Vegetarian - just stopped eating meat one day to see if I could keep it up.
(The reason being that I had already been thinking for a while how gross it actually was to eat animal corpses, and that I'd also rather be alive than dead, so others shouldn't suffer that fate just because I had to satisfy my taste buds)
That was the easiest part - the social aspect of it is a lot more complicated than that, mostly because I had to explain to people why I made the decision, over and over again. And obviously the braindead comments about not getting enough protein etc.
Some things I did not even know initially, like how many products contain gelatine (which is made out of animal bones and skin), but nowadays it's rather easy to avoid such products.
Going Vegan is the next goal, probably when I move into my own place, and I already tried going Vegan, but always ran into a wall because I am not the person doing groceries in this household.
>and that I'd also rather be alive than dead, so others shouldn't suffer that fate just because I had to satisfy my taste buds)
If everyone did this, then raising of animals for food would stop. That wouldn't keep any animals from being killed for food; instead, it would mean those animals never existed in the first place, and never got to have any life at all.
Now, I don't know whether that's better or worse: is it better to have a short, somewhat unhappy life than none at all? This is a question for philosophers. But it's something to think about. But the point is, you're not saving any animals from being murdered by not eating meat.
I am not vegan. But the life of an animal bred for human consumption is not "somewhat unhappy". It's closer to "absolutely depressing" or "shockingly inhumane".
Change the word animal to human in your question: Is it better for a human to never exist or for it to be born and then at the age of 6 we murder it?
The obvious answer to that is that it's much better that that human never exist.
Again, I'm not vegan, and I occasionally eat meat. But your logic here is terrible.
There is a HUGE area between "bred for human consumption" and "shockingly inhumane" chicken farms, for example.
My chickens are out in a pasture right now enjoying the sunshine, hunting bugs, and they do that every day until they die. The taking of their life, if it's on my terms and not a predator's, is very quick. The length of their life is cut short, but the quality of the life they lived is not harmed. In fact, it's likely improved via watertight shelter and readily available food & water.
When I hatch, I often get to save the life of a chick who would have died in his shell. I also get to correct things like splayed legs that would follow a chicken through its whole life (or leave it dead).
So there's more to the world than your extreme version of things.
The lifespan of my laying hens is quite a bit longer than it would be for one in the wild. If we compare chickens to their wild genetic ancestor, anyway--there is no such thing as a wild chicken.
I'll leave the philosophical questions to other folks, I'm just presenting a contrary example to your rigid set of rules.
Fair enough, but you have to understand that your chicken operation is the exception and not the rule, right?
Factory-farmed chickens do not get to go outside, enjoy the sunshine, and eat bugs. They live in cramped chicken houses devoid of light, fresh air, or anything remotely resembling your beautiful sounding farm.
The vast, vast majority of chicken purchased in a grocery store lives out their life in that second situation, not in a place like your farm.
For what it's worth, my place is not a farm and not particularly beautiful, but I do have a pasture and keep chickens.
On to my real response: my "exception" invalidates your argument wrt whether or not animals should be raised for consumption and have their lives cut short, which you said was an "obvious answer."
I think most people agree that it's okay, so long as the animal is allowed to have a normal, fulfilling existence.
We love our chickens and take no pleasure in butchering them, but I feel certain they are happy to get a shot at life, even if for some of them that life is only a year or two.
I've had a minute now to think about your "obvious answer" from up-thread. I had a lot of fun by the time I was 6 years old. Experienced a lot of love, caught a lot of fish, explored a big world, rode my bike on dirt roads. I knew where "deer road" was, I knew how to sneak up on the bridge there and spy on the turtles. A couple of those years just might have been my best. I don't think I can agree with you.
Anyway, if we pose the question as "is it okay to raise animals for consumption? animals that wouldn't have had a life otherwise?", I think the answer is something like "Yes, if we treat them well."
So the answer isn't (necessarily) to become a vegan. A perfectly viable option is to source your meat differently.
>But the life of an animal bred for human consumption is not "somewhat unhappy". It's closer to "absolutely depressing" or "shockingly inhumane".
I've seen plenty of pastures with lazy, grass-munching cows to believe this is universally true. Sure, the life of many factory-farmed animals isn't great at all (particularly thinking of Tyson chickens here), but this isn't universally true. Livestock in many other parts of the world does not live this way. There's more to the world than America, you know.
>Is it better for a human to never exist or for it to be born and then at the age of 6 we murder it? The obvious answer to that is that it's much better that that human never exist.
That isn't obvious at all. What if that child has a nice, happy, carefree existence until it hits the age of 6? Who are you to say that life isn't worth living?
The first and fundamental question you want to ask yourself is not how, but why: when your reasons are clear, the path naturally follows.
I can see three strands:
1. For health reasons. This is IMO the weakest reason. I'm not interested (nor qualified) in starting an endless debate about the health risk/benefits of meat; but if you only want to eat healthier is best to start with the obvious: cut sugar, snacks, sodas, sweets, junk food and deep fried; eat more low-GI and greens, etc.
