Microblog post: Not even a vegan but they’re obviously right no need to try to argue with them it’s fine to just be wrong and live your life
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 4 points 5 days ago (40 children)

This is a super hot take so bare with me, but the conditions of a lot of vegan food production are also often harmful to the humans that grow the food (I'm talking blood produce) and the growth in popularity of certain superfoods have severely damaged the ecosystems that indigenous populations in the areas where they're from depended on.

This is not to say being vegan is bad. It's obviously proven to be better for the environment, and the way that animals are treated is absolutely inhumane.

This is to say however that we should be demanding sustainability in all our food consumption and respect for all living beings. But mostly, it's to say fuck capitalism.

  • source
  • hideshow 40 child comments
  • [–] 17 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (23 children)

    By vegan food production you must mean processed fake meat? Not all vegans eat a horrible diet.

    If you mean vegan food production as in normal non-meat foods such as vegetables than that’s a while opinion. Unless you are Jain or just want to die, we got to eat something.

    Most food production in general kills a lot more than I would like especially vegetable and fruit production. Not much to do on the regard though.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 23 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Yes I did mean veg and fruit, but I mean that obviously we need to eat but we need to do it in a sustainable and fair way.

    Currently a lot of the produce in Canada & the US is grown by migrant labour where people are treated horribly. In Mexico, many of the agricultural production sites are owned by cartels. Quinoa used to be a primary food source for quechuan (peruvian indigenous) people but when it grew in popularity in the west, it became too expensive for those who depended on it. There are many more examples.

    What there is to do about it is to demand better agricultural practices and support fair-trade, co-ops, and sustainable food vendors. In the same way we should be / are demanding cruelty-free and sustainable animal products.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [+] -6 points 5 days ago (20 children)

    Unless you are Jain or just want to die, we got to eat something.

    That's the thing though, why should plants be more eligible for eating than animals? Both are living. Animals are closer to us, so we can understand them better, but that doesn't mean we aren't being just as harmful to plants.

    I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with eating another animal for sustenance. Just the same as there isn't anything wrong with eating a plant for sustenance. What matters is what we do before we eat them.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 20 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 5 days ago (4 children)

    Plants cannot think or feel as animals can. Arguing a tomato has the emotions and thought of a dog or pig is just silly.

    Killing a pig versus a tomato is not the same thing dawg

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [+] -7 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    as animals can.

    As we can. We understand how animals think, because evolutionarily they're closer to us. We don't really understand how plants "think" or "feel", we just decide that because they don't have what we have that makes it okay.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Just making up whatever you want aren’t you?

    “I’m not a plant therefore idk what their nonthinking minds are thinking”

    Who is we in your statement? Pretty sure modern botany understands how plants work and interact.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago

    That understanding has its limits. We're just cracking on the ways plants (and fungi) may communicate with one another via external chemical signalling. There are things beyond our current understanding, and how a plant "feels" is completely alien to us. Hell, the function of how people "feel" is still not fully understood.

    My point is that it's ultimately arbitrary. We feel pain, and we can imagine animals feeling pain in a similar way, because their neurological systems are similar. We assume plants don't feel pain - and we can confidently say they don't feel pain the same way we do, but we can't say they don't feel pain at all in a way we don't yet understand.

    Either way though, both plants and animals are living beings, and you are denying them the same opportunity to life by eating them.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 11 points 5 days ago (14 children)

    Are you stupid? Genuine question, because animals need to eat as well for you to pay someone to murder them. Even going from the assumption that plants suffer too, a plant based diet still causes much fewer plants to die compared to feeding the plants inefficiently to animals to then eat the animals.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 14 child comments
  • [–] -2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (12 children)

    eating meat today doesn't cause it to have been fed in the past. events in the future cannot cause events in the past. eating meat doesn't cause past suffering.

    are you stupid

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (10 children)

    Award for not even tangentially hitting the point I made goes to you my dear zoophile <3

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (6 children)

    I addressed the assertion that eating meat causes suffering. that's simply untrue.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (5 children)

    So you have no problems with slave labour because the suffering already happened when you buy its products? What about a video of a rape? The rape already happened so it won't cause further suffering getting off to it.

    How hard is it to understand that these animals get tortured and murdered for your consumption and you don't just happen to come upon a corpse accidentally. Your consumption drives the production.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (2 children)

    calling me a zoophile is baseless.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -2 points 5 days ago

    Are you stupid? Genuine question

    Liar. You're just being a dick here. No bother though.

    Like I said before, what matters is what we do before we eat them. Industrial farming practices are where I see the real problems at - and the key thing is that this is an issue for both meant and plant farming.

    Plant based diets can definitely be more efficient, although palm oil is also vegan (and palm oil farming is currently the cause of a massive amount of habitat loss), so just because you have a plant based diet doesn't mean it's perfect. But what I'm saying here is that eating plants is not inherently more righteous than eating animals. In practice, it almost certainly is (mainly because of farming practices), but not inherently.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

    "Super foods" are kind of fucked, and that's part of being a good vegan—researching and avoiding things that cause harm (as much as practicable). But those are more a thing in wellness clean eating fad diet circles. Most vegan staples are like rice, beans, pulses, and random veggies.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -5 points 5 days ago (10 children)

    Nah, there are definitely some vegetarian and vegan foods (especially when we're talking ultraprocessed foods) that are worse for the environment and worse for your health than just plain meat or cheese.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    Genuinely which ones? Everything I can think of is better than meat. Largely because the cows eat a lot of food in the first place with most of it being wasted.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago* (2 children)

    It's been a good long while since I made my comparisons but i believe Quorn was worse than chicken (but not as bad as beef obviously). In Sweden we also have Anamma which used to be very good, but at some point they removed their classic formulations and suddenly added like 30% sugar to everything (and doubled the price for good measure). Not sure if they've walked that back by now, hopefully they have.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Oh you are talking about fake meat stuff, I was thinking of normal ingredients.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago

    No, it's the ultraprocessed stuff that can be pretty bad. But I think a lot of things have happened in the past decade during which there was also a huge focus on sustainability, so I think the market is better now than it used to be. I'm not up to speed anymore.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 5 days ago (5 children)

    In the UK there's a sweet maker called Candy Kittens. They make, like, vegan Haribo (only better) that tastes really really nice.

    They've started making their own vegan peanut M&M's. Instead of chocolate they use a shit ton of palm oil.

    It's "ethically sourced" palm oil, but that's still a sour thought after you've devoured a whole bag of tasty sweet treats in one sitting. It's still increasing the market capacity for palm oil, which in turn increases demand to destroy habitats eg orangutans in Indonesia and other SE Asian islands.

    TL;DR palm oil is vegan.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (4 children)

    Wait isn't chocolate vegan though? Why substitute chocolate with palm oil?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Cocoa is vegan. Chocolate is usually made with milk products to make it more palatable. The chocolate in peanut M&M's has milk in it, so they are not vegan.

    Except these days milk is largely substituted with palm oil recipes, which is much cheaper, but creates a worse product (often described as waxy) while the industry producing it is tearing down virgin forests for farm land.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [+] -6 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    we should be demanding sustainability in all our food consumption and respect for all living beings

    Hear hear.

    Plants are living beings, also. The fact is, unless you photosynthesise, you likely have to consume another living being to survive.

    What nearly everyone can agree on is that industrial farming practices are harmful. Not just to the living things we farm, but also to the consumers, who end up consuming a lesser product that is often contaminated by industrial processes that cut corners to save on cost.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment