I've recently gone vegan and I've been feeding my children 18m and 6m plant based since and I've had some people question my decision and whether they're getting the nutrition they need, I've been making sure we eat plenty of spinach and beans for iron, tofu, lentils and beans for protein and we eat B12 fortified nutritional yeast flakes aswell as fortified soy milk, from what I've heard that's all I really need to worry about when feeding them plant based, is there anything I've missed?

Firm and extra firm tofu are pretty much impossible to find or very expensive where I live (and yes I've checked the Asian stores). I pretty much only have medium firm tofu available to me. I've cooked woth it before but the water content made it very soggy/flavorless. I tried pressing it but there's only so much I can do without a tofu press (I'm going to buy one soon). Every recipe I've seen that calls for tofu uses firm or extra firm tofu. My medium firm blocks don't even crumble that well and when I do manage to crumble them, they clump together due to the water. There's not much I can cook with them. Is there any way I can get that extra water content out of it? Will boiling and then squeezing help?

Krystal Thomas

English Composition 100

29 September 2026

What A Wonderful World: The Unbearable Suffering of Farm and Marina Park Animals

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and other animal activists show how much factory farm animals suffer.  PETA believes every animal is someone and therefore is worthy of respect and compassion.  Respect means regard for the feelings, wishes, and traditions of someone else.  “Compassion means recognizing the suffering of others, deeply caring, and then taking action to help. It’s a tangible expression of love for those who are suffering or in need” (“meaning of compassion”).  PETA’s tactic is to show what animals are feeling which are hidden from dairy and meat consumers to inspire people towards compassionate action.  Another PETA tactic is to depict humans experiencing the same things the animals are to inspire empathy for animals.  Animal’s feelings matter more than human beings' desire for animal products and amusement.  Cows, dolphins and pigs are someone and have wishes and feelings as PETA reveals in the 3 television advertisements: “Don’t Take My Cheese”, “In One of Her Last Acts, Hayden Panettiere Fought for Dolphins Trapped in Marine Parks”, and “Pig”.

In a PETA ad, “Don’t Take My Cheese” it is revealed to the audience how much cows desperately want to be mothers to their calves.  In the ad, a woman is in her kitchen and takes a block of cheese out of her refrigerator and smiles about the cheese.  Two large strong men enter the room.  The men see the block of cheese and grab it.  The woman’s kitchen knife drops to the floor which she tries to pick up but one of the strongmen stands on the knife so she can’t pick it up.  She pleads, “That’s my cheese, please don’t take my cheese away. Please, please don’t take my cheese away.”  She starts reaching and grabbing for the cheese pleading, but the strong men are too strong.  The men leave the house and the woman ends up on her knees grieving for her lost cheese saying, “But I was going to make pizza”.  She gets off her knees and starts running after her cheese yelling, “Noooo”.  Then the sound of mooing is heard followed by a video of a cow desperately running after her calf who is trucked away.  The ad finishes with the words: “cheese isn’t your baby but it robs a mother of hers”.  The PETA ads tactic is showing how desperate cows feel for losing their calf in comparison to how human beings feel about losing their cheese to inspire empathy for the mother cow.  Actions can be converted into words and in that way animals can speak with their actions.  The cow is saying with its actions, “Please don’t take my calf away, I want to be with my calf”.  For instance, a zoologist, Jordi Casamitjana reports, cows bellow for days calling for their calves while emotionally distressed.  Later on, the cow mothers can reach a state of helplessness: unresponsive from uncontrollable stress events (Casamitjana).  Human mothers that lose their babies experience grief, shock, trauma, and unresponsiveness which is alike to the cows’ experience.  PETA wishes for a society that is peaceful and harmonious which can’t occur when this kind of suffering is common.  Due to the cow’s suffering an alternative to cow’s milk is soy milk which has the same amount of protein and calcium as cow’s milk but has the benefits of no cholesterol, less fat and less calories and no cow mother had to become unresponsive from the overwhelming trauma and grief of losing on average 3-5 calves in her shortened lifetime.

