I have a question for vegans.

[John the Gamer]

(...)A simpler way to state this is, "if something died, not eating it."(...)

So you only eat rocks? Since "if something died, not eating it" kind of means you can't eat anything that was once part of a living being, including everything we can use as nutrients.

Did you know that about a billion of the atoms forming your very own body once belonged to someone like Mozart or Buddha?

Yes... Saying you won't eat anything that required something to die is a pretty poor choice of words. (Or you have a very selective definition of death.)

I can't believe however, that the first thing anyone jumped to as a counter-example was bacteria...

I mean, what about plants?

Did you know a lot of the plant material humans eat could technically still be considered to be alive when we eat it?

Just as well plants don't have feelings right? I mean, how many would eat an animal while it's still alive? Sounds a lot more cruel than killing it, then eating it...

Yeah, I prefer my salads live and kicking. Tastes a lot better when they struggle a bit...

Meat tends to be killed completely first, because raw meat tends to contain lots of delicious deseases.

 

[Souplex]

I too have a question for vegans.
Since the definition of vegan is that you don't eat animal products, does that make cannibalism vegan?

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Personally, I think veganism is hypocritical, considering how many day to day products uses resources from animals.

Computers, vehicle tires, fabric softeners etc. It would be pretty damn difficult to live a modern life that doesn't include using something made with animal parts.

Very difficult, but still hypocritical.

This informative chart may help!

As far as I can see, the only way to be truly vegan is to become some kind of nudist cave-dwelling vagrant, eating only berries and roots and generally avoiding all contact with the civilised world.

That chart is actually kinda fuckin' mindblowing. I'm sure someone somewhere has hit that vegan singularity where they use absolutely no animal products, but I'm pretty sure that kind of neurosis would literally classify medically as a psychological disorder.

 

[TehCookie]

As a vegetarian, I don't eat eggs or fish purely out of distaste.
On another note, don't trick long-time vegans into eating beef. It could lead to severe illness due to digestive problems.

Isn't that just as bad as talking someone into going vegetarian then? I eat a diet of mostly meat and junkfood so if I switch to fresh greens I can't digest it.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Well, eating eggs would be the same to vegans as an abortion but i don't see a problem with drinking milk.

I would suggest most supermarket eggs are more akin to periods than abortions as very, very few of them will be fertilised (if any at all). It's only when you buy eggs from independent shops or farms that you run any great risk of eating an unborn baby chicken.

Just... Just stop. I'm trying to eat a scrambled period right now...

 

[In Search of Username]

I can understand not using animal products for religious, environmental and cruelty reasons. However the one thing I don't get is this: What if you kept chickens and treated them right, fed them and made them free range etc. Could you then collect, and use the eggs knowing that you had not abused the chickens into laying them?

If you had animals, and treated them without abuse or hormones could you then harvest their products? Milk for example comes naturally to cows.

I am not looking to flame or troll, so please don't any of you.

I think this is something some vegetarians/vegans do instead of simply boycotting meat entirely; making a positive impact on the industry rather than just staying out of it. I'm guessing the reason most don't is the amount of effort it takes compared to just avoiding meat.

I too have a question for vegans.
Since the definition of vegan is that you don't eat animal products, does that make cannibalism vegan?

Humans are animals. Though I guess there are some extreme vegans who prioritise animal welfare over human rights so I guess maybe they'd be cool with that?

 

[Something Amyss]

Edit: And it's funny that you think the "global warming" -> "climate change" terminology shift is propaganda. It is. Right-wing propaganda. The term "climate change" was invented by a GOP strategist named Frank Luntz at the behest of the Bush II administration to make global warming sound less severe than it actually is, and the term eventually caught on in general usage.

To be fair, it's a better term anyway. It's a better term for the millions of people who don't understand that snow today doesn't mean that it's not getting warmer. And since it sounds more like the radial shifts we get, it works there, too.

But yes, the propaganda complaint IS kind of funny how it works.

 

[bananafishtoday]

Edit: And it's funny that you think the "global warming" -> "climate change" terminology shift is propaganda. It is. Right-wing propaganda. The term "climate change" was invented by a GOP strategist named Frank Luntz at the behest of the Bush II administration to make global warming sound less severe than it actually is, and the term eventually caught on in general usage.

To be fair, it's a better term anyway. It's a better term for the millions of people who don't understand that snow today doesn't mean that it's not getting warmer. And since it sounds more like the radial shifts we get, it works there, too.

But yes, the propaganda complaint IS kind of funny how it works.

While you're right that "climate change" is more descriptive, the problem is that it's also more... passive and nebulous. Global warming sounds like a distinct thing that can be measured and adjusted. Like, "Planet's getting warmer faster. Do stuff to make it get warmer slower or not get warmer at all." Climate change sounds really murky and suggests it's just... kinda happening. You can measure warmth; you can't measure change.

I dunno if I'm describing myself well enough, but I view it like calling a mass extinction "species modulation," or calling an earthquake "tectonic repose."

Now, if I were in charge of the propaganda machine, I'd go with "climate disruption." That's what I call a loaded phrase: the climate has fallen into a state of disarray, and all we need to do is fix it so it's normal again!

 

[lechat]

i once spent 3 months on a zero carb diet so i will somewhat sympathize with vegetarians at least to the point that every now and again it's ok to eat a bit of lettuce....

 

[cookyt]

Meat is an incredibly inefficent way to feed a population. If I remember from ecology you generally transfer approximately 10% of energy between tropic levels. So if you go from Plant --> Cow --> Person, you are losing 99% of the energy the plant had made from the sun. If you consider the economic and environmental consequences of 9 billion people moving to a meat centered diet, suddenly the carrying capacity of the world is a lot smaller. So you can be vegetarian or vegan morally by justifying yourself with physics!

But plant life stores most of its energy in the form of cellulose sugars which cannot be broken down by the human consumption anyway. Cows and other farm animals have specialized digestive tracks and symbiotic bacteria which allow them to convert the energy in plants into meat which is then easily consumable by humans.

I'm not sure what the precise ratio is, but by switching to eating only plants, I doubt you would see a significant energy intake. I would even surmise that you would see a decrease in energy intake. When you take into account the fact that other necessary components for a healthy body (such as protein) are not as readily available in plant life, you see that the energy conservation argument doesn't really hold water. Also, it is more difficult to be a vegan than to subsist on a diet which includes meat.

 

[CrystalShadow]

(...)A simpler way to state this is, "if something died, not eating it."(...)

So you only eat rocks? Since "if something died, not eating it" kind of means you can't eat anything that was once part of a living being, including everything we can use as nutrients.

Did you know that about a billion of the atoms forming your very own body once belonged to someone like Mozart or Buddha?

Yes... Saying you won't eat anything that required something to die is a pretty poor choice of words. (Or you have a very selective definition of death.)

I can't believe however, that the first thing anyone jumped to as a counter-example was bacteria...

I mean, what about plants?

Did you know a lot of the plant material humans eat could technically still be considered to be alive when we eat it?

Just as well plants don't have feelings right? I mean, how many would eat an animal while it's still alive? Sounds a lot more cruel than killing it, then eating it...

Yeah, I prefer my salads live and kicking. Tastes a lot better when they struggle a bit...

Meat tends to be killed completely first, because raw meat tends to contain lots of delicious deseases.

True. Although humans must have a pretty low tolerance for disease considering most of the meat-eating animals on the planet eat theirs raw.

I've certainly fed my cat raw meat often enough without it having any obvious ill effects.

Also the few groups of people that eat any kind of insects often eat them alive...

(Being serious for a moment, cooked meat is a lot easier to digest. Disease isn't necessarily the primary reason humans don't eat raw meat.)

 

[Something Amyss]

While you're right that "climate change" is more descriptive, the problem is that it's also more... passive and nebulous. Global warming sounds like a distinct thing that can be measured and adjusted. Like, "Planet's getting warmer faster. Do stuff to make it get warmer slower or not get warmer at all." Climate change sounds really murky and suggests it's just... kinda happening. You can measure warmth; you can't measure change.

Yes, that's true, but consider we were already berating, belittling, and doing nothing proactive as a culture anyway.

If the sense of urgency of Global Warming had led to any strong movement, I might be put off by the downgrade in terms.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Besides, it's about time for another ice age, I'm getting fed up with this sunshine/rain binarity of it all.

