samjc

This month I will have been vegan for 10 years.

How it started

Probably around about 2012 I began to feel bad about eating meat. I tried vegetarianism, but ultimately failed. For one, I was working in a pub kitchen and cashed-strapped. Being able to eat scraps of meat that would otherwise be thrown away was a small perk of the job. But the other reason was that I found vegetarianism too contradictory, knowing that the dairy and egg industries were hardly kind to animals either and — since only female animals produce eggs and milk — deeply intertwined with the meat industry. I perceived veganism to be too difficult and extreme, so to resolve the tension I ended up just eating meat again. I guess the psychology is interesting and fairly common — lots of people I speak to feel reducing animal harm has to be all-or-nothing.

In 2014, I’d just moved to Liverpool to begin my studies, and I generally felt in a mood for new beginning. My journey into veganism began when I started following the comments of a belligerent vegan advocate on Reddit. He showed up in any thread about animals and began arguing with anyone with an opinion about eating meat, and often appealed to his master’s degree in ethics. He was probably everyone’s stereotype of an annoying vegan, but I could not get around the strength of his arguments.

At one point he said “If you claim to care about animals but still eat them, then maybe you’re just a shitty weak-willed person”. Again, a rather abrasive style of argument, but I could not really refute this. I did think it was wrong to eat animals given I could be perfectly healthy without them, and yet I was eating them every day.

So I told my then-fiancée I wanted to try veganism. We resolved to try it for a week. I remember going to town the next day, buying a bean-based pastie and a carton of soya milk and consuming them. Neither were particularly delicious (especially as the first time I’d ever tried soya milk), but it tasted good to finally be consistent.

Anyway, a week passed, and it was fine. So we tried another week, and that was that.

Even as recently as 2014 there wasn’t the wealth of convenience options for vegans that there are today. There was Linda McCartney, and that was about it in most places. But I was a student with a lot of free time, able to cook and experiment, and I already enjoyed Gujarati cooking, so this all helped make it easier.

It wasn’t long before a few friends, inspired by my example (and my food), decided to also take up veganism. I never pushed it or argued for it with them.

The arguments

Veganism is often thought of as a diet, but it is about reducing harm to animals in all consumer decisions. The primary arguments for veganism are the wellbeing (or perhaps rights) of animals, and the ecological impact. These are generally well understood, so I’ll just add a few of my own comments I think are under-discussed.

One staggering part of the animal wellbeing argument is the sheer scale of the suffering. Humans kill hundreds of billions of animals every year for food (possibly over 2 trillion). I’m not a utilitarian; I don’t think morals can be “calculated”. But heuristically, if an animal’s suffering is worth even a tiny fraction of a human’s, that’s a catastrophe of enormous magnitude.

If aliens observed our planet and found one species industrially slaughtering over a trillion sentient lifeforms a year for food they may raise an eyebrow (these are Star Trek aliens, who have eyebrows); indeed, if we witnessed an alien species doing this we may raise our own.

Not eating animals is the only way to simultaneously resolve welfare and ecological concerns. To address ecological concerns, one could eschew beef and eat only chicken or fish — but then the animal death/calorie ratio is higher. Or one could choose only “high welfare” animals — which require more land and resources to raise, and thus increases the ecological footprint.

How it’s going

It’s going fine. Once you know how to feed yourself the inconvenience is only slight. Plant-based options have increased vastly in the last 10 years. Pretty much anywhere I eat out will have at least some options, and supermarkets now have plenty of convenience food. Even the cheese is pretty decent these days. I enjoy the food I eat and don’t really miss anything, except possibly fried chicken.

I’m a quiet vegan for the most part, far from an activist. I don’t really talk about it unless it specifically comes up (e.g. dietary requirements at an event). My students are generally surprised when they find out (usually because they’ve tried to ask me an off-topic question like how I like eggs cooked).

I don’t know my micronutrient levels (do you?), but I feel fine and take a daily multivitamin. And not a vegan one either. The amount of animal product in a multivitamin is generally measurable in micrograms. A back-of-the-envelope calculation, for example, tells me that if a sheep’s coat produces 200g of lanolin by-product that can be converted to vitamin D3 with even 1% efficiency, then that sheep’s coat can produce enough D3 for several lifetimes worth of multivitamins. Considering the extra cost of vegan multivitamins, the potential protective effect on my health, and the likely utterly neglible real impact on animals, this is one area I compromise on¹.

Another area of compromise is leather shoes. Even relatively expensive faux leather footwear I have bought has been less durable and breathable than leather. However, all the leather footwear I own is second-hand. I would not buy new leather, and use leather alternatives for all non-footwear (belt, wallet, bags, etc). Hopefully the leather alternatives will catch up with the real thing one day.

Wrap-up

It’s been interesting to see veganism’s popularity surge recently; I guess I was at the beginning of that wave. It’s tricky to find exact numbers, but apparently around 4% of the country is vegan now. However, it’s hard to know how much of that number are in it for the long-term. A lot of people do give it up for various reasons. I don’t think I’ll be giving it up at this stage. Besides caring about animals and the reduced ecological footprint, it’s just habit now. It’s how I eat and live, and it would feel weird to go back.

It feels like the initial hype for and surge of capital into the plant-based market has died down a little bit now, and I don’t mind this. The revolution for animals isn’t going to be brought about by another line of Greggs plant-based pasties. However, reducing the privilege required to ease the plant-based transition might make a more of a dent. It was easy for me to go vegan at the time I did because my rent was cheap, I had my student loans, and I had loads of discretionary time to learn a new way of cooking and living. Nowaadays I’d likely struggle. The food can still be expensive, especially without the knowledge I have of savvy vegan shopping. And with work and family life, I’d have much less time for experimental cooking. Reducing the cost of living and length of work hours may do more for animals than any new line of products (and have plenty of other benefits). But if you are able, I still believe this is the right way to live right now.

If you have good-faith questions on this topic, e-mails and Mastodon replies are always welcome.