Part-time Vegan

Today, I decided to be a vegan.

Yep, just like that. I woke up this morning and knew that it was time to embrace this movement that has been on my mind for years and...

Oh, who am I kidding? My wife told me this morning that we should try to eat two vegan meals a week, at dinner time and I agreed to give it a shot. As a family, we eat too much red meat and maybe this is a good way to force ourselves to cut back.

I like chicken and would eat it every night until I grew feathers, but others in the house talk about something they call "variety." Seems like crazy talk to me, but I get out-voted every time. None of us enjoy fish, so that healthy option never makes it onto the menu.

We eat steak, pork chops, sausage and ground beef. Steak and ground beef break the red meat rule, pork chops break all the rules for fat intake. Sausage? There's probably not a rule that isn't broken by sausage. Yummy, rule-breaking sausage.

When I look up veganism, I learn that, "Veganism is a philosophy and lifestyle whose adherents seek to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose." So, if I follow the definition, I will not eat animals, wear things that were made from animals or by animal labourers, and will ignore the "or any other purpose" part because I don't know what other purposes they might be referring to. I know I'm only a part-time adherent to veganism, but so far this doesn't look too tough.

To be a proper part-time adherent, I should be aware of the criticisms of my new way of life. I found one critic who, "attacks "ideologic vegetarians," whom he claims believe that "all life is sacred" and that "all forms of life have equal value," saying that these beliefs "can lead to absurdities such as allowing mosquitoes to spread malaria, or vipers to run loose on one's premises." If malaria spreading mosquitoes and loose running vipers are part of the deal, I'm glad I'm only doing this twice a week.

Apparently, as a vegan, I do not grant moral standing to insects and don't believe that insects are conscious of pain. Presumably, this means two things: that I am to focus on things I cannot possibly know and eat insects at every opportunity. Once again, as a part-time adherent, I believe I am free to adapt these rules as I see fit and I believe that blogging about insects and their consciousness of pain should be adequate to maintain my membership in the vegan club.

There is no mention in the articles I found about berating all non-vegans I encounter, but I'm quite certain that even part-time adherents are expected to participate in this obnoxious behaviour.

Tonight, I'll be eating a vegan-chili with a side of ants and looking down my nose at the likes of you.