Veganism

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I would like to hear from you, especially if you're vegan.

Vegans have their reasons for refraining from eating meat-products - some are religious, emotional, factual - all right. But other than for the religious angle: if I stopped eating meat for a week so that you, a vegan, could eat meat for a week, would this be okay? I mean, no extra animals would die, you're just eating my animals.

My son, the atheist vegan, laughed when I asked him your question.

Then he said, "No".

He's a smart kid.

Vegans are opposed to any animals being used by humans for food.

Personally, I'd rather have a decent sausage roll.

Sorry but this is a very odd question.
Ed: On the other hand if I came across food which would about to be thrown away and there would be no one to eat it (which happens far too often in the West & actually I find myself in similar situations a lot) and I needed to then I would contemplate doing it. It is sort of a derivative of your proposition. However my reasons for veganism are rather complex and final result would likely be no for health/consistency and other emotions.

I am a vegan 87.5% of the time

I eat meat, like the dirty savage I am.

Clever question, Sunshine, I laughed out loud a little!

I actually know a few younger people who call themselves "Freegans." They are vegan for the most part, but will eat non-vegan food if it would be thrown away otherwise, for example they will go dumpster diving and eat whatever they find that isn't spoiled. Wasting food sucks. So your idea actually isn't that crazy.

Anyways if you are curious about the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle then my suggestion is: pick one day a week (for example Friday if you're Catholic) and don't eat meat (or dairy/eggs if you want to go all the way) on that day. This might not seem like much, but if the whole world cut meat consumption by 1/7 it would have a huge health and environmental benefit, certainly a bigger overall impact than a tiny number of people going 100% vegan.

Most vegans don't eat meat because they have ethical qualms with eating things that come from animals, or they just find it repulsive. Some have more generalized issues about the exploitation of animals, but if you think it through it starts to make a lot less sense on that level. Then you have to start weighing the value of life, as those animals wouldn't exist at all if we didn't use them, and it becomes very philosophical and very messy. As far as I'm concerned, there's only really a valid reason to be vegan on a personal level, which means they don't eat meat because they don't want to eat meat, so whether you eat meat or not they still won't.

The Buddha had an interesting idea on the topic. (According to some teachings) he allowed his followers to eat previously-slaughtered and cooked meat if it was respectfully offered as alms. But not if the animal was killed specifically to feed you. In other words if a family says "we are just sitting down to chicken dinner, won't you join us?" there is no karmic/spiritual benefit to insulting their hospitality and complaining that their food is impure, but you're not supposed to go to the butcher and say "that chicken looks tasty, please kill and pluck it for me."