Not so fast. As a Trump supporter, what is your position on his line of steaks? 
Not too appreciative. 
The group that eats meat is larger still. You should trust them even more.
Well, that’s a tough one, and even the pain of infants of any circumstance is a tough one to decide on. Can they reason enough to be suffering? This is where I err on the side of “humans are special” and assume it is suffering, to be avoided or prevented.
…so YOU say.
My problem with that reasoning is that it draws an arbitrary line, on the one side of which are entities to whom I owe moral responsibility and on the other side are those to whom I don’t. Arbitrary lines like that don’t have a good history of making for good ethics.
I’m much more comfortable with a less bright line, more of a continuum, based on empirical evidence. Despite all the claims that I’m being subjective or anthropomorphic or whatever, I find the alternative to be much more subjective.
No, humans aren’t extra-special. We’re jumped-up primates. What makes us special is that the adult versions of us can reason in complex manners.
But I don’t think our suffering is qualitatively different from that of my ex-roommate’s dog: the dog howled and screamed every night in her tiny chain link pen in the front yard, with the path worn down from her constant circling, the pen where she lived nearly every moment of her life. It’s hard for me to call her life experience anything beyond suffering. She had desires, she had awareness of other beings, she had relationships, she had fears; and her most fundamental desires were consistently thwarted, her fears consistently realized. What is that, if not suffering?
I would not be so sure of that. Yes, the meat that is generally available in the US is shit, but the stuff generally available as alternatives (not counting TVP-like substitutes) is also shit. And being a vegetarian requires quite a lot of effort, to replace the essential nutrition that one gets from eating flesh. Most Americans are simply not smart enough or dedicated enough to thrive on a vegetarian diet.
Teaching in an underfunded public school?
I have two comments:
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Indian food is disgusting to me. I can’t even walk into an Indian restaurant without getting nauseated from the smell of the spices.
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The life expectancy in India is about 10 years less than that in the US. Possibly not directly correlated to their diet, but it sure doesn’t support the idea that it’s a healthy way to live.
It is related to prosperity.(water born diseases, infant mortality, other factors bring it down) It has gone up over the years w/o the percentage of non-veg Indians going up.
Vegetarians age well I suppose. My grandfather is sitting well at 90. My father at 59 can do some of the difficult yoga poses (requiring strength and flexibility) which 90% of youngsters can’t do.
Many famous people (leaders, Olympic medalist wrestlers, a famous world champ chess player, actors, body builders) here are vegetarians.
There are famous vegetarians and there are vegetarian bodybuilders, but there are no famous vegetarian bodybuilders. Also, I think you can, if you make an effort and watch your diet, live a healthy life as a vegetarian. But I’m not so sure about vegans. I’ve never seen an old vegan, and I’ve heard some horror stories of people who stuck with a vegan diet for years. I’m not convinced it’s healthy in the long term.
yes, but your entire argument here seems to be little more than “we can do this, therefore we should do this.” To which I say we all can climb Mt. Everest, but I’m pretty sure most of us shouldn’t.
You sound like you’re not exactly coming at this from a place of knowledge. I mean, it’s cool and all that you’ve never seen an old vegan (you can spot them from a quarter mile off!) (yes, yes, tell the joke), but so what? Here’s one!
We’ll have to agree to disagree about humans. And then the difference to me with the dog example is the dog can’t ask Why? or have the extra layer of wishing it could be different.
I don’t like factory farming, but I don’t care enough to avoid eating meat. When vat-grown meat is available, I will be the first person in line and I will be happy to cut “animal-grown” meat out of my diet entirely.
It has absolutely nothing to do with diet, unless you consider “starvation” a part of diet. Indian food has too much saturated fat in it (and too much sodium, in some regions) but is otherwise much healthier than most Western food. Indians die younger because of problems with sanitation, medicine, food supply and various other factors. It’s not even slightly correlated to diet, and to be honest I kind of hope you were joking.
I’m Indian and don’t like Indian food, for whatever that’s worth - but I’d be far healthier if I was still eating it.
What is “Indian food?” What is “Western food?” Once we have a working definition of what the terms mean, then we can have a pissing contest over which is healthier. Correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that both “India” and “The West” were huge areas containing disparate groups of people. Different sub-regions have their own cultures, languages, and cuisines.
FTR, the couple times I’ve eaten at Indian restaurants here in the greater Pittsburgh area, I did not enjoy the experience. OTOH, such Western dishes as lutefisk are so utterly repulsive that I would gladly belly up to the Indian buffet if those were the only choices.
The Indian food I’ve eaten is great. But I most often eat it in restaurants, so I doubt it is any healthier than Applebee’s.
Home-cooked food is the healthiest, in my opinion, regardless of culture. In fact, as a diet, it would probably be the best one. Eat whatever you want! Want cake for dinner and pie for dessert? Go for it! Just make sure whatever you eat is something you actually cooked yourself, and watch the pounds melt away. (Because cake and pie are time consuming, expensive and difficult to make, compared to grilling a hunk of chicken or cooking some veggies and rice.)
Great, dueling anecdotes! You know how many links I can find with people detailing the health problems they got by going vegan long term?
The fact is, a vegan diet doesn’t provide adequate Vitamin D, B-12, omega-3 fatty acids, calcium or zinc. You can supplement your diet with them, but in my opinion a diet that must be supplemented cannot be considered healthy.
If your anecdote is taken on face value, it’s really profoundly silly. I’ve never met anyone from Lithuania, but if we have a conversation about whether Lithuania exists, who gives a shit about my own lack of experience?
If your anecdote is presumed to be remotely relevant, we have to assume you’re implying that old vegans aren’t out there. I was showing that you’re wrong.
The idea of a “supplement” is not an actual scientific idea. Your diet consists of what you eat, whether that’s grown in the ground or reared on the hoof or manufactured in the lab. A diet is a diet. Saying that a vegan diet can’t be in your opinion healthy is super-groovy, but maybe you need to listen to the American Dietetic Association:
Can the infant living in a terrible orphanage ask those questions, or wish for things to be different, in a way significantly different from the dog?
I’m a level 5 vegan–I don’t eat anything that casts a shadow.
How long did it take to get used to eating in the dark?