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A Vegan No More

voraciouseats.com

216 pointsabraham266 comments

I'm all for radicalism since radicals are the main force questioning conventional wisdom. But the size of the vegan movement is totally out of proportion to its veracity.

Take the whole "meat is murder" slogan. It's ridiculous from the outset and completely ignores our existence within the earth's ecosystem. I mean industrialized animal farming is fairly horrific, but the way to stop that is by advocating and paying the premium for more sustainably raised meat. Opting out of meat entirely does nothing to change the industry, because most people will always eat some meat if they can afford it.

Meanwhile, as vegans focus on the elimination of meat from our diets, they practically ignore the industrialized food that wreaks direct reproducible havoc on our metabolisms causing epidemic obesity and diabetes. Consider the effect of refined and reconstituted carbohydrates made from federally subsidized crops that make the most devastatingly unhealthy food items also the cheapest. Just the effects of soda pop alone are worthy of an international movement.

I agree with most of what you have to say, but I want to make a note about this:

Opting out of meat entirely does nothing to change the industry, because most people will always eat some meat if they can afford it.

I think opting out does a few things. It puts pressure on restaurants to offer alternatives to meat, so we're not all forced to eat it because it's the only healthy option. It pushes our culture to give people a choice. Honestly, all I really want as a vegan is for people to have a good choice every day, at each meal, about how much/what kind of animal products they consume. Right now in most places there just aren't choices, because 99% of people have a "well, I'll just keep eating what I always have" mentality.

Also, opting out of meat does get me into conversations regularly about the meat industry. The fact that I only eat very specific kinds of meat in specific occasions opens up conversations with other people about when and why they eat meat. I don't care if people eat meat on purpose, for their own reasons, but I do care that they wolf down pounds of it every day for no particular reason because it's what's put in front of us. My opting out creates a context for other people to consider opting out.

And given that's my motivation, I'm pretty careful about how I engage people. I don't shame people, I don't push them. I honestly don't give a shit what they decide. I just like having the options all out there.

Note: I consider myself vegan. I eat meat and dairy sometimes. I eat vegetables, and vegetables are grown with animal products. Meat and dairy are not the basis of my diet. I eat a plant-based diet, so I consider myself vegan. You can call this "reform vegan" to the "orthodox" if you like. But anyone who's really looked at the realities of the situation (including the OP) comes to understand that there is no such thing as 100% vegan, and that what matters most is the health of the whole ecology.

I'm a large consumer of meat and I completely understand your point of view.

I personally realise a lot of the consumption is habit based and has no basis of defense if questioned. I prefer to eat locally grown produce and (attempt) to grow my own vegetables. I do think a lot about reducing consumption both from a calorie and cost point of view - I'd rather have two good steaks than 7 bad ones. I'd like to take this further but being in a family does tend to restrict the ability to dictate the diet, especially if you don't produce the majority of the meals.

I have no intention of ever giving up meat products but there is a lot in what you say that people should honestly appraise what they are eating and ask if it is because it is what they really feel like eating, or what they should be eating, or if it is just because it is 7 oclock and time to consume some dead animal. I'm going to re-appraise this and see if I can approach it from a different angle.

>And given that's my motivation, I'm pretty careful about how I engage people. I don't shame people, I don't push them. I honestly don't give a shit what they decide. I just like having the options all out there.

A very important point. I'm a vegetarian myself, and the subject comes up from time to time. I always end up advocating deliberate, thought-through decisions over any particular choice of diet.

Most of the animal products that are used in the growing of vegetables, are by-products of the livestock (meat,eggs,dairy) industries. If we were able to successfully eliminate those industries, then I highly doubt that they would be able to raise animals just for the creation of those by-products and still make it economical.

Feel free to correct me as I haven't researched this extensively.

What animal products are used in the growing of vegetables? You mean fertilizer? Almost all fertilizer is synthetic; there are a few places that use manure, but they are the exception.

There's a lot of bone and fish meal used in organic farming. Conventional farming is much more vegan than organic.

I think you could actually be doing more harm then good if you are focusing on "meat or no meat". This really still re-enforces factory farmed meat because it acts like the only meat choice is factory farmed. If the choice is between the environmentally destructive technique- grain fed factory meat or sustainably raised grass-fed meat, that would actually make the meat situation better.

Grass-fed meat is often worse for the environment. See e.g. http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2010/04/08/grass-fed-be...

In any case, consider an analogy: suppose you wanted to end human slavery. Would supporting "sustainable" slavery end it more quickly, or not supporting any slavery at all?

I realize that slavery is not the moral equivalent of eating meat, but in terms of the effectiveness of boycotts, they are pretty similar. I can't really imagine a way in which the boycott to buy only "sustainably" slave-made goods would hasten the end of slavery more quickly.

none of the "science" (or blogs in your case) people quote about pastured meat is close to correct. This blogger assumes that all methane from cows will be released into the atmosphere like in the factory model when it is in a big pile by itself. This assumption does not hold when the cow manure is spread out and worked into the soil by nature. Methane is probably the least of our concerns in such a comparison anyways- there is a much greater damage done to find and burn all the fossil fuel for the fertilizer to grow the grains with and other energy used in this process- by some estimates a calorie of factory farmed meat comes from 10 calories of oil. Compare this to grass fed meat where most of the energy input is solar to grow the grass, and the topsoil actually grows instead of being slowly degraded while growing grains.

I am really not going to bother debating a ridiculous comparison of eating meat with slavery. It is essential for our health and we don't need to feel bad about it when we aren't destroying the environment or torturing animals.

actually, I remember now that most methane emissions from cattle are from burping. But I still have never seen someone analyze the whole system- equally important is how much methane is absorbed back from the atmosphere in a pasture.

Reminds me of something Slavoj Zizek once said:

"The worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it."

I don't. I focus on the ecology of animals and people and environment and trying to make it better. There are dozens and dozens of considerations.

But the size of the vegan movement is totally out of proportion to its veracity.

That's a weird statement. When is "movement size" ever a good indicator of truth?

Anyway, veganism is not about "veracity", it's about a different set of moral beliefs, or a particular diet, or...

You speak of vegans as if it was a monolithic group, and you paint it with a negative brush because of a few crazy individuals. That's like dismissing entire religions and countries because of a handful of fanatics.

Really? All of the vegans I know care a lot about eating a balanced and healthy diet (at least, more than the average non-vegan).

  > Really? All of the vegans I know care a lot
  > about eating a balanced and healthy diet (at
  > least, more than the average non-vegan).

Not necessarily. I know a number of vegans that don't necessarily eat that healthy.

The thing that irks me is when vegans proclaim that the 'vegan diet' will make everyone healthier, cure obesity, etc. There are plenty of unhealthy foods that are perfectly vegan. I say this as a vegan myself. I see these people as 'hurting the movement' because they are spreading un-truths, even if they are well-intentioned (and the messengers believe the false message).

[Edit] Don't take this as a claim that the 'vegan diet' (I use quotes because it is such as broad term) is necessarily unhealthy. It's just that there are many foods that are completely vegan, yet unhealthy:

  - Skittles (since they removed gelatin as an ingredient)
  - Oreos
  - Sugar
  - Soda
  - A lot of potato chip varieties
  - Transfats (i.e. burned oils)

(note: That I can only confirm things like Skittles or Oreos in the US. I know that in different countries the formulas are different. Skittles may still have gelatin in Canada, for example) [/Edit]

Not necessarily. I know a number of vegans that don't necessarily eat that healthy.

You know all of the parent's vegan people?

The marketing aspect of things related to animal rights and vegetarianism/veganism is done very poorly, and I wish we could undo all the bad stuff that's been spread throughout the last 20+ years. Is it true that veganism is more healthy if done properly? The differing research out there makes that inconclusive, in my opinion. To me it's a "it works for me, YMMV" sort of thing.

Well, statistically speaking, vegans live longer, right? That does not necessarily imply that all the benefits come from the diet, and it certainly does not say that going vegan is guaranteed to make you live longer, but it does mean that if you choose a random vegan they will be healthier than a random omnivore.

So I think if you have to choose between the statements "vegans are healthy" or "vegans are unhealthy," there's not a lot of evidence to argue for the latter.

"Plant based whole foods" is the way.

> Take the whole "meat is murder" slogan.

There are, you'll be pleased to hear, many vegans with stronger ethical arguments than "meat is murder". Such as, in summary:

* unnecessary extreme suffering is unjustifiable.

* some non-human animals (notably the ones we eat most of) are as capable of suffering at the physical level as humans are. We shouldn't discount their suffering just because they aren't members of homo sapiens.

* factory farms raise most animals in conditions of unnecessary extreme suffering.

* therefore, it is ethically wrong to eat those animal products.

(This is actually an argument for eating humanely-raised meat instead of veganism, but finding verifiably humanely-raised meat is difficult enough that I'm not sufficiently interested to bother, and there are practical advantages in eating a predictable diet. So I just eat vegan.)

By the way, I hate the federally subsidized crop situation too. I wish I could do something substantial about it. It's disingenuous for you to say that vegans are uninformed about health issues or industrial practice or the farm lobby just because they don't "focus" on it; that doesn't match my experience of other vegans at all, and it's obviously untrue that someone can only pay attention to one issue.

It's difficult to find humanely raised meat? I just go to the farmer's market and buy it straight from the farmer who raises grass-fed free range cows. If I would like to verify, I can head to her farm and see how she raises the cows myself.

Or I buy fish that are caught in sustainable ways, which have grown in their natural habitat and not subjected to any suffering beyond the catch (which is a necessary part of consuming them).

Yes, humanely raised meat (and milk, eggs, other animal products) is more expensive, but it's also tastier, and it feels good know the people who have grown and raised the food you eat. I balance out the extra expense, and impact of raising animals, by eating meat or fish only about 2 or 3 times per week; the rest of the time, I pick vegetarian options. That also makes it easier for me when dining with people; I leave my couple of omnivorous meals for the weekend, so I can have whatever's being served without having to cause extra trouble for my hosts.

I believe that the most humane way you can get your meat is, in many places, to hunt for it. Because humans have reduced habitats and/or eliminated other predators in many places, wildlife management agencies have to use human hunting as a tool to keep populations at sustainable levels.

Example: if there is enough food in a given area for 100 deer to survive the winter, but there are 200 deer, that doesn't mean that half of the deer will starve to death before spring--it means that all of them will eat quite well for the first half of the winter, after which food will become extremely scarce and most of them will starve to death.

Wildlife management agencies constantly monitor population levels in order to determine how much of the population needs to be culled each season in order for the remainder to survive. Bag limits or tag quotas are set accordingly. I currently live in a place with so much deer overpopulation that local hunters never kill enough each fall, so professional hunters have to be hired each year to get the herds down to a sustainable size.

If you hunt with respect for your game and only take shots which are likely to be clean, you will give your kill a quick death instead of a very likely slow and painful death by starvation. Also, the life it would have lived up until that moment would have been about as humane as possible.

No matter how well a farmer treats his cattle or chickens, the fact is that they were raised for the express purpose of being slaughtered. Wild game is a natural part of the ecosystem that is only killed out of necessity to keep that system in balance. Either way, an animal is dying so that you can eat.

I certainly enjoy beef, chicken, lamb, and other farm-raised animals, and eat far more of those than of things I've killed myself. I also realize that many people simply would not want to hunt. However, for any who have never tried it, and who are looking for ways to make their meat consumption more humane and ethical, they should consider giving it a try.

If you are into hunting, I think you should make things fair for both sides. Leave the gun at home and try something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

Why should we go for "fairness" when hunting for food? Using our brains isn't fair? Animals won't show any restraint when using their strengths to kill any weaker prey.

So, according to your definition of fairness, we should for example nuke Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia et al., as terrorists show no mercy with our women and children, so why should we bother? Or maybe Microsoft was just right to use its OS/Office monopoly to kill Netscape and many others, as they were in top of the food chain...

IMHO, fairness is necessary linked to bringing balance into the world. Using our brains is of course fair, but we should agree that there is much less brain work in the average modern hunter, drinking beer in a hideout and waiting for an opportunity to shoot a power rifle from a safe distance, than in any of the hunters depicted in the video. I of course cannot do what they do, but it was very humbling and moving to see such display of respect and fairness.

I think that you and parent both played the straw man against each other. This isn't a binary issue, it's a continuum. Modern hunters have a wide range of tools to choose from, at various points on the spectrum of "fairness." I would posit that "fairness" isn't even the primary factor in choice of equipment for most hunters in modern countries. Other considerations such as "challenge level" and laws/regulations probably have much more to do with it. For example, in the U.S. most areas have two deer seasons: a longer, earlier season where only bows and/or muzzle-loaders are allowed and a shorter, later season where modern high-power rifles are allowed.

This is, of course, anecdotal, but I don't know any hunters who use high-power rifles from blinds. Typically, deer stands are used by bow hunters. High-power rifles are typically used from much greater distances where the shots are correspondingly more difficult. I'm not really into deer hunting (I prefer upland fowl), so my experience with the subject is limited. Either way, the "brain power" part of it went into the development of the tools, not so much into their use. Also, only an idiot mixes alcohol with firearms (or broadheads). Yes, there are people out there stupid enough to do so, but they are a very small minority (it tends to be self-enforcing). Hunting from a deer stand typically involves getting up before dawn and climbing up onto a rickety platform to shiver silently for hours hoping that a deer comes by close enough to shoot. That's why I'm not a big fan of deer hunting.

