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According to The Vegan Society: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals." 1. Ethics 1.1 Sentience of Animals I care about other human beings because I know that they are having a subjective experience. I know that, like me, they can be happy, anxious, angry or upset. I generally don't want them to die (outside of euthanasia), both because of the pain involved and because their subjective experience will end, precluding further happiness. Their subjective experience is also why I treat them with respect them as individuals, such as seeking their consent for sex and leaving free from arbitrary physical pain and mental abuse. Our society has enshrined these concepts into legal rights, but like me, I doubt your appreciation for these rights stems from their legality, but rather because of their effect (their benefit) on us as people. Many non-human animals also seem to be having subjective experiences, and care for one another just like humans do. It's easy to find videos of vertebrates playing with one another,[1] showing concern,[2] or grieving.[3] Humans have understood that animals are sentient for centuries.[4] We've come to the point that laws are being passed acknowledging that fact.[5] Even invertebrates can feel pain. In one experiment, fruit flies learned to avoid odours associated with electric shocks. In another, they were given an analgesic which let them pass through a heated tube, which they had previously avoided.[6] Some invertebrates show hallmarks of emotional states, such as honeybees, which can develop a pessimistic cognitive bias.[7] If you've had pets, you know that they have a personality. My old cat was lazy but friendly. My current cat is inquisitive and playful. In the sense that they have a personality, they are persons. Animals are people. Most of us learn not to arbitrarily hurt other people for our own whims, and when we find out we have hurt someone, we feel shame and guilt. We should be vegan for the same reason we shouldn't kill and eat human beings: all sentient animals, including humans, are having a subjective experience and can feel pain, enjoy happiness and fear death. Ending that subjective experience is wrong. Intentionally hurting that sentient being is wrong. Paying someone else to do it for you doesn't make it better. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7GmYJnUtsY [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/r1vdyz/pufferfish_waits_by_its_trapped_friend_while_a/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmnAWmL-sq0 [4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159106001110 [5] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/22/enacted [6] https://academic.oup.com/ilarjournal/article/52/2/175/659957 [7] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211005446 1.2 The Brutalisation of Society There are about 8 billion human beings on the planet. Every year, our society breeds, exploits and kills about 70 billion land animals.[8] The number of marine animals isn't tracked (it's measured by weight - 100 billion tons per year), but it's likely in the trillions. Those are animals that are sexually assaulted to cause them to reproduce, kept in horrendous conditions, and then gased to death or stabbed in the throat or thrown on a conveyor belt and blended with a macerator.[9] Most people reading this will be leftists. That means you probably want to weaken or dismantle hierarchies, whether political, economic or social. You're hopefully an anti-racist, an anti-fascist and an anti-capitalist. You know that systems of oppression are bad. Vegans are also anti-speciesist. Different humans have different capabilities, but we respect them as people. Sometimes, they even have different rights and obligations. You'd probably be sympathetic to someone who wants to commit euthanasia due to terminal illness such as cancer. You're also probably sympathetic to a pregnant person who wants to terminate that pregnancy. In both cases, a human being is dying, but in both cases, we agree that it's moral. In the first case, because it's consensual and is relieving suffering. In the second, the human being doesn't yet have a subjective experience, and can't experience pain (until the third trimester, but most abortions at that stage are to save the health of the mother). Children gain new rights and responsibilities as they age, while seniors might lose rights if they're declared incapable or give power of attorney to a family member. Someone with a mental disability might similarly be declared incapable. So even within human beings, there's no single set of rights and responsibilities. As anti-speciesists, we aren't calling for legal equality between humans and non-human animals. The rights of non-human animals might simply be real enforcement of existing anti-cruelty laws, without exemptions for farm animals. Vegans don't believe humans and animals are "the same", we just think that the massive exploitation and death of sentient life inherent to animal agriculture is an unnecessary injustice. Like all systems of oppression, animal agriculture has a momentum of its own, with lobbyists manipulating public policy to replicate itself.[10][11][12] It supports and is supported by the ruling class.[13] It's hard to quantify what this system does to humans. We know abusing animals is a predictor of anti-social personality disorder.[14] Dehumanising opponents and subaltern peoples by comparing them to animals has a long history in racist propaganda, and especially in war propaganda. The hierarchies of nation, race and gender are complemented by the hierarchy of species. If humans were more compassionate to all kinds of sentient life, I'd hope that murder, racism and war would be more difficult for a normal person to conceive of doing. I think that treating species as a hierarchy, with life at the bottom of that hierarchy treated as a commodity, makes our society more brutal. I want a compassionate society. [8] https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-and-charts-2020-update/ [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko [10] https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/removing-meat-subsidy-our-cognitive-dissonance-around-animal-agriculture [11] https://landwirtschaft.jetzt/en/ipcc-report/ [12] https://www.dw.com/en/leaks-show-attempts-to-water-down-un-climate-report-greenpeace-says/a-59570391 [13] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/members-congress-got-nearly-16-million-farm-subsidies-and-trade-war-bailout [14] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12108563/ 2. Environment 2.1 Greenhouse Gas Emissions A 2013 study found that animal agriculture is responsible for the emission 7.