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A Vegan No More

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Re: A Vegan No More

#151

Post by anthonyb »

lox wrote: post #126
anthonyb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in Australia, you can also get kangaroo in most supermarkets. They're taken from the wild and killed with a high-powered rifle shot to the head (plus they're a native animal == less enivronmental damage) so they're about as guilt-free as you can get and still be eating meat.

I was under the impression that they are farmed now, although they are much friendlier to the environment per-head than cattle are.

Kind of hard to farm them, since they can jump fences pretty easily, plus you have to compete with hunters:

http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/RJ9830035.htm

Re: A Vegan No More

#152

Post by davidj »

manish wrote: post #94

I simply can't understand why eating meat is wrong, when eating plant is not wrong. I feel they are same.

Yes, I've always said when you eat fruits and nuts, you are eating the plants babies. Why all the hatred towards plants ..

Re: A Vegan No More

#153

Post by ckuehne »

abeppu wrote: post #145
_3u10 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be downvoted into oblivion for saying this but there are lots of ways that the average vegetarian or vegan every day supports killing animals for their own personal benefit. Animals are killed every day so that we can live a better life. It's not a big deal. Get over it or get off the grid. I hope you don't drive on roads, or use anything produced by the petrochemical industry. Hell, somewhere between your compu…

If I'm following, your reasoning is that because (a) it's effectively impossible to live in the modern world without benefiting from the deaths of animals that (b) any attempt to limit the number of animals we kill to support our daily lives, or the kind of animals, or how they lived or died, must be pointless. I find that jump from (a) to (b) is unfounded. There's a qualitative difference between (i) a mouse killed…

Not arguing for or against it because the whole thing seems way too muddled for me.

But have you ever considered that the difference between your arguments (i) to (v) (with exception of (iii) maybe) is the intention of the humans involved not the suffering or the dead of the respective animals? This kind of moral reasoning is human and can be seen in other areas as well. For example, we care a lot more about the comparably "few" deaths caused by terrorism vs. the many caused by traffic, because presumably in the former there is intention of bad guys involved whereas in the latter its merely bad circumstances and chance. The result is the same: an animal or a human is killed. However, the moral reasoning is different. Just saying ...

Re: A Vegan No More

#154

Post by jules »

> As a feminist, this body-hating rhetoric infuriated me. The willing participation in the denial and degradation of my bodily needs smacked of misogyny, patriarchal control and violence against the female body, and everything that I fight against.

Huh? So somebody who willingly does not eat animal products despite the health issues is misogynistic? What does this have to do with sexes?

> I refuse to play the game that so many women (vegan or not) are forced to play by our violently woman hating society; I will never feel shame or guilt for eating what my body wants and needs to be healthy.

It seems like veganism is not her only problem...

Re: A Vegan No More

#155

Post by alextp »

mmaunder wrote: post #37

I eat meat, I fish and I've hunted. My wife has been a vegetarian for 20 years, since age 19. By vegetarian I mean she eats eggs and drinks milk, but doesn't eat meat of any kind. It's outright weird how the author swings from one extreme to the other, both emotionally and nutritionally. Why not try adding eggs, milk, cheese and full-cream yoghurt to your diet first? Or even add shellfish or chicken once or twice a w…

Agreed. This was a really creepy read precisely because of her black-and-white perspective, and the overemphasized near-religious importance her past self put on not eating meat (to the point of considering eating only bad meat, as if pleasure itself is evil or immoral).

I think a hidden problem that was not mentioned enough in this thread is that vegetarianism for many people (the author included) became a clear derivative of christianism (she herself ate vegan as a way to both free herself and the planet for our sins as humans).

Re: A Vegan No More

#156

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

abeppu wrote: post #150
fleitz wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding producing oil from livestock, you'll want to look into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization I believe that ConAgra has a plant for doing this to left over bits of turkey. More to the point as far as we know oil deposits are created by thermal depolymerization of plants and animals on geologic timescales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation Therefor anything produced from petrol…

I think you're attacking a straw man who you want to represent all vegetarians and vegans. Different people make the choice to give up meat for different reasons, they define veganism and vegetarianism with differing boundaries, and they practice with various levels of consistency. There's no one vegan or vegetarian moral code for you to find hypocritical, or one set of goals that vegans and vegetarians are all tryin…

Indeed. It's an attempt to make things black and white when they're grey.

In the same way you could argue that unless you become completely carbon neutral any attempt to minimise your carbon output is pointless, or indeed if you can't stop all crime, why bother trying and stop any.

Most vegetarians aren't hypocritical because they don't claim perfection, they just claim to be doing more in this one regard than the average and in that respect they're normally correct.

Re: A Vegan No More

#157

Post by Egregore »

dasil003 wrote: post #13

I'm all for radicalism since radicals are the main force questioning conventional wisdom. But the size of the vegan movement is totally out of proportion to its veracity. Take the whole "meat is murder" slogan. It's ridiculous from the outset and completely ignores our existence within the earth's ecosystem. I mean industrialized animal farming is fairly horrific, but the way to stop that is by advocating and paying…

Actually veganism is about ethics, if you can survive without causing suffering, why would you need to cause that suffering, for pleasure?

Re: A Vegan No More

#158

Post by alecco » 

  When the doctor first told me that I had numerous vitamin and mineral
  deficiencies, that I was almost anemic, and my B12 was so low she
  wanted to give me an injection immediately, I refused to believe her.
That's poor diet. Vegan or not. B12 is made by bacteria (not animals or plants) and industrial meat is full of it because we feed livestock with putrified waste foods while industrialized vegetables are unnaturally clean with chemicals. Organic vegetables have enough B12.

Also modern diet has anti-nutrients preventing absorption (like coffee and iron.)

The broad generalizations from reactionaries like political vegans and their anti-vegan counterparts disgust me. Both groups are completely uninformed and stubborn. For them it's about confirmation bias and group think.

Re: A Vegan No More

#159

Post by alecco »

pyre wrote: post #75
ced wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the size of the vegan movement is totally out of proportion to its veracity. That's a weird statement. When is "movement size" ever a good indicator of truth? Anyway, veganism is not about "veracity", it's about a different set of moral beliefs, or a particular diet, or... You speak of vegans as if it was a monolithic group, and you paint it with a negative brush because of a few crazy individuals. That's like di…

> Really? All of the vegans I know care a lot > about eating a balanced and healthy diet (at > least, more than the average non-vegan). Not necessarily. I know a number of vegans that don't necessarily eat that healthy. The thing that irks me is when vegans proclaim that the 'vegan diet' will make everyone healthier, cure obesity, etc. There are plenty of unhealthy foods that are perfectly vegan. I say this as a vega…

"Plant based whole foods" is the way.

Re: A Vegan No More

#160

Post by Egregore »

huhtenberg wrote: post #88
cjbprime wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't really call those arguments. They assume that animals can suffer without giving an argument that animals can suffer. Whether animals can suffer is the core issue which should be addressed, and is not addressed by these statements. No, you're decades out of date. It is established fact, on all sides of the animal rights argument, that animals suffer and feel pain. I'd be shocked if you could find a single…

Wait till they discover Plant and Fungus Suffering. That should make things plenty more interesting :)

Plants and fungus don't have nervous system, so there are no scientifically demonstrable ways how they will use ability to suffer. Animals can move and suffering helps them find better conditions, for example if there is to hot an animal will seek another place, if something causes suffering animals will try to avoid it, plants on the other hand can't move and can't avoid suffering so plants don't need to feel suffering.
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