reading room
The Misinformation Olympics
I'm told I'll fade without meat — usually by someone halfway through a drive-thru, confidence dripping with grease, arteries rehearing their last act.
You're not getting enough protein. You're iron-deficient. You need B12. That vegan food's too artificial.
Artificial. That word lands heavy from people whose meals were factory-made before the cow was born.
They bite into burgers with twelve grams of protein and twice the saturated fat, then lecture me while I've had nineteen before noon — from pumpkin seeds, not pork — and tofu waiting like quiet triumph in the fridge for later.
It's a not a competition, but if it were, I'd win. Mine's the only diet with maths, not myths; with fibre that feeds the gut, not grease that feeds disease.
They call my food fake, but theirs is built on needles and nerves — animals swollen with antibiotics, force-fed soy, their flesh marbled with the same saturated fat that builds walls around the human heart.
They call my food unnatural while their sausages are stitched from scraps and salt, their eggs from hens who never saw daylight, their plates loaded with sodium and denial.
I eat colour, fibre, sunlight pressed into leaves. They eat nostalgia — battered, fried, and seasoned with excuses.
Yet somehow, I'm the one who's "missing out."
No. Here's the truth: I'm not undernourished. I'm just inconvenient.
My existence interrupts the story they tell themselves to sleep better.
Because if I can live stronger, cleaner, kinder without killing, then maybe their comfort food starts to taste a little guilty.
That's what really bothers them. Not my protein. Not my iron. Not my B12.
Just the quiet, undeniable proof that compassion and health can share a body.
So yes — I'll keep eating my pumpkin seeds. My tofu. My beans. My conscience.
You keep your comfort food, your myths, your artificial innocence.
We'll see who survives the syllabus of science.
— Lilith