In case you aren't already aware, allow me to inform you that I am a 30 year old lady. In my adult life I have seen so many new words pop up and sometimes it gets to the point that I don't even try to keep up with all of them. The first time I … Continue reading Vegan Gray Areas: Freeganism
What does it really mean to be vegan? On face value, it means not eating or using animal products. It also refers to abstaining from products tested on animals (whenever possible, I mean if you need life saving medicine that was once tested on animals, take the medicine! It's important to have reasonable exceptions to … Continue reading Vegan Gray Areas: Palm Oil
About four years ago we brought our cat José home for the first time. A coworker was no longer able to keep him and we took him off her hands so he didn't end up at the shelter. He was roughly eleven weeks old and I remember feeling nervous because even though I'd had pets … Continue reading Why you Shouldn’t Declaw your Cat
On face value the answer to whether or not eating oysters and other bivalves (such as clams, mussels, and scallops) is vegan would seem obvious. They're animals so of course they're not, right? The argument is that because they don't have a central brain it is unlikely they're able to feel pain. There's also no … Continue reading Vegan Gray Areas: Oysters
Photo by kinkate from Pexels I made the decision to be vegan mid January of this year (2019). My first priority was to understand how to eat a balanced plant-based diet. However, I knew being vegan wasn't just about food. Another regular purchase I make is beauty products. I started off doing a simple google search for cruelty … Continue reading Cruelty Free vs Vegan Beauty Products
I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not getting into the health aspect of whether eating eggs is good or bad. The focus of this is purely from an ethical standpoint in the case of backyard chickens, not those from factory farms. Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pexels For many homesteaders, having backyard chickens is a … Continue reading Vegan Gray Areas: Eggs From Backyard Chickens
As someone relatively new to the world of veganism, I've done a lot of exploring the internet in search of community. I craved like-minded people to learn from and converse with. I shouldn't have been surprised to find that many people in this community are anything but like-minded. To be honest, it's rather divided. I've … Continue reading There’s No Purity in Veganism (An Opinion Piece)
I was going to write this post about the psychological trauma slaughterhouse workers experience due to the nature of their work. I found my words to be largely inadequate and have instead decided to allow them to speak for themselves. But let me just say, on top of being physically dangerous, slaughterhouse work has been … Continue reading The Effect on Slaughterhouse Workers (Part 4 of Why I Went Vegan)
In January of this year I decided to go vegetarian for a month. I simply wanted to try it out and see how I felt afterwards. I figured if I liked it I would keep going and if I didn't I would stop. These events were sparked by a documentary I saw about the health … Continue reading Health Benefits (Part 3 of Why I Went Vegan)
I had a different subject in mind for the next part of my 'Why I Went Vegan' series, but since it's Earth Day it only seems appropriate to broach the subject of how veganism benefits the environment. This is largely a matter not of what vegans do, but what they don't do. They don't contribute … Continue reading Environmental Reasons to go Vegan (Part 2 of Why I Went Vegan)
The Vegan Homesteader 