After months of anxious waiting, our long national vegan cheese nightmare has ended. The much-anticipated retail version of dairy-free Daiya cheese showed up at our local Whole Foods (a trifle late, WF Albuquerque, but all is forgiven!) this morning, and we snatched some up!

For those not familiar with Daiya, it’s a non-dairy, 100% vegan cheese (that is also free of gluten and soy) that hit the vegan food scene last year. People who have tried the stuff have raved about its authentically cheese-like texture and flavor. Unfortunately, up to now it’s only been sold to the food service and food manufacturing markets, so unless you’ve been lucky enough to have a local source for it, it’s only been available in bulk quantities at steep prices. We’ve been dying to try it, but didn’t want to shell out a lot of cash on a product we have reason to be wary of.

The reason we’re so excited about Daiya is that non-dairy cheeses generally range from “inedible plastic” to “inedible Play-Doh” in taste and texture, and the ones that taste okay don’t melt well, and vice-versa. Most of the animal-based foods we used to eat have decent vegan substitutes, but not cheese. And we love cheese! When we heard about this new vegan cheese that actually had a dairy cheese taste and texture, we were like, “give.” So we’re thrilled that Daiya is finally available in a retail package that we can try. And so we have!

The first thing I noticed on opening the packages (for now, it’s available in two varieties, cheddar and mozzarella) is a strongly cheesy aroma. I doubt that anyone but a super-smelling cheese expert could tell by smell alone that this wasn’t dairy-based cheese. Since much of what we perceive as taste is actually smell, this is a good start.

The texture is also pretty cheese-like (it comes in shredded form, but I’m hoping for a block or sliced version), although the shreds are pretty small, more like confetti than what I’m used to seeing. I think it feels a little gummier than dairy cheese, but it’s been a while since I’ve touched shredded dairy cheese, so I dunno.

The taste of uncooked Daiya is surprisingly cheesy — I think this has to do with the fact that it’s not a soy- or rice-based cheese, so it doesn’t have the characteristic flavors of those ingredients — but not totally convincing. Hannahbee calls it a “processed cheese vibe,” which I think is accurate. If you’ve had Velveeta or Kraft American slices, it’s similar to that flavor.

Where Daiya clearly earns its reputation is when melted. I made grilled cheese sandwiches on white bread with Earth Balance, and…wow. Yeah. it’s cheese. Gooey, salty, cheesy cheese.

I’m not sure what kind of weird science was employed in creating this stuff, but I’m grateful for it. I’m sure it’s highly processed, and I don’t for one second mistake Daiya for whole, healthy food, but a glance at the ingredients doesn’t show anything alarming:

(Daiya Mozzarella) Filtered water, tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and/or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, coconut oil, pea protein, salt, vegan natural flavors, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, sunflower lecithin, calcium citrate, xantham gum, citric acid, vegan bacterial cultures.

There is saturated fat (2g per 1/4 cup serving) in Daiya, from the coconut oil (I won’t get into a discussion of plant-versus-animal-based saturated fats, but those avoiding saturated fats should take note), and quite a lot of sodium (250-280mg per 1/4 cup serving). Again, Daiya should not be confused with health food, but hey, even vegans should get to splurge on junk food once in a while, right?

(If you compare Daiya to animal milk-based cheese, it’s fairly comparable. Kraft mozzarella, for instance, has 3.5g saturated fat and 200mg sodium per 1/4 cup serving.)

What was really satisfying about our Daiya experience was the feeling of normalcy that came from eating something familiar and satisfying like a grilled cheese sandwich. Now, I don’t want to build our diet around simply veg-ifying our pre-vegan dishes, because I find that too limiting when there’s this whole world of delicious plant-based foods out there. But sometimes it’s nice to have comfort foods. And for Hannah and me, a lot of our comfort foods are cheese-based.

I don’t foresee eating Daiya more than a couple times a month, but it does open up a lot of possibilities. For instance: nachos. Tonight. Aw yeah.

I read this Slate piece on why it’s OK for vegans to eat oysters, which gave me some…okay, I’m going to assume we’re all aware of the humorous implications of writing the phrase “food for thought” on a food-related blog, and moving forward, will use this phrase without acknowledgment of those implications.

I think this piece is problematic for a number of reasons, but I have to admit that “The Oyster Problem” has been on my mind since the beginning of my vegan journey. On the most superficial level, I used to love eating oysters, and this in particular was one of the really difficult things to give up. Oysters remain one of the very few animals that still tempt me.

The reason oysters present such a conundrum for vegans is that, unlike almost every other animal that is commonly used for food, they only barely qualify as animals by conventional standards. Technically, yes, of course oysters are animals. But they have only a rudimentary nervous system — and no brain or central nervous system at all — and from what we can tell, have no capacity to feel pain or suffering.

Unlike even other bivalve molluscs (like clams and mussels) oysters don’t try to escape from predators, so they don’t appear to have that quality of “wanting to live” that other animals do. So it’s much harder to see oysters as other than an animal “in name only,” no more sentient than a plant.

Much of the problem in dealing with The Oyster Problem as a vegan is that there are so many issues related to veganism, and why people adopt veganism. Ethically, oysters don’t present many of the problems of consuming factory farmed animals. They don’t (as far as we know) suffer in captivity. Ninety-five percent of them are farmed, so sustainability is not really an issue. Oyster farming has minimal impact on the environment, and in fact can even improve the surrounding ecosystem. With farmed oysters, there’s little to no bycatch — one of the most damaging consequences of eating seafood.