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, or 14.5% of human emissions.[15] A 2021 study increased that estimate to 9.8 gigatonnes, or 21% of human emissions.[16] This is why the individual emissions figures for animal vs plant foods are so stark, ranging from 60kg of CO2 equivalent for a kilo of beef, down to 300g for a kilo of nuts.[17] To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees by 2100, humanity needs to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030, and become net zero by 2050.[18] Imagine if we achieve this goal by lowering emissions from everything else, but continue to kill and eat animals for our pleasure. That means we will have to find some way to suck carbon and methane out of the air to the tune of 15-20% of our current annual emissions (which is projected to increase as China and India increase their wealth and pick up the Standard American Diet). We will need to do this while still dedicating vast quantities of our land to growing crops and pastures for animals to feed on. Currently, 77% of the world's agricultural land is used for animal agriculture.[19] So instead of freeing up that land to grow trees, sucking carbon out of the air, and making our task easier, we would instead choose to make our already hard task even harder. I'd go as far as to say it will be impossible. A world that continues to eat animals will probably be one with a billion climate refugees by 2050.[20] [15] https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ [16] https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/CB7033EN/ [17] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local [18] https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition [19] https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture [20] https://www.zurich.com/en/media/magazine/2022/there-could-be-1-2-billion-climate-refugees-by-2050-here-s-what-you-need-to-know 2.2 Pollution Runoff from farms (some for animals, others using animal manure as fertiliser) is destroying the ecosystems of many rivers, lakes and coastlines.[21] I'm sure you've seen aerial and satellite photographs of horrific pigshit lagoons, coloured green and pink from the bacteria growing in them. When the farms flood, such as during hurricanes, that pig slurry spills over and infects whole regions with salmonella and listeria.[22] Of course, even without hurricanes, animal manure is the main source of such bacteria in plant foods.[23] [21] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/dead-zone [22] https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/more-dozen-breached-hog-waste-lagoons-found-north-carolina-after-hurricane-matthew [23] https://www.horticulture.com.au/growers/help-your-business-grow/research-reports-publications-fact-sheets-and-more/vg13039/ 2.3 Water and Land Use No food system, whether capitalist or otherwise, can overcome the laws of thermodynamics. Feeding plants to an animal will produce fewer calories for humans than eating plants directly. The ratio varies from 3% efficiency for cattle, to 9% for pigs, to 13% for chickens, to 17% for dairy and eggs.[24] This inefficiency makes the previously mentioned 77% of arable land used for animal agriculture very troubling.[19] 10% of the world was food insecure in 2020, up from 8.4% in 2019.[25] Humanity is still experiencing population growth, so food insecurity will get worse in the future. We need to replace animal food with plant food just to stop people in the global periphery starving to death. Remember that food is a global commodity, so increased demand for soya-fed beef cattle in Brazil means increased costs around the world for beef, soya, and things that could have been grown in place of the soya. Water resources are already becoming strained, even in America[26] and Europe.[27][28] Like in the Soviet Union with the Aral Sea, America is actually causing some lakes, like the Great Salt Lake in Utah, to dry up due to agricultural irrigation.[29] Rather than for cotton as with the Aral Sea, this is mostly for the sake of animal feed. 86.6% of irrigated water in Utah goes to alfalfa, pasture land and grass hay.[30] A cloud of toxic dust kicked up from the dry lake bed will eventually envelop Salt Lake City,[31] for the sake of an industry only worth 3% of the state's GDP.[32] Comparisons of water footprints for animal vs plant foods are gobsmacking,[33] because pastures and feed crops take up so much space. As water resources become more scarce in the future thanks to the depletion of acquifers and changing weather patterns, human civilisation will have to choose either to use its water to produce more efficient plant foods, or eat a luxury that causes needless suffering for all involved. [24] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/105002 [25] https://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/2021/en/ [26] https://theconversation.com/farmers-are-depleting-the-ogallala-aquifer-because-the-government-pays-them-to-do-it-145501 [27] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62519683 [28] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-must-manage-water-resources-carefully-drought-continues-drought-group-2022-08-23/ [29] https://www.greenmatters.com/news/why-is-the-great-salt-lake-drying-up [30] https://gopb.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022_07_27-Plan-for-Coordinated-Water-Action-Chapter-3.pdf [31] https://d1bbnjcim4wtri.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/10101816/GSL_Dust_Plumes_Final_Report_Complete_Document.pdf [32] https://economic-impact-of-ag.uada.edu/utah/ [33] https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/ 3. Health 3.1 Carcinogens, Cholesterol and Saturated Fat in Animal Products In 2015, the World Health Organisation reviewed 800 studies, and concluded that red meat is a Group 2A carcinogen, while processed meat is a Group 1 carcinogen.[34] The cause is probably the haem iron in meat, which causes oxidative stress.[35] Cholesterol and saturated fat from animal foods have been known to cause heart disease for half a century, dating back to studies like the LA Veterans Trial in 1969,[36] and the North Karelia Project in 1972.