2. For Ahimsa [0]. Ahimsa is a beautiful and subtle topic, but broadly speaking it means that you try to minimize the amount of suffering caused by your actions. Buddhists (as well as Socrates) believe we constantly fail to understand that our actions have consequences. Ahimsa is about getting in touch as best as we can with these consequences, and act accordingly to our insights.
3. For environmental reasons, i.e. reducing your ecological footprint. This has some overlap with Ahimsa, but the reasons are practical rather than ethical and there are exceptions: in terms of sheer sustainability, battery farmed chicken might be OK (maybe, I don't know).
Whatever your reasons are, it's something I believe is worth thinking about.
edit: i dont mean any of this to be combative or insulting, figured i would throw this in at the top in case someone doesnt make it to the end thinking i am trying to attack their ideology, just trying to get feedback on an argument i read long ago
what do you think about the argument that by removing yourself from the market of meat entirely, you do nothing to promote better lives for livestock.
By abstaining from meat, you do nothing to push the meat industry towards more sustainable and compassionate treatment of animals. You, being someone who is conscious of these abuses are in a position to push for change, but instead you remove yourself from the market entirely.
Ultimately, isnt refusing to vote with your wallet worse than voting for compassionate and sustainable production of livestock?
Wouldnt eating lab grown meat do more to end the suffering of these animals than not eating meat at all? since it would push an entire industry toward your preference of eating only that which was produced to your standards.
would the entire population of vegetarians and vegans combined buying only the most sustainable and compassionately raised meats be enough to effect the processes of major producers? Would this be a greater good than not eating meat at all? of course, this likely doesnt effect the decision on a personal level, but at scale does veganism help or hurt the progress towards more sustainably and compassionately raised livestock? (though of course if that scale were to include everyone, it would be no longer an issue i suppose)
of course this moreso assumes your overall goal is to reduce the suffering of these animals, or the suffering of all things as much as you possibly can- if your goal is to instead reduce the amount of suffering you directly cause, then this argument is meaningless.
I'm honestly asking this, as its the only argument that i have found that sounds reasonable against becoming vegan, im not really trying to start a debate, i dont really have more to say than this, but its an argument that stuck with me the first time i read it and i very rarely have a chance to have a level headed discussion about such a topic (reddit isnt really the place for level headed discussion, and i am not aware of a nutrition or dietary equivalent to hackernews)
Here's reason #4. You'll look younger, have better skin, and live longer. Vegans typically live 15 years longer and don't have many of the degenerative diseases which are caused by meat and dairy.
I was pushing my parents to let me become vegan when I turned a teenager. I stopped eating meat on my 16th birthday despite their assertions that I would die. Gave up dairy a few years later, which I only ate because the dairy industry's advertising is so damn strong.
I'll turn 46 this summer, so it's been almost 30 years, and people think I'm 10-15 years younger. Teenage girls still try to pick me up. My fiance has been vegan for something like 20 years and is 40 this summer. Last year, two high school kids invited her to the prom.
And reason #5, which was the primary reason I went vegan, followed by having a sense of ethics and feeling it was wrong to enslave, torture, and murder animals, because meat is yummy: Eating rotting corpses is pretty gross when you think about it.
I'm telling you the reason that I went vegan at 16. And those were the main reasons. Though at the time, I called it grody, but I'm not sure of the correct spelling.
Animals start to decompose at the moment of death. The meat at the supermarket has been dead for how long? Days, weeks? It is in the process of rotting, just not visibly so. Much of it is actually spoiled, but I've read 70% of meat in supermarkets is treated with carbon monoxide to keep it from going brown or grey. You might not like it, but it's a very valid and important argument.
And as for feeling that it's unethical. We (people) enslave entire species, remove their body parts without anaesthesia, cage them in cells so small they can't move, force them to have babies over and over and then kidnap their children and eat them, grind them up, or enslave them as well. It's horrible. I think that anyone who knows what is done and argues, but meat is yummy or delicious as someone else did in here, is a sociopath. Can anyone who is connected to their sense of empathy be okay causing that much pain to other feeling beings?
> We (people) enslave entire species, remove their body parts without anaesthesia, cage them in cells so small they can't move, force them to have babies over and over and then kidnap their children and eat them, grind them up, or enslave them as well. It's horrible, and I think that anyone who knows what is done and argues, but meat is yummy, is a sociopath.
I produce my own meat, on my own property. Not in cages, no forced babies (chickens lay anyway), no enslavement (the arrangement is closer to me being their slave), and no 'body part removal.'
So many of your arguments are made up for non-commercial meat sources.
Also, do you not see how your language is just an attack on meat-eaters? You say you're just "telling us the reason," but you're not, you're making an attack.
You are part of a tiny percentage of people, so that doesn't really mean much compared to the billions of animals who are part of factory farming.
But, I applaud you for doing it yourself and think everyone should eat meat the way you do, if they must eat meat in the first place.
