The fig is an ecological marvel
nautil.us
nautil.us
...also the "milky latex" (that the tree bleeds) burns your skin and leaves scars. If in contact with my skin, I would wash it immediately and avoid any kind of experiments.
I would have guessed olives.
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. No one puts lychees in a fruit salad either. There are a couple of things going on:
1. Lychees and fruit salads come from two different cultures, so there's no real way for lychees to be part of fruit salads. The groups "people who make fruit salads" and "people who eat lychees" have negligible intersection.
2. "Fruit salad" is a word that refers to something in particular. There's no obligation for fruit salad to include all fruits, and in fact it never does.
But if you ask people what olives are, they'll tell you they are a fruit.
And people put avocados in fruit salad all the time, despite the fact that, like olives, they are a nonsweet fatty fruit.
But that's not evidence that chicken isn't considered "meat". It is.
There are two separate points here: my point was specifically that culinary and botanical categories for the word fruit do not overlap - there are botanical fruit that few people around here would consume as culinary fruit, such as olives and cumin. There may be culinary fruit that are not botanically fruit (for example, some may consider rhubarb stalk 'fruit').
Even if you are right that when asked what olives are people would say 'fruit' (I believe you'd get a variety of responses, with some calling them legumes or even spices), that still doesn't mean that people think of them as fruit. If you ask someone to pick up some fruit from the market, they won't come back with olives.
Your point is also correct, in that the culinary fruit category is culturally specific, and different cultures may regard different foods as 'fruit'. I doubt there is any culture where culinary fruit is perfectly matched with botanical fruit.
B) anyway, you don't eat manure
C) anyway, vegans are fine with figs so the whole thing is a strawman
All figs are 100% omnivorous food and -- Some -- figs are 100% vegan food. (Lets pretend that all this birds entangled and shoot never existed). And I'm saying some, but not all.
The varieties of Ficus carica can be classified in four groups if I remember correctly. Figs in the so called 'common' group don't need to be pollinated. Can be cultivated in areas too cold in winter for the wasp to survive (like Germany, UK or even Sweden) so is a popular one and often seen in markets. This could be tagged as genuinely "100% vegan". You can do a thousand studies on then and "prove" that figs never, ever, have insects inside, but you would be just lying to yourself and your customers.
Because the real hot stuff in figs are the 'Smyrna group', that always involve the death of several animals (that are stolen to nature by people and put there deliberately to die. Definitely not vegan friendly kind of stuff). Figs in the groups 'Smyrna', 'San Pedro' or 'San Antonio' will hold the remains of a few of those animals. Period.
But those figs are also much better in complexity of flavor, crunchy texture, and better nutritionally also so the sacrifice was not in vain. Those are the famous figs breed in warm places like Greece or Turkey.
Insects are many, they're small, and they're everywhere. Between growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, putting on store shelves, buying, transporting home, and putting in the fridge, you can bet that any piece of produce is highly likely to have dead insect pieces on it, or in it.
It's like people don't realize what the biosphere is made of. It's not a magical land where living things frolic - it's a dense soup of things that live, and things that once lived. The soil in which we grow our food is made of dead bodies mixed with sand, infused with nanobots that forever try to recycle the carcasses into more living things.
No, worrying about insect biomass is not the best thing to ground your ethical framework around. Otherwise, you'd best not breathe - the air is full of dead bodies too.
Ironically, the only kind of food that you can be absolutely 100% certain is definitely insect free is stuff like milk, eggs and meat.
However, thinking about it, it is very hard to draw a line. I know where line my personal line is, but it's very hard to explain why it makes any sense to anyone but me.
Why is it such a stretch to understand that someone might have the same reaction with a slightly different animal?
Also, in general it's a very weird comparison, but I'm not even making fun out of the guy for refusing a ride - I just think it's a weird moral stance to take, I can understand refusing to buy some leather seats, but riding in them? Especially as a favour? What does that change in the world? Literally nothing.
