In October 2007, I watched the video Meet Your Meat. It showed the most horrific images from slaughter houses. I read countless articles on veganism and decided to become one. A month later I was a full-on vegan.
Well, almost full-on. I would cheat occasionally, sneaking Hostess cupcakes or coffee cake. There's nothing wrong with cheating because I'm still eating less animal products than I would otherwise, I told myself. And anyways, this food was already bought. Eating it or throwing it out makes little difference.
There was pressure from all sides to quit veganism altogether. My mother constantly complaining how much the food cost, the rest of my family making snide remarks about my diet, my friends getting in heated debates with me about the ethics of using animal products, people making bets about how long I'd last. I continued being a cheating vegan, more determined than ever to prove them all wrong.
I ate a lot of processed foods. Mock meats, pre-made burritos, Oreos, etc. I was also consuming a lot of soy. Silk, mock meats, Oreos, and probably a bunch of other foods I'm not even aware of.
Obviously processed foods are bad. But "healthy" processed foods can't be bad, right? Soy may mess with your thyroid, but I'm not eating that much of it, am I? And so on.
After a while, veganism was no longer a moral crusade. It was a habit. It was something I did because one day I had thought it'd be a good idea. I would sometimes go back and read the arguments for veganism, but somehow they didn't seem all that convincing. I also started reading arguments against veganism.
The thing that finally made me switch back to vegetarian, though, was a blog post about health. It was not healthy to abstain from all animal products, especially not the way I was doing it. Don't get me wrong veganism can be healthy. But it takes so much planning and calculating and supplementing that it just isn't practical.
A perfect example of this situation is bread. There are a million different kinds of bread. The healthy whole-grain ones usually contain milk/whey and honey. The vegan ones are filled with chemicals and soy. This situation is typical of many, many foods.
I also found out that some of the ethically questionable practices involving farm animals were simply not true, and many others were exaggerated. The arguments for veganism appeal to emotion and are generally not logical.
I still think harming animals for pleasure is wrong, which is why I still don't eat meat and gelatin or wear suede and leather. However, I must put my health before the animals'. I cannot be blinded by emotion; I must look at the situation rationally. When I do this it is obvious that veganism is not the answer.
