Is there any benefit to raw milk vs pasteurized milk?

[Creed of Heresy]

Yeah, and while those deficits can be made up through supplements, it pretty much shows that the vegan diet is NOT natural, and is sustainable only through 'human engineering.' Without modern tech for extracting and processing the necessary nutrients and consolidating the amounts needed, vegans would need to eat well past their capacity to eat just for basic nutrients like those listed. I may have been too hasty to state that vegans are ALWAYS deficient in those nutrients, yes...but the fact that vegans NEED to take so many supplements tells me their diet is, frankly, bullshit, at least on its own. If it's all about health, then just eat some meat once in a blue moon to make up some of the deficiencies.

Seriously, I need this whole vegan diet thing explained to me, cuz I'm not seeing the point of being a vegan as opposed to being either a vegetarian or a semi-vegetarian...I mean, hell, from what I was reading, semi-vegetarian diets are more healthy than vegan ones, so why the fundamentalist-levels of self-imposed restrictions??

[Creed of Heresy]

Oh, and, no, I am not saying anyone here has claimed veganism to be more natural or whatever, I do not intend a strawman, I'm just stating that I fail to understand the reasoning behind veganism, is all.

[James2014]

That link is a bit biased. Firstly vegan diets are not deficient in protein. Brain foods such as EPA and DHA can be obtained from vegan sources, specifically from algae. While vegans are at a greater risk of B12 deficiency, supplements are available, as are fortified foods. D3 can also be obtained from vegan sources, derived from lichens. Lastly veganism has been associated with a number of health benefits including reduced risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality.

It's so biased that it keeps citing sources and studies. If you'd actually read the link, it did indeed state that you can get SOME proteins from legumes and the like, not ALL kinds of proteins, and there is more than one. You can get EPA and DHA from algae, sure...nowhere near the amount you get from a simple hamburger per volume so unless you're eating a FUCKTON of algae you are still deficient, and if you REALLY want to eat THAT MUCH algae a month...go right ahead, you enjoy eating something that tastes like foetid pond water, I'll enjoy something that my stomach doesn't revolt over...

You tell me MY site is biased, then you cite sources from a website tailored to vegans. The link I provided cited sources that show how inefficient D3 intake is from supplements. Now, I've found published literature on studies on the matter, and they seem to show that algal omega-3, EPA, and DHA can be readily supplied from it without any tradeoffs.

Thing was, the studies published in the review were done largely by industries involved with the production and distribution of the product, so additional, unbiased studies are being conducted still. Just saying, don't be so eager to claim your supplement is just as good, you might end up unpleasantly surprised later on down the road, though for now, I will concede that one, at least.

http://www.vegansociety.com/lifestyle/nu...n/b12.aspx To quote this own site that boldly admits the truth about B12 [respect to it for doing so]:

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Is there a vegan alternative to B12-fortified foods and supplements?

If for any reason you choose not to use fortified foods or supplements you should recognise that you are carrying out a dangerous experiment - one that many have tried before with consistently low levels of success. If you are an adult who is neither breast-feeding an infant, pregnant nor seeking to become pregnant, and wish to test a potential B12 source that has not already been shown to be inadequate, then this can be a reasonable course of action with appropriate precautions. For your own protection, you should arrange to have your B12 status checked annually. If homocysteine or MMA is even modestly elevated then you are endangering your health if you persist.

If you are breast feeding an infant, pregnant or seeking to become pregnant or are an adult contemplating carrying out such an experiment on a child, then don't take the risk. It is simply unjustifiable.

Claimed sources of B12 that have been shown through direct studies of vegans to be inadequate include human gut bacteria, spirulina, dried nori, barley grass and most other seaweeds. Several studies of raw food vegans have shown that raw food offers no special protection.

Reports that B12 has been measured in a food are not enough to qualify that food as a reliable B12 source. It is difficult to distinguish true B12 from analogues that can disrupt B12 metabolism. Even if true B12 is present in a food, it may be rendered ineffective if analogues are present in comparable amounts to the true B12. There is only one reliable test for a B12 source - does it consistently prevent and correct deficiency? Anyone proposing a particular food as a B12 source should be challenged to present such evidence.

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I've read around that fortified foods use the bacteria as opposed to the animals that processed it...but additionally, you'd need to eat like four bowls of cereal to match your daily dosage needs. As opposed to eating three ounces of cooked clams, which ensures you get like 1700% of the necessary amount. In other words, you're covered for a long-ass time on that afterwards. Whereas you gotta eat more cereal than you could possibly be hungry for in a single sitting. So, typically, unless you're sticking to that regiment, you're going to have deficiency. And how sad that this supposedly all-natural diet requires chemical manipulation and unnatural culturing processes to provide that B12 in fortified foods...

