I am an ethical vegetarian from Texas. Most of this article is correct, but I bet you lost 90% of your audience in the “Playing Dumb” section, before they even got to the *meat* of your argument. Why?
Because you framed giving up eating all animal products as “easy” and requiring “no real sacrifice.”
It is NOT easy to tell your mom that you can’t have her turkey on Thanksgiving, or your grandpa that you won’t go fishing with him anymore, or your cousin that you need him to prepare meat replacement patties if he wants you to attend his BBQ. Nevermind relearning to cook. Meat and meat replacements cook differently, and if you decide not to use them, then that requires entirely restructuring your dishes so that they do not center on meat as the centerpiece item but are still filling and satisfying, which is very atypical for lunches and dinners, at least in the U.S.
I have had far more success getting people to cook more plant-based meals by sharing tips, recipes, and restaurants than I have by telling them they’re stupidly refusing to make a super easy sacrifice for the climate.
interesting to see people in /r/environment either haven’t taken into account how our typical eating habits tend to have a negative impact on the environment… or simply don’t care that they do.
so easy to point the finger at all the big corporations and governments making poor decisions. hard to face our own contributions to this mess.
I always wanted to do a vegan free food giveaway at an event or something, there is still a lot of people that think all vegan food is gross… I think it would be a cool way to introduce people into things… Plus who doesn’t love free food? lol
Dairy and eggs are now too expensive, so I guess the Avian flu epidemic made going vegan easier for us.
Making this a war with sides makes no sense. It is far more realistic to get people to consider reductions to meat intake and selecting meats that are less closely associated with environmental damage. Also worth pointing out that industrial monocrop agriculture has made vegetables also problematic in various ways, so really all need to consider ways of improving agriculture and how we eat.
Yes, stop eating animals! It’s cruel and unnecessary.
I’ve never met a healthy vegan, I know it’s anecdotal but the vegans in my life eat poorly. Seems to me vegetarian or pescatarian is a better balanced lifestyle dietarily speaking. Even the simple idea of eating local bee honey, which helps with allergies, as opposed to vegan honey which is highly processed and hard on your digestive system.
Yes being a omnivore isn’t a good reason to eat the way we evolved to eat. s/
I’m a fairly recent convert — grew up in a “meat and potatoes” family. Occasionally my mom would put down a salad or boil some brussels sprouts. We mostly ignored it.
Two years ago I discovered that the meat I was eating was the primary cause of my kidney disease — the disease that killed my mother. I switched to being vegan overnight. In the past two years I’ve only eaten one hamburger, one piece of fish, and one order of chicken strips (Complicated reasons. I regretted every time. It won’t happen again.) No eggs, no dairy, etc. My kidney disease has stopped in its tracks and even recovered to a small degree. My hypertension is gone, and all my bloodwork is normal. At 64 years old I’m on zero meds. Two years ago I was on five!.
The hardest part was cooking food for my kids, knowing I was feeding them the same poisons that caused all my health problem and killed their grandparents. But they’re young. They have time…
Here’s the thing — Foods can be just as addicting as drugs. In fact, it’s a somewhat blurry line between food and drugs. Grapefruit is known to have dangerous interactions with a lot of drugs. Interactions between aflatoxin (from moldy peanuts, in amounts smaller than anyone can taste) and casein (the protein in dairy) is known to cause liver cancer — 100% of the time in high enough doses (still lower than you can taste. ref: *The China Study*, T. Colin Campbell).
This is controversial, but I believe it will be proven eventually. Meat is addicting, just like alcohol and other drugs. Meat is more than just protein. It is saturated with hormones and fatty acids that affect the gut microbiome and allow those hormones to pass through the gut, directly into your blood stream, where they do what hormones do in your body. Other mammal’s hormones are all similar enough to human hormones that your body is somewhat confused about how to react to them, causing problems. This study needs to be done!
If you listen carefully to meat eaters make their excuses, they’ll sound familiar to anyone who’s had experience with any other kind of addict. I think we’d make better progress if we start treating the overconsumption or meat like an addiction.
While I’m 100% whole-food vegan myself, the evidence is clear that consuming 5% to 8% of your total calories from meat (preferably fish) is not necessarily bad for most people. Meanwhile, our meat and dairy production is still devastating for the biodiversity of the planet, for the climate, and is morally *evil* (I was going to say reprehensible, but the more you know….)
