Being Vegan is worse for the environment? | Hacker News Reader

Being Vegan is worse for the environment?

veganskeptic.blogspot.com

I wish this was done more often. When I read the paper I spend most of my time wondering why an article was published and who made the phone call.

In this case, I think it's probably more innocent than corporate interests influencing the news or anything else people are likely to suspect. As a vegetarian, people like to argue with me about my food choices — not meat industry employees, but just people in general. There are a lot of folks who take "Meat is good" as an a priori fact and assume vegans are doing some sort of twisting to make it look like their diet is workable. I'm sure someone read the intro, got to that part and said, "Ha! I knew they were playing a trick on me!" — and then got straight to writing an article about the real truth they'd uncovered.

>assume vegans are doing some sort of twisting to make it look like their diet is workable.

Last I checked, unless vegans are supplementing their diets with multivitamins, they lack all the necessary nutrients needed to survive. As somebody who hasn't taken multivitamins since he was a child, that certainly seems like "twisting" from my perspective. Vegetarianism strikes me as perfectly normal however.

However, I must say it's really none of my business what others chose to ingest, be it meat, veggies, heroin,... I really don't care. I think the only reason most people become wary of vegans is because of stunts organizations like PETA preform.

How do a requirement for multivitamins make vegan diets unworkable?

I'd also point out that a simple condiment, nutritional yeast, satisfies the need for b12, since your primary concern seems to be an aversion to taking pills. http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/b12.htm

>How do a requirement for multivitamins make vegan diets unworkable?

It doesn't. Clearly vegan diets are workable, as evidenced by millions of people. Requirements for supplements "seem like a twist" to those of us who maintain more natural diets (vegetarians/omnivores). I understand how vegans get along with their lives, I've taken my fair share of nutrition and health courses (they counted as easy lab science credits ;) I was explaining why people view it as odd/a trick.

"it's really none of my business what others chose to ingest, be it meat, veggies, heroin"

I agree, with the caveat that what they ingest should inflict minimal harm on the rest of society. I would be equally in favor of government measures to reduce red meat consumption and measures to reduce emissions from a coal-fired power plant. I'm skeptical that the best thing in either case is to ban the emitting entity outright.

PETA is a wacky fringe group, but for nearly any position one can imagine a sane person supporting, there are also wacky fringe groups supporting that same position.

>I agree, with the caveat

See, that caveat is where the problem is. Why you may keep it reasonable, many many others decide to make it their personal crusade to tell others what to do. The hostility that vegans feel from your average generic food eater is almost always backlash from people turning what others eat for dinner into a political issue.

Cats, dogs, horses, pigs, dolphins, whales, people.

I mean, at some point along that list everyone's going to agree that what others eat for dinner is reasonably a political issue.

What other people ingest in the privacy of their own home is never a political issue.

At least when it comes to cannibalism most people seem to agree that it is a political issue. Most people would probably also agree that eating monkeys or dolphins (or rather killing monkeys or dolphins with the intent of eating them) should be illegal. There is also a pretty wide consensus that endangered species like whales shouldn’t be killed and consequently cannot be eaten.

It seems like most people don’t agree with you, most people are comfortable drawing some lines with respect to what people should and shouldn’t be allowed to eat. Your comment is not in any way self-evident and needs to be backed by an actual argument.

>cannibalism

So long as it's done between two consenting adults, I can't figure out why cannibalism would be any of my business.

>Most people would probably also agree that eating monkeys or dolphins (or rather killing monkeys or dolphins with the intent of eating them) should be illegal.

Hell if I know why. Fundamentally no different than any other animal.

>There is also a pretty wide consensus that endangered species like whales shouldn’t be killed and consequently cannot be eaten.

Hardly an issue with the farm raised meat most people content themselves with.

The government should do a study on the most environmentally friendly, and healthy, form of nutrition, even if its a tasteless white paste. Then produce that. For the good of society, everything else should be heavily taxed, whether its red meat or a tofu burger.

> Last I checked, unless vegans are supplementing their diets with multivitamins, they lack all the necessary nutrients needed to survive.

Source? I've been vegan for close to three years now and don't take multivitamins, yet I'm surviving. So long as you eat a variety of foods (and if you're female, plenty of leafy greens) you're all set.

There is however exactly one vitamin which is not available from plant-based sources, and that is B12. However it is produced by bacteria and thus is may be cultured as a supplement.

Please check your facts before posting next time and stop spreading misinformation.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Specific_nutrients http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_b12#Sources

Please check your facts before posting next time and stop spreading misinformation.

This is exactly the kind of defensive attitude that gives vegans a bad name :\

Point taken, but it's also people who are otherwise well-educated but repeat nonsense and anecdotal evidence who cause my friends and relatives to worry about my health and to doubt my lifestyle choices.

And it's this kind of reaction that makes vegans irritable, when you tar an entire class of people with a small subset's behavior. :)

Seriously, though, can you blame 'em? Take whatever uninformed opinion somebody has about something near and dear to your heart. If you use computers and/or you're a geek, this shouldn't be hard. Things like: Macs are for idiots, or Linux is broken, or Windows is inherently insecure.

Now imagine hearing people--- well-meaning and otherwise--- tell you about it over and over. Wouldn't you get sick of that? Even if you personally wouldn't, is it that hard to imagine that a reasonable person might?

Supplement/Multivitamin. To somebody who is required to ingest neither the difference is meaningless to me.

I'm aware that B12 can be produced by bacteria, but I'm not really sure how that's related to anything... puzzled

True, but you probably obtain much of your iodine and vitamin D from fortified foods (e.g. salt, dairy milk, butter). Many products marketed for vegans are similarly fortified with vitamin B12.

That B12 can be produced by bacteria is significant because it means it is obtainable from non-animal sources. Vitamin D3 is an example of a vitamin which does not meet this criteria (although fortunately it is both produced naturally by humans, and can be substituted by D2, which can be obtained from plants).

>That B12 can be produced by bacteria is significant because it means it is obtainable from non-animal sources.

I wouldn't try to insult the intelligence of people here by suggesting vegans are hypocritical because B12 comes from animals. Outside of that assumption, I'm still not really getting why a random nutrition lesson is in order.

> Last I checked, unless vegans are supplementing their diets with multivitamins, they lack all the necessary nutrients needed to survive.

Plenty of us have been surviving for many generations (in Asia). The numbers are reducing today not due to nutritional reasons, but social .. peer pressure, travelling to the West etc.

And unless meat-eaters are "supplementing" their diet with something besides beef, their diet is going to be pretty poor quality as well. The need for nutritional balance is not unique to vegans, and meat-eaters often fail at it (hence all the obesity cropping up simultaneously with diseases stemming from lack of other nutrients).

While doing such studies one should be careful when considering alternatives. The article refers to tofu as an alternative. Many Vegans (e.g. in India) do not consume tofu, so his comparison would fail there.

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