Ethical Claims Of The Vegan Diet

[dd99]

What does it say about human emotion when we can feel immense emotion for a handful of humans dying in once place (france), yet very little emotion for a human death toll over 2000 on the very same day in a different geographical location (baka)?

I think it's related to the Hierarchy of Death. And, sadly, also to expectations: because of recent history, people are used to hearing about atrocities in Africa, but not about terrorist attacks in Paris.

 

[Anonymous]

This thread is misleading. The title was about the nutritional claims only, not the ethical/political claims. They have to be separated when discussing nutrition.

Also understand, that there are different kinds of veganism. There is "raw gourmet" which is a high fat version of it, and there is HCLFV, which is either a fruit based, starch based , or both fruit and starch based, low fat version. Then there is the "tofurkey" and soy based meats version.

The term "plant-based" is a misleading term because, for example, I could have a salad, filled with greens and tomatoes etc., but then add some pieces of grilled chicken breast on top of the salad. The salad is still "plant-based" with the chicken on it.

As always, there is no better method of a nutritional approach then trying something for yourself. I am currently doing a less meat and animal fat approach simply to keep my fat intake and bad amino acid intake down.

 

[jaa]

pboy,

I don't know where to start. Spiritually superior? I don't know man, hunting is one of the most spiritual things an human can do.

There is something to be said about killing a sentient being vs killing a plant. It's a sliding scale based on sentience. Conveniently, I think humans are at the top of that scale, which provides a rationalization for killing. I feel better on a meat based diet. There are other factors like killing animals in the wild leading to a cleaner death than the animal would otherwise experience and treating farm raised animals humanely and allowing them to live full lives (the more sentient they are of course). Based on this, I see nothing morally wrong, or spiritually depriving, with eating humanely farmed meat. Eating a wild animal of equivalent sentience is even better, and eating wild animals of less sentience like shellfish is better still.

 

[Such_Saturation]

pboy,

I don't know where to start. Spiritually superior? I don't know man, hunting is one of the most spiritual things an human can do.

There is something to be said about killing a sentient being vs killing a plant. It's a sliding scale based on sentience. Conveniently, I think humans are at the top of that scale, which provides a rationalization for killing. I feel better on a meat based diet. There are other factors like killing animals in the wild leading to a cleaner death than the animal would otherwise experience and treating farm raised animals humanely and allowing them to live full lives (the more sentient they are of course). Based on this, I see nothing morally wrong, or spiritually depriving, with eating humanely farmed meat. Eating a wild animal of equivalent sentience is even better, and eating wild animals of less sentience like shellfish is better still.

But what is the value of feeding a being if it means perpetrating killing as a value? Suffering has value when it brings about a reduction of itself.

 

[jaa]

Yeah it's tricky. I think the word killing has a lot of negative connotations. Instead, I think we should look at it denying future well being. So you would use some formula that incorporates things like how long the animal has left to live on average and the quality of that remaining life based on sentience, the total suffering of the death itself, how other sentient beings are effected by it's death, etc. This kind of formula expresses our gut feeling that it's worse to kill an elephant than a fly. It also takes into account overpopulation of deer, which causes disease and people to get killed in car accidents, and takes into the shorten life span and horrible deaths wild animals usually suffer. And it takes into account the well being of creatures killing the animal.

When humans reach a point where we can economically get all our nutrition from lab grown meat without any negative health consequences, this will be the obvious ethical route to go. We may still be required to kill animals every now and again for population control reasons and to reduce animal suffering, but that by and large will be it.

 

[tara]

When humans reach a point where we can economically get all our nutrition from lab grown meat without any negative health consequences, this will be the obvious ethical route to go.

I'm not at all sure everyone would agree that this would be the obvious ethical route.
At the very least, before I would even start to consider whether it were an ethical option, there would have to be a massive worldwide social transfomation that would prevent even greater corporate industrial and increasingly monopolistic control of the food supply and ecosystem that is the current trend, and that allows a refocus of the scientific community on reality, rather than supporting unethical corporate profits with skewed science.
In the current social organisation at least, I'd be voting for millions of well-managed human scale pastoral farms any day.

 

[mt_dreams]

In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care, so this would seem to include all the kingdoms. Nobody would question it's easier to kill a fly compared to an elephant, but I still believe this is b/c a elephant is part of our kingdom, and thus has many similarities with humans. It still seems to bleed with a privileged mindset that our kingdom is more important, or that we experience more sensations than the other kingdoms. A while back, a couple hours from where I live, we had plants poison some herds that we overeating in a particular area, so its sorta stuck with me. I guess I've always held plant life in the same respect as animals.

