We’re All A Little Bit Vegan
Omnivores with fast-food burger diets are 10% vegan. Omnis with healthier diets are 50%-70% vegan. Vegetarians are 80% vegan. Vegans are 99-100% vegan.
If you have no idea what you’d eat if you went 100% vegan, your diet isn’t varied enough. You need to eat more fruits, vegetables, and non-animal products. You need, for your own health, to become a little bit more vegan.
Here’s a chart of the USDA Food Pyramid:
We could debate about how accurate that guide is for proper human nutrition given the dairy industry lobby’s effect on the USDA, but for the time being, let’s just act as if it’s a good guide.
Now, let’s take a closure look at the guide and specific recommendations:
Above, I’ve highlighted the vegan foods. As you can clearly see, it’s not difficult to maintain a USDA approved vegan diet. In fact, the MAJORITY of foods recommended by the USDA are vegan: grains, vegetables, and fruits.
From the “milk” group, the USDA says:
“If you can’t or don’t consume milk, choose [...] calcium sources such as fortified foods and beverages.”
But we also know that calcium comes from spinach, collard greens, tofu, kale, soybeans, almonds, and even oatmeal. If you eat a wide variety of vegan foods, you’re more than likely to get all the calcium you need. Cows, after all, get their calcium from the plants they eat. That’s why milk has calcium. Cows don’t produce calcium, they simply filter it out from plants into dairy products. Well, you can go directly to the source yourself and get your own calcium from plants, too.
Or, you can just drink fortified soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, hemp milk, or fortified breakfast cereals or fortified orange juice.
As far as protein goes, well the USDA recommends “beans, peas, nuts, and seeds” for vegans.
Clearly, even though two food groups, “milk” and “meat,” are eliminated in a vegan diet, there are adequate replacements. More importantly, the ENTIRE rest of the food groups are VEGAN: grains, vegetables, and fruits.
Sadly, most people aren’t eating enough fruits and vegetables. If you’re not eating a diet that is 50-100% vegan, you’re probably seriously lacking nutrients. That is to say, if you “have no idea” what you’d eat if you went vegan, you’re not eating a healthy diet now.
I see what you’re getting at, and I can see you have very good intentions by writing this post. But, in my humble opinion, it’s not a great message to be telling omnivores they are 70% vegan - it waters down the concept of veganism itself in the minds of those who already know little about it. I think it might actually give a meat eater *less* incentive to go vegan, because they figure they’re already close enough to being vegan. I wouldn’t claim that any meat eater is eating “healthier” so long as they are eating meat (no matter how many veggies they consume). Going from eating meat to being vegan, to me, is like going 0 to 100 mph. I do think people need to transition at their own pace (phasing out certain foods) - but I’d much rather see them transitioning by cutting meat out of their diet, than saying to themselves, well, I just need to eat more veggies to be more vegan.
Besides it’s rather like saying someone is 70% pregnant, because you’re either pregnant or you’re not - same with veganism, you’re either a vegan or you’re not. Though veganism has some grey areas that often come under dispute (like eating honey), I think all vegans will agree that there are no gradations of veganism that include eating meat (or dairy).
The truth is, I am finding that good health and animal rights, though they come together naturally through veganism, does not mean they can’t be mutually exclusive. Though veganism is always a healthier choice than an omnivorous or vegetarian diet, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a vegan is super healthy. Though I am as vegan as I was the day I decided to go strictly vegan, my eating habits are much healthier now - meaning I eat about 50% more FRESH fruits and veggies (rather than vegan cookies, cakes, pasta, canned/frozen stuff, etc.).
Best wishes,
Jeannie
“either pregnant or you’re not” - yes and no. There’s that critical time when you don’t know if you’re pregnant or not: the first few weeks. So you behave one way or another, depending on your life goals. For me, I don’t drink alcohol, just in case. Just saying… not everything is so cut and dry. Sometimes you’re not ‘either pregnant or not’.
If either you’re vegan or you’re not, then even if you accidentally eat animal products, you’re not vegan. That’s absurd. Veganism isn’t about personal purity. If you’re 99.9% vegan and call yourself a “vegan” that’s fine by me. And it’s fine by many vegans’ standards. (It’s different if you sell a product and label it “vegan”, then it’d better be 110% vegan.)
