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Have a cruelty-free Tofurkey Day
By Zoë Williams and Emile Hallez
williamz@mscd.edu • ehallez@mscd.edu

Vegans,
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I am wondering why the heck you would want to pass up all the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and celebration?

Sincerely,
Karny Vore

Dear Karny,

While there is a certain feel-good sentiment to the Thanksgiving story we all learned in elementary school, history presents a very different reality. According to James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, the first Thanksgiving dinner was cooked and prepared entirely by Native Americans not invited to the feast. This took place in 1621, a mere footnote in the mass torture, rape, enslavement and genocide against the indigenous people of this nation.

These events are celebrated in this country with a tradition of gluttony and the consumption of animal corpses.

In this country, more than 40 million turkeys are raised and served up on silver platters for the holidays. Turkeys are highly intelligent birds that love running and socializing. On breeding farms, they are raised for meat, and the birds have their beaks and toes cut off prior to being shoved into cages so tight they cannot move.

Turkeys are then fed and drugged to gain large amounts of weight in a short amount of time. If a 7-pound human grew at the rate turkeys are forced to, the infant would weigh 1,500 pounds at just 18 weeks of age.

The dairy and egg industries are just as cruel as the meat industry. Dairy cows live less than a quarter of their potential life spans while getting pumped full of hormones and antibiotics that make them so heavy and weak they can barely walk. Sick laying hens and male chickens are ground up while still alive and rendered as meat. Doesn’t that make you want to butter up your turkey breast?

The cruelty doled out to the Native Americans is hardly a celebratory occasion, and it becomes truly macabre when the event’s mascot is a tortured animal corpse on a silver platter. By opting out of Thanksgiving, or at least the cruel parts of it, you can choose to reject brutality as a joyous or naturally occurring event.

Dear Voracious Vegan,
Growing tired of eating things with faces, I’ve decided to go vegan. Since I have no vegan friends, I turn to you for advice: How can I healthily and stealthily engage in this endeavor? What will I eat on Thanksgiving?

Yours truly,
Colin Kanzaar

Dear Colin,
Congratulations on your decision to adopt a compassionate lifestyle! Thanksgiving is a great time to learn about vegan dietary options. To help make your transition as seamless as possible, let’s begin with things you can swap out without noticing them.

Vegans don’t eat eggs. Fortunately, eggs are one of the easiest ingredients to replace in baked goods. As binding agents, items like bananas (1/2 banana = 1 egg), applesauce, soy yogurt and flax seeds do the same job, minus the cholesterol, salmonella and chicken misery of eggs. If eggs are the main component of a dish, such as a quiche or omelet, use crumbled firm tofu instead.

Dairy products are also easy to replace. Soy, oat, rice or coconut milks are good substitutes for milk. They also taste better and won’t give you explosive diarrhea.

Similarly, you can easily give cheese the old heave-ho. Firm tofu works in place of ricotta, nutritional yeast in place of parmesan and a handful of vegan cheeses can replace just about everything else. Your conscience and arteries will thank you.

Butter and ghee are vehicles to an early grave. Use oil, applesauce or vegan margarine instead. In place of sour cream, place some silken tofu and a splash of vinegar in a blender and mix with maximum aggression.

Obviously, meat is out of the question. However, seitan, tofu, vital wheat gluten, tempeh and texturized vegetable protein are widely available, delicious options that will help you kick that omnivorous habit. Legumes and nuts are also high-protein detours from the long, sad road we call speciesism.

If you’re not much of a cook, do not fret. Since veganism is becoming common, health food stores are usually well stocked with prepackaged goodies. Lunch meat, sausage, chorizo, mayonnaise, even haggis (yes, haggis) have ready-to-eat cruelty-free counterparts.

On Thanksgiving, you can be just as gluttonous as ever, sans the killing. Traditional side dishes and desserts can easily be modified using the ingredient substitutions listed above. If you need a turkey-esque touch to your dinner, but aren’t bold enough to concoct a winged wheat-gluten version, just pop a frozen Tofurkey in the oven – they’re surprisingly tasty.