I think it’s that, as vegetarians/vegans are uncommon, the jackasses tend to stand out more and be held up as examples of type. At my deli, I can’t tell you the number of polite vegetarians I’ve had because they don’t stand out. They ask what we have without meat products or meat/dairy, thank me for the answer, and buy or leave. Total non-event. I certainly can give examples of the militants and/or fruit loops who stand and argue with me over the popularity/superiority of their diet and how a veggie diet can adjust my ph so I never get sick/develop cancer. Even if it’s the same percentage, one jerk out of ten sticks in your mind more than ten jerks out of a hundred.
You made that claim three sentences after saying people don’t make that claim. A common theme of a vegan dieting is “we cause less suffering and have a smaller impact,” but that claim pre-supposes two things which have not been proven. Namely that a vegan diet actually does indeed cause less suffering, and also what “impact” we should be minimizing and why.
Thank you!!!
I heartily second most of this–I’m not quite the rock-climbing badass this person is, but I’m a 33 year-old vegan who has been happily and healthily vegan for a decade. And I do believe that the environmental/resource argument is the strongest and most motivating one.
There is also the whole question of animal torture, which is what most mass-produced animal product/by-products amounts to. I don’t have any links to post and I’m not trying to convert anyone anyway (not all vegans are televangelistesque testifiers). But if you’re an interested animal lover, do the research.
As for plants—yes, they are alive. So are bacteria, but I am not going to lose sleep over them. Hair-splitting philospohical debate over the sentience of beings with no dicernable brains (and yes, I read the octupus/jellysish bit-I need a short way of expressing my meaning and ‘brain’ will have to do) can be a fun way to kill some time (sure, she says she’s a vegan, but she kills time!), but at the end of the day, I need to eat something, and I want to feel as morally satisfied as I can about the contents of my sammich. So my vote is, cows, no; tomatoes, okay.
Interesting thread. I must admit, carnivores can be pretty funny. I love a good cannibal joke.
As someone who has been vegetarian (although I have sort of half-assed it in the “not doing it for ethical reasons but simply out of habit” tradition: I eat gelatin and gelatin products, I pretend not to notice when soup is made with chicken stock, etc) and is very strongly considering eating fish, I find this debate really interesting.
I agree that the environmental argument is by far the strongest for vegetarianism. As for avoiding suffering . . . from what I understand, even the process of coaxing milk from a cow for human consumption is unpleasant for the cow. Unless you are a very observant vegan, I don’t think it’s possible to avoid animals suffering for your diet. I think a good argument could be made that an omnivore who ensured that all his animal products came from free-roaming, naturally fed animals is causing less pain to animals than a vegetarian who freely buys conventional diary products.
Wow, that’s scary. As a man, I’ve been medically advised to go easy on meat, because too much iron is unhealthy for men. Now you’re telling us a vegan diet has even more iron?? Then men especially would be strongly advised to avoid a vegan diet, for health reasons.
I’d like to have an answer to my earlier question–is it possible/plausible to do a healthy vegan/vegetarian diet when one is allergic to most beans, intolerant of legumes in general, and somewhat lactose intolerant?
The lactose intolerance doesn’t matter much, because vegans don’t drink dairy products.
What exactly does “intolerant of legumes” mean? Do they make you sick, or you just don’t like them?
What beans are you allergic to? Soy is an excellent source of protein. There’s some small amounts in common plant products, like brown rice. You can’t really eat enough non-bean non-legume plants to get all the protein you need in a vegan diet, though. For example, a cup of that brown rice would only give you 9% of your daily recommended value of protein. You’d need to take supplements, but a quick google search shows plenty of vegan protein supplements.
What about flour/meal made from defatted nuts or defatted oily seeds such as sunflower? - are you counting these as supplements? (I’d say they’re more like ingredients)
This post leads me to think you might not understand what constitues a vegan diet, mayhaps? (My apologies if I misunderstood.) Vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal, including milk, eggs, cheese, etc. And while the milking process may be unpleasant, that ain’t the half of it. The life of a dairy cow on most large factory farms is downright nightmarish, not to mention abbreviated (they’re generally slaughtered as soon as they stop giving milk). And don’t get me started on the freakin’ chickens. I don’t care how dumb a creature is, there’s gotta be some massive karmic repercussions for treating a critter that badly. (Should be, anyway.)
It all depend on production. Factory-farming methods are deeply incompatible with sustainability, agreed. But there are other ways to raise livestock. The reason we raise them the way we do now is not because it is the easiest way - it is because it is the way that maximized profits for corporations while eliminating small farmers. Profit is what has created the factory farm system, not food shortages.