Nutritionally, oysters are basically a wash, in my opinion. There’s the obvious issue with bacteria in raw oysters — mostly a problem for people with compromised immune systems, but people do die every year from eating them — and oysters do contain saturated fat and cholesterol. On the other hand, the levels of saturated fat/cholesterol in oysters are extremely small, but they are rich in nutrients like B vitamins, zinc and magnesium. Of course, most of these nutritional benefits are negated when you eat them, say, deep-fried in an oyster po’boy, but by themselves it’s hard to argue that they’re actively bad for you.

So, is it OK for vegans to eat oysters? I have no definitive answer to this question. Technically, you can’t really call yourself “vegan” if you’re eating animals, which oysters are. But if one defines “vegan” as someone who does not use animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose, nobody in our society can truly call themselves vegan, because it’s basically impossible to live in this world without in some way consuming/using something that is produced using animals or, somewhere along the line, has caused suffering to an animal. So the purist argument doesn’t really work here.

But I have three points to make as to why vegans — or at least this vegan — probably shouldn’t eat oysters.

(1) The moral/ethical/environmental implications of eating oysters are not all that clear. One of the humanitarian arguments against eating animals is the exploitation and suffering of human beings involved in factory farming. I don’t know the oyster farming industry well enough to know what conditions people work in, or whether or not they are paid fair wages. Oyster farming is an international industry. What are the labor laws governing oyster farms in Sri Lanka, for instance? Is child labor used in any oyster farming around the world? Also, what kinds of chemicals are involved in oyster farming? How is oyster farming regulated?

The problem that arises is that we get to this place where we say, “it’s okay to eat oysters provided they’re grown in safe, humane conditions and humans aren’t exploited and the environment isn’t polluted.” Which is the same kind of conditional reasoning people apply to other animal eating (“it’s okay to eat pork/beef/poultry that’s humanely raised”), and the problem with that is that it’s founded on this untrue assumption that there even is such a thing as “humane” meat.

Under nearly any circumstance where most people are going to eat oysters, it’s going to be impossible to know for sure what conditions their oysters were grown in. So, unless I’m actually at an oyster farm, eating oysters I’ve personally obtained from a farm whose practices I’m completely aware of, any time I eat an oyster I’m just assuming it’s okay — an assumption so many well-intentioned people make (wrongly) about the meat they’re eating.

So, it may be philosophically acceptable to eat oysters, given the right set of circumstances, but in the real world, the actual picture is too murky to make me feel okay with it.

(2) It muddies and contradicts our message as advocates for animals. As anyone who has adopted a vegan lifestyle for any length of time knows all too well, there is an incredible amount of misinformation and confusion out there about veganism and vegetarianism, right down to what those terms even mean. Even people who think they’re practicing veganism sometimes get it very wrong, calling themselves vegan while consuming eggs, dairy, and even fish or poultry! And what people who know them come away with is a very confused idea of what veganism is about.

The reason this is important is that our choices send messages. Any vegan, whether he or she intends it or not, invariably becomes a spokesperson for veganism among their social group. Our choice to live a vegan lifestyle makes us advocates, for that lifestyle and for the animals whose suffering we are trying to prevent. So, if we want to be advocates for the animals, and to send a message to the world that it is not ethical or moral to consume and exploit animals, we should be as consistent as we can in that message. Sure, there is an argument to be made that “it’s wrong to consume and exploit animals…except for oysters.” But that’s a peculiar and not very effective way to present yourself.

Of course, there are many people who choose a strict vegetarian lifestyle purely for dietary reasons, and not out of any ethical concerns at all, so this point may not apply to everyone. But for those of us who do want to be animal advocates and who are concerned about animal rights, it’s an important consideration.

(3) Veganism, ultimately, is a series of choices. Like I said at the outset, it’s impossible to be a “pure” vegan, in the sense that we don’t consume any animal products or live in a way that is completely untainted by animal exploitation or suffering. Purity is not the point of veganism. To be “vegan” is not a status or condition that is earned or lost. Rather, it’s a way of living that seeks to minimize the suffering and exploitation of animals.

What this means is not that we demand perfection from ourselves or others, but that we make choices that are as consistent as possible with our values. I currently own leather shoes that I’ve had since before I made the choice to become vegan. I still wear them, because I can’t afford to replace my shoes with vegan alternatives. In the future, will I buy leather shoes? No. In the strictest sense, am I “vegan” if I wear leather shoes? No. But if the term has any practical meaning at all, it’s as a way to guide our choices in the world.

That’s why I think “vegan” should really be thought of as a verb — veegin’. It’s not something you are so much as something you do. And nobody can be veegin’ 100% of the time, but we can choose to “veeg” whenever possible.

There is some proportion of our vegan choices that is out of our control, or impractical to control. For instance, I can buy a can of organic pinto beans (vegan!), but the label on that can might be printed with non-vegetable inks (not vegan!). Or the company that makes it, which I’m supporting with my money, might also be involved in industrial meat production (not vegan!). But at some point we have to say, “I can’t be perfect, but I can do my best.” Intentions aren’t everything, but they do matter.

