Many people here (in Slovakia) have self-pollinating figs in gardens. Figs that require pollination are only some cultivars used in agriculture as far as I know.
> Some types of fig that are grown for human consumption have figs that ripen without pollination. It is also possible to trick plants into ripening figs without wasps by spraying them with plant hormones
…”Interesting” writing, but the only takeaway people will have is that figs contain wasps, which isn’t true in real life consumption, and this type of writing just produces urban myths.
The conclusion may well be true but as someone who doesn’t regularly eat figs, is it the case that all these varieties are readily available?
After all, there are more than 15 varieties of banana but the likelihood of my picking a Cavendish (conditioned on having picked a banana) at my local supermarket is actually a resounding 100%.
EDIT: To responder, the point is that if you have 5 options, it doesn't mean you have 1/5 the chance of each option. Hence the example with the banana.
That question doesn't mean anything. It depends on where you live. The most common types of figs in France are not the same as the most common figs available in Turkey for example.
A significant chunk of packaged figs that I've seen are black mission figs because they dry well, and are non-pollinated. A lot of the others are smyrna or calimyrna which require pollination.
So, I'm a produce buyer for a grocery store in the Northeastern USA.
The vast majority of fresh figs in the USA supply chain are Black Mission. They're also the best, at least by the time they get here. Brown Turkey are also available, but rarely carried at grocery stores. Kadotas and Adriatics are also available, but much less common.
Fig producer here, I don't get the backslash about fig ...flower, there is no tiny wasp in there, its entirely broken down by the tree's enzymes. In ancient Greece it was the most popular and important fruit, a pillar of the economy.
...also the "milky latex" (that the tree bleeds) burns your skin and leaves scars. If in contact with my skin, I would wash it immediately and avoid any kind of experiments.
The Kimi PDO figs variety are the biggest, most sweet, fleshy figs in the world. Coupled with the traditional (goes back to antiquity) manual way of preparation and drying they are the king of sun dried figs.
You're probably using the botanical term 'fruit', while the GP was using the culinary term 'fruit'. Olives are not fruit in the culinary sense (no one puts olives in a fruit salad).
> Olives are not fruit in the culinary sense (no one puts olives in a fruit salad).
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. No one puts lychees in a fruit salad either. There are a couple of things going on:
1. Lychees and fruit salads come from two different cultures, so there's no real way for lychees to be part of fruit salads. The groups "people who make fruit salads" and "people who eat lychees" have negligible intersection.
2. "Fruit salad" is a word that refers to something in particular. There's no obligation for fruit salad to include all fruits, and in fact it never does.
But if you ask people what olives are, they'll tell you they are a fruit.
And people put avocados in fruit salad all the time, despite the fact that, like olives, they are a nonsweet fatty fruit.
Following up on this, if you go to a restaurant in China and order "meat", you'll get pork. That's what "meat" means; any other type of meat will be specified as "chicken meat", "cow meat", "bullfrog", or etc.
But that's not evidence that chicken isn't considered "meat". It is.
That's actually another way of categorizing food, common in Europe and the US as well. A food menu will usually have a category for meat products, usually with pork, beef or chicken, more rarely duck, rabbit, or game, and a separate category for fish and seafood. At the same time, fish flesh is still considered meat in other circumstances.
As a fun aside, in my family in Romania we do put lychees in a fruit salad, when we find some (usually canned).
There are two separate points here: my point was specifically that culinary and botanical categories for the word fruit do not overlap - there are botanical fruit that few people around here would consume as culinary fruit, such as olives and cumin. There may be culinary fruit that are not botanically fruit (for example, some may consider rhubarb stalk 'fruit').
Even if you are right that when asked what olives are people would say 'fruit' (I believe you'd get a variety of responses, with some calling them legumes or even spices), that still doesn't mean that people think of them as fruit. If you ask someone to pick up some fruit from the market, they won't come back with olives.
Your point is also correct, in that the culinary fruit category is culturally specific, and different cultures may regard different foods as 'fruit'. I doubt there is any culture where culinary fruit is perfectly matched with botanical fruit.
Better not. Ficus latex has a substance that acts as an anti-sunscreen. It makes UV rays more dangerous and are activated in a sunny day. UV are one of the main reasons to have warts.
