In the past month, The New York Times has published two negative reviews of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (1, 2), an editorial by a vegan that vegans hated because it made veganism sound hard, and now an article arguing that if animals are worthy of moral consideration, maybe plants are too. Vegans haven’t forgotten The NYT’s infamous Death By Veganism piece either.

What’s next, New York Times? A sickly vegan on your front page?

Labels are very important to vegans. Nutritional labels, certainly, but even more important is the label “Vegan” itself.

“I’m vegan” is often one of the first things a vegan will say about themselves when meeting a new person. “Are you vegan too?” might be the next thing they say, depending on how optimistic they are. (A few years ago I apparently had almost this very conversation with someone I had just recently met, who luckily didn’t write me off because of it). Though plenty of vegans are not quite that anxious to disclose their animal-product-eschewing lifestyle, it’s a fact they cannot hide for long, especially if food is present. “Is that vegan?” is the first question any vegan must ask about food they aren’t sure they can trust, and it’s an instant giveaway.

With their vegan identity reinforced at every meal, it is hard for veganism to not become a big part of who vegans are. But that’s just fine for most vegans, because the label gives them a purpose. By strictly obeying vegan rules, vegans become worthy of the label, and become a part of something larger than themselves that is for the good of the world.

In order for this meaning creation to seem plausible, the definition of vegan must be protected.

This is one reason vegans would rather throw out food with traces of animal products than eat it, even though it has no affect on the environment or animals at that point — eating it would tarnish the shiny green V seared onto their souls. [Though there is another more practical concern here too. Vegans become so self-conditioned against animal products over time, even the thought of eating something with a little bit of whey powder in it makes them nauseated.]

Veganism keeps vegans pure, and in return, vegans keep veganism pure. They do this by policing the terms vegan and vegetarian, pulling the alarm when an impostor slips by. Vegetarians who eat fish and sometimes even chicken are the most common intruders, but sometimes a particularly bold omnivore will dare to call herself a vegan while not avoiding animal products as strictly as a vegan should.

For instance, a vegan message board once fretted about a site for “chill vegans,” vegans who don’t go out of their way to eat meat or dairy, but who don’t panic if little bits of animal product sneak past their vegetable decimating jaws. The chill vegan site no longer exists, but the threat still lurks. When I was in Toronto to take photos of vegans, I stayed with a friend who initially told me that he was vegan; a few days later, we were eating beef heart together.

Fake vegans and vegetarians are a menace to the sacred labels they incorrectly apply to themselves, and to those who are actually worthy of the the veg*n insignia. Therefore, self-proclaimed vegans and vegetarians who don’t strictly obey the rules are on the vegan shitlist.

Vegans wouldn’t normally care too much about what happens with vegetarians, since vegans consider themselves in a totally different category than their less-consistent, udder-sucking, egg-nabbing counterparts. But vegans know that to most meat eaters, all non-meat eaters are pretty much the same, so if omnivores want in on the coveted vegetarian label, it won’t be long before the vegan label is heavily under siege as well.

Vegans say that the main problem is confusion. When the meaning of the veg*an label is diluted, it causes very real inconveniences. A vegan might request a vegan meal for a wedding reception, and the well-meaning host who only knows so-called vegetarians who eat fish might have a nice eel sashimi prepared for the vegan. “I’m vegan, I don’t eat eel,” the vegan would be forced to say. “Are you sure?” The host would ask. “My daughter’s a vegan, and she eats eel.” “Then your bitch daughter’s not a fucking vegan!” the vegan would scream, ruining the night for everyone.

But what really gets vegans more than the confusion is the diminishing of their own sacrifice. The label is, in a sense, the goal. To claim the label without earning it is cheating. True vegans eschew all animal products all the time in order to earn that V pin they put on their backpack, yet these bastard fake vegans and vegetarians get all the glory with none of the work. They get to be morally superior and have their eel sashimi too.

As eatyourveggies says, “Sounds like she wants the label without making the necessary sacrifces. Vegetarianism is not a fad, people, it’s a lifestyle that I think most of us believe demands 100% commitment if you truly care about the animals.”

