I won’t argue for most of the animal-based market but I reject the idea that eggs are inherently unethical. Some of the ways they are produced certainly are (the vast majority even, I assume), but chickens just lay eggs in their day to day life and I don’t think anything is wrong with eating them, though I do acknowledge that finding ethical options is probably more complex than just paying a bit extra for the free range cartons.
I should find a local producer again, then they are usually both cheaper and not factory farmed.
no need to try to argue
Didn’t realize they are the king of what can be argued.
I don’t think they’re correct, but also why care? If anything they’re helping the environment and living the life they want to live. Good for them and more power to them.
Ig the point is they’re ethically correct just from an environmental standpoint. We should all be doing more to reduce emissions, and veganism is one of the easiest ways to do that.
Yeah the vegans are definitely right.
Munches on my cheese
Tldr: my jagged journey to being a shitty vegan started with admitting it was ethically superior and then just trying things for fun/challenge.
That was my attitude basically ever since I seriously thought about the ethics for maybe 10 whole minutes. I mean it’s obvious. But it didn’t impact anything I did until I lived on my own for a while. Then I started by cutting out the obviously reprehensible options like restaurants that support factory farming, cheap machine produced stuff, etc. I’d still eat trash from time to time, but I tried to shop for more ethical sounding options, like free to roam stuff.
Many years later I slowly started cooking vegetarian meals more than anything else, and would joke with my wife "look: totally vegan… Except for all the cheese lol. " 100% vegan meals then became a personal challenge then, so tried to make them good without cheese. Nothing bad happened.
I always said I could never be vegan because of cheese, but then I thought what if I JUST quit cheese and dairy (just obvious sources, but not like if it’s in a piece of toast and I can’t tell). Again nothing bad happened. Actually my vegetarian friends were really supportive and showed me lots of vegan dishes.
I still had eggs every day for breakfast and the occasional fish, like sardines or tuna sandwiches. I didn’t know how I could ever quit my morning eggs, and had even tried a couple times.
Then I saw a vegan thread on lemmy here and just asked someone what they ate for breakfast and they gave me a few ideas and I decided to try yet another tofu scramble and that just did it.
I did feel sluggish for a day or two, and maybe a little bit “off” for a week but not even as bad as a cold. I just stuck with it and ate a bit more to make up for any loss, through in a daily vitamin, and that was just it. And yup, nothing bad happened. The whole time I guess it was just a couple sluggish days away from me.
I said maybe I’d eat meat or dairy just to be easy from time to time, but then Thanksgiving came and went and I really didn’t feel like it. I just brought a lentil patties and ate some sides until I wasn’t hungry anymore. Easy peasy.
But I’m just at the outset. I don’t vethink everything, I just don’t partake in anything that is made with animal products as far as I can tell, and as much as I easily can.
I think I could easily go vegan 5 days a week, but I could never give up my weekend breakfasts with eggs, cheese, and the occasional sausage or bacon. Not to mention the homemade lattes :(
If you do it, you can say you’re still 5/7 days superior, and that’s a perfect score
In the era of awesome spices and sauces and wide ranging produce available year round there is very little reason to eat meat.
But also yummy & convenient
Just eat less meat. You don’t have to go 0-100. Skip the patty, skip the filet. Double up on proteins. Dairy shouldn’t be an end goal but substitute the actual meat for dairy for at least some reduction. Pick the food that is vegan instead of the one using meat stock, etc. Little things here and there. Default to meatless, eat the damn meat if you absolutely have to. Increase this change over time, and make sure to add a vegan B12 supplement. 80% is better than 100%. 60% is better than 80% when you get there. Maybe someday you hit 0%. Achieve perfect through gradual change, don’t shun good if you can’t be perfect.
This is the best advice you can give someone imo. Im like 75% vegan, still have eggs and bacon on the weekends, some chicken with dinner, some other stuff here and there. But mostly its beans/tofu and rice with veggies.
Some people think they have to give up everything all at once right now and of course that seems overwhelming… because it is.
Nah
I’ve had this exact mentality until one day I just stopped eating meat, and generally nothing bad happened to me. It’s not like I miss it, I didn’t lose anything, there’s no sacrifice in my daily life. I just no longer participate in the direct consumption of the product of (still existing and still supported by my work via taxes) the terrible pipeline of infinite suffering, which is something I guess. In the past I’ve also quit smoking and I can tell you dropping animal products from my diet was much easier. So much, it felt underwhelming.
