rax | Why veganism, two and a half years later

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Why veganism, two and a half years later

A couple people have asked me why I'm vegan recently, and it got me thinking about how some of the reasons are the same as when I started and some of them are rather different. One of the questions was in terms of what living with me would look like, and that was interesting for a whole host of reasons, not least of which the fact that I'm going to be looking for housemates very soon. So I thought I'd free-write about it and share and see what other people thought about it, too.

When I first started doing the vegetarian thing, in 2004, it was so that I could get fresh produce instead of cafeteria food while I was working at a summer camp, and because I couldn't afford much of anything else. It turned out that I enjoyed it, although when I got more money and a different job I went back to eating meat, then gave up meat and kept eating fish, and by the end of November had just said "screw it I'm a vegetarian now." But I pretty much rejected any political premise for this --- sure some of it was in the back of my mind, but at the time I was going all California health-conscious and working out like crazy (for me, anyway, which is not as much as maybe it should be) and I associate the decision with that more than anything.

I did veganism for Lent a couple of years --- maybe three? And the last time, 2008, it stuck. Partially I stuck with it because I had become lactose-intolerant from going vegan earlier and it was easier just to cut dairy out of my diet entirely. At the time, I wrote "I am not vegan because I believe it is wrong to eat animals or animal products." This has changed; I don't go so far as most abolitionist vegans [0] and think that animal lives are worth as much as human lives. I think it's important to prioritize human life and experience and to consider the people preparing and shipping and growing our food when we talk about "cruelty-free" products and diet. And I think there are some situations in which eating animal products isn't wrong, or at least, its wrongness doesn't matter very much, since it's stacked up against the wrongness of starving oneself (or malnourishing oneself, or what have you). But for people who have the time and Internet access to read my rambly thoughts about veganism, and who have the financial resources to make most to all of their own food choices, I think it's wrong to eat meat.

The thing is... I don't really care if you do it. We all do things that are wrong in this sense all the time. I think it's wrong to perpetuate economic inequities, but I'm not sending most of my income to charity organizations or to the government. [1] I think it's wrong to go to war most to all of the time, but I'm not out there protesting right now. I think it's wrong to make individual transportation dependent on fossil fuels whose extraction and marketing is hardly "cruelty-free" but I own a car. [2] It is my assumption that people who eat meat probably work to improve the world around them in different tiny ways from the ones I do, and it's not my place to tell them they should be improving the world in the tiny ways I find the most important. (I'm also not going to try to convince anyone that being vegan is one of the ways they should choose to do this; other people have done it much better.)

In terms of relationships, close friendships, and housemates? It is convenient and comfortable to spend time with people doing the same tiny things as me, and I like having housemates who are also vegan biker queer &c. &c. I'm basically unbothered by vegetarian food in my environment but sometimes the smell of cooking meat kinda weirds me out. Luckily our new house has a vent fan over the stove, so as long as potential new housemates do a good job with the dishes, I don't really mind. Kissing meat-eaters can be weird if it's right after a meal, but luckily my current onmivore paramour (which is super fun to say out loud) has quietly made this not an issue at all without my ever having to say anything. [3] I like to be able to cook for people, and I'm happy to meet their restrictions when doing so if they have allergies or preferences, although at this point if their preferences include "every meal must have animal products" we're probably not going to eat together very often because that's not a preference I can meet in my kitchen.

The environmental veg*n idea (mentioned in this comment) also holds some sway for me --- that producing meat requires more environmental resources (food, water, space, and so on) and it's good to take up fewer resources. I've heard anything from "meat takes twice as many resources" to "meat takes ten times as many resources" and I don't know what to believe, but not even Serious Meat Apologists claim it doesn't take more so I figure the claim, if not the scale, is true. It's hard to sit there and pat myself on the back for taking up fewer resources with my food choices when I live on arable land and grow grass, have central air, and own a car. But at least I don't eat animals too, I guess. ;)

A lot of vegans are down on them, and often for good reason, but vegan fake meat products really help me with all of this. Sure, they're more resource-intensive than raw produce, and they're mass-produced, and they're not as good for you, and so on, but they allow me access to the kinds of meals I find nostalgic (vegan calzones!!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3) and the kinds of meals I can serve much more easily to omnivorous friends. Plus, they taste really good. ^^;; Over time I'm working on making my own (spiced seitan!) and abstracting the things I cook away from "fake meat" --- like marinated tempeh instead of "fake beef in a box" --- but I don't think the concept is inherently wrong given the cultural and nostalgic value that meat-seeming food has for a lot of people.

