Are you a vegetarian? (poll)

unabashed meat lover (rare blood dripping, meat juice sipping) http://i44.tinypic.com/21bqh07.jpg
flexitarian (mostly vegetarian, but you occasionally eat meat) http://i44.tinypic.com/1zn92e8.jpg
pescetarian (no meat with the exception of fish) http://i42.tinypic.com/2eqe59w.png
vegetarian (but you do eat eggs and dairy products) http://i40.tinypic.com/6ihaf7.jpg
vegan (no eggs, dairy products, or processed foods containing these or other animal-derived ingredients such as gelatin) http://i39.tinypic.com/161zymo.jpg
raw vegan/ raw food (you strive to eat only unprocessed vegan foods) http://i41.tinypic.com/2yv0u94.jpg

Have been vegan for five years for ethical reasons. Oddly, it was an argument on ilx where I realised I was pretty much talking bollocks that precipitated this change (I had been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 15 years up to that point).

OMG not the sea man video game thing again - it terrifies me! He was very mean iirc.

Pescetarian (no meat with the exception of fish)

For some reason I feel the need to point out that I eat fish probably less than 10x a year.

I have been either a vege or pescetarian for (OMG) EIGHTEEN YEARS which means that I have not eaten meat in longer than all the years I did eat it for.

flexi because i hate rules

vegetarian for like 10 years, pescetarian for the last couple of years. started due to vague ethical reasons/dating a vegetarian, now it's mainly just force of routine and because it's basically the only healthy life habit i have.

pescetarian for 6 years, with a few months as a vegetarian in the middle (brought on by eating the most disgusting piece of fish of all time and almost barfing all over the food court)

flexi because I hate to see food go to waste, but I don't cook meat

pescetarian but i hate eggs and have a p strict diet that means i end up eating vegan most of the time

also because sometimes I'll go to something and the vegetarian option will be shredded lettuce + cheese on white bread and fuck that shit

the meatiest meat lover who ever ate meat

but I eat loads of veggies

flexi because i'm fine with eating a mostly vegetarian diet, but if you tell me i can't have meat anymore then i get all HULK WANT MEAT and i'll probably go eviscerate a cattle ranch in my hulky purple shorts

You know what's weird? I learned to cook for myself after I stopped eating meat and I've never made fish at home - I only eat it when out. This all means that I've never cooked a piece of any type of meat in my life. I have no idea how!

I sometimes have greater misgivings about eating fish than I ever do about meat, tbh.

I mean I'm sure I could figure it out. It just occurred to me that I've never bought or prepared any meat products ever.

fish is in some ways environmentally more problematic than eating meat is xp

yeah, i'll probably just give up fish again since i rarely have it anyway. my problem is that i love sushi so much. :(

Vegetarian + cheese/dairy. Feel real bad about the dairy the same way I felt bad about meat back when I ate it. I'm never going to stop eating cheese, so I should try and source it more ethically, I guess. I'd consider eating meat again if it were ethically sourced, but my wife's sorta gung-ho about vegetarian. I have no illusions about the animals that have to die on lettuce and soybean farms for farmers to protect their crops and stuff. I'd really like to be trained how to hunt and butcher, as well.

There are so many ways to prepare various meats and their various cuts, ENBB, it's not like one thing. Frying, roasting, broiling, stewing, bbq, etc...

I'm not sure I would want a vegetarian to cook meat for me, tbh. I had a babysitter who was vegetarian whehn I was a kind and her hamburgers were pallid, wan, insipid and, of course, overcooked. Her veg was always awesome though.

I should try and source it more ethically

If you're concerned, morally, about killing animals, cheese is problematic since the males are either slaughtered young or sold off to be slaughtered as adults.

It's all problematic in some way or another. If I really thought long and hard about it I'm sure I'd probably be vegan but that's never going to happen and I feel like I'm doing my small part in some way as is.

Yeah, I mean, it's totally frought. Cheese is like heroin though. Oh I should have told people on the heroin poll: demerol and percodans didn't count, but cheese would have.

fraught

MW - I know! My dad's a German chef, remember? I'm aware of lots of different cuts of meat and types of cooking, I've just never done it myself. My dad is also a hunter who used to gut deer in our shed which probably informed my decision to stop eating meat on some level.

I voted flexi as the nearest approximation.

I eat meat maybe 2 times a week. I eat eggs with wild abandon (maybe 6 times a week). I love veggies and whole grains. Fruit? Strangely enough, I can take it or leave it.

If you're concerned, morally, about killing animals, cheese is problematic since the males are either slaughtered young or sold off to be slaughtered as adults.

― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White), Friday, March 16, 2012 2:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And I don't really give a shit about killing animals as much as I care about their conditions while alive.

Fruit? Strangely enough, I can take it or leave it.

Same. I like it when I eat it but that's more of a recent discovery. I went years hardly eating any at all. I prefer vegetables much more.

x-post - More of my concern as well tbh.

I feel I could give up cheese tomorrow, no problem

I've been a vegetarian more than half my life and was a vegan for about two years before going back to dairy. I'm definitely cutting down on the amount of dairy i consume but you'll take my cheddar when you prise it from my dead, cheesy fingers.

I found veganism quite a struggle in the UK as there's lots of stuff that has hidden dairy-derived ingredients and it always seemed like hard work to get enough protein and energy (mostly because i'm lazy, tbh - there are good vegan cookbooks out there). I don't think i consumed any dairy products in two months in China, though, and felt great.

I am an unashamed and unabashed meat eater, but I do quite often cook vegetarian dishes. We probably eat met 4-5 days out of seven.

flexi but probably bordering on veg when I cook for myself.

I found veganism quite a struggle in the UK as there's lots of stuff that has hidden dairy

^^^ I would have been vegan between 1999-2000 if not for this.

whoops that should be 1999-2001

If I had to, I could subsist on vegetarian food at home and not miss meat too much, but I HATE HATE HATE going to vege/vegan cafes or restaurants. They never have anything I find even vaguely palatable. At least if you go to meat-serving places they have vegetarian options, but, nooo, WHERE'S MY BACON YOU FUCKERS?

That brings up an interesting point: the main problem being veg (although not so much now) or vegan (definitely still a problem) is that being veg/vegan means having to have boring conversations with smug veg/vegan people.

I eat out with a vegan quite often whose gf is not, both of whom are quite foody. It makes for really interesting dining, actually.

magical things are possible in san francisco

Pesco here. Been a vegetarian since 1992 but never gave up dairy/eggs. Started eating very occasional fish (maybe once-twice per month) a few years back just for some additional menu options when eating out. But I don't even like most seafood, so it's really the occasional tuna steak or salmon. Not interested in going vegan, although been doing a lot less dairy at home by default since my wife seems to have developed a slight dairy allergy. I just love cheese way too much.

xxxxp that's kinda like complaining that you can't get a BLT or cheeseburger at a kosher deli I mean

I HATE HATE HATE going to vege/vegan cafes or restaurants. They never have anything I find even vaguely palatable.

emil.y, have you tried Terre a Terre? Seriously amazing food and head and shoulders above any other veggie place in Brighton.

I guess flexitarian. Rarely cook meat at home. When I'm out, I'll eat chicken, fish, sometimes kangaroo. Mostly avoid cow and sheep for environmental reasons.

i like veg restaurants! especially the kind where you can just order a heaping plate of brown rice and steamed vegetables, and there's good-quality produce. i love tofu and seitan but usually i find fake meat/cheese ridiculous. that said, i like the thai vegan places where you can get a nice tofu curry on the cheap.

fuck it. we wouldn't even have cows if not for people like me and our cheese & steaks.

I bet aurochs either tasted shite or weren't docile enough to take a good slicing.

'flexitarian', having (depressingly) slid all the way down from vegan via each of these stages over the past twelve months

I just looked at the menu for Terre a Terre, and... no. Just no. I really don't want to spend £15 on any of those dishes. I mean, I don't want to eat them at all, but then having to pay £15 for them makes it quite a lot worse.

Yeah, I can't afford to eat there that often, but it's really nice as a treat.

I am a vegetarian because....I seriously don't enjoy meat. I mean, I got sick on badly cooked meat a few times. Too many bad meatloafs. At first I cut out just red meat. I don't drink milk either and only consume processed dairy products. I have some dietary allergies but don't like to be a pain in the ass about it. I can't digest bananas or fruit pulp either!

However, I am pragmatic, if there is chicken stock in the soup, I hope no orthodox people are watching...I mean, if I'm traveling, I'll eat what is there...as long as it's not a pig or a cow. I prefer to keep the peace and not be difficult about it.

A chicken kiev or a fish slathered with butter can still entice me.

I genuinely enjoy fake meat, it has lots of healthy oils and makes me feel healthy!

unrepentant carnivore, eat meat every day though not every meal, has hunted game, slaughtered cows, pigs and chickens, and knows how to butcher, hasn't eaten carbohydrates in years

Was straight-up ovo-lacto vegetarian from 1998-2006 and pescatarian since then. I eat fish/seafood at least once a week, although not very often at home.

(And to be perfectly honest, it's probably going to take me a while before I cook fish again after some oven-baked whitefish a few days ago struck me with the worst bout of food poisoning I've ever had.)

I'm a meat eater, but I've been phasing blood red meat out of my diet for several years. Have hated steak for a long time, and I'm getting to a point with burgers. Still, I eat lots of pork, poultry and fish. Unfortunately, you didn't create an option for me in this poll.

option # 7 "I am Johnny Fever"

Part of what I enjoy about pescatarianism is just that it opens up so many options at restaurants. I live in a big city, so it's not particularly difficult for me to find vegetarian meals, but there are still a lot of places that either don't include vegetarian dishes or treat them as an afterthought.

I used to be more serious about vegetarianism but at some point I changed my mind, I realized what i respect is food awareness, like healthy choices. It was the unhealthiness of some of the food I ate as a child that turned me off to meat. I like reading about healthy diets including fish. I still don't like red meat though. I used to love ribs as a child, however...if they made fake ribs I could die happy. Also lobster or crab looks good to me even though I won't eat it.

if they made fake ribs I could die happy.

Pretty sure you can get fake anything in this day and age.

http://www.morningstarfarms.com/content/dam/common/products/MorningStarFarmsHickoryBBQRiblets_16331.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2406/2424225078_377ca05d13.jpg

^ these do look a bit dodgy (and what are those weird things next to the corn?), but you could probably make yr own out of seitan or something.

what are those weird things next to the corn?

Potatoes, obvs.

They are? What the hell have they done to those poor things?

Red potatoes, to be more specific.

Looked like some sort of cheesey apple to me.

look like cheesy bollocks to me.

That would definately not be vegetarian.

I <3 u vegetarians but fake ribs make me want to cry

I have never seen those fake ribs before! They don't have them where I live. I would like "raw" ribs that you could bring to a barbecue. I'm sure if I look hard enough.

Whatever you think about vegetarianism, it has certainly expanded people's ideas of what one should eat...restaurants include more vegetable dishes or salads and people include vegetarian items at parties. It used to be that office parties and the like barely served vegetables...everything was fattening and had meat in it!

veg for years trending toward vegan. pretty much the only dairy I eat these days is local eggs from people we know at the farmers' market, I rarely buy any cheese any more but when I'm away on business there's much pizza to be eaten and even at home pizza's still a thing once or twice a month. I expect that at some point in my life I'll make the leap to fully vegan.

Xps to snoball - for every smug vegan/vegetarian there is at least one smug meateater/ I-love-bacon-so-much-I-use-bacon-grease-as-lube person.

i would be interested to see the results broken down into gender and reason why

xp my cousin-in-law is an un-smug vegetarian married to an I-love-bacon-so-much-I-use-bacon-grease-as-lube person : /

The only thing I've found difficult about vegan cooking is not being able to use worcestershire sauce (although you can buy expensive vegan kinds our make your own).

I almost always order chicken/seafood when eating out, but only cook vegan at home.

I would probably go straight vegan if I had the money. I'd do juices and smoothies in a blender. I did do this diet for a while but went broke. I'd do it to see how much better I'd feel....changes in your body are interesting. I like that you can throw a bunch of fruit and peanut butter in a blender with some weird protein powder and feel full all day!

That brings up an interesting point: the main problem being veg (although not so much now) or vegan (definitely still a problem) is that being veg/vegan means having to have boring conversations with smug veg/vegan people.

i've experienced this, but almost entirely in the opposite direction, which is non-vegs who bring up the vegetarian thing over and over and over and over again. "I'd give you a piece of this - but you can't eat meat!!" "I don't know how you do this, oh man the meat is so good!" "It must be so hard for you here because you don't eat meat!" "I could never not eat meat, I don't know how you do it!". The repeated thing drives me wacky, especially as the chance of me talking about meat vs. not eating meat in a conversation is approximately 0.0000000001%

i would be interested to see the results broken down into gender and reason why

(a) woman
(b) i'm not one of those BACOOOOOOOON types but the occasional meat cravings are such that i can't commit myself fully to vegetarianism (and i've tried)

xpost
this is most painfully apparent at thanksgiving, which is solidified in my head as the holiday where you have to hear about how difficult it must be to be a vegetarian all day.

but the side dishes (mostly vegetarian) are the best part of thanksgiving!

was a vegetarian/pescetarian for two years, gave it up in january. i don't regret doing it, and being forced to eat no meat is a good lesson in teaching yourself to eat a better diet, but you can't really keep it up forever if your heart isn't in it.

a) woman
b) I really really do enjoy the taste of meat. I love vegetables fine, but food in general for me is as much about enjoyment as it is nutrition, so I think I would be a sad panda if I had to only eat vegetables all day, no matter how tasty.

Z® otm. I'm not even vegan/vege and it drives me into a rage when ppl do this.

Lol z®

I probably eat a lot less meat than I think I do due to the cost of it and my inherent laziness, but when I get a strong craving for a particular meal, it's usually for a particular kind of meat dish (like filet mignon or sashimi or seared duck breast). I like other non-meat foods a lot and eat a lot of vegetarian meals, but nothing other than dessert-type things engenders any particularly strong craving in me and I would enjoy eating a lot less and wouldn't think of it as a reason for seeking out new restaurants or cuisines without any kind of meat involvement. I could give up cheese way before I could give up meat.

Carnivore. I eat a little less meat each year -- but mainly due to portion size rather than frequency.