The only exception would be ivirt or like some threatened or near-extinct animal that you went out of your way to aquire, I know people who do that for handbags, and that is something i find appauling
You say that like people aren't often hypocritical. If I raised and slaughtered dogs for food you'd better believe I'd be hearing about it from people who eat meat with every meal!
Cars are basically sacrificial altar machines requiring a daily offer of blood and flesh from prehistoric animals to keep moving... and they are worried by the leather in other's cars while driving home, pfff.
They are very chill people. They don't really care if you eat meat and won't try to force veganism on you. They don't get caught up in issues like this.
The only "crazy" vegans I've heard are on Reddit. I didn't even think there were actual people like that until I went on Reddit. I think it's a problem with social media, not veganism.
I'll admit it's possible I've met healthy vegans who I just didn't know they're vegan, it's just that every vegan I HAVE met has fit in those categories.
> Strict Jains do not consume food that has been stored overnight, as it possesses a higher concentration of micro-organisms (for example, bacteria, yeast etc.) as compared to food prepared and consumed the same day.
There is no such thing as a "vegan food", be it figs, honey, or lettuce. What does exist are vegan values, and their end goal is to reduce suffering of sentient beings and to have no part in promoting it by exploiting them or consuming products which do. Arguing whether there is any wasp biomass in figs should be irrelevant to veganism. What should matter is whether wasps are suffering and being exploited because we eat figs. I believe not, but what do I know, I am not a vegan.
A cow spends 18 months in a field living a generally quite nice life. In its last moments there is momentary discomfort as it is knocked unconscious by an explosive bolt to the head. Is this moment of discomfort so intolerable, so ruinous of the animal's prior worth, that it's better if it never existed in the first place? In my opinion, this conclusion is absurd to the point of being weird.
I say this as someone who has personally experienced the sensation of been knocked unconscious by a severe blow to the head; in my case caused by an involuntary backwards fall towards the ground. I did not "suffer" at all until after I woke up with a headache. Had this strike to the head proved fatal, I can't imagine how I could have suffered at all.
There are many aspects of the animal food industry which are cruel and should be made illegal. There are many aspects of the animal food industry which have serious externalities that are bad for human civilisation. But this doesn't make absolutism the moral high ground.
"Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a green salad?"
"I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point sir, which is why it was decided to cut through the whole tangled problem by breeding an animal that actually wanted to be eaten—and was capable of saying so, clearly and distinctly. And here I am."
"Glass of water?"
Cows are impregnated and kept in small fenced areas,l all their lives. Their babies are removed most often right after birth, sometimes a few days later. The calves are separated and kept with other calves, fed a small share of the milk produced by their mothers (or even just from the tank containing all cows' milk. The males are butchered as babies and the females raised for milk production and share the fate of their mothers - dozens of babies, taken away each time right after birth. All of them are fed various kinds of medicine (steroids, antibiotics, etc) to make sure they grow fast and survive, irrespective of whether they suffer.
For slaughter they are usually first stuffed in wagons or trucks and carted hours to whatever abattoir paid the best price. There they are in a long queue where they hear and smell and later see the animals in front of them being killed. The 'shock' is often hit or miss, meaning many are alive when they get the bolt into their skull, others even survive that for a bit. All that just so that you get a cheap burger.
Dozens of the quality labels are just lies: e.g. Grass fed means they got grass, not that they were ever outside. Most animals never see the sky in their lives.
I appreciate that it could be much more humane, but to ignore that the above is the reality today is just willful denial. Advertisements show you beautiful alps or Argentinian meadows, but these are not the reality in which your animal actually lived.
I'm not saying that the entire animal food industry is humane; I would be very happy to see a permanent end to caged egg production, as well as the bullshit ultra-factory "cage free" egg production. There's a lot to be concerned about and we need much better standards across the entire industry. It can be improved. But all too often the descriptions of the animal food industry are just so divorced from reality that one wonders if some vegan activists have ever actually visited a farm.
Not GP, but in the Netherlands we have all that. Tiny country, huge meat exporter. In recent years there is more political attention to change the horrible system, but nitrate emissions on nature, threats for disease are more prominent motives. Animal well-being maybe comes third in that. We have a "Partij voor de Dieren" political party (Party for the Animals) with seats in parliament.
