But never announce it on social media. The purists will fight you.
Vegans have the worst PR department ever
I’ve never encountered a group I mostly agree with that I want to avoid more
I’ve been a strict Vegan for over a decade now and even i tend to stay away from the crowd. It’s a bit better offline, but depends on how much any person needs to boost their ego by signaling moral pureness.
I’m a bacontarian like in the image, but I love sharing recipes with all folks. This works even for the hardcore vegans.
Baconarian?
The word you are looking for is Murderer, obviously 😉
But honestly, cutting out animal products helps animals, so thanks for that. Should it be all animal products? I’d say yes and live accordingly, but i can accept that other people arrive at other points.
The word you are looking for is Murderer, obviously
And yes, I know. I try to only eat suicidal animals, because I’m a good human!
My initial goal with switching more and more things to vegan was to reduce my ecological footprint.
For the animal products I still consume, I try to buy the fairest and highest quality available. If I’m responsible for their end, the life they had should at least be somewhat pleasant. But I guess they would prefer not to be eaten at all.
I’m just, in this moment, testing a new oat milk, and thus far I like it. It’s a worthy contender against Oatly Barista
I don’t know your options, but my work uses milk lab for speciality milks and the oat milk is good in my opinion. Well, good in coffee. I don’t know how that translates to other uses.
I’m in Germany and the options are, well, not limited, but the quality varies a lot. Currently I’m testing a band from Lidl, because I was too late to drop into Aldi yesterday.
I’m in the exact same boat - I’m grateful that the person who introduced me to it never forced it on me, they obviously would cook vegan meals for both of us when I’d visit his house but that was pretty much the only exposure they gave me.
When I started looking more into it and taking it on, they were obviously very supportive and I intend to do just that in my own life - people know I’m vegan eventually just from seeing the meals I eat and eventually asking, but I don’t mention it otherwise.
Doctor Who fans circa 15 years ago. I enjoyed the show for a while after the reboot. They were insufferable and I stopped watching at some point.
You know, that’s what they act like come to think of it. A toxic fandom. They’ve got something good that I occasionally enjoy. But I’m not as into as they are so I’m not welcome. And that’s fine. With Doctor Who I just stopped. With veganism I’ll make myself some cool ass meals and never share the recipes.
If there’s one group I hate serving more as a waiter, it’s vegans
Every other dietary will put in their booking their dietary in order to allow the chefs time to prepare them something pre service (we usually run a chef’s choice menu, set items)
Even FODMAP, arguably one of the most confusing dietaries, isn’t this bad at it. But vegans will almost always show up unannounced and expect to be fed when the only item on the menu that’s normally vegan is the bloody bread
If it’s bloody, the bread probably isn’t vegan either.
The purists will hate you, and those that hate the purists will also hate you.
I’m a purist but I appreciate everyone doing their best. Everyone has different challenges and priorities and in the end a bacontarian is much better than eating meat all the time, according to me at least.
For me, I’d love to see the monoculture farms go away. Reduced meat eating would go a long way to that end.
It doesn’t require completely abstaining but even a 10% reduction in the need for feed and other processed items would free up land that could be used in more sustainable ways.
To that end, I’m also a fan of alternative farming methods such as vertical farms and promoting even small balcony boxes that may only produce pretty flowers or herbs.
Every variety of greenery in as many places as possible would combat the poison we’ve pumped into the world over the past few centuries.
I’m a purist
You are accepting that others aren’t and thus okay with harm reduction stances (“lesser evil is better than greater evil”), so you are not a moral purist at least, if that makes any sense. For a true moral purist evil is unacceptable so they will refuse making that choice, even if that leads to a worse outcome
Ah, I guess I’m more of a dietary purist.
vegans as well as linux users are nowhere near as outspoken and petty as they are made out to be. personally i find jokes about that insufferable and ubiquitous. The ratio of jokes about this to actually people like this existing is like 100:1. my theory is, They get so much shit because them just existing reminds people of their own shortcommings, instead of applauding people doing the effort to pioneer a better world these people decide to make a snarky remark and continue being lazy and annoying with these jokes.
