I’m vegan for a while. I’m not a health vegan, because it’s perfectly possible to eat totally unhealthy as a vegan. I’m the living proof. I’m not really doing it for animal cruelty reason. I’ve have eaten by far too much animal parts in my life as i started with eating vegan at 47 or so. The ship of absolution has sailed, already sunk and is now a diver’s paradise. I just went vegan because i wanted to do it. It was somehow a byproduct of the time where i did a lot of sport. I stopped to eat meat because I stopped to like it at a point because most meat seems to be of an increasingly mediocre quality.
It started with something called flexitarian (eating vegan or vegetarian when something appealing to eat was available), went over vegetarian to vegan.
If you want a reason why I went vegan, it’s perhaps the climate. However, I’m at over 500 flights in my life now. If the animal cruelty situation is a diver’s paradise, I don’t know what this is? Perhaps traces of rust at the bottom of the sea. That said, I stopped flying around and taking trains even before Corona hit the world of business travel. I think that has much more effect on my carbon budget than eating vegan stuff for the next 100 years. If I think about it … I don’t really know why I’m vegan. It just went this way. Strange.
I know that vegans have a very bad reputation: And there are valid reasons for this. I observed such behaviour. But I have a very clear opinion on this. Being vegan doesn’t make you a better person, primarily it makes you a pain in the b*tt to cook for when visiting friends. This is the reason, why I opt for vegetarian food in such situations. Vegan is a diet decision, not a religion. And cooking vegan is a road full of failure especially in regards of sauces. It’s my decision and that’s the reason why I’m still purchasing meat for birthday parties or use eggs in cakes for family and friends.
That said, to be honest I’m not a total vegan. From time-to-time I’m cheating. Very seldom. But not never. I like chocolate too much. I like real ice too much to go this way. And the last one got a problem. And this is what i really hate about being vegan.
I’ve learned that being vegan has some self-accelerating properties nobody really talks of. For example, there is a reason why I’m always asking, “Is this really oat milk?”. I’ve learned it the hard way in early spring last year when i have eaten the world best ice (with a dog on the ice cups that looks like the dog of my parents and is exactly called this way). I barely got back to Lüneburg afterwards. I spare you the details. The ice was great. Easily beat anything before. However: It was worth the hassle afterwards. I would probably do it again. For this ice I would really think hard about it.
I got some kind of lactose sensitive … or i was it always and getting vegan and drinking no cow milk for a while just served my residual tolerance of lactose the final hit. Don’t know. The relation of my digestion to cow milk was always a little bit strange. But that was a real gut punch. To the outside my question may look like the typical militant vegan question just wanting to show of “hey look, I’m vegan. I’m better than you all. everybody listening”. Well, no, i had to ask for the sake of the cleanliness of my trousers and to be able to take a walk around the Alster instead of running around. or riding with a bike for a long distance. I paid almost dearly for not checking this at a coffee house in Lueneburg.
Apropos lactose-sensitive: What I absolutely despise in this regard: Lactose free milk. I. simply. hate. it. Will always hate it. I don’t like this sweet taste. Interestingly a little bit of milk in cakes or so is not a problem. It’s about larger quantities like in a very large Latte or in a very large ice.
That said: Vegan is not so much a problem today, as when my sister started with it many years ago. You get quite acceptable ready-made alternatives. Some of them are horrible. I once bought vegan egg substitute for baking. Used it once. Never again. I have now other ways to get a halfway cake like consistency into a cake without eggs. That said, the usual fast-food dispensaries have good veggie and vegan alternatives.
However, you shouldn’t think too much about the ingredients to much. I’ve learned words like “Sojatexturat” (textured vegetable protein) on this way. You should not think too much about it. I’ve don’t have some diet related problems any longer since I went this way, but I have now a different set of problems.