Why aren't figs considered vegan? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#101

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

croisillon wrote: post #24

Grustaf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, producing honey is also very much part of the bee’s natural cycle, as is laying eggs for the hen and unfertilised eggs don’t suffer. Of course commercial animal husbandry causes endless suffering, but most vegans would probably object even to naturally produced honey and eggs. Just saying.

bees and hens don't produce "naturally" food for humans, they have their own use of honey and eggs [addendum to people answering "bees don't produce for bears either" or "plants don't produce food for humans either" : that's a strawman, I merely commented the term "naturally produced honey and eggs"]

[deleted]

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#102

Post by Lio » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #71

Lio wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian but in order to have a female cow produce milk regularly you need to cycle it through pregnancy. So the question is what happens to the calves? Well the females go on to be milk cows but males calves are raised just long enough to be slaughtered. If the male is particularly unlucky it will become a veal calf, which I'm sure you'll agree is not a great life. If the male cow is "lucky"…

Gassing may be one option. Another thigh is simply grinding them alive.

I guess that would depend on where you live. In the UK that would not be legal.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#103

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 3:43 PM UTC

scandinavegan wrote: post #82

dan-robertson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably that there are many people who call themselves vegan despite having different opinions on what they should eat and why, and that those people do not necessarily care about or align with the cure definition from the vegan society. Indeed if I look at the vegan society on Wikipedia, it claims vegan originally meant “non-dairy vegetarian”.

From Wikipedia: "Watson coined the word "vegan" to stand for "non-dairy vegetarians" who also ate no eggs." You shouldn't leave out the egg part. But yes, terms change. I've read early Vegan Society texts where they talk about "fruitarians" as those vegetarians that only eat the fruits produced by animals, i.e. milk, egg, honey. Today a fruitarian is a vegetarian that only eats fruits (and sometimes nuts and seeds) t…

>> There are also different opinions on the term vegetarian. In Sweden, it commonly includes milk and egg, and if you order a vegetarian pizza you get cheese from cow milk.

In My Big Fat Greek Wedding there's a scene were the mother-in-law learns the groom is vegetarian and (after exclaiming embarrassingly loudly) she says she'll cook him lamb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFemw_6a-Tg

The way I understand this is that it says that Greeks think that lamb is vegetarian as in "not really meat". I always found that a little weird, because in Greece lamb is absolutely "meat". Traditionally, you're only supposed to eat it on Easter sunday, or on religious feasts (the "panygiria") so it's really something special, unlike pulses, legumes and fish (which would be eaten much more commonly traditionally). I can imagine a Greek yiayia saying "You're vegetarian? That's OK, I'll cook you chicken!", or adding feta to the salad, etc. But- lamb? I don't quite see that.

Maybe it's a Greek US diaspora thing, but I'm guessing that was translated for the American audience whom the authors considered might be confused by "I'll cook you chicken", because they actually don't consider chicken to be "meat".

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#104

Post by YUMad » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

croisillon wrote: post #24

Grustaf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, producing honey is also very much part of the bee’s natural cycle, as is laying eggs for the hen and unfertilised eggs don’t suffer. Of course commercial animal husbandry causes endless suffering, but most vegans would probably object even to naturally produced honey and eggs. Just saying.

bees and hens don't produce "naturally" food for humans, they have their own use of honey and eggs [addendum to people answering "bees don't produce for bears either" or "plants don't produce food for humans either" : that's a strawman, I merely commented the term "naturally produced honey and eggs"]

Humans don't subsist on vegan diets naturally.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#105

Post by neuralRiot » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

ZeroFries wrote: post #90

scandinavegan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are obviously many different flavors of vegans, each stopping at different points when it comes to what they consider animal suffering. There are vegans with pets, but they might not agree with the idea that all forms of keeping animals is considered suffering. Other vegans won't keep pets, I'm one of them, because I agree completely with the post you commented on and draw the same conclusion as you that it's i…

I'm genuinely curious about this: are vegans who are against animals suffering in any form universal anti-natalists? From my perspective, if you treat a pet well, or even live-stock well, their lives involve much less suffering than their wild-counterparts, who typically die of disease, starvation, or predation. So the only way to make the view consistent IMO is to be against animal life in general.

