I’ve always seen food as more of an experience than a necessity, what I’d consume would reflect my mood, atmosphere and self reflections at the time, I can’t remember a time when I ate because I had to eat, I’d eat when I wanted to eat. While this has never come to mind in the past it is a predominant thought at the moment as I have decided to become a vegan.

While my reasons for doing so are unclear at the moment, I have had conversations with many people, telling me what they think veganism is, mostly in a negative fashion. What surprised me most was how much of hostility a simple diet change would incite such passion, not only with like minded people, but with the opposers that wanted to share their views all of a sudden.

It’s not surprising, change has always made masses uncomfortable, even to extreme levels. The issue I have is that nothing is said as long as everybody stands to conform, but as soon as somebody speaks, or acts out of line it is noted and brought to discussion in a pessimistic manor, while these are issues that I may elaborate on in future posts, for now, I just wanted to share my bewilderment at the stigma that comes along with changing a simple aspect of an individuals life.

On the other hand, looking through popular vegan websites and forums, I can see that this reaction from the general populous has caused vegans to be overly defensive and retaliate toward the people that have caused them to feel isolated. They treat meat eaters with such disdain to the point where they’ve become overly aggressive themselves, calling other people things such as “corpse eater” which in itself isn’t exactly incorrect, but does have a certain implication of a passive aggressive nature to the issue at hand.

While I do plan on using this forum as a means for me to discuss, and vent on my new lifestyle choice, it seems that so far nothing has come of it, and I like the people that I’ve been discussing, are stuck on the larger topic at hand, rather than going along with my new self. Will there ever be a time where individualism is truly accepted?