
November 08, 2009, 11:18pm Comments
This is amazing. I’m so glad it’s been put on youtube so I can put it on here.
November 06, 2009, 10:01am Comments
JanneM Janne Moren
Hi,
I hope you don’t mind me asking, what do you mean about no garlic, onions or strong herbs?
Alex
JanneM Janne Moren
Veganism is part of a religious tradition, and one of the dietary tenets are to avoid the “five strong tastes”; most practitioners avoid all onions, like yellow onion, shallots, leeks, garlic and so on, as well as strongly fragrant herbs like coriander.
By contrast, the western “vegan” movement seems to simply have taken the name as a synonym for vegetarianism; a rather strong impression is that western “vegans” are simply those who don’t think “vegetarian” sounds cool enough. To take a photographic example, they’re people who like to refer to “giclee” since “inkjet print” doesn’t sound high-brow enough.
I sympathise with vegetarians and could well consider it at some point or other; that sympathy does not extend to those I called “20-something vegan posers”.
JanneM Janne Moren
JanneM Janne Moren
Anybody is allowed to call themselves a vegan, just like anybody can call an inkjet print for giclée. I can call myself a vegan if I want, even as I finish a plate of spareribs. It’s not a protected term. But using “vegan” for “vegetarian” does mark the user out as somebody who uses words without knowing what they actually mean. Such people are often disparaged and ridiculed by others, and not without reason.
I do know some of the harshest critics of “veganism” are vegetarians who - not without reason - worry that the very negative impression created by the sometimes infantile poseur mentality spills over on to vegetarianism in general.
Who is a vegetarian? I don’t know. Do we really need a separate term for those who eat egg but not fish, or who eat fish but touches nothing made from landbased animals, or who eats nothing with eyelashes (a former colleague actually uses that precise criterion) or whatever? Why can’t it all simply be “vegetarian”?
November 03, 2009, 1:46am Comments