From vegoutmag.com
By Jordan Cooper
The pursuit of ethical perfection might be making us worse at actual change
I was crouched behind a dumpster at 2 AM, eating mozzarella directly from the bag like some kind of dairy gremlin. Six months into veganism, I'd cracked. Not at a restaurant with friends, not at a family gathering where grandma pushed her famous lasagne. No, I'd driven to a 24-hour grocery store in the next town over, bought string cheese, and eaten it in the parking lot like contraband. The shame felt physical—hot face, racing heart, the whole works. I sat there thinking I'd failed at the one thing I'd been genuinely proud of changing about myself.
The next morning, I almost threw away my "Herbivore" tote bag. Almost deleted my plant-based recipe Pinterest board. Almost told my vegan friend group I was traveling that weekend instead of showing up to our potluck. Because if you can't be a perfect vegan, what's the point of being vegan at all? That's what the voice in my head kept asking, the same voice that had whispered "fraud" every time I'd accidentally eaten something with whey powder or bought shampoo without checking if it was tested on animals.
It took me years to realise that voice wasn't helping animals or the environment or my health. It was just making me miserable. And I wasn't alone—scroll through any vegan forum and you'll find people confessing their "failures" like they're in some kind of plant-based catholic church. The dirty secret of modern veganism is that almost everyone feels like they're doing it wrong. Maybe it's time we talked about why that is, and why the pursuit of perfect veganism might actually be undermining the very changes we're trying to create.
1. Your "failures" are more normal than the success stories you see online
Instagram doesn't show you the vegan who accidentally ate milk powder in their crackers and spent the rest of the day feeling guilty. Twitter doesn't highlight the plant-based person who ordered vegan at a restaurant but suspected the sauce had butter and ate it anyway because sending it back felt too awkward. Nobody's posting their 2 AM cheese shame or their honey-in-tea compromise when they're sick.
The curated nature of social media creates an illusion where everyone else is thriving on their homemade cashew cheese while you're struggling to remember which E-numbers are animal-derived. But here's what years in vegan communities has taught me: everyone has their thing. The militant vegan who lectures about leather? They have a beloved wool coat they can't bring themselves to donate. The raw food influencer? They order Domino's during particularly stressful weeks. We're all just humans trying to align our actions with our values in a world that makes it unnecessarily complicated.
2. The all-or-nothing mentality is a bigger problem than any individual food choice
Veganism, as it's currently constructed in our culture, operates like a binary switch. You either are or you aren't. This framework turns every tiny deviation into an existential crisis. Ate something with egg by mistake? You've "broken" your veganism. Used a beauty product with beeswax? Failed again. This perfectionist approach would be considered unhealthy in literally any other context—imagine if we treated exercise this way, where missing one workout meant you might as well never exercise again.
Psychology research on behaviour change consistently shows that sustainable habits form through flexibility and self-compassion, not rigid adherence. Yet veganism has somehow become exempt from this wisdom. The person who eats plant-based 95% of the time but occasionally has cheese at a friend's dinner party is doing more for animals and the environment than someone who never tries because perfection feels impossible. But we don't have a word for that person. They're just "not really vegan."
3. The purity tests are getting more extreme, not less
When I started my plant-based journey, veganism meant not eating animal products. Now? The goalposts have moved so far they're in another stadium. Did you know some vegans won't eat figs because wasps die in the pollination process? Or that certain wines are filtered through fish bladder? Or that your vegetables might be grown with animal-based fertilizers? The rabbit hole of potential animal products is literally endless.
Each new revelation brings a fresh wave of vegans criticizing other vegans for not being vegan enough. You'll avoid leather but someone will point out your car tires contain animal products. You'll switch to synthetic materials and someone will explain how they're worse for the environment, therefore worse for animals. The purity spiral accelerates until veganism becomes less about reducing harm and more about winning an impossible game of ethical perfection.
