Mostly Vegan

We are mostly-vegan.  Yes, I did just make that up.  In our world, it means that we never eat food that required an animal to die.  At every restaurant the wait-staff hear “no meat, no cheese.” (See here for why not cheese.)   And we try to limit our consumption of food that involves the unkind treatment of animals to produce, which translates to avoiding dairy and eggs. (See here for why not eggs and here for why not dairy, but be warned you may not want to know.)

In daily practice this means we are vegan at home (except for an occasional processed food treat, like Sour Cream & Onion potato chips, which contain dairy) and mostly vegan out in the world (eggs and pancakes at restaurants, ice cream on vacations, frozen yogurt for a treat, etc).

The “mostly” part entered our vegan as a direct result of embracing the chaos — accepting and resolving a conflict between two different parts of our belief system.  We believe fully in the idea that kindness to all creatures (human, animal, insect, etc) is a central part of being a fully realized human.  We don’t allow physical violence in our house; we work out our conflicts with conversations (although we may start with some yelling).  Guns (even pretend ones) are strictly forbidden. We don’t squash bugs; we capture them and put them outside.  Choosing not to use animal products is a natural extension of this philosophy, especially if you know anything about common farming practices.  Morally this belief means we are “vegan.”

Being vegan is hard in our world.  We have a blended family with kids ranging in age from 9 – 30, who are at different stages of embracing our philosophy. We live in a medium-sized city without so much as a single vegetarian restaurant (much less a vegan one).  Traveling is an important part of who we are.  We encourage our children to try new things and seek out new adventures.  We discovered that trying to maintain a fully vegan lifestyle in the midst of this life, required the artificial imposing of order on our life. We had to bring food supplies with us. We had to research new destinations for food options. We had to avoid certain areas and activities because we wouldn’t be able to eat. We were telling the kids that live with us ‘No’ while their older siblings were doing the ‘Yes’.  As part of my current practice of learning to impose less order, it was clear that we needed to re-evaluate how we were incorporating our ethical beliefs about food production and kindness into our interactions with our children and the rest of the world.

Our current status of “mostly-vegan” is the culmination of that reconciliation.  Later, as life evolves, this, like all things, may change.  But for life right now, this is working.