Our Online Dating for Vegetarians and Vegans
For those seeking vegetarian online dating, Consonance (Gleichklang) cares deeply about supporting the online dating and friendship search of our vegan and vegetarian members. It is also possible to search for and find vegan or vegetarian projects, collaborations, or communities through Consonance.
Shared convictions and ethically grounded lifestyles are of central importance for partnership relationships and friendships. They enable deeper connection, fewer conflicts, and a shared way of life. That is why Consonance has offered the vegetarian-vegan matching option since our founding in 2006.
Vegetarian-Vegan Option for Matchmaking and Friendship Search
We ask all our members whether they live vegan or vegetarian. We also ask all our members whether it is important to them that their partners or friends live vegan or vegetarian. We use this information as a basis for our psychological matching, enabling valuable partnerships and friendships for our vegetarian and vegan members.
Processes of Change
But our vegetarian-vegan matching option is not only aimed at vegan singles, vegetarian singles, or people seeking friendships. Rather, this option serves as an important indicator and incentive for change in the sense of solidarity-based self-optimization for all members of our ecologically sustainable dating community. Because at Consonance, even the meat-eating members usually eat meat only once or less than once a week. They are fundamentally aware of the ethical and ecological reasons that speak for a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.
By asking this question, we activate their consideration of whether they would not like to truly live vegan or vegetarian. We know from numerous feedback responses that this is exactly the case and that, at the latest in a new partnership or friendship they have found at Consonance with vegan or vegetarian people, the transition to their own vegan or vegetarian lifestyle begins.
Through our vegan and vegetarian search option, we also contribute to the spread of the vegan and vegetarian lifestyle. This in turn leads those affected to experience more ethical consistency, which enables greater satisfaction with themselves.
How Do We View Vegetarianism and Veganism?
We see a spectrum of plant-based lifestyles and believe that many people are still at different points on a path that leads to the same goal. In veganism, this goal is achieved when we begin to maximize our protection of the environment, reduce animal suffering to the greatest possible extent, and thereby simultaneously experience maximum consistency between our values and actions.
The vast majority of all vegans were once vegetarian, and most of those who become vegan now were previously vegetarian. With the vegetarian-vegan option, we want to support progression on this path for everyone: for meat-eaters who become vegetarian, for vegetarians who become vegan, although many increasingly also take the direct step from meat consumption to veganism.
Vegetarianism as an Umbrella Term
Vegetarianism refers to a diet and lifestyle that abstains from the consumption of meat and fish. Occasionally, people who eat fish also refer to themselves as vegetarians because they abstain from other meat products. However, the consumption of fish is actually incompatible with vegetarianism, and the corresponding self-designation is therefore nonsensical in this case.
Within vegetarianism, different varieties can be differentiated:
- Vegans come closest to the ideal of a purely plant-based diet and lifestyle in that they consistently abstain from the consumption of all animal products, including eggs, dairy products, and honey, but also leather and wool for clothing purposes. Hidden animal products, such as those containing gelatin or rennet, are also avoided. Veganism understands itself as the consistent implementation of a radically vegetarian diet and lifestyle.
- Ovo-lacto vegetarians abstain from the consumption of meat and fish, and ideally also from wearing leather for clothing purposes. However, they continue to consume products of animal origin in the form of milk and eggs, and usually also honey and wool. A further distinction can be made between pure lacto-vegetarians, who abstain from eggs, and ovo-vegetarians, who do not consume dairy products but do consume eggs.
- There are various motives for a vegetarian lifestyle, whereby the two main strands of argumentation can be distinguished as ethical vegetarianism and vegetarianism for health reasons. Furthermore, there is also an ecological and social vegetarianism as well as a religious vegetarianism, the latter partially, but not completely, overlapping with ethical vegetarianism. Finally, one can also speak of an aesthetic vegetarianism.
Vegetarianism and Animal Rights
Ethical vegetarianism demands a vegetarian diet and lifestyle out of recognition of the rights of animals to life and physical integrity. The killing of animals for human nutrition and clothing is considered unacceptable by ethically motivated vegetarians. The main justification for such an ethically motivated vegetarianism is the fact that animals are sentient beings who, like humans, have a natural need for self-preservation and try to avoid situations that are unpleasant, painful, or dangerous for them.
Arguments against ethical vegetarianism often appeal to nature, where predators also kill and consume other animals. However, this argumentation commits the fallacy of deriving an ought from an is, uncritically equating humans with predators, and overlooking the human possibility of choosing a vegetarian lifestyle of their own free will. The fact is that humans are not compelled to kill other animals for their nutrition or clothing, but that a vegetarian lifestyle is possible.
