How to Make Vegan Butter

That wouldn't surprise me, and I do frequently add vinegar to my almond milk when baking to make it more like a buttermilk, even if the recipe doesn't call for it. The additional acidity when adding vinegar to a recipe that uses baking soda or baking powder can replace some of the effect of using sour cream (a very common "secret ingredient" in non-vegan chocolate cakes), which provides more leavening. It probably also alters the flavor in some way, though there are so many other competing and strong flavors, and the vinegar is such a small amount, that it probably doesn't do too much.

I don't think I've used vinegar in my chocolate cake attempts, however, so it's probably something I'll try next time.

See my other reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9129468

Wikipedia is estimated to be the sixth most-visited web site in the world, and is the only site in the top that is commonly referred to by the word "wiki".

You are free to complain about or dislike that, and to want people to broaden their horizons if they think of it as the wiki or as the default thing that "wiki" refers to, but you are not free to claim that most people, when they say "wiki" as a shorthand for a site, actually mean some other site, or that some other site which could be called "wiki" is more likely to be meant.

> Assuming that someone goes on a vegan diet and ends up unhealthy because of it is a bit much.

There are a number of people that tout themselves as ex-vegans because they went vegan, (probably) didn't eat a well-balanced enough diet, went to their doctor (who said "LOL just eat meat silly!"), got better, and then become staunch anti-vegans.

I think this happens because people try to just cut out non-vegan things from their current diet, and think that their work is done.

You would need to have an increasing level of soy consumption in Japan for that to make sense as a suggested causal relationship.

Simply "they eat a lot of soy" and "their birth rate is declining" doesn't imply any kind of causation, if they were eating the same amount before it started declining.

These topics are subtle and the current fashions among some social classes in some regions of the world cannot be considered as something more than mere fashions.

For example, that "obvious and easily observable health benefits of being vegan" are related to the avoidance of processed foods and heavily unbalanced diet, rather than avoidance of "animal flesh" or dairy products themselves. This is just the confirmation bias and similar factors at play.

Those, who have studied human physiology, not just cellular metabolism, which is also important, could tell that the problem is too complex to be dealt with by silly slogans like "avoid red meat". There are many subtle ratios involved, not just an ability of a particular enzymes to convert a particular molecular structure into molecules involved in the metabolism and support of the homeostasis, but the ratios among these processes. The balance is what is important. In other words, "substituting the protein sources", is not that simple as it seems.

There is no scientifically proven reasons to avoid dairy products, except for individual cases of lactose intolerance, while there is a consensus that the food industry is the cause of the problem to which veganism seemed to be a solution.

Tribal eating habits is a quite interesting topic, btw.

As for birth control, this is quite another topic, which, perhaps, cannot be discussed in this context. For some members of so-called "urban-middle-class" in some region of the world the policies of forced birth control are acceptable, while in other societies there are quite different reasons about how many children should a family have and why. And, of course, it is not for some "vegans" to decide what other people in other regions of the world should do.

Beef is not essential. Milk is.