Vegans (pronounced VEE-guns) are people who choose not to eat any animal products, including meat, eggs, dairy, honey, and gelatin. Vegans do not wear fur, leather, wool, down, or silk, or use cosmetics or household products that were tested on animals or contain ingredients that were derived from animals. Most vegans also do not support industries that feature captive and/or performing animals, including circuses, zoos, and aquariums.
The American Vegan Society defines veganism as “an advanced way of living in accordance with Reverence for Life, recognizing the rights of all living creatures, and extending to them the compassion, kindness, and justice exemplified in the Golden Rule.”
The word “vegan” was derived from “vegetarian” in 1944 by Elsie Shrigley and Donald Watson, the founders of the UK Vegan Society. Shirgley and Watson were disillusioned that vegetarianism included dairy products and eggs. They saw “vegan” as “the beginning and end of vegetarian,” and used the first three and last two letters of vegetarian to coin the new term.
related links:
Urban Vegan Blog
Vegan strippers
Interesting lies on this blog. This site claims that Mark Twain, among others, were “Vegans” despite the fact that there was no such thing before 1944.
A site concerned with “Vegan” tattoos
From the NYT article:
>>“As a feminist, I’m not keen on the idea of using
>>women’s bodies to sell veganism, and I’m not into
>>the idea of using veganism to sell women’s bodies,”
Heh heh. Riiiiiiiiiight. That’s why there are all those P&TA ads with the T&A hotties pimping Ingrid Newkirk’s message.
On the other hand, of course insects and worms are animals. What else would they be? Minerals? Vegetables?
So, they don’t eat honey because it exploits the bees? Do they eat the plants that are pollenated by those same bees? Farmers exploit bees on an industrial scale because otherwise there aren’t enough wild bees to provide for the crops we all need.
How about bacteria, virii and prions? Are they alive? Do vegans take antibiotics when they get sick? Are vegans against finding a cure for AIDS or Creutzfeld-Jakob (CJD)?
How far does their mental illness extend?
In my opinion this Western form of non-religious veganism is a type of obsessive compulsive disorder, or even mass-hysteria, that is enabled by the overly-affluent society these freaks enjoy.
Its hard to find an idea, good or bad, that someone doesn’t take too far.
On average, plot the length and breadth of a concept, and the best application of it will be somewhere in the middle.
Not the far right neo-con agenda we are suffering under now, and not the socialized welfare state that the neo-cons label the reasonable middle with.
Extremists are fun to talk to, for about 5 minutes.
Effen weirdoes.
I admire that they don’t want to harm animals. My uncle would hunt animals just for sport.
My friend is (or was) a vegetarian, but she had no trouble with eating milk or eggs. We looked up that that’s called a lacto-ovo-vegetarian. Then she said she doesn’t have trouble eating fish, because fish are stupid.
And why the heck wouldn’t you consider insects and worms to be animals? They aren’t vegetable or mineral!
What psycho has decided that everything is categorized as one of three things: animal, vegetable, mineral?? So a Mushroom is suddenly a vegetable? Cheese is a mineral? What’s a lichen?
Folks this stems from some commercial for an after shave sometime back in the 1970’s.
A cockroach is NOT an animal. It’s a friggin’ insect.
Old Spice or Hai Karate?
#6 – Mr. C. Dvorak
>>What psycho has decided that everything is
>>categorized as one of three things: animal,
>>vegetable, mineral??
Uh, that was tongue-in-cheek, Mr. C. Dvorak.
And if you can’t tell the difference between a bumblebee and a lichen, or a gecko and moss on a tree….well. I don’t know what to say. I’m rendered speechless. I never met anyone before who didn’t think insects and worms were animals. Do you think only puppies and kitties are “animals”?
Bless my buttons.
I especially love the ‘rat temple’ in India I saw in TV. Rats are especially precious creatures!
Did you know trees can cry? What about them?
You vegans are so cruel to our brother plants!
Does an ear of corn have a soul? I think it does!
In fact I know it!
Why do you think they call it HOLY WATER?
Your entire existence is a sore on the Earth.
