Veganism

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

The situation in Australia is not necessarily representative of what exists elsewhere, e.g., I’m not aware that mouse plagues are common in other areas,

Seems a strange sentence, were you aware of the mouse plagues in Australia? Also, Australia is the second largest beef exporter in the world, behind India. It seems a fair place to focus for looking into something like this.

but:

1) As the link by SS notes, a significant decrease in energy/resource use could be achieved if people simply lowered their caloric input. Most people overeat, and the figures in the linked article on Australia don’t challenge this.

Not sure why you posted this, it really has very little to do with the links I posted, mainly because the paper SS posted has nothing to do with veganism or even vegetarianism. I'd never dispute these facts.

2) The article contrasts the slow, painful death of poisoned mice (and again, I don’t know that mouse plagues are a general problem with plant cultivation in other parts of the world) with the instant death of cattle. But in many feedlots, the animals are severely confined, resulting in suffering most of their lives, and while death at the slaughter house may be quicker than by poisoning, it isn’t instantaneous nor without suffering.

Veganism isn't about a balance though, I've never heard a vegan say that the death of lots of animals who live free is better than the long term suffering of a few caged animals. I posted it as it highlights one of my biggest problems with veganism and that is that almost every vegan I've ever met only ever considers primary animal suffering (meat, dairy, fur, leather etc.). Vegan shoes for example necessarily use plastics instead of leather, supporting the petrochemical industry that kills and interferes with untold numbers of animals. But that's OK because it isn't leather. Vegans don't eat honey (which baffles me to be honest) but large scale crop production kills billions of insects a year and destroys habitats of and kills larger animals (whereas pasturelands and the cattle there actually help support other life), yet these deaths are tolerated. I have a vegan friend who replaces their mobile phone at least twice a year and who buys computer parts and consoles like they'll be currency when the bombs drop. Production of these things increases our demand for rare earth elements, the mining of which (yes, you guessed it) destroys huge swathes of natural habitats. None of these things are necessary, so he is causing harm for his own pleasure.

If veganism is truly about least harm then these articles highlight an uncomfortable truth many vegans will refuse to discuss. That is that, obviously depending on farming methods, eating some meat might actually cause the least harm to animals overall.

3) As what I said above, arguments in this article are really more an indictment of large-scale agribusiness than plant cultivation per se.

Again, this doesn't seem relevant to the discussion, I think we're thinking along different lines. I fully accept that current farming methods are extremely poor, both for crops and animals, but that's not really the point I was alluding to posting those articles and as far as I'm aware, that isn't veganism.

 

[Jspear]

Neither system is perfect. You enjoy your veggies, I'll enjoy my veggies and meat and let's get along. Both sides are leaving footprints behind themselves, both sides can try and reduce that.

Good post KB

 

[Merckx index]

Re: Re:

Not sure why you posted this, it really has very little to do with the links I posted, mainly because the paper SS posted has nothing to do with veganism or even vegetarianism. I'd never dispute these facts.

In the first place, I routinely respond to more than one poster in a single post. Just because I responded to both SS and you doesn't mean that I was drawing a link between his posts and yours.

Except that, in the second place, there obviously is a link. The whole thread of this recent discussion is a pushback against veganism and vegetarianism, the notion that eating animals has advantages over a strictly vegetarian diet.
The paper linked by SS clearly claims that eating more fruits and vegetables is worse energy-wise than eating pork or chicken. And yet you claim it has nothing to do with vegetarianism? Do you really think when the authors set out to study this, they were only thinking in terms of USDA standards? If that were the case, what would be the point of SS posting it in a thread on veganism?

