[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/veganuary-why-do-vegans-receive-so-much-flack\/#NewsArticle","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/veganuary-why-do-vegans-receive-so-much-flack\/","headline":"Veganuary: Why do vegans receive so much flack?","name":"Veganuary: Why do vegans receive so much flack?","description":"Using vegans as the subject of punchlines and ridicule has become a trope of sorts in mainstream media and television. In popular American sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, self-pronounced food connoisseur Charles Boyle breaks into an amusing fit when he finds out his casual lover is vegan.\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s a vegan!\u201d he exclaims in the middle of a […]","datePublished":"2022-01-21","dateModified":"2022-04-14","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/rachel-teng\/#Person","name":"Rachel Teng","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/rachel-teng\/","identifier":367,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rachel_Teng-100x100.jpg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rachel_Teng-100x100.jpg","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"TheHomeGround Asia","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","width":640,"height":640}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/S3-Feature-1920-x-1080-px-V1-14.jpg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/S3-Feature-1920-x-1080-px-V1-14.jpg","height":900,"width":1600},"url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/veganuary-why-do-vegans-receive-so-much-flack\/","about":["Community","Environment","Health & Wellness","Local","Singapore"],"wordCount":1271,"keywords":["activism","advocacy","centre for responsible future","ethics","moral","movement","social psychology","vegan","veganuary","vegetarian"],"articleBody":"Using vegans as the subject of punchlines and ridicule has become a trope of sorts in mainstream media and television. In popular American sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, self-pronounced food connoisseur Charles Boyle breaks into an amusing fit when he finds out his casual lover is vegan.\u00a0\u201cShe\u2019s a vegan!\u201d he exclaims in the middle of a funeral. (Source: Brooklyn Nine-Nine)This Veganuary, it suffices to say that our omnivorous readers do not want to scroll through yet another article on why the plants are (literally) greener on the other side. Rather, we shall explore all the reasons why many find vegans and what they stand for to be so inherently repulsive \u2014 as repulsive as drug addicts, as research shows, apparently.\u00a0For some context, people go vegan for three main reasons: health, the environment, and ethics.\u00a0In 2021, out of more than half a million people who signed up to be part of Veganuary worldwide, almost half reported that their main motivation was animal welfare, more than 1 in 5 for personal health, and about 1 in 5 for the environment.\u00a0(Source: Veganuary End of Campaign Report)\u201cIt really depends on the individual and which phase of life they are in. Those who are older look more towards their health. For the younger generation, it\u2019s usually environmental and ethical,\u201d says Ms Bianca Polak, Secretary of Centre for a Responsible Future (CRF), an organisation promoting plant-based diets.\u00a0For Mr Teo Jae Ren, 26, what he finds most deplorable about the vegan movement is the imposition of beliefs from a moral high ground. \u201cIf you just talk about veganism as a lifestyle, then I don\u2019t believe anyone actually has any beef with it,\u201d he says, probably intending the pun.\u00a0\u201cIf you\u2019re talking about veganism as an activist movement, I believe that\u2019s where you find people disagreeing with it, just as much as they would with any movement trying to extend beyond oneself in an evangelistic manner,\u201d adds Mr Teo.\u00a0Agreeing, Ms Polak believes that the movement does have a bit of an image problem. \u201cSome vegans can be quite aggressive in trying to get other people to adopt the diet, and they almost treat it like a religion of sorts \u2014 which it is not, obviously. It\u2019s a lifestyle and a personal choice,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u00a0If you love How I Met Your Mother,\u00a0 you\u2019ll probably love this one.\u00a0A vegan is portrayed to use the passive-aggressive \u2018moral high ground\u2019 argument. (Source: How I Met Your Mother)\u201cHonestly, I think the vegans who are more evangelistic are those who do it for ethical reasons,\u201d adds Ms Polak.\u00a0With almost half of vegans citing animal welfare as their main motivation for adopting the lifestyle, the rest of the mainstream public unfortunately runs a higher risk of having a bad run-in with the vocal extremists of the otherwise affable vegan community.\u00a0On the other hand, a vegan might not actually have to do or say anything before rubbing a meat-lover the wrong way. \u201cBy their mere existence, vegans force people to confront their cognitive dissonance,\u201d social psychologist Hank Rothgerber at Bellarmine University, Kentucky tells the BBC.