Unnatural Vegan

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Swayze Foster (1988–), also known as Unnatural Vegan, is an American vegan YouTuber, utilitarian, and skeptic. Her channel has, as of August 2020, around 266,000 subscribers and 47.6 million views.

Foster was originally a raw foodist when she started her channel, which is why her handle is "FitOnRaw"; she now describes herself as a "former crazy raw foodist turned pro-vaccine, pro-normal diet vegan". The name "Unnatural Vegan" is apparently intended to contest the appeals to nature that crop up in some vegan circles.

Skepticism

Foster favors a scientific and pragmatic approach to vegan practice and activism, and thus, frequently calls out anti-vaccine, anti-GMO and anti-fluoridation stances, as well as overly restrictive dieting, appeals to nature, cherry picking of studies, shill gambits and bad science in general, regardless of whether it comes from the pro-vegan or anti-vegan camp.

She generally provides citations for her statements, and freely admits and corrects her mistakes, however she has not made one of her so-called "I Was Wrong" videos since 2016. In 2019 she denounced and heavily criticized the book she had authored seven years earlier, The Science of Eating Raw.

The good: Ethics and nuance

Foster follows a utilitarian ethic and bases her veganism on the idea of reducing suffering for animals, following the lead of Peter Singer and John Stuart Mill. She is, as such, critical of the deontological approach of Gary Francione, whom she criticizes for making veganism seem unnecessarily difficult and exclusive, even as he proclaims "Go vegan, it's easy!"

She is also quick to denounce and deconstruct misanthropy and asshole behavior from other vegans, particularly the more virulent specimens such as Vegan Gains and That Vegan Teacher, and also stands out as showing a compassionate approach toward people who have fallen off the vegan bandwagon. She responded far better to Blaire White quitting veganism than most of her vegan Internet colleagues did. However, she has also called out numerous people for making less-than-valid anti-vegan arguments, such as Lauren Chen and Jaclyn Glenn.

Her tolerant approach toward non-vegans, her favorable attitude toward reducetarianism and her rejection of pseudoscience in the vegan community have prompted other vegans to accuse her of being an infiltrator or of not really being vegan.

The bad: Social justice

She seems to have had a blind spot when it came to her 2017 video rejecting intersectionality, which she saw as incompatible with utilitarianism; she misrepresented it as a "belief system" in which victims of oppression are "beyond reproach", rather than simply a means of studying and understanding how different axes of oppression intersect with each other. This stance was criticized by YouTubers such as Marine (A Privileged Vegan) and Reg Flowers. Although Foster removed the video in question and showed some surface-level understanding of privilege, she continued to reject intersectionality in 2020, and used whataboutism to denigrate the imperative of the Black Lives Matter movement while claiming to support it, drawing criticism from YouTubers such as Niles Gilmore, Jean Maté, Lo Aleen, and happyblacklegends.

See also

• Peter Singer
• Utilitarianism
• Vegan Gains

External links

• Unnatural Vegan on YouTube
• Unnatural Vegan on Twitter