So when it comes to oysters, my position is this: I don’t know all the ethical/moral/political/social/environmental ramifications of eating them. It seems to be a fairly benign act. But the bottom line is that I don’t have to eat them. Oysters are not in any way essential to my health or well-being. So, as with eating any animal, eating oysters is purely a matter of choice, not necessity.

Therefore, I’m going to continue to try to make the best choices I can, guided by my ethical and moral values, which do not include eating animals or animal secretions. Given that I have any qualms at all regarding eating oysters, and that it’s just as easy to choose not to eat them as to eat them — easier, actually, since it’s not like I’m surrounded by oysters all day — I’m gonna go ahead and choose not to eat oysters whenever possible. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Just a brief post to assure our readers that piggypiggypiggy has not been abandoned. Hannahbee and I just got an Xbox 360, and all other activity not strictly required to sustain life are being suspended while we hack and slash our way through Fable II.

I’d like to further assure our readers that, even within the game, our characters are eating vegan. I was actually pleasantly shocked to find that food vendors in Fable II actually sell organic and silken tofu! Pretty weird. I have to confess that early in the game I did eat some beef jerky just to get rid of it, and my health overall isn’t great because I was drinking way too much beer and wine, but I’m back to a healthy diet of celery and greens.

We are also not kicking any chickens.

Piggypiggypiggy will return once the kingdom of Albion is made safe for compassionate, conscious living.

You want quick and easy? We got quick and easy! Tonight Mrs. Pants and I had a little something I like to call Harvest Casserole. It’s what I’m gonna call a “second-run” entree, in that the central ingredient is something left over from a previous meal.

In this case, the leftover in question is a delicious vegan Alfredo sauce, courtesy of Vegan Yum Yum. It’s a regular favorite at Casa McCracky, and very easy to make. We made this sauce the night before last, for a simple pasta dish, and doubled the recipe since we knew we’d be making this casserole later. (Yay meal planning!) This sauce makes a great creamy base for just about anything you want a creamy sauce for.

For the pasta, we use Bionaturæ organic semolina pasta. Semolina pasta isn’t as healthy as whole grain wheat pasta, but it is less processed (and therefore retains more nutrients) than refined white flour pasta, and we prefer the taste and texture of it over the whole grain pastas we’ve tried, so we look for 100% semolina pasta whenever possible.

Ingredients

• Hurry Up Alfredo Sauce


• Bionaturæ penne pasta (about ½ bag)


• Trader Joe’s Harvest Hodgepodge frozen vegetables (1 bag)


• Trader Joe’s Petite Peas (frozen, about 1½ cup or ½ bag)


• Trader Joe’s Gourmet Fried Onion Pieces (French’s is more common and is probably OK, but we know for sure that these are vegan, so we stick with TJ’s)


• Soy milk (or any unflavored non-dairy milk — we used soy because that’s what we had left over from making the Alfredo sauce) (about ½ cup)


• Salt and pepper to taste

Prepare the pasta, taking it off the heat a bit sooner than you normally would, so that it’s a little firmer than al dente (it will soak up some water and flavor from the sauce while baking). Meanwhile, if you don’t already have the Alfredo sauce on hand, this is a good time to prepare it.

Also get your pan ready. You’ll want a rectangular baking dish, greased with Earth Balance margarine or olive oil. Preheat your oven to 350°.

When the sauce is ready, combine it in a LARGE bowl (you’ll need plenty of room for all the ingredients) with the bag of Harvest Hodgepodge and the peas (these veggies don’t have to be defrosted). When the pasta is ready, you’ll want to mix that in and stir well.

The sauce will probably be a bit thick, so you can thin it out with soy milk until it’s a good consistency (you don’t want it to be soupy, but you want it a bit thinner than Alfredo sauce because some of the liquid will evaporate during baking).

Pour the mixture into the baking dish and cover with foil. Bake at 350° for 20-30 minutes. Remove the foil and sprinkle fried onion pieces evenly over the top of the casserole.

Return the dish to the oven and continue baking, uncovered, for another 15-20 minutes or until the topping is nicely browned. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve!

If you like casseroles, this dish is a real winner. It has all the comforting, creamy richness you want from a creamy casserole. I think the crispy fried onions are the crowning touch.

If you wanted some kind of meat-like component, I suppose you could add some chunks of chicken-style seitan or marinated tempeh — I might try that next time — but this dish seriously needs nothing else to be incredibly satisfying.

No photo this time. I really need to remind myself to take pictures of this stuff. Ah well. I might edit one in later, next time I make this dish!

As part of what seems to be a budding series on Inappropriate Breakfasts, I thought I’d try something a little different with my usual oatmeal this morning. Now, I am very, very conventional when it comes to certain foods. For instance, a bowl of grits, for me, is grits, butter (or nowadays, “butter”), salt, and black pepper. That’s it! Cheese grits? WRONG. Sweetened grits? DOUBLY WRONG. Things that are normally sweet, should stay sweet. That which is savory, remains savory. Some people grew up putting salt on their watermelon. Not me, so I never will.

On the other hand, never say never. Oatmeal, for me, is something to be eaten sweet: brown sugar and cinnamon, and some fruit. Walnuts are about as far towards savory as I’ll go. But when I read about Mark Bittman recommending savory oatmeal, I was intrigued. I tried it a while back, and liked it quite a bit. I had it again this morning, adjusting some things to suit my tastes.

As usual, my “recipes” are pretty much just “a handful of this, a shake of that.” But I’ll share what I did.

