I have done some travelling as a vegan, and lots of travelling as a vegetarian, especially in Europe. It’s really cool how many countries with a lot of meat eating tradition have a burgeoning vegan movement, at least in their larger cities. Krakow has a bunch of great vegan stuff, veganism is huge in Germany too. Also I went to a really nice plant-based restaurant in Kiev.
And yeah, in terms of fake meat, I don’t like it. Here in the UK the vegan “McPlant” just landed and a lot of people are talking about it. I walked past a McDonald’s and thought about checking it out, and tried to remember what a McDonald’s burger tastes like… I genuinely felt physically sick at the thought, so I kept on walking! I find the smell of meat to be repulsive at this point, and even struggle to be around people who are eating meat without getting very uncomfortable. Still, I am very happy for these options to exist, including lab-grown meats - as many people do still want to eat meat or an approximation of it, and this is a fantastic alternative for them.
A few points I would like to address. Firstly as there has been a lot of vegetarian discussion in this thread, I would like to assert that in my opinion, from an ethical standpoint, eating an egg or drinking milk is exactly the same as eating meat. Although abstractly it doesn’t seem to be the case, animals are routinely killed and tortured to produce these products.
Secondly, I see a lot of people saying they avoid factory farming in particular, or they prefer ethically sourced animal produce. These things do not exist in any meaningful quantities. These labels are created to assuage consumer guilt, and they are very effective at that. But animal rights groups make a point of disseminating footage collected from so-called “ethical” farms and they are anything but. You simply cannot meet consumer demand and treat animals ethically (I further contend that it is not ethical to kill an animal for food if you don’t need to eat it).
Finally, the notion that veganism is a personal life choice and vegans should just be quiet and let everyone get on with their lives is an extremely insidious one that seems to be commonly held and accepted in society at large. I disagree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. Veganism is a movement fighting against a social injustice of an inconceivable magnititude. If nobody ever talked about being vegan, the movement simply wouldn’t grow. This attitude is the same as saying “Stop talking about developer crunch, I just want to play my games”. Not calling out anyone particular here for this stuff, more just the general anti-vegan sentiment in society!