The Veganism Thread

[GrahamS2]

If you can post some of these I'm genuinely interested, as I've said before it was the health aspect that initially got me heading in this vegan direction. I'm honestly trying to think back but I have only come across the opposite. 

 

(I'll look up the saturated fat thing you mention, I love an MCG-like debunk)

It's all on page 1 of this very thread  Nothing new, any exclusionary diet is bad for you. Consuming anything in excess is bad for you. Eat a balanced diet, live a balanced life.

Edited August 28, 2019 by GrahamS2

[WrightJnr]

It's all on page 1 of this very thread Nothing new, any exclusionary diet is bad for you. Consuming anything in excess is bad for you. Eat a balanced diet, live a balanced life.

Everything in moderation. Across everything in your life is what I believe. So far, it’s worked well for me and those I have observed doing the same.

 

Disclaimer: above excluding listening to your wife. For good health I suggest you do that in excess.

[Chris_]

If there is anything I hate its this balanced moderation rubbish. Its a line we've awarded ourselves to be mediocre and firmly comfort-zoned. 

[Chris_]

Very brave attempt this.

 

I tasted KFC's meatless fried 'chicken' dishes and even though they look like the real thing, they didn't taste like it https://www.businessinsider.co.za/i-tasted-kfc-meatless-chicken-review-2019-8

 

[Rouxenator]

[Odinson]

Very brave attempt this.

 

I tasted KFC's meatless fried 'chicken' dishes and even though they look like the real thing, they didn't taste like it https://www.businessinsider.co.za/i-tasted-kfc-meatless-chicken-review-2019-8

 

Sold out in a few hours, so still impressive. 

 

On the whole, Beyond Chicken might never taste exactly the same as actual chicken flesh, but is it really a bad thing? As long as it tastes good, albeit different, it'll have a place. 

[Odinson]

Haven't even posted it here. 

 

Last Sunday was the inaugural Official Animal Rights March in Brussels. For those who don't know, the march was launched in 2016 (I think) in London. In London this year over 12000 folks rocked up to make their voices heard. Wifey and I joined the Brussels edition. About 250 people attended. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2019 by Odinson

[Eldron]

If there is anything I hate its this balanced moderation rubbish. Its a line we've awarded ourselves to be mediocre and firmly comfort-zoned. 

 

I think you're doing a really bad job of extrapolating a healthy way of eating into some kind of anti motivational meme!

 

I'm guessing your health wouldn't be that great if you drank beer all day and ate sugar all night*. BOOM! YEAH! Screw you moderation guys I'm living the life WHOOOT!

 

*which in a strangely ironic twist would be a vegan diet.

 

Moderation in moderate moderation done moderately is probably the best way to live.

[Odinson]

Stop Mocking Vegans

They’re right about ethics and the environment. If you won’t join them, at least respect their effort to build a sustainable future.

 

When Popeyes’ new fried chicken sandwich went viral for its deliciousness last week, I did not pause, not even for a second, to consider the vast toll of suffering and environmental destruction inherent in its rise. I am guessing you didn’t either; indeed, I can already feel your eyes rolling deep into your head at the mere suggestion that there’s anything to feel guilty about regarding the sold-out sandwich. So before we go on, let me warn you: The rest of this column is going to give your eye-rolling muscles a very good workout.

You want to shake me: Shut up, killjoy! Haven’t I heard how unspeakably delicious the sandwich is? As The New Yorker proclaimed, “The Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is Here to Save America.” So why spoil this one last true thing by mentioning the squalid, overcrowded, constantly-lit, 40-day life span of the typical factory-farmed, fast-food chicken?

Or, for that matter, the irony of the sandwich going viral at the same time as heartbreaking pictures of the Amazon rainforest on fire. Many of us, myself included, engage in painless, performative environmentalism. We’ll give up plastic straws and tweet passionately that someone should do something about the Amazon, yet few of us make space in our worldview to acknowledge the carcass in the room: the irrefutable evidence that our addiction to meat is killing the planet right before our eyes. After all, it takes only a few minutes of investigation to learn that there is one overwhelming reason the Amazon is burning — to clear ground for cattle ranching and for the cultivation of soy, the vast majority of which goes not into tofu but into animal feed, including for fast-food chicken.

As I say, I did not consider any of this, because I don’t regularly come into contact with a lot of preachy vegans. Indeed, preachy vegans are something of a myth. There’s an old joke — “How do you know you’re talking to a vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you” — that is as untrue as it is revealing about the teller. Although vegans can marshal stronger evidence to support their claims than adherents of many other belief systems — whether of other diets or major religions — they get little respect, and their ideas rarely receive mass media acknowledgment other than mockery.