We need to treat meat like an addiction — if you ate chocolate cake, cherry pie, and tiramisu at every meal, no one would dispute that’s too much. Those are treats, not staples. If you drank beer and wine and whiskey at every meal no one would dispute that you have a problem. Meat is the same. We’ve been oversold on the importance of protein. Meat protein is no better for you than plant protein, and if you’re getting enough calories, you’re getting enough protein, no matter what its source. Meanwhile, the importance of fiber is tremendously under-acknowledged, and animal products have *zero* fiber.)
Meat is a treat. It is a supplement to an otherwise perfectly adequate diet, and like sweets and alcohol and salty processed foods, it is addicting. In the history of human evolution, it has always been that way. It needs to be that way again. We’ve grown to expect a too-rich diet, and our planet cannot provide it for the number of people who are demanding it.
My only excuse is that it tastes good
I make no excuses for eating animal products. They taste great, and I pay a premium for ethically-raised, non-industrial, local meat from my neighborhood butcher.
I sometimes eat vegetarian meals because that’s what I feel like that day, but I do not believe any excuse needs to be made for eating animal products. It’s not inherently immoral.
You guys had excuses?
I just liked the taste of meat 🤷♂️
I think that it would be more effective to concentrate on reducing meat consumption on the way to having people shift to being vegetarians (or mostly so). The need to push it all the way to veganism is a losing strategy.
Bugs and lab grown meat should overtake regular meat, but the industry is underfunded whereas traditional farming is insanely subsidised to the point of there being a large group of meat producers protesting on the streets any time someone wants to change the policy to something more sensible. Milk especially is in way too many products that don’t need it at all, which is cumbersome for someone with lactose intolerance like me. I recently came across apple juice that had lactose in it, somehow.
Anyways, I will never agree to put any blame on individual working class people. First eat the rich, then change policy to accommodate a change in people’s diets. To expect the world to be saved by 8 billion people suddenly deciding to go vegan when they’re surrounded by meat is a lunacy. To expect that to happen by shunning people for “playing dumb” is just virtue signaling at the expense of an existential crisis. You might as well tell them to take bathe once a week while giving them free hot water.
16 comments
Good thing I don’t need an excuse.
Animals aren’t delicious?
I am an ethical vegetarian from Texas. Most of this article is correct, but I bet you lost 90% of your audience in the “Playing Dumb” section, before they even got to the *meat* of your argument. Why?
Because you framed giving up eating all animal products as “easy” and requiring “no real sacrifice.”
It is NOT easy to tell your mom that you can’t have her turkey on Thanksgiving, or your grandpa that you won’t go fishing with him anymore, or your cousin that you need him to prepare meat replacement patties if he wants you to attend his BBQ. Nevermind relearning to cook. Meat and meat replacements cook differently, and if you decide not to use them, then that requires entirely restructuring your dishes so that they do not center on meat as the centerpiece item but are still filling and satisfying, which is very atypical for lunches and dinners, at least in the U.S.
I have had far more success getting people to cook more plant-based meals by sharing tips, recipes, and restaurants than I have by telling them they’re stupidly refusing to make a super easy sacrifice for the climate.
interesting to see people in /r/environment either haven’t taken into account how our typical eating habits tend to have a negative impact on the environment… or simply don’t care that they do.
so easy to point the finger at all the big corporations and governments making poor decisions. hard to face our own contributions to this mess.
I always wanted to do a vegan free food giveaway at an event or something, there is still a lot of people that think all vegan food is gross… I think it would be a cool way to introduce people into things… Plus who doesn’t love free food? lol
Dairy and eggs are now too expensive, so I guess the Avian flu epidemic made going vegan easier for us.
Making this a war with sides makes no sense. It is far more realistic to get people to consider reductions to meat intake and selecting meats that are less closely associated with environmental damage. Also worth pointing out that industrial monocrop agriculture has made vegetables also problematic in various ways, so really all need to consider ways of improving agriculture and how we eat.
Yes, stop eating animals! It’s cruel and unnecessary.
I’ve never met a healthy vegan, I know it’s anecdotal but the vegans in my life eat poorly. Seems to me vegetarian or pescatarian is a better balanced lifestyle dietarily speaking. Even the simple idea of eating local bee honey, which helps with allergies, as opposed to vegan honey which is highly processed and hard on your digestive system.