I know quite a few vegans in my life who are amazing, nonjudgmental people. On Lemmy, I’ve been called a “murderer” and a “carnist” for mentioning I’m reducing my meat consumption.
Yup. I posted the canadian food “plate” in one of the vegan communties as a sanier counterexample to the new US inverted meat pyramid. Canada fought its Ag industry tooth and nail to publish it. The pretty reasonable “protein” section is largly beans, nuts, fish and then red meat, in a way that mirrors actual health recommendations instead of industry demands.

I specifically called it a better version that recommended eating less meat. Immediatly hit with “all meat is murder” and had my comment deleted within the hour.
It doesnt change my personal views on veganism, but it did tell me not to interact with the community here, which is unfortunate. Id like to get more input and perspectives, and hell even recipe recommendations, but nah.
You went to a vegan community and posted propaganda advocating consumption of animals and you’re surprised at the response?
Doesn’t carnist just mean someone who eats meat?
It does. It’s just a word for people who follow the belief that it’s normal, natural, and necessary to consume animals.
Since those people are the invisible majority, it’s often taken as an insult to have their ‘normal’ status get a label. Veganism is the belief that we shouldn’t exploit and harm animals, carnism is the belief that we should.
Which is hilarious in hindsight, because the reverse happens in other topics. Call someone in other circles ‘normal’ and they’ll throw 15 label names at you for why they’re not normal.
Carnism would still technically cover “vegan plus (animal-based) bacon”. That’s kinda like saying you’re an atheist but believe in (insert god here).
Carnism would still technically cover “vegan plus (animal-based) bacon”
And this all-or-nothing approach is precisely what I’m referring to. I consider myself pretty well-read, and the only time I’ve ever seen the word “carnist” used in the wild is when someone who’s vegan is hurling it as an insult
Sorry to break it to you, but if you believe that the Christian god exists yet don’t think there was ever a guy named Jesus that rose from the dead after 3 days, you’re still a theist even if you call it atheist.
And if you think it’s acceptable to kill pigs because you like their cooked bodies, you’re still practicing carnism even if you call it veganism.
“I’m reducing my meat consumption by doing (x).”
“Fuck off, carnist!”
It really isn’t being used that way when the intention is flagrantly insultive.
no. it’s a term made up by vegans to describe people who don’t have their ideology. just like how Christians talk about sinners
please go ahead and share the discussion with us
I speak from personal experience. I once tried talking about reducing meat consumption and got attacked. Never again.
I got banned from a vegan community for calling someone out for equating meat consumption with domestic violence.
You think violence and violence aren’t comparable?
Comparing eating meat with domestic violence is a laughable comparison and disingenuous at best. It’s attitudes like that that make the average person unable to take vegans seriously.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Vegan, is in fact, bacon/Vegan, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, bacon plus Vegan. Vegan is not an diet unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning diet system made useful by the bacon, grease and vitals destroying components comprising a full obesity as defined by WHO.
I see what you did there…
most people are chill, but there are people who act like if you aren’t a vegan or a linux user, you are an evil and morally compromised person
which is understandable coming from vegans, imo. bad tactic and all but yeah, animal consumption is pretty messed up.
coming from linux evangelists it’s fucking laughable
All the linux “evangelists” I’ve seen online just shitpost with inside jokes, or talk about the benefits of FOSS, or explain what makes google and microsoft such evil companies, or post genuinely helpful content about software alternatives or advice for making the switch.
I’ve never seen a rabid linux user. On the other hand, some vegans get so rabid that they actually chase people away from their cause. You’re never going to get people to change a core aspect of their lives such as eating habits by insulting them and going on a tirade about why they’re evil.
For what it’s worth, I’ve spent years as a vegetarian, and it took me years before that to gradually reduce my meat consumption to zero. I tried going vegan a few times but I would get grumpy, lethargic, and start craving things like cheese and eggs.