I am vegetarian, can't eat egg-heavy dishes (no quiche, bread okay), can't really eat dairy in excess, should probably just embrace veganism but cheese and also, as mentioned upthread, being vegan requires way too much ingredient scanning. I was vegan for about 6 mos once and whey is in so much stuff.

At least if you go to meat-serving places they have vegetarian options

in the US at least this is simply not true, especially with "option" being plural, but I have definitely looked at menus and seen zero meat-free entrees. Also, caprese sandwiches should be considered as taboo as human flesh imo.

Z S totally otm. most conversations I have with non-friend people about being vegetarian eventually turn into conversations about how great meat is. which is fine, I don't care, but the strident vegetarian stereotype is mostly confined to college age ime.

I just ate some Velveeta. I am not getting enough calcium right now. I am a hypocrite and no, my body does not digest it well. But I think I needed some oil and fats and calcium so I ate it.

im a big hairy man, I'm vegan and have been for 8 years and I'm VERY smug and aggressive about it also I weigh appx 9000 pounds

I live in Texas and my wife is vegan too
can I have my medal now?

in the US at least this is simply not true, especially with "option" being plural, but I have definitely looked at menus and seen zero meat-free entrees. Also, caprese sandwiches should be considered as taboo as human flesh imo.

this is not true in the major US west coast cities. Menus always havd items for vegetarians. Less so for vegans.
In fact, I enjoy eating out vegetarian at omnivore restaurants as opposed to veggie-only.
(Except for the HighLine in Seattle, all vegan crusty/metal diner. Sooooo good.)

my point was just that it isn't true that ALL meat-serving restaurants have vegetarian options. obv the West Coast is different than the South or the Midwest

That is so true once you get outside of the big cities. I remember when that was true in the suburbs (1980s and before)! Everything was red meat, eating chicken all of the time (which I did) was almost like being a vegetarian. Unless you were Italian...Italian and Chinese restaurants were less white bread.

However even now out in the boonies you can get something that is at least lacto-ovo friendly - marinara pasta or something. Or you can eat an appetizer without feeling like a weirdo.

I really do find grass-fed beef is easier on me and actually more tasty. I have no compunction about paying more (and eating less of it) for red meat, if it's better but then I think that generally about most things.

I checked vegan, but in reality I'm vegan at home, lacto-vegetarian at local restaurants (try to find a good Indian place that doesn't slather dishes in ghee/clarified butter), and sometimes pescetarian on scuba vacations.

Male, dropped the meat and quit smoking when 3 years ago when I decided to clean up my health, and the longevity/chronic disease advantage of veganism (but don't forget the vitamin B12!) seemed pretty clear in the literature.

http://www.scielo.br/img/revistas/abc/v88n1/en_a06tab02.gif

Non-judgmental vegetarian since '99. If not for Indian buffets and the kids' uneaten pizza, I'd be vegan.

I didn't realize until Facebook how much certain people love bacon. Prior to Facebook, all I got/heard was stuff like "I'll have a BLT" or "We just bought this bacon; might as well have it with some eggs," not "OH MY GOD BACON YOU GUYS NOM NOM NOM" or "OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU BE VEGETARIAN DON'T YOU MISS BACON?!?!"

Bacon is gross.

Mount C OTM.
I would normally never seek out a Boca burger, but when my partner and I went out to the boonies to buy our puppy (1 hr south of Aberdeen, WA), there was the one diner in the middle of nowhere (the city was Artic, WA.). They had a Boca burger option. They could have easily dropped the item, which would have made me so miserably hungry that day.

A lot has changed in the past 7-10 years alone.

Sorry for doing all-caps BACON earlier. It was more about what I want from cafe breakfasts than "ALL BACON IS GREAT WHY DON'T YOU EAT BACON?" I don't get the bacon-flavoured everything either.

I can think of a lot of processed meats I'd rather retain than bacon if I had to choose. I love bacon but c'mon; bresaolo, belota, foie gras d'oie, (kinda bacon-y) lardon, guancia, rillettes, hell even a good mortadella w/pistachio...

I don't really enjoy bacon when it's included with other meat. More than one kind of meat in a burger just seems unnecessary to me. I mean, for a meat sauce or something maybe but, yeah I'm not a crazy bacon person even though I do eat a fair bit of meat. I tend to worship steak more than bacon, if anything.

I don't know what half of those things are, Mr White. So, yeah, I'll have your bacon.

a good prosciutto (like la quercia) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> bacon, 90 percent of the time.

yep

mostly vegan right now (though occasionally i've had a few desserts that had hidden eggs in them, a few soups from the deli that prob had chicken broth)

bacon is gross!

do you ever feel like some people are fronting with this whole OMG I LOVE RIBS/BACON/CORNDOGS/FRIED CHICKEN shit nowadays

I feel like there's kind of a lack of discerning taste when it comes to ribs and stuff like that. people I work with are always OMG RIBS, and they could be garbage from any punkass bbq chain, they'll even eat storebought ribs and tell you it's from gods own cow and I just find it to be idiotic.

it's like, good barbecue or good fried chicken, and the rest of the shit out there is like the difference between a ripe tomato from your vegetable garden and a 'ripe' tomato from the grocery store. They shouldn't even be called the same thing.

to paraphrase nate dogg, HEYHEYHEYHEY EAT MEAT EVERYDAY

i pretty much subsist on meat/cheese sandwiches

I can think of a lot of processed meats I'd rather retain than bacon if I had to choose. I love bacon but c'mon; bresaolo, belota, foie gras d'oie, (kinda bacon-y) lardon, guancia, rillettes, hell even a good mortadella w/pistachio...

― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White), Saturday, March 17, 2012 3:06 AM (33 minutes ago)

i wrap cheeseburgers in jamon de iberico belota

I still like bacon taste. I ate something with bacon bits in it...and was pleased to find out they were TOTALLY FAKE. I can't remember which brand it was. Also there is liquid smoke or some other product that makes all food product taste like barbecued meat.

I had a terrible addiction to bacon bits sandwiches as a kid

Haha rev -- just yesterday I sang that to myself except it was "hey hey hey hey, eat beets everyday. "

is flexitarian a real word? fuck you, world.

it's like, good barbecue or good fried chicken, and the rest of the shit out there is like the difference between a ripe tomato from your vegetable garden and a 'ripe' tomato from the grocery store. They shouldn't even be called the same thing.

i gotta step in here and say that i have enjoyed the fried chicken they make at the supermarket when they have to do something with their inventory by the use-by date. it doesn't have a haute-cuisine pedigree like the ludobites fried chicken, but it's something nice and salty you can gnaw on for a few days when you're skint.

(is there any vegan food you can "gnaw" on? maybe corn on the cob?)

Wow, that attitude about ribs must vary depending on workplace culture. At my last job I actually wondered if someone upstairs was prejudiced because ribs were verboten at any office party. I suppose ribs could be banned because of the strong smell...but it seemed we could eat anything but ribs.

is there any vegan food you can "gnaw" on? maybe corn on the cob?

licorice root?

xxpost - get bent, I realized afterwards that I sounded like a big fat food snob and I didn't really intend it that way. I'll totally chow down on supermarket fried chicken or even KFC if the mood (sometimes) takes me. I think it's more me being IA with my fake food-porn coworkers whose gushing about how awesome this food or that food is, is way out of proportion to the actual tastiness of the food. You know?
They will RAVE about storebought mac and cheese. I'll enjoy it, but I save my raves for great food, I guess is what I wanted to say in my head but didn't. :)

I cant bring myself to eat pork of any variety, though I very VERY occasionally have bacon. But I do not get the bacon fronting. I dont think its anything but an addiction to the salt/smoke flavour. I avoid bacon, salamis, and other processed meats almost completely (v occasionally I'll have sausages pref w/out preservatives tho) due to all the canceros shite in them.

An irony coming from a smoker, I realise.

Im not vegetarian but I eat mostly meat free meals - lots of rice, vegies, legumes and tofu. I prefer to enjoy an expensive quality steak once or twice a month, than eat meat every day. I remain quite puzzled by peoples need to put meat into a meatless dish as if it is "missing something", I guss it might be an umami thing tho?

I could never be vegan. I love chese and eggs way too much.

I will pretty much eat every part of a pig, pork belly and pork jowl are so sinfully good! I will almost eat every part of a cow and chicken too. When I first tried bone marrow, I felt like the clouds parted and god was shining a light upon me. But I was a vegetarian in my early 20's.

I could never go back to doing without meat. The first time I tried slightly grilled though raw in the center foie gras the flavor brought tears to my eyes.

yeah otm re marrow. scary delicious.

i've experienced this, but almost entirely in the opposite direction, which is non-vegs who bring up the vegetarian thing over and over and over and over again. "I'd give you a piece of this - but you can't eat meat!!" "I don't know how you do this, oh man the meat is so good!" "It must be so hard for you here because you don't eat meat!" "I could never not eat meat, I don't know how you do it!". The repeated thing drives me wacky, especially as the chance of me talking about meat vs. not eating meat in a conversation is approximately 0.0000000001%

imo these people are awkwardly expressing their curiosity and interest but they don't feel comfortable saying "I'm actually pretty interested in knowing about your whole vegetarian deal." before I sort of started responding from that perspective (not super-longwindedly [except I'm me & am longwinded], just not defensively: "I could never not eat meat, I don't know how you do it!" "--I gotta be honest, when I stopped I wondered myself if it was going to totally suck but hand to God I don't miss it at all. Except maybe when a recipe calls for chicken stock, veg stock is hit or miss"; this exchange & variants pretty invariably lead to enjoyable non-"DON'T YOU MISS BACON?" conversations) I hated the fuck out of HOW CAN YOU STAND IT? q's but I seriously do think they're "How can I ask you about this without letting on that I'm legitimately curious about OH NOE VEGETARIANISM"

Haha rev -- just yesterday I sang that to myself except it was "hey hey hey hey, eat beets everyday. "

― Laura Lucy Lynn (La Lechera), Friday, March 16, 2012 9:09 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are many vegetables i get down with, but beets i cannot abide by

You're missing out, roasted beets with goats milk cheese is tasty

That brings up an interesting point: the main problem being veg (although not so much now) or vegan (definitely still a problem) is that being veg/vegan means having to have boring conversations with smug veg/vegan people.

i've experienced this, but almost entirely in the opposite direction, which is non-vegs who bring up the vegetarian thing over and over and over and over again. "I'd give you a piece of this - but you can't eat meat!!" "I don't know how you do this, oh man the meat is so good!" "It must be so hard for you here because you don't eat meat!" "I could never not eat meat, I don't know how you do it!". The repeated thing drives me wacky, especially as the chance of me talking about meat vs. not eating meat in a conversation is approximately 0.0000000001%

― 1986 Olive Garden (Z S), Friday, 16 March 2012 23:28 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

zs otm itt. sure there are dicks but there are as many breeds of smug anti-vegetarian rhetoric, disdainful references to salad, rabbit food, strength-of-the-bull brandishing of meat intake credibility, bemused assumptions that you do not understand meals, &c. thanksgiving/&c is so funny an example of awkward-times-to-be-a-vegetarian as it is vegetarian-bonanza, as long as no one cooked the potatoes in goose fat. it is all the vegetables at once.

my friend was vegan for a long time, & then moved back into i think first dairy, then dairy & fish. now she says her ideal diet would probably be vegan w/fish. which sounds like it skipped a step of the pyramid but which i totally get. my dairy intake is decided by the times i imagine a pizza or an egg-glazed bagel and have to think whether i mind the providence of its ingredients, which is sometimes yes sometimes no, kinda vague.

Pescetarian for 7 years.

I eat meat. Burgers and all kinds of pork products are my favorite. Poultry less so, but chicken is such an easy staple food I probably end up eating more of that. I'm not fronting, it's the way I've eaten my whole life.

Vegetarian, vegan or meat eater, I really don't mind so long as smugness and elitist attitudes are not involved.

I have come across several food blogs when I went in search of protein shake and juicing recipes then tried to find a soup based on chicken broth, sesame oil and ginger that I use to make. There are a lot of people out there obsessed with wanting to eat as "perfect" as possible. Whether it is to ward of illness or be as hip as can be going gourmet at home daily. The eesh factor comes in with the way they praise themselves on their own diets and food choices. It is such a turn off.

vegetable fruit and grain-based here but eat some sort of seafood weekly (mostly at work for "quality control" purposes). been this way since 1982 when i was 15

Haven't eaten meat or fish for 6 years, think about going vegan all the time but I'm too transitory and don't cook enough to be vegan. (I'm also not pushy enough; takes balls to go into, say, a taqueria and ask for vegan food). Greenhouse gasses/factory farming's effects on humans are my main reasons. I've become a bigger animal fan as the years have gone by, though, and have come more into the idea that making any living thing with the capacity for suffering suffer so that your dinner tastes better isn't an okay thing to do.

I often wonder why it's easier for me to not eat meat, which is a moderately significant inconvenience in America, than to remember to turn everything off before I leave the house or seek out ethically made clothing. I think it's latent Catholic in me, mildly reveling in the self-denial.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/3642661392_5801c3b218.jpg

LOL

I really think the whole blood type thing has a lot to do with it. I am AB and if meat were removed from my diet, I wouldn't miss it. However, that being said, my body eventually does miss it and I did become anemic on a vegetarian diet in my 20's. I still do if I go too long without it so for that reason I do meat.

I did raw food for three weeks and was satisfied but that was a ton of pricey nuts, like bulks and bulks to use in all sorts of recipes. I went broke before the end of the month and had to return to the stove top.

Unabashed is a bit too much, flexi is a bit too little. Should have an option inbetween :-(

Just what I was thinking - I am unabashed in that there isn't much meat I'll shy away from, but I try and have about 50% of my meals meat free.

I don't really try, it just works out that way.

yeah, me neith

i like eating meat plenty but i would become a vegetarian if i dated one or like, lived with a bunch of them

i checked vegan, but i guess i'm flexivegan, given that i have been eating foods like cadbury creme eggs lately. plus, i often don't ask "vegan questions" in restaurants where sauces are concerned - like, i won't order a cream sauce, but i also won't grill the waiter to find out if half a teaspoon of fish sauce went into something. meat eaters that know this about me say that i'm a HUUUUUUUUGE hypocrite.

ignore them, anybody with any ideals beyond apathy ends up being hypocritical sometimes.