I should come back to this at the end of 2012 and see what I think then. In the meantime, it's time to have some granola with soy yogurt, and maybe some juice, and then get to work. :P

[0] Some would, either grinning enthusiastically or rolling their eyes, say "yet." I don't expect this to happen, but I also didn't expect to get where I am now, so who knows.

[1] Well, that might be even worse, really.

[2] I care a lot about this one too, thus all the walking and biking and such, but if I really cared, I could certainly live without a car. I just don't, because having one is nice, and I'm unwilling to give up the usefulness for the principle. Whether this is pragmatism or moral incontinence depends on your perspective, I guess.

[3] He did once taste of cheap candy, but what can you do. ;)

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"I'm unwilling to give up the usefulness for the principle" - I think the principle reason the damn things are so insidious is that they externalise their costs on other people so effectively.

I think that's true of lots of environmentally disastrous choices, though, not just driving. Driving does bother me more because, like eating animal products, it's more avoidable than people think it is. Though it depends on locality; not driving in Boston is easier than not driving in Bloomington is easier than not driving in, I don't know, Green Bay, Wisconsin. In Boston I basically never felt like "Oh I'd rather just drive"; here it's been much more a conscious effort to say "No, I am not going to drive there" and walk or bike, although I've been making that conscious effort and am happy about it.

Big parts of the US are optimized aggressively for cars, which is sort of the corporations/government's way of pushing additional costs onto people who choose not to (or are not able to) drive. It makes it really hard to not have one, even if you don't use it regularly, and then once you have one and have to pay for insurance and upkeep and such, it's a bad investment if you don't use it except when you need to take those long trips or haul stuff*, and then if you're not careful you wake up one morning and realize you've been driving to work...

*(While I admire your ability to move Ikea furniture via bicycle, I am just not that hardcore. :)

Well, anything that burns up oil externalises costs a bit, in the sense that we're all going to be equally screwed in the long run whether or not we're the affluent Westerners who did the burning, but I think cars are unusual. Flying, say, is a bit unpleasant for people who live near airports, but it doesn't routinely kill enormous numbers of people who don't fly; likewise (if only because it's not as commonplace) flying doesn't produce an enormous distortion akin to all the shops being in vast out-of-town retail monoliths and half the employers being in the arse end of nowhere; most other processes that burn oil don't spit the end-products out at street level where people are breathing, and so forth.

If I was sensible I would have hired a handcart - some friends of mine moved across Cambridge with one - and of course one doesn't have to be particularly hardcore to move three bookcases a mile by handcart.

[Also, of course, the occasional need to haul stuff doesn't have to be met by you personally. Friends of mine who want bookcases or firkins of beer or exercise equipment moved don't have to own cargo trailers personally...]

On the other hand I eat all the cows I can lay my hands on so I can't really talk.

Those are all entirely reasonable objections. :) Part of the problem is that they're mostly things that can be solved at a large municipal level rather than an individual level; if I got rid of my car, that wouldn't stop all the stores from being clustered far away and my still needing to go to them. Of course, one can preferentially choose housing close to those clusters, which is what I did; everything I need is within a mile and everything I want except a big hardware store is within three. Of course, this means that campus is two miles away, but the buses do go there.

Hiring a handcart doesn't work if there aren't sidewalks. :) Regardless, I should look into bike trailers... Ooh, or maybe a bike rickshaw, so the next time someone said "I want to go, but I really don't want to deal with walking/riding there" I could just say "Get in the rickshaw, lazybones." I'd have legs of steel if I didn't die first!

Well, indeed - that's part of why I don't think the situation can be sensibly changed merely by encouraging individuals to stop; people play defect because playing defect is effective, and when everyone around you plays defect there isn't really a lot of point in playing cooperate.

After the funny-bikes day (which you may have seen the photos of) I think I'd more like one of those huge tadpole cargo trikes than a trishaw. The cargo trike is only good for one person (maybe two little ones, it's rated to 150kg maximum) but I don't often want to haul lots of people around, and it looks a lot more use for cargo.

Enlightening - thank you.

There are a lot of paths towards living with compassion, and that's a nifty one.

