Why do vegans have to have pretend food? 🤔

@TinyViolins It's actually about compassion, most people like the taste of meat but don't want to know that what they eat felt the pain of dying. But you are right, new lifestyle changes take time to develop. Also a couple nights out of the week if you're in-between groceries, vegan mock meats is really all there is.

I'd love for each restaurant to have vegan dishes that are not mock meats but we are not there yet. Meat eaters want to act as if there's not an empathy component to veganism and then they want to act all dumb about shit.

@SatanBurger Compassion is a big part of it, but I won't pretend it's the only reason. I spent many years as a vegetarian and later as a vegan, and I started off doing it for environmental reasons. It wasn't so much that I cared about animals, but realizing the environmental impact of raising animals for food is incredibly destructive. Eventually I did appreciate the emotional complexity of animals, but it wasn't the only reason.

In my time I got to meet a lot of other vegans and vegetarians, and a lot of them never mentioned animal intelligence or environmental impact. They just said they didn't like the taste and feel of meat. Some said they were doing it for health reasons. I felt kinda bad being lumped in with these kind of people since their choices were so logically inconsistent.

That said, I started eating meat again. I truly don't care anymore. I want the world to burn. There's a fair point to be made about the taste of certain vegan foods. A lot of vegan alternatives try too hard sometimes and miss the mark. There's a lot I've tried to get on board with and couldn't. There's a lot of trial and error, and for the most part I just made my own vegan meals because I didn't want to waste the money.

That said, people picking on vegans tend to have the emotional maturity of a soggy pancake. It's like they don't even care to entertain the philosophy behind it and just take someone else's diet as a personal attack. They probably had one self-righteous vegan proselytize to them once and it put them off of the idea about it forever. I know firsthand that not all vegans are calm and reasonable

@TinyViolins [quote]A lot of vegan alternatives try too hard sometimes and miss the mark.[/quote]

That's because people think the wrong way, a whole foods vegan diet is based on rice, potatoes, and other good things. People in general, not you.. just need excuses to do whatever they want it seems, making vegan meats out to be a bad guy is a convenient excuse.

@TinyViolins But you are right, vegan meats try but fail. I'm just saying I understand why vegans may want them. There's also the impossible burger which is vegan and tastes exactly like meat lol. It's weird...