I would tell them it’s an odd dinner topic to bring up at Smith & Wollensky.
There is also an inverse correlation between the amount of thought and introspection that a person performs, versus the quantity, loudness and indignance of the words they speak or write.
So you’re more likely to hear from the comparative minority of shallow-minded blowhards than you are from the majority of people who spent a moment thinking.
That is indeed exactly what I’ve faced from aggressive meat eaters, repeatedly, on several different occasions, while I was quietly minding my own business. It’s always the same harassment too.
The last time someone pulled that on me, I lost my temper so bad that the only retort I could think of was “Fuck you, bitch!” I don’t often lose my temper but they kept at it until I snapped.
ETA: I’m sorry. My depression is worse today and it’s making me cranky. But it’s unadvisable to dwell on old injuries.
But greens give you beneficial things that meat can’t. I have not experienced any haranging from vegans but have from carnivores, or I should say omnivores.
I would think it would be similar to when we switched from using horses for transportation; we just bred fewer of them over time. There wasn’t a horse apocalypse.
Right. For vegans, dairy is off the menu too.
And it’s not just the cramped barns, it’s also repeatedly inseminating cows and then taking their calves away from them immediately, and you can watch videos of how upset the cows are when that happens.
This was the real surprise for me – I’d always assumed we had some magical way to make cows produce milk without them needing to have given birth recently, but, it turns out, no.
There is no danger of there being a shortage of calories in the US even in the implausible scenario of everyone switching to vegetarianism / veganism overnight. And, as pointed out, in the long term it’s a far more efficient way to feed people.
There might be a few deficiencies for a while, but the public are already deficient on average of many nutrients, it would just be different (and likely, fewer) deficiencies for a while.
And I’ll stop there. Frankly, I think the attempt to find lots of reasons not to cut meat is a post-hoc rationalization, and I think if there were no motivation behind this, you would realize none of these arguments really stands up.
I’m not trying to convert anyone to being a vegan. You’re inviting this with your rants.
My opinion is that not eating meat is an unsatisfactory and shallow approach to reducing animal suffering. It’s not nothing, but it is the equivalent of recycling plastic. To truly reduce animal suffering, a much deeper understanding of animals and how we coexist with them would be needed, and it would involve a complete restructuring of both food consumption and biological awareness. The combination of quasi-religious fanaticism and lack of knowledge displayed by PETA soldiers is deeply disturbing to me. I’ve spent my whole life working with animals, and I feel I speak from some experience of these people.
As I say, I don’t recall ever being lectured about veganism during my 40+ years eating meat. There are 10 million veggies / vegans in the US alone, it’s very clear that the vast, vast majority of people don’t tell other people what to eat.
Again, I think there’s a degree of rationalization here: “I eat meat because I don’t want to be like one of those quasi-religious fanatics who don’t understand animals”
At least the hunter has the chance to apologize to the animal face to face. “I’m sorry, brother, but I need your flesh to feed my family.”
I’m happy to insult PETA soldiers, who do all sorts of nutty things. I know lots of vegans, and i will defend them as decent rational people who have made a choice I’m not willing to make.
I once had an interaction with a vegetarian, where we probably both thought the other was being hostile and unreasonable. We were taking food at a buffet, and maybe i asked about her choices, i forget. She said, “I’m a vegetarian”, and i replied, “I’m a carnivore”, and she launched into a lecture about how humans aren’t (obligate) carnivores. Which of course I’m fully aware of. But it’s true i get sad if i go too many days without eating meat. This isn’t a hypothetical, my husband thinks that meat is unhealthy for his heart, and often cooks vegetarian dinners. My usual lunch is leftovers, but if there’s been a lot of vegetarian meals i sometimes cook a slab of frozen fish or something for lunch, because i long for the dense protein of meat.
My compromise on the ethical vegetarian front is to buy meat from sources that generated less suffering. So in particular, i avoid factory-reared pork (and US veal). But i also buy from vendors who gave the animal a decent life until it was slaughtered.
