>Are you saying you don't eat plants because you feel their pain? My guess is probably not.
You are correct. I am, like we all have evolved to be, omnivorous. I supped on delicious pig parts with potatoes and brussels sprouts last night. The seasonings I used included crushed plant seeds, pressed seed oils, and real butter from someone's cow.
Vegans, like those people who choose to eat meat-heavy diets are making a conscious choice to ignore a specific option from all the available food sources.
Your body has evolved to be able to handle all of it, some of it may be better for your health over the long run but that doesn't mean that you can't eat it. It means that you have chosen not to eat it for philosophical reasons.
I'm not in your head so I don't know why you have chosen to be vegan except that you say that you don't want to cause pain to that part of the biota that we understand has the capacity to experience pain. It appears to be an ethical question for you. Stick to your guns. Live your life.
I wrote the "mock poetry" as you describe it in a tongue-in-cheek way in order to have the reader see life from a different perspective, that of the plants that you would potentially be consuming. I have also followed the literature about plant growth, etc. for many years. I don't have a green thumb so I usually end up feeling sorry for the plants who unwittingly fall into my cart when I'm on my annual garden upgrade adventures. I do what I can to make their growing environment more growth friendly, ultimately so that I can eat the fruits of my, and their, labors.
After catching the NYT article that I linked I was grazing HN posts and found this one and at that point I knew that I had found the perfect article to challenge a vegan's belief system about the ethics of eating something that knew that it was being injured in the process and perhaps felt pain and sent itself into damage control as a result of the attack on its life.
I only needed to find a vegan poster who would make the argument that eating plants is more ethical than eating animals because animals feel it when we hurt them. You came along and my heart skipped with joy, or maybe I have an undiagnosed arrhythmia. I quickly began to type out in my word processor all the things you see gathered in that "mock poetry" part of my posted reply. My mind was flooded with bullshit so I flushed it into that post.
Poetry, like art, is subject to individual interpretation.
I intended to cause the reader, and you, to consider that plants may also be disinclined to accept our established usage of them as a food source. Perhaps they are in fact just resigned to their fates and immediately launch into damage control as soon as a credible threat appears.
If you took my post personally then maybe the lack of collagen in your diet has thinned your skin a bit too much. You should consider adding supplements to your diet to correct that deficiency. Of course the best sources of collagen are animal products. The choice is yours.