I have been on many vegan group trips that were wonderful but did one this year that was the most unvegan, vegan trip I've been on and very sketchy. It was to Vietnam and was organized by a content creator and her partner. I still have no idea what his last name is. It was not cheap and the villa that was advertised to us was not the one we stayed at and one of the hosts, the yoga teacher, did not come. According to them it was because of low turnout. We still paid full price. Their website has no details or fine print for if this happens. This was definitely a learning lesson.

The hosts were so cheap and did not have fruit, nor snacks for us, not even coffee because they don't drink caffeine. They had us doing long hikes in 95F/35+ degree weather mid day without lunch, enough water or elektrolytes. We got it when I asked for it.

They would not give straight answers of where we were staying in the next cities so we could not inform loved ones. They told us not to get sim cards nor cash and then left us vulnerable without it. We eventually got sim cards but that experience was sketchy. The little man told us not to tell people we were with a travel group because of the Vietnamese tourism mafia.

The hotels we stayed at after the villa did not have good breakfasts for us and down pillows. I had to ask mine be replaced. I told one of the host he should have checked it. The guy clearly wasn't vegan.

Furthermore, out of 6 guests, only 2 others were vegan. So no one wanted to talk about animal rights, nor veganism. The 2 vegans were mealy mouthed, positive vibes vegans. The food and cultural education was sub par. I wanted to meet Vietnamese vegans but apart from a couple vegan restaurants, we never met local vegans or went to vegan run businesses.

I guess the moral to the story is do not fall for content creators selling tours. Go with companies with a long track record and years of reviews. People who don't hide their names.

Please for the love of humanity can you put soy lehemoglobin in a pill and sell it. Like I don’t think yall realize that what you have here is literally a cure for anemia, which I’ve struggled with my whole life. I’ve always been consuming non-heme iron, which the body absorbs poorly and is easily not absorbed if you eat calcium. Y’all literally have the only source of heme vegan iron and took a patent for it. Please do something good with it and put it in a pill. People will buy it. I don’t want credit for this just do it please. Go talk to your managers and make it happen and get a promotion. Thank you.

If you live in a developed nation and you know better, the only reason to not be vegan and say you care about any of these issues is the fact that you don't really care. You can be a meat eater, you can be an activist, but you can't be both. Sure, wear your free Palestine shirt, nobody is any less hungry because you want to pay to fund an industry that guzzles down more resources than the entire human population.

This is how use of AI impacts animals:

"Wolves roam into Finnish villages after Google destroys 1,300 acres of forest for AI data centers — forest where wolf packs used to live is now an expanse of mud".

As a vegan use AI free search and tools. On Google that's just adding udm=14 to search queries or using the "Web" tab.

Plastic is bad. I get it. I don’t like it either. We’re on the same side. We both care, we both want to do the right thing. We’ve weighed up the pros and cons, the environmental costs, microplastics and tanning chemicals. I know you care. I’m sure you’ll be interested in this information. I don’t know where the idea that leather is biodegradable came from. It’s wrong. Yes, even vegetable tanned leather. Yes, even under controlled conditions. Yes, that is just as bad as microplastics. Here are reports, industry investigations, well sourced articles. You simply don’t believe me.

It’s a wonderful stroke of PR genius. The leather industry has somehow become more trustworthy than anything I could provide. And even if leather was biodegradable, plastic still produces less carbon, uses less water, and causes less environmental damage than industrial animal agriculture. This doesn’t make plastic good. I agree, we need a better option. But that option isn’t leather.

I haven’t even opened up the ‘animals don’t need to die’ discussion. I focused on your claim, that plastic is worse than leather for the environment, and it’s impossible to agree on what seems to me to be objective fact. Plastic is not worse than leather by every metric available.

At least when I talk to people about not harming animals they understand even if they don’t agree. It’ll be a long time undoing all the ‘leather is natural’ stuff. Until then, I’ll keep putting the information out there and hope some of it sticks.

i’ll keep things brief and honest: around august 19th, i decided to go vegan. however, after seven or so weeks and going to bed hungry numerous times, i decided to go back to being omnivorous. i thought i’d just go back to how i was before, but about ten days later i realize that my newfound morals are seemingly diametrically opposed to any lifestyle but veganism.

i don’t know anybody else in real life who IS vegan (or even not an omnivore), so i’m posting on this subreddit to ask for advice: what do you guys eat everyday to feel full? particularly as a poor college student who doesn’t really want to cook all the time. maybe i just didn’t have enough variety idk. anything high in protein is especially appreciated lol.