I don’t tend to talk about it, because I know how my “whining” about meat eating would be perceived, especially remembering how I myself loathed anyone who tried to convince me that eating meat might be bad. It’s just such a silly thing to defend and keep doing. Just gobble up those beans, man. They’re delicious. Leave the cow alone. Organize to overthrow the capital class. Marinate your tofu. Don’t be silly. Kill fascists, not the piggies. Come on.
I have a little suffering every now and then as a treat. But I have greatly reduced my intake.
But I like being silly!
Obligatory mention that you don’t need to cut out meat from your life entirely to have a significant impact on your carbon footprint and your health. Going mostly vegetarian is also an option and its basically been the default of humanity since the agricultural revolution.
“But it’s awkward in social settings”, “What if I’m going out to eat”, “What if it’s the only option”, “What if I am trying but don’t realize something has an animal product”
Idk dude then eat meat in those settings I guess. 95% of your food is consumed outside of those settings so just be 95% vegan or vegetarian.
In this economy I’m buying less meat just because it’s so expensive
25lbs of pinto beans and 20 lbs of dry rice is a month of staple meals and costs ~$35 at costco
It’s really beef that is the vast majority of emissions just cutting that out of your diet gets most of the environmental benefits of vegetarian.
And sheep. Cutting dairy is generally a pretty easy swap.
Plants are alive too. Vegans are just plant racists.
Veganism isn’t about not eating what was or is “alive”. It’s about “suffering” (and avoiding it as much as possible).
You can find that fundamental belief in Buddhism or Jainism too. If you think about it, you can probably find it in you. Why would anybody want to make any other sentient body suffer?
Vegan is just not eating stuff from animal, someone’s reasoning for that varies.
Veganism can also be about environmental impact. I’m vegetarian mostly because a meat based diet isn’t sustainable on a global scale. While I’m obviously happy about the reduced suffering, it’s importance is only in second place for me.
Tho maybe veganism is pretty much entirely for reducing animals suffering, I’m only a vegetarian and won’t pretend to know for sure.
It’s a widespread misunderstanding but adopting a plant based diet for some reason other than avoiding the exploitation of animals isn’t veganism. Praying five times a day isn’t Islam unless you’re praying to Allah.
While I’m obviously happy about the reduced suffering, it’s importance is only in second place for me.
that’s confusing. I don’t know how to reply.
why is “environmental impact” concerning you if it’s not for the suffering it causes and will cause?
We are only just beginnig to understand what plants feel. They have hormons they have pain rezeptors they have a basic neural net.
To assume a plant would not suffer is a little outdated.
Even 20 Yeats ago it was already known that plants do feel pain. they inform surrounding plants about pain and they react to it.
ALL organisms can sense and respond to their environments or else they will be easily killed. Bacterial signalling molecules and receptors exist too.
This is very different to the concept of pain or suffering.
Even if we took that as true, directly eating plants still kills fewer plants than feeding them to animals and then eating those animals.
to assume plants are sentient is a charognard propaganda
outdated? pfff… Receptors doesn’t mean “pain rezeptors”. Don’t seed confusion.
i eat vegetarian most of the month but i gotta have a steak at some point
Theyre not? We are apes,apes like of veggies and meat.
Plus, we are one of the most carnivore of the big apes,our guts are adapted to both meat and vegetables, we are not able to decompose celulose.
(I am not vegan)
Apes eat meat. Humans do industrial farming. These things are not the same.
Which can be more ecologic given newer tech and incentives
We are apes,apes like of veggies and meat.
Go tell that to a gorilla. Being a great ape, ‘it’ would punch you to a pulp and go eat some “celulose” (sic). You would rot in vain.
apes can eat also bugs, bugs are animals
we are clearly adopted to live in the savannah yet many would choose a constructed home. curious
And? the thing is that still we can make do, its like implying a modern PC cannot run a NES game.
You have to emulate stuff btw.
giving the most benefit of the doubt to you here.
when the post says “vegans are obviously right”, assuming that to mean that humans are made to not eat meat is a very bad faith interpretation. similar equating can happen when someone says all genders are equal and someone pulls out the sexual dimorphism research to claim they aren’t. there’s missing context of what is being said and what is being interpreted. i dont believe there’s a substantial group of vegans claiming humans are incapable or not ‘evolved’ to eat meat.
i am not debating that humans are apes, most carnivore, or adapted to both meat and vegetables. i don’t agree there, citations needed, but taking it as a mere simplification of facts its fine enough.
there’s complexity to the question of eating meat now that society has reached a point where we no longer need it to sustain ourselves. i am not arguing either way here but an argument there exists and we will need to have an answer to it. just like we didnt evolve to be able to see if our eyes fuck up, but we managed to just have spectacles (and surgery) to fix it. we can adopt to a non-meat diet if that is the answer, whether or not we evolved for it.
i am conflicted on if vegans are right. but i can appreciate that they are at least right on pointing towards the question.
