Veganism: An Engineer's Perspective | Hacker News Reader

Veganism: An Engineer's Perspective

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I'm diabetic and allergic to legumes. It's nearly impossible for me to get enough protein or complete protein without excessive intake of either legume derived protein or carbs.

Beyond that, I like meat and feel that eating meat is part of a natural state of being. I find that factory farming has other issues and most don't eat enough head to tail profile for appropriate nutrition though.

Aside: I think another large issue is that most people aren't eating enough healthy balanced fat profiles, and get too many fats higher in linoleic acid which is more problematic. Most natural sources of unrefined and specifically animal protein are generally 0.5g fat to 1g protein or higher. The eating of animals combined with cooking food are what allowed homosapiens to evolve. Not that I fault those who chose a vegetarian lifestyle, though the religious zealotry is a bit annoying.

Have you tried spinach and other leafy greens? Loads of protein, fiber and other nutrients. Also you only need the essential amino acids and not whole proteins. All protein is equal as plants contain all the essential amino acids. Also since you have access to the internet and time to post here you probably have never had protein problems (think third world people who are starving). Also too much protein turns into glucose then into fat.

I think you missed the part where I said I like meat.

Okay, you try eating 10# of spinach a day for a week and see how you feel. Not to mention how many stores I'd have to go to and the environmental impact of all of that driving in order to get enough.

I would like for you to try for a month of eating vegan, with no pre-processed products with 100g of protein a day, and 50g of balanced fats without any legumes. No peas, beans, lentils. And on top of that, stay under even 100g of carbs and under 20g sugars a day. Note that I stay under 50g total carbs (including fiber) and under 20g net carbs and generally under 5g sugars a day.

By the end of a month, you probably won't want to do it any longer... beyond that, you may lose your job, as it's pretty rough trying to eat 10# of greens a day.

So fuck the righteous, religious zealotry of the cult of vegan.

You can vote the above down all you like... the fact is, I'd have to eat over 8 pounds of food a day to get a sufficient level of protein a day. I have enough eating the 2-3 pounds of food I typically eat as it is. It's utterly ridiculous. I stated why I eat the way I do, and included that I like meat, and that I really don't care for the religious-like approach that most vegans take.

Only to have that ignored, and for someone to make a suggestion that just doesn't work in any practical way.

The OP quotes a study that says vegans are at least as healthy as other vegetarians. That's not a comparison to meat eaters and not much of an endorsement.

He neglects the recently published study (posted here on HN) that connects vegetarianism with depression and other mental problems.

I hate factory farming, too, and was a vegetarian myself for many years for that reason. But animals can be killed for food without being inhumane. The cure for factory farming is to make it nice for the amimals. Giving up meat to fix factory farming is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

How is killing a being that doesn't want to die humane? And sadly meat production at the current level without factory farming is even more devastating for the environment if even possible.

No being wants to die. That said, much of the animal kingdom (of which we are a part) lives by doing just that. Animals can be raised in kind and happy places and can be killed painlessly.

While I agree with the goal of changing factory farming, I don't think we can fight biology. It's ok if people eat animals. We evolved to do exactly that.

I find it very ironic that we as the dominant species being capable of feats like space travel, worldwide real time communications, eradication of diseases, DNA engineering, nuclear energy and more cannot find another form of nutrition than that of a bear or a baboon.

Eating is pretty basic. I see no reason to deny our basic biology.

Engineer's analysis for an engineer's perspective:

- Point 8: this is not sufficient by itself; having a Declaration on Consciousness is not enough without papers and documentation.

- Point 2: correlation doesn't mean cause; vegans tend to have a better food education, but this doesn't prove that veganism == healty.

- Point 3: not sufficient, it doesn't show how human body absorbs and uses those nutrients.

Beyond this, you're missing much more infos, such as documentation about vegan food (lack of?) impact (soy and avocados, for example) and going on.

See you next time.

