Veganism...why?

[Haagrum]

The real problem with these opposing viewpoints is morality. If we remove that from the equation it could solve quite a lot of the fuss going on.
Just think about it, everyone eating any food because they want to. Or the kind of foods being grown for the best yield or most nutrition least effort/cost.
It would be glorious.

It would be glorious. The only difficulty is that we live on a world with finite resources, and the two scenarios you put may not be mutually inclusive. Put simply, there aren't enough resources for every person on the planet to eat the average Australian or American diet.

For some, yes, it's about morality (on both sides). For others (myself included), it's about the ethics and economics of production and consumption. There is an important difference, as morality typically takes absolute positions detached from details (e.g. killing animals is wrong), whereas ethics are generally aimed at resolving practical situations and difficulties (e.g. killing animals should be avoided, unless it is necessary for survival or where it can be done with a minimum of distress).

As with most discussions, it's generally the loudest and most militant who get the most attention. It'd be great if some of the meat-eaters didn't see this as an attack on them personally (often, it's guilt, reflexive defensiveness or anger rather than reasoned engagement) for supporting what others claim is an unethical industry. Likewise, it'd be great if the vegetarians and vegans were more patient and less preachy, because no-one likes a sermon (even if the ideas have intellectual merit and deserve discussion).

[mini-rant] As an aside - the tired "more animals die per square acre of crops than pasturage" argument inaccurately assumes that the same space feeds the same number of people regardless of whether it's used for agriculture or meat production. Per capita of humans fed, the "deaths per square acre" count works out substantially in favour of vegetarians/vegans. [/mini-rant]

Getting back to the OP's question, though: There are some people for whom environmental concerns, animal treatment, economics, personal taste or health reasons are sufficient cause to give up eating animal products. Given how many people on this topic are asserting the importance of personal choice in their lifestyles, isn't that reason enough?

 

[Lunar Templar]

Why is veganism a thing?

Because it gives us Telepathic Powers

only in Canadian comics, and he lost to a meat eater

That's only because the Vegan Police stripped him of his powers as punishment for his constant veganity violations ("Chicken isn't vegan?"). ;p

so? he still lost to the meat eater the fact Tod (i think was his name) was to weak willed to stick to it (or to stupid as the case seems to be) is just extra

sides we all know meat eaters have cooler powers in fiction

 

[Scylla6]

There's been some confusion in this thread as to two different terms; Sentience and sapience.

Sentience is when an animal is aware of it's surroundings, capable of understanding whether they are beneficial or not, and making a choice accordingly. In this way a worm is sentient, because it moves to areas of soil with more nutrients and a better climate when possible.

Sapience, which may or may not apply to animals other than humans, is when the subject is aware, not of their surroundings, but of their own awareness. They are cognizant of their own cognizance. A simple way of thinking about it is "Can the subject be thinking of the way in which it is thinking?". Sapience is thus, without further study, restricted to humans, in that we have philosophy, whereas a worm does not.

Hope this clarifies things.

 

[BNguyen]

50% of the chicks that emerge as males and get casually tossed into a grinder? That is an unavoidable consequence of mass breeding chickens. Not all of them turn out female.

Why cant we eat roosters? That may seem stupid but ive never understood this practice. Youve invested money in getting an egg to hatch into a rooser. Why not just free range farm them for consumption? Isnt it a huge waste not to?

it's harder to raise any number of roosters together because of the usual male dominance reasons
we can eat roosters but it would cost a whole lot more to maintain a good number for the primary reason of consumption
we only raise roosters to maintain a high level of productive females and eggs, its the same as hunting deer - mostly hunting females and at certain times we go after the bucks to keep population levels from going out of control

 

[wintercoat]

Cooking meat is what made us intelligent.

I'm not disagreeing with that, I think it's probably true. I just don't see how that's an argument for continuing now. It's a genetic fallacy to say that good in the past automatically means good in the present, regardless of current context.

