dreamer042 said:
Anything that gets people thinking about the impact of their dietary choices is ultimately a good thing and a step in the right direction toward truly ethical eating. When one first becomes aware of the atrocities of industrialized meat and dairy production, going veg is the obvious solution, sprinkle in a bit of PETA propaganda at just that right moment and the vegan brand of extremism seems the only moral and sensible reaction to the realities of the ongoing torture and genocide.
I agree with you dreamer, that thinking about dietary choices is a step in the right direction towards ethical eating. I think PETA has had a major impact on shifting people away from animal products, but it also has a lot of room for improvement. I also think that majority of true propaganda comes from meat, dairy and poultry industries - we've all seen images of happy cows and pigs on fields basking in the sun.
I don't view the vegan movement as extreme, but rather as assertive. And I think it's only as assertive (or extreme if you prefer) as people who've been involved in any kind of social justice movement in the past (like racism, chauvinism, heterosexism, etc.)
dreamer042 said:
Unfortunately, once people make the choice to go vegan, they tend to fall into a trap of self-righteousness and abandon critical thinking. Anything that adheres to the “is it vegan” policy is instantly healthy, moral, and sensible with no need for any further investigation.
That seems to me to be an overgeneralization of an entire group of people. Some of the most humble people I've ever met in my life were vegan. When I was eating meat, I myself got in heated debates with vegans and would often tease fellow vegan friends - I just couldn't understand their viewpoint. But throughout it all, many vegan people I knew weren't offended by this and continued to remain humble and friendly to me. This made me have massive respect for these people.
dreamer042 said:
Following the money quickly destroys the myth of ethical choice at the grocer and reveals yet another marked-up niche market for the conglomerates to exploit.
For me, this is a lesser concern than the suffering and death of innocent animals. If McDonalds wants to turn itself into a vegan joint (they're introducing McVegan in Finland), I have no problem with this - what matters is only the net positive/negative ratio on our society as a whole.
dreamer042 said:
The ability to maintain a vegan diet is entirely rooted in industrial culture and the disconnect we experience from the realities of food production. It’s easy to take the ability to eat plants based products all the year round for granted when we aren’t dependent on what we can raise in our garden and catch in the forest to sustain our families through the the winter. Without stocked produce sections and synthetic and imported nutrition pills, the fallacy of a vegan society quickly becomes evident.
I agree that veganism is only truly possible in today's day and age. There have been vegans throughout history, but it is possible for veganism to become a global movement because of the choices made possible to us today.
But could you clarify what "fallacy of the vegan society" you are referring to? I don't see any fallacy here. The philosophy is rather simple - minimize harm to innocent beings as much as possible to the best of your ability.
dreamer042 said:
As good as we’ve got it, we have to recognize that it’s not a sustainable model, and sooner or later this artificial bounty is going to come to an end. This is where making sustainable choices here and now comes into play. Those places with active gardens and strong local food movements aren’t so dependent on precarious supply networks predicated on cheap oil and political benevolence. By lessening the petroleum input in our diets and easing up our dependency on big ag now, we can help to ensure a more resilient local food economy well into the future. Backyard chickens will continue laying eggs whether the semis have fuel to get those “certified vegan” supplements to your doorstep or not.
Yes, I think sustainability can be improved, and as pointed out in the discussion with endlessness earlier, I agree that locally grown plant-based foods are the most sustainable. So anyone growing their own food in a garden is doing an amazing job at taking personal responsibility.
If someone uses eggs from their own backyard chickens (And takes good care of the chickens, and doesn't kill the chickens for food), then there is no ethical dilemma there - that's all good in my view.
I've heard your views from an environmental perspective Dreamer and I wonder what's your position on the ethical dimension of the issue (i.e. of killing animals for food in today's day and age when we have healthy alternatives)..?
Jagube said:
Veganism has never been as viable as it is in the 21st century thanks to the advanced technology, science, genetic engineering etc. But hey maybe that's the way of the future. Maybe one day we'll be bio-cyborgs with chlorophyll injected into our skin to make our own food from sunlight and veganism will be out of fashion for being unsustainable.
