Promoting Vegan Junk Food Forever & Instant Karma

Without realizing the temporal consequences, many vegan bloggers have taken a liking to receiving free vegan food products from companies, and then promoting them, regardless of the nutritional content, and generally ignoring same.  They praise and praise the products, offer giveaways, and all to drive more traffic to their blog.  They usually cite product claims straight from the company's website without investigating their validity.

I've written about this many times.  Most recently here, here, and here.

In correspondence with a long-term vegan online friend today (and owner of an extremely popular vegan blog), my friend pointed out that these bloggers are, in effect, promoting unhealthy (fatty, salty, sugary) junk food to the vegan community, and since they've blogged about the product, they have, in effect, provided FREE ADVERTISING FOR THIS JUNK FOOD FOREVER.

How proud they must be... a new term comes to mind to describe them:  the Perpetual Vegan Shill. 

Encouraging people to buy and consume excessively fatty fake cheeses, ridiculous fatty and sugar-laden candy bars, and other nutritionally useless products.  And with the Internet, it's forever on their blogs.  They should be totally ashamed, especially those bloggers who extoll "healthy" vegan food and "no to low fat vegan recipes" on their blogs but get all excited about giving away highly processed vegan junk food.

But wait!  They'll get more free vegan products to eat and write about, and the cycle perpetuates itself.

Very very sad.  Selling your vegan soul for free products by promoting vegan junk food, forever... and in return for encouraging people to eat badly, you get more free food and more hits!  Is it really worth it?

IMHO, to quote John Lennon, "Instant karma's gonna get you."

[09_0911:  Addendum:  Wow!  The Happy Shillavore has just posted another giveway of Newman's Own Chocolate Bars (only if you subscribe to her Newsletter).  How weird.... a vegan chef promoting no to low-fat vegan recipes giving away free high fatty/sugary vegan candy bars (nutritional analysis and original commentary here) to stimulate site hits and Newsletter subscriptions  How sad.]

Comments

[Thomas]

I appreciate the work that you do here. Too many people think that just because something is vegan it's healthy. It helps to have bloggers like yourself dispelling this myth.

[Thanks, Thomas.... nice to get a comment like yours (have gotten a lot of positive e-mail). The blogger in question has been quite viscious via e-mail and it's most disappointing. It's amazing how fat, sugar, and salt, can be such an emotional issue for those addicted to any of them.

Particularly amazing that since vegans pull off what many people say is too difficult, giving up meat and dairy, as well as animal products, that so many can't get past those three addictions I've mentioned, or worse, don't realize how important it is to. The math and science doesn't lie.

Your feedback was most welcome!

Best regards, Mark]

[Peter]

G'day Mark,

What do they mean free? There is a high price to pay for such so called 'free items' as a result of the increased probability of heart attack not to the mention all the other associated diseases health diseases.

Unfortunately the profit margins to be made on unprocessed fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes are tiny so we don't see much marketing muscle behind these real health foods.

Regards,

Peter

[You made me laugh this morning! Thanks for the comment... yeah, I had worked and re-worked a line about there being no such thing as a free "lunch" or something like that, but it didn't seem to fit the context I was addressing.

But yup... those unfortunates who consume added oil and sugar and salt to a point over what Essy, et. al., recommend, will pay a higher price in the end.

Best regards, Mark

[Breeze Harper]

I couldn't agree more with your concern over this. I am wondering if people really don't know that just because something is labeled vegan , doesn't mean it's healthy. My parents and brother also become confused when it comes to things labeled "organic" (they are not veg*n). They will tell me that they bought organic cereal, but I'll still notice that there is too much sugar (albeit organic) that has been added. Nonetheless, they actually think it's okay to to eat a lot of these foods because they are "organic." I'm excited that they're trying to get into more healthy eating, but it seems like companies marketing "organic" don't seem to care that their products may have high amounts of organic sugar. I cringe when I see my father pouring spoons of organic Agave nectar into his food. He is diabetic and has learned that agave is "suitable for diabetics"... I try to explain to him he can eat it in moderation and that "suitable for diabetics" doesn't mean you can use half the bottle per meal.

For vegan and organic foods, my partner and I always complain that much of the pre-packaged stuff is still garbage and will make people sick. I'm also perplexed by people who want to "go vegan" for the sake of non-human animals, yet the ingredients in many of these vegan foods are not ethically sourced. I don't know how many times I'll see s vegan junk food candy or bar that has no non-human animal products in it, but the chocolate, sugar, vanilla, etc come from sources in which human beings are exploited. I'm probably going off on a tangent here, but I think a lot of people either don't care, don't realize that what they're promoting is destructive, and or they just want free stuff and don't really mind the consequences.

[I tend to think either they are oblivious or believe a "little bit" or "moderation" is okay (which McDougall, Esselstyn, et. al., disagree with, as do I... maintains the addiction in addition to an onslaught on your body's systems and components).]

Here are some dissertations written about the politics of meat substitutes, corporatization of the veg movement, etc. Maybe that can shed some light on this. You can contact me if you want the pdf:

Flail, J. G. (2006). The Sexual Politics of Meat Substitutes, Georgia State University. Ph.D.: 193.

Malesh, P. M. (2005). Rhetorics of Consumption: Identity, Confrontation, and Corporatization in the American Vegetarian Movement. English, University of Arizona. Ph.D.

[Thanks for your thoughtful and insightful note. I'll contact you offline about the PDFs... they sound interesting. Best to you and yours, Mark ]