Weekly Mission

If I polled everyone who's ever seriously changed the way they eat on what has been their biggest challenge in making that change, I'll bet my best olsenHaus boots that social/family situations would be at the top of the list.

 

That's why whis week we're featuring a post on the topic by one of my favorite eco bloggers, Jenn Sturiale, a Vegan at Heart subscriber and co-founder of the popular environmental blog Tinychoices.com, which has been providing candid, thoughtful, daily content since 2007. She lives in Brooklyn and is currently working on her first book.

 

I feel comfortable with my food choices, and mostly don't feel the need to defend them or explain my reasons to people, though I like nothing more than a good open discussion about food choices.  In my experience, most folks don't ask me why I choose what I choose, but some do assume my life is in some way negatively limited and lacking.  I don't agree, of course, and my overall good health and fitness and happiness levels can testify to that!

So I was a bit surprised when I read this interview in New York Magazine with Moby, who's been vegan for 20 years, in which he comes across as a purposefully apologetic vegan.  He explains his reason for choosing this tactic:

"I had a long period of being very annoying," Moby admits about his years of vegan proselytizing. "But it didn't really help." Instead, the musician changed tactics: "I try as hard as possible to be a nondidactic, almost apologetic vegan." 

I get it. No one likes a proselytizing vegan, except maybe other proselytizing vegans. Same holds true for Hare Krishnas, satan worshippers, and Mennonites (though who can imagine a Mennonite proselytizing?) And I think this is an interesting tactic to take when surrounded by what Moby frustratingly calls "normal people," on whom he usually imposes his "weird veganism."

So, I guess self-deprecation makes him less self-righteous, less preachy, more aw-shucks-I-know-I'm-annoying-what-with-the-save-the-animals-thing; but what I don't like about this approach is that it magnifies the view of him/vegans as outsides, as "others," as different freakies who must always apologize for being themselves and following their hearts.

I know there are lots of folks out there who make alternate food choices due to physical maladies- abstaining from gluten, dairy, sugar, soy, or a combination of the above- and I'm wondering if the same feeling holds true when alternate food choices are a physical necessity rather than an intellectual choice- is there a feeling of needing to apologize, of self-deprecation in order to smooth ruffled feathers?
Now that we know animal byproducts are responsible for 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide human caused greenhouse gas," it seems like a meat-free/reduced-meat diet should be more celebrated, and less villified. And if famous folks who are making these choices are simulaneously apologizing for said choices, to me it seems to undermine the strength of their convictions.

 

 

So what do you think? Can a message be effective if served in a self-deprecating manner?