Tovar Cerulli is an ex-vegan turned hunter who writes the blog A Mindful Carnivore. But isn’t “mindful carnivore” a contradiction in terms, like… “Ethical Butcher”?

Even some meat eaters see hunting as barbaric, but it doesn’t take much time on Cerulli’s blog to figure out that he didn’t give up compassion and thoughtfulness when he left veganism. In entries such as Reverberations of a Kill, Cerulli describes the conflict he feels over killing to live — he doesn’t treat hunting as the giddy bloodsport that some vegans imagine it to be (and which, for some hunters, it is).

A comment Cerulli wrote on “Reverberations of a Kill” explains his position succinctly:

I don’t need absolute proof of, or perfect understanding of, animal suffering to make me take it seriously and to avoid doing unnecessary harm. If I felt that continuing to be a vegan (as I was for 10 years) could (1) give me full bodily health and (2) truly avoid causing harm to animals or their habitats, I don’t think I’d be eating animals or hunting today. In a sense, my hunting is underpinned by the same values that made me a vegetarian.

Cerulli is currently working on a book that—based on his journey from veganism to hunting—explores the ethics, ecology and spirituality of human-nature-food relationships.

(photo courtesy of Tovar Cerulli)

What got you into veganism?

I grew up fishing, and eating just about anything and everything. In my late teens, I started eating less beef and pork simply because I’d heard and read that excess red meat was unhealthy. And my girlfriend at the time was vegetarian, as were her parents and sisters, so I was learning more about other ways of eating.

When I was twenty, I had an experience with a trout I caught. In the moment of killing it, I realized its death hadn’t been necessary. I could have eaten something else. That was the end of my flesh-eating.

Not long after that, I eliminated eggs and dairy, too. My concerns, like those of so many vegans, were both ethical and ecological: the mistreatment and confinement of animals, the impact of livestock operations on the environment, and the use of farmland to grow animal feed instead of food for hungry humans.

After a while, I couldn’t think of any reason for me or other humans to eat eggs or dairy products, let alone flesh of any kind.

What got you out of veganism?

Two things.

One factor was nutrition. Or, rather, my wife’s study of it. She was learning about herbal medicine and holistic health, and her instructors—including former vegans and vegetarians—offered cautions about the long-term effects of veganism. A lot of sick people had come to them for help after decades of complete abstention from animal products.

My wife wondered if we, and especially I, might do better if we starting eating yogurt and eggs again. I wasn’t ill, but my energy wasn’t great and I had some allergic sensitivities. Once we started eating dairy and eggs, things improved for me. They improved more when we started eating chicken, and occasionally fish.

The other factor was my recognition that everything I ate had a cost to animals. Clearing land for agriculture destroys wildlife habitat. Birds, rabbits and rodents get minced by grain combines, and fish get poisoned by fertilizer and pesticide runoff. Because we have exterminated most of the large four-footed predators in North America, growing crops of all kinds now depends on keeping white-tailed deer populations in check: hunters and farmers kill them by the millions every year. Though I was vegan, my diet was still killing animals.

Even in the organic garden my wife and I were growing, we had to face the dilemmas of dealing with ravenous insects and fence-defying woodchucks. That didn’t make me abandon veganism, but it did put me in a different frame of mind. It opened me to the idea of changing my diet and made me see that veganism wasn’t as harmless and innocent as I had believed.

Then again, even after I stopped being a vegan, I had no interest in buying supermarket meat from animals whose lives I knew nothing about. I still wanted to live and eat compassionately and ecologically.

To vegans, eating compassionately means “no animal products.” Is that too simplistic? How do you think compassion can be compatible with meat eating?

I do think it’s too simplistic.

Compassion is important: for fellow humans, for fellow creatures, for the earth itself. But how compassionate is a vegan diet if the production of that food maims and kills animals, harms ecosystems, and utilizes underpaid migrant workers? My point is not that these harms are unique to the growing of fruits, vegetables, and grains; they occur in the livestock industry, too. My point is simply that “no animal products” is too simplistic a measure of “compassionate.”

Following a path of compassion is far more complicated than eating-meat or not-eating-meat. So your question could be rephrased as “How can compassion be compatible with living and eating?”

And that’s not a question I can answer briefly. It runs throughout my blog and my book.

Do you think hunting is the most compassionate way to get meat?

It depends. We have to look both at how animals live and at how they die.

I think that the animals I hunt—primarily white-tailed deer, within a few miles of home in Vermont—live good lives, free and wild. And if my kills are quick, as they all have been so far, then I think the animal dies well, too, losing consciousness in seconds, before fear surfaces and before shock can become pain: a faster exit than starving in winter, being mangled by a car, or getting dragged down by coyotes.

On the other hand, hunting kills can be botched. Even the most conscientious, careful hunters can make mistakes. Animals can get wounded, feeling pain until the hunter finishes the job, the animal recovers, or the animal dies. I dread that possibility in my own hunting.

With domesticated animals, I again look at their lives and their deaths. In many of the factory farming conditions we see and read about, I think animals live horribly. On the other hand, I’ve seen meat chickens contentedly pecking away in a grassy backyard. I’ve read about botched slaughters, yet I also know folks who take care to make every livestock kill instantaneous.

You don’t want animals to suffer, yet you kill them. Why is suffering bad but death is okay?

One element of this way of thinking is, I think, very common. Most people don’t want to cause suffering, for other humans or for animals. This is true for vegetarians, meat-eaters, livestock ranchers, hunters, and so on. Are there exceptions: people who don’t care about suffering at all, or actually enjoy inflicting it? Sure. But they are relatively rare among hunters, as they are among the general population.

The killing element is less common. Virtually all of us cause some animal deaths, whether we eat meat or not. But few of us do the killing ourselves. We don’t look directly at the animals. We don’t know how swift or tortured their deaths are. So we don’t need to think about it.

Those of us who do actually kill have to find a way to make peace with it.

For me, it’s not so much a moral judgment that death and killing are “okay” as it is an acceptance that death and killing are inevitable. Whatever I do, my existence causes some amount of animal death. Hunting is part of how I come to terms with that.

Of course, hunting involves a lot more than killing. It involves getting to know the land, the habits of the animals there, and more. Most of my time hunting, I don’t even see deer. When I do see them, I usually don’t get a clear, legal, ethical shot. If I do get that once-a-year shot at a deer, my highest priority is to make death instantaneous.

I don’t enjoy killing at all. But I kill anyway, because I don’t want to distance myself from it, always letting others do the killing for me.

You seem to have conflicting emotions while hunting. Is your conscience trying to tell you that you’re doing something wrong?

My feeling is that my conscience is telling me that I’m doing something difficult. Something troubling. Something that stirs up questions about what it means to be a living, eating being with a moral conscience.

In exploring my feelings about hunting and about other aspects of human relationships with nature and animals, I often think about a line from Barry Lopez’s book Arctic Dreams: “No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself.”

My aim is to eat honestly, to fully inhabit both my body and my heart. I want to eat, feel compassion, and celebrate life despite the blood. That involves some emotional and moral discomforts.

One of your recent entries was about how the way you honor the animal you’ve killed has evolved over time. Vegans are often annoyed with the idea of a post-killing prayer, since they think the best way to honor an animal is to not kill it — the animal is dead and so it can’t appreciate any prayer you are doing (and even if it were alive it wouldn’t understand the concept). Why do you think it’s important to honor an animal who isn’t aware that it’s being honored?

I understand that kind of criticism. If I’m convinced that an act is wrong, then any secondary act that seems to spin it, dress it up, or excuse it is going to offend me.

As a hunter, I’m not sure “honoring” is quite the word I would use. But I do find that making some ritual gesture is important to me. Partly, the impulse is simply to acknowledge the animal’s death, apologizing for the killing and giving thanks for the food.

Partly, the gesture helps me address and integrate the apparent contradiction of compassion and killing. This goes back to the Barry Lopez quote I mentioned before, to that primal difficulty of being both a creature with a need to eat and a creature with a moral conscience.

And, partly, the gesture comes out of the possibility that it matters to the animals, too. From most scientific perspectives, that sounds crazy. From a religious or spiritual view in which animals have no souls, it sounds misplaced. But traditions all over the world, especially the traditions of hunting cultures, describe animals as “animal persons.” In those traditions, animals are seen as communicative and intelligent beings, with a great deal of spiritual power, and rituals are seen as important ways of maintaining good relationships with them. I didn’t grow up in a tradition like that. Yet—as an agnostic—I think it’s worth staying open to the possibility.

You wrote an entry saying you are more okay with intentional harm (shooting a deer) than unintentional harm (hitting a deer with your car). From the vegan perspective, this is backwards. It’s better to kill something accidentally than intentionally because, as you put it in the comments, “One way to think of it is as the difference between involuntary deerslaughter and first-degree murder.”

Vegans justify eating the products of agriculture even though it is an attack on animals because that killing is the means rather than the end. But when you shoot something on purpose, that death was the intentional end, which makes you guilty of willful killing. Some vegans would even say that if you kill fewer creatures by killing intentionally rather than as a byproduct, it is still better to kill as a byproduct. You admitted feeling similarly when you first started hunting.

Why did you change your mind? Why do you believe that it’s better to shoot an animal and eat the flesh than to accidentally hit a deer with your car or eat the vegan agricultural products that lead to deaths that you never see?

This is a realization I’ve come to fairly recently, and I’m still sorting it out.

For many years, I felt that intentional harm to an animal was far worse than unintentional harm. It wasn’t until that car accident—where a doe ran into the side of our car as we went past and, fortunately, survived—that I realized my feelings had changed. I still don’t understand it fully.

Part of it is this: When I harm fellow creatures unintentionally, that harm serves no specific purpose. The animals that get maimed or killed on our highways, in our farm fields, and elsewhere are merely collateral damage. When I hunt, a purpose is served: death feeds life.

Another part goes back to your question about suffering: Unintentional harm, in agriculture and elsewhere, is often messy. I’m a volunteer firefighter and was once called to an accident scene where a car had hit a deer. The driver thought the deer had run away. But when I walked down the highway in search of the missing front license plate, I saw the doe drag herself into the underbrush. I called the game warden and showed him where she’d gone. She hadn’t gone far and, after he shot her, he told me what I already knew: she had been very badly injured.

I never want to do that to an animal. When I choose to cause harm, as I said above, my priority is to kill as swiftly and painlessly as possible.

If for some reason you couldn’t hunt anymore, how would you get your food? Would you give up meat again?

I don’t eat flesh foods every day.

Also, I’m not a subsistence hunter who absolutely depends on hunting. That’s a good thing, because in my first three years of deer hunting I dragged home exactly zero pounds of venison.

My wife and I still eat other flesh foods, especially chicken, which we buy from local producers. Those folks include another couple of ex-vegetarians who raise their own meat animals—and run a meat CSA—because they care deeply about the quality of those animals’ lives and about the swiftness of their deaths.

So, no, if I couldn’t hunt I wouldn’t give up flesh foods. I would still eat venison if it was given to me by other hunters. I would still fish. And I would still eat chicken. Maybe I’d start raising some of my own birds.

I interviewed locavore hunter Jackson Landers a while back and he admitted not being keen on the organ meats. Are you the same way? Do you feel like you should put the organs to use so that you can kill fewer animals?

I think it’s ideal to use as much of an animal as possible. That said, I don’t eat every last bit. For example, I find deer heart perfectly edible, but have more trouble with the taste of liver. I don’t generally eat the latter, though I will happily pack it home if I know someone who wants it.

Also, the function of the liver includes detoxification. So deer livers, like deer kidneys, sometimes have high concentrations of toxic metals such as cadmium. This is especially true in older deer. The Connecticut Department of Environmental Conservation, for example, has a deer liver consumption advisory on its website. I’m not keen on eating cadmium.

Because I don’t eat flesh foods every day, my decision not to eat one deer liver in a year doesn’t have an appreciable effect on the number of animals I eat.

How much hunting does it take for you to kill one deer? And how long does that meat last you?

The time it takes me to get a whitetail varies wildly. The past couple years—given the density of the deer population here, the state regulations, the places I know and have access to, my modest skills, and the vagaries of luck and whatever other forces are at work in the woods—I’ve hunted a few days in bow season and then a few days in rifle season before getting a deer. The day I get a deer, it might come after a few hours in the woods, or it might come after a few minutes.