There is no room in vegan spaces online to talk about the process of reducing consumption or the struggle associated with it. That’s pretty detrimental to the goal of a 100% meat-free society.
The only way we’ll ever eliminate factory farming is through slow-incremental change. But the average vegan will never accept that. They’re a classic example of “letting perfection be the enemy of progress.”
idk the amount of times I’ve tried to explain my wife and kid’s dietary restrictions that mean veganism is basically impossible for us in other places I get a lot of hate.
The kids are autistic and have major taste and texture aversions, which maybe we could work around with the right things. My wife though had a malabsorptive bariatric surgery that means she needs to eat Low carb, High protein, and most importantly Low volume meals. When you need like 1.5 cups of beans to get the same protein as like 3oz of ground beef and only have a 6 ounce stomach volume you kinda have to go with the one that gives you the most protein for the least volume.
I could imagine vegans being upset if you weren’t vegan solely because your wife and kids can’t be (like they are a shield or something, idk). Modern veganism should be about harm reduction. I know someone mentioned beans but I think seitan has more protein per punch (has more than steak according to a random google, *forgot about the carb limit tho, it looks like it wouldn’t go over too much but depends on the source). I don’t have much experience with your family’s conditions. I need a bunch of fiber or else I get severely constipated, I was shocked at how little your wife gets. Sorry you got hate for your wife and kids. It sounds like your wife was (is?) in a bad spot, I hope her recovery gets better.
*edit
The only problem with that is we live on a fixed budget as I don’t work since they all need varying degrees of care around the clock. We live entirely off my wife’s disability and whatever assistance programs we qualify for. I have neither the time, the energy, nor the money to prepare meals for myself entirely separate from their dietary restrictions.
Each kid eats maybe a dozen things themselves, 20 for the oldest, and there’s maybe 6 that overlap between them. By the time I’ve figured out what they’re willing to eat and made it I almost zero desire to even look at food let alone prepare an entirely separate vegan meal with all of that no money I have to purchase vegan ingredients that again likely nobody but me would be able to eat.
(Edit: I should add I’m not completely against the idea of changing my own diet. It’s just that by the time I’m feeding myself I’m so done with the whole thing that my “diet” is whatever I can easily shove in my food hole without fussing too much about it)
That sounds really rough, sorry you are going through this. I am also on disability and welfare and have a caregiver partner (so my benefits meant for 1 person have to be stretched for 2), but I do not have children (let alone disabled children). I’m guessing your wife isn’t able to eat the seitan after all? That sucks. Seitan is chewier than tofu or tempeh but you know your kids the best. I hope you hang in there. You are doing your best and it is appreciated. I’ve read about caregiver burnout before, the suffering the people around us go through is awful. Fuck the system we live in.
I’m not sure we’ve never actually found seitan around to try it. Wholeheartedly agree about the caregiver burnout and the way the system works though. So much “invisible” care work it just expected to be done for free with zero support it’s crazy.
The wildest part about that to me was that Medicare would pay me to care for her… if we weren’t married. But because we are I’m ineligible for that.
Omg yeah, the system does not want disabled people married!!! Once a disabled person marries, their disability income gets cut and chore services gets cut. What a load of bs, both partners need to have an income in this stupid economy just to be able to live and a partner will absolutely burnout without support. It’s the main reason I can’t marry. If I marry, I essentially lose all of my benefits (also how is a limit of $3k in total assets for a married couple fair?!). Disabled people are penalized for having any type of savings or assets like life insurance ffs. Even with chore services, insurance will makeup excuses like some hypothetical person is providing free support and thus they don’t give as many hours. Getting paid is a mess because of the EVV crap to “prevent fraud” aka just more spyware embedded in your phone. I’ve actually heard of people getting legal divorces just to get around this crap. Also people like me who can’t get married but are terrified of being found to be “holding out” on marriage which can cause benefits to be cut completely. I’ve read articles on people having children out of wedlock (not that there is anything wrong with that) simply because of the disability welfare system. IT SUCKS.