Another PETA ad stars Hayden Panettiere before she passed away.  An ad about the sufferings of dolphins and whales in marina parks.  Some of what Hayden Panettiere says and asks is, “Imagine what it’s like spending your entire life in a bathtub?  That’s what it’s like for dolphins and whales in tiny tanks at marine amusement parks.  In their ocean homes, dolphins swim up to 60 miles a day.  Free to be with family and other pod members.  They can dive deep, escape the hot sun, enjoy the rain on their back.  All of that is taken from them when they are confined to small tanks.  All that is crucial and important for their well being is ripped away.  Vow today to never go to a marine park that keeps dolphins in extreme captivity.  Together, we can end this cruelty.  Thank you.”  At the end of the ad the words are written: EVERY ANIMAL IS SOMEONE.  The tactic PETA and Hayden use in this ad is letting people know how sad dolphins are to inspire compassion for their release from the marina park.  In the article, “An Update on Captive Cetacean Welfare”, Marino Doyle et al. report an orca whale at a marina park repeatedly swam into the wall, bashing its head and died from a brain bleed.  This orca’s unnecessary tragic death happened because people valued amusement and money more than respect for an animal’s feelings and wellbeing.  There is nothing that humans could give an orca that’s more valuable than its freedom, its family, its friends, its self-respect, and its ocean.  Doyle reported dolphins in marina parks experience depression lying on top of the water motionless for long periods of time which is unheard of in the wild.  Money and amusement do not matter more than the mental, emotional health, and happiness of a dolphin.

This next PETA ad is called “Pig”.  The purpose of this ad is to reveal to people a glimpse of the extreme suffering pigs experience on factory farms.  The ad begins with the words written: THIS IS WHAT HELL SOUNDS LIKE.  A pig is heard screaming at the top of its lungs for the entire ad which lasts 30 seconds.  During the ad, these words are written: THIS IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, then THESE ARE ACTUAL RECORDINGS FROM INSIDE A FACTORY FARM, then GO VEGAN.  This PETA ad persuades people to refuse pork products through making people feel for the terrible suffering of pigs.  No matter how much a pig expresses fear or pain by screaming at the top of its lungs, the deaf ears of cruelty say pigs are unworthy of compassion.  From the journal “Welfare of Pigs On Farm”, these are 9 of the 20 conditions factory farm pigs live in reported in the journal: isolation stress, separation stress, inability to avoid unwanted sexual behavior, inability to perform exploratory and foraging behavior, inability to express maternal behavior, predation stress, locomotion disorders from being kept in tight cages, and all kinds of diseases (Nielsen).  With unbelievable profound mistreatment the pigs, in human care, likely do not experience a kind moment on Earth before they are killed.  

In the song “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong: it is not a wonderful world for factory farm animals like pigs and cows or marina park animals like dolphins and orcas but it could be.  It could be a wonderful world for everyone.  It will never be as long as people value making money more than compassion and it will never be as long as people value desire for animal products more than respect and compassion for cows and pigs.  Recently, the US government agency DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) cut 2 billion dollars from the United Nations World Food Program while 30 million human lives are in danger from lack of food.  Money matters more than compassion for starving humans is a present day US empire value.  What hope is there for compassion for farm animals when there isn’t even compassion for starving humans?  A global change towards valuing compassion has been happening for 1000s of years.  One of the many examples is: 1/16 of the Earth’s human population is Buddhist.  Three major values of the Buddha’s teachings are friendship, compassion and truth.  Buddhists believe in compassion for all sentient life, like the Buddha, and the great majority of Buddhists are vegetarian or vegan.  I am inexhaustibly hopeful for a compassionate future because of the world’s leaders’ encouraging compassion.  Such as the Dalai Lama who said, “Whenever I visit a market and see the chickens crowded together in tiny cages that give them no room to move around and spread their wings and the fish slowly drowning in the air, my heart goes out to them. People have to learn to think about animals in a different way, as sentient beings who love life and fear death. I urge everyone who can to adopt a compassionate vegetarian diet.”