First of all, take a grass-fed cow, buffalo, sheep, or goat on a farm. They live in fields and eat grass and weeds growing in the sun. They consume a non-trivial amount of water, but much of that water is returned to the field in the form of feces and urine and nurtures the plants and organisms that live there. Their only food source is grass, which is totally indigestible to me. As a bonus the land they live on is enriched in the most beneficial way possible, building topsoil and fertility. Some of the most fertile soil in the world, our own Midwest, was built in exactly this way - through the symbiosis of grass and ruminants.
Smart farmers will rotate their land, giving land used for planting crops adequate time to be replenished.
Non-ruminants, such as pigs, chickens, turkeys, and geese, can also be pastured. They also eat plant matter, but they prize sources of fat and protein like insects, small mammals, nuts and seeds above all else.
As another benefit all animals raised on a biologically appropriate diet rather than processed soybean-corn powder food have much higher amounts of most vitamins and also higher ratios of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids.
Most herbivores have a body shape designed to carry around a huge stomach. These stomachs include options to treat cellulose and other poor sources of nutrients. The waking day is filed with a constant search to feed these engines. The evolutionary step of being able to process animal protein enabled us to literally get our snouts out of the dirt and proceed to becoming the dominant species on the planet.
Looking at this, could it be argued that veganism is counter evolutionary and subversive to our species as a whole?
I’ve heard it argued that a vegetarian (and especially vegan) diet can sometimes actually be WORSE for CERTAIN aspects of the environment than a diet that involves meat - especially if you’re buying “organic”. Why? Well, because unless you’re buying directly from the farm, there’s no guarantee that anything is local.
I haven’t any sources to cite, but the way it goes is this… Take New York City, as an example. With a population of 8 million people, if you assume that everyone needs at least 1 acre of land to feed themselves, that’s just over 1/5th the area of the entire state of New York… Just for feeding that one city. It can also take more land to produce the same amount of plant life with organic farming than with what’s now considered “normal” farming. I’m fairly positive that 1/5th of New York isn’t farmland (not commercial farms, anyway). So all that food has to come from elsewhere. This much is obvious. Now you can bring in the calorie dense animal protein, or you can ship in veggies.
Green leafy veggies (like lettuce) are bulkier, finicky, and require refrigeration as well as a good deal of maintenance to ship (and thus use up a good deal of energy/oil). Tubers like carrots, potatoes, parsnips, etc. don’t require as much care. Fruits (of which you can argue that bell peppers and tomatoes are a member) also require special care and can be bruised fairly easily. All this adds up to high energy (and pollution) costs for shipping these yummy things. None of these store well for too long, under most circumstances.
Grains and legumes are fairly nutrient-rich pound for pound, don’t require much care and store easily. Animals tend to eat these pretty much as-is (very minimal processing), but people want to buy bread and other processed forms of such things in the store; we’re a packaged society and “nobody” has time to cook anymore.
Large commercial farms also tend to be relatively near (not always, of course) where grains, beans and sugar beets are grown, so the environmental impact of shipping is less. Grains and beans also store well, so the cost of keeping the feed around is less, too.
I know that this is getting long, so bear with me…
Considering how calorie-dense meat is, let’s pretend it takes 2 pounds of vegetable stuff to equal the calories in 1 pound of meat. It may take 20-40lbs of food to make that 1 pound of meat, but supposedly by the time you factor in the distances involved, the oil burned thereof, and whatnot, that 2 pounds of fresh veggies you get “costs” as much to the environment as the 1 pound of meat.
Of course, this doesn’t factor in something like managing to buy only local or whether anyone involved uses clean/green energy in any of the steps or whether the farmers involved (anywhere) use sustainable methods.
I don’t know how much of this is true or not, but I’d be interested in knowing the details. I do, however, think it’s pretty clear that the further north you go, with the climate being what it is, the more difficult it is to claim that vegan/vegetarianism is less of an impact; simply because it simply isn’t possible to grow things; as an example, the Eskimo/Inuit lived almost solely on meat, out of necessity.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, if you buy any food regardless of whether it’s meat or not, there is no guarantee it is local.
Also, I’m not entirely sure if organic farming is better or worse for the environment. They are lower yield, but on the other hand, I would think their methods would result in less pollution from run-off.
QUOTE=annelions;11944395]I haven’t any sources to cite, but the way it goes is this… Take New York City, as an example. With a population of 8 million people, if you assume that everyone needs at least 1 acre of land to feed themselves, that’s just over 1/5th the area of the entire state of New York… Just for feeding that one city. It can also take more land to produce the same amount of plant life with organic farming than with what’s now considered “normal” farming. I’m fairly positive that 1/5th of New York isn’t farmland (not commercial farms, anyway). So all that food has to come from elsewhere. This much is obvious. Now you can bring in the calorie dense animal protein, or you can ship in veggies.
Grains and legumes are fairly nutrient-rich pound for pound, don’t require much care and store easily. Animals tend to eat these pretty much as-is (very minimal processing), but people want to buy bread and other processed forms of such things in the store; we’re a packaged society and “nobody” has time to cook anymore.
