20 responses so far ↓

• 1 jana // Aug 26, 2010 at 11:16 am

  and ice cream???

• 2 John // Aug 26, 2010 at 11:28 am

  Damn. Yes, ice cream.

• 3 Melissa // Aug 26, 2010 at 11:46 am

  I was vegetarian for many years, vegan for about six months (cheese…there’s just no good substitute for it…). However, thanks to my lovely digestive system, many vegetarian and vegan options are no longer open to me. Not being able to eat any sugars, in almost any form (with the exception of low-sugar veggies), makes it difficult to NOT eat meat and get enough nutrition in my day.

  I am constantly surprised by how much grain is used in so many things. And in the strangest places. For instance, in the vegan veggie broth I used to get, there it was — wheat flour. And gluten-free doesn’t help me either, as rice is off the menu for at least 3 more months, as is corn and oats (winter without oatmeal is seriously going to such).
  I too, am turned off by the absolutism of much of the vegan community. There are far bigger things to worry about than if you’re vegetarian ‘enough’…perhaps that energy would be better spent gardening?
  And while I admire the raw food folks, the amount of time they put into preparing food that mimics cooked food…what is that?!

• 4 G // Aug 26, 2010 at 12:20 pm

  I’ve recently cut WAYYYY back on the amount of time I spend on meal prep, and also, have recently gotten tired of being turned away by the blood bank for having low iron.
  (Also, lately, I’m really hungry a lot too)

  So, meat’s back on the menu. ( I’m eating left-over spaghetti and meatballs as I read this. It’s what was in the fridge as I was hurrying out the door this morning).

  It’s a work in progress. It will probably be different next month.

  But especially what you said about exclusionary social rituals, and dogma. Oh… and also cheese. Yep.

  (icecream…. mmMmmmmmm)

• 5 Anita // Aug 26, 2010 at 12:59 pm

  Perhaps this term applies to your current dietary lifestyle: Flexitarian.

  Flexitarians avoid, but occasionally eat, meat. In 2003, the American Dialect Society voted flexitarian as the year’s most useful word and defined it as “a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat”.

  : ) Good luck to you, John.

• 6 Lauren // Aug 26, 2010 at 4:25 pm

  I’m bothered by the belief that in the vegetarian/vegan community, an absolutist ethic pervades. Some vegans are absolutists, but many others recognize that while they live, they must live in the made world, and so cannot avoid harm, as much as they would like to try. I am one of those vegans.

  My dietary choices separate me socially, but not as much as people might think. I can’t look at food without thinking about the processes that made the food ‘come into existence,’ so it’s hard sometimes sitting around meat, but I still love the people I’m sitting with and I want to be with them, no matter what.

  I think there are ways to look at vegetarianism/veganism besides the negative connotations of deprivation and extremism. One, by changing my eating habits, I contribute to the health of another creature, my environment, and the global population. I don’t look at my lifestyle as ‘missing out’–which in your case, John, I would see happening because of your cultural connections to food.

  I just have a strong reaction when extremism/absolutism is used to describe this particular group. Some are, but they likely know that they can’t live without harming others just as we all likely recognize. However, I know many vegans who are kind/non-militant people who just want to take steps to minimize harm and to contribute positively to their world. People can agree or disagree on how to to contribute positively, but I wonder if it’s fair to characterize the movement as rigid and absolutist.

• 7 aubrey // Aug 26, 2010 at 4:38 pm

  one of the things i find so interesting about (at least part of) our present culture is the latent pressure to self-identify as as “something”arian or “other”avore (vegi, flexi, omni, loca, carni, ahhhhh), which you seem to be grappling with as well. while good ole fashioned self-reflection is never out of style, i always feel a bit chagrined when i find myself trying to categorize my eating into an -ism, in part precisely because of the point you made about hating the institutionalized, cliquish, and dogmatic aspects of food-isms. yet, i do it, out of utility, vanity, and a desire to simplify myself, even though I’m certainly not without inconsistencies that make a mockery of -isms in general. and so I’m a vegetarian, who is really a flexitarian, who is mostly a locavore and definitely an omnivore in the throes of a “dilemma”. To a wedding-RSVP I’m a vegetarian, but I never pass up the wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon when it goes on sale at Whole Paycheck, a store I hate to love and make peace with by replacing it’s chosen moniker with a snark. I’m a snob for vegetables and a fiend for a farmers’ market and I wash down my quinoa and nutritional yeast with home-brewed kombucha, and sometimes i would kill (how apt) for an andouille sausage and crumbly cheddar for afters.

