Vegetarianism versus Veganism versus Meat Eating

[Mark6]

I really don't think I've ever heard any of this 'preaching' and evangelism from vegetarians, and I have known, and do know, quite a lot of them.

I have.

A few weeks ago, my daughter who is an ovolacto-vegetarian was told by just such "preacher" that she is fooling herself, and that eating eggs/milt from "captive animals" is just as evil as eating meat.

My daughter laughted at him and explained in no uncertain terms that the only reason she does not eat meat is because she does not like it, and where he can stuff his holier-than-thou.

 

[Belz...]

As long as your objection is only to those who preach or evangelise (which, as I say, I have never experienced), I don't very far disagree. I do, after all, eat meat. Of course, we are all animals.

My objection is to those who say what I said I disagreed with, whether they "preach" it or not.

 

[Belz...]

I don't completely buy this argument. There are certain humans that we would say have rights, e.g. infants, the mentally handicapped, etc., but we don't completely hold them responsible for their actions.

It's not a black or white issue, though. They have _some_ rights and _some_ responsibility. Parents hold infants responsible for some things and not for others, and they do not yet have the right to drive or vote.

Animals have _no_ rights and _no_ responsibility.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

I have.

A few weeks ago, my daughter who is an ovolacto-vegetarian was told by just such "preacher" that she is fooling herself, and that eating eggs/milt from "captive animals" is just as evil as eating meat.

My daughter laughted at him and explained in no uncertain terms that the only reason she does not eat meat is because she does not like it, and where he can stuff his holier-than-thou.

Jane Goodall is a vegetarian, and she gets flak from some vegan groups for not being a full on vegan. She's acknowledged that she is aware of these criticisms, and she pays them no mind.

What's hilarious is that I actually have seen vegan groups who say that she is simply an selfish person unwilling to give up her spoiled lifestyle. Oh, yes, let's criticize the lady who gave up living in civilization for spending her life in the jungles of Africa for the sake of animals for not being willing to compromise her lifestyle. Not to mention, how easy do they think it is to be a vegan in the wilds of Africa? I was briefly a vegan in college before going on an anthropology project in Mexico & Guatemala - much of it in remote areas. I could not be a vegan, I would have starved to death. It was extremely difficult for me just to be vegetarian and my diet was very limited. Being a vegetarian alone must be a huge challenge for her.

Whenever I hear such criticisms of her, it just boggles my mind, considering there are few humans living who have done as much, and sacrificed so much, for the welfare of animals as Jane Goodall. I really think people who level such criticisms are a vegan more out of the sense of superiority it gives them than because they genuinely are concerned with animal welfare.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

If you eat meat you probably eat too much of it (based on the latest health recommendations). How many years of health would you be willing to trade for your excessive meat habit?

 

[Rat]

If you eat meat you probably eat too much of it (based on the latest health recommendations). How many years of health would you be willing to trade for your excessive meat habit?

I live with a vegetarian, and she does more of the cooking than I do. I rarely ask her to cook meat, although she is happy to do so if I do ask. So I don't really get through that much meat these days. Probably do have too much processed meat, which looks increasingly like it might be very bad compared to non-processed.

On the other hand, I smoke and I drink far too much, so I'm not sure my meat intake is going to make that much of a difference to my life expectancy.

 

[Retrograde]

I really think people who level such criticisms are a vegan more out of the sense of superiority it gives them than because they genuinely are concerned with animal welfare.

Then there are the raw food vegans, who are even more limited in their diets and thus even holier (are at least more sanctimonious)

 

[Mark6]

Not to mention, how easy do they think it is to be a vegan in the wilds of Africa? I was briefly a vegan in college before going on an anthropology project in Mexico & Guatemala - much of it in remote areas. I could not be a vegan, I would have starved to death. It was extremely difficult for me just to be vegetarian and my diet was very limited. Being a vegetarian alone must be a huge challenge for her.

If I lived in the wilds of Africa, I would be eating a lot of insects. I do not like mammal meat.

If you eat meat you probably eat too much of it (based on the latest health recommendations).

I do not.

How many years of health would you be willing to trade for your excessive meat habit?

When will you stop beating your whore?