So that by itself is a very good question, but the ability of not consuminy it should not mean the obligation(or prohibition), or even the morals on the wheter of eating or not eating meat.
So thats my argument, we really should not matter that much about what is on the meal of people by itself. Maybe, one day, artificial meat becomes better than normal one and we end up replacing meat, and humannity, accidentally, end up as a vegan species by itself.
The thing is that involving the morally good or wrong about something like food shouldnt be a thing if it can be improved or obsoleted.
I don’t think anyone would deny we are adapted for an omnivorous diet. But we are omnivores rather than obligate carnivores, so meat consumption does remain a choice rather than an imperative. Should our biology dictate our morality?
No, but our morality cant really dictate our biology either.
Then why did my parents pay a doctor to chop off my foreskin?
Should our biology dictate our morality?
Should evolutionary proximity dictate our morality?
We understand animals, because they are closer to us than plants. But plants are also living creatures. The fact is, unless you photosynthesise, every large living being has to consume another to survive.
I think the choice is much more complex than meat vs vegan. I think it comes down to farming practices, particularly industrial farming which min/maxes everything and cuts corners as much as they can get away with to save on cost.
Palm oil is vegan. Yet palm oil farming is the cause of a great deal of habitat and species loss. Palm oil is quietly used in a lot of vegan food.
I’m not sure many vegans would agree that palm oil is vegan it can certainly be part of a plant based diet, which is a large part of being vegan, but really only the beginning.
I do agree however that my major complaint with animal products available today are with modern farming practices more than any kind of egoist notions. It’s crazy to me that you can just walk to the back of any grocery store to the glistering wall of pink sheets and just grab one without any sense of reverence, or thought to what’s required to keep that dreaded wall fed 365 days of the year.
I’d still abstain because I’ve yet to see a farmer, even the good ones, corral or kill their animals in a way that didn’t make me want to riot on the spot.
Imo it’s just too easy to simply abstain.
Crazy it’s like you don’t know one single thing about the vegan viewpoint and are arguing entirely against strawmen
This is a super hot take so bare with me, but the conditions of a lot of vegan food production are also often harmful to the humans that grow the food (I’m talking blood produce) and the growth in popularity of certain superfoods have severely damaged the ecosystems that indigenous populations in the areas where they’re from depended on.
This is not to say being vegan is bad. It’s obviously proven to be better for the environment, and the way that animals are treated is absolutely inhumane.
This is to say however that we should be demanding sustainability in all our food consumption and respect for all living beings. But mostly, it’s to say fuck capitalism.
I’m doing more good as an antinatalist than any vegan
They hated him, for he spoke the truth.
we should be demanding sustainability in all our food consumption and respect for all living beings
Hear hear.
Plants are living beings, also. The fact is, unless you photosynthesise, you likely have to consume another living being to survive.
What nearly everyone can agree on is that industrial farming practices are harmful. Not just to the living things we farm, but also to the consumers, who end up consuming a lesser product that is often contaminated by industrial processes that cut corners to save on cost.
Nah, there are definitely some vegetarian and vegan foods (especially when we’re talking ultraprocessed foods) that are worse for the environment and worse for your health than just plain meat or cheese.
In the UK there’s a sweet maker called Candy Kittens. They make, like, vegan Haribo (only better) that tastes really really nice.
They’ve started making their own vegan peanut M&M’s. Instead of chocolate they use a shit ton of palm oil.
It’s “ethically sourced” palm oil, but that’s still a sour thought after you’ve devoured a whole bag of tasty sweet treats in one sitting. It’s still increasing the market capacity for palm oil, which in turn increases demand to destroy habitats eg orangutans in Indonesia and other SE Asian islands.
TL;DR palm oil is vegan.
Wait isn’t chocolate vegan though? Why substitute chocolate with palm oil?
Surely they meant the sugar in the chocolate, not the cocoa. But they could have been specific.
Genuinely which ones? Everything I can think of is better than meat. Largely because the cows eat a lot of food in the first place with most of it being wasted.
It’s been a good long while since I made my comparisons but i believe Quorn was worse than chicken (but not as bad as beef obviously). In Sweden we also have Anamma which used to be very good, but at some point they removed their classic formulations and suddenly added like 30% sugar to everything (and doubled the price for good measure). Not sure if they’ve walked that back by now, hopefully they have.
Oh you are talking about fake meat stuff, I was thinking of normal ingredients.