But it took me more than three autumns to get my first. And I expect that I, like most deer hunters, have plenty of meatless hunting seasons in my future.

So the meat I get from hunting—though cost-efficient in terms of ecology, fossil fuel consumption, and the like—is not terribly cost-efficient in terms of time. Fortunately, my hunting also rewards me in ways that have nothing to do with food.

We eat that venison—say between 50 and 100 pounds, depending on the size of the deer—throughout the entire year, and also share it with friends and family. It’s a nutritionally and symbolically valuable part of our diet, but it’s not a daily staple. If it was, I would need to kill more deer.

The goals of veganism for most vegans are to reduce animal suffering and death, reduce their impact on the environment and sometimes to improve their health. Is veganism the best way to achieve these goals, or is locavore hunting more effective?

That’s a complicated question.

Nutritionally, it’s not my place to dispense advice on others’ health.

Ecologically, a vegan diet can be low-impact if you’re eating local, organic food produced through farming practices that minimize soil erosion and such. Hunting locally can be low-impact, too: the past two autumns, I killed a deer within a half-mile of home. But a lot of factors come into play. To make precise comparisons, we’d need to calculate everything from habitat displacement and the fossil fuel used in the production, transport, and storage of foodstuffs, to the manufacture of tools and gear such as tractors, shovels, rifles, and blaze orange vests.

In terms of animal suffering and death, it again depends on specifics and on how you measure things. In the case of the deer I’ve killed, thankfully there has been no suffering: just one death, virtually instantaneous, yielding 50 to 100 pounds of meat. Could I get the same volume and nutrient value in vegan foods, while causing fewer deaths or less suffering? I doubt it. But I suppose it’s possible.

In any case, hunting isn’t for everyone. It’s emotionally challenging, even for many hunters.

And if everyone wanted local, wild meat to be central to their diet, North America’s game populations couldn’t support it. In the US, for example, white-tailed deer numbers are roughly what they were before European contact. In some parts of the country, overpopulations threaten forest biodiversity as well as crop production, and wildlife managers are working hard to bring those numbers down. But, with over 300 million people in the US, we still only have about one whitetail for every ten humans. If the majority of us suddenly started hunting, game regulations would quickly adjust to protect wildlife from the kind of massive overhunting that almost exterminated many species in the late 1800s.

You were influenced to leave veganism by hearing the experiences of ex-vegans and ex-vegetarians who had negative long-term effects from avoiding animal products. Most vegans prefer to think that ex-veg*ans “did it wrong” and that the same thing would never happen to them. It is only once they have health problems themselves that they start to question this. Why were you open to listening to the ex-veg*ans even though you had no health problems of your own?

It’s true that I didn’t have any severe health problems. My system was just somewhat weak: low energy, active allergies, and the like. That might not have been enough to convince me to change my diet.

By that time, though, I had already realized that my vegan diet had impacts: that agriculture destroyed habitats, that many critters (especially deer) were getting killed to bring food to my plate. I had begun to see that I was part of nature. My existence affected other beings. There was no escape, no way to achieve innocence.

That opened me to the possibility of eating flesh and other animal products. I still cared about the kind of impact my diet had. But the illusion of “no impact”—which had made me highly resistant to changing my diet—was gone.

In the comments to the CNN article on you, an upset vegan said that you were never a real vegan, simply on the basis that you are no longer vegan. Some vegans do believe that if someone quits veganism, then they were never vegan to begin with. Why do you think vegans react that way? 

When someone makes a claim like that, I imagine that, for them, being “vegan” means much more than not eating animal products. I understand that. For me, too, veganism was much more than a diet. It was a way of living, a way of perceiving, and a way of trying to change the world for the better. It was both a system of ideas and a program for action.

I can’t speak for other vegans, but—putting myself back into the mindset I once held—I can imagine being angry at someone who abandoned veganism. I don’t know that I would have felt threatened, but I might have thought, “This guy’s convictions can’t ever have been as real and strong as mine are. He wasn’t ever a real vegan like I am.”

Changing my diet involved shifts at levels far deeper than my dinner plate.

Is there anything wrong with veganism?

I don’t think so.

Morally, it’s a fine stance to take, based as it often is on the admirable commitment to not harm mammals, birds, fish or even insects. My only concern is that some vegans delude themselves into believing that their diet is harm-free, which is exactly what I did for many years. What I ate was my business, but my holier-than-thou judgments were based on ignorance about the costs incurred by agriculture.

Nutritionally, I’m not so sure. I’m no expert and I try to remain open-minded. Long-term veganism may work for some folks. It just didn’t work for me and it hasn’t worked for a lot of other people I know. Nor did it work for Mahatma Gandhi, who tried veganism and went back to consuming milk. Nor did vegetarianism work for the current Dalai Lama, who tried it and went back to eating meat.

You mentioned making holier-than-thou judgments as a vegan. Is there something innate to veganism that turns people judgmental?

I don’t think this is particular to veganism. It can happen when people get invested in any kind of absolute moral certainty—dietary, religious, or otherwise.

I should note, too, that I know vegans and vegetarians who are not rigidly judgmental.

On the one hand, I think the capacity to make moral judgments is vitally important. Without it, we can easily slide into the murky realm of ethical relativism, where nothing is right or wrong. On the other hand, I need to temper my ethical perceptions and judgments by reminding myself that they aren’t perfect or absolute.

That’s part of what I’m getting at in my most recent post, about how Gandhi was simultaneously committed to the truth as he saw it and to the recognition that it was a “relative truth.”

Moral questions remain crucial—for me and, I think, for the world. I still pass judgments on others’ behavior. But I’ve come to a place where the quest for absolute certainty feels less relevant than it once did.

Heather is the co-founder and editor of SirensMag, which is where I saw her article Lessons Learned from a Vegan Diet, about how her month-long experiment with veganism influenced her eating habits for the better. But what most caught my eye was her reference to having been raised vegan.

One of my great fears is to be reincarnated into a vegan family (of course that assumes I won’t come back as a factory farm pig as punishment for eating meat), but if Heather was still flirting with veganism as a freewheeling adult, her childhood diet must not have completely traumatized her.

Nevertheless, I decided to ask her about it.  

How long were you a vegan as a child? Did it start in the womb? 

I believe it did start in the womb, as it was a lifestyle choice my parents had made several years prior. I remained vegan until around age 11, when my parents began introducing dairy products back into our diets. Eventually fish and poultry followed. I think the reasons had to do with convenience and cost more than anything. We were a big family—six kids—and it wasn’t as easy to find protein substitutes back then. I can still remember what soy milk circa 1980s tastes like: gritty, grainy, sour and just… bleah.

My mother and I remained the mostly-vegetarians in our household the longest—I never wanted to have anything to do with red meat and I eschewed most animal protein. In high school, I made the personal, political decision to be a strict vegetarian, a lifestyle I retained until my late 20s. I started eating fish basically on doctor’s orders. I was anemic and needed a better source of iron and protein. I maintain a mostly pescatarian diet to this day.

What were your parents’ reasons for raising you vegan?

It was the 1970s in Southern California. They were definitely hippies. However, as they explained our diet to me, their reasons seemed to be a mix between ethical beliefs and good health. My father was interested in organic farming—in fact, we had quite the mini crop in our backyard—and holistic medicine. It all just went together.

What was your childhood diet like?

Lots of mashed things: root vegetables, peanut butter, avocado, beans, apple sauce, and fruits and veggies of all kinds. I’m so thankful I developed a taste for all vegetables at a young age—turnips, kale and beets, even! There was also pasta, rice and early forms of soy protein. Again, the formulations weren’t all that great back then. Tofu was soggy and mushy, and imitation meat products more closely resembled fabric than the proteins they were emulating.

Did this cause any difficulties at school?

Most definitely. That fabric meat I mentioned? I call it that because I was constantly teased about my “fabric sandwiches” at school. Most kids ate bologna on white bread; I had Wham (fake, fabricy ham) sandwiches on sprouted whole grain with avocado. Today, I’d choose the latter in a heartbeat over the former, however, it’s not easy to appreciate food quality when you’re the object of ridicule. Cheetos and Fruit Roll Ups? None for me! Mom sent us to school with sliced heirloom tomatoes and date-and-almond bars. Again, I much prefer the healthy, tasty snacks of my youth today than processed pantry products. But sometimes a kid just wants a Cheeto.

I remember my first rebellious act of eating Lucky Charms—with real milk!—at a friend’s sleepover in the seventh grade. My mom often sent me to these events with my own boring puffed wheat or rice cereal and soy milk. Completely embarrassing to a preteen. So for this occasion, I hid my healthy stash and ate the marshmallow cereal with the rest of the girls. I nearly threw up. It’s literally a bowl of sugar. And the milk tasted so rich and odd to me. I’ve never eaten it—or any other high-sugar cereal—since. Today I can appreciate the importance of introducing young people to healthy, whole foods rather than processed junk.

Did your parents change their minds about veganism?

I’m not sure if they changed their minds. I think they still appreciate the philosophy behind it to this day. It’s just an easier lifestyle for a big family to eat more kinds of foods. Both of my parents—and all of my siblings—now eat pretty much everything. I remain the only one who flirts with vegetarian/vegan diets, and I’m very particular about any animal products I eat.

How does your family deal with you being the one semi-vegetarian holdout?

When I decided to be a vegetarian as a teen, my parents supported me. My mom would always make a separate, veggie-friendly version of dinner if the main dish included meat. She still does that when I come home to visit, despite the fact that my diet has changed.

Some anti-vegans like Nina Planck refer to raising a child vegan as child abuse, based on cases where vegan kids died of malnutrition, had severe spine damage by their teens or had symptoms of severe starvation, like bloated bellies (this last one mainly seems to happen with raw veganism). That ignores the majority of vegan kids who survive childhood just fine, though I will say that the kids I’ve seen on vegan parenting blogs often look unhealthy to me.

Still, from the point of view of vegan parents, there is no reason not to raise their children as vegans. They obviously aren’t trying to harm them — they feel they are doing them a favor. And you certainly don’t seem resentful over your vegan childhood. What would you say to the “veganism is child abuse” crowd?

I’m very offended by the “you’re a bad parent” talk out there. There’s always someone ready to point a finger and accuse another of failing their children because they didn’t subscribe the same tactics. I think that’s bullshit. It’s absolutely possible to feed and raise a child healthfully on a plant-based diet.

However, I also understand the challenges that presents. Children do have specific dietary needs that must be met. It can be harder to fulfill these on a vegan diet. I think this is the primary reason my family eventually seceded from the lifestyle. It just became too difficult to feed the brood properly—and affordably.

I also think there’s a difference between wanting to introduce your children to a healthy way of eating and forcing a political cause—literally—down their throats.

So far there don’t seem to be any cases of someone being vegan from birth to old age. Do you think it’s possible for someone to survive as a vegan child to a vegan retiree?

I think it’s definitely possible, however, unlikely. It comes down to curiosity and choice. When I was growing up, I rejected the “weird” foods my parents made me eat and rebelled by eating what the other kids did. That made me sick, both literally and psychologically. When I was able to decide, on my own, that I didn’t want to eat meat, it became a much easier thing to live with. I had MY reasons for doing it, not theirs.

Even today, as I go back and forth between strict vegetarianism and occasional meat-eating (still, never red meat; never), I do it for my reasons—health, hunger, diet, cleansing, political inspiration—whatever. My choice, my life, my food.

I found Sondra while researching my entry about the recent mood study on Seventh-Day Adventists, which found that vegetarian Adventists were in a slightly better mood than their meat-eating brethren. Sondra is an ex-Adventist who now blogs about her new faith at 8thDay4Life. In her entry SDA Health Message, she wrote:

I cannot find any scriptural foundation for teaching that your choice of diet and level of health will affect your ability to be holy.  The Seventh-day Adventist church, from its very origins, has made this a monumental issue.  Ellen White presented this as a vital part of process of sanctification, without which your very soul could be in danger.  I heard more than once as an Adventist that the health message was the “right arm of the gospel” and this avenue is often used to gain proselytes, using health seminars as a way to get their foot in the front door of people’s acceptance. 

