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 would have said it was the best decision ever. I wouldn’t even say now that quitting veganism was the best decision I ever made, though I’m fairly confident that it was a better decision than becoming vegan.

But there’s no way to really know what our best decision is. It’s impossible to track the consequences of every choice we make, even with regards to how the decision affects us directly, so something that may seem to us like the best option we could have picked might have actually made our lives much worse.

Also, something feels off about saying that some restriction that you imposed on yourself was the best thing ever. Arguably it’s similar to an alcoholic saying that quitting alcohol was the best decision they ever made. But that makes more sense. A former alcoholic can at least see the obvious benefits in their ability to function again.

Quitting animal products isn’t really like that. The rewards, if they exist at all, are more abstract. Some vegans say they notice major health transformations from quitting animal products (Woody Harrelson cured his acne by weaning off dairy), but many don’t, and some admit noticing immediate health declines.

When they say, “Going vegan is the best decision I ever made,” they don’t just mean for themselves, they mean for the world as a whole - the environment, animals, and starving children. But as I said in a previous entry, something isn’t really an accomplishment if an even better way to achieve it is to commit suicide or never be born. A much more effective solution to heart attacks, carbon footprints and animal exploitation than veganism would be for all of us to kill ourselves. Would that be the best decision we ever made?

Maybe. But probably not.

Curious to see how common it was for vegans to credit animal avoidance as best decision number one, I did a Google search for “best decision I ever made” (in quotes) and vegan. There were 369,000 results.

Alright, for the sake of intellectual honesty, I should say that one of them was a mother saying that having a C-section was the best decision she ever made, another was a poll about whether moving to Charlotte was the best thing you could ever do, and one was a raw foodist saying that not buying a dehydrator was her best decision. So make that 368,997 results.