Estimates have it that in the industrial world, somewhere between 1-5% of people are vegan. That remaining the same until your preferred revolution happens, and your idealized form of governance becomes the reality everywhere: how is your socioeconomic system going to get the remaining 95% of billions of people to stop consuming, committing cruelty to, and exploiting animals? Sorry, but we have to do whatever we can in the here and now, and there is urgency in time. It's not only a matter of morality. We know that our wanton animal consumption is one of the largest drivers of climate change. We know that our society's addiction to flesh and secretions have resulted in agricultural systems that not only resulted in one recent pandemic, but we are hanging on the edge of an even worse flu pandemic that can end up happening at any time. 75% of new infectious diseases have a zoonotic origin.

In a world where ideal society has never happened and is always a dream away, we do not have the luxury of an either/or approach of fixing one problem before we think about the next.

The toxic food environment is a reality, and that needs to be fixed in policy. But individual choice matters too, because what we choose to buy is what drives what is sold. Taste is dynamic and subjective. New diets are only temporarily less satisfying until the person develops the knowledge, cooking skills, and palate to start getting more satisfaction out of their foods. Even better, the difference in the way people feel when they adopt a whole-food plant-based diet for even as little as a couple of weeks, is a start contrast to the standard western diet. Experiencing the difference first-hand generates more motivation to continue.

Also, our bodies do not inherently like the smell, taste, and mouthfeel of animal flesh. That is a learned habit. When a person goes long enough without consuming flesh, the very smell of it changes - even the freshest meats smell rotten, and the people who eat these foods smell like rotting corpses.