I was a vegetarian for around 13 years, but I started eating meat again in 1998 so it's been a while. I definitely bring a more veg influence to our meal planning though, I make veg dinners at least twice a week. my wife is a serious carnivore but I have swayed her somewhat.

I am kinda in the same boat as ENBB in terms of not having had very much practical experience in cooking meat, I usually defer to mi carnivorita.

really enjoying my vegatarian lifestyle

vegetarian lifestyle sounds like a dreadful slick magazine

"great tofu farm getaways"

I'm trying to eat less meat so I've adopted these personal rules: no red meat, no processed meat, no more than one meal a day that includes meat (so if I have meat at lunch, then I don't have it at dinner).

that is making eating less meat real complicated, just eat less meat

Actually I find it easier to have rules, because then I don't have to think about it - it becomes kind of automatic.

no processed meat

Fuck that rule. If I can't have pastrami at least one time a month, someone dies.

These things aren't set in stone so once in a blue moon I might treat myself to pastrami (only if it's really good). I've only been doing this for a couple of months so far.

Good man.

Can't live without hot dogs. And scrapple.

When I get seriously depressed, I eat bologna sandwiches.

procesed meat gives u bowel cancer

Worth it

otm

I don't smoke, so I opted for a diff cancer :/

i've been a vegetarian for abt 14 years and stopped wearing leather/eating gelatin/etc like eight years ago. i still wear wool and eat dairy and eggs, though. i'm more or less comfortable with that ethical compromise i think

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

*fist bump with system*

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Compared to the comments in the thread, the result is suprising. Not that meat eaters won, but how many there are!

yeah while I was reading this thread I was like, holy shit all of ILX is vegetarian

MEATEATERS WE ARE LEGION lol

well it's really 73 meat, 27 flex, 50 some-kinda-vegetarian, which is kinda amazing considering that the national figure is like 5%

tho like many like this you have to adjust for the fact that 100% of vegetarians were gonna click on the thread

many polls like this*

don't ruin this for me iatee

:)

well it's really 73 meat, 27 flex, 50 some-kinda-vegetarian, which is kinda amazing considering that the national figure is like 5%

'national', f u

i'm glad to know there are no raw foodists on this forum, though

yeah I was gonna put something about 'also british people exist I guess' but I decided not to

My ex was talking about rawfood stuff when we went out the other night, wondering aloud wether it'd be fun to try (he isnt even a vegetarian so wtf) and i said I saw a Jonsi weblog where he made some kind of raw lasagna, with the "cream" being pureed cashew... R said "wouldnt even processsing raw food be cheating?" At which point I decided if thats the case, rawfoodists are all just NUTS.

you mean they are cashews

tho like many like this you have to adjust for the fact that 100% of vegetarians were gonna click on the thread

― iatee, Tuesday, March 20, 2012 8:12 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

real talk

my sister-in-law has been on a modified raw food diet since she was diagnosed with MS, and she has found it's helped with some of her symptoms. Dunno how scientific it is, but yeah in general raw foody ppl are kind of crazy...and honestly my brother in law gets a little out of hand with the chatter about it too

I'm pretty much okay with anything anyone eats as long as they don't need to tell me on an hourly/daily basis about it

some kind of raw lasagna, with the "cream" being pureed cashew...

*shudder*

i use pureed raw cashews all the time as a sub for cream in cooking - it works really well bc in their raw form, cashews don't really have any flavour, they're just fatty/creamy. especially good in mashed potatoes, or a creamy potato bake.

it was more the concept of a raw lasagna in general

i would cook more with cashews if i had a processor and they weren't really expensive, so instead i just keep consuming dairy

cashews go a long way as a fake cream, though - probably like 1/2 c cashews to 2 cups water? depending on how thick you want it.

what's the raw foodists' argument against cream - that it's been pasteurized?

probably that it's not vegan

Arent raw foodists mostly vegan? If so it'd be that.

xpost

the problem with the raw food movement is that there is SO MUCH conflict over what is good and what is bad. i've read stuff that says 90% of your raw food should be vegetables and other stuff that says 90% should be fruit. then there are all the 'bad' fruits and veggies. i think the reality is just... moderation. SHOCKING.

are there any omnivorous raw foodists?

i don't think it was a raw foodist that said there was anything wrong with processing cashews - it was trayce's non-raw foodist friend

raw (unpasteurised) goats' milk/cheese is popular with a lot of raw foodists

Yeah it was just my ex and he didnt even know, he was just musing aloud if that counted as "raw".

is there a temperature above after which a food has been subjected to, it is no longer raw

yep. according to noted vegetarian expert about.com, it's 115 F (46 C)

A summer day in Tucson and your food is cooked!

I'm going to put the raw foodist's dish in the sun for about half an hour and not tell them, they will be foiled!!

I can just imagine a raw foodist in tucson: it's too hot to eat today. going back into my hovel to hibernate in the darkness.

tbh that's my main strategy in the summer

according to noted vegetarian expert about.com

roffles

with the "cream" being pureed cashew...

This sounds dope, but also crazy expensive.

i could go for a hot dog right now

xp good place to buy nuts is indian groceries, you can get mad volume for a fraction of trad groceries ime

Disregarding flexitarian: 73 meat to 50 non-meat.

What a bunch of pussies! You've really outdone yourself this time ILX

"flexitarian" - what the fuck is this? You either eat meat or you don't. Even if you don't eat it often you call yourself a carnivore and maybe mention you don't often eat meat. BS category imo.

^truthbomb

"flexitarian" is more like responsible meat eating amirite

I go through phases where I hardly have any meat, but the meat I have during that time is more likely to be rare blood dripping etc.

If you gotta have meat, gotta do it right

I do flexicise

flexitarian could mean not letting food go to waste

well even vegetarians are just people who eat meat really, really, really infrequently

x-post - If you eat meat you eat meat period. I don't care if you're doing so because you don't want it to go waste. You're still eating meat. It's a made up dumb word.

you're a made up dumb word

; )

if flexitarian is a made up dumb word so is pescetarian imo

i think flexitarian just means "i eat meat but i feel guilty about it"

even vegetarians are accidentally consuming small creatures once in a while, so 'vegetarian' is also a dumb word

if a carnivore accidentally forgets to eat meat are they a vegetarian?

even vegetarians are accidentally consuming small creatures once in a while, so 'vegetarian' is also a dumb word

― iatee, Wednesday, March 21, 2012 1:08 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is pretty silly but i think you know that

no I will defend it to the death

flexitarian = I like to give my eating decisions a stupid name so I can perhaps fill in an extra box on the census form

i think flexitarian just means "i eat meat but i feel guilty about it"
more like "don't sweat the fish sauce/chicken broth/gelatin/bonito flakes"

x-post - I'm not thrilled with the word "pescetarian" either tbh but since I do on occasion eat fish I can't call myself a vegetarian any more. I don't think I've ever said "pescetarian" irl. If asked I usually just say "I sometimes eat fish" or "fish is the only meat I eat". It doesn't really come up much tho tbh.

lol NA otm re "flexitarian" and guilt

Apparently pollotarian is also a thing? Oy.

'flexitarian' might not be a popular ~identity~ or ~lifestyle choice~ but there's a pretty big gap between someone who eats meat once a week and someone who eats it once a week. in fact, in terms of meat consumption, that's a much bigger difference than the difference between once a week and never.

someone who eats meat once a *day* and someone who eats it once a week

I dunno, flexitarian makes some sense in that people who are trying to follow the "eat less, mostly vegetables" are in a minority. Lumping all meat-eaters together is reductive and writes off that there is a social good to eating less meat, although I am sure many vegetarians (and especially vegans) would argue that the "responsible" amount of meat to eat is zero.

it's just a stupid name

you can eat or not eat whatever you like. but if you call yourself a flexitarian to my face I will hit you with a rump steak

Even eating meat once a day is a hell of a reduction for the majority of the population

so aggro, too much meat vg!

idk, I don't care what it's called but I think having a moniker has some merit

i'm a flexitarian, i eat school paste and small pieces of metal

oh wait this isn't the IA thread, sorry

I think this is kinda an important subject cause americans do need to eat less meat but if you think that it's gonna happen through the animal-rights-guilt-"ARE YOU WITH US OR ARE YOU AGAINST US" then I dunno what to tell you

which is to say, flexitarians are more important than vegetarians, probably

flexitarianism is like someone said "i want to take all of the ill-informed and terrible discussion about whether bisexuality is a real thing or not and apply it to food"

MH I see your point but it just seems like a sort of pointless and dumb term to me. Is it actually something people use irl?!

Because seriously.

I support flexitarian because it gives people a nice packageable goal to work towards that's not crossing the Rubicon of really becoming a 'vegetarian'

can someone come up with a less stupid sounding name for it, at least

I'm a vitameatavegaminatarian

dayo otm

bicarnivorous

nice packageable goal to work toward

yup, and I think the concept offends people more than other concepts because more aggressive vegetarians will be up in arms because you eat meat, and other meat eaters who can normally dismiss vegetarians or write off their beliefs as different are offended by the idea that it's ok to eat meat but they're doing it wrong

I can see Dayo's point, sure. At the end of the day "flexitarians" are still meat eaters and the term itself is still awful.

Feel like people can be encouraged to eat less meat without having to have a stupid name to go with it. Maybe this is an IA thing but it really just grates.

It sounds obnoxious imo.

responsivores

we could call them Pollanators

I have never identified myself as flexitarian until this stupid poll, but since people seem to love rules and categories so much it seems as valid as any other.

conceptually the difference between 'eating meat' and 'eating fish' has never made sense to me

I thought people were going around using the term irl! For the purposes of the poll I guess it's OK. I just hope I never have to hear someone self-describe as such.

'flexitarian' might not be a popular ~identity~ or ~lifestyle choice~ but there's a pretty big gap between someone who eats meat once a day and someone who eats it once a week. in fact, in terms of meat consumption, that's a much bigger difference than the difference between once a week and never.

― iatee, Wednesday, March 21, 2012 2:11 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dunno, flexitarian makes some sense in that people who are trying to follow the "eat less, mostly vegetables" are in a minority. Lumping all meat-eaters together is reductive and writes off that there is a social good to eating less meat, although I am sure many vegetarians (and especially vegans) would argue that the "responsible" amount of meat to eat is zero.

― mh, Wednesday, March 21, 2012 2:12 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I support flexitarian because it gives people a nice packageable goal to work towards that's not crossing the Rubicon of really becoming a 'vegetarian'

― dayo, Wednesday, March 21, 2012 2:16 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep, yep, and yep.

And while we're at it, what's with the word moribund? Either you are dead or else you are alive. Moribund is a made up dumb word.

x-post - Oh, it doesn't make any sense to me either Dayo. I'll be the first to admit that I think my own fish eating, however occasional it may be, is pretty hypocritical. I just can't muster any feelings or strong opinions about shrimp.

Now you know what it feels like to be a ~flexitarian~

Pardon me while I share 0 tears over these bonito flakes.

props to zs for fixing my typo while quoting me, I wish everyone on ilx would pick up that practice

I just can't muster any feelings or strong opinions about shrimp.

well to farm shrimp in SE asia they cut down mangrove forests - mangroves being one of the biggest CO2 storers in the world. cutting down mangrove trees accelerates CO2 release. also, shrimp farms become polluted and untenable after only a few years of use, so the shrimp farmers have to move on and cut down more mangrove forests. there!

Calm down, guys. It's just the word that seems really annoying not the practice itself though I thought I'd made that pretty clear?

props to zs for fixing my typo while quoting me, I wish everyone on ilx would pick up that practice

i thought about it for a moment before doing it, wondering if i was crossing some sort of ethical line!

there was this time recently when I had multiple posts w/ typos excelsiored at the same time, it really bothered me

My hunch is that ENBB is a vegetarian primarily for ethical reasons, so it irritates her that someone who doesn't follow her strict ethical standard is allowed to have a category that places them anywhere near her own ethical position, while still eating the dead flesh of once-living animals and therefore clearly falling nowhere near her beliefs.

otoh, if the terms carnivore, vegetarian and flexitarian are simply conceived as descriptions of one's typical diet, without attatching a moral dimension to that description, I can't see why it would bother anyone to divide the dietary spectrum among those who eat meat into two categories, reflecting the amount of meat they eat.

Someone C&Pd something of mine earlier and didn't correct the typo and I wished they had!

x-post - Yes Dan, I know there are things to get up in arms about because of seafood. A lot of things, in fact. I am, however, just one person and have done/continue to do my small part in a way that I'm OK with. I'll say it again - it's the word more than anything else that I find annoying. I can see why the distinction could be useful in a theoretical kind of way but the idea of people self-identifying as flexitarians seems annoying.

There is nothing inherently "annoying" about the morphemes (or phonemes) that comprise the word "flexitarian" because sounds and word parts aren't charged with anything beyond their...meaning.

My hunch is that ENBB is a vegetarian primarily for ethical reasons, so it irritates her that someone who doesn't follow her strict ethical standard is allowed to have a category that places them anywhere near her own ethical position, while still eating the dead flesh of once-living animals and therefore clearly falling nowhere near her beliefs.

Yeah that's not really otm at all.

It's just an annoying fake sounding word! To my ears it just SOUNDS annoying and trendy and like something someone really pretentious would say.

I support ENBB 100%

flexitarian is a reallllllly dumb word

x-posts

Um, never mind. You guys are being really weird about this. I think it's good that people are eating less meat! I honestly just don't like the word. There are lots of words I don't like. It's OK. You guys can like it! People like and dislike different things all the time.

OK, so you find the word aethetically displeasing, is that the whole thing in a nutshell?

btw, to the best of my recall, I've never said "flexitarian" out loud, and have not encountered it outside a few citations in the newspaper and on the net.

i just say "i eat well" and then smile thinly

how many times do you have to say the word is annoying before ppl go 'ohhh so you mean the WORD is annoying'

i like the distinction, because as others have said, there's a world of difference between someone who refuses to go a full day without eating meat vs. someone who is a vegetarian but will eat meat if it's already been prepared and it would go to waste, or someone who is making a substantive effort to eat less meat and saves it for holidays only (or whatever).

i guess it might sound fake or annoying, but i mean, if you hate that, then you might also hate when someone busts out 'milieu' while waiting in line for the restroom. i'm not sure where you draw the line there. anyway, i think having the term 'flexitarian' it's a useful, more precise descriptor.

enbb you are kinda backtracking, you said:

x-post - If you eat meat you eat meat period. I don't care if you're doing so because you don't want it to go waste. You're still eating meat. It's a made up dumb word.

sorry e, i honestly don't even care i'm just typing because i'm bored! :)

I don't really think words can be "annoying" is part of the problem.