[37] Heart disease killed 700,000 Americans in 2020, almost twice as many as died from Covid-19.[38] [34] https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cancer-carcinogenicity-of-the-consumption-of-red-meat-and-processed-meat [35] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261306/ [36] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/01.CIR.40.1S2.II-1 [37] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6062761/ [38] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm 3.2 Antimicrobial Resistance 73% of antimicrobials sold globally are fed to livestock.[39] The UN has declared antimicrobial resistance to be one of the 10 top global public health threats facing humanity, and a major cause of AMR is overuse.[40] [39] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1503141112 [40] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance 3.3 Zoonotic Spillover Intensive animal farming has been called a "petri dish for pathogens" with potential to "spark the next pandemic".[41] Pathogens that have recently spilled over from animals to humans include: 1996 and 2013 avian flu [42] 2003 SARS [43] 2009 swine flu [44] 2019 Covid-19 [45] [41] https://www.hsi.org/news-media/animal-agriculture-could-spark-next-pandemic/ [42] https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/avian-influenza-humans/facts [43] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sars/ [44] https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/information_h1n1_virus_qa.htm [45] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62307383 3.4 Slaughterhouse Worker Health Killing a neverending stream of terrified, screaming sentient beings is the stuff of nightmares. After their first kill, workers report suffering from increased levels of: trauma, intense shock, paranoia, fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame.[46] Besides wrecking their mental health, it can also wreck their physical health. In 2007, 24 slaugherhouse workers in Minnesota began suffering from an autoimmune disease caused by inhaling aerosolised pig brains. Pig brains were lodged in the workers' lungs. Because pig and human brains are so similar, the workers' immune systems began attacking their own nervous systems.[47] [46] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15248380211030243 [47] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2841649/
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Aug 29, 2022 18:13
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I think a lot of your points are spot on. This however seems a bit loaded. Enjoy posted:As anti-speciesists, we aren't calling for legal equality between humans and non-human animals. The rights of non-human animals might simply be real enforcement of existing anti-cruelty laws, without exemptions for farm animals. Vegans don't believe humans and animals are "the same", we just think that the massive exploitation and death of sentient life inherent to animal agriculture is an unnecessary injustice. You are saying you don't think livestock should be killed. Why butter it up with a non-statement? I'd also like to hear your opinions on the economic feasibility of a vegan diet for most of the population. It seems like it would be prohibitively expensive for low income families and individuals to maintain a nutritionally sustainable diet especially with inflation and increased food costs.
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Aug 29, 2022 18:55
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Jimlit posted:I think a lot of your points are spot on. This however seems a bit loaded. "Vegans think humans and animals are the same/should have the same rights" is a common anti-vegan strawman I wanted to get out of the way. Jimlit posted:I'd also like to hear your opinions on the economic feasibility of a vegan diet for most of the population. It seems like it would be prohibitively expensive for low income families and individuals to maintain a nutritionally sustainable diet especially with inflation and increased food costs. You should be more concerned about the nutritional sustainability of meat-heavy diets. 42% of Americans were obese in 2020.[48] Look at the leading causes of death in America in 2020.[38] Diabetes, at number 8, can be managed and even cured on a plant-based diet. [49][50] Strokes, at number 5, can likewise be reduced on a plant-based diet.[51][52][53] Covid, at number 3, is much deadlier for obese people.[54] Cancer at number 2 and heart disease at number 1 were discussed in section 3.1. Poor people are eating themselves to death right now. Meat is only cheap firstly due to subsidies as discussed in section 1.2, and secondly it's only cheaper than plants if you buy the nastiest, most horrifically bred meats around, like caged chickens. Soya, chickpeas, beans and lentils are all cheaper sources of protein than beef. If humanity all went vegan, we'd have the 77% of arable land currently used for pasture and feed crops[19] to grow plant foods on. Obviously plant diets would then become much cheaper. The market is currently geared to produce meat, so we need to regear it. The issue isn't really cost, it's taste and social inertia (which is why conservatives are usually the more vocal opponents of veganism). Going vegan (and especially vocally vegan) will help overcome that social inertia. Obviously if I snapped my fingers and made everyone vegan, I'd then snap them again and make everyone socialist. But in reality we can only change diets for ourselves. That's why the title of the post is why YOU should go vegan! [48] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html [49] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466941/ [50] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1499267115300186 [51] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/STROKEAHA.113.002636 [52] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466937/ [53] https://n.neurology.org/content/96/15/e1940.abstract [54] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2020.1775546
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Aug 30, 2022 01:12
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Good post! I try not to get into the relative value of humans vs non-humans, but if you don't value the life of a thinking, feeling soul more than you value a hamburger on your plate then you are a dangerous, unfeeling creature.
