Things People Typically Say When They Find Out I'm Vegan (with my responses)

I know (or heard about) this vegan who got cancer / heart disease / diabetes / fat.

A vegan diet does not completely guarantee the avoidance of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity or any other degenerative disease. Being a vegetarian or even vegan does not mean that you are healthy. The only healthy plant-based eaters consume lots of minimally-processed fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes without genetic engineering, pesticides, or herbicides.

The purpose of following a strict vegan diet is to live a compassionate, sustainable lifestyles while minimizing your chances of disease. But just like omnivores, vegans still have access to processed foods that contain unhealthy sugars and fats. I recommend eating organic, fresh, and whole foods for the majority of your diet. Staying active is also extremely important.

All animal products: 1) tax the kidneys and liver, 2) encourage free radical production, which accelerates aging and promotes cancer, 3) stimulate the wrong hormones, and 4) change microflora in the intestines.

I eat animal products, but I eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains plus I workout regularly!

Even a modest percentage of animal products in one’s diet has been inextricably linked to increase risk for all cause mortality. Animal protein (from any animal source including dairy and eggs) feeds cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and all other forms of degenerative diseases. Please read The China Study for a lot more information. The bottom line? The only ideal amount of animal products in one’s diet is zero regardless of how much good stuff you eat or how much you work out.

But vegans kill living plants - how hypocritical is that?!

1) Plants are not sentient beings, meaning that they do not have a central nervous system and do not feel pain. Some research claims that plants “feel” pain, but this is not true. Some plants do react to “pain” but it does not hurt them. In other words, they might react to “pain” stimulants, but such stimulants do not hurt them.

2) If you believe plants feel pain and will not be convinced otherwise, then a vegan diet is still much more compassionate towards plants because the average meat eater consumes more than 10 TIMES the plant life that vegans do when you account for the indirect consumption of plant food on behalf of the animals that non-vegans eat. Yes, if you eat animals, you are indirectly consuming all of the plants that the animals consumed, minus all the healthy phytonutrients! However, there isn’t anything healthy in the vast majority of animal feed. Animal feed used for factory farm animals is extremely poor quality. Chickens often receive arsenic-based feed additives to promote pinker flesh and faster growth, and beef cattle continue to be fed with animal byproducts, which increase the risk of mad cow disease. http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/FactoryFarmNation-web.pdf

Don't you need to drink milk for strong bones?

You do not need milk for strong bones.

For the meat, eggs, dairy, and other animal products at the grocery store, the harm has already been done. It doesn’t matter if I eat or purchase these products after they have already been produced.

You vote with your wallet. For every slice of chicken, glass of milk, and egg you purchase, the meat and dairy industries will exploit and kill more animals to fill the place of your purchases.

But I couldn’t live without cheese!

You mean you can’t live without congealed bovine mammary secretions?

The protein found in milk and cheese, casein breaks down during digestion and releases morphine-like substances called casomorphins. These substances  have been found to activate the reward centers of the brain and create and addictive response on par with heroin. Heroin! No wonder we have such a hard time avoiding the stuff! Ever talk to someone who says, “I’d totally be vegan, I just could never give up cheese?”

But I just eat fish and chicken!

Poultry and fish are built from the same harmful components as red meat. One muscle moves a leg, the other flaps a wing, and another powers a tail, but they all provide the same harmful components to omnivorous humans: saturated fat, excessive protein, and cholesterol. Furthermore, raised fish is fattier and far more contaminated than most other meat.

I understand the ethical implications of consuming animal products so I buy happy, grass fed beef, chicken, pork, etc. that is humanely slaughter.

Please define humane slaughter. After you define humane animal slaughter, I would love to hear your definition of humane manslaughter. How can there be humane murder and exploitation of one species, but not another? "The astronomical number of animals being raised and killed for food makes it essentially impossible to treat the animals in any fashion that the average person would consider humane. Nevertheless, you should also reflect on whether you would consider it acceptable to be eaten even if someone promised to treat you better before killing you." - Nedim C. Buyukmihci, V.M.D.

Vegans are weird, crazy, and they eat disgusting food.

“Being considered ‘crazy’ by those who are still victims of cultural conditioning is a compliment.” – Jason Hairston

Please define disgusting, because we must not be talking about the same word. “The standard diet of a meat-eater is blood, flesh, veins, muscles, tendons, cow secretions, hen periods, and bee vomit. And once a year during a certain holiday in November, meat-eaters use the hallowed out rectum of a dead bird as a pressure cooker for stuffing. And people think vegans are weird because we eat tofu?” – John Robbins

No one diet is optimal for everybody.

While I agree that there isn’t one “perfect” diet for everyone, owing to individual difference in genes, lifestyles, and food allergies, the majority of research points to the idea that a diet free from animal products is more “perfect” than one with even minimal animal products. In other words, the less animal products you eat the better. Furthermore, while there might not be a “perfect” diet for everyone, there is only one perfect human diet for the wellbeing of our environment and the billions of animals that are needlessly killed or otherwise exploited each year: a vegan diet.

But eating animal products is natural!

There is nothing natural about drinking another species milk. No other species does this.

But there are plenty of nutritionists and nutritive biology experts pushing a Paleo diet! Surely they aren't wrong.

Paleo is a dramatic improvement in comparison to a Standard American Diet, admittedly so. However, a vegan diet is vastly superior. People can attempt to justify the consumption of animal products as much as they want, but that doesn't make them right. We have evolved to a point at which we do have a choice and the choice is clear (for those who wish to continue to evolve). A vegan diet is superior to Paleo in every way.

I don’t care about my health. I eat things because they taste good.

You might not think you care about health, but I'm guessing you haven't spend much time around a hospital.

The world cannot all live on a vegan diet. It is unsustainable.

Eating meat is becoming a greater and greater problem for our world by the day. More than one billion people on the planet currently go hungry. According to World Watch Institute, the only way to produce enough food is “to cut back sharply on meat consumption, because conversion of grazing land to good crops will increase the amount of food produced.” (source) Instead of using vast amounts of resources (land, water, etc.) for animal agriculture, we could more efficiently feed humans directly with plants.

A plant-based diet is too hard to maintain!

This argument aggravates me more than anything else. If you are reading this, you live in abundance! You have access to clean drinking water and health food. Living in selfish, cruel ignorance is despicable.

Okay, okay, I just like the taste all right? Leave me alone!

Beyond the fact that there are plenty of DELICIOUS vegan meat, egg, and dairy replacements, this is the only argument I don’t have a good response for. I really did enjoy the taste of animal products before I went vegan.