This isn’t a cult or a club. There’s no bouncer keeping you out if there’s a tiny bit whey in your energy bar or if you’re using hemorrhoid cream made from shark oil. We live in an omnivorous society and if you take part in the general society and don’t completely isolate yourself from the rest of the world, you’ll likely have to draw your lines somewhere and settle for 99% vegan instead of 100%. That’s OK.
One major barrier to veganism is lack of knowledge. If people strive to become “more vegan” they will gain a better understanding of what veganism means. If they incorporate more vegan meals into their routines, 100% vegan doesn’t seem so scary.
People are SOOOO ignorant that they actually say things like “vegan food is nasty” completely ignoring the fact that strawberries, oranges, apples, peanut butter, cashews, watermelons, avocados, beans, rice, tortilla chips, raisins, most beer, many bagels, sorbet, and tons of other tasty foods are “vegan foods.”
It doesn’t dilute veganism to suggest that omnis do Meatless Mondays or that they eat more veggies. Consider raw foodists: they talk about themselves as being 100%, 80%, 50% raw. The idea is that raw food is good and the closer you can get to 100% raw, the better.
Quite honestly, it’s pointless to talk about what incentives meat-eaters have for going vegan unless we include sociological studies. We can hypothesize all day and all night, but there’s nothing quite like real life experience and concrete data:
1) The vast majority of vegans go vegan gradually, effectively going from 50% vegan to 80% vegan to 100% vegan. That method obviously worked for many of us.
2) Meat reducers do have an impact. Even if people don’t go vegan, if they ditch some of the meat from their diet, they’re doing a good thing. Moreover, they’re making it easier for vegans by demanding vegan options some of the time.
3) Vegan Outreach claims they’ve helped create 72,633 vegetarians and vegans with their pamphlets. I’ve read those pamphlets and they promote meat reduction just as much as they promote veganism. It’s not all or nothing. They even say in “Compassionate Choices”:
“Years of eating less meat and eggs will prevent more suffering than a brief stint on a vegan diet, so it’s more important to take an approach you can sustain. You can make exceptions, such as eating meat on certain occasions, and still make a big difference by eating vegetarian the rest of the time.”
I cringed when I read it, but the fact is, it works. And that’s what matters.
Like I said, I understand what you’re saying, and in fact, I agree with much of your response in terms of moving toward veganism by phasing out animal products gradually.
Regarding “dilution of veganism,” I said that there are many grey areas in veganism (like honey, insects, etc.). I think maybe you misunderstood me. I was not in the least advocating personal purity - I wasn’t talking about things like “whey” or accidentally eating something that’s not vegan. When I said that it is a little worrisome to say things like “70% vegan,” I meant that meat eaters might get the wrong idea (esp. because, like you said, they know so little about veganism) — they might think that veganism is simply about percentages, and that to work toward veganism they can just work on eating more veggies rather than cutting down the amount of meat they eat (for example substituting eating fruits for eating Twinkies instead of cutting out the meat in their dinner once a week - it’s really NOT a stretch to think a meat eater would actually think this way). Advocating Meatless Mondays is a great idea. I’m not one of the folks who think that to become a vegan, one needs to do it virtually overnight - I believe that incremental steps is in almost all cases needed (and quite honestly, healthy). One animal not eaten during dinner is one animal that is not killed. I was just simply saying that meat eaters could get the wrong idea about what veganism is about if you start talking about percentages.
Also, in this golden age of “happy meat,” I worry that in telling a meat eater that they are 70% vegan that they will take it the same way their consciences are assuaged when they eat cage-free eggs or free-range beef. They may think of it as if they are doing great so far, because they are now 70% vegan—or 70% cruelty free (in their eyes). I don’t see veganism that way. I hope most vegans do not see it that way, either.
I understand what you’re saying about the first few weeks of not knowing whether or not you’re pregnant. However, like I said, I’m not talking about a person who mistakenly ate a food with whey or decides to eat honey and questions whether they are vegan or not (they still are vegan, in my eyes). I’m talking about someone who is eating 30% meat/dairy. If someone who is eating 30% meat/dairy questions whether they are vegan or not, or thinks that they could possibly be vegan in any way, it’s because their sources are not giving them the proper information.
Cheers,
-Jeannie
Let me emphasize again, that I do think we’re on the same page. We both believe that working toward veganism by cutting animal products out of one’s diet at one’s own pace is a good thing. and that every animal that is not consumed is one animal that is not killed. I think it’s just delivering the message in a way that includes percentages that concerns me.