October 2009
43 posts
2 tags
"Best Decision I Ever Made"
I’ve often heard vegans say that going vegan was the best decision they ever made. Something about this comment strikes me as odd. Even though, I guess it makes sense. If you believe that veganism is good for animals, the planet and your own health, that it does no harm and all good, it does seem like a pretty airtight decision.
Still, I used to believe all that, and I don’t think I...
September 2009
40 posts
1 tag
Vegan Paradox: The Least Deserving Humans Get to...
One of the paradoxes of veganism is that animals want to thank vegans for their compassionate abstention from animal products. And the only way animals can think to thank vegans is by offering them their flesh when they die. Yet this is the one gift that vegans cannot accept. So the least worthy humans, the meat eaters who don’t have compassion and don’t make self-sacrifices on the...
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Vegans Review Daiya Cheese Alternative - It Melts!
Moralistic dairy abstainers have been searching for a tolerable vegan cheese product since the animal-free lifestyle was invented in the 1940s. Now many of them seem to think they’ve finally found it: Daiya.
As I reported earlier, the ingredients of this cheese imitation are:
Purified water, natural whole ground cassava/tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, high oleic sunflower and/or...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
Vegan Man: Tonight’s dinner was the beer-battered tofu. Oh. My. God.
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Meat Hatred Brings Famous Musician to New Low
The reason I think this is such a low ebb for Paul McCartney is not only that he’s sold his artistic soul to push a cause (a lot of artists fall into that trap), but that the cause itself is such a weak compromise. He doesn’t want there to be a Meat-Free Monday. He wants there to be a Meat-Free Forever.
Yet here he is, quivering with desperation, artlessly begging the meat eaters of...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
Vegan Angelik: I have a friend who is an omni in the medical field, and she constantly tells me that I care more about animals then people, but that’s not true. I care about them both equally, and if I had to choose between a human and an animal that I had equal feelings for, it would be so hard for me to just choose one.
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The Cure for Acne
The New York Post today reports that Woody Harrelson believes quitting dairy cured his disgusting acne in three days. Bullshit. I bet it took four days, and in retrospect he is amending his memory to make veganism look better.
Still, four days isn’t bad.
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Vegan Message Board Quote of the Day
Healthy: Sorry, I have to vent. I came to work in a super happy mood. Yesterday my BF treated me to an Xmas shopping spree and I made vegan-conscious clothes choices (man-made materials, no leather, no fur). So I started today feeling super good.
THEN I’m in the lunch room chopping an organic apple, and I added a can of Eden low-salt chickpeas and some flaxseed oil and raw apple cider...
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Vegan Shitlist: "Eat Mor Chikin" Ads
Vegans hated those “EAT MOR CHIKIN” ads, in which cows tried to save their hides by getting us to eat chicken instead of beef. Farmyard buddies shouldn’t be pitted against one another, trying to get humans to eat different kinds of animals — they should be getting humans to give up meat all together.
If you want to avoid the vegan shitlist, make an ad with animals united...
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Veganism and the Seen and the Unseen
One thing I realized while reading Lierre Keith’s The Vegetarian Myth, a critique of the vegan approach to saving the world, is that veganism is a case of recognizing what is seen and overlooking what is unseen.
This concept of the seen and the unseen originated with the French economic philosopher Frederick Bastiat. His essay, What is Seen and What is Not Seen, began with this:
In the...
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The First Vegan: Donald Watson
Just like vegan bodybuilders are the retort to “Where do you get your protein?,” Donald Watson, the man who coined the word “Vegan” and founded The Vegan Society in 1944, is the proof of the potential for vegan longevity. Donald Watson was vegan for about two thirds of his 95-year life — a very good age, even if it falls somewhat short of the immortality that veganism promises.
Donald Watson’s...
Soilman Lives!
Last month I compiled an entry of quotes from a former regular to vegan message boards, a man who called himself Soilman. After discovering his actual name, I found that a man by that name of the same age (or so I thought) had died. I linked to that obituary and pronounced Soilman soil again.
I was mistaken, however, as Soilman was kind enough to point out. Perhaps it’s worth noting that of...
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Vegan Message Board Quote of the Day
A Vegan In Trouble: I have been struggling with my veganism for several weeks now. I still believe in animal welfare and not wanting animal stuff in my body, but gosh it is just so hard to do at the moment.
I have recently reached this compromise with myself - I have let go of my veganism a tiny tiny bit. I am not about to go drink a cup of milk (disgusting) or even add it to my tea, but I have...
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D.C. VegFest: The Quinoa Woman
This is Mimi Clark, one of the presenters at the D.C. VegFest. Her vegan origination story was that twenty years ago or so, she was dancing in a ballet class or something, and felt bogged down by undigested meat that she had eaten a few days before. I’m not sure how she knew meat was the culprit. Presumably she got an X-ray that came back like this:
Horrified that an entire steak had...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
Troutina: I’ve been avoiding Hubba Bubba for years because someone told me it had whale blubber in it!! Oops, I’m so gullible!!
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D.C. VegFest Photos
Do the license plates of D.C. Vegans say “Taxation Without Vegan Representation”?
I saw this guy at the NYC Veggie Pride Parade. He seems to recognize me too.
A classic illustration of how healthy vegans think they are versus how healthy they actually are.
If a vegan hires a meat-eating bodyguard, does that not support the meat industry in a way?
I submitted this T-shirt...