The "positive" stuff at the beginning were the unexpected side-effects. The attacks are answering the question that this thread is about. Why did I become vegan? That's exactly what I was thinking as a teenager, and continue to think 30 years later.
Is it an attack to say, "Take a look at the results of your actions. This is what you're a part of. This is the suffering you cause."?
Calling someone a sociopath might be an attack. lol. That comes from being attacked for being a vegan hundreds of times, just for not eating what everyone else was, when I didn't bring it up at all. When I explain why, I get, "but meat tastes good" (Subtext is, "so it's fine for animals and the planet to suffer because of factory farming, because meat is yummy"). Oh, well, that's fine then.
I've never actually called someone a sociopath when they said that meat tastes good as justification for eating it. But now that I think about it, justifying killing for pleasure (of eating) seems like a pretty good definition.
The attacks I'm referring to are the misuse of the term "murder", calling a couple hundred million folks "sociopaths," and the implication (which has some truth, no doubt) that those eating the meat are responsible for the mistreatment of animals and are causing their pain.
I'm sure you can think of dozens of examples where people who are a cog in a machine are not exactly on-board with the whole thing, yet feel powerless to stop it.
Diet is not something that everyone feels they can change on a whim. If it were, I suppose we wouldn't have an obesity crisis, and perhaps more people would join you as vegans, too.
The cultural pressure to eat meat is also a big factor, just as you have mentioned in your response here. Not just to be normal, but maybe to avoid hurting mom's feelings when she makes your childhood-favorite lasagna or something.
People use the same argument for eating meat (it tastes good) as they do for getting morbidly obese. Nobody wants to be morbidly obese or impose those kinds of health problems on themselves, so perhaps you need to understand that the issue is deeper than just "I do or don't want to hurt animals." It certainly is with obesity.
Im mostly vegan when eating out since Im unsure of meat used. And I like to cook hence it turns out when you cook meat dishes at home its a real bargain.
I was 16 then. I cut out the meat intake immediately. I happened to one day take a stroll in a part of the town where butcher shops were in plenty and I stood and observed the butchering process out of curiosity. Whatever I saw left me pale and horrified. I came back home and cried a lot. The shrieks and cries of the hen didn't leave my mind. And I decided from that day onwards that I wouldn't kill for my taste buds.
It was lucky you lived somewhere where you even had an opportunity to see the butchering process and thus make your own informed choices about it.
In the USA, it is not difficult to go your whole life eating meat and never seeing where it comes from, other than "from the supermarket refrigerated aisle." Many if not most supermarkets don't butcher on site (eg, in college I once briefly worked at a Walmart meat department and was disappointed I would not be learning any butchering, but would just be moving around boxes that happened to contain meat)
I'd like to propose a perhaps odd view: It may not be wrong to eat meat, but it's surely wrong to eat it if you wouldn't be willing to do the butchering and preparing yourself if that were the only way to get it.
Went Vegan about 8 months ago. Cut of meat and dairy products immediately. Feeling great. Been loosing weight - some people might want that, not me, skinny as it is. I was always a bad eater, so I guess removing meat and dairy came natural to me. What I can suggest is stop thinking of food as tasty. I'll eat dirt if it gives me the right vitamins and proteins, don't care how food tastes as long as it gives my body what it needs.
I went vegetarian for a year. The girl I later married was (and is) vegetarian, and I knew I'd be doing a lot of the cooking, and wanted to see things from that side for a bit.
Try to watch it in a full sitting. You probably wont be able to, but try. Then walk to a mirror and look yourself in the face, and ask if you and this world are really real, that is, do your own version of a reality check.
Then you will see your proverbial red pill and blue pill.
Dont do it because you think you might lose a few pounds and impress some stranger at a beach. Do it because you want to deeply re-examine life and this world. Make it a life path for yourself.
Its either a difficult and impossible path OR its a trivially easy path, it all depends on your intentions.
Watch the film.
I have been vegan for several years.
It took me almost 2 years to watch the film in its entirety.
You do realise that more living beings are killed while farming plants (pesticides, rodents killed mechanically and with poisons, etc) than by raising organic meat? Never understood this argument exactly. If something is large people usually have more compassion for it, probably because we see their faces and we can not see face of a mosquito or fly or a bug dying.
How many of those plants are farmed to feed the animals that are then being killed? I couldn't easily find data on this, but this massive inefficiency is part of what makes veganism more environmentally sustainable when done right.
I did go vegetarian (been vegetarian for ~15 yrs now).
Back during the birdflu scare (2008-09), my parents decided to stop eating meat (chicken - which was the only meat I used to eat). I was ~12-13 yrs old.
Overtime, I wanted to switch back but for some reason or another (saw some videos on Youtube about how chickens are treated and killed didn't sit right with me), never did.
We cut meat immediately. While I didn't miss a lot it, I did eat a lot of soy in the interim period (ofc a few friends of mine who tried didn't succeed).
Just as an FYI: Don't watch those videos if you like stuff like leather for example...I love the feeling of leather seats, but I'm looking for synthetic leather in my next car.