By vegan food production you must mean processed fake meat? Not all vegans eat a horrible diet.
If you mean vegan food production as in normal non-meat foods such as vegetables than that’s a while opinion. Unless you are Jain or just want to die, we got to eat something.
Most food production in general kills a lot more than I would like especially vegetable and fruit production. Not much to do on the regard though.
Unless you are Jain or just want to die, we got to eat something.
That’s the thing though, why should plants be more eligible for eating than animals? Both are living. Animals are closer to us, so we can understand them better, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t being just as harmful to plants.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with eating another animal for sustenance. Just the same as there isn’t anything wrong with eating a plant for sustenance. What matters is what we do before we eat them.
Are you stupid? Genuine question, because animals need to eat as well for you to pay someone to murder them. Even going from the assumption that plants suffer too, a plant based diet still causes much fewer plants to die compared to feeding the plants inefficiently to animals to then eat the animals.
Plants cannot think or feel as animals can. Arguing a tomato has the emotions and thought of a dog or pig is just silly.
Killing a pig versus a tomato is not the same thing dawg
as animals can.
As we can. We understand how animals think, because evolutionarily they’re closer to us. We don’t really understand how plants “think” or “feel”, we just decide that because they don’t have what we have that makes it okay.
Just making up whatever you want aren’t you?
“I’m not a plant therefore idk what their nonthinking minds are thinking”
Who is we in your statement? Pretty sure modern botany understands how plants work and interact.
Yes I did mean veg and fruit, but I mean that obviously we need to eat but we need to do it in a sustainable and fair way.
Currently a lot of the produce in Canada & the US is grown by migrant labour where people are treated horribly. In Mexico, many of the agricultural production sites are owned by cartels. Quinoa used to be a primary food source for quechuan (peruvian indigenous) people but when it grew in popularity in the west, it became too expensive for those who depended on it. There are many more examples.
What there is to do about it is to demand better agricultural practices and support fair-trade, co-ops, and sustainable food vendors. In the same way we should be / are demanding cruelty-free and sustainable animal products.
Fully agree. Good point on labor too, I was considering insects and rodents.
I don’t argue about whether or not people should be vegan. I just know that my quality of life would be vastly diminished as I really don’t enjoy most vegan food. If they can nail lab created meat, I’m all for it.
I think you might be shocked how easy it is to eat tasty vegan food, saying you dont enjoy"most vegan food" implies to me that you’ve only had a really limited selection of what’s available. Highly recommend trying ethiopian food.
The issue with that is that cooking is difficult and eating out is expensive.
Ethiopian veggies are great but yebeg wot is on a different level.
There’s tasty vegan food for sure hut there’s usually a slightly tastier horrifically unethical alternative.
I agree with op, I think vegans are right, I basically support them but ain’t converting. Realizing they were right on food made me a lot less angry that other people don’t feel the same way I do about sweatshop clothes and they, like me are doing their best. Some prioritise animals in tortorous conditions, others prioritise kids in poor ones, others look after drug addled first worlders, everyone’s got their own moral priorities.
I very much doubt it would be unless you’re already artificially limiting what you’re eating
I mean, depending on where you’re from, you can already get most meat products in a convincing non-lab alternative, at least from what I hear from colleagues. (I don’t have an opinion on this, because I don’t like meat. 🫠)
That is definitely not the case. Most meat alternatives are still pretty awful
Are you from the US?
Non-vegans should support vegans, even if they continue to eat meat, because vegans drive better treatment of animals and also drive more attractive non-animal food options.
However, a person must have a brain and also not have meat eating tied to their masculinity.
My meat eating isn’t even close to being tied to my masculinity. I hardly even care how myself and others perceive my masculinity.
My meat eating is nearly entirely tied to my enjoyment of the taste of meat.
Keep telling yourself that bro
As a cis dude who wears skirts, pink ball caps, and like dick as much as pussy… Please tell me how much my perceived masculinity matters to me.
Just because someone likes feminine stuff doesn’t mean they can’t also be attached to masculine aspects of themselves.
Non-vegans should support vegans
What really drives me mad is that there’s a dead simple solution - lab-grown meat - that can obviously be the best of both worlds with a bit more development (and in fact is being commercialized already), but is being lobbied against by the meat industry precisely because it’ll be cheaper and better. And nobody seems to be talking about it.
Ecofeminism has a lot to say about meat/masculinity/fascism.
Yeah, you can’t say the conditions we’re subjecting livestock to is “good”. You don’t give up your rights to eat bbq if you admit it.
Lower demand for animal products lowers prices for others.
People don’t wanna by hypocrites as if that can ever be truly avoided