 

[Mark6]

Then there are the raw food vegans, who are even more limited in their diets and thus even holier (are at least more sanctimonious)

Even more strange (although in my experience not particularly sanctimonious) are raw foodists who are NOT vegetarians. Raw meat and veggies diet...

[Edited] And raw eggs. Yes, I know someone who actually mixes raw eggs and raw hamburger and eats that. At least they are farm-raised.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Then there are the raw food vegans, who are even more limited in their diets and thus even holier (are at least more sanctimonious)

And even loonier.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

If you eat meat you probably eat too much of it (based on the latest health recommendations). How many years of health would you be willing to trade for your excessive meat habit?

I hear a lot of people answer these types of questions with the response that they'd gladly trade years off their life to keep eating tons of red meat/smoking/whatever unhealthy thing they are doing.

The problem with that is they seem to imagine that what this means is that they'll live exactly as they are now until they simply drop dead of a heart attack one day. They don't seem to understand that they could spend years, even decades with severely debilitating diseases which leave them with a terrible quality of life, not to mention ruin them financially due to lost or lessened ability to work and health care costs.

 

[Dessi]

Bob Blaylock,

That's really not the point.

The simple truth is that we humans, for optimum strength and health, require proteins and nutrients that are difficult to obtain from non-meat sources. The easiest and cheapest way to get these nutrients is by eating meat.

Not sure if this is a very good argument for eating meat, not least of which because there are plenty of healthy vegans out there. The argument seems to be that your personal convenience matters more than any concievable harm caused to animals in the process of raising them for slaughter. I'm actually reminded of a brief thought experience I ran across a number of years ago, The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle:

To challenge my students to think about the ethics of what we owe to people in need, I ask them to imagine that their route to the university takes them past a shallow pond. One morning, I say to them, you notice a child has fallen in and appears to be drowning. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy but it will mean that you get your clothes wet and muddy, and by the time you go home and change you will have missed your first class.

I then ask the students: do you have any obligation to rescue the child? Unanimously, the students say they do. The importance of saving a child so far outweighs the cost of getting one’s clothes muddy and missing a class, that they refuse to consider it any kind of excuse for not saving the child. Does it make a difference, I ask, that there are other people walking past the pond who would equally be able to rescue the child but are not doing so? No, the students reply, the fact that others are not doing what they ought to do is no reason why I should not do what I ought to do.

The excerpt above has nothing to do with vegetarianism, but the underlying principles of the moral dilemma are the same: do you sacrifice a small amount of convenience and comfort on behalf of another person's life, or do you pay no attention?

I generally think the scenario is comparable to vegetarianism: namely that you are fully aware that you *could* be a vegan, probably without a tremendous amount of effort, but it's inconvenient. I'm not denying that your argument might be factually correct, but I'd be personally interested if you yourself feel that its "good" argument, one that you'd feel comfortable defending if the same principle were extended to the treatment of humans?

It is possible to obtain proper nutrition from a vegetarian diet, but it is neither easy nor cheap to do so.

We are omnivores. We require a range of nutrients that don't readily come from just one type of source. If we eat a diet that includes a balanced amount of meat and vegetables, we will do fine. If we eat a diet that omits one or the other of these categories, we will be missing some important nutrients.

I've only seen a few times in my life where someone's decision to go vegan resulting in bad health:

- One person who subsisted on junk food (tortilla chips, salsa, bean dip, sugar, soda) for 4 months, the poor guys teeth were starting to fall out.

- One woman who was a health-food weirdo, was really into raw-food diets, she picked up this weird belief in raw food communities that menstruation was the body's way of removing "toxins" from the body. She bragged proudly about how, at the age of 23, her menstruation had almost totally stopped. *jaw drops* Ummmm... yeah, that's a serious sign of malnutrition, see a doctor IMMEDIATELY.

- I have a friend who's wife, as a result of a leaky gut, developed a gluten intolerance and dairy intolerance, found it very difficult to maintain a vegan diet.

I think poor health is an exception, not the norm among vegans. At least not the ones I've ever met.

Speaking just for myself, I've been a vegan since 2004, I don't take multivitamins, I read labels religiously for foods with acceptable nutritional value, and I make a glass of fresh juice each morning giving me the energy to benchpress a Buick. I don't really go out of my way to be healthy, it just sort of happens without me thinking about it. I don't think my experience is particularly remarkable, and I very strongly feel that all the warnings of malnutrition are a product of FUD more than anything else.

