Let’s face it, it’s easy to hate on vegans. But before you interrupt with “but bacon!”, hear me out. The stats are clear – our current meat consumption habits are bad for our health, the environment, and animals. Here’s a whole list of common arguments against veganism, and my responses.
Isn’t a vegan diet unhealthy and unnatural because it lacks essential nutrients like iron and B12?
Australia’s peak health body, the National Health and Medical Research Council, acknowledges that a vegan diet can be suitable for people of all ages. A vegan diet provides many sources of iron in the form of legumes, grains, nuts, seeds and vegetables. Though a B12 supplement is recommended for vegans, B12 is actually produced by bacteria that live in the soil the animals feed from, not the animals themselves. In many cases, industrially farmed animals are fed B12 supplements.
But haven’t humans been eating meat forever?
Yes. But there’s a massive difference between the times of cavemen, for example, and now. When humankind were largely hunters and gatherers, seasonal changes meant that the majority of their diet – consisting mostly of wild nuts, seeds, berries and roots – needed to be supplemented with the energy-dense calories provided by meat in order to survive. Today, we have easy access to supermarkets and a wide variety of nutritious food; with so much choice, why would you choose to take a life?
But I love the taste of [insert animal product here].
Taste is the most arbitrary and malleable of our senses. Also, we are creatures of habit – if we grow up eating a certain food regularly, then it makes sense that we gain pleasure from eating it. People in other countries claim that dog meat tastes wonderful, yet in the Western world people usually react to such a practice with disgust. Does taste justify cruelty?
But animals eat other animals – it’s all part of the natural food chain.
What separates humans from other animals is our cognitive ability to make moral decisions. Therefore, the “food chain” point becomes moot when we realise there is nothing “natural” about the way modern society forces animals into a machine-like existence, robbing them of their natural behaviours and desires.
So I get why you don’t eat meat. But what’s wrong with eggs and dairy? The animals aren’t harmed.
Well actually, they are; such animals arguably have a more painful life than animals raised for their meat. Instead of being slaughtered after a matter of weeks or months, hens and dairy cows have to endure years of suffering, often in cramped, unsanitary conditions, constantly producing at an unnatural rate, and with a much shorter lifespan. Ultimately, the dairy and egg industries are intertwined with the meat industry, so supporting one inevitably means supporting the other.
But I eat free-range eggs and humanely killed meat. What’s wrong with that?
Don’t buy into the clever marketing ploys. “Free-range” doesn’t often mean what you think it does. Also, there is no way to “humanely” raise an animal as a production machine or to kill an animal that clearly doesn’t want to die. You think they volunteered themselves to be enslaved and eaten?! 
I think it would be too hard for me to become a vegetarian, but for the environment's sake I have a few health choices of my own. It's my 3rd month not eating red meat at all, I've substituted it with poultry and fish, and I have decreased the amount of them in my diet. I'm a strong believer that even the smallest changes can make a great impact
great post! the best one that I think I hear from people is the food chain one. not only do other animals need to eat animals to survive and we don't, we're supposedly part of the ape family and if that's true we can get as jacked as a fruvigore gorilla on a vegan/raw vegan/fruitarian diet.
Thanks for your well written post! I struggle with the 'but bacon' lifestyle! Recently switched to vegan breakfast and vegetable heavy lunches. My carbon footprint from beef embarrassed me! So not for health particularly but for the environmental impact my top of the food chain diet has, I have decided to eat more plant based. Keep up the good work!
I love this! You've just said whats on every vegan's mind. I was planning on writing a page like this but i just can't find the words you know, thanks for vegan love and inspiration!
Thanks for the support!
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