•  memfree   ( @memfree@beehaw.org ) 
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    64 months ago

    You said that I said:

    “Cooking vegan is hard”

    False. I said BEING vegan is hard. It is morally correct, but it can be difficult. Later you compare eating cheese to being a sociopath. I’m pretty sure that even sociopaths can feign compassion in public when someone explains how they are having trouble achieving their goals.

    You said:

    90% of non-vegan recipes can be made vegan by leaving out or substituting non-vegan ingredients.

    This is where I know you are not serious. 90%? Please. My mom visited from out of state a few weeks back. At restaurants and her friend’s house where she stayed (she won’t stay with us), she ate: eggs, bacon, buttered toast, coffee, lox and cream cheese on bagels with red onions and capers, oysters, lobster, calamari, moussaka, hummus, baklava, general tso’s chicken, sushi, sashimi, gyoza, chicken tandoori, saag paneer, vegetable pakora, roast beef in aus jus, brussle sprouts with bacon, pepperoni pizza, deviled eggs, macaroni salad, a black and bleu burger with onion rings, and so on. I don’t know how to make eggs and bacon without eggs and bacon. I don’t know how to make lox without fish. I CAN make moussaka with veggie crumbles instead of meat, but I don’t know how to get that eggy quality without the eggs in there. I do make vegan hummus. Baklava without honey? How? Sashimi? How? Gyoza? How? Saag is vegan. Paneer is not. I’ve never been able to make Indian food properly despite repeated tries, so while in theory I could make a Saag without paneer, the reality is it would be awful regardless of the animal content. I have to stick with whatever the restaurant has.

    But you’re saying “I pay other people to torture animals for my pleasure and I’m not going to stop”, and we’re supposed to, what, smile and nod and agree how hard it is to not torture animals for pleasure?

    Yes to both counts. I am saying, “I pay people to torture animals for me and despite my regrets about that, I am not going to stop until there is another way to get a similar joy-of-food experience.” AND I am saying that YOU should say, “I know it is hard for you to stop paying people to torture animals for you.”

    Do you also yell at depressed people for bringing everyone down? Do you think people are unaware of their failings? What sort of juvenile ego tripper gets off on yelling at people during their confessions?

    • I deleted most of this comment because it wasn’t as civil and understanding as I wanted it to be and it’s probably better off lost to history 😆

      But let me summarize my thoughts: your mother, and presumably you, eat a lot more meat than the average person. The 10% of human foods that aren’t plant-based and can’t easily be made plant-based are overrepresented in your meat heavy diet.

      And meat heavy diets are bad for your personal health and for the health of the planet, for reasons we both know very well.

      Which is to say: you are universalizing your personal experiences. It’s not difficult to go vegan. It’s difficult for you to go vegan, because your diet and lifestyle are so heavily focused on animal products. That’s not an indictment of veganism; it’s an indictment of the Western diet, and big agriculture, and capitalist food science that studied what flavors and textures trigger dopamine release so they could pack food with them and sell more product, and the whole vicious capitalist PR mechanism that convinced Westerners to eat a meat heavy, highly processed, unhealthy diet and convinced Western governments to subsidize it. And, to a much lesser extent, it is an indictment of your personal choices.

      It’s difficult for you to go vegan. But that’s not on veganism. That’s on you.

      •  memfree   ( @memfree@beehaw.org ) 
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        24 months ago

        And we’re back to my complaint about the article. For some people, veganism is hard. Obviously it isn’t hard for everyone, and I never said everyone, but for some people it is.

        Articles like the one posted created a divide and encourage the belittlement of people trying to do better rather than suggesting anyone try to help people get closer to veganism.