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Aug 30, 2022 07:17
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Me and some folks who I've found out also have been there, done that wrt trying out the vegan lifestyle have all come to the same conclusion: we all got loving malnourished lmao. As people who have suffered a lot and put a lot of personal money into the welfare of animals (including strays), don't take this to mean that I don't care about the welfare of animals, as seems to be the common accusation against people who are not satisfied with the vegan diet. I just feel that veganism without political campaigning to improve the overall field of agriculture (both livestock and crops) itself resigns veganism to a personal belief, rather than something that could help improve animals lives. Spending a lifetime on an alternative diet plan can only affect the animals you would've consumed in your own individual lifespan. Improving laws that will enrich the lives of livestock animals as a whole well beyond what they would naturally experience in nature (which is to say, short brutal deaths because nature is mean and there are no peaceful natural deaths)? Well that's something I do find worth struggling for. I have no faith that veganism can do much by itself without any legislative effort to improve agriculture. It just feels so much the same way that oil corporations placed blame on individuals using the notion of a "personal carbon footprint," so that way no one would notice the major systemic issues. I don't want to poo poo on people for doing what the feel is better for them, of course. I just want to know if there are any legislative pushes I can help support that improves animal welfare.
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Aug 30, 2022 09:01
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god please help me posted:Me and some folks who I've found out also have been there, done that wrt trying out the vegan lifestyle have all come to the same conclusion: we all got loving malnourished lmao. As people who have suffered a lot and put a lot of personal money into the welfare of animals (including strays), don't take this to mean that I don't care about the welfare of animals, as seems to be the common accusation against people who are not satisfied with the vegan diet. I just feel that veganism without political campaigning to improve the overall field of agriculture (both livestock and crops) itself resigns veganism to a personal belief, rather than something that could help improve animals lives. What were you eating? god please help me posted:Spending a lifetime on an alternative diet plan can only affect the animals you would've consumed in your own individual lifespan. Improving laws that will enrich the lives of livestock animals as a whole well beyond what they would naturally experience in nature (which is to say, short brutal deaths because nature is mean and there are no peaceful natural deaths)? Well that's something I do find worth struggling for. Do you think politicians will be more or less inclined to improve animal welfare if there are more vegans in the world?
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Aug 30, 2022 09:19
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Enjoy posted:Do you think politicians will be more or less inclined to improve animal welfare if there are more vegans in the world? Activism isn't meaningless, but this is a bit of that politoon with all the politicians staring at an approval ratings curve. And more seriously, agriculture is a massive business, because even the poorest people will try to eat, and agribusiness is just profoundly hosed up. Which also means that their global spending power, on politicians and propaganda in general, is massive. I agree with the notion that mistreatment of animals is morally wrong, but I am pessimistic about any systematic changes any time soon. Incidentally, I always found it striking that George Riley Scott, writing in space year of 1940 (!) a brief afterword to his book History of [human] Torture that he was hopeful that as mankind moved away from torturing each other, animal treatment would also improve. I feel that he would be disappointed in the world of today 
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Aug 30, 2022 09:27
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Enjoy posted:What were you eating? This is from years back and I never really went full vegan, just cutting out meat out of my diet when I could but.... regular diet, hardly meat, plenty of rice and beans, no tofu. Had plenty of grains. Too many grains. Eating enough vegetables didn't really take away the hunger. As for what my other friends with more money ate? Probably the same, but with tofu. quote:Do you think politicians will be more or less inclined to improve animal welfare if there are more vegans in the world? There are more sizeable demographics who are begging for basic rights to their politicians, and even then they hardly get attention. So no, I don't believe just existing as a vegan is enough. To really promote animal welfare, there has to be more of a legislative angle to it for better change, which does involve bothering politicians directly. god please help me fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 09:41
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Jimlit posted:I think a lot of your points are spot on. This however seems a bit loaded. vegan specialty foods or vegan restaurants may be expensive, but a plant-based diet is less expensive than an omnivore's diet. Makes sense: meat, fish, and dairy have borne the largest price increases--from what i've seen. Primary research in this arena is lacking and can hardly be said to be objective but still, here's a survey-based study from the UK from 2 years ago https://www.veganfoodandliving.com/news/research-finds-vegan-meals-cheaper-than-meat-and-fish
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Aug 30, 2022 10:41
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I mean. I'm just concerned by that article since it seems that according to it, only 3.7% of the sample household spent anything on a meat substitute. You can certainly eat a diet of nothing but carbs and vegetables and have it indeed be inexpensive in comparison, but god that's not going to be healthy nor is it going to be that great if you're a working class poor person who does very labor intensive jobs (like me). Eating meat strikes the best nutrition/cost balance for working class poor people. I do not mind there being more people choosing a vegan diet, but there is a decent risk of being malnourished for those who don't know what they're doing.