Don't get me started on the smear campaign started years ago by probably competitors, all figs are 100% vegan foods, there is no scientific proof that there is "wasp biomass" in there. We are not talking about a regular wasp, but an ant sized one, small enough that can fit in from the flowers lentil sized opening. Their wings are dropped upon entering. They get trapped and consumed by the tree.
Vegans avoid any animal products, not just the animal's flesh. They don't want any animals held captive. Manure is definitely an animal by-product and it's collected from domesticated animals, so manure is not vegan in the same way a facial cream derived from milk would not be vegan. I don't really know to what extent manure is used to fertilize these days though.
Wasp or no wasp (...but there is really none, nada, zilch it's impossible to trace kapish?), lot's of flowers pollinate with the help of insects. I don't feel like it's coincidental these "there is wasp in your figs" articles appear, right before harvest season. Those who can't match the quality of your product, well they try with dirty ways to smear it.
Its definitely possible, however I think also that journalists (and people in general) lately have become more aware of the seasonality of everything. Seasonal articles will also get a slight boost during their time so people are encouraged to write them.
All figs are 100% omnivorous food and -- Some -- figs are 100% vegan food. (Lets pretend that all this birds entangled and shoot never existed). And I'm saying some, but not all.
The varieties of Ficus carica can be classified in four groups if I remember correctly. Figs in the so called 'common' group don't need to be pollinated. Can be cultivated in areas too cold in winter for the wasp to survive (like Germany, UK or even Sweden) so is a popular one and often seen in markets. This could be tagged as genuinely "100% vegan". You can do a thousand studies on then and "prove" that figs never, ever, have insects inside, but you would be just lying to yourself and your customers.
Because the real hot stuff in figs are the 'Smyrna group', that always involve the death of several animals (that are stolen to nature by people and put there deliberately to die. Definitely not vegan friendly kind of stuff). Figs in the groups 'Smyrna', 'San Pedro' or 'San Antonio' will hold the remains of a few of those animals. Period.
But those figs are also much better in complexity of flavor, crunchy texture, and better nutritionally also so the sacrifice was not in vain. Those are the famous figs breed in warm places like Greece or Turkey.
I will never understand people who are so vegan that they wouldn't even eat biomass from an insect that naturally died. Why? Do such people also refuse to travel in any vehicles? Where do they draw the line at how small an organism has to be?
Yup! Plenty. I even dated one for a couple months, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. She actually ended it over something I said (not even did) jokingly, that was equally as ridiculous as this fig wasp thing. I sure did dodge that bullet.
It's not a consistent position in any way. After all, they still eat food.
Insects are many, they're small, and they're everywhere. Between growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, putting on store shelves, buying, transporting home, and putting in the fridge, you can bet that any piece of produce is highly likely to have dead insect pieces on it, or in it.
It's like people don't realize what the biosphere is made of. It's not a magical land where living things frolic - it's a dense soup of things that live, and things that once lived. The soil in which we grow our food is made of dead bodies mixed with sand, infused with nanobots that forever try to recycle the carcasses into more living things.
No, worrying about insect biomass is not the best thing to ground your ethical framework around. Otherwise, you'd best not breathe - the air is full of dead bodies too.
Vegans should avoid tomato juice too because there is always a certain percentage of insects mixed in it too. That is part of acceptable processes in the food industry.
Eggs bought in the shell, I can see being convinced that these are reasonably likely to be insect-free, but why milk and meat? I can imagine insects in the processing of those.
How? Milk from a big scale industrial farm is taken pretty much directly from the udder into a sterilised tank, and then directly into cartons/bottles from there. Large scale butchers also follow strict hygiene procedures. Like, ok, maybe an insect could be somewhere in the process, but everything about milk and meat processing should almost guarantee lack of insects anywhere. As compared to things like wheat where insects will always be in flour and we can't do anything about it.
I know people like to think vegans are crazy, but I've literally never met a vegan who was anything like this.
However, thinking about it, it is very hard to draw a line. I know where line my personal line is, but it's very hard to explain why it makes any sense to anyone but me.
I have. Coworker refused a lift in pouring rain because I had leather seats in the car(not just refused - got in, asked if those seats are leather, I said yes, then he apologized and said he would rather walk than sit on leather). I was like ok, sure dude, your choice.
I want this story to end with him pulling out a small paper cocktail umbrella, holding it over his head, and singing "Give me a home where the buffalo roam," before disappearing into the rain... never to be seen at the office again.