Veganism isn't about a balance though, I've never heard a vegan say that the death of lots of animals who live free is better than the long term suffering of a few caged animals. I posted it as it highlights one of my biggest problems with veganism and that is that almost every vegan I've ever met only ever considers primary animal suffering (meat, dairy, fur, leather etc.). Vegan shoes for example necessarily use plastics instead of leather, supporting the petrochemical industry that kills and interferes with untold numbers of animals. But that's OK because it isn't leather. Vegans don't eat honey (which baffles me to be honest) but large scale crop production kills billions of insects a year and destroys habitats of and kills larger animals (whereas pasturelands and the cattle there actually help support other life), yet these deaths are tolerated. I have a vegan friend who replaces their mobile phone at least twice a year and who buys computer parts and consoles like they'll be currency when the bombs drop. Production of these things increases our demand for rare earth elements, the mining of which (yes, you guessed it) destroys huge swathes of natural habitats. None of these things are necessary, so he is causing harm for his own pleasure.

If veganism is truly about least harm then these articles highlight an uncomfortable truth many vegans will refuse to discuss. That is that, obviously depending on farming methods, eating some meat might actually cause the least harm to animals overall.

I can only speak for myself, but I have no problem with eating animal products like milk, eggs and honey, and even eat some animal flesh, like fish. I guess that makes me more vegetarian, and even that not perfectly, than vegan. I’m very much aware of rare earth element use, and the problems with plastics. But more to the point, the article provided no estimates of animal deaths resulting from plant cultivation. Apart from going on and on about how male mice sing to female mice, the article made claims about how lizards, snakes, etc., are slaughtered when a field is plowed, without backing that up with any numbers. No doubt when wild land is converted to farmland, some of that happens, but after the land is cleared, and it's just a matter of plowing the soil? I really don't know, but I got the impression the author doesn't, either. I do know that I’ve lived and worked on farms at various times, and I never noticed this as a problem. The only birds that followed the plowing and tilling were robins looking for worms.

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

Not sure why you posted this, it really has very little to do with the links I posted, mainly because the paper SS posted has nothing to do with veganism or even vegetarianism. I'd never dispute these facts.

In the first place, I routinely respond to more than one poster in a single post. Just because I responded to both SS and you doesn't mean that I was drawing a link between his posts and yours.

I know you do. You responded to SS above quoting me. It seemed obvious that those three points were directed at me, otherwise surely you would have put them before quoting me? Therefore it seemed fair to assume you were referring to the article SS posted in reference to my post.

Except that, in the second place, there obviously is a link. The whole thread of this recent discussion is a pushback against veganism and vegetarianism, the notion that eating animals has advantages over a strictly vegetarian diet.
The paper linked by SS clearly claims that eating more fruits and vegetables is worse energy-wise than eating pork or chicken. And yet you claim it has nothing to do with vegetarianism? Do you really think when the authors set out to study this, they were only thinking in terms of USDA standards? If that were the case, what would be the point of SS posting it in a thread on veganism?

At no point does the paper look at either a vegetarian or vegan diet with regard to their data. Vegetarian diets are only discussed in the introduction and discussion with relation to other peoples work that shows moving away from meat and dairy elsewhere in the world does reduce water usage, GHG emissions and energy use. I'm not going to pretend to know what the authors were thinking about, but I'm sure that if they had vegan or vegetarian diets in mind they would have looked at and reported on them. They did no such thing. The paper reads more like a damning indictment of current US agriculture and food production methods, rather than a "which diet is nicer to the environment".

As for SS's motivations, again I don't know what he was thinking. I can only surmise he read the headline and article on the CMU News site (which is grossly misleading) rather than the actual paper.

Veganism isn't about a balance though, I've never heard a vegan say that the death of lots of animals who live free is better than the long term suffering of a few caged animals. I posted it as it highlights one of my biggest problems with veganism and that is that almost every vegan I've ever met only ever considers primary animal suffering (meat, dairy, fur, leather etc.). Vegan shoes for example necessarily use plastics instead of leather, supporting the petrochemical industry that kills and interferes with untold numbers of animals. But that's OK because it isn't leather. Vegans don't eat honey (which baffles me to be honest) but large scale crop production kills billions of insects a year and destroys habitats of and kills larger animals (whereas pasturelands and the cattle there actually help support other life), yet these deaths are tolerated. I have a vegan friend who replaces their mobile phone at least twice a year and who buys computer parts and consoles like they'll be currency when the bombs drop. Production of these things increases our demand for rare earth elements, the mining of which (yes, you guessed it) destroys huge swathes of natural habitats. None of these things are necessary, so he is causing harm for his own pleasure.