Meat-like products grown in weird ways in the lab does not necessarily make it more ethical than real meat. How far from the garden have we fallen that this is even a possibility. The more we play God, the farther we get. All these synthetic grown foods are getting us closer to being comfortable with fake food, and last stop on that train is food grown from cartridges & a food printer. If lab made meat becomes a reality, rather than the ethical debate going on now with regards to animal life, I think the more ethical question would be regarding the choice to eat something creation has already given us vs something man-made in a lab.

 

[barbwirehouse]

Another video on the vegan diet. This is a big one because this guy is a PHD so vegans loooooooove to refer to him.

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

 

[jaa]

When humans reach a point where we can economically get all our nutrition from lab grown meat without any negative health consequences, this will be the obvious ethical route to go.

I'm not at all sure everyone would agree that this would be the obvious ethical route.
At the very least, before I would even start to consider whether it were an ethical option, there would have to be a massive worldwide social transfomation that would prevent even greater corporate industrial and increasingly monopolistic control of the food supply and ecosystem that is the current trend, and that allows a refocus of the scientific community on reality, rather than supporting unethical corporate profits with skewed science.
In the current social organisation at least, I'd be voting for millions of well-managed human scale pastoral farms any day.

Fair enough. Assuming all else equal, lab grown meat is the ethical way to go.

In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care, so this would seem to include all the kingdoms. Nobody would question it's easier to kill a fly compared to an elephant, but I still believe this is b/c a elephant is part of our kingdom, and thus has many similarities with humans. It still seems to bleed with a privileged mindset that our kingdom is more important, or that we experience more sensations than the other kingdoms. A while back, a couple hours from where I live, we had plants poison some herds that we overeating in a particular area, so its sorta stuck with me. I guess I've always held plant life in the same respect as animals.

I think Eastern philosophy has a lot of good to say about the subjective experience of the mind, but that doesn't mean it is correct about everything. There is a lot of woo associated with those traditions. Our current understanding of the complexities of biological life and neuroscience trump ancient ideas of sentience.

Meat-like products grown in weird ways in the lab does not necessarily make it more ethical than real meat. How far from the garden have we fallen that this is even a possibility. The more we play God, the farther we get. All these synthetic grown foods are getting us closer to being comfortable with fake food, and last stop on that train is food grown from cartridges & a food printer. If lab made meat becomes a reality, rather than the ethical debate going on now with regards to animal life, I think the more ethical question would be regarding the choice to eat something creation has already given us vs something man-made in a lab.

This is naturalistic fallacy at it's finest. If it's created in a lab, then creation has provided it. If it's the same particle structure as beef, it's going to be assimilated into your body the same as beef. Just because it seems weird to you, doesn't mean there's anything harmful about it.

 

[mt_dreams]

I think Eastern philosophy has a lot of good to say about the subjective experience of the mind, but that doesn't mean it is correct about everything. There is a lot of woo associated with those traditions. Our current understanding of the complexities of biological life and neuroscience trump ancient ideas of sentience.

I agree that no philosophy is entirely right, it was mostly meant to show that the East & Western differ in this regard. And hopefully by now you've also noticed that what we call science today also contains a fair bit of 'woo'. One difference being we've been able to quantify our 'woo'. that said, I'm not suggesting the whole nervous system research within all different life forms inhabiting the earth is 'woo', as that's pretty solid reasearch.

This is naturalistic fallacy at it's finest. If it's created in a lab, then creation has provided it. If it's the same particle structure as beef, it's going to be assimilated into your body the same as beef. Just because it seems weird to you, doesn't mean there's anything harmful about it.

I'm not the greatest writer, so I may have been misunderstood. I have no qualms about the nutritional aspect of synthetic foods, so the weirdness is not nutritional based, rather how it's being grown. This kind of meat would not be in the same category as say a veggie burger, or fake eggs, rather it would be a new category of identical synthetic copies of real food. We've been trying to play God all through the agriculture revolution, and this would just be another step up, which imo would warrant an ethical debate. There has to be a difference b/w what natural life creates, and that of man-made creation. I'm not bashing man-made creation, just that some man-made creations deserve at least some ethical debate. An off topic ex would be something like science using aborted kidney fetuses to create man-made kidneys that will end up saving the lives of humans who might otherwise die without a transplant. The roundabout point I'm trying to make is, if eating meat is our healthiest way to go, then creation is telling us to eat meat. I don't mind people suggesting that plant life (vegan or otherwise) is the better route for food, but it feels alien to say that meat is best, and then to go the route of synthetically making it ourselves without an extensive ethical review of why this would be ideal. If creation is suggesting to me to create my own beef as a better option, then it is going to have to do a better job of getting this point across to me. If you believe you/I are the creator, then I would agree that this fake created beef would be no different than the beef you/I created in cows.