If nobody knows or cares what “vegan” means, how is a vegan to know who they are anymore?

So if you’re desperate to get on the vegan shitlist, don’t wave meat in front of vegans and tell them how delicious it is — wave meat in front of vegans while wearing a “Vegan” t-shirt and bragging about what a chill vegan you are. Ooh, they would really fucking hate that.

Vegans hated those “EAT MOR CHIKIN” ads, in which cows tried to save their hides by getting us to eat chicken instead of beef. Farmyard buddies shouldn’t be pitted against one another, trying to get humans to eat different kinds of animals — they should be getting humans to give up meat all together.

If you want to avoid the vegan shitlist, make an ad with animals united behind signs that say “EAT MOR TOEFOO.”

A snack bar called “SoyJoy” just sounds vegan, doesn’t it? But the ingredients of these bars include: “Butter (from milk),” “Egg,” “Milk Chocolate Chips,” “butter oil,” “fermented milk powder” and “Parmesan Cheese.” That makes SoyJoy a non-vegan pretender, putting it high atop the vegan shitlist.

The reason SoyJoy immediately sounds vegan is that soy is a replacer food that is only rarely intended for those who can guiltlessly eat the real thing. True, soy can replace either meat or dairy, so it’s not unusual for soy to crop up in a vegetarian but not vegan scenario, as it does here. However, since most snack bars are vegetarian to begin with, it’s easy to assume that the soy here (so prominent an ingredient as to be in the name of the product) must be replacing dairy.

Yet there is both soy and dairy in SoyJoy, which not only angers vegans, but makes them a bit paranoid. What could explain this bizarre contradiction, aside from a manufacturer’s conspiratorial vendetta against vegans? Is SoyJoy a malicious Trojan horse to trick vegans into buying and ingesting animal products? And worse, have vegans been eating other foods that they had innocently assumed were pure?

A near-vegan food is one of the worst abominations a vegan can imagine. A steak is evil, sure, but at least it isn’t fooling anybody. But what can excuse an otherwise vegan product with a small amount of animal product arbitrarily thrown in on a whim? Don’t these companies know there are people with principles in the world? It’s similar to why Jewish Kashrut laws consider pigs to be a symbol of hypocrisy and evil, and about as unkosher as it gets: it looks kosher… but it ain’t kosher.

To a vegan, putting a tiny squirt of milk in an otherwise vegan product is like hocking a loogie on a delicious plate of food just before you hand it to a starving man. Since everyone thinks as much about vegans as vegans do, adding a tiny dab of whey to the end of an ingredients list is an intentional jerk thing to do. Impostor bars like SoyJoy are mass-produced taunts aimed squarely at vegans.

What makes SoyJoy even worse is that it squeezes in every non-meat animal product it can imagine, seemingly in the hope that vegans will fail to check the ingredients, eat it, and consequently find themselves guilty of not just one count, but multiple counts of impurity ingestion.

The SoyJoy site has an “Ask the SoyJoy Dietitian” page. There is only one question vegans want to ask this fraud: “WTF?”

The vegan blog Healthy Diet had this to say about Soyjoy:

Is SoyJoy vegan? Nope. Really, not vegan? A soy bar? Why not? Two slightly un-informed booth workers proceeded to check the label for me, almost as if they had never done so before. SoyJoy is not vegan. They explained that this ‘healthy’ bar contained butter, eggs, whole milk and even cheese. Now is it just me or does that throw anyone else off? … These soy bars remind me a lot of the dairy-free veggie cheese that contains casein, aka milk-protein. Totally absurd.

What’s interesting about calling near-vegan products like soy cheese with milk protein absurd (and most vegans would) is that it contradicts the usual vegan notion that vegan food is for everyone. Here “Healthy Diet” seems to be saying, “Who the hell could find joy in soy but a vegan?”

And what could be more cruel than cheating vegans out of one of the few slight joys that they have left?