Except that it's always been part of a healthy diet. If it has always been good for us, why would it suddenly not be?

You can bring up external factors like, how today meat can be pumped full of hormones etc and is not in the same pure form of nutrition that it used to be. And that's true. But it's also true for crops. With pesticides and preservatives being sprayed on and fed to it.

I'd say the largest health-risk to humanity in terms of consumption, at the minute is wheat. The amount we currently consume, and the average glycemic index of wheat based products is scary high. Like, alarmingly so.

Meat is part of a healthy human diet. We could change that with pills, but there's no saying that this change won't have long-term side effects. Maybe not in any of our lifetimes, but gradually over time.

There's no saying it will either. Scare-mongering about what might happen if we use synthetic sources without any empirical basis isn't going to convince anyone to abandon vegetarianism or veganism.

I never said it to scare people off of the doubles V's. I'm saying that the there is the off chance, so to people who enjoy eating meat... why would they trade in something they know is perfectly healthy for something that might not be?

Saying 'it might not have any effects' isn't going to convince people who eat meat to drop that drum stick and pick up a Vegan approved air wafer.

The fact is, both diets can be healthy. If someone were to say that veganism is unhealthy, I could list plenty of counter-examples to that. Likewise, if someone were to say that meat were unhealthy, I could provide plenty of counter-examples to that too. The health argument to me, is moot. It can be done healthily. It's the moral aspect of this debate that interests me.

The Vegan diet isn't healthy though, you have to take supplements and tablets etc to make it a healthy diet. You could live on nothing but cheeseburgers and get all the minerals and vitamins you'd normally get from veg in pill form... I wouldn't advise it though.

A healthy diet is balanced, and unless you have some sort of medical condition. Pills shouldn't really be a part of it.

What I'm basically saying is that a Vegan diet does not have any health benefits that a balanced diet does not, and it has drawbacks. So what is the incentive to switch from a balanced diet to an unbalanced one?


And I don't buy into the whole morality aspect of the debate.

It's silly, some animals eat other animals. It's part of nature, I really don't see why morality has to be dragged into something as base and primal as eating.

I do think that we should treat the animals with as much respect as possible. But that doesn't mean that I won't eat meat in protest to the bad farms or whatever.

I'd rather just buy from sources I trust.

Actually, it is possible to eat no meat and not have to take any pills. It just requires a much more structured diet in order to get all of your essentials. Taking a protein pill is just easier than having to structure all of your meals around proper protein consumption. As a meat eater, you get all of your essentials easily, while vegetarians, and especially vegans, have to work for it.

Personally? Not worth the effort. Also, bacon.

 

[Jammy2003]

It's pretty simple actually. A Cow can't do much aside from eating, shitting and sleeping. Even the biggest failure of a Human can and will accomplish more for the World then that. A Cow has no existence beyond that of a wandering sack of Meat, be it through Humans as Predators or any other Predator. It's the only thing a Cow is good for, feeding other Species, because other then that they are only a Resource drain. In fact, we actually put the Cow to better use then any other Predator could.

You can disagree all you want, it is a important factor.

1. You are assuming that I am not the most gifted, brilliant person on earth. I resent that, I'm pretty awesome. xD

2. ....(snip)

Actually the average human will be FAR more of a drain than a cow wandering about would. Trust me, I live in Britain, look at our benefits system. So I would actually rather trade the bottom 10% of our population for cows, and set up temples worshiping them, it would be cheaper and more beneficial.

1) You may be, but for the sake of arguement, assumptions must be made

2) All philosophical debate requires mental gymnastics. Earlier in the thread, the constantly put forward thing was that if everyone went vegan at once, "But think of the animals!" what would we do with the remaining livestock?

3) Ultimately, you aren't really WORTH more than a cow, not by simple existance. This isn't some right you inherit, that means you are always worth more than any other creature. If I'm crossing a desert, a camel is worth more to me than you would be. If I was trying to have a self-sufficient farm stead, a cow would be infinitely more valueable than you. They give while you would just drain.