 

[jaa]

I agree that no philosophy is entirely right, it was mostly meant to show that the East & Western differ in this regard. And hopefully by now you've also noticed that what we call science today also contains a fair bit of 'woo'. One difference being we've been able to quantify our 'woo'. that said, I'm not suggesting the whole nervous system research within all different life forms inhabiting the earth is 'woo', as that's pretty solid reasearch.

All woo is not created equal. I'll take western science over any other explanation any day of the week. Western science changes based on evidence (or is supposed to anyway) and is more predictive than any woo will ever be. This does not mean that the scientific method is always used properly in the west, or that scientists are not bias and there is no inertia to overcome when a wrong path is taken. So in the sense that western scientific model may not accurately explain reality, we are in agreement.

There has to be a difference b/w what natural life creates, and that of man-made creation.

I think this is where we differ. In theory, I don't see any reason why we cannot create lab grown meat that is identical to 'natural' meat. I don't believe that this will happen on the first iteration, it may take a while, but I think for all intents and purposes we will be able to grow meat that provides all the benefits as natural meat without any scary gives you cancer in 10 years type side effects.

I don't mind people suggesting that plant life (vegan or otherwise) is the better route for food, but it feels alien to say that meat is best, and then to go the route of synthetically making it ourselves without an extensive ethical review of why this would be ideal.

Again, you seem adverse to the process because it's not natural. This is understandable given how synthetic foods are now created. But if we can get to the point where there is no atomic difference between the structure of synthetic and natural meat, then there is no difference to the benefits / harms to human health.

f you believe you/I are the creator, then I would agree that this fake created beef would be no different than the beef you/I created in cows.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

 

[Dan W]

I don't know if I should be reviving an ancient thread, but Denise Minger did some fact-checking on Dr. Greger's claims:
"How Not to Die" by Dr. Michael Greger: A Critical Review

Nothing from a Peat perspective, but pokes some holes in some of the claims.

 

[tara]

I don't know if I should be reviving an ancient thread, but Denise Minger did some fact-checking on Dr. Greger's claims:
"How Not to Die" by Dr. Michael Greger: A Critical Review

Nice, thanks.

 

[tara]

Denise Minger

And she wrote this related to the topic last year, too, giving reasons why vegan diets can work better or some people than for others:
4 Reasons Why Some People Do Well as Vegans (While Others Fail Miserably)

 

[DawN]

lol, the site is named authoritynutrition...what you have to eat to count for elite

 

[Dopamine]

The key is to eat less, as we are overeating meat. If we eat less, maybe we can justify spending a little more on the meat so that animal could have been brought up on a pastured farm like we had been doing for 5-10 thousand years prior to the last little while.

There is no more room on the planet for natural grassy pasture lands. 5-10 thousand years ago populations were much smaller and thus less meat and pastureland was needed to satisfy demand.

Grass feeding cattle isn't an efficient use of space considering how much land you need to feed a small herd. Growing plants to eat on that land is more efficient per calorie and per acre and you can also grow vertically. As you move up the food chain there are energy losses and the amount of plant protein it takes to produce animal protein just isn't efficient.

If you say that the key is to eat less meat than maybe we should follow that logic all the way to eating no meat. I don't see why not unless you want to try to make the argument that meat and/or dairy is necessary for health but that is not the scientific consensus. Also anecdotally many people have been raised vegan since birth and have perfectly average or above average health markers if you want to argue down that line of thought.

Next time a vegan says they can not tolerate killing for their food, remind them that 1000s of deaths & displacement occur every time a wild patch is plowed over in order to grow food, so death is inevitable (factory raised meat is contributing to this problem with its soy fields, but pasture raised does not). Seeing miles and miles of soy, corn & wheat crops with nothing living other than the soy, corn & wheat due to pesticide usage, is not my idea of saving life. Animals are not the only kingdom living on this planet.

Machine farming of fields actually does not kill very many mice and small animals. There are studies that show this. As for efficiency of land use again we arrive at the fact that plant agriculture is a much more efficient use of land space than animal agriculture. Most grains and farm crops are fed to animals not people which again is inefficient:

"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans,"

"Each year an estimated 41 million tons of plant protein is fed to U.S. livestock to produce an estimated 7 million tons of animal protein for human consumption. About 26 million tons of the livestock feed comes from grains and 15 million tons from forage crops. For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein."

