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Abstract

by simply forgetting to ask for an alternative. “I ordered a coffee and forgot to say almond milk,” says Rachel. “I didn’t want them to just throw it away, so I just drank it.”For undercover animal agriculture investigators like Noah, who document the suffering of animals that happens on farms and behind the doors of slaughterhouses, if they refuse to eat the food shared with them by their coworkers, it could expose their identity and compromise their work.There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and “cruelty-free” is a marketing scheme, but the notion of purity still runs amok in vegan circles, inflating the performance of veganism over the intention behind the choices we make. Our daily habits change dramatically as we interrogate the material world and the ethereal realm simultaneously. Being ethical goes beyond buying products labelled vegan but that are swimming in palm oil, packaged in single-use plastic, and profit from child labor & enslavement. While the principles of veganism are radical — liberation for all beings — its practice is nothing short of complicated.For undercover animal agriculture investigators like Noah, who document the suffering of animals that happens on farms and behind the doors of slaughterhouses, if they refuse to eat the food shared with them by their coworkers, it could expose their identity and compromise their work. “Normally before starting an investigation you already know that this possibility exists and you avoid it whenever you can,” Noah explains, but if a coworker or supervisor repeatedly offers to share food, “at some point you have to accept it to not raise suspicions.”People who have inherited unhealthy relationships with food like orthorexia have to navigate ethical consumption carefully. “I’m VB6 (Vegan Before 6) from that ol’ scamp Mark Bittman,” says an anonymous Instagram user who avoids reducing consumption to binaries of right and wrong, good and bad for the sake of her mental health. She agrees with an animal rights ethic but recognizes how easy it would be to “slide back into orthorexia” if she held herself to a strict vegan code, even though the majority of the meals she eats are vegan.The reality is that being vegan doesn’t happen without missteps. Talking about it is uncomfortable. Hell, writing about is gut-churning, but the sitting with the discomfort helps to increase accountability and deflate the unnecessary tension that builds around our private and public consumption.For Ruthie, dating another vegan “makes it so much easier not to cheat because we cook our own food or eat at vegan restaurants. Our families and friends are also supportive,” she says. Traveling outside of supportive communities to places where animal products are difficult to avoid or socially ostracizing to refuse poses its own particular strain. “I am vegan at home, but vegetarian when I travel or I am a guest at someone’s home,” Sarah tells me. “I used to be more hard-lined but I find that with a softer approach people are more willing to hear me and adopt a plant based diet themselves.”Living on the East Coast, Jamelah doesn’t “cheat with meat or fish ever,” but when she returns home to visit family in Palestine who live under Israeli military occupation, she enters a land where “the food costs more than my ethics matter.” Land theft, illegal settlements, military checkpoints and rationed calories limit the agency of Palestinians, so there is “a lot of pride in growing food and raising animals for one’s family,” Jamelah continues. “Tending to the land or herding goats and sheep

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can become an act of resistance.”Defending animals and rejecting their products dates back millennia, but it wasn’t until 1944 that a group of British friends, who split from the Vegetarian Society to form a new group, the Vegan Society, that embraced a broader understanding of compassion toward animals, coined the word vegan. Donald Watson, a founding member who published the Vegan Society’s newsletter, Vegan News, explained that the word vegan was formed by taking the beginning and end of the word vegetarian to evoke the logical progression of consciousness about the suffering of animals. Watson, who was a committed pacifist and registered conscientious objector, understood that becoming vegan happened in stages rather than a single moment. The Society’s working definition of veganism defines it as:<blockquote id="cd81">A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.</blockquote>The phrase, “as far as is possible or practicable,” is often overlooked but offers insight into what veganism actually expects from us, according to Drew Robert Winter, an anthropologist at Rice University. Instead of being a strict dietary regimen, veganism is an elastic set of principles that help us navigate different contexts “in a world of unevenly distributed material goods,” argues Winter. Within this framework, veganism is less about individual purity and more of an aspirational model to reduce harm toward nonhuman animals within the varying limitations of personal agency.“Consumer choices are seen as the beginning and end of one’s agency in social change, shifting the focus away from mass action, pressuring policy change, and demonizing individual corporations, industries, or the very system of capitalism itself. In this framework of individual action, the subject is stripped of history, social ties, race, class, ability, and cultural norms.”The problem with focusing on individual action — and our inevitable failure to live up to our own ideals — reduces veganism to a lifestyle choice rather than a unifying force of systemic change. This is a byproduct of neoliberal capitalism, Winter asserts. “Consumer choices are seen as the beginning and end of one’s agency in social change, shifting the focus away from mass action, pressuring policy change, and demonizing individual corporations, industries, or the very system of capitalism itself,” he explains. “In this framework of individual action, the subject is stripped of history, social ties, race, class, ability, and cultural norms.”Becoming vegan isn’t a fixed moment but a continual process, and aspirational veganism is a malleable principle not a one-size-fits-all praxis. After all, animal liberation doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and can’t be won without an explicitly anticapitalist, antispeciesist political agenda where white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, colonization and the violence of the carceral state are stripped of their power. Our interconnected struggles should be seen “as complementary rather than competitive and mutually exclusive,” Winter continues. “To say I am vegan is not a declaration of what I have attained, but what I pursue: to tread as lightly as possible, knowing that we still must tread.”</article></body>