Let's also not conflate "fair" with "humane." As I mentioned, the area where I currently live is so overpopulated with deer that professional hunters have to be hired to kill a few hundred each year (it's truly astounding how fast the local herds grow). If they don't kill enough, even more will die by starvation and disease. If they were overly concerned about fairness, they wouldn't be able to kill enough deer in time, and that would be inhumane.

You certainly show a level of maturity that is not common among typical hunters. I understand that you enjoy the process of hunting, not only the result, and I can sympathize with that. Thanks for augmenting my perspective on the subject.

On the one hand, I appreciate the second two sentences of your post. On the other hand, the first sentence wipes out any semblance of goodwill:

"You certainly show a level of maturity that is not common among typical hunters."

This is just plain stereotyping. I don't know how you formed your perception of the average maturity level of a typical hunter, but it clearly wasn't by actually interacting with typical hunters. Furthermore, I'm not even sure what a "typical" hunter is. That's kind of like a "typical" golfer, or a "typical" swimmer. I move around a lot, but I don't like to hunt alone, which unfortunately means I don't get to hunt very much any more. It also means that I'm always looking for new people to hunt with, and I've found hunters from all walks of life, often in very heterogeneous groups where the only thing they share in common is hunting.

If anything, hunting promotes maturity: when you teach a ten year old how to utilize a deadly weapon, and all of the ways you can accidentally hurt or kill yourself or others with it, and all of the rules for avoiding such mishaps, and all of the myriad ways you can get hurt or killed outdoors even without weapons involved, the sudden load of responsibilities tends to instill maturity in a way that less hazardous activities can't. True, some kids simply aren't ready for it as young as others, but most parents/mentors see this quickly and wait another year before resuming the lessons. Much like alcohol use in conjunction with firearms, it's rather self-enforcing: would you want to hang out in the middle of nowhere with an immature kid wielding a lethal weapon? Neither would I. Does it happen? Sure. Is it common? No.

I have no problems changing my mind when proved wrong, but there are facts that cannot be ignored. It is very difficult (and definitely not advisable) to stereotype individuals, but certain qualities can be easily attributed to groups of people. For example, I can say that the "typical swimmer" is not black, which shows no prejudice, just the statement of a fact. Likewise, I can also infer that the "typical" golfer is an upper-class/rich guy. Please bear in mind that I cannot say anything about a single individual, but there are certainly some common characteristics.

I apologize if I offended you in anyway, perhaps I have been just unlucky with my prior shallow and brief interactions with hunters.

Not sure why this is getting down-voted: I had assumed the comment to be tongue-in-cheek, and that video is absolutely fascinating. I'm completely in awe of those guys.

The "tastier" organic myth is a myth in at least some cases. Double blind taste tests of 2 halves of the same product reveal that the half presented as "organic" is often chosen as being "tastier", despite being identical to it's other "non organic" half.

IMHO, he organic food "movement" is marketing targeted at the guilty conscience of the well-heeled consumer of organic foods.

lambda never mentions anything about Organic. Organic is not the same as humanely raised meat, nor hormone free. And, IMHO, Organic standards are so varied and in many cases silly that the green label isn't even a tell for a desirable product by my terms.

In my experience, texture is very noticeable when comparing "supermarket" meat vs locally raised, hormone-free meat.

As far as Veganism goes: I rather not take a vitamin supplement--it seems unnatural.

LOL>

Every time I buy normal, mass-market chicken or eggs that are not in some way organic/cage-free/free-range/nataural, I am so disappointed in the result that I vow never to buy it again (until I'm sucked in by some sale months later). For me, the difference is too striking to be only a placebo effect of sorts.

If you live in Australia, you can also get kangaroo in most supermarkets. They're taken from the wild and killed with a high-powered rifle shot to the head (plus they're a native animal == less enivronmental damage) so they're about as guilt-free as you can get and still be eating meat.

I was under the impression that they are farmed now, although they are much friendlier to the environment per-head than cattle are.

Kind of hard to farm them, since they can jump fences pretty easily, plus you have to compete with hunters:

http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/RJ9830035.htm

I agree with most of what you said (although fish are never killed humanely, so I'm not up for that), but I don't own a car and I live in a city -- the difficulty involved in heading to a farm to see how their animals are raised is just large enough that I don't think the reward is worth it for me. I don't have any quarrel with someone who finds it an acceptable choice, though.

Your "never" makes me uneasy. As a fisherman, I've often killed fish as humanely as possible. Many others do the same. And while commercial standards are likely very poor, for certain species great care is taken regarding the quality of the meat with the side effect of relatively humane treatment. For example, tuna are often stunned and pithed using the "Taniguchi Method": http://wwwx.spc.int/coastfish/Fishing/Sashimi_E/Sashimi.pdf

> As a fisherman, I've often killed fish as humanely as possible.

Thanks! That's a good link. Yes, I should have said "Commercial fish being caught in quantities large enough that you aren't dealing with each one individually immediately (so, using nets, for example) are not killed humanely". I appreciate the correction.

You might be surprised how easy it is to get local farm-raised meat delivered or handed off via a local restaurant or purveyor. It's totally worth it.

It's very hard to find humanely slaughtered meat. To quote Foer, who in turn was citing a review of some audits of slaughterhouses (emphasis in the original):

>[Grandin's report found] deliberate acts of cruelty occuring on a regular basis at 32 percent of the plants [slaughterhouses] she surveyed during announced visits in the United States. It's such a shocking statistic I had to read it three times. Deliberate acts, occurring on a regular basis, witnessed by an auditor - witnessed during announced audits that gave the slaughterhouse time to clean up the worst problems. What about cruelties that weren't witnessed? And what about accidents, which must have been far more common?

There is a strong ethical case for not accepting instrumentality in ending another creature's life -- ask a Jain. I'm not sure I buy it, but it has a long and proud tradition. I'm on the fence w/r/t my diet(1), but the animal suffering argument is by far the most compelling, and making the ethical decision to no longer participate in an unethical system is to my mind sufficient, particularly when the ethics are conflicted.

(1) http://homonculus.net/posts/personal/2010-10-30-veganism_con...

I wouldn't really call those arguments. They assume that animals can suffer without giving an argument that animals can suffer. Whether animals can suffer is the core issue which should be addressed, and is not addressed by these statements.

I believe suffering is caused by, roughly, difference between one's preferences and reality. But animals do not have preferences (this is controversial. will you agree that if that controversy goes my way, then being a vegan is a mistake?)

You haven't even said what you think suffering is. If you just assume it's physical pain ... well that is false. We know it's false because sports players and fetishists often enjoy limited amounts of physical pain, and do not suffer from it.

> I wouldn't really call those arguments. They assume that animals can suffer without giving an argument that animals can suffer. Whether animals can suffer is the core issue which should be addressed, and is not addressed by these statements.

No, you're decades out of date. It is established fact, on all sides of the animal rights argument, that animals suffer and feel pain. I'd be shocked if you could find a single credible source arguing otherwise at this point.

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone. If you kick a dog, which you shouldn't, it'll exhibit all the same physiological responses that we do to being kicked; it will be in obvious pain and distress, and measurably so; it might cry, it'll hide, it'll be scared of you in the future. What else is there?

> But animals do not have preferences

No, that's patently ridiculous. Many adult animals, and most especially other primates, hold long-term preferences and have tested at the cognitive level of young human children (toddlers). Again, why would you possibly expect anything else?

> You haven't even said what you think suffering is.

There are books upon books written about animal suffering, and I was giving bullet points, so not exhaustively defining my terms is hardly a fair criticism. You could read Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights#Animal_suffering

Wait till they discover Plant and Fungus Suffering. That should make things plenty more interesting :)

Plants and fungus don't have nervous system, so there are no scientifically demonstrable ways how they will use ability to suffer. Animals can move and suffering helps them find better conditions, for example if there is to hot an animal will seek another place, if something causes suffering animals will try to avoid it, plants on the other hand can't move and can't avoid suffering so plants don't need to feel suffering.

>Plants and fungus don't have nervous system

Who says plants don't have a different, but equivalent way of sensing their environment?

Plants respond to stressors in the same way that animals do, they fail to thrive -- they wilt, or don't produce fruit, they grow more slowly, etc. Overtime, plants evolve defensive mechanisms like bark, thorns or poisons. Everything an animal does (or at least with strong analogies to animals), except plants aren't mobile.

Plants also respond to positive stimuli in the same way animals do, they thrive. Plants turn to face the sun, they grow faster, reproduce faster, produce more flowers and fruit, they stand taller, their leaves are fuller, their stems are firmer, all have strong analogies in the animal kingdom.

Anybody who's ever taken care of a house plant can attest to the fact that plants that are well cared for, doted over, with careful attention to making sure all of the plants needs are met, thrive better (seem happier) than those that aren't.

Plants don't need the mechanism of suffering, because it's useless for them, plant's can't run away from somebody who is harming them and can't move location from a bad place to a better place.

I think if plants can't move, that puts them into even worse circumstances compared to animals.

At least animals can try to get away from the danger, plants do not even have means for that. I feel more sorry for the plants now. Way to discriminate the whole kingdom of living creatures just because they did not happen to evolve the nervous system humans can understand. How can we say they do not suffer in ways we can not grasp at our current development level?

Oh, and also - some plants can move. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_plant_movement

I have read the research and it's wrong. If you think otherwise you have not given an argument, you just appealed to authority.

> I have read the research and it's wrong. If you think otherwise you have not given an argument, you just appealed to authority.

You haven't explained why it's wrong. Surely the person who thinks that the almost-unanimous scientific consensus of the last few decades is "wrong" should be the person who is, you know, posting links to their crazy theories or whatever? I can't post them for you.

If you're serious about this, pick a paper you want to know what's wrong with, and email the cite to curi@curi.us, and I will reply by email with flaws in that particular paper (or a concession statement if I find none).

I do not want to pick the paper myself b/c then you can just say (quite correctly), "OK so one paper was flawed but that doesn't mean the others are." So it's important to start with you picking a paper that, if it's wrong, you'll have to rethink your views, and if it's right I'll have to rethink mine, and then we discuss that one.

I expect you to choose a paper you have read before, not just google one up now. (You did read some papers before posting claims about what the scientific consensus is, I hope.)

* unnecessary extreme suffering is unjustifiable.*

I'm wondering, what is the vegan's position on eating: fish; oysters/mussels; squid, octopus; crabs etc.

> I'm wondering, what is the vegan's position on eating: fish; oysters/mussels; squid, octopus; crabs etc.

It's complicated. The largest problem is that all of these animals are killed either by suffocation after they're removed from the water, or by having their organs explode from decompression sickness. Sure seems to me like the least possible humane way to kill an animal. (I guess I'd go with the organ explosion, if I had to choose.)

On the other hand, I think that we should care about animal suffering proportional to how capable of suffering the being we're considering is. Animals without nervous systems are clearly less capable of suffering than, say, mammals, so I don't think it makes sense to be as upset.

Anyway, I don't eat any fish. :)

The largest problem is that all of these animals are killed either by suffocation after they're removed from the water, or by having their organs explode from decompression sickness.

I grew up fishing, and that's not necessarily true. You generally try and either kill or stun the fish before they sufficate, largely so the fish doesn't flop around so much. In most cases (average sized salmon, for instance) this is done by bleeding, though often larger fish are clubbed in the head to stun them before bringing them into the boat.

For large fish, like bigger halibut, we actually carried a revolver on board so we could shoot them in the head before we brought them on board. This was a safety measure--100 pounds of halibut flopping around is enough force to break your legs. Unfortunately we never caught a fish that big.

If you have time, sit back and read this excellent essay by David Foster Wallace on eating lobster, which examines the issues from a humane, non-dogmatic perspective:

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...

This was the title essay in one of DFW's essay compilations.

They don't eat those.

I can see the issue with animals with brains.

However, Oysters/mussels should be separated out of this list as they don't. After watching this Ted video, http://www.ted.com/talks/stefano_mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_... , I think high level plants may be functioning at near the same level as low functioning animals.

So if animals were raised and killed in humane manner would you be more willing to eat meat? This seems to be the most coherent ethical stance. Otherwise you enter into the "like-us conundrum" wherein the value of a living organism is directly proportional to it's similarity to our species.

> So if animals were raised and killed in humane manner would you be more willing to eat meat?

Yes. It seems plausible to me that I'll start eating meat again within a decade or two, once industry practices improve.

So, don't buy industry. Buy local, humanely raised and killed animals.

e.g., our turkey for thursday was processed today, at a family's small farm here. Our eggs come from the back yard. We've gotten pork from another local person who raises a few pigs on the side. FWIW, poultry seems to be the hardest to source for us, and maybe that's because the margins are so damn slim for the factory birds.

Humanely killed from whose perspective, ours or the animals'? I'm guessing if we could ask, most animals would prefer to live regardless of how painless their death would be or how enjoyable their lives were up until that point. I eat meat so I don't have a problem with killing animals for consumption, I'm just trying to understand the whole "humane killing" idea.

