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Comment by CarelessExpert | Hacker News Reader

There's something unexpected about this aspect of veganism, which is often embraced by those wanting to lead a healthier lifestyle, resulting in the development of more and more advanced food processing technologies designed to synthesize the experience of foods being excluded from the diet.

Basically, in the quest to return to a more healthy, natural diet, some folks end up moving to foods that are more and more processed.

That's not meant to be a criticism! In my mind it's just a bit of a surprising outcome and makes me wonder how folks who consume these products square that circle in their minds.

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> There's something unexpected about this aspect of veganism, which is often embraced by those wanting to lead a healthier lifestyle ...

I'm not sure what you base this statement on. There are many people whose initial motivations for going vegan were ethical, either to avoid funding animal abuse, environmental degradation, or both.

That was why I went vegan 23.5 years ago, and why I'm still vegan. I eat mock meat and non-dairy cheese because these taste like foods I liked before I went vegan. I didn't stop eating meat and cheese because I thought it tasted bad! I loved it, but I hate what went into its production. Now I can have the foods I like without the negative externalities. That's perfect!

That said, my palette has expanded hugely since I first went vegetarian, and I also enjoy all sorts of things I used to really dislike, including more whole foods type dishes, and even raw food.

I totally get ethical vegetarianism, and appreciate that much animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent. Of course, believing that and shopping ethically requires a great deal more selectivity and research (and willingness to pay more for food whose provenance can be trusted).

Not to pick a fight, but I don't get the basic argument that 'all animal husbandry = unnatural exploitation' given the symbiosis between species like ants and aphids etc. which I can just go and observe in my yard at this time of year.

I've not really encountered the idea that it's unnatural exploitation, to be honest, and I completely agree with your point there. The core ethical argument that I generally see presented for veganism is that once you've advanced past the point of requiring animal products to live a healthy life, consuming them becomes entirely a matter of convenience, taste, and preference. The argument follows, then, that it may not be ethical to subject animals to the realities of modern husbandry simply on account of these reasons.

The question of whether abuse is inherent is largely academic at this point. The fact of the matter is that almost all of the animal products we consume are the result of optimized industrial processes that result in shortened, low-quality lives for those put through them. Whether an animal could, under the right circumstances, be humanely raised for resource extraction or slaughter doesn't really apply in modern consumption.

> I totally get ethical vegetarianism, and appreciate that much animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent.

It's inherent. Cows, like all mammals, need to have given birth to produce milk. This means dairy cows are impregnated and give birth roughly yearly. It's entirely uneconomical to raise all of the calves, since it would effectively triple or more the cost of producing milk, which is already barely profitable, even with government subsidies. So the calves are killed and sold as veal.

Not a vegan or vegetarian but it's very hard to get past this point. It's definitely insane that we have to impregnate cows over and over to keep them producing milk.

>...all mammals, need to have given birth to produce milk.

Wrong. Humans don't need to be pregnant or give birth to produce milk. Lactation can happen with medication or stimulation, which becomes easier as women age. If a woman is not inducing lactation with hormones, she must stimulate the breasts several times a day using hand compression or a breast pump. This is how adoptive and foster mothers breastfeed their babies. Lactation can also occur in men because they have milk glands, which is the reason they too can get breast cancer.

How, then, do you consider forcing medication or stimulation on a sentient being, without their consent? Obviously if this took place with a human, it’d violate several kinds of rights.

Now extend that train of thought towards other beings.

Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on people? That is right, nowhere.

Perhaps you need some remedial reading comprehension.

Perhaps... but I was talking about cows.

Where in my reply did I mention forcing lactation on cows? My comments were directed at the statement that all mammals need to give birth to lactate, which is incorrect.

If you are having difficulty ascertaining this point, you definitely need remedial reading comprehension.

That's an interesting aside about humans; I didn't know. I think the simplification is justifiable for the explanation in this case, though.

Using an example of something that exists in nature like aphids/ants to justify human behavior is a fundamentally flawed argument because quite simply: ants aren't humans, we're quite a bit more sophisticated and have far more reach/impact which comes with greater responsibility and consequences.

Putting that aside for the moment because it is a rabbit hole, there is a continuum of what people think constitutes animal abuse.

One the worst side of the spectrum (IMHO), are CAFOs: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. These are the first things you read about when you research animal cruelty. They're the videos of hundreds of thousands of cows standing kneed deep in their shit their whole lives and pumped full of antibiotics. And yet, some people look at this and go, "Yeah, I'm cool with that."

On the other side of the spectrum, we have vegans who do not use any products derived from animals.

In between we see efforts to mitigate the cruelty, such as: free range vs. constricted cages where movement is impossible; feeding them diets of foods they would find in nature (instead of feeding cows ground up chickens); not forcing them to grow so much meat they cannot move (chicken breasts; growth hormones in cows); not forcing them to produce so much milk their udders tear and become infected so they are injected with antibiotics, etc.