I also don't care about this argument at all outside of defending the rights of sounds and word parts to be arranged in a meaningful and useful way.

With or without meat.

a lot of neologisms sound funny at first and seem less ridiculous once they just become part of common speech

^ That is true, yes. Although I don't actually call myself a pescetarian irl I'll admit that it sounds less weird to me now when other people do than when I fist started hearing people using the term.

Yeah Iatee, I know I was but thanks for pointing it out! ;)

In truth, I hadn't really thought about Dayo/ZS's point when I posted that and there is a part of me that still thinks that if you eat meat you eat meat, end of story. However if having such a category could be useful in terms of public health programming or something then I can sort of understand it. The fact remains that it's still a dumb sounding word especially when I thought this was something that people were going around and calling themselves on a regular basis.

hehehe, yeah I guess I've never heard anyone refer to themselves as a "flexitarian" out loud. I have seen it in print before, though. And of course About.com included it in their categorization of vegetarians, so that's the end of it.

if the entire country cuts its consumption of meat in half, that has the same effect on animal welfare and emissions as if half of the country became vegetarian. I really think vegetarian-activists should approach it from this perspective more often ('eat less meat' not 'eat no meat') but activists are always going to be people w/ the most stringent beliefs.

flexisexual

ENBB otm. "flexitarian" is a horrible word, and "pescetarian" is borderline at best (at this point, anyway, and to my ears). just say, "no, but i don't eat much meat," or "no, i mean, i eat fish sometimes."

flexisexual, otoh, is awesome.

What about just flexi. Flexitabulous. Flexilicious. Flexidiculous. Flexigraphical. Flexiholic.

if the entire country cuts its consumption of meat in half, that has the same effect on animal welfare and emissions as if half of the country became vegetarian. I really think vegetarian-activists should approach it from this perspective more often ('eat less meat' not 'eat no meat')

totally, and going off on a envirofascist tangent, but it's hilariously ironic to me that people oppose action on mitigating climate change now on the grounds that it would somehow constitute a govt. takeover of their every day lives, because if/when the shit hits the fan, govt. would be FORCED to make drastic changes in everyday life (i.e., limiting the amount of meat that is produced, which would be a really quick way to reduce GHG emissions) in response.

Z Soylent

flexitarians is people!

xxp:
moribund: 1721, "about to die," from Fr. moribund (16c.), from L. moribundus "dying," from mori "to die" (see mortal). Figurative sense of "near an end" is from 1837.

I approve of the existence of stupid-sounding words.

<hits self and recognizes Aimless's context>

I can't believe you're all arguing about 'flexitarian' when the word 'vegan' exists. Born of noble origins, but still a terrible, terrible word imo.

Especially when people ask you if you're a vay-gun

ah man, an old professor of mine used to say vay-gun. it was really unfortunate because we were writing a paper on agriculture, eating habits and resource consumption, so vay-guns came up about 1000 times a day.

relevant: http://achewood.com/index.php?date=01232006

"vay-gun"

My mom says it like that but she pronounces some words incorrectly and it's just really strange. For example, she says "pooberty" which is way way worse than vay-gun.

vagitarian

For example, she says "pooberty" which is way way worse than vay-gun.

this is weirdly common

flexetarian IS horrible word

the "et" in the middle is a stumpy remnant of vegETable left there. look it's just bad.

i know this happens in language (ever wonder why every scandal is a -gate lolololol) but come on

pooberty has a latinate ring to it, i kinda like that

i have no idea what the etymology of "vegan" is but if it is literally "'vegetarian' with even more removed" that is truly lol

if the entire country cuts its consumption of meat in half, that has the same effect on animal welfare and emissions as if half of the country became vegetarian. I really think vegetarian-activists should approach it from this perspective more often ('eat less meat' not 'eat no meat')

Cutting consumption doesn't necessarily mean that welfare standards will improve. On the second point, environmentalism and welfare issues are only part of it. If you're vegetarian for animal rights reasons, you can't really say 'hey it's actually okay to kill animals for food but only if you eat them on certain days of the week'.

I was thinking about how it's normally kind of "pewberty" sound the same as a church pew

Then I realized that maybe it is for E's mom, too, and she sits in a poo at weddings

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2umCamnY7Ac/TNmk6zd2zpI/AAAAAAAADqw/hAgNfegw1L0/s1600/poobah-709241.jpg

it would be cuter if it were spelled piuberty

She'd definitely say pew correctly. Maybe it's a regional thing? Whatever it is it's awful. It takes an already fairly gross and awkward thing and makes it sound like another gross thing and, well, the overall effect isn't that great.

If there is a word to distinguish someone who eats animal products but not meat, or fish but not other animals, there def needs to be a word for ” mostly veg”.

Personally, I'm happy just saying ” mostly veg”.

you can't really say 'hey it's actually okay to kill animals for food but only if you eat them on certain days of the week'.

That "you" is where the mine field begins.

Cutting consumption doesn't necessarily mean that welfare standards will improve. On the second point, environmentalism and welfare issues are only part of it. If you're vegetarian for animal rights reasons, you can't really say 'hey it's actually okay to kill animals for food but only if you eat them on certain days of the week'.

well w/ welfare I was mostly referring to animals not having to die, but again, people w/ flexible meat consumption are actually in a better place to influence the day-to-day welfare of to-be-consumed-animals because they can purchase from company x or company y.

even PETA puts animals to death - there's no way to not be pragmatic about yr beliefs on some level when you start mapping out the bigger picture.

I think it's long been established that half the work that PETA does is a total embarrassment to animal activism - the sexism in their campaigns, the unnecessary euthanasia in their shelters, the dumb sea kitten stuff. Unfortunately that's the half that gets all the publicity.

flexetarian IS horrible word

the "et" in the middle is a stumpy remnant of vegETable left there. look it's just bad.

i know this happens in language (ever wonder why every scandal is a -gate lolololol) but come on

― goole, Wednesday, March 21, 2012 3:34 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark

if you're really serious about this point then probably 75% of the english language needs to be reformed

well I mentioned that less for the 'lol hypocrites' and more for the fact that it is impossible to save every single animal on the planet and with that in mind everything becomes a compromise and when everything is a compromise maybe it's not a bad idea for vegetarians to push for the pragmatic eating of fewer animals, a gospel that is actually more approachable for a lot of people.

i'd say that less than 10% of the english language consists of awkward attempts to build neologisms around the word "vegetable"

xp

I think goole's larger point is that words should be spelled like they sound

if you mean that people should express thoughts 75% less then ok

no that wasn't my point but i don't remember my point

hah okay - if the point was that vegetable was a word that was made by combining 'veg' and... ?

How many of ye vegans and vegetarians are also smokers? If your veggie diet is for healthy living reasons and you also smoke then you really are cutting out the wrong thing and you might be a hypocrite

so you might as well eat meat

I don't think there are many people here who believe that cigarettes are living creatures capt, maybe a few people

can we bring back Suggest Ban just for Captain Lorax please

I don't think most vegetarians are doing it for animal activist reasons but I could be wrong!

but saving the cows and chickens is the most self-defeating prophecy that I can think of

oh this was my point: "vegetarian" is made by vegetable + -ian (person-of, follower, adherent, etc)

someone who eats flexibly would be a "flexarian" maybe, but the word was bolted onto vegetarian but removing "veg" and not "veget" fully.

fuck idk it's just bad

I don't think there are many people here who believe that cigarettes are living creatures capt, maybe a few people

Only if you smoke actual camels

Cutting consumption doesn't necessarily mean that welfare standards will improve. On the second point, environmentalism and welfare issues are only part of it. If you're vegetarian for animal rights reasons, you can't really say 'hey it's actually okay to kill animals for food but only if you eat them on certain days of the week'.

don't really get this. if people worldwide ate half as much meat, standards for meat animals might not improve much, but far fewer animals would be subjected to those conditions. that would have to be seen as a significant improvement, right?

haha now I'm imagining vegetians, people who follow vegeta from dragonball z

you have just outnerded me

if people stopped eating cows and chickens we might have to kill them because of overpopulation
well, i can wish

anyway yer point is equally applicable to 'pescetarian' which probably should be pescian yeah?

Pescian: lovers of Joe Pesci

goole I don't think there's anything wrong w/ that et being there because it is like the fossil of the word 'vegetarian' and signifies what the flexitarians are being flexible about, I mean they're not flexible about *everything*

that we know of

what's an ianian?

"fossil" does sound better than "stump"

randtarian

it's thematic too

thesbians

nietzchetarian

undeniably! i have heard people say semi-jokingly that they are "meatetarians" which *makes you think*

xp to iatee

fwiw my dictionary says 'arian' and not 'ian' is the proper suffix

-arian |ˈɛːrɪən|
suffix
(forming adjectives and corresponding nouns) having a concern or belief in a specified thing: antiquarian | humanitarian | vegetarian.
ORIGIN from the Latin suffix -arius .

but goole's point still stands, it would be flexarian ... unless you were implying that you were flexible in your vegetarianism so therefore flexetarian (or flexitarian because we think that flex should be followed by 'i' like in flexible)

don't really get this. if people worldwide ate half as much meat, standards for meat animals might not improve much, but far fewer animals would be subjected to those conditions. that would have to be seen as a significant improvement, right?

I think the thing we're fighting against is "animals having shitty cruel lives" and if the same proportion still have shitty cruel lives then on the cruelty bit you're not helping much. Animals that never existed don't know that you're not treating them poorly, I guess.

Lorax just making shit up now

Lorax, you know that there are different factors and there's not some rule that you have to apply them all equally, right? Even if we were all chainsmokers, switching to a less meat-centric diet is going to have some, probably less significant, result.

far fewer animals would be subjected to those conditions. that would have to be seen as a significant improvement, right?

Yeah of course it would, but it does nothing to protect the interests of the actual animals that are still used for food, it just kind of makes people feel a little better about eating them.

Just to clarify, I had wrongly interpreted iatee's use of "welfare" to mean the sorts of things that animal welfare groups like the RSPCA or Compassion in World Farming campaign for i.e. better conditions for farmed animals (bigger cages, ending tail-docking and de-beaking etc), but those groups are on the whole still okay about killing animals for food.

Yeah of course it would, but it does nothing to protect the interests of the actual animals that are still used for food, it just kind of makes people feel a little better about eating them.

well, it wouldn't "just" make people feel better. it would also spare billions of animal lives, and prevents trillions of hours of suffering. i mean, grousing about these sorts of partial solutions sounds a bit like an all-or-nothing stance. like if a step doesn't fix the whole problem, it is therefore unsatisfactory to that degree. i have a problem with that kind of thinking in general. good is better than perfect.

if people stopped eating cows and chickens we might have to kill them because of overpopulation
well, i can wish

― monkeys on the ceiling fan, ceiling fan (CaptainLorax), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 3:54 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey bro i know density is kinda yr bag, but to knock down this incredibly lameass point so you dont feel like ppl were ignoring the ol capn

k so basically "the # of farm animals alive at any time" is a function of the demand for their production. they do not just show up in any "natural" way. meat industries breed them bc they expect they will be able to sell that much dead animal.

assuming there is a gradual downturn in meat consumption as opposed to an overnight abstention, producers would simply breed less over time. no overcrowding problem because those xcess livestock and chickens and turkeys were never bred in the first place (in this hypotehtical scenario).

flex diets are fine as a practical matter
ppl who identify as "flexitarians" can get shit on tho, nebulous title with no moral mustard imo

well there are 3 main reasons to avoid meat (animal rights, enviro, health) and it's got moral mustard for #2

Contenderizer - It would spare billions of lives but it would also still perpetuate the use of billions of others. It's a utilitarian sort of argument that you're making and yeah, a lot of groups do buy it, cos there are loads of meat-free-monday type campaigns all over the world.

'people eating less meat' does not perpetutate the use of billions of others

i'm fine with advocacy of "hey less meat" and this is being done by a lot of ppl in and out of animal protection orgs (and it's working).
obv my qualms with it as a vegan is that "eat less meat" as the end goal is insufficient to me morally (but since i'm vegan i'm impractical i guess). as a practical matter, i have qualms with it cos i'm gonna take a wild ass guess and say that a greater percetange of those who commit to a vegan diet/lifestyle are more likely to stick with it long-term than a flexiperson will stick with whatever arbitrary flex standard they have set for themselves. i think vegans are more likely to influence their peers/families into thinking about the moral issues of animal exploitation than a flex person would (i think identifying as a vegan has a tacit message that "i think animals lives' are more important than my satiating a pallate"; i think flex eating carries the message "i want to eat healthier/i kinda care about the environment"). i dunno, my mom and brother have both gone mostly vegan all vegetarian in the time that I've been vegan and my father is probably flex. members of my wife's family are much more flex-like too. i don't know that this would have happened if we were flex eaters ourselves bc it would be easier for us to say "we use our flex bucks on this meal with our fams" rather than to find a way to accommodate each other as a vegan family with a non-vegan family

that does feel like a wild-ass guess!

: )

well a greater percentage of vegans staying vegan still doesn't matter much in the big picture, because vegans make up a tiny fraction of the country and almost certainly will 20 years from now. whereas 'people who eat some meat, but might be willing to eat less' make up an overwhelming percentage of the country. that it's not as much of a gossip for those people is going to be true almost by definition, but they're still an exponentially more important demographic.

m bison are you an actual bison

as much as a gossip = as much of a gospel

also i am amazed that the gag about vegan being vegetarian with other letters taken out is actually true

Brit. /ˈviːg(ə)n/ , U.S. /ˈvigən/
Etymology: < veg- (in vegetable n.) + -an suffix; the pronunciation reflects the spelling, rather than the pronunciation of the etymon vegetable n.

D. Watson in Vegan News Nov. 2 We must make a new and appropriate word.‥ I have used the title ‘The Vegan News’. Should we adopt this, our diet will soon become known as the vegan diet.