Finally, vegan diets are healthier it seems, yet not the healthiest. THAT would go to vegetarians who consume fish, so if health is REALLY your concern, then start eating fish instead of being a food-fundie. Unless it's just to be holier-than-thou in which case nobody really cares. There is also the anti-inflammatory properties of carnosine, which, again, is apparently related to aging.

And before you crow too quick about the results of the studies, I must wonder, what WAS the requirement for a "non vegetarian diet?" Were ones where they too were taking supplements for their uptakes factored in? Or was it just the diets alone? Were the vegan/vegetarian diets allowed supplements? I'd like to know that if it is at all possible t find out but I can't find anything about the studies that show it...

In that train of thought, too... http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp...t-8c.shtml

So I wonder if the comparisons are being made according to typical agriculture-industry meats and plant-based foods, or if they're comparing the so-called "organic" plant diets to the "standard" meat diets, or if they're comparing an organic vegan diet to a "hunter gatherer" styled diet of meats and vegetables...in which case, if the hunter-gatherer styled diet of meats wasn't taken into account, is this an accurate representation of the diets between vegans and omnivores? On top of that, if a vegan diet was so "naturally healthy," why on earth do you guys gotta jump through hoops with supplements and everything else? On top of that, much of the time, vegans only buy "organic" foods (as if it makes a difference...) which cost like twice as much, if not more, PLUS you're paying for $15+ bottles of supplements for things I get by eating a single $2 cheeseburger...less than $2 if I make it at home.

I get the impression that the higher cancer rates among non-vegetarians has something to do with the fact that vegans and vegetarians typically are extremely health-minded to a deranged degree.

I mean, that's the point of being a vegan, right? Bein' healthy? If you're that dedicated, probably means you don't drink, smoke, probably don't drink much of if any soft drinks, candy's probably right out, chocolate as well, sugar in general... I mean, if you're gonna go to that extent for health as it is, you gotta cut everything else out, otherwise what you're doing is just restricting your diet for the sake of restricting your diet.

Now, if it's to not harm animals, well, got news for ya; plants can feel too. You eat plants, you're killing them. Just cuz it can't yelp when you pluck it doesn't mean it has the ability to react to outside stimuli. Indeed, plants quite often do react to outside stimuli quite extensively...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05...71027.html An article on that here.

So...if it's for "moral" reasons, that's bullshit because you're just taking comfort in the fact what you're killing can't make a sound that disturbs you and doesn't bleed like you do so you don't consider it "murder." It's an arbitrary line wherein SOME things that live are considered more or less "OK to kill."

So you have to supplement your diet with a ton of pills that without science and "unnatural" human engineering you'd never be able to obtain in viable quantities...if at all. You have to justify the health-driven reasons for it by not being a hypocrite and partaking in other unhealthy activities, because given what hoops you're jumping through just for "health," if you're doing anything unhealthy deliberately, you're ruining the entire point of the endeavor. You will either have to pay for over-priced, underwhelmingly-flavored, pitifully-small produce at some yuppie store patroned by people with way too much money, which eats away at anything else you might spend money on, or you have to buy that awful "mass-produced" food. Never mind it often tastes better... And the size of it is usually larger...

And you sure as hell can't do it for moral reasons. You're still killing something that is living and able to sense and detect and react to outside stimulus not unlike how animals do.

So, the whole thing seems like a pointless endeavor to me. Less risk of cancer, sure, but I smoke, I drink, I treat my body like a mobile dumpster because I love the sensations and experiences.

To put it in the words of Gabriel Iglesias: "Gabriel, don't you want to live for a hundred years??" "Not if I can't tacos!" Time's limited on this planet no matter what. Plenty of people never smoke and get lung cancer. Plenty of people eat extremely healthy and get cancer, whereas some people who ate like pigs die at the age of 80 of congestive heart failure instead. You can maximize your chances, of course, of not getting it...but at what cost? Financial, sensory, hell, even health-wise if you're not watching your intake of certain vitamins and minerals like a hawk to make sure you're getting the right amount of what you need every day.

Doesn't seem anywhere near worth it to me. Superior health to omnivorous diets or no, I'd rather have one LESS thing to stress out over, and I'd rather eat food that tastes good, not food that tastes bland.

And the first person to say tofu can taste great is getting my meat-eating boot up their ass. >_>
So in conclusion: Vegan diets, even if healthier, seem rather unnatural given the amount of necessary supplements that I get without thinking about them just through the course of an average meal, and the moral "superiority" seems rather hollow to me. So, I need more explanation as to why anyone bothers with veganism.