We left the SDA church several years ago, but long after we left I was still absolutely convinced a vegan diet was the most healthy, even if I wasn’t following the regimen.  I had constant guilt and fear that I was damaging my health by eating animal products. 

This seemed to go along with what I was getting from my research — because Adventists believe that God vouches for the healthfulness of vegetarianism, Adventist scientists and study subjects are biased and any study involving them is on a shaky ground. But I am an outsider when it comes to Seventh-Day Adventism; I interviewed Sondra to see if I was on the right track.

Why exactly do Seventh-Day Adventists (SDAs) believe that vegetarianism is the proper diet for mankind?

They believe this mainly because [Adventist prophet] Ellen G. White said it was. As scriptural evidence, they point out it was given at Creation to Adam and Eve, therefore it was God’s original intent and highest wisdom regarding health. Also they use the story of Daniel and his friends who ate no meat and were wiser and healthier than the other young men being trained in Babylon after the exile — total disregard for the Jewish context there, and the miraculous nature of the story.

They also often refer to modern methods of meat production as cruel and unhealthy, which is true, but not a reason to not eat meat at all. 

SDAs often see vegetarianism as a way to show their devotion to God and church; if you do eat meat as an SDA, you may be viewed by the veg*an SDAs as less spiritual. (It is a diverse community, so I’m just speaking for the majority of situations). They believe Ellen G. White heard from God, so to disobey her is to disobey God. They will not admit they place her on this level of authority, but this is the common practice.

In my entry about the mood study on Seventh-Day Adventists, I listed terms that Adventists use in reference to spreading Adventist ideas of health. What do they mean when they talk about the “health message,” “medical missionaries,” “health evangelism,” and “the right arm of the gospel”?

Adventists will often give conflicting definititions on their terms when you ask them to pin down what they mean. I will explain them to you based on my own experience.

Health Message: This is the term used to refer to all the revelations Ellen White claimed to have received from God concerning diet and health. They believe this is an essential message given specifically to their church, and it goes beyond just food. She applied it to how people should dress, even admonishing that wigs were unhealthy.  

When observed correctly, the SDA health message can be a full-time job. It’s very easy to have a great deal of your life occupied with what not to eat (which can create awkward social situations) and acquiring the needed food products. Food prep activities can get really involved, like making your own imitation cheese, etc.

There are schools that Adventist purists attend to learn the ropes of the vegan/Ellen G. White lifestyle, based off The Eight Laws of Health. We had friends who trained at one of these places as “medical missionaries.” They believe health has a direct link to your spiritual life and affects your ability to be in tune with God (we often heard that a bad diet would cloud the mind). To evangelize people to follow the health message is to help them know God better.

The health message also gives them a foot in the door to start sharing their doctrines with people. They use it as a point of contact with their communities.

As far as “the right arm of the gospel,” we had a pastor once who used this phrase many times. I know SDAs who felt their standing with God would be jeopardized if they ate meat, especially pork or seafood.

Do Adventists hope to convert people through the health message and vegetarianism, or are they interested in spreading vegetarianism for the sake of it?

I think both probably. They so strongly believe it’s beneficial that they feel they are helping people even if they don’t convert.

Is the official church stance on diet a vegan one?

Only the very conservative, historic Seventh-Day Adventists are all the way vegan, or see it as part of the “gospel.” Even vegetarianism isn’t required — just very strongly encouraged. Eating “unclean” meat, however, is seen as extremely bad. I have known people who would commit sexual sin before they would eat bacon.

Does nutrition talk enter the Adventist church often? For instance, would this mood study be discussed at a church gathering?

Yes, absolutely — maybe even from the pulpit.

While doing research on the Adventist influence on nutrition, I saw stories about Adventist leaders encouraging Adventists to become dietitians or assistants to dietitians. Do Adventists become dietitians to spread the word of their prophet?

I can’t comment on their motives as individuals but it would seem logical. No other church I know of encourages their members in this way. Mormons also have some eating guidelines, but I do not know of any that see this as a special message on its own that they must share with the world.

The researchers for the Adventist mood study wrote that the study subjects (vegetarian Adventists and meat-eating Adventists) were unaware that the study was about vegetarianism. But wouldn’t Adventists in a nutritional study kind of assume it is a vegetarian study?

With anything involving food, yes, it would most definitely be in their minds. My simple explanation for this very unscientific subjective mood study is that SDAs who take their religion seriously, but eat meat, are living with guilt that would most definitely make them moody!

Do vegetarian Adventists pressure meat-eating Adventists about their diets?

Many SDAs are obsessive about their diets, so it’s a common topic for conversation, which can also be an indirect pressure to conform. Even though half the members might eat meat in a particular congregation, none would bring any to a potluck. It’s just a loaded issue for everyone. Meat-eating Adventists may often feel guilt and fear — lots of fear — for not eating correctly.

What are they afraid of?

Sickness, disease and God’s displeasure. I also am convinced that fear of death is a big player (subconsciously) here because of the Adventist doctrine on the spirit of man. They don’t believe you have one. Your spirit is simply your “breath” and that’s it. You basically cease to exist until the resurrection.

Now that I am in fellowship with Christians who believe they are with Christ at the point of their death, not depending on themselves, I see people who view death and dying in a much better light. When a body is all you have, it seems you can get a little too concerned over it.

How serious a crime is it for an Adventist to eat meat?

Often the food issues will be observed more strictly than morality. EGW taught that eating meat would make you more prone to anger and lust, so those who eat it are sometimes seen as less concerned about growing in their relationship with God. She also taught that only believers who did not eat any meat would be alive at the time of Christ’s return. The rest would die during the time of persecution preceding the second coming. (More fear factor there.)

Every time researchers do a nutritional study on Adventists, they point out that all Adventists don’t smoke or drink alcohol or caffeine, but some Adventists eat meat and some don’t. Why is meat the one exception for so many Adventists, especially considering how much guilt they feel for eating it?

My speculation is that it’s because the body actually needs meat and it’s very difficult to go against that. However, it’s been explained to me from their side that meat is a harmful addiction rather than a nutritional need.

The SDAs I know are not really that strict about caffeine, but smoking and alcohol are seen as “evil” - as in from the devil. Obviously the lack of smoking and abuse of alcohol would factor into the statistics, if they are valid at all.

One interesting thing noted in the book “Nourishing Traditions” (p. 200) by Sally Fallon is a 1994 study that showed SDAs actually have a much higher cancer rate than other people:

Researchers found that although vegetarian SDAs have the same or slightly lower cancer rates for some sites, for example 91 percent instead of 100 percent for breast cancer, the rates of numerous other cancers are much higher than the general US population standard.

And it goes on to list type and percentages.

Here is a Web page with quotes regarding the “health message” and a citation on the study mentioned in Fallon’s book. And this website has some of the outrageous things Ellen G. White taught about health.

What do Adventists get out of it when science vindicates vegetarianism?

Reinforced faith that their prophet knew things before her time… or just more guilt, depending on level of adherence.

When science defends vegetarianism, do Adventists automatically view that in religious terms, as a vindication of their prophet?

Yes.

And do they see any scientific skepticism of vegetarianism as an attack on their prophet?

As an SDA, I had no idea there was any scientific evidence to the contrary. I never dreamed there could be. Opposing scientific evidence was never even presented as something to defend against. We were taught how to defend against anti-vegetarian arguments, but I don’t remember hearing about any actual studies or research that contradicted what we believed. It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me to look for some, and I was amazed at how much evidence there was that conflicted with what I had always believed was “absolute truth” about health.

If vegetarianism was proven to be unhealthy, would that be a problem for the Adventist church?

It would not be possible to prove to them it was totally unhealthy, no matter what evidence you provide.

You were vegan for a while. How did that work out for you?

I only lasted six months as an SDA vegan, though I was raised lacto-ovo vegetarian. I tried the Hallelujah Diet later because even after I left the Adventist church I was convinced they were right about health. I lived in fear all the time that I was not eating well enough to be healthy.

I found the vegan diet very unsatisfying and didn’t have the self-control to stay on it. All the vegans I personally know have many health issues, and their diets are very carb heavy. I think veganism can be good for cleansing or during an illness, but not as a way of life.

What is your diet like now?

I now believe a healthy diet consists of non-processed whole foods, ideally local meats, vegetables and dairy. But my time and money are limited so I am not inclined to spend much of either on my diet now. My idea of healthy is completely different than it was and it’s also less of a priority. I mainly endeavor to eat simply, cooking as much as I can from scratch and avoiding pre-packaged food.

But the main thing is I don’t believe my health is going to affect my relationship with God.

After a vegan blog called me out for claiming that nobody becomes vegan purely for athletic purposes, I realized I could stand to learn a little more about vegan athletes. But then, my biases being what they are, I thought it might be even more interesting to learn about ex-vegan athletes. So I interviewed Devon Crosby Helms, a runner who tried out veganism and vegetarianism until she discovered that meat improves her athletic performance.

Why did you become a vegan athlete?

I never set out to become vegan. When I was in a holistic natural chef program in 2007, we were focusing on a strongly vegetarian diet and I was learning to cook all sorts of fun vegetarian and vegan dishes. I realized one day that I hadn’t been eating animal products for a whole month and I felt really good, so I decided that my body was responding to a vegan diet, and therefore I would make it into my lifestyle.

Was there an ethical component to your vegetarianism and veganism?

Not at all. I don’t mix food and morals — my favorite post-vegan read is The Shameless Carnivore. I became vegan for my health and said I would listen to my body if being vegan no longer supported that. Ultimately it didn’t.

Do you know of other athletes who became vegan purely because they thought it would improve their athletic abilities?

Yes, I have known plenty of people who thought becoming vegan would improve their athletic abilities. If you go vegetarian or vegan and are really eating a clean, organic, local, whole food diet, then it would help your athletic performance. But you can eat meat that meets that criteria as well.

Does being athletic make it easier or more difficult to stay vegan?

Much harder. Just getting in the number of calories alone on a whole food vegan diet is hard. I think it is important to note that my diet (whether or not meat is included) is predominately comprised of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, oils and alternative (gluten-free) grains and beans. I am gluten-intolerant and don’t eat soy. So when I was vegan, it was harder to get in the calories I needed.

Why did you stop being vegan?

A vegan diet stopped supporting my health and when I stayed on it anyway, I ended up with a whole host of problems that I still have to deal with now. I was rundown, anemic, had developed hypothyroid and had severe adrenal fatigue. And on top of that, being vegan made me neurotic about my food.

Since the founding principle of my veganism was listening to my body’s needs, I said that if and when my body needed or wanted meat again then I would willingly reincorporate it (at least, I thought it would be that simple).

Why wasn’t it that simple?

Before I went vegan, I had a healthy balanced relationship with food. I was in tune with my body’s signals and ate intuitively. When you take on a strict definition of yourself as an eater, the act of eating becomes much more conscious. You become hyper-aware of what is in everything.

Knowing what is in your food is good (In Defense of Food-style), but being rigid and neurotic is not. Being a strict, gluten-free, soy-free vegan meant I had to check on what was in every bite of food when I didn’t prepare it myself. When you exert that much control over your diet, your body’s natural signals get drowned out. It has taken me a long time to re-learn the the physical awareness and eating intuition I had before I was vegan.

Did you like that the vegan label helped you to define yourself?

No, I hated that anyone would define me by my food choices. I think it is very confining and can be dangerous to be defined by food. To me, food should be about nourishing your body and being healthy. Labels are marginalizing and when I stopped being vegan, I was ridiculed by some vegans. I even had a good friend stop being friends with me because I was no longer vegan. It is kinda funny since I was a meat eater when we were first friends.

All the recent ex-vegan interviews I’ve posted have been with women. Maybe women are more likely to become vegan (and thus ex-vegan), but in your entry Define to undefine to define myself, you mentioned talking to a doctor who said protein was an even bigger issue for women than men because women don’t produce as much testosterone. Do you think it’s harder for women to stay vegan than men?

I do think it is harder for women to stay vegan while participating in endurance sports. I also feel like a lot of athletic women go vegan to cut calories and lose weight, and ultimately that is going to be defeating in one way or another. It is harder for woman to retain muscle in general and I think that to be on a vegan diet and retain your lean mass, you have to be very meticulous about your nutrition.