> Just as an FYI: Don't watch those videos if you like stuff like leather for example...I love the feeling of leather seats, but I'm looking for synthetic leather in my next car.
Genuinely curious: are animals slaughtered specifically for their leather? I always assumed that cattle raised for food would supply more than enough. If that's the case, buying leather in the current situation should not cause any extra suffering.
It does because of the market. Leather increases the return of a single animal. So meat can be sold cheaper, which again increases the demand. (Lower price -> higher demand)
Some animals are raised just for their leather while the meat from them is an additional source of income (especially if you consider luxury cars - one that finally got me was the fact that Lexus does not like leather from animals that were raised in farms that had barbed wire....because it damages the skin and hence the leather. I felt that that animals were raised and looked upon as numbers and use instead of them being organisms with feelings for example).
Vegan for about 6 years. I cut out red meat for health reasons for a few years. I then decided to become vegetarian, which proved fairly simple. I "slowly" cut dairy from my diet over the course of a few months and immediately became vegan once I realized that dairy made me feel sick.
Do you usually cook for yourself? Do you live in a rural town with few vegan options? If the answer to either of those is "yes", I'd give yourself a couple months to learn how to eat meat- and dairy-free. Otherwise I'd say just go for it. Especially in a big city it is easy enough to find vegan substitutes (e.g. mock meats) in a pinch that you should have no trouble supporting a rapid transition.
I was a vegetarian (abruptly) for a couple of years. Eventually I started to feel sort of icky, not properly nourished, though this is probably the fault of my specific dietary habits and not vegetarianism in general.
Since then I've stuck to a low-meat diet; I mostly eat vegetarian, and when I eat meat I try to eat low on the food chain. I'd say I eat fish and chicken about once a week each, and pork or beef maybe once a month. I also cook with chicken broth pretty often.
I went to an Earth day event in the late 90s, which had lectures on the environmental impact of beef and really good vegan pizza, vegetarian ever since -- Vegan for 7 years of that; but got tired of being that guy. I was already vegetarian at home at the time, so I just stopped ordering meat when I was out to eat.
I transitioned gradually. Limited when/where I ate meat (eg veg at home, meat still at work/lunch). Also limited what I ate (eg no mammals).
Transitioning slowly really set me up for success. Doing so allowed me to adjust my habits. Took longer for my tastes to change.
I thoroughly enjoy my diet now. It doesn't feel like a burden and I don't feel like I have to compromise on enjoying food.
One thing that is really easy is just eating less meat. By just cutting down, you don't have to change/think about your diet. Just eat less meat, more everything else. Cutting it out entirely takes a bit more work (still totally doable).
No because meat is delicious. Giving it up is effort and not going to stop any of the negative actions that occur from the global eating of meat anyway.
Sure, one person giving it up may not stop the negative actions from eating meat, but we live in a society in which your actions influence thousands of other factors. If activists for causes we now commonly accept pretended that any change in their own lifestyle would be futile, we wouldn't have advanced much as a society.
I'm not claiming that veganism is beneficial to society, but that your argument is rather fallacious.
Yes. Went from omnivore to vegan overnight, stayed that way for two years, and then went vegetarian three years ago. No meat since Jan. 3rd 2012.
When my wife and I took the plunge I had been eating lots of meat at lunches...mostly in sandwich form and we had been unintentionally transitioning from all meat to chicken and fish to mostly just fish at home for dinners...wife's preference for fish over other meat drove that.
Then we watched the documentary "Forks Over Knives" and, regardless of the scientific accuracy of the film, said "Why don't we try going vegan for a month and see what happens".
So after a New Years trip to see family in LA where we are a ton of meat we drove home and then...never ate meat again. After the first month "test" we asked each other if we should try it again for another month, agreed to do it, and then never asked again.
Over the holiday break in 2014 we ended up eating a bunch of eggs and decided we really wanted eggs and cheese, so we ditched the veganism and went vegetarian. We probably eat 80% of our dinners as vegan still, unintentionally, but we don't feel bad about eating cheese anymore.
One quick tip if you try to be vegan...be flexible if your not doing it from a moral standpoint. If I ordered a sandwich and they accidentally put mayo on it, I just ate it anyway. If a coworker brought cookies or cake, I ate it. I didn't ditch my shoes or belt. True vegans would probably be appalled, but life is so much easier if you go with the flow. Try to stick to it, but don't fuss or worry about the occasional lapse.
Hell, I know plenty of vegetarians that are 99.9% vegetarian but occassionally grab a slice of pepperoni pizza or slice of bacon or whatever. There aren't any rules...it's a personal decision. Do what makes you happy.
Fiancee and I watched Forks Over Knives and did the "let's try it out for a month" thing as well. She has been totally vegan ever since for more than 3 years now. I eat nearly entirely vegan at home as it just doesn't make a lot of sense to keep two sets of food in the house. As someone who really enjoys to cook, it's also been really fun to learn how to cook new types of dishes that don't rely on animal products.
