It's part of my culture
Cultural meaning is real and worth taking seriously. It does not by itself settle whether a practice is justified: and every major cuisine already has deep plant-based traditions.
The food I grew up with is how my family remembers its dead, marks its holidays, and passes itself on to the next generation, and asking me to give it up is asking me to cut a thread that connects me to the people who made me. That is especially true for communities whose foodways have already been mocked or pressured to assimilate, where being told by outsiders that the traditional dishes are wrong feels like one more demand to stop being who we are. Telling someone their cultural practices are morally indefensible is a weighty claim, and it should not be made casually by people who have nothing comparable at stake.
This deserves more respect than it usually gets. Food carries memory, family and belonging, and dismissing that as sentimentality misunderstands what is being defended. It also lands differently depending on who is speaking: a demand that a minority community abandon its foodways, made by someone from the majority, is not the same conversation.
Two things still follow. Cultural embeddedness has never been treated as sufficient justification on its own: practices central to cultural identity have been revised repeatedly as moral understanding shifted, usually from within. And the choice presented is a false one. Indian, Ethiopian, Levantine, East Asian and Mediterranean cooking contain centuries of sophisticated plant-based tradition; adapting a cuisine is not abandoning it, and in many cases the plant-based version is the older one.
- My ancestors didn't die for me to eat tofu
Different wording, same argument. The response above answers all of them.
Treating the length of time a practice has continued as a reason to continue it. Age is not a justification; it only tells you the practice is old.
How it applies here: Cultural embeddedness is offered as the justification. This is the same structure as 'we have always done it', carrying a stronger and more sympathetic emotional claim.
Presenting two options as though they were the only ones available when further options exist. Also called a false dichotomy, or black-and-white thinking.
How it applies here: Presents the options as keeping the cuisine intact or abandoning it, when the traditions in question already contain extensive plant-based cooking to draw on.