4) Cows actually do have concepts of life and death, check this article out: http://www.globalanimal.org/2012/04/13/cow-proves-animals-love-think-and-act/71867/

I would also argue that the intellegence of cows is stunted by their association with humans. "Intellegence is generally not viewed as a positive attribute from a livestock owner's point of view - a clever cow is one that figures out how to get out of fences or cause mischief of one variety or another, and a cow who is nicknamed "Curiosity" is likely to be called "Hamburger" as soon as possible." In this way, selective breeding has actually shaped cows into being docile, less curious animals, than they otherwise could be. Plus, in actual fact, pigs have been proven in intellegence tests to be MORE intellegent than a dog, which we hold up and say "But it's too intellegent to eat".

In terms of general animal intellegence vs human intellegence, mirror tests have proven that chimps, other great apes, Magpies, Cetateans, and elephants actually have a sense of self-awareness. Elephants can even do simple arithmatic, which is more than a chunk of humans!
So if we are basing this on the idea of intellegence, in what can be shown to us, some elephants apparently deserve more "human rights" than people without access to proper education. There is a guy in my town you can't read or count, does this mean he doesn't deserve these rights?

Also, all sorts of primates have been taught sign language, and there is a recorded case of one chimp teaching other chimps how to sign.
http://www.npr.org/2008/05/28/90516132/the-chimp-that-learned-sign-language
Nim was raised like a human, taught to sign and generally communicate. Later when he was put into a lab for animal testing, he constantly signed "No, please stop, it hurts" and actually taught the other chimps to do so as well.

I'm pretty sure this teaching aspect has been shown to extend to squid, in that if a squid solves a puzzle, is put in a tank with another squid for a time, and then the other squid is put in to solve the puzzle, it will have a much quicker solving time. Read that a while back but can't find documentation right now though.

I can flood you with examples of animal intellegence, but I doubt you will have read all of the above ones completely. Everyone seems to accept it as common knowledge than animals aren't intellegent, but a simple google search provides many examples to the contrary.

 

[Jammy2003]

No, actually the human won't. The wandering Cow contributes nothing. Humans do. End of Story.

1) You may be, but for the sake of arguement, assumptions must be made

Sure, but not entirely baseless assumptions that rely on building a entirely alternate reality. The given example doesn't result in a argument because it requires far too much abstract thought to remain applicable to the discussion.

If that's what the Poster is going to do she could just go full circle and name a complete role reversal of a given Animal and a Human, that would be equally nonsensical, yet equatable to what she is doing now.

2) All philosophical debate...

Noted. Yet irrelevant to me, I haven't made such claims, they do not apply to me. Also, you should note the difference between some abstract thought and alot of abstract thought, it can make or equally break a point. In this case it breaks the point.

3) Ultimately...

False. It's situational. If you are going to assume that crossing the desert with a Camel will result in the Camel following your lead, doing what you want, I can equally answer that I would be more useful because in this case "I" am a local expert of the given desert who can get it through it safer and more comfortable then the Camel could. If you are trying to create a self-sufficient farm I am the expert who knows how to use the land and animals to maximum capacity. All the Cow can do is produce Milk and Meat. All the Camel is going to do is walk.

4) Cows actually do have concepts of life and death...

All I see in that article is the humanization of a cow. I see no reason to believe that the cow reasoned a decision. Interesting, but at best circumstantial and insufficient to claim that all cows have concepts of life and death, especially considering that the article doesn't even imply death, all it implies is a nuture instinct, common in mammals.

How about a different explanation? I'll give you a simple one:

For whatever reason 1 Calf followed it's Mother while the other did not.

With the information at hand that could easily be the solution. I atleast see no reason why we should inherently be ascribing reason to that cow.

I would...

So, you want to argue that Cows are more intelligent then they seem (based on a anecdote?) yet that they also aren't because we have selectively breeded them as to not be. Excuse me, what? It would be new to me that we are talking about what Cows theoretically could be.

