Why Your Silly Friend Justin Chose to be a Vegan, and Still is One
This is a longer read, and elaborates on a particular topic mentioned in one of my other posts about self-expression. Enjoy if you must.
If you were unaware, either because you are somewhat unfamiliar with me as a person, or because you are not so good with titles — yes, I follow a relatively strict diet that is often referred to as “vegan.” I prefer to think about it as a concept though, rather than some sort of sticker you can see on labels for funky new foods. If you will indulge me, I would find it cool if this was read with a similar train of thought.
Everyone who chooses to follow such a lifestyle is asked constantly why they do so in the first place. After all, most of the internet says that roughly half of a percent of the world currently follows a vegan diet. If you are any good at math, you would know this means that the remaining 99.5 percent of everyone on the planet does not do the same. So, with about a fraction and half seconds of thinking, most people probably have at least some curiosity behind why this tiny portion does things differently.
Understandable.
Back in grade 10, and approximately fall/winter of 2016 to be more specific, I was being a typical bored high school kid, watching YouTube videos from my recommended feed. The video that popped up in my feed was just a regular, non-vegetarian dude talking about “why vegetarians are annoying.” Being my privileged 15-year old self, I clicked that video, expecting to be entertained by the topic of these oddities of society. To very briefly summarize that video, he justifies his reasons for not being a vegetarian, but concedes that he feels bad in some ways for not doing so, and that society may be better off if it were vegetarian.
This just got me interested.
YouTube, being clever with their recommendation algorithms, suggested to me another video (as the usually do). This video was about trying something new for 30 days, and either the algorithm was set this time to turn me vegetarian, or I just happened to stumble upon an enlightening sequence of events.
As one can likely infer, I put the concepts of these two videos together, which one can then also infer, meant I would try going vegetarian for 30 days.
That night, I had a huge bowl of clam chowder. Let it be known that clams were the last animal corpses to enter my mouth.
At the end of the first week, I had honestly been having a bit of fun with becoming a vegetarian. I still had cheese pizza, and everything else that technically has no meat on it. By the end of the second week, though, I was less satisfied than I was the first week. I basically had three options: (1) I could just be less satisfied and finish this little “30-day challenge,” (2) I could just quit completely and move onto something else, or…
(3) I could ramp things up a bit. Two weeks into being vegetarian, I decided I was having too little trouble adjusting my diet. So, it was at that point that I decided to look into something a little more extreme: being vegan.
I went home one night and found myself compelled by this seemingly extreme form of vegetarianism. I had already been cutting out meat, so now if I wanted to take that next step, I pretty much just had to cut out milk, eggs, and some other little things that are sparse enough to be incomparable to the other two listed.
As I had been doing since about grade seven with things of interest to me, I put some research into this. It started with another video, this time about how being vegetarian is “pointless” as compared to being vegan. It was some hippie-looking dude, but at this point, I kind of just expected that was the demographic for this sort of trend anyway, so I just let it pass by.
Between the slightly exaggerated, yet technically accurate video, and reading some editorials on the matter, I had a couple of findings. One was how the industries for eggs and dairy are hardly any less cruel than those that produce meat. To “make” a dairy cow, which must be female of course, the cow must give birth. Its offspring will need milk — however, we as people want the milk, so we get rid of the offspring, and eventually the dairy cow when it no longer produces milk. For eggs, a high ratio of female chicks are preferred, so a lot of male chicks often just get disposed of. Sometimes just thrown out, sometimes just tossed in a grinder.
I cannot say that I was, nor am, a huge fan of these practices.
My other finding was the fact that the health benefits of milk and eggs is still highly debated in science. The argument in favor of milk is that it is high in calcium, but a lot of research now suggests that calcium is actually brought out of the bones upon consumption, for reasons still unclear. The argument in favor of eggs is that they are high in protein, but they also have significantly high amounts of cholesterol, which is really good for stuffy arteries.
