Answering Common Questions About Veganism

Mar 23, 2020

"I think the world would be a better place if people stopped every once in a while and questioned everything they thought they knew."
–Tamara Ireland Stone,
Little Do We Know

A few weeks ago, I asked everyone on the Introverted Activist Facebook page what the most common questions about veganism they received were. And even though most seasoned vegans can easily answer them, it can be frustrating and tiresome to keep repeating the same responses over and over. And if you're new to veganism -- if so, welcome! -- you may not yet know how to respond to these questions. So today, I'll be answering some of them. If you have been asked any of these questions before, please feel free to share this with people curious about this seemingly strange lifestyle.

1. Where do you get your protein?

Interestingly, protein actually originates in plants! The animals in the food system eat mostly plants (even if they're naturally omnivorous, in farming conditions, it's much cheaper to feed them soy, wheat, or corn), so the protein you get from eating them or their secretions (milk and eggs) is like a concentrated form of all the plants that animal has eaten. So, you may be thinking, Well, that's great! I get more bang for my buck by eating animal products. However, increased animal protein intake has been linked to virtually all diseases, including 14 of the 15 leading causes of death.[1]

But, the good news is that you don't actually need as much protein as you think; "protein" has become an incredibly successful marketing term, but that's really all it is. Women only need about 46 grams per day, and men need about 56 grams. To put that in perspective, if you ate 2,000 calories of just broccoli in one day, you'd get 146 grams of protein![2] And if you did want to eat a high-protein plant-based diet -- which is totally fine because it's animal protein that is associated with increased mortality -- you still can by eating a balanced vegan diet, full of hearty, protein-rich foods.

2. What do/can you eat?

The amazing thing about the world we live in is that we can eat nearly anything. The wonderful thing about veganism is that we don't eat everything. Now, that might sound confusing, so let me explain. Veganism has absolutely nothing to do with diet; the only reason diet has become such a large part of mainstream veganism is because that's where most animals are exploited and killed, numbering at more than 60 billion land animals and 2.7 trillion marine animals every year. Veganism, however, is defined as "a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."[3] Simply, it's not unnecessarily harming animals.

That being said, the majority of food that should be included in a nonvegan's diet is already mostly vegan: fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds, and herbs and spices. (Sorry to disappoint, but we, in fact, don't live off grass and salad.) The only food products we don't consume are meat (including seafood because fishes and other aquatic creatures are animals), dairy, eggs, and honey. When transitioning, most new vegans find comfort in eating the foods they know and love in plant-based form: burgers, wings, deli meat, cheese, ice cream, milk, honey, and even eggs. But if you're afraid of trying some of these products, you don't need to! Many vegans follow a whole foods, plant-based diet (which, fortunately, doesn't mean you have to do all your shopping at Whole Foods), shortened to WFPB. A WFPB diet seeks to exclude processed foods and oils and emphasizes plants in their most natural form. When done properly, the science shows that this is the healthiest diet out there.[1] Yay for veganism!

*Please see "Is Veganism Healthy?", "Is Fishing Worse Than Hunting?" & "QUIZ: Are You an Herbivore or an Omnivore (+ free printout!)" for more information.

3. Why don't you eat dairy or eggs?

As stated in the second question, veganism is about not using animals for any reason, including seemingly "harmless" things like dairy, wool, or zoos. While the cruelty in the dairy and egg industries are substantial -- and even "cruelty-free" versions from backyard hens or small farms will never align with the values of veganism -- I will share with you some of the standard, "humane" practices.

Cows, like all other mammals, only produce milk for one reason: to feed their babies. In order for humans to drink their milk, the babies must be removed soon after birth, usually within 72 hours. For female babies, they are raised in small hutches and fed a milk replacement. Once they are old enough, they are impregnated through artificial insemination. Even while lactating from their prior pregnancy, females are impregnated again; nine months later, they will lose another child.

