Vegan This and Vegan That

A Shift

Precisely as my Qigong instructor predicted when I first told him I became vegan, I've slowly progressed from excluding non-vegan foods from my diet to excluding all other non-vegan products from my life altogether. At first, when he said, "Let me know if you need me to recommend any vegan lotions to you for massage; I use quite a few of them," I laughed and said that's a bit extreme. You see, at the time, I was still trying to wrap my head around my new vegan diet and issues such as which sweeteners are vegan (not all sugar is, as mentioned in a previous post). It might sound weird to you, but it hadn't even occurred to me that being vegan might refer to more than one's diet. Then, as my new diet began to settle in and become more of a second nature, I started to become aware of other ways in which animal products, animal by-products, or animal-derived products are infiltrated into our lives.

Photo courtesy of vegnews.com

My main question is... is there no other way? Can we not have proper hair care or nourishing skin lotions unless we include animal products in the ingredients? And if we can, why do the companies choose not to? I want to find out.

{First of all, for anyone who might not know what the term "vegan" implies when we refer to skin/hair care products... it means that the product not only can't contain animal products such as milk or eggs, it also can't have animal-produced ingredients (i.e. honey or beeswax) or animal by-products (i.e. derived from animal fat, bones, or other parts of an animal that have been rejected for human consumption, excluding hair, horns, teeth, and hoofs). }

The other day I came across a Web page that had some very useful tips about vegan hair products. They talk about the hidden ingredients in cosmetics that don't stand out as vegan when you read the label -- unless you happen to know what the terms imply. For example, stearic acid, often found in conditioners, can be derived from cows, sheep, cats or dogs. Steroids are also derived from animals sometimes -- namely, from animal glands. And how about Keratin? Just last week I was considering a Keratin treatment for my hair to permanently straighten it into "healthy" glossy goodness. Now I've learned that it's made from animal horns and hooves, making my decision-process a whole lot easier, since I wasn't ready to spend the $280 anyway.

Why does all this matter? You ask. After all, from a sustainability point of view -- and also a Buddhist one -- if an animal has already died, it doesn't matter how we use its parts anymore. What's more, we should make the most out of them so that the animal's death actually served a purpose. Sure, it might be wrong to kill it, but once it's been killed, to reject what the animal has to offer is not only a waste, but also a "sin."

Okay. That may be true, except there is more to this issue than simply utilizing our "resources" in the best possible way. Products translate into consumerism, and so rejecting certain products becomes kind of like consumers' voting. If the demand for vegan hair/skin products is high enough (and it is), companies will shift their focus towards including vegan options in their product lines. If it surpasses the demand for "conventional" products (eventually), they might even stop making those altogether -- after all, vegan would be a more inclusive option for a wider range of customers. Call me crazy, but I think there should be more to an animal's life than serving one out of two purposes: either become food or be turned into another product for human consumption.

Photo courtesy of PETA.org

Renowned? Not in my book...

Finally, I will leave you with a fun bit of information from the PETA Web site (don't make that face -- you know you love PETA;) which may change the way you view some of the skin/hair/cosmetics companies. I had no idea so many renowned companies (*cough* L'Oreal, Unilever, Procter & Gamble *cough*) still test their products on animals! Goodbye, Dove soap and Febreeze air freshner, I guess. Oh, and I'll miss you, too, Ralph Lauren fragrances! But seriously, get with the program and quit testing on animals already. Here's the tool I mentioned; it's very fun to use.

In my next post, I'll elaborate more on why not only is it harmless to ask about the ingredients in a lotion or your food, it's actually helpful in that it sends a message and has the potential to change the way we treat animals, and, ultimately, the way we treat each other.