So I mean this from a place of curiosity not trying to get you all to change anything, I’m not even vegetarian. Is there a particular reason your wife couldn’t do several smaller meals over the day? Like do their organs not allow something like that anymore or more like it would be ridiculous to carry around a bag of beans to snack on over the course of 4 hours?
I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m going to be adding some addendums/emphasis and providing some additional context for some things about her condition in here. I do not mean any of this to say that I believe that you personally are or plan on discounting her condition. It is meant only for emphasis because the particular bariatric surgery she had, the Duodenal Switch is significantly more involved than most other surgeries. A lot of people end up having to have the surgery partially reversed because they can’t keep up with the vitamin supplementation and end up hospitalized and dying of malnutrition.
The malabsorption means that she already has to have many small meals through the day. Then each of those meals needs to hit certain macros while being under that volume.
So like to give an example. She needs at least 200g of protein in a day while staying as far under 50g of carbs as possible (fiber included) to not be utterly miserable. That’s not “the doctor told me to get this much” they told her to go for 150g. That’s the levels she’s found over the years result in her not being in significant gastrointestinal distress and actually having decent energy levels along with the roughly 50 vitamin supplements she HAS TO TAKE TO NOT DIE OF MALNUTRITION because and I cannot stress this enough the malabsorption means she CANNOT properly absorb most of these vitamins from food. They need to be very specific formulations at specific times of day to keep her levels up. Like 125,000IU+ PER DAY of Vitamin A (This is WILL KILL YOU levels for a normal person BTW) to still be partially night blind from deficiency (yes she has seen a doctor about it to make sure it’s nothing else)
That 1.5 cups of black beans is around 22.5g of protein and 60g of carbs. So that’s 2 entire “meals” of nothing but beans to have a little over 1/10th of the protein she needs in a day and 20% over the entire day’s limit for carbs.
One might think “Why get this surgery then?” if it’s like this. Which is a fair question. For my wife in particular she had a condition called pseudotumor cerebri where she was producing too much cerebrospinal fluid and not getting rid of it fast enough so it was compressing her brain and optic nerve much like a brain tumor (hence why it is called pseudo tumor). She was significantly overweight at the time and had this issue before. It resolved temporarily when she lost weight but due to heavy food insecurity and other trauma when she was younger she struggled to keep the weight off. So she had 2 options: Aggressive weight loss from bariatric surgery, or getting a shunt implanted in her skull to drain the fluid. She chose the bariatric surgery that gave her the best chance of not still needing the shunt, which was the DS. Since having severe OCD she knew for a fact she could keep up with the vitamin supplementation and use managing the vitamins as an adaptive outlet for the OCD.
Why specific formulations and times for vitamins? A couple reasons, one is ease of absorption. Certain formulations have to be basically digested a little first to get properly absorbed which because of the surgery her body just doesn’t properly do. This is basically why she needs the supplements to begin with. Since her body only properly digests part of what she eats she doesn’t actually absorb a bunch of the nutrients from it and needs to supplement the vitamins her body can’t absorb well from food. The second is that certain vitamins interfere with the absorption of others, calcium inhibiting iron absorption for example.
They are two very different things to discuss. First, eating is vital, computing with computers is not. People eat to survive and 44% of the people in the world live in poverty, so they probably don’t get to choose what to eat to survive. This statistic takes China into account, outside of China, the fight against poverty is way more ineffective, to put it mildly. The USA has been okay with an increasing amount of poor people, in the range of 10-15% by more than half a century. There are countries with >80% of people living in poverty in Africa.