This gets into deeply philosophical, unanswerable questions. If we didn't bring them into the world as food, would they have existed in the first place? Is is it better that they existed for a shorter period of time than not at all? Do the animals we eat for food have the capacity of preferences? Due to their brain capacities, is it more humane to eat fish and birds versus pigs and cattle?

Both, really. Ideally, the animal would be having a happy life until it suddenly wasn't, and didn't exist anymore. Practically, that can mean that they're kept in their normal surroundings until the last moment, and then they're killed as quickly and painlessly as possible.

For example, the farm around the corner has a mobile slaughterhouse come to their pasture. The cows to be killed are put in one pasture, separate from the others. They're killed with a gunshot to the head, then taken away. There's no chance for the cows to stress in transport and know that the day is any different from any other, until the very last second. I'd call that humane.

Does that scale? If everyone did it, would it work?

"finding verifiably humanely-raised meat is difficult"

One word: hunt.

> One word: hunt.

I know you're probably expecting me to be outraged or something, but I don't have an ethical issue with someone killing an animal painlessly to eat -- it's a vast improvement from life on a factory farm!

One problem is, of course, the painlessly part; I would (and should) feel guilty when, inevitably, I miss my shot and don't manage to kill the animal straight away.

On average, dying from even an imperfect shot is more humane for the deer than how it would die naturally in the wild (most likely starvation).

> finding verifiably humanely-raised meat is difficult enough that I'm not sufficiently interested to bother, and there are practical advantages in eating a predictable diet.

http://slowfood.org/

I'm not vegan, but I do advocate a more reasonable approach to meat. By eating less meat, you can afford to eat better quality meat. I've heard a few good suggestions that balance ethics, pragmatism, and nutrition, either following the rule "vegan before 6", so you save up meat and dairy products only for dinner, or "meat x3", where you eat high quality meat only three meals a week, with the rest vegetarian, which I've been trying to do, and it seems to work great, even in the midst of a workout routine.

I've also tried to convince people that shrimp and oysters are vegan, but I've had less luck with that.

Thank you for making that point. False dichotomies annoy the heck out of me.

I encourage people who are not to try and eat vegetarian (never mind vegan - and BTW I am neither) for one week as an intellectual exercise. The issue is not whether one eats meat, but how totally unthinking our meat consumption has become - bacon for breakfast, ham sandwich for lunch, burger for dinner.

The question isn't whether to be vegan or omnivore, but whether it is necessary to eat meat at every meal, as is now common in many Western countries. A lot of the ecological, social and humanitarian concerns of meat production can be significantly improved by just reducing red meat consumption.

A lot of our food choices are habitual choices that can be changed with minor effort. Have hummus instead of ham in that sandwich. Have shrimp instead of beef in your Thai curry. Don't eat a mammal every meal out of reflex - eat it mindfully, and pay a fair price for humanely reared meat. The planet (and probably your body) will thank you for it.

For bonus points, keep track of hidden meat, like gelatin in 'yogurt' and marshmallows, isinglass in your wine, or bonechar in your sugar, or lard, oyster sauce, fish sauce or chicken broth snuck into otherwise vegetarian dishes.

I appreciate the sentiment that you should know what you eat, but don't understand this mentality that I observe many vegetarian / vegans have. Oh no, gelatin snuck in your food, you're not a proper vegan / vegetarian anymore! Beat yourself up about it!

It oddly reminds me of those tiny silly inconsequential rules that you're supposed to pay attention in some religions. Like no alcohol. What does that have anything to do with the main idea of the religion? Oops, you ingested some chicken broth. Feel bad about it. Maybe we'll forgive you later.

It's not about 'rules' or 'regulations.' For some it's about morality. If I find it immoral to eat a dead animal, then why would it be 'ok' because it's 'only chicken broth?' I've still supported (with my money) the death of an animal.

[ Please don't break down into some 'but animals die all the time in the wild,' argument. It's slightly different when we created the animal just for the purpose of killing it for meat. We take issue with the idea of growing full-sized human clones just to harvest for organs in the event that the original needs a transplant (i.e. The Island), so why is it that different for animals? They are still living beings, but our society has been raised to treat them like a commodity. No different than some mineral that was mined out of hole in the ground. Unless they are one of the 'chosen' types of animal (e.g. dog, cat, etc) then it's totally immoral to treat them poorly or (god forbid) eat them. ]

>Please don't break down into some 'but animals die all the time in the wild,' argument.

Yeah, let's not bring up a totally valid objection!

Please expand on how it's valid.

[edit] I'm being open to debate here, but instead of debate, I get down votes? Is that really what HN is about? [/edit]

All animals are in one way or another a food source for other animals. It is in no way evil if an animal suffers unless that suffering is intentionally caused by a human. Our sin is in the mass production and mis-treatment of livestock while they are alive, not in the actual killing or eating.

Not eating mass-produced chicken or wearing leather makes sense, refusing free-range eggs or seafood does not. Not that there can be any real debate over an issue that predominately comes down to personal opinion. Always better to do what you are comfortable with and allow others to do the same.

You're inferring the feelings of an animal to make your judgement. No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

Since you posit that huamn beings can infer the feelings of animals I posit that animals prefer to be factory farmed than spend what existence the animal has being constantly chased by predators. Therefore wearing leather and eating mass-produced chicken makes perfect sense and is in tune with the feelings of the animal.

While we can't be sure to of the preferences of livestock, we can make pretty good guesses. If the responses of animals in a factory farm are more similar to the responses of an animal that is being injured than an animal that is not being interacted with, then the posterior probability of the factory farm situation being dis-preferred by the animal is reasonably high.

Factory farming or "wild" existence is a false dichotomy. There is the option of having pastured animals. And, critically, there is the option of not existing at all. Furthermore, I'd suggest that domesticated animals are different enough from their wild forebears that spending their existence being chased by predators isn't the default "non-factory farm" option.

From what I know of factory farms, pastured animal husbandry, and the probable preference functions of animals, I would guess the preferences would be: pasturing > non-existence > factory farm

largely from The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

> You're inferring the feelings of an animal to make your judgement. No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

Can you infer the feelings of other humans? If you're willing to accept human communication like speech to answer "no, I don't need to", but are unwilling to accept communication like adult cows being willing to go through physical pain in order to stay with their calves when the calves are being taken away, I think you have a speciesist arbitrary-line problem going on here.

  > You're inferring the feelings of an animal to make your judgement.
  > No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

Does the lack of knowledge of their living preferences somehow bolster the argument that it's ok to factory-farm them though?

You can't make the decision one way or the other.

  "Monks, these two extremes ought not to be
  practiced by one who has gone forth from
  the household life. (What are the two?) There
  is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures,
  which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary
  people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there
  is addiction to self-mortification, which is
  painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding
  both these extremes, the Tathagata (the
  Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it
  gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to
  calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to
  Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized
  by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold
  path, and nothing else, namely: right
  understanding, right thought, right speech,
  right action, right livelihood, right effort,
  right mindfulness and right concentration."
  - Siddhārtha Gautama, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

We can make some guesses. See e.g. http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-fee...

No one actually knows the living preferences of a chicken or a cow.

But does anyone know, without any doubt, the living preferences of a potato or an apple tree?

  > free-range eggs or seafood does not

Personally:

1. Eating seafood supports the over-fishing of our water-ways.

2. The 'free-range' label, IIRC, only requires that the animals have 15 minutes of time outside of their cramped cages. It's not a huge improvement.

3. In general, when they are hatching new chickens for egg-laying they sort out all of the male chicks and then kill them. Industry-standard practice is to put them into garbage bags and suffocate them, or to toss them (in garbage bags) into a wood-chipper.

4. Egg-laying hens are only kept alive as long as their production is at a certain level. As soon as it drops below a certain level they are called 'spent hens,' and killed.

Pyre,

this morning, I woke up to this submission. Going trough my morning routine and walking to work, I completely felt bad. For the first time, I feel bad to be part of HN due to many illogical and harmful statements.

What I'm going to say is: Thank you for encouraging intelligent conversation in these threads. I'm giving each and every comment an upvote.

This is really not a valid objection. It is fairly well studied, and it's known as an "appeal to nature." You can see some info on it at these places:

* http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnature.html * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

It's largely ignored in philosophical discussions because of the issues mentioned in these pages (and more!).

I'll be downvoted into oblivion for saying this but there are lots of ways that the average vegetarian or vegan every day supports killing animals for their own personal benefit. Animals are killed every day so that we can live a better life. It's not a big deal. Get over it or get off the grid.

I hope you don't drive on roads, or use anything produced by the petrochemical industry.

Hell, somewhere between your computer and HN a switch, server or piece of critical infrastructure is powered by burning dead animals. Or perhaps, it's just the plastic sheath on your ethernet cable that was made from petrochemicals.

I hope you're seriously considering refraining from using the internet because of the animals that were killed to make it.

Also, have you EVER considered how many field animals die to produce vegetables? You think a combine cares if there is a mouse in the way? Now, lets say you rely on a good shipped by trucking, train or ship, well then odds are somewhere along the line something was diesel powered, as we all know most diesel comes from oil fields, oil to the best of our knowledge contains dead animals.

If you're living you're consuming dead animals. Stop feeling bad about it and start enjoying the taste of meat. They died so you can live. It's the way of life, you think a tiger ponders the morality of eating a human?

Not eating meat is basically the sorriest excuse for making a difference I've seen, it's basically on par with believing recycling makes a difference. It's a small step to take with the aim of moralizing to everyone else how big of a difference you're making. Also, how many animals had to die because of habitat loss to make that nice house you're living in?

Meat may be murder, but so what? Pay soldiers to kill the animals then they are just casualties and it's no longer murder. We can now say the animal died in combat.

  > I hope you don't drive on roads, or use anything produced by the
  > petrochemical industry.

I've yet to hear that humans have successfully produced crude oil from livestock. Do you have a source of this?

  > Also, have you EVER considered how many field animals die to produce
  > vegetables?

1. You're creating a false dichotomy. Either a person eliminates all things in their life that affect animals, or they eliminate none. In the real world there are shades of grey.

2. Who are you to decide whether or not a person should care whether or not gelatin (or chicken broth or whatever) is in their food? You're coming from the opposite side and reacting against the idea that I'm trying to tell you what to do, but your response is just to tell me what to do. Seems a little ironic to me.

3. This entire post comes across as, "Yea! I really stuck it to that vegan guy! I win!"

  > Not eating meat is basically the sorriest excuse for making a
  > difference I've seen, it's basically on par with believing recycling
  > makes a difference. It's a small step to take with the aim of
  > moralizing to everyone else how big of a difference you're making.
  > Also, how many animals had to die because of habitat loss to make
  > that nice house you're living in?P

This is a very defeatist attitude. It borders on the, "I'm only one person. I can't make a difference. Why should I bother to vote," argument.

Secondly, who said anything anywhere about 'making a difference?' I certainly didn't. I've only talked about living according to my own moral code. Is living my own life according to my own moral code a 'small step to take with the aim of moralizing to everyone else?'

It borders on the, "I'm only one person. I can't make a difference. Why should I bother to vote," argument.

Whoa, here. The argument against voting is completely separate from the argument against supporting something you abhor in the market. In the latter case, all else equal, the industry will eventually do less of that thing than they would if you were supporting it, even if no one else ever changes. The effect seems small weighed against the sum total of usage, but over years, there are animals never born, raised, and killed if you choose to stop using animal products. The analogy with voting is poor, since if you, personally, choose to vote for the other side or not to vote at all, your decision has literally zero effect on the outcome.

Regarding producing oil from livestock, you'll want to look into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

I believe that ConAgra has a plant for doing this to left over bits of turkey.

More to the point as far as we know oil deposits are created by thermal depolymerization of plants and animals on geologic timescales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation Therefor anything produced from petroleum very likely contains dead animals.

1. There are definitely shades of grey, but I tend to think that putting animals in your tank and on your plate are largely the same. If you think that eating dead animals is wrong, then why would consuming any product of which a component was dead animals be any different? Would it be ok to just kill an animal for no reason and not consume it?

2. I'm primarily attempting to point out that your actions and your moral code are hypocritical and thus you should be ignored as someone who advocates a standard for which they are unable or unwilling to meet themselves.

3. I don't really care how it comes across, if it effectively communicates to anyone else that the lifestyle choice and moral code of people who practice veganism or vegetarianism for moral reasons are hypocritical, then it has served it's purpose. If people who are not vegans or vegetarians for moral reasons laugh at the hypocrisy then it's also effective. Sometimes you have to make Modest Proposals in order to communicate effectively.

4. I think that voting is largely ineffective and that the electoral system produces results that are far more influenced by lobbying and money than by casting votes.

5. The entire point of the post was to convince you and others that don't eat meat for moral reasons that you are NOT living your life according to your own moral code. Or that your moral code contains arbitrary exceptions for the consumption of animals for whenever you find it convenient.

I think you're attacking a straw man who you want to represent all vegetarians and vegans. Different people make the choice to give up meat for different reasons, they define veganism and vegetarianism with differing boundaries, and they practice with various levels of consistency. There's no one vegan or vegetarian moral code for you to find hypocritical, or one set of goals that vegans and vegetarians are all trying to achieve.

