This is definitely a sane and logical take. I’ve been eating plants for almost a year and no meat. Not only am I still waiting for my soy manboobs to come in but in surprisingly not a mummy lol.
Meat is not essential for human diet. However, many of the nutrients found in meat are essential for our health. Protein, iron, and B vitamins are just some of the nutrients found in meats. Meat provides our bodies with proteins, vitamins, and minerals that are necessary for proper muscle and organ function.
Sure there is a pill for everything but its the same as getting a IV with fluids instead of drinking. You will still be thirsty… again finding balance is the key, not every meal requires meat.
I’d go farther in saying that staying the fuck away from “industrialy” grown meat, and overly processed food is the way to go (for health). Reducing a maximum the meat consumption, and subside it for higher quality one is what’s necessary for the environment.
Going vegetarian (mostly) is even more efficient in both cases as long as the diet is well crafted for balancing all the body needs.
You can get protein from plenty of non meat sources like nuts and beans. iron from cashews and oats you can get a nutritionally complete diet without killing sentient beings.
…and you could do the same thing and eat exclusively from the animal kingdom too.
If you don’t want to eat anything from the animal kingdom for your own reasons, cool. But when you start saying anything about what other people eat, imo you are no different than someone saying their religion/beliefs are best. Just don’t.
Humans are omnivores and always have been, society and technology today has only recently allowed humans to strictly become vegetarians on any kind of scale. Specific eating habits for moral reasons is a thing people who aren’t poor in first world countries have the privilege of doing. People in 3rd world countries/poor people are simply going to eat whatever is available to them.
Again, no one is wrong here, until one starts advocating that their way is best or better.
People in 3rd world countries/poor people are simply going to eat whatever is available to them.
There is an entire such country with over a billion people in Asia where almost half the population is vegan/vegetarian. I'll leave you to guess which one. It's not about price, but rather accessibility. Their entire food economy is centered around it. Modern western diets push meat way more than others. You do NOT need it every single day.
Omnivores who primarily didn’t eat meat. Until recently in non hunter gatherer societies at least meat was a luxury not a staple and it would still be that why if not for massive subsidies. Letting people do what they want doesn’t apply when there are victims which animals are.
Actually, they ate meat as much as they could. Just wasn’t always available without good ways to store it long term. But there’s a reason why they were called hunter gatherers and why humans evolved to be able to run long distances and are heat tolerant, because our ancestors ran down prey by exhausting it.
But as far as we know all people hunted at least until early agriculture started being practiced
I said in non hunter gatherer societies. In sedentary societies meat was a sign of upper class luxury. The fact the we have evolutionary advantages for hunting prey says nothing about how we should structure society one way or another.
true, love me both some cashew and beans too bad both are also horrible strains on the environment like 6k liter for 0,5kg cashews buth that is a whole other debate
Water consumption doesn’t say everything and cashews are an extreme example where water use is concerned. Greenhouse grass emissions, land use and many other metrics tell a wider and more accurate story.
However, many of the nutrients found in meat are essential for our health. Protein, iron, and B vitamins are just some of the nutrients found in meats.
These nutrients are found in non meat sources as well. Meat doesn’t carry anything unique besides B12 because we wash the fuck out of our vegetables. Plant based diets make it pretty difficult to miss nutrients unless you’re just sitting around eating oreos all day.
Domesticated species are selectively bred by humans to enhance characteristics we find desirable. Many of these characteristic would be weeded out by natural selection within one generation. Cultivated banana trees, for example, cannot reproduce; and Dairy cows can die if not milked regularly.
That’s a big part of what makes them “domesticated”.
They die. They succumb to death. They cease to be. They expire and go to meet their maker. They run up the curtain and join the choir invisible. They become ex-animals.
A “food animal” … Most of the animal breeds slaughtered for meat were basically genetically modified through selective breeding by humans to be more profitable.
Fast and unhealthy growth of muscle mass, additional rips, laying eggs much more often, etc.
These modification come with a great price the animals have to pay in pain. Most of them can’t live without human help anymore. We made them this way and we are responsible. To keep them in an endless cycle of suffering after we created them like this is probably the pinnacle of cruelness. And all of that just because they have a voice we do not understand or recognise.
