The NYT reports that vegans and vegetarians are angry that VegNews used stock images for its photography, rather than ensuring that all of its food photos were of food that does not contain animal products.  (This scrumptious-looking red velvet cupcake, for example, probably contains cream and eggs.)

As a vegetarian since the ’90s (back when vegetarianism was really weird and the food companies catered to us via frozen cheese pizza and not the cornucopia of veggie food available in supermarkets and restaurants these days), I get the idea of being grossed out by inadvertently lusting after meat-containing food (or, for vegans, vittles with animal products).  But food photography is notoriously difficult; you can’t just whip up a batch of vegan cupcakes, grab a camera, and then have a lovely, appetizing picture for your blog.  Professionals do this sort of thing, and sometimes even use fake food to get the texture right.

So VegNews can certainly do this, and has committed to doing so, but at what cost?  A handful of images of vegetarian and vegan entrees that will always be used in the magazine, month after month?  (“Here’s a totally new recipe for vegan lasagna, and here’s the picture that accompanied every single vegan lasagna recipe put out in the past three years.”)  Driving up the costs by hiring professionals – and then using more pop-up ads (a minor nuisance, maybe) or charging for access to the site?

Miscellanea: Jonah Goldberg also weighs in at NRO with a series of vegetarian-themed posts, from the complaint that a lot of vegan food looks like, um, meat and not the vegetable it came from, to pointing out Hitler’s (alleged?) vegetarianism and how it fit with his ideology.