Monday vegan ramble

I agree with Erik Marcus about many things. For example:

I'm far more interested in helping a non-vegan take another step away from animal products than I am in winning the love of the Vegan Police
— Vegan (@vegan) September 19, 2013

But I disagree with him about Slate.

Shame on @Slate for publishing article from guy who feeds chicken stock to vegetarians and thinks it's OK. http://t.co/SoEb3bboaL
— Vegan (@vegan) September 19, 2013

Slate should have published that column, in all its ridiculousness. Publishing it only exposed its ridiculousness and made room for some amazing comments. What is an online forum if not a vehicle for discussion?

By the way, I was at a party the other night... actually, let me back up: I was at a dinner a month or so ago where there was a lovely vegan option. It was consumed by two or three people. I kept thinking, everyone else is missing out; this is delicious, and no one's touching it because they reflexively prefer to eat meat. But I digress. I was at a party last night, and even though the hosts are, if anything, the opposite of vegan, there were many lovely vegan options. The hostess apologized that she didn't manage to procure the same vegan meatballs that flew at her last party; I told her that I appreciated her looking, and that the other food was lovely. There were some things I wasn't sure about (especially after she brought out a yogurt dip that someone had brought and told me it was vegan; I pointed out that it was yogurt-based), but I also didn't care. Id est, I didn't care if the amazing potato dish someone had brought had a little bit of butter in it (although I was delighted to find out that it didn't, that it was entirely vegan). I didn't care that much whether the crusts of the potato-onion tartelets that she also pointed out to me were entirely vegan. And I knew that the bakhlava that someone had brought had butter in it, but I tried a small triangle nonetheless, for social reasons more than anything else.

I relate all this in the context of the silly Slate piece, so as to say, "sure, sometimes I try things that may or even do have animal products in them, even though I generally prefer not to." But it comes down to my making the choice to try those things; it shouldn't come down to someone lying to me, intentionally,  about what is and isn't in the food.

You know how inane I think paleo is. If you don't, let me tell you: it's the stupidest f*ing way to eat beyond the standard American diet. The paleo delusion that grains and legumes have antinutrients? I think that's some of the biggest, most heaping bullshit in the universe of pseudo-nutritional bullshit. And there's no ethical component to paleo. All that said, I would never, ever, ever take it upon myself to feed a paleo-eater grains or legumes without their knowledge. That would just be obnoxious.