Fake meats, nondairy cheese, gluten free fancy shit, organic everything, vegan ice cream, yeah. WE KNOW that stuff’s expensive as all hell. We don’t expect anyone to have to afford that stuff. So you don’t need to keep reminding us that you can’t afford that. A lot of us can’t either.
Also. What if I told you… these things are absolutely not necessary to pursuing a happy and healthy lifestyle? They are NOT staples.
You guys just need to learn how to cook/shop smart. Seriously, anything is possible :)
There needs to be a minor correction to this.
Mock meats produced in countries like the US can be extremely expensive. But Asian food stores in the exact same country will be carrying mock meats for an extremely low price, because they’ve been a food staple in Asian culture for such a long time. Asian mock meats, typically made with gluten or soy, can cost as cheap as a can of beans.
Non-dairy cheeses like Daiya, Chao, Tofutti, etc. may be expensive. But they’re not the only way to make “cheese” or “cheesy” vegan meals. There are plenty of inexpensive recipes on the internet that do not use store bought non-dairy cheeses as a base ingredient.
Unless you have a gluten allergy, there is no reason to buy “gluten free fancy shit”. Vegans can eat gluten. Vegans can also eat GMOs.
You can make vegan ice cream at home - even with ingredients found in most dollar stores! Bananas and canned coconut milk are great ways to get ice cream that’s even cheaper than dairy ice cream.
The reason why we don’t need reminders that everyone can’t afford store bought, prepared vegan foods every day is because it’s highly misleading; it suggests that the only way for you to eat things like vegan dairy and meat analogues is to spend ridiculous amounts of money for someone to make it for you.
“Wah, you can’t eat the GOOD vegan food if you’re on a budget!” Please, just learn to ask people (poor as shit vegans, for example) who actually have knowledge and experience in the subject before blindly assuming based on stereotypes.
Even if we couldn’t make the most delicious food on the planet while being poor (we can) there would still be no excuse to exploit animals. Cheese is not more important than everyone else’s lives.
It is accepted that some Greek philosophers brought their beliefs of vegetarianism from Egypt.
There are sources that say ancient Egyptians ateplant based diets and have been recorded as abstaining from animal flesh and skins since 3200BCE.
Choctaw Indian’s were recorded in the 18th century as eating primarily plant based, and even their homes were not constructed of animal skins, neither their clothes. They didn’t adorn their hair with feathers either.
People like the Aztecs and Mayans ate exclusively vegetarian until a certain ages even.
Upwards of 42% of India adheres to a vegetarian diet
But because some white people in western cultures also adhere to plant based diets it is now a “white people thing.”
Veganism and vegetarianism spreading is now “imperialistic.”
This kind of erasure is perpetuated to discredit veganism and vegetarianism by the common meat eater, to make veganism and vegetarianism seem childish, pointless, privileged, trendy, and unnecessary. It makes veganism and vegetarianism seem like new concepts without histories deeply rooted in many cultures. Veganism and vegetarianism is NOT a white people club, it never was. It is simply something that has existed in most cultures around the world and continues til this day to be practiced by all colors.
This is the corrected version, reblog this one instead!
Shit even a substantial number of Jamaicans and Rastafarians eat what we would call vegan or to them “ital”
STOP. FUCKING. ERASING. VEGANS. OF. COLOR. IT. IS. FUCKING. RACIST.
Anonymous asked: I'm an ethical and environmental vegan and I am feeling super overwhelmed by all of the articles coming out as follow ups to the "almond milk is bad!" news. Is soy, and almond really that bad or are these facts being presented poorly?
I’ve seen lot of these too and I was initially concerned. The facts aren’t being presented poorly, they’re being purposely misrepresented. Now that plant milks have become so popular the dairy industry is spending an eye-watering amount of money to slander these products and to get people back into dairy. Many of the central concerns came from water use in California where almond milk specifically was being blamed for California’s ongoing draught. Many articles ran with the headline “California’s Almonds Suck as Much Water Annually as Los Angeles Uses in Three Years,” or similar. This does sound terrible, but, we need to look a little closer at this comparison.
Firstly, we need to remember that 80% of the world’s almonds are grown in California, so holding up California’s water use for growing almonds and saying “this is how much water it takes to grow almonds everywhere” is misleading at the very least. But even as dishonest as it is to hold up California as an example of this, if we look at the stats above, we can see that even in California, where almost all the almonds are being grown, almond growing is still far less water intensive than standard meat and dairy production.
Almonds do take up quite a bit of water, so does soy, and rice, and hemp, and any crop for that matter. But these are alternatives to existing products that require considerably more water than any plant milk in existence. This makes sense, since you have to water the cow and water the crops used to feed the cow, rather than just the crops as it is in almond and soy production.
If you are truly concerned about water use for almonds and soy, you may consider not drinking plant milks. The good news is that we don’t need any kind of milk to be healthy. If that is the reason you want to give them up then that is perfectly legitimate. Just don’t let the fact that the dairy industry indirectly told you to do it be the reason for it, since meat and dairy are among the most water and crop intensive foods on the planet.
Being vegan goes beyond what we put in our mouths, and it can be tough finding everyday things like shampoo and sunscreen that are aligned with our ethics.
With that in mind, we present Cruelty Free Kitty’s extensive list of cruelty-free companies! It’s a handy guide that culls information from Leaping Bunny, PETA, and other resources.
all of you who value the lives of endangered species while completely supporting the killing of others that are not endangered always forget that species is an abstract collective, species can’t suffer, individuals can.
I tried to explain this in an environmental ethics class once and everyone just seemed to care so much for the idea of a “species” existing, rather than the life of an individual existing, but when I ask why they just say “oh its important” or “it would be bad if a species died out” and couldn’t dig any further into why they thought that. They weren’t even thinking about whether the species was essential to the ecosystem.
To me, their attempts to explain why species were more important than individuals sounded like they were saying these species belonged to humankind, that a species was something like our pristine collection, and the extinction of a species meant that we would have a possession taken away from us. The people who couldn’t explain why a species dying was important to them didn’t really see the species as a group of individuals who can feel pain and emotion.
I’m always wary now around people who only talk about animal welfare/ecosystems in terms of endangered species because rarely do I feel they care about the animals involved and more often the case is they care about keeping the world exactly the way they want it for their own enjoyment or consumption. They still want to see pictures of certain wildlife. They still want “exotic” animals in their zoo. They still want to go to a foreign country and forcibly ride an animal or swim with trained, stressed animals. They want nature to bend to their desires.
