Why veganism?

We were sitting in a vegan restaurant: this fact alone still surprises me. Earlier, when we were trying to decide where to go I was surprised when Husband and our friend went along with my suggestion. It certainly made a change from our usual haunts.

"I've been getting more and more into this kind of thing," I said, as we browsed the menu.

Husband knows this, but it seemed to have been news to our friend. He looked up from the menu and turned towards me. "Why?"

The question wasn't one I'd been expecting, but then I guess I'd confused the fact that he'd come with us to the restaurant with him being clear on why we were there in the first place.

As usual, I was crap at giving a satisfactory answer to a searching question for which I was unprepared. It reminded me of when Husband and I used to be asked why we weren't having children. We both knew why ourselves, but hadn't prepared any spiel. Besides which, it irked me that I felt we had to do so. I mean, what I really wanted to say was that we didn't fancy contributing to the overpopulation of the world, and dedicating our lives to a small being that basically takes all your money, treats you like shit and then pisses off after 18 years (if you're lucky).

You run the risk of alienating people if you tell them that. Yet it never occurs to people to ask the opposite – why people do have children (I personally have never seen it as any of my business).

Likewise, no one ever asks why people eat meat. The standard answer, I think, is that it tastes good (if cooked well – which I found it seldom was). The implication is that veggie/ vegan food doesn't, although the same thing applies: go to a place that knows what it's doing, and vegan food can be amazing.

I've come to appreciate that any deviation from majority behavioural norms is bound to invite curiosity. In this case, while I didn't mind answering the question, I wished I had a better response that I could have expressed more eloquently.

"Uh... Well, it's because of the way animals are treated, really. I just can't eat meat anymore."

We didn't pursue any discussion as we were out to have fun. But the question lingered in my head. While I don't want to end up in Pseuds' Corner, for me food has never been just about taste. That's not to say I'll eat poor quality food, but my husband has always chuckled at my interest in trying food for reasons other than because it tastes good – environmental, ethical, nutritional (I'll eat green slime if I think it's good for me), and more recently, to protest against the treatment of animals.

Food industries depend on our confused thinking around non-human animals. "Many of us live with companion animals such as dogs, cats and rabbits," says Benjamin Zephania in his short film below. "We share our homes with them, consider them members of the family, and we grieve when they die. Yet we kill and eat other animals that, if you really think about it, are no different from those we love."

The bias we show towards certain kinds of animals while exploiting others is speciesism. To throw in a statistic, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, humans kill approximately 56 billion animals for food each year (not including fish) – and that may be a conservative estimate. This quantity can only be achieved by factory farming.

It's a tricky area; many people all over the world owe their livelihoods to animal farming. Yet, it's by no means a perfect system due to the waste and unequal distribution.

I don't know what the ultimate answer is, but somehow global paradigms have to be changed in order to lessen the suffering of both humans and non-human animals. And, just as we have tried to eradicate racism, sexism and ageism, speciesism is no less important.

For the time being, I can only offer my own miniscule protest. "Veganism is the ultimate protest against animal exploitation," says Zephania. I wish I'd had that quote with me at the restaurant.

"With the mounting evidence – compassion, our health, the environment, water pollution, supporting developing countries, food security, rising population, sustainability, the rainforests... When people ask, 'Why are you vegan?', perhaps the answer should be, 'Why aren't you?'"