  now, if there’s any way to cram that all into an -ism, i’ll eat my hat.

  also, i feel you re: the gentle pressure of family and friends, and the desire to experience food as communion and community – an impulse with deep anthropological and historical roots. and an impulse with promise for making global and cultural connections in the future, as i’m reminded every time i cook and eat with Aakash’s Indian family.

• 8 John // Aug 26, 2010 at 4:41 pm

  Hey Lauren, I’m only on for a sec, but I wanted to clarify: I hope that what I’ve communicated is not a characterization of vegans as a whole, but of aspects of *my* experience. I’ll try to address this more later, but I have experienced pushy, judgmental vegans. They *have* turned *me* off to veganism, the way that people like you and Tracie and my daughter turn me on to it. I think this is worth addressing. Remember the context of the post as a whole is positive towards Veg-isms.

• 9 Lauren // Aug 26, 2010 at 4:52 pm

  John, I do! I don’t want to sound uptight about it, but I’m worried that there’s a larger trend, beyond the Remy comment that needs to be addressed somewhere in the outer world. That’s why I wrote what I did here. I probably need to blog about it; I’ve been thinking about it for a while and your blog made me revisit that. I’m really glad to read about your experiences! I just hope people (in general) will come to see that we don’t have to have binaries with these kinds of situations. I told Maureen about this back at CW–the world is grey; do no harm is a great mantra, and it’s one I want to live by, but I know it’s not possible. So–to me, those binaries are some of those harmful things, and I want to explore more about how we can open our perceptions up.

  And, I’m totally glad to hear about your progress. Hugs.

• 10 eBrown // Aug 26, 2010 at 5:49 pm

  ” I’m a vegetarian, except for burgers…” ~ Susan Cloud
  

• 11 Gregory Hamel // Aug 26, 2010 at 5:55 pm

  I’ve been struggling mightily with the dogmatic, authoritarian aspects of the “movement” that you describe, having had pretty much the same deep revulsion to it. I am wary of anything that demands as part of its ethic a kind of “purity.” I find myself moving in the same direction — a vegany-vegetariany flexitarianism that is a continual dance and reflection upon personal needs, moral issues, environmental, realism, and all the rest. And I’m a lot happier for it, though I no longer have the simple Yardstick of Good.

• 12 Melissa // Aug 26, 2010 at 6:59 pm

  Lauren, I have several lovely friends who are vegans, but I know a couple of people who get seriously militant, and they are the ones I take issue with. For instance, my friend C is a vegan who became vegan because she’s never liked the taste of meat or cheese (although I don’t understand the latter AT ALL!). She loves to eat food, and grazes all day. She has turned me on to things I never thought I’d like, and her recipe for thai chili cashews is simply AMAZING (and I thought they were good at TJs).

  And then there’s my other friend C, who belittles people who are outside BBQ’ing, calls anyone who eats meat (or any animal products, even if they don’t cause an animal’s death) a speciest, etc. It almost makes me want to bite into the crappiest, cheapest hot dog I can find, just because she’s so sanctimonious. Her behavior has alienated her friends, even. It’s very sad.

• 13 David K. // Aug 27, 2010 at 4:50 am

  As you know, John, I’ve been a vegetarian for about three years now.

  I hate it.

  Sometimes I think about going vegan.

  I would hate that even more.

  Vegetarianism is, for me, an absolutely ethical choice. There’s no element of personal preference or taste involved. I don’t like to eat vegetable-based foods; growing up in a typically debased American home eating meat three times a day and rarely eating any produce that wasn’t potatoes has given me preferences for the consumption of flesh that three years of relative abstinence have done little to quell. The health benefits I had hoped would accompany my cessation of eating meat have never materialized in any meaningful way, so that element of it is moot, as well.