\u00a0According to Dr Rothergerber, people use around 15 strategies to deal with the \u201cmeat paradox\u201d \u2014 the mental paradox that one can eat meat and continue to feel like a good person. One could, for example, experience this paradox when eating fish and chips while their beloved goldfish watches.\u00a0One such strategy could be dissociating meat from animals, or choosing not to acknowledge how meat is being produced. With a vegan holding up the moral mirror, staring this paradox in the face might be a little harder to do.\u00a0Another study led by Professor Benoit Monin from Stanford University showed that society tends to be threatened by people who have similar morals to us, yet are prepared to take the extra mile to stick to them. In a follow-up study, the team also found that meat-eaters who had thought about being negatively judged by vegetarians first, tended to associate vegetarians more strongly with negative words.\u00a0Let\u2019s not forget that food is a key love language here in this food paradise we call home. Meat-heavy food trends like Mookata and K-BBQ are all the rage these days, further affirming the default omnivorous lifestyle.\u00a0Coupled with Asian cultural values of conformity, finding vegan accommodations as a group can come across as an impolite \u2014 or even deeply personal\u00a0\u2014 inconvenience for those who take their food-tasting crusades seriously.\u00a0While many F&B outlets are starting to cater to their plant-based patrons, Ms Polak warns that companies don\u2019t actually have vegans in mind, but vegetarians \u2014 so \u201cmeat-free\u201d instead of \u201cplant-based\u201d might be a more accurate term to use on the menu.\u00a0A lot of vegans end up writing to restaurants complaining about this, which may give rise further to this sociocultural polarisation, she says.\u00a0No single reason\u00a0\u201cThe rationale for adopting this lifestyle can be so different,\u201d asserts Mr Teo. And if that\u2019s the case, it might be unwise to assume that another person is going to \u2014 if ever \u2014 be convinced by the same arguments that they were.\u00a0\u00a0He says as much as people go vegan to improve their health, a similar proportion of people need more carnivorous diets such as the ketogenic diet for other health reasons. Some environmentalists would also argue that a flexitarian diet is better for the planet than a full vegan one.\u00a0Singer Miley Cyrus would agree with him. After six years of being a vegan, the Disney star shifted to a pescatarian diet, because she felt her \u201cbrain wasn\u2019t functioning as well as it could be\u201d.\u201cI think when you become the face of something, it\u2019s just a lot of pressure,\u201d she explained, citing the stress she received from her vegan followers. \u201cAnd if I can adjust and I can learn how to operate at 110 [percent] living a vegan lifestyle that would be ideal. I just didn\u2019t get there.\u201dWhat about meat alternatives, one might ask? Mr Teo finds it to be costly, less healthy, and in some ways, a roundabout way of reducing culpability.\u00a0But Ms Polak cautions against generalising all vegan options to be equally healthy. \u201cIf you eat a lot of fried and processed vegan foods, then it\u2019s a no-brainer that it won\u2019t improve your health,\u201d she says, highlighting that alternative meats like Impossible are actually high in salt content.\u00a0\u00a0Furthermore, these options are more catered towards heavy meat eaters rather than vegans, contrary to popular belief.\u00a0\u201cMany vegans I know actually really love the taste of meat, but gave it up for ethical reasons. They will still eat impossible and the likes, but those who give up eating meat altogether for health will avoid alternative meat because it\u2019s processed,\u201d she adds.\u00a0Changing vegan advocacy\u00a0Regardless of which side you\u2019re on, it still stands that some forms of advocacy rub off on people better than others.\u00a0These days, organisations like CRF have ceased to use graphic videos of animal slaughter in factory farms to traumatise people into abstaining from meat.\u00a0\u201cInstead, we use more positive statistics to plant seeds of change, getting people to rethink their meat consumption habits,\u201d says Ms Polak.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re not telling anyone to go vegan overnight or even go plant-based full-time,\u201d she adds, emphasising action-based advocacy over back-and-forth moral arguments. \u201cI think there\u2019s only so much you can do by telling people [to go vegan], instead, just find really tasty vegan options to try out together.\u201d\u00a0Join the conversations on TheHomeGround Asia’s Facebook and Instagram, and get the latest updates via Telegram."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Destinations","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Singapore","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/\/singapore\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Veganuary: Why do vegans receive so much flack?","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/veganuary-why-do-vegans-receive-so-much-flack\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]