A good friend of mine has turned Vegan (rant alert)

[LEMmingaround]

And is banging on about how disgusting the meat industry is etc etc, putting provocative shit on facefuck and generally shoving it down my throat. (and her other friends too i imagine). She has two young children and is now thinking about feeding them a vegan diet too - great, im sure its very healthy, whoopie. But i don't want to become a vegan, i was veggie for a while but found it too restrictive i am too lazy and expensive to eat properly. Whatever.

You know what - if you want to be veggie, great, if you want to be and can manage to be vegan - respect! but fuck off with trying to make me feel guilty for not doing the same thing. EVERY fucking time i see or talk to you. especially when the last time i saw you shopping in tesco before you met a new group of friends you were buying battery farmed eggs

She tried to make me have soya milk and really got shitty when i said, no i'll have proper milk please, because actually, and i can't be 100% sure it was the soya or quorn but i had an allergic reaction and had to be blue lighted to hospital when i ate a veggie spag bol once before, so no thankyou very much. Thinking back i could have just had black coffee but was tired and mind fucked from her going on about the poor fucking cows....

Rant over

thanks for clarification re honey and cochineal etc btw

carcharodoncarcharias - because what do you think happens to all the male chicks?

I am a vegetarian but don't go on about my diet to other people. I would suggest just smiling and nodding. But people often become vegans because it's something they feel passionately about.

I am a vegetarian and it does get on my nerves when people ask me why I am one - I don't ask them why they eat meat.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it's not vegans who bore on about diet, it's (almost) everybody - but if they are boring on about something that you also do, you don't notice (confirmation bias).

I was briefly vegan back in 2002 and conversations tended to go "Ham sandwich? / No thanks, I'm vegan. / Are you? Why would you do that? You're wrong! Let me tell you all about why I'm not rah rah rah soil association rah blah ethically farmed blah rah did you know soya blah rainforest blah…"

But in that instance I would be the one who was seen as weird for having mentioned that I was vegan, but at the same time, expected to justify my unusual dietary habits - damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I find people talking about their diet extremely boring unless I am cooking for them in which case I would like to know early, ideally before I go to the shops, not when dinner is in the oven. And I think I hear FAR more from omnivores who are evangelising about being carb-free / 5:2 fasting / self-diagnosed as gluten intolerant because whaddya know cutting back the doughnuts reduced their 'bloat' than I ever have from vegans…

/intolerant old bat

cutting back the doughnuts reduced their 'bloat'

I would love to hear someone say that. It would crack me up

Kill her. And then eat her.

My friend recently went on a gluten free diet and has told me (not suggested, but told) that I should do the same. She says 'I've lost loads of weight. You should do it' as she eyes up my vast thighs and muffin top. It makes me want to scream. No thanks, I don't want to give up pizza and doughnuts. She's even put her two dds on the same diet. It makes me so sad when they come out of school with someone's birthday chocs and she says, 'No, you can't have those'. I bet she scoffs them when they've gone to bed. By the way, I have no problem with her doing it. I just wish she wouldn't tell me to do the same. Grrr. Sympathies!

LEMmingaround
actually, and i can't be 100% sure it was the soya or quorn but i had an allergic reaction and had to be blue lighted to hospital when i ate a veggie spag bol once before

Preachy vegan alert...

You were 'blue lighted to hospital' with a severe allergic reaction, and you didn't establish the cause? Since soya is more commonly used as an ingredient across products, I'm guessing it was the quorn. But I'm staggered that you don't know. Do you carry an Epi-pen and do you avoid eating anything with soya and quorn?

You may want to point out to your super healthy friend how bad soy milk actually is for humans. Google soy milk and list all the bad things soy milk does to our body on your friend's FB page and enjoy the ensuing freak out that she will have.

Here's some info: www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/soy-health_b_1822466.html

Wow - there's a lot of anger and aggression in the OP and from other non vegan posters. It's a very typical reaction - I think everyone who eats meat knows deep down it's a cruel thing to do, even though they kid themselves. Hence the furious reactions. And you know, if you are able to stomach watching things like this earthlings.com/?page_id=30 (highly doubt anyone will click on it) and still think eating animals is OK, then you've got a chip missing somewhere to be honest.

And you can evade the responsibility and turn it around and say it's people like ME and the OP's friend who put you off veganism, but actually, you're the reason you eat meat, because you won't listen and you refuse to educate yourself and you use your energy getting angry at the people who have the moral high ground rather than examining your own behaviour.

BTW, there's really no comparison between someone believing in an imaginary friend that lives in the sky, ie a fairy tale, and someone who is passionately against animal cruelty. Which is a fact. People used to laugh at abolitionists, and suffragettes, and dismiss them as extreme. One day, fortunately, people like you will be relics and veganism will be the norm.

ps you can grasp at straws all you like and dig up research about how certain vegan foods are unhealthy, but really? Meat?Eggs? Milk? Put some energy into researching how healthy these foods can be.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner in the "completely missing the point" category, and I'm delighted to announce that it's didyoureallysaythat!

