Monica Gagliano, one of the researchers, may be a little bit biased in her research:
Here’s the abstract of an article by botanists, saying, basically, "Slow your freakin roll, folks.
I used to work with lab mice. One got away. When we finally caught it, I pointed out that it was no longer a source of unbiased data, since if it’s results were different we’d probably throw the data away. One of the other ladies in the lap adopted it and named it “Lucky”. It lived out its life as a pet.
Yeah I regularly feel guilty for eating meat and have toyed with veganism. Every scrap of evidence I’ve ever encountered has told me the Western diet is a pretty big burden on the planet and torturously cruel to animals. So why wouldnt I feel shame?
Its hard for me working in a kitchen. I also think it’s hard in general because so much of our relationships are mediated by food. Like when you’re spending time with adult relatives who you dont live with, isn’t it usually at a meal?
I think veganism should be more of a collective intention than just an individual consumer choice because we’ve built food into such a social thing. It will never take otherwise. If most of the people I know were vegan at most of their meals, veganism would be a trivially easy adjustment to make.
Sorry I don’t have a subscription to the Times to see what the entire article says or doesn’t say about Gagliano or all the other researchers who’ve published on the subject of plant intelligence, but here’s an accessible article (including an interview with Gagliano) by Forbes, which tends to be rather hard-headed and skeptical about claims that it views as pseudoscience:
Also, a suggestion: unless you’ve suddenly taken on Mod plumage unannounced, kindly dispense with comments like "Don’t do that’’ and “Get out of here”. You don’t get to dictate what other posters may say in this forum.
Also note: there are plenty of other published papers by additional researchers in this area as well.
It’s not that I buy into the idea that consuming plants is problematic or ‘‘immoral’’ due to supposed plant sentience. But it does make some vegans’ claims of moral superiority appear rather shaky.
I struggle with this myself, OP. I’m not in the mood to argue, but here’s where I’ve landed, for whatever it’s worth. I eat a mostly vegetarian/vegan diet, but I make some exceptions for flavor, social reasons, and convenience. I love cheese; I eat far less than my heart’s desire and buy the torture-lite kinds when I do, but if I were a better person I’d give it up entirely. I’ll sometimes eat what’s available at a party or a rest stop instead of fasting or bringing granola bars everywhere. I limit my use of leather and other non-food animal products too. There are other considerations; leather tends to be much more durable than the alternatives, which means less waste; a particular leather product might have been made under less sweatshop-like conditions than a particular alternative product. Similarly, free-range organic meat might, under some circumstances, be produced with less environmental damage than some foods that happen to be vegan. A particular recipe might require either an animal product or a vegan alternative, the latter of which might not be available at your local market, which means burning a lot of gas making a special trip for it, or possibly buying from a less ethical company that rhymes with shamazon and treats their workers like shit. It’s hard to account for and quantify all the suffering you’re contributing to with your choices.
But you don’t have to constantly deprive yourself, hate yourself, or just close your eyes. You can make what you feel is the most ethical choice most of the time, and give yourself a break once in a while and eat your grandma’s meatballs.
Nope, I do not feel guilty. I try as much as possible to be informed about the choices I make and live with them. I will buy meat from the local butcher over a supermarket because the amount of overall expenditure in resources is lower even if the price is higher. I visited the Burns processing plant in the 80s as part of a field trip and was off eating red meat for a few months. However, eventually I decided that steak and burgers are tasty and I can live with what I saw. I’ve helped hunters clean deer and plucked and gutted chickens as well. I dislike intensely the fact the whole concept of the factory farm where animals are penned or put in cages for their entire (usually short and miserable) lives. I conscientiously try and avoid eating anything as a product of them. Sometimes I fail.
I’ll re-iterate: Give respect for the life that gave it up to make yours possible.
Huh. It would not be an easy adjustment for me. While there are a handful of vegan meals I make that I really like, there’s a lot I don’t like. And all my favorite foods are animal-based. Well, except chocolate, I suppose.
I went to a dinner-and-movie night at a vegetarian friend’s house recently, and I brought all my own food. What I brought was all vegetarian, and was all food I could share with everyone there. (And I did.) But I brought it because I knew that otherwise I would go hungry.
I long for meat when I haven’t had it in a while.
I try to eat meat raised with less cruelty. But no, it wouldn’t be an easy adjustment for me at all.
If only I’d quoted the relevant section, so you didn’t have to use up one of your free articles.
Watch out with that irony meter! 
It really doesn’t.
I think the “obnoxious vegans” thing might be due to a selection effect. If there are obnoxious vegans, and non-obnoxious ones, which ones are you going to know about? If your co-worker the next cubicle over never talks about their diet, and the one time you went to lunch with them, they ordered the pasta primavera, would you even know they were vegan?
When climate change destroys civilization, and humanity reverts to primitive barbarism, those who restrict their dietary options will have a lower probability of survival than those who seek nutrients from a wide variety of sources.
Some of us are hoping it doesn’t get to the point of looking up long pork recipes…