Sometimes, I hate being vegan
Vegan influencers will convince you that being vegan is easy. I couldn’t disagree more if I tried.
I was doom scrolling one night during a bout of insomnia and I watched a video featuring a couple of vegans ranting animatedly at a guy who was antagonistically eating a chicken wing. I turned off my phone and stared into the darkness until sleep eventually took me, just as my alarm went off.
I’m supposed to say how much I love being vegan and how I have no regrets, how I think everyone should be vegan and how it’s changed my life for the better. While I might believe some of those things, quite honestly sometimes being vegan can really ruin my week.
The first ever story I wrote (and have since sensibly taken down) was about getting a moon cup stuck the first time I tried one, because since I was now vegan I thought I also had to single handedly save the planet by doing things I (and my vagina) were not ready for. My brain doesn’t help. I get so overwhelmed with information that I can’t process it properly and try and do everything all at once, until I get so stressed I relapse. Many a time in the early days I relapsed in secret because the internet is not kind to people who make mistakes, even if you get back on the wagon and try again. I haven’t gone back to moon cups.
I grew up ostracised from mainstream society. My mum was a Jehovah’s Witness, which is undoubtedly a cult, until I was around 15. Being forced to be part of said cult ruined my entire childhood and many of the years that followed.
Being vegan constantly reminds me of that community of people who think they’re better than everyone else. For seven years I have been at odds with being part of another controversial space despite agreeing with what it stands for. Since social media’s inception, particularly the days people realised they could speak directly to their audience (inflicting their faces on us constantly), I have been at odds with people shrieking their opinions into the ether and demanding we agree. Particularly in the food world. When I was at drama school, our voice coach would judge our range by deciding if our voices were powerful enough to fill the National Theatre. These days we just need a phone to talk into and the whole world can hear us.
I hate that veganism and the whole wellness space is marketed at a certain demographic, when veganism has been around in many cultures for far longer than when an old white guy decided to coin the term. I really hate that healthy foods aren’t accessible to everyone to maintain a balanced diet. I hate that eating well and being taught what foods are good for us isn’t taught in school. I hate the fact the (majority of the) medical industry place no value on diet. I hate the yoga clad wellness brigade pretending a bowl of leaves is satisfying. I hate Gwyneth Paltrow and she’s not even vegan. I hate the fact I don’t enjoy crisps as much as I used to because after seven years I realised I wasn’t getting enough protein in my diet and now I’m eating better than I ever have, I never need a snack. I miss eating for fun. Because eating for fun is a privilege I was once not afforded and every time I go shopping or occasionally add another item of overpriced nonsense to my Ocado shop out of curiosity, I realise how lucky I am. Because it’s not always been the case and it isn’t for a lot of people.
There were many times in my childhood I was unable to eat nourishing food because I grew up poor and from a single parent family. And vegetables were boring. Some days it was a bowl of rice and a knob of butter for dinner. Other days we ate like kings, indulging in all of my childhood favourites (too long to list here) because that was my life, shrouded in poverty, unpredictability and extremism with strict rules you must abide by for fear of being shunned.
Now I’ve voluntarily entered another community that most people hate that gets shunned from mainstream society because we’re seen as being self-righteous and extreme. Not to mention, annoying. I’m inclined to agree with part of that. I occasionally fantasise about going back to a time when I would greedily look at the menu in a restaurant surrounded by friends and not get food envy. I would order whatever I fancied knowing the likelihood of me enjoying it was high. And even if I didn’t enjoy the food, I enjoyed and craved the social acceptance the experience brought with it. I have no desire to go to dinner with a bunch of vegans.
Every day my brain fizzes with information as my family and I try to do the vegan thing competently. Feeling the benefits health wise while my guilt is alleviated because fewer animals are killed and while the planet is no better off because of my individual choices, I’m doing my best and making a tiny contribution.
I am often conflicted by the barrage of information and vitriol from anyone with a platform aimed at anyone who will listen. And the emotionally unregulated responses from people who forget to take a breath before replying. I saw a reel by vegan hating writer Max Lugavere and nestled amongst the many swipes he takes at us he discovered and ordered from McDonald’s secret menu. What he asked for was essentially 1lb of beef served up as 4 quarter pounders, apparently not cooked in oil and seasoned only with salt and pepper. Grim, I hear you say. Same. Max suggested that if anyone is ‘in a bind,’ it’s a cheap (around $8) protein hit (72g), snack or meal and he was suggesting it *as an option*.
Newsflash; despite not eating or living how he suggests, some of his posts are educational and relevant for me and I thought this was a perfectly reasonable suggestion. The amount of protein we need depends on our age and weight (calculator here) and there are so many amazing plant-based sources of protein but the point here was *if you’re in a pinch*. The amount of people (vegans included) telling him they’re unfollowing him because they can’t believe he’d recommend meat, let alone meat from McDonalds didn’t surprise me in the slightest. But it did highlight how out of touch the privileged are with how a lot of the population live. The idea of eating four beef burgers from McDonald’s repulses me. But would I eat it if I had no other choice? Yes I would. Would I enjoy it? No. But that wouldn’t matter if it was a matter of survival and desperation. Where is the pragmatism?