Hmm… Dvorak’s mentioned Veganism a number of times in recent memory. Do I sense a lifestyle change coming on?
But seriously, I’m vegan and not of the moon-hippy variety, so let me help you understand the position.
1. Nobody currently contends that animal products are at all required for optimum human nutrition. In fact, there is tremendous and mounting evidence that animal products are the source of a lot of our current health problems (but that’s besides the point).
2. Given point 1., why then use ANY animal products when there are abundant and easily obtainable alternatives that don’t involve the confinement and slaughter of any form of life? Apparently, the answer most people unwittingly cling to is merely that animals taste good. Vegans simply disagree with this and choose instead to use animal-free alternatives, if possible.
3. Are insects sentient? Is honey from farmed, trucked honey-bees vegan (who incidentally may be destroyed by burning if not needed by the beekeeper)? Who knows… most vegans simply error on the side of caution and avoid eating insects and use maple syrup or other non-animal derived sweeteners.
4. For those of the “but we’re carnivores and have always used animals as we see fit” persuasion, well, we’re omnivores, which actually means that while we CAN eat meat, it by no means means that that’s what we’re truly intended to consume. Rather, our dietary promiscuity is a result most likely of shortages in available resources in primitive times – humans with the maximum flexibility in what they *could* eat were selected over those with only plant or meat requirements.
Just because that was our past doesn’t mean that we need to continue that way, especially when really all it means is making some fairly simple substitutions in your diet and behavior.
W.T.Riker
#10 – William T
>>why then use ANY animal products
Because they taste good? Note that a lot of vegan or vegatarian prepared foods are mock-ups of the real thing. Boca Burgers, fake chicken nuggets, soy “milk”, vegan “fish” and the multitude of other things that everybody wants to eat. So instead of eating the real thing, vegans make a surrogate from tofu, and flavor it up so it’s semi-palatable.
Fruit and vegetables are great, but so is filet mignon, salmon sushi, barbecued chicken, cheeseburgers, and all the rest.
Moderation in everything.
Do you consider breast feeding to be a violation of the tenets of veganism?
I’d love to see one of these vegans sit patiently as a mosquito sucks up his daily quota of blood.
No, no, no! Don’t swat the bug. He is a life-form just like the rest of us.
#6–JCD==whats under your skin? Last time I checked “life” was generally categorized into 10-11 groups and insects were definitely in the animal phyllum. Mushrooms are in the fungus family==which I don’t think is plant but may be vegetative or of the 3 categories offered certainly is vegetable before it is animal or plant.
Its all somewhat arbitrary and certainly definitional–but valid.
I once heard that being a vegetarian meant not eating anything with a face. Under that humorous view, I guess you could eat worms, but not cockroaches.
#10–Riker==I am of the group that says meat tastes good. You can say you prefer other choices but you can’t say you disagree as if the meat eater’s choice is “wrong.” I am not an advocate for eating meat, I don’t see why others would advocate anything regarding “taste.” I got off a vegan kick a while back when firm tofu was more expensive than chicken. That is changing right now, but taste is taste.
Why not give your information and personal experiences but let people choose what they like?
#10 – Mr. T. Ryker
>>all it means is making some fairly simple
>>substitutions in your diet and behavior.
I know quite a few vegans, and the substitutions they have to make in their diet are anything BUT simple. The vegetarian lifestyle is simpler, but it’s still a pain in the ass.
And who wants to give up barbecued ribs??
As usual, Pedro #11 is right again
#12 – Mister Mustard:
Regarding animal product substitutes (e.g. soy milk, boca burgers, etc), those products exist for the very reasons you’ve addressed: because they provide a protein taste and feel that’s so ingrained in our food habits. I agree that a diet of purely vegetables and fruit would be pretty bland.
But, by choosing a veggie burger, I’m simply conceding a little of the taste (and believe me they’re getting better all the time) for a burger that didn’t involve an animal’s death. If you’re saying that that slight margin in taste is a morally sustainable reason to opt for the animal burger that’s where I would disagree.