When we order delivery or eat out at restaurants that aren't specifically vegan restaurants, I'll eat the occasional meat dish. The real hard one for me to give up has been cheese. Vegan food companies can make pretty decent faux meat, but vegan cheese is downright awful.
I don't know, have you tried the Chao cheeses? They were pretty close for me. Daiya isn't too bad either. After 1.5 years of veganism I have to say though that I don't crave cheese or meat at all anymore and just try the faux meats/cheeses out of curiosity...
I haven't tried Chao, I'll have to see if I can find them. I have tried the Daiya cheeses and they're ok if you're using them for a sauce or something or melting them on a pizza.
But grabbing a block of the Daiya cheddar and comparing it to proper cheddar, Daiya just doesn't compare.
I love animals and care for their welfare (and still do), but reflecting back as an adult, the reason did it was because I wanted to control over some aspect of my life, and I consider my own vegetarianism (and my young cousins 'low fat high carb veganism') as eating disorders.
Check out the documentary "Forks Over Knives" for great information about the health benefits of a vegan (whole food plant based) diet. The title makes reference to how much better it is to prevent (and even treat) many chronic health conditions with the fork rather than the surgeons knife.
I was a strict vegetarian for 20 years but recently went back to eating meat primarily to increase the diversity of protein in my diet.
If you're planning to go veg, my suggestions would be
1. Go all-in straight away.
2. Stick to it all the time. It's easier on others if they just know that you won't eat meat rather than guessing
3. Prepare a canned answer to the "Why" question. You'll get asked this every time you share a meal.
4. Don't preach it, just do it
5. Don't equate vegetarian/vegan with healthy. Any diet can be healthy or unhealthy.
I am slowly getting there. After watching the film cowspiracy my wife and I decided to slowly transition, mainly environmental reasons but also because of the way animals are treated. We eat meat maybe once/twice a week coming down from twice daily, and when we do eat meat we try and source the best from small farmers. Transitioning away from meat has been relatively easy, where I personally fall short is dairy. There just isn't a good substitute for cheese and I find the smell and taste of soya milk awful. Hopefully new products will come along...
Unsweetened cashew milk is the best "veggie milk".
I find soy milk to be so thick it feels like drinking yogurt. Almond milk tastes like dirt to me, but cashew milk is so close to milk that I haven't found any reason to buy actual cow's milk in years.
Agree with you on cheese though. There just isn't good vegan cheese.
I just flipped the switch one fine day in 2011 - to go vegetarian, it was at the back of my mind via various sources, I wont go into that. However mentally for me it was lack of exercise and meat just made me lethargic and I felt vegetarianism will help.
So I turned vegetarian and started exercise (tennis, walks) and I started feeling the benefits.
Hindsight (20/20) of course, I think it was just exercise that was needed. I think we are what we eat but we are polished if we exercise.
Last year I tried just eggs a bit (for me vegetarian = no meat/fish/eggs, definition I guess allows eggs) but did not like the taste, after 6 years of vegetarianism.
I woud overall say, listen to your body, eat what you like, but don't forget to burn those fats irrespective of if you eat meat or not.
I am a third generation vegan & fourth generation vegetarian. It is much easier to be vegan than it was 20 years ago. Also the quality of milk and cheese replacements has significantly improved. The first time I tried almond milk (1993ish) it was a very poor experience, now it is amazing. My email is in my profile, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] thread(The reason being that I had already been thinking for a while how gross it actually was to eat animal corpses, and that I'd also rather be alive than dead, so others shouldn't suffer that fate just because I had to satisfy my taste buds)
That was the easiest part - the social aspect of it is a lot more complicated than that, mostly because I had to explain to people why I made the decision, over and over again. And obviously the braindead comments about not getting enough protein etc.
Some things I did not even know initially, like how many products contain gelatine (which is made out of animal bones and skin), but nowadays it's rather easy to avoid such products.
Going Vegan is the next goal, probably when I move into my own place, and I already tried going Vegan, but always ran into a wall because I am not the person doing groceries in this household.
If everyone did this, then raising of animals for food would stop. That wouldn't keep any animals from being killed for food; instead, it would mean those animals never existed in the first place, and never got to have any life at all.
Now, I don't know whether that's better or worse: is it better to have a short, somewhat unhappy life than none at all? This is a question for philosophers. But it's something to think about. But the point is, you're not saving any animals from being murdered by not eating meat.
I am not vegan. But the life of an animal bred for human consumption is not "somewhat unhappy". It's closer to "absolutely depressing" or "shockingly inhumane".
Change the word animal to human in your question: Is it better for a human to never exist or for it to be born and then at the age of 6 we murder it?
The obvious answer to that is that it's much better that that human never exist.
Again, I'm not vegan, and I occasionally eat meat. But your logic here is terrible.
There is a HUGE area between "bred for human consumption" and "shockingly inhumane" chicken farms, for example.
My chickens are out in a pasture right now enjoying the sunshine, hunting bugs, and they do that every day until they die. The taking of their life, if it's on my terms and not a predator's, is very quick. The length of their life is cut short, but the quality of the life they lived is not harmed. In fact, it's likely improved via watertight shelter and readily available food & water.
