Well said. I think people confuse dietary choices with religion. There is no 'holy book' telling me what I can or cannot eat. It is all my personal choice. I have not eaten meat apart from the odd accidental case in about 30 years, but I have fish when I feel like it. A lot of our eggs come from our own chickens who have a nice life. I rarely have dairy milk these days and have cut down on cheese for health reasons, but that does not mean I will never have them.
I base my decisions on health, animal welfare and the environment with an element of pragmatism. Sometimes there are limited choices and I do not want to go hungry, but I will stick with the no meat part. It is a lot easy to be veggie (however you define that) these days. Some vegans may look down on me, but what do I care? Some of my meals are vegan, but I would find it hard to stick to that diet.
Soooooo muuuuuch thiiiiis. It's the people who treat it like religion who drive me bonkers. When I was veg people used to be surprised or call me "the cool vegetarian" simply because I wasn't a pushy asshole. When people are that way, they are actually driving people away rather than making more people want to be veg. Sometimes I ask, do you want more people to be veg, or do you want to feel self-righteous? And I've actually had some answer that they don't care if they drive people away from a veg diet - so, they prefer to feel self-righteous, and aren't doing it for the animals or the Earth at all, but for themselves. It's like Christians who are genuinely nice and charitable and not pushy, and Christians who are busy telling everyone else that they're going to hell. Do you want more people to come to your church, or do you want to feel superior? If it's the latter...
So yeah, people who use religion or diet to feel superior can kiss my arse, they're just assholes.
There are people going to steak restaurants to shout at others eating meat. I wouldn't do that as it is not the way to get them to change. We need to generally cut down on meat though. Having other options helps.
So true why do we need a label, you've summed up my post an a paragraph haha. Seriously though this is the kind of message we need to portray and this is a major societal problem too many people think we have to conform to one or the other diet why? Once this cycle is broken society will be able to grasp freedom and realise we all control our own destiny 💯🐒