You were vegetarian for a while after quitting veganism. Why did you get back into meat?

When I finished my first 100 mile race in 2008, I knew that my body was going to want some weird and funky things. After not craving it or desiring it for a year, suddenly all I could think about was a egg and cheese burrito. I had one and didn’t crave another. Over time I got back into eggs and dairy, until I found out I was allergic to eggs (after another one and a half years, I am no longer allergic to them, thankfully).

I started eating meat about four months after my first bite of dairy and eggs. I was craving it seriously after long runs. My body was demanding it. Turkey and lamb were the usual desired meats and it’s funny because before being vegan, I didn’t like either.

In the entry Peanut Butter as a Metaphor a while back, you described your relationship with food as a vegan, and “neurotic” would be a good way to describe it. Have you become more relaxed about food now? Are you still afraid of a lot of foods?

I definitely fell down the rabbit hole with my feelings toward food when I was in my culinary program. After learning about all the things that are nutritionally “bad,” I tried to give my body the best fuel, and I just took it too far. I got to a point where I didn’t consume coffee, alcohol, animal products, gluten, soy, peanuts or sugar. And pretty much every food choice made me anxious.

Now I have a very even keel about food. I eat a healthy diet, but I know that enjoying treats and dining out is an essential part of staying balanced — body, mind and spirit. So no, I am not afraid of a lot of foods anymore. Being anxious and neurotic about food is more detrimental to your health than “bad” food is.

I still often choose vegan foods (for instance, every day I have a large salad for lunch), but now it’s a real choice, rather than the only thing I am able to eat that meets my food criteria. I like being free to eat what I want and not have it be a declaration of who I am, or even who I am as an eater.

Can anybody be vegan if they care enough, live in an industrialized country with supplements and substitutions, and do everything they can think of to stay healthy? Many vegans would say “yes,” but what about star-crossed veg*ans? Should people with allergies to vegan staples like gluten, soy and nuts get a pass for guilt-free animal product consumption? Does an inability to digest beans grant you immunity for murder? Or are the rules of veganism absolute, making it wrong to participate in animal suffering no matter what?

Amy Madden’s blog The Veggie Patch was about being a near-vegan while afflicted with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, soy intolerance and (self-diagnosed) fructose malabsorption, conditions that rendered most vegan foods off-limits. If Amy could pull off veg*anism, almost anybody could.

But she couldn’t.

How long were you vegetarian?

Just over three years.

Did you have to consider any medical conditions before going vegetarian?

I had a lifelong history of stomach problems and had been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome before I went vegetarian. The first thing my GP said to me when I told him about my decision to go vegetarian was that it would be interesting to see what it did to my digestion.

I was hoping things would get better for me, rather than worse. And while I knew about my intolerance to fruits and fruit juices, I hadn’t yet stumbled upon anything about fructose malabsorption so it wasn’t a part of the decision. 

Your fructmal hadn’t been diagnosed yet?

I still haven’t been formally diagnosed with fructose malabsorption. What I have known for years is that even small amounts of fruit upset my stomach. When I looked into it further, I realized that a lot of the other foods I had trouble with were also on the do-not-eat list for fructose malabsorption.

I do hope to get tested properly one day, but it is expensive and can be somewhat inconclusive for some people, so for now it’s more about avoiding what I know makes me feel most unwell.

What did you get out of vegetarianism? Was it mainly a way to avoid the guilt you felt about eating meat after learning about factory farming?  

I have always loved animals. It never mattered if the animal was one that I knew or not — if it was hurt or injured or I perceived it to be unloved or mistreated in any way, then I would feel a sad, hollow feeling and want to help it.

When I was young, like most people, I didn’t think about where the meat on my plate came from. It wasn’t until about four years ago that I actually looked into it. I found a link for Meet Your Meat, managed to get through the first two minutes and knew then that I just couldn’t continue to let animals suffer in that way for my dietary preferences.

Were you ever an aspiring vegan?  

Definitely. About six months into my vegetarianism I learned about the cruelty involved with eggs. I had never been a big egg eater so it really wasn’t an issue to cut those out of my diet. Deep down I knew I could never be vegan, though, as dairy was one of the few foods I could tolerate in any kind of quantity. I am aware, however, of the cruelties involved in the dairy industry and it was a struggle. I would use rice or almond milk as often as I could to replace dairy milk, and nut creams to replace cream.

What vegan foods can’t you eat? 

Despite all of my allergies and intolerances I have not had any formal testing done. Allergy testing in Australia is expensive and the medical community does not believe in intolerance testing in any form other than through elimination diets. I have followed a few of these in my lifetime but have never had any conclusive results. There are certain foods, though, that definitely make me feel violently ill. Soy is the main problem.

I knew going into my vegetarianism that I was, at the very least, soy intolerant. Half a glass of soy milk is too much for my system to handle and just a few pieces of tofu will upset my stomach for hours. Any more than that is a recipe for disaster.

Likewise with legumes. I tolerate some more than others. I was restricted to one-fourth cup per meal of red split lentils, black turtle beans and cannellini beans. I can’t have more than one-eighth cup of any other types, and even then I have to be having a good day to tolerate them at all. Chickpeas are off-limits altogether. The pain they cause my insides is indescribable. Sadly peanuts are a legume and are also generally off the list (although I often indulge in peanut butter and regret it later).

Add to these, fruit. When I say fruit, I mean almost all fruit. I do okay with a small amount of applesauce in baking but even five strawberries in a smoothie will upset my stomach for hours, sometimes days. Different fruits cause different reactions, but I’ve yet to find one where I can actually eat an entire piece and be okay. Certain vegetables are also a problem for me. Cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage aren’t tolerated at all. Others I have to limit. I can eat small amounts, but like legumes, only once a week and only if I am well beforehand. Eggplant and celeriac are two that I have issues with in particular. Fibrous greens are another. I can eat some, but not large quantities.

Too much dairy will also give me issues. I can have a cup of milk and be fine, and some days I can have two, but for the most part two is beyond my limit.

Last but not least, certain grains aren’t tolerated well. Oats in particular I really can’t eat at all, and I have to limit whole grains. I eat as many as I can, but two pieces of wholemeal bread is roughly my daily limit.

I was intolerant to almost everything I was able to eat within vegetarian guidelines.

With all those problem foods, what were some typical meals for you?

At first I was very experimental. I did cook beans and lentils etc. But as they caused more and more pain for me I slowly started drifting away from them. Towards the end, most nights were literally “meat” and potatoes. I would have some kind of seitan (seitan sausage, or cutlet that had been marinated or a seitan/potato/white bean burger pattie) with vegetables. Most often white or sweet potato, steamed broccoli and either carrot or spinach. Very plain and very boring. I started to eat a lot of potato meals too. I would use Indian spices to jazz them up. Couscous also played a large part in things. 

I tried to give myself some variety by adding paneer, but it couldn’t be a regular thing because it has a very high fat content and eating that much cheese every day wouldn’t be a good thing!

You were a star-crossed vegetarian. As one of the commenters on your post about leaving vegetarianism said, sometimes your body doesn’t go along with what your mind wants. Why do some people fight fate and go veg*an despite the near impossibility of it for them?

For me it was always about the animals. I was uncomfortable with the fact that they are bred to die. Not just in factory farms — we have fewer of those here in Australia than they do in the States — but the whole idea of slaughterhouses just made me want to cry. The thoughts and fears that must go through their heads as they walk to their death is unimaginable.

For me, preventing the suffering of them was far more important to me than my food intolerances, and for a while, my own health. I think for most who battle on with it, it is because their vegetarianism stems from compassion for animals rather than for health or environmental reasons.

Did the odds against your vegetarianism make your ability to maintain it more satisfying in a way?

I wish I could say yes to this question, but no. I found it all very frustrating and difficult and I wavered a few times about a my decision to remain vegetarian.

My husband and children are all omnivores and because all vegetarian convenience products here contain soy, I was left cooking everything from scratch. I would spend hours in the kitchen making seitan from scratch and veggie burgers without too many beans or whole grains. Then come dinnertime I would have to cook one meal for me and one meal for the rest of the family who all refused to eat vegetarian food. It was truly exhausting.

Have you heard from people with other conditions that make veg*anism almost impossible for them? 

I actually only ever heard from one person with fructose malabsorption who was vegetarian and I know that she gave up her vegetarianism as the fructose friendly diet is quite heavy in meats and non-wheat grains while being light in vegetables and fruits.

How would you have reacted if someone had told you before your breaking point that you shouldn’t be vegetarian with all those restrictions, that you should look out for yourself first and eat meat?

A couple of people actually had suggested to me that I was not doing the right thing for my body. I don’t think I reacted badly but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Mostly their queries were met with silence because I knew deep down that it was plausible that they were correct, but I didn’t want to admit it to them or myself.

What was your breaking point when you realized you couldn’t go on as a vegetarian?

About six months ago. I was suffering depression, anaemia (which has been a lifelong issue for me and nothing to do with the vegetarianism, however it did add to my overall health issues), I was tired constantly and I really felt as though I was lacking essential vitamins and minerals in my diet. I had a general feeling of something being missing and of needing more nourishment. 

I had blood work come back from the doctor that showed I was anaemic, and that my cholesterol was rising despite being a young female on a vegetarian diet; I am not overweight and I’d never had cholesterol problems in my life. I felt like I was bordering on malnutrition (which I have suffered from before, so am aware of the symptoms).

How did you know meat would help?

I didn’t know for sure that it would. It originally started as me just feeling as though I needed more food options. I introduced fish into my diet for a few weeks and felt a little better but not a lot so I added chicken. I decided to give it a three-month trial and re-assess how I felt at the end. If I didn’t feel any better I would return to my vegetarian diet, but if it helped, I would stick with it. And it did help.

You noticed improvements after eating meat again?

Much to my dismay, yes. I’m still tired a lot, but I no longer feel as though I’m lacking in essential vitamins and minerals. I haven’t yet had my yearly blood test to check for sure how all my levels are but from the way I’m feeling I’m sure there will be an improvement.

I haven’t ruled out vegetarianism forever. America has many vegetarian and vegan food options that aren’t available in Australia yet; maybe it will eventually be easier here. Or maybe one day I will learn exactly what my condition is and vegetarianism will become a diet I can follow while remaining healthy.

Most vegans allow an exception to the not killing animals rule when it comes to self-defense or immediate survival. Your condition is in that territory but since you were able to survive for a time as a vegetarian, that indicates that being veg*an is at least somewhat doable for you. Do you think you can claim the survival exception on this one, or is there an argument that you should have suffered on as a vegetarian for the animals?

I think I had actually moved beyond suffering to a point where I was going to become seriously ill if I didn’t change my diet. While I was eating enough calories in a day to not lose weight, I certainly wasn’t thriving. As I mentioned above, my cholesterol had doubled, my iron stores were non-existent and my blood pressure was that of a dead person’s (according to my GP). So I guess my answer to that would be yes, I can claim survival on this one, although I don’t know that I’d ever phrase it like that myself.  

Veganism argues that animal product consumption is wrong in an absolute sense, so individual conditions can’t affect this. There are no health excuses that make it justifiable to murder a human, after all. What does it say about veganism, then, that some people just cannot be vegan? Is the philosophy flawed in some way? Is the wrongness of inflicting animal suffering and death not as absolute as veganism would have us believe?

This of course can only be my opinion on the matter. Yes it is never justifiable to murder a human, however, if you look at evolution, for the most part humans have had to kill animals in order to survive. I hate to use the “food chain argument,” but it is true that for many, many years humans have hunted animals for food. Animals themselves don’t give it a second thought to hunt and eat each other — they do what they have to — and for those of us with food allergies and intolerances I believe that it is also a matter of doing what we have to in order to survive.  

Yes, I suppose the vegan philosophy is a little flawed, again though, this is just my opinion, derived from my experience as a vegetarian, and I’m sure there are many out there who will think that my beliefs are flawed. Having a family of meat eaters and continuing to purchase and cook meat for them meant that I never really stopped seeing meat as food. I stopped seeing it as an option for me but I always held strong to the belief that people were entitled to choose what it was that they put into their bodies.

