weastie
That’s fair, as someone who went vegan recently I quite enjoy a couple meat substitutes. I imagine someone who’s been vegan for a while doesn’t care for them much though.
I really like impossible ground beef and its derivatives (meatballs, burgers). This has been my main way of convincing my friends they could maybe go vegan, all but one of my really picky friends still enjoy these. But the vast majority of vegan imitation meats I don’t care much for.
I think there are a few spots where vegan cheese works.
There’s a couple simple parmesan cheese recipes that are pretty much just blended cashews, nooch, and seasonings that I enjoy on spaghetti. I’m sure it wouldn’t fool anybody but it works like a charm for me.
I also think you can make queso dips pretty well, the main ingredient usually being blended cashews or blended potatoes and carrots.
Sorry for bringing up cashews again but you can also make a really good cashew ricotta that’s a good spread on crackers.
I tend not to enjoy the imitation cheeses. I prefer just going all in on the nuts and enjoying the final product as it’s own unique item.
I’ve never been all that fond of falafel. I feel like I would like it in theory but when I eat it it’s just, meh.
Okay but there’s a moral hierarchy when it comes to eating meat. Humans used to hunt, meaning we would kill animals that lived natural lives. Not to mention, we would typically target animals that were older or sickly, because we would have a harder time killing animals that are in their prime.
That’s so much different from modern day agriculture practices. We raise animals in fences so tight they can’t turn their heads, and feed them nasty stuff. We abuse the shit out of them until they reach the point where we deem them the most profitable then we kill them. There’s nothing natural about that.
Also, it’s really hard to know for sure, but we have a good amount of evidence that humans didn’t eat that much meat. First of all, the animals we hunted wouldn’t be nearly as fat as the animals we eat today. Secondly, there’s evidence that many humans ate roughly 100g of fiber per day, which is not possible if you had any serious amount of meat. Humans ate a lot of plants. 100g of fiber is an insane amount of plants.
Honestly I feel like the idea of “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is so lame. Like I understand that you could find something technically ethically wrong with everything, but that statement just feels like a way for people who don’t want to give up certain things to justify themselves.
Capitalism, especially modern day capitalism where the government and companies collaborate, does lead to a lot of ethical issues. And yes, I understand that it is not liveable to give up everything that is unethical. But you can still have boundaries.
I mean like, buying oats and grains from a grocery store, which are typically grown domestically, compared to buying dead abused animals or bananas from a company that uses slave labor. Those are totally different things.
If you prioritize buying things that are made in countries that have better labor laws, and avoid animal products, then that’s a pretty damn good start.
I mean, most vegans would still commend your effort to reduce animal product consumption.
But from a moral standpoint, simply eating less animal products really doesn’t have much value. Imagine using your argument for other moral dilemmas.
“Racism is wrong, so I reduced the amount of racial slurs I use to only 1/3”
“Rape is wrong, so I only rape on Mondays now” (in reference to meatless Mondays)
I hate to be so militant about it, but you either think animal abuse is acceptable or you don’t.
Now, what I do think could be a moral standpoint, if you really want to still be able to eat meat, is to only eat “humane” meat. I put “humane” in quotes because even farmers with the best intentions are still killing animals young. I don’t personally believe any animal product can be humane, but even then I can recognize that any animal that was raised on a pasture and ate real food is more ethical to eat than one in a factory.
So if you genuinely only ate pasture raised beef and chicken (and you were sure about it), then I would say that is quite honorable.
I wish this was true. I have some pet lizards I got before I went vegan, two of them are omnivores (blue tongue skink and Argentine black and white tegu). They can’t be vegan. I mean, honestly, if there was a large scale effort to research it, I bet we could come up with a suitable vegan diet for them, but I don’t think anyone will put a bunch of resources into that.
So the major problem with this, is that only hens produce eggs. So what do you do with all the roosters? You really don’t need that many roosters to breed hens. Since there is a roughly 50/50 split of roosters/hens, and only a couple roosters are used for breeding, what do you think happens to the rest of them? So the idea is that you can’t buy or own hens without them being a product of a massive amount of roosters being murdered.
I don’t support egg or dairy. As I said in the post, my view on the “tier 2” animals is basically that I think it is possible to ethically keep them in captivity. That doesn’t mean keeping them in captivity is ethical in general, but that if you really do it right I think it is okay. I think it’s okay to keep a dog or a cow or a pig as a pet, but I think you really have to make sure you give them lots of space and enrichment. I don’t believe you should be able to use them for resources though.
The difference being that tier 1 animals, even if you really try to give them a good life, I don’t think should ever be kept as pets or in zoos. Like I don’t care if you built the coolest ever whale terrarium, sorry, not allowed to put an animal like that in captivity.