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Aug 30, 2022 11:18
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god please help me posted:I mean. I'm just concerned by that article since it seems that according to it, only 3.7% of the sample household spent anything on a meat substitute. You can certainly eat a diet of nothing but carbs and vegetables and have it indeed be inexpensive in comparison, but god that's not going to be healthy nor is it going to be that great if you're a working class poor person who does very labor intensive jobs (like me). Eating meat strikes the best nutrition/cost balance for working class poor people. I do not mind there being more people choosing a vegan diet, but there is a decent risk of being malnourished for those who don't know what they're doing. I'm still unsure what you mean by malnourished.
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Aug 30, 2022 11:26
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Starting to feel bad, lacking energy and ability to focus, really hungry for protein and meat, feeling bloated and watery due to eating a lot of carbs/vegetables but not enough of protein. I had to admit that my attempt to cut out one of three of the essential macronutrients was not going well, so I went back to eating meat and vegetables primarily, and felt better. I still eat carbs too, no worries. Just not as much as I was when I trying how long I could go without meat. My friends have reported similar experiences. That's why the article talking about a diet of only 3.7% meat substitute strikes me as not feasible for me. god please help me fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 11:47
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Enjoy posted:In 2015, the World Health Organisation reviewed 800 studies, and concluded that red meat is a Group 2A carcinogen, while processed meat is a Group 1 carcinogen.[34] The cause is probably the haem iron in meat, which causes oxidative stress.[35] How can iron be a carcinogen? Isn't it a vital mineral for human diets? I have heard that animal-based iron is more readily absorbed by the body than the other kinds. Aren't vegans often recommended to take iron supplements so they don't become anemic?
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Aug 30, 2022 11:51
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What do you all do when traveling? Animal based products are a big part of the local cuisine in almost every culture around the world. Do you try out foods from other cultures or do you always keep to a Vegan diet in these cases?
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Aug 30, 2022 12:01
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From a practical position it is hard to see a difference between eating less meat and being vegan, if the object is to reduce meat demand then it doesn't really matter if you cut out most or even just some of your meat eating rather than all of it, as both would have severe effects on the economic viability of the industry.
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Aug 30, 2022 12:06
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god please help me posted:Starting to feel bad, lacking energy and ability to focus, really hungry for protein and meat, feeling bloated and watery due to eating a lot of carbs/vegetables but not enough of protein. I had to admit that my attempt to cut out one of three of the essential macronutrients was not going well, so I went back to eating meat and vegetables primarily, and felt better. I still eat carbs too, no worries. Just not as much as I was when I trying how long I could go without meat. My friends have reported similar experiences. That's why the article talking about a diet of only 3.7% meat substitute strikes me as not feasible for me. Maybe B12? https://veganhealth.org/vitamin-b12/vitamin-b12-plant-foods/ Basically, a Vegan diet is not sustainable by just eating food, because there's nothing Vegan that makes B12. You need fortified products or supplements, quoth the Vegan society. quote:Fortified foods and supplements are the only proven reliable sources for vegans As far as sustainability goes, afaik an Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian or low-percentage Ominovore diet would feed more people on this planet than everyone going Vegan, but I don't remember the source.
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Aug 30, 2022 12:10
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god please help me posted:Starting to feel bad, lacking energy and ability to focus, really hungry for protein and meat, feeling bloated and watery due to eating a lot of carbs/vegetables but not enough of protein. I had to admit that my attempt to cut out one of three of the essential macronutrients was not going well, so I went back to eating meat and vegetables primarily, and felt better. I still eat carbs too, no worries. Just not as much as I was when I trying how long I could go without meat. My friends have reported similar experiences. That's why the article talking about a diet of only 3.7% meat substitute strikes me as not feasible for me. Beans, chickpeas and lentils have protein. And yeah, take a vitamin supplement.
