Comment by kylie_kraft@lemmy.world on Meat?

Nah, they aren’t bad. Just religious zealots in disguise

The difference between veganism and religion is that one is based on facts, the other is not.

It’s true that other species of animals are sentient, they have nervous systems similar enough to ours that we know they can feel pleasure and pain.
It’s true that we kill billions of them per year.
It’s true that the vast majority of them are factory farmed (74% worldwide, 99% in the US).
It’s true that humans at all stages of life can thrive on a properly planned vegan diet, according to most major health organizations.
It’s true that animal agriculture is extremely inefficient and loses a lot of calories from crops being put towards feeding animals (see: trophic levels)
It’s true that animal agriculture has a huge impact on the environment compared to feeding crops directly to humans.

so get out of here with that nonsense that veganism is religious zealotry. I don’t have time to cite a source for each point, but they’re all super easily verified. Veganism is looking at the impact of your choices with clear eyes and choosing compassion over personal pleasure. It’s choosing to live and let live, rather than forcing death and misery on other species because you like the taste of their flesh and secretions.

It’s true that humans at all stages of life can thrive on a properly planned vegan diet, according to most major health organizations.

Wait, including newborns? I mean, I doubt there’s a vegan alive who’s against breastfeeding, but for people who can’t breastfeed, baby formula isn’t vegan, is it?

Not trying to rag on the point you’re making btw

I think there is vegan formula, and using breastmilk is vegan since it’s consensually given, including breastmilk shared by other mothers

using breastmilk is vegan since it’s consensually given

the definition of veganism says nothing about consent, only exploitation. breastmilk is as vegan an cows milk.

Maybe your point would stand if humans had been bred to massively over-produce milk and had their babies taken from them so even more milk could be taken from them for profit and they had no agency in how their life went, from being bred in captivity and then impregnated in order to cause them to produce more milk to being killed when they stop producing milk.

This is a stupid take, even for you

You’re not being exploited if you consent. Cows can’t consent, mothers can. That’s the argument.

If we could somehow communicate w/ cows and get their consent, then cows milk could be vegan.

And you start from a base assumption that any of that matters in terms of food.

It’s like a retronym, picking facts to claim as a basis for a belief that’s rooted in a moral code.

No, veganism as a conclusion is a combination of facts and basic moral understanding, principles like “live and let live”, “do no harm”, and the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do to you. If you’re a psychopath who doesn’t care how much harm, death, and suffering is caused in order to get sensory pleasure, I probably can’t convince you why veganism is worthwhile

Lmmfao.

There it goes. Straight to “oh, we’re super moral, and you’re evil/crazy if you don’t agree”

And you’re not a zealot talking like that. Okay champ, you are good boy, sure, you go.

do you disagree with all the ethical principles I mentioned, or the facts I listed? Or do you think that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises?

You are focusing on the word religious, but it’s the zealot that’s important here. Of course you lot are zealots. It doesn’t matter what argument is made against veganism, you will defend it - vehemently.

OK, maybe not all of you are radical to the point of, I dunno, bombing meat processing plants, but online, you make a up very vocal group of people. Enough that there are memes about y’all. It’s like linux folk, or the people over on lemmygrad, the anti-woke crowd, the feminists, and other vocal groups.

I’m not vegan, but what are the counter arguments? It tastes good? It’s convenient?

Eh, the real counter argument isn’t about their beliefs. That’s fine. Most of it is sound logic.

The problem is their insistence on not only being right, but being better.

The part that makes it silly is the assumptions that chain from there being a right and wrong about what we do with dead animals. It’s a corpse. What matters is how we treat the living animals, and they are utterly convinced that not only is their way the one true way, but that anyone who believes otherwise is a bad person. I’ve been using this troll for something like a decade, and it never, ever fails to draw someone throwing around terms like evil, heartless, cruel, psychopath, etc.

That’s the thing to counter argue, not any of the ecological stuff, or the need to treat living things well.

That assumption of moral authority is the point of the troll.

Why do you need a counter argument? X being valid/true has no impact on whether Y is valid/true. Attack an argument on the merits of the argument, not on the lack of merits of an alternative.

That said, the main argument in favor of eating meat is that humans evolved to eat meat, so our bodies need nutrients that are easier to find in meat (e.g. certain types of protein). However, meat was a much smaller portion of our diets in the past than it is today, so this argument is actually in favor of eating less meat, but still including meat in your diet.

The concepts of veganism aren’t really at odds with meat consumption. In many (most?) cases, vegans care most about the ethical treatment of animals (as opposed to vegetarians, who are more often motivated by nutrition), and our current meat processing industry is a lot less ethical than it was hundreds or thousands of years ago when most meat was either free range or wild. So I think it’s totally reasonable to take a middle ground and defend meat consumption on nutritional grounds while also defending veganism on ethical grounds.

