Why arent you vegan

[Kasandra]

The above question is posted on veggieboards.

Reading skinny ***** over the weekend and some more information on the internet about cruelty to animals I just took myself to that space where I didnt want to end up.



I felt inferior as a vegetarian and that I am not doing enough. I vowed to not eat dairy to cut out eggs I hardly ate the whole weekend due to severe anxiety.

THEN I REALISED : breath and take a step back.

I AM A VEGETARIAN and I am doing the best I can (within my boundaries) to keep myself healthy.

I should be content with that.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I don't call myself vegan mainly because of what I would be prepared to eat. I eat vegan most of the time, although I don't know about all the obscure ingredients in things, but maybe once in a blue moon I would be prepared to eat something with egg in it like Christmas cake, or something with bee stuff in it. I think about going back to eating egg, sometimes.
Egg mayo was one of my favourite sandwiches, and tofu and black salt don't really do as well, but I want to keep up with not having eggs.

I think if I became too strict, I might just snap one day, and go back to eating eggs, and even the odd mars bar.

I ate some crisps a few weeks ago, that had lactose in it, and I got, as I seem to these days, a kind of psychosomatic mucus in my mouth at the thought of the dairy I have eaten, which is good in a way. It is a nice barrier to eating dairy....Might get it with eggs as well.

There is also the leather footwear I am forced to buy, as I have large feet, but I think that wouldn't be a barrier to being a vegan, as it doesn't seem practical to avoid it.

 

[Kasandra]

yes my dairy consumption is very low basicly little bit of milk here and there - i avoid cheese butter etc due to cholestrol issues! as for eggs i can only stomach egg white the yellow freak me out.

i also avoid leather, cosmetics and products tested on animals.

but in the end - the journey is very personal, well at least for me and we all do the best we can.

 

[ledboots]

Kasandra, that thread about 'why aren't you vegan' is awful. Please eat your vegetarian food, and don't read that garbage. And including an egg yolk or some cheese sometimes would not be unhealthy in your case; I would hazard a guess your cholesterol is pretty low.

Hang in there, Kasandra, and take a deep breath. There's always going to be someone 'more vegetarian' or 'the best vegan who ever lived on the planet', but you are doing wonderful things for the animals and for the earth by eating vegetarian. And if you don't take care of yourself, you can't help the animals as much.

 

[Muggle]

Was vegan for 2 years, had to go back to being lacto-ovo when I had to move back home.

Not sure if I will go back to being a vegan though. I mean, I will give up dairy and eggs, and possibly honey once I move out again but I won't call myself vegan. Mainly because I don't have the energy or will to email companies to find out if the vitamin D in their food is D2 or D3, for example. The small things like that don't really bother me that much and that was the thing I found most difficult when I was vegan because it was such a pain finding a new product in a shop that looked vegan and looked really good but I didn't know about the added vitamin D in it. So I didn't buy it, a couple of weeks later remembered about it, did a load of googling, then had to wait for the company to email me back. The time I was thinking of was when I found something in a shop in Dublin. So after I got back to Wales and a few months later I discovered that it was only sold in Ireland, not the UK and I couldn't be bothered to order some online because it wasn't something I was desperate to have. It just would have been nice as a snack when I was watching the Six Nations in Dublin.

So yeah, I don't have that sort of dedication like most vegans have. So if I'm not sure about a trace ingredient then I just buy it and eat it and don't worry about the small stuff.

 

[Kasandra]

Thanks LedBoots

i have to agree that thread is horrible.

I just had to "check" myself and calm myself down and post here to bring myself back to reality.

 

[Muggle]

Also, I'm planning on spending £125 on a pair of leather walking boots. I think some people from that other board might be coming around to my house to take my vegetarian membership card off me.

And because of the attitudes that I've encountered on the other board I feel like I've got to justify myself here as to why I'm going to buy leather boots. But you know what? I'm not going to. I feel liberated!

 

[mlp]

The entire trace elements thing is something I'm pretty sure I will never again worry about.

 

[RabbitLuvr]

It was really difficult for me to find a conveniently-available, sliced sandwich bread without dairy or eggs. Out of dozens of types/brands that I read the labels on, I found one.

It has D3 in it.

And I'm not going to worry about that.

 

[SummerRain]

I have a secret for you, even if you go vegan, you'll still get other vegans telling you you're not doing enough. Usually in a passive aggressive manner. If they don't manage to find fault in how vegan you are, they'll move onto environmentalism/feminism/another issue.

My point is, some people just like to make other people feel small. Whether it's about vegetarian/veganism, or whether it's about another moral issue, or whether it's about the size of your nose or what you weigh or how much you earn. It's easy to say don't let it hurt/affect you, but I'm not sure I've ever been able to consciously change how I feel, so I think more practical advice is to avoid places and people who have that kind of attitude.

 

[Wolfie]

The entire trace elements thing is something I'm pretty sure I will never again worry about.