Ingredients:

• Oatmeal, Steel-Cut (1 cup) cooked in a rice cooker on “porridge” setting with water (3½ cups) and salt (½ teaspoon)


• Scallions (Green Onions) (¼ cup or a small handful)


• Eden Organic Seaweed Gomasio (a couple of shakes, to taste) Gomasio is a Japanese condiment made from sesame seeds ground with salt. The seaweed gomasio I use contains ground dried sea vegetables for extra flavor and nutrional goodness! However, regular sesame seeds are just fine.


• Nama Shoyu (1 tablespoon) Nama shoyu is raw, unpasteurized soy sauce; regular soy sauce works, too.


• Misc. seasonings: I added a shake of granulated garlic (garlic powder if you don’t have that) and a bunch of black pepper (I am a fiend for black pepper).
  
  I also added sea salt, which was a mistake because the nama shoyu and gomasio made the dish plenty salty. I wouldn’t do it again, but if you’re using regular sesame seeds, you might want to taste the dish and add salt at the end if needed.

To assemble this dish, you take a bowl of cooked oatmeal and stir in all the ingredients except for a bit of the scallion to sprinkle on top as a garnish. If you like, you can also sprinkle a little olive oil on top for a bit of richness. Make sure everything’s well-combined.

I find the flavor of savory oatmeal a little unusual, since I’m so used to the flavor of my usual sweetened oatmeal, but it helps to think of it as akin to a rice porridge, which (at least in Asian cooking) is generally a savory dish. But it’s really good. If you have any leftovers, you can refrigerate them and make fried cakes out of them later.

Like I said, I’m not normally the most adventurous eater. One terrific side effect of going vegan has been to open my eyes (and taste buds) to new kinds of flavor combinations that never would have occurred to me before. My diet is actually a lot more varied and interesting than it was when I was still eating animals. So much for the idea of a vegan diet being “limiting.”

Sorry for the horrible photo, but I had to take these with my iPhone.

We had some leftover quinoa from last night’s dinner, so I thought a breakfast quinoa would be an interesting change of pace from our usual morning oatmeal. Here’s what I did:

I heated up about 1½ cups almond milk (sweetened/vanilla) in a sauce pan until it just began to boil. Then I added enough leftover quinoa to make kind of a porridge-y, grits-like consistency, then lowered the heat, added about 2 tablespoons brown sugar and a couple of good dashes of cinnamon, and stirred constantly until it was completely heated through.

Meanwhile, I had some frozen fruit (blueberries and strawberries) that I had thawed overnight, and some walnuts. I spooned some fruit/nuts into each bowl (Hannah wanted strawberries only, and I wanted strawberries, blueberries, and walnuts, because I like to live large).

When the quinoa was heated through, I spooned it into the bowls and then stirred vigorously to mix everything up. That’s it! It took about five minutes.

I thought it was pretty good — fluffy and soft, but the quinoa doesn’t disintegrate into mush, so you can still taste the individual grains. It’s similar to the (steel-cut) oatmeal we know and love, but has a lighter consistency and that distinctive, slightly grassy flavor of quinoa.

Hannah thought it was good, but still prefers oatmeal. I agree, but I think it’s a nice change of pace, and a pretty tasty way to use up leftover quinoa.

Jim posted a thoughtful response in the comments of my previous entry (“Who Are You?”) that naturally caused me to write a damn novel in response, so I’m posting it as a separate entry. And yes, I disagree with Jim on this. But I think he makes reasonable points that I want to address, at great and tiresome length, but also, I hope, convincingly.

Jim wrote:

I’m not sure there’s a most basic, elemental aspect of existence. But if there is, I’m not sure it’s food. I certainly agree that corporations aren’t looking out for us. They do produce a lot beyond food, however, and I’m not really sure that turning away from products like bottled water, movies, or alcohol results in any less or more liberation from corporation-influenced culture than turning away from factory-farmed meat. I can see why the idea that eating good food is the best thing you can do for yourself is appealing, but I don’t think it’s the foundation to happiness any more than any other healthy habit is. I’ve known people that are happy, at peace, and with a strong sense of self that have unhealthy diets that could be criticized from 50 different directions. Eating good food is good for you. But I think it’s up to you to make yourself happy with the health benefits you get from it. I have yet to see any indication it’ll do anything for your sense of satisfaction automatically.

Is Food Basic to Our Existence? Pants Says Yes

While I’d absolutely agree that food choices aren’t the only (or, for many people, the dominant) factor in one’s happiness or well-being, I maintain that food is the most basic universal element of human existence.

Yes, there are things like air and water that are more immediately necessary for life. And of course there are things like sex and money that are absolutely pervasive in our culture, social interactions, etc. (And it’s worth pointing out that all of those things can as easily fit into my point about “living your values” as food.)

But I can’t think of anything that is more fundamentally woven into more aspects of our lives — survival, culture, upbringing, well-being, entertainment, and social connections, among other things — than food. You can be asexual, apolitical, or care nothing for material possessions, but even if you only eat to live, you’ve still got to eat. And while I’ve encountered people who have no strong opinions about politics or religion, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t harbor some strong opinion regarding food.

Just about every social gathering or celebration or holiday revolves around food. Every culture has food traditions that, in many cases, run deeper than all of its other traditions (as I’ve seen in myself and everywhere I’ve lived, descendants of immigrants who may no longer know the language or customs of their ancestors’ home country still recognize and cherish their food heritage).