Humans are omnivores, and have been for the lifespan of our species

There are a number of important nutrients that humans get from animal products that are difficult to get from plant-based sources, including vitamin B12, which is not present in land-based plant species (I’m not sure whether red algae counts as a plant, so I’m playing it safe with land-based)

This is one argument @darganon. We need nutrients from a variety of things. We can live without some of them but that can come at the cost of health later in life e.g Vegetarian women more likely to fracture hips in later life.

Furthermore:

animal-source foods (ASFs) are dense in bioavailable vitamins and minerals. ASFs are the only intrinsic food source of vitamin B12 [7] and contain more bioavailable forms of vitamins A and D, iron, and zinc than plant source foods (PSFs)

Source

Then there’s land-use:

• 86% of the global livestock feed intake in dry matter consists of feed materials that are not currently edible for humans

• Contrary to commonly cited figures, 1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

• Livestock consume one third of global cereal production and uses about 40% of global arable land

Source

It wouldn’t surprise me if we evolved to have balanced diet from multiple sources because they have the nutrients we require. We most likely don’t need all the meat we’re eating and we do a terrible job in developed countries with reducing waste. But just like a purely meat based diet, a purely plant based diet is just one of the extremes. To each their own though.

That being said, a lot of people (myself included) eat far more animal products, particularly meat, than needed

There are a number of factors at play there, including government subsidies for feed crops and meat production artificially driving up its availability

I’m zealously against rape, zealously against slavery, why should people not be zealously against what they consider industrial mass murder of innocent lives? Zealousness isn’t bad in and of itself

“what they consider” being the important part here. People are zealously against what they consider the dilution of the “white gene pool”. Does that make them right? People are zealously against what they consider robbery by the state of their hard earned money. Should we condone it because they are zealous?

Yes, zealousness isn’t bad in and of itself, nothing is. Everything is a matter of perspective. Maybe murder of humans could be considered a valiant, virtuous, and veritably honorable thing to do if one thought it could fend of the mass extinction event we are in. Rape could be justified by rapists as a necessary action to spread their seed.

Vegans aren’t the only people with justifications for what they do and what they consider right.

You get it :)

I ain’t mad at what people do with their own lives, but vegans are so easy to troll with this because it’s true.

Anti-vegans are way more annoying and overzealous in my experience. I rarely see the stereotypical asshole vegan but I do often see the obnoxious anti-vegan.

I’m not gonna defend this meme or anything but there are very militant vegans on lemmy who sit in their communities and just insult non vegans with invented slurs and sometimes fantasize about violence towards them.

While it’s usually in their communities they also frequently forget where they are and bring it outside the bubbles. I wouldn’t be surprised if one pops up here.

Idk, I have the opposite perspective. In real life, I hear of far too many announcements about being vegan when food isn’t even being discussed (e.g. “Hi, I’m <name> and I’m vegan.”), and I pretty much only hear about someone being anti-vegan when someone is being obnoxious. This is much worse on the internet, where people’s inhibitions seem a lot lower than real life.

In fact, the only obnoxious anti-vegans I’ve seen are responses to obnoxious vegans. As in, the discussion is started by the vegan, and then they get dogpiled by the anti-vegans. The number of responses may be higher from the anti-vegans, but anti-vegans don’t seem to initiate.

Maybe that’s just me, idk, but that’s what I’ve noticed.

Maybe, maybe. Dunno, I’m not anti-vegan, I just like trolling them.

That is actually a different thing. I cook vegan for friends and family. I even agree with most of the reasoning they espouse (the serious ones, not the online assholes).

But, c’mon, they’re so easy to bait, and someone always tries the same stuff in response. I can outright say “I’m trolling you vegans because it’s fun, and the troll is that you’re religious zealots”, and there’s still people that have to screech about how vegans are superior. That’s how silly it gets.

It’s a personality flaw, I guess. I just can’t stop myself from poking at stuffed shirts. It got me fired twice irl. One of those was in fast food as a teenager, so I don’t think it counts, but still.

not the online assholes

Honestly you’ve made yourself seem like an online asshole here. Who else besides an asshole ragebaits people for their own enjoyment?

Did I ever say I wasn’t an asshole?

Hell, go back through my comment history. I’ve said, directly, honestly, and openly that I’m an asshole. I tend to be a friendly, happy asshole, but I’m just as much an asshole as every other human on the planet.

hey bud maybe you think everyone is an asshole like you and that’s your excuse for being one but that’s not going to change that you’re an asshole and especially as people get older they have less time for assholes.

You might want to stop trying to own it and just try not being an asshole instead.

Yeah, the famous religion of veganism lmao

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