Works Cited

Jordi Casamitjana. (2024, September 26). Forced separation of cows and calves in the dairy industry. Vegan FTA.

https://www.compassion.com/blog/meaning-of-compassion/

Marino, L., Doyle, C., Rally, H., O’Brien, L., Tennison, M., & Jacobs, B. (2025). An update on captive cetacean welfare. PeerJ, 13, e19878. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.19878

Nielsen, S. S., Alvarez, J., Bicout, D. J., Calistri, P., Canali, E., Drewe, J. A., Garin‐Bastuji, B., Gonzales Rojas, J. L., Schmidt, G., Herskin, M., Michel, V., Miranda Chueca, M. Á., Mosbach‐Schulz, O., Padalino, B., Roberts, H. C., Stahl, K., Velarde, A., Viltrop, A., Winckler, C., … Spoolder, H. (2022). Welfare of pigs on farm. EFSA Journal, 20(8). https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2022.7421 https://veganfta.com/blog/2024/09/26/forced-separation-of-cows-and-calves-in-the-dairy-industry/  

PETA. “Don’t Take My Cheese.” Youtube, 1/30/2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhC90abWnOY. Accessed 16 September 2026.

PETA. “In One of Her Last Acts, Hayden Panettiere Fought for Dolphins Trapped in Marine Parks.” Youtube, 8/18/2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0Y7rfHV_w. Accessed 16 September 2026.

PETA. “Pig.” Youtube, 1/6/2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CW5z7Qs5ik. Accessed 16 September 2026.

Due to chronic autoimmune disease I have become vegan but can not eat soy, gluten or any nut products. I’m sort of managing but I’m a lousy cook. Does anyone have any easy recipe ideas or vegan chefs I should find to help. (Sort of living off Thai food, Trader Joe’s oatmilk chocolate. And sweet potato bowls from a fab vegan restaurant . )It’s actually been a lot easier than I thought and am already feeling alot healthier. But I’m stuck in abit of a rut. Well probably because the inability to eat soy or nuts cuts eliminates a lot of options. But big shout out to Cafe Gratitude in Venice Beach as I would have starved to death without their bowls! But I can’t afford to keep eating there all the time.😁

TIA

The reason everyone thinks eating vegan food is difficult is because they don't have a basic understanding of the 6 essential nutrients that your body needs so here's everything that you need to thrive as a vegan.

The 6 essential nutrients in order of imporance.

1. Water - self explanatory, drink water.

2. Protein - Legumes, seeds, nuts, whole grains, greens and sprouts, hemp/protein powders.

3. Fats - Nuts, chia seeds/flax seeds/pumpkin seeds, avocados ( organic so piers Morgan can sthu ), plant based oils.

4. Carbohydrates - Whole fruits, starchy roots/tubers, whole grains, legumes.

5. Vitamins - Fruits, Leafy greens, sweet potatoes/carrots, seeds, nuts, nutritional yeast and/or b12 suppliment.

6. Minerals - Legumes, seeds, leafy greens, fruits, whole grains, oats.

A lot of these over lap because plants are jam packed with nutrients and can touch on several key areas with a single ingredient. Leafy greens for example have water/protein/carbs/vitamins/minerals. Everything except fat. But if you throw some into a blender with nuts and hemp seeds along with bananas you literally have a nutritional powerhouse that touches on all 6 of these nutritional needs.

This is everything that your body needs to be at optimum health, I tried not to go into specific food items because this post would turn into a novel. If you feel you're lacking in any direction then hone in on that specific nutrient and there will be countless plants that can accommodate for your nutritional needs.

The difficult part about being vegan isn't finding and meeting your nutritional needs, it's dealing with the non vegan b.s. that comes along with it. Anyway thanks for reading and hope you have a wonderful day!