Veganism as a Consistent Form of Vegetarianism
Representatives of veganism point to an inconsistency in the non-vegan vegetarian diet and lifestyle: The production of milk and eggs in our society is necessarily linked to the meat industry. In egg production, this begins with the separation and killing of male chicks, but in milk production as well, pregnancies of cows are required, and the majority of male calves are killed after short fattening. Likewise, chickens and cows are killed when they no longer produce enough eggs or milk. The egg, milk, and meat industries are so closely intertwined and mutually conditioning that the consumption of milk and eggs ultimately cannot be separated from the killing of animals.
Plant-Based Spectrum
Even if non-vegan vegetarians do not succeed in consistently disengaging from animal production, from a vegan perspective, abstaining from meat, fish, and leather is still to be regarded as a significant progress. Because this at least creates awareness of animals’ right to life in society, and the extent of meat production and the associated animal suffering could at least be limited by a non-vegan, vegetarian diet and lifestyle.
Motives for Vegetarianism
Health and Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism for health reasons points to the health-damaging effects of meat consumption. While the generally better health of vegetarians and also, contrary to assumptions, of vegans is scientifically established, a purely health-based argumentation is nevertheless too short-sighted because it overlooks the ethical aspects of animal suffering created by the meat industry and thus obscures the more fundamental argument for a vegetarian lifestyle:
- A purely health-related argumentation could therefore begin to differentiate quantitatively and allow small amounts of meat consumption, which fundamentally contradicts vegetarianism.
As a rule, however, ethical and health-related vegetarianism are combined. Many vegetarians also want to benefit health-wise from the vegetarian lifestyle, without forgetting the suffering of animals, which the vegetarian lifestyle seeks to avoid, as an important motive. Health-related arguments are also used by primarily ethically motivated vegetarians to achieve greater acceptance and spread of vegetarian lifestyles.
Ecological Motives
Vegetarianism for ecological and social reasons emphasizes the destructive effects of meat consumption on our ecosystem and on the world food situation. To ensure meat consumption, forests are cleared and soy monocultures are created, whose valuable plant protein is then fed to animals with great loss, and through whose slaughter a much smaller proportion of protein is ultimately made available for human nutrition.
Social-Ecological Motive
Not only ecological destruction is the consequence, but world hunger is also significantly promoted by the meat industry because valuable plant-based foods are not made directly available to people but finance the mass meat consumption of industrialized countries. In addition, factory farming also directly generates climate-damaging gases. Studies show that vegetarians live in a much more climate-friendly way, although there is again a significant difference between the most climate-friendly vegans and other vegetarians. With a vegetarian and even more so with a vegan lifestyle, people can make an important contribution to environmental protection and nature conservation.
- Read also our dating tips for vegan singles or our dating tips for vegetarian singles
The ecological-social argumentation for vegetarianism is internally consistent and points to the destructive effects of meat consumption on our ecosystem as well as on human society. However, a purely ecological-social argumentation would ignore the suffering of animals and thus ignore the essential foundation of justification of vegetarianism. Accordingly, a purely social-ecological argumentation could also be compatible with greatly reduced meat consumption, since the killing of animals itself is not considered objectionable.
As a rule, however, social-ecological vegetarianism is embedded in an overarching ethical vegetarianism and thus points to essential additional aspects without damaging the central concern of the vegetarian movement, namely the protection of animal life. Ecological-social arguments are also suitable for promoting acceptance of a vegetarian lifestyle even among those who still lack awareness of the kinship between humans and animals and the sentience of animals.
Religious Motives for Vegetarianism
Religious forms of vegetarianism reject the consumption of animals for religious reasons. A completely consistent view in this regard is held, for example, by Jainism as a small religion in India, but also authoritative Hindu and Buddhist traditions demand a vegetarian way of life. Less frequently, but still significantly, there are also Christian and Islamic traditions that advocate vegetarianism. Religious argumentation, similar to ethical vegetarianism, is partly tied to the suffering of animals, but other aspects, such as one’s own salvation, are added, and often a completely vegetarian lifestyle is not demanded either. Religious justifications are tied to particular confessions insofar as they lack the universal appeal as an argumentation for a vegetarian lifestyle. Nevertheless, it is to be welcomed and serves the spread of vegetarianism when spiritual reasons are put forward for it.
Aesthetic Motives
Finally, there are aesthetic arguments that regard the consumption of meat as unappealing, with a coupling of feelings of disgust and aversion. While this argumentation certainly contains many convincing elements, it is subjectivistic and lacks the fundamental character that ultimately only the consistently ethically oriented vegetarianism, which is focused on ending animal suffering, possesses. This does not exclude that aesthetic arguments can also be put forward regarding the indeed disgusting practices of the meat industry, which are accordingly repulsive to any person with “healthy sensibilities,” in order to promote the spread of vegetarianism. These aesthetic motives can therefore also be regarded as an expression of mindfulness.