Meanwhile I recently watched another young ex vegan, ex gluten-free influencer have a very public breakdown after selling her clean-living gluten-free, anti ‘bad’ food lifestyle to mostly young impressionable girls, then come back a year or so later to influence people into buying her ‘How To Stop Being An Influencer’ workshops. This shit hurts my brain.
My mum temporarily became vegan shortly after I did and has since gradually transitioned back to an omni diet because she couldn’t understand why she needed to take additional supplements to make sure she was getting enough nutrients in her diet. She kept calling the supplements I take a ‘whole heap of crap’ and wondering why she was experiencing so many negative changes in her body. I don’t blame her because being vegan is hard and staying vegan is even harder, especially when most meat and dairy products have additional hormones and vitamins pumped into them, making life easier.
It can be so hard to constantly try and find things that don’t taste like shit, or come up with creative ways to make tofu tolerable, knowing fine well once upon a time I would’ve absent-mindedly shoved some seasoning on a slab of meat and not thought twice about the fact one day I’d have to make sure I took my b12 supplement. Don’t get me started on the anaemia I’ve had for as long as I can remember.
Vegan influencers will convince you being vegan is easy and I couldn’t disagree any more if I tried. Fundamentally, I blame capitalism.
The Plant Kitchen aisle in M&S has shrunk to a fraction of the size it was. It could be because there’s more choice from other supermarkets but my local posh supermarket only sells one type of vegan pastry now because the rest weren’t selling anymore. I joked with the staff member that it’s because all the vegans have moved to Margate, when in reality it’s more likely that people are falling off the vegan bandwagon permanently because eating animal products is the easier, cheaper and more socially acceptable option. It’s just a hunch. If it’s true, it’s a real shame but I understand why. I see one influencer living her best plant-based life on Instagram but on Threads showing her beautifully placed eggs bobbing around in that sexy ceramic bowl of bone broth she made earlier because she’s not following a vegan diet anymore. This is not a criticism, more an observation that earning money with an army of Instagram followers in tow has impeded our ability to be authentic. The idea of speaking up when we make a lifestyle change for fear of being cancelled or losing income because our choices no longer align with strangers on the internet who avidly absorb our content must be terrifying.
Influencers have sold us a lifestyle, made a living out of it but now some are turning their back on it because it’s too hard/expensive/unsustainable, after they went so hard and are now burning out. I take a ridiculous amount of supplements and I am exhausted having to constantly think about whether I’m getting enough anything in my diet (let alone video it). The answer is usually no, I’m not. Not to mention the fact I’m trying to be fully vegan by not buying animal products and had been succeeding much of the time until I recently failed dramatically.
I gave myself such a hard time over the fact I’d accidentally bought a pair of non-vegan trainers for the first time in years. Then trying to get on the whole sustainability train, not only do I rarely buy clothes anymore, I rented an outfit for a wedding instead of buying one. But on the recommendation of the wonderful owner of the shop who helped me put the outfit together, I also bought accessories (inc non-vegan shoes) making the entire outfit, including rental cost far more than I would’ve spent if I just bought a cute boxy something or other from Cos, and worn a pair of shoes I already own. Now I have some shiny gold and very comfortable platform sandals that I’m unlikely to ever wear again but I’ll keep anyway just in case. I felt great in the outfit, I was comfortable, it was flattering, it suited the atmosphere of the wedding but the guilt that consumed me about not being 100% vegan and an unnecessary spend was overwhelming. And I didn’t even get to keep most of it.
I’ve forgotten what it’s like to relax.
Social and mainstream media are constantly keeping us on our toes and I’m sick of it but can’t look away. Where is the encouragement to just do our best? Saying out loud that I sometimes hate being vegan has been really cathartic. I won’t change how I eat or my lifestyle but I wish more people would be honest about how they really feel. Instead of watching a reel and hanging on every word of another influencer saying how easy it is to be vegan, which could be true for them, or it could be for the benefit of the algorithm. Because for me, it’s not easy. Lots of vegans and omnivores will argue about their way being the correct way to eat and live. They will back their arguments up with studies, but people can find plenty of studies or even conduct them themselves to support their argument. If more people admitted that this lifestyle is actually difficult to maintain, more people might be inclined to give it a try, knowing they don’t have to aim for perfection.
I have no regrets about being vegan. The plan is that since animal products repulsed me way before 2017, I will stay vegan indefinitely. It’s likely I will slip up occasionally down the line but that’s life, no one is perfect and I wish the militant vegans among us would calm down. The way I’ve (just about) managed to retain my sanity is by managing how much time I spend on social media. These platforms absolutely have a purpose but in order to stay healthy, make sure I get all my nutrients and have a balanced diet, over the years I’ve followed and taken advice from different experts and educators and adapted it to my lifestyle. Most of these people aren’t vegan. For anyone, vegan or not, that might find them useful, here are a few