I'm not vegan, if anything I'm an herbivore
For the past ten years or so I've eaten nothing but things that come from the earth: vegetables, grains, legumes, fruit. No meat, no fish. I also avoid eggs and dairy, although every now and then I find myself eating some in spite of myself.
So you're vegan, then? NO!
What do you mean? And here comes the usual, extremely pedantic (and wrong, I might add) classification, halfway between the bureaucratic and the anthropological: if you eat eggs and dairy you ARE vegetarian, if you don't eat those either you ARE vegan.
Like I said: NO!
First of all, a vegetarian diet shouldn't include eggs or dairy. And if you thought about it for a second, you'd see that right away. Do eggs grow on trees? No. Does milk gush out of plants? Nope. They're animal products. The root of the word "vegetarian" is "vegetable," so eggs and milk are NOT included. Real vegetarian eating is actually what people commonly (and wrongly) call vegan. And what people commonly call vegetarian is, in nutritionist jargon, called ovo-lacto-vegetarian. So NOT vegetarian.
Okay, fine, but let's get back to the point. Why can't you be called vegan if you eat like a vegan? For exactly the reason you just gave, buddy. Because I EAT LIKE a vegan, but I'm NOT a vegan.
What does that mean? What's the difference? Okay, first off, I'm no expert on the subject, but from what little I know, veganism is an activist movement that fights to defend animal rights. Rights that include the right not to be used for food. It's a group that lobbies at the political level, applies social pressure, practices evangelizing, and looks after its own marketing. It goes without saying that if you're fighting for the right of animals not to be exploited for food, you can't eat animal products.
Did you catch the subtlety? A vegan isn't vegan because they eat only plants; they eat only plants because they're vegan. If the difference (which is huge) isn't clear to you, I suggest you pick your high school logic textbooks back up.
Consequences of all this (my take on each in parentheses):
- A vegan might be salivating when they see a steak, but they still force themselves not to. (I often eat sitting at the table with omnivores, and their plates don't tempt me at all. If I felt like eating meat, I'd eat meat. I don't choose my menu out of principle but out of taste.)
- If it seems to you that vegans bust your balls, it's because they're committed, by choice, to social pressure and evangelizing. It's the social role they've assigned themselves. They bust your balls, yes, but they're consistent with their own principles. (Like I said, I often eat with people who order meat or fish and I don't bust anybody's balls. If anything, the exact opposite happens: there are people who break my balls. Besides, I sympathize with animal rights, but I understand that there are ancestral habits that can't be ignored.)
- The vegetarian diet (the real one, see above) is called vegan because vegans have proven to be very skilled at marketing. And the people who can't fucking stand vegans fell for the trick like suckers, ending up doing their advertising for them. (I didn't fall for it, and what I write is the proof. I also try to do my part in spreading the word, but, believe me, it's like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon.)
- Veganism is a fairly recent movement (mid-twentieth century) and a Western one (it was founded in the United Kingdom). Yet in the East, millions of people have eaten only plant products for millennia and never dreamed of calling themselves vegans. (I've favored plant foods ever since I was a kid. It's a personal trait of mine, one that sets me apart even from other members of my family. As an adult I went on to cut animal ingredients out of my diet completely, freeing myself from social conditioning and learning to listen to my body, after spending longer or shorter periods in environments devoted to vegetarianism, in the Far East itself. I've never had anything to do with modern veganism, with its activist vocation and Western stamp.)
Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.
