vegans – thy name is compassion

Compassion is a wonderful thing and something lacking in too many people’s lives. We are all so hell bent on getting ahead that the people who actually give a shit about anything other than themselves are few and far between.

 

However, where you will find an abundance of them in the vegan community.

For some that compassion seems, very oddly, to extend to animals only with no real care for other people or the environment.

 

But for many the compassion is all enveloping.

These are the kind souls who buffer the new vegans from the scorn of the older (and therefore much better and more evolved) vegans, who offer kind advice and gentle correction, who share ideas and recipes and tricks that make it easier; thing they have learnt that they don’t think other people should have to struggle to know.

 

For all the self-righteous sanctimonious vegans of yesterday’s post there are a slew of truly compassionate people for whom veganism is a lifestyle choice rather than a food choice.

 

They care – about themselves, about others, about generosity and compassion, about building people up and empowering them, about sharing their skills and knowledge – and they happen to manifest this in ways that include not wanting to kill animals for food.

 

Now that’s true veganism in my book

the cost of plantbased eating

One of the things I always thought about vegan eating is that it is simply too expensive. I mean have you seen the price of nuts and avos and all those other fancy things one obviously has to have when not eating meat.

R30 a litre of soy milk – you have to be kidding, right?!

How much are nuts? That’s daylight robbery!

Have you seen the price of tomatoes? I am not paying that much per kilo

 

Uh huh – yep, I agree. Nuts are crazy expensive. Like R250 a kilo crazy. I would never buy stuff that expensive!

hear the sarcasm

I certainly can’t often afford to buy a whole kilo of nuts so I buy small bags which are more expensive per kilo but less to shell out. Likewise my meat eating people cannot often afford to buy a whole animal or even a pack of chops or steaks, so they buy single servings.

 

Except R30 worth of nuts, even at inflated prices, is 60g. R30 worth of red meat is 125g of processed ham or similar to eat on a sandwich, or about a 200g sirloin,  250g chicken livers or 2 or 3 chicken thighs.

 

60g of nuts is a lot of nuts – made into vegan parmesan or nut cheese or nut butter I could eat on those 60g for a week. The meat amounts bought – each is a single meal really with maybe the livers being a meal for two.

 

‘Ja, but you eat expensive stuff like avos in a single sitting’

 

So let’s look at a salad we might both eat.

 

We all eat the basics – and my avo is still cheaper than your tuna and cheese.

And it is in colour so I win.

Usually half an avo is all the rich I can eat anyway

 

So tell me again about how being a vegan is too expensive?

No one has to be a vegan – eat whatever makes you happy

But don’t use financial constraints as an excuse or reason

 

*I used the same shop for the prices of all the items in the article – I know you can get everything for less and for more at other outlets, but these are all from the same place.

Why I am a (new) vegan

So, I’ve been a vegan for a week and it doesn’t feel like a decision I had to make or a lifestyle I now have to follow, but rather just what and how I am supposed to be. But that may be because I am in the honeymoon phase and all these replacement/additional/delicious meal options are exciting, shiny and new.

In a week/month/year I may be gagging for bacon, desperate for a chop or dreaming about biltong. (This is what happened when I did the vegetarian thing for a year previously.)

If that happens, I will deal with it then. It certainly doesn’t mean that my feeling of rightness now is any less valuable or real.

 

But why? I am asked. In the name off all red and meaty (and delicious) WHY?

 

Well, there is a MEAL of reasons.

 

Me

I don’t want to consume all of the antibiotics and other bits and pieces injected and fed into animals bred for slaughter.

I think there is a correlation between many cancers and eating animals.

My body does not like vast amounts of meat and other flesh – my stomach rebels, I feel sluggish and tired, I am always hungry.

When I tried banting, which is animal eating in the extreme, I got eczema and gastritis. I know I don’t need to eat that much meat and animal products, but the fact that this was my body’s response made me question wanting to put any of it in my body at all.

 

Earth

The carbon footprint of animal products for eating is just ridiculously massive.

Grass fed, organic-style animals have a bigger footprint that feedlot ones. So, so much for that being the response to me not wanting antibiotics etc.

The Earth cannot sustain us – there are too many of us consuming too much. Eating plantbased meals simply and easily reduces my carbon footprint.

 

Animal Lives

This is the actual, real, final reason I just couldn’t eat flesh and other animal products any more. (Because let’s not pretend animals bred for products other than meat are treated any better than those slaughters to eat.)

 

It’s a story so settle down – no gruesome crying piglet images, I promise (except the one I just put in your head).

 

In April 2016 I made a series of decisions which resulted in my beautiful dog Pippa being hit and killed by a car. I didn’t do it on purpose but as the human in the relationship, it was my fault. I let her do something which directly and specifically resulting in her being hit by the car. So yes, it was my fault.

And her death agonises me still. I dream about her, I miss her, I feel so guilty that I made decisions which resulted in her death.

 

And yet I was happy to get up and chose to eat bacon for breakfast and not even think about the animal I was killing with that decisions. I’d buy wors and chops and steak for a braai and never even consider the farmyard I was sending to their death. Eggs, milk, cream and cheese – yum yum and screw the animals kept in captivity, treated like crap, separated from their mothers when still needing her milk, slaughtered at birth if male, and finally, possibly mercifully, killed

 

Why do we think some animals are worth loving and protecting while others are commodities to be treated appallingly and then destroyed?

 

We don’t need animal products to be healthy; in fact, we may well be healthier without them.

 

So, yeah, that’s why I am just not going to consume anything an animal suffered to produce.

Cos those random cows, lambs, sheep, chicken and even fish deserve life as much as Pippa did.

 

Also – I watched Food Choices on Netflix which actually consolidated all of these thoughts.

Watch it – it’s not even gruesome, just eye-opening