Part two. ‘Going vegan’ - a very personal change

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Burden or benefit? I might have to deal with some social isolation and some doing-without, but there’s also a plus side to going vegan. As it happens, the change of diet isn’t much of a problem after all. You lose some favourite foods, you replace them with something else and that becomes a favourite now.  With a few new products in the cupboard and a few new recipes, there’s not a lot you miss. The craving for animal-stuff fades sooner than expected. Obviously some people do it hard - they allow their resolve to fade before new lifestyle habits kick in. I know a few people who’ve gone half way and never progressed beyond that. Like vegetarians - great start: sad stop!

The plus-side is simply knowing one has made a great leap forward - thinking of yourself and being able to call yourself “vegan”. Psychologically this means a great deal, it means you have taken up an ideal that most people wouldn’t even consider. It means you’ve been able to defy the brainwashing of Convention and been able to think things through and act for yourself. It means you’ve put others’ interests before your own, namely the animals’ and the eating and enslaving of them. It means you’ve given your own body a chance to regain health by not pumping toxic foods through it, namely the animal protein which is so detrimental to good health.

But, despite the obvious benefits, there are reasons why people don’t rush into becoming vegan. There are fears of not being accepted by people, fears that they’ll think a vegan is weird. And there are fears from within ourselves generated by ourselves, which might not be too easy to overcome. Perhaps our being vegan makes us feel superior and therefore immune to being judged, allowing us to make value judgments of others.