Why? How is that different than sitting on lamb or rabbit leather? Those are also very cute animals. You wouldn't be able to tell if you looked at it. My mum used to have a blanket made out of cat fur for a while.....it's just leather - It's only weird if you make it weird :-P
Also, in general it's a very weird comparison, but I'm not even making fun out of the guy for refusing a ride - I just think it's a weird moral stance to take, I can understand refusing to buy some leather seats, but riding in them? Especially as a favour? What does that change in the world? Literally nothing.
I dont think the spesific animal makes a difference, that would be rather hypocritical.
The only exception would be ivirt or like some threatened or near-extinct animal that you went out of your way to aquire, I know people who do that for handbags, and that is something i find appauling
> I dont think the spesific animal makes a difference, that would be rather hypocritical.
You say that like people aren't often hypocritical. If I raised and slaughtered dogs for food you'd better believe I'd be hearing about it from people who eat meat with every meal!
Well, yes, that is the impression you'd get if it were dog skin. But if it's cow skin, you are expected to be absolutely fine with it and if you find it distasteful you get mocked.
I don't know, I actually find it very good that we use all parts of the animal, and the skin is used for something as practical as a seat/chair. Skinning and tanning is one of those skills that we as humans have developed over millenia and it helped us become who we are as a species - to now behave as if it's distatesful....it's just a bit fake to me, a bit dishonest. You are of course welcome to feel this way, I just think it's a weird thing to be weird about.
There are plenty of places dogs and cats are accepted as food animals. Surely those places use the leather too? Some of those places are net exporters, so it seems reasonable some of our leather goods are dog or cat but labeled otherwise.
Can't wait for the day when this people finally realize that they are filling the car three times a week with a distilled juice of dead corpses called gasoline.
Cars are basically sacrificial altar machines requiring a daily offer of blood and flesh from prehistoric animals to keep moving... and they are worried by the leather in other's cars while driving home, pfff.
I've met a few people I would consider "hardcode" vegans. In that they are 100% vegan, and believe that veganism significantly improves their health and lives.
They are very chill people. They don't really care if you eat meat and won't try to force veganism on you. They don't get caught up in issues like this.
The only "crazy" vegans I've heard are on Reddit. I didn't even think there were actual people like that until I went on Reddit. I think it's a problem with social media, not veganism.
Indeed, I have the feeling that the very few ridiculous vegans that are out there get insane amounts of attention for their stupidity, probably to the chagrin of other vegans. But he, we love the "us against them" narrative, they are all stupid and we are all smart! Vegans vs Omnivores, Democrats vs Republicans, etc. All anime fans are weebs, all republicans are hillbillies, all vegans are unreasonable, all democrats hate all aspects of the free market, all feminists are Karens...
I've met two kinds of vegans: those who are doing it because it's trendy and then the kind that are anorexic level skinny/very unhealthy. Never an "insane" one, those I have only ever met on the internet which obviously has its issues (self selection).
I'll admit it's possible I've met healthy vegans who I just didn't know they're vegan, it's just that every vegan I HAVE met has fit in those categories.
There is a whole religion in fact [1]. Uncompromising committment to non-violence.
> Strict Jains do not consume food that has been stored overnight, as it possesses a higher concentration of micro-organisms (for example, bacteria, yeast etc.) as compared to food prepared and consumed the same day.
I think it is to fall into a trap to argue whether figs are "100% vegan" or not. The real problem is the quasi-religious approach that some unfortunately vociferous people follow with regards to many personal decisions, in such a way that the end goal of pursuing a moral principle is co-opted by a simplistic totalitarian interpretation of the rules, with the need to follow them perfectly as a sign of purity.
There is no such thing as a "vegan food", be it figs, honey, or lettuce. What does exist are vegan values, and their end goal is to reduce suffering of sentient beings and to have no part in promoting it by exploiting them or consuming products which do. Arguing whether there is any wasp biomass in figs should be irrelevant to veganism. What should matter is whether wasps are suffering and being exploited because we eat figs. I believe not, but what do I know, I am not a vegan.
As someone who is not a vegan I think this is a very well written, concise summary of the distinction. I appreciated the clarity. Personally I am not swayed by veganism because I think the concept of suffering is oversimplified. In my view, suffering is better described as cognitive awareness of the situation causing pain or distress. Being mauled to death by a leopard is far more likely to cause suffering than a cow being walked into an abattoir—because the cow has no concept of an abattoir.