I was quietly horrified that you could taste snack cake on me; it was early enough in the relationship that I thought that might be dealbreaker-esque. ;)

I just thought it was adorable! Although it did reinforce my desire to force-feed you all manner of spices. ;)

Kind of you, as usual. <3 Also, I get plenty of spices at home, but only when Nick cooks. I do find myself eating rather little meat these days, but largely because I'm not particularly interested in it and it doesn't often fall near the intersection of my personal price/convenience/nutrition tolerance curves. I mention this not in defense but just because this post about your personal food history was interesting, and made me consider my own. I do entirely agree that it's impossible to lead an ethically pure life (where did I read that anything that's really "pure" is probably dead or unliving?) and that the returns on efforts toward purity tend to diminish rapidly after a certain point. Part of that is this society's system of punishments and rewards for conformity or lack of same, but part of it is just the way the universe is set up. This is a dog-eat-dog, or at least fox-eat-plant, universe, that is the natural order of things. Of course, that doesn't mean we should accept it, any more than we accept a lifespan that probably tops out around 40 in "the wild". We are here to reshape nature towards our own desires, to my mind -- to work towards goals that transcend nature's simpleminded decree that we cover the universe with our gene map.

(All of the above makes me consider that it would be interesting to eat something that was synthesized from gas giant hydrocarbons. Labor conditions and environmental issues aside, that would be even more ethical than a conventional vegan meal. It would technically involve the use of nonrenewable resources, but very abundant ones. If we could do that economically, we could hang up the whole farming thing and stop destroying wild habitat.)

It is my assumption that people who eat meat probably work to improve the world around them in different tiny ways from the ones I do, and it's not my place to tell them they should be improving the world in the tiny ways I find the most important.

That's a wonderful way of seeing it, I think.

I've heard anything from "meat takes twice as many resources" to "meat takes ten times as many resources" and I don't know what to believe...

At each level of the food chain, you lose ~90% of the energy from the previous level. So, of the sunlight that reaches the earth's surface, only ~10% of that energy gets stored in plants, and when a cow comes along and eats those plants, only ~10% of that energy makes it into the cow. So yes, producing meat takes about 10 times more energy (if not, strictly speaking, resources) than producing plant products.

Okay, please bear with my self-indulgently long response. :P

Your attitude matches mine rather closely. I regard eating meat as a wrong, due to the suffering inflicted on animals during the process. But, despite a period of five years as a vegetarian, I'm now back to eating meat, mainly because I was and am far too finicky to be healthy on a vegetarian or vegan diet. (And no, the answer to my being finicky isn't "you haven't tried enough" -- that doesn't work when I gag on flavors most people find palatable. As far as I can tell, I genuinely taste things differently than other people do.) I think there's a trade-off to be made, between my maintaining a healthy diet and eating animals, and being healthy is more important. That being said, I do think it will someday be viable to switch entirely to vat-grown or synthetic meat, and I'll happily do so.

Regarding the "meat consumes more resources" argument: my first gauge for the amount of resources (not just material, but fuel and labor) consumed by an item of food is its price. This unfortunately is biased by variations in supply/demand and such things as corn subsidies. Still, it's the best one I have for comparing specific items, rather than broad categories like "vegetables versus meats". And under this criterion, I notice a couple of things. First, processed foods involve something like a 100% markup -- they have more packaging and are precooked, along with other stuff that means their preparation consumed more resources than the ingredients. If I compare a two-dollar cut of beef (which, in my grocery store, is large enough to be a complete meal) and a five-dollar vegan TV dinner, can I be sure that the latter consumed fewer resources? (Though again, corn subsidies and the lower supply of vegan meals biases the prices.) Second, and more pertinently, eating at a restaurant introduces a markup of 300% or more over a homemade meal. The surplus money pays for such things as the construction of restaurants, its A/C costs, the wages of its employees, the profits of its owners, and its wasted meals and ingredients... while the previous comparison was dubious, I think it's arguable that eating a home-cooked meat-based meal spends fewer resources (at least, if the labor of cooking doesn't cut into other productivity) than eating out anywhere, vegan places included. A free-spending vegan consumes more resources than a frugal omnivore.