But even if you can choose, my opinion is that achieving a balanced diet is the goal, not being a vegan.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
And the enemy of progress. If everyone arrived for “good enough” we’d get further than people who refuse to try for fear of not achieving perfection. And this is problem comes not only from that person, but from the external pressure to be perfect. Fuck that shit. My old man used to get on me as a kid, “You only want to be good enough?” Yeah, that’s fine. I get everything done that I need to, and I can go be good enough at some other shit too, and I think I make the world around me better with all of my good enough shit.
Gatekeepers are the fucking worst. Every time I start reading up on something there’s always a handful of miserable condescending shitheads being nasty to people because they’re 'not ‘doing it right.’
Most vegan threads I come across usually has some of these, insulting anyone that’s not 100% on board even if they’re trying to get into it. Audiophiles are pretty much on the same level as hardcore vegans when it comes to being obnoxious (recently saw someone ask why the op was bothering setting up a music system if they didn’t have thousands of dollars to spare, for example). Linux users on support threads is a coin flip of whether they’ll be helpful or insulting.
Let people ease into things, stop demanding perfection right out of the gates!
This also applies to renewable energy btw. Some people seem to think we can’t start with the energy transition before we’ve figured it all out, including storage for the winter and at night.
Let’s just build solar panels and wind mills and see how far we can go with that :D much more productive that way.
Dont get caught up in labels. If you want to vegetarian but don’t want to give up bacon just do it. Doesn’t matter what you label it it’s just a diet.
Being overly pushy and judgmental towards people who want to make a change in the right direction is a great way to repel them from your cause. I prefer to welcome them and offer them the proper resources to get started.
It’s entirely possible that once the people who want to go vegan but aren’t ready to give up bacon/cheese/that one other food get used to a vegan diet and substitutions, they will eventually be ready to let go of those last few products on their own.
Being overly pushy and judgmental towards people who want to make a change in the right direction is a great way to repel them from your cause.
Someone who openly eats bacon because they enjoy it and claim themself vegan is far away from the vegan cause. If you don’t like to ear the truth or face simple criticism i would argue you are not really looking to make much change in the right direction.
I would argue that the person willing to give up 95% of their meat consumption cares more about making a change than the one telling them not to bother at all because it’s not the full 100%.
According to one survey, which has some interesting statistics on veganism:
52.1% or 6779 participants said they were vegetarian prior to going vegan.
Research suggests that people are more likely to stick to habits that they adopt gradually rather than suddenly making drastic lifestyle changes, and it’s much easier to reach 100 from 95 than it is from 0. Maybe a better vegan substitute for bacon will be invented in that time and they’ll give it up even sooner.
As another user here says, don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.
That applies to any cause. Every time I see people going all in and fighting anyome with 1 inch of different opinion I think “you are only pushing people away”. Once someone is moving is the right direction, let them go. If you still don’t agree 100% it’s ok, people can improve with time. Be tolerant of people and you’ll see a lot of improvement. Radicalism will never, in any areas, be good or make the world better
You’ve convinced me, I’m going vegan + meat + dairy + animal fat.
Well, no eggs at least ;-)
I bet they simply forgot about them. What an idiot. Who would do that?
Oh yeah! Dammit.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly
I am seeing more and more folks go veg simply because the price, and that’s great! Build a culture of veg meals and normalize the epic curries, chillis, soups, stews, spreads, and tofu / seitan/mushroom dishes
I really like Derek Sarno’s YouTube channel for this reason. I feel very welcome watching his content because he doesn’t browbeat folks who aren’t fully vegan, he just presents an epic mountain of some of the most mouth watering vegan food I’ve ever seen.
Instead of purity tests to keep folks out, we need more people like Derek who hold the door open for everyone, so they can smell the amazing food cooking inside.
Can’t upvite this enough. I’m not really vegetarian, but I love the fact that it is gaining traction, since it’s just so much better food. If there is a vegan option of anything, I’ll go for that.
The best burger I’ve ever eaten had a giant mushroom as the main thing in it, sterotypically served by a trans girl at a street food vendor in the gay quarter of Amsterdam.
