When I was a kid growing up in a meat-eating household in England, we always had eggs and milk in our fridge.
Eggs were a regular feature of many of our family meals. Boiled eggs with bread “soldiers” for breakfast before school, fried eggs and bacon on weekends, fried egg and chips for supper, scrambled or poached egg on toast for snacks, eggs in our cakes, and so on.
I used to particularly look forward to the “double-yolkers” that my mum got from the local market… those unfeasibly large eggs with two, and sometimes three, yolks inside that looked like something an ostrich might have laid.
As for milk, I used to drink gallons of the stuff as well as having it on my breakfast cereal. On top of that, I ate copious amounts of cream, custard and milky puddings. Also, I cannot forget the thickly laden buttered toasts and teacakes. I consumed so much dairy as a kid, my parents thought I was going to start “mooing” (Needless to say that I didn’t “moo” but I did get lots of mucus, asthma and lots of stomach aches… conditions which have been linked to dairy consumption).
Leaving Home
When I left home and was at college, eggs and milk were always on my list when I went out shopping. Not only did I enjoy the taste of eggs and milk, but I also wanted to stretch my meagre money supplies.
Even when I first chose to be vegetarian in my mid-twenties, nearly 18 years ago, I still ate eggs and drank milk. In fact, my intake of eggs and milk actually went up when I became an ovo-lacto-vegetarian. This was mainly because I was concerned about a lack of protein and calcium intake after removing all meat, poultry and fish from my diet.
The fact that I spent a high percentage of my leisure time smoking and drinking in pubs, at clubs or generally “getting wasted” with friends was not a health concern to me and demonstrates a voluntary myopic approach to my health at the time… go figure that one! (This could be seen as an example of hypocrisy, but there’s a bigger one coming… read on!)
Going Veggie For a Bet
Let me be clear, I didn’t start my veggie journey as an “ethical vegetarian”. Nope!
I first became an ovo-lacto-vegetarian for a bet (the details of which are best reserved for another time), and after having stayed true to this “new diet” for a couple of weeks (under the terms of the aforementioned wager), I felt so much healthier.
And this was despite finding myself pretty regularly in situations where I would imbibe way too much alcohol, cigarettes and other substances than are good for any sane, self-respecting person.
When I was able to wake up without a hangover, have more energy than I had done for years and also think more clearly, I realized that I must be on to something. I was hooked with this new diet so from then on meat, poultry and fish were formally removed from my diet forever.
[Side note: I also stopped drinking alcohol a few years after becoming vegetarian while I still had some brain cells intact. That was nearly 12 years ago. And then the cigarette smoking stopped. Perfect, me? Hardly... I'm trying but a long way off yet!]
Hey Man, I Get The Ethics But Let Me Keep The Cheese!
Of course, you don’t embark on this kind of thing called vegetarianism without ultimately getting into the ethical side of things. I read bits and pieces here and there to fully convince myself that I had made the right choice from an ethical perspective as well as a health strategy.
So, when asked why I was a vegetarian, I meant it when I told people that I thought harming animals was ethically wrong.
I felt I was doing my bit for the animals… even though eggs and milk played a key part in my diet and I wore leather and wool clothing.
Over the years, my intake of milk and eggs massively reduced and I stopped buying leather products. I would still occasionally have a cafe latte at coffee shops and pre-made supermarket cakes that contained modified milk products or eggs. And, of course, I still ate pizzas because, like so many other vegans, I didn’t want to give up the cheese. It’s the addiction thing that the Skinny Bitch authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin talk about:
All dairy products contain casein, but cheese has the highest concentration. In fact, cheese contains far more casein than is naturally found in cows’ milk. It also has phenylethylamine (PEA), an amphetamine-like chemical. So when we kid around and say, “I am addicted to cheese,” it’s not a joke – it’s true. We are chemically addicted to cheese.
