Are you happy now?

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For omnivores, a vegan regime may sound too radical and even today it seems almost too new to try. They may value personal safety above everything else. But also, they might not want to miss out on any chance of increasing life’s pleasures.

It comes down to being both conscious of bodily safety and not wanting to risk happiness (via the ‘little pleasures of life’). Most of us are a bit precious about our own lives. Most won’t stray too far from tried and tested diets. We won’t be too radical or altruistic in case it back-fires on us; ethical questions aren’t wrestled with and unconventional foods aren’t tried out.

            In general, humans don’t like experimenting too radically with food if it means denying themselves food-satisfactions. If we move away from the daily conventions surrounding food it seems like a very big step. Because food has such a significant effect on our lives our reason for changing our food regime would have to be very convincing; food has great power over mood. It produces a ‘full’ feeling in the stomach, it provides vital energy, it provides a guaranteed sensation of pleasure – we won’t give that up in a hurry.

Many of the foods omnivores use are not efficient. It’s like a propeller-driven aeroplane, it works but it’s slow. By comparison, vegan food is ‘jet-driven’. It’s less cumbersome, digestively quicker to move through our system, it makes our brains work faster and in general a plant-food diet has a noticeably beneficial effect. When, eventually, we take on a workable vegan diet there’s a certain gratifying satisfaction that comes from transforming a simple-enough physical experience into a conscience-cleared spiritual sensation. But is that enough?

The sticking point here, surely, is that humans equate happiness with what they know brings pleasure, and which is readily available. This is surely why we’re reluctant to give things up. Meat and animal products are what most of us know from our earliest years. They feel safe even though they’re addictive. And these perceptions about our favourite foods are encouraged by vested interests who heavily promote them and make them look very attractive. The Animal Industries know that the ‘happy meal’ is always going to be more attractive than the ‘useful meal’.

Whatever brings us pleasure (rich foods, alcohol, drugs and sex) we go for. Next to these pleasures a simple diet doesn’t quite figure. We’re brought up to believe that our food should be instantly gratifying, especially if there isn’t much else to inspire our lives. Food can make us happy, and happy equates to attractive; so what we eat has to be attractive, because eating is what we do so often, to make ourselves feel happier. Animal-based foods give us the ‘rush’ we want at the time, whereas plant-based foods aren’t as powerful in that way. So, can we forgo this immediate euphoria?

Vegans know they can do without it since the addictive qualities of past favourite foods have faded and other subtler attractions of whole plant-based foods have taken over. But, immediate sensation aside, the main consolation is more long term. We experience a marked increase in energy, and that really is worth having. The satisfaction that comes from regularly eating vegan food trumps the rush of ‘yummy’, animal-based foods … but let’s be frank, the ‘rush’ is attractive. All omnivores know this and salivate at the very thought of their favourite meaty, milky, eggy foods. The cakes and creamy-chocolaty foods all guarantee the ‘warm and fuzzies’; they are so immediately attractive that most people can’t (or don’t think they could) ever give them up.

Education comes into the picture here. Where crime is attractive the knowledge of punishment holds us back; where sex is attractive the fear of over-populating the family makes us take precautions, and so it is with food. Food education is the first preventer of many food-abuse problems. It may be that people are not well enough informed to get past their own bad habits, but today we are very well informed. Perhaps then, worse than not-knowing is knowing-but-not-caring. 

It may be that we stick with the foods we know because we’re too lazy or too frightened or too uncaring to experiment. We live conventional lives, eat traditional foods and die of avoidable food-related illnesses. I would think that most vegans find that to be incredibly sad.