Veggieness

What’s The Deal With Eggs?

This gets real intimate real quick.

“I didn’t know you’re vegetarian.”
“I am though.”
“So do you eat fish?”
“No, I’m vegetarian.”
“I know vegetarians who eat fish.”
“They’re pescatarian. I don’t eat meat or fish.”
“So you’re a vegan?”
“No, I eat dairy. Vegans don’t eat dairy.”
“So you eat cheese?”
“Vegetarian cheese, yeah.”
“Isn’t all cheese vegetarian?”
“No.”
“What about eggs?”

Yes, what about eggs? What about eggs indeed.

Y’know, we’ve had a lot of fun here with our role play (I was the veggie, you were the nosey bastard) but there’s a serious point here. Once you go veggie you’re a target for all kinds of questions and “Why thoughs” and “Yeah buts” about your extreme lifestyle choice. One of the most common is how you’re able to eat eggs despite claiming to not eat animals. After all, says the crowd, eggs turn into chickens and chickens are animals. So begins the pro-life/pro-choice debate. About chickens.

As sure as eggs is or is not eggs
The summary is: Eggs are not chickens. The unsummary is: Not very attractive but stick with me here.

An egg is not a chicken. This isn’t a pro-choice thing. It’s that an egg isn’t comparable to a human foetus, because a human foetus is the result of a human ovum having been fertilised by a human sperm. The real comparison is with a human ovum that hasn’t been fertilised, because a woman produces ova whether or not she has a gentleman caller and a hen produces eggs whether or not she’s being courted by a cockerel. Eggs only turn into chickens if fertilised, the same way ova only turn into babies when someone ejaculates onto a stork.

Even fertilised eggs aren’t chickens. A fertilised egg has the potential to become a chicken, but only if incubated. It’s at this point you stray into the “potential life” territory of televangelists, Republican extremists and defenders of stem cells, but your non-veggie interrogators rarely make it this far into the conversation. Point is, if a fertilised egg hasn’t been incubated it won’t hatch shit.

As sure as eggs is bad
The other thing is how hens are treated. Battery farms aren’t much fun but The Vegetarian Society defines free-range eggs as vegetarian and recommends them as part of a vegetarian diet. It’s tempting to go with that, but look a little deeper and you’ll feel like an arsehole for eating them. As we learned elsewhere in this stupid thing, millions of male chicks are killed on the day they’re born because they’re useless to industrial eggeries. Depending on where they are in the world they’ll be gassed, drowned or minced alive. The latest of my many micro-epiphanies called it: The dairy industry is the meat industry. If we’re eating eggs we’re taking part in it.

So that’s the deal with eggs. They’re part of a big industrial death machine and are bad wrong bad. But if you stick with them, next time someone asks you about eggs just tell them you’re eating the equivalent of a human ovum that hasn’t been penetrated by spunk. That’ll draw the conversation to a close pretty quickly.

Photo credit: Bernjuer

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.

 

Going vegan: A cow stands in the ocean in Goa, India

Levelling up

How, why and which I went vegan. Well, not which. But how and why. And which you should too.

 

Why go veggie: A sad pig squashed into a truck

WHY THOUGH

Six solid reasons for going veggie. Each of them so convincing you’ll be mortified you haven’t done it already.

 

Myths about veganism: A man with his head in his hands

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.

 

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