  But, to my mind, abstaining from eating meat is one of the most important things I can do for minimizing the harm I do to the planet and to the rest of humanity. I’ve seen the numbers, and there is no single thing I can do that reduces my individual consumption of water and energy and my personal contributions to pollution and environmental degradation as to refrain from eating meat. So I refrain. Even on a day like today, when I literally spent hours fantasizing about eating meat but refused myself the pleasure. Perhaps my appetites were whetted by this story I read this morning that reveled in the consumption of flesh; I don’t know.

  I can’t always resist the temptation. Sometimes, my will fails; I cave and buy the bratwurst or kielbasa that I’ve been craving. I don’t accept these lapses, though. Well, I accept them inasmuch as I accept myself as a weak-willed individual with an abundance of failings, but I don’t forgive myself for them.

  Personally, I don’t feel a lot of room to be flexible, or to be accepting of my failures. I perceive that the world in which I live is in a state of life-or-death crisis. I perceive that the way in which contemporary humans act holds serious potential for the ultimate annihilation of the majority of life on Earth. It seems melodramatic to frame it in such terms, I know—but that is only because we humans have a number of cognitive biases that collude against recognizing the importance of myriad small or invisible things combined (such as individual acts of carbon pollution) as opposed to confronting immediately apparent realities, like appetite preference or any number of other things people would prefer to think about rather than their own contributions to environmental degradation.

  The way in which we consume resources is already directly responsible for the extinction of species at a rate unprecedented since the death of the dinosaurs or the death of Pleistocene megafauna (although we might’ve had a hand in that, too). Since eating meat accounts for such a large percentage of that resource consumption, and thus the annihilation of species, I have a hard time viewing it as optional.

  The production of meat, extended to include the production of fodder which accounts for something like 70% of the corn production in this country, lies at the very cholesterol-clogged heart of everything that is short-sighted and dangerous about our current mode of capitalism. It takes exponentially more resources to produce a pound of beef than it does a pound of grain, since animals convert food and water to muscle tissue at such a low rate of return (about one pound of meat out for every sixteen pounds of grain in). Think of the water alone—in a state where we are constantly being told to conserve water, we eat beef, which requires something along the order of 2,500 gallons of water per pound to produce.
  All this means we have to destroy habitat to make room for cows or to get water for cows or to accommodate the many millions of acres we have to dedicate to growing food for cows. All of this means an exorbitant expenditure of fossil fuels for fertilizer and transportation, which directly feeds into the feelings of the need for the violent control of foreign oil. All of this means nitrate pollution in water, carbon pollution in air. All of which comes back down to how each and every one of us chooses to eat.

  I don’t put much weight on the social comfort of others regarding my vegetarianism, because I value the comfort and esteem of others less than I value my consistent and deliberate adherence to my principles. I don’t go around preaching about my lifestyle, unless asked (as now), but quite frankly, if people are offended by my choices, that’s not my problem. I value the good graces of others less than I value the continued survival of life on Earth, which seems to be at issue right here and right now. Consequently, in this crisis mindset, I regard the ability to be flexible and tolerant as luxuries that I cannot afford. I don’t see that I have the capacity to make those kinds of choices between indulgence and abstention. Many, many people in the developing world are living with the consequences of the American diet without enjoying the benefits; they have no choice about the wars or the environmental degradation that afflict their homelands as a result of how we Americans, the most resource expending people on the planet, choose to live our lives. As a result of our utilization of their resources, they have few options; I don’t feel it’s ethical for me to see my minimization of my utilization of resources as an option when the exponentially amplified resources I would consume eliminate options for other people.

  None of this is to disparage your own experiences or those of anyone else, even though those experiences and conclusions may differ from mine. I think each of us has his or her own road to walk when it comes to these things, much as I feel that such permissiveness on my part in the face of what I perceive to be a life-or-death crisis might be contributing to getting us all killed two or three generations down the line. But if humanity is potentially coming to the end of its existence as a species due to its deeply ingrained preference for living in denial of the consequences of its actions—if the experiment that is the human species is destined to fail, and take many thousands of other species that did nothing to warrant death with it—I can’t take the responsibility all on my own shoulders. But I still have to do everything in my own power to prevent it. The question then becomes, for me: how can I minimize my utilization of resources while still maximizing my efforts to avert this crisis? The only reason I don’t employ force or dogmatism on behalf of my views, which are overwhelmingly validated by empirical evidence, is because I don’t think the application of intellectual or physical violence are efficient means of causing cognitive change. I write stories instead, as inefficient and as ineffective as that particular means of causing cognitive change may be.

