A vegan diet and lifestyle is often perceived as intentionally missing out on culinary pleasures. As a consequence, people assume that vegans must have cravings for the foods they used to eat and secretly fantasise about eating meat, dairy or eggs. The reality is usually the opposite. Most vegans develop a growing disgust towards animal products, which, through the vegan eye, come to look less and less like food as time passes.
This is not a question about the taste of a meal but about the deeply felt knowledge of what is literally in it. While the psychology behind this resolved cognitive dissonance is pretty straightforward, it is far more interesting to explore why non-vegans would like vegans to live with cravings and a secret desire to eat animal products.
Why vegans do not miss meat
Vegans do not miss eating meat for a very simple reason. They do not and cannot possibly see it as a food item any longer. Where other people see a burger patty, a nugget, a fillet or a steak, a vegan sees literal flesh cut from an animal that once had a beating heart and a natural instinct and desire to stay alive.
If you’re not vegan and you’re flinching at these last few lines, wishing them away, then you are coming very close to what people often feel right before deciding to become vegan. For most people who allow themselves to truly feel what meat is or used to be, it becomes a one way street with no return. Some things cannot be unseen, unlearned or unfelt.
People who become vegan only as adults, of course, retain a strong memory of the taste of meat, dairy or eggs, in whatever form they used to consume them. It is not that vegans suddenly stop liking those tastes or merely pretend to. It is that even what may once have been their favourite taste in the world is no longer worth all the baggage that comes with it.
If a vegan were to eat a non-vegan meal, their taste buds might respond much as they did before going vegan, but what would follow is a deep psychological pain, a sense of guilt and regret that can feel utterly gruelling.
This is something many vegans experience when they accidentally eat something non-vegan, whether through a mistake in a restaurant or by missing an ingredient on a label. For most vegans, the only real regret is that it took them so long to become vegan in the first place.
The social factor and what vegans might really miss
While veganism has entered the mainstream in many countries, vegans still stand out in many social situations and cannot simply blend in like everyone else. The food itself is rarely the problem, because there is now so much vegan food on the market that almost any dish can be veganised in one way or another.
Being constantly put in the spotlight as the one vegan at a party can feel draining and may create a longing for the good old days, when one was just as relaxed and casually oblivious as everyone else. It is similar to being an adult and looking back nostalgically on the carefree days of childhood. And you know those days can never come back.
Some vegans avoid any social gathering where animal products are involved. It is a choice that should be respected, as for them it is simply another thing that is not worth the psychological toll of being exposed to animal flesh and watching other people consume it without a second thought.
Other vegans choose to remain in such social situations, but in doing so they often consciously engage in a temporary form of cognitive dissonance. At the end of the day, each person makes their own cost-benefit-analysis and decides what is best for them in that particular moment.
When vegans leave the sinking ship
Not only vegans have strong feelings about veganism. Many non-vegans seem to feel extremely triggered by the topic and by actual vegan individuals. People who are not vegan often dislike the idea of others being vegan and sometimes even actively try to stop family members or friends from becoming vegan.
Funnily enough, this phenomenon is quite rare when people try to improve their lives in other ways, such as becoming more active or quitting drinking or smoking. Although the latter can also cause friction, especially between spouses when only one person gives up smoking while the other wants to carry on.
With veganism, it is often far more drastic. Sometimes it can feel as though you are trying to leave a cult or a clan that may take revenge on you for wanting to start a new life.Generally, humans justify most of what they do on a daily basis by the fact that everyone around them is doing the same.
This is especially true of things that are not morally justifiable once we truly open our eyes. It used to be normal and accepted to keep human beings as slaves or to kill homosexuals. In some parts of the world, the latter is still habitually practised. In the same way, the mass breeding, killing and eating of animals is still seen as normal and accepted today.
When someone stops doing something harmful or morally wrong while everyone else continues, all eyes turn to that one deserter, and they become the target of hostility because their choice makes an entire worldview begin to crumble. And as history keeps showing us, decades later those first outliers are, in retrospect, seen as the pioneers of a better society.
Schadenfreude as a way to preserve cognitive dissonance
Apart from irritation and hostility towards vegans, many non-vegans express their aversion in the form of mockery or Schadenfreude. This brings us back to the question of why non-vegans want vegans to crave meat and, ultimately, not to thrive or feel happy in their vegan lifestyle.
Being “funny” at the expense of vegans or groups of vegans might seem milder and more socially acceptable than being openly aggressive towards them. But it is also a deeply rooted self-protection mechanism. Mocking someone does not make you feel like a bad person in the same way that outright bullying or insulting would.
Mockery is therefore the easiest way to create distance between yourself and vegans, in order to block out anything that might challenge your cognitive dissonance. Living in cognitive dissonance does not make you stupid or weak. It is a very normal and instinctive coping mechanism that extends far beyond veganism and touches many other areas of life.
Vegans, too, will maintain cognitive dissonance in other areas or remain in denial about things they do despite having a gut feeling that those things are harmful or morally questionable. In the end, it can be truly beneficial to question your own cognitive dissonance. Understanding yourself down to your deepest abysses is truly priceless.
