About vegans

[Rev. Rye]

I once had a coworker who was an outspoken vegan; she said she made an active choice not to eat dead things. If I actually had a smartphone at that time, I would have shown her this scene from Oldboy.




It turns out this is a real thing in Korea. It’s called san-Nakji, and while it’s usually just octopus tentacles cut off as soon as possible after the octopus in question is killed (and still moving because the nervous system of an octopus is a very strange thing), But doing what Oh DAe-Su is doing here isn’t unheard of. 

Choi Min-Sik, a devout Buddhist, said a prayer for each of the octopi he had to eat (four in all) during the filming of that scene. But, hey, at least he wasn’t eating anything dead.

[The Valkyrie]

I have heard that human flesh tastes like salty pork.

I want to know if vegans taste like broccoli or tofu?

[The Grand Nudger]

In my experience the subject is normally brought up by meat-eaters who want to try and convince themselves that they are doing the right thing. Just look at the OP for example arguing that plants could possibly also have emotions and feelings therefore it's no better than eating an animal who is clearly able to suffer.

I have found the same thing with people trying to convince me that organic food is a con and that I am stupid for not following the exact same diet that they do. I never try to convince anyone else to eat organic food but if people find out about it then some can become really defensive about it.

It -is- a con.  

It shouldn't be, though, and maybe someday, if enough people go organic, they'll have the market influence to demand the product that they think they're getting.  They might even force the legal standards to reflect the product they want. As with veganism, it's one of those things where I think more people should align their dietary habits to their principles.

[Catholic_Lady]

In my experience the subject is normally brought up by meat-eaters who want to try and convince themselves that they are doing the right thing. Just look at the OP for example arguing that plants could possibly also have emotions and feelings therefore it's no better than eating an animal who is clearly able to suffer.

I have found the same thing with people trying to convince me that organic food is a con and that I am stupid for not following the exact same diet that they do. I never try to convince anyone else to eat organic food but if people find out about it then some can become really defensive about it.

Yeah, I prefer to buy organic/pasture raised animal products any time I can because I feel the animals are treated more humanely this way. I've had a couple people give me a hard time about this, which i don't understand. You eat what you want, and I'll eat what I want. Not that hard.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I actually find people who have a problem with vegetarians and vegans to be much more outspoken and obnoxious than vegetarians and vegans. Every time someone brings it up in a forum like this, someone inevitably says "PETA means People for Eating Tasty Animals". 
I have had vegetarian parts of my life, and people actually yelled at me about it. 

Somehow it's threatening.

I think for some people the notion of others forgoing meat for moral reasons threatens their own sense of morality. It makes them feel insecure about their own character and they deal with that insecurity by, surprise surprise, being jerks and making snarky comments.

---

Don't take the PETA thing wrong, they are a rather dubious organization.

I don't think that was her point.

But that is the point of people who say it.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's often a disparity between how people -think- animals are treated when they buy product x and how that actually plays out for the producer.  "Free range" or "cage free" chicken is notorious for this.    All a producer has to do to qualify as free range is give the chickens "access" to the outdoors..but ofc this is trained out of them by a pavlovian response to feeders.  The door to the battery is open for five minutes..but a smart producer runs his feeders then..and so the chickens never -want- to go outside.

Anybody ever wonder what they do with all the roosters?  You have an egg, it's pretty much 50/50 male or female...but the males have little to no economic value.  So..what is the "humane" way to dispose of all those little unwanted eaters? It's a super high tech method called "stuffing them all into a pile in a trash bag and suffocating them as soon as they can be sexed".

Funding these markets under the assumption that one is securing better treatment for animals actually does precisely the opposite. If you want your food grown or raised a certain way..find a producer that does it, where you can go watch them do it, and buy direct. That;'s the only way to get what you want..what you think you're paying for. It will always be this way, so long as the industry itself steers legislation. Compassion is not profitable, at least not as much as the illusion of compassion is.

[Rev. Rye]

I have heard that human flesh tastes like salty pork.

I want to know if vegans taste like broccoli or tofu?

Actually, William Seabrook was a travel writer who once happened upon a tribe of cannibals. They did not eat him, but he did ask them what it was like. They could not adequately describe it, and did not permit him to take part in a cannibal ritual. Later, however, he got samples from a hospital in Paris. He cooked it up and had this to say about it.

It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.

I can remember once, inspired by that passage, deciding to buy some veal, cook it, and call it "menschenschnitzel." It was okay. That said, I suspect the actual taste would vary wildly depending on what parts it was cut from and, to a lesser extent, how it was cooked. I do not have the full book "Jungle Ways" where Seabrook explained it, though it seems his sample was cooked over a spit, and was a "rump steak."

[chorlton]

organic:

how do we provide & pay for the 25-30% more land required to get the same yield and justify the increase in its carbon footprint?

I eat probably 1/2 organic simply because chemicals cost money & the smallholder farmers cant afford it
not scalable to feed the west inho

[Aoi Magi]

What does it matter to me? I am a selfish enough creature, and I eat whatever is available and cheap. Normally veggie dishes cost me more than meat based dishes, so the choice becomes obvious. I have never tried to justify my food choices considering I have at least the luck and means to get food, as opposed to a major chunk of the population.

[LastPoet]

In my experience the subject is normally brought up by meat-eaters who want to try and convince themselves that they are doing the right thing. Just look at the OP for example arguing that plants could possibly also have emotions and feelings therefore it's no better than eating an animal who is clearly able to suffer.

I have found the same thing with people trying to convince me that organic food is a con and that I am stupid for not following the exact same diet that they do. I never try to convince anyone else to eat organic food but if people find out about it then some can become really defensive about it.

Yeah, I prefer to buy organic/pasture raised animal products any time I can because I feel the animals are treated more humanely this way. I've had a couple people give me a hard time about this, which i don't understand. You eat what you want, and I'll eat what I want. Not that hard.

I work at a slaughter house / pork meat processing plant. Altough being at the warehouse, I have seen the slaughter process. They put the pigs sleeping before the killing blow. Its a thing because according to the engineers, if you stress the animal it impacts on the workers and on the meat quality.. they even use noisy bags filled with air at the tip of a stick to push them trough the corridors. Not to harm the pig O.o;