(sorry if this is the wrong flair)

I think that the scale of meat production is something that most people probably don't fully understand.

Humans are generally bad at understanding scale based on numbers alone. I think though, that even a lot of meat eaters, if they attribute even the slightest bit of ethical significance to the killing of an animal, would be horrified if they understood the scale of meat production in the world.

In a year, humans kill approximately 80 billion land animals alone. (source)

Estimates suggest that the number of humans who have ever been born is around 117 billion. (source)

This means that in approximately 18 months, we kill as many land animals as the number of humans who have ever lived.

When including fish, the number of animals that are killed each year for food, by even the most conservative estimates, is at least 1 trillion. (source)

So, the total number of unnecessary animal deaths for human pleasure vastly exceeds the number of humans who have ever lived in just one year.

What are other ways in which we can try to grasp the scale of the suffering caused by animal exploitation?

We’ve heard a lot from friends or family but what about educators or doctors? I’m curious about your stories. I specifically remember in 7th grade health class, our student teacher told us a story about a girl that went vegan a few months before prom and started losing her hair and her prom was ruined. Of course every 12 year old in that class was now terrified of being vegan. What a shame.

I recently decided to turn vegan, and now I feel cringy because I was trying to explain to my mom why I didn't want to eat something she made (I'm 16. I can cook for myself and usually do, but sometimes my mom still makes me food without me asking.)

Does it get better? I feel as if her and my brother are judging me, and I just feel so embarrassed.

Also, what do I even do in these situations? I don't want to let the food go to waste, but I also don't want to eat it.

Yesterday I made the decision to go vegan! I've been a vegetarian on and off for about five years. What got me was a shirt i saw online that had a cow face and read "Not your mom. Not your milk.'' That really hit home for me. I am a birthmother, meaning I placed my baby with an adoptive family. I was with her for 24 hours, and I breastfed her. It was an unbelievable experience. And then, the next day she was gone. My heart fell to pieces, but I knew it was best for her. Cows and calves being separated like that is just not ok, totally unnecessary. I have the option to visit my daughter once a year. Cows and calves are separated forever. Not ok. So today at the store I tried to "think vegan," which is totally new to me. I bought coconut milk mango yogurt. Wow that was good! I think this is the right move for me, but I'm shy to tell people irl, in case I backslide or something. Can any of you share your experience of your first few weeks as a vegan? That is much appreciated.

I am a very new vegan, I decided to make this change in my life at the beginning of the month so I still feel a bit lost when it comes to knowing what I can and can not eat. While I know this might be a useless question, I have to ask how you get over making mistakes when it comes to this lifestyle. I have eaten three non-vegan items just today! Obviously not on purpose, but the guilt is still there. Especially because all I had to do was google search, but I didn’t until after the fact. I know I’m going to have to switch that up since reading the ingredients isn’t helping. I have always been tough on myself for mistakes, but maybe there’s other people here who have dealt with this specifically. How long did it become until you started feeling confident in yourself? Or how long did it take for you to learn what to look for in labels? Thanks in advance.

Specifically, vegan kids that are adults now. I’d love to hear from people who have younger kids too, but I’m more interested in hearing from parents of older teens or adults who have even began their entire life. What was it like? I want to have children but all I hear from Omnis is how the kids will be malnourished, they’ll be super short, they’ll get bullied etc. Now, these are the same people who don’t know that a pregnancy is required for cows milk, so I don’t listen to what they have to say. However, I still would love to hear your stories.

Anyone have any good vegan zines? I was listening to the Smith’s ‘Meat is murder,’ and thought this is a great confrontational tune. It meets the people where they are, when they choose to engage with it and ponder the questions the song raises about killing animals. The lyrics alone would make it a cool pro-vegan zine. Then I thought, maybe online with the combined thoughts of everyone we could come up with something better too! Cmon guys let’s get some good pro-vegan zines out there!