Plus, in actual fact, pigs have been proven...

I don't recall ever hearing someone say that Dogs are too intelligent to eat. I always assumed they just don't taste good or that they would be ineffcient in that use.

In terms of general...

So, you eat those? I don't. I knew all of that aside from the Elephant counting (because judging by what I found, it was counting). I really don't see the point of you bringing these Species up though. I doubt anybody here eats those and I also don't recall claiming that all animals are equal, just that none of them come close to what we can do. You haven't actually refuted that, so I don't see your point here.

So if we are basing this...

So, is this guy mentally retarded? Because otherwise I'm calling bullshit to the claim that a Elephant has a better understanding of quantities then he does.

Also, all sorts...

The article you linked doesn't reflect that. It actually remains at best ambitious if the Chimp ever actually used sign language to communicate of it's own regard. Now, I wouldn't find it difficult to believe that he did, because other chimps have. I just don't see qhy you would link a article that doesn't illustrate what you are claiming. Also, I find it interesting that you are assuming that mimicry constitutes having understood something. A chimp showing other chimps sign language doesn't mean that those chimps actually know what it means.

I'm pretty sure...

You mean the puzzles that consist of squeezing into boxes to get food? What puzzles are you refering to here?

I can flood you with examples...

I don't recall claiming that animals in general cannot be or show intelligence in any form. I said that no animal that we know of comes anywhere close to human intelligence and thus comparing them to humans is a false equivalence. So, by human standards, animals aren't intelligent. They may be able to surprise us with some things, but you can't compare them to us, especially not across the board. You are essentially complaining that people are obmitting "in comparison to humans..." when they say something like ...animals aren't intelligent.

I could also tell you that it's has been shown that a chimp for instance can balance a object, much like a child could. Yet if you modify the same object as to change it's center the chimp will just keep trying to balance it and eventually give up. A human child on the other hand will start examining the object as to find out why the same object now cannot be balanced in the same way.

No, you're missing my point. Some people don't contribute anything, and as such they are simply a drain from the rest of society. The cow, being neutral, is then actually better. Zero impact is better than negative impact. They eat, pollute, take money from taxes that could go to benefit useful members of society and access healthcare they didn't contribute to. How is that better or more valuable than a cow in a field? My point is being human does not entitle you to worth. You have to earn worth.

The poster didn't build an entirely alternate reality, she simply took your arguement that its all about potential and built upon that. It's no more abstract than just accepting at face value the "fact" that potential is the most important thing in life, which is opinion anyway. You make it sound like she was describing some reality where plants were the dominant species and WHAT THEN? She simply took your arguement to a theoretical level with discussion value.

You have included a fair bit of abstract thought that if we were in the desert you would be an expert in the local area. Yes, it is situational so in that case, maybe you would be more useful, however that's pretty abstract. I'm talking the average person, and the average camel. Which is now worth more? And fine, even if the average camel wouldn't follow my lead or whatever, me wandering the desert alone is still better than having another "average" human, as thats another mouth to feed and give water to. That theoretical human has negative worth.

Same with the farm, you're assuming that suddenly you are now an expert in agriculture, but if you take the average human and their knowledge of farming, they would not be as much help as a cow would be. They eat, require a larger living area to have been built and may not give as much as a cow would. Why should the worth of the average animal be compared with the worth of a human specialised in that field?

Fair point with the cow, I was hesitant to link due to the tone of the arguement. But if you are going to argue it's nuture instinct, the mother would not have simply left one calf out and gone back to the barn. She would have stayed out with both, and the farmer would have discovered it then and there. I see no reason we should inherently abscribe stupidity to the cow

My arguement was that cows are more intellegent than they are given credit for, and that they would "potentially" be even more so (seeing as how potential is the most important thing here). Not that they both are and aren't intellegent. I then went on to say that animals in general are underestimated in terms of their intellegence and they are used for all sorts of purposes which they shouldn't.

