Friday, December 09, 2011

Are you in or are you out?

I've been trying to come up with answers to both my own questions and other people's, are you vegan or vegetarian?

And to which the obvious answer is vegetarian, but I am disappointed in this answer. I've come to see it as a failing on my part; I was always happy with vegetarianism and always expected vegans to be a "bit weird".

Vegans are far from weird; my brief experience has shown me they are intelligent, funny, rational and extremely passionate.
I really envy them their passion, I sort of fell into veganism. I didn't come to it through the moral high ground; I came to it from the food perspective.  Come for the food, stay for the saving of the animals!

Which brings me to that very infamous quote from that even more infamous movie:
"Do or do not... there is no try." - Yoda, Star Wars

I'd eat 90% vegan (everything I cook myself) and probably about still 10% vegetarian (when I'm out). Cruelty free/environmentally friendly products have always been a huge deal for me, ah you found me out, and I’m secretly a tree hugger!

The big word here is TRY, I'm trying to live a more compassionate lifestyle. Food has become a lot easier, but I will admit to being still quite a noob when it comes to cruelty free non-food products.

Something that once again came home to me when I attended an info session for the local roller derby league. I had reiterated what I'd already learned, a leather boot is the best kind of skate boot. There are loads of synthetic versions available, usually cheaper than the leather versions and there are starting to come on the market 100% vegan skates.

When I first became interested in derby the whole leather v non-leather skates wouldn't have been an issue, now, I couldn't comfortably buy leather skates, no matter how much better they might be.

While there may be no try, I feel I may be doing in a fashion, I think I may be "doing" for some time to come before I'm actually happy with the result.



2 comments:

2paw said...

It is very hard to be Vegan when you are dining out but I think being vegetarian is perfectly acceptable in the circumstances!!
Is Fresh vegan or vegetarian??

Anonymous said...

I think you are doing a fabulous job, I too am quite new to this, I stopped eating meat on the 30th May after watching A bloody Business on 4 Corners, I think all meat eaters need to see what the animals suffer before reaching our plates, after only a couple of weeks I realised the cruelty in the dairy and egg industry was just as bad if not worse and it made sense I had to be vegan, and like you say it's not just about food it's a lifestyle, it's about clothes, shoes, bags, even wool we knit with once you start looking into some of those practices and even honey as I recently found out bees are really exploited and not treated nicely and in a natural way they would behave in order to get the honey, it is a learning curve everyday and there are stuff ups but as long as I keep trying my best I feel great about it, you should too