Wednesday 4 September 2013

Conversations with a vegan... the cattle 'prod'.

Well I wondered how long it would take...
Here's little old me doing my utmost to be all compassionate and thoughtful and try and save the planet and the human race (mostly from themselves) and yet someone feels the need to challenge my veganism (in a rather unpleasant way). Of course that someone might have been doing so because they felt their business was threatened - she is the daughter of a cattle farmer in Montana, USA.

This little conversation played out on Twitter and if your life's not too short that you have time to look at some of her tweets, you'll see that in her role as 'Media Relations Specialist' (!) for the family business, her campaign consists of pretty much attacking and questioning people in the vegan community.

What follows isn't so much of a conversation - (as detailed debate within Twitter character limitations isn't advisable) - but this post is an analysis of thoughts, ideas and coulda, woulda, shouldas that can be safely discussed on this blog (or via email!)


Place: Twitter
Situation: Ms K tailgating in on a conversation I was having with a friend about PCOS & Paleo to Vegan diet and attempts to lose weight.




A deliberate 'dig' to tell us that we need to eat meat then.

At this point I wish I had picked up on the fact that as a cattle farmer's daughter she would have been brought up eating beef so a) why didn't she stay slim if it's a miracle slimming food and b) why has she only just lost the weight now? 

Yes the cutting carbs will probably have helped her lose the weight - it's what happens (short term) when you remove a whole vital food group from your diet! But to be fair she does mention 'veggies'. Could these have been the miraculous little slimming aid? 
oh the coulda woulda shoulda...




Once I had composed myself, I then thought - perhaps her body is addicted to the antibiotics and other drugs she is over-consuming in all of the meat she has eaten / eats? Hence the seizures (if they exist?).
It's hard to answer something like this without a body of scientific research to hand. When I have finally published my research directory I will have a huge body of independent evidence that I can point people to. The problem is that much of the science in support of meat is biased because it's funded by agri-biz and big-pharma and it quashes the independent unbiased research that supports cutting out meat and dairy.




Now I look at the 50lbs in 5 months again and think she must have gone into ketosis to lose that much so quickly and it will have been caused by the removal of dietary carbs. Any seizures now may even be caused as a result of carb deprivation, not by meat deprivation, as this is what lack of carbs can do to the neurotransmision in the brain. Unfortunately she's equated the weight loss success (conveniently) with her eating meat. If a lack of meat in our  diets gave us seizures, veggies and vegans would be piling up on the floor everywhere.
If her statement is at all true - she needs further medical investigation.




This is either quite a naive (bordering on ignorant) comment in that she thinks the UK is so backward, compared to the US, that we have no choice but to eat plant-based diets, or it is a subtle attack on veganism by using the word 'choice' - because myself and many others don't like this word, as you'll see by my reply! Oh and I  think her use of the word 'honestly' is interesting - as language psych students will know - an unnecessary use of a word such as this often indicates a subconscious belief in the opposite of what is being said.....






Again I would say it's really difficult to have these type of conversations - that should be reasoned debates - in the Twitter arena, because you just can't say enough. None-the-less, it's also really important to me to get some of my views across and to not ignore even subtle challenges.
There was A LOT I would love to have replied with - most of it pretty sarcastic and the odd swearword may have been involved...

But I bit my Twittering lip, because it's also my obligation to remain calm and reasoned and to demonstrate that my lack of meat eating hasn't given me a blood lust for vengeance on those who chose to have a go at my lifestyle in public.
I always believe, hard though it may be, that becoming angry and defencive in a situation like this can weaken your argument, and that it plays into the hands of the bullies. It could cause great harm to the perception that people have of vegans and veganism if I were to retaliate in as unpleasant a way.

And experience through life has also taught me that there's always more to it when people are so ready to attack unprovoked - think, for example of vocal homophobes, who often turn out to be gay themselves, and you'll understand what I mean.

So I looked at her family business website. Here it says that she's at Uni studying Animal Science (?) and Ag Education, and then the penny drops for me. This young lady is surrounded by a culture, a community, a family and now a university all indoctrinated (and indoctrinating) with the belief that eating meat is the only way to live. I would imagine she's never known anything else.

So referring back to my very first comments - faced with a fast-growing global community of vegans and the prevalence of health reports on the dangers of meat eating, she's in a world of conflict with all she's been brought up to believe. It's threatening and therefore her attacks are her defence.
This is my perception and understanding of it.

I don't wish to sound patronising at this point, but now I feel sorry for her. She talks about choice, but she almost has none. Almost...

I think, at some point in the future, I will check her Twitter again, maybe send a few gentle, kind, informative comments and links.
A comment or two on her blog post 'Are you really vegan?' might be just the place too (I see one lady has already written an excellent reply).

This will give her the chance to learn more, see more and understand more about Veganism.

Chantal x


What do you think? 
Has something like this happened to you within either social media, or indeed outside of it in 'real life'?
How did it make you feel? How did you respond and what were your coulda woulda shoulda's?


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