by chadnik » Sat Aug 23, 2014 7:52 pm
, I have a Vitamix and love it. Pulverizes like none other. You can buy them refurbished and with a 10-year warranty from their website for significantly cheaper than MSRP.
, I am not a vegan (I buy leather and wool and silk) but I eat a plant-based diet. For me, the transition was very gradual. I stopped eating meat when I was 11, barring occasional forcings of tuna and chicken from a mother worried about her kid's development (fair enough), due to a research project I did on the treatment and killing of pigs in slaughterhouses. I have also always had an intolerance to dairy, for which I took lactose pills for years, but only when I started experimenting with not eating it entirely did I realize just how much better I felt (and how much the pills hadn't been catching). In college I began cooking for myself and loved how much control I had over my food, both from a culinary and a health perspective. So by this time, I wasn't eating meat or dairy, had the resources of a progressive college town with vegan dishes at most restaurants and great farmers market, and some experience cooking for myself. I stopped eating eggs after reading and watching videos of the treatment of chickens/reading about the environmental impact of raising meat/feed for animals, and that was basically that. There was a time when I called myself a vegan (and I still use it in restaurants for an easy shorthand), but I don't like to identify as such any more because I'm pretty obviously not adhering to a vegan lifestyle: I buy clothing that utilizes animal products, and I will eat non-meat animal products when traveling abroad and other options are not available or it would insult my hosts otherwise (e.g. in the highlands of Peru where I ate the cheese and potatoes offered at every meal, and secretly bean energy bars I brought from home, for 3 weeks). I don't call myself a vegan because I have friends who are absolutely committed to the cause of animal welfare/the political aspects of veganism, as Bobbin is, and to call myself a vegan would to take away from the strength of their cause. When people ask me what I eat, I now say "a plant-based diet," which sums it up pretty well, I think. In my approach, I am happy to introduce people to the variety of delicious, nutritionally sound foods that are/can be made vegan, which I've definitely done in the past four or so years that I've eaten this way. I find it more realistic to encourage more people to eat more tasty plant-based foods (edit: as well as locally-grown, organic ones, which is part of the same big picture to me), rather than expecting everyone to adopt fully vegan diets, and I think this generation is already doing pretty well in that regard: just a generation or two ago, a meal wasn't a meal without meat, but now lots of people our age are perfectly happy to eat tofu and tempeh and the like.
My lifestyle makes sense to me because it makes my body feel the best, and I am doing what I feel is an easy, small step in reducing the environmental impact of the consumption of animal food products. However, I do sometimes think about becoming vegan (i.e. ceasing to buy clothing made with animal products)—but I am not comfortable either with the environmental impact of petroleum-based substitutes or their durability, and frankly am probably being selfish in not wanting to curtail my enjoyment of mainstream fashion. Would definitely love to hear people's thoughts on these issues, sorry for writing so much.