Point out to her that the organisation PETA actually stands for People Eating Tasty Animals.

Rainbunny - I wouldn't rely on anything 'Dr' Joseph Mercola says to be scientifically accurate: this is the Joseph Mercola who thinks HIV does not cause Aids and homeopathy is better than real medicine etc.

Soy milk, tofu etc are traditional foods widely consumed in Asia without harming the millions of people who eat them every day.

Just humour her, with a dagger behind your back.

"There's a lot of stereotyping and distrust of vegans"

Because so many of them are sanctimonious bores. I have lots of vegetarian friends and my niece is a strict vegetarian. I don't question their choices and enjoy the challenge of cooking for them.

By challenge I mean cooking something that they wouldn't normally eat. I am interested in food and eat meat, vegetarian and vegan food. I don't differentiate and think "tonight we we'll eat vegetarian food". I just cook. Some meals have meat/animal products and some don't.

"Vegan cat food has all that is necessary for an cats health (is supplemented)."

Sorry, I don't believe that at all. Cats need a very high protein diet. I am not convinced an artificial diet containing no meat products is that healthy for a cat. If a vegan can't bear to feed cats meat perhaps they shouldn't even own a cat.

I think some people have a problem with vegetarians/vegans because it is a lifestyle choice, not a health issue, but I love cooking and am happy to take visitor's preferences into account (unless they are just completely fussy)

Even my vegan friends accept that their cats are meat eaters!
I am quite happy with vegans as long as they get on with it quietly. I don't bore than with my eating preferences.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for vegans and veggies, especially those who can stick to it. I have no problem at all with their chioces. I am even quite happy to have a conversation about it, yes, i do feel guilty about eating meat sometimes. But i do not want to have that conversation ad nauseum.

CuttingBackTheDonutsReducedMyBloat - PLEASE someone take this username

A friend of mine is a vet and a vegan. You will shorten your cat's life and compromise its health by forcing it to be vegan. If you feel that strongly about meat eating, do not keep a cat.

Exexpat - Good to know, I didn't pay much attention as I quickly googled. However there is evidence to suggesting that the phytoestrogens in soymilk can mimic estrogen in our bodies which is not good. Also, soy milk contains more concentrated levels of phytoestrogens than soy food products, so by drinking soy milk we consume a higher dose of phytoestrogens on average than someone who eats soy products. I spent 5 years living in Japan, I personally never saw anyone drink soymilk, there was lots of tofu, fermented soy dishes and edamame but no soy milk that I saw.

I don't feel remotely guilty eating meat and it is not a subject I wish to discuss. I get it locally and I know where it came from and how it was killed.

fascicle You make a very good point there. After my allergic reaction - which involved me puffing up like a puffer fish, being given intravenous anti-histamine my face looked very when i pitched up at my GPs to tell them all about it and expected to be offered allergy testing (as i have really bad hayfever) and people to be generally running around offering me epi-pens and telling me what food to avoid - nup, just told it was probably a one off! I just avoid quorn and soya products now - i wasn't veggie at the time, just on a very low fat diet due to gallstones. Thankfully there have been no incidents since and it was a fair few years ago, but i am not going to take any chances - so i am almost as staggered as you really.

Have been veggie - never felt the need to replace meat products with things that try to look and taste like meat, i don't get that.

didyoureallysaythat my "aggression" was very tongue in cheek. My friend, as I pointed out, is a lovely person so the worse i would do is slap her about the head with a wet salmon (i would of course lovingly return the salmon back to the river from which i tickled it from).

Thing is, i am actually interested in veganism, i couldn't do it myself because im just not that disciplined but am quite happy to hear about lovely new recipes etc, but don't patronise me with lectures about animal welfare, im not an idiot, i do know its not ideal, i also know that alot of propaganda bandied around the interweb is not exactly accurate either, especially the more graphic examples.

sorry but anyone who feeds a carnivore vegan food is a tad barking if you ask me, what will they do if their cat catches a mouse - which lets face it, its going to if all it has to eat is fecking tofu burgers. I quite like tofu myself.

Rainbunny - this is going to sound like one-upmanship, but I lived in Japan for 11 years, and they definitely have soy milk - do any of these little cartons look familiar? They have them in every supermarket and convenience store. Maybe if you don't read Japanese you didn't realise they were soy rather than cow's milk.

Admittedly, the soy in Japanese diets tends to come more from tofu, miso, okara etc than soy milk, but in China and Taiwan (where I also lived for a year) warm soy milk is a very standard breakfast food - they dish it up from street stalls and serve it with deep-fried dough sticks. Yum.

Traditional Chinese breakfast as consumed by millions of people every day...