Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Vegans

First, a disclosure: I don’t know everything. I know that is a shocking revelation.

Second, another disclosure: I have been a highly ineffective vegan many times, way more often than I’d like to spend much time ruminating on. I have been vegan since the 1990s, so mistakes have been made along the way; some of these are habits I outline below and are still things I need to remind myself not to do (hello, number five!). All have gotten better with time and a little mindfulness, though. If my ultimate goal is to help more people eat fewer animals, I need to be as effective as possible. These are the biggest habits I have learned that are unhelpful, sometimes profoundly so. I don’t claim to have all the answers for everyone (see first disclosure) but I do know that when I worked at eliminating these habits, the number of people I had actually productive conversations with increased significantly.

Five Habits of Highly Ineffective Vegans

1. They embrace and spread disinformation

From making unfounded health claims to aligning with disinformation peddlers, vegans do a disservice to the animals when we are sloppy and slapdash with the messages and the content we share with the world at large. If someone can write off our claims about the health…