If veganism is truly about least harm then these articles highlight an uncomfortable truth many vegans will refuse to discuss. That is that, obviously depending on farming methods, eating some meat might actually cause the least harm to animals overall.

I can only speak for myself, but I have no problem with eating animal products like milk, eggs and honey, and even eat some animal flesh, like fish. I guess that makes me more vegetarian, and even that not perfectly, than vegan.

It makes you an omnivore (It's a pescatarian and lacto-ovo vegetarian diet I suppose if you have to label it as long as you only eat fish).

I’m very much aware of rare earth element use, and the problems with plastics. But more to the point, the article provided no estimates of animal deaths resulting from plant cultivation.

From the article:

"Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in:

at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein"

So that's not no estimates. They even include a summary of the data and calculations:

"However, the largest and best-researched loss of sentient life is the poisoning of mice during plagues.

With its soft feet and low water use, kangaroo is a source of less ecologically damaging meat. No Dust
Each area of grain production in Australia has a mouse plague on average every four years, with 500-1000 mice per hectare. Poisoning kills at least 80% of the mice.

At least 100 mice are killed per hectare per year (500/4 × 0.8) to grow grain. Average yields are about 1.4 tonnes of wheat/hectare; 13% of the wheat is useable protein. Therefore, at least 55 sentient animals die to produce 100kg of useable plant protein: 25 times more than for the same amount of rangelands beef."

And that is only mice. To claim that no other animal dies through arable farming, even with no data, would be completely disingenuous, so we can comfortably say it is higher than that.

Apart from going on and on about how male mice sing to female mice, the article made claims about how lizards, snakes, etc., are slaughtered when a field is plowed, without backing that up with any numbers. No doubt when wild land is converted to farmland, some of that happens, but after the land is cleared, and it's just a matter of plowing the soil? I really don't know, but I got the impression the author doesn't, either. I do know that I’ve lived and worked on farms at various times, and I never noticed this as a problem. The only birds that followed the plowing and tilling were robins looking for worms.

I'm sure the author doesn't know, it's probably incredibly difficult to study and no one would fund it anyway, but as I've mentioned up-post, even just taking into account the mice which have been studied, it's 25 times more death.



I'm unsure how we've ended up in this discussion though to be honest. I think that you thought my original post was a continuation of the general discussion when it wasn't, it was just a couple of interesting articles. The rest of the discussion I think we are probably of a fairly similar point of view. Current methods are horrible and should be changed and it is likely that, when everything is done responsibly, no diet is better or worse for us and the environment than any other (and if one was it would massively depend on the location).

Where we might differ is in that I think every vegan is hypocritical, they accept and cause suffering just as readily as everyone else as long as they can't see it on their plate, but you're not a vegan and it's not a criticism of you and would have been irrelevant even if it was. However I don't know your feelings on that. You seem to still be continuing the previous discussion that involves veganism and vegetarianism, whereas my points on secondary and tertiary animal suffering were purely directed at vegans in general and I think that caused some confusion.

 

[red_flanders]

Re: Re:

Dupe post...

 

[red_flanders]

Re: Re:

As my 11-year-old daughter recently pointed out to me, meats cause much more water use than vegetables. Here's an article looking at the water footprint of various foods.

http://www.gracelinks.org/1361/the-water-footprint-of-food
C

Let’s take a look at a typical lunch. A loaf of bread requires about 240 gallons of water, and a pound of cheese takes about 382 gallons. So a simple cheese sandwich takes about 56 gallons of water. Throw in a small bag of potato chips at 12 gallons and you just ate about 68 gallons of water. Add some turkey and it jumps to 160 gallons! Thirsty? Rinse your sandwich down with an ice cold soda and you can add an extra 46 gallons of water onto your tab.

The sheer amount of water used to make the food we eat every day can be mind-boggling.

Let’s take a closer look at meat. Pound for pound, it has a much higher water footprint than vegetables, grains or beans. For instance, a single pound of beef takes, on average, 1,800 gallons of water. That huge water footprint is primarily due to the tremendous amount of water needed to grow the grass, forage and feed that a beef steer eats over its lifetime, plus water for drinking, cleaning and processing.

