Long time gentle readers will know that the thrust of my blogs purpose is to help make veganism easy for as many people as possible. As such, I’ve decided to write a guide to becoming a lazy vegan. Veganism should be seen as something easy, and not a hardship that perhaps most of us might think of it as.
I applaud all efforts of vegans in trying to become as vegan as possible, but I prefer to focus on doing the most amount of good with the least amount of effort. Most of us are lazy and would prefer to keep things humming along without having to rock the boat. And yet veganism by its very nature is about rocking the boat. But we can rock the boat lazily and without much effort.
The first step to lazy veganism is determining why you want to become vegan in the first place. For me it has always been about ethics and as such, that’s where I’ll focus this post on. My veganism is informed by and buoyed by trying to limit the amount of suffering that I bring to other sentient beings on this planet that we all share.
The key word there is LIMIT. I am under no hallucination that veganism is the means to end all suffering all that the ending of suffering is even possible.
But veganism is perhaps the best and easiest step to take if you are interested in limiting the unnecessary suffering that humans contribute to this planet. Not just towards sentient beings but to the planet as a whole.
If all of us can agree that ending unnecessary suffering is a worthwhile goal, then veganism is a natural and easy step in that direction. Unless you’re a psychopath, I think that you’ll agree that causing unnecessary cruelty, violence and death against sentient beings is egregious and abhorrent. And yet three times a day, most of us contribute to that unnecessary cruelty, violence and death by stuffing our faces with slain animal bits and bobs.
How can I say this? Because the use of animal flesh and byproducts including dairy and eggs is unnecessary to live healthily. I’d argue that it is unhealthy to eat animal products, but that is a post for another day. So, if animal products is unnecessary for health, then partaking in them is contributing to UNNECESSARY suffering, which we’ve agreed is abhorrent and egregious.
And I know you want to do the right thing. And the right thing in light of this unnecessary violence and cruelty to which you’ve been partaking is to become vegan. But you thought it was difficult. Not any more. Here’s how to become a lazy vegan.
And I must add, that by becoming a lazy vegan, you’re doing a tremendous amount of good and alleviating a tremendous amount of suffering.
The second step, or the only step really, in becoming a lazy vegan is to avoid all animal products that you can. It’s that easy. Yeah, you already know that. But I’m talking about avoiding animal products that you know and can see.
For example, you’re out with friends for a pizza. You can see the cheese on the pizza and we all know that cheese is an animal product. Easy, just avoid the cheese. Have a no cheese pizza. Have a pasta with just a tomato or vegetable based sauce. No meatballs for you.
The key is to not get bogged down in minutia. At this stage, don’t worry about whether the pasta has eggs in it, or the pizza dough was made with butter. Or the bread you bought at the grocery store has dairy in it. Don’t worry about the margarine which might have a bit of whey powder in it. You’re a lazy vegan who’s doing great things to alleviate suffering.
Most restaurants have vegan options now, or are happy to create a vegan option if you ask nicely. The thing is, you just have to come to understand that veganism is not difficult. It’s actually quite easy.
Buy soy milk instead of cow’s milk. Buy margarine instead of butter. Don’t buy eggs, they’re bad for you anyway. Eat more beans or mock meats instead of animal flesh or other protein foods. Other than B12, there is nothing you need to worry about that can’t be had from vegetarian foods. And B12 is an easy and cheap supplement to take.
I’d also encourage you to not buy any new leather or wool products, silk too if you can remember. Many stores are selling non-leather shoes now.
Don’t worry if that car you’re buying has a leather steering wheel or leather wrapped gear lever, these are small issues that are not as important as what you put in your face three times a day when it comes to lessening suffering.
That being said, I encourage you to take it as far as possible. But the biggest bang for your compassionate buck comes from eliminating the noticeable animal foods that you used to eat.
Here’s the stats. There are >50 billion land animals killed for human use each year, and another >90 billion marine creatures killed for human use each year. Most of this is for consumption.
Compare this to the ~60 million animal procedures performed each year through animal testing, and you can see that the food we eat is responsible for more than 200 times the animal deaths each year.
I’m not going to debate which is inherently crueler, animal food production or vivisection, I find them equally repulsive, but I will offer this thought; if we eliminate animals from our dinner tables, I am certain that it won’t be long after that that we release them from the vivisectors’ cages.
For those of you not yet vegan or not long vegan you might not understand the above paragraph. But you might find, as I have, that the longer one is a vegan the more one’s compassion and sense of right and wrong as far as animal use is concerned, the clearer it all becomes.
I often find myself quite bemused that I once thought of animal flesh as food. You will come to see it that way too if you give it a chance. Just become a lazy vegan, remove all animal products that can be easily seen and removed. The rest will fall into place.
The last thing I want to remark on, is how intrinsically intertwined the minutia is in the larger use of animal products. In other words, if there is no more demand for meat and milk, there will be greatly reduced need and desire for leather and wool. With limited or no demand for animal flesh and fluids there will be less tolerance for animal research and less need for it as our whole health improves.
Food for thought and for health. Go on, just become a lazy vegan. You’ll be surprised how easy it is and you’ll wonder why you waited so long!