To be honest I didn’t give up meat and dairy for the animals. I chose to experiment a meat free lifestyle for the health, digestion and,at the time of the switch, my athletic performance. I personally don’t think it’s bad to eat some meat here and there, but I’ve gone so long without it, I don’t like the taste/texture (which is why I never had much interest in consuming mock meats). I never had a problem eating eggs, so I never felt like I needed to give them, especially since the egg alternatives are either expensive, traveled a long way, or processed. I gave unintentionally gave up in favor for more plants in order to improve my health. I didn’t care for processed alternatives, and I always tried to support the local community as much as possible. Eating eggs more often probably helped improve my health because I live in a country (Taiwan), where the primary non-animal protein is tofu and I don’t like tofu that much.
I’m glad you mentioned that it’s eating vegan isn’t automatically synonymous with environment friendly. To take it a step further, it is not ethical consuming some of these foods from across the world as they may have picked and packaged by someone spacing away for pennies. People are animals too and that’s not ethical either.
While I’d love more people to eat less animals, there should also be a push for eating locally more often too.