I've skimmed a bit of this but can I just come in here and say can ppl STFU and stop calling human meat eaters "carnivores" please?

A carnivore eats NOTHING BUT MEAT.

I invite any one of you to do that and come back to me with scurvy in 3 months, k thx.

Also, I assumed "flexitarian" was just a silly made up term for the purpose of the poll, but I appreciated being able to distance myself from the "must eat meat every day/every meal or else I feel like I havent eaten, RARRGH" types, which I have never been and which frankly baffles me.

fwiw the % of vegans in the US has more than doubled in the last few years, going from (~1% in 2009 to 2.5% in 2011). it's a small number compared with the increasing number of flex eaters (and their growth is v much important and i don't want to sound like im not happy about that. i am! the world of food is so much better than it was 10 years ago when i stopped eating animals.

im a bison on my mother's side

Whoops sorry meant omnivore when I used it earlier. Man, ppl be gettin all up in arms today. :(

Hahah no big, E, not hammering on you specifically :D but ppl do use "carnivore" a lot to mean meat eater, I was being pedantic =)

m bison are you an actual bison

― thomp

Is the Pinefox an actual fox who lives in a forest of pine trees?

-- Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore)

I dunno if I trust that 2.5 figure, where did you get it from? that's just about the percentage of people I knew who were vegan when I lived in berkeley and san francisco.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-vegans/2011/03/31/AF1wbw0D_story.html

most things I see are saying .5%, which seems more reasonable

m bise, would you concede that it's probably much easier for a flexitarian to make the jump to veganism than for a full blown omnivore

iatee, that 2.5% figure might be from this phone survey conducted in 2011:
http://www.vrg.org/blog/2011/12/05/how-many-adults-are-vegan-in-the-u-s/

Towards the bottom of the stats, there is this figure:
Male 3% Female 2% - Never eat meat, fish, poultry, dairy, eggs

It's quite a confusing set of stats though

remember when I implied earlier that vegans wouldn't be down with a "less meat" idea even if it meant a lot fewer animals being raised/killed for meat because of a lack of compromise?

welcome to the thread, m bison

Now we just need someone who lives all meat-and-potatoes to hate on the idea because it gives them a guilt complex. I thought someone was starting to bite on that earlier, but they did not.

that's a phone poll of 1k people so the margin of error would be about 3% which would mean the result is "the number of vegans in america is somewhere between -.5% and 5.5%". more male vegans than female vegans is also something I'd bet against. but it's kinda pointless to ask that question if you are only polling 1000 people.

the margin of error eats the findings. they basically mean nothing.

far fewer animals would be subjected to those conditions. that would have to be seen as a significant improvement, right?

Yeah of course it would, but it does nothing to protect the interests of the actual animals that are still used for food

Except, I presume that, if no one ate any domestic animals, and no one used or ate any products derived from domestic animals, then there would be no reason for the existence of most domestic animals, apart from pets. At which point, 99.9% of farm animals, such as cattle, chickens, turkeys, goats and pigs would vanish, as their reason for existing vanished. A few people might raise them, out of eccentricity, but they'd be as rare as bison are today.

I don't know, a lot of their natural predators are gone and we have a lot of land that just has cows on it now that they might continue to wander around

I'd also like to play devils avocado and ask what the hell all the farmers, truckers, abbatoirists, butchers et al are supposed to do for work if theres no meat or livestock.Theres gotta be a hell of a lot of ppl employed in such related industries.

here's a poll with a much larger sample size (5000, margin of error ~1.39) :
http://www.vegetariantimes.com/features/archive_of_editorial/667

.5% vegan
3.2% vegetarian

affectionate lol @ devil's avocado

Feral chickens? Awesome thought!

I'd also like to play devils avocado and ask what the hell all the farmers, truckers, abbatoirists, butchers et al are supposed to do for work if theres no meat or livestock.Theres gotta be a hell of a lot of ppl employed in such related industries.

― zooey bechamel (Trayce), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 8:24 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

farmer's would probably be fine? truckers too. would wager that the large majority of abbatoirists/butchers are undocumented immigrants

Well, we'd suddenly have a giant infrastructure for producing feed grain that's no longer in place, so presumably all those people will work at ethanol plants or ones making plastics from corn.

Also, corn-based whiskey will drop in price

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.urlesque.com/media/2009/05/google-chicken.jpg

...land that just has cows on it now that they might continue to wander around

The cities of the future... today!

http://aphs.worldnomads.com/colleen_finn/16632/IMG_0089.jpg

I'm going to bovine university!

Also, corn-based whiskey will drop in price

And presumably more corn will be available at cheaper prices so that poorer populations can buy more to feed themselves with.

would wager that the large majority of abbatoirists/butchers are undocumented immigrants

All the reading I've done on slaughterhouse workers makes it sound like a terrible job for terrible money in a stressful and dangerous environment that you wouldn't really wish on anybody.

yeah there are some pretty graphic depictions in fast food nation

Yeah that's right. There's this book too:

http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Shocking-Inhumane-Treatment-Industry/dp/1573921661

m bise, would you concede that it's probably much easier for a flexitarian to make the jump to veganism than for a full blown omnivore

― dayo, Wednesday, March 21, 2012 5:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya

which is (another reason) why the knee-jerk snobbiness towards it is nagl, even if you still believe they're going to animal-eaters-hell

k

wow, all this about flexitarians, but no one has mentioned those delightful FREEGANS.

lol I almost brought up freegans earlier but decided it was better not to go there.

everything that isn't freeganism is indefensible

xp it's always best to go there.

And presumably more corn will be available at cheaper prices so that poorer populations can buy more to feed themselves with.

oh ffs

Oh ffs what? The demand for corn for animal feed pushes up world grain prices which has an impact on food availability for poorer nations. It was the exact same thing with the rush for biofuels a couple of years ago iirc

has a lot more to do with import/export regulations and government subsidies

sorry, posting from work, really can't get into it here for work-related reasons

Yeah sure, I would imagine it is fairly complex and it was kind of a glib statement on my part, but there is some sort of relationship there surely?

yeah there's some amount of truth to it

sure, I would not argue that

i don't know why ppl find 2.5% vegan such a long shot

well less than 2% of americans are jewish and I would bet all the jewish-money I don't have that there are more jews in america than vegans.

I remember being astounded upon learning when I was in college. Growing up in NY I swear it seemed like at least 1/2 my friends were Jewish.

Except, I presume that, if no one ate any domestic animals, and no one used or ate any products derived from domestic animals, then there would be no reason for the existence of most domestic animals, apart from pets. At which point, 99.9% of farm animals, such as cattle, chickens, turkeys, goats and pigs would vanish, as their reason for existing vanished. A few people might raise them, out of eccentricity, but they'd be as rare as bison are today.

Going back to this hypothetical - yes that would be true, but it would also be an opportunity for a recovery in a lot of the biodiversity that has been displaced by the ever-increasing numbers of farmed animals and by the clearance of land to grow feed crops. I don't see why we should mourn the extinction of certain breeds of cattle for instance, when it might mean that a host of wild species are saved.

I'd say that, given what humanity has done so far, we would be more likely to just expand our population to fill the available space, and the wild species would be no better off than today. However, my actual point was the irony of trying to solve the problem of the farm animals' well-being by working to make them vanish entirely.

However, my actual point was the irony of trying to solve the problem of the farm animals' well-being by working to make them vanish entirely.

― Aimless, Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:39 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is nietzsche's wisdom of silenus - "“Oh, wretched ephemeral race … why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. "

which I kind of agree with tbh

we would be more likely to just expand our population to fill the available space

Sadly I agree with this :(

the irony of trying to solve the problem of the farm animals' well-being by working to make them vanish entirely

The *breed* would vanish sure, but the whole thrust of animal rights arguments to some extent is treating animals as individuals and you wouldn't be making any individuals disappear.

What I mean is that on the one hand you have a stance of "we must prevent harm to these cows in the here and nows" and on the other "we must protect the future of this breed".

here and nows

the whole thrust of animal rights arguments to some extent is treating animals as individuals

As individuals, or as pets?

There's nothing like having to milk a herd of cows by hand to let you know they are individuals and to begin to treat them in that way. But a vegan would never do this, because a vegan would have no use for the milk or the cows.

I would wager that at least 98% of all the vegans in the USA have no firsthand experience of raising farm animals, and their harrowing tales of animal mistreatment, however true they may be, were obtained at second hand.

xxp:

FWIW, most domesticated breeds would die out quickly in a natural state. Cornish-Rock broiler chickens grow so fast they start breaking bones and suffering heart failure around their slaughter date of 12 weeks. Thanksgiving turkeys have been bread with such large breasts that they are incapable of mating (all result from artificial insemination). Highly bred Holstein-Fresian dairy cows would die out quickly as well, as the genes for producing 20,000 lbs of milk yearly have their toll on longevity, fertility, and mastitis/lameness.

I'd be fine with special occasion meat eating (as practiced in the developing world) as that sort of demand could be supplied by animals living lives not dissimilar to those experienced by domesticated animals prior to the 20th century: cows grazing on land too poor/rough for row crops, chickens eating insects etc. Then again, even Michael Pollan admits to eating CAFO meat most of the time. The modern system of treating animals as feed converting machines is only possible because most of us deny or avoid the idea that other animals (besides our own pets) have emotional lives.

why should it matter they don't have first hand experience? xp

As individuals, or as pets?

As individual moral patients.

I would wager that at least 98% of all the vegans in the USA have no firsthand experience of raising farm animals, and their harrowing tales of animal mistreatment, however true they may be, were obtained at second hand.

I'm not sure of the relevance of this, but it's a pretty obvious logical step to take when you see a piece of meat to assume that an animal has been killed. I don't need to witness the slaughtering first-hand to make that leap.

whenever I think 'hmmm does a chicken have an emotional life' I think of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

that would be like if you were an alien and you based your judgment of the entire human experience on terry schiavo

I was fine w/ killing her too tho

not eating her I guess

my mom had to take care of some chickens her family had when she was a kid and feels no remorse about eating chickens because she feels like they are horrible nasty creatures

I've milked cows by hand (my Costa Rican host families cows) and skinned hunted deer. There's a huge jump from husbandry as it was practiced before WWII to the industrialized animal agriculture seen for the last 65 years (in the developed world). There's a fundamental difference of perspective in thinking of an animal as a valued family possession, and thinking of one as a factory part.

well that goes for basically everything we own

like I agree our perspective on consumption sux but I don't think that affects whether it's right or wrong to kill and eat a chicken

In a 1992 radio interview, Nugent referred to Heidi Prescott of the Fund for Animals as a "worthless whore" and a "shallow slut," asking "who needs to club a seal, when you can club Heidi?" He was ordered by a court to pay Prescott $75,000.

Going back to the "oh noes, hoosteen holstein cattle might die out" way of thinking, I don't really give a hoot about the preservation of modern agricultural breeds per se, cos most of them are bred in a way to maximise production rather than for the good of their own health (sometimes these might intersect, it's true, I'm not sure I can name any actual examples of this though). Yes we should treat living animals a lot better, but I’m cool with not bringing a load more of these miserable creatures into the world.

i want to recut the "born to die" video with footage from an omaha processing lot

I'm not sure of the relevance of this, but it's a pretty obvious logical step to take when you see a piece of meat to assume that an animal has been killed

The relevance was this.

Imagine a group of people who have absolutely no personal experience of raising farm animals, who do not know the first thing about caring for such animals and if they were given a ranch stocked with livestock, the chances are high that those animals to suffer and die in large numbers, due to the abysmal ignorance of their new owners. We will call this Group A.

Contrast this with another group, who live in intimate contact with farm animals, whose livelihood depends on their knowledge of keeping these animals safe and healthy and who prove their ability to do that on a daily basis. We will call this Group B.

As it turns out, Group A seems to have some very strong opinions about Group B's behavior. Members of Group A consider that Group B is going about their livelihood all wrong, that Group B despises their animals, Group B doesn't understand that animals have emotional lives, Group B is sadistic or uncaring or practically inhuman, and that the animals themselves are miserably ill-treated.

Now consider this, the chances are nearly 100% that no member of Group A has ever met a member of Group B or ever seen one of these miserable, ill-treated animals.

Now I ask you, what are the odds that Group A's opinions on Group B may contain some misconceptions?

what about Group C, the factory farmers?

Ever met one?

what about Group D, the people who eat the animals produced at Group C's factory farm?

So, let's ignore everything I just said and get back on the safe and familiar ground of blanket denunciations, eh?

you say that 98% of vegans have no experience with farm animals. but most animals that people eat are not farm animals. I'm not sure what your point is...?

there are only two groups. conscientious farmers and the people who don't understand them.

To quote what everyone is sidestepping:

Now I ask you, what are the odds that Group A's opinions on Group B may contain some misconceptions?

aimless, I'm still trying to figure in what the relevance of Group B has on our discussion.

if killing animals for food is wrong then intent doesn't really matter

dayo, if you are assuming that by "farm animal" I exclusively mean Bessie the milk cow who belongs to Ma and Pa Kettle and gets milked by hand each evening out in the barn, then you are misunderstanding me. I was trying to indicate, by convenient shorthand, cattle, pigs and chickens.

oh if you're talking about large factory farm operations or CAFOs* then I would wager group A doesn't have any misconceptions about group B people at all

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_Animal_Feeding_Operations

I mean, mad cow disease didn't happen because bovine spinal cords somehow magically made it into the grass and hay that ranch cows were eating!

still trying to figure in what the relevance of Group B has on our discussion.

Group B raises cattle, pigs and chickens. Here is how I described them (as a refresher): a group, who live in intimate contact with farm animals [NB: by this I stipulate: cattle, pigs, chickens], whose livelihood depends on their knowledge of keeping these animals safe and healthy and who prove their ability to do that on a daily basis.

Nothing in there about wearing overalls, carrying a slop pail from the kitchen to the pig pen, forking hay from the loft, or delivering calves at calving time. No sentimental glow. That intimacy is inherent from the fact that you can't get robots to raise animals. You gotta get in tehre with them from time to time and put your hands on them.

whose livelihood depends on their knowledge of keeping these animals safe and healthy and who prove their ability to do that on a daily basis.

would you agree to amend this to say

whose livelihood depends on their knowledge of keeping these animals safe and healthy and who prove their ability to do that on a daily basis until the animals are ready for slaughter?

the whole thing kind of reminds me of the "why don't people who hate abortion try to help people get birth control and teach better sex ed?"