 

I am not a vegan. I am barely, failingly, a vegetarian/pescatarian — I make an effort to avoid meat, but for reasons of convenience and shameless hedonism still end up eating it several times a month, especially fish. My purpose here is not to change how you eat, dress or think about the ethics of consuming something like the Popeyes’ sandwich. Instead, as a fellow omnivore and a person concerned about the planet’s future, I want to ask you to do something much more simple: to alter how you think about vegans.

 

I want to urge you to give vegans a chance — to love and to celebrate them instead of ridiculing them. We need more vegan voices, because on the big issues — the criminal cruelty of industrial farming; the sentience and emotional depth of food animals; the environmental toll of meat and the unsustainability of its global rise — vegans are irrefutably on the right side of history. They are the vanguard. Climate scholars say that if we are ever to survive a warming planet, people will have to consume far fewer animals than we do now. We will all have to become a little more vegan — and if we are to succeed in that, we will have to start by saluting vegans, not mocking them.

 

We are nowhere close to that now. In the media, in pop culture and even in progressive, enlightened polite society it is still widely acceptable to make fun of vegans. The stereotype of the smug, self-satisfied, annoying vegan has taken deep cultural root. One survey found that vegans are viewed more negatively than atheists and immigrants, and are only slightly more tolerated than drug addicts.

 

It’s true that America’s food industry has recently begun investing heavily in animal-free milks and meats; supermarkets are brimming with bounties of meat alternatives, Burger King is selling an Impossible Whopper, and KFC just announced fake fried chicken wings and nuggets. This is all great news for the planet, yet no one thanks vegans for creating a market for these alternatives. Not even the meat-alternative start-ups themselves, which call themselves “plant-based” and strictly avoid the V-word, perhaps because food industry surveys find that “vegan” is the least appealing label that can be applied to food — worse than “diet” and “sugar-free.”

 

“There are many things that have gotten better in the five years that I’ve been vegan, like the availability of options or the quality of vegan cheese — but the attitude that omnivores have about vegans doesn’t feel like it’s changed that much, if at all,” Summer Anne Burton, the editor of a new vegan-focused magazine called Tenderly, told me. “Even people who are really radical and progressive in lots of areas of their lives still seem really suspicious, frustrated and annoyed by the idea of someone being vegan.”

 

The annoyance manifests in all kinds of ways. Ms. Burton will post an inoffensive vegan recipe and someone will invariably reply, “That would be better with bacon!” Vegans are constantly tarred with the suggestion that they are unfun — they’re asked whether oral sex is vegan, or accused of ruining weddings and birthday dinners with their outlandish preferences. “Being vegan or talking about your reasons for being vegan is taken to mean you are judgmental and smug — ‘You must be fun at parties!’ is probably the thing that I hear most often,” Ms. Burton said.

The tragedy here is that the mockery intimidates vegans. Rather than being out and proud about their beliefs, vegans find themselves biting their tongues. “A lot of us overcorrect,” Ms. Burton said. “You make a sacrifice because of your beliefs, and when people ask you about it, you’re afraid to sound judgmental or smug, so you brush it off.”

 

There are many theories for why vegans have it so rough, but the one I lean on is guilt and cognitive dissonance. Many omnivores understand the toll that meat wreaks on the planet, and we can’t help but feel the tension between loving animals in the abstract while eating them with abandon on the plate. All of this creates feelings of defensiveness, so when a vegan comes along, their very presence seems like an affront. To an omnivore, every vegan looks like a preachy vegan.

 

Well, that’s the point! As a culture, we are far too comfortable with consuming animals. The idea that meat is cost-free is exactly what led us into this trap; delicious as it may be, we should feel embarrassed and uncomfortable that people are going gaga for a mass-manufactured fried chicken sandwich.

For the good of the planet, put down the sandwich. But if you won’t do that, at least refrain from putting down the people who are trying to light a path to a livable future. The vegans are right. The vegans were always right. The least you can do is shower them with respect and our gratitude, because they deserve it.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/vegan-food.html?fbclid=IwAR2CSsKcbE1X3NI0UhZcxeEJOAqF0_lLBBQduHrohKI9y1VbvCVTYyS1jhk

Edited August 29, 2019 by Odinson

[Chris_]

I think you're doing a really bad job of extrapolating a healthy way of eating into some kind of anti motivational meme!