A cow spends 18 months in a field living a generally quite nice life. In its last moments there is momentary discomfort as it is knocked unconscious by an explosive bolt to the head. Is this moment of discomfort so intolerable, so ruinous of the animal's prior worth, that it's better if it never existed in the first place? In my opinion, this conclusion is absurd to the point of being weird.
I say this as someone who has personally experienced the sensation of been knocked unconscious by a severe blow to the head; in my case caused by an involuntary backwards fall towards the ground. I did not "suffer" at all until after I woke up with a headache. Had this strike to the head proved fatal, I can't imagine how I could have suffered at all.
There are many aspects of the animal food industry which are cruel and should be made illegal. There are many aspects of the animal food industry which have serious externalities that are bad for human civilisation. But this doesn't make absolutism the moral high ground.
I have thought there was a short story to be written (or maybe it already has been!) about aliens who come to earth and start eating humans. When the humans complain, the aliens say, "why do you complain? you eat other animals, we eat you -- no big deal!"
I remember a very old comics (in french?) where this happen: aliens arrive on earth, chase a human, start eating him alive (an ear, a part of his arm) but then they find the taste just disgusting so they leave it there, bleeding but alive and suffering.
In terms of comedy derived from the eating of animals, I'm partial to the restaurant scene in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a green salad?"
"I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point sir, which is why it was decided to cut through the whole tangled problem by breeding an animal that actually wanted to be eaten—and was capable of saying so, clearly and distinctly. And here I am."
I think far fewer people would be vegetarian if any aspect of modern farming looks even remotely the way you describe below. At most a tiny fraction of the cows in milk or meat production (and basically NONE of the pigs or chicken) ever see an open pasture in their lives.
Cows are impregnated and kept in small fenced areas,l all their lives. Their babies are removed most often right after birth, sometimes a few days later. The calves are separated and kept with other calves, fed a small share of the milk produced by their mothers (or even just from the tank containing all cows' milk. The males are butchered as babies and the females raised for milk production and share the fate of their mothers - dozens of babies, taken away each time right after birth. All of them are fed various kinds of medicine (steroids, antibiotics, etc) to make sure they grow fast and survive, irrespective of whether they suffer.
For slaughter they are usually first stuffed in wagons or trucks and carted hours to whatever abattoir paid the best price. There they are in a long queue where they hear and smell and later see the animals in front of them being killed. The 'shock' is often hit or miss, meaning many are alive when they get the bolt into their skull, others even survive that for a bit. All that just so that you get a cheap burger.
Dozens of the quality labels are just lies: e.g. Grass fed means they got grass, not that they were ever outside. Most animals never see the sky in their lives.
I appreciate that it could be much more humane, but to ignore that the above is the reality today is just willful denial. Advertisements show you beautiful alps or Argentinian meadows, but these are not the reality in which your animal actually lived.
What country are you in where they're building giant sheds to hide cows from the sky? I doubt there's been a single cow in my home country of Australia that has been grown for food or milk and didn't see the sky nearly every day of its life. Even our largest factory dairy farms only only bring cows inside for milking. The closest thing to living indoors would be man-made outdoor shade.
I'm not saying that the entire animal food industry is humane; I would be very happy to see a permanent end to caged egg production, as well as the bullshit ultra-factory "cage free" egg production. There's a lot to be concerned about and we need much better standards across the entire industry. It can be improved. But all too often the descriptions of the animal food industry are just so divorced from reality that one wonders if some vegan activists have ever actually visited a farm.
> What country are you in where they're building giant sheds to hide cows from the sky?
Not GP, but in the Netherlands we have all that. Tiny country, huge meat exporter. In recent years there is more political attention to change the horrible system, but nitrate emissions on nature, threats for disease are more prominent motives. Animal well-being maybe comes third in that. We have a "Partij voor de Dieren" political party (Party for the Animals) with seats in parliament.
It may not have the "concept" of an abattoir, however it's not entirely uncommon for them to know what's coming when being taken to slaughter [1] (as additional anecdata I knew a chap in Cornwall who was on call for dealing with this exact scenario).
Vegetarian here and can only agree. I love the flavor of meat and would eat it but in my view the meat industry is a dystopian nightmare that I'm sure our decendents will look upon with the same horror as we have when we look at our ancestors' acceptance of slavery and serfdom. I believe anyone who eats meat chooses to close their eyes to this suffering for a minor gain in pleasure - I can't make this choice for myself but I have to accept that others do so.