I’ve been vegetarian for around 3 years after I discovered how badly we treat animals, and also by connecting meat and animals in my mind… Realising that the same pets that I adore are the steaks that I ate. But still, I went vegetarian because I could. I could manage to find time in my life to change my diet and to make sure I had no deficiency in nutrients… So don’t be too hard on yourself mate, your situation is totally understandable! Actually I strongly disagree with people saying that anyone could become vegetarian if they wanted to, it takes a lot of thought, trial and error, time and obviously a lack of allergies… Saying that, anyone can fight for animal rights in their own way, being vegetarian is only one of the many tools we have…
I’m grateful that you say that (not OP). So many vegetarians/vegans are convinced anyone who isn’t vegan hates animals, or is at least “worse” than them on some magical scale they came up with.
I fought for my state’s free range chicken law, but I wouldn’t fight for bans of consuming chicken or eggs. I would love a law that banned chick-killing (the practice of immediately killing all newborn chickens of the “wrong gender” when reselling chickens to farms or growing egg breeds). I’m sure they’d find a way around that. Despite that, I’ll still eat chicken.
Damn I forgot about lamb, goat, and their cloven hoofed friends like deer
Lamb is readily available in the US, but we (excluding farmers and active hunters) tend to eat it selectively like duck or veal as a delicacy or a meal for a special occasion. Normal everyday people don’t eat lamb, veal, or duck when cheaper chicken, beef, fish, etc is available. Americans have an aversion to eating cute animals.
I’ve eaten bear. It’s gamey as hell. Tried it multiple times and prepared multiple ways. The cooking methods that make it the most palatable are the ones that take forever like slow roasting and smoking. It’s a very tough meat so it takes a lot of tenderizing methods. Large predator meat is typically not great eating.
Before everyone jumps on me for being a hunter, I am a native Ojibwe. I don’t want to dox myself by revealing much more than that.
A supermajority of animal feed comes from the waste product of crops we that were being grown anyway, or grass from a fallow field that needs to be harvested anyway (not enough the latter due to logistics, but my local farms all do). That whole “8 to 1” calorie to cow thing leaves out the part that it’s 8 calories of landfill material to make 1 calorie of beef. Nobody has an “animal only” corn field. And nobody is using harsh animal-killing chemicals on the fallow fields.
And cows are still being fed things whether you eat them or not. We need their manure and it’s overall better for the environment than synthetic fertilizer. Without some form of fertilizer, we need much more farmland, which means more animals killed per calorie. All compared to 700,000 calories in a cow.
Unfortunately, nobody has ever demonstrated in a defensible manner that a horticulture-only scenario would be anywhere near as efficient on animal lives as what we have now. It’s one thing to cut animal intake 10%, entirely another to try to rebuild our farming industry without animals.
A supermajority of animal feed comes from the waste product of crops we that were being grown anyway
According to the Alberta Cattle Feeders Association, 80% of the feed is composed of corn. According to the USDA itself half the corn grown in the US was used for animal feed, and 78% of the world’s soy production is made for animal feed.
Is the waste product of corn and soy included in these numbers?
The ACFA link you sent doesn’t seem to say what you referenced, that I could find. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone say that cattle is fed decent corn in any stage of life except “finishing” (which reduced gaminess), and even then 80% is the high end.
Is the waste product of corn and soy included in these numbers?
Since I cannot seem to trace your references, I’m not sure. But it’s covered in the numbers I linked. Every single reputable or researched reference I have ever seen on the topic (as well as the actual cattle ranches I’ve lived near) put a bare minimum of 85% of a cow’s diet as inedibles. And why would it be anything else? Those inedibles are dramatically cheaper than buying edible corn.
…and stepping back, I’d like to point out that we’re discussing the paltry percent of some of the least nutritionally valuable crops in the world are eaten by cows, who by any honest analysis produces one of the most nutrious staple foods known to man.
The figure was almost by the middle of the page, search for the string “AT THE FEEDLOT, CATTLE ARE FED A DIET OF 80% GRAIN AND 20% FORAGES. (SILAGE AND HAY)”, on the section “Start weight, finish weight”.