For male babies, they face many other fates: either to be "culled" immediately on the farm, to be raised for six months and slaughtered for veal and leather, or to be raised as one of the few semen-producing bulls on the farm. A cow's natural lifespan is 20-25 years, but dairy cows are usually slaughtered at five years of age, as their bodies can no longer withstand the tribulations of dairy farming.

Similarly, egg-laying hens are exploited for their female reproductive system. Only with them, the product we want from them is their unfertilized egg. Human women pass this egg 12 times a year, and, naturally, chickens would ovulate about 17-20 times per year. (This is why many vegans refer to eggs as "chicken periods.") But through selective breeding, hens produce an egg almost every day. For them, the process is significantly more challenging, as their small bodies must form a much larger, solid egg and excrete it. Egg-laying hens often develop bone diseases, as calcium is leached from their bones to produce the eggs. (This is why "backyard eggs" are a big no-no. Hens will actually eat their own eggs to reabsorb some of the calcium, but if their eggs continue to be taken away, they will ultimately face the same fate as factory-farmed hens: a short, painful life.) A healthy chicken can live to be 10 years old, but most egg-laying hens are slaughtered within two years of birth.

However, there are still some victims that never reach the slaughterhouse. In the process of breeding billions of chickens, about half of the babies born are male, but because they can't lay eggs, they are killed at just one day old. This is known as "chick culling." The most common methods are gas chamber, suffocation by garbage bag, or grinding them up alive. (You can't make this stuff up; it's incredibly disturbing.) So, the most important takeaway from this is that all animals are killed -- even if the end-products don't seem intentionally harmful -- and in the case of dairy cows and egg-laying hens, their meat is used in cheap fast food, dog/cat food, or even fed back to other herbivorous farm animals.

*Please see "Proof That Dairy is Rape" for more information.

4. Not even cheese?

There are so many wonderful vegan cheese brands available today, far more even than when I went vegan five years ago. So, when we feel like sprinkling some parmesan on our pasta or making a three-cheese pizza at home, we can still get that cheesy satisfaction without harming cows. However, we understand that strange pull to cheese, the thing that makes almost every nonvegan say, "But I could never give up cheese!" The reason we feel this cheese addiction is because we're actually addicted to it. In our brains, the casomorphins in cheese stimulate the same receptors as other addictive substances like morphine or heroin, which drives us to keep going back for more. (This pull is designed by nature to encourage a calf to come back to his or her mother to feed.) Though casomorphins are present in all dairy, because of the processing of cheese in particular, they become more concentrated.

*You can read more about dairy addiction in Dr. Neal Barnard's book The Cheese Trap or in his great speech, "What the Dairy Industry Doesn't Want You to Know."

5. Why don't you eat honey?

Honey is actually bee food; they work hard, like little farmers, to produce it as sustenance for the hive. And it certainly is hard work. Just one pound of honey requires the pollination of two million flowers![4] That's lifetimes of work for bees. And to turn that into the honey we know and love, bees actually eat and regurgitate it up to 50 times. So, realistically, honey is actually bee vomit. However, aside from the "gross factor," the bees, like dairy cows and egg-laying hens, are treated as honey-producing machines; it seems that everyone is in favor of "Save the bees!" initiatives, but very few are concerned with the welfare (or lack thereof) of bees in the industry.

Most people believe that bees have some free will, that they could just fly away at any moment, but that's not the way a hive works. The queen dictates what the rest of the bees do, so, to prevent her from leaving and taking all her profit-producing workers with her, her wings are removed. (We see this practice in other areas of agriculture in the form of tail docking, ear and tooth clipping, horn disbudding, castrating, and more.) Male worker bees are often killed in the process of semen extraction, as bees are also artificially inseminated. And, maybe cruelest of all, we take their honey -- their livelihood -- and feed them a sugar replacement.[5]

While it's more difficult for us to relate to bees and other insects, in a past post, I created an analogy I'd like to share again: bees work hard over their entire, short lifetime, pollinating flowers with the end goal of creating food -- honey -- for their family, the hive. It's like you and your family have all worked day after day laboriously farming your own food with the goal of creating great, healthy, sustainable meals once the plants are ready to harvest; but then, you've done all that work to only have the product of it all taken away by someone else and replaced with Twinkies.