It may not have the "concept" of an abattoir, however it's not entirely uncommon for them to know what's coming when being taken to slaughter [1] (as additional anecdata I knew a chap in Cornwall who was on call for dealing with this exact scenario).
[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/cow-shot-dead-police-a...
But to argue that fig wasps or bees are being exploited is free of reason. You can't till the fields without killing worms, you can't harvest grain without death of rabbits or mice living between the plants (but you CAN reduce pesticides and do less harm to insect life and the environment). You can't even make apple juice without an occasional worm in there. You also can't live in a modern city without exterminators killing mice, rats, pigeons, ducks, cockroaches, etc. You can't maintain a healthy forest without either wolf or man killing some of the deer.
The radials that can't see nuance or reality are not helping anyone.
100% agreement there. I worked in an abbatoir (pigs) for 10 years. It's a horror show for the animals AND the workers.
I am not vegetarian, but I only buy organic and/or free range meat now. I won't touch anything that goes through the industrial killing machine.
The only "vegan propaganda" I recall is displaying slaughter houses and intensive animal farming, which is disgusting and probably will be looked down with shame and disgust later by future generations. "We did that to animals?" will probably be popping in children minds, that are yet to be born.
History will tell.
I for once believe that in places where you buy meat there shouldn't be images of animals grazing in green fields, but actual footage and images of them being fed and slaughtered - at least people will see the real cost of eating so much meat. Maybe people would avoid those places more, and would have more consideration for every time they buy a piece of meat. It worked with tobacco, when images of the damages of smoking were introduced on packs in some countries.
I saw pigs and cows being killed as a kid, it's not fun or entertaining. A pig screeching it's a sound that gets engraved in your mind.
PS: I'm not vegan, but I'm increasingly dropping the amount of meat I eat for the past 5 years.
0,0001% 'holier-than-thou' extra points. Is a race for power in the olympic purity games. "I'm better than you" is the goal. Not more, not less.
Kadota: doesn't need pollinating
Brown Turkey: doesn't need pollinating
Black Mission: doesn't need pollinating
Adriatic: doesn't need pollinating
Calimyrna: must be pollinated by a wasp
So in conclusion it is unlikely that if you pick a random fig from the supermarket that it was pollinated by a wasp.
After all, there are more than 15 varieties of banana but the likelihood of my picking a Cavendish (conditioned on having picked a banana) at my local supermarket is actually a resounding 100%.
EDIT: To responder, the point is that if you have 5 options, it doesn't mean you have 1/5 the chance of each option. Hence the example with the banana.
Why not?
What a strange sentence.
Reverse the two clauses and it reads much more naturally. "funds for the school in exchange for logging rights"
[0]: https://app.visualpedia.igg.cloud/stories/wasp-eating-fig
> *This article has been revised to clarify the fact that not all fig plants require pollination to produce edible fruit.
Which contradicts the Nautilus article:
> Anyone who eats figs is consuming wasp biomass.
Which to believe?
there are exceptions == usually true
> Some types of fig that are grown for human consumption have figs that ripen without pollination. It is also possible to trick plants into ripening figs without wasps by spraying them with plant hormones
Despite all this, I have no plans to alter my fig consumption at this time.
Now, when the wasps emerge from the caprifigs with pollen, they go into the the edible figs and pollinate them, but they cannot lay eggs there due to their morphology. AFAIK they die inside.
That said, most varities, at least here in Portugal, don't require caprification. This list of varieties from Algarve shows few requiring caprification: https://www.drapalgarve.gov.pt/images/destaques/Livro_WEB_Fi...
"2 Ecology of or denoting a plant which is taller than the surrounding vegetation, especially a tall tree in a forest. • of or denoting a water plant with leaves and flowers that appear above the water surface."
Is this tree taller than others nearby?
People in North London, where there is a big Greek/Turkish population, wrap the individual figs on the tree in small plastic bags to protect them from the weather as they grow.