Corn is a major component of livestock feed. Feed use, a derived demand, is closely related to the number of animals (cattle, hogs, and poultry) that are fed corn and typically accounts for about 40 percent of total domestic corn use. The amount of corn used for feed also depends on the crop’s supply and price, the amount of supplemental ingredients used in feed rations, and the supplies and prices of competing ingredients.
We may not eat large quantities of soy directly, but the animals we eat, or from which we consume eggs or milk, do. In fact, almost 80% of the world’s soybean crop is fed to livestock, especially for beef, chicken, egg and dairy production (milk, cheeses, butter, yogurt, etc).
You obviously know way more than me about the subject but you gotta excuse me for taking anything from a website called “sacredcow” talking about the “plant-based industry” at the top of the page with a grain of salt, everything else I’ve seen online points to animal farming being incredible inefficient and a huge contributor to global warming and water waste.
You’re free to do whatever you want, all I meant is decreasing meat consumption not only will reduce the amount of big animals killed, but also the number of smaller ones. Growing a cow takes a whole lot of grain.
I know why people think vegans do this for some smug reason, but we don’t, I promise you. We just want people to change and stop hurting animals, and the only way to do that is to keep talking about it.
Funny thing is that many of us feel the same way about vegans. We just want them to change and stop getting in our face like street preachers with what we consider to be flawed logic and more flawed ethical philosophy.
And the only way to do that is to keep standing up to vegans the same way we do JWs. It sucks because it’s exhausting and we just want to be left alone.
But the difference between vegans and JWs is that the issue vegans have is real, and we have more than enough evidence for our case. Religion is a personal choice, but actions that harm others are not. You can call it preachy but that’s how things get better.
JW’s would say the exact same thing to vegans. YOU think the issue is real, but all the rest of us see is you throwing around junk science and fabricated propaganda. Ultimately, you think you can force your morals on us because you think you’re better than us… and think we have no right to do the same to you. That’s where the “smug” part comes in. You know we’ve thought about the ethics. You know we might even be more educated in right-and-wrong than you are. But you don’t care what our conclusions were as long as they differ from yours. You’re infallible on that topic, are you?
Religion is a personal choice, but actions that harm others are not
You don’t think what you’re doing is harming people? Or is it that you don’t care because your ethics are more valuable than others are? Proslytization hurts people. Which means preachy vegans hurt people.
You can call it preachy but that’s how things get better.
You’re pushing people AWAY from veganism. I’ve been on a constant mission to improve my footprint, but every time I end up in an argument with a vegan I end up so exhausted by their zealous crap that I start questioning whether it’s worth all the effort I put into MY part of the environment. It literally just makes me want to go out of my way and eat a steak, but that’s not much better (but it is a little better) than what preachy vegans do.
junk science and fabricated propaganda… how? Besides the scientific consensus on the benefits of plant based diets on the environment, veganism is an ethical stance to stop unnecessary harm towards sentient beings. The only science we need is to prove that plant based diets do that, and they do. No I don’t accept your conclusion until you stop violating the rights of others.
Proslytization hurts people.
Hmmm killing vs proselytization, which is worse? We are asking you to stop physically harming others then you call it abuse, its silly.
Also I’m definitely not pushing people away from veganism, I’ve been at this for a long time and the truth is you weren’t going to change your mind. I’m just providing opposition to your points for everyone who reads this thread.
Different discussion, and feel free to read my MANY other comments on this thread if you’re interested in my take on that. I said that’s how we see the vegan side. If you want to cover whether that opinion is accurate, my answer here is going to be RTFM in the other comments, sorry.
Besides the scientific consensus on the benefits of plant based diets on the environment, veganism is an ethical stance to stop unnecessary harm towards sentient beings
That “scientific consensus” has tons of asterisks. The consensus is that reducing global meat intake would have an environmental impact in a vacuum. And I agree with that. And as long as it’s not too many people “doing their part” by going vegan, go ahead. And as long as you don’t think that’s the ONLY thing you should be doing.
And no, veganism is not “an ethical stance to stop unnecessary harm towards sentient beings”, it’s just not eating animal products. And here’s how I can show that. If someone handed you a shotgun and said “this deer has to die; feel free to eat it. If you don’t kill it, 5 more animals will starve to death” what would you do? Trolley problem. If your stance is actually stopping unnecessary harm, you kill the deer and you feast. You kill the deer because it saves lives, and you feast because at least the death served a purpose directly.
