People love to call veganism ‘privileged,’ while conveniently ignoring the fact that the only reason animal products are even close to being accessible for the average consumer is because they’re factory farmed, slaughtered and packed by grossly underpaid labourers working in dangerous conditions, and then massively subsidised by all of our taxes.
It really is tho. Substitutes are expensive.
There’s a reggae album out of Jamaica by Romain Virgo with a song called “I’m doin good”
In that song is the line, “may not be able to buy what vegetarians cook but I’m doin good”
The album is from 2010. The first time I heard that song was my first realization that vegetarianism can be difficult as I’d recently been to Jamaica, and they do love them some vegetarianism. It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe some of them wanted to be vegetarian but weren’t able.
I also recommend What Me Eat by Macka B
This shit is insane. While it’s not just overall more expensive to be vegan. But some vegan substitutes are expensive as hell, while the carnivor alternative is super cheap because substitution is a joke. There is a local little factory that makes oat milk. Great, right? No long routes, and no gross tiddy milk. One liter is 4 bucks, while random milk is like 1 buck. There is a dry meat alternative that is made of smoked beets, it’s pretty much twice as expensive as just dry meat. It’s a clown world.
You have a local factory that makes oat milk? Do you live in sweeden?
Crazy how people wanting to live in luxury has brought down the prices of all these products once deemed too expensive. Vanilla was only for the rich and now it’s in every cheap product. It became so normal that the word “vanilla” is now synonymous with “normal” or “basic”.
We really need to drop the expensive ass meat replacements as the main meatless option. There are countless delicious meals you can make without meat, and are much cheaper because of it.
There’s a vegan restaurant near me and the entire menu is imitation meat. Meals are $10-15. I haven’t bothered trying the restaurant.
I think that calling veganism privileged is a response to the more militant vegans who don’t realize that economic hardship and food scarcity can make their version of veganism unsustainable for some people.
You’re referring to outliers.
If you care about animals, you don’t move to a “desert” where you don’t have a supply of non-animal-based food. That’s the cost of trying to give a shit. You don’t get to be an opportunistic predator, you don’t practice it only when it’s convenient with your business/career plan.
For most people this isn’t even an issue, but carnists love to glom onto the exceptions as if most humans are living on a space station surrounded by asteroid cattle.
Some people can’t afford the cost of giving a shit, and expecting everyone to have the same levels of economic freedom and access to food and clothing needs as you do is a position coming from ignorance and privilege. Even thinking of moving as a voluntary thing is from that same position.
If you can be vegan and can afford to live that lifestyle, great, that’s a moral thing to do.
If you’re starving on the street you don’t have the option.
The fact veganism is an option some people can choose and others can’t makes it a privilege.
I’ve lived in a dessert, and there’s no shortage of fruit, dates, olives, bread, carrots, onions, beans, rice, cabbage, beets, and all the veggies you need at the local market
Hell, israel has the highest number of vegans per capita than any country, and most of the diet is Whole Foods.
I was referring to this concept: https://sentientmedia.org/food-desert/
Ah. Right. Then its basically pasta and bread and peanut butter. Maybe bananas or canned corn or something if you’re lucky
Could you be more explicit? Like what are the foods and clothing etc suggested by militant vegans that are luxury goods?
When you’re in desperate levels of food scarcity, you don’t have room to be picky. When you are relying on borrowed/stolen/passed down or thrifted clothing, you’re going to wear what you can get.
Veganism is an ethical choice, but it’s a choice some people aren’t in a position to make.
That’s what makes it a privilege.
That’s what makes it a privilege.
Completely wrong. You can still be vegan even if you aren’t able to live without being forced to use animal products. The literal definition of veganism includes “as far as is possible and practicable” for reason. Please make sure you read the sidebar as that distinction is very important. It allows all the things that you’ve outlined in your comment as acceptable under the definition of veganism.
I don’t eat this stuff, but I assume they mean vegan cheese, tofu, tempeh, store bought seitan sausages/deli meats, fancy ice cream, almond milk, and whatever weird stuff I see in some rich comrade fridges
Tofu and tempeh are cheap, the rest are junk foods largely marketed towards lactose intolerant people and carnists with a guilty conscience.
