This sort of thing has made catering for office events a nightmare now - not the fault of people with genuine medical conditions, and I’m happy to accomodate them wherever possible, but the plethora of Vegans and People On Fad Diets means it can be hard to do something nice that works for everyone otherwise.
The doughnuts’ carbs are “quicker”, they’re simpler, easier to digest, and produce a sugar high more quickly. That makes a big difference. Which one is safer will vary with the individual and as Johnny L.A. says it should be the individual who knows it.
Within your pack. Am I to take it, then, that you’re cool with out-of-group murder, or with perfect murder (the type of murder that other members of your pack never find out about)?
Bzzt–teleological argument. Nature didn’t build you for anything. As for “unnatural,” you realize that you’re communicating your worry about unnatural actions by typing them into a computer on the Internet, right? That “unnatural” ship has sailed, friend :).
Fortunately, there’s no correlation whatever between “natural” and “ethical.”
:rolleyes:
It isn’t hard, you make sure you have a salad; croutons cheese and dressing on the side. It won’t be balanced, people will gripe - but they won’t starve.
Generally, a chipotle type bar works too - people can make a burrito or they can make a salad - they can add beans or meat if they want.
People with fairly extreme diets shouldn’t expect to get fed at a mass catering event (and generally don’t want to because if you are going to go into shock eating poultry you don’t want to eat anything you don’t trust, and if you take your kosher obligations seriously, you don’t eat anything that hasn’t come out of a kosher kitchen - and you are used to this expectation), so send out the menu ahead of time having made an effort to make sure you have something that is vegetarian/gluten free/non-diary.
As someone with a medical condition, I just wish that when I say “I can do without out - enjoy yourselves” or “I’ll bring my own - don’t worry about me” that people would actually take me at my word.
I DO NOT want to be the person who denies pizza to everyone in the office because I can’t have pizza and the organizers don’t want me “left out”. What a way to guarantee I’ll be the focus of animosity. Let the people eat pizza! I’ll nibble on garlic toast or bring something I can eat and socialize with everyone there. Heck even if I have nothing in front of me I’ll socialize, just don’t force me to eat something I shouldn’t, don’t go crazy bending over backwards to “accommodate” me when I’ve already said it’s not necessary, and for Og’s sake don’t punish everyone else who doesn’t have my limitations!
In what benighted place do you live that has no Peeps? With what you you make your dioramas?
I like vegetables and fruits and eat a lot of them. But I also eat fish and animal flesh because that type of protein gives me strength and endurance, fills me up, and fuels my active lifestyle.
Can you imagine the deprivation if all of the world’s carnivores suddenly stopped eating meat? Every species on the lower end of the food chain would quickly overpopulate, consuming and straining all available plant resources and eventually starving both themselves and other species. Any species that loses its natural predators quickly overpopulates. We’ve seen it happen all over the world. It is part of the design of nature as we know it that there is a food chain and that its purpose is to encourage diversity, protect the environment from excessive imbalance and overuse of resources, and to allow sufficient (but not overabundant) breeding in order for each species to magnify any favorable mutations and decrease unfavorable ones.
At our place, it’s the Wellness Committee that has banned certain foods – no cookies, no soda. Luckily their big boss spoke up and insisted on cookies at division meetings 
If one doesn’t eat meat because they don’t want to, or for religious issues, that’s fine. This blather about institutional farming methods as the only reason, however, is mostly manure. There are plenty of options almost everywhere for obtaining sustainably raised, ethically harvested meat. It is MUCH more expensive than mass produced meat, but if your principals really demand it then you will pay what is necessary. Or you can say that you don’t eat meat because maintaining your ethical standards towards food animals is too expensive, so you just eat veggies. Don’t however, blame it on something that can pretty easily be avoided.
Okay, this is a laudable goal in regards to livestock. But there’s never going to be a milk and honey utopia where no animals suffer. Unless we someday wipe out all species besides humans and our algae-chow.
How many field mice, rabbits and insects had to die so you could enjoy your salad and vegetarian curry? More than the number of cattle that had to suffer and die for my steak, that’s for sure.
I have a friend who farms about 45 minutes from my house. He gave us chickens so I can have organic eggs direct from my back yard. They also sold us a side of pork from a pig who we could verify (by visiting it) that it lived a happy and healthy life. It averaged $3/lb and lasted us several months.
I’m not saying this solution scales for everyone, but if you’re serious about minimizing the suffering involved in your dinner, I’d start avoiding grocery stores before I avoid meat. Go find a CSA or local farmer and get to know your food before it becomes a brightly colored package on the shelf.
Was your steak grain-fed? Because if so, nuh uh. And even wild-grazing cattle are fairly disruptive to the ecosystem.
That said, a related point–that a plant-based agricultural diet is still the result of a lot of animal death–is definitely true. Nobody gets to claim purity.
I know I come in these threads and appear to defend animal rights. I don’t actually ascribe to animal rights, because I think that the value we place on being alive is demonstrably a cultural value: the survival instinct is a powerful instinct, but not the only one, and it’s possible that livestock animals would, if we asked, rather have the life they got (followed by a painless death) than have had any other possible life. There are definitely abuses in the world of agriculture, but it’s not clear to me that the most ethical choice is to refuse to participate in animal agriculture.
I specifically said “cattle” to illustrate that there is more impact than just the particular animal you’re eating. There was only one steer killed for my steak (and that one steer probably fed 50-100 people), as opposed to the entire ecosystem destroyed by growing the ingredients to your salad. You’re right that there are similar deaths from raising livestock, either by feeding them grains or the insects and pasture life they kill just by grazing.