For example, there is a cattle farm 10 miles from my house that has about 20 head of cattle, and you can purchase one as part of a co-op a year in advance. You can go visit the cow. You can see how it is raised and its conditions. This makes me feel a lot better than buying plastic-wrapped package from a Save-Rite supermarket. But that's me: some people might laugh at me for being "fancy pants liberal simp" other's think I'm still keeping animals from doing what they would do in nature if we weren't harvesting them.

My point is: this is not an easy answer, and in my opinion how we treat animals that we capture and cage matters. Why? Since reason is a social construct, I can go deeper if you push, but it is my choice to not make animals suffer more than they have to.

> animal abuse can occur within the dairy industry, but I don't think that's inherent

There is no economical way to do it otherwise. I honestly don't care that much about animal abuse (I do think that animal agriculture is often environmentally unsustainable), but you can't really play pretend about "some milk not involving abuse"

In the very next sentence I observed that purchasing dairy without supporting abuse involves paying more in both time and money.

From where can you purchase such dairy, I would love a source.

Milk production involves separating calves from their mothers on a yearly basis. Most are slaughtered shortly after, their stomach lining is taken as it contains an enzyme used for cheese production.

Personally, I am fine with it as long as no extra, unnecessary suffering is caused, but some activists may call it inherent animal abuse.

Abuse is only one among several other arguments presented for ethical vegetarianism. For example see https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/vol19/iss1/1/

But I'm not questioning ethical vegetarianism, I'm talking about veganism's opposition to any kind of dairy farming over and above that.

Oh I see. The linked paper uses vegetarianism in a wider sense that covers that too.

That's why I said "often embraced", not "always embraced". :)

I certainly am not so arrogant as to believe I understand why each and every person eating a vegan diet has made that choice.

However, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to claim that a non-trivial number of people make the switch for health reasons, and that these plant-based substitutes are marketed based on claimed health benefits.

Sure, plenty have done it for health reasons, but your comment implied that it was the majority reason. Maybe it is, but I don't know of any good statistics on this.

As to whether the plant-based substitutes are healthier, they probably are when compared to the thing they're replacing in nearly all cases. But if you want to optimize your health I'd expect a plant-based diet based on less processed foods would be much better.

There is a wing of the ethical-vegan community who disapprove of meat substitutes, arguing that we will never truly do justice to our animal brothers and sisters until we have lost the very appetite for their flesh. So, it is not just those who eat vegan out of health concerns, who are concerned about meat substitutes.

Whoa, I'm an ethical vegan and pretty steeped in theory, and I've never encountered this wing before. I doubt I'll agree with them, but I'd be curious to read if you have anything you can link or cite.

Cheese is a 'processed' food. It's a long article, so I'm not surprised that nearly no-one in the comments has read it, but it goes into a lot of detail about the many small home-made cheese shops that are springing up with processes that more or less match that of the artisanal cheese making process.

> A nut is soaked and then blended with water to create a milk base, to which a culture is added. The cultured milk is left to ferment, forming a curd. After the curd is drained through a cheesecloth, it is molded into whatever shape the cheesemaker desires.

This is something I've noticed as well. Sometimes ingredient lists are a mile long. Less so here in Europe than what I've seen in America, but nevertheless it is shockingly less natural. I have always though that it makes more sense to just create vegan foods from what you have rather than recreating the things you are choosing not to eat.

Warning though, I am not a part of the vegan club, so it is all just opinion.

To some extent, it's an attempt to partake in the wider food culture while still following stricter ethical guidelines than those food cultures developed in.

Most of the vegans I know can nutrition themselves capably using non-imitation food, but still want to be able to have a pizza on occasion.

As much as some in the hackerverse like to pretend it doesn't, eating is both an emotional and an expressive experience for some people. Expecting everyone to be a rational actor in the food world is approximately as reasonable as expecting them to be rational actors in the dating world.

I'm vegan but I do agree. However, myself and other vegans I know do only use these alternatives on occasion. They're definitely not a part of our daily diet. I probably have vegan cheese once a month at most.

Being vegan is a big change, and I ate meat for 29 years, so sometimes my body wants something non-vegan and it's nice to know alternatives exist.

I never really went vegan to be 'more' healthy anyway, so I eat similar to how I did before.

The ingredient list of an apple is also miles long if you are forced to write it out, you just aren't.

There are a million different things "processing" can mean. It can be as innocuous as just chopping something up, or complicated like pickling. Not all of it is bad.

Certainly true.

But, as an example, the Impossible Burger notably has more fat and significantly more salt than its meat-based brethren. Sure, it may be purchased due to a perceived variety of other benefits (sustainability, animal rights, etc) totally unrelated to the healthiness of the product, but it's objectively not a healthier option.

>objectively not a healthier option.

I am not saying you are wrong, but there is a whole lot more to "healthiness" than amount of fat and salt.

The Impossible Burger has about 12% fat which is quite lean. As far as I understand, the meat in most burgers is around 20% fat. Adding things like breadcrumbs, eggs or onions to the patties will of course change the amount.

> The Impossible Burger has about 12% fat which is quite lean. As far as I understand, the meat in most burgers is around 20% fat.