When Vegans Cheat

When was the last time you ate something you knew wasn’t vegan? Let’s talk about it.

I had been vegan for one year when I cheated for the first time. It was the fall of 2011, and I was working on a political campaign in my hometown of Bedford, Indiana, not exactly known for its vegan provisions. The campaign headquarters was a revolving door of Papa John’s pizza deliveries and my only option for a quick, free vegan meal was to pull the triangular slab of congealed mozzarella off of each slice, leaving behind a faint trace of red sauce slicked over the bare dimpled crust. It was a vegan hack that quickly lost its charm. One day, in a state of desperation and craving, when no one was looking, I caved and bit into an unaltered slice. Instantly, I was filled with regret and felt like a complete failure. The cheese didn’t even taste good.

Nearly every vegan has a story about a time they ate something they knew wasn’t vegan. I asked vegans on Twitter and Instagram when the last time they had cheated was and what prompted them to do it. Most of the people who responded drew hard lines around eating meat, whereas dairy, eggs and honey were sometimes negotiable depending on the situation. No one wants to go hungry at a wedding or “be the guy who says no to birthday cake,” according to one Twitter user. For a lot of people, it isn’t just about indulgence or lack of willpower. Cheating can mean choosing to consume something with animal products to avoid wasting food or going hungry. For homeless, low-income, and working class vegans, they might accept free food that has dairy or eggs because it’s the only meal they might have access to on a given day.

“Shit happens. Veganism isn’t about perfection. You fall off, you get right back on!”

Cheating isn’t something most vegans like to admit, let alone unpack, for fear of judgement from other vegans or appearing hypocritical in front of our omnivorous friends. Essentially, we don’t want to set a bad example that seems to make light of animal exploitation. “I never tell people because I don’t want my omni friends to think that my dedication to veganism is something I can set aside, because it is incredibly important to me,” says Stuart. “I just understand that sometimes something’s gonna sneak in there and I don’t need to beat myself up about it.”

Alcohol is a common culprit of failed vegan piety. The last time I cheated was in September when I had one too many cocktails and ate a homemade chocolate chip cookie, to the horror of a close friend. “Well, the cookie should have been vegan,” I said jokingly. It’s easy to get derailed by a late-night booze-induced craving when judgement is cloudy and inhibition is suppressed. One person who had been vegan for 10 years without deviating, confessed that they got drunk and “couldn’t resist” a non-vegan cupcake. When Taco Bell was unexpectedly closed, “drunk pizza happened,” admits Joe, which left him feeling sick and bloated more than it made him feel guilty. “Shit happens. Veganism isn’t about perfection. You fall off, you get right back on!”

Dining out can be risky, sober or not, because the default for many packaged foods contain animal products and accidentally consuming them can happen by simply forgetting to ask for an alternative. “I ordered a coffee and forgot to say almond milk,” says Rachel. “I didn’t want them to just throw it away, so I just drank it.”

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and “cruelty-free” is a marketing scheme, but the notion of purity still runs amok in vegan circles, inflating the performance of veganism over the intention behind the choices we make. Our daily habits change dramatically as we interrogate the material world and the ethereal realm simultaneously. Being ethical goes beyond buying products labelled vegan but that are swimming in palm oil, packaged in single-use plastic, and profit from child labor & enslavement. While the principles of veganism are radical — liberation for all beings — its practice is nothing short of complicated.

