Vegetarians Vs. Vegans

This is a little rant that's been percolating in my head for years. I'm not going to be a complete jackass about it like some people I could mention, because that defeats the purpose, but I might be a wee bit salty.

In my life, I have met two kinds of people who don't eat meat: vegetarians and vegans. Vegetarians are simply people who do not eat meat. They might eat other animal products, such as eggs, dairy, and honey, but they do not eat meat. Vegans eschew all animal by-products whatsoever.

Every vegetarian I have ever met is chill about it. Eat what you want, but they won't be having the steak dinner, thank you. And the world, frankly, needs vegetarians in it. Humans in general eat too much meat, and we need to reduce our consumption for the good of the environment. The world simply cannot sustain the current amount of meat that people consume.

Meanwhile, every vegan I have ever met is insufferably smug about it. They behave as if the rest of us are puppy-kicking levels of sadistic, simply because we may have eaten a cheeseburger at some point in the last month.

Here's the thing, vegans. Every single successful campaign to lower people's meat consumption has worked by finding common ground and supporting choices that nearly everyone, regardless of budget or dietary constraints, can do. We can all enjoy Meatless Mondays. We can all order the Impossible burger instead of the beef option. These are things that most people have no problem doing. But vegans have a tendency to insist that everyone go from zero to Full-On Vegan immediately, and most people are going to balk at that.

Plus, a lot of vegans' arguments don't work. Not all of the land currently used for livestock grazing is suitable for growing food crops. Some people are allergic to soy, nuts, or both, and cannot get enough protein from purely vegetable sources. And a big one: you cannot get enough B12 without meat, unless you're taking vitamin supplements. So no, we can't just swap ALL of the farmland over to vegetables, feed everyone a purely-vegan diet, and sing Kumbaya in a world of nothing but vegans. It doesn't work that way.

The whole point of activism is to get people to change, not to shove your self-righteousness in other people's faces. The smug attitude of most vegans works against them because it makes people less likely to change their eating habits. (And then you have people who go full Maddox and just make things worse all around.) You want people to change. Because people eating less meat, while not the same as your precious fantasy of a fully-vegan world, is still better for the environment than the current average meat intake.