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Vegans on Humanely Raised Animal Products
Aeriellie: My fiance is omni and he absolutely won’t give it up. He’s eating more vegan/vegetarian meals with me, but he won’t give up his meat, fish, dairy, and eggs. Since he still insists on eating meat, is it necessarily bad that I ask him to at least choose his meats from more humane sources?
M.W.O.A.I.: I’d say yes, unfortunately. It’s the whole “lesser...
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DC VegFest: The Doctor Is In
Dr. Michael Greger was the token nutritionist at the D.C. VegFest, one of the few doctors that vegans can trust - a vegan doctor. He had a booth promoting his book Carbophobia: The Scary Truth About America’s Low Carb Craze, but the main attraction was his lecture.
His gimmick was that he introduced a food that vegans rely on - tofu, seitan or potatoes, for instance, and asked the vegans...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
mizzourunner: Hi, I’m new here and I’m interested in becoming a vegan. However, I have struggled with anorexia for 12 years and been hospitalized numerous times. The only thing that has kept me from becoming a vegan is that so many of the foods that vegans eat (nuts, beans, lentils, etc.) are scary for me because they seem to have more calories and fats for the volume of food compared...
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Vegan Message Board Quote of the Day
Chey: My best friend has been a veggie for her whole life, like me, and now I’ve become a vegan. The day I started the veganism, she told me she had started eating meat. She’s always eaten meat on and off, but I felt kinda backstabbed. … The time I needed her veggie support, I needed some solidarity, and she went and started eating meat. I understand that she, like me, had the...
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Love the Vegans, Hate the Veganism
I don’t intend this blog to be anti-vegan. I intend it to be anti-veganism.
To me, it’s natural to separate the two. Vegans hate when their veganism is called “just a phase”; they counter that for some uncommitted false-hearted vegans it is, but for the true vegans it isn’t. If you are vegan for the right reasons, veganism is forever.
But the truth is that few...
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Vegan Quote of the Day
Vegan Chai: It bothers me when people accuse me of being “extreme,” because i think it’s much more “extreme” to pay someone to torture and kill an animal rather than to just eat a peanut butter sandwich.
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Why Vegans Love Processed Foods, Part Two: The...
The second reason vegans love processed food is conditioning. They learn to look for food items with labels that say “VEGAN” or “V,” and these can only be found on processed foods.
For a new vegan, these V labels are a helpful reference, a quick way to tell if a product is okay or not. “Look for the V,” seasoned vegans will tell the newbies. In a sea of...
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Why Vegans Love Processed Foods, Part One:...
Vegans consider their diet to be the most natural and healthy diet in the world. But with the possible exception of macrobiotic vegans and raw foodists, vegans eat more processed foods than just about anyone else. There are a few main reasons for this. This entry will cover the first: necessity.
Vegans don’t give up animal products and keep everything else about their diet the same. They...
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Vegan Message Board Quote of the Day
Mahk: I thought a good way to ‘help’ people make the move [to veganism] would be to list all the things that us vegans no longer have to personally worry about.
mcfluffin: People don’t come round and eat all your food…i.e. vegan mayonaisse and yoghurts!
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Interview With An Ex-Vegan: Cory Kilduff
Cory Kilduff got me into veganism. He planted the vegan seed in my head in high school, and it finally blossomed into lacto-ovo vegetarianism about six months after I graduated.
I remember feeling guilty during my initial year of vegetarianism when I happened to see Cory while I was wearing a leather coat (I had it from before I was vegetarian, but still). And another time when he was over and I...
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Vegan Equality: The Last Great Civil Rights Battle
Via World Vegan and Vegetarian News, I found a commentary that I expect many vegans would find to be ludicrous as I do. It is called What Vegans Can Learn From the Gay Rights Movement’s Success.
The author, Sherry F. Colb, starts by comparing the human oppression of animals to the indignities that human minorities have faced. Which, at this point, makes this a fairly typical animal rights...
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Do Vegans Dream of Delicious Meat?
Noone: This disturbing event happened to me last night. I was dreaming that Arby’s was having a big sale on roast beef and I ended up getting a sandwich and eating it. Before eating it in the dream, I had second thoughts but ate it anyway. After I ate it, in the dream, I freaked out over it - then I woke up and realized - much to my relief - that it was a dream.
Rosemary: I have had a...
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Vegan Message Board Quote of the Day
Roxy: It really is upsetting when I hear about vegans that go back to eating meat. In fact, it makes me sick.
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Rynn Berry, Vegan Author and Raw Foodist, in His...
“It is a fallacy to say that a vegan diet makes a person puny or weak. The strongest animals in world — the rhinoceros, the gorilla, the hippopotamus, the camel, the horse — are vegans.”
“Three fast-food vegetarian restaurants in New York City — Zen Burger, FoodSwings, and Crisp — provide a foretaste of the vegetarian fast-food restaurant of the future.”
“The...
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Vegan Message Board Quote of the Day
Kristie999: I was in a huge hurry and I didn’t check a label for a bottle of curry sauce. When I got home and unpacked my stuff I realized it had milk in it (GAH!!). If it had animal stock or actual meat I’d donate it or toss it, but since it was milk I kept it and have used it. My issue is that I feel slightly guilty about it but I also don’t want to be wasteful. WWYD?
...
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"Soilman" Theodore Zuckerman In His Own Words
Soilman at 56
Soilman: “I developed stomach and duodenal ulcer after being vegan for about 35 years. I also took [Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs] for those 35 years, and most likely that was the cause. Interestingly, the main symptom I got was nausea and inability to hold ANYTHING down, for weeks. Even carrot juice and cantaloupes tended to come back up…
“Mostly all...