Same here. I just consider myself strict vegetarian. The bread for $5 a loaf at the HFS that I had reasearched thoroughly was fine when I had the money to buy it and the time to do the research. Now I have neither money or time so grocery store-bought bread with an ingredient list that looks mostly okay it is.

I also try to remain organized and carry food with me all the time, but if I forget and am running around and the blood sugar starts to drop, I will eat a nonvegan food to stop it. Never meat and never anything loaded with cheese or egg salad or anything like that, but I will eat a cookie or milk chocolate.

Even when I was all-out vegan I didn't obsess over bone char filtering in sugar and water the way "proper" vegans seem to. (This was in the days before the Internet, when I found out about bone char filtering.) So it's kind of nice to just say I'm not vegan so I don't have to have a panic attack over sugar.

 

[Pickle Juice]

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[Skylark]

The most important thing is the overall picture of what you eat, not one thing on one day. If you feel you must claim a particular label, that's cool, but keep in mind the big picture. A person could be vegan in the strictest sense, but they might be eating entirely processed, high-sugar, high-fat items. That's not great for their body or the environment.

 

[Danner]

Following a vegan diet would be possible if I only ate at home (in fact, I rarely eat dairy or eggs at home), but eating out would be nearly impossible for me. I would drive myself insane trying to ensure that everything I ordered was 100% vegan. I just don't have the heart to interrogate some poor waiter over every ingredient on the menu. This might not be as hard if you live in NYC or San Francisco where vegan restaurants are more plentiful, but where I live, I'm happy if I can find a pimento cheese sandwich on the menu.

 

[MrsSchu2u]

I'm not vegan because I'm satisfied with my current life and am not worried what other people think about what I eat, wear, etc. I know that I make a difference in a way that is signifigant to the animals and to me and my family. My son is now a vegetarian. My daughter and husband comsume far less meat than ever before, and my extended family always makes sure that we eat well. It's a balance that we all live comfortably with.

 

[shyvas]

I find it impossible to follow a vegan diet overhere. There are no mock meat products or vegan cheese available and food is very expensive. Furthermore if you're invited out people don't cater for vegans.

 

[Fromper]

I have a few issues that stop me from going vegan.

One is that I have a very hard time finding shoes that fit, due to extra wide feet. Since I need shoes that look nice in a business environment, this means I have to fall back on buying leather. I really do try to look for non-leather shoes first, and my sneakers, slippers, and even snow boots are non-leather. But for the office, I keep ending up with leather shoes.

As for food, I'm just a lazy cook. My groceries for home are mostly vegan, with a couple of exceptions. I don't worry about trace ingredients in things, so I'm sure my bread and other things are non-vegan.

Actually, I used to buy vegan bread when I lived in Florida, but that brand goes by a different name in the midwest, and the products are nowhere near as good (Arnold's vs Brownberry). Come to think of it, I probably should look into the bread at my supermarket here. My supermarket VERY heavily caters to the orthodox Jewish population in the area, who are even more anal than vegans about making sure certain things are dairy free, so I'd guess it's one of the most vegan friendly supermarkets in America. I've just never thought to look for bread in the kosher aisles, but they probably have some dairy free options there that aren't in the bread aisle.

I buy frozen veggie burgers and hot dogs a lot (again, lazy cook), and most of the vegan varieties I've tried are awful, so I won't buy them any more. Boca's "chicken" patties (however they spell it to indicate it's not real chicken) are the one exception, being vegan and pretty good. And I'm addicted to milk chocolate, which I'm trying to cut back on as much for weight loss reasons as vegan reasons.

And as others have indicated, eating out is tougher than eating at home, though it's not terrible here. Chicago's a pretty veg-friendly area. But I tend not to ask about hidden ingredients and stuff, and I occasionally end up with things that have cheese or egg just due to lack of other options.

--Fromper

 

[Danner]

I find it impossible to follow a vegan diet overhere. There are no mock meat products or vegan cheese available and food is very expensive. Furthermore if you're invited out people don't cater for vegans.

I think switching to a vegan diet requires a lot more creativity in the kitchen. Most of the veteran vegans I've come across online rarely eat the pre-packaged mock meat and cheese products anyway. They're expensive and not really all that healthy to begin with. They're nice comfort food options to fall back on occasionally, but they're not the kind of thing you really want to center your diet around.

 

[shyvas]

I think switching to a vegan diet requires a lot more creativity in the kitchen. Most of the veteran vegans I've come across online rarely eat the pre-packaged mock meat and cheese products anyway. They're expensive and not really all that healthy to begin with. They're nice comfort food options to fall back on occasionally, but they're not the kind of thing you really want to center your diet around.

I have always cooked and baked very original and healthy food in the past. When I'm in the US and UK, I find
that there is far more choice of vegan food. It makes it much easier to be vegan.
My everyday diet is centered (and always has been ) around whole grain foods, vegetables, fruit and pulses. I miss lots of omni food so at times I find it difficult to become a vegan.