Standard plant based food is like bean or lentil stew. Not hotdogs except molecular gastronomy.
Are veggies not massively subsidised too though? Also harvested and packed by grossly underpaid labourers?
iirc it’s a difference in scale, meat is more subsidized than veggies
Meat is subsidised twice because the animal feed is also subsidised.
I don’t know what that’s got to do with it, since fertiliser is subsidised too
So three times.
I think in a developed nation, “veganism” almost always connotes some amount of health consciousness, which can be expensive. Different, I imagine, in rice-and-lentils developing parts of the world.
AFAIK Oreos, sour patch kids, taco bell bean burritos, and McD’s French fries are vegan…but they’re not associated with “vegan culture.”
Quick correction: McD’s fries are vegan everywhere except the US. They use some sort of milk and “natural beef flavoring” in the breading here for some dumb ass reason. In Europe they’re vegan though.
McDonald’s also fries things in beef tallow, iirc
No way, that’s too expensive
That used to be true. It is not the case any more. I believe that is why they now add natural beef flavoring to their fries.
Think they still add the beef flavoring to the oil. Check my edits
Damn. Good work gathering those links.
Also: fuck off, mcdonalds.
That’s just ridiculous to me. Why? I have had fries plenty of times which were way better than McDonald fries and all they were made of was potatoes, oil, and salt. The perfect French fry doesn’t need anything other than that. It’s all about choosing the right potato variety and then it all comes down to cooking technique.
The fact that McDonald puts anything else in their fries just makes me shake my head.
Usually when things like this happen, its because someone has a buddy that sells something like milk powder, and they’re lining their pockets
McDonalds fries have 19 ingredients, many of them processing chemicals, and one labeled Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]*), they have been sued over it a few times and at various points McD made PR videos showing their fries are safe, so i would imagine it is not actually fit for human consumption Source
ETA: When McD hired Grant Imahara, has very big Kari Byron supporting Big Oil vibes
Are you vegan, because all of those second paragraph things are associated with veganism.
Well idk about taco bell cause I’m not a seppo but literally when I told me sister I was going vegan and asked if she had advice she said “Sour patch kids and oreos are vegan”
I’ve lived in my car and definitely taco-bell was a go-to option on rainy days. I usually order a few bean burritos. Substitute black beans because its mor calories and the same price.
I’m all for veganism, but that exact same criticism can be made of fruit. No way any of us could afford strawberries or blueberries etc without exploitation of migrant workers and subsidized water.
So meat eaters and strawberry eaters are privileged? I am unsure of your point here?
It is true that not eating strawberries and not eating meat are both accessible outside the global north or w/e.
This is a weird one.
I’d imagine many people who call veganism “white” are taking a more global perspective. While factory farmed/processed food is the norm in the U.S. et. al., it’s not that way around the world. There are other parts of the world where people attempting veganism would suffer ill effects and even death due to B12 deficiency as not everyone has a wide variety of food to choose from, can go to the store and get B12 supplements, or buy fortified processed foods.
Then, the whole reason the average, modern (U.S.) citizen (or people from similarly set up countries) consumes factory foods in the first place at all is because we’re born into grossly overpopulated capitalist societies that can only be supplied by factory farmed foods made possible by fossil energy.
This tweet then uses the unfortunate consequences of human overpopulation + capitalism and it’s reliance on factory farms to feed such massive numbers to imply that eating meat is the problem.
Eating meat is not wrong, it is what our species has evolved to do, it’s what many other animals do. What’s wrong is the way modern humans live, exploiting nature for profit and growing to massive numbers to facilitate capitalism’s extraction of natural resources.
Go ahead and ban me now.
Spot on. Factory farming is the real issue.
Factory farming is very much a global problem that’s not limited to the US
We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1]
https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates
It’s not just more people that’s caused factory farming. It’s increase per capita consumption. The rates of per capita consumption are enormously different. If everyone ate like Americans, we would need 137% of the world’s habitable land which includes forests, urban areas, arable and non-arable land, etc. Cutting down every forest wouldn’t even be enough
