Why I Say “Plant-Based” Instead of “Vegan”
By: That Human Over There
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Health, Plant Based, Vegan, Racism

Why I Say “Plant-Based” Instead of “Vegan”

Photo by Chantal Garnier on Unsplash

Ya girl has sustained a plant-based diet for over a year now.

The verdict is: I love it. I’m inspired by all the benefits I’ve reaped. So I keep doing it. I also appreciate that eating plant-based is a way to support a healthy planet. But I don’t force my diet onto anyone else or judge others for not eating plant-based. Your body, your choice.

I know everyone has a different stance on this type of diet, but I never understood the intentionally negative reaction people have to the word “veganism,” like this and so many others I mistakenly mined on TikTok while scrolling #vegan.

I recently learned that it is largely due to the ideology behind the word itself; that “vegan” is a term that doesn’t just flatly mean “plant-only diet.”

As I look to understand how I can help improve access to healthy foods in marginalized communities, I have become more intentional about using the word “plant-based” over “vegan,” because my reasons for maintaining this type of diet do not align with the problematic foundations of veganism.

Veganism is rooted in projecting an ethical judgement

Donald Watson was an animal rights advocate who created the concept of “veganism,” as well as a society for it — The Vegan Society — in 1944.

Watson declared that to be a vegan is to abstain from eating animals or their by-products for ethical reasons.

Damn. I started calling myself a “vegan” because that was the only term I knew to identify a diet of only plant products, not to demonstrate my opinion of how animals are treated. It’s not that I want animals to suffer, it’s just not why I eat plants.

The concept of veganism is anchored in a judgement of morality, which is different than what anchors me, which is good health.

I now find it hard to identify with the “V” word, given it’s true genesis, but there’s another reason I feel othered by it.

On a macro-level, there is a disconnect between POC representation and the vegan community

I think one of the reasons I have never had a true understanding of veganism is because the organizations who represent this school of thought are not speaking to people like me.

That then leads me to believe that the vegan community — whether or not intentional — separates itself from the numerous cultural traditions in the world that have celebrated plant-heavy diets for…millennia. Take for example, my Indian and Nigerian background, where the “advocacy” around this type of diet is simply to uphold culinary tradition and yes, good health.

Even though the Pew Research Center has identified that 8% of Black people in America are plant-based compared to a 3% rate of Americans overall, the last time I saw Black representation in this plant-based world fully escapes me. I really only know of Tabitha Brown, who has spoken to this as well:

“Brown said before she made the switch, she thought ‘only white people did it’, saying she’d never met a black vegan before.”

Outside of adequate representation of non-White or non-Western plant eaters, a huge tenet of veganism posits that animal lives are equal to human lives, which reads as fully tone-deaf. Fullyyyyy.

When human lives within our own species are not equal, how is it possible to use that as a barometer for our relationship with other species?

“Speciesism” is to imply that marginalized human lives face the same degree of perilous threat as poultry does. Which, as a person of color, doesn’t sit great with me, at all.

Equating groups of people to animals does not support a case of equality.

A huge tenet of veganism posits that animal lives are equal to human lives, which reads as tone-deaf.

By arguing that animals should be treated as equal to humans, the basis of vegan thought overlooks the very real inequalities that still exist in human society. In overlooking these inequalities, veganism only perpetuates them.

So, even if I did choose to eat plant-based because of the way animals are treated, I still wouldn’t identify with veganism unless I also believed that racial discrimination was on the same level as eating a chicken’s eggs. Which I most definitely do not.

I am not a ‘V’ word!!!

My prior use of the word “vegan” has always been as a lazy identifier of “plant-based,” but the concept itself is not one that I fundamentally align with. Veganism is a lifestyle that mandates an ethical judgement onto those who choose not to follow a plant-based diet.

This stance is based on the fallacy of human equality that veganism overlooks, to purport the idea that all species should be treated the same. The reactive and othering nature of this body of thought limits the full inclusion of plant-based eaters under its umbrella.

I am now way more intentional about identifying as “plant-based” versus “vegan,” especially as I start to share the health benefits it has brought to my life; the implications of the “V” word are not what I signed up for.