Yes being a omnivore isn’t a good reason to eat the way we evolved to eat. s/
I’m a fairly recent convert — grew up in a “meat and potatoes” family. Occasionally my mom would put down a salad or boil some brussels sprouts. We mostly ignored it.
Two years ago I discovered that the meat I was eating was the primary cause of my kidney disease — the disease that killed my mother. I switched to being vegan overnight. In the past two years I’ve only eaten one hamburger, one piece of fish, and one order of chicken strips (Complicated reasons. I regretted every time. It won’t happen again.) No eggs, no dairy, etc. My kidney disease has stopped in its tracks and even recovered to a small degree. My hypertension is gone, and all my bloodwork is normal. At 64 years old I’m on zero meds. Two years ago I was on five!.
The hardest part was cooking food for my kids, knowing I was feeding them the same poisons that caused all my health problem and killed their grandparents. But they’re young. They have time…
Here’s the thing — Foods can be just as addicting as drugs. In fact, it’s a somewhat blurry line between food and drugs. Grapefruit is known to have dangerous interactions with a lot of drugs. Interactions between aflatoxin (from moldy peanuts, in amounts smaller than anyone can taste) and casein (the protein in dairy) is known to cause liver cancer — 100% of the time in high enough doses (still lower than you can taste. ref: *The China Study*, T. Colin Campbell).
This is controversial, but I believe it will be proven eventually. Meat is addicting, just like alcohol and other drugs. Meat is more than just protein. It is saturated with hormones and fatty acids that affect the gut microbiome and allow those hormones to pass through the gut, directly into your blood stream, where they do what hormones do in your body. Other mammal’s hormones are all similar enough to human hormones that your body is somewhat confused about how to react to them, causing problems. This study needs to be done!
If you listen carefully to meat eaters make their excuses, they’ll sound familiar to anyone who’s had experience with any other kind of addict. I think we’d make better progress if we start treating the overconsumption or meat like an addiction.
While I’m 100% whole-food vegan myself, the evidence is clear that consuming 5% to 8% of your total calories from meat (preferably fish) is not necessarily bad for most people. Meanwhile, our meat and dairy production is still devastating for the biodiversity of the planet, for the climate, and is morally *evil* (I was going to say reprehensible, but the more you know….)
We need to treat meat like an addiction — if you ate chocolate cake, cherry pie, and tiramisu at every meal, no one would dispute that’s too much. Those are treats, not staples. If you drank beer and wine and whiskey at every meal no one would dispute that you have a problem. Meat is the same. We’ve been oversold on the importance of protein. Meat protein is no better for you than plant protein, and if you’re getting enough calories, you’re getting enough protein, no matter what its source. Meanwhile, the importance of fiber is tremendously under-acknowledged, and animal products have *zero* fiber.)
Meat is a treat. It is a supplement to an otherwise perfectly adequate diet, and like sweets and alcohol and salty processed foods, it is addicting. In the history of human evolution, it has always been that way. It needs to be that way again. We’ve grown to expect a too-rich diet, and our planet cannot provide it for the number of people who are demanding it.
My only excuse is that it tastes good
I make no excuses for eating animal products. They taste great, and I pay a premium for ethically-raised, non-industrial, local meat from my neighborhood butcher.
I sometimes eat vegetarian meals because that’s what I feel like that day, but I do not believe any excuse needs to be made for eating animal products. It’s not inherently immoral.
You guys had excuses?
I just liked the taste of meat 🤷♂️
I think that it would be more effective to concentrate on reducing meat consumption on the way to having people shift to being vegetarians (or mostly so). The need to push it all the way to veganism is a losing strategy.
Bugs and lab grown meat should overtake regular meat, but the industry is underfunded whereas traditional farming is insanely subsidised to the point of there being a large group of meat producers protesting on the streets any time someone wants to change the policy to something more sensible. Milk especially is in way too many products that don’t need it at all, which is cumbersome for someone with lactose intolerance like me. I recently came across apple juice that had lactose in it, somehow.
Anyways, I will never agree to put any blame on individual working class people. First eat the rich, then change policy to accommodate a change in people’s diets. To expect the world to be saved by 8 billion people suddenly deciding to go vegan when they’re surrounded by meat is a lunacy. To expect that to happen by shunning people for “playing dumb” is just virtue signaling at the expense of an existential crisis. You might as well tell them to take bathe once a week while giving them free hot water.