Why everything has to be black or white? I'm a vegan and i have rescue pets, if an animal is sick i would help it even if it is a wild one, if a predator has to hunt I wouldn't interfere and i respect that, even hunter humans who have no choice are fine to me but impregnating animals and removing their offspring to get it's milk when there's no need for us to consume it, keeping animals in cages where they can't even move, force feed them to enlarge their livers, grow them so fast that they can't even stand up, and a long list of more "treatments" in the name of what? Need? Or just greed? We all know what is bad or good, I don't care of people who eat meat but they don't need to excuse themselves.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#106

Post by dan-robertson » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

scandinavegan wrote: post #82

dan-robertson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably that there are many people who call themselves vegan despite having different opinions on what they should eat and why, and that those people do not necessarily care about or align with the cure definition from the vegan society. Indeed if I look at the vegan society on Wikipedia, it claims vegan originally meant “non-dairy vegetarian”.

From Wikipedia: "Watson coined the word "vegan" to stand for "non-dairy vegetarians" who also ate no eggs." You shouldn't leave out the egg part. But yes, terms change. I've read early Vegan Society texts where they talk about "fruitarians" as those vegetarians that only eat the fruits produced by animals, i.e. milk, egg, honey. Today a fruitarian is a vegetarian that only eats fruits (and sometimes nuts and seeds) t…

> You shouldn't leave out the egg part.

I think this is part of the same definition issue. The sentence I quoted as an example doesn’t make it clear whether or not Watson intended for their choice of not eating eggs to be a personal one or one included in the definition of veganism. Certainly if someone told me they were non-dairy vegetarian I think I wouldn’t assume that they eat eggs (or assume that they definitely don’t eat eggs). I think I would err on the side of non-eggs despite that that would be the sameish as veganism. Perhaps everyone else disagrees with me and the phrase has a clear definition, but otherwise I think it shows that a lot of these terms are not fully defined and different people take them to mean different things when describing themselves.

Rereading the sentence again I think perhaps I parsed it wrong, in which case I agree with you.

Re: Why aren't figs considered vegan?

#107

Post by scandinavegan » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 8:56 AM UTC

ZeroFries wrote: post #90

scandinavegan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are obviously many different flavors of vegans, each stopping at different points when it comes to what they consider animal suffering. There are vegans with pets, but they might not agree with the idea that all forms of keeping animals is considered suffering. Other vegans won't keep pets, I'm one of them, because I agree completely with the post you commented on and draw the same conclusion as you that it's i…

I'm genuinely curious about this: are vegans who are against animals suffering in any form universal anti-natalists? From my perspective, if you treat a pet well, or even live-stock well, their lives involve much less suffering than their wild-counterparts, who typically die of disease, starvation, or predation. So the only way to make the view consistent IMO is to be against animal life in general.

> I'm genuinely curious about this: are vegans who are against animals suffering in any form universal anti-natalists?

When you say "against animals suffering in any form" you make it sound like you mean both in the human-operated animal industry and wild in nature, and also that these vegans would want to prevent wild animals from breaking their legs or something because it induces suffering. I haven't seen vegans argue that we should interfere with nature to limit suffering in that way.

Some vegans are utilitarians (what I've read of Peter Singer comes to mind), and then I guess it comes down to if you think that the benefits of the animal's life outweighs the suffering when considering if they should have been born or not.

Other vegans are into animal rights, where you assign unalienable rights to animals like the right to freedom, but these vegans wouldn't even consider your idea of ending all animal suffering. They would be antinatalist in the sense that being born into captivity and raised just to be slaughtered for meat is wrong, and for that animal it would surely have been better to not have been born at all.

I'm heavy on the animal rights side and extremely suspicious of utilitarianism. I'm sure that hardcore utilitarianism could lead to the bizarre conclusion that you're presenting, but I haven't seen it argued.