The strength of the Adventist study is that as a population they have very low levels of smoking and live very similar healthy lives, which means confounding from things associated with a vegan diet unlikely. You are right that in that study pescetarians have a slightly lower all cause mortality than vegans, but difference is so slight that the 95% confidence intervals overlap that the difference not statistically significant. All one can say from that study is that vegans, vegetarians and pescetarians all have a lower mortality than omnivores. It pretty much blows all the nonsense about not getting enough B12/protein/D3 etc etc out of the water. In the population most vegans are aware of problems with not B12 and supplement/eat fortified foods to an amount such that it does not affect health. The evidence however that meat causes diseases like cancer on the other hand is vast

I disagree with your argument about a vegan diet being bad because we need supplements. Supplements are just part of a vegans diet that just happened to be made by people, but that doesn't make them unnatural. We evolved to be able invent and create things, everything we do is therefore natural because it is the outcome of this. Of course just because a product is made by humans doesn't mean it will be good or bad for your health, just like a "natural" also doesn't mean its good for you, for example hemlock.

Personally I am a vegan for ethical reasons. The argument the plants can suffer is just incorrect. While they may have very simple forms of memory, like habituation, they do not have associative memory or episodic memory to be able the "what, where and when" of an event like for instance a mouse does. This type of memory means that animals can bind together multiple sensory inputs into one conscious experience to actually be conscious and suffer. Whereas with plants, as the link you cited says "Just as a plant can’t suffer subjective pain in the absence of a brain, I also don’t think that it thinks"

[James2014]

I think it is also important to note what the American Dietetic Association (the largest professional body of nutritionists in the US, and indeed the world) says about vegan diets... and

"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes."

[Creed of Heresy]

Well you certainly have a good point just in general, especially about the health benefits which I admit to being a valid reason for vegetarian diets, but at the same time, the ethics part just doesn't click to me. Why is the ability to bind sensory inputs into a biological CPU more important than a decentralized input system? One has less memory capability than the other, in other words, one is of inferior 'intelligence,' for lack of a better word, and ergo less thought need be paid for it than the other. Then why not eat meat? Animals have less 'intelligence' than we do, less awareness, less self-determination [if any]...if having a much simpler 'intellect' is the grounds for your ethics...then why bother sparing animals? And what are the ethical concerns with drinking milk, eating eggs, cheese, that sort of thing? The egg isn't aware in any way whatsoever and the ones that get eaten are not even fertilized, so there is no pain or suffering involved there. Same with milk and cheese. As for fish, well...they're somewhere in that gray area between animals and plants, so I'll leave that up to you whether or not you feel the need to answer that part.

As far as suffering goes...unfortunately, whether we want to or not, we all cause suffering. It's good to minimize the output of it, of course, but...at some point you have to draw the line as to what you will and will not cause. Am I against eating meat that comes from mass-production beef farms, wherein the cattle are treated like shit, stuffed into boxes every day, and mass-fed byproducts? Yup. Am I against eating meat that comes from a farm wherein the livestock are treated well, allowed to roam around, and otherwise led comfortable lives? Nope. To me, I see no ethical compunctions doing that because I know the animal lived a good life, and was likely killed so quickly it never felt a thing...which is necessary for beef, by the way. Adrenaline, which gets pumped through the bloodstream when suddenly faced with mortal danger, is produced to such an extent that it ruins the meat. Flavor, tenderness, all of it. So by necessity of the trade, they HAVE to kill the cattle before they can even feel what killed them. As for chickens, neck snap, instant termination of all neural functions. All organs stop instantly. Consciousness is gone within a couple seconds, and pain is not felt because the nerve endings are completely dead. If the animals lived a good life, and died painlessly and without suffering, what does it matter if I eat its carcass or not? Hell, I have a problem with NOT eating meat ethically. By the numbers, for the most part people will consume meat as part of their diets, and probably always will. We're omnivorous, it's just how our nature tends to be. So there's always gonna be meat lining the shelves. And as long as there's meat lining the shelves, there's gonna be meat expiring. In other words, the reason for the animal's death gets wasted. Hell, at least they serve a purpose in death. More than can be said for most human beings...