But in point #1 above, I think you drifted off course; the problem from my perspective isn't dead animals but rather killing animals needlessly. An animal which was dead eons before I was born is not my moral responsibility. It is my responsibility if an animal dies so that I can eat steak, if I could have just as easily had beans.

Indeed. It's an attempt to make things black and white when they're grey.

In the same way you could argue that unless you become completely carbon neutral any attempt to minimise your carbon output is pointless, or indeed if you can't stop all crime, why bother trying and stop any.

Most vegetarians aren't hypocritical because they don't claim perfection, they just claim to be doing more in this one regard than the average and in that respect they're normally correct.

  > Regarding producing oil from livestock, you'll want to look into
  > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
  >
  > I believe that ConAgra has a plant for doing this to left over bits
  > of turkey.
  >
  > More to the point as far as we know oil deposits are created by
  > thermal depolymerization of plants and animals on geologic
  > timescales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation
  > Therefor anything produced from petroleum very likely contains dead
  > animals.
  >
  > 1. There are definitely shades of grey, but I tend to think that
  > putting animals in your tank and on your plate are largely the same.
  > If you think that eating dead animals is wrong, then why would
  > consuming any product of which a component was dead animals be any
  > different? Would it be ok to just kill an animal for no reason and
  > not consume it?

You're equating the killing of animals with the death of animals. The animals that died eons ago to make oil were not killed by beings that had an active choice to make (i.e. "Do I kill this animal, or do I not kill this animal?"). An animal that died of natural causes was not killed, and a T-Rex (or a lion for that matter) does not have a moral dilemma when it comes to mealtime.

The only possible exception here is if you wish to postulate that some or all of the animals that crude oil comes from were killed by intelligent (and sentient) extra-terrestrial or terrestrial beings that left no trace behind for us to find.

I'm also clueless as to why you question if it's ok to kill an animal for no reason and not consume it. Most of the animal-based products that we have on the market today come from animals that humans have raised, and killed for the expressed purpose of creating that product. Do you not realize that these animals would not be killed if there were no demand for these products (or at least only a demand for similar products that were not animal-based -- e.g. faux leather).

  > 2. I'm primarily attempting to point out that your actions and your
  > moral code are hypocritical and thus you should be ignored as
  > someone who advocates a standard for which they are unable or
  > unwilling to meet themselves.

Please point to where I was advocating a standard.

  > 3. I don't really care how it comes across, if it effectively
  > communicates to anyone else that the lifestyle choice and moral code
  > of people who practice veganism or vegetarianism for moral reasons
  > are hypocritical, then it has served it's purpose. If people who are
  > not vegans or vegetarians for moral reasons laugh at the hypocrisy
  > then it's also effective. Sometimes you have to make Modest
  > Proposals in order to communicate effectively.

So you advocate ad hominem attacks on people based on some sort of stereotype that you have in your own mind, but which really doesn't match reality? As others have stated, you're trying to take the adjective 'vegan' and create your own definition of it based on the negative view you have of what some of the people it describes believe.

To use a religion analogy, you're trying to condemn all Christians based on the actions of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church in no way represents all Christian religions, but they are seen as the 'canonical' Christian religion in most people's minds. But in this case it's even worse, because the view points that you are attacking aren't even associated with some proper group or institution. It's just a view point that some people who are vegetarian/vegan hold.

  > 4. I think that voting is largely ineffective and that the electoral
  > system produces results that are far more influenced by lobbying and
  > money than by casting votes.

You're sort of missing the point that I was making with that comment. I was just using a common defeatist view point in pop-culture as an example.

  > 5. The entire point of the post was to convince you and others that
  > don't eat meat for moral reasons that you are NOT living your life
  > according to your own moral code. Or that your moral code contains
  > arbitrary exceptions for the consumption of animals for whenever you
  > find it convenient.

Where did I define my moral code for your review? Yet you assume that you know what it is, and attempt to viciously attack it to (presumably) gain some sort of personal satisfaction that you have 'proved' that you are right and someone else is wrong on the internet?

I also question why you are attempting to tell others that their moral code should be black-and-white. Is you own personal moral code this black-and-white? Is murder is always murder, and self-defense is no excuse? Or do you allow an exception in that case? A picture of a naked child is always child pornography, even if it's just the 'classic' bathtime photo of a baby? Are these not 'arbitrary exceptions?'

If I'm following, your reasoning is that because (a) it's effectively impossible to live in the modern world without benefiting from the deaths of animals that (b) any attempt to limit the number of animals we kill to support our daily lives, or the kind of animals, or how they lived or died, must be pointless.

I find that jump from (a) to (b) is unfounded. There's a qualitative difference between (i) a mouse killed accidentally by a combine, (ii) a lab rat killed by a drug company, (iii) a pig raised and killed to be eaten, (iv) a mink killed for its fur and (v) an endangered mountain gorilla killed so a collector can stuff its head and hands. Different people draw their moral lines at different places.

A lot of people might have a problem with (v) but be okay with (i) through (iv). I can personally live with (i) and (ii), but have a problem with (iii) especially given the messed up fact that while almost a billion people on the planet are malnourished, the US has enough excess to give the majority of its soy and corn crops over to feeding livestock. As in, we're literally choosing to feed the pigs, cows and chickens we're going to kill before we feed the poor. I know of people who will accept (ii) if the research is for a compelling medical cause, but not if it's for something like cosmetics. I know plenty of people who can live with leather, but won't accept fur based on the crazy cruel stuff that happens on fur farms.

This stuff isn't black and white. You can't just equate animals that died millions of years ago that turned into oil with animals that we raise to kill; not all animal deaths are equal. The ethical and moral questions get complicated, and there's a lot of grey areas encountered when balancing human needs and desires against the potential suffering of creatures whose subjective experience we can't understand. And then there are health arguments and environmental arguments, and it never ends. Given that it's complicated, please have a little respect.

You write as though you expect that vegetarians and vegans must not be aware of natural predators or animals killed unintentionally by humans for reasons other than meat, or the weird, myriad ways we use highly processed animal products in the modern world -- and that if we had been aware we should obviously have come to the same conclusions you did. That presumption, that vegetarians and vegans must have made their life decisions out of simple ignorance of the facts, is a bit offensive. I'm not saying you should believe anything different about eating meat. But please don't flippantly talk down to people who have chosen to draw their moral distinctions in different places than yours.

Not arguing for or against it because the whole thing seems way too muddled for me.

But have you ever considered that the difference between your arguments (i) to (v) (with exception of (iii) maybe) is the intention of the humans involved not the suffering or the dead of the respective animals? This kind of moral reasoning is human and can be seen in other areas as well. For example, we care a lot more about the comparably "few" deaths caused by terrorism vs. the many caused by traffic, because presumably in the former there is intention of bad guys involved whereas in the latter its merely bad circumstances and chance. The result is the same: an animal or a human is killed. However, the moral reasoning is different. Just saying ...

Yes, human intent makes a difference, to some degree - shooting a tiger that's about to eat you is different from raising an animal in awful conditions to eat it later.

But there's also the issue of scale: while laboratories do kill quite a few animals (ideally in a somewhat humane fashion after a decent life, but that's not nearly always the case), the food industry kills a lot more.

I think human intentions do matter, at a qualitative level. And at a quantitative level, I hope we can agree that we're likely to kill fewer animals if we only kill them inadvertently than if we kill them both intentionally and inadvertently.

But even if you take a wholly consequentialist or utilitarian view (where the utility of animals gets some limited consideration), I would argue that eliminating (iii) through (v) is beneficial because it allows us to greatly reduce the animal suffering we cause, with minimal impact to our own wellbeing. In the modern age, pretty much no one needs fur, and certainly no one needs stuffed gorilla heads, and most people probably don't need meat. Steaks and mink coats are wasteful luxuries we can do without. However, getting rid of cases like (i) would require a great deal of effort, and getting rid of (ii) could block the path of medical advances which might significantly reduce human suffering from disease.

Statement one: "It's impossible to be a perfect programmer, so it's stupid to even try."

Statement two: "It's impossible to never harm someone, so it's stupid to even try."

Surely you don't agree with statement one? So why does the argument hold for statement two?

I was mainly trying to underline frossie's comment about how people eat meat unthinkingly, by pointing out that they may often also be eating meat unknowingly. It's shocking how pervasive dead animal products are in our society -- to the point that we use shellac (including dead insects) to wax apples, so even raw fruit may not be vegetarian.

For the record, I'm a vegetarian, but I drink filtered wine (isinglass or oxblood), eat cheeses made with rennet, eat sugar without knowing whether it was whitened with bone char, and last week ate a dessert that likely contained gelatin. I don't think those things mean I'm not a vegetarian, but I find it crazy that our society has so much dead animal hanging around that we've stopped keeping track of where we put it.

I thought the lighted hearted mockery of this mentality in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" was pretty funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIXv9N9PHO8&t=0m40s

De-veganizing ray! ZUM!

People who don't eat meat regularly lose an enzyme they need to properly digest meat. When I find that I've accidentally consumed something with chicken broth in it, I am physically ill during digestion. Therefore, I ask whether a soup or a risotto is made with a meat broth, because it's not worth me getting ill over.

Chicken broth is used in too many places as "instant flavour" where water would do just as well, or a mushroom broth. There's no reason for it, and the chefs I spoke with in Italy were horrified by the use of chicken broth in making a risotto.

I choose not to have anything with gelatin in it, because it's a useless filler, especially to yogurt. If you really need to thicken yogurt because you're reducing the milk's fat content, use agar or pectin.

(I am ova-lacto vegetarian, although I reduce my lacto because I'm mildly milk intolerant, more's the pity.)

Why shrimp? I understand the part about oysters, but I've read that shrimp feel pain.

It really depends on how you define "pain", given how simple they are, I'd say it's more of a simple stimulus response.

But you're right that it is a little more debatable with shrimp than with oysters.

Actually veganism is much older than the word 'vegan', which was coined in the 1940s. There are many eastern religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism, that encourage various forms of veganism (not all of them necessarily healthy diets) in their monastic orders.

However, I think you are fairly liberally type casting vegans as single issue people. I would argue most vegans probably know about where their food comes from than you, as well as the affects that other parts of their lifestyle have on the environment.

From my own personal experience, I know there is exactly one vegan organic standard (which is the VON's "Stockfree" certification a sub-certification of British Soil association's UK-5 standard). That means if I eat organic produce living in the US a large amount of the fertilizer used is probably of animal origin. However, I'm between the rock and the hard place because I either choose harm the environment (and animals in other ways) or accept that some of the organic fertilizer will be manure. I didn't set up the system it isn't my fault. However I will choose to opt-out where-ever I sensibly can.

In my experience people become vegan for a variety of reasons, but most of those reasons are because they are conscientious, caring people. Like all groups there are a vocal minority who wish to harass other who disagree with them, but I don't like be tarred with that brush any more than you like being accused of murder.

Actually most Buddhist monks depend on alms, so they aren't required to adhere to a vegan diet; they eat whatever the populace around the monastery offers. The only thing the Buddha ever said about eating meat is that one should not accept meat if they even suspect that the animal was killed specifically for them.

Actually while monks do depend on alms it depends what Buddhist tradition you come from. In many schools of Mahayana ('Great Path') Buddhism all animal produce is to be rejected.

It's impossible to declare "the only thing the Buddha said" because the Pali and Sanskit writings we have today are accounts of the aural teachings from the Buddha written 500 years or more after his death. More than that while there is a lot of agreement over parts of the canon there is also disagreement over other parts leading to various traditions and schools of Buddhism.

You are right of course on both points, I was talking about Therevadan monks and was referring to an interpretation of the Pali canon when talking about what the Buddha said.

"Opting out of meat entirely does nothing to change the industry, because most people will always eat some meat if they can afford it."

FWIW, my opting out of meat entirely has motivated at least a few others to do the same. On a larger scale, I've seen an increase over the last 10 years in the number of vegetarian restaurants and vegetarian offerings in general-menu restaurants. I'd say there has been some change in the industry, driven by people who have opted out of meat entirely.

Even if you're skeptical about just how much change any one person can effect I fail to see how one might go about changing an industry while not at the same time demonstrating commitment to the ideals feeding that desire for change.

"Meanwhile, as vegans focus on the elimination of meat from our diets, they practically ignore the industrialized food that wreaks direct reproducible havoc on our metabolisms causing epidemic obesity and diabetes"

Really? I've not seen that. If anything the vegans I've encountered, either personally or through books and magazines, seem quite zealous about replacing meat with quality nutrition. In fact, I don't see how one can be a vegan and not have to bend over backwards to select food carefully.

I've known vegans who would admit to eating nothing but Doritos/Skittles/Coca-Cola on roadtrips rather than feed themselves some halfway decent, but non-vegan, nutrition available on the road.

I've eaten crap, too, rather than eat meat, but only when crap was the best non-meat choice. I don't advocate it, though, if there's real veggie food available.

Have to say though that it's a lot harder to eat vegan on the road than to eat veggie. But Skittles + cola? That shit'll kill you.

I often wonder where these veracious vegans are. I've yet to meet a vegan who has been evangelical, yet have met many omnivores who speak poorly of vegans. Is this a region specific problem?

The punk/hardcore scene is filled with them. Earth Crisis, Vegan Reich, Hardline, vegan straight-edge, etc.