Wait what

We're moving out of ice age

 

[Winthrop]

I have a question for Vegans (or other who may know):

How does fertilizer impact your diet? Do you refuse to eat any plants with animal product fertilizers (Manure, blood meal, bone meal etc.)? Does the environmental impact of the farm impact which brand of vegetables you buy (Runoff from fertilizers destroying aquatic ecosystems, the farm had a forest cleared for land)?

How do you feel about synthetic meats? They are not around in any appreciable quantity, but i suspect in the next 20 years they will become fairly common.

 

[Coffeejack]

This seems to be one of those things that makes less and less sense the more you think about it. So much arbitrary picking and choosing involved, it reminds me of my Catholic days.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I'm not a vegetarian or vegan myself, but I used to date a vegetarian girl with vegan parents. From what I understood, they just don't view animals as a food source, the idea is weird to them (as well as the cruelty bit). It's like if you suggested eating cats to most people, they would recoil in horror, because to them cats are fluffy, friendly companions rather than dinner.

 

[maninahat]

I'm not a vegan but I was a vegetarian at one point. I'm sure there might be some vegans who would accept some forms of meat and dairy produce, if it was obtained ethically and kindly. But there might be some who still feel this is unnecessary and demeaning for animals. They see animals on a much closer level to humans, so they feel it is right to give them similar treatment to humans - which means no pets, no ethically produced dairy, or anything like that. The logic is that you wouldn't keep a boy as a pet, or milk a woman for your morning tea, so they don't want to do it to animals either. That thinking doesn't seem unreasonable to me at all.

 

[John the Gamer]

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Yeah, I prefer my salads live and kicking. Tastes a lot better when they struggle a bit...

Meat tends to be killed completely first, because raw meat tends to contain lots of delicious deseases.

True. Although humans must have a pretty low tolerance for disease considering most of the meat-eating animals on the planet eat theirs raw.

I've certainly fed my cat raw meat often enough without it having any obvious ill effects.

Also the few groups of people that eat any kind of insects often eat them alive...

(Being serious for a moment, cooked meat is a lot easier to digest. Disease isn't necessarily the primary reason humans don't eat raw meat.)

I think it's the fact that the human digestive system is more or less omnivoric that makes us more susceptible to food-born disease. Since the digestive system is rather long, meaning food takes a long time to get through. This is an advantage when you want to get more nutrients extracted, but every minute the food's in there increases the chance for disease to get out of the food and into your system.

Spoiler: 1:47-ish

 

[Comocat]

Meat is an incredibly inefficent way to feed a population. If I remember from ecology you generally transfer approximately 10% of energy between tropic levels. So if you go from Plant --> Cow --> Person, you are losing 99% of the energy the plant had made from the sun. If you consider the economic and environmental consequences of 9 billion people moving to a meat centered diet, suddenly the carrying capacity of the world is a lot smaller. So you can be vegetarian or vegan morally by justifying yourself with physics!

But plant life stores most of its energy in the form of cellulose sugars which cannot be broken down by the human consumption anyway. Cows and other farm animals have specialized digestive tracks and symbiotic bacteria which allow them to convert the energy in plants into meat which is then easily consumable by humans.

I'm not sure what the precise ratio is, but by switching to eating only plants, I doubt you would see a significant energy intake. I would even surmise that you would see a decrease in energy intake. When you take into account the fact that other necessary components for a healthy body (such as protein) are not as readily available in plant life, you see that the energy conservation argument doesn't really hold water. Also, it is more difficult to be a vegan than to subsist on a diet which includes meat.

I'm not saying all meat is bad, just that meat is an inefficient way to get energy. For example to make a 100 J of energy in a steak would involve the input of 10,000 J of energy from plants. So feeding cows X kJ of corn is less efficient than using that corn to feed people.

In your argument you also neglect the energy costs of raising meat products, which are considerably higher than growing plants. For example on a similar land size you can get much more productivity out of plants than you can cattle.

Here are a number of links that might be of interest

http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/trophic.htm
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/321foodenergy.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency

 

[bojackx]

Exactly what can't vegans eat again?

Animal products like meat, jelly, ice cream, leather, glue, chocolate. The good stuff.

Mmm... yummy leather and glue...

OT: I don't really get it either. I think it's just because it's not as easy to make a statement about how cruel it is whilst you eat eggs and drink milk. It's loses a lot of its punch if you have to explain that it's okay because these animals were treated real nice.