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I started living as a vegan in 2001.
At the time, it was the natural next step after becoming a vegetarian the year before. I became a vegetarian after meeting a Hare Krishna who talked about the cruelty to animals that eating meat produced.
A year later, it just struck me: why would I consume the milk of another animal? No other animal does that. In fact, no other animal consumes milk after infancy.
And so began the process of becoming a vegan. It was a quick process but a process, nonetheless. At first, I was consuming things that I thought were vegan but were not. At other times, I knew something wasn’t vegan but had to muster the strength to withstand the urge.
Soon enough, I was a “vegan.” I use quotations because even though I overcame my battle to eat overtly non-vegan food, I did eat honey during certain times, or even wear shoes that were at least partly made with leather. No doubt, hard-core or “pure” vegans would say that I had never been a vegan at all.
And it was such a person that helped cement my more recent conversion to becoming “almost vegan.”
But now, my new aim is to be roughly 97-percent vegan. Why?
While I do feel that eating a purely vegan diet is great, there are some practical and ideological issues I find with it.
Firstly, I think there is value in being flexible. Sometimes being flexible just amounts to being wishy-washy, but in other instances, it allows for a more embracing approach to life. Being a “flexitarian” is such a case. A flexitarian is a person who is usually vegetarian but who sometimes eats meat, which some people define as: “to live without a backbone.”
This “diet,” if it can be called that, may be branded as simply “living as a hypocrite.” But I think there is merit in it, especially in some instances.
If a person is vegetarian on a daily basis but sometimes eats animal products, I think this can be ethically sound. If, for example, someone has prepared a meat dish and it will go to waste, then eating it is good because it won’t get thrown out, potentially into landfill where it will produce methane that makes its way into the earth’s atmosphere. Another case would be eating roadkill.
A more contentious example would be eating something containing animal products that someone has prepared which is of great significance to them—imagine being in a remote village where a family has sacrificed the family goat in your honor and has prepared a once in a year feast, also in your honor. I feel like despite the harm that has been done to the animal, the emotional harm to the host may outweigh it. If so, then being flexible might be the best approach to take.
I’d like to be like this but from the standpoint of “breaking” my veganism. There’s no way I can stomach meat. But if something has a little bit of eggs or milk in it, like a cake, I’d like to be able to eat it if the situation calls for it.
The other reason relates more directly to the type of ethics involved. My conversion to being “almost vegan” was cemented during an encounter with a coworker who was (also) vegan. She asked me why I was vegan, and I said that originally it was to protect animals, but now it is to protect the environment. Her response was that, in fact, I wasn’t vegan at all because a vegan’s only aim is to reduce animal cruelty.
Firstly, I was taken aback by someone explaining to me that I couldn’t classify myself as a particular identity. That would be like telling someone who believes in the prophet Muhamad but who drinks alcohol they cannot call themselves a Muslim.
To me, veganism is an ethically motivated approach to life, whether that be based around avoiding animal cruelty or environmental catastrophe. And this is exactly how the Vegan Society defines it: “Some people may choose to go vegan, for some it may be because they do not believe in farmed animal practices and animal exploitation, for others it may be due to environmental concerns.”
The other thing was that it made me see how loaded the term “vegan” really was and how pedantic and confrontational some vegans could be. That made me want to disassociate myself from the term.
So, I decided that I would no longer be “vegan” but would be “plant-based.” The latter term seems less intense and more open to me: open to conversations with others to share a journey, not a strict regime. (Funnily enough, the term “plant-based” had gotten me in trouble previously when I was trying to order a vegan pizza online and ended up with a vegetarian pizza covered in “real” cheese!)
I think this spectrum is helpful to see. To me being a “vegan” is not all or nothing. From an environmental point of view, the less animal products you eat, the better it is for the environment. And any amount of reduction is great.
The other thing is that having an “all or nothing” mindset is not useful in trying to change because every time we “fail” at being vegan, we cement the idea that we are “not vegan,” which in turn makes it even harder to eat less animal products.
Like any type of change—be it fitness, lifestyle, relationships—small changes are more sustainable.
So, what does my life look like as a 97-percent vegan, plant-based eater?
On a day-to-day basis, if I don’t get into any ideological debates with any hard-core vegans, I would pass as your standard vegan. I mostly eat at home, and all the meals I make are 100-percent vegan because that’s simply what I like to eat.
When I go out, occasionally, I will eat a donut, which contains a tiny bit of milk and egg, but for the most part is made of flour. (Ideally, I would eat a donut that contained 3-percent milk and eggs!)
If someone makes a cake for a special occasion, I’ll try to have some, depending on how creamy it is.
And wait for this one: a few times a year, I might even have some fish!
So that’s my new 97-percent “vegan” life.
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