Although, outside of that scene, I haven't often ran into them, so my guess is that most people are referring to the internet zealots, who tend to be an issue for any political, social, or cultural group, no matter how radical or mainstream.

None of those bands have been relavent in hardcore (other than on the fringe) in 20+ years. I've been involved in the punk/hardcore scene since the mid-nineties (and vegan since 2002) and while the scene is a little more veg friendly then most, a majority of the punk/hardcore kids i've grown up with and know are meat eaters.

as for the internet - it's full of opinionated zealots no matter what the cause.

None of those bands have been relavent in hardcore (other than on the fringe) in 20+ years.

The fringe is specifically what I'm referencing. I'm not saying punk in general is vegan, or hardline, etc. But the proportion of people within punk who are, compared to the general populace, is obviously much higher.

And I disagree that the scene is only a little more veg friendly than most, I'd say it's much more, except maybe scenes like conscious hip hop or hippy festivals.

Of course, I was specifically involved in very politicized punk scenes, so YMMV.

I wish someday that the next vegans I meet are the same bunch you've met. Almost every single vegan I've met has been the loud, obnoxious, moralizing, more righteousnesses than thou, I don't care if I'm being difficult and selfish and forcing everybody around me to adopt to my personal life choices and I won't bother to accommodate anything other people need and I make sure to make people go out of their way to make sure there's at least one vegan-certified pizza at the corporate pizza party at the cost of 4 of the other pizzas (and then I won't eat more than half a slice) type.

I have to give special notice to two of my vegan friends who are not like that, but they are a very rare exception to the rule.

I used to share a flat with one when I was at University - he used to do things like hand out leaflets in the morning with pictures of partly butchered animals as we prepared breakfast.

Apart from those idiosyncrasies he was quite a pleasant chap - I had to respect him when he received some extremely painful medical treatment and he refused an anesthetic because it might have been tested on animals.

>I often wonder where these veracious vegans are.

Two words: The Internet.

Come checkout Portland sometime.

  > Meanwhile, as vegans focus on the elimination of
  > meat from our diets, they practically ignore the
  > industrialized food that wreaks direct reproducible
  > havoc on our metabolisms causing epidemic obesity 
  > and diabetes.

This is a bit of a strawman. You're basically saying that if you can find any fault with someone that is vegan, then their entire message is null and void. Think about it. You've stated that vegans aren't perfect because while eliminating one 'bad' thing from their diet they are forgetting a completely different one. That's your argument.

You're also only commenting on the effects to humans, while ignoring the effects to animals (which is an important factor for some/most vegans).

In general though, if you want to blame something, blame capitalism, and a lack of care for proper nutrition by the general public. Capitalism drives food companies to become ever more industrialized, and do whatever necessary to increase profits (fiddle with the sodium-fat-sugar content of their products to attempt to make people feel the need to eat more, and never feel that they have satisfied their hunger). The consumer can combat this with their pocket book, but the consumer just doesn't seem to care.

Your accusation of strawman doesn't hold. It is a valid point that if you claim your movement is about health, but you ignore the biggest health problem there is (because it does not fit the ideology), the claims to health should be, if not entirely ignored, certainly not taken at face value. It's perfectly logical.

Are you claiming that everyone out there that claims to be vegan is part of some all-encompassing singular movement? Who is the leader? Where is the movement's webpage?

Are you claiming that nobody ever uses that argument?

That rhetorical device cuts both ways, which is why it is useless in actual logic.

I don't become paralyzed by the fact that I can't draw absolute boundaries around things, and I reject disingenuous invitations to be so paralyzed for your rhetorical benefit. Yes, this is clearly an argument made for veganism, by a significant proportion of vegan thought leaders. I reject the idea that people should be allowed to make arguments but as soon as they are challenged go hiding behind the claims that "well, not everyone thinks that way so you can't criticize it". That's just flat-out bullshit. The original argument was and is valid.

  > Your accusation of strawman doesn't hold. It is a valid point that
  > if you claim your movement is about health, but you ignore the
  > biggest health problem there is (because it does not fit the
  > ideology), the claims to health should be, if not entirely ignored,
  > certainly not taken at face value. It's perfectly logical.

You seem to be arguing against the validity of vegetarianism/veganism as a whole based on the statements of a few vegetarians/vegans. You also seem to be under the impression that vegetarianism/veganism is some sort of singular 'movement' that has extreme solidarity and a singular purpose.

None of this is the case though. People decide to become vegetarian/vegan for a variety of personal reasons ranging from health to animal welfare (aka 'animal rights') to religion.

There are a number of movements that advocate a vegan diet (e.g. Peta) but that is a lot different than what you seem to want to imply. Your 'strawman' is the idea that vegetarianism/veganism is some sort of 'movement' where everyone believes the same thing and has the exact same goals. [ What are 'vegan thought leaders' anyways? ]

Best line in the whole post: "I now no longer lie to myself about the fact that life requires death."

I never understood the "Meat is murder" slogan. It's factual. They should have used "Meat is torture". I think it's more accurate with their line of thinking.

I wonder what they think about plant death. You do quite literally kill plants when you rip them out of the ground and take a bite out of them. Even if you only ate nuts or beans you are still killing off their unborn child plants.

There are very strong reasons for thinking that vertebrates feel pain in a way very similar to humans (see e.g. http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-fee...).

There is absolutely no evidence that plants feel anything.

Plants to scream when you kill them. We just can't normally hear it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320720.800-stressed-...

> Take the whole "meat is murder" slogan. It's ridiculous from the outset and completely ignores our existence within the earth's ecosystem.

It is almost as ridiculous to posit that humans should be held to the same standard as your average animal. The moral objection is that being able to comprehend the existence of other beings bestows an obligation to facilitate their well-being in addition to your own. You can disagree with that, but it is not "ridiculous". Personally I think that we as a "higher species" - in comparison with the rest of the lifeforms on this planet - should at least make an effort to move toward veganism. In the end, it may not fully work and it will never completely remove the need to kill animals, but I think it can go a long way to reduce unnecessary suffering.

A lot of people do and will continue to eat meat (and wear leather &c.) but that is not an argument to not attempt to change the situation - or just change your own habits if you feel no pull toward effecting social change. Your argument is also undermined by the very factual increase in vegetarian and vegan

Most vegans I know are quite aware of food quality and will avoid additives and processed foods. Some do not, some have very poor diets indeed. There is no dichotomy here, though.

On the topic, while the most hard-line vegans will disagree, I think milk, eggs and non-sentient beings like various clams, oysters and such are a reasonable compromise in ensuring one's nutrition. They - given humane and sustainable practices of course - do not cause much suffering to the animals involved.

Thanks for this. To put it another way -- if you're unwilling to object to causing suffering to other animals because "that's what they do to each other anyway", you lose the ability to make ethical objections to murder, rape, etc., when they're being performed by humans.

We know that other animals don't have the same evolved talent at empathy and compassion (and ethical reasoning) that humans do, so we don't expect them to become vegetarian themselves. The fact that humans are capable of these things introduces a responsibility for us to use them rather than ignoring them.

Just a minor point, but what do you mean by “sustainably raised meat”? It seems reasonable to assume that the production of non-industrialized meat needs just as much or even more energy. Meat is cheap because it is efficiently produced, mostly disregarding the animals’ welfare. How can energy consumption go down by shedding efficiency in favor of animal welfare? Is that not what you mean by sustainable?

Probably not more energy. Way more space though. Order of magnitude, at least.

For example, sustainably raised beef winds up needing a bunch of pastureland to rotate through, so that they don't overgraze any one section of grass. Feedlots cram them in and feed them corn or some other grain crop that's had it's own huge energy input.

Poultry needs the same sort of thing, or they will scratch their grass down to mud right quick. Most of the cage-free/free range criteria stop in the 5 sqft/bird range, but they need 10x that to not destroy the ground, if they're not moved every few days. (incidentally, vegetarian feed for chickens is good (hey, it won't contain other chickens), but chickens are _not_ vegetarians. They love bugs. Happiness is a flock of chickens and an ant hill.)

I don't eat animals or animal products because I personally don't want to. What's wrong with that?

I think there is nothing wrong with that as long as you feel healthy and are healthy. I think the point of the submitted post was that the author did not eat animal products and became very unhealty. That's pretty much it ...

I've always wondered what the plan is. Meaning, suppose the entire population is "enlightened" to the vegan diet and stops eating meat and using animal products, what are we supposed to do with the animals we're no longer eating?

The industry just in the U.S. consumes something like 150 million cattle and 9 billion fowl per year and that's not counting the animals we use for other purposes (dairy, eggs, etc.)

Are we to let them just starve and die in the fields? Pets? Let them go feral? (I can tell you that feral pigs are some of the scariest, meanest animals in the world). Can cows even go feral? Or have they been so domesticated over the last 10,000 years that they're pretty much useless in the wild?

No matter what, it would be intolerably cruel to the extant population of farm animals.

The life cycle of farm animals is very short (from few weeks to couple of years), much shorter than the "enlightening" process would take. We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that.

> We just need to stop to produce "replacement" animals for the eaten ones. Simple as that.

This brings up the second question, whenever I hear "we just" or "simply" or some other similar keywords, it often involves a wholesale change in the mindset of all of humanity to accomplish whatever is being posited.

(not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhumane and immoral)

> (not to mention that many people would probably consider the forced sterilization of billions of animals inhumane and immoral)

Hey, did you know that pretty much all commercial turkeys can't have sex anymore? We bred their breasts to be too big, so they can't physically penetrate any more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Breasted_White

You'll be finding this inhumane and immoral and refusing to eat turkey now, right? Oh, guess not. Weird how that works.

I imagine we just let them go extinct.

If killing and eating animals is inhumane and immoral, is mass genocide any better?

Actually veganism is about ethics, if you can survive without causing suffering, why would you need to cause that suffering, for pleasure?

Well that's the problem with radicalism...they live on the other side of the chasm, ignoring all non-revolutionary paths that might lead in that direction from current reality, so they have virtually no effect on mainstream discourse. Just like to them, the Dems and Republicans are "the same". It's an attitude I'm sure they enjoy having but it sure is ineffectual.

"I'm all for radicalism since radicals are the main force questioning conventional wisdom."

Yes. It's the way of the world. Radicals fight each other, and the compromises between them are perhaps the nearest you can get to the truth.

I eat meat, I fish and I've hunted. My wife has been a vegetarian for 20 years, since age 19. By vegetarian I mean she eats eggs and drinks milk, but doesn't eat meat of any kind.

It's outright weird how the author swings from one extreme to the other, both emotionally and nutritionally. Why not try adding eggs, milk, cheese and full-cream yoghurt to your diet first? Or even add shellfish or chicken once or twice a week?

She seems to swing from the most militant form of vegetarianism to maniacal flesh gorging with an indictment of the vegan community to boot.

The range of diets that incorporate or exclude meat or animal byproducts is wide as is the impact each variation has on our environment. A productive approach would be to find a meat-veggie balance that works for your nutritional needs and then spend the time to find environmentally friendly and humane sources of the ingredients you need.

>Why not try adding eggs, milk, cheese and full-cream yoghurt to your diet first? Or even add shellfish or chicken once or twice a week? ... A productive approach would be to find a meat-veggie balance that works for your nutritional needs

Did you even read her article? That's pretty much exactly what she did... it's not like she's engaging in an all-meat diet now or something.

Agreed. This was a really creepy read precisely because of her black-and-white perspective, and the overemphasized near-religious importance her past self put on not eating meat (to the point of considering eating only bad meat, as if pleasure itself is evil or immoral).

I think a hidden problem that was not mentioned enough in this thread is that vegetarianism for many people (the author included) became a clear derivative of christianism (she herself ate vegan as a way to both free herself and the planet for our sins as humans).

This post has some great lines in it:

* As a revolutionary feminist and anti-imperialist, veganism seemed to be yet another way I could fight the injustices we are facing.

* Capitalism has turned food, and especially grains, into a commodity, a weapon of war, and a way to make a profit, instead of the inalienable right it should be. The way to prevent hunger is not to feed the starving masses the food we currently feed to animals (excess food production and the resulting food dumping is one of the causes of hunger in the first place), but for the chronically hungry people to throw off the shackles of neo-imperialism and to gain back control of their local food systems.

* It was shocking to realize I had been expounding on the need to transform agriculture and farming without even knowing the bare minimum of what it takes to keep an ecosystem healthy.

Really? Was it really shocking? Really? I feel like I'm in a missing scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian.

On the other hand her 3 paragraphs about the 3 kinds of bad people (the frauds, the foolish know-it-alls, and the evidence deniers) sparked instant recognition and made me realize that those are the exact people that irritate me more than just about anyone else in this world.

> On the other hand her 3 paragraphs about the 3 kinds of bad people (the frauds, the foolish know-it-alls, and the evidence deniers) sparked instant recognition and made me realize that those are the exact people that irritate me more than just about anyone else in this world.

She seems to qualify for at least two of those three categories.

Instant karma's gonna get you!

Really though, it's the people who take knowing-it-all and evidence denial to a personal level who deserve a special place in hell.