A comprehensive new survey by our web portal vegan.eu has shown that in the German-speaking area, the motives for a vegan lifestyle can be reduced to three basic components:
- animal ethics considerations
- ecology and politics
- health and body
Animal ethics considerations dominate. Health as well as ecological-political considerations are typically rather complementary motives for the vegan lifestyle. While religious-spiritual motives hardly appeared in this survey in the German-speaking area, this would certainly be completely different in Buddhist countries, for example.
Vegetarianism Between Insight and Action
Vegetarianism faces a powerful industry that generates its profits from the exploitation and killing of animals. Promoted by this industry, but also partly conditioning and enabling it, there is indifference and thoughtlessness among many people that leads them to understand themselves as animal lovers on the one hand, but on the other hand to have animals killed for their consumption.
However, in reflective discussions, it can repeatedly be observed that many are ultimately aware that the killing of animals for their nutrition is problematic, but that this partially existing awareness is repeatedly suppressed in order to allow themselves the seemingly indispensable consumption of meat. Vegetarians and most clearly vegans provide an important role model here by repeatedly demonstrating to their fellow human beings, not only verbally but through their lived example, that a diet and clothing without the killing of animals is possible and also individually achievable.
Even the animal exploitation and killing industry cannot completely close itself off to the arguments of the vegetarian movement and attempts to demonstrate that animal suffering can be minimized. Even if this is almost without exception easily refutable propaganda, this industry itself thereby recognizes the sentience of the animals it kills, which should actually lead to its abolition.
Some discourses against the vegetarian lifestyle accuse it of focusing on animals and overlooking humans. Vegetarianism is almost equated with reactionary ways of thinking and systems of exploitation in this view, which lacks any factual correctness. In fact, unconditional love for humanity is inherent to vegetarianism in its ethical argumentative basis. Humans should not be sacrificed to animals, but their rights should be respected just as it is necessary to advocate for human rights. By seeking to abolish the killing of animals, vegetarianism simultaneously raises the threshold for the killing of humans through war and the death penalty.
However, it must not be concealed that there have been and are tendencies within the animal rights movement, particularly associated with the person of Peter Singer, to pit animal rights against human rights and ultimately advocate for a right to life according to (presumed) intellectual capacity. This highly problematic and inhuman argumentation goes so far as to question the right to life of disabled and ill people and to establish species- and individual-based hierarchies of dignity of life.
At Consonance (Gleichklang), we oppose this and advocate unconditionally for the right to life of all, for an inclusive society, and for inclusive dating and inclusive online dating.
The vegetarian movement would do well to uncompromisingly distance itself from such thought systems, which are even criminal in their possible consequences if implemented, and to place the humane and animal-friendly standpoint of vegetarianism unconditionally at the center.
How Often Do People Live Vegetarian or Vegan?
Regarding the spread of vegetarianism and veganism, it must be noted that data on the number of vegetarians vary greatly depending on the study and survey method:
For Germany, percentage fluctuations between 3 and 9% are given, although the vegan lifestyle is considerably rarer and its spread is likely to fluctuate most between 1 and 2%. Similar figures are reported for Austria and Switzerland.
In contrast, the proportion of vegetarians in India is significantly higher and is assumed to be at least 15 to 20%, with other figures speaking of up to 40% vegetarians in India. Worldwide, there are therefore, conservatively estimated, at least half a billion vegetarians.
Overall, the proportion of vegetarians in the Western industrialized countries, which have the largest share of global meat consumption, is growing, albeit slowly. The slow nature of this growth is based on human tendencies toward attitude-discrepant behavior:
- While at the level of cognitive insight, far more people have an awareness of the irresponsibility of meat consumption and the animal and human suffering it creates, many find it difficult to implement this insight in the form of a vegetarian or even vegan lifestyle.
The still too low density of vegetarian and vegan restaurants, although growing, and the quasi-omnipresence of animal products in our food are a significant reason for this, but this — this is an example and message of the at least 500 million vegetarians in our world — can be overcome individually.
Consonance (Gleichklang) wants to contribute to the necessary further spread of the vegetarian and vegan lifestyle with its offering of efficient matchmaking for vegetarians and vegans. By bringing vegetarians and vegans together as partners and friends through Consonance, the chances increase that they can together advance the spread of the vegetarian and vegan lifestyle in our world to some extent, for the benefit of animals as well as for the benefit of humans.
Furthermore, we also motivate our members to take the step toward a vegetarian and further toward a vegan lifestyle. Simply by asking in our vegetarian-vegan option about the desire to become vegetarian or the desire to become vegan, we stimulate thought processes.
We know from member feedback that this has provided the impetus for quite a few to actually switch to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle over the years.