And no vegan in their right mind would object to breastfeeding. What aspect of breastfeeding involves unnecessary cruelty and slaughter on any being’s behalf? Then again, perhaps my mother was doing it wrong… 😉
#14 – Bobbo:
I agree, meat tastes good. But I don’t eat it because I know how it was produced and that it’s unnecessary. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that perhaps your “vegan kick” was a little ill-conceived if all it took was the price of chicken being cheaper than tofu to break your resolve.
My previous posting was (I think) fairly low-key and wasn’t exactly me hammering the podium with my shoe, but if you feel that I should “let people choose what they like” then blame Dvorak for bringing it up in the first place 😛
W.T. Riker
Vegan bodybuilders.
Vegans are annoying.
#17 – Mr. T. Riker
>>What aspect of breastfeeding involves unnecessary
>>cruelty and slaughter on any being’s behalf?
What aspect of milking “free-range” cows and producing milk, cheese, etc. involves cruelty and slaughter on any being’s behalf? Or making omelettes from eggs derived from free-range chickens?
While I agree that many aspects of factory farming are cruel, despicable, and obscene, it’s still possible to eat quite a number of animal products without supporting the military-industrial complex of Con Agra and their ilk.
As to the “slaughter” aspect, hey, that’s mother nature at work. Humanely killing a pig for bacon is surely a better way to go than a lion taking down a gazelle on the Serengeti and eating it alive.
Ultimately the vegan argument eventually comes down to some contrived argument of morality. There is no dilemma in nature about life eating other life to survive. And saying “well we’re smart enough to manufacture supplements to counter our otherwise inadequate diets, so we should just abstain” doesn’t create one either.
Jägermeister, hysterical.
Vegetables. It’s what food eats.
wow. the maturity level here is astonishing. you really need to be pissed off at people who choose not to use animal products? really?
#23 – Emily
>>you really need to be pissed off at people who
>>choose not to use animal products?
Nope. But when they adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, fantasizing that they’re somehow “superior” to the rest of humanity because of their faux burgers and faux fish and faux chicken, it gets a little annoying.
As long as they don’t malnourish their childern (which vegans are wont to do), they may eat whatever they wish. Just knock it off with the snide remarks when I choose to indulge in a medium-rare carcass of beef, or dead fish on a plate with wasabi and ginger.
#17–Riker==I think you are missing the point. I have my preferences, values, morals etc but I recognize them as my own. Do you have an argument that my eating meat somehow infringes on YOUR freedom?
If not, why in the world would/should ANYONE try to enforce their personal morality on anyone else. Can’t you just feel smug and superior on your own?
So==give us your strongest shot, be heavy handed, pound your shoe==why is your life style/choices any better than anyone elses as long as everyone pays their own piper?
And btw, don’t drag DCD into this. Just because a door is opened doesn’t mean you have to walk thru it, and having done so, that doesn’t determine which direction you turn thereafter.
Why not be a model of good choices and morality rather than take it over the line into tom foolery if not worse?
#22 – QB – Vegetables. It’s what food eats.
I’ll have to remember that one! 🙂
I’m all for them doing what they want to do. If they want to kill themselves by choosing malnourishment, let them. Just don’t let them force their choices on anyone else.
I’m just waiting for the real nuts who say we shouldn’t eat plants, as we’d have to kill them to eat them, too.
Emily and Sister Margaret Gertrude have one thing in common, they both think I’m going to hell.
> So a Mushroom is suddenly a vegetable?
It is a vegetable, but not a plant. It does not use chlorophyl. Vegetable is food classification term.
> Cheese is a mineral?
This is not a living being althought it contains living organisms.
> What’s a lichen?
This is a living organism, although not a plant.
> A cockroach is NOT an animal. It’s a friggin’ insect.
Insects are animals, as they can move.
Mammal, reptiles, avians, marsupials, insects, and several others are all ANIMALS.
#30 – mv
And they’re all part of the food chain. Bon Appétit.
There was a guy who owned a vegan restaurant here in town, and he would only eat food that the plants willingly gave up. That limited him to fruits and nuts. He wouldn’t “kill” vegetables to eat them. He went to regular veganism after he became malnourished.
Remember, a cow is a machine that turns grass into food.