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Interestingly, I was listening to a vegan friend complaining about exactly that this week - that he finds the vegan community itself nearly insufferable due to
by beat 12y ago
Interestingly, I was listening to a vegan friend complaining about exactly that this week - that he finds the vegan community itself nearly insufferable due to smugness and proselytizing. He's vegan for religious reasons, but doesn't want to impose his faith on anyone else and doesn't feel it makes him superior. Sadly, not true of many vegans.
My daughter, a budding chef and foodie with many vegan friends, gets a lot of grief over it too. For her part, she's trying to get the vegans to eat decent food, as most of the ones she knows eat what she calls "vegan junk food" - factory products rather than actual cooking of fresh ingredients.
- RodericDay 12y agoso vegans are smug and proselytizing, and your non-vegan daughter goes around calling what they eat junk food, trying to get them to switch diets. interesting.
- beat 12y agoI don't think you understand. She tries to teach them to cook good vegan food. She totally respects their choice to be vegan. She worries that they're eating factory food from a box rather than something more natural and healthier. She would never, ever try to make a vegan break their veganism. She will make them food that is tastier and more nutritious than what they normally eat, but is still vegan.
- RodericDay 12y agoI don't think you understand. She is trying to get them to eat something different (proselytizing), for reasons that she believes are important and true, even though they don't currently agree with her themselves (smug). Sounds a lot like ethical vegans to me.
- beat 12y agoIt's one thing to try to make people better at their own diet, and another thing to try to make them choose another diet. Not all help is proselytizing. There's a TREMENDOUS difference between "I understand you're a vegan, here's some homemade lentil stew that's better for you than the potato chips you're eating", and "You are a filthy murderer for eating that burger!", or "You're a stupid pansy who needs to eat a burger!" If you can't understand that distinction...
- RodericDay 12y agoThat's not the difference between proselytizing and not proselytizing, that's a difference in how you go about it. If you want to make the case that your daughter is a really nice proselytizer for healthy eating, and that vegetarians are really awful, we can just compare anecdata. You went out of your way to quote second-hand sources for "filthy murderer" vegans, suggesting it hasn't been your experience. How many people who've called vegetarians pansies do you personally know?
- beat 12y agoActually, I just made those quotes up. As for "proselytizing"... rather than bickering over the word, bicker the intent. Do you think it's a bad thing for a non-vegan to cook vegan food for a vegan? To teach them about cooking and nutrition? To encourage them to make their own food rather than eating something put in a bag in a factory? I don't see how what she's doing can be reasonably considered negative. So if it's proselytizing, then proselytizing is itself not a negative. If you think it's negative, I'd love to understand why.
- RodericDay 12y agoDo you think it's bad for someone to persuade someone else to stop eating factory-farmed meat? I don't see how that can be considered negative either. Can you?
- beat 12y ago