This is based a massively ridiculous assumption that all the water that goes into pastureland goes into beef production though. The study posted by StyrbjornSterki shows that actually vegetables, fruits, eggs, nuts and seeds all have a larger blue water footprint.

Is it? I don't see those details in the article not where they're getting the information. You may be correct, I don't know.

This goes into more detail. Seems consistent with the other article I posted:

http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/4712/the-water-footprint-of-beef-industrial-vs-pasture-raised

Haven't read the study you reference yet. Will do.

 

[red_flanders]

So I took a look but can only get to the abstract which does confirm what you say but w/o any details. It is counter-intuitive as mentioned, I'd really like to get into the details but not sure I want to drop $40 on the full text. Anyone have it? Seems to be in conflict with everything else I've ever read on this. Very interesting.

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

As my 11-year-old daughter recently pointed out to me, meats cause much more water use than vegetables. Here's an article looking at the water footprint of various foods.

http://www.gracelinks.org/1361/the-water-footprint-of-food
C

Let’s take a look at a typical lunch. A loaf of bread requires about 240 gallons of water, and a pound of cheese takes about 382 gallons. So a simple cheese sandwich takes about 56 gallons of water. Throw in a small bag of potato chips at 12 gallons and you just ate about 68 gallons of water. Add some turkey and it jumps to 160 gallons! Thirsty? Rinse your sandwich down with an ice cold soda and you can add an extra 46 gallons of water onto your tab.

The sheer amount of water used to make the food we eat every day can be mind-boggling.

Let’s take a closer look at meat. Pound for pound, it has a much higher water footprint than vegetables, grains or beans. For instance, a single pound of beef takes, on average, 1,800 gallons of water. That huge water footprint is primarily due to the tremendous amount of water needed to grow the grass, forage and feed that a beef steer eats over its lifetime, plus water for drinking, cleaning and processing.

This is based a massively ridiculous assumption that all the water that goes into pastureland goes into beef production though. The study posted by StyrbjornSterki shows that actually vegetables, fruits, eggs, nuts and seeds all have a larger blue water footprint.

Is it? I don't see those details in the article not where they're getting the information. You may be correct, I don't know.

This goes into more detail. Seems consistent with the other article I posted:

http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/4712/the-water-footprint-of-beef-industrial-vs-pasture-raised

Haven't read the study you reference yet. Will do.

The problem is the inclusion of all green water. Blue water usually refers to water specifically used for irrigation etc. so that's perfectly logical to include, but including all of the water that falls on the pastureland is crazy. It suggests that the land supports no other life which is patently untrue, it's a thriving ecosystem.

An easy way to look at it is to take that figure of 1,800 gallons/lb and extrapolate it to even a modest sized herd. A quick Google search is giving around 1000 lbs for an average weight at slaughter. That's actually the low end. Lets assume that 1/3rd of the cow is not marketable beef (might be more but I took the low end weight to keep the calculations easy). so we have 667 lbs of beef per cow. This means that, per cow, based on these numbers, you would need 1.2 million gallons of water. Per cow. I'm completely pulling a number out of the air here, but lets say a small farm slaughters 50 cows a year. That's 60 million gallons of water.

The way beef is currently farmed isn't either environmentally friendly of responsible (as humane as possible when you are farming for food) and it needs to change. But so does the rhetoric on the other side of the argument.

 

[Lupi33x]

Vegan here. I dont really care about animals any more than the average person so I dont care what logic meat eaters use to morally self license their choices. Health reasons are my motivation. If animals benefit, thats a bonus.
The mainstreaming of veganism means that you neednt be a hippy or subscribe to any of the other negative stereotypes which quite honestly repel a lot of people from considering the option.

