Trying to go vegan because of this, but then I realize halfway through the yogurt I am eating that it is based on milk and is not vegan in the slightest, even though it is considered vegetarian. There is always tomorrow.
Trying to go plant-based too much at once is really difficult and almost always leads people to this all or nothing mentality (and speak for you directly obviously—just my observations).
I’d love to see people take a statistical model. I currently get 50% of calories or maybe protein from animals. If I reduce that to 40%, what would that look like? Maybe 1 fully-plant-based meal a week? That way I can test out a recipe or learn how to make tofu yummy.
Or maybe you’ve heard “I can’t live without steak” or “cheese.” Well, trend towards plant-based except for steak or cheese (while not increasing your consumption of that).
I quit animal products pretty abruptly and on a personal level I wouldn't say doing it all at once is necessarily the difficult part. I was unprepared for the sudden lop-sidedness in favour of needing to plan and prepare meals. The shift to not being able to eat unprocessed on-the-go and restaurant meals because the plant-based options were mediocre to non-existent is quite drastic. I've gotten used to accompanying people who are eating without partaking myself.
I am still allowing myself to make an occasional mistake, because if you do not read the ingredients carefully it can be hard to say what is (for example, finding out a brand name chicken ramen bowl is artificial chicken and is actually vegan friendly) and what is not vegan (for example, a brand name candy I previously enjoyed, sadly), but rather than giving up I hit the reset button and start again the next day until I get it right. Everyone gets a mistake!
Doing less than 100% is not a "mistake." Self-castigation only undermines your efforts. The change you do make still matters. I have started aiming at 80% because it is attainable. Doing so sets an example for others that it doesn't need to be a radical lifestyle change, which in net terms may be more effective than doing 100% but scaring people off by making it look unattainable and uncomfortable.
+1. I phased out meat over almost like 6 months before being completely vegetarian. It made the transition much easier when I did this about 12 years ago.
I eliminated types of meat (e.g no more chicken, then no more beef, etc). Slowly adapting my diet over time.
If you end up needing to keep dairy, you can do things like only buy dairy from 100% grass-fed, pasture-raised cows. Cheese from Europe is more likely to meet (or approach) that criterion, and yogurt is very easy to make, especially if you have a temperature controller (though it's not critical).
You're still doing more than most, and if everyone in the world made choices like yours it would still cash out in massive changes to animal welfare even if it was short of 100% perfect.
I think an unfortunate thing that has poisoned too much of the talk of animal welfare has been what I consider a small minded and frankly frivolous accusation of hypocrisy. The "hypocrisy" is the price of agreeing to be accountable to a much higher standard. The "consistency" of not even bothering to try is not morally preferable.
Sadly that is not entirely true. Many farms will make such claims.. until secret “inspections” happen and you realize they are skirting around the rules.
In theory yes it’s better, in practice, not always.
Yeah that is good when shopping at a local grocery store, but more difficult when you want to make good choices at the local coffee shop, which has more limited options even though they do have some available that are vegan or/and organic.
Go at your own pace. It's more important to succeed a little than to risk failing. Cheese and yogurt still lack really great vegan alternatives. But I switched to oat milk, which lasts longer, is cheaper, and (IMO) tastes better, and I haven't looked back.
Wait until you're comfortable with the changes you've made, and only then introduce more.
Flax eggs are a good substitute for eggs in many recipes.
It is hard to take almost any mentorship program seriously that is not a formal university education, and even then, at most universities they do not teach skills that are directly applicable at companies given they are not intended to directly be job training programs. Not that I am on any hiring committee currently, but if I was, I would rather see a candidate with a degree and open source project contributions than App Academy dreck, for example.
Contributing larger PRs to terraform-provider-aws because apparently my contributions so far do not have enough lines of code as a metric. Getting familiar with Floci for usage with Terraform over LocalStack since it is a true open source project rather than freemium. Also getting my AAS from Maestro. Ride or die since I can not afford college anywhere else despite their current accreditation issues with COE.
I lost access to my Revolut account a while back and recovery did not work after losing access to my primary email address and MFA. They also removed the ability to deposit checks on their mobile app. For these reasons I can not treat it like a real bank anymore as much as I love their 4% APY savings account rate. Unlike gmail, which had recovery options with a secondary email address. They could have implemented something similar.
Maybe it is different for you, but for me the web app is flakey at best. A bug which has been a pet peeve of mine for the last 6 months: if you leave the page open for half an hour with nothing playing, sometimes all the play buttons just stop working and you have to reload the whole page before you can play anything again.
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