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Food labels – choosing our battles – the peril of 'plant-based'

From There's an Elephant in the Room blog
June 2024

An item intended for consumption cannot technically be ‘vegan’. Veganism is an ethical stance that rejects all use of the lives and bodies of other individuals who value their lives for any contrived human-related purpose whatsoever. To be vegan is to hold that stance. So, if I’m going to be pedantic (regular readers will know me!), an item intended for consumption cannot be an ethical stance.

Image by photojournalist Andrew Skowron from a series

This blog details my thoughts on the terms ‘suitable for vegans’ vs ‘plant based’ vs ‘vegan’ when applied to items intended for consumption. These have come about in response to observations of a growing trend where some companies are re-naming items ‘plant-based’ that were previously labelled ‘vegan’.

‘Vegan’

Well for a start I’m just going to throw this out there. An item intended for consumption cannot technically be ‘vegan’ [Veganism; ‘militant’, ‘strict’, ‘extreme’ – or just honest?] Veganism is an ethical stance that rejects all use of the lives and bodies of other individuals who value their lives for any contrived human-related purpose whatsoever. To be vegan is to hold that stance. So, if I’m going to be pedantic (regular readers will know me!), an item intended for consumption cannot be an ethical stance.

So having quickly eliminated ‘vegan’ as an accurate descriptor, what term should be used? I’d say the correct term is ‘suitable for vegans’ and I know many people who use it, but I can really understand why it’s been shortened to simply ‘vegan’ on labels – even the attention span of those of us who read labels is understandably limited!

What is ‘real’ – or ‘food’ for that matter

And carrying on with the pedantic thing, I’d like to clarify why I’m saying ‘an item intended for consumption’ rather than ‘food’. Well, (being pedantic again) as a vegan, I do not consider the bodies, eggs, breastmilk, or secretions of other individuals to be ‘food’, but the items I’m referring to are intended for consumption by nonvegan humans.

Although this isn’t often emphasised, this point is akin to where we see cow/ sheep/ goat cheese and dead flesh and other bodily substances being referred to as ‘real’ in various conversations; as in ‘that tastes just like ‘real’ cheese / ‘meat’’ etc. As animal rights advocates, we must be constantly aware that such language undermines our cause by suggesting that vegan alternatives are in some way ‘fake’, ‘unreal’, or ‘less than’ the ‘real’ substances derived from the flesh, eggs and breastmilk of exploited and slaughtered individuals.

So then there were two; ‘suitable for vegans’ vs ‘plant based’

As an activist / blogger/ writer I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve written that veganism is not a diet; that it’s so very much more than a diet. Yet here we are, in a society where the word ‘vegan’ is prominently displayed on the packaging of all sorts of processed and frequently expensive food items. And it’s mostly the expensive processed edible stuff where it’s seen. For instance, although I do it myself, I’ve yet to see anyone else in the supermarket poring over the labels of toiletries, washing up and laundry liquids to see whether it’s there – I suspect it’s only vegans that do that – preaching to the choir really.

So, on all the mainstream fearmongering and publicity that’s currently being latched on to and condemned with delight by the exploitation industry promoters as ‘unhealthy’, ‘highly processed’ etc., we see the word ‘vegan’ being firmly associated with food by a consumer base that almost certainly knows no better than accept the self-serving slant of those promoting the slaughterhouse tainted ‘real thing’. It would not be an exaggeration to say that food labelling must surely contribute to the fact that the vast majority of nonvegans now look on the word ‘vegan’ as synonymous with food. And I’ve pointed out before that believing we already know all about something is one of the biggest barriers there is to finding out the right way of things. The word ‘vegan’ continues to attract a lot of bad press, and vested interests, mainstream media and sheer ignorance are all feeding off each other to keep the pot boiling which is very much to their financial advantage. The truth does not interest them in the slightest.

The losers are always the same

Of course any one of us could most likely clarify the media falsehoods in a one-to-one conversation, but none of us has the combined reach, advertising budget, or political clout of the nonvegan supply industries and their shills. We definitely have truth and science on our side but there’s only one group that loses out EVERY SINGLE TIME in the furore. And that’s the victims of our nonvegan species [‘Saving’ victims by being vegan – numbers from a hat]. Prolonging any battle about terminology is hurting them more than anyone else, and while the squabbles go on and consumers are diverted from the true issues of justice and animal rights, the slaughterhouses, egg barns and dairy sheds are laughing all the way to the bank.

So to cut a long story short, I can see advantages in dissociating the word ‘vegan’ from food items.

And then there was one, ‘plant-based’.

So now we’re down to one. Veganism is NOT a diet but every vegan eats a diet comprised of substances obtained from plants. At first glance the use of the term ‘plant-based’ seems like an ideal fit. BUT. Oh yes, there’s always a ‘but’; do you know what it is? There’s no legal definition of ‘plant-based’. A fact emphasised when recently I picked up items in a supermarket freezer labelled ‘Plant-based’ and there on the labels of individual items, were cow breastmilk (milk) and bird eggs (eggs) – helpfully in bold because of course even the unscrupulous exploitation industries must acknowledge that the atrocities they commit produce allergens.

So I looked up a dictionary;
Plant-based (of food or a diet); consisting LARGELY OR SOLELY of vegetables, grains, pulses, or other foods derived from plants, rather than animal products.

Ahhh. There’s the catch; the loophole that’s so big you could drive the proverbial bus through it. LARGELY OR SOLELY. By that definition, theoretically, I suppose an item consisting of 49% flesh and 51% plants could fit the bill. And from my own observations of a dozen years of veganism, I can imagine that this plays very nicely into the hands of the exploitation industries who are already slipping their slaughterhouse-tainted atrocities into the ‘green’ freezer section of the supermarket with only ‘picky’ vegans being aware of the fact. How many items have we all enjoyed until suddenly, stealthily, (milk) or (eggs) appears on the ingredient list. I can think of a few and I could speculate on reasons that have to do with industry profits but this isn’t the place.

I currently know someone who has been medically advised to avoid ‘animal products’ and eat a ‘plant-based’ diet to limit cancer progression. And it’s an oxymoron. Eating a ‘plant-based’ diet is NOT synonymous with avoiding animal products. If you’re going by the labels, you can’t do both.

So what’s the answer?

I reckon that the easiest thing would be a legal definition of the term ‘plant-based’ to describe food items containing NO substances derived from the body parts, breastmilk or eggs of nonhuman individuals. It needs only the smallest tweak for the definition to read:

Plant-based (of food or a diet); consisting SOLELY of vegetables, grains, pulses, or other foods derived from plants, rather than animal products.

I suspect that the exploitation industries would be up in arms about this though – it would close off the route by which they continue to profit through the vile atrocities of dairy and egg production that lurk quietly in the ‘plant-based’ aisles, alongside ‘vegetarian’ offerings where they don’t even bother to disguise the horrors of breastmilk and bird egg exploitation to the consumers they keep in the dark.

Sadly I don’t have all the answers, so for the present I think we must either call for a new definition, look for small text that reads ‘suitable for vegans’, or continue to read the labels as we always have.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: July 1, 2024
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We began this archive as a means of assisting our visitors in answering many of their health and diet questions, and in encouraging them to take a pro-active part in their own health. We believe the articles and information contained herein are true, but are not presenting them as advice. We, personally, have found that a whole food vegan diet has helped our own health, and simply wish to share with others the things we have found. Each of us must make our own decisions, for it's our own body. If you have a health problem, see your own physician.