If you don’t do those things, you’re not doing what you can to “stop unnecessary harm towards sentient beings”. But if you DO do those things, you’re not a vegan. Words have meanings, and vegan doesn’t mean “stop unnecessary harm”, it means “won’t eat animal products at all costs”.
The only science we need is to prove that plant based diets do that, and they do
I disagree. I think too much veganism, especially preachy veganism, costs more lives and causes more suffering. I see what overpopulation does every day, and I’ve seen many times how many animals die on a farm.
Also I’m definitely not pushing people away from veganism, I’ve been at this for a long time and the truth is you weren’t going to change your mind
No, I wasn’t going to change my mind because I’m educated on this matter and have been dealing with smug vegans for a decade now. Unlike a lot of dupes you might talk to, I have a background in philosophy and ethics, as well as at least some knowledge about agriculture and how farming actually works. But my wife toyed with veganism until she got annoyed by someone not very much unlike you. It led her to stop. She un-quit red meat, which was a huge win to me.
But think about this. Anyone on the fence who reads this comment chain is going to see the preachy vegans overreaching with what arguments they have and come to the not-quite-true conclusion that NONE of what you’re saying is accurate. Which is funny because we SHOULD still be trying to improve our overall relationship with food.
I’m just providing opposition to your points for everyone who reads this thread
Actually, quite the opposite. This all started because you insisted vegans aren’t smug. Readers can come to their own conclusions. At this point, I’m convinced any non-vegan reader will agree that you came across similar to a JW.
I’m not even going to argue science with you at this point because you are so far off of what even nonvegans who care about the environment usually agree on and you clearly have an issue believing or understanding research.
Your trolly problem point is a nothing sandwich. Vegans get a win win in that refusal to eat animal products results in overall harm reduction in our real world. So it doesn’t matter whether or not they are rights-based or utilitarian vegans.
You can deny evidence and think what you want but now you are really just arguing for your sake instead of being honest with yourself.
If you are so into philosophy you would probably know your anecdote about your wife means nothing to me.
Also YOU see preachy vegans, stop assuming what others see. I’ve seen more people go vegan and its better evidence for this than your wife anecdote.
Again, JWs preach something no one sees. Animal agriculture is a real thing and its a false equivalence, Mr. Philosophy
I’m not even going to argue science with you at this point because you are so far off of what even nonvegans who care about the environment usually agree on and you clearly have an issue believing or understanding research.
Just from how you worded this, I think that’s probably smart.
Your trolly problem point is a nothing sandwich
I see. I’m sorry you feel that way about ethics.
Vegans get a win win in that refusal to eat animal products results in overall harm reduction in our real world
And I bet you can formally prove that in some ethical framework instead of make the claim despite me having knowledge it’s false
So it doesn’t matter whether or not they are rights-based or utilitarian vegans.
Nothing matters but you winning against the non-believers?
You can deny evidence and think what you want but now you are really just arguing for your sake instead of being honest with yourself.
Reptent, sinner, and turn to our lord and savior Bob. You know he’s the true god. You’ve always known. Just be “honest with yourself” and stop denying the evidence of his coming… Do you not see how utterly mindlessly inane that sounds? You’re now trying to convince me that NOT ONLY is everything I know to be true a lie, but that deep down inside I KNOW that everything I know to be true is a lie.
A this point, you might as well try to make me an antivaxer or flat-earther. But I guess using common sense is out the window because, as you admit, I already have enough knowledge not to be convinced by rhetoric.
If you are so into philosophy you would probably know your anecdote about your wife means nothing to me.
No. I knew that from the point where you got offended by being called smug, and then started replying with things like… Well, this smug insulting hateful post of yours I just replied to.
I’m gonna hit that little “Block” button now, quite comfortable in the fact that I have succeeded in my goal of showing how wrong veganism is.
I felt that way about your irrelevant trolley problem, not ethics. The point of the win win is that it doesn’t matter why they do something if the outcome is the same… Yes? I want people to stop exploiting animals… False equivalence to religion again. What a winner 🏆, you declared it a success 👏.
Vegans will literally eat slave labor picked Avocados but still think the best way they can help reduce comodification is by yelling at other people online, instead of not eating the slave avocados.
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