It literally ruined burgers for me, I’m still chasing that high. I think if you want to be a vegan activist, learn to cook well and open a restaurant. That’s how they got me.
That’s awesome. I’ve had some bad experiences with mushroom burgers. I need a good one like this.
I support small changes for self improvement. Buying pints instead of fiths is a start.
Moderation is my favorite word
I am very fun at parties
Duncan?
Are you referring to Duncan from Haha You Clowns ?
I think he’s referring to this:
Haha! Lovely!
When the vegetarian option becomes cheaper and tastes just as good though, continuing to eat the meat version is an explicit choice.
I think there is also a cooking skills gap no one acknowledges. For example tofu is way different than chicken/beef/pork. Scares a lot of people away because poorly cooked tofu is 100x worse than poorly cooked meat.
Our family eats about half vegetarian because the cost difference is still minimal and variety is fun. Animals are also way more evil than most people realize. Cows are basically the only one that won’t eat it’s friend when they are bored. Not saying it justifies earing them, but I’ve never understood why vegans put animals on a pedestal.
I don’t put them on a pedestal. I would still be vegan even if I hated animals. You don’t have to love or even like somebody to not want them to be tortured and killed. The conditions that chickens, pigs, and cows live in aren’t something I would wish on my worst enemy.
Animals are also way more evil than most people realize.
This would be an argument for not breeding them into existence in the first place. Creating an evil entity is not a good thing.
I think tofu is just an acquired taste. When I first started cooking it, I did all the things. Pressing, freezing then thawing, brines, breading, sauces, air frying, etc.
But the more eating it became habit, the less all that stuff mattered. When I’m preparing it now, I usually take it out of the package and immediately crush it with my hands into rough chunks into whatever I’m cooking. I actively crave the stuff enough that I will pretty much always eat a raw chunk as I’m crumbling it.
The meat animals are selected for tastiness, not friendliness.
That, and their magical ability to convert things humans can’t eat (grass) into things humans can (beef, milk). This is fundamentally why"food" animals were domesticated.
I might add health concerns to that list along with cost and taste. Allergens and sodium content, for instance. Also a concern about being “highly processed”.
Not that that’s not an issue with animal-based foods. But Impossible is still “new and different” and if Impossible turned out to be terrible for you, it wouldn’t be the first time something new and different (even something new and different that was touted by some as being better for you) resulted in a public health crisis. (I’m referring to trans fats in particular here.)
Sometimes it tastes better. The last 10 years has been really depressing, because I’ve discovered that there are quite a lot of people who are unwilling to change even in the face of pandemics and environmental collapse.
Nope! Change is bad. Always. Just cross your arms and dig in your heels.
Sometimes it tastes better
Taste can go either way, but meatless options are almost overwhelmingly the winner in the texture department.
Yeah. Taste is a very subjective thing.
I have tried chicken, fish, prawn and squid from well known restaurants and I can still just make a salted steamed potato that I would like better.Turns out I just don’t like meat stuff. Well, at least I know I can digest them in case it is required in emergencies.
It’s already cheaper it’s the tastes just as good part that is expensive. The faux meat is still expensive but vegetables have been cheap. If you didn’t care about variety you could eat chicken soup with a Costco chicken for a whole week for like $8
It’s already cheaper
for some people
i always wanted to quit smoking, but couldn’t drop the first cigarette with my morning coffee. it took me way too long to make peace with that single cigarette, turns out i can easily forgoe the other 19 I’ve been smoking every day
Last year I nearly quit smoking weed, except when I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons.
that’s fair enough, you probably don’t play d&d every day
even if they do play d&d daily, it’s still less than if they were a morning/noon/night smoker.
I eat more veggies and less meat than ever
That’s down to iterative changes.
If the only option was a hard-line cold-turkey (lol) approach, I’d very likely have never changed a thing
It’s definitely easier if you do it one format at a time.
Vegan restaurants and tiktok chefs do infinitely more for veganism than posters.





