Yes veganism has never been as viable as it is today - yay! :d It's first about minimizing harm to sentient living beings, and then about sustainability. I believe minimizing harm to living beings takes priority here over sustainability, because the whole point of a sustainable planet is to serve the living beings on it.
Jagube said:
BTW those statistics that say "going vegan reduces this or that by X%" don't mean anything unless they come with qualifiers stating *how* the vegan / non-vegan food must be grown for the numbers to apply, because the "how" makes all the difference.
I think even if the "how" is not explicitly stated, it is still is a powerful statistic. Allow me to mention it here for you:
The land needed to feed one person for 1 year is 0.17 acres for a vegan; and 3 acres for an average meat eater. That means it requires 18 times more land to grow food for a meat-eater than it does to grow food for a vegan person.
Whether the "how" is explicitly stated or not, it is still noteworthy statistic, because you can be assured that the average meat-eater simply cannot have a lesser environmental impact than a vegan.
TheAwakening said:
I too respect people who consciously choose their food as opposed to eat what the dominant culture feeds them. I think veganism is a reasonable reaction to mainstream factory farming but I do think it's equally as extreme. I was vegetarian for 2 years, trying only to eat as local as I could possibly do. I eventually, though losing some extra weight, started to just not feel right, blood test was fine. When I felt into my body the message was clear, I needed meat again.
I think it's great that you tried to eat as locally as possible and be mindful of your environmental impact on the world. I wonder if your craving for meat was psychological? I say this because medical science is heavily balanced in favor of plant-based diet. Meat, dairy and poultry (wild caught or not) are associated with a wide range of health problems (see my response to your comment regarding Inuits).
TheAwakening said:
These days I still eat a mostly plant based diet, meat maybe once every month or two. I have the most interest in meat I can hunt myself. I think that this is the honorable way to eat meat.
I think you're having a positive impact on the world by opting for plant-based diet. But I must pose some questions from an ethical standpoint in response to hunting.
What exactly makes hunting honorable?
What is honorable about killing an innocent animal when healthy food alternatives are available?
TheAwakening said:
When I say I would rather hunt my own meat I have been attacked especially that I want to do it with a bow. Even though it only requires a single small tree to be chopped down and a few stalks from a local plant, some stone to make some decent arrows and some feathers from a chicken. As opposed to a gun which requires mining and all the ecological damage that comes from the practice, plastic and often other damaging environmental chemicals.
You're considering the environmental component which is good, but what about the ethical component? Comparing which way to kill is better - bow or a gun - is not the right way to look at the matter, because killing is killing. Why not introduce a third option - let's not kill at all and eat plant-based..?
TheAwakening said:
I echo the sentiments shared that all life is sentient and the only reason animals get a special treatment is because they express themselves in ways we can more easily recognise. Ultimately I view this as sort of like 'specism' that vegans have spoken to me about before, we only recognise intelligence and suffering when it is similar to one species, that of humans. Take an ecosystems perspective and plants, fungi, bacteria are no less and basically are more important to a functioning eco-system than animals. Though you will find no eco-system in the biosphere without animals and since we should imitate nature/ecosystems in our food production animals should be included in them.
I agree completely that all life is sentient and that it is only a matter of culture that only some animals get some treatment - this is in fact "speciesism." To clarify for those who may not have heard of this term before, "speciesism" is a term analogous to racism, sexism (and other -isms) and is the belief that humans are superior to all other life forms (and thus are entitled to dominion over all other life forms).
From what medical science understands so far, bacteria, fungi and plants have no nervous system and are therefore incapable of feeling any pain. Therefore this doesn't justify our use of animals. Also, even if we were to assume that plants do feel pain, let's keep in mind that it takes 18 times more land to grow the food for an average meat-eater. That means that more plants were grown to feed the livestock than would be required to feed the human. Inevitably, the ratio of bacteria and so on would also be greater in the production of food for a meat-eater.
The whole point of the "circle of life" and "natural ecosystem" is survival. The fact is that in today's world, we don't need animal products for survival - rather, we do it for taste and convenience.
