All in the Vegan Family: Do I Make You Uncomfortable?

All in the Vegan Family: Do I Make You Uncomfortable?
When my eight year old son announced that he did not want to share his “Why We Are Vegan” project with his friends at school because he was afraid of making the “meat-eaters” in his class uncomfortable, I was simultaneously proud that he was not the one feeling uncomfortable because of his alternative diet, and impressed [...]

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When my eight year old son announced that he did not want to share his “Why We Are Vegan” project with his friends at school because he was afraid of making the “meat-eaters” in his class uncomfortable, I was simultaneously proud that he was not the one feeling uncomfortable because of his alternative diet, and impressed that he could be so perceptive. Until that point, I hadn’t given it much thought, but I decided that he was right – our diet does make other people uncomfortable and that really made me question … why?

Is it because I preach to people about a vegan diet?

No. I go out of my way not to preach to people about their diet. In fact, until recently, I rarely talked about my diet at all. And yet, when people learn that I don’t eat meat or dairy, they invariably ask me why. Once I tell them that I’m vegan, the conversation immediately becomes a justification of why they are not. “I don’t eat much meat – but I can’t give it up entirely – I love chicken too much.”, “I would love to eat that way – but it’s too much work.”, “I could never eat that way … I wouldn’t know what to eat.”

Is it because I judge non-vegans?

I’d like to say no, but the honest answer is … maybe. I try hard not to judge people. After all, most of us have been grossly misinformed about food – what is healthy and what is not. We’ve been taught our whole lives by authority figures that we need dairy for calcium and meat for protein. Our doctors, teachers and governments endorse animal products as a healthy and essential part of our diet. We have also become so far removed from our food sources that we are disconnected from the animals that we are eating. Agri-business deliberately glosses
over the horrors of factory farming. How can we blame people for being confused about what they should eat, and not understanding how their food choices impact their health, the environment and animals?

Having said all that … the right information is out there if you are open to it, and once you start looking it’s a difficult thing to argue or ignore. I believe that people inherently know that factory farming is wrong, that eating saturated fat and cholesterol is unhealthy, that our values are misaligned when we choose to love and pamper some animals and kill and eat others. Perhaps a vegan diet makes people uncomfortable because on some level they know that it is an optimal diet. Maybe looking at someone else eating this way forces them to look at what they are eating and judge themselves.

Discomfort About Eating Meat: Is it a bad thing?

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that vegans make meat-eaters feel uncomfortable. Maybe just by being in the room we make non-vegans consider their food and lifestyle choices;
some people will be defensive and closed – but other people will be curious and open, and those are the people who may let their discomfort change their lives for the better.

I love that my son is confident about being vegan – that in his world being vegan is “normal” and eating meat might make some people “uncomfortable”. I hope for his sake that his
world stays that way. I dare to hope that my son is growing up in a world where the question asked when he reaches adulthood won’t be, “Why don’t you eat meat”, but instead “Why do you eat meat”?

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