It is impossible for me to say this person is "wrong" but I figure I may as well throw my data points into the graph - I've been vegan for 11 years and I am more healthy on every level than I've ever been. I went vegan in my late teens when I was done growing, my younger brother went vegan at 12 a year after me and is now taller/broader than me. I know many people who have been vegan over 20 years who are in great health.

Obviously that doesn't just apply to vegans but regardless, the secret is this: you have to hack your diet! You have to learn about nutrition in general and then in relation to YOUR body and experience. There is no silver bullet and I am glad there isn't: life should be a constant practice of critical thinking and mindfulness. "Practicing" veganism is a great way to constantly engage with the world in an active manner.

It's interesting how strong peer pressure is in groups like vegans to continue to press someone in to a lifestyle that clearly is not to their best interest.

It reminds me of religious cults, and other 'us or them' styled groups.

Very scary.

If you identify 'progressivism', 'environmentalism', etc., as lineal descendants of ecumenical Protestant Christianity—that is, when you see them as essentially religious movements—it is easy to understand the emergence of vegetarianism and especially veganism: they are the exact analogues of religious dietary laws. Hinduism has a prohibition on the consumption of beef and other meats, Judaism has kosher, Islam has halal, and progressivism has vegetarianism/veganism. In all cases, the purpose of dietary laws is the same: they are hard-to-fake demonstrations of piety.

> It's interesting how strong peer pressure is in groups like vegans to continue to press someone in to a lifestyle that clearly is not to their best interest.

Given the levels of obesity in developed nations you could argue that just about everybody is being pressed 'in to a lifestyle that clearly is not to their best interest'.

> It reminds me of religious cults, and other 'us or them' styled groups.

I really don't think it is fair to generalise from a single blog post. It really feels like you are drawing on a collection of stereotypes about what you consider to be 'weird people' for this to have such an impact. Or do you have any other examples you can share with us?

She even says that she and her family has received threats!

What would make someone do that simply because the lady has started eating meat?

It's psychologically complicated but it has to do with people telling you that you yourself are living a lie, and exposing that lie. That ties right in to 'ego' and self preservation.

People do not like to have their core beliefs challenged in a credible way.

If one single story like this can challenge someone's confidence on their veganism then obviously they are quite insecure about their position. Similarly if one single story like this is given such a high level of prominence (was top on HN no less) by the majority who have an opposing view then surely this also indicates a certain insecure desire for any scraps of evidence to support ones position. No?

Yes. It's strange that people really think that what they're doing isn't connected in a way with their self-esteem, especially if they claiming all the time that they're doing it only for a better world.

Wouldn't it be funny, if at the end there's no much difference between the SUV driver and the vegan.

I think people buy large SUVs under the false assumption of crashworthiness. For the price range they could have gotten sedans of similar prestige.

And of better crash-worthiness!

> I never expected this post to get so much attention.

There is nothing more popular than an anecdote that appeals to people's pre-existing biases. Unfortunately there will be many for which this one story will provide the same weight of evidence as the entire China Study.

The point of the story is that not everyone can do a Vegan diet and still be healthy. While this is just one example it does demonstrate the principle that meat is a necessary and vital part of some peoples healthy eating.

I sometimes wonder if Vegans worry about Lions on the savannah eating antelope. Do they want prevent that as well. Humans are Omnivores. We are built to get nutrients from both meat and plantlife. Our metabolisms work best when we eat both in moderation. A Vegan lifestyle makes it harder to eat healthy not easier and for some it makes it impossible.

Humans are Omnivores. We are built to get nutrients from both meat and plantlife. Our metabolisms work best when we eat both in moderation.

Please let's not resort to "appeal to nature", because that can certainly be abused both ways (and frequently is). There are certainly all sorts of sketchy vegetarian and vegan bogus arguments about why not eating animals is natural (and certainly eating dairy and chicken eggs isn't natural).

We weren't built for anything, and just because something is natural, doesn't mean that it's good or right. If we ruled our lives by what was natural, we'd die in our thirties, have high infant mortality, and while we would eat meat, we would also chase after it with sharpened sticks, and more of us would die from starvation. Agriculture is unnatural; it's technology. Yes, our ancestors ate meat, but that alone doesn't mean that we need to. The OP's system couldn't handle her vegan diet, so she needs meat, but that doesn't mean everyone needs meat.

If you want to eat meat, eat meat. That's reason enough. If you find that you personally physically need to eat meat, then please eat meat. But neither the omnivore nor the vegan who claims that one diet is universally nutritionally or morally optimal in virtue of being natural is making a solid justification.

>We weren't built for anything

Swap out built with adapted and I think you'll have a hard time finding a dentist that agrees with that.

Swapping 'built with adapted' doesn't avoid the naturalistic fallacy. Just because we have adapted to cope with something doesn't imply it is good for our current circumstances. Any source of calories would have desirable for our early ancestors - now we have the opposite problem. Instead gazing backwards to our primitive forbears for advice, we need to use science to guide us as to what the best foods to eat are.

In line with my point above that nature is irrelevant in a discussion about what's good or right, I'd like to point out that because of such unnatural practices as cooking our food, it kind of doesn't matter what our teeth are adapted to eat. I don't want to eat whatever foods our savanna ancestor ate, because now we have farms and kitchens and supermarkets, and I have better options, and better criteria to guide my choice than some interpretation of what's 'natural'.

Agreed. It seems like many people add a "perfectly" to adapted, and that gets them into trouble.

> I sometimes wonder if Vegans worry about Lions on the savannah eating antelope. Do they want prevent that as well.

I think it's safe to assume that you are against rape. Do you worry about dolphins in the ocean raping other dolphins?

Veganism implies a moral consideration for animals; opposition to rape doesn't.

Correction: veganism implies a moral consideration for animals from the point of view of humans. That is, most vegans believe it to be immoral to kill an animal because we as humans are (for the most part) capable of surviving without doing so, and we have the capacity to recognize this fact. True carnivores have neither of these traits and therefore are not morally obligated not to eat meat. Apologies if my analogy was not clear.

Except that the OP is one example of someone who clearly can not survive without doing so. It may be true that some Humans can do so but it is not true that all Humans can do so.

> The point of the story is that not everyone can do a Vegan diet and still be healthy.

When you hear a story about how some substance 'cured cancer' do you instantly conclude that the claims are necessarily correct - even for the cured person in the story? Would you expect the story to become popular on HN? The problem with one-off anecdotes like this is that they don't even conclusively demonstrate anything.

> I sometimes wonder if Vegans worry about Lions on the savannah eating antelope.

Dude that is a really ignorant and insulting thing to say.

> Humans are Omnivores. We are built to get nutrients from both meat and plantlife.

And here you demonstrate your limited grasp of evolution which a resort to a naturalistic fallacy.

> Our metabolisms work best when we eat both in moderation.

Actually the research demonstrates otherwise.

> A Vegan lifestyle makes it harder to eat healthy not easier

That is trivially true in a society where adding animal products to many foods is routine. If even 20% of the population was vegan it would be trivial to follow a vegan diet.

> Dude that is a really ignorant and insulting thing to say.

Why? We have it within our power to prevent that particular form of animal suffering. Give me enough money and political power and I could round up all the antelope and lions and keep em seperated. How is ignoring that form of animal suffering any different than ignoring animal farming?

> And here you demonstrate your limited grasp of evolution which a resort to a naturalistic fallacy.

I'll bite. How is it a fallacy? Fact: Humans are capable of digesting and processing meat. Fact: Humans have been eating meat for as long as we've been around. Fact: Humans get a number of nutrients in meat that are not easily found elsewhere in a form we can process.

>> Our metabolisms work best when we eat both in moderation. > Actually the research demonstrates otherwise.

Citation needed

> That is trivially true in a society where adding animal products to many foods is routine. If even 20% of the population was vegan it would be trivial to follow a vegan diet.

Because the market would provide? Either way you still have to work harder and be far more careful with what you eat in order to pull it off so my point still stands.

No where did I say it was impossible. Notice I said in moderation as well. You wouldn't have to eat a lot of meat to get the required nutrition.

"Either way you still have to work harder"

Since the production of meat uses up more resources (energy) than plant based food, I think your claim does not hold up.

It is easier to produce plant based food, so why should it be harder to buy plant based food?

I also doubt that you automatically eat healthy by simply adding meat to your diet.

>> Dude that is a really ignorant and insulting thing to say.

>Why?

You obviously have absolutely no idea of the range of reasons people have for being vegan do you? Here are a few

- Visceral disgust at the though of consuming animal flesh / produce

- The view that a vegan diet is healthier than a diet with meat. Also a view that meat products are a significant cause of many of our chronic diseases. Both of these views are well backed by a large amount of science for example 'the China Study'.

- The view that plant food is significantly more efficient to produce (5-10 times) and far less harmful for the environment than meat. This is true not just in term of calories but also for protein.

See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism

- Religious beliefs

- The view that human control of animals represents a kind of slavery.

- The view that it is immoral for humans to knowingly and unnecessarily kill and/or cause pain to another being. The fact that humans are intelligent enough to have a choice and understand the consequences of their actions is the important thing. Many vegans feel especially strongly about factory farming which is often cruel in the extreme.

See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_eating_meat

So now do you see how ignorant your point about lions is? Veganism is primarily about humans relationship to animals not about animals relationships with each other.

> I'll bite. How is it a fallacy?

By definition, that's how. Look it up : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

> Citation needed

There are so many but I'll just stick with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Study cause I'm lazy.

> Because the market would provide?

Yes there would be numerous vegan options with the nutrient mix customized to suit vegan diets.

> Either way you still have to work harder and be far more careful with what you eat in order to pull it off so my point still stands.

You have to work pretty hard with a meat based diet to avoid the chronic diseases it can cause.

Being a strict vegan and getting all the required nutrients to maintain optimal health is almost mutually exclusive. You can take pills and shots to make up for the missing parts but these use animal products. It can be an insane amount of work for normal people. To say it would be easy if more people do it does not reflect the realities of nutrition. I wish you luck but it is not and can not be for everyone at leat not strict vegetarianism I also think that people who are pregnant and maintain the diet are amoral there is no shortage of research that show it can harm the infant.

Note meat little meat and almost shurly less than optimal for health. I don't like the people that go against research.

Dude you've mostly just stated a bunch of unsubstantiated opinions which I assert are factually in error. You specifically mentioned 'there is no shortage of research that show it can harm the infant'. If there is no shortage of this research then you should easily be able to provide at least one reference.

Rather than list all the studies here I'll just link you to a page with that lists them.

http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/2008/VeganDiets.htm

That page lists studies showing B12 deficiencies, bone density issues, and elevated Homocystein issues.

Also there is a very strong link to issues with pregnant and nursing women and their babies due to B12 deficiencies. The opinion of most researchers in this area appears to be that pregnant and nursing women should not follow a strict Vegan diet.

So the basic conclusion of this study is 'The evidence surrounding veganism appears to be mixed'. And further 'Overall, veganism is healthier than an omnivorous diet with respect to chronic diseases'. Did you manage to read these parts?

With respect to B12 it seems that there is clearly good evidence for vegans to take a supplement.

With regards to pregnant and nursing women the evidence seemed a bit less clear. There doesn't seem to be any mention of actual problems with vegan children, only correlations between them and children that did have problems. Despite the uncertainly It certain seems good enough evidence to take b12 supplement for vegans.

So the takeaway I get from this is that

(Vegan diet + b12/multivitamin) >> Omnivorous diet

Just as well there are probably people who can not eat a meat diet and be healthy, for example if they are allergic to eggs, milk or some meat variants. In fact the percentage of people who can't deal with milk is very high. If you go into a normal supermarket, it is actually very difficult to find any foods that don't have milk in it (Lactose being used for lots of dirty tricks).

The symptoms she describes (bloated belly, increased heart rate after eating) sound to me more as if there were some other problems - maybe she couldn't deal with some parts of the food very well. I've just read a good book about those problems (it is not allergies, I don't know the proper translation), and for example up to 17% of humans in the western world have problems digesting fructose. So naturally stuffing themselves with vegetables might cause problems. In that book it is also explained that those problems can often be cured in a matter of weeks. Few doctors are knowledgeable about those, though.

> I sometimes wonder if Vegans worry about Lions on the savannah eating antelope. Do they want prevent that as well.

I think vegans are more concerned with how animals are treated, not simply that they are killed and eaten.

And there are many people who will wrongly think the China Study is something to pay attention to: http://www.google.com/#q=debunking+china+study

"debunking" is a rather loaded term, don't you think? I would imagine that you're more likely to pull up crank sites than normal with a search like that.

In any case, there are (claimed) responses from the author of the China study which might be worth reading:

http://www.30bananasaday.com/group/debunkingthechinastudycri...

http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/campbell_china_response.h...

I haven't been able to find these on any "official" site though, so beware ;)

If a link to google search is what you think passes as debate then why not also check out

http://www.google.com/#q=debunking+evolution

The standard of debate is likely to be at a similar level. If you actually have an confidence in any of these 'debunkings' then why not point out one that you think will stand up to scrutiny?

I concur. It bothers me that at the top of part 4 she says she regrets having decided to become a vegan through being swayed by graphic images of factory farms rather than having "adhered to the rigorous academic standards" that she claims to use in all other decisions -- and yet this anecdote turned polemic will surely be used by others in hastily making up their minds that veganism and possibly vegetarianism are not viable or beneficial to either the individual or society.