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Aug 30, 2022 12:15
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It sounds from this thread that fake meat actually more expensive than real meat in the US, is that possible? What is the price of a kg (or whatever unit) of soy mince vs meat mince?
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Aug 30, 2022 12:37
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Iron is carcinogenic Link as are lots of things if you want to ignore any qualifiers. Too little or too much of most nutrients are bad. If you ever get a blood test then most of the results show whether you are in a healthy range for whatever they are testing for. Individual requirements can vary drastically, genetics predispose us to process differently. On top of which food interactions change things. As an example vitamin C helps your body absorb iron, while tea and calcium do the opposite. Link There is a lot of misinformation around dietary requirements in general. If you eat a traditional diet then you sort of benefit from others having balanced the nutritional value historically. If you eat a modern western diet you probably have too much sodium, sugar and potentially minor deficiencies. Do vegans take supplements, sure. Do they need to is a different question. Other than B12 a balanced diet isn't any harder to make with a plant based diet. It doesn't even need to be a pill, plenty of products are fortified.
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Aug 30, 2022 12:54
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Mata posted:It sounds from this thread that fake meat actually more expensive than real meat in the US, is that possible? What is the price of a kg (or whatever unit) of soy mince vs meat mince? Stuff that tries to imitate meat gets pretty expensive in the US, yeah. I suspect a large part of it is because they're marketed as a premium product of sorts. It's pretty silly, I can spend like $6-$7 at the grocery store out here to get two impossible or beyond patties, or I could spend a few bucks less to get a 4 pack of veggie burgers that aren't trying to taste like meat but are tasty in their own way. And heck, on a related tangent to that, most people who are buying those kinds of substitutes still eat meat. This is from 2019 so the numbers might be a lil different now but it definitely shows that a clear majority of people who are buying impossible and beyond stuff aren't vegan or vegetarian: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/almost-90-percent-people-eating-non-meat-burgers-are-not-n1082146 quote:NPD found that plant-based hamburgers are largely responsible for the increase in Americans’ consumption of plant-based proteins at restaurants, with nearly 80 percent of that growth coming from Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat. Aside from burgers, sales of plant-based versions of wings, sausage and meatballs have risen by double digits over the past year — and sales of plant-based Italian sausage have skyrocketed by 416 percent in that time.
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Aug 30, 2022 13:39
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Agreed, OP. Personally I could not live without eggs though. That is were I draw the line. Whenever I visit the veganism sub-reddit I am aghast at the purity contest going on there. In my opinion people who eat meat consciously and rarely are much further ahead than those who eat it like it grows on trees, but that is just me. Good informative thread though.
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Aug 30, 2022 13:54
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Focusing on how iron is carcinogenic when taken in large amounts seems more than a little misleading, given that vegans often have to pay special attention to their diets to ensure that they get enough iron. Is the amount of iron in the average non-vegan diet unhealthy, or is this a problem manufactured by the OP?
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Aug 30, 2022 14:32
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:Agreed, OP. Personally I could not live without eggs though. That is were I draw the line. Whenever I visit the veganism sub-reddit I am aghast at the purity contest going on there. In my opinion people who eat meat consciously and rarely are much further ahead than those who eat it like it grows on trees, but that is just me. Good informative thread though. Obviously mass egg productions is abhorrent, but our backyard hens live a pretty good life, they certainly have more personality than I would ever have given a chicken credit for before we started keeping them. The issue is that only satisfies a certain way of living unavailable to multifamily dwellings and people with nazi HOAs Larger scale "Free range" egg production could help with this issue, but much like organic I get the feeling that it is simply a marketing buzzword with zero actual connection to the farming conditions
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Aug 30, 2022 14:38
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silence_kit posted:Focusing on how iron is carcinogenic when taken in large amounts seems more than a little misleading, given that vegans often have to pay special attention to their diets to ensure that they get enough iron. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8118195/ quote:3.1. Epidemiology of Dietary Iron and Cancer
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Aug 30, 2022 17:05
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I mean this is just reinforcing what silence_kit is saying. Too much iron is definitely bad.