For me it is ultimately not about the death of the animal, but the life they have beforehand and the way in which they are killed (I always believed more in welfarism than abolitionism). I would invite any vegan who takes issue with those of us who cannot be vegan for health reasons to attempt a vegan diet with the restrictions that some of us have to live with and see if they can remain healthy for any length of time.

Should vegans be more lenient and make a point of granting exceptions to people who have conditions that make it incredibly difficult to thrive without animal products?  

I will go out on a limb, generalize and loosely say yes. For a lot of people who don’t have food intolerances or allergies, it can be hard to understand just how difficult it is to feel well while eating the bare essentials. Food is definitely something that most people take a little for granted.

However, I have found that while there are vegans who hate and condemn people for their dietary choices, there are far more who are understanding and supportive. I have numerous vegan friends I made while blogging and they have been nothing but 100 percent supportive. I thought I would be sent at least a couple of nasty messages or comments but it didn’t happen.

Many ex-vegans say they didn’t thrive on a vegan diet, even though they don’t have conditions as restrictive as yours. But without the excuse of multiple intolerances, should they have tried harder? Or is health a good enough reason even when they have more choices than you did?

Again, I know there are people out there who think the health angle is a cop-out. Even with less restrictions than I had, a person has to really want it in order to succeed with it. Being vegetarian is tough, particularly in countries where the options available are limited. For example, in Australia we don’t even get all the vegetables available overseas. Spaghetti squash doesn’t exist where I live, neither do collard greens or kale.

For some they try their best, for others I guess it’s a phase and they find it all too much work and effort. I suppose the people who gave it up out of laziness rather than for actual health reasons could have tried harder.  

I don’t believe, though, that people who did their best should have tried harder. I believe (again) that they have the right to do what works for them and if that means eating meat, well hopefully they will have at least learned enough during their vegetarian journey to make more informed decisions about their food.

Do you feel guilty about eating meat?

Definitely. I struggle with it. The majority of the meat I currently eat is hidden and I still prefer vegetarian meals. I haven’t really revised my ethics so much as try to repress them. I am trying desperately to pretend that I don’t know where the food on my plate has come from but it’s hard and I don’t know that I will ever be comfortable sitting down to a steak or a chunk of meat.

Do you enjoy meat at all, or just see it as an unfortunate necessity?  

I do occasionally eat something that I enjoy. I enjoy mince a little at the moment, I think because the texture of it is very similar to the seitan that I used to make, and I will enjoy the occasional bit of chicken. For the most part, though, it’s still an unfortunate necessity at this point.

How does your husband (“Mr. Un-Veg” on your blog) feel about your dietary change?  

Mr. Un-Veg is quite happy with my dietary change. For the last two years, cooking his meal often entailed throwing a chunk of meat or chicken onto one of those electric grills until it resembled a rubber shoe sole and serving it up with vegetables on the side. Now that I’m eating meat again, I’m back to cooking more exciting meat-based meals and I haven’t once brought the electric grill out of the cupboard, so his belly is happy again.

Does he call you Mrs. Un-Veg now?

He does occasionally joke and call me Mrs. Un-Veg, but he also knows how much my vegetarianism meant to me and how hard it was for me to give it up. He has always backed me, both when I went vegetarian and during my transition back.

What happens when you are the first of your vegan friends to betray the cause? Will your friends accept and love you despite your return to selfish eating? Or might there be a little judgment of your ethical failure?

I was lucky in a sense. I was one of the last holdouts in my group of vegan friends, so by the time I finally put myself before the animals, my friends were more likely to be happy than to hate me.

That was not the case for Jessica Pelkey. 

What was your diet like before you became vegan?

I was raised on standard American fare. My mother made staples like ground beef tater-tot casserole, chicken enchiladas with the spice packet, tacos, open-face hot turkey sandwiches, and peaches from a can. I started drinking coffee when I was 11 and drank soda on a daily basis. In high school, I became very aware of what I ate and tried dearly to be anorexic or bulimic. I didn’t accomplish either and instead felt guilty about everything I ate. Shortly after graduating high school I stopped drinking coffee and soda altogether.

What got you into veganism?

I became vegan literally overnight when I was 18 years old. I was having dinner with a couple of folks and one of them was vegan and gave me a brochure called “Why Vegan?”

She brought “Why Vegan?” pamphlets to dinner? Animals must love her. Were you taken aback at first?

At the time I didn’t know much about veganism and when I asked her for details, she jumped right on me. She was volunteering with Vegan Outreach so she had all those activism materials on her. It wasn’t too awkward because, even though she was zealous, she only got on her soapbox after I prompted her.

I took it home, read it, cried about how awful factory farms were, and was totally vegan from that day forth (as far as I understood it; it took me about a month to get caught up on all the byproducts). I quickly adjusted to not being able to eat food at parties and always having to order fries when out with non-vegan friends. I wrote down a bunch of pro-vegan quotes and put them in my wallet to remind myself why I was vegan.

What were the quotes?

Some examples: “Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.” - George Bernard Shaw. “Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man himself will not find peace.” - Albert Schweitzer. “Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” - Elie Wiesel

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality” would have been a good one to add to Wiesel’s quote. Except that most vegans don’t believe in hell because they weren’t raised religious, or have stopped believing in their family’s religion. Was that the case with you?

You read me perfectly. I went to a Lutheran grade school and Catholic high school. When I graduated high school, I was on the war path: god didn’t exist and Christianity was the most blasphemous BS religion of all the religions. I dropped it like it was hot shortly after became vegan.

Do you see any similarities between veganism and religion?

I commonly used to say that veganism was my religion. I do see lots of similarities. It’s hyper-moralized and the members try to outdo each other. It can extend beyond just diet, clothing and product use into fighting the man however possible: don’t wear Nike, don’t support Silk Soy, don’t feed your dog Iams, don’t shop at Safeway, don’t don’t buy any clothes produced overseas, don’t do anything at all ever again.

I thought that meat eaters were living in their own personal hell by ingesting the flesh/milk of animals who died cruelly; as though somehow, the way the animal died would transfer into the consumer. I thought that people who ate meat deserved to be fat and have clogged up arteries. They would die before me and that would be their punishment.

I have always been a self-righteous person, no matter what I have going on in my life. So feeling like I had been lied to my whole life about what to eat and where my food came from turned me into a turbo bitch. Being vegan gave me an easy way to feel like I was more ethical, more kind, more alive than other people. Overall I thought everyone who wasn’t vegan wasn’t worth being close friends with.

Do omnivores underestimate the extent of vegan judgment?

Absolutely. I judged everyone who wasn’t vegan. The only way someone could be okay by me was if they were vegan. Thus, the main/only connection I had with lots of my friends was our veganism.

When I would be hanging out with all vegans, we would trash the fuck out of anyone we knew that had stopped being vegan. If someone was once vegan and went back to eating meat/eggs/dairy, we all agreed that they had never really cared to begin with. I told a vegan friend about people I met at school who called themselves vegan but would eat stuff like M&Ms or eggs from someone’s backyard chickens. We agreed that they were totally phony and shouldn’t get to call themselves vegan.

I also judged vegans. I lived with a vegan friend and looked through her cosmetics and found stuff that had trace animal products in them. I thought she was phony from then on and told friends of ours about her offending shampoo.

But I got judged by vegans too. I ate honey for a good three out of my five and a half years of veganism. In the vegan community I was in, this was a gross violation. One girl called me out at a vegan potluck in front of 20 other vegans, saying I wasn’t really vegan if I ate honey.

Did you judge lacto-ovo vegetarians?

Oh god. I thought lacto-ovo vegetarians were so lame. Why didn’t they just close the deal and become vegan? I don’t know how many times I heard someone say, “I would be vegan but I could never give up cheese!” I thought they were weak-willed.

What got you out of veganism?

I felt good and healthy for a solid five years and never thought twice about my choice to be vegan. I thought that I was going to be vegan until I died, since obviously the vegan diet is nutritionally and morally superior. Things changed for me last summer.

During the last six months I was vegan, I ramped up my fitness regime. I was doing a three-day-a-week boot camp of running and trapeze. I ate peanut butter every single day, along with gangs of beans and greens, and experimented with supplements. But I could not feel satisfied no matter what I ate. I became mildly obsessed with eating eggs.

I felt I had to choose between being vegan and being athletic. I love fitness too much to scale back in that area. Veganism had to go. I started with eggs, then went to dairy, then ate fish, and finally polished it all off with filet mignon a few weeks ago in DC at the Daily Grill. YUM! I now eat eggs almost every day and I feel 10x more energetic. I also don’t crave sugar like a fiend. (Vegans tend to be sugar addicts and I was no exception.)

Even though there are plenty of scientific studies that give credence to what I experienced — short-term effects of veganism are positive, but long-term effects are negative — I know most balls-to-the-walls vegans would disagree vehemently with me and mention Brenden Brazier and Carl Lewis. I don’t have opinions about Brenden Brazier’s veganism. I only know about my own.

A lot of vegans say that veganism isn’t a sacrifice. Did you feel that way as a vegan? Do you feel differently after the filet mignon?

I did not feel like being vegan was a sacrifice at all. I always used to say it was “the least I could do.” As a vegan, I didn’t realize how much I was missing out on by not being able to share meals with my family and do small things like eat cookies my friend’s three-year-old daughter bakes for me. I feel much more connected to other people without the roadblock of my eating habits/holier-than-thou judgments in the way.

How did you convince yourself that it might be morally tolerable to eat animal products?

I went on a camping trip with a bunch of my vegetarian friends. I sat by the fire and told them I was craving eggs like a crazy woman. I was having a mild identity crisis and actually said to them, “Who am I if I am not vegan?”

They all said that I should “listen to my body.” When I told them that my vegan friends were going to disown me, they said the obvious, “then they’re not really your friends.” Looking back, I don’t think I needed too much coaching, just reassurance that I wasn’t a terrible, evil person if I decided to eat eggs.

How did the vegans in your life react to the bad news?

After a few months of veganism I had dated a 31-year-old vegan tattooer. He helped usher me into the lifestyle, as he had been vegan for 10 years at that point. It was through him that I found the community that now snubs me.

I had kept in touch with him even though we’ve been broken up for a few years. But I told him that I was eating eggs and dairy and he flipped shit — he was genuinely angry with me. Later I sent him an email about some art he’d made, and he never wrote back. Eventually he flat-out told me that he was distancing himself from me since I wasn’t vegan anymore. This is impressive because after we broke up I slept with his best friend and he didn’t distance himself from me then. Apparently not being vegan is a worse offense. 

I called two vegan friends before I ever ate an egg to ask what they thought. One of them told me I should do what felt right to me. The other one said I should try to figure out what my egg craving meant and satisfy it another way.

I knew that news would travel fast, and it did. I walked into a vegan restaurant that I used to eat at frequently and the guy ringing me up was wearing a shirt that said, “Never trust an ex-vegan.”

That same day I walked up to a table of vegans I knew and one dude wouldn’t even talk to me. It was sad because he looked like he had to try so hard to not be friendly. He felt he was doing the right thing by shunning me. One vegan friend told me that she believed my mind wanted eggs and not my body. Another friend has posted things on her facebook wall that leave me wondering if they’re aimed at me. Things like, “go and stay vegan” as a status update.

My vegetarian friends seem to think it’s kinda funny and haven’t reacted poorly at all.

How did the non-vegans in your life react to the good news?

A lot of my non-vegan friends are surprised because I was staunch for such a long stretch. I can’t count how many times people have said “welcome back” to me. Where I’m being welcomed back to, I’m not sure. They laugh when they see me eat meat now. Really, though, they don’t care. Only the vegans care.

There’s a good chance your vegan ex-friends will eventually want to switch the placement of that ex-. Could you see being friends with them again as future repentant ex-vegans?

I could be friends with most of them again. The vegan social culture is different from American culture en masse and I expected them to react poorly to my decisions. It will be interesting as time goes on to see who else leaves the vegan club. I wish them no ill will and I’m just happy to be out from under the crushing dogma myself.

When you became vegan, you felt like you’d been lied to your whole life. Now that you’re an ex-vegan, do you feel like veganism lied to you?

