Why do people hate vegans? 7 main reasons

Our celebrations and holidays include many meat and dairy products, with cheese and ham staples of most Western countries’ diets. 

Summer is associated with meat barbecues and great times with friends. Poultry and eggs are symbols of holidays like Christmas and Easter. The best way to finish the week is a traditional Sunday roast dinner with chicken, beef, or pork at the pub. 

People view veganism as challenging the best times with friends and family, leading to resistance or discomfort. 

4. The taste and burden of modifying eating habits:

Planning meals with meat or fish is so much easier, and we are all used to it: you have your meat or fish as a protein, and you have a bit of carbs on the side, like potatoes or rice with some vegetables or a salad. You can buy seven pieces of animal protein, stock up on the rest, and you are sorted for the week. Planning only plant-based meals takes a bit more time and needs more consideration. If you do not want to end up with chickpea curry and beans on toast every single day. Vegan food needs way more understanding of nutrition, and you need to eat way more food to get all the nutrition you need. 

Vegan food also needs much more practice and understanding of the flavours and textures to make things taste good. Pre-planning and stocking up on spices and souses like miso or tahini is essential. 

5. Questioning and challenging your own values: 

For many of us in the rat race of capitalism, razing children or caring for pets, trying to exercise, as well as trying to have a bit of social life, some things, even if important to us, do get pushed back on a priority list. Every single parent wants a bright future for their kids, cares about global warming and does (more or less) understand what implications the meat, dairy and fish industry has on the planet. People do not want to harm animals. But most forget about the worries of the future or animals and focus on how to feed very picky kids today, 3 times a day and rely on quick and easy family favourites like fish fingers and chicken nuggets. 

Many people are so exhausted that they will choose convenience rather than animal welfare or consider future implementations on Earth.  

Seeing vegans having time to implement the changes makes people feel conflicted and not trying enough, even if they care. 

6. Feeling judged:

Negative emotions toward other people usually if not always, come from internal conflicts and self-doubt or feeling that you are not the best person you think you should be. Someone doing better in any of the parts of life—money, happiness, career achievement, better choices in life like nutrition—makes a normal human being feel bad about themselves.

Most people think that vegans judge meat eaters and that could be true, but most of the time, vegans care for animals and try to educate other people rather than judge them (9). 

7. Lack of Information or questioning:

We all eat food every day but don’t necessarily stop to think about what this food is doing to our bodies or even where it comes from. 

A lot of our understanding about nutrition is still based on very old data or myths that our moms used to tell us. You need to drink milk to get calcium, eat meat to get iron and drink fish oil to get your omega-3s. A lot of fitness influencers promoting protein powders every single day, “you need your protein to grow muscle, “do not help either. 

We all forget to question where our food comes from and what are the consequences and a real costs for eating it.