When I hatch, I often get to save the life of a chick who would have died in his shell. I also get to correct things like splayed legs that would follow a chicken through its whole life (or leave it dead).
So there's more to the world than your extreme version of things.
The lifespan of my laying hens is quite a bit longer than it would be for one in the wild. If we compare chickens to their wild genetic ancestor, anyway--there is no such thing as a wild chicken.
I'll leave the philosophical questions to other folks, I'm just presenting a contrary example to your rigid set of rules.
Factory-farmed chickens do not get to go outside, enjoy the sunshine, and eat bugs. They live in cramped chicken houses devoid of light, fresh air, or anything remotely resembling your beautiful sounding farm.
The vast, vast majority of chicken purchased in a grocery store lives out their life in that second situation, not in a place like your farm.
On to my real response: my "exception" invalidates your argument wrt whether or not animals should be raised for consumption and have their lives cut short, which you said was an "obvious answer."
I think most people agree that it's okay, so long as the animal is allowed to have a normal, fulfilling existence.
We love our chickens and take no pleasure in butchering them, but I feel certain they are happy to get a shot at life, even if for some of them that life is only a year or two.
I've had a minute now to think about your "obvious answer" from up-thread. I had a lot of fun by the time I was 6 years old. Experienced a lot of love, caught a lot of fish, explored a big world, rode my bike on dirt roads. I knew where "deer road" was, I knew how to sneak up on the bridge there and spy on the turtles. A couple of those years just might have been my best. I don't think I can agree with you.
Anyway, if we pose the question as "is it okay to raise animals for consumption? animals that wouldn't have had a life otherwise?", I think the answer is something like "Yes, if we treat them well."
So the answer isn't (necessarily) to become a vegan. A perfectly viable option is to source your meat differently.
I've seen plenty of pastures with lazy, grass-munching cows to believe this is universally true. Sure, the life of many factory-farmed animals isn't great at all (particularly thinking of Tyson chickens here), but this isn't universally true. Livestock in many other parts of the world does not live this way. There's more to the world than America, you know.
>Is it better for a human to never exist or for it to be born and then at the age of 6 we murder it? The obvious answer to that is that it's much better that that human never exist.
That isn't obvious at all. What if that child has a nice, happy, carefree existence until it hits the age of 6? Who are you to say that life isn't worth living?
I can see three strands:
1. For health reasons. This is IMO the weakest reason. I'm not interested (nor qualified) in starting an endless debate about the health risk/benefits of meat; but if you only want to eat healthier is best to start with the obvious: cut sugar, snacks, sodas, sweets, junk food and deep fried; eat more low-GI and greens, etc.
2. For Ahimsa [0]. Ahimsa is a beautiful and subtle topic, but broadly speaking it means that you try to minimize the amount of suffering caused by your actions. Buddhists (as well as Socrates) believe we constantly fail to understand that our actions have consequences. Ahimsa is about getting in touch as best as we can with these consequences, and act accordingly to our insights.
3. For environmental reasons, i.e. reducing your ecological footprint. This has some overlap with Ahimsa, but the reasons are practical rather than ethical and there are exceptions: in terms of sheer sustainability, battery farmed chicken might be OK (maybe, I don't know).
Whatever your reasons are, it's something I believe is worth thinking about.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa
edit: rephrased
Good breakdown regardless. I'd recommend checking out The China Study [1]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-I...
And I agree.
I found no contradiction in his statement.
There are better reasons to go vegan, and as repeatedly stated in thread, reason is important to sustaining the (any) path.
I do believe there is a strong link between reducing suffering, compassion, and veganism.
It is VERY hard for me to listen to people try to promote messages of peace, love, freedom, compassion... if they are not vegan.
what do you think about the argument that by removing yourself from the market of meat entirely, you do nothing to promote better lives for livestock.
By abstaining from meat, you do nothing to push the meat industry towards more sustainable and compassionate treatment of animals. You, being someone who is conscious of these abuses are in a position to push for change, but instead you remove yourself from the market entirely.
Ultimately, isnt refusing to vote with your wallet worse than voting for compassionate and sustainable production of livestock?
Wouldnt eating lab grown meat do more to end the suffering of these animals than not eating meat at all? since it would push an entire industry toward your preference of eating only that which was produced to your standards.
would the entire population of vegetarians and vegans combined buying only the most sustainable and compassionately raised meats be enough to effect the processes of major producers? Would this be a greater good than not eating meat at all? of course, this likely doesnt effect the decision on a personal level, but at scale does veganism help or hurt the progress towards more sustainably and compassionately raised livestock? (though of course if that scale were to include everyone, it would be no longer an issue i suppose)
of course this moreso assumes your overall goal is to reduce the suffering of these animals, or the suffering of all things as much as you possibly can- if your goal is to instead reduce the amount of suffering you directly cause, then this argument is meaningless.