The purpose of the post very clearly is to make the point that veganism is not for everybody. Not to suggest veganism is not viable for all people.

edit: s/some/all/. english/logic fail.

I guess it all depends on whether you'd prefer to be miserable and slowly starve to death starting in your 20s or be happy and energetic before dying at cancer at 60.

Look, veganism is a preference, not a religion.

For me, the salient facts are that eating animals and animal products is a) ethically questionable and b) avoidable.

But it's just a choice. If I go round someone's house and they've cooked me an otherwise vegan meal but put cheese on top, I'm not going to be a dick about it, I'm going to eat it. Food isn't magic. Maybe this makes me not really vegan, or a "bad vegan" or whatever, but I don't know or care what the rules are. I don't even know any other vegans. It's nobody else's business.

I know it's a privilege to be affluent and healthy enough to be able to be selective about what I eat, but I choose to exercise that privilege, just as I choose to exercise other counter-evolutionary privileges like using contraception and not murdering people who annoy me.

Could I do more? Could I be a better person? Certainly. Always. But doing this much is so easy that it's a no-brainer, so that's how much I do. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow.

I feel kind of shocked and alienated by how aggressively negative some of the posters here are being about that choice.

> "Look, veganism is a preference, not a religion."

The line between preference and religion can be awfully thin. See: Urban vs. suburban, Nikon vs. Canon, Vi vs. Emacs, etc.

All of the above are contentious issues that are, at the end of the day, incredibly asinine to argue about. And all sides in the above suffer from incredibly poor signal to noise ratio - both defending their ego more than they are any notion of reason.

You don't get emotionally wrecked when your preference is defeated. "Wracking sobs and tears" - that's a reactopm tp a firmly-held lifelong belief being deconstructed - so for her it was religion.

For what it's worth, I don't think of people who eat diets supposedly free of animal products as "vegan". I think of them as "fundamentalist". To me, veganism is about creating a culture where we don't abuse animals. It happens that part of that work for me involves mostly not eating meat. But sometimes eating meat is exactly what I need to do.

Eating meat, in specific ways, can be a way to connect with people, a way to nourish myself... there are lots of ways in which eating meat can lead directly or indirectly to my helping to lessen animal abuse.

And I think that's profoundly vegan. I think the OP feels the same way, but she's apparently not as comfortable hijacking the word "vegan" as I am.

The way she uses the word, and the way most people use the word, makes it useful only to marginalize people. What a waste of a word. I'd use it to inspire people.

Like the mormon who might occasionally share a beer with their sister, in the spirit of love and family and togetherness (important mormon values)... a vegan can eat meat. These labels do not have to be so cut and dry.

There are lots of reasons for being vegan. What if you can not digest animal products very well, or just think it is healthier to eat vegan. YOur world view seems rather black and white.

Also I don't understand the part about connecting with people - so if you don't eat meat, you have troubles connecting (if you eat something else)? How so? Also, does eating meat also help you to connect with vegans, or maybe not?

All in all, I call bullshit.

There are lots of reasons for being vegan. What if you can not digest animal products very well, or just think it is healthier to eat vegan.

That's great. I think those are wonderful reasons, and am happy for those people to include themselves under the umbrella of veganism.

YOur world view seems rather black and white.

Why are you attacking me?

if you don't eat meat, you have troubles connecting (if you eat something else)? How so?

When I went to Spain, there were often situations where I could either eat Spanish food with Spanish friends, or I could sit and not eat anything with them, and then go home and cook my own food. I chose to share in their culture and participate. I didn't really eat much meat, but I did eat some vegetarian food. And I did try some of the meat.

does eating meat also help you to connect with vegans, or maybe not?

I don't recall a situation where eating meat helped me connect with vegans. I generally connect with vegans by eating vegan food with them, or talking about vegan food.

All in all, I call bullshit.

Why are you antagonizing me? I'm just honestly expressing my thoughts about something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Please be a little nicer to me.

Another case that comes up frequently is I tell meat-eaters about the fact that I often eat pizza, even though I consider myself vegan. And that I think it's OK to be vegan and still eat your favorite non-vegan foods every now and then.

It DOES help me connect with those people. People often hear that and thing "oh! that sounds like something I could do!" Unlike abstaining from animal products entirely, which, to most people does NOT sound like something they could do.

Ginny Messina, who is a dietitian and actually has some qualifications to talk about this stuff, wrote a great response to this blog post - http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/do-ex-vegans%E2%80%99-stor...

>That doesn’t mean I think she has made any of this up.

She has an awfully weird way of expressing this. The first few paragraphs of her post are dedicated to implying as hard as she can that this blog post is some sort of meat industry propaganda.

For example:

>There is so much that is eerily parallel in these stories—not just the vague descriptions of the health-related experiences but also the evolving philosophy regarding food justice, and some very, very similar language.

I think Ginny's saying that the the author of the blog post is simply echoing things she read elsewhere. That doesn't mean it's some sort of propaganda effort on the part of the blog poster.

I think that's definitely how she's trying to spin it "officially", but her actual intent is pretty clear.

>I have to admit I’m always a little suspicious when an ex-vegan dives headlong into a love affair with meat.

I mean come on, what else is that supposed to mean? Is she "suspicious" that the author is simply echoing a new-found respect for meat? That doesn't even make sense.

Sheesh, you really love your conspiracy theories.

Ginny's post is primarily about debunking the ridiculous health claims in the original post. She's "suspicious" of the claims because they're ridiculous, and the amount of fervor that Tasha shows suggests that there's something going on besides nutrition.

It's a conspiracy theory to suggest that others are seeing conspiracies where there are none?

Man you people are nuts.

You're saying that Ginny is suggesting a conspiracy, when she isn't. That's all I'm saying.

I think she misses out on that people need to justify stuff for themselves and those that do this justification loudly (for others to hear) are going to persist in that pattern no matter what their decisions.

Personally I think that being a vegan, vegetarian or omnivore is an entirely personal thing and you don't need to blast it out like that. Also so that you can change your mind without having to do mental double takes like that.

I don't think Ginny's missing that at all. In fact, I think that's her main point, that Tasha's entire post is a post-facto attempt to rationalize a decision made for non-rational reasons.

Yes, but my point is that Ginny was not going after her when she was still rooting for 'her' team, probably for all the wrong reasons as well.

Ginny's post comes off as a very effective smear job against a 'former believer'.

Ginny is pretty consistent about promoting good science and criticizing the bad. For example, in a blog post on "7 Ways to Encourage and Support New Vegans" (http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/08/7-ways-to-encourage-and-su...), she says:

    Be honest about nutrition. It’s pretty unlikely that a vegan diet is the only healthy way to eat and we will always get backed into a corner if we say that it is. Likewise, some nutrients are harder to come by on a vegan diet. If we dismiss nutrition issues, we run the risk that some vegans won’t thrive, which is bad for them and bad for veganism

I don't think she has time to address every blog post by every uninformed person (vegan or anti-vegan) on the web, unfortunately.

This is a perfect example of why one must use the utmost caution in allowing a choice to become part of one's identity. When the time comes for that belief to be challenged you will fight not because it is true, but because it is perceived as an attack on the self. You will ignore reason and fight to save that piece of yourself from annihilation like a feral animal cornered by a predator.

You are not a vegan. You are not an atheist. You are not the car you drive or the contents of your wallet. You are a human being, and nothing that is within your power to change should be exempt from introspection.

I've added this to my personal collection of awesome quotes.

Reposting my thoughts from Reddit:

As a vegan I'm sad on two fronts.

a) That some vegans see the need to attack someone in this way.

I know some vegans consider (including myself) see it as a deeply moral issue. However, I'd rather be like Ghandi than a fundamentalist. First and foremost, we can't help how we are made. I can't understand how it is immoral to care for oneself first. That said I personally haven't suffered adverse health (quite the reverse).

b) The fact that my choice for me causes some people to want to knock me down.

Time and time again, I find my veganism attacked by people who aren't vegan. Whether they make a joke of waving their meat meals in my face, or attack my moral/ethical/dietary stance. It seems like a lot of people who are omnivorous either feel guilty about it or simply don't like the idea that I have chosen a moral stance stricter than their own. I find it disappointing, both in the title and the comments of this thread that people seem to want to take me down a peg for my beliefs.

Maybe people just don't like being told that their moral stance is less strict than yours when they don't feel they're doing anything wrong. Your post is almost literally asking, "Why are people upset when I have a holier-than-thou attitude?" What is really the difference between, "I have chosen a stricter moral stance," and holier-than-thou?

Stricter implies that I am applying more conditions to myself, 'holier-than-thou' implies that I'm somehow applying them to you too.

I've chosen my morality for me, I'll happily advocate it if you are interested. However, my act of choice in no way threatens your own act of choice.

What I find frustrating is that because I've made a choice for me people choose to assume I'm judging them.

This makes your point... I just find it incredibly odd.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that when you say "stricter moral stance," you mean "more rules." That is not how I would interpret "stricter moral stance."

I suppose I'm also thrown off by the concept of "my morality." If morality is entirely personal, the whole concept of stricter or looser moral stances seems nonsensical. If it's entirely personal, then isn't everyone, by definition, strictly adhering to their own morality?

Some definitions of the word strict from the Random House Dictionary that might explain my position:

3. closely or rigorously enforced or maintained: strict silence.

5. extremely defined or conservative; narrowly or carefully limited: a strict construction of the Constitution.

8. stern; severe; austere: strict parents.

You could also think of strict as the root of "restrictive". I have a moral code which allows me to do less than you, it restricts my actions.

However it doesn't follow that my morality inherently requires me to expect it of others. That's a very western belief.

Well, if you rationalize your beliefs, and folks poke holes in those rationalizations, then it isn't wanting "to take me down a peg for my beliefs", its debate. And when you are wrong in debate, its not quite fair to wrap yourself in religion and claim foul.

I was never a vegan, but I was a pretty strict vegetarian for about ten years. I started to rethink it when my doctor told me I was seriously deficient in iron, B12 and folic acid.

The first time I ate meat again, a lamb shawarma, it was freaking delicious. I felt my body scream "YES!" Now I incorporate some non-industrial, locally sourced meat, cheese and eggs into a predominantly plant-based diet, and it seems to be working well for my overall health.

Unfortunately a bread bar (exactly what it sounds like) operated by a Slow Food chef recently opened near my house, and I find myself eating altogether too much fresh baked bread.

> As a feminist, this body-hating rhetoric infuriated me. The willing participation in the denial and degradation of my bodily needs smacked of misogyny, patriarchal control and violence against the female body, and everything that I fight against.

Huh? So somebody who willingly does not eat animal products despite the health issues is misogynistic? What does this have to do with sexes?

> I refuse to play the game that so many women (vegan or not) are forced to play by our violently woman hating society; I will never feel shame or guilt for eating what my body wants and needs to be healthy.

It seems like veganism is not her only problem...

It sounds like she was getting very little fat and protein in her diet. When you demonize fat, and don't eat much protein, you have no choice but to fill the void with carbs, if you can fulfill your csloric needs at all

Also, Leafy vegetables are wonderful sources of nutrients, but terrible sources of calories. It seems like she was trying to fill her caloric needs with leafy vegetables, which simply isn't going to work.

The article specifically mentions iron and B12. There is no natural way for a human to get B12 without some kind of animal product or a supplement (usually made from an animal product) and this woman developed a nutritional deficiency as a result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12#Sources

I've never been a vegetarian, but I used to eat very little meat.

The one mineral I rarely hear about when talking about a vegetarian or vegan diet is Zinc. It is nearly impossible to get enough Zinc without eating animal products. You can either eat nearly 3 pounds of peas, or little more than .5 ounces of canned oysters to get enough Zinc in your diet. Being low on Zinc weakens your immune system, and your libido, so yeah - it's important.

YMMV, but I am feeling much better now that I've made it a point to eat more (local, organically-raised) meat.

Oysters are actually a weird case for some vegans, in that a lot of the arguments made for veganism don't really apply. They don't have brains, so there's not really a chance for suffering, and they can be farmed in an eco-friendly way. Peter Singer, the animal rights philosopher that vegans are always quoting, has at points said that he doesn't object to eating oysters. http://www.slate.com/id/2248998/

Unfertilized chicken eggs don't have brains either, right? They are still "unclean".

I eat eggs sometimes, but I'm not proud of it. The moral considerations are very different from oysters because of how they're produced. Producing a lot of eggs requires a lot of hens. Having a lot of hens (and not roosters) involves killing a lot of male chicks. Producing any volume of eggs economically requires having a lot of hens in not that much space, which typically involves things like clipping beaks. This also produces a lot of concentrated waste which can often cause environmental damage. Keeping a lot of hens fed requires that you give them a lot of feed, which requires agricultural resources which might otherwise have produced food to be eaten by people. So eating eggs entails killing and torturing birds, producing toxic waste and using agricultural resources inefficiently.

I think that has to do with the manner in which the layers are cared for. Chickens and cows don't produce eggs or milk at the same rate throughout their lives. So farmers cull them once their production drops below the economical point. Also the majority of the males are culled since they're not producers. My grandfather thought it might be worth while to breed dairy cows with a meat producing aspect due to the 25% yearly cull rate.