Yes. When I was vegan I thought I had found the perfect way to eat. I believed it was the only moral lifestyle and also the healthiest diet for my body. Now I don’t subscribe to any diet with a name and I’m wary of ever doing so again. I weightlift and lots of people at my gym are into the paleo diet. I just can’t jump on the bandwagon because I lost faith in the idea that someone can write a book and design a diet that will meet everyone’s needs. Even if I ate a paleo-type diet, I don’t think I would rep the name.

Furthermore, I am not here to say that veganism is the wrong diet for anyone. It just didn’t work for me long term.

Are you self-righteous in your ex-veganism?

I don’t think so. Mostly I’m just bummed about how my vegan friends have treated me. It’s hard for me to continue to be supportive of their way of life when they’re so hostile about mine.

How do you avoid guilt now that you eat meat again?

I don’t avoid it. I live in Seattle and you can’t go anywhere without encountering vegetarian/vegan advocacy. When I think about the animals who are living in awful conditions, I still feel upset about their shitty lives. What has changed is that I don’t feel like I am going to fix their situation with my diet.

Pamela is pursuing a PhD in philosophy and education, mostly studying moral education and school reform. I would have loved to talk to her about educational philosopher John Holt’s unschooling movement (she’s a fan), but Pamela was an ex-vegan and first I needed to find out — how could someone who once knew it was evil to eat even trace amounts of animal products ever go back to eating meat? She writes a blog called This Field is Required, and in the entries “Why Being Vegan Can Be Bad For You” and “More Thoughts On Veganism and Well-Being”, she answered this question. So really I just wanted her to say it over here. 

What got you into vegetarianism and then veganism?

When I moved across the country and began graduate school, I was broke, living alone and clueless about cooking. So I started eating even less meat than usual (I’d never been much of a carnivore). It was eventually down to one or two servings per week, almost exclusively at restaurants. Because I was eating less meat already and realized I didn’t miss it much, I was slowly becoming more receptive to arguments for veg*nism.

Then I adopted my first dog, Chip, as an adult from a rescue group. He had apparently been abandoned and spent some time as a stray, which left him with severe separation anxiety. He would literally have a panic attack every time I even looked like I was leaving the house. I was amazed at the obvious complexity of his range of emotions, and the depth to which he experienced them. It made no sense to spend hundreds of dollars on his medical care — and a doggie behaviorist, even — and then to turn around and eat other animals who were just as emotionally sensitive as Chip.

So, I started feeling rather guilty about eating meat and became vegetarian soon thereafter. But on account of the vegans’ arguments for the inconsistency of vegetarianism, that dairy and egg production methods are at least as cruel as that of meat production, I ended up going vegan another month or two after that.

Behaving like a vegetarian apparently helped you decide to become one. Something similar happened to me. One night at a buffet restaurant (I’m not ashamed to say it was Golden Corral) I unintentionally got only vegetarian foods. The friend who was with me asked if I was vegetarian. I looked at all the vegetarian food on my tray and said “Yes.” I didn’t eat meat again until ten years later. I had already been considering vegetarianism, so it wasn’t totally random, but it also seemed to relate to what you wrote on your blog: “Your value judgments and deliberative processes can themselves be altered by ways in which you already act.” Are we not really as moral and rational as we like to think?

Moral psychology is a fascinating but possibly disillusioning field, because it exposes so many shortcomings in human reasoning as to invite a general skepticism toward people’s choices and justifications.

I think these cases have a lot to do with cognitive dissonance. There is a psychic cost associated with the mismatch between beliefs and behaviors, so we naturally try to get one in line with the other. This can be accomplished by either changing the belief or the behavior, and maybe that happens somewhat haphazardly. Holding values deeply, reflectively, and consistently remains possible, but not without an awareness of the biases and barriers that threaten critical thinking.

You were vegan for nine months. How did you quit?

I didn’t just wake up one day, decide to quit being vegan, and start force feeding myself foie gras. Rather, I had spent a while struggling with some very strong cravings for animal foods, particularly eggs. Some people interpret cravings as our bodies telling us what they need. That sounds plausible, but I don’t know that there’s any evidence for it. The cravings could also have just been related to the fact that animal foods had become forbidden fruits, so to speak.

I merely gave myself permission to eat animal foods when and if I felt that doing so was right for me, all things considered.

Why did you feel the need to leave veganism?

There were a few aspects to it. One was the cravings I just mentioned. Another important factor was my growing disillusionment with sources of vegan nutritional information. It often seems that everyone giving out nutritional advice has an agenda –- the vegetarians and vegans, the Paleolithic eaters, the government –- and that everyone’s data just happens to justify their pre-existing beliefs about what we should eat.

In general, I have a lot of respect for evolutionary biology, and so I became concerned that there was some truth to the suggestion that people aren’t fully evolved to eat a whole lot of grains, or processed foods in general.

Much of my vegan diet consisted of these items, and it began to feel like wishful thinking to suppose that the diet is the best from a nutritional point of view.

Some vegans are going to think, “Aha! She ate too many grains and processed foods. No wonder she didn’t feel healthy as a vegan. If only she had followed nutritionist Jack Norris’s advice, she could have stayed vegan.” Do you think that you “did veganism wrong” and could have figured out a way to make it work if you tried harder?

No, and I think that vegans who say those things to ex-vegans who made good faith attempts at veganism are putting a mean-spirited face on the animal rights movement. I have quite unstable blood sugar, and this was exacerbated by veganism because of the low amounts of protein that plant foods provide. Surely it was enough protein to stay alive, but maybe not optimally. I had serious reservations about eating large amounts of soy foods, and the only unequivocal defenders of them were people committed to the veg agenda.

I could have eaten fewer grains and processed foods but, from what I understand, people on more like a raw diet fare even more poorly health-wise in the long term than ordinary vegetarians or vegans. Evolutionarily indicated diets that reject grains and processed foods make up for them with meat, raw milk and eggs, not with pounds and pounds of fruits and vegetables. So that was more of a gamble than I was willing to take with my own health. And people are at least as morally obligated to take care of themselves as they are obligated to take care of any animal.

Did anything other than nutritional fears cause you to reconsider veganism? 

Most of all I was disturbed by some of the attitudes that being vegan caused me to develop. I have what you might call an obsessive personality. This probably partially explains why people like me who become interested in animal issues jump so quickly into veganism, finding its logical consistency and purity attractive.

Over the nine months I spent vegan, I experienced emotional ups and downs, between feeling proud and good about my lifestyle to feeling despair at the plight of animals and disgust toward everyone around me for their failure to see the light.

Ultimately, I think the way in which being vegan often compromises social relationships is the biggest indictment against it. How are you supposed to fully appreciate your spouse, parents, friends, etc. and enjoy spending time with them when your moral ideology has you focusing on how totally nonchalant they are about torture and death?

Veganism provided the perfect opportunity for me to obsess about something while pretending that it was totally justified. I am surely not the only vegan for whom the diet serves that purpose. Quitting veganism turned out to be essential on my own journey in fighting obsessive tendencies.

Can you think of specific instances when your vegan ethics came between you and another person?

For sure. My husband, then fiancé, moved in with me while I was vegan. He was a really good sport about it, and ate vegan dinners that I prepared, but had non-vegetarian breakfasts and lunches. I was pretty disgusted by having animal foods around, and I tried hard not to think about how little he apparently cared about the animals.

I also had some trouble with my mom. I became vegan after a period in which I had started exercising and eating a healthier omnivorous diet, and had lost around 30 pounds. My body mass index had fallen to squarely in the normal range, but I think my mom thought I was developing an eating disorder. She would give me a bit of a hard time about not wanting to eat certain meals with the family, and asked how I could lead a normal social life as a vegan. To some extent, her concerns were legitimate, but I resented them.

I’m jealous of people who left veganism sooner than I did. How did you realize in nine months what it took me nine years to realize?

I’m sure that the main reason I realized some of these things so quickly is because I am a philosopher in training. My undergraduate degree is in philosophy, and I have almost three years of graduate work in philosophy under my belt. Thinking about things (mostly ethics, broadly construed) is just what I do, both professionally and for fun. My philosophical nature is what helped to get me into veganism in the first place, but ultimately it is also what got me out.

I began studying Aristotle, who takes a very different approach to ethics than most contemporary moral philosophers. While newer work in ethics tends to be fairly technical, and focused on the rightness or wrongness of particular hypothetical actions, Aristotelian virtue ethics focuses on the qualities of character that help a human to excel and flourish. From this perspective, I began to see that a genuine sensitivity towards the suffering of non-human animals is compatible with eating in ways that do not harm me, mentally or physically.

You got into veganism because you believed that it was wrong to cause animals suffering and death. But you quit veganism because it wasn’t good for you. Do you still agree with the arguments for veganism, then?

I don’t think there is anything wrong with causing animals’ deaths, per se, because I don’t believe animals have rights. However, I do continue to believe that animals have a morally significant interest in not suffering. The arguments for veganism – the good ones, anyway – make legitimate trouble for the omnivorous habits in which most people uncritically engage.

The identification and explanation of speciesism represents a great step forward in expanding our moral spheres to include not only humans of other races and genders but non-human animals as well. And the problem of marginal cases helps to clarify our thinking about animals, while also shedding light on related moral issues, such as what qualities are necessary and sufficient for moral personhood. So yes, I still believe in the arguments to a large extent.

But since you now eat meat, is it that you think applying these arguments does not require veganism? Or do you think that it’s permissible not to fully live up to all of your own beliefs?

Of course, I’d rather not see myself as akratic, or weak-willed, in that I can’t bring myself to follow my own best moral judgments regarding whether I should be vegan. I suppose that’s possible – humans are excellent rationalizers, and our motives are often opaque to us. But, officially, I would say that vegan arguments do not show that veganism is morally obligatory. Rather, they suggest that veganism is supererogatory – an instance of going morally above and beyond.

Vegan arguments are hard to criticize because they are indeed logical, and many people who attempt to refute them do so ineptly. But the broader, more holistic moral perspective that I described before – that of Aristotelian virtue ethics – provides reasonable explanations for why veganism is not required.

Because humans are social creatures, the social costs of veganism may be too high, depending on the circumstances. Because humans are also animals, lifestyles that are natural to us (like omnivorous eating) are good and fitting, when pursued wisely. When we take nutritional concerns into account as well, there is enough reason to reject veganism as obligatory – in my opinion, anyway.

This does not absolve people of the need to be compassionate towards animals, which is an individually and socially valuable trait.

A way to summarize the main vegan argument might be to say that animals being sentient proves that animals have rights. Yet you believe animals are sentient and don’t have rights. What’s wrong with the argument that sentience = rights?

Sentience is only one of a variety of properties that can ground a being’s having rights. People who reject the sentience explanation or justification of rights tend to adopt an alternative standard, which appeals to capacities that it seems only humans have. These are usually taken to include things like the capacity for reasoning (especially including moral reasoning) and the having of a life plan.

Of course, this argument runs into the problem of marginal cases, but you can always bite the bullet and say that higher animals do have rights and that humans lacking these capacities do not. You can also adopt some view according to which rights aren’t natural, but are constructed through hypothetical or actual negotiations in which animals cannot take part.

Do you think the origin of vegan reasoning often comes from an emotional feeling of disgust toward animal killing, and then finding the logical arguments to support those emotions?

I have no doubt that much of vegan thinking originates in this way. Why else would PETA find more success in showing graphic videos than in presenting logical arguments?

However, this is no indictment against veganism. Experimental philosophers studying moral psychology are finding that many or most of our moral judgments are based on disgust reactions or the lack thereof.

Paradigmatic examples might include homophobia and racism. People with these positions are just trying to justify a primitive disgust reaction. People with more liberal beliefs experience less disgust toward homosexuals and people of other races, so the theory goes.

Vegans say that speciesism is just as bad as racism, sexism and the lot. Do you agree? Or is there a significant difference between speciesism and discrimination between human groups?

There may be a sense in which speciesism is equally bad, from some kind of ideal moral perspective. But I think people are less blameworthy for being speciesist than for being racist or sexist. In combating racism and sexism, we usually use techniques to get people to see just how alike women or non-natives are to themselves. This technique is not as effective in the animal case, for probably evolutionary reasons that are quite difficult to counter.

People who have close relationships with higher animals do sometimes begin to see their similarities with humans (as I did with my dog), but the similarities are indeed more limited than in the racism and sexism cases. I think this similarity gap explains animals’ not having rights, but not the more commonly drawn conclusion that we do not have obligations of any kind towards animals.