But to argue that fig wasps or bees are being exploited is free of reason. You can't till the fields without killing worms, you can't harvest grain without death of rabbits or mice living between the plants (but you CAN reduce pesticides and do less harm to insect life and the environment). You can't even make apple juice without an occasional worm in there. You also can't live in a modern city without exterminators killing mice, rats, pigeons, ducks, cockroaches, etc. You can't maintain a healthy forest without either wolf or man killing some of the deer.
The radials that can't see nuance or reality are not helping anyone.
I predict that if/when lab grown meat becomes commercially viable and normalized, our descendants are going to look back at us as immoral savages for factory farming and turning a blind eye to animal suffering. I'm not even a vegetarian and I recognize the hypocrisy in "caring about animals" but still wanting to eat meat.
I wonder if these people who apparently get pissed off about """wasp biomass""" only consume vegetables grown on 100% dead-insect-free biomass... What an idiotic thing to get worked up about.
If you search online for articles in many different languages, going like "you wouldn't believe whats inside there, you will never eat this again", spreading fud you would think like me something is up.
So articles with click bait titles that pop up on some keywords define a group of people?
The only "vegan propaganda" I recall is displaying slaughter houses and intensive animal farming, which is disgusting and probably will be looked down with shame and disgust later by future generations. "We did that to animals?" will probably be popping in children minds, that are yet to be born.
History will tell.
I for once believe that in places where you buy meat there shouldn't be images of animals grazing in green fields, but actual footage and images of them being fed and slaughtered - at least people will see the real cost of eating so much meat. Maybe people would avoid those places more, and would have more consideration for every time they buy a piece of meat. It worked with tobacco, when images of the damages of smoking were introduced on packs in some countries.
I saw pigs and cows being killed as a kid, it's not fun or entertaining. A pig screeching it's a sound that gets engraved in your mind.
PS: I'm not vegan, but I'm increasingly dropping the amount of meat I eat for the past 5 years.
I don't get the problem even if there is a wasp in it, why would any vegan be upset about it? Wasp is dead, ended up there 100% naturally, died naturally, has no specific taste - what practical/medical/ethical/philosophical issue one can possibly have with eating it accidentally? What about eating other organic fruits then that almost always have worms in it, like plums or cherries or apples? Do vegans avoid that too? What about misc flours or coco powder that always have some percent of insect parts in them? Do people really obsess about things like that?
This reminded me of The Queen of Trees[1] by Deeble & Stone, a mind blowing documentary about this wonderful tree. Indeed one of the most fascinating documentaries I ever watched.
[1](https://youtu.be/xy86ak2fQJM)
"2 Ecology of or denoting a plant which is taller than the surrounding vegetation, especially a tall tree in a forest.
• of or denoting a water plant with leaves and flowers that appear above the water surface."
I have a fig tree in my yard. It has never produced much fruit. The fruit it does product are brown and small about the size of a cherry tomato. Everything above ground completely died this year as a result of winter-pocalypse, but new growth is now a ball of green about 8 x 10 x 7 feet.
looks like you have a wild fig... figs usually are not planted by the seeds, but by planting branches of already known 'domesticated' figs, in the ground, where the new branch takes root and turns into a tree itself... aka cloning.
I have a volunteer fig tree that is about 7 years old now. I am finally getting good figs off of it this year. With water and fertilizer it seems to have responded very well, with nice large figs. It is a mission fig variety.
What do you use for fertilizer? My tree seems to respond well to bonemeal and this year I have fed it all my discarded banana peels. For my tree these contribute to excellent growth but I still get very few figs.
I just use an organic fruit tree fertilizer. I also pruned it to be a "tree" since it is in a tight space, but it really wants to be a bush and is constantly sending up shoots from the roots.
A few years ago, I got a little put off by the wasps-fig thing, then, after some research, I found that wasps have nothing to do with the species of figs that are consumed by humans
Some species of figs consumed by humans require caprification (either only for the Fall figs — San Pedro group —, or for both the Fall and breba crop — Smyrna group) which involves getting male figs from specific varities (caprifigs) on the trees you want to pollinate. These figs are where the wasps lay their eggs, but they're not really edible.
Now, when the wasps emerge from the caprifigs with pollen, they go into the the edible figs and pollinate them, but they cannot lay eggs there due to their morphology. AFAIK they die inside.
