Can anyone explain to me why being vegan is the new cool, while being vegetarian is equal to eating meat without eating meat? Like, when I'm looking for vegetarian recipes, I only see vegan recipes, no vegetarian ones anywhere.
psst, since you shared those videos I thought I'd share a cool resource. There's a website called kinderworld.org that has collections of videos on the egg industry, dairy industry, and meat industry. I hope you find this useful :)
In my country, supermarkets aren't allowed to sell eggs from caged hens. Only eggs from hens raised outdoors. There are four categories of eggs marked with numbers:
0: eggs from caged hens, not sold anywhere legally.
1: eggs from uncaged hens but raised indoors, very difficult to find.
2: eggs from uncaged hens and raised outdoors, easy to find.
3: eggs from uncaged hens, raised outdoors and feed with natural food, without pesticides and shit, easy to find.
By the way, US is neither the center of the world nor the only country in the world. Sorry to say that, but I think it's necessary to say it.
2: eggs from uncaged hens and raised outdoors, easy to find.
We have similar categories, however our laws leave a lot to be desired. Apparently a huge indoor shed with a tiny door to a small outdoor area qualifies for this category because in theory, the hens could take a look outside.
I hope, your regulations are better worded than ours.
Yes, animal cruelty is a real problem. But I'd say the message then is "choose responsibly the source of your milk and eggs", not necesarilly jump-full-vegan
As a vegetarian myself, I've thought about this a little bit.
I think it ultimately boils down to the fact that going vegan requires a lot more work from an individual. Avoiding meat might be a pain in the ass to implement at times, but the actual intellectual process is straightforward. You need to watch out for soup stocks, cheeses with rennet, and meat sauces basically. Everything else, at least in my experience, is obvious. Converting a recipe to vegetarian doesn't require too much thinking. A lot of foods are just innately vegetarian and won't be labelled as such: there aren't "vegetarian pancakes" or "vegetarian pies" out there — they're just expected to be vegetarian unless someone made a meat version. Only a small handful of pizzas will be labelled vegetarian even though most are or trivially can be made such. It's easier to find/adapt recipes that are vegetarian compatible.
Going vegan is just a full extra process. Eggs, milk, butter aren't visually obvious. Even bread isn't certain to be vegan-friendly. The ingredients being removed from a recipe cannot be simply removed, especially with baked goods, without risking the entire recipe becoming a disaster. If you take a cookie recipe and remove the eggs and butter, you're going to be disappointed; you need to find a recipe designed from the ground up to not use eggs or butter.
The extra restrictions on vegans mean they need to be much more specific about their foods than vegetarians.
I would describe myself as vegetarian but there is a wide variety of ways to be strict about it so it's almost a useless way to describe oneself. Personally, I avoid cheese because of rennet, wine because of eisenglass, I won't eat anything with gelatin, i avoid eggs unless they come from my friends who have chickens (because I know their chickens are well cared for). I end up being close to vegan but don't really feel like that label fits me because I'm sure I eat butter without realizing it, or other milk products which can end up in places you don't expect (milk is in tootsie rolls, for example).
On the other hand I know vegetarians who just avoid meat and are fine with chicken or beef stock or gelatin.
Especially since so many products contain stuff like milk powder etc., which is insanely cheap due to being almost a waste product of the animal industry.
Vegan is easier for me compared to vegetarian which I was for a few years. Now I don't have to think about it, if it contains animal products I don't support it.
I found more new recipes instead of just avoiding things I added more new things. Vegetarian diet is mostly removing stuff while a plant based diet is more about adding new stuff.
So don't eat the shitty fake vegan cheese. I agree, they're pretty meh. From a former cheese enthusiast, some of the cultured nut "cheeses" are ok, but they don't really melt or stretch the same. (Not that the mass market potato-starch based ones do much better, anyways.)
The closesest thing I've found so far is homemade almond ricotta, mainly because the taste is quite close to cow ricotta, and ricotta generally isn't used as a melting cheese.
Sigh, well I get downvotes but I just say it - because it's more restrictive and some people really like that, dare I say live for that. I'm pretty sure in 20-30 years there'll be a more restrictive diet than veganism and it'll be the new cool
If you look at the moral side of things, vegetarian recipes still often require products from the animal industry. If you look closer at the ways animals in those industrial settings are treated, it can be hard to stomach. We like to believe the images of happy cows on mountain pastures and chickens running around freely on a farm, but the reality looks very differently in the overwhelming majority.
Plus there is still the environmental issue, using food to raise animals to produce food is still a lossy process.