That has cropped up right in this thread. Come to think of it, yeah I guess it is obnoxious behavior, but I don’t pay it any mind. What has upset me is them getting in my face and directly making it personal about me.
I live by the principle of: Don’t start none, won’t be none.
On the subject of the economics and climate impact of eating meat… There is land, mostly marginal land that would need substantial irrigation to produce crops, that is more economically efficient to produce calories by grazing animals that eat can eat grass. But of course, that’s not where any of our meat come from in the US. Partly because we “finish” our beef on grain and other foods that require the same resources to grow as human food, and partly because our total consumption of meat is far more than dry-grazed animals would produce.
But in a perfectly optimized food-producing world, there would be room for a little meat.
Given the vast waste (or inefficiencies, if you prefer) of US and global meat production, cutting down on eating meat is good for the environment, though.
Part of it is that they may be subconsciously expecting you to be meek (and therefore an easy target for bullying) , along with your vegetarianism, just because that’s sort of a meme.
No particular reason why you need to be though.
In one sense it is just that easy.
Right now we have Farm A which produces 1,000 GiggaCalories of grain per year, and sells all of that food to Farm B, which produces 100 GiggaCalories of meat for American markets.
It is easy to see how reducing meat consumption would mean that we could eliminate all of the resources devoted to Farm B, and 90% of the resources devoted to Farm A, and still put 100 GiggaCalories of food in American bellies.
When that reduction happens over time, farmers have the opportunity to redirect their activities, close down less efficient producers, etc. and the market has the opportunity to shift resources without causing more harm than we already get.
Farmers are cogs in the machinery of the Global Industrial Food Conglomerate, and have few choices within it. In rural New England there’s a plethora of small-farm producers of pastured pork, beef, chicken, lamb, and many homesteaders who raise a pig or a steer for their own freezers, but that just isn’t the case most other places. Would that it were different.
This, so much this.
My gf chooses to not eat veal. I point out to her that because she drinks cow milk, veal calves are being created.
Meanwhile, I do not drink cow milk, but really enjoy veal.
Well, all the vegans I know STFU about it, so this hasn’t been an issue to me. I suppose I’m lucky?
Honestly, I myself have gotten a bit reticent about veal. I won’t say no, but I don’t order it or buy it myself. I’ve gotten similarly squeamish about octopus. I’m not entirely sure why I care … I might as well be consistent about it, but I’m human and weird.
I can’t do octopus either. They are one of the few non-human species on earth that I think might be sentient.
I’ll do a nice plate of calamari though.
I know that. That’s why I said “I can’t possibly get enough…”
The plant based foods I can eat, with protein, are mostly of legume and beans types.
Many prepared bean foods(aka …peanut butter) I can’t eat.
It takes a bunch of beans to get a partial protein. I can’t eat that amount of food at one sitting. Everything I eat is measured carefully. The only answer is a portion of meat. Plain meat. Not sauced, condimented or casseroled. Gotta count every carb. Swallow that.
(P.S. spinach is a green, I grow it and eat it a lot)
Also, someone said “why do I judge?”
Because, I can.
I’m a grown person, with free will to think anything I want about what I see. As a person on a severe food restricted diet, I have opinions.
I DO NOT attack, accost, question or berate folks about what’s on their dinner plate. EVER.
See, to me that’s a weird take. I don’t see meat-eating as inherently logical or necessary, but I do see deciding you like meat and killing animals to get some as rational. That’s less emotionally fraught than a take like “I’m reducing suffering in the world.” Caring about animal suffering is sentiment to me, and I save my sentiment for people. Even though I’ve got plenty to go around, I can’t see spending any on random farm animals being raised for food.
That’s probably colored by growing up rural and doing a bit of unenthusiastic hunting, fishing, and farm work in my formative years, as well as a few situations where I’ve had to run from decidedly unenlightened members of the animal kingdom. (I’ve found bears most unsentimental.)