Just in case some of you didn’t already know (yes, some people don’t go out much on sundays) : a vegan is one who tries to live a life free of animal products. Vegans eat a plant-based diet, with no components from animals : no meat, dairy, eggs or honey. A vegan lifestyle also avoids leather, wool, silk and other animal products for clothing or other merchandise, and animal tested products.

In this glorious month of November 2009, the Vegan Society supports the World Vegan Month and asks people to take a pledge not to eat meat or any animal products for a day, a week or a month. Hopefully, they didn’t ask that in December for, as a French, I couldn’t have survived without the Christmas and New Year “foie gras”, which is, I admit, one of the most cruel way to force-feed and kill poor ducks.

Actually, I seem to be making fun of vegans but I’m not ! I think it’s admirable to live without eating off the back of poor goats and gentle cows, not just to save them (for one steak not eaten, how many will end up in a hamburger ?) but to denunciate negative health implications of consuming animal fats and proteins. Not to mention other issues like the effects of factory farming on the environment and the inherent animal cruelty.

Maybe Vegan lifestyle is a bit extreme but Vegetarian is one I could choose. The difference ? Well, you just don’t eat meat but you can wear your favorite leather jacket and make a good omelette with mushrooms without feeling guilty. Personally, I don’t see the problem in eating eggs for no animal suffers or get killed, it’s the natural process of the hen procreation. Of course, we could let all the little hens live but the opportunity of this hypothesis is not something I want to discuss now (at what age an egg becomes a future hen ? is it moral to break an egg in a pan after 3 days or 20 ? who came first, the egg or the hen ?).

Anyway, I’m all for Vegans and Vegetarians as long as they allow me to make pancakes with a lot of rhum in it.

That’s why this month, on Wednesday (that is to say tomorrow), I will go Vegan ! I swear before you all that I shall not eat or even look maliciously at any piece of meat or animal product for a whole day ! For one day, I will care about my poor health (already baddened by cigarettes and alcohol) and about the pork and the young nanny goats. I will wear only my old coat made in China by children for a dollar a day (!!) and go to school using my gas-spender Ford but I will not touch one hair of a cow, I promise !

Happy Vegan Month to you all !

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