Depends on the beef. I looked the numbers up before I commented, and a simple beef burger made with lean ground beef weighs in at 11% fat, slightly less than the Impossible version (though yup, I admit, basically equivalent, which is what I should've said).

Though I have no evidence to back it up, I get the impression that the popular justification for new adherents to veganism has shifted from ethical to health. Its original definition certainly points to the ethical concern:

> Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."

Only by extension might there be a benefit to humans.

However, I think there is a parallel misconception that vegan implies healthy. This is absolutely not always the case! I do see rational health advocates more often use the phrase Whole Food Plant Based, to denote both a non-junk-food vegan diet, and a relaxation of the rule to always dispense with animal products, especially non-food products.

As with anything, all people have different priorities. Some people prioritize taste in their food. Some health. Some ethics. Though usually it’s some combination of many different priorities. Indeed there are different types of Vegans as well, who don’t like to eat processed foods.

I’d guess that most people would prefer to eat less pre-processed food. But most people are all too busy and stressed that they don’t have time to grow their own crops, process our their food, cook meals by hand, AND make lots of money working a full time job selling insurance or whatever. And of course, much of this preprocessing makes food deliberately tastier and store longer, so there are clear benefits. So I’d guess most people are just balancing their food priorities among their needs to, say, interact in society and eat a living while staying full and healthy.

Disclaimer: I am not a vegan

I don't think "natural" is not a very good metric or goal to begin with.

Is cheese made from milk natural? I think people only believe that because cheese has been around forever, so they consider it being "normal", while they consider the vegan cheese alternatives "unusual".

Cheese is both a pretty processed product and not particularly healthy.

It's true that there's some relation between "unprocessed" and "healthy" (eat lots of veggies and fruit), but neither cheese from milk nor from plants fits that category. Also that isn't a fundamental law, it's more a "rough guidance". There's no fundamental reason a plant-based product can't be as healthy or healthier as a similar animal-based product.

I'd love for vegetable products to be processed skillfully enough that I wouldn't miss animal products. It's not the amount of processing that bothers me, it's the types of processing (and the types of additives.) Processed foods are on average terrible, but any particular heavily processed food might be wonderful for you.

This is almost the most important technology being developed right now IMO. Meat is killing us through environmental degradation and disease jumps from domesticated animals to humans. When I hear a "horror story" in the news cycle about there being no meat in a Taco Bell taco or somesuch, I'm like "if only."

In my experience, the vast majority of people go vegan out of concern for animals, and not primarily because they want to be more healthy.

Doing a quick search seems to support that, but perhaps the trends / reasons are changing as veganism in general becomes more mainstream.

https://vomadlife.com/blogs/news/why-people-go-vegan-2019-gl...

Note that the The China Study book a few years ago (and its accompanying cookbooks) brought some people to adopt a solely plant-based diet, but without necessarily referring to themselves as "vegans". Of course, people following such movements may still be a minority of all plant-based-diet eaters, but they are out there if you search beyond fora calling themselves specifically vegan fora.

It's basically abusing the single metric. You can put "Vegan" on your label if you follow very specific rules and anything outside of those rules is far game. The folks that consume these products have mostly that label and marketing to go by.

It's like orange juice advertised as "not from concentrate" which goes through a massive amount of processing just to satisfy that labeling even though it's unlikely any folks consuming the product really want that.

> Basically, in the quest to return to a more healthy, natural diet, some folks end up moving to foods that are more and more processed.

Is less processing always more healthy? It's often touted as such but adding some processing can unlock nutrients vs eating raw, right?

Spinach for example, when eaten raw, has less bioavailable iron than if it were "processed" by steaming.

There's a difference between what the parent means by "processing" and simply cooking.

A related question I always had is why many vegan people are pushing so hard for a substitute product just to simulate the flavor of flesh —- many Asian food like Tofu are vegan and natural. Why not embracing and inventing more types of naturally plant based recipes rather than pushing for fake meat?

The justification is that they are temporary/bridging foods while transitioning to a whole foods diet.

There is not much evidence of this working among vegan influencers (who fill their videos with meat and dairy mimicking meals) but that could be distorted by most product placements being such foods.

I wonder about that claim.

I've never seen the Impossible Burger, for example, pitched as a bridging mechanism. It seems to be purely about food substitution with no expectation that someone would phase that substitute out as they adapt to a plant-based diet.

I feel like the pitch is "hey look, you can be vegan/vegetarian and not miss the meat-based foods you love so much!" i.e., you can have your vegetarian cake and eat it, too.

But that then gets back to, why switch at all? If it's about ethics, these products make sense. If it's about health, it makes a lot less sense to me.

If you haven’t seen the Impossible Burger episode of South Park yet I think you’d enjoy it.

I eat them because dairy cheese triggers my autoimmune condition. They are a god send tbh

Yea I don't really get the whole 'health food tech' industry. When I want to feel good or lose weight: Chicken breast, vegetables, water, nuts, rice. It's the same old story, people want to be healthy and diet without actually doing any of that or give up the idea that every meal is supposed to be a treat.

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