Newly vegan and fed up of ridicule from others

[townandcountrygirl]

I have been vegan for 7 months now and have really grown tired of OH's family / friends making irritating / derogatory comments about veganism and my healthy lifestyle. I have seen only positive changes since going vegan - I am in good shape, I am waking up earlier, my eye sight has improved and my energy levels have shot up considerably. I had been vegetarian for 12+ years and this is something I have always wanted to do.

My own friends and family are supportive. I have grown up in a household where I was encouraged to make my own decisions and stand up for what I believe in. My mother is a gluten-free nutritionist who grows her own veg and is very active / health conscious. My sister is also a vegetarian. I have meat-eating family members, but they treat my decisions with love and respect, even if they think I am a little 'different' because of it.

OH and I have been together for 6 years and have been friends for over 10 years (we grew up around the same home town). We are living together and have been spending a fair amount of time with his friends and family. I have received many negative comments about my diet, which I am not banging on about every 2 mins, I am merely ordering vegan options from restaurant menus or have been caught in the act juicing veggies.

OH's family are generally unhealthy, choosing convenient foods, alcohol, sugary treats and high-fat meals over anything remotely healthy. I often feel like the 'weird' one for having vegetables on my plate at all. My thought is that they are irritated by my healthy lifestyle because they are unable to stop their own poor lifestyle choices.

Has anyone else come up against criticism from people in this way? I bite my tongue and smile, knowing my diet does not affect them at all, but I am tired and disheartened by their constant snipes. I am a nice, loving person so keep telling myself that we are all entitled to our own decisions. It is just sad, because i'd never put another person down for their food choices, even if I didn't personally agree with it.

[edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

My partner is a vegan nutritionist (PhD,, not a quack) and I've been vegan for 10 years and my eyesight is still complete crap, so I am a tad skeptical about that particular claim,. but seriously, just ignore the naysayers and do your thing.

Vegans: what about wool? Sheep need shearing for their welfare. Is it a yay or nay?

FloatingthroughSpace

My personal opinion is that using wool shorn from pet/rescue sheep where it has been done for welfare reasons is ethically fine. It is environmentally better than plastic leaching synthetics and that's a big factor for me. In this circumstance the wool is a byproduct of properly caring for the animal, not the purpose of owning the animal. Other vegans will disagree with me and say that by using any kind of wool you are saying it is ok to use animal products, but I'll just have to agree to disagree with them. As I can never really be sure of the provenance, I avoid buying new wool but do buy second hand.

Large scale farming where the sheep are specifically bred to produce more wool than the breed originally did and are killed once no longer profitable is not fine for me. It is the large scale side of things which often results in sheep being injured in the shearing process and dispatched when no longer useful.

Commercial wool production is very cruel in countries like Australia (google mulesing if you’re brave enough).

izzylane.bigcartel.com/

Floatingspace - I think most vegans would be ok with wool from Izzy Lane as the animals they keep are not killed, and are rescue animals.

I don't think that saying wool is okay as sheep need to be shorn is an argument, as the vegans I know would argue that sheep do not need to be kept by people for human use. We have bred sheep to need to be shorn - that is not their natural state, obviously. It's rather a circular, self serving argument to create an unnecessary dependency in an animal and then use that created dependency to justify your use of that animal, iyswim. Buying new wool would be funding an industry which harms and kills animals and which veganstherefore don't agree with.

Continuing to read this as I would like to eat less dairy (I’m meat free but have a lot of yoghurt and cheese) and actually getting some good ideas of where to look for new recipes. The PP who mentioned occasional slip ups by vegans makes a good point too. Nobody is perfect

There's a huge huge difference between being "vegan" and having a plant based diet. An active vegan takes into account all aspects like leather, plane travel etc.

“I don’t eat meat because I love animals” well if you drive a car, ride a bike wash your clothes using softener, use toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, sit on a couch, watch/use fireworks, have wooden furniture or play a musical instrument then i am afraid to tell you that you are in fact using animal products

Plant based diets is simply cutting out meat and dairy. A plant based/vegan diet can be as healthy or unhealthy as you want OP, and I'm surprised so many people care about what you eat.

My mum's vegetarian, I'm lactose intolerant therefore a lot of the meals we eat together are accidentally plant based. Doubt anyone would even notice to be honest, and when people go to her house for dinner and eat those types of food she doesn't spout crap about her vegan food. No one cares.