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.
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
Veganuary beganuaried
As Veganuary hit and I finished updating the Veggieness section of this here website, I was lightning-bolted by one of my many micro-epiphanies: Ever since Covid demanded I spend less time in the kitchen and more time in bed I’ve become a lousy, lazy vegan.
Veganuary: What, why, how, when and who
Veganuary aims to get people trying veganism for a month, drawing them in with time-limited new year faddishness. Last year it had more than half a million sign ups, with about 85% committing to cutting down on meat and dairy thereafter, and a solid 40% aiming to stay vegan for all time. That’s decent, given the most popular new year’s resolution – getting and using an annual gym membership – has a success rate of less than 3% I assume.
Soyless Green
As with many hells, the road to veganism is paved with good intentions…
Stem in a teacup? Celling out? (It’s been a while)
You’ll recall they made a stem cell burger a while back. It was funded by one of the guys from Google taking a break off reading your emails and spying on what you spaff to. He gave a few hundred grand to a couple of mad scientists taking a break off stitching hitchhikers’ mouths to hobos’ bumholes.
Mr Zero’s unfeasibly grand re-veggiefication scheme: part two
As you’ll recall I’ve been terribly ill, mummy’s brave little soldier keeping his chin up through the flu, a chest infection, a spot of whooping cough and very little in the way of blogging. Throughout this charming episode I’ve had a number of very helpful people explain it’s all down to my vegetarianism, there having been no documented cases of illness among meat eaters.
Mr Zero’s unfeasibly grand re-veggiefication scheme: part one
In the days before my epic post-qualifying/pre-job slouchfest, back when I was an overworked and increasingly tetchy student, I bashed out a few new year’s resolutions to fill up a bit of space on what was becoming a seriously neglected blog. However, comeuppances being what they are, I’m now forced to put some effort into doing whatever it was I said I’d do, and all to satisfy an audience of precisely no one. How I hate myself.
Operation Parmesan: It begins
As the days count down and 2011 draws to a close I have some unfinished business to attend to, an outstanding resolution yet to be instood. I speak, of course, of Operation Parmesan, the unprecedented assault on the world of cuisine that will make the Hiroshima bombing look like an inappropriate historical event to make reference to.
And The Jetsons melted down Rosie for kicks
It’s a hard and trying task, all this Zero business. All this research, all this protesting, all this motivating the troops and doing the groupies. At times I grow weary. People cannot live on self-righteousness alone. It can’t be all hard work and hand wringing and so from time to time I put down my tools, tramp down from the moral high ground to the sewer in which the rest of you live, and have a night off. A couple of nights ago I watched a film. Naturally, I was able to turn it pretty quickly into hard work and handwringing.
Words are my power
You’ll recall how I’ve been writing for my uni’s studentmag. It’s some full on proper do-gooding, converting everyone on campus to my splendid way of life and raising issues usually neglected by right-on students such as Fairtrade, vegetarianism, feminism, environmentalism… Oh. Right.
