this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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TIL figs aren’t vegan
I'm a vegan, although not super strict. But I knew some terror vegans who do not consider vigs vegan.
The definition of "vegan" differs. Like, I don't like products that had a nervous system. So technically I could eat oysters. But some vegans consider oranges not to be vegan because there might be an animal product in the pesticides used on oranges. Some claim they only use plant based products, but they get mad when I ask them about fungi, as their cell structure looks more like an animal cell than a plant cell (I love to make terror vegans mad).
Being vegan means you buy products which fit your idea of being vegan.
And sadly for some it means you need to be a fucking asshole to anyone you meet.
Regarding your last paragraph: that's unrelated. There are also lots of insufferably vocal meat eaters who feel personally attacked when someone else doesn't religiously stuff themselves with meat every meal.
I know zero (0) vocal vegans but 3 meat eaters who make a point on hating vegans and sometimes make it sound like they eat extra meat to spite vegans.
One of them once said to me a restaurant can only be good if it has no vegetarian options.
Someone has never tried falafel...
Yeah, I usually don't say anything, unless it's unaoidable and then I usually just say I don't eat all that much meat.
Most will leave it at that, but I'll happily answer. I don't really want to yuck people's yums, and the food industry is a bit of a special interest of mine.
Advertising is one hell of a drug. Everybody running around eating bacon and butter, and beef tallow, and haven't had a gram of fiber, getting colon cancer at forty.
Candidly, I think your vocal vegan is like your radical feminist, or social justice warrior, or diversity hire: mostly made up.
Oh, do tell.
I live in Bavaria. There are multiple politicians who don't get tired to performatively eat sausages and try to make laws that mandate calling oat milk “oat drink” and vegan burgers/schnitzel/… anything else. As if anyone would ever get confused by that. There's a common joke that they should rename “scouring milk” to “scouring drink” otherwise people get confused!!!
I’m just saying this specific fruit has a literal animal inside of it
All fruits have that, if you enhance your view enough. Put any fruit under a microscope and it's crawling with creatures.
Where do we draw the line? Seems like it’s impossible not to eat an animal
Also depends on whether you consider fungi an animal of a plant. As their cell structure resembles more of animal cells than plant cells. And fungi are everywhere. Humans, animals and plants would all die if fungi would seize to exist. They are in our body, create our food and medicine, they are the cycle of life as they break down dead tissue, they feed plants and trees. The oldest living organism is a fungus. They are what keep us all alive, they are basically mother earth. And we eat that. Seeing The Last Of Us suddenly makes a lot of sense. Revenge of the fungi.
Idk isn't that like saying all animal pollinated plants are not vegan?
Well, this one’s got a literal animal inside of it… Is all I’m saying
I guess it depends on if people think roadkill is vegan; the dead wasp is part of the life cycle of the wasp/fig symbiosis so its going to die well before humans intervene.
Imo the argument could be made that by clearing land for vegetables there's a large reduction in habitable natural environments. This results in things dying that normally wouldn't. Especially true when you consider pesticides.
So is the problem the dead bug in the fig or the dead bug outside, say, an apple?
I’ve only been vegan for eight years. I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never really researched it. I just don’t need animal products. But it seems like eating anything that was an animal or has an animal in it isn’t vegan
Fuck goose down
And I mean, where do we draw the line? There’s microscopic organisms that we kill all the time
This one doesn't either, it's just a ghost.
Eating ghosts is vegan
I’m a level five vegan. I don’t eat anything that Casts a shadow
They are most fruit require insect pollination, as long there is no forced labor or murder it's still vegan
Depends on the vegan you're talking to.
Wild figs may be but as soon as you're cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture. Much like honey or milk, the fact you don't eat the animal's flesh might still defy the spirit of 'no animal exploitation'. Most pollinators do not explicitly perish as part of pollination; figs are one of the foods vegans may disagree on.
The good news is that there are a small number of fig varieties that can be fertilised without the wasp (either by hand, or self-pollinating clones). In a lot of countries this is the variety that may be grown because importing wasps could be ecologically dangerous.
That's still different to animal exploitation. Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. This is not contrary to that, "milk" and "honey" are produced by the animals for a specific reason, namely their young. Even if it were possible to obtain them without harming the animal (and there isn't, both require animal death if they are to be produced in consumer quantities) there still is the problem of consent. It is clear that bees and cows under normal circumstances do not want to give away their milk/honey. The wasp however is already dead, it is not harmed by eating the fig and it's consent is no longer part of the equation.
If the fig cultivation reaches a level where the wasps have to be kept under circumstances similar to the bees then yes I wouldn't consider the figs that require these wasps to be vegan.
I agree with you, but this fruit has a literal animal inside of it
See my comment here https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/19570004
Wait until you find out what fossil fuels are made of
Mostly plant plancton.
Yeah, the point is they are technically not vegan so you have a supply chain issue with everything you consume.
Nitpicky, I know, and of course vegan+fossil fuel based supply chain (as long a I can't do anything about it) is still good
Mostly plants and plankton?
Are zooplankton vegan?