  Does that come across as intolerant and preachy? Maybe it does, but these are my thought processes, day in and day out. These are the things I think about every time I smell somebody grilling steak and start salivating. These are definitely not the things I go around telling to others, because I expect that others, for the most part, will discard my views as sanctimonious extremism. But then, when I try to be restrained, I feel like I’m just valuing situational morality and the good opinion of my peers over right action, and that seems rather ridiculous in the face of the unprecedented extinction of species. But I try to value the opinion of my peers anyway, as much as I ultimately think I am a coward for doing so.

  You’re dead right about the vegan cheese, by the by.

• 14 Chandelle // Aug 29, 2010 at 4:10 pm

  Your thoughts parallel mine, John. Though I think I was in here a year ago pushing for vegetarianism? Or at least a stricter definition of the word. (I still loathe the term “flexitarian.”) I’ve had a change of heart in some ways. If you have time, I wrote a bit about it here: http://www.chicken-tender.com/2010/08/integration.html

  Good to hear from you.

• 15 Davis // Aug 31, 2010 at 7:47 am

  I think moderation is key. I try to keep my red meat intake limited, but I am not against the occasional steak.

  You comments about Vegan-ism being too rigid were very interesting. I have always thought this, but have never been able to put it in words as well as you.

  The only way to be a true vegan is to walk everywhere, and wear clothes made out of cotton and flax you grew yourself. It has always sort of astounded me that vegans never consider the huge amount of animal products used in plastics, rubber, cosmetics, textiles etc.

  A lot of good food for thought.

• 16 Chandelle // Sep 1, 2010 at 5:31 am

  “…vegans never consider the huge amount of animal products used in plastics, rubber, cosmetics, textiles etc. ”

  I’m sorry, I realize this is a threadjack, but this just isn’t true at all. People who are vegan by lifestyle (not just diet) do go out of their way to avoid animal products in clothing, cosmetics, and so forth. Wool, leather, and silk are generally avoided by lifestyle vegans, and there are several lines of animal-free cosmetics and personal care items specifically targeted at vegans. There’s even a brand of silk (Ahimsa) made from silkworms who have completed their life cycle instead of being boiled alive. Spend a few minutes on any vegan-focused blog, website, or discussion board, or within the pages of any introductory vegan book and you’ll find a long list of animal-based materials that vegans-by-philosophy will try to avoid.

• 17 Davis // Sep 1, 2010 at 6:52 am

  I know there are plenty of things vegans try to avoid, but they do not seem to take into account things like car interiors, bike tires, paints and finishes etc.

  I guess my point was that of the few ‘militant’ vegans I know, none of them really lives a truly ‘vegan’ lifestyle. I did not mean to offend anyone that is trying to minimize their impact.

• 18 John // Sep 1, 2010 at 8:12 am

  Davis, I want to clarify, too, that most vegans I know make that lifestyle choice because they are more aware than most of the impact of their decisions on the world around them. Even the militant ones may be more aware of the issues than you give them credit for–many of them struggle with living up to their ideals as well. And I’ve noticed this as I have started learning more about veganism, or even the varieties of veganism.

• 19 John // Sep 1, 2010 at 8:14 am

  DavidK, I really appreciate you sharing your experience and ideals so candidly here. It means a lot to me because I’ve watched you make these changes, and I know how difficult some of them have been. And I think we share many similar ethical motivations, though we may draw our lines at different places.

• 20 John // Sep 1, 2010 at 8:18 am

  Aubrey, thank you for articulating the difficulty of naming something–here we’re attempting to capture lifestyle choices, ethical and moral questions, (counter-) cultural movements, approaches to consumption, etc., etc., with a couple of simple labels. And yet sometimes we have to make do with them, and they can communicate powerfully. It’s like using a paint roller when what you really need is a fine-point pen.

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