For undercover animal agriculture investigators like Noah, who document the suffering of animals that happens on farms and behind the doors of slaughterhouses, if they refuse to eat the food shared with them by their coworkers, it could expose their identity and compromise their work. “Normally before starting an investigation you already know that this possibility exists and you avoid it whenever you can,” Noah explains, but if a coworker or supervisor repeatedly offers to share food, “at some point you have to accept it to not raise suspicions.”

People who have inherited unhealthy relationships with food like orthorexia have to navigate ethical consumption carefully. “I’m VB6 (Vegan Before 6) from that ol’ scamp Mark Bittman,” says an anonymous Instagram user who avoids reducing consumption to binaries of right and wrong, good and bad for the sake of her mental health. She agrees with an animal rights ethic but recognizes how easy it would be to “slide back into orthorexia” if she held herself to a strict vegan code, even though the majority of the meals she eats are vegan.

The reality is that being vegan doesn’t happen without missteps. Talking about it is uncomfortable. Hell, writing about is gut-churning, but the sitting with the discomfort helps to increase accountability and deflate the unnecessary tension that builds around our private and public consumption.

For Ruthie, dating another vegan “makes it so much easier not to cheat because we cook our own food or eat at vegan restaurants. Our families and friends are also supportive,” she says. Traveling outside of supportive communities to places where animal products are difficult to avoid or socially ostracizing to refuse poses its own particular strain. “I am vegan at home, but vegetarian when I travel or I am a guest at someone’s home,” Sarah tells me. “I used to be more hard-lined but I find that with a softer approach people are more willing to hear me and adopt a plant based diet themselves.”

Living on the East Coast, Jamelah doesn’t “cheat with meat or fish ever,” but when she returns home to visit family in Palestine who live under Israeli military occupation, she enters a land where “the food costs more than my ethics matter.” Land theft, illegal settlements, military checkpoints and rationed calories limit the agency of Palestinians, so there is “a lot of pride in growing food and raising animals for one’s family,” Jamelah continues. “Tending to the land or herding goats and sheep can become an act of resistance.”

Defending animals and rejecting their products dates back millennia, but it wasn’t until 1944 that a group of British friends, who split from the Vegetarian Society to form a new group, the Vegan Society, that embraced a broader understanding of compassion toward animals, coined the word vegan. Donald Watson, a founding member who published the Vegan Society’s newsletter, Vegan News, explained that the word vegan was formed by taking the beginning and end of the word vegetarian to evoke the logical progression of consciousness about the suffering of animals. Watson, who was a committed pacifist and registered conscientious objector, understood that becoming vegan happened in stages rather than a single moment. The Society’s working definition of veganism defines it as:

A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.

The phrase, “as far as is possible or practicable,” is often overlooked but offers insight into what veganism actually expects from us, according to Drew Robert Winter, an anthropologist at Rice University. Instead of being a strict dietary regimen, veganism is an elastic set of principles that help us navigate different contexts “in a world of unevenly distributed material goods,” argues Winter. Within this framework, veganism is less about individual purity and more of an aspirational model to reduce harm toward nonhuman animals within the varying limitations of personal agency.

“Consumer choices are seen as the beginning and end of one’s agency in social change, shifting the focus away from mass action, pressuring policy change, and demonizing individual corporations, industries, or the very system of capitalism itself. In this framework of individual action, the subject is stripped of history, social ties, race, class, ability, and cultural norms.”

The problem with focusing on individual action — and our inevitable failure to live up to our own ideals — reduces veganism to a lifestyle choice rather than a unifying force of systemic change. This is a byproduct of neoliberal capitalism, Winter asserts. “Consumer choices are seen as the beginning and end of one’s agency in social change, shifting the focus away from mass action, pressuring policy change, and demonizing individual corporations, industries, or the very system of capitalism itself,” he explains. “In this framework of individual action, the subject is stripped of history, social ties, race, class, ability, and cultural norms.”

Becoming vegan isn’t a fixed moment but a continual process, and aspirational veganism is a malleable principle not a one-size-fits-all praxis. After all, animal liberation doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and can’t be won without an explicitly anticapitalist, antispeciesist political agenda where white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, colonization and the violence of the carceral state are stripped of their power. Our interconnected struggles should be seen “as complementary rather than competitive and mutually exclusive,” Winter continues. “To say I am vegan is not a declaration of what I have attained, but what I pursue: to tread as lightly as possible, knowing that we still must tread.”