Dog are used for food, China and Korea both have practices of that, which most people will condemn as brutal or wrong. Same with whales and dolphins being used for food. It was to point out the double standard that some animals are pets, or cute and some food, based on the false idea that they are more intellegent.

The guy is not mentally retarded to the best of my knowledge. He simply never had an education, never wanted to learn, and so never has. He's a pretty old guy who used to come into where I worked, would hand me the shopping list and ask me to find the stuff, as he couldn't read it. But even if he was, what then? What if he then had less potential or less grasp of numbers than the elephant? Even if it's only equal understanding that refutes the point that "no animal can come close to what we can do". The man has not done anything particularly in his life but be a breeder, so why is he better than an animal?

Correct, after posting I checked out the link more thoroughly and realised it didn't include everything I wanted it to. At the time I was trying to remember the name of the chimp I read about before and linked in haste. My bad.
I would put it down to mimicry if the sign language had done anything to stop the testing, but the scientists carried on regardless, so why would the other chimps mimic the behaviour? If there is no benefit from the behaviour there is no reason to mimic it.

I believe the puzzles were things that needed to be manipulated in order to get access to food.
Why should the chimp want to balance the object? What reason does it have to balance it?

My point is that we test these animals on things we consider intellegence. I always love the line from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy which goes something like:
"Humans consider themselves to be the most intellegent species as they have built cars, planes, jobs and societies. Dolphins consider themselves more intellegent as they haven't"
We test animals on human intellegence and, surprise surprise, the less like humans they are, the lower they score on the tests.
Though some exceptional animals seem to then score higher on our tests than less intellegent humans. That counts as close to me. And so it makes me wonder about the rest... at least enough to not want animals treated as badly as they are.

EDIT: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/aug/18/troubled-life-nim-chimpsky/
Link with the complete information I meant to include. References to Nim teaching other chimps about 1/5 of the way down.

EDIT 2: Actually, that link is pretty interesting, more so than I thought. Don't be daunted, the bottom 3/5 is comments, not article.

 

[LittleShe-Bear]

Cooking meat is what made us intelligent.

I'm not disagreeing with that, I think it's probably true. I just don't see how that's an argument for continuing now. It's a genetic fallacy to say that good in the past automatically means good in the present, regardless of current context.

Except that it's always been part of a healthy diet. If it has always been good for us, why would it suddenly not be?

Read my post. I never said it wasn't healthy. I'm saying justifications for consumption in the past don't mean those justifications automatically hold up in the present.

The Vegan diet isn't healthy though, you have to take supplements and tablets etc to make it a healthy diet.

So how do you explain the many, many counter-examples of people who live on a vegan diet in perfect health? If it can be done safely and healthily then it's not true to say its inherently unhealthy. Meat diets and plant-based diets can BOTH be healthy or unhealthy depending on how you tackle them.

It's silly, some animals eat other animals. It's part of nature, I really don't see why morality has to be dragged into something as base and primal as eating.

No it's not silly. I've brought this up before but I'm still waiting for someone to address the is/ought fallacy in this thread. Just because something is natural, why does that make it good? Just because something is, why does that mean it ought to be? Cancer, heart disease and all manner of nasty things are natural, does that mean we should just accept them as right and good? If we're capable of transcending nature for the sake of good, why shouldn't we? Why should nature trump compassion?

I don't recall claiming that animals in general cannot be or show intelligence in any form

My point is that arguing about intelligence is the wrong criteria to use to assess needs in terms of welfare. Any creature capable of feeling pain is capable of being interested in not suffering or being killed, therefore if you follow the golden rule, it's right not to inflict pain on something capable of feeling pain unless its absolutely necessary. If a creature can suffer, we shouldn't make them suffer. Why should it matter how smart they are? Why should it matter how much potential they have to be smart?

The point of my "silly" example was to demonstrate that it might not be a good idea to use intelligence as the by-word for worth. If you do that, you could end up de-valuing human beings as well as animals. You're every bit as important as the uber-mensch, you have just as much right to life as he does but if you use intelligence as the yard-stick for importance, you might have to accept the rightness of sacrificing yourself for the more "important" individual.

I was also using that "silly" example to try and demonstrate that while the human/human is more similar in many respects than human/cow, in the relevant respect, they're exactly the same. Both can be significantly interested in not being subject to pain and being killed. Intelligence level has no bearing on that.

And yes, it probably did involve some mental gymnastics to imagine all that. That's what thought experiments are for.

 

[Jammy2003]

Eating animals is neither inherently good or bad. It's just part of nature. Our bodies have adapted to eat meat, why would we abstain from that course of action? Morality doesn't enter into this in except how we treat the animals before consumption.

If a person wishes not to eat meat then that's their choice, just as it's another persons choice to continue to eat meat. Both choices should be respected.

True, but our bodies are not really as adapted as you might think:
http://www.detox.net.au/images/chartqo5-1.jpg
I don't like this chart that much, because it doesn't reflect the carni/omni attributes like forward facing eyes etc. as well as the herbi attributes, but it does reflect how we aren't that well adapted, and definitely not for a meat DOMINANT diet.

True, all choices should be respected... But what if your choice starts to effect me? The meat production in the quantity needed for our current population and their dietary choices is causing a large impact on the planet as a whole. And that does effect me, so is it now a personal choice?

How far is a personal choice allowed to go before its no longer personal?

 

[Jammy2003]

I'd never recommend a meat dominant diet, but meat is certainly a part of our optimum diets. Especially fish.

And I'd like to point out that we don't share many physical attributes with predators because we only became praetors fairly recently in our evolutionary history. Before we started scavenging and cooking meat, we were gatherers. Our diets consisted of nuts, roots, fruit and vegetation. The enhanced brain function that came from eating a high calory diet which included meat and an easily digested diet, which came about from cooking food. Is what gave us the ability to make tools which undercut the need to evolve classic predator attributes such as claws, fangs etc.

You could say the same for the high demand for crops. Especially wheat, as I said earlier. Wheat based products are probably the most widely consumed crop on the planet. They're also incredibly bad for us, whether that is naturally the case or through our tampering with crop yield. I don't know.

But they have an astronomically high glycemic index and that is effecting everybody.

Not to mention the space that would be required if crops were to totally replace livestock as a food source. Much of the land that is used for livestock isn't suitable for yielding high quality crops. If any at all.

Everything we do has a large is only short lived effect on our eco system, picking on meat consumption is naive and counter productive.

Sure reform in how we care for our livestock would be great. But the same could be said with how we yield crops or anything else we do.

Meat may be part of our optimum diet, but next to nobody sticks to the optimum diet. You always seem to be arguing to get everything you need for an optimum diet as a vegan would be hard/impossible without supplements. However, how many people get everything they need for an optimum diet on an omni diet? What's the difference? Vegans generally have a healthier diet due to the fact that, as some things are harder to obtain, lots of products are fortified with things to make sure they get the vitamins and nutrients required.

I'm sure there are unhealthy vegans, but there is many more people living off MacDonalds every day with far worse diets. Extremes happen with everything though, and a vegan friend of mine probably eats both a healthier and more varied diet than I do.

I'd argue about the fact cooked food is what let us develop tools:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070222-chimps-spears.html
As far as I'm aware chimps don't cook, but they are renowned for using tools, and now weapons.
Sure, meat may have developed us to a degree, but we seem to have hit a bit of a plateau with regards to that now, and its time to look at other options perhaps.

Wheat may be bad for us, but that will then be a person choice that doesn't cause harm to others beyond them. Growing a crop doesn't emit the same level of emissions as lifestock, and the high demand for wheat? I've stated this before in this thread, 1/3 of the worlds grain production is used as feed (that's all grain, including rice) and 70-80% of the USA's production is used as feed for livestock. Simply redirecting that feed to humans instead of livestock would mean no more needs to be grown.