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Aug 30, 2022 17:20
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silence_kit posted:Focusing on how iron is carcinogenic when taken in large amounts seems more than a little misleading, given that vegans often have to pay special attention to their diets to ensure that they get enough iron. Iron deficiency is the most common nutrient deficiency in the world. I don't think that iron being carcinogenic is an issue, sorry if I didn't get that across in my post. I was actually trying to. There are a lot of ways to get iron into your diet. Lentils, chickpeas, beans and tofu are all good sources of iron (and protein) and as I said in my post, vitamin c helps with the uptake. For example a tofu stir fry with veggies like broccoli is great. Women are more prone to iron deficiency and apparently in the US 79% of vegans are women. It is an issue that can be fairly easily mitigated. For vegans specifically B12 and to a lesser extent calcium are the ones to watch. As this is well known a lot of targeted products are fortified with them, such as soy milk. In answer to your question the average non-vegan diet is not unhealthy due to an abundance of iron. Large amounts of red meat does cause an increased risk of death. This interesting article suggests that over 3 servings a week is bad and that a typical steakhouse fillet is 3 and half servings.
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Aug 30, 2022 17:32
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edit: I don't want to talk about iron any more
Enjoy fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 17:35
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I feel like eating meat, especially from industrial farms, is going to look pretty barbaric in retrospect, like probably within our lifetimes. For both animal welfare as well as environment/climate reasons. I haven't cut out meat (and certainly not all animal products) entirely, but I think even just not eating meat three times a day every day would make a difference. While almost all cultures around the world do eat meat, I think that's definitely a pretty recent thing that we've gotten used to pretty quickly. As for nutrition, from what I've seen a while ago, it's not really an issue if you're eating a diverse diet and not like 100% carrots-only or something.
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Aug 30, 2022 18:23
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mobby_6kl posted:I feel like eating meat, especially from industrial farms, is going to look pretty barbaric in retrospect, like probably within our lifetimes. For both animal welfare as well as environment/climate reasons. You are in good company, over five hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci said "I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."
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Aug 30, 2022 18:38
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There are a lot of links in the OP so I may have missed it but are there any studies that provide a "tiering" of diets ranging from Tyrannosaurus to Level 5 vegan? Typically the focus on animal use revolves around beef/lamb because those two are wildly disproportionate in damage to benefits, but what does the harm/benefit/etc look like as things get scraped away? For example, does beef and lamb removal solve a huge fraction of CO2 and water problems to the point where ethics becomes the primary driver? Or how about removing pork, then chicken? If everyone went pescatarian or ovo-lacto does that hit a sweet spot? What benefit occurs when honey is removed from diet? And so on.
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Aug 30, 2022 18:58
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I still don't see any reason not to ethically raise hens for eggs. They can eat scraps. But overall you've presented some very good arguments supporting serious reduction of consumption.
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Aug 30, 2022 19:12
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you are correct about factory farming but my friends' and family's chickens and ducks lead a better life than I do e oops thought I was in a different forum sorry if I broke rule 35 subsection 40 or w/e namaste pandy fackler fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 19:18
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silence_kit posted:What do you all do when traveling? Animal based products are a big part of the local cuisine in almost every culture around the world. From personal experience with people adhering to veganism or a pescatarian diet, it varies wildly. I know a pescatarian who will never eat meat at home, but works with people in marginalized communities in which meat dishes are cultural and traditional touchstones, and they'll absolutely eat the meat dish if they're being offered it by those people because it would be very rude to pass on hospitality from people who have so little. They're also more open to trying meat dishes from other cultures when traveling, to an extent. But I know another vegan (hard vegan) who will pretty much melt down if there's even cheese on a dish she receives, which she could easily scrape off. The type of vegan who lets everybody know, and often. When she travels she demands vegan food or nothing. Land of contrasts! I certainly know which of those I think is the more thoughtful person.
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Aug 30, 2022 19:27
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silence_kit posted:What do you all do when traveling? Animal based products are a big part of the local cuisine in almost every culture around the world. Can you give an example of some places you have traveled to where you think this might be the case? There are pretty large parts of India where your statement isn't even true. I don't travel that often but I have always found something to eat. Sometimes it's just a little more difficult than others and you might just have to eat a salad or something. The term "vegan" might not be known to some people so it's easier to ask if things have meat or dairy individually. Punjabi cooking is historically known to use a lot of butter, and even in an Punjabi restaurant in India I was able to find several non salad things to eat. How are u posted:From personal experience with people adhering to veganism or a pescatarian diet, it varies wildly. I know a pescatarian who will never eat meat at home, but works with people in marginalized communities in which meat dishes are cultural and traditional touchstones, and they'll absolutely eat the meat dish if they're being offered it by those people because it would be very rude to pass on hospitality from people who have so little. They're also more open to trying meat dishes from other cultures when traveling, to an extent. It's odd to compare someone working in an environment with marginalized people, to someone not working in that environment. AnimeIsTrash fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 20:03
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Speaking as a vegan, if someone who knows I'm a vegan serves me something with cheese on it and tells me to just scrape it off, I'm never gonna trust any food they serve me ever again.
