they are so obsessed with, would you say this a problem with Americans or (as I believe) a problem rooted in lazy thinking, stereotyping and general prejudice?
Hell, stereotypes are part of the what made us so successful a species today, we'd have been in trouble had our ancestors decided to figure out whether every sabretooth tiger they saw was actually just a kitten who wanted nothing but cuddles and love so the unconscious creation of them is a pretty deeply rooted defense mechanism.
- antibiotic resistance (increases in deaths due to more resistant strains of bacteria)
- pollution of air, soil and water
- poor utilization of resources: water, nitrogen and food
- breeding reactors for pandemics: thousands of animals kept very close together with people cleaning and moving waste within that area enhances pathogen evolutionary jumps
- major contributor to climate change
- yes, obligatory: animal cruelty
In short, if we want to survive and not extinct ourselves because of a desire for $0.99 hamburgers, we're gonna have to go vegan whether we like it or not (it sucks, but I for one already made the change). It might be disappointing to many people, but it's a necessary shift in lifestyle standards, just as keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
I don't know about IRL, as I haven't met many people that I know to be vegan, as with most groups on the internet, the worst squeaky wheels are over-represented and their brand of squeakiness really gets under many people's skin.