Vegan Imperialism

I read today on this Food Politics blog about New York thinking of introducing a law forbidding people from  buying "soda" with their food stamps. My first reaction to this is: sucks for the poor people! They have so few luxuries in life, and now you want to take away their sugar water too? In the end, you have to accept that people are adults and have the right to eat and drink whatever they choose - even if the money was given to them by the government. Plenty of "if you want soda you can pay for it with your own money" is coming out of this debate. I take exception to people self righteously complaining about "their" taxes paying for people on the benefit. We all pay tax for things we don't agree with and social welfare is just one small piece of the equation. Taxes also pay for defence, even though some of the population don't support war, and just the other day our government voted on this $850,000 injection for the red meat industry. People with no kids still pay for education and people who don't drive still pay for roads. So there is no point in whining about it, we just have to accept that as a society we have some socialist policies and we support each other through taxes. We have to live and let live, it is totally condescending to tell people what they can and cannot buy to eat. And at the end of the day, I don't give a shit. If they get diabetes, if they give their kids diabetes, that's none of my damn business. Even if I have to subsidise their healthcare with my taxes. I am a libertarian in that sense.

The only exception to this rule - my ethics in reference to veganism. I suppose, as a vegan, I am telling people what is best for them and for the animals. But the key difference is this - I don't actually tell people they shouldn't eat meat, dairy or eggs, I just raise the point with them that it is in fact a choice. Just like choosing to farm animals is a choice. Nobody made you. So many people assume that the omnivorous diet is the only option, for nutrition, convenience and societal reasons, and that just isn't the case. Some of the arguments for eating meat are just so inherently weak, so it is important to make people consider that the real reasons they eat meat are: they like the taste, they don't know what else to eat, or they just haven't thought about it. Not that they will die without it. Not that they can't afford the alternatives.