Why do so many people criticise vegans?

[trunch]

I'm a meat eater!

However, I don't understand why people criticise vegans so much.

They aren't hurting me and are trying to save animals and the environment.

What's wrong with that?

Surely people should be more critical of me because animals are killed for me to eat?

Grief it certainly seems as though lots of people do criticise vegans - some of the language here is choice !

I was vegan for 2 years until I did some research on UPF and realised how unhealthy my diet was. If you are a vegan who has the time to prepare fresh meals using only non-processed plant based foods fair play to you. It's very difficult. The vegan dairy and meat alternatives are so bad for you but they are marketed as healthy options.

My issue is many vegan foods are upf and framed as healthy when no. Then there is all the packaging even when recyclable it takes a toll on our planet. But I'm rather extreme in my choice of foods not having too much packing and not being processed. I rarely cook meat but I'm not a vegetarian. I love a vegan meal that's not processed.

I don't voice a dislike of vegans and I'm uncomfortable with the clear dislike they face that seems wrong to me. I might comment on packaging and processed foods if vegan comes up in conversation but I disapprove of packaging and processed foods not the vegans. Some vegans are actually really eco and absolutely not using upf and plastics

Earthling Ed, that well known activist and "educator". No agenda there then? Do you think he has produced a balanced piece of film making??

Tbh I don't see much of the packaged stuff called 'healthy'. Much of it is frozen...often that is in cardboard too so I suppose that is better than plastic.

I mean when we look at how meat is packaged, there's just as much of that and meat based products as there is there is other stuff nit packaged well. Only difference is that the product in the vegan options is probably better for the environment.

I do not criticise vegans

i do criticise restaurants who take the easy option and just provide vegan fake meat products

i also criticise people who say they are vegan for January or are vegan 1 day a week….they are not vegan

I'm not sure criticise is the right word. Some people do criticise vegans but it's mostly for banging on about it (often I suspect this is perceived banging on but not always). Or because they think, rightly or wrongly, that a vegan diet cannot be healthy, especially for children.

I think rather than criticise, some people mock vegans. People don't want to face up to what we do to other species. They don't want to see other animals as equals and continuing to eat them makes them feel the superior species (same with pet ownership). If they took time to wonder why some people are vegans they may have think about their own beliefs and ideas and they don't want to do that. Far easier to mock them.
There are also not many other groups of people left to mock. Thankfully, it's largely seen unacceptable to make racist or homophobic jokes or to mock disabled people or those with learning difficulties. But vegans are still seen as fair game.
People's hatred, anger, dissatisfaction with life, need to other, guilt, shame and so on has to go somewhere and right now some of that is being directed at vegans. I'm sure things will change in the future, one way or another, but it's going to be a long time coming.

The biggest thing that convinced me that I could not be a vegan was catering for DS when he was allergic to milk, eggs and soya in infancy.
I can find pleasure in vegetarian recipes, but vegan food lacks too many ingredients and uses too many UPFs to compensate for things like eggs being used as an emulsifier. I do not love vegetables enough to go near a healthy vegan diet, and there's too many IBS triggers. "Plant-based" not food is annoying. Ok, it's not a chicken nugget- I don't want to have to read the extensive small print to find out what it actually is.
I swerve vegan totally in restaurants because menus lack the nuance to tell if it's an acceptable trace amount of soya content, or a fast-acting laxitive content of soya.

I am not ripe for converting.

Zealous moralising is not an attractive character. It's not that vegans are bad people, it's that difficult, alternative lifestyles are attractive to people who have high control needs. When I was at school before "free-from" aisles and vegan subsitutes in the supermarket, it was vegetarianism that was "alternative" and there was a disproportion of vegetarians who also had disordered eating. Using an established restrictive form of eating was a socially simpler way of establishing control into an eating pattern that was already disordered. These days it would be veganism rather than vegetarianism.
I am not saying that all vegans/ vegetarians have eating disorders, just that it's a filter that is useful to people that do and therefore they are more represented.

Environmental veganism is tunnel-visioned. Often irrelevant statistics are mis-applied to British agriculture. A lot of cattle and especially sheep farming is on marginal land unsuited to reliable arable farming. They're better for biodiversity than large fields of crops. Crops such as palm oil and soya incentivise deforestation in other parts of the world. Environmentalism is complex and nuanced. Generally traditional regional diets are environmentally sensitive. It was easy and appealing to eat vegetarian food in India. Russia values meat for good reason. It is not as simple as vegan = best.

I don't mind whatever diet/ faith/ political choices people make for themselves. I just don't appreciate the proportion of those people that lecture and try to convert others.

I'm some ways I'm glad about vegans.
My girls used to be intolerant to dairy, DH still is. So the rise in vegans is helpful to us in some ways.

