Vegans like to use the word “yummy.” Though “yummy” hasn’t entered the vegan lexicon as something unique to animal-free living (the way that “compassionate” has), per capita they use it more than anybody else. My guess is that it’s to make vegan food sound more palatable than it actually is, but who knows, it could be any number of reasons, all of which would say something negative about veganism.

Here are a few search phrases to show you what I mean.

“Vegan and yummy” gets 677,000 results. “Yummy and vegan” gets 666,000 results, suggesting it’s slightly more popular to emphasize the veganness before the yumminess.

“Yummy in my vegan tummy,” alas, only gets 44.

A search for “yummy” by itself brings up 25,500,000 results. Add “vegan” to the search and you decrease that by a little over half: 12,000,000 results.

“Yummy food” gets 574,000 results. “Yummy vegan food” gets more than half that, 322,000 results.

That’s impressive considering vegans hover around one percent of the population. And some searches are even closer than that.

“Yummy cupcakes”: 85,400 results; “Yummy vegan cupcakes”: 70,600 results.

“Yummy breakfast”: 79,600 results; “Yummy vegan breakfast”: 63,900 results.

“Yummy restaurant”: 61,100 results; “Yummy vegan restaurant”: 58,700 results.

“Yummy cookies”: 47,400 results; “Yummy vegan cookies:” 44,000 results.

“Yummy pies”: 19,500 results; “Yummy vegan pies”: 12,300 results.

And sometimes the vegan version of a yummy search brings back even more results than its cruel counterpart.

“Yummy meat”: 56,300 results; “Yummy veggie”: 102,000 results.

“Yummy burger”: 38,300 results; “Yummy veggie burger”: 62,800 results. 

“Yummy baking”: 19,700 results; “Yummy vegan baking”: 36,000 results.

“Yummy cruelty” (-free): 9 results; “Cruelty-free yum”: 997 results.

“Yummy meaty goodness”: 852 results; “Yummy vegan goodness”: 6,740 results

Quite a few vegan blogs even have “Yum” or “Yummy” in their names: Yummy Vegan Dinners, Vegan YumYum, Yummy Vegan, The Yummy Vegan, Yummy Cookbook and Vegan Yummy are a couple of examples. There’s also Yummy Vegetarian Recipes and Yummy Diet Food, but those sometimes include dairy.

Speaking of vegetarians, they use “yummy” less often than vegans in total, even though there are more of them. “Yummy vegetarian” gets 93,300 results while “yummy vegan” gets 131,000.

I could go on. In fact, I originally did. But it was so tedious that it was the final straw for one (valued, as they all are) reader who promptly unsubscribed from this blog. So I’ll cut it off right here. The point is, vegans say “yummy” too damn much. If you don’t believe me, just re-read this entry.