> Consuming animal products results in slaughtering ~75 billion sentient farm animals each year

I am sympathetic but people do not seem to understand that a huge number of animals – probably many more than this worldwide – are destroyed when fields are plowed.

totally agree!

however, we plow fields mostly to feed the animals we eat...

the feed the animals are happy to eat is boring and can grow very densely, the food vegans would like to eat (if a lot of people went vegan) would assuredly not just be corn, or wheat, or legumes.

"the food vegans would like to eat": vegan/vegetarians already exist, and we study and analyze their diets when determining crop usage, e.g. see reference #5 in the blog post. Or, my personal favorite: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0594-0

tldr; omni diets consume about an order of magnitude more crops in total, so, you know, more animals die in crop production to eat animals than not eating animals...

oooo, also of interest: we actually eat a very small number of crops, 40 crops make up 90% of the global calorie consumption (see ref #4)

Being vegan is hard. If you notice, there are qualifiers for the health statements such as "well-planned" and "if appropriate food choices are made". Being lacto ovo vegetarian is much easier and probably has close to the same health benefits and environmental impacts. Regardless, I think everyone should try either one for a while and see what works for you. My family ate meat pretty much every meal growing up so I felt trying veganism was a good experience, but ultimately it didn't work out. I still eat meat but less frequently.

"well-planned" and "if appropriate food choices are made", these statements are there because some people who "try" to go vegan end up eating too little and not enough variety. It would be like trying to survive solely on a limited selection of MREs or solely on sugary cereal at the supermarket. The human body isn't stupid and if you aren't giving it the things it needs then the "diet" your eating (meat or no meat) is bad.

> I’ve created a set of three simple statements (with supporting references) that represent the fundamental arguments that brought me to veganism:

>It’s unnecessary for humans to consume animal products, i.e. we can thrive on a vegan diet [1, 2, 3].

> Consuming animal products is one of the largest individual contributions to climate change [4, 5, 6].

> Consuming animal products results in slaughtering ~75 billion sentient farm animals each year — animals that want to live [7, 8].

> Logically, from the above three points, it follows that consuming animal products is unnecessary and causes destruction to the environment as well as billions of sentient animals.

Logically, this is textbook circular reasoning or a tautological fallacy. The author's three points are that consuming animal products is unnecessary and causes destruction to the environment as well as billions of sentient animals. To then say that the _exact same three things as the three points_ follow from those same three points is circular reasoning.

The blog post may benefit from an editor, but those three points are supported by the footnotes, whose very references – but not content – you included in your quotation. The footnotes themselves constitute more than half the post and include citations of published studies.

True enough - instead of "Logically, from the above three points, it follows that", just "In short," or something would be far better.

I enjoyed the succinctness of this post. Not sure if I agree that there's amazing vegan cheese though ;)

I'm a big fan of Tree Line and Miyoko's nut cheeses, and Chao fermented tofu cheese slices.

Kite Hill has great cream cheese as well.

Oh yes! Forgot about them.

It’s worth noting that all reasons to go vegan, if you don’t find them sufficiently convincing to actually become vegan, are also good reasons to simply eat less meat and other animal products.

First of all, whether something is "sentient" is a bit subjective, and whether eating a sentient being is okay is also quite subjective. If we strike that list item, we are left with the climate change argument.

However, they're also missing a number of other arguments, such as:

- difficulty eating a balanced diet - inconveniencing others (must take into account vegan options when going out to eat with coworkers/clients) - some meat sources don't particularly contribute to climate change (e.g. hunting/fishing on your own)

If your going to try to come up with a deductive argument in support of veganism, you need to take into account all major arguments on all sides of the issue (vegetarianism, piscatarianism, etc).

As such, I'll only accept this argument as a completely subjective argument because the climate change argument (and part of the sentience argument) entirely depends on how you source your meat, leaving the completely subjective sentience argument.

Did you take a look at reference 4-6, particularly #4, and Figure 1 in #4? The animal products we consume are objectively more resource intensive than the non-animal products.

Brilliant. Thanks for compiling this information.

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