Many vegans believe that the only way to avoid speciesism is to be vegan. Are they right?

They are wrong. Speciesism consists not in treating different groups of beings differently, but in failing to give different groups of beings equal moral consideration for no good reason. Thus you cannot necessarily infer that a practice is speciesist just because it results in different species being treated differently.

I happen to believe that the outcome of giving animals genuinely equal moral consideration can be some diet other than veganism. Although it matters that animals suffer, and we should do a lot to alleviate that, they cannot experience the social and personal distress that being vegan tends to incite.

This justifies our causing animals some amount of suffering – although certainly not an unlimited amount. And this conclusion is not speciesist, because it did not come from denying animals equal moral consideration.

To many vegans it makes no sense to care about animals enough to improve how you treat them or to reduce consumption of them, but not to quit eating them completely. If it’s wrong to intentionally kill a million animals, then it’s wrong to intentionally kill one.

Veganism, besides being about consistency, is also about maximization. As you say, vegans would have us not merely reduce animal suffering but literally try to eliminate it. This idea is related to the moral theory of hedonistic act utilitarianism, which holds that an action is morally permissible if and only if there is no other action that would produce more utility, impartially considered and over time.

But hedonistic act utilitarianism is the laughingstock of moral philosophy, and almost no one accepts it because it has possibly terrible implications: punishing the innocent, forcing organ donation, spending all our resources on satisfying a utility monster, denying that anyone has rights, ignoring the past and only considering the future, etc.

Once we reject a maximizing conception of utility, there is nothing baffling about reducing animal consumption but not eliminating it completely. Flexitarianism becomes morally akin to giving to charity sometimes but not always, which almost everyone agrees is morally permissible.

So there is an ethical component to your own flexitarianism? 

Yes, definitely. It’s not as if I have tried to reassume willful ignorance regarding animal issues. My flexitarianism is not merely for taste or nutrition, but itself constitutes a morally responsive way of life.

I eat very many vegetarian meals and some vegan meals. I eat meat, on average, maybe once or twice per week, which is really very little as compared to the standard American diet. I try to choose animal foods from reputable sources and am very happy to shop at Whole Foods, whose moral and political stances I respect.

And anytime I attend an event where guests are asked to choose entrees or specify dietary requirements in advance, I go vegetarian. That sends a signal to others about me and my beliefs that would go unknown if I were to eat the meat dish.

That’s the opposite of one of my friends who only eats vegan at home and then will eat anything when out. His reasoning is that he avoids the social alienation and inconvenience of veganism this way, while still being vegan most of the time. On the other hand, your way would make sense from the Jonathan Safran Foer perspective of setting an example. Do you think that you can offset some of the moral cost of your own meat eating by convincing others to eat less meat?

I definitely understand the eating habits of your friend. Because I don’t like having a lot of meat around and am not always comfortable touching or preparing it, I also eat meat at restaurants sometimes – but typically when my doing so is anonymous. In those cases, my eating vegan will not really convince anyone of anything, unlike when I am dining with friends or other associates.

I had an awkward experience in this regard last year. I was teaching an introduction to philosophy course while I was vegan, and I discussed it with the class. One of the students in the class works at one of my favorite restaurants. Now, when I go there and she’s working, I become concerned that she will think I was lying about being vegan or that I’m a hypocrite (in the case that I’m eating something non-vegan). The ridiculous part is that she probably doesn’t even think of the vegan stuff when she sees me.

I’m not particularly forceful about my moral flexitarianism, in that I don’t really try to change others’ beliefs or diets. But I am happy to discuss my position, if it comes up, and I like it when people express curiosity about it.

I don’t see convincing others to eat less meat as a way of offsetting the moral cost of my own meat eating, though. Rather, if I succeeding in doing so, I would see it as helping the person to lead a better life, morally and nutritionally, for that person’s own sake.

Because we have higher capacities and therefore are morally responsible agents, it’s bad for people to live their lives indifferent to gross amounts of animal suffering. I’m glad that animals’ suffering may be reduced as a side effect of the diet, but a veg*n-inspired lifestyle is ultimately justified by the goodness of the accompanying compassion and awareness for humans.

In Eating Animals, Jonathan Safron Foer calls compassion a muscle that we exercise by making an ethical choice such as vegetarianism every single day. But for me there was very little compassion exercising involved. Rather, veganism became a rigid habit. Was your veganism a constant compassion workout?

I agree that compassion is a muscle we *should* exercise every day. But I don’t think that simply being vegetarian is evidence that you are in fact continually exercising compassion. The diet can definitely become rigid and rule-bound, rather than remaining an expression of the goodness of our characters.

While I was vegan, I did think about the animals with some frequency, but it was emotionally draining and socially isolating. Eating vegan didn’t feel compassionate so much as it felt like my only hope for escaping constant and crushing guilt. 

Is there anything you miss about veganism?

Labels give a shape to our identities, and I liked being able to convey my beliefs simply to others by applying the “vegan” label to myself. Now, I practically have to write a book to even begin to explain it all. Being vegan made me feel clean and self-righteous, which was gratifying (although probably damaging in the long run).

I drove by a filthy cow farm on a recent road trip, and I would have liked to be able to say “I don’t give my money to those reprehensible businesses.” While I still don’t approve of the intensive farms, being vegan is like putting your money where your mouth is.

Also, being vegan caused me to choose and plan meals carefully. As a non-vegan, I am struggling to retain that kind of awareness of, and connection to, the food I eat.

Fortunately, vegans don’t have a monopoly on compassionate and mindful eating – it’s just that, for the rest of us, the path is not so clear.

After commenting a couple of times on this blog, Lindsay wrote to me:

“I was vegan for 5 years and vegetarian for about 8 years. Now I’m a full-blown meat eater.

“I never had any serious health problems from veganism. For me, the vegan diet was a natural progression from an ultra-low fat eating disorder. Moving away from veganism/vegetarian was about slowly accepting my body and not feeling the need to deny myself anything anymore.

“There were complicated thought processes during my transition, lots of miserable vegan traveling and an eventual move to Europe. But I don’t need to go into that.”

I had to disagree with that last sentence.

What got you into vegetarianism and then low-fat veganism? 

I became a vegetarian when I was 13 because of animal rights. A friend and I went vegetarian together after seeing the video for the song Interesting Drug by Morrissey that shows baby seals being clubbed for fur coats. From about 13 - 17 I had a very typical American teenage diet that just didn’t include meat, so I ate lots of cheese, other dairy and fast food like Taco Bell and pizza.

At this age, I also had a long-term boyfriend who was pretty emotionally abusive and would often tell me that I was fat (I absolutely wasn’t by any sane measure). This is what got me started on an extreme low-fat diet. I lost loads of weight through starving myself (I only allowed myself something like 2 grams of fat per day) so absolutely believed the standard wisdom that fat was fattening.

So your vegetarianism and veganism was more about body image than ethics?

Even though I’m pretty sure staying super-thin was a major motivation for going vegan, I told myself and other people that it was to further my belief in animal rights. I definitely believed that factory farming for meat and dairy was an incredibly cruel process. I gave impassioned speeches in English class for vegetarianism and against animal testing. 

Very soon after going vegan though, I flirted with a raw-food diet, claiming the health argument as my motivation. But thinness was the obvious goal. Fortunately, I gave that up after making some vile Essene bread and realizing that I wasn’t willing to go that far. I also used to try doing the stupid lemon juice, cayenne, maple syrup fast once in a while but would always completely crash and have to eat something.

When I went to my first college, I did go to one meeting of the campus animal rights group and found the discussions about different brands of soy milk and how to eat enough protein through cafeteria food very boring. I decided that I was more interested in the oppression of humans and joined Students for a Free Tibet instead. When I went back home to Chicago, I got involved with Food Not Bombs and was most interested in the aspect of helping people, but was also pretty happy that it was through the preparation of vegan food.

How veganism relates to eating disorders is controversial. For some people, a previous eating disorder can lead to veganism, either for use as a cover or as a progression of the disordered eating. Some anti-vegans argue that someone without an eating disorder might develop one after going vegan. And some vegans say that going vegan helped them to cope with and overcome an eating disorder. What’s your take on this?  

Well, I can certainly only speak from my personal experience but it was very much a way to amp up my eating disorder. Veganism helped to further it because it was even easier to refuse food and not have to eat dinner with other people. It required less will power to deny myself food because so many things were now off limits for supposedly ethical reasons.

Were you sure to avoid even trace amounts of animal product in anything you ate?

As I encountered more vegans, I became much more concerned with vegan purity. I started to learn about whey and casein and sodium caseinate from Bark and Grass and started to shop more at health food stores.

I remember my first day at college, I found out my roommate was vegan. I was really happy because it was the first time I had been able to spend lots of time with another vegan. Then we went down to the cafeteria and the selection for vegans was crap and I was thinking that maybe if she wasn’t there, I might be able to eat some non-vegan stuff just to satisfy my hunger.

I think this is part of the problem with purity lifestyles in general; you are so worried that other people are watching and judging you that you police yourself against your own best interest and happiness. The self-denial of freedom described in Foucault’s analysis of the Panopticon comes to mind. Instead of eating the cookie that’s right in front of you that might have some dairy in it, you walk for half an hour to the health food store to buy a vegan version so you don’t feel like you have failed yourself or any other vegan.

But I should point out, this purity applied strictly to what I would put in my body. I still wore leather and wool and I still had lots of friends who were omnivores so I didn’t look at the world through some sort of vegan dichotomy of good and evil. I also was never one of those vegan maniacs who tried to make my cats vegan.

I think the concept of my vegan purity really started to wither away after my dad was diagnosed with celiac spru (gluten intolerance). This was a man who’s main hobbies were baking bread and brewing his own beer, both of which he was forced to immediately give up because of his condition. It also made eating outside of the house incredibly difficult for him because of the risk of cross-contamination.

Seeing that there were very real consequences if he ate even a tiny bit of gluten made me think about how many times I had conveniently overlooked the fact that my Indian food was probably cooked in ghee but suffered no ill effects. It all started to feel really hollow and disingenuous.

A lot of vegans complain about the characterization that veganism is a form of deprivation. They say their diet actually got more varied when they became vegan, because they had to seek out new kinds of vegetables, fruits and grains. Did your diet grow “more varied” as a vegan? Do you see veganism as form of deprivation now?

I think both of these scenarios were true for me. Veganism completely expanded my horizons when it came to vegetables, pulses and grains and got me interested in food from different parts of the world, like India, the Middle East and Ethiopia, which were more vegan-friendly and meant I could still go out to eat once in a while. Veganism also forced me to learn to cook, which is something I absolutely loved.

But this is all down to the fact that I grew up in a house (and a wider culture) where food was from a box or can. My mom just didn’t like to cook. I had already given her a really hard time when I became a vegetarian, expecting that she’d make special meals for me. When I became vegan, she made it clear that I was on my own.

I do think that veganism is more prevalent in places that have a boring food culture and less connection to artisanal, traditional and local foods (North America and the UK). It’s easy to deprive yourself of mass produced food that doesn’t taste very good. I personally didn’t have much of a problem giving up processed cheese singles and margarine, which is what we ate in our house. Growing up in suburban America, it was really easy to make the direct connection between meat eating and corporate fast food, so the health and animal rights arguments against eating meat and dairy seemed pretty watertight.

This limited view of food and culture also made it seem like veganism (or at least vegetarianism) was a necessary prerequisite to being involved in left-wing political activism. When I first moved to the UK, I was shocked to see that a lot of the punks and crusties from Spain and Italy were omnivores but when I went to Spain and Italy, it made complete sense.

For me, veganism became a form of deprivation when I was getting more connected to local food production and traveling around Europe. So basically, veganism turned me into a foodie and being a foodie eventually turned me off of veganism.

Yeah, being raised on a fast-food diet can make veganism seem downright appealing. That was my background and seems to have been with most of the vegans I’ve known. Some vegans, like the authors of Skinny Bitch, cite their former fast food habits as proof that they were once entrenched in meat eating, and thus veganism must be very compelling indeed for them to have given up their daily Big Macs for it. But to me they are just giving away that they had little to lose by going vegan…

Uggh, Skinny Bitch. Sorry, I need to address this before you get to your question. I think this attitude of being disgusted by people who eat fast food and equating any body shape besides stick thin with unhealthiness is a sign that lots of vegans are body fascists who manage to totally prop up the status quo.

