We had a chat with this participant that ended up into the topic of veganism, and how it can be difficult sometimes for vegans to handle the constant pressure of a society that is mainly sort of against it/them, despite the movement being a clear solution to many problems of this world (animal cruelty, environmental impact, antibiotic resistance, countless health problems, loss of biodiversity, ...).
I then asked him if he would be happy to share his feelings on the topic as a non-vegan.
- As a non-vegan, I do feel bad sometimes, there are so many people in the world being vegans, putting all the effort and time and feeling bad about themselves while not contributing to the awful part of society that is, I guess, meat eating. That's terrible, but... I'm a part of it.
- Maybe there's an in-between to that, between being vegan and not?
- I'm not sure. I think the thing is once you start to make the distinction between « I don't want to kill animals anymore » and... like, if you're gonna try and go vegan in that sort of sense, because you feel bad about the animals, you can't be like « Oh I'll just kill some of these animals », so there isn't really a middle ground, it's just to put the effort in and that's it...
- Do you think someday you might make the effort?
- Definitely, with my family we used to do like, the first days of the week was vegan... that was obviously good, but it's just about the effort, because vegetables is so much chopping and...
- Is it the reason really!!? (laughing)
- Yeahhh, I mean it's an effort! That is the reason why I'm not a vegan I think. Ok obviously I love meat, so...
- A great advice I could share is to get a good big knife, just 15 pounds and then it's a real delight to cut vegetables! (laughing)
- I know, it's just that a vegan meal is a lot more prep and chopping than a meat eating would be, where you have like beef and you put some onions and that's it. With a vegan meal obviously you've got just veggies, so...
