Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[No_God]

Steak is delicious

[Aractus]

I know you might not agree about whether animals deserve this protection too, but vegans and vegetarians certainly do.

This is a lie that makes sane vegetarians look bad. I'm a vegetarian who occasionally "goes vegan." I certainly don't agree.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. While some people go vegan as an ethical choice, others go vegetarian as a health conscious choice (eg SDA's).

Nope. It's definitely just being dickish. Where's your "sense of compassion and duty" toward other human people? Food is a basic right, and animals are food for most people. Killing for food isn't like killing for sport or pleasure. It's natural, and for people in poorer parts of the world, it's absolutely essential.

Correct, and in addition it's essential in first world countries too, as a. not all land is suitable for growing crops and b. meat is a necessary by-product of dairy, wool and eggs and all three of those products are essential. But that certainly doesn't mean that everyone has to eat meat - I mean everyone is different and diversity isa good thing. So while it's a perfectly valid and healthy choice for an individual to be vegetarian, it's not such a great idea on a more national scale.

[My imaginary friend is GOD]

Steak is delicious

Meat eater code for: I have nothing useful to contribute, so I will just be a dick.

They think they're trolling us, as though we haven't heard the same shit a million times before.

[Aractus]

Meat eater code for: I have nothing useful to contribute, so I will just be a dick.

It's not trolling since it is difficult to satisfy our taste buds with a vegan diet. You can kick up the biggest fuss you like, but them's the facts.

No ancient society has ever thrived on a vegan or vegetarian diet - despite the fact that you and the other vegans here keep claiming that it's easier, cheaper and more efficient to get our nutrition without meat. Think about that for a second. For all the diseases that meat may have brought when it was less hygienic than it is today, and all the other disadvantages to it, it had to still have advantages that outweighed the costs or otherwise we'd have ancient societies that thrived without any meat!

Vegans in fact know that meat is delicious, and that's why much of the processed vegan food they eat has MSG's and artificial flavours added (and consequently carcinogens) - you wouldn't need to add these if the flavour obtained purely from unprocessed vegan foods was enough to satisfy our taste buds. That's cheating. And it's really not healthy either. So much for your cancer-causing pseudo-meat patties.

So I'll say this once again - vegetarian diets can be healthy. But if you're replacing meat with processed foods containing MSG then you're aren't better off than you were eating meat, you're worse off.

[No_God]

Now you've heard it 1,000,001 times.

[bennyboy]

Vegans in fact know that meat is delicious, and that's why much of the processed vegan food they eat has MSG's and artificial flavours added (and consequently carcinogens) - you wouldn't need to add these if the flavour obtained purely from unprocessed vegan foods was enough to satisfy our taste buds. That's cheating. And it's really not healthy either. So much for your cancer-causing pseudo-meat patties.

I kind of agree to a degree. I think simulated "meats" are basically vegetarian porn-- it's not the real thing, but it stimulates enough of those neurons to make it pleasurable in its own way. But the fact that vegans eat anything formed to look like meat is a pretty obvious acknowledgement that meat-eating is part of our nature, at least on an instinct level.

As for MSG and artificial flavors-- I've never heard of vegan foods being full of garbage. That seems antithetical to the "purity" of controlling your food intake. I always check ingredients on everything, and if there are chemical names, I have to look them up, and if they can be animal sourced, I have to contact the company and specifically ask if they can guarantee a vegetable source. And even after all that, I feel a little uncomfortable eating the food, because I'm not confident that the company employee who had to deal with me wasn't just telling me what I wanted to hear to make his/her day easier.

I've found many vegan products that list ALL the ingredients, and they are all natural, taste great, and are of good quality.

[James2014]

Correct, and in addition it's essential in first world countries too, as a. not all land is suitable for growing crops and b. meat is a necessary by-product of dairy, wool and eggs and all three of those products are essential. But that certainly doesn't mean that everyone has to eat meat - I mean everyone is different and diversity isa good thing. So while it's a perfectly valid and healthy choice for an individual to be vegetarian, it's not such a great idea on a more national scale.

This is complete nonsense. The evidence of harms of meat eating are so well evidenced that even the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations agrees that "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."

When it comes to grass fed beef, yes it will be better for the animals and it will not entail wasteful use of crops. However the animals will grow considerably slower, reducing productivity, and increasing the amount of methane and carbon dioxide production from the animals as they digest food. Additionally as the land becomes increasingly marginal, this will dramatically increase the amount of energy used to herd the animals, which will have to be dispersed over a large area. All this means that this can in fact INCREASE the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted by grass fed beef compared to feedlot fed.


Indeed as this study comparing grass-fed vs feedlot cattle says, grass-fed beef is so much worse for the environment that "increasing proportion of lot-fed beef in Australia is favourable, since this production system generates lower total GHG emissions than grass-fed production; the additional effort in producing and transporting feeds is effectively offset by the increased efficiency of meat production in feedlots."

The fact is no animal product is required for health and while even vegetarianism is significantly better for ones health than eating meat, veganism can decrease mortality further and is more protective against cancer. Dairy and milk are not required for health. Wool also is not required as there are plenty of plant based and synthetic materials that are just as good. All the evidence shows, as detailed in the FAO report, that meat is significantly harmful to our environment. Going vegan would reduce our use of resources and reduce global warming.

[Anomalocaris]

This is precisely why we need to permanently sequester all the milk and meat cattles in tightly restricted and control pans with internal air circulation and methane capture similar to how chickens have been optimized to produce big eggs and juice breasts and drum sticks with the least environmental impact per egg or drum stick. We need to keep our eyes on the ball and extract with maximized efficiency the milk and meat extraction from cattles, while minimizing environmental impact. If meat eating has health down sides, then answer to genetically engineer cows whose meat offer the same enjoyment but with little or no side effects, and not to turn ourselves into cows by eating grass.

[James2014]

No ancient society has ever thrived on a vegan or vegetarian diet - despite the fact that you and the other vegans here keep claiming that it's easier, cheaper and more efficient to get our nutrition without meat. Think about that for a second. For all the diseases that meat may have brought when it was less hygienic than it is today, and all the other disadvantages to it, it had to still have advantages that outweighed the costs or otherwise we'd have ancient societies that thrived without any meat!

Vegans in fact know that meat is delicious, and that's why much of the processed vegan food they eat has MSG's and artificial flavours added (and consequently carcinogens) - you wouldn't need to add these if the flavour obtained purely from unprocessed vegan foods was enough to satisfy our taste buds. That's cheating. And it's really not healthy either. So much for your cancer-causing pseudo-meat patties.

So I'll say this once again - vegetarian diets can be healthy. But if you're replacing meat with processed foods containing MSG then you're aren't better off than you were eating meat, you're worse off.

As for vegetarian diets in ancient societies, many Hindus and Buddhists have indeed thrived on this diet. On a vegan diet, while one could argue that Jains have thrived on this, it is only now as we can make B12 from bacteria and a firm understanding of physiology that has enabled us to live a healthy vegan diet. And the facts speak for themselves vegans are healthier.

Show me some actual evidence that "artificial" vegan food actually causes cancer. Now compare that lack of evidence with the overwhelming evidence that meat causes cancer. Vegan food is delicious, and it also doesn't cause that feeling of disgust at having brutally murdered another conscious being, which definitely adds to the flavour

[Bad Wolf]

The sun causes cancer too. I'm not that bothered to be honest.