The Organic Vegan

Vegetarians don’t eat meat, which is kind of obvious. They do, however, often consume other animal products, like maybe eggs, and they typically don’t have much of a problem with people like me, who require an animal sacrifice for a meal. Their reasons are usually moral, religious, or health related. It’s kind of like being Jewish, religiously, where you aren’t supposed to eat pork at all, or shellfish, or animals that don’t have cloven hooves, like horses. Or maybe it’s animals that do have cloven hooves, like cattle. It’s one or the other. Muslims also don’t eat hogs, unless no one is looking. Or something.

But vegetarians, at least some of them, tend to be a little arbitrary when they determine what constitutes meat. For example, fish is kind of iffy. Some vegetarians eat it, some don’t, and some only eat certain fish, which is probably just personal preference. Some eat chicken, too, on account of chickens being birds, more or less, and tasting really good if they’re fried right. So far, so good.

Vegans, on the other hand, are a little more specialized. To be a vegan, you not only have to eschew all meat and animal products, like milk and eggs and grease that comes from animals and grease that meat or fish was fried in, etc., you also have to spend at least an hour a day irritating people who eat those things. The peta people are pretty good at that. Like, they’ll post a picture of a steak, along with a picture of a calf, with a caption that says, ‘Your meal was somebody’s brother.’ And no, I don’t think they realize how ridiculous they sound.

A vegan, a real vegan, also refuses to use any product that was tested on animals, like deodorant, or ink, or thumbtacks, or whatever. They’re big on whining about animal testing, and when you ask them if they’d be OK with, say, medicine being tested on animals if it saved their child’s life, they’ll tell you no, they’d rather their child died. So they’re either liars are really horrible parents. And no, that’s not meant to be funny.

The funny part is when vegans post videos about stuff they eat, and prove, accidentally, that they’re basically loons. For instance, a vegan woman recently posted a video where she showed two chicken eggs in a bowl and said they were hardboiled vegan eggs she got from a vegan market. For $17. Then she peeled one, commenting on how it smelled like a regular chicken egg, and put salt and pepper and hot sauce on it, and ate it. And then she said, ‘I can’t believe this is vegan.’ Because, of course, it tasted good, like eggs are supposed to. That’s one of the main clues to why vegans are always unhappy, by the way.

Another ‘vegan’ posted a video in which she says, ‘I’ve been vegan for three years, but I eat eggs every morning to get my protein. The key is that you buy organic because organic means the chickens were fed a vegan diet. So if the chickens were fed a vegan diet, that means the eggs are vegan.’ And she says it with a totally straight face.

No. That’s not how this works. That’s not how anything works. Organic just means ‘relating to or derived from living matter.’ Chickens are organic, of course, and so are people, and cows, and fingernails, and tadpoles. Meat that’s advertised as organic means the cow wasn’t given any chemicals, or antibiotics, or growth hormones, or fed any styrofoam or rubber tires or anything else man-made.

And it’s a misnomer, since all cows are organic by definition, whatever they eat. But no matter what you feed a chicken, the eggs don’t come out vegan. They’re still chicken eggs, and they’re delicious, which is why they don’t taste vegan.

Personally, I mostly eat beef, and cows eat grass and grain, so I’m a second-hand vegan. I still eat fish and chicken and pork, but they’re organic, so that’s fine, too. I guess I’m a swell guy.

The only real difference between me and vegans is that I don’t think I’m better than you . . .

Kendal Hemphill is an outdoor humor columnist and minister who doesn’t necessarily need a bunch of letters from vegans written in crayon, thanks all the same. Write to him, if you must, at [email protected]