Why are you vegan?  Wait, I don't want to know…
08 February 2005

If you ever sit down to eat with omnivores, even polite ones, the question of why you’re not eating what they’re eating inevitably comes up. Even good-hearted omnis sometimes want to know why you’re vegan, what you eat1, and how long you’ve been at this for.

In her excellent book Living Among Meat Eaters, Carol Adams says that the dinner table is never the place to discuss veganism, and I sort-of agree. The dinnertable isn’t the place to have the vegan conversation without looking preachy, which I try to avoid at all costs. But sometimes, people can be demanding. They don’t let up. They keep pushing. And they really want to know why you aren’t eating this lovely chicken, or wonderful beef, or expensive endangered fish that everyone else is into. So, sometimes I begin to tell them. I tell them that I think animals are tortured. I tell them that we don’t need meat to live. I tell them that even if they don’t care about animal rights that they’re likely consuming meat that was drenched in deadly bacteria at one point or another. Having been pushed, I say the real reasons that I’m a vegan. And they inevitably say, after just a minute of this,

“wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t really want to know. I might want to stop eating meat.”

And here we hit the wall of blissful ignorance yet again. It is clearly better for these folks not to know, to imagine that the cow that they’re eating spent its life frolicking in some lovely meadow rather than understanding the true conditions that led to their meat.

Blissful ignorance: if it weren’t for you, the world might actually be a better place….

1 they also worry inordinately about me having enough protein, which is kind-hearted, but absurd.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
Potentially Related Articles:

There are no related articles