4. Your individual consumer choices matter less than you've been told
Here's the truth that makes everyone uncomfortable: whether you eat that cheese or not, the same number of cows will be milked tomorrow. Your personal boycott of animal products, while admirable, is a drop in an ocean of systemic issues that require collective action to address. This isn't an argument for giving up—it's an argument for perspective.
The hyper-focus on individual purity distracts from larger conversations about agricultural policy, corporate responsibility, and systemic change. While you're spiralling about accidentally eating whey powder, the actual solutions—supporting legislation, building alternative food systems, making plant-based options more accessible—go underfunded and underdiscussed. The guilt you feel about being a "bad vegan" is energy that could be directed toward actual impact.
5. Most "vegan fails" happen because the world isn't designed for veganism yet
My 2 AM cheese incident wasn't really about cheese. It was about being exhausted from a week of conferences where every meal required negotiation, explanation, and usually settling for sides. It was about the emotional labour of constantly swimming upstream in a system designed around animal products. When people "fail" at veganism, it's rarely because they suddenly stopped caring about animals. It's because maintaining non-standard choices in a standard world is genuinely difficult.
Restaurant menus that offer one sad veggie burger. Grocery stores where reading every label takes hours. Social events where your dietary needs become the main conversation. Work lunches where you're either difficult or hungry. The infrastructure for easy plant-based living simply doesn't exist in most places yet. Your "failures" aren't character flaws—they're systematic design problems we haven't solved.
6. Self-compassion leads to more sustainable choices than self-punishment
After my parking lot cheese incident, I had two options: declare myself a failure and give up, or acknowledge I'm human and keep going. The shame-based approach says that first option maintains the "integrity" of veganism. But what actually helps animals more—someone who aims for perfection, fails, and quits entirely, or someone who does their imperfect best for years?
The vegans I know who've sustained their choices the longest are the ones who've learned to forgive themselves. They don't spiral when they realize their medication contains gelatine. They don't quit when they accidentally buy bread with milk. They acknowledge it, maybe feel a moment of disappointment, and then they keep going. Because the goal isn't perfection—it's harm reduction. And beating yourself up causes harm too, just to a different animal.
7. There's no trophy for perfect veganism, only the changes you sustain
The vegan police aren't coming. There's no certificate of completion, no achievement unlock for never making a mistake. The only reward for perfect veganism is the anxiety of trying to maintain it. Meanwhile, the imperfect vegans—the ones who occasionally mess up, who make compromises, who focus on progress over purity—they're the ones still doing it five, ten, twenty years later.
Every time you choose plant milk over dairy, every Meatless Monday, every vegan meal you cook—these choices add up. They add up whether or not you're "perfectly" vegan, whether or not you call yourself vegan, whether or not other vegans approve. The impact exists regardless of the label. And sustained imperfect action beats abandoned perfection every single time.
Final thoughts
I still remember the taste of that parking lot mozzarella—not because it was transcendent, but because it tasted like shame. These days, I'm still predominantly plant-based, but I've stopped treating it like a test I can fail. I've stopped confessing my "sins" in vegan forums. I've stopped believing that my worth as someone who cares about animals is determined by whether I perfectly avoid every animal-derived ingredient in existence.
The conversation we need to have isn't about how to be a perfect vegan. It's about how to create a world where caring about animals, the environment, and our health doesn't require perfection. Where plant-based choices are easy enough that they don't require constant vigilance. Where we support each other's efforts instead of policing each other's failures.
If you're reading this while feeling like a "bad vegan," here's what I want you to know: your imperfect efforts matter. Your mostly-plant-based choices count. Your compassion for animals isn't negated by your human moments. The guilt you're carrying isn't helping anyone—not you, not animals, not the planet. What helps is showing up, imperfectly but consistently, and creating space for others to do the same.
The future of ethical eating isn't in perfect vegans. It's in millions of imperfect people doing their best, supporting each other, and refusing to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even if sometimes that means eating mozzarella behind a dumpster and getting back up the next morning to try again.
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