 

[Echoes]

Today is the Ash Wednesday, celebrated by the great Catholic poet T.S. Eliot and the start of the Lent. So I'll try to get as close to a vegan diet as I can. Though for me first and foremost, the Lent would mean quit eating crisps and fries (that has nothing to do with veganism), I'm gonna have to cut consumption of dairy products. That's gonna be hard, I love some Belgian cheese and yoghurt. Quit eating chocolate is very doable though. With regards to meat, I've already reduced to the minimum (only when I visit friends & family, a bit like Safebet, I think) but .I know realise that meat eating is sin and it's part of my confessions. &#128528 Cutting my consumption of soft drinks is easy. 've already reduced it to the minimum for financial reason (I'm very poor). I usually just drink water, and from the tap. And if I have to buy water at the shop, I'd take a glass bottle rather than a plastic one in order not to be dependent on oil and for saving money. I haven't drunk Coca Cola for 20 years (but on one occasion 6 years ago) and almost quit drinking Ice Tea. I realise that Coke is really a drink for Bourgeois. So expensive compared to water! With regards to beer, that's only just on the odd occasion, anyway.

I've long ignored Lent, to my shame. I rediscovered it when discovering the work of Dr André Gernez about fasting and prevention against cancer. Fasting is good, especially in spring. That's why things like Lent or Ramadan are good. The Conciliarist Church at the Vatican have now scrapped the Lent, which is further proof that they are not Catholic anymore, they are in apostasy. Hence they advocate for gluttony. It should be remembered that the Catholic Church has always promoted vegetarianism and that Jesus was probably a vegan (not just a pesco-vegetarian as He's sometimes referred to). Hence the massive lie by atheistic vegans that considered the Christian religion as anthropomorphic and cruel towards animals. The Mystic Lamb symbolism and the Rule of Saint Benedict, they probably have never heard of it. While their (non-existent) spirituality leads to Idon'tcarism and hence meat-eating in a most gluttonous way. So if you are a vegan with consistency and genuine idealism, join me.

By the way, even though I still think some aspect of veganism is exaggerated (fur, honey, ...), I can hardly be blamed for destroying nature by other means, as was suggested above. I have no smartphone, no iphone, no Ipod, I have long been impervious to mobile phones until I realised it was impossible to do without and the one I have now I have had it for 5 years and I won't change it until it dies out. Obviously I have no Plasma-screen TV, I only have an old small-screen Phillips from 1996 and when it blows up, I don't intend to replace it because I don't any telly (my laptops are my only guilty pleasures, though they also are a necessity). I also have never played PS in my life, would rather read books. Never even an old type of Nintendo or Sega. I've never even TOUCHED a console. I'm very proud of that fact. Only played an old school type of Game Boy in the nineties but it was not mine, it was my best friend's. I'm very careful with all this High Tech, even before I went flexitarian. I know about the exploitation of Coltan in Eastern Congo and the wars that the US have waged there.

 

[frenchfry]

Today is the Ash Wednesday, celebrated by the great Catholic poet T.S. Eliot and the start of the Lent. So I'll try to get as close to a vegan diet as I can. Though for me first and foremost, the Lent would mean quit eating crisps and fries (that has nothing to do with veganism), I'm gonna have to cut consumption of dairy products. That's gonna be hard, I love some Belgian cheese and yoghurt. Quit eating chocolate is very doable though. With regards to meat, I've already reduced to the minimum (only when I visit friends & family, a bit like Safebet, I think) but .I know realise that meat eating is sin and it's part of my confessions. &#128528 Cutting my consumption of soft drinks is easy. 've already reduced it to the minimum for financial reason (I'm very poor). I usually just drink water, and from the tap. And if I have to buy water at the shop, I'd take a glass bottle rather than a plastic one in order not to be dependent on oil and for saving money. I haven't drunk Coca Cola for 20 years (but on one occasion 6 years ago) and almost quit drinking Ice Tea. I realise that Coke is really a drink for Bourgeois. So expensive compared to water! With regards to beer, that's only just on the odd occasion, anyway.

