A few days ago I read an article that left me perplexed, asking me how a person can sacrifice the health of their children in order to remain faithful to their ideals.
The article is as follows(1):

This is an Australian woman who, in order not to have to kill small animals such as lice, prefers to let her daughter be infested with them, with the risk of infecting her little friends too.
This woman probably doesn’t realize that she has ended up in an egregore that has nothing to do with ethics, and that makes her act against her own interests, making her behave like a religious fanatic.

MICROORGANISMS, BACTERIA, FUNGI, PARASITES
We know that there are countless microorganisms, fungi, bacteria and parasites that can cause disorders and diseases.
Actually, most of these are already present in our body living in a symbiotic state(2), but the loss of a natural balance, due to a wrong diet, an unregulated lifestyle, the accumulation of stress, the reckless use of antibiotics or other drugs can cause a strain to proliferate, bringing an imbalance that could later evolve into a disease.
The same goes for the bacteria that live on our skin, in the mouth, on the scalp, near the glands and in all other parts of the body. As long as there is a balance these will not harm us but will live in symbiosis with us.
When for one reason or another, one of these bacterial strains prevails over the others, becoming aggressive, it can lead us to inflammation and consequently to more serious disorders, so we must intervene to re-establish a balance and return to health. This can be done by changing our lifestyle, for example by changing our diet, starting to play sports, eliminating various stress factors, but also by taking specific medications in more serious cases.
Controlling this bacterial community by eliminating a part of it, in this case harmful, has nothing to do with ethics, much less with an alleged lack of coherence towards our ideals whether vegetarian or vegan.
Safeguarding a larger organism, in this case our body which for them could be equivalent to their world, is the best thing we can do and also the most obvious.
Furthermore, we will also save a much larger community of microorganisms, all those that populate our body, to the detriment of a small minority.
But this is also true in other areas. For example, if we have a vegetable garden with lush vegetables and suddenly they begin to deteriorate because a parasite has crept into them, we intervene to eliminate the problem.
So if we have a pet, for example a dog, and it becomes infested with ticks, we use a pesticide to free it and get it back to health.
If we do not eliminate parasites from our garden, the plants will probably not produce fruit and will perhaps wither. The same goes for our dog. If we don’t free him from ticks he is likely to get sick and risk dying.
More generally we could say that when a balance ceases to exist due to external interference, strong action may be necessary to re-establish it.

BAD PUBLICITY
For these reasons, the fact of not wanting to eradicate a parasite, as in the case of the lice in the cited article, demonstrates ignorance on the part of the subject and certainly little foresight, in addition to the fact of not being supportive of the cause for which he is fighting. Instead, they risk giving bad publicity to their ideas and being looked at with suspicion by those who don’t share them.
Furthermore, the haters and supporters of the opposite cause, the convinced carnivores, will be unleashed as a result and they will be happy to point out those who make these choices as deranged, and will thus be able to plead their cause, arguing that vegans are ignorant and dangerous people, and that their choices are to blame because they only bring harm to themselves and others.

ANECDOTE
I still remember when my father told me about a dinner in a restaurant where several poets who had participated in an event had been invited, including him and a friend.
When he saw his friend calmly eating some cold cuts from the appetizer, he asked him with some surprise if he was still a vegetarian.
He replied that he was, however, in order not to disrespect the person who had prepared that dish, he would have made an exception.
Probably most vegetarian or vegan people would have been horrified by that gesture, classifying that person as a heretic and throwing them out of their category.
But this episode shows us that not all of us are the same and think the same way. And there are no well-defined boundaries according to which if we are inside then we belong to the X category while if we are outside then we belong to the Y category. Simply, we are all different, we have different sensitivities, and from time to time we decide on what is best to do based on the circumstances, our beliefs, and also based on what common sense suggests to us at that moment.
There is no handbook for vegetarians and vegans with written rules that must be followed to the letter to be part of these categories.
Not eating meat is an ethical but above all a personal choice, and it is not like joining the marines and following military rules of behavior.
In fact, we often hear ourselves accused of a lack of coherence by those who perhaps not only would not be able to support such an important choice but would not even be able to make small changes in their life and stick to them.
For example, a former colleague accused vegans and me of not being coherent because having removed some foods from the diet, and having included some particulars such as quinoa, we were not keeping faith with the ethical ideology which is the basis of the movement. In particular, he accused us, due to our new eating habits, of taking away a food of primary importance such as quinoa from some populations of the Andes who produce it because these, living in a condition of poverty, due to the increased demand on the last 10 years of this legume, they would be forced to sell their entire harvest to eat something else.
In truth, the fact that quinoa has become very popular in the West is not only due to the change in diet of some individuals. But also to the fact that it has been highly publicized and has thus become popular and used by everyone, not just vegans. Furthermore, even if there are vegans who use it extensively, there are probably others who don’t know it at all.
It is also true that companies have been created that are starting to cultivate it in our country too (3) and which therefore allow us to have an organic, 0 kilometer product that is potentially also cheaper.