One reason why I struggle with talking openly about vegan issues is that food, in proportion to its essentially benign nature, is an incredibly provocative, contentious topic, which I think points to how fundamental a role it plays in our lives. People fight over things like whether Chicago-style pizza is “real” pizza. It’s hard to even state an opinion about food without making someone defensive. Look at the most primal food issue: breastfeeding. I think it’s actually a federal law that any online mention of breastfeeding or mother’s milk vs. formula must immediately devolve into a vicious flame war.

And when you get into the “rightness” or “wrongness” of people’s food choices, that’s when things get really ugly. There are entire weblogs devoted to attacking particularly controversial diet plans. I’m not even going to get into the feuds that go on within vegan and animal rights communities.

Psychological issues with food are pandemic in our culture. Very few of us grow up without some kind of weird food-related emotional complex. Look in any bookstore, and see how many books there are about food-related issues compared to other topics: weight loss, eating disorders, disease-related diet plans, cookbooks, books on alternative diets, etc.

If there’s a subject that is more central to our daily lives, our thoughts, and our relationships with our families and loved ones than food, I simply have yet to see it.

Food and Happiness

There’s a 2003 Gallup poll that animal rights advocates point to often in discussions of Americans’ relationship with animals. Among other things, the poll finds that 96% of Americans believe “animals deserve at least some protection from harm and exploitation.” (25% say animals deserve “the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation.”) Sixty-two percent of Americans, in this poll, favor passing strict laws concerning the treatment of farm animals.

At the same time, 99% of animals raised for slaughter in the United States comes from factory farms. So it stands to reason that most of those people who are concerned about animal welfare, and who eat meat, are eating meat produced under conditions they oppose.

The notion that food issues underlie a vast American cultural malaise is sort of a pet theory that I’m still developing. It first occurred to me while I was watching the documentary Food, Inc. (Which, for those who haven’t seen it, is not a vegan film or specifically about meat, but a pretty damning look at our industrial food production system that is a must-see for anyone with any interest in what they’re eating.)

One of the segments in Food, Inc. is about a Latino working-class (or more accurately, “working poor”) family of four, and their struggle to eat healthy food on a limited budget. We see them shopping for groceries, and having to choose between what’s healthy and what’s cheap. (At one point, the daughter puts back a couple of pears and gets ground beef instead, because the beef is cheaper per pound than the pears.) The mother talks about how they end up eating fast food most of the time, because it’s cheaper and more convenient than trying to cook healthy meals at home.

We find out that the father is diabetic, and that they have to spend $400-500 per month on his medications. One of the children, we learn, is pre-diabetic. So they’re faced with a dilemma where they can’t afford healthy food because they have to pay for medications…for a disease that may well be caused by, or at the very least is worsened by, eating crappy food. They’re trapped in a vicious circle, and it’s heartbreaking to watch this family talk about how they are essentially at the mercy of a corporate-controlled food system that artificially makes unhealthy food cheaper (via subsidies) while causing healthier foods to be more expensive (via manipulation of food law).

The cherry on top of this shit sundae is that, as a result of all this corporate junk food consumption, we come down with diseases that we then treat with expensive medications generously offered to us by Big Pharma. We pay companies for the food, then we pay companies for the consequences of eating that food. Our exploitation at the hands of corporate America couldn’t be more complete!

This ties into what I hear all the time from people who are trying to eat healthy and ethically: they’d make better choices if they could, but it’s almost impossible given the situation we’re faced with. We’re essentially at the mercy of the factory food system. If farm animals that were truly humanely raised and killed with a minimum of suffering were widely available at affordable prices, I’d imagine every meat eater would choose that meat. But in our current system, this is a practical impossibility for the average person. Which forces people — even people who might limit or eliminate their meat consumption if it were affordable to do so — to participate in a system that is corrosive to their morality.

So, why is food, more than any other corporate-produced product that we consume, such a dominant factor in our (un)happiness, according to me? The number one reason is, see above: we have to feed ourselves. Name a non-food consumer product category that is actually required in order to live. (Breatharians may disagree with my premise.)

Other corporate-produced products — home electronics, movies, cars, etc. — we can avoid. You can buy some basic clothes from a thrift store and be presentable. We’re not as tied to those things as we are to that thing we actually need to sustain life. The effort it takes to remove yourself from the factory food system is vastly greater than for anything else. The extent to which our culture flows in this direction makes it incredibly difficult for anyone trying to swim in any other direction.

But that’s what makes the sense of liberation greater, when you actually do opt out of the system.

I want to make one thing completely clear: I didn’t become a vegan in order to achieve this liberation. It was a completely unintended consequence. It’s something I didn’t even perceive as a possibility until after I had made the decision, and then began to realize the true depth of the moral implications. But it’s really hard to communicate this to someone who hasn’t made the same choice, because you kind of have to experience it in order to understand it.

And another thing I’d like to clarify is that this is not a health issue, per se. There is a valid debate that can be had about whether or not meat can be part of a healthy diet. That’s not what I’m primarily concerned with in these two blog entries. What I’m talking about is not deriving happiness from improved health, but rather the morality of our food, and the values we apply to our food choices.