I bring that unbalanced comparison up not to moralize (though I do think there's a strong case to be made against supporting restaurant chains that treat their employees badly, and there are many such chains), but to outline one of the further dimensions in the question of a person's impact on the world. A more personal matter involves long car drives: when I'm in the right mood, I've found that such rides are tremendous, irreplaceable sources of inspiration and introspection... there are also bike rides at night, but while they provide introspection of comparable intensity, it's a different sort of experience. However, such rides put carbon dioxide into the air, drain my bank account, and consume a limited but vital resource, with no practical reason. How do I weigh the value of inspiration against the harm of consumption? I don't claim this is answerable, but I do want to applaud you for having a broad enough awareness of related issues to appreciate the quandary. The more common debates about veganism or consumption center on either the supposed ignorance or selfishness of the masses, or the role of powerful corporations and interests, leaving out a vast range of both individual experience/reasoning and collective behavior. *grins* Also, thanks for the chance to articulate something I've been pondering recently, which is always a chance that ought to be taken.

I generally agree with all the points raised about intersectionality in this comment. The diet thing... in a sense I agree and in another sense I don't. The problem, and I said this to another friend in a similar situation, with vegan diets in our society is that they're already "finicky"; veganism is already something that society makes into an exception. If veganism were the norm then unusual dietary restrictions or tastes would, I think, be included within that norm, in the way that Rax's particular dietary sensitivies are included within veganism.

IOW, veganism can be modeled as a structure rather than a consumer choice.

I don't expect to talk you out of your own experiences, though, and it may turn out that cultured meat does play a part in that vegan society that I eventually want to reach. Still, I would argue that the demand for meat rests on tradition more than need, and that human beings eat too much protein and far, far too much fat. There may be exceptional cases to that rule -- I want to be careful not to commit nutritional essentialism -- but that's my educated guess at this point.

Well, you'll get no argument here -- I agree entirely that a more broadly vegan or vegetarian society would have made the finickiness less of a hurdle. For that matter, if vegan infrastructure continues to grow, I may give vegetarianism another shot -- already something like four-fifths of the food I eat is vegetarian, and a third or so is vegan. I would be willing to wager that there exists a vegetarian (and maybe vegan) diet that I would find palatable and healthy, but I failed once to find it, and am currently unwilling to try again.

IOW, veganism can be modeled as a structure rather than a consumer choice.

Well, the two aren't inconsistent. :)

Still, I would argue that the demand for meat rests on tradition more than need, and that human beings eat too much protein and far, far too much fat.

A great deal of it is particular to America, too -- our society had huge amounts of open land, and grazing was an economical way to put it to use. You won't find beef or other meats so cheap anywhere else, as far as I know. Though as someone who goes to intense martial arts classes, I rather appreciate the high energy density of fat. :P

I would argue that the demand for meat rests on tradition more than need

Humans, myself included, seem to be really bad at untangling tradition and need in general. :)

There is definitely a personal-need element to eating meat in at least some percentage of the population-- I am not the only person I know who has tried vegetarianism under a doctor's supervision with vitamin supplements and all sorts of nutritional care, only to find that without eating genuine red meat every so often I quite literally faint at random intervals. What the doctor said boiled down to 'this happens to maybe one percent of people who try this with me, no one knows why'.

my first gauge for the amount of resources (not just material, but fuel and labor) consumed by an item of food is its price

I'm skeptical that this is accurate for energy resources, although it's an interesting metric; it's a good thought experiment but I think we'd need real research to say if the "energy markup" of pre-processing foods or serving them at restaurants actually made vegan food less efficient, if the 90% energy loss figure is true.

How do I weigh the value of inspiration against the harm of consumption?

Yeah, I feel like if I always did the right thing environmentally I would just crawl in a hole and wait to die. :P So clearly there have to be tradeoffs.

I'm skeptical that this is accurate for energy resources...

I am too, but I include labor in the mix of "resources consumed" as well. I'm doing graduate work in plasma physics, so of course I'm a fusion optimist. :P More seriously, I think that I have a greater amount of control over the type of labor a given amount of my money invokes than I do over the amount of energy that expenditure consumes, and I would rather invoke a more worthwhile form of labor (both for the worker and for myself) than restaurant service. As a concrete example: last year around this time I was at an emotional low, so I permitted myself to eat out frequently, and ended up without much spare money. This year I've strictly controlled that habit, which meant that when an artist I was following on FA needed emergency cash, I was able to make a hefty commission without significant harm to my finances. For the same amount of money I could eat out twice, getting some working class people to spend a collective total of maybe thirty minutes of their lives babying me; or else, I could get the art, which supports the artist, makes me feel good for that support, brings pleasure to the person I made the commission for, and brings another art object into the world. Energy and material go into this price criterion, yes, but the labor aspect is the most important one to me. My money (scarce as it is, on a graduate student's budget) sets people to moving -- may it set them to moving in worthwhile ways.