I would wager group A doesn't have any misconceptions about group B people at all

...and so it goes. Mediated experience is always going to simplify and simplification always leads to loss of detail and imposition of perspective. Except in this case, where one's innate ability to know what one has never experienced about people one has never met doing things one has never seen done or done oneself, cannot possibly lead you astray in any way?

so should we adopt the opposite end of the continuum - we're only allowed to have opinions of those things which we have direct first-hand experience with?

how do you think presumably straight republicans get such strong opinions about having sex with men?

hey aimless:

if killing animals for food is wrong then intent doesn't really matter

― iatee, Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:00 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if the ethical-vegan position, that killing and eating an animal is grossly immoral, then it doesn't matter what misconceptions (if any) vegans have about farmers and ranchers.

feedlot operators could be kissing and hugging each pig to sleep at night, killing at eating the animal would still be in the same moral category.

er, if the ethical-vegan positin is correct

itt a shit-ton of question-begging going on, esp. in the rather loaded phrase "safe and healthy."

whose livelihood depends on their knowledge of keeping these animals safe and healthy and who prove their ability to do that on a daily basis until the animals are ready for slaughter?

Sure. (shrugs) I have no problem with that.

But, if you want to argue reductively that, because very animal raised to become food (meat) eventually is killed in order to be eaten this one fact alone is sufficient to establish inhumane cruelty, and proves the people who raised them are unable to perceive animals as having an emotional life (where this piece of the discussion began), then I think you'd find your whole argument balanced on a very narrow point.

and anyway aimless your hypothetical is pretty stacked - you can easily imagine a Group B of people whose jobs isn't to keep animals 'safe' and healthy' but rather 'not-sick' and 'not-dead' until it's time for slaughter.

xp or what Phil said

by this logic pimps are incentivized to keep their sex workers happy and disease free

xp in there somewhere

xxp, I'd be interested to know what you think some of the main misconceptions are.

In your view, is the treatment of animals on industrial farms generally better than the minimum standards the government imposes or are those standards entirely adequate in themselves?

aimless, it's not the fact that animals are raised to provide meat establishes inhumane cruelty - it's the fact that animals are killed for meat that establishes cruelty. or see what goole said.

in the rather loaded phrase "safe and healthy."

Again, this was intended as a contrast to how safe and healthy those animals would be if your average vegan were to become their sole custodian as of... say, tomorrow, and were in charge of making all the decisions concerning their welfare.

I suspect that, if such a thing were to happen, most of those cattle, pigs or chickens would not be appreciably better off, except if their new owner instituted a policy of doing just about everything for the foreseeable future exactly as it was being done under the former inhumanly cruel owners... with the exception of slaughtering them... until the money ran out.

Again, this was intended as a contrast to how safe and healthy those animals would be if your average vegan were to become their sole custodian as of... say, tomorrow, and were in charge of making all the decisions concerning their welfare.

Probably the vegans would run out of money and euthanize them all, PETA-style

I don't understand how that affects the argument at all - should I be prevented from opposing the death penalty because I wouldn't be able to think of a better way to properly administer it were I to take the place of the executioner?

it's not the fact that animals are raised to provide meat establishes inhumane cruelty - it's the fact that animals are killed

OK. We've established that this is not about animal treatment in general, except in the extremely narrow sense of how an animal dies.

feedlot operators could be kissing and hugging each pig to sleep at night, killing at eating the animal would still be in the same moral category

You know, this is an interesting point of view, in that it simplifies matters to the point where every type of cruelty to animals can be justified, so long as the animal is going to be slaughtered in the end, because that one fact overrides all others and becomes the only one of any moral signifigance. Which, oddly, has much in common with the most extreme and reactionary position a feedlot owner might take, saying a steer or pig is just a commodity raised to be killed, so incidental cruelty doesn't matter. Oh, the ironies!

Really? Saying that the death penalty makes a prison system morally unjustifiable irrespective of how the inmates are treated surely isn't the same thing as saying that how the inmates are treated doesn't matter. I'm not sure there's a difference here.

aimless your whole point is that vegas are prejudiced and ignorant about the real lives, interests and values of livestock farmers. that may or may not be true.

the counter point is that if you view eating an animal as on the same plane as cannibalism, then all other 'misconceptions' are irrelevant. no, vegans do not misconceive that farmers are killing animals for other people to eat.

lol i keep typing "vegas"

I'd be interested to know what you think some of the main misconceptions are.

I'm going to have to jump out to do errands and live what meager life I have, soon. But I'll make a stab here.

Really I should go back and glean quotes, because the main misconceptions are not about what standards are being kept in regard to feed lot operations (which, incidentally, is not where most cattle are raised, but only where they are kept in their last month or two before slaughter) or standards on ranches or pig farms, but rather I was speaking to misconceptions about the people engaged in this business and how they think about the animals they own and raise.

The main misconception is that this is a monolithic group of factory owners, who see livestock as nothing more than units of production, and who have no concern for their animals' welfare. I don't dount there are myriad abuses and cruelties embedded in the whole system we have now. I also know that there still are, in Oregon, ranchers who raise cattle who take good care of them, and manage to make a living on rangeland that would be utterly useless for crop farming. I've met them.

I was speaking mostly about the tendency of two groups that have no contact with one another and who have different interests and ideas, to form antagonisms and then to dehumanize one another. I was seeing that in this thread repeatedly. I was trying to point this out gently, rather than just calling the perpetrators ignorant bigots.

When you find yourself denigrating whole swaths of humanity as all alike and all bad, then that should give you a reaon to pause and reconsider how you know this is true and how sound the foundations of that knowledge are.

xp another counterpoint is that it's kind of an inane argument to say that vegans are... uh, wrong(?) because if they were suddenly given a farm to run they might not do a good job?

Boy, the ways in which one's well-formed sentences get read, processed, and then misunderstood are always amazing to me. I try very hard to write what I mean and no more than I mean. I sometimes fail, but it is worth the effort to read every sentence twice; if it seems inane at first reading, perhaps you missed something.

ffs, people here might be wrong, in fact they are wrong all the time, but they're not stupid

Aimless I really think you are all kinds of not-otm here - how do you know what constitutes ” good care” of these farm animals you've seen? It's really only your perception of good care, much like how some vegans might perceive that same care as not-good.

Now we are back to where the care of the animals matters?

But a moment ago I was wrong because the care of the animals didn't matter, because the bare fact that they were to be killed for food was all that mattered.

people here might be wrong, in fact they are wrong all the time, but they're not stupid

iatee, idgi, if I say someone may have missed something in what I wrote, based on how poorly they paraphrased it, am I now calling that person stupid? Or is this in regard to something else entirely? I can't tell, because there is not much context in your comment.

Members of Group A consider that Group B is going about their livelihood all wrong, that Group B despises their animals, Group B doesn't understand that animals have emotional lives, Group B is sadistic or uncaring or practically inhuman, and that the animals themselves are miserably ill-treated.

As a member of member of Group A, I would say on the contrary, I'm sure that many farmers are considerate towards their animals, and yes, they keep them happy and healthy and they probably take a good deal of pride in this. If nothing else it's in their economic interests to do so, but I don't believe this is their sole motivation: I'm willing to agree that they will sometimes do this out of a sense of compassion towards their animals. I have no idea in these instances what their feelings are once their animals reach the abbatoir gates. Somewhere along the lines of 'I treated those animals well and consider it a job well done'. You must appreciate how I, as a vegan, have mixed feelings about this and probably wouldn't be patting them on the back exactly, but on the other hand I recognise they are not evil monsters, and I think you're caricaturing vegans to suggest so.

You also have to recognise that a great many animals raised for food -perhaps the majority- are perhaps not treated in this way. Many farms or factory farms give their animals the minimum amount of care and attention required by welfare standards. Many farms and factories fall below even these standards. How do I know this? Because in many undercover investigations this proves to be the case. Have I seen it with my own eyes? If watching video footage counts then yes I have and it makes me feel quite ill to be honest and yes, sometimes quite angry and upset.

Imagine a group of people who have absolutely no personal experience of raising farm animals, who do not know the first thing about caring for such animals and if they were given a ranch stocked with livestock, the chances are high that those animals to suffer and die in large numbers, due to the abysmal ignorance of their new owners. We will call this Group A.

With regard to this point, there are plenty of farm sancturies around that are run by vegans who know exactly what they're doing with the animals that they care for. And guess what? Many of these vegans feel exactly like I do with repect to the process of raising animals for food.

there are plenty of farm sancturies around that are run by vegans who know exactly what they're doing with the animals that they care for.

I congratulate these vegans for their compassion and certainly it would be wrong to attribute abysmal ignorance of how to care for domestic animals to such a group.

I would also wager that these vegans would express well-considered opinions on particular aspects of livestock farming, directed only at those farms where those practises are used, rather than indulging in diatribes against livestock farmers as a whole.

The fact that you are aware of such vegan farmers caring for livestock, and also have personally stated that you accept the idea that non-vegan livestock farmers may also be humanely concerned for their animals, shows that knowledge is often a sound basis for tolerance and that information tends to modify and qualify extreme opinions.

Now we are back to where the care of the animals matters?

But a moment ago I was wrong because the care of the animals didn't matter, because the bare fact that they were to be killed for food was all that mattered.

This is pretty disingenuous.

a) Not all vegans have a unified voice.
b) Not all ilxors have a unified voice.
c) Not all the ilxors who are arguing against you are vegans.
d) It is possible for more than one of your premises to be wrong.

I recognise they are not evil monsters, and I think you're caricaturing vegans to suggest so.

Those who express opinions that all livestock farmers are evil monsters surely caricature themselves. It is only for me to point it out when they do it. There has been some of that on this thread already. Your reasonableness exempts you from this characterization. An equal reasonableness on the part of all vegans would be welcome, and then there would be nothing to point to or to caricature.

I don't think it would be a difficult thing to establish that the "evil monster" school of thought exists among some vegans and vegetarians. That is my target, where it exists, and not veganism or vegetarianism, or the people who practise them.

so, now we just need to find the ilxors itt who have taken the extreme position that Aimless has suggested

Really? Saying that the death penalty makes a prison system morally unjustifiable irrespective of how the inmates are treated surely isn't the same thing as saying that how the inmates are treated doesn't matter. I'm not sure there's a difference here.

― Une semaine de Bunty (ShariVari), Thursday, March 22, 2012 4:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah sorry it was an analogy drawn on the fly - my point was moreso that I don't need to have had firsthand experience with how the death penalty works to be morally against it.

emil.y, I agree with you.

However, look at it this way. First, other ilxors raise the issue of animal welfare to establish the immorality of eating any meat, however little, so I try to address the idea of animal welfare being tied to their utility as sources of meat, eggs and milk, and subsequently I am told by several ilxors that this is absolutely irrelevant, so long as the animal is killed, this is all that matters.

Then another ilxor tells me I am far off the mark because my idea of animal welfare may not conform to a vegan's idea of animal welfare. So, this argument is entirely at cross grain with the earlier absolute position taken by others.

Now, I cannot simultaneously answer all these objections, when the objections are themselves contradictory, and when I am arguing in good faith on the basis of a set of assumptions made by one interlocutor, I am taken to task because those assumptions don't suit someone else.

I need to go for a walk. Ta.

How about, we just take it as an article fo faith that no matter what I say, at least someone here will tell me I am wrong and why. They will choose the reasons why from a long menu of choices that best suit their own ideas of right and wrong.

well, here's something that might split the difference: a large portion of the meat consumed in this country was probably raised on large-scale factory farm operations where, as undercover investigations have shown, conditions can be very cruel and inhumane. a large portion of the meat consumed in this country may also be raised in the type of operations that aimless is talking about with free-range ranchland, where the cattle are only sent to the slaughterhouse a month or so prior to death. maybe that's okay.

but when you go to the supermarket, you don't know if the meat came from the inhumane factory farm or aimless's oregon ranch cattle. so, to be safe, you choose not to eat meat. or you might say - I will only eat meat that I know has been ethically raised and sourced. there's room for that position too.

I don't think it would be a difficult thing to establish that the "evil monster" school of thought exists among some vegans and vegetarians

I'm sure it does, but I was actually at vegan fair at this past weekend and talking to a variety of folks there, I can't imagine many of them putting things in those terms. I can't pretend to speak for anyone else here, but among vegans you're more than likely to encounter the argument that killing animals for food is morally wrong and no matter how farmers treat their animals, they're still complicit in this process. Does it make them monsters? Certainly not, but it does undermine whatever good intentions they may have from an animal rights point of view.

Anyway, have a good walk, I'm personally not trying to get at you.

thankfully, having lived with cattle farmers, i can tell you aimless is wrong

Aimless' most-reasonable-guy-in-the-room shtick at Geir levels of roboposting itt---also, scolding vegans for tarring Farmer McHuggins with the same brush as industrial farming and leveraging it as a reason to feel aggrieved or to insert doubt into the conversation is a p flimsy rhetorical dodge. as goole and NickB pointed out, if yr issue is with the raising of animals for food, then the fleeting kindnesses of a decent life honored among wagons don't balance the ledger when it's tiime for slaughter. some slave owners treated their slaves kindly, and generously, but they still owned em. etc

if anything, the notion of caring for a creature well in order to eat it is doubly perverse if you take the idea of animal sentience/agency seriously. total betrayal, man, how could u

also btw since dayo mentioned it: p sure no one in this thread actually played the "all farmers are evil scum" card, did they?

some of my best friends are farmers

farmers drive like this

*takes up one and a half lanes of a country road, waves*

one-finger wave i do believe

gawd.

first gbx posts a very clear, direct analogy where he unmistakeably equates all livestock farmers with slave owners, some of whom may have treated their slaves well, but they were ALL slave owners, and then exactly one minute later adds:

p sure no one in this thread actually played the "all farmers are evil scum" card, did they?

I give up. The righteousness of many participants in this thread is matched only by their complete inability to actually hear or understand what is coming out of their figurative mouths.

all of those analogies depend on accepting one clear given: "if you think that killing and eating an animal is grossly immoral, then..."

i don't think there are many vegans on this thread, even! the whole point people are trying to make is that if one is a vegan then questions of animal welfare within a system of slaughter agriculture are very second order if not irrelevant.

if you believe that meat eating is morally identical to cannibalism then, no, you can't really "misjudge" a farmer who does that work.

sorry guys, this thread made me really hungry for bbq and I had it for lunch

You had the thread for lunch?

