Where is the full image? 🤤

Vegans don’t. We can’t know what is not told. Vegan isn’t about being a perfectionist. It’s about avoiding harm as much as possible. There’s nothing herculean about not eating a bag of chips because there’s milk powder in it, it’s just very frustrating when all the chips in the supermarket contain milk and you really wanted some chips.

“I can’t be perfect so I won’t try at all” is a lame ass argument.

It works pretty much the same way that all of our values do. From the big bundle of things we care about, we derive a bunch of heuristics that help us to make decisions in life, and this greatly simplifies our choices. For instance, I value being considered authentic and trustworthy, so in general, I follow the rule of “do not lie”.

However, these heuristics inevitably fail when confronted with the complexity of the real world, so we end up having to adjust on the fly, sometimes prioritising one value over another; I might find myself in a situation where my general policy of honesty is in tension with my policy of “don’t be an asshole”, and I may decide that in this instance, lying feels morally acceptable (or even necessary).

In the context of veganism, an example of this kind of negotiation might be if a vegan mistakenly buys something containing animal products. If sustainability is a significant component of their veganism, then they might prefer to eat the food rather than waste it. Someone else might choose differently, depending on their underlying values. Sometimes even the same person with the same values might choose differently, depending on their circumstances (someone who is ill and exhausted might be more likely to eat something non-vegan, for example)

I agree that “it’s impossible to be truly moral in this hell world”, but I imagine you still try to live by your moral values? If you were to picture yourself saying the most vicious things you could possibly muster to a dear friend in a deliberate attempt to hurt them, that probably feels bad to imagine, right? And yet, it’s inevitable that we will, at some point, do or say something to hurt the people we care about, despite our best efforts to avoid that. We can never be perfect, in anything we do. What matters is the intention, combined with a genuine effort to live by our values.

For me, the most important part of living in a moral manner is regularly reflecting on whether my actions are aligning with my values. I tried to go vegetarian a year or so back, but unfortunately, my life is too hectic for that to be a viable option for me right now — I already struggle with building healthy eating habits, and adding additional restrictions on top of that led to me failing in my basic duty to my own wellbeing. I had to step back and re-evaluate my priorities, which led to me deciding that whilst going fully veggie is still a long term goal, for now, I’m just going to focus on reducing the amount of meat products I eat.

I feel a bit uncomfortable to have to make that compromise, but that’s sort of the point, I reckon. Having to walk the tightrope between values that are in tension with each other is our opportunity to show our moral mettle. It’s ultimately a personal choice, so there aren’t really any right or wrong answers (because we’re the ones grading our own tests, so to speak). We’ve just got to be mindful about it, and try not to beat ourselves up so much that we end up making it harder to make choices that feel right.

Being vegan just means you are constantly working on causing less harm in whatever way you can. Its a slow learning process and it changes over time. I’ve been vegan for 3 or 4 years now and I still have shoes with leather in them because I can’t afford to replace them until they wear out. Probably 50% of my meals are from Taco Bell.

We all just try to do our best with what we have.

a herculean task

It isn’t. It’s a process and people try their best. Just because there’s a lot of hurdles doesn’t mean you shouldn’t even be trying.

Yes thats a big problem in Vegan community. People tend to dig into deep and lose the practical cause of the mission. I’m more of an advocate for lazy veganism rather than absolutist because diminishing returns is just so high - you make a huge difference by just cutting out meat, milk and eggs and small stuff like cutting milk powder is just a nice minor extra.

I’m sorry, “feather meal”?

yum yum explain this…

Processed in a facility that also aerosolizes peanut protein isolate.

You don’t need to self identify as vegan or call yourself vegan. You’re already doing more than most people, and that’s great.

basic bastard daily diet staples

Well, legumes. 😅

Some of my classics:

• Cook noodles and red lentils in one pot. Strain the water. Add a can of tomatoes. Boom, pseudo-bolognese.
• White beans are great in salads and such. You can get them pre-cooked in a jar. Just wash the glibber off, add a bit of salt, pop them into the microwave if you’re feeling fancy, and then throw them on top of your salad.
• If you can find TVP in the shops, that’s also really versatile and hardly processed. Particularly bigger chunks of it are nice, because they’re chewy and you can sear them like meat for that extra flavor.

?? Are those somehow not vegan? Do they roast them in lard?

/MODE #vegan +b glitchdx

Better?

(I have no idea why I’m seeing this, guess because I’m browsing /all)

Did you know? There’s this neat little “block” button you can use for communities that don’t apply to you. If you don’t want to see posts about veganism, blocking c/vegan is totally an option.

Oh no! This dickhead’s self-imposed assholery has made them blocked and reported!

If only there was another way. Like them not being a prick.

So funny that they’re only a few letters away from a noun that could be used to describe them. Unrelated, here is the letter C, and for no reason, the other 3 letters UNT - can you do the magic trick of combining them?

🪻

Ever heard of dairy allery, or someone being lactose intolerance, or maybe, idk, the fact that MILK IS A CARCINOGEN!