If your ethical standard is “number of lives snuffed out per calorie of usable nutrition obtained”, that probably pushes the balance towards more meat eating. But vegetarians place more value on large mammals with sympathetic faces, and much less on insects and other, often invisible, casualties of raising crops.
So if your standard is just “amount of suffering per usable calorie” then we’re basically in “make it up as you go along” land. That’s as subjective a standard as you get. My point is that you have to take into account far more than just the organism you’re eating. Also, the OP has an issue with causing any amount of suffering. He’s deluding himself if he thinks just eating veggies eliminates all the suffering his choices cause. If he feels guilty about eating pills with gelatin or swatting mosquitoes, that’s a walk in the park compared to the amount of suffering a salad causes.
Then it’s a totally apples-and-oranges argument and completely useless. The question, “How many penguins died for your salad? MOre than the number of golden marmosets who died for my steak?” would be equally relevant.
Nobody has that standard. Not even Jains.
This is nonsense. We have an excellent sense of what causes human suffering. We have a very, very good sense of what causes suffering among other primates. We have a good sense of what causes suffering among other mammals. We have some sense of what causes suffering among other primates. We have a limited sense of what causes suffering among other animals. We have no sense of whether suffering exists in any meaningful way among other living things. We’re pretty sure suffering doesn’t exist among other entities made of matter.
If I stab an awake person, I’m 100% sure they suffer (barring some obscure technicality like they’ve been numbed, let’s avoid such technicalities going forward). I’m equally sure a goat and a weasel suffer. I’m pretty sure a chicken and a fish and a frog suffer. I’m unconvinced a worm or a grasshopper suffers–maybe? I doubt a sponge suffers. I’m pretty sure a maple tree and a fly agaric mushroom won’t suffer. I know a pencil eraser won’t suffer.
There is some level of subjectivity there, compared to say calculus. But there are also standards of evidence and reason that may be applied.
Do you have any cite for this? This is the “make it up as you go along” part I was talking about. It’s entirely subjective. You might “feel” like a sponge suffers less than a frog, but what evidence is there except the fact that frogs have faces (not as cute as kitties, but close enough for people to vaguely sympathize with them) and sponges don’t?
I mean, I’ve yet to even see a useful definition of “suffering”, let alone one that is objectively measurable across all species of life. Usually we talk about lives lost, because that’s an easier number to measure, assuming that animals don’t want to die and plants don’t care. But that’s a naive standard at best.
Just reposting this for those who haven’t read the whole thread. Best comment to date.
As for me, I have a button on my wall at work that says “I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables.” And that’s all I’m going to say.
Press on.
Are you kidding?
Let’s assume you’re not.
I have this thing called a brain. It’s connected to nerves that run all through my body. Some of those nerves are sensitive to a kind of stimulus I call “pain.” A stab wound is a good way to stimulate those nerves. When I feel enough “pain,” it goes into territory I consider “suffering.”
Are you with me so far?
With a high degree of certainty I believe you have a similar nervous system. Without going through all the steps, my belief in your similar nervous system leads to my belief that you experience stimuli like “pain” in a way similar to my experience. Because my pain leads to suffering for me, and because you and I are neurologically similar, I believe similar pain will lead to similar suffering for you.
Still with me?
A geriatric weasel–or whatever mammal you can think of that’s not at all cute, I cdon’t care what it is–has a nervous system with important differences from ours–but not in the realm of pain stimulus. My limited knowledge of biology includes a high degree of certainty that geriatric weasels have nerves sensitive to pain, connecting to brains that interpret nervous system responses. I also know that mammals respond to pain in ways that are relevantly similar to ways that humans respond to pain–with sharp movements back, tensed muscles, often with cries. All empirical evidence points to similarities of structure and of response; therefore the most straightforward conclusion is that there’s a relevantly similar underlying experience in response to the stimulus.
Did you make that connection?
Once we’re working with frogs and fish, the nervous system that generates a response to stimulus is starting to get significantly different. Here’s where my ignorance kicks in: I’ve read conflicting accounts of how the nervous systems of frogs and fish are set up, whether they have pain-sensitive neurons that are functionally similar to mine. Also, their brains have a lot more differences from mine than does yours or does a geriatric weasel’s; I’m less confident that the underlying experience is still relevantly similar.
One more big jump to make:
Sponges don’t have brains, or indeed any nervous system at all. Since my whole understanding of MY experience of pain involves the communication of stimulus from neurons to my brain, and since a sponge is missing the key physical components of that system, I have no reason to conclude that sponges have any relevantly similar experience of being stabbed at all.
Of course, I may just be lying and secretly think old weasels are cuter than froggies. But I hope you’ll entertain the possibility I’ve thought about this subject.
See, I think you’ve made some logical leaps that I cannot follow. Being another creature is a matter of subjective experience. And there is no science behind it. You cannot know what it is like to be a weasel, let alone a cricket or head of lettuce. You’re inferring that something with similar parts has similar feelings and desires, and I just don’t think that’s justified. I mean, I know people who enjoy pain and/or want to die. You’re telling me it’s not possible a chicken just doesn’t give a shit either way? Or that a stalk of wheat may actually want to live?
Empathy works with people, for the most part. It probably gives us some insight into primates, but any other life form? You’re fooling yourself if you think you know what they feel. Or if the concept we call “feeling” even applies to them. Suffering and emotion means more than just stimulus/response, in my opinion. And not only that, but different reactions to stimuli might entail different types of suffering that we can’t comprehend. To act like a vine, which searches for sunlight and structure to support it and grows with tenacity and goes to a lot of lengths to prevent its own death, doesn’t feel a thing, but some tiny-brained defenseless bird does, simply because it possesses nerves, seems entirely baseless to me. It’s a form of prejudice, to think that something structurally different from us must not possess feelings or the will to live.