A DIFFICULT CHOICE
Unfortunately it is very easy to blame people when incidents similar to the one in the article happen.
However, we must remember that becoming vegetarian, but above all vegan, is not a simple thing but is a choice that involves many deprivations, and also careful research into what we eat, wear and use.
And we cannot expect those who profess to be vegan or vegetarian to follow a consistency dictated more by a label than by a need, a label that the system has probably given them.
In fact, those who choose to be vegan do so essentially for two reasons. Stay healthy and respect the environment and all the beings that live within it, and it doesn’t matter if they are respecting a certain coherence desired by the system.
Ethics and coherence, in fact, are not necessarily two sides of the same coin.
The choice is dictated by love for the planet that hosts us, the other beings that live there and for life in general.
For this reason, those who are unable to make certain sacrifices should not criticize those who make them in their place.
If someone goes out of their way to keep the environment we live in clean, healthy and vital, while we are unable to do so, they only deserve our approval.
Although some vegans may seem too fanatical, and some certainly are, the majority have made a choice that goes far beyond their own selfish well-being.
Many of them probably simply aspire to live in a world that they loved to dream about as children and that as adults the harsh reality of a capitalist and often cruel society has violently torn away from them.

PROPAGANDA
Even if many will turn up their noses, I believe that the need to eliminate meat, as well as the issue of food and resource scarcity, has recently been pushed and exploited by the system to advertise its products and fuel new businesses.
Such as synthetic meat, which we will probably soon find in supermarkets(4).
But also alternative products, for example cricket flour, which has been widely advertised on social media.
In fact, some experts predict a shortage of food due to an ever-increasing consumption of meat by industrialized and emerging countries, and climate changes that penalize production.
It was therefore decided to replace some foods that are no longer sustainable with others that are and have the same nutritional value, for example cricket flour (Acheta domesticus).
On social media, public opinion was tested in this regard and various advertising campaigns were used to get the public used to it, such as the guy who goes around making other people try snacks with cricket flour that often show a reaction of surprise and approval.
At the beginning of the year the European Union introduced a regulation that authorizes the marketing of cricket powder for use in foods in all European countries(5), so we could already purchase products containing it today.

FOOD FASHIONS
In recent years, thanks also to the release of some books and documentaries, many people have become more aware of nutrition. In particular, many studies have emphasized the fact that some foods derived from meat, such as sausages and processed meats, can be the cause of tumors and other diseases.
But also foods such as milk and its derivatives as the book The China Study points out.
However, since social media has exploded there has been greater availability of information on the subject. Most people, previously totally unaware of what lies behind the meat industry, have had the opportunity to see what mistreatment is meted out to farmed animals and what atrocities are committed.
The most attentive and sensitive people have therefore begun to review their diet in order to no longer feed such a cruel and insensitive system towards animals, switching to a plant-based diet.
But at the same time, many people, even if not driven by an ethical, environmental or health issue, but rather simply curious to try something new that has become very popular, have begun to follow this diet, perhaps building on themselves a new identity to seem cooler and more informed, and be able to talk about it on social media or on their personal blog. Many of them, not completely embracing the idea of distorting their diet to replace it with a rather different one, by exploring foods that were hitherto unknown or little used, were unable to find an equally healthy balance and ended up with some health problems or perhaps simply by losing too much weight, perhaps because they lack some nutrients, they abandoned this diet shortly after, criticizing it because it didn’t work for them. Unfortunately, they have not understood that it is not just a passing fad but an approach to a new lifestyle and that, once those shortcomings due to a radical and sudden change in diet have been filled, they end up re-establishing theirselves on a new balance benefit their health. Maybe initially also by integrating specific vitamins.

AS ABOVE SO DOWN
There is a saying that says that what you do to others you get back which is a bit equivalent to the law of karma.
In the bible it is written that what happens in the highest planes also happens in the lowest ones and vice versa. This could also mean that if we feed and mistreat animals because we consider them inferior, something similar could happen to us on another plane, where other beings considering us inferior use us as livestock.

COHERENCE
Does it then make sense to talk about coherence when making a very specific food choice? Depends.
For example, there are people who profess to be vegetarians but eat fish. In this case there is a lack of coherence.
In general, in fact, those who have chosen not to eat foods that involve the death and suffering of other sentient beings do not eat any type of animal that has even the slightest anatomical features that can be traced back to us, and which therefore most likely feels pain as we do.
But deciding to keep the lice just to want to kill anything I don’t think has anything to do with an ethical discussion.
This is not about wanting to demonstrate consistency. In this case, in fact, coherence seems to have an illusory meaning that is probably not achievable in the world we live in.
In fact, when we simply walk in a park we kill many microscopic insects.
When we take a shower we kill an infinite number of microorganisms.
When we wash the salad also.
So in my opinion it makes no sense to talk about coherence when we get rid of a parasite.
Just as it wouldn’t make sense to let ourselves die from a serious infection because in order to be consistent we don’t want to take a medicine that would kill pathogens.
The only thing that makes sense is to re-establish the right balance when it is lacking due to external causes.
And also use critical thinking especially when talking about coherence.

(1)https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2023/08/09/mamma-si-rifiuta-di-debellare-i-pidocchi-della-figlia-sono-vegana-non-voglio-uccidere-nessun-essere-vivente/7257164/
(2)https://www.santagostino.it/it/santagostinopedia/microbiota-intestinale
(3)https://www.millionaire.it/quinoa-dalle-ande-allitalia-coltivarla-si-puo/
(4)https://www.eufic.org/it/produzione-alimentare/articolo/carne-coltivata-in-laboratorio-come-viene-prodotta-e-quali-sono-i-pro-e-i-contro
(5)https://www.pieronuciari.it/wp/quello-che-ce-da-sapere-sulla-farina-di-grillo-che-tra-poco-invadera-il-mercato/

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