Veggieness
Veggie Medicine
We can’t even use leeches.
No one gets into this veggie thing to make life easier for themselves. Everywhere we look there are vicious bastards making things harder for us. Food has animals in it. Drink has animals in it. Crockery and clothes and toiletries have animals in them. And when we’re ill we’re up against another stupid thing: Even medicine has animals in it. Here comes another pain in your ass. Maybe literally, depending on what your medicine’s for.
What’s the what?
Some medicines have gelatine in them, which isn’t veggie or vegan. Some have cholecalciferol (vitamin D) or lanolin from sheep, others have lactose monohydrate from cows. All three may or may not be vegetarian. They’re definitely not vegan. Some have magnesium stearate, stearic acid and lactic acid which can be derived from vegan-friendly plants, or animal-unfriendly dead animals. Some have glycocholic acid, which is basically bile from an animal’s stomach, proving, once again, people are fucking disgusting. And there could be a bunch of other stuff for all I know. They’re chugging stomach bile. God knows what they’ll go after next.
Even if ingredients are as vegan as lettuce they might be packed into dirty-bad gelatine capsules and blow the whole thing. And even if ingredients are vegan and they’re packed into harmless vegan caplets, medicine has to be tested on animals before humans can get a shot at it.
And we’re not down on medicine here. This isn’t ableism shaming people who need to take stuff. I am very definitely not suggesting people stop taking medicine, and very definitely not stopping taking mine. People need medicine to live. At the very least we need medicine to live less miserably, and even the Vegan Society says we need to look after our health in a non-vegan world. Still, this gives us the kind of dilemma those know-nothing naysayers think they’re onto with their “Yeah but what if you were on a desert island” shit.
Hands: Wringing
So what’s a veggie to do? First, we can check medication ingredients at www.medicines.org.uk or your local equivalent. There we’ll be able to find the ingredients that manufacturers don’t always list in their sleeve notes, and hopefully find brands that make the same thing without dead animal parts. Researching this article, for example, I was delighted to discover the only painkillers that have ever helped with my hilarious spinal injury might contain fucking milk, marking the 58th time I’ve ruined my life for you people.
Second, we can be hypocrites trying our best and failing in a world that isn’t ready for us. If my aunt Mabel has a headache, she can take paracetamol and avoid gelatine capsules. She’s happy, the cows are happy, the high ground’s of the moral type. If my aunt Mabel has diabetes and her pancreas is on the fritz she can do anything she likes. If the only thing keeping her alive is a dose of Creon, which uses pancreatic enzymes from poor little pigs, it turns out I like aunt Mabel more than I like pigs.
It doesn’t feel great to say it but we should be honest here. I’m not falling back on “survival of the fittest” or “top of the food chain” weak-ass carnivore arguments. I’m saying there are times we have to be hypocrites or die. I don’t want to die. And I don’t want aunt Mabel to die.
Unless I get a mention in her will, in which case I’m a hundred percent supporting the pigs.
THE GUIDE
Definitions
Vegans, vegetarians, carnivores, omnivores, pescatarians, flexitarians, fruitarians… Every one of these tedious knobs explained so you can decide which you’re going to be, starting now.
My Life As A Hypocrite
How a spider spurred my veggie awakening and with it my wider Zero awakening and with it your wider Zero awakening and with it a general saving of animals, humanity and the planet.
Levelling up
How, why and which I went vegan. Well, not which. But how and why. And which you should too.
WHY THOUGH
Six solid reasons for going veggie. Each of them so convincing you’ll be mortified you haven’t done it already.
YEAH BUT
Lies, myths and tiresome bullshit about veggieness and veganism
Gelatine and the Newbie Pitfalls
Bits of animals are hidden everywhere: in marshmallows, in red food dye, in fake fingernails, even in meat and fish and everything. Swot up on what you need to miss out on.
In search of protein
I scream, you scream, we all scream for protein. Let’s just calm down and eat some. It’s basically everywhere.
What's The Deal With Eggs?
Prepare yourself for the dullest of dull questions meat-eaters will ask you, armed with a bit of knowledge and a lot of spunk.
Veggie medicine
Because even being ill is an ethical pickle for the self-righteous vegetarian. Between gelatine capsules and mandatory animal testing, you’re best just maintaining perfect health forever.
Veggie Pets
What should we feed our fellow omnivores? Should we force our morality on other creatures? Will a leopard ever want a bit of tofu? Just three of the questions I’m not all that into but wrote about anyway.
Veggie Kids
I believe the children are the future. The pale, listless future.
Animal testing
Putting lipstick on a pig. And shoving botox in a mouse. And giving a bunch of animals a ton of tumours.
THE BLOG
National Vegetarian Week begins; will last three days if we get tired
Not to be confused with International Vegetarian Week, Regional Vegetarian Week or National Vegetarian Hour, National Vegetarian Week sees thousands of pasty-faced liberal weeds using their collective energies – about the same as the energies of two meat eaters – to convince the world to become vegetarian. You’ll have noticed this year’s campaign featured prominently on page 27 of your newspaper.
Blue PETA
Like many people I’ve spent most of the last week researching for the vegetarian section of a website called The People’s Zero. In the course of my intellectual travels I spent a lot of time on the websites of the Vegetarian Society and PETA and was struck by the inanity of PETA’s campaign to convert Page 3 fans to vegetarianism while leaving women objectified and ignored and feminists of both genders furious.
