>In fact, you could probably consider vegan diet to be colonialist and imperialist since it was created with European climate in mind.
Decolonize Your Diet is a vegan Mexican food cookbook.
https://www.amazon.ca/Decolonize-Your-Diet-Plant-Based-Mexican-American/dp/1551525925 the most prominent one I can find is this. I've seen some other works on my social media but it doesn't seem like they're popular works so I'll have to re-find them again. I can dm you sources once I do!
> Veganism is often ableist
The ableism is in assuming that disabled people are incapable of making moral, ethical, and science-based decisions to reduce their animal exploitation to what is possible and practicable for them.
> classist
The argument that veganism is classist typically comes from a privileged position where one assumes that vegan food is more expensive because they're only familiar with the meat and milk alternatives in their own well-stocked grocery store.
The majority of the world subsists on the cheapest and most available foods in the world like beans, rice, corn, potatoes, lentils, oats, peas, grains, and vegetables, and so do I.
> exclusionary of indigenous practices that sustainably use animal products
Is the person who is saying this to you a hunter themselves? Why would veganism be open to this critique but not their personal way of living?
Strange how the cookbook Decolonize Your Diet is mostly plant-based.
Also, are they aware that North America didn't have cows, chickens, goats, and pigs until the region's most famous colonizers brought them over from Europe in the Columbian Exchange?
> Veganism has also contributed to about 7.4 million acres of deforestation, just in soya production, since the late 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest
"The cattle sector of the Brazilian Amazon, incentivized by the international beef and leather trades,[1] has been responsible for about 80% of all deforestation in the region,[2][3] or about 14% of the world's total annual deforestation, making it the world's largest single driver of deforestation.[4]"
https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed
"The proportions are even more striking in the United States, where just 27 percent of crop calories are consumed directly — wheat, say, or fruits and vegetables grown in California. By contrast, more than 67 percent of crops — particularly all the soy grown in the Midwest — goes to animal feed."
https://ourworldindata.org/soy
"More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh."
Since they're understandably concerned about deforestation for soy products, they'll go vegan now, right?
> That’s even before we get to the environmental impact of imported fruits and vegetables that vegan diets rely on.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
"Eating locally would only have a significant impact if transport was responsible for a large share of food’s final carbon footprint. For most foods, this is not the case. GHG emissions from transportation make up a very small amount of the emissions from food and what you eat is far more important than where your food traveled from."
"Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%."
> The BBC has published multiple articles talking about the negative environmental impacts of veganism
Have them link these articles to you. If they're what I think they are, they're just editorials, not actual reporting on studies and scientific findings.
> as well as debunked many UN reports (many of which were funded by soya corporations and other corps that benefit from increased sales of vegan food substitutes)
This person clearly is just looking for what tells them good things about their bad habits.
> Also, personal sustainability choices such as refusing personal straws, as a whole, account for less than 1% of climate issues.
Correct, but this has nothing to do with veganism.
What does have to do with veganism is the fact that over half of the plastic in the ocean is from discarded fishing nets:
"Lost and abandoned fishing gear which is deadly to marine life makes up the majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans, according to a report by Greenpeace."
> Being vegan is fine if that’s what you want to do. But it isn’t the most environmentally friendly choice
"Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet."
> decolonize my diet
That's a vegan Mexican-American diet
You might enjoy this cookbook:
https://www.amazon.com/Decolonize-Your-Diet-Plant-Based-Mexican-American/dp/1551525925
This article by a Native American vegan might be relevant:
And I've come across Decolonize Your Diet but I haven't read it myself.
Decolonize Your Diet - Vegan Mexican with an emphasis on pre-Columbian ingredients
Bought, Borrowed, and Stolen - Interesting recipes from the around world and a lot of talk about the most basic cooking tool, the knife. That + the broad style of cooking included might make it a good starter book.
The Family Meal - Actually useful recipes from super obnoxious-fancy chef Ferran Adria but with step-by-step pictures that are really helpful.
Moosewood Cookbook - Classic cookbook of vegetarian dishes.