The Fog Lifts
The day my wife and I, together with our children, gave up eating eggs and having milk in our diet (or even in our home), was the day when we all felt truly congruent in ourselves. It was like “coming home” to a part of us that we had been denying… possibly because in the communities we lived, the extended family relationships we were in, and the people we associated with, just being vegetarian was viewed as weird in itself. To be fully vegan was seen as a step too far by most other people.
Despite the social surroundings, it was so easy to “Go Vegan!” once we finally understood a few things that helped clarify our former clouded thinking.
The first thing was when we really understood the truth about the egg and dairy industries and the gross cruelty and injustices that takes place to hundreds of millions of chickens and cows just so we can have eggs and milk in our fridge.
Of course, I had previously “known” about factory farming and the cruelty that chickens and cows underwent… or at least I thought I did… so I had previously moved to predominantly free-range eggs and organic milk thinking that these would be in line with my ethics of animal welfare. Little did I know that terms such as “free-range” and “organic” can be very misleading and do not necessarily mean cruelty-free (and often don’t). (And, regardless of its living conditions, one fundamental result remains the same for the hen.. it has its egg taken away).
The other thing was that I also allowed “regular” milk and eggs into my diet via the ingredients in store-bought products and in restaurants and cafes (There’s that “voluntary myopia” in evidence again.)
Blind Ignorance
Looking back, I was like the one-eyed person in the kingdom of the blind who had an eye-patch over my “good eye” when it came to truly seeing the real world of egg and milk production. Despite being a vegetarian, I was still fairly ignorant of so many things. That changed when I watched a few videos that exposed the horrors of the egg and dairy industries.
I then felt like I had been a hypocrite in telling people that I was vegetarian because I supported animal rights. By consuming eggs and dairy, how could I say I was against animal cruelty with any real integrity? I had to ask myself some serious questions.
Now, I could no longer hide behind my ignorance of what happens to the animals involved in egg and dairy production. To have eggs or dairy products in my diet would be to condone the ongoing cruelty depicted in these videos.
There is certainly no shortage of such behind-the-scenes shots of what happens in the egg and dairy industries with websites like PETA. “Meet Your Meat” (below) is just one example that highlights the cruelty and violence towards all kinds of factory farmed animals including the plight of hen-laying eggs and dairy cows.
Find out more at meat.org.
The Charges?
When it comes to charges of hypocrisy against vegetarians and my “former self”, perhaps I would do well to consider the words of Samuel Johnson in The Rambler:
Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.
Maybe I am being too harsh. After all, was I simply ignorant of the facts and, therefore, cannot be blamed for acting on that ignorance?
And are most other ovo-lacto-vegetarians also simply “ignorant of the facts” and if they knew the real picture they would also become vegan?
In some cases this might happen as it happened to me and my family. However, in conversations I have with many ovo-lacto-vegetarians, it seems that veganism is just too difficult a stance to take for most of them. Too far out of their comfort zone when they take into account the negative responses they perceive will come back from most other people in their life; when they have to struggle to think about vegan alternatives to their staple vegetarian meals that often contain dairy and/or egg ingredients; and the challenges of foregoing leather and wool fashion items.
Do I sound judgmental? Probably, but I’m also just reporting back what I’m often told: “Going vegan would be too hard for me, right now?” And I wonder back, “When are you hoping it will it get easier?”
What Do YOU Think?
As a final point, take a look at the following slideshow which shows images captured by Animal Liberation Victoria (Australia) and Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary (USA) during investigations into the activities of the egg industry. It makes some powerful comments about the “myths behind cage-free eggs”.
One slide in the video is particularly worth repeating, especially for ovo-lacto-vegetarians who, like my former self, declare that they are opposed to animal cruelty yet still consume eggs. The slide states:
The truth of the matter is that each purchase of eggs, or the many processed foods that contain them, means more chickens brought into existence, more male chicks killed, and more laying hens exploited, exhausted, and slaughtered.
In the final analysis, we each make our own choices about what’s right or wrong. So, over to you for your comments. Are ovo-lacto-vegetarians, who claim to support animal rights, being hypocritical? Or am I just being divisive? What do you think?
