...to wonder why people are so rude about vegans?

[CheekyWombat101]

Obviously not everyone, but in general, I can’t go a single day without hearing a comment or spotting an eye roll if the word ‘vegan’ is spoken out loud. It’s like a dirty word. Ironically a word usually brought up by someone who isn’t vegan, but starts the conversation and then takes offence at it. It’s really bizarre.

Over and over again you hear associated words like... fad, militant, extreme, unhealthy...

Why? Why do some non-vegans take such an interest, and such an offence to it all?

Non-vegans who don’t care or are supportive - you are awesome! Please keep doing what you’re doing, it’s really refreshing.

I've nothing against vegans I wish they would show me the same courtesy and stop jumping on me in town trying to show me videos stop picketing the bloody supermarkets live their lives and accept I'm going to live mine

Being vegan doesn't mean you are an animal rights activist.

I hate being out with my young kids and seeing animal activist videos of animals being slaughtered or treated cruelly.

My children are interested in veganism and I was looking online for videos for them to watch. My son loves the channels Pick Up Limes nd Bosh on YouTube. I watch them and he has picked up on them both. They are not pushy but just share really nice recipe ideas.

I found a video for kids which promised no traumatic images and then they talked about how baby cows were taken from their mums and "how would you feel if you were taken away from your mummy so someone else could have your milk?" I am so glad I watched before I showed it to my 5 year old.

For me, that is abhorrent and that sort of campaigning would never have persuaded me. I avoid vegan activists on the street because apart from our diet, I probably have very little in common with them.

There are definitely some people who are pushy and smug who are vegan. But from a few of the PPs on this thread, I certainly don't think those traits are restricted to vegans.

I should point out I don't live in the UK so maybe activists are more common here?

We get people wearing the Anonymous masks with a video of slaughterhouses on hour high street a couple of times a year.

If you don’t have farm animals where would you get the manure to feed the soil for plants ?

Maybe some people are confusing vegans with animal rights activists or PETA members.

Who made that video, Maximus? Was it PETA? Some of their stuff is horrendous.

If you don’t have farm animals where would you get the manure to feed the soil for plants?

Plant based compost?

This is the link. It is about 4 minutes in. It is pretty insidious because it is packaged as so fun and friendly.

My kids aren't vegan and I don't want them to be vegan because they are bullied into it by traumatising videos. If they want to be I will support them and if they don't, then that's fine too.

I don't identify with a lot of PETA stuff and I don't like that they seem to be the default representation for all vegans.

As a vegetarian, I've personally come across plenty of sanctimonious or aggressive meat-eaters, but only one annoying vegan. I'm vegetarian mostly for personal taste reasons, not ethical ones, and I never bring up the subject. But I always dreaded going out for meals with people I didn't know well, because they'd always work it out in the end, based on what I was ordering off the menu. And then, quite often, I'd spend the next half hour being criticised for my choices. Either because I couldn't possibly be fun and life-loving if I didn't want a nice bacon sandwich, or because they'd decided that I was a fussy pain in the arse even though I'd happily gone along with their choice of restaurant, or because they'd decide that I was lecturing them and making them feel bad, even though they'd brought the damn subject up and I'd immediately said "it's not an ethical thing, I just don't enjoy meat. I guess I'm a fussy eater" .

And there's always that one guy who thinks it's cute and funny, or flirtatious or whatever, to keep challenging you and making personal attacks on you about your vegetarianism (is "negging" the word I'm thinking of?).

Obviously, this is just personal experience. But a lot of people have no self-awareness about how intrusive and downright hostile they act towards anyone who dares to have a different diet to them.

The problem is that the very vocal animal rights/militant vegan type give the rest a bad name. You see it with lots of things in life- the ones who shout the loudest about what they do or don't do are the ones that create the stereotype of whatever it is that they are doing. Diet, religion, zero waste, preppers etc etc.

I couldn’t give a monkeys who eats what or how they live their life, I just don’t like trying to be converted in the street or seeing people leaving ridiculous messages on bits of paper on packs of mince etc. Vegan food is great, I have vegan friends who are great, but they wouldn’t be so great if they started telling me what I should or shouldn’t eat alongside that. I manage to restrain myself from doing so, as do the majority of normal people who also happen to be vegan, sadly the minority don’t and it’s those who give the bad impression that lots of people have about them (and I include any dietary choice here- meat eaters can be as bad!)

And yeah, PETA are arseholes, but none of the vegans I know can stand them either.

Let's put it this way: the PETA/ activist types don't represent regular people who've just opted for a vegan diet, any more than the woman on Mumsnet who says "personally, I would never have an abortion" is represented by the kind of activist who pickets family planning clinics, verbally abuses vulnerable women and sends bomb threats to doctors.

What Notreadyrofetupyet said. Especially the comparison of PETA and SPUC.

It’s one of the few groups left that’s it’s allowable to mock. It’s no longer acceptable to laugh at people for their gender, sexuality, race, appearance or intelligence. It’s a group that have ‘opted in’ and everyone knows a vegan or the shorthand description conjured by the word. It’s used so much in comedy that it’s becoming hack.

Vegans and cyclists - hated on mumsnet. If you eat steak and drive a big fat polluting vehicle, you're alright

And people with any kind of religious faith, MN hates them too.

I’ve never been accosted by a vegan or a vegetarian either. They must all live in England .

However I have been subject to a large number of rants from strangers ABOUT vegetarians / vegans as I sit there meekly at some social event eating my gluten free food. Obviously the sight of a person with a medical condition eating is enough is set these nutters off.