So, goole, just to clear up any misconception here, do you believe that meat eating is morally identical to cannibalism? Because, if you don't believe that, then I presume that at some level, you find this to be a mistaken belief. Whichever way you answer, it seems to me to be relevant.

no i don't. which makes my attitude toward meat different, but not especially relevant to this line of discussion.

this whole thing started when you grouped vegans ("group a") as people who fundamentally misjudge or misunderstand farmers ("group b"). this is sort of like saying the catholic priesthood fundamentally misjudges satanists.

vegan belief/practice (if you hold it) means you have a fundamentally "correct" view of animal agriculture as a whole, no matter how nicely some farmers do it.

i'm not judging either party here, but this seems obvious.

"you vegans just don't understand farmers at all. they're not all monsters!"

"they're killing living beings and selling the parts for money for people to eat, what is it that we're missing, exactly?"

like i don't get why you even took up this line of argument, is the point

What goole and gbx seem to me to be saying amounts to this: if you believe that it is impossible to raise livestock for food without being the moral equivalent of a slave owner, to kill animals without being the moral equivalent of a murderer, or to eat meat without being the moral equivalent of a cannibal, then you are correct to state these conclusions as if they were true. I disagree with this.

"they're killing living beings and selling the parts for money for people to eat"

^^ this is a fact

"farmers who kill living beings and sell their parts for money are monsters"

^^ this is a conclusion

"what is it that we're missing, exactly?"

The part where you distinguish one from the other and realize that such judgments are complex, personal and subjective, and should not be treated as eternal verities becuase they appear obvious to you.

vegans can state whatever conclusions they want as true, cause its just like, their opinion

vegan belief/practice (if you hold it) means you have a fundamentally "correct" view of animal agriculture as a whole

So, whatever one believes, that belief becomes fundamentally "correct"? idgi. It is just this sort of thinking that ilxors find incomprehensible among theocratic evangelicals. One can say, "I cannot accept any other belief for myself", but it goes too far to say, "No other interpretation of these facts can be correct." This doesn't stop people from doing it, but it is an error of logic, among other things.

btw, racists could use this same card to "get out of jail free", too.

aimless why do u care?

Because blind self-righteousness is the basis for social intolerance of all sorts.

You'll note that, when I suggested, far upthread, that there might be some room for misperceptions between vegans and livestock farmers, each about the other, at least one ilxor dismissed the idea that any such misconception was possible in at least one direction. That sort of thinking is like mental poison. I care about that. Sue me.

yeah but there aren't very many vegans (I scientifically proved this upthread) so it's not really a big deal, they are not oppressing very many people atm, I wouldn't worry too much

they are not oppressing very many people atm, I wouldn't worry too much

You are correct.

But let's presume you would like to see vegetarianism grow to encompass a larger part of the population. I wouldn't mind this at all. I can see where it would probably be a good thing overall. But not if it carried with it the seeds of intolerance. In which case it would become a force capable of oppression.

Also, it is a good lesson for people to learn about scapegoating, marginalization, dehumanization and the like, not by rote, where we all learn a list of bad 'isms", like racism, or sexism, or ageism, or sizeism, and stop there. It is far better to learn the signs and symptoms, especially when they arise in our own minds in regard to "isms" we are fond of, or think of as good "isms", like veganism or vegetarianism.

Someone took a stance against me stating that veg(etari)ans are promoting better living conditions for animals because more veg(etari)ans means less animals are going to be born into terrible conditions. If you remove the slaughter element, are these animals being treated so bad? Sure their diet might be rich in proteins or whatever but that's not such a big deal. Most livestock have land to roam and sunlight. I feel like the animal rights veg(etari)ans must be more concerned about the slaughter. However, saving animals by ensuring that less are born (less demand = less supply) seems like backwards thinking. I think farm animals have pretty full lives up until they're slaughtered. If anything, I think more livestock should be born into peaceful farms and sunlight.

My thoughts are kinda summed up around minute 14:30-16:30 of this BBC documentary on megafarms and hypermarkets. Tony the British dairyman is emotionally overcome seeing how happy the dairy cows at a state of the art American dairy appear. And yet, there's nothing clearer to the outsider that the cows are being treated exactly as cogs on a wheel.

yeah but you're strawmanning - I think most ILXers, even the vegans, are against the militant vegans you describe. and the ones who do hold very the strict vegan views you describe, like NickB and m bison, are probably among the most civil and nonjudgmental ILXors posting. I'm not sure why you need to aim your screed at ILX!

ain't no flies on us, no sir!

If you remove the slaughter element, are these animals being treated so bad?

Lorax. Please.

captain: I don't think increasing the total number of farm animals in the world is increasing the total amount of animal happiness.

I hope the vegans love their children too. ;_;

I don't think decreasing the total number of farm animals in the world is decreasing the total amount of animal happiness.

The peaceful farms and sunlight seems a little romantic, to me, but others' experiences of industrial farms might vary from my own.

I don't think it's necessary to view farmers as monsters to have grave concerns over the way they treat animals, just as i don't think it would have been necessary to view 19th century factory owners as monsters to have grave concerns about the way they treated workers.

I'm sure that there are lots of farms where animals are treated relatively well but in an era where people expect meat to cost next to nothing and where good farmers are competing against unethical ones skirting the minimum legal requirements, it's going to be difficult for them. I'm not sure why farming should be different to any other industry in a capitalist system in having an inherent bias towards those offering the lowest legal standards and taking the most profit.

And yet, there's nothing clearer to the outsider that the cows are being treated exactly as cogs on a wheel.

Just for your consideration.

Cows have been breed as domestic animals. They are no noteworthy for their keen survival instincts when raised apart from humans. Much of that has been bred out of them to make them more tractible. They may, just may, possibly, be relatively contented in an environment where they are fed and watered regularly, have clean bedding, are warm, and have no predators to wory about and stress over. For a cow, being "a cog" under such conditions might be a pleasant experience. They can ruminate in peace.

killing animals is all part of the food chain. you can choose to participate or not. get used to it or become a veg(etari)an. but don't expect to have a voice on the matter by abstaining from meat. if you want to have a say on something like how livestock are killed you should protest, because abstaining ain't gonna fix anything

aimless, iyo, what % of cows raised for meat in this country live like that

in an era where people expect meat to cost next to nothing and where good farmers are competing against unethical ones skirting the minimum legal requirements

Providing a market for the more ethical farmers is the one consideration for elevating the standards of the market as a whole and reducing the demand for the cheapest meat. Eating less meat is another way to reduce the market of low-cost providers. I do some of both. Vegetarians and vegans obv reduce the low-cost market even more than I do, since I do sometimes buy the cheap stuff, when the premium placed on the better stuff is too high.

clean bedding, no predators, and abundant food (and free healthcare!)
even without the bedding it's a pretty sweet deal

is that the argument you want to go with??????

iyo, what % of cows raised for meat in this country live like that

I have no opinion on that percentage. I was simply addressing the idea that cows treated as "cogs" might be compatible with cows being happy with their lot. I daresay that "a state of the art American dairy" will not represent the majority of dairies.

to come clean I am neither vegetarian nor vegan, but I'm having trouble parsing the objections here. my #1 prob with animals used as meat is more likely energy consumption.

and fuel.

If I was livestock in this country, I would think it better to be born than not at all. Maybe I'd die younger than I had planned but at least I wouldn't see my death coming or feel pain for very long

okay, maybe I can't speak for the animals but I've never seen a sad pig

btw, it is a mistake to conflate dairies with cattle ranches. A milk cow like a Jersey or Guernsey is a different beast than a white-faced Hereford or a black Angus, and they are raised differently. Dairy cows are slaughtered at the end of their working life, but not butchered and sold for human consumption, iirc.

But let's presume you would like to see vegetarianism grow to encompass a larger part of the population. I wouldn't mind this at all. I can see where it would probably be a good thing overall. But not if it carried with it the seeds of intolerance. In which case it would become a force capable of oppression.

your whole steez itt is ridiculous but this in particular is just terrible

If I was livestock in this country, I would think it better to be born than not at all. Maybe I'd die younger than I had planned but at least I wouldn't see my death coming or feel pain for very long

it's actually sad how many animals aren't born and never become livestock. lost generations.
sometimes eating more would be best.

the logical endpoint to that perspective is we should be having babies 24/7 and just leaving them to starve to death in a big baby pile cause its still better that they existed

welcome to the republican party

it's actually sad how many animals aren't born and never become livestock. lost generations.
sometimes eating more would be best.

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!),

And you're right about the energy problems. I'd also mention the abundance of greenhouse gases
Although, there's so many better solutions to these problems than trying to get people to stop eating meat

Dairy cows are slaughtered at the end of their working life, but not butchered and sold for human consumption, iirc.

Dairy cows are normally slaughtered once their productivity starts dropping off or once their heath problems (typically lameness and mastitis) become too great. This is normally when they're about 4 or 5 years old (they could otherwise live naturally until they were over 20). The meat from them is definitely sold as beef for human consumption (see for instance this report from Illi Dairy Net - "In 1998, 2.5 billion pounds of cull cow beef was produced in the U.S. with nearly half of that amount from cull dairy cows")

Providing a market for the more ethical farmers is the one consideration for elevating the standards of the market as a whole and reducing the demand for the cheapest meat. Eating less meat is another way to reduce the market of low-cost providers. I do some of both. Vegetarians and vegans obv reduce the low-cost market even more than I do, since I do sometimes buy the cheap stuff, when the premium placed on the better stuff is too high.

It seems quite legitimate for meat-eaters to say "i'm doing my bit by only buying from farms i know to have excellent welfare standards, even if that means i only eat meat once or twice a week".

It seems equally legitimate for vegetarians and vegans to point out that the percentage of people doing that is tiny and that political and social factors (limited disposable income, fixed ideas about diets, power of the farm lobby, competition from countries overseas with lower standards, etc) means there's very little prospect of real market change in the short or medium term. Under the circumstances, i don't think there's anything wrong with thinking that the farming industry, on the whole, is morally idefensible, even if some of the farmers are ok.

my food has got to die sometime. this is a pretty defensible argument to me

there's even less of a prospect for a serious % of the country/world to completely give up meat than there is for a lot of people to be willing to adjust the way they buy and the amount they consume

okay, maybe I can't speak for the animals but I've never seen a sad pig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul2cmwJs140

Black Sabbath are 50% vegan. Why can't we all be more like Black Sabbath?

xxp Yep, i can't really see animal welfare concerns having a huge impact one way or another. A much higher percentage of people are going to be practically vegetarian in 30 years' time, i'd say, but only because meat production is unstustainably resource intensive.

your whole steez itt is ridiculous but this in particular is just terrible

well, there you go. i do regret being terrible, but not ridiculous. but, hey, what can you do, eh? sometimes terrible is what you are and there's no denying it.

what's steez?

Anecdotal, but most of the hog farms I've been in the pigs seemed to be doing alright (until will killed them and ate them!). The county were I grew up had more hogs that any other county in the country. The smell was less than spectacular, but there were plenty of pork perks.

xp

your stylo

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=steez

and tbh on review the post Lamp is commenting on is pretty o_0

I for one welcome our Nazi vegan overlords.

xxp Yep, i can't really see animal welfare concerns having a huge impact one way or another. A much higher percentage of people are going to be practically vegetarian in 30 years' time, i'd say, but only because meat production is unstustainably resource intensive.

― Une semaine de Bunty (ShariVari), Friday, March 23, 2012 4:22 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that's basically my take too

pork perks

Not sure I want to know about this.

If I was livestock in this country, I would think it better to be born than not at all. Maybe I'd die younger than I had planned but at least I wouldn't see my death coming or feel pain for very long

― monkeys on the ceiling fan, ceiling fan (CaptainLorax), Friday, March 23, 2012

I'm going to be generous and assume this is just ignant and you have some notion that livestock in this country frolics in a pasture enjoying the occasional ear scratch/belly rub until one magical day it just gets bonked over the head.

fyi livestock in the factory farm system the sweet release of death is the best thing that will ever happen.

FOR livestock in the factory farm system

lol man the cap'n comes optionally pre-installed on every new ilxors killfile these days, do not engage

aw man... i've been away too long

xpp
you must think that cows live in shackles and eat nails

What do we all think abut eating insects?

What do we all think abut eating insects?

forestalling humanity's doom imo

This fucking thread.

michael white asking the tough questions

I ate fried crickets in Mexico last December. Crunchy, salty, protein filled.

Compared to beef, light wrt resource consumption. Not all that rare in much of the world, either and since I eat eggs and crustaceans and fish and whatnot, any squeamishness has to be primarily cultural.

but yeah I've always thought it's interesting where vegans/vegetarians for ethical reasons draw the line between empathizable life and non-empathizable life

MW I invite you to come chow down in my thread insect sushi, insects as food (don't click if you're squeamish)

I think it's kind of weird though that all these species have trained us to adopt them and now, for some of them, we're just going to decide, "thanks for the ride but we're going to let you basically die out except for a few in a zoo or whatever."

I tried waxworms and crickets at the Insectarium in January -- would eat again.

(They have an "edible insects" demo every day, it wasn't a case of me noshing on bugs out of the exhibits.)

xp dayo:

Here's an ethical vegan (of sorts) advocating sustainably harvested oysters

I remember that article. kind of a go-to when talking about vegan stuff (/guy that keeps factoids in case of unanticipated social contexts oh god)

I do admire the fruitarians who only eat fruit that's dropped to the ground. now that's sticking to your principles!

Aimless you come across as really... paternalistic, in this thread.

FYI many vegans are less concerned with how well you're taking care of your animals and more with the fact that you are involved with them at all: they should be left to their own devices (this includes all animals, not just ones we plan to eat) But that is just one school of vegan thought.

i cant say how happy i am reading most of this thread. the vegan police were not even vegans this time!

aimless, ftr, i usually like what you write. i just think the line of argument you are pursuing here is not based in anything approaching reality on a systemic level.