We can live perfectly happy, peaceful lives while making incredibly unhealthy choices. But I also believe that our level of happiness is directly related to how consistently we live according to our values. If you’re living in a way that drastically violates your morality or ethics, there’s no way you can honestly call yourself happy or at peace with yourself, unless you’ve compartmentalized your emotions so severely that you only exist in that small space that remains uncompromised.

Are there people who eat factory farmed meat and animal products who are perfectly happy? Of course. But of those people, I would ask: (1) how aware are they of the facts of how their food is produced? (2) being aware of those facts, is the welfare of the animals they consume an issue that is important to them? and (3) if it is an important issue, do they believe their overall well-being, even if it is currently good, could be improved even further by making choices more aligned with their moral priorities?

I really hope this doesn’t sound like I’m trying to judge anybody, because I’m not. This is not about applying my values to other people, but observing how other people apply their own values to their own lives. Some people don’t place a high moral value on animal welfare. Many people don’t invest very much meaning in their food at all, so animal welfare as it pertains to food doesn’t even become an issue for them. While I personally disagree, I can accept that people have a right to their own system of values. My discussion is really more about those people who do care about food in this way than those who don’t.

For me, the most profound realization I’ve had since making the decision to go vegan is that my food choices are inseparable from both physical health and moral/spiritual well-being. A year or so ago, when H and I “went raw,” that was a vegan diet, but my own reasons for doing it had nothing to do with animal welfare. I did it strictly for physical and mental health.

And it didn’t last, because I was constantly plagued, from the beginning, with temptation and feelings of deprivation, specifically centering around meat. So when I was presented with meat-based temptations, I freely gave in, because there was nothing stopping me from doing so but health considerations — and I do plenty of unhealthy things in life, so what the hell?

Since I’ve gone vegan this time around, I actually haven’t felt much temptation at all. And when I do, it’s extremely easy to deal with. Why? Because this time there is a moral and ethical component to my decision not to consume animals or animal products. Because of my constant awareness that I am much happier when I am living consistently with my values . None of the animal-based foods I used to enjoy give me pleasure that compensates for how I feel when I am morally compromised. And the spiritual and moral fulfillment I feel living this lifestyle more than satisfies whatever sense of deprivation I might otherwise feel.

It goes without saying, or ought to, that I’m far, far from perfect, and that I don’t ever live 100% consistently with my beliefs. But going vegan has brought me closer to that ideal than almost any other decision I’ve made in my life.

We live in a society that offers more cheap, easily obtained opportunities for diversion and amusement than any other in history. And yet, so many of us are depressed, unfulfilled, bored, and unhappy.

I believe this is because many of us lack a real purpose in life, something to give our lives a moral and spiritual center.

I believe that it’s difficult to know our purpose or work to achieve it when we’re blocked from our full potential as human beings.

I believe one reason for that block is that we are not living according to our values, whatever those values may be.

It’s almost impossible, these days, to be true to our values, because our post-industrial, commercialized culture is designed specifically to subvert and confuse our sense of ourselves.

If you know who you are, you don’t need some company to tell you what you need in order to be a complete person.

If you know who you are, you don’t need a brand name to give you a sense of belonging.

If you know who you are, you’re less likely to believe that purchasing a product from some corporation will make you happy, make you fulfilled, make you beautiful and healthy and successful.

Corporations hate happy people. People who are happy and living life to the fullest tend not to spend as much money as the unhappy and unfulfilled. They have what they really need in life, which is not a profitable state of being.

So corporations have helped create a world designed specifically to cultivate in people those qualities that cause them to buy products from corporations.

Identity confusion. General dissatisfaction. Unfulfilled desire. Idealized, unattainable fantasies.

And all these things turn around a single axis: you don’t know who you are, what you believe, or why you’re even here.

Having a system of moral/ethical values, and living in a manner consistent with those values, is one way to help establish and maintain a coherent sense of self.

Most people in our society believe industrial animal agriculture is inhumane. It violates their sense of what is right, or moral.

Yet, most people in our society purchase and eat factory farmed meat and animal products.

Which means most people in our society are not living according to their values. And not only that, but the area of their lives in which they are being so profoundly untrue to themselves is food, the most basic, elemental aspect of existence.

When our lives are built on such a shaky foundation, is it any wonder that there’s so much unhappiness and discontent within us and around us?

When corporations create the culture that dictates who we are and what makes us happy, is it any wonder that we turn to corporate-produced meat-based products for pleasure?

Or that we turn away from the very choices that offer us liberation from that culture?

I’m up way past my bedtime, but I didn’t want to let the day pass without saying something about Howard Zinn, the legendary historian and progressive activist, who died today of a heart attack at 87.

For those who may not be familiar with Zinn’s work, he’s probably best known for his book A People’s History of the United States, a kind of alternative take on American history from a perspective that’s rarely (if ever) taught in schools. If history is written by the winners, Zinn’s book is a history written on behalf of the “losers” — from the native Americans exploited and murdered by Christopher Columbus’s crew to the workers crushed beneath the boots of the Robber Barons of the 19th century, through the labor and anti-war activists of the 20th century.

It’s a brutal, but completely factual and matter-of-factly delivered overview of American history, that exposes the grimy reality behind the burnished romantic glow of the rah-rah “official” history we’ve all been fed. I first encountered the book in my 20s, and it absolutely blew my mind. I have no idea what they teach in elementary and high schools today, but back in my day, the American history we received was very much of the patriotic, “greatest nation on Earth” perspective, with the less-savory bits sort of gingerly and briefly dealt with as unfortunate aberrations in an otherwise heroic and noble saga.