"Back in the 1950’s, feed conversion ratios were nearly 11:1, meaning that it took nearly twice as much feed to produce a pound of beef. Genetic selection and innovations continue to improve feed conversion in cattle."

Going vegan will not save the animals. The only reason cows, pigs, chickens are alive is so they can be eaten. If no one was eating them, then they would not be alive, as they are not wild animals, and no one would want to upkeep the costs to feed all of them in sanctuaries. Here in North America, no one would tolerate cows living wild (like in India), and the chickens & pigs would end up being food for the wolves, coyotes & wild cats, making those animal populations grow too large for the population to safely tolerate. One has to change their mindset on life & death. Would you rather have none of these animals around, thus preventing them the opportunity to spend some time living on this earth, just to avoid the fact that you will at some point kill the animal so you can eat it. Everything living becomes food for some else. Just b/c we put ourselves in boxes when we die, doesn't mean that the rest of life on earth doesn't understand this.

This is not based in reality as the worlds population will not go vegan overnight. This is similar to the argument people make towards vegans of having to eat meat in survival situations. Ya sure... but again it is not based in reality as we are not starving in the wilderness like some people around the world are or like our prehistoric ancestors. The worlds demand for meat will not drop from extremely high to zero overnight. Realistically if the demand for meat and dairy slowly started dropping in favor of plant products- than intelligent farmers would start shifting their production towards plant based agriculture to supply a rising demand. Governments could even help subsidize this shift like in Denmark where there are organic farm subsidies.

Farm animals are an abomination of nature boasting characteristics that are not conducive to survival rather they have been selectively bred to be more fat, heavy, fast growing etc... and as a result often die earlier of infectious/mechanical disease than their wild counterparts. There are wild pigs, grouse/hens, pigs/boars, goats, sheep and cattle that are adapted for survival in the wild and occupy important ecological niches if that is what you are worried about.

There is nothing spiritually superior to killing a plant over an animal.
A plant and animal both have conscious awareness so killing either one is the same. Plants don't scream though so the this is poorly understood. Rather, plants release toxins as a defense when harvested for food.

Going vegan will not save the animals.

I think veganism is not so much about "saving the animals" as it is about minimizing needless suffering consciously inflicted on animals by people. Animals can't be saved- everything dies eventually but we don't need to hurt, and murder animals if we can eat plants which are alive but not sentient. Plants can react to stimuli but this is different from conscious sentience. Humans for example can be cut open while under anesthetic during surgery but although our bodies will react to the stimulus of being cut through release of certain hormones, change in blood pressure etc... we will not have a conscious experience of pain.

Even if you proceed with the notion that plants have the same capacity for conscious experience of suffering as animals (which they don't) this is still an argument for veganism because animals like cows will consume many more lbs of plants in their lifetime than people and through raising billions of these animals we are indirectly consuming much larger quantities of plants.

 

[MatheusPN]

That was beautiful Dopamine, surely this spared me time, thank you!
The livestock, the meat industry, exterminates, removes the expanse of several different species, placing the abomination of nature in place of the others, many at risk of extinction, serious or not to them is irrelevant!

 

[lvysaur]

I don't know why omnivores keep deluding themselves with obviously bogus arguments. Vegan/vegetarianism is more ethical. Lab meat is more ethical. Eating meat kills more plants than eating plants does, AND kills the animal on top of that.

I'm just going to eat real meat anyway.

What does it say about human emotion when we can feel immense emotion for a handful of humans dying in once place (france), yet very little emotion for a human death toll over 2000 on the very same day in a different geographical location (baka)?

Speak for yourself, I don't find myself particularly perturbed by either. I would if I were living there.

 

[MatheusPN]

When people you like, intelligent people, who think veganism is very health, who know how vicious and cruel the industry is and still continue to help the infamous machine, the coward machine, it makes you lose the expectation of a rational kindness from people, for some time... And rational kindness, is the beautifoul kindness, the truly one!

Formerly the blacks, the not white ones, etc. were seen by the "whites" as inferior, another kind of being, they say they had neither soul, to be more tranquil to use, more smooth to enslave them; this was seen as normal to be "treated like animals", formerly a regular thought now it remains unexceptional to be unnecessarily cruel against defenseless beings (a Bull facing a FAMAS chambered with a 6.5 grendel), veganism is only the continuation of the same ideology, on the same basis as the anti-slavery thoughts!

 

[MatheusPN]

I don't know why omnivores keep deluding themselves with obviously bogus arguments. Vegan/vegetarianism is more ethical. Lab meat is more ethical. Eating meat kills more plants than eating plants does, AND kills the animal on top of that.

Whoever is able to prove or theorize otherwise is certainly a genius