 

[citizenzen]

Ah, OK. I think most people don't feel the same way about animals and plants, whether vegetarian or not. I feel it's wrong to kill people; I don't think that applies to plants.

As I said previously, the physiology of animals (especially mammals) is very close to humans. If I stick a knife into a live animal I can be fairly safe in assuming that animal feels pain. Though they are incapable of telling us what they are experiencing, animals act similarly to humans when they react to pain, fear and death.

Therefore it is easier to emphasize with the plight and suffering of an animal and less so for a carrot, which no matter how much you threaten it, no matter how many times you plunge a knife into it, just lies there.

 

[Belz...]

Then there are the raw food vegans, who are even more limited in their diets and thus even holier (are at least more sanctimonious)

I wonder if there are people who only eat mineral.

 

[Morrigan]

I am not a vegetarian, but I like animals and can understand the not wanting to harm/kill them part that some vegetarians express. I really can't ever understand vegans, though. Are they saying milking a cow or taking eggs is cruel? Or are they really "all animal captivity is bad" loonies?

 

[Belz...]

If you eat meat you probably eat too much of it (based on the latest health recommendations).

So you shouldn't eat any meat at all ? That doesn't sound right for omnivores.

How many years of health would you be willing to trade for your excessive meat habit?

Would you rather live to be 75 and eat whatever you want to eat, or 90 and spend your life eating stuff you don't like ?

 

[Belz...]

I am not a vegetarian, but I like animals and can understand the not wanting to harm/kill them part that some vegetarians express. I really can't ever understand vegans, though. Are they saying milking a cow or taking eggs is cruel? Or are they really "all animal captivity is bad" loonies?

Well, as I said, "total animal liberation" is the goal of some of them. No pets, no food, no medecine, _nothing_ based on animal exploitation.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Even if you don't care about animal welfare, keeping lots of animals pumped full of antibiotics in close proximity to each other is not a good idea.

Having said that, cutting down rain forests to plant soya beans, or using vast quantities of fertilizer which runs off into rivers aren't shining examples of big-picture thinking either.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

I am not a vegetarian, but I like animals and can understand the not wanting to harm/kill them part that some vegetarians express. I really can't ever understand vegans, though. Are they saying milking a cow or taking eggs is cruel? Or are they really "all animal captivity is bad" loonies?

Ask Rolfe.

How would you like to be kept pregnant for much of your life and have all your babies taken away (and either killed if male or put into the same slavery you find yourself subject to if female)?

I drink milk. I don't fool myself it's nice for the cows.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

I am not a vegetarian, but I like animals and can understand the not wanting to harm/kill them part that some vegetarians express. I really can't ever understand vegans, though. Are they saying milking a cow or taking eggs is cruel? Or are they really "all animal captivity is bad" loonies?

The conditions that many dairy cows and egg laying chickens live in is just as horrific and cruel as the worst factory farms use for meat animals. This is why I buy my dairy and eggs from local farms who I have researched and know the conditions the animals are raised in. However, I do eat out at restaurants where I have no idea the conditions of the eggs and dairy. I make a point of patroning restaurants which advertise humanely raised dairy cows and egg chickens, but I do eat at places which do not, and I do feel bad about that.

I know quite a few people who were formerly vegetarian or vegan, but now are not because they have access to humanely raised meat/dairy/eggs, whereas in past years it was much harder to obtain those items. But they will only eat humanely raised animal products.

The thing is, even with humanely raised eggs and dairy, it only goes so far. The chickens are killed once they can't lay eggs anymore, the calves from the dairy cows are used for veal, and often the dairy cows are slaughtered once they don't produce milk anymore (though some of the smaller New England family farms do let their dairy cows "retire" and live out their golden years on the farm). So it's true that lacto/ovo vegetarians like myself are kidding themselves if they think animals aren't dying for their food. I just don't kid myself. I think that I've reduced the amount of things on my plate which have caused harm and death to animals, and I at least buy most of my food from places where I know the animals lived and were killed in humane conditions, but unless you're a vegan, animals definitely died for your food. Of course as the article in the OP points out, even with vegans, animals can be killed in crop harvesting...but that's an unplanned side effect as opposed to the known end of production...like an egg chicken getting the axe once she's no longer productive.