My train of thought at this point was that, if the healthfulness of these things is unconfirmed, and they cause unnecessary harm in their production, then there was really no reason for me to continue consuming them.
I then made the decision to give the more extreme diet a try. Having been somewhat of a regular old schmuck, I was definitely questioned a little by the people I ate lunch with. Me being me though, I was just interested in it because I found it interesting, not because it is something that tends to be interesting, so I put little thought into the questioning. I was also definitely more compelled to follow through with this challenge now that it actually started to feel challenging.
Once again, I was interested. However, this time, more interested.
Having done some more research to rightfully win arguments with my friends, I was definitely somewhat invested at this point in following through with being vegan. Being really big on nature documentaries, I decided one day that I would see if Netflix had anything related to such. Of course, they did.
In addition to reinforcing what I had already learned about the effects of animal products based on the two prior mentioned findings, watching some of the documentaries introduced me to something new: the environmental impact of animal products. It never occurred to me, but large animals eat substantially more than people, and to raise enough for us to eat takes up a lot of resources. The WWF estimates that a whole quarter of the land on Earth is used for beef production, which is also displayed on this Wikipedia page, if you trust that as a source.
Now I had about three and a half reasons to be vegan: (1) It is kinder to animals, in that it does not treat them as consumable commodities, (2) it may be healthier, (3) It appears to be significantly better for the environment, and (3.5) I still found this a fun little challenge.
Anyway, that was all within about a month of looking into being vegetarian. It is now about four and a half years later, so there has definitely been a lot of experiences in the context of being a vegan, but this is already long enough to be considered any sort of quick read, so I will spare a fair bit of the details.
As mentioned in my post about self-expression, I definitely felt like I began to fit in even less throughout high school. It was not something I brought up outside of my friend group if I had the option, and if I was ever put on the spot about it, I kind of just shrank within my skinny six-foot-two body and tried to divert the conversation to something else. For some reason, though, I persisted, despite feeling like I was intentionally making myself an outcast without much to benefit from it. I guess it just felt right.
I have definitely had times where I considered giving up, as it would quite frankly be really easy. To an extent, being vegan is just the same as living environmentally consciously, as it just adds some extra effort to life with most of the trade-offs being things that are not benefited from directly.
Later on in high school was when I started reading about certain people that have become major influences of mine, of which lived a vegan lifestyle and did so in a way I felt I could relate to. One such influence is Mike Vallely, a professional skateboarder who was a skinny lad growing up and went on to become a tough, expressive, muscular, vegan icon. His sincerity to all members of mankind along with his tough attitude made him something I could get behind, along with being an extremely unique and talented skateboarder.
After learning about Mike V from a skateboarding art book I bought simply to just look at pictures of cool old skateboards, I quite honestly became a bit obsessed with him. In Sean Cliver’s book, Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art, there is a quote of Mike saying that he quit skating for the World Industries brand soon after he was asked to do an advertisement for a board with a hamburger graphic. There is more to it than that, but reading this made him seem like some sort of tough vegan guy to me, and that only really scratches the surface of how tough of a guy he really is. Here is a video highlighting Mike V being a tough guy. On the other hand, here is a documentary he made which shows how great and authentic of a person he really is, if you have about an hour to spare.
If you look into Mike Vallely at all after reading this, you may realize I aspire to share many of the qualities that he has. The main thing I take from Mike, in the context of being vegan, is that it is fully possible to live in such a way, feeling so strongly about it, and having a stern yet approachable attitude. After obsessing over Mike (I have his board, documentary on DVD, and a personal autograph), I have made it my goal to not be knocked down by the belittling of what I believe in, and I think I owe it to his influences for both continuing with the lifestyle as well as developing relatively thick and resilient skin about my feelings for it. I just need to work on the muscular part.
If you have any questions about any of the claims made here, do feel free to ask where I got the information. The last thing I want is to seem like a bullshitter. That summarizes why I no longer put animal stuff in my mouth and such, though.
March 28, 2021.