[Creed of Heresy]

Addendum: I could, in all honesty, actually do just fine on a vegetarian diet. I couldn't do a vegan diet, though. I tried doing a vegan diet myself about four years back when I went all serious-business about getting healthy. Thought it'd make me feel better. All it did was make me feel lethargic, empty, and cranky. I felt, health-wise, better, but mood-wise, I felt like a dead, cranky, humorless husk. I found no joy in trying to convince myself that tofu could taste decent. I'm a very good cook, if I do say so myself; I can make something mind-blowing from the cheapest ingredients; quality need not go in, but quality does come out. I tried cooking tofu and using it in a variety of dishes, trying to make it taste like something other than unwashed socks. All it ended up tasting like was whatever I had added to it. The flavor was bland, and the texture made it feel like it was oozing down my throat. Vegetables and fruits are all fine and can taste very good, and not to toot my own horn again but I can make them taste really damn good. Chive and garlic butter, poured over steamed asparagus, broccoli, and carrots, for example, with a hollandaise dipping sauce [suddenly doesn't become vegan; you see my problem already]. But, see, that's the problem. Margarine can be used, sure, but the flavor is much different, especially when melted and simmered with herbs, spices, etc, than butter, as its consistency. No matter how hard you try, the flavor of butter just is not capable of being replaced when its flavor needs to be directed. There's things you can replace with margarine, but even then, the taste and consistency changes, and not in ways I consider to be improvements.

I'd also never be able to give up seafood. Ever. Crab, lobster, oysters, salmon...they're all way too good to give up.

[KichigaiNeko]

Creed, it the above that often makes me wonder...
"You are very health conscious, has it ever occurred to you that these foods you love and 'can't give up' are exactly the foods your particular body needs to be healthy?

[Creed of Heresy]

Quite a bit, yes. XD I don't really eat chicken all that much, either. I eat beef fairly consistently, but I always go for lean, and from certain sources...except when I go to McDonald's from time to time. And by time to time, I mean quite a bit since I started working... Not lately, though.

[KichigaiNeko]

I rarely have MacDonald's. Beef and lamb is just once a week, rest of the time it is quite lean chicken & pork with of course the 1(meat):2 ratio of veggies. Pasta and/ or potatoes round out the meal.

My sauces aren't as good as yours but I'm in there experimenting. Zen loves my tarragon and mustard cream sauce! Also my lemon and chilli sauce is a hit too!

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As for non pasteurised milk? I doubt very much there is any "health benefit" at all.

The only "benefit" I can see happening is IF in fact you own said lactating cow, know precisely what it eats, know something regarding veterinary science (to keep said cow healthy) have a scrupulously clean milking area and have the poor dear artificially inseminated so that an over amorous bull doesn't break her back.

[James2014]

Why is the ability to bind sensory inputs into a biological CPU more important than a decentralized input system?

It is the ability to be conscious that means that the activation of pain receptors causes the feeling of pain and suffering. Feeling and suffering is not just a function of activation of pain sensing neurons in the skin, for example. Rather they are the result of integration of those signals within conscious experience created by the binding of multiple sensory inputs in the brain. Its not just a question of the quantity of CPU power, its a structural feature of the way sensory inputs are processed that creates a qualitative change in information processing to allow consciousness to exist or not. Animals have this ability to be conscious, whereas plants do not.

I value the happiness of conscious animals, and wish to reduce suffering, so to me eating meat is wrong. Even if the animal were to be killed painlessly having lived a great life (which is almost never the case), one is still preventing an animal from living a long and happy life. With milking animals, dairy cows are still subject to a very unhappy life, including forced separation from their young, enforced pregnancy, and increased risk of mastitis from mechanical milking. All this produces a significant stain on animals health, which dramatically reduces life expectancy.

With eggs, to maintain a supply of chickens one must allow many of those eggs to hatch, 50% of which will be male chicks. The vast majority of male chicks are then killed because one only needs a few to impregnate females, and having too many together will result in fighting.

More broadly though I am becoming more convinced by the rights based argument rather than just a utilitarian argument. This starts with the acknowledgement that conscious animals have their own conscious desires and interests. When we take an animal as property we are saying that the interests of that animal should be subservient to our own, and that consequentially its life is of inherent less value. But on what basis? One could argue that animals have lesser cognitive abilities, but many humans also lack some cognitive abilities, such as babies or the mentally disabled, and we would not treat them as property (by for example harvesting their organs for transplantation). For me the only thing that matters is the ability to be conscious and have interests, and if one can do this then we should have right not to be treated as property.

Re vegan food etc, sorry to hear you are not into tofu. I only ever eat it when I go to Chinese restaurants, I think they must deep fry it or something, when it try it always turns out a bit soggy and bland. Soya mince can be pretty good though when cooked with plenty of olive oil. Anyhow I tend to get my protein from lots of whole grains, nuts and legumes instead. As for alternatives to hollandaise sauce with vegetables, I find that plenty of olive oil, a bit of salt, +/- balsamic vinegar and garlic is all you need.