I've long ignored Lent, to my shame. I rediscovered it when discovering the work of Dr André Gernez about fasting and prevention against cancer. Fasting is good, especially in spring. That's why things like Lent or Ramadan are good. The Conciliarist Church at the Vatican have now scrapped the Lent, which is further proof that they are not Catholic anymore, they are in apostasy. Hence they advocate for gluttony. It should be remembered that the Catholic Church has always promoted vegetarianism and that Jesus was probably a vegan (not just a pesco-vegetarian as He's sometimes referred to). Hence the massive lie by atheistic vegans that considered the Christian religion as anthropomorphic and cruel towards animals. The Mystic Lamb symbolism and the Rule of Saint Benedict, they probably have never heard of it. While their (non-existent) spirituality leads to Idon'tcarism and hence meat-eating in a most gluttonous way. So if you are a vegan with consistency and genuine idealism, join me.

By the way, even though I still think some aspect of veganism is exaggerated (fur, honey, ...), I can hardly be blamed for destroying nature by other means, as was suggested above. I have no smartphone, no iphone, no Ipod, I have long been impervious to mobile phones until I realised it was impossible to do without and the one I have now I have had it for 5 years and I won't change it until it dies out. Obviously I have no Plasma-screen TV, I only have an old small-screen Phillips from 1996 and when it blows up, I don't intend to replace it because I don't any telly (my laptops are my only guilty pleasures, though they also are a necessity). I also have never played PS in my life, would rather read books. Never even an old type of Nintendo or Sega. I've never even TOUCHED a console. I'm very proud of that fact. Only played an old school type of Game Boy in the nineties but it was not mine, it was my best friend's. I'm very careful with all this High Tech, even before I went flexitarian. I know about the exploitation of Coltan in Eastern Congo and the wars that the US have waged there.

One coke every 6 years is OK, 2 cokes every 6 years means you are a bourgeois heathen sinner. Echoes' rule.

Glad that is clear, I had some doubts.

 

[red_flanders]

Re:

Vegan here. I dont really care about animals any more than the average person so I dont care what logic meat eaters use to morally self license their choices. Health reasons are my motivation. If animals benefit, thats a bonus.
The mainstreaming of veganism means that you neednt be a hippy or subscribe to any of the other negative stereotypes which quite honestly repel a lot of people from considering the option.

I've often wondered what causes the reaction to vegetarianism or veganism which I almost invariably see from a large portion of the population. I think what you mention may be factors, as is lack of education and awareness of the health benefits and the wide range of options available. I think change is difficult for a large segment of any population and that's a big part of it, informing much of the above.

What I can't escape is the fact that some people seem to react to others living their lives in new and improved or experimental ways, is that somehow they take it as a declaration that what they're doing is "wrong". Thus the reaction. More than anything, some people can't stand to be "wrong" and are wildly defensive to the point of seeing differing lifestyles as attacks on their values and culture.

Humans.

 

[carolina]

Re:

Vegan here. I dont really care about animals any more than the average person so I dont care what logic meat eaters use to morally self license their choices. Health reasons are my motivation. If animals benefit, thats a bonus.
The mainstreaming of veganism means that you neednt be a hippy or subscribe to any of the other negative stereotypes which quite honestly repel a lot of people from considering the option.

what health reasons?

people have this misconception that vegan/vegetarian diets are healthier, but that's not true. If you want to be healthy just make sure you have a normal weight, eat plenty of whole foods, limit processed foods as much as you can and make sure to eat enought fruit and veggies so you can meet your daily micronutrient needs. It also helps to be fairly active.


You don't need to eat animal products every day, but completely eliminating them makes no sense.

 

[Archibald]

Re: Re:

Vegan here. I dont really care about animals any more than the average person so I dont care what logic meat eaters use to morally self license their choices. Health reasons are my motivation. If animals benefit, thats a bonus.
The mainstreaming of veganism means that you neednt be a hippy or subscribe to any of the other negative stereotypes which quite honestly repel a lot of people from considering the option.

I've often wondered what causes the reaction to vegetarianism or veganism which I almost invariably see from a large portion of the population. I think what you mention may be factors, as is lack of education and awareness of the health benefits and the wide range of options available. I think change is difficult for a large segment of any population and that's a big part of it, informing much of the above.