(I said earlier that I didn't mean to moralize, but the reason I said it is because I often go off like this when it comes to matters Thoreauvian. Sorry!)

fwiw (oh and hi, I haven't read lj in like a million years), this really only discusses eating meat versus actual veganism (despite some brief mentions in the beginning). do you have any thoughts on the non-meat aspects? I do see that you noted lactose intolerance, but that's still somewhat different than "won't eat an occasional (non-vegan) baked good". Please do note I'm not pushing for you to do so, but all that I read in what you are saying is about meat per se.

That's a fair criticism and largely something I dodged. ;) I have mixed feelings about other animal products; I feel like if eggs or honey in particular are harvested in a cruelty-free way they might actually be fine. I don't have the tools to judge that, and I've chosen to just not eat them rather than do research into which eggs are free-range enough or something like that. Vegetarian products generally fall under "I don't even care if the people close to me eat that" even though I have a vague sense of moral unease around them. I would say that answering this question well probably requires I spend a lot more time thinking about it.

Also, hi! :)

My mostly-vegan sister is addressing one bit of that issue by raising chickens in her backyard. They are very spoiled chickens. (She was going to just sponsor a chicken to join her neighbor's coop, but decided her chicken was being picked on, and built her own coop, and then got another chicken.)

It's funny when I notice my opinions about things have changed - I often don't notice while it's changing, but sometime much later I'll suddenly realize I'm holding the exact opposite opinion from me-of-10-years-ago.

I used to be a bit scornful of vegetarianism & veganism that was based in preventing cruelty to animals. And I used to be all like "but ... how could you not want to eat meat, which is the tastiest thing ever?"

These days I have started to buy into the whole "meat is bad for the environment" thing, as well as the "our food processing machine is too cruel to animals". (I wonder, though, whether it's just because I'm slowly being brainwashed by my environment.)

Anyway, all that is to say that now I'm intrigued by the idea of trying vegetarianism for a bit and seeing how it goes.

If you told ten-years-ago Rachel that she would be (list of appropriate adjectives), the thing she'd be most surprised by would certainly be "vegan." And there are some pretty eyebrow-raising adjectives in there. ;)

I will totally cook for you when you come visit! *cajole cajole cajole*

I think 10-years-ago jadia would be most surprised that she doesn't have more eyebrow-raising adjectives. ;-) Also, that she's settled down in Boston instead of becoming some crazy world traveler.

I really cannot even imagine you eating meat, like, ever. I wonder how 60-year-old us's will surprise us....

I will totally eat your food when I come visit! It's one of my core competencies!

I imagine the conversation with teenage-Rachel going like this: "OK, you did X, and I see how that led to Y, and I get to do Z that sounds pretty rad, but, like, dude, WHAT DO WE PUT IN OUR CALZONES???"

One of the awesome things about writing stuff like this down is being able to come back to it in the future and see what things are most surprising. I suspect our sixty-selves will be even more awesome.

Have you ever considered going fruitarian for Lent? (Note: not a serious suggestion.)

I have but decided it was dumb. I've also considered raw, which is less dumb, but I don't think there's moral value to not heating food in the same way there is to not eating animals, so it doesn't seem in the spirit of the thing. (I'm dubious that there's practical value either but some people seem to really dig it.)

I haven't had anything good to give up in the last couple of years. Hopefully this year I'll come up with something.

I like vegans!

Dating them is hard, though, when you are not.

The best food conversion rates (drawn from a book on space habitats) are something like 2-2.5x as much food as meat produced for certain fish/seafood/prawns, 3x for chickens, and from there it gets worse.

The tricky bit on the resources front is that ethically produced meat does not actually use human food resources much at all, as, for example, people do not typically eat grass. The whole grain-fed meat thing is pretty much cow abuse. Also I think a global warming thing, as I think grain-fed cattle produce more methane?

At the same time, I have encountered rather a lot of anecdotal evidence that some people cannot eat vegetarian and be healthy (that whole "malnourishing yourself" thing) and I am certainly one of them; one of the pieces of anecdotal evidence I came across was a doctor tying the subtypes somewhat to blood groups. (And by that logic, I am in the "Oh, honey, don't even try" blood group.)

Though there is no way in hell i'd ever give up meat. (I'm such a carnivore) I do have to say the food you made when I came over was fucking awesome.

And that is my 2 cents

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Why veganism, two and a half years later

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