The Problem with Vegans - from an Ex-Vegan

I'm just going to come out and say it: vegans are a cult. At least most of the radical ones this video features are violently trying to come up with some absolute ideology and affect people that way.

I was a vegan for two years; I loved it and I would go back to it if I could. Unfortunately, like my mum, I developed iron deficiency and in order to not feel dizzy all the time and keep my blood oxygenated, I had to start eating red meats again.

I'm going to state now that even though I feel very strongly about animal rights and adamantly oppose animal cruelty, I didn't decide to quit eating meat because I wanted to singlehandedly save them. I wanted to feel better, I wanted to be healthier, and maybe lose weight as well. I realized that it is pointless to not eat meat solely because you feel sorry for the cute cows being slaughtered. It is better to actually do something worthwhile to help them.

I was always aware that my sacrifice was good for me and no one else. Even if half the population gave up meat, there would still be the other half that would insist on eating it. If it has to be an animal product, it is better to ensure it is ethically sourced. The quality of life does matter even if an animal is going to get slaughtered. If a chicken has to lay eggs treat it right, allow it outside. It's an animal, not a machine. If a cow has to be slaughtered, make sure it had fresh water, fresh air, care, and loving until it had to be, for lack of a better word, processed. Which it is going to be anyway unless we start keeping these animals as pets.

I cannot count on my fingers how many times I faced eye rolls when I told someone I was vegan. Not once did I understand the absolute scorn people had for my dietary choice. They did relax when I told them I'm not exactly protecting the animals with it and I'm not going to shame them into not eating meat because I don't. I had to defeat the argument about bacon several times too(to be honest, the loss of cheese pained me more than bacon). More precisely about how whoever I was talking to, they couldn't bear the bleakness of existence without bacon.

So the video aggravated me for many reasons. It is because it does what atheists hate about religious people: it tries to convince them that they would have it better, had they converted. There are very few things more patronizing about faith than telling educated people "They just don't know better." Somehow, they have managed to live without religiousness, they will probably survive without the goodwill of Christians, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants etc.

Vegans started preaching the same way. Now, this wouldn't be all that bad since people don't always take religious speeches seriously either. However, vegans invent pseudo-arguments 'proving' that people were originally evolutionarily herbivores and we should return to our roots.

In the video our vegan 'activist', Ed brings the example of a pig as a herbivore at some point; his very first mistake. Pigs, unfortunately, are omnivores, their teeth have the same characteristics as human teeth. We have molars and we have pointed canine-like teeth too. Earlier for chewing, latter for tearing. It's a mixed set of teeth adapted to processing multiple types of food. Flat molars you can observe in a horse's or cow's mouth—they're unlike human teeth in their shape though. Fangs, as we all know, are found in the mouth of predators.

Our 'activist' friend goes on to say we wouldn't kill a pig had he brought one into the auditorium because we are naturally repulsed by the sight of, as well as the thought of, murder.

This I found was very easy to counter since if and when we had to—we could murder anything. Hunter-gatherers were forced to kill to procure food, to replenish the energy lost during the hunt. If eating vegetables and berries was enough, why would humans have picked up weapons to hunt? Simply, the evolution of hunting behavior and tool use suggests that meat had such advantages that it was worth risking their lives for. Animal products are full of protein, which is what a large percentage of the human body is made of and provided far more energy when digested than plants did. Simple and straightforward.

The next thing he claimed was that humans are not endowed with the natural tools to take down another animal. Meaning we do not have the claws and teeth to take down said pig... This is simply untrue since as I have mentioned our teeth have evolved to enable predation as well. Not to mention that the good thing about evolution is that traits that aren't biologically advantageous anymore are naturally selected against in the following generations. With tool use, humans ceased to need claws since weapons were more effective in hunting. I discovered this by simply researching the topic for five minutes, which the 'activist' obviously saw fit not to do and rely entirely on his holier-than-thou vegan intuition. Since it was said in Scott Pilgrim; being vegan basically makes you better than everyone else.

He then proceeds to elaborate on people witnessing a dog being tortured in front and behind a wall and whether doing that same thing to a pig would make one more or less likely to intervene and save the animal.

Obviously, one is kept as a pet primarily except in some remote and barbaric parts of Asia and the other is primarily a farm animal to become food once grown. That does not justify cruelty to either of them. However, vegans never campaign for the fair treatment of animals that actually get slaughtered. They want to save them by simply not eating the animals that will be massacred anyway for their meat. Not participating in a process does not exclude enabling the process or contributing to not terminating said process. Standing aside and washing your hands repeating you have had no part in it, is basically Hitler saying he killed no one because he has not ended anyone's life personally by his own hands. Vegans completely forget in their magically-enhanced legume trance that capitalism will still satisfy a demand even if it is slightly reduced. They also fail to do their calculations correctly since the amount if vegans to elicit any change would have to be overwhelming. At this state, this is not the case.

Not to mention the argument about the preparation of animal products consuming resources in a terribly wasteful way. I would urge them to think about what goes into preparing their special almond, soy, and rice milk or something as simple as margarine. I would refute the claim that vegetables and fruits are not better for lacking animals hormones and artificial enhancers they are in fact treated chemically and are permeated to prevent them from pests and insects. It may be the topic of a lengthy debate which one is worse.

Humans need animal products. We should and we can improve the way of procurement and the way these products are processed. It is no wonder when a vegan and a carnivore climbed Everest the one that made it down was not the vegan.

Words, even though they're very powerful, will achieve what they've already accomplished: people to run for the hills when someone mentions the V-word.

Vegans are a minority and instead of exhibiting consistency in their ideas, presenting actual factual arguments and a behavior that isn't about converting people, they're doing things like holding seminars about made-up weak-ass points. Vegans could go ahead and do some real-life activism to save the animals they're so vehemently protecting. Or at least they allegedly do so.

No one has won a cause by being repulsively arrogant and violently bickering with anyone who dares to disagree with them, nor has anyone succeeded in convincing others to willingly join their cause by shaming them for a perfectly normal behavior without valid, reasonable counterpoints. People have very little patience and time for raging fanatics trying to tell them how to live their lives by the human embodiment of a pulsing, purple vein on someone's sweaty temple.

Instead of doing anything akin to activism, they're trying to appeal to people with sonorous, albeit, invented ideas dressed in a robe that sounds scientific but really isn't so that more people could swallow it. I doubt that people will be more willing to join their cause by likening themselves to religion unless, obviously, their mission solely is to appeal to that demographic. Most religions have something in common anyway—their more or less consistent ideas. Vegans, to their disadvantage, cannot agree on most things. As far as I know, that is not the way to redeeming the world...

All in all: less pseudo-BS preaching, more saving our environment and far fewer raging 'activists' and more pacifist doers. That is how change is brought on.