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Well, if it’s beef or grain it probably comes from out west in the great plains. And if it’s beef at a fast food place it’s probably a mixture of meat from out west and also from South America. At least that’s what I read like 10 years ago. Meat from South American cows don’t have enough fat content for burgers, but are cheaper, so they mix high-fat meat from North American livestock, with low-fat meat from South American livestock.
Grains and legumes are fairly nutrient-rich pound for pound, but as always, going up from one trophic level to another, a lot of energy is lost in the process. The amount of energy in the plants is lost in the process of being absorbed by the livestock, and yet again when the livestock are eaten. Also, take note that that nutrient rich food is being given to them over a period of time, so that’s even more energy being used.
QUOTE=annelions;11944395]
Large commercial farms also tend to be relatively near (not always, of course) where grains, beans and sugar beets are grown, so the environmental impact of shipping is less. Grains and beans also store well, so the cost of keeping the feed around is less, too.
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We aren’t feeding livestock lettuce and stuff are we? Humans could be eating those grains and beans if we really wanted the efficiency.
[I wasn’t done writing but I accidentaly hit submit]
Okay, I guess I’m done, I could have done better but oh well. I’ll just add in that I looked around very briefly at some stats and I wasn’t able to figure out the what the land use was in New York right away, but I found stats for the whole US. Apparently the US - in the lower 48 States - uses 23.3 percent of total land area for crops - and 30 percent for livestock. And apparently land use for agriculture has declined in the past few decades. From the sound of that it doesn’t sound that unreasonable to think that 1/5 of the land in NY might be aricultural land.
Oh, also, I doubt the environmental impacts of growing those crops outweighs to really awful pollution that pig farming causes. Cess-pits are not good.
But most American meat isn’t local either, and even if the meat is raised in a local feedlot/slaughterhouse, the plants the meat eats still have to be grown somewhere (else, usually)… only now you need that much more of it (one number I often hear is 10x, but don’t quote me on that) because most of the calories go toward the food animal’s metabolism instead of yours. The same transportation headaches would still apply and may even be magnified; most adult cows, for example, eat corn shipped from the Midwest and not the grass next to them.
As a vegan, I can still believe that the situation is different in different parts of the world and we should (indeed, must) examine each area’s food situation on a case-by-case basis. There are certainly climates, soils, or other environments where humans cannot survive on local plant matter alone and need animals to process the plants first. But I believe these to be fringe cases. Certainly your average American – humans and farm animals alike – does not eat locally and an American vegetarian diet may be more sustainable if only because most of our meat comes from mass feedlots dependent on the very same vast, inefficient network that you’re criticizing, only now it’s even more inefficient because you’re adding an additional layer (the animals).
Even more frustratingly (or perhaps intriguingly), the overall environmental impact of any given practice is incredibly difficult to measure. Aside from transportation, there’s so much more to consider: Fertilizer runoff (and algae blooms and fish deaths, etc.), manure buildup, disease spread, air quality, worker health, consumer health, blah blah blah… but on the other hand, you take away a factory farm and suddenly you’re affecting the local economy and community, you’re requiring even more meat to be imported, blah blah. It’s not just a butterfly effect or even the resultant hurricane, it’s a perfect storm of hurricanes.
The overall point of all this is not necessarily veganism, but sustainability. It just so happens that in America, veganism is one common pathway towards that goal – but not the only possible one. I would recommend reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Or if you’re more interested in hard numbers (way too much of 'em, IMHO), check out Diet for a Dead Planet.
Our abundance as a species is the result of many factors, not just omnivorism; otherwise any ol’ predator could’ve risen to the top. I mean, sure, you have Great Whites on Wall Street and pigs in Washington, but that’s not quite the same.
Evolution doesn’t necessarily select for the fittest, but merely for the fit enough to survive any given niche. But we’re quickly outgrowing our niche and our population may one day exceed its carrying capacity unless we alter our habits, using our (slightly more) evolved brains, not our stomachs, to plan our future.
Maybe you’re just trolling, but if not, sustainability – if that’s what you meant by “a softer touch” – is a multi-faceted problem requiring multiple approaches and solutions. Population control may factor into it, but it’s one of the less socially desired solutions. Also, the ecological footprint of one American may exceed that of even a medium-sized family in a more rural country; their agricultural activities can sometimes offset what they take from their region and perhaps even help to increase local biodiversity. Of course, that could just be the whole noble savage thing talking.
Point is, no matter who they are, what they do while they’re alive is just as important as what they eat or how much they breed.
Different arguments appeal to different people, or perhaps appeal to the same person at different times through his or her life. I see no reason why they can’t all be used together. I knew I first considered vegetarianism because of a PETA shock brochure, but two years later the shock has long since worn off and I choose to stay vegan because of the resource use arguments (among other things).