TheAwakening said:
It is a myth that hunter-gatherers expect to live shorter lives [1]. This data comes from the fact they have higher child mortality rates if they get past that stage they enjoy similar lifespans to the rest of us. With the very little cancer rates ever reported in hunter-gatherer societies surely this is less than vegans and meat eaters (which is 50% less likely from what I can tell) [2,3]. So is the issue really with the meat or something else?
...Also regarding Eskimos and Innuits - try and live in their climate only eating a local plant-based diet, it's impossible.
The main reason that Eskimos didn't eat plants is because of the lowered supply in the winters. There is hard evidence that Greenland Eskimos (Inuits) suffered from heart diseases and had shorter life spans. Take a look at
this video that compiles many research studies on this very topic. Also you can read these studies if you'd like (click on the Sources tab on the page I linked). Also in regards to Maasai people (who primarily ate meat and dairy) and in regards to further information about Inuits, please also
read this - it is a very well-cited paper.
TheAwakening said:
I have ultimately found that in the discussions I have had with vegans one key difference is how we see the future. Most of them see a future as a progression from where we are now where as I see the future society bringing some of the modern comforts but returning to something also similar to how we have lived in the past.
I echo your nostalgia for the past - we all love sharing stories with good friends around the bonfire. But for me personally, it wouldn't be at the expense of a life unnecessarily taken.
TheAwakening said:
I know that if everyone foraged and hunted we'd wipe the planet because the fact is there are too many humans on this planet, thats another difference I've found a number of vegans have an idea that the Earth can support this amount of people on a plant based diet. While I am here and able though I am going to live as I have evolved to, within the limits of my ability. Evolution psychologically can happen in an instant but you cannot defeat physical evolution overnight rather hundreds of thousands of years.
Well, speaking of physical evolution, our bodies are at their healthiest on a plant-based diet (which medical literature confirms). There is also very strong evidence to suggest that human physiology is designed for plant-based foods (although this hasn't been concretely proven yet).
For instance, all omnivores retain their carnivorous physiology to a large degree. This means that all true omnivores have sharp teeth and claws. Here is a list of true omnivores that all meet this criteria: Bears, Sloths, Foxes, Coyotes, Raccoons, Squirrels, Skunks, Opossums, Hedgehog, Badger, Rat, Mouse, Chipmunk, Coatis, and Civet.
Find me an exception to this - I've tried and I couldn't find any omnivore that didn't have sharp teeth and claws. By the way, apes like chimpanzees and bonobos are often mis-categorized as omnivores. They aren't true omnivores, but rather frugivores. As our closest cousins, chimps and bonobos share about 98.5% of their DNA with us. They eat a diet of 97% plants and 2-3% insects/worms.
TheAwakening said:
I found these studies to be very interesting. The third study you linked confirms the reduced cancer risk associated with a meat-free diet.
The cross-examination of the hunter-gatherer people was also interesting. It showed me that their lifespans were longer than I originally thought. But since this study doesn't directly examine the role of meat and dairy, I am led to believe that the hunter-gatherer tribes were very physically active and also ate a lot of healthy plant foods which countered the effects of meat and dairy consumption - I say this because of the current medical literature on this subject. The paper you linked also says that meat wasn't always available to these tribes, therefore, I think that this paper is interesting, but doesn't prove that meat/dairy is healthy in any way. But thanks for sharing that!
dragonrider said:
For this reason, i think a vegetarian is a little more sustainable than a vegan diet. It allows you to be a little more flexible and not to rely on expensive supplements and such.
Dragonrider, some questions:
1) Which do you think takes priority? Lives of living beings or environmental sustainability? Though they both often go hand in hand, I'm curious about which do you think is more important.
2) Is the life of an animal more important or personal convenience?
dragonrider said:
There are vegetarian cheeses btw, that taste just as good as 'normal' cheese. I don't know why they still use renet from animals (mostly goats, i believe) because it tastes just the same.
And vegan cheeses! Allow me to open a portal into a new dimension here.
These are the top of the line products - give em a try - you can get them on Amazon
dragonrider said:
Veganism is probably going to be much more sustainable in the future because all over the world, people are experimenting with alternative sources of fatty acids and vitamin b12, like algea, fungi, and bacteria, etc.
Yes it's a very strong and growing movement and I agree this will be the case in the near future
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