But - There is a girl in DD2's class who is vegan, which is fine, but mum also insists on no colours, no additives, no upf's, all organic home made etc. One parent asked her to send her eith some food to a playdate to make sure the mum was happy with what she ate, and the vegan mum was very vocal about how this was discrimination etc - 'she will feed other kids but not mine'. Funnily enough, this poor child now doesn't get invited to hardly any parties or playdates now.

SIL on the other hand, also vegan and very picky eater, happily brings her own food ( after I made food which was vegan but 'not to her taste') won't be forcing her child to be vegan and doesn't make my brother feel bad about eating meat, he just has to prepare and cook it himself.

You are comparing the actions of a minority of activists that are sufficiently extreme and out of the ordinary to be newsworthy, with people's every day experiences of reactions to their diet. In 50 years of eating meat, I didn't recieve a single remark from anyone at all. In the 5 years I've followed a vegan diet..well I've lost count of the comments, jokes and attempts to challenge the choice ive recieved. Not the sort of out right aggression people are talking about here, but comments none the less. Meat eating is the default, veganism is the minority, so its pretty obvious who makes most of the comments to whom.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/28/plant-based-meat-alternatives-environment-nutrition

To all those going on about vegan processed foods (fake meat) being supposedly bad for environment and unhealthy vs meat, see the below.

A study has found they are both eco friendlier and mostly healthier.

Not to say I am promoting them, but when you consider them vs meat options they are mostly way better on both counts.

@BogRollBOGOF most of the soya and deforestation is due to making animal feed or space for animal grazing. I do not promote palm oil or use it, nor do many vegans. It is not a "vegan" issue but an issue for everyone, whether meat eating or not.

This study, as referenced in the thread above, the largest OF ITS KIND, carried out by University of Oxford has said the single biggest thing any individual can do to help the environment is to go plant based:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth#:~:text=%E2%80%9CA%20vegan%20diet%20is%20probably,UK%2C%20who%20led%20the%20research.

See my post above about demonisation of vegan foods - a recent study found they are both healthier, and better for the environment than the meat based equivalents.

Not that I am promoting them or think they are better than a basic vegan diet - which would be whole food based.

Vegans don't need to consume these fake meats but they are used as a ridiculous argument against veganism when in fact they are more eco friendly and healthier than the equivalent meat diet.

And regarding packaging - all pre-prepared foods are packaged in some way - meat or vegan. So it is not a "vegan" issue.

To add to that, if you want to buy fruit or veg (from which you would make your vegan meals), it doesn't generally require packaging (apples, broccoli, carrots, potatoes and most veg have their own natural skin as "packaging" whereby additional packaging is unnecessary) whereas if you wanted to buy a meat product you would have to wrap it up in plastic or paper before you could carry it home.

Yes, this putting all vegans in some preachy, extremist box strikes me as being somewhat similar to how refugees or muslims, for example, are demonised by sections of the media due to the actions of a handful.

I'm not saying it is exactly the same but the same prejudices are built on a few odd examples (e.g. vegan activists) that the media trots out while failing to highlight the majority of vegans that are quietly going about their business or undertaking positive community actions etc.

If the media promoted the rest of the vegans who are good people, going about their day, unbothering people, highlighted the benefits of veganism, attitudes might change.

Yes this 100%. If I even try to share anything about the realities of life for farmed animals the abuse and predictable comments( mainly from men it has to be said-not eating meat is seen as anti macho) is off the scale. McCartney had it right ' everyone would be vegan if abattoirs had windows'

I would only criticise if a vegan was preachy or judgemental towards me. Being holier than thou attitude is annoying.
Otherwise not an issue. Everyone should be able to make their own choices regarding food.

This is true. It takes a lot of time to prepare un processed food. The meat substitutes are not great.

@WitchesCauldron but they are healthier than the meat equivalent:

www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/28/plant-based-meat-alternatives-environment-nutrition

Live and let live. I don't judge vegans but I do worry that some of them have a diet depleted of necessary nutrients.

Earing a wider range of vegetables, beans, nuts and pulses... probably going to be less depleted in nutrients than non vegans.

No one worries about omnivores who live on chips and chicken nuggets and other pricessed stuff etc too... odd that.

Just as many unhealthy meat eaters as vegans.

Infact there was a study that showed vegan participants were less deficient in key nutrients on average than their meat eating counterparts (something like 4 for vegans and 7 for omnivores).

It all depends on how healthily individuals eat.

Yes, I’m sure you’re really ‘worried’ about us. 🤣🙄

I think the tide is turning. I reckon in 50 years time vegans will be in the majority and people will look back the generations of meat eaters the way that people look back at past generations of smokers.

I've only ever heard people criticise vegans who are judgy about eating meat etc. - 'eewwwwww how could you eat a DEAD BODY, you're murdering the cute little lambies' kinda thing. Other than that, I've not noticed anyone caring either way.

🤞 I also think humans will look back with shame in time about the way we have ‘farmed’ animals, like we look back on many other things and think how was that ever ok.