Veganism

Well, I've been eating entirely vegan since last Wednesday (not this most recent Wednesday, but the one before that). Well, technically Wednesday evening. I say eating vegan for a few reasons. First of all, I'm not considering myself vegan until I have proven that I can keep it up. Second of all, veganism isn't only food. I mean, my shoes are unfortunately made out of leather (which is really bad, especially given that I haven't eaten meat for a long time, but in my defense, I haven't bought a pair of shoes at all recently), I haven't made sure that my toothpaste, etc. is vegan, and I haven't even begun to research clothing. Still, it's a good start. I plan to work on the non-food front when I return home.

So now I've decided to use the rest of this post to engage in the quite probably futile effort to convince someone (I don't have anyone in particular in mind) to at least eat fewer animal products or less meat. I can at least try. As whenever I try to articulate my reasons, all that I end up coming up with is that "they're really mean to the animals", which isn't exactly the most effective way of communicating what I mean, I plan on mostly linking to things. I think I mostly do this because if I ever learn any of the details I quickly try to forget about them, which I feel that I'm justified in doing as I still reform my behavior.

My fear of conflict is whispering in the back of my mind for me not to do this, but in such a situation I am able to ignore it. My current motivation is powerful enough to overwhelm such. There are a few categories under which arguments for veganism tend to fall, the most common one being concern for animals. But veganism also benefits the environment and is healthier.

I figure I should start off with the bit I've already explained in the past: the vegetarian part. First of all, killing animals is wrong. That alone was enough to make me a vegetarian. Then of course, the animals are treated horribly. They're generally kept in tiny cages where they don't have room to move around, and that's only the beginning. The free range thing isn't a good copout, either. It doesn't actually mean that they all get to wander around. I've also argued in the past that becoming a vegetarian is so easy that there's no excuse not to, but that argument isn't quite as effective when it comes to being vegan.

I'm going to make one more point and then I'll just post the links. It's not that hard just to replace a few things. For instance, soy milk in my experience tastes better than regular milk. Ricemilk is okay, too. I didn't like almond milk as much. You have to be a little pickier about ice cream (soy ice cream is kind of bad, as is rice, but hemp and tofu- yes, tofu: it actually tastes good- make good ice cream). Pancakes taste the same without eggs and with soymilk. I can't say I've had good luck with cheese replacements. There are egg replacements. Vegan bread tastes the same. Seeing as I'm sure people have heard this before and that this won't really convince anyone, I'm just going to leave the links. Hopefully at least someone will look at some of them just to humor me. ...Just be glad I spared you the PETA links.

Vegan Action
Vegan Outreach
Vegan Wolf (Don't ask me where they got that title...)
Veganic (Okay, so this one's by someone working for PETA. It was inevitable.)
Viva

Perhaps this isn't the greatest time to mention it, but I just realized that Starbursts aren't vegan or even vegetarian. ...I should have known that by now.