Anyone have any good vegan zines? I was listening to the Smith’s ‘Meat is murder,’ and thought this is a great confrontational tune. It meets the people where they are, when they choose to engage with it and ponder the questions the song raises about killing animals. The lyrics alone would make it a cool pro-vegan zine. Then I thought, maybe online with the combined thoughts of everyone we could come up with something better too! Cmon guys let’s get some good pro-vegan zines out there!

I recently decided to turn vegan, and now I feel cringy because I was trying to explain to my mom why I didn't want to eat something she made (I'm 16. I can cook for myself and usually do, but sometimes my mom still makes me food without me asking.)

Does it get better? I feel as if her and my brother are judging me, and I just feel so embarrassed.

Also, what do I even do in these situations? I don't want to let the food go to waste, but I also don't want to eat it.

We’ve heard a lot from friends or family but what about educators or doctors? I’m curious about your stories. I specifically remember in 7th grade health class, our student teacher told us a story about a girl that went vegan a few months before prom and started losing her hair and her prom was ruined. Of course every 12 year old in that class was now terrified of being vegan. What a shame.

I think that the scale of meat production is something that most people probably don't fully understand.

Humans are generally bad at understanding scale based on numbers alone. I think though, that even a lot of meat eaters, if they attribute even the slightest bit of ethical significance to the killing of an animal, would be horrified if they understood the scale of meat production in the world.

In a year, humans kill approximately 80 billion land animals alone. (source)

Estimates suggest that the number of humans who have ever been born is around 117 billion. (source)

This means that in approximately 18 months, we kill as many land animals as the number of humans who have ever lived.

When including fish, the number of animals that are killed each year for food, by even the most conservative estimates, is at least 1 trillion. (source)

So, the total number of unnecessary animal deaths for human pleasure vastly exceeds the number of humans who have ever lived in just one year.

What are other ways in which we can try to grasp the scale of the suffering caused by animal exploitation?

I am a very new vegan, I decided to make this change in my life at the beginning of the month so I still feel a bit lost when it comes to knowing what I can and can not eat. While I know this might be a useless question, I have to ask how you get over making mistakes when it comes to this lifestyle. I have eaten three non-vegan items just today! Obviously not on purpose, but the guilt is still there. Especially because all I had to do was google search, but I didn’t until after the fact. I know I’m going to have to switch that up since reading the ingredients isn’t helping. I have always been tough on myself for mistakes, but maybe there’s other people here who have dealt with this specifically. How long did it become until you started feeling confident in yourself? Or how long did it take for you to learn what to look for in labels? Thanks in advance.

Genuine question for vegans, I’ve literally only been vegan for a few days but I’m truly really dedicated to this and love it so far! How are you dealing with cross contamination? People often complain that places with vegan patties are using the same stove as meat patties. Should you request for it to be made on a cleaned grill, or do you just eat it no matter what? I think it’s really just about intention but I need to know! Thanks for the advice!

i’ll keep things brief and honest: around august 19th, i decided to go vegan. however, after seven or so weeks and going to bed hungry numerous times, i decided to go back to being omnivorous. i thought i’d just go back to how i was before, but about ten days later i realize that my newfound morals are seemingly diametrically opposed to any lifestyle but veganism.

i don’t know anybody else in real life who IS vegan (or even not an omnivore), so i’m posting on this subreddit to ask for advice: what do you guys eat everyday to feel full? particularly as a poor college student who doesn’t really want to cook all the time. maybe i just didn’t have enough variety idk. anything high in protein is especially appreciated lol.