There was a recent Simpsons ep where Lisa says she won't tattle on Bart if he uses 'Meat is Murder' next time he goes spraying graffiti in Springfield. After going out tagging a bunch of walls, Bart remembers Lisa and sprays 'Meat is Murder' under his art.. but then decides it would be better if he adds a ? to the end

you had to be there

stop

look, all this aimless bullshit is just a well (or at least persistently) argued version of a common anti-vegan argument that i hear ALL THE TIME: "you think you're saving the world with your diet, but you're actually making the world worse." today, this argument has taken the form of "your failure to truly understand the object of your ire is creating an oppressive force" or at times even, "animals would be even worse off in your care than the care of a farmer." this can also take the form of "your synthetic shoes use more oil and need to be replaced more often than actual leather" or it is sometimes expressed as, "vegan food is more expensive - if mcdonald's went away, poor people would starve, since they can't afford your bourgeois tofu."

my response to all of these
1. i never claimed i was saving the world, so fuck off.

and to clarify: the trope of the "self-righteous vegan" is so well-worn that people like aimless have a hair-trigger sensitivity to any whiff of it. this thread was BARELY making any moral judgments about animal rights/welfare, and all of a sudden its the bigotry of the animal rights people that becomes the issue. please.

I don't think aimless was ever trying to judge you or ever wanted his discussion turned into sound bites

he was just here to discuss

right, just discussion. about vegans being misguided, about vegans being bigoted, about animal rights leading to oppression like racism, sexism, etc.

just discussin!

oi

my food has got to die sometime. this is a pretty defensible argument to me

most of "your food" never sees the sunlight in its life and is treated cruelly from the moment it's born until the moment slaughter finally ends its misery. sorry to get preachy yall I know it's Lorax but dude is being really awful

my favorite aspect of aimless's argument is 'if the care of animals was turned over to vegans, they would die through the inevitable incompetence of the vegans'

are the vegans just ... given the animals? are they given equipment, land? training? are they given ... time? or is it, like, you keep your job as a gluten-free anarchist baker but you get home and there's a cow in your living room and you have no guidance and that cow will die

i really feel that fleshing out this scenario is an essential part of resolving this argument here and in the wider world, anyway here are some ex-factory hens

http://littlehenrescue.co.uk/images/dsc02747.jpg

Aerosmith otm

They look happy!

btw Lorax do some reading when you get a chance. You can start pretty much anywhere from the place you're at now but the following is as good a place as any.

http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/index.html

most of "your food" never sees the sunlight in its life

Cap'n Lorax lives on potatoes?

a common anti-vegan argument that i hear ALL THE TIME: "you think you're saving the world with your diet, but you're actually making the world worse."

I would not make that argument, because I do not believe it. Veganism, considered purely as a diet, does not make the world worse. I'm not sure how it could.

today, this argument has taken the form of "your failure to truly understand the object of your ire is creating an oppressive force"

Ire is tricky. Ire most definitely can make the world worse. At times it can make it better. But veganism is not ire, it is a diet. I do not see the two as identical. However, I do see people expressing ire in this thread in rather noticeable quantities and most discussions of it seem to feature ire.

As for the statement "your failure to truly understand the object of your ire is creating an oppressive force", I cop to the fact that this is a reasonably accurate paraphrase of an argument I did make in this thread. I think it is legit, because ime the ire of vegans can easily become indiscriminate. Ire at cruelty is a credit to one's compassion as a human being.

When principles get mired in anger and disgust, and one's ire turns to denunciations of everyone and everything connected to the consumption of meat, milk, cheese, eggs, leather or other animal products, then I do think it becomes oppressive. Because vegans do not have the power to be oppressive at a societal level, the opppressiveness I am referring to is both local and personal, and it oppresses the owner of that anger as much as those who are given a dose of it.

or at times even, "animals would be even worse off in your care than the care of a farmer."

This, too, is taken from my arguments on this thread, but you have personalized it to be about you. So, if this is about you, all I can do is ask, would you be able to care for 600 head of cattle for four or five years, feed them, treat their ailments, etc. Speaking for myself, taking care of one dog or one cat seems like a complex undertaking and I know I would be pretty deficient at it for the first few tries. Maybe you are different.

this can also take the form of "your synthetic shoes use more oil and need to be replaced more often than actual leather" or it is sometimes expressed as, "vegan food is more expensive - if mcdonald's went away, poor people would starve, since they can't afford your bourgeois tofu."

I am happy to agree with you that the shoe argument is foolish and even taken purely in terms of oil used, is probably inaccurate. As for the cost of vegan food, that person doesn't buy tofu, obviously, because I can get a pound of it for a bit less than a pound of hamburger.

Now that we've cleared those up, I want to address whether my arguments are "anti-vegan", because they are "about vegans being misguided, about vegans being bigoted, about animal rights leading to oppression like racism, sexism, etc."

First. Are vegans totally incapable of being misguided? I doubt that very much. They are not super beings. If you find the idea of someone suggesting as much to be an attack, then that is probably due to a very reactive sensitivity to criticism. I expect that reaction is based on experience, but it is reactionary.

Do I think they are they misguided about whether or not to eat meat, milk, eggs, cheese and such? No. Veganism can be a healthy diet, and it is a personal choice.

The only way to be "misguided" in relation to one's diet is to believe it will accomplish things it won't, or has qualities that it doesn't have. I have seen and heard somevegans making such misguided claims. Not you, ytth, just some vegans. For an example, see the damn stupid PETA ads that were linked here on ilx not so long ago. If those were not misguided, so help me, I am an ass.

So much for how horrible it is to talk about "misguided vegans". Now for vegans being bigoted.

We have to start at the same place as before. Do you think vegans are by nature or habit incapable of bigotry? If so, then you are making a bold claim. If someone suggests that such bigotry may from time to time be demonstrated by certain vegans and their remarks about other groups of humans then don't get your knickers in such a twist.

If you are sick of having to defend yourself because some bigoted assholes, similar in temperment and lovability to the fine folks at PETA, have made some bigoted asshole remarks about people whose morals they find inferior, then just dissociate yourself from the asshole remarks, agree with the person who says they are bigoted and move on.

Lastly, you characterize the discussion as "animals rights leading to to oppression like racism, sexism, etc". This is a wrong reading of what I said. Animal rights do not lead to oppression. Intolerance leads to oppression.

It is pretty plain to me, that you have experienced intolerance towards veganism. You felt it to be oppressive, didn't you?

To the degree that some vegans are intolerant, and express their intolerance, to that degree those individuals are capable of being oppressive. That capacity, without power, is more latent than actual (which, btw, is what I said already), but where there is intolerance it will use whatever power it can gather in order to oppress. Please notice that I am NOT saying that vegans are evil oppressors, only that the emotions raised by the issue of animals rights have the potential to create intolerance, because the rhetoric of animal rights often frames the argument in absolute terms of good and evil.

I don't think the above paragraph is either controversial or incorrect.

Lastly, ytth, I understand if you are a vegan there is a strong tendency to see a statement such as "vegans have been known to say bigoted things" to read that as "ytth has been known to say bigoted things". This is natural. But, really, I haven't been slagging off all vegans, or you.

For an example, see the damn stupid PETA ads that were linked here on ilx not so long ago. If those were not misguided, so help me, I am an ass.

these were roundly denounced by everybody on here. it's still not clear to me, aimless, who you are arguing against itt or what even moved you to expound so loquaciously on these propositions which nobody itt has made. at all.

so if vegans took over the world institutional structures would lead to vegan attitudes being instituted as an oppressive norm, so the most important thing to talk about w.r.t. animal rights is the implicit possibility for oppression in veganism, is what you're saying

this thread makes me wonder what parfit's repugnant conclusion means for veganism

i am looking at the wikipedia page but i am too tired for it to make sense, plz gloss

it's a paradox (sorta, only bc it goes against our gut sense of rightness) that basically a lot of unhappy people maximizes happiness more than fewer happy people.

For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living

so, an even larger, even more barely worth living industrial meat industry is preferable to a smaller one with fewer, happier animals.

nah

critical update:

EMMETSBURG, Iowa — Rep. Steve King (R-IA) beamed at a town hall meeting on Tuesday as he recounted a recent congressional hearing where he forced witnesses to “confess” that they were vegetarians.
King said the hearing included witnesses who called to testify before the House Agriculture Committee, including the president of the Humane Society as well as other animal rights groups. He recalled how during the hearing, he asked the individuals, “under oath, are you a vegetarian?” King smiled as he told the town hall constituents that they “confessed they were vegetarians, all of them.”

KING: I’m here to tell you I’m a committed carnivore. I like meat. I sit on the Ag Committee and we had a hearing before the Ag Committee when we invited in the president of the Humane Society of the United States, HSUS, President Wayne Pacelle. And we had one or two other witnesses from the anti-meat crowd or anti-animal husbandry crowd. PETA was there and one other animal activist group. So we just asked them, under oath, “are you a vegetarian?” And they confessed they were vegetarians, all of them. Well there they are with an agenda for our diets.

King offered his own “confession” at the end of the hearing. “I too am a vegetarian,” said the Iowa Republican. “I eat concentrated, recycled, enhanced vegetables in the form of meat.”
ThinkProgress went back to review the hearing transcripts to determine whether King’s story is accurate. It is not. The congressional hearing on animal welfare that King appears to be referencing occurred on May 8, 2007. There were no witnesses from PETA. King did not ask anyone “are you a vegetarian?” In fact, it was another member — Steve Kagen (D-WI) — who asked the Humane Society witness to say he was a vegetarian.
The only thing about King’s story that does appear to be true is that he did in fact say “I eat recycled, concentrated, enhanced vegetables in the form of meat.”

“I too am a vegetarian,” said the Iowa Republican. “I eat concentrated, recycled, enhanced vegetables in the form of meat.”

when i was abt 18, was at some wedding for a 3rd or 4th cousin or some bullshit and one of my extended relatives said something to this effect to me.

the last time i saw him was 4 years later at my wedding in which all the food was vegan. SUCK IT, WE ARE NOT EVEN BLOOD-RELATED.

4 rill tho, iowa farm politicians are public enemy #1 on animal issues

“I eat concentrated, recycled, enhanced vegetables in the form of meat.”

DAD JOKE!

totes

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9145?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theoildrum+%28The+Oil+Drum%29

Paleo diet commenters (whose sole source appears to be Loren Cordain) are as much a blight on nutrition forum discussions as abiotic oil nutters on peak oil topics.

haha I hadn't read the comments...I just like the dude's pov and the food chart

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/table_0.PNG

and thats why shrimp is the best

Accidentally consumed bacon in an avocado breakfast sandwich the provider had presumed was vegetarian. If I had to accidentally eat meat today, could I not have accidentally eaten some carnitas or something? fucking bacon?

http://grist.org/food/its-official-china-now-eats-twice-the-meat-we-do/

http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/epi_uschinameat_chart.png

Yeah, I saw that yesterday but their per-capita consumption is still well below ours

Yeah, China has roughly four times the population of the US I think. Still a heck of an increase though.

it's gonna get worse before it's gonna get better

The development of China in all domains is pretty extraordinary. We think of manfacturing but agricultural development is pretty outstanding too. I knew a lady who was big into wine sales and marketing and instead of returning to France or Italy or Spain, she's working in China right now.

yup the per-capita gap is not a good thing, just reveals that the red line is not headed down anytime soon. xp

MW, my friend told me a story about a group of shanghainese businessmen who ordered boxes and boxes of $300 a bottle bourdeaux - possibly grand crus - and drank them with orange juice because they didn't like the taste

more practical than the nyc investment bankers who pretend like they like the taste

Who the hell doesn't like $300.00 Bordeaux? Disgusting savages, imo.

my dad likes to mix his wine half and half with cold water.

filtered, ice cold water

I like $250 bordeaux and $400 but $300 just doesn't do it for me

How could red wine mixed with orange juice be an improvement? It's like dorm-room sangria.

it makes it sweet

I kinda like red wine and coke

That seems to be a thing these days

I pretty much won't drink any wine that would be improved by adding something to it, except the taste of good food.

no mimosas?

Not anymore. My sister always makes bellinis for Easter but if the champagne is good, I feel like a fool for adulterating it and if it's some terrible cava or whatever, why am I even drinking it?

This isn't a very strict policy, btw, but I find it is increasingly the case.

red wine and coke

This isn't too far from the recipe I suspect of some cheap vermouths (bad red wine, sugar, cinnamon, citrus peel, juniper, ginger).

There are some fabulous vermouths by the way, Vya and the sadly gone King Eider made for extraordinary martinis (which should be 20-25% vermouth, no waving the vermouth bottle over the mixer, savages).

^^^

ice in the white wine man
ice in the white wine

And I pay like two percent of the price of those guys. USA #1

if the champagne is good, I feel like a fool for adulterating it and if it's some terrible cava or whatever, why am I even drinking it?

i can think of a good reason to drink pretty much any wine, no matter the taste

transubstantiation

i lol'd

my dad likes to mix his wine half and half with cold water.

I do this! In fact Im so used to it now I find the taste of straight wine too strong, haha. Weird. Its best with cheap wine of course.

what is chinese meat production like, environmentalyl

Chinese agribusiness is increasingly concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) as in the U.S., with the usual local issues with rivers of sewage, etc. They also import (480,000 metric tonnes of pork in 2011), which is a convenient way of importing embodied water when so much of the nation is running short. It's been a boon to soybean farmers (prices are approaching all-time highs) in Brazil & worldwide, as soya, like #2 seed corn, is largely used as animal feed, and that has encouraged rainforest deforestation.

CAFOs produce some of the most depressing google image search results i have seen for some time /:

according to aimless those farmhands know just how to keep those animals alive and happy

well, I guess I shouldn't dredge up old ghosts

Allergic to Meat: Tiny Tick May Be Spreading Vegetarianism

A tiny tick might be to blame for a rash of meat allergies in central and southern regions of the U.S.

A bite from the lone star tick, so-called for the white spot on its back, looks innocent enough. But researchers say saliva that sneaks into the wound might trigger a reaction to meat agonizing enough to convert lifelong carnivores into wary vegetarians.

"People will eat beef and then anywhere from three to six hours later start having a reaction; anything from hives to full-blown anaphylactic shock," said Dr. Scott Commins, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "Most people want to avoid having the reaction, so they try to stay away from the food that triggers it."

Cases of the bizarre allergy are cropping up in areas ripe with lone star ticks, according to research presented today at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif. But whether the bugs cause meat allergies remains unclear.