The issue with them for most vegans is probably that hens are usually kept in inhumane conditions.

Oysters are an outlier in terms of zinc.

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/

From NIH "Oysters contain more zinc per serving than any other food, but red meat and poultry provide the majority of zinc in the American diet. Other good food sources include beans, nuts, certain types of seafood (such as crab and lobster), whole grains, fortified breakfast cereals, and dairy products"

You can get a lot of Zinc from plant based sources:

http://food.vegtalk.org/minerals/spices-fats-fruits-vegetabl...

Pumpkin seeds have a load of zinc in. A handful on salad does the job.

You would have to eat nearly 1.5 cups of pumpkin seeds to get 100% DRV http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/30...

Perhaps those who eat meat should slowly introduce vegetarianism into their diet (if they wish to) rather than going vegan straight.

I turned veg about 15 years back (but still ate an egg). My haemoglobin count actually went up by a point (a year later). About 5 years ago, i gave up eggs too. A year later my Haemo was up by another half point.

I do have a small amount of milk in tea/coffee. In India, there are millions of vegetarians who live without health problems. Veganism seems a little extreme to us.

Hmm, in the same way that this girl strongly was able to have a strong moral stance for being a vegan before she has also been able to justify a strong moral stance against it, pointing to large scale farming now as the enemy.

I'm all for the overall feeling but it does show that people can very easy justify contradictory stances at different times.

It did seem like that the author should examine her decision making/philosophy adopting process along with her dedication to veganism.

I went to a 10 day meditation retreat a few years ago. As you can imagine I met a lot of interesting people there.

One guy actually was a body builder and vegetarian. He told me that he had problems with being anemic as well. So his doctor told him to have a steak once a month, which helped him a lot.

There is a reason why we can chew and digest both plants and animal products and meat.

While personally I lean towards a vegetarian diet (for reasons of health, morality, and sustainability) any such bias has to be paired with "wisdom".

Generally if we know how to listen our bodies will let us know what they need. I mostly eat whatever I want, whenever I want it. It somehow naturally ends up being mostly vegetarian, with diary product, and occasionally meats and (yes) some candy.

Edit: I do avoid all low fat products and products with sugar replacements.

Reminded me of a comment by Linus Torvalds [1]:

Meat is kind of important to people. Young kids in particular need a lot of varied nutrients, and a balanced diet - with meat - is likely to be way healthier than the alternatives.

Quite frankly, being vegetarian is like being religious: you should let the kid decide on his/her own when they are grown up and can make that choice on their own. Plus by then they've done most of their development, so your choice won't mess them up for the rest of their lives.

Humans are designed to be omnivores. Don't play games with your kids nutrition.

Eating meat is not at all unnatural. It's generally considered to be one of the main reasons humans could afford to evolve a larger brain - because meat is denser in nutrients than vegetarian diets.

Yes, you can do a healthy vegetarian diet (and even a vegan one, although at that point you really are crazy - there's no substitute for milk), but it is certainly not at all a trivial matter. It's much saner to just say "eating meat is natural".

Once you're fully grown, it's a different matter.

Quite frankly, anybody who tells their kids to "don't eat meat" is kind of crazy. You're much better off telling them to not drink sodas, avoid overly processed foods etc.

And yeah, I care a hell of a lot more about my kids health than I care about cows or even pigs. Deal with it.

[1] http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/05/pig-lovers-oath....

As a counter point, I've been vegetarian (ovo-lacto) my whole life. My parents aren't crazy, they just decided they wanted to be vegetarian, and the logical consequence of that is that my siblings and I were raised the same way.

I'm 6'1", ~175 lbs, and am strong and healthy. I've never had a blood test show any deficiencies. I don't have to go out of my way to find protein: dairy, eggs, and legumes are in enough dishes to make it easy. Plus, you don't need nearly as much protein as most people get.

Linus is often wrong about things, especially when they're outside his areas of expertise.

Personally, I can't wait until we grow meat without having to kill animals who can feel pain, distress, etc, to get it. It won't come one day too soon.

I think this a case of the 'tail wagging the dog'.

The author decided she wanted to be vegan for (possibly) superficial reasons.

She then found she couldn't be vegan for health reasons, but rather than take a step back and hold on to some of the principles she claimed to have (and become an ovo-lacto vegetarian; and see if that worked) .. cognitive dissonance came into play and she shifted her entire world-view around to suit her new choice of meat-based diet.

I imagine it must have been difficult to make the choice - but there's something about the subsequent rationalisation (and justification) that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Okay, maybe I'm being a bit harsh - but I did find the sea change in opinion a bit difficult to comprehend.

Some people might _need_ to eat animal derived products to function - but that should still be able to be compatible with a desire to ascribe to vegan ideals. When a person chooses involve politics in dietary choice, pragmatism should still be able to operate. Fundamentalism at any level is a bit wrong.

I don't see why the alternative - of becoming a fully fledged carnivore - was taken when there was an intermediate step.

That was kind of eye-opening.

Not because it shows how bullshit veganism is; I knew that already.

But because it reminds me of this friend I have, who is always complaining that she feels tired and weak. She goes to the doctor at least monthly, who diagnosis her with some new deficiency. She's always taking some new pill or food type.

I always thought she was a hypochondriac. But it just occurred to me that she might not be, because she's a vegetarian.

> because she's a vegetarian.

400 million Indians are vegetarian (milk and/or eggs): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_in_India and I've been a vegetarian all my life. Last year I ran 50 miles non-stop in Grand Teton at 10,000ft elevation so I can say from personal experience that it is certainly possible to be healthy on a balanced vegetarian diet. I can't say the same about veganism though and it's not popular in India at all: http://business.in.com/article/recliner/being-vegan-in-india...

while I agree with your base assumption (living without eating meat is not a health drama) pointing out to vegetarian indians is a fallacy that people should stop making.

We have no knowledge of related/correlated facts about those 400M people, so you can _for example_ follow the fallacy and say:

Life expectancy in india is lower than the world average and a lot lower than other "poor" countries where vegetarianism is not common, such as north korea, brazil or the palestinian territories. Thus vegetarianism leads to at a shorter life.

Proof by underanalyzed example is not a good one.

I totally agree that it may be possible. But a deeper question is it optimum? We are coders, what could the A/B/C test of Vegan/Vegetarian/Carnivore be? No judgement, just interesting to me.

> because she's a vegetarian.

There's a difference between a vegan and a vegetarian: a vegetarian doesn't consume meat, but does consume diary products and eggs (egg-but-not-meat eaters like me are sometimes also known as eggetarians).

A vegan, on the other hand, doesn't consume any animal products at all.

I have been vegetarian (or rather eggetarian) all my life, and I have had no such problems. Also, I know many vegetarians (lots of them here in India), who face none of these problems. I believe being a vegetarian is a fairly healthy lifestyle. Being a vegan, maybe not.

Yes, I know the difference.

I was merely saying that her symptoms sound identical to my friend's, that's all. Just like some people seem to be successful as vegans, others may be unsuccessful at being vegetarians.

And others are unsuccessful at being omnivores.

There are a host of other nutrition problems that may be completely unrelated to whether meat is in one's diet. It's not very fair to blame vegetarianism, which is usually considered a pretty safe diet.

I have never known anyone who's been unsuccessful at being a vegetarian (and about half my friends and family are vegetarian).

Edit: the only time I have known someone switch to a non-veg diet (after becoming an adult) is when they started going to the gym and were keen on building muscle mass.

Well you probably know a different set of people I do. I know quite a few that quit. Of the ones that are current, one is my cousin, but she confessed to me that after last Thanksgiving she bought herself an entire turkey and ate the whole thing in one sitting. Another friend of mine is a veg as well, but she eats one steak per month to prevent anemia. Of the two that are strict non-meat eaters, one is the friend that is always sick all the time, and the other has an underweight BMI. Yay anecdotes!

I was glad to see the food miles metric[1] tangentially mentioned in this post (when she talked about importing exotic foods to keep herself healthy). This is a notion that, in my opinion, doesn't get enough attention: it doesn't matter how great the farming practices are if the food is then shipped three thousand miles to my door. (Yes, the food miles notion is imperfect, but it's at least a reasonable first-order approximation of the environmental impact of your food.)

Besides being fun, one of the best things about hunting is that you can directly observe the cost of transporting and processing food from animal to table. On top of that, the animal I hunt most frequently (feral hog) is a depredating pest in most of the southeastern US, doing substantial damage to farm and ranch land. Most of my hunting is done on land where cows are pastured, and I'm only happy to help reduce the population of hogs, protect the grazing lands, and get a little meat out of the deal.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_miles

> it doesn't matter how great the farming practices are if the food is then shipped three thousand miles to my door. (Yes, the food miles notion is imperfect, but it's at least a reasonable first-order approximation of the environmental impact of your food.)

I don't think so. Transportation accounts for only 11% of the environmental impact of food[1], so that's not a first-order approximation of the true cost at all. It is not only possible, but is in fact often likely, that shipping food three thousand miles from somewhere where it was efficient to produce has less environmental impact than buying food with epsilon "food miles".

(Which means that the take-home message is: if you want to use food miles as a metric, you should generally only buy food that is grown as efficiently where you are as in the part of the world that grows it optimally.)

[1] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702969f

Another data point: I've been vegan for five years and haven't noticed any related health problems and I have a friend who has been vegan for 30+ years without any related health problems.

Whatever your position on the subject, it's important to approach this matter with objectivity, logic, openness, sensitivity and lots of data. :)

  When the doctor first told me that I had numerous vitamin and mineral
  deficiencies, that I was almost anemic, and my B12 was so low she
  wanted to give me an injection immediately, I refused to believe her.

That's poor diet. Vegan or not. B12 is made by bacteria (not animals or plants) and industrial meat is full of it because we feed livestock with putrified waste foods while industrialized vegetables are unnaturally clean with chemicals. Organic vegetables have enough B12.

Also modern diet has anti-nutrients preventing absorption (like coffee and iron.)

The broad generalizations from reactionaries like political vegans and their anti-vegan counterparts disgust me. Both groups are completely uninformed and stubborn. For them it's about confirmation bias and group think.

Actually it's recommended for vegans to take suppliments of B12, you can read more about different aspects of vegan health at http://www.veganhealth.org/

Many foods like wheat flours are already fortified with B12 and iron. At least where I live.

I do know, anecdotally, of someone who is literally unable to eat meat(causes digestive problems). A rare case, and I'm pretty sure ovo-lacto vegetarianism is still OK. For my part I'm definitely one of the meat-eating types, though I have my limits.

A bit more OT diet-related: As the months have grown colder I recently noticed a dangerous binge-type craving for sweet stuff. So I decided I would go low-carb and high-fat for a few days leading up to Thanksgiving just to see if it could change my appetite. It's made a very obvious difference. One daily Starbucks venti breve latte just obliterates the problem, though it's a bit hard to digest and tiresome to drink.

> In the span of just a few days I received an outpouring of emails from fellow ‘vegan’ bloggers, who told me in confidence that they weren’t really vegan ‘behind the scenes’.

> I even received emails from two very prominent and well respected members of the vegan AR community. One a published and much loved vegan cook book author, the other a noted animal rights blogger, their emails detailed their health struggles and eventual unpublicized return to eating meat.

This pisses me off the most, and what makes veganism look like a religion to me. You learn much more from being wrong, and talking about being wrong, than from standing by a point of view because it's popular.

There's a (somewhat) rebuttal to this here: http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/do-ex-vegans%E2%80%99-stor...

"A Vegan Diet" is nothing more than a diet devoid of animal products or byproducts. A vegan diet could technically be nothing but potato chips. What did this woman eat? What did she eat exactly? What sort of workout did she do every day? How many green smoothies did she rely on for energy for her workouts? This has nothing to do with veganism, but everything to do with a very confused person who did not know how to feed herself.

I know that the lipid hypothesis is completely fallacious, these animal foods won’t hurt me or cause me ill health in anyway, in fact, the vitamins and minerals they provide, along with the nutritious cholesterol and wholesome saturated fat, will restore my health.

Great to hear that she sees the forest from the trees.

Considering how this submission got voted and how the discourse is going, this is a good example of how powerful the USA are.

I wonder how the discourse will continue now that it's dark night in the USA and the day is starting for Europe and India.

"You once were a ve-gone, now you will be-gone."

--Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Who knew iron pills broke vegan edge?

I'll tell you one thing iron supplements do and that is stop up your pipes >.<

I simply can't understand why eating meat is wrong, when eating plant is not wrong. I feel they are same.

Is eating a human the same?

This is same question many of my veggie friends ask. I think no, it is not the same for humans. For other carnivores, it does not make any difference.

No, because humans are capable of reciprocating moral obligations.

Veganism is really difficult to avoid if you're a utilitarian, and really easy to avoid if you're not.

Yes, I've always said when you eat fruits and nuts, you are eating the plants babies. Why all the hatred towards plants ..

Plants don't have nervous system, animals have, and it allows them to be able to suffer. But even if you think that plants can suffer, still being vegan is more ethical, because overall suffering will be reduces, there are less plants needed on vegan diet than feed to animals to be eaten.

It's normal to eat meat. People who don't, look kinda sick, you can tell.

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