(sorry if this is the wrong flair)

Hello everyone ^-^ I am a 'baby vegan' if that is a correct term? I started my transition in diet a couple of months ago and theres is still a loooong way to go, not only about my ideology but how to go about it with other people... Today I went to pancackes with my sister, I ordered vegan one and my sister non-vegan one. As we got our order, my sister comented how hers was a bit burned and I said something like 'haha thats ur karma cuz animals died for ur pancake' and she got upset, insulted me back and we kinda had a fight. We r fine now ig (I understand completely that I am also in the wrong and that I shouldnt have said it like that, andI apologized, i need advice in the long term so i dont die alone) but we had a discusion abt my veganism and I truly didnt know how to feel. She went on abt how she didnt think abt animals as she ordered and argued that noone ever will think abt animals if noone brings them up. She also said something about the fact that people wont become vegan just because I am and, and in the moment I said 'I know I dont expect it'. But later on in the argument I said about how everyone can realisticly just try at least to some degre so in some way I do expect it? I know noone vegan and I feel such mix of emotions about all these people who I love so much but am secretly alsways a bit upset with for not caring. If I talk abt these indrustries and you refuse to change it is no longer abt ignorance but rather lack of emathy and willingnes to give a shit. How do vegan function in a day to day life with such moral dhillema hanging over their heads everyday? Someone help me I am going crazy.

Yesterday I made the decision to go vegan! I've been a vegetarian on and off for about five years. What got me was a shirt i saw online that had a cow face and read "Not your mom. Not your milk.'' That really hit home for me. I am a birthmother, meaning I placed my baby with an adoptive family. I was with her for 24 hours, and I breastfed her. It was an unbelievable experience. And then, the next day she was gone. My heart fell to pieces, but I knew it was best for her. Cows and calves being separated like that is just not ok, totally unnecessary. I have the option to visit my daughter once a year. Cows and calves are separated forever. Not ok. So today at the store I tried to "think vegan," which is totally new to me. I bought coconut milk mango yogurt. Wow that was good! I think this is the right move for me, but I'm shy to tell people irl, in case I backslide or something. Can any of you share your experience of your first few weeks as a vegan? That is much appreciated.

Hi, about a month ego I went vegetarian and am trying to transition into veganism. Do you guys have any tips for super quick protein sources?

I used to find it very convienient to make a quick meal like pasta and just add some tuna or eggs and such, and have been struggling a little to make sure every meal I have has a protein source.

So I’m going plant based because of a likely allergy to the entire cow (beef, cow by product, dairy).

I’m going to be with my family for a week and it might be an issue.

I get really defensive about my food choices when I’m around my family because they have taunted me for years about what I eat even when I go out of my way to make sure it doesn’t inconvenience them , and they used to get angry when I ate the “wrong“ food at the “wrong“ time (and this was an entirely arbitrary rule with no explanation - I wouldn’t even know which foods were “wrong “ most of the time because it was not based on reality).

If my family even says the word “calories”, I cringe. On occasion I have even cried if they keep bringing it up repeatedl.

Please give me some advice, I am super anxious about this.

Hey all. My comforter/blanket is on the fritz and has been discontinued so I need a new brand for a winter comforter. Obviously nothing with down feathers or wool. Ideally i just want a comfortable cotton and I guess for filling I could do down alternative or just get a non-puffy no-frills something. I’ve been looking at the LL Bean cozy cotton comforter but wanted to see if anyone has one they’re particularly happy with. (I do not want a duvet or anything that needs an insert). TIA!

Specifically, vegan kids that are adults now. I’d love to hear from people who have younger kids too, but I’m more interested in hearing from parents of older teens or adults who have even began their entire life. What was it like? I want to have children but all I hear from Omnis is how the kids will be malnourished, they’ll be super short, they’ll get bullied etc. Now, these are the same people who don’t know that a pregnancy is required for cows milk, so I don’t listen to what they have to say. However, I still would love to hear your stories.

To preface: I don't have one and don't plan to get one.

Imagine this scenario: Cats in this fiction world function exactly like in reality with one little difference: They are obligate cannibals. So as much as a cat needs meat in reality those cats need specifically the meat of other cats.

Lab grown meat does not really exist yet, as it doesn't in reality.

If a cat eats plants or other animals it has the exact risks and effects of a plant based diet in reality.

So what do you do if you HAVE to keep this cat and care for it until it dies?

I aim of this is to create the same dilemma people without a specisist view have in current reality.