What I can't escape is the fact that some people seem to react to others living their lives in new and improved or experimental ways, is that somehow they take it as a declaration that what they're doing is "wrong". Thus the reaction. More than anything, some people can't stand to be "wrong" and are wildly defensive to the point of seeing differing lifestyles as attacks on their values and culture.

Humans.

not helped by the media saturation of meat/dairy consumption that suggests that you should be doing nothing but... education by the media - helping increase idiocracy since...
'where's the beef'
'got milk?'
'get some pork on your fork'
'get up and googie' [eggs]
the lamb roast ad series where the girl refuses the date with Tom Cruise (circa 1990) for her mum's lamb roast
the "tradition" of lamb on the barbie for Australia Day...
the red meat cure for iron deficiency in women ads - stealthily disguised as healthy info-mercials
all the 'our milk is best for your baby/toddler' ads
plenty of others out there

Not many 'eat your veggies' ad campaigns out there...

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Re: Re:

...I've often wondered what causes the reaction to vegetarianism or veganism which I almost invariably see from a large portion of the population....

It couldn't possibly be the imperious proselytism.

...Not many 'eat your veggies' ad campaigns out there....

That's because veggies aren't proper food, they're what proper food eats.

 

[Archibald]

Re: Re:

...I've often wondered what causes the reaction to vegetarianism or veganism which I almost invariably see from a large portion of the population....

It couldn't possibly be the imperious proselytism.

...Not many 'eat your veggies' ad campaigns out there....

That's because veggies aren't proper food, they're what proper food eats.

Really?

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Re: Re:

...I've often wondered what causes the reaction to vegetarianism or veganism which I almost invariably see from a large portion of the population....

It couldn't possibly be the imperious proselytism....

...or the criminal behaviour masquerading as activism ....

Chef Drops Foie Gras From Menu After Vegan Death Threats
Maya Rhodan @m_rhodan
Feb. 12, 2016

Vegan activists threatened a restaurant in the United Kingdom over its Valentine's Day menu....



Can you say ...wackadoodle?

Find me a headline reporting that a cattle rancher has attacked a vegan for serving organic carrots.

 

[carton]

Re:

No one ever presented (nor ever will) a theory or anything scientific to prove plant sentience. It simply doesn't exist.

Not disputing this, I've just always thought plants are a little more sensitive to stimuli than we give them credit for. They have a clear-cut strategy for dealing with me: they've fully committed themselves to suicide before life in captivity. It's been a good long-run strategy for them.

I'm not sure I'm not up to something:
http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/some-plants-can-count-160121.htm
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/free-music-to-make-your-plants-grow.html

 

[Kokoso]

Re: Re:

No one ever presented (nor ever will) a theory or anything scientific to prove plant sentience. It simply doesn't exist.

No no, there are some scientific studies proving plant sentience I think The world is changing...

 

[Stingray34]

Is it just me or do ramen noodles look like canine heartworm?

Otherwise, I'd love to be a veggie - I'd prefer sheep, pigs and cows as pets. I only eat chicken these days- and I've painfully learnt they are smarter than they seem!

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re:

We keep pigs etc in a relatively safe environment as a food supply.

A relatively safe environment? Perhaps. A healthy, stimulating environment that makes life worth living? Not so much.

The problem with rearing animals for food is not so much the killing as everything that comes before it.

 

[StyrbjornSterki]

Long term vegetarian diet changes human DNA raising risk of cancer and heart disease

Populations who have had a primarily vegetarian diet for generations carried a genetic mutation which raised risk of cancer and heart disease

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

For every study one finds in one direction, you can find an equal and opposite study in another.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-13477/how-the-food-you-eat-changes-your-genes.html

 

[ray j willings]

I'm becoming more and more convinced that vegan is the way to go. Its just a bacon sandwich with ketchup, I cant stop myself .

 

[Jspear]

Re:

I'm becoming more and more convinced that vegan is the way to go. Its just a bacon sandwich with ketchup, I cant stop myself .

Yes, imo you have to be a hard core vegan/vegetarian to fight off the temptation of bacon. I have a friend who raises pigs...freshly cured bacon is simply heavenly.

Sorry...back to the normal conversation here.