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Why aren't figs considered vegan?

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Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#91
post #9
post #7

The article touches on this, but veganism is not about only eating plants - it's actually an ethical decision to avoid anything that harms animals. As such, figs are definitely vegan since the wasp is living its natural lifecycle.

I understand what you mean, but I don't know any vegans who would eat a steak from a cow that had died of old age.

Buddhist monks won't purchase meat for themselves, but will happily accept an omnivorous meal as a gift.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#92
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be like looking for fringe cases of things meat-eaters do (e.g. eating animals while they're still alive, eating dogs and cats) and using that to attack meat-eaters. Don’t worry (or do worry), newspapers will attack veganism, vegetarianism, AND carnivorism (or omnivorism) if they have ways to create inflammatory headlines. That’s not something reserved to only one subset.

Medias treatment of of different subjects is not randomly balanced in the way you assure. Clearly, positions which are more popular with readership require better treatment than less popular ones, and positions which are popular with advertisers have to be treated most respectfully.

> positions which are popular with advertisers have to be treated most respectfully

Datapoint: the meat, fish and diary industries are provably much wealthier and more powerful than alternative food-related industries and they are known to heavily fund "think tanks", lobbying groups, "social media influences", ads.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#93
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you mean, but I don't know any vegans who would eat a steak from a cow that had died of old age.

Buddhist monks won't purchase meat for themselves, but will happily accept an omnivorous meal as a gift.

This is a generalization. In some traditions monks buy meat. In many traditions donors are invited not to donate meat or expensive or decadent food.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#94
post #74
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the vegetarian argument is that while hunting may be natural for a lot of animals, including us, we have the possibility not to do it, so we should. I don’t really agree, but it’s a reasonable stance.

I believe it's a bit more nuanced than that. Most vegans I've spoken to believe that hunting is okay. If you have the callousness of killing a baby dear, then you 'deserve' to eat it. The problem comes from how modern meat is produced - in massive factories which provide just enough conditions for the 'meat' to get produced. Animal wellbeing is nowhere near the list of priorities. Mark my words. Two hundred years fro…

I don't think many hunters kill baby deer, and most hunting tags are for bucks, not does.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#95
post #63
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I highly doubt that there are millions of people who call themselves vegan without having heard of this definition. You can doubt it, but you'd be wrong. At best they'd chanced about some historical background piece that contained the definition. But the huge majority wont tie it to some 19th century "Vegan Society" or know/remember anything about some "original definition". > It's kind of like the term hacker. The…

But the huge majority wont tie it to some 19th century "Vegan Society" or know/remember anything about some "original definition". Do you have any evidence for that claim? All the vegans I know use this definition. Also, the vegan society was started in the 20th century.

>Do you have any evidence for that claim?

No, but you can check it empirically and statistically.

>All the vegans I know use this definition.

Well, I know several people that self-identify as vegan (annoyingly so), who have no idea about the origins and just seen a few videos or read some articles and were convinced to try that diet.

(And of course they don't belong to any society either).

>Also, the vegan society was started in the 20th century.

Yes, confused it with the vegetarian society.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#96
Article is missing some relevant information.

1. Enzymes in the fig digest wasp parts so you don't normally find wasps inside your figs. So they really are vegan.

2. The males are flightless and wouldn't have escaped anyway. The females only escape long enough to go lay their eggs in another fig. So it really isn't that dramatic.

Source: https://www.jerseyshoreonline.com/dear-pharmacist/figs-reall...

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#97
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ethical thing is to halt the husbandry of farmed animals and let the bees die out naturally, so there is no longer a source of honey (except for that delicious beech honeydew, but I don't know if those insects can be farmed). https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1436-honeydew-ecos...

> The ethical thing is to halt the husbandry of farmed animals and let the bees die out naturally What is it that makes the "natural order of things" better? Aside from our fantasies about not being animals, aren't humans part of the natural order, by definition? It seems like a deforested barren world would be more moral under this sort of reasoning?

[deleted]

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#98
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ethical thing is to halt the husbandry of farmed animals and let the bees die out naturally, so there is no longer a source of honey (except for that delicious beech honeydew, but I don't know if those insects can be farmed). https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1436-honeydew-ecos...

> The ethical thing is to halt the husbandry of farmed animals and let the bees die out naturally What is it that makes the "natural order of things" better? Aside from our fantasies about not being animals, aren't humans part of the natural order, by definition? It seems like a deforested barren world would be more moral under this sort of reasoning?

I don't particularly agreed with the parent, but the honey bees in most places in the world are non-native species that are introduced to produce honey and pollinate large fields, orchards, etc. For example in the American Midwest we have European honeybees everywhere, and they displace native pollinators (bumble bees, native butterflies and skips, etc). All told it's not a big deal but I can see an argument for removing them where they aren't native.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#100

I wish people wouldn't generalise that because 1) some people might consider figs non-vegan and 2) this line of reasoning might be weird/stupid, then 3) most vegans must think this therefore veganism is weird/stupid as a whole. How many people that say they are vegan consider figs non-vegan? Are there surveys on this? I'm going to guess most haven't thought about it (figs aren't daily in most places), don't have a st…

Eating dogs and cats doesn't sound tasty, but how does it compare to eating an animal alive?

If it's about not eating intelligent animals- pigs are way smarter than both dogs and cats. Yet meat eaters wouldn't find eating them "fringe" (I don't).

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