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Currently I am baking the most delicious coconut/oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies. Dietarily this was a horrible idea. While delicious, the cookies are are laden with wheat flour and sugar and I can't help but rationalize eating the ones that get broken when I take them off the pan. This cleanse has me convinced that wheat and sugar are basically (
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1. That's completely my viewpoint as well. In an ideal world I'd like everyone to eat things that are vegan and organic and locally grown, but sometimes (most of the time) that's not feasible for a variety of reasons. We have to pick our battles. On the "diet" front, I think veganism is just a pretty easy way of beginning to sort through the good and the bad in food politics, and so I consider it as my fundamental starting point. However, I think that for a lot of people it prevents them from thinking about how a vegan diet (especially in Canada) can really be problematic in terms of environmental impact and labour issues with the foods we come to rely on.
For me where it gets more complicated is in lifestyle (and especially in clothing) because so many other political factors come into play. Actually, I guess they're kind of the same political factors (labour, overconsumption, wastefulness, etc), but for some reason I tend to come down on "the other side" as more fundamental in the unrelated-to-food debates.
2. Those things are all also major concerns that I have. Gluten and soy are two things that most vegans I know probably rely upon much too heavily. From a health perspective that can be really problematic.
Veganism is easy when you don't really have other ethical concerns about consumption, but when you aren't willing to take it as the be-all and end-all of any argument (and increasingly I'm not as I take labour practices and environmental impact and consumption into account), things get complicated. And I don't feel at all guilty or conflicted about that. I make choices because they're right for me, and I don't have to answer to anyone. End of story! If people are trying to make the most ethical choices they can, it just seems really mean and unnecessary for others to get all "veganer than thou" and come down on people who are trying to make good choices.
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I totally agree with you though, veganism as being a starting place for questioning food politics in general. However, I also find that for a LOT of people who label themselves vegan, it's also an ending place where being vegan justifies all kinds of other unethical food practices. Even the term 'vegan' means completely different things to different people!
Anyway, I have so much more to say about this. I've actually been trying (half-heartedly, what with school..) to get a food politics zine together to talk about these exact issues! Basically I just want to get a bunch of different perspectives of food choices, i.e. what you eat and why you eat. My main issue is with people in our (respective?) boats, picking battles with food and how to eat ethically with food we enjoy and keep us healthy.
I don't know if you read this, but it's kind of where I want to go with the zine:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/allscrapedup/71175.html
And to a lesser extent this (the food part, not the sxe part, heh):
http://www.livejournal.com/community/sxe_grownups/19617.html
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I have typed up a response to you about a zillion times and always end up deleting what I write because it just seems redundant and full of "I agree!"s. I am very grateful that I encountered veganism at a young age. It really changed the way I thought about politics and political action, and gave me a sense of agency that I think young people need so that they don't feel endlessly frustrated. Having said that, I think it was also kind of responsible for making me think that I don't have to do any more because I'm doing more than most people. There have been points in my life when I was certainly of the essentialist "there is no reason for anyone anywhere to not be vegan" mindset. In my defense, it was at a time when I was very young, had never met another vegan, and I got all my information from interviews with vegan celebrities and decade old animal rights propaganda.
I really hope that you go forward with the food politics zine. Veg*ns so often criticize omnivores for saying, "Don't tell me about why this food is bad. I don't want to know! I like it!", and yet so many of us do the exact same thing when confronted with information about non-organic food or the abusive labour relations it can take to get tofu and mid-winter strawberries to our plates. At the same time, I'm finding that there's an explosion of interest in the politics of food among my friends, and especially those friends who aren't vegetarian.
Also, I happen to particularly love when you talk about food because to me, you are a shining example of someone who does eat ethically with food you enjoy that keeps you healthy.
xoxo!
(PS. I liked the second post that you linked so much that I just joined the community!)
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Heh.
Seriously though, I hear where you're coming from. I "became" vegan around 18 or so, and it really influenced me to think about food beyond the supermarket shelves. However, it was limited in that it only taught me to think about certain areas of food production/consumption, the ones relating to animals.
I really want to get this zine underway, but I find it's pretty difficult to get people to actually write things for it, even if they are interested in the topic. I have to re-examine my strategies for recruitment, I think, and advertise more. However, I'm not sure yet if I want it to be completely open (i.e. write what you eat and why you eat it) or more focused and specific. We'll see.
Also, thanks for the compliments. You make me blush Pam! I aspire to be as eloquent as yourself.
Unrelated, I keep thinking that you and my ex-partner Jonah (butserious would be good LJ buddies, or at least you would have interesting arguments (he was one of the ones arguing on my sxegrownups thread I sent you). His love of parentheses reminds me of your love of the ampersand (he has tattoos of parentheses on the backs of his arms). Anyway, just a passing thought!
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Anyway.
I wish I had some helpful advice for you about the zine, but I'm terrible at organizing things and have lost almost all faith in collective activities. It's a debate that a lot of people could surely contribute a lot to, but the difficulty, as with any project, lies in finding people who are committed.
Having said all that, I really hope you are able to decide on a course of action and pursue this, becuase I think it could be really beneficial for a lot of people.
Don't blush! Everything I said was true. However, I must disagree with your contention that I am articulate. My lack of oratory skills and limited vocabulary are two things that I really wish I could change about myself. I was much more eloquent before I started taking French immersion. Now everything just comes out in a jumble of non-sequiturs and semi-coherent paragraphs!
Phew, that was long again!
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