It was Zinn who opened my eyes to the ways in which the history of America is a history of wealthy, powerful forces consolidating and cultivating their power and undermining the forces of social justice. As an immigrant to this country who will forever be grateful to have grown up with all the resources and benefits of living in the United States, it was hard to face the unpleasant truth about the horrible things this country has done in the name of its citizens. But I feel I’m a wiser and more enlightened citizen for that knowledge. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

I pay tribute to Howard Zinn on this weblog because, although I have no idea whether or not Zinn was a vegetarian or what his views on animal rights were, I do know that Zinn and those who support animal rights share a common value — speaking truth on behalf of the powerless and voiceless. Zinn was an iconoclast who championed positions on civil rights and pacifism that were, at the time, deeply unconventional and unpopular. Most of all, though, he was a person of compassion and generosity, who inspired legions of admirers.

To me, Howard Zinn represents everything I aspire to be, as a vegan and as a human being. Anyone else who, like Zinn, spent a lifetime immersed in the most depressing, inhumane aspects of human history, speaking out against towering forces of injustice in front of a mostly apathetic, unaware populace, would likely end up a discouraged cynic. But Zinn was never cynical or hopeless. As disappointed as he could be with the failures of our political leaders, he held steadfast to his belief in the ability of ordinary people to make a difference in the face of overwhelming power:

The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth. Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson — that everything we do matters — is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.

Howard Zinn also left us this, some of the most moving and inspirational words I’ve ever read:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

I can’t think of a better summation of the moral impulse that underlies veganism. We live in a society dominated by industrial animal agriculture, an institution that is easily as vile and inhuman as anything this country has produced in its history. When I think about the fact that factory farming continues to expand, that global meat production is expected to double in the next ten years, I feel depressed.

But Howard Zinn reminds me that we can choose how we live our lives in the face of cruelty and the worst of human nature. Zinn embodied that truth, as an example of the good people can do when they choose to live the way they think human beings should live.

Every once in a while, I feel a twinge of desire for some kind of meat-based product. It usually happens when I’m watching TV. I see someone eating a hamburger, and I remember how much I used to love hamburgers. (Of course, then I imagine ammonia-soaked ground beef patties, and the feeling kind of passes.) And of course, cheese.

This impulse is mostly emotional: it’s about habit and gratification. The habit part, for me, is fading quickly; once animal products are no longer part of your daily life, they lose their hold on you. It’s like being hooked on a TV show. Eons ago, when Friends was still on, I was addicted to that show and watched it religiously. At some point I decided I was spending too much time watching TV, and resolved to go cold turkey. The only hard part of that decision was giving up Friends. The idea of not watching it anymore made me feel panicky. How would I find out what happened to Ross and Rachel? But I did it, and it only took a few weeks before whatever connection I had with that show completely faded. I thought about how anxious I felt about giving it up, and how it was that notion, not the notion of giving up the show, that was incomprehensible to me.

Gratification is harder to deal with, because it’s tied to pleasure/stimulation seeking, which we are hard-wired for, but also to personal happiness, which is a thorny landscape of entitlement, guilt, and all kinds of punishment/reward issues from childhood. For me, the way to deal with issues of deprivation and self-medication through food (“my happiness in life depends on being able to eat this cheeseburger”) is to focus on physical and emotional well-being.

When there’s a void in your life, it’s tempting to fill that void with stimulating food, because food is one of very few pleasures in our culture that is also an absolute necessity for existence. Even if you’re at a low ebb of self-esteem and don’t feel you deserve any other pleasure or joy in life, you can allow yourself food, because everyone needs to eat, right? (Just make sure it’s the most unhealthy, cheap, crappy food available.) So, when Hannahbee and I embarked upon this vegan journey, one thing I was absolutely adamant about was that our mental and spiritual well-being had to be right up there as a top priority in our lives.

We live in a stressful society that seems engineered to make people unhappy. Stressed-out, unhappy people turn to familiar comfort foods — which, in our culture, means things like hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza. So, as people who grew up around those things, it’s critical for us to circumvent situations that might lead us to want them, at least until new habits and new comfort foods take hold. When people say that they couldn’t possibly give up eating meat, I think most of the time what they’re really saying is, “Don’t take away my security blanket.”

A year before we became vegan, Hannahbee and I went on a raw food diet. (I hate using the word “diet,” because it wasn’t a weight loss plan, but just a diet in the sense of a way of eating.) It was, in practice, a vegan diet, but we didn’t frame it or think about it that way. We weren’t specifically trying not to consume animals — that was just a side benefit of our plan.

It was a positive period in our lives. We both felt pretty good, mentally and physically, and yes, we lost weight. But we couldn’t sustain it. Eventually we went back to eating cooked food, including animal products. And there was never a point where I didn’t crave all those comfort foods.

Now, living as vegans, I might feel the occasional impulse, but it never develops into a full-on craving. The temptations that spring up are pretty easily dismissed. One reason, of course, is that a typical vegetarian diet is nowhere near as restrictive as a raw diet. If you’re cooking your food, you have access to all kinds of familiar dishes.