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Aug 30, 2022 20:21
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AnimeIsTrash posted:Can you give an example of some places you have traveled to where you think this might be the case? There are pretty large parts of India where your statement isn't even true.
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Aug 30, 2022 20:28
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AnimeIsTrash posted:Can you give an example of some places you have traveled to where you think this might be the case? There are pretty large parts of India where your statement isn't even true. You can usually find vegetarian-friendly food in every culture (barring places like the arctic circle where farmed vegetables were not a thing until recently), sure. But primarily most people are going to offer food with meat in it since it has plenty of protein in it. It's only hospitable to offer a protein-containing meal, as opposed to say only a side-dish of egg-free potato salad. You can certainly manage to find vegetarian options during your stay in other countries, but I feel that it is disingenuous to act like food containing animal products isn't a major part of every culture on earth. In fact, I struggle to think of a culture that has strict vegetarian people only, no living along side meat-eating people as is the case in India or that time in Japan that meat eating got banned due to Buddhist scripture (but people still ate meat on the sly). I can however think of plenty of cultures where they live on a strict vegetable-free diet due to animals being able to consume the local plant life that humans can't. They fulfill their vitamin C requirement from fresh meat and organs. This is all to say that culturally, animal products in food is to be expected more than they are not. Also, I'm going to agree with the people upthread saying that reducing meat consumption for individuals is more feasible and accomplishes the same goal of reducing animal products better than strict veganism alone. It's easier to achieve, avoids the issues of getting malnutritioned, acts upon something reasonable that most meat-eating people would agree on, and refocuses the issue on how animals are treated in the field of animal agriculture, rather than condemning agriculture as a whole/pretending that plant agriculture doesn't have its own issues that is as bad if not worse for the environment than animal agriculture. god please help me fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 20:41
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Cicero posted:I've heard that it can be difficult to be vegan in Japan. Even if you avoid obvious meat, stuff like soup broths will be meat-based (fish). I have heard from pals that have traveled over there a few times that it has gotten better in recent years but you still gotta go out of your way to do research to find restaurants that do accommodate vegans for that kinda stuff.
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Aug 30, 2022 20:46
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AnimeIsTrash posted:It's odd to compare someone working in an environment with marginalized people, to someone not working in that environment. I was using it as an example of how somebody who does not eat meat can be thoughtfully flexible and considerate if the context requires it. The hard vegan would refuse the hospitality and not care if it was offensive. Srice posted:Speaking as a vegan, if someone who knows I'm a vegan serves me something with cheese on it and tells me to just scrape it off, I'm never gonna trust any food they serve me ever again.  The context of that anecdote was that we were having margaritas at a mexican food place, ordered chips and guac with no cheese, but it ended up coming with a sprinkling of cheese on top of the guac. Eminently easy to eat around, avoid, or scrape off, but the person in question made a big fuss and refused to even try to avoid the cheese. Inflexible on principle, regardless of the reality of the situation (easily avoidable cheese). I'm sure some people think that reaction is entirely reasonable, but to me it just seemed dramatic and fussy in the extreme.
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Aug 30, 2022 21:15
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god please help me posted:Spending a lifetime on an alternative diet plan can only affect the animals you would've consumed in your own individual lifespan. It affects less than this, because the actual "production" from livestock farms isn't going to change based upon your own consumer choices. It's not like, by choosing not to buy chicken, you're bringing the chicken that was killed back to life. Or that the company is going to be aware that you didn't buy chicken at a restaurant and reduce its chicken production by 1 in the future. It's the sort of consumer choice that has literally zero impact unless it reaches a threshold where it makes farms actually decrease their "production." And I would argue that it's impossible for enough consumers to voluntarily reduce their consumption to such a degree, because our society/economy is so strongly intertwined with meat production. A real meaningful decrease would require government action (and this would require a fundamental change to our political system). There's a good chance that, even if there was a significant and widespread change in consumer behavior, meat production would still stay the same, with the products just being used in different ways (sort of like we've seen with other farming products, where the industry is powerful and has its own influence over the government, which provides it with subsidies). It's sort of similar to climate change in this regard, only individual consumer choices are possibly even less relevant (since you're at least the the one actually creating emissions with something like driving, while the animal you'd be eating is always already dead, unless you buy a live lobster and release it into the ocean I guess). Vegetarianism* is basically objectively correct morally, but your personal choices about what to eat don't really matter at all (to anything other than your own nutrition and finances, anyways). * I don't think there's any meaningful ethical issue with eating fish. Overfishing is a serious problem, but that's a separate issue.
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Aug 30, 2022 21:18
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