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Why You Should Be Vegan
A heartfelt, well-researched plea for a plant-based life. The research went in a different direction.
Editor’s note
We really did try.
The plan was simple: ten convincing reasons to go vegan. We sat down with an oat flat white, opened an empty document and typed the headline you see above. We meant every word of it.
Then we started the research, and around lunchtime things went wrong. What follows are the ten reasons we ended up with. They are, unfortunately, all reasons not to be vegan. We have left the original headings in, crossed out, so you can see how well it started.
The list
Ten reasons to go vegan not to
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Was:
It’s good for your healthCheese exists.
We could end the list here. Raclette. Mozzarella. Käsespätzle. That is the whole argument, and it has never been defeated.
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Was:
It’s a tradition worth startingSwabia already tried, and cheated.
Legend has it that Maultaschen were invented by monks to hide meat inside pasta during Lent, so that God wouldn’t see it. If the Almighty couldn’t stop Swabians eating meat, a documentary on a streaming service is not going to manage it.
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Was:
No living thing gets hurtNobody speaks for the carrot.
A cow can at least walk away. A carrot has to lie there in the ground and take it. It is pulled out by its hair, peeled and eaten raw in front of the other carrots. And you people call yourselves kind.
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Was:
History is on your sideNo great empire was ever built on tofu.
The Romans conquered the known world on bread, wine and a fish sauce nobody dares to recreate. Napoleon, as you know, was seven feet tall, and he did not get that way on lentils.
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Was:
It’s easier than you thinkYou would have to tell everyone.
Being vegan is ten percent not eating animal products and ninety percent announcing it. At parties, at work, to the dentist, to strangers on the U6. Who has that kind of time?
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Was:
Plant milks are deliciousSomebody has to milk the oats.
Have you ever looked at an oat? Where would you even start? Nobody has explained this to us, and we have stopped asking because of the way people look at us.
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Was:
You won’t miss a thingBacon.
That’s it. That’s the reason.
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Was:
Animals would do the same for youThe lion wouldn’t.
The lion has never once considered it. We refer you to Round 4 of the zoo debate, in which the lion was offered a tofu steak and made his position extremely clear.
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Was:
Your family will support youYour Oma.
Try telling a Swabian grandmother that you don’t eat her Sunday roast. She has got through things you cannot imagine and she will not be beaten by a “lifestyle.” You will eat it. You will have seconds. You will take some home in a tub.
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Was:
There are great alternativesVegan cheese.
In Reason 01 we said that cheese exists. Vegan cheese does not count as existing. It is a candle with ambitions.
Scientific equipment
The RemindHistory Vegan Detector™
Not sure whether there is a vegan in the room? Our patented device will find out.
Accuracy: same as the rest of this site
Historical evidence
Veganism through the ages
- 10,000 BC
- The first vegan is born. Nobody finds out for almost four seconds.
- Ancient Greece
- Pythagoras refuses to eat meat or beans, leaving him with triangles. He invents a theorem to pass the time.
- 1789
- Marie Antoinette says, “Let them eat kale.” The rest is history.
- 1944
- The word “vegan” is invented in England. This one is true. Before that, vegans had to describe it using a whole sentence, which they did not mind at all.
- Today
- Scientists confirm that oat milk is now available in every café on Earth, and in two on the Moon.
Right of reply
In fairness to the vegans
The real arguments for eating fewer animals, such as the climate, the animals and your arteries, are annoyingly good, and the vegans are probably right about most of it. But this is a website on which Napoleon is seven feet tall, so you knew what you were getting. Eat a vegetable. Then tell no one.