But I’m convinced that the main reason I don’t get seriously tempted anymore is that, this time around, our intention of not eating animals is not simply a dietary self-improvement plan, but an ethical, moral, and spiritual change in our lives. If I were doing this strictly for health reasons, I wouldn’t stick with it. For one thing, I don’t have a high enough self-esteem — at least, not yet — to sustain a “my body is my temple” attitude. And for another, good physical health, while a laudable goal, is hard to maintain as a motivating force in my life, because, while the idea of it is certainly pleasurable, it’s not actually a pleasurable sensation.

(I’m not talking about physical fitness, which is pleasurable — it feels good when your muscles are strong and you can move easily — but rather nutritional health, which, if it’s in order, is pretty much invisible, and defined mostly by what’s not happening in your body, namely cancer and heart attacks, or even just noticeable discomfort, like stomach problems.)

What does feel noticeably good, though, is my spiritual well-being. One thing that happened when I went all in with veganism and committed myself to living a life of compassion and nonviolence, is an enormous sense of liberation. I felt freed from my guilt over contributing to the suffering of animals and humans by participating in the factory farm system. Food honestly tastes better when you can appreciate it with your whole heart, without having to block out any unpleasant knowledge of the implications of what you’re eating.

So now, when I receive those familiar cues to eat whatever animal products are being marketed to me, there’s a lot happening on my side to fight against that pressure. I have the positive reinforcement of living a life that produces vitality and joy and a defense against stress. I have the awareness that I’m living a life that reflects my ethical and moral values, and there’s no food pleasure that is worth going back to a life of denial and moral blindness. And if nothing else, I have the knowledge of the unpleasantness of our food production system, and of everything that gets imparted to our food that would make us nauseated if we could clearly perceive it.

I would feel tempted to return to my old life if there was anything about that life that was remotely appealing, aside from the temporary pleasure of eating something that I’ve already eaten thousands of in my lifetime, and which never even made me all that happy to begin with. If you think about it that way, where’s the temptation at all?

Let me say up front, so you know where I’m coming from, that I’m not the child of San Francisco hippies, raised on sprouts and tofu. I’m a lifelong meat eater. Veganism is something that has not come naturally or easily to me.

As a little kid, I loved hamburgers. Now, I know it’s nothing special for a kid to love hamburgers. But how many kids do you know who, in first grade, had their teacher call their parents in for an emergency conference because, when they were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, said they wanted to work at McDonald’s?

So, when I became a vegan, it wasn’t because I hated the taste of meat and cheese. In fact, I’d say that my love of dead animal flesh motivated me, in a big way, to find reasons to not give it up.

Believe me, I’ve gone through all the arguments.

I went through the whole “animals exist for us to eat them” argument and the “farm animals would go extinct if we didn’t kill and eat them” argument. I went through the “let us honor the majestic beasts by raising them with love and hugs before we slaughter them and pray and weep over their roasted flesh with a side of creamed spinach” argument.

I tried to think of any plausible rationale to keep forking the flesh into my gullet, and none of them could stand up to the facts.

In the end, it wasn’t a great epiphany that finally brought me over. Not that there haven’t been epiphanic moments over the years. By the time it finally happened, I was primed to switch. Ultimately, what it came down to is that I just plain ran out of excuses.

Bottom line: there was no plausible rationale. There was only my desire, built into me from birth from a hundred different directions. And my fear of change.

And in the other direction, the direction towards veganism and compassion for animals, there were dozens of good reasons, reasons I couldn’t deny.

We live in a world that is in pretty shitty condition. Polluted air, water, and earth; global climate change; a society rotting to death from cancer, heart disease, and other “diseases of affluence;” global hunger; and a nation in which big business keeps getting bigger and more powerful while the poor schmucks who work for big business keep getting shafted.

The realization I came to, after I stopped looking for reasons not to give up meat and started looking to find out what could happen if I did, was that giving up meat was the single most effective action I could take in order to improve the world and my own physical and emotional wellbeing. This one simple act, of not eating animals or animal products, could achieve more than any number of other things I wasn’t doing to save the world.

And, you know, I’m a compassionate guy. I care. I hate the fact that the world is going down the tubes. But I’m also an extremely lazy guy. I am not the kind of guy who installs solar panels on his roof, or builds his own electric car from a mail-order kit. I am not the kind of guy who goes to save-the-planet rallies or stands around college campuses handing out leaflets. I am not an activist.

So, when I discovered that I could, in fact, make a significant difference just by — get this — not doing something, my heart leapt (well, lurched) for joy. Now here was something I could get behind. How often do you get to ease suffering in the world and improve the lot of your fellow Earth-based organisms by just sitting there in your underwear? (Shocking answer: not often.)

I helped save the world today. I did it several times, in fact. I saved the world when I drove by Whataburger and Wienerschnitzel and didn’t drive through and buy a burger or hot dogs. I saved the world when I went to the supermarket and walked past the dead animal aisle to buy a sack of oranges. On the way home, I figured I’d save the world one more time and didn’t stop at 7-11 for a bucket of nachos.

Here’s what I did: I didn’t contribute to the suffering and death of animals. I didn’t put money in the bank accounts of industrial animal agriculture companies that are drowning the country in toxic waste and paying desperate humans low wages to work in hellish conditions until they lose their minds and souls. I didn’t help suck every last living thing out of our oceans. I didn’t ingest substances that corrode my body until I have to seek treatment I can’t afford from a broken health insurance system run by evil, greedy assholes.

All that, just by not doing one simple thing.

Veganism: It’s What’s for Dinner, for Lazy Sacks of Crap…Who Care.