Having tried vegan foods over the past months, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprized by the vegan food that's readily available in the supermarkets. Not only the taste and texture of the food was good, the prizes also weren't as high as I expected. But that, still isn't enough to make me go vegan... and here is why
I love the Burgundy Lifestyle
This may need some explanation. The Burgundy Lifestyle, for me, relates to the enjoyment of life and good food, as it once was common amongst European royalty over the past 500 years or so. They had extravagant parties, with an abundance of foods and they were enjoying their lives. This sentiment, to a certain degree, still lives in Belgian and Dutch culture. When I'm eating certain foods, which fit within the Burgundy Culture, it gives me a great feeling. As I'm somewhat of a hedonist, that is what I want.
Now this, ofcourse, is a lame excuse. Me feeling good, while eating parts of a dead animal, is no justification for eating meat. I'm well aware of that. But... when I started experimenting with vegan foods, that was the baseline. I wanted the same experience with eating vegan foods as I have while eating meats and that is where it fell short.
Vegan products are quite okay-ish
I'm ofcourse not talking about hamburgers, sausages, ground beef or ground pork. I've eaten the vegan versions of those meats and actually they were quite good. (althought the carrot-pumpkin burger made me gag to a point where I nearly threw-up) The vegan chicken nuggets, vegan chicken schnitzels, the vegetable burgers, vegan shoarma, vegan sausages and vegan ground-beef were all quite good in both taste and texture.
In my daily life I'm quite willing to switch from actual meat to vegan products for about half the time. Why not fully? The taste and texture of real meat products is just better. I'm not even sorry to say so. I'm willing to compromise, but based on the experiences of the past months, I just can't see myself go fully vegan.
Regular vegan products don't give the food experience I want
On top of that... the complete dining experience with dishes like Deer stew, Boarleg or even some simple, but excellent spare ribs, in combination with a nice wine or some good beers... I don't feel like the experience will be the same with Vegan foods.
One can say, 'you can have wonderful vegatian meals, that can give you a good feeling'. They won't be wrong, but the sentiment surrounding it won't be the same. The ambiance won't be the same. It's still good, but on a different level.
Having an excellent dinner, with close friends or relatives, or even by yourself, where you've had a long build-up to the dinner itself, preparing for the dinner, knowing that you're going to make a special dinner, which takes additional effort to make, bring an additional level of excitement, that vegan foods and vegetarian foods simply haven't brought me. And I can't imagine vegan foods giving me that feeling.
The morality of veganism
Obviously there is a rather large moral sentiment behind veganism. I do realize that. The food industry has grown way too large in order to supply a grotesk amount of people, a quantity of food of disgusting proportions, leading to a mountain of perfectly good food being wasted. Which means many animals are killed for nothing.
Prior to these "production" animals being killed, often they are treated horribly and they do suffer terribly. This is something I do know and I definitely object against. However... this is a completely seperate issue from me eating meat. Eating meat, on itself, is not immoral. It's can't be.
If eating meat was immoral, then eating roadkill or stillborn animals would be immoral. Which it isnt. With morality we look at wellbeing. Treating cognitive and sentient animals poorly reduces their wellbeing and thus we consider this to be immoral. Purposely killing these animals also 'reduces' their wellbeing, so we can consider this to be immoral aswell. But eating eat? No. If its already dead, then you cant reduce its wellbeing any further.
Here, ofcourse, the principle of supply and demand comes in to play. To meet the demand, more animals need to be produced and killed. So, obviously one can argue that eating meat, leads to immoral acts, as you create the demand for the supply of dead animals. Sure, I get all of that. But I don't look at the moral aspect for eating meat.
I fully accept that, for eating meat, it can be argued that this is immoral. I see morality as being subjective and I am willing to elevate my own wellbeing over the wellbeing of other animals, when it comes to food. At the moment that I am chosing to eat vegan foods over actual meat, I am compromizing my mental wellbeing in relation to the physical wellbeing of the animal I would have eaten. This is a personal choice.
In daily life, I am willing to compromise and add vegan foods, sure. But I will not completely refrain from eating meat, as the feeling I get from eating meat benefits my own wellbeing, even when it means an innocent animal needs to be killed to achieve that feeling.
If that hypocrisy? Maybe. Do I care about the hypocrisy? No. I like meat. I like a nice deermeat stew, porkleg, a smoked chicken, things like that. And from time to time I really do enjoy eating that, in private or with family or close friends. If you think that is immoral, then so be it. But as long as the vegan foodindustry doesnt provide foods that give me the same experience, I'm going to favor this. Even when I know it can be considered to be immoral, as I favor my own wellbeing over that of the animals involved.
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