Hi I’m 21 and I’ve been eating meat since forever, but recently I’ve been kind of feeling down about it. I’ve tried some vegan food before and they were nice. I wish I knew more tasty vegan foods to try if anyone can recommend :) but I don’t know if it’s too late to become vegan I been eating animals ever since that I feel it don’t matter anymore…

it makes me severely depressed that most of my friends and family laugh whenever i bring the topic of veganism up. (not to convince them to be one, but just the facts) and they’re all christian too. (i’m atheist)

wouldn’t it make sense for out of anybody, a religious person to understand it’s not right to have animals killed and eaten? i’m feeling like cutting everybody off. the world is looking extremely dim and bleak to me, i am in a deep depression over this.

i don’t want to speak to anyone who is okay with this. how i hate this world and wish i was never a part of it. how do you guys cope?

This is great news.

Hi, about a month ego I went vegetarian and am trying to transition into veganism. Do you guys have any tips for super quick protein sources?

I used to find it very convienient to make a quick meal like pasta and just add some tuna or eggs and such, and have been struggling a little to make sure every meal I have has a protein source.

Genuine question for vegans, I’ve literally only been vegan for a few days but I’m truly really dedicated to this and love it so far! How are you dealing with cross contamination? People often complain that places with vegan patties are using the same stove as meat patties. Should you request for it to be made on a cleaned grill, or do you just eat it no matter what? I think it’s really just about intention but I need to know! Thanks for the advice!

Hey all. My comforter/blanket is on the fritz and has been discontinued so I need a new brand for a winter comforter. Obviously nothing with down feathers or wool. Ideally i just want a comfortable cotton and I guess for filling I could do down alternative or just get a non-puffy no-frills something. I’ve been looking at the LL Bean cozy cotton comforter but wanted to see if anyone has one they’re particularly happy with. (I do not want a duvet or anything that needs an insert). TIA!

Here's my piece – 'Bonfire of the Animal' – I'd love to hear your thoughts! xo

I first read about this variation probably in 2017. There is a hypothetical non-vegans would somehow ask vegans thinking it's a clever question, "what would you do if you were stranded on an island and there was nothing to eat except a pig?"

If the pig is from this stranded island to begin with, and they survived all this time, then there's edible plants on the island I could also survive on. If it's a last resort and they are hostile, I will kill even a human for my own survival. If no one is attacking the other and we have the rest of our lives here, I'd rather the pig and I just be friends, then whoever dies first gets to eat the other if they want to, I probably wouldn't eat the pig anyway.

Now for the vegan thought experiment as the best reply to the question above, that I first read a variation of in 2017. 

Suppose you are a human against animal torture and cruelty. Some vegans including myself have already done public activism this way, and 100% of people asked say they are against animal torture and cruelty. Ask them:

"What if you lived in a world where you didn't have to pay people to torture and kill animals for you, where you didn't have to buy or eat any animal body parts or secretions. You can make all the same taste and flavor, be perfectly healthy (or even healthier), and even have 90%+ less land, water, and carbon footprint. This is actually the current reality we live in. As a logical person against animal torture and cruelty, would you continue to pay people to harm and kill animals for you?

If you are a sane and logical person, try one meal without animal cruelty. Then go for a day. Go for even longer. How long can you go without contributing to animal massacre?"

Send this to people and see what responses you get. I think this is a great thought experiment.

Hi All,

I'm sharing my year 4 blood work results in the event it is of interest to anybody. I also previously shared my year 1 and year 3 blood work results.

My results were, in a word, boring. Nothing high. Nothing low. Cholesterol and blood sugar are fantastic. Basically couldn't have a heart attack if I tried. I don't know that I'll continue sharing after this because quite frankly there doesn't seem to be a lot to share at this point.

Happy to answer any questions if there are any.

Just a public service announcement: I found out that coffee shops like Starbucks, Cuppi Coffee, and Dunkin’ Donuts have pumpkin spice syrup/flavoring that includes dairy. So if you order a pumpkin spice latte with oat milk, you may think you’re ordering it completely dairy free, but I’ve come to find out that the flavoring syrup they add more than likely has dairy in it.

The amount of stupid jokes made by the panel was just frustrating to hear and cringey (especially Sean Dyche’s “jokes”). The issue is obviously not being taken seriously.

Simon Jordan was the only one who tried to debate with Jennifer about the morality of using Phoenix as a mascot, where he argued that the eagle being born into captivity could have a different psychological profile to the wildlife eagles. This is ideologically flawed. You can’t just snap your fingers and wipe out the million years that this species have been in existence for and the evolution of their behaviours.