I'm honestly asking this, as its the only argument that i have found that sounds reasonable against becoming vegan, im not really trying to start a debate, i dont really have more to say than this, but its an argument that stuck with me the first time i read it and i very rarely have a chance to have a level headed discussion about such a topic (reddit isnt really the place for level headed discussion, and i am not aware of a nutrition or dietary equivalent to hackernews)
I was pushing my parents to let me become vegan when I turned a teenager. I stopped eating meat on my 16th birthday despite their assertions that I would die. Gave up dairy a few years later, which I only ate because the dairy industry's advertising is so damn strong.
I'll turn 46 this summer, so it's been almost 30 years, and people think I'm 10-15 years younger. Teenage girls still try to pick me up. My fiance has been vegan for something like 20 years and is 40 this summer. Last year, two high school kids invited her to the prom.
And reason #5, which was the primary reason I went vegan, followed by having a sense of ethics and feeling it was wrong to enslave, torture, and murder animals, because meat is yummy: Eating rotting corpses is pretty gross when you think about it.
I tend not to let them rot before I eat them, personally.
I don't understand why you had to turn your otherwise-upbeat argument into a pretty overt attack in the last sentence.
Animals start to decompose at the moment of death. The meat at the supermarket has been dead for how long? Days, weeks? It is in the process of rotting, just not visibly so. Much of it is actually spoiled, but I've read 70% of meat in supermarkets is treated with carbon monoxide to keep it from going brown or grey. You might not like it, but it's a very valid and important argument.
And as for feeling that it's unethical. We (people) enslave entire species, remove their body parts without anaesthesia, cage them in cells so small they can't move, force them to have babies over and over and then kidnap their children and eat them, grind them up, or enslave them as well. It's horrible. I think that anyone who knows what is done and argues, but meat is yummy or delicious as someone else did in here, is a sociopath. Can anyone who is connected to their sense of empathy be okay causing that much pain to other feeling beings?
I produce my own meat, on my own property. Not in cages, no forced babies (chickens lay anyway), no enslavement (the arrangement is closer to me being their slave), and no 'body part removal.'
So many of your arguments are made up for non-commercial meat sources.
Also, do you not see how your language is just an attack on meat-eaters? You say you're just "telling us the reason," but you're not, you're making an attack.
But, I applaud you for doing it yourself and think everyone should eat meat the way you do, if they must eat meat in the first place.
The "positive" stuff at the beginning were the unexpected side-effects. The attacks are answering the question that this thread is about. Why did I become vegan? That's exactly what I was thinking as a teenager, and continue to think 30 years later.
Is it an attack to say, "Take a look at the results of your actions. This is what you're a part of. This is the suffering you cause."?
Calling someone a sociopath might be an attack. lol. That comes from being attacked for being a vegan hundreds of times, just for not eating what everyone else was, when I didn't bring it up at all. When I explain why, I get, "but meat tastes good" (Subtext is, "so it's fine for animals and the planet to suffer because of factory farming, because meat is yummy"). Oh, well, that's fine then.
I'm sure you can think of dozens of examples where people who are a cog in a machine are not exactly on-board with the whole thing, yet feel powerless to stop it.
Diet is not something that everyone feels they can change on a whim. If it were, I suppose we wouldn't have an obesity crisis, and perhaps more people would join you as vegans, too.
The cultural pressure to eat meat is also a big factor, just as you have mentioned in your response here. Not just to be normal, but maybe to avoid hurting mom's feelings when she makes your childhood-favorite lasagna or something.
People use the same argument for eating meat (it tastes good) as they do for getting morbidly obese. Nobody wants to be morbidly obese or impose those kinds of health problems on themselves, so perhaps you need to understand that the issue is deeper than just "I do or don't want to hurt animals." It certainly is with obesity.
I was 16 then. I cut out the meat intake immediately. I happened to one day take a stroll in a part of the town where butcher shops were in plenty and I stood and observed the butchering process out of curiosity. Whatever I saw left me pale and horrified. I came back home and cried a lot. The shrieks and cries of the hen didn't leave my mind. And I decided from that day onwards that I wouldn't kill for my taste buds.
In the USA, it is not difficult to go your whole life eating meat and never seeing where it comes from, other than "from the supermarket refrigerated aisle." Many if not most supermarkets don't butcher on site (eg, in college I once briefly worked at a Walmart meat department and was disappointed I would not be learning any butchering, but would just be moving around boxes that happened to contain meat)
I'd like to propose a perhaps odd view: It may not be wrong to eat meat, but it's surely wrong to eat it if you wouldn't be willing to do the butchering and preparing yourself if that were the only way to get it.
Wow, this really sounds like a ringing endorsement for veganism! I'll bet a lot of people will try it out immediately after reading this!
As for how, I went cold... tofurkey?
Watch the film on YouTube: "Earthlings"
Try to watch it in a full sitting. You probably wont be able to, but try. Then walk to a mirror and look yourself in the face, and ask if you and this world are really real, that is, do your own version of a reality check.