 

I'm guessing your health wouldn't be that great if you drank beer all day and ate sugar all night*. BOOM! YEAH! Screw you moderation guys I'm living the life WHOOOT!

 

*which in a strangely ironic twist would be a vegan diet.

 

Moderation in moderate moderation done moderately is probably the best way to live.

 

'Everything in moderation including moderation.' great line.

[Chris_]

I think you're doing a really bad job of extrapolating a healthy way of eating into some kind of anti motivational meme!

 

I'm guessing your health wouldn't be that great if you drank beer all day and ate sugar all night*. BOOM! YEAH! Screw you moderation guys I'm living the life WHOOOT!

 

*which in a strangely ironic twist would be a vegan diet.

 

Moderation in moderate moderation done moderately is probably the best way to live.

 

I think we've all done a bad job as to being told whats healthy, and balanced, and acceptable, and just edging along sideways without applying some nouse.

[Rocket-Boy]

 

Stop Mocking Vegans

They’re right about ethics and the environment. If you won’t join them, at least respect their effort to build a sustainable future.

*snip*

 

The idea behind being a vegetarian or vegan is great. The constant bashing of opinion is not.

To illustrate this point, next time a Jehovas witness comes around, invite them in, have a chat and really listen to what they have to say.

The above point can be rehashed with almost any religion, or strong beliefs.

 

So while the author was saying its possible to not hate vegans pushing their agenda, Im saying, its possible to be a vegan without being a dick.

Heck Im fairly sure in the 5 odd years my brother has been vegan that he hasnt told anyone who didnt ask.

[Odinson]

The idea behind being a vegetarian or vegan is great. The constant bashing of opinion is not.

To illustrate this point, next time a Jehovas witness comes around, invite them in, have a chat and really listen to what they have to say.

The above point can be rehashed with almost any religion, or strong beliefs.

 

So while the author was saying its possible to not hate vegans pushing their agenda, Im saying, its possible to be a vegan without being a dick.

Heck Im fairly sure in the 5 odd years my brother has been vegan that he hasnt told anyone who didnt ask.

 

I've never told anyone who hasn't asked, other than on here. 

 

Let me ask you this, RB: if you were to switch places with a farmed animal, would you want someone to speak up on your behalf before being sent to the killing floor? Quietly going about things won't change the paradigm. 

 

 

I think perhaps people who find the mere thought of vegans 'annoying' and label them as dicks should rather take some time and introspect as to why they feel that way. 

[GrahamS2]

The idea behind being a vegetarian or vegan is great. The constant bashing of opinion is not.

To illustrate this point, next time a Jehovas witness comes around, invite them in, have a chat and really listen to what they have to say.

The above point can be rehashed with almost any religion, or strong beliefs.

 

So while the author was saying its possible to not hate vegans pushing their agenda, Im saying, its possible to be a vegan without being a dick.

Heck Im fairly sure in the 5 odd years my brother has been vegan that he hasnt told anyone who didnt ask.

He's a petty shoddy vegan if he isn't spreading the gospel, um, message to everyone around him.

 

Happy Friday!

[WrightJnr]

If there is anything I hate its this balanced moderation rubbish. Its a line we've awarded ourselves to be mediocre and firmly comfort-zoned.

Don’t assume the effort applied in a moderately controlled activity. Believe me, when I rock up at the start line, I’m more motivated than you to win. I’m rarely in any sort of “comfort zone”. The difference (not comparing to you) is that once I’m across the finish line I don’t get on the rollers to cool down and then go for a recovery nap. Friends, Family, Health, Wealth.....I try my best to treat them “equally” but with a passion on 100.

[Eldron]

The idea behind being a vegetarian or vegan is great. The constant bashing of opinion is not.

To illustrate this point, next time a Jehovas witness comes around, invite them in, have a chat and really listen to what they have to say.

The above point can be rehashed with almost any religion, or strong beliefs.

 

So while the author was saying its possible to not hate vegans pushing their agenda, Im saying, its possible to be a vegan without being a dick.

Heck Im fairly sure in the 5 odd years my brother has been vegan that he hasnt told anyone who didnt ask.

I always find these statements a little hollow. Odin is about the only vegan on this thread that I consider edgy. There have been way more members posting pics of meat and saying how they love meat...on a vegan thread.

 

On balance of scales on this thread I'd say the dick/troll/me me me award would go to the meat eaters.