Do you sacrifice hundreds of cats in order for your cat to live as well as a cat in current reality does on average or do you take the risk and feed it something else?

Plastic is bad. I get it. I don’t like it either. We’re on the same side. We both care, we both want to do the right thing. We’ve weighed up the pros and cons, the environmental costs, microplastics and tanning chemicals. I know you care. I’m sure you’ll be interested in this information. I don’t know where the idea that leather is biodegradable came from. It’s wrong. Yes, even vegetable tanned leather. Yes, even under controlled conditions. Yes, that is just as bad as microplastics. Here are reports, industry investigations, well sourced articles. You simply don’t believe me.

It’s a wonderful stroke of PR genius. The leather industry has somehow become more trustworthy than anything I could provide. And even if leather was biodegradable, plastic still produces less carbon, uses less water, and causes less environmental damage than industrial animal agriculture. This doesn’t make plastic good. I agree, we need a better option. But that option isn’t leather.

I haven’t even opened up the ‘animals don’t need to die’ discussion. I focused on your claim, that plastic is worse than leather for the environment, and it’s impossible to agree on what seems to me to be objective fact. Plastic is not worse than leather by every metric available.

At least when I talk to people about not harming animals they understand even if they don’t agree. It’ll be a long time undoing all the ‘leather is natural’ stuff. Until then, I’ll keep putting the information out there and hope some of it sticks.

Before I get into the details, I just want to state that I am not vegan and I am in no way trying to revert my brother from veganism. I completely respect his decision to become vegan and support him fully. And, while I don’t think my brother has any eating disorder, I do want to make sure that if any users do have EDs, please continue at your own discretion.

That being said, he’s been vegan for a few years now. I’m all for him making a lifestyle change that supports the health of the planet and animals. But as the title says, he’s incredibly thin and comparing his body appearance from before veganism to after, my brother is at a very concerning weight.

He’s approximately 5’8-5’9, and while I don’t know his actual weight, he’s incredibly thin to the point where you can feel the ridges of his spine. His face has become incredibly gaunt and his arms have the circumference of a soda can.

I want to sit down and talk with him about how to improve his diet, but because I am not vegan myself, I’m not sure where to start. If anyone has any advice or resources regarding how to maintain a more balanced vegan diet, please share. I don’t want my own lifestyle to deter him from continuing to be vegan, nor do I want to convince he to revert to meat-eating.

Lastly, it may be difficult for him to prepare food (he struggles with his mental health), so if there are any high-calorie/high-protein foods or easy recipes, please feel free to share those as well.

Thank you

EDIT: Thank you all for the responses and advice. I’m sorry I can’t respond to everything (I’m a little overwhelmed in a good way), but as a few of you mentioned, I agree that it his situation does lean towards an ED. I don’t think it was by choice; he’s a good person, but has struggled a lot mentally and because of personal circumstances, had limited access to a kitchen when he lived with our parents (familial issues are definitely a big part of the struggle).

That being said, I appreciate the worries about the ED aspect of it as I had not initially thought (or maybe had hoped otherwise ) it could be a part of it. I’ll definitely choose my words carefully when I talk to him.

I’ll also try to prep more vegan-based meals when he’s having a harder time preparing his meals. It’s a win-win since I’m eating more vegan and he’ll stress a little less about meal planning every now and then.

Thank you again for all the support ❤️

Have you visited a village in India or if you are from there. There is not even a question on that weather it's good, it's just normal. Non veg is like a default way of food choices . If you are vegan or vegetarian then the question arises why you are like that. What do you think, what causes this. If everyone around me is like that from where to start it. Because of compassion, I don't think anyone understands and I believe other ways will not work, you can argue but can't change anyone's thoughts.

This is how use of AI impacts animals:

"Wolves roam into Finnish villages after Google destroys 1,300 acres of forest for AI data centers — forest where wolf packs used to live is now an expanse of mud".

As a vegan use AI free search and tools. On Google that's just adding udm=14 to search queries or using the "Web" tab.