I’m frequently told that it’s unhealthy to exclude one food group, even when I explain that gluten isn’t a food group and that excluding gluten is EXACTLY what doctors advise for people like me, that I will become ill within an hour of eating it etc.

I’m usually told I’m just doing it to be like X celebrity , who I’ve never heard of.

Sometimes I get a lecture about their cousin Betty, who has coeliac disease / is gluten intolerant and is FINE as long as she only eats a small piece of wedding cake / has just a few sandwiches . So why can’t I be more REASONABLE like Betty?

If I CBA I usually point out that there’s nothing unhealthy about vegetarian diets either. But then the nutters start to ask me about it and as a non vegetarian I don’t have all the facts.

So I try to button it and smugly remind myself that I’m usually at least several dress sizes smaller , substantially fitter and look 5 years younger that the people who are telling me that I’m so unhealthy on my “ fad diet “.

So I have a lot of sympathy with vegetarian and vegans if this is what they have to put up with every time they eat out.

Feminists.
Anyone who doesn’t believe in ghosts.
Anyone lefter than slightly left of centre.

Mumsnet isn’t quite “The Daily Mail at prayer”- but not far off. Daily Telegraph, maybe?

Oh God, there’s a depressing thought!

@Rosemary46

I really feel for you and it is another symptom of lumping everyone in together and assuming the reasons behind their choices are all the same

I hate the way people don't take conditions like ceoliac disease as seriously because it gets confused with people who exclude it for other reasons.

Ultimately, as much as I want to avoid it, a bit of meat won't kill me so I don't worry about trace warnings or the risk of cross contamination. I can't imagine how hard it must be having to be so careful all the time.

@MaximusHeadroom

Thank you. Gluten won’t kill me but it will make me ill enough that I’d need to take a taxi home, because I’d be in too much pain to drive. So distressing and expensive but not life threatening , like an allergy.

But I do strongly believe that people’s choices about their lifestyle ( like eating / not eating meat or animal products ) should be respected. No one should be nagged and lectured at social events.

I don’t take it upon myself to lecture those who are outside a wedding venue having a cigarette. I assume they already know that smoking is bad for them and a waste of money and that quitting isn’t easy. They don’t need my opinions.

I don’t sit beside an overweight person stuffing their face on bread and chips and explain to them about carbs and insulin resistance. Because it’s none of my business.

I wish we took the same attitude to other dietary preferences or requirements.

Feminists. Anyone who doesn’t believe in ghosts. Anyone lefter than slightly left of centre.

This is to ignore the issues being caused by the hijacking and increasing intolerance of those advocating leftist or 'woke' issues.

I have no issue with people taking an ethical stance on anything as they interpret it. What I and some others are starting to observe which makes us uneasy is a shutting down of free speech, an inability to live and let live and respect others choices. Often this intolerance is based more on feeling and not fact. I'm suprised a feminist cannot see that since exactly this issue is a threat to feminism.

Veganism used to be a personal choice. But now the language and the stance towards those not agreeing with it has changed. Now it isn't I choose to be vegan because I have become persuaded by x argument. Its: You also should/must adopt my argument. And people are happy and prepared to hand over power to authorities to legislate ie force people to comply to their world view. Who does this serve? Some of these movements are exploited by high profile individuals who make tons of money from it. Or are sponsered by big business.

The food industry for one, the same industry that sells everybody sugar in the form of cereals for breakfast, extolled the virtues of fat free for decades, has people cooking with vegatable oils, has sold products like Milo and formula as replacement products for womens own breast milk in the third world and told everyone how awful butter was based on flawed scienctific research but has never been found culpable. The purveyors of the food industry could give 2 fucks about your health. Their job is to force you to rely on the processed foods they sell. Buy cereal instead of eating a boiled egg.

The same companies that will make a fortune from developing lab based meat.

As far as I am aware there is no science that conclusively shows veganism to be better than a diet including meat however there has been concerns regarding nutritional deficiencies. It does not and cannot suit everyone. Some of the countries with the healthiest populations and diets in the world consume large amounts of animal fat, some much more than we do and yet their environmental impact is still less. It is not a simple formula. The evidence either way is not clear, it is mixed. Yet it doesn't matter to those who only see their way as being right based mostly on feeling.

I am strongly for people excercising their personal freedom that doesn't encroach on the rights of others. I am strongly in favour of people you disagree with having the right to their views and being respected. If a person comes to me showing no such tolerance then yes. I push back. And others push back. And that is what is happening now. Although imo it's too late. Should have happened years ago. I feel society will become volatile because of it and we'll all have less freedom overall.

Catherineofaragon, I couldn't agree more if I had written your post. And the same is pretty much true of my views on most MN posts, from left and right. My views are fairly centrist on most topics, and I am regularly dismissed airily as being extreme. To the point that I have virtually given up posting on anything except S&B where you are still allowed an opinion.

If you want to be vegan be vegan. It's your choice and I couldn't care less. Just don't try and inflict your choices onto me.There is no way I am going to eat vegan food.

I always find it hilarious that people claim to be vegans for environmental reasons then have no issue buying fruit and veg flown in from South America and North Africa.

And when I highlight the destruction of the Amazon rain forest (and the rest) to make way for soy production to cater to the vegan market I get the "oh I don't really know much about that" cop-out. Well I do know about it.

There's also billions of people in Brazil, India, and China and they're all getting a taste for premium meat and if you think your veganism is going to make any difference in the scheme of things, then you haven't been paying attention.

You don’t have to eat soy to be vegan. Sorry to burst your bubble.