Let me emphasize that this is a status quo based on sexism, classism and racism that emotionally, psychologically and physically damages tons of people, which completely contradicts the common claim that veganism is about liberatory politics. Most of the vegans I’ve encountered could never envision optimum vegan health in anything but a very thin body. Equating thinness with righteousness is puritanical and I feel really ashamed to have spent such a long time believing it.

I would highly recommend the book The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos in answer to anyone who tries to claim that veganism is by definition healthier because it helps people lose weight. And that goes double for anyone who tries to justify veganism by citing the “prevailing scientific consensus” about things like cholesterol and fat. For people with a worldview that is often skeptical of anything mainstream, vegans are surprisingly quick to believe that the science that backs up their personal theory is totally unbiased.

And to take this to another level, if I may, everywhere outside of deracinated, white North America, traditional and regional foods are intimately linked with culture and identity. This is especially true for any culture that has ever been under threat. So the expectation that everyone can and must go vegan isn’t just about having your head up your ass, it’s actually cultural imperialism. It’s no different than the English outlawing the Welsh and Gaelic languages, except that most vegans will not go as far as holding a gun to the head of a meat eater.

I’d like to think that if a vegan army frogmarched into Barcelona tomorrow, anarchists from around the world would rush to the sides of the Catalan people to fight the fascists and defend cultural autonomy. Only this time they would totally win because the vegans wouldn’t have the stamina Franco’s army did.

Along with a boring childhood cuisine, another common background I’ve noticed in people who become vegan is that they tend to be atheists, or just weren’t raised very religiously. Did that apply in your case? 

I wasn’t actively raised with any religion. My dad’s family were Quakers and I think that a lot of those values filtered in throughout my childhood. There was a general emphasis in my house on being a good person — I once got grounded for a month for lying to my dad about eating a lollipop that belonged to my sister.

By the time I became a vegan, I was a surly teenager and would have identified as an atheist, for sure. But it was still pretty difficult for me to see the world in black and white. There were lots of people I loved who ate meat and cheese; how could I think they were evil? So I never really bought into the cultish aspects of veganism.

What would you say those cultish aspects are?

There are a lot of characterists of militant veganism that align perfectly with characteristics of a cult but I think pure and simple, being unable or unwilling to accept that there might be any gray areas between vegan/righteous and non-vegan/evil is cult behavior. For a lot of people who go vegan, rejecting non-vegan friends and family, or at least pissing them off through proselytizing and self-righteousness, is very common. And any kind of dissent expressed by another vegan about the absolute rightness of veganism is quickly quashed.

When you look at most definitions of cults though, a major requirement is a charismatic, authoritarian leader who can control members through fear and guilt. The fact that a lot of vegans are anti-hierarchical means this wouldn’t wash so vegans end up policing themselves and their peers. It’s sort of like having the Stasi without the East German state, only everybody is a Stasi agent who is willing to inform even on themselves.

Some vegan nutritionists are now saying that the low fat diet is bad idea. Do you think you could have stayed vegan longer on a Mediterranean-style vegan diet?

The only reason I was able to last five years as a vegan was by leaving the low-fat diet behind. I transferred to a college in New York City and lived in Brooklyn with two vegan roommates who were a great influence on my eating. One of them was even studying to be a vegan pastry chef at the Natural Gourmet Cookery school and I got to eat all of her experiments.

With both roommates, the act of shopping, cooking and eating together helped me heal my fucked up relationship with food. We were members of the Park Slope Food Co-op and sharing the cost of food meant were able to afford a lot of really good stuff.

This was also part of a process that involved studying feminist theory and building up my self-confidence that was so rock bottom after my high-school boyfriend. My belief in veganism became more about health than being thin. I felt generally healthy as a vegan and assumed I would stay vegan forever.

When I moved to the UK to live with my omnivourous partner who isn’t very fond of most vegetables, things changed. My consumption of carbohydrates and fake meat products skyrocketed so I gained weight and I generally felt like crap. I was depressed and angry at my partner and the UK for ‘making me’ gain weight and compromise on the health ideals of my vegan diet. I would occasionally try to eliminate wheat and sugar from my diet and that would make me feel slightly better but it seemed like no matter how many beans I ate, I was still hungry all the time. 

When I look back on my veganism, what I feel most foolish about is the food I missed out on while traveling. Cheeseless pizza was a staple in Paris, Italy and Poland; in Geneva I ate Ethiopian food; and in Tokyo I ate mostly Ethiopian and Indian. My last day in Tokyo, after a month of being there, I finally had sushi, which helped speed along my decision to completely abandon veganism. Do you have any depressing vegan traveling tales?

You know what, this list could be endless but I’ll stick to the main offending events.

Missouri, family reunion: Going to a restaurant where there was no vegan option, making a scene, complaining and generally being a miserable little shit when I should have been having fun with my cousins who I never got to see anymore because we were growing up.

First visit to the UK: While I was trying to maintain a vegan diet and eating hardly anything but bread, it wreaked havoc on my bowels. This is not something you want to happen when you don’t have easy access to a toilet.

Bologna, Italy (known for its amazing food): I convinced my partner to go to the only vegetarian restaurant I could find out about in all of northwestern Italy. It was a total throwback to the 1970s. A tofu sausage rolling around on a plate with some boiled vegetables and alfalfa sprouts (this was listed as the hot dog option). I think the only thing that tasted good was the mustard.

Levanto, Italy: We were staying at a beautiful agriturismo olive farm up in the hills above the town. The woman who owned the farm came by our patio in the morning while I was having coffee to offer us fresh eggs, still warm from her hens. She had this lovely smile on her face and when I had to turn them down, her face just dropped and I felt like such an ungrateful asshole. We then walked to the horrid supermarket nearby to buy stuff for breakfast. How I couldn’t see the lunacy of this at the time completely baffles me now.

Upper Penninsula, Michigan: On a road trip with my partner and my parents, we stopped by a health food store in a small town to ask if there was anywhere to get vegan food around there. The couple who owned the place warned me that there was absolutely nowhere that served pure vegan food for 100 miles and convinced me to eat a microwaved, frozen burrito from their store before going out and watching everyone else eat at a restaurant. Of course, I complained about it the whole time they were trying to eat.

Arlesford, England: My partner and I went to stay at a cottage in rural England to celebrate my birthday. We arrived late and the only thing that I could get in the whole town to eat was some take-away Chinese food. My birthday dinner was basically a box full of bean sprouts in salty, sweet sauce and white rice. I was also missing out on lots of amazing restaurants that were opening up right in my neighbourhood. There has been a real resurgence in traditional British foods since I moved here and that was something I was completely unable to participate in.

I remember reading A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain on a flight to Chicago and lamenting the fact that I had chosen to close myself off to that kind of meaningful eating. His chapter on the Berkeley vegans was pretty hilarious and when I remembered the health food store couple in Michigan I began asking myself if I really preferred to be aligned to people whose hardline values completely prevent them from supporting anyone else in their community.

So basically, all of these food experiences (or lack of real food experiences) pushed me away from veganism and with every new travel opportunity, I made changes. Before I went to Barcelona, I started eating seafood so I could eat paella. Before the next time I went to Italy, I started eating dairy so I could get real pizza and gelato. Before I went home for my first Thanksgiving in six years, I started eating poultry. And finally, before I went to spend a week in rural Wales with my parents, I started eating all meat.  

Since then, I’ve had some amazing food experiences while traveling. On a recent trip to Wales, my parents and I foraged for mussels on a beach and cooked them in local cider. Every time I talk to my dad, he mentions how this was the coolest thing ever and the best thing they ate during their trip to the UK. Who knows what we would have eaten that night if I had stayed vegan.

What was the psychological process of leaving veganism like?

I left veganism in stages and each step was fraught with guilt and constant questioning. The first move I made was to start eating fish, which actually took me completely out of the realm of vegetarianism so it did feel like a huge leap. I had not eaten any meat for 15 years and now my niece, who was born the year I stopped eating meat, had become a vegetarian, probably because of my influence on her.

I was so nervous about telling all my vegetarian and vegan friends. It turned out that the two really important vegans in my life (the roommates from Brooklyn) had both left veganism too, so I felt a bit better about it. One vegetarian friend who I had known since I was 16 came to visit me in London. When I met him at the train station, he looked at me and enthused about how pink my cheeks were and how shiny my hair was, encouraging me to keep eating fish.

Always an advocate of eating organic food and not shopping at supermarkets, I was getting more concerned about my food being local and seasonal. I became a member of a local organic vegetable box scheme and tried to shop for everything else at a farmer’s market, but I still had to rely on a lot of industrially processed foods like vegetarian meat products to get my protein and satisfy my omnivorous partner. A lot of the time, this meant giving my money not only to the companies that manufactured this stuff but also to a supermarket because there wasn’t always a health food store on my route home.

The major turning point for me in terms of eliminating my residual guilt was reading The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Katz. It completely solidified everything I had been thinking about and experiencing when traveling through Europe and also living in my immediate community.

Reading about really inspiring food activism that revolved around meat and dairy products was a revelation. It clicked that supporting a multi-national supermarket (even occasionally) instead of eating traditional, artisanal, locally produced food right around me was completely anathema to all of my values — except veganism, so I started wondering whether or not veganism really fit in with my values anymore.

Would it be better if a family who had been producing sausages for centuries from the pigs they reared themselves had to give that up to go work in a factory that produced soy sausages instead? The answer to that was a resounding ‘Hell no!’

What is your diet like now?

I still eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables that I get through a weekly organic box. Since moving to meat eating, I’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Nourishing Traditions just to completely rid myself of the delusion that soy sausages are better for my health or the environment than traditional sausages. It actually worries me about the kind of damage I may have done eating all that unfermented soy and rancid vegetable oil as a vegan.

So I buy grass-fed meat from a local butcher that is the direct retailer for a farm in Yorkshire and I get unpasteurized cheese, butter and milk from my local farmers’ market. I’m lucky enough to live half a mile from a city farm where they keep free-range hens and sell the eggs.

I make lots of fermented vegetables like sauerkraut and make my own sourdough bread. I also grow some of my own vegetables and herbs in our small garden and have been getting really into foraging and eating as many of the weeds as I can from my back yard.

The most important lesson I took from The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved was to completely divest myself of the alienating concept of purity and judging myself or others by impossible standards. I think it’s important for me to take advantage of and appreciate the amazing local food options I have in London as much as I do when I’m traveling, so I’m going to eat delicious lamb shish kebabs from my local Turkish restaurant and pho from my local Vietnamese joint, even though the meat is most certainly not grass fed. And if there is an industrially processed cookie in front of me that I want to eat, I’ll eat it. 

How did your partner and family react when you went back to meat eating?

The first thing my parents said when I told them was, “Good for you!” My vegetarian niece, on the other hand, needed a bit of time before she could talk to me after she found out. Rightly so, I would have felt exactly the same at her age. Fortunately, we’ve healed that rift. 

Every time I wanted to make one of the changes to my diet, my partner would be like, “No, you can’t do that!” His whole perception of me was as a vegan. But the first time I grilled a whole mackerel, roasted a chicken or made burgers with ground beef, he quickly decided that these changes were very agreeable.

Do you miss anything about veganism?

The fondness I have for my vegan days is more about missing the Park Slope Food Co-op and cooking communally with my two really good friends. I suppose there is also something special about living in a city and knowing this secret code about where you can get vegan milkshakes, which coffee shops have soy milk, which Thai restaurant will cook without fish sauce, etc., mainly because it gives you something to connect with other vegans about.

But saying that, you can do that even better as an omnivore because it’s all about which places make the tastiest food.

In some of the other interviews I’ve read here, people talk about the smug sense of superiority they felt as vegans, but that hardly ever really felt like the case for me. I’ve never had a life where I completely surrounded myself with other vegans so it was easy to feel isolated. I’ve worked with young people for the last ten years and they would always want to order pizza when they got together. As I sat there just drinking water while they ate and enjoyed themselves, I probably looked like a superior jerk, but I didn’t feel like one.