Simple conservation of energy. If there is enough now, even with the animals in the middle, there will be more than enough if we cut them from the chain. No more wheat would be needed, in fact less could be grown. I'm not talking about a couple of cows on a hillside thats way too steep to level in layers to make it viable for crop farming, I'm talking about the vast stretches used simply because of the demand for SO MUCH meat.

So because everything needs fixing, fix nothing?

 

[Jessy_Fran]

Is this true?:

Yeah either way I subscribe to the reason that you know, human's today are made to consume animals. So there is no reason against doing it.

Yup, this is true but I have also seen this exact image with every one of the items listed having a vegan alternative written next to it. It's damn difficult to avoid all of this stuff and yes, something we vegans slip up. However it's the intent to avoid the products that matters in those cases. For example, I go out of my way to buy comestics/cleaning products etc that neither contain nor were tested on animals. (While it may make my life a touch more difficult I think that they deserve that much repect from me.) However, I did recently buy a medicinal shampoo that I didn't realise had changed companies and is now tested on animals. I'm annoyed at myself but at least now I can change what product I use and stop supporting that company.

I suppose it's less difficult than it is time consuming but as I say, to me it's worth it!

Actually, that's a very good point. This thread is about Veganism as a whole, right? It's not just a diet, so what do people think about animal testing? Argue all you want that humans are made to consume meat but should we really be testing our shampoos and injections on them? Just curious as to peoples thoughts.

 

[Vivi22]

Wheat based products are probably the most widely consumed crop on the planet. They're also incredibly bad for us, whether that is naturally the case or through our tampering with crop yield. I don't know.

There aren't a whole lot of studies into whether modern wheat is worse than the stuff we used to eat since many nutrition scientists still blame saturated fat for all of our ills, but there is evidence out there. I know modern wheat compared to more primitive forms like Einkorn or Emmer has a vastly greater impact on blood glucose for starters. Also, the way wheat reproduces when cross bred results in new strains having properties which are both a combination of the parent strains, and completely new since they retain the full gene sequences of both parent strains rather than just being a combination of them. One study I know of actually compared fairly recent blood samples from soldiers to samples taken and kept about 50 years earlier and the more recent samples had significantly higher amounts of celiac antibodies than the 50 year old samples indicating that the gluten proteins in modern wheat are likely causing problems for more people than older strains, which makes some sense since the present strains didn't exist before the 1960's and have since been so successful that they're used almost everywhere to the exclusion of less modern strains.

I don't have any links to sources handy at the moment for those but I can track them down later if desired. And a good primer on all of the health issues wheat has been linked to would be the book Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis. It's pretty thorough in its critique of wheat and well sourced as well.

Actually, that's a very good point. This thread is about Veganism as a whole, right? It's not just a diet, so what do people think about animal testing? Argue all you want that humans are made to consume meat but should we really be testing our shampoos and injections on them? Just curious as to peoples thoughts.

Shampoos I could see an argument against. At this point, do we really need 50 different kinds of shampoo on the market? Is there any real improvement going on? Is testing really necessary? How many lives are these shampoos saving?

But for medications, medical treatments, and even food testing, I'd say absolutely, we should test on animals first. But my reasoning is that I place the well being of humans over the suffering of animals. You could argue we could just test on willing human test subjects, but this creates a whole host of moral issues. Is it right to test on living people if we have no idea what the side effects might be because animal testing never happened? Is it right to offer experimental treatments to dying or otherwise desperate patients when the treatment might actually be worse than the disease and you're basically preying on their desperation to test your drugs? Can a person even make an informed choice when they don't know the potential risks?

I don't think they can, and I think if we're talking about questions of morality that protecting human lives and well being is more important than protecting the lives and well being of animals. People are free to feel differently about that, but it would take a pretty compelling, objective, and logical argument that didn't try to appeal to my emotions to convince me that I shouldn't value the well being of members of my species over members of other species.