*Also, note that honey is not a health food. It is pure sugar, 100 percent carbohydrates. Instead of honey, try maple syrup, agave nectar, or other liquid sweeteners.

6. Do you eat gluten?

Being gluten-free has nothing to do with veganism. (For that matter, neither do organic and non-GMO foods.) I'm not entirely sure why gluten-free diets are so popular, but it's great for people sensitive to gluten or with Celiac disease that there are so many products available for them now. You'll often see in restaurants that gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan menu items often get lumped together, but all three are incredibly different. When it comes to a plant-based diet, you can easily be gluten-free or not; that's entirely up to you!

7. What do you miss about not being vegan?

Truly, sincerely nothing. Every vegan will tell you that the only thing they regret about being vegan is that they wish they'd done it sooner. Especially with all the meat and dairy alternatives taking over the market now, there's nothing to miss out on. We can go to Burger King and get a mayo-free Impossible Whopper or even make our own burger patties at home with Beyond Beef. We can adopt from animal shelters instead of buying from breeders, and we can buy cotton sweaters instead of wool.

When first transitioning (or if not following a balanced diet), you will likely get cravings for animal-based foods that you've eaten your entire life. That's understandable. But those go away with time, and you no longer see those products as food; you seem them as products of exploitation, violence, and cruelty. There's nothing about nonveganism that attracts us anymore. And even if we still craved dairy cheese sometimes, the suffering of the animals is more important than the taste pleasure we get from eating it.

8. Are you a strict vegan?

The answer to this question is nuanced, and probably different kinds of people will answer it differently. To me, it's yes and no. Let's take another look at the definition: "Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."[3] When it comes down to it, veganism is about how possible and practicable it is for you. If you are a single mom feeding a child, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and can only afford something from the Dollar Menu at McDonald's, but still feel aligned with the values inherent to veganism and seek to avoid unnecessarily harming animals whenever possible, then you're vegan. But if you prepare nonvegan foods to serve carnist friends at a dinner party, then you're not vegan; you're pandering to their discriminatory habits and saying that your values (and animals' lives) are less important than their taste buds. In that sense, I'm a "strict vegan" because I don't accept that people can sometimes -- even if it's almost never -- use animals (when they have the ability not to) and still call themselves a vegan. To me, that shows that they haven't fully aligned with the vegan values.

In another sense, I am not a strict vegan because I recognize that the world tries at every juncture to force us to give in to carnism, and there are some instances when it is quite impossible to be strictly vegan. The most common example of this is with medications and vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry is worth billions, and medications and vaccines are nearly always tested on animals and sometimes contain animal ingredients. But if you need a pill to remain healthy or you get the flu shot every year, then that's just something you need to do. No one (or at least very few) will say you're not vegan because of that.

9. What would happen to the animals if we don't use them for XYZ?

Unfortunately, the world is slowly progressing towards complete veganism. But because of that, there are (or there should be) fewer and fewer animals being bred, used, and killed. Eventually, the pigs and chickens we know now will cease to exist. While that may sound alarming and counterintuitive to vegan ideals, that is the best fate these animals could have. All the creatures we use for food and clothing have been through decades of selective breeding to get fat faster, to produce more milk and eggs in less time, to grow more fur quicker. Because of this unnatural process, their bodies simply cannot handle living a full, healthy life and will give out on them far too prematurely. If we continue to breed them for the sake of keeping their species alive, we would just be putting them through unnecessary pain. Fortunately, these animals all come from wild species, so it's likely we'd never have a completely cow- or sheep-free world.

In the meantime, animals rescued from these industries live out their lives as healthfully and happily as possible at farm sanctuaries, receiving nothing but love and compassion until they die peacefully. In summation, it's not our problem what happens to these animals once we get them out of the farms and zoos because they never belonged there in the first place.

*Please see "Will There Ever Be a Vegan World?" for more information.