Then you will see your proverbial red pill and blue pill.
Dont do it because you think you might lose a few pounds and impress some stranger at a beach. Do it because you want to deeply re-examine life and this world. Make it a life path for yourself.
Its either a difficult and impossible path OR its a trivially easy path, it all depends on your intentions.
Watch the film.
I have been vegan for several years.
It took me almost 2 years to watch the film in its entirety.
Back during the birdflu scare (2008-09), my parents decided to stop eating meat (chicken - which was the only meat I used to eat). I was ~12-13 yrs old.
Overtime, I wanted to switch back but for some reason or another (saw some videos on Youtube about how chickens are treated and killed didn't sit right with me), never did.
We cut meat immediately. While I didn't miss a lot it, I did eat a lot of soy in the interim period (ofc a few friends of mine who tried didn't succeed).
Just as an FYI: Don't watch those videos if you like stuff like leather for example...I love the feeling of leather seats, but I'm looking for synthetic leather in my next car.
Genuinely curious: are animals slaughtered specifically for their leather? I always assumed that cattle raised for food would supply more than enough. If that's the case, buying leather in the current situation should not cause any extra suffering.
Do you usually cook for yourself? Do you live in a rural town with few vegan options? If the answer to either of those is "yes", I'd give yourself a couple months to learn how to eat meat- and dairy-free. Otherwise I'd say just go for it. Especially in a big city it is easy enough to find vegan substitutes (e.g. mock meats) in a pinch that you should have no trouble supporting a rapid transition.
Don't forget to take B12 supplements.
Since then I've stuck to a low-meat diet; I mostly eat vegetarian, and when I eat meat I try to eat low on the food chain. I'd say I eat fish and chicken about once a week each, and pork or beef maybe once a month. I also cook with chicken broth pretty often.
Transitioning slowly really set me up for success. Doing so allowed me to adjust my habits. Took longer for my tastes to change.
I thoroughly enjoy my diet now. It doesn't feel like a burden and I don't feel like I have to compromise on enjoying food.
One thing that is really easy is just eating less meat. By just cutting down, you don't have to change/think about your diet. Just eat less meat, more everything else. Cutting it out entirely takes a bit more work (still totally doable).
I'm not claiming that veganism is beneficial to society, but that your argument is rather fallacious.
When my wife and I took the plunge I had been eating lots of meat at lunches...mostly in sandwich form and we had been unintentionally transitioning from all meat to chicken and fish to mostly just fish at home for dinners...wife's preference for fish over other meat drove that.
Then we watched the documentary "Forks Over Knives" and, regardless of the scientific accuracy of the film, said "Why don't we try going vegan for a month and see what happens".
So after a New Years trip to see family in LA where we are a ton of meat we drove home and then...never ate meat again. After the first month "test" we asked each other if we should try it again for another month, agreed to do it, and then never asked again.
Over the holiday break in 2014 we ended up eating a bunch of eggs and decided we really wanted eggs and cheese, so we ditched the veganism and went vegetarian. We probably eat 80% of our dinners as vegan still, unintentionally, but we don't feel bad about eating cheese anymore.
One quick tip if you try to be vegan...be flexible if your not doing it from a moral standpoint. If I ordered a sandwich and they accidentally put mayo on it, I just ate it anyway. If a coworker brought cookies or cake, I ate it. I didn't ditch my shoes or belt. True vegans would probably be appalled, but life is so much easier if you go with the flow. Try to stick to it, but don't fuss or worry about the occasional lapse.
Hell, I know plenty of vegetarians that are 99.9% vegetarian but occassionally grab a slice of pepperoni pizza or slice of bacon or whatever. There aren't any rules...it's a personal decision. Do what makes you happy.
When we order delivery or eat out at restaurants that aren't specifically vegan restaurants, I'll eat the occasional meat dish. The real hard one for me to give up has been cheese. Vegan food companies can make pretty decent faux meat, but vegan cheese is downright awful.
But grabbing a block of the Daiya cheddar and comparing it to proper cheddar, Daiya just doesn't compare.
I love animals and care for their welfare (and still do), but reflecting back as an adult, the reason did it was because I wanted to control over some aspect of my life, and I consider my own vegetarianism (and my young cousins 'low fat high carb veganism') as eating disorders.
If you're planning to go veg, my suggestions would be
I find soy milk to be so thick it feels like drinking yogurt. Almond milk tastes like dirt to me, but cashew milk is so close to milk that I haven't found any reason to buy actual cow's milk in years.
Agree with you on cheese though. There just isn't good vegan cheese.
So I turned vegetarian and started exercise (tennis, walks) and I started feeling the benefits.
Hindsight (20/20) of course, I think it was just exercise that was needed. I think we are what we eat but we are polished if we exercise.
Last year I tried just eggs a bit (for me vegetarian = no meat/fish/eggs, definition I guess allows eggs) but did not like the taste, after 6 years of vegetarianism.
I woud overall say, listen to your body, eat what you like, but don't forget to burn those fats irrespective of if you eat meat or not.