I once built a scrolly-telling tool for designers and how figs are pollinated by these wasps is one of the stories [0] - if anybody would like to see a more graphical explanation.
People in North London, where there is a big Greek/Turkish population, wrap the individual figs on the tree in small plastic bags to protect them from the weather as they grow.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] thread> *This article has been revised to clarify the fact that not all fig plants require pollination to produce edible fruit.
Which contradicts the Nautilus article:
> Anyone who eats figs is consuming wasp biomass.
Which to believe?
there are exceptions == usually true
https://askabiologist.asu.edu/figs-without-wasps
> Some types of fig that are grown for human consumption have figs that ripen without pollination. It is also possible to trick plants into ripening figs without wasps by spraying them with plant hormones
Why not?
Despite all this, I have no plans to alter my fig consumption at this time.
Kadota: doesn't need pollinating
Brown Turkey: doesn't need pollinating
Black Mission: doesn't need pollinating
Adriatic: doesn't need pollinating
Calimyrna: must be pollinated by a wasp
So in conclusion it is unlikely that if you pick a random fig from the supermarket that it was pollinated by a wasp.
After all, there are more than 15 varieties of banana but the likelihood of my picking a Cavendish (conditioned on having picked a banana) at my local supermarket is actually a resounding 100%.
EDIT: To responder, the point is that if you have 5 options, it doesn't mean you have 1/5 the chance of each option. Hence the example with the banana.
...also the "milky latex" (that the tree bleeds) burns your skin and leaves scars. If in contact with my skin, I would wash it immediately and avoid any kind of experiments.
I would have guessed olives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(tree)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden
I'm pretty sure this is wrong. No one puts lychees in a fruit salad either. There are a couple of things going on:
1. Lychees and fruit salads come from two different cultures, so there's no real way for lychees to be part of fruit salads. The groups "people who make fruit salads" and "people who eat lychees" have negligible intersection.
2. "Fruit salad" is a word that refers to something in particular. There's no obligation for fruit salad to include all fruits, and in fact it never does.
But if you ask people what olives are, they'll tell you they are a fruit.
And people put avocados in fruit salad all the time, despite the fact that, like olives, they are a nonsweet fatty fruit.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/avocado-fruit-salad/
But that's not evidence that chicken isn't considered "meat". It is.
There are two separate points here: my point was specifically that culinary and botanical categories for the word fruit do not overlap - there are botanical fruit that few people around here would consume as culinary fruit, such as olives and cumin. There may be culinary fruit that are not botanically fruit (for example, some may consider rhubarb stalk 'fruit').
Even if you are right that when asked what olives are people would say 'fruit' (I believe you'd get a variety of responses, with some calling them legumes or even spices), that still doesn't mean that people think of them as fruit. If you ask someone to pick up some fruit from the market, they won't come back with olives.
Your point is also correct, in that the culinary fruit category is culturally specific, and different cultures may regard different foods as 'fruit'. I doubt there is any culture where culinary fruit is perfectly matched with botanical fruit.
B) anyway, you don't eat manure
C) anyway, vegans are fine with figs so the whole thing is a strawman
All figs are 100% omnivorous food and -- Some -- figs are 100% vegan food. (Lets pretend that all this birds entangled and shoot never existed). And I'm saying some, but not all.
The varieties of Ficus carica can be classified in four groups if I remember correctly. Figs in the so called 'common' group don't need to be pollinated. Can be cultivated in areas too cold in winter for the wasp to survive (like Germany, UK or even Sweden) so is a popular one and often seen in markets. This could be tagged as genuinely "100% vegan". You can do a thousand studies on then and "prove" that figs never, ever, have insects inside, but you would be just lying to yourself and your customers.
Because the real hot stuff in figs are the 'Smyrna group', that always involve the death of several animals (that are stolen to nature by people and put there deliberately to die. Definitely not vegan friendly kind of stuff). Figs in the groups 'Smyrna', 'San Pedro' or 'San Antonio' will hold the remains of a few of those animals. Period.
But those figs are also much better in complexity of flavor, crunchy texture, and better nutritionally also so the sacrifice was not in vain. Those are the famous figs breed in warm places like Greece or Turkey.
Insects are many, they're small, and they're everywhere. Between growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, putting on store shelves, buying, transporting home, and putting in the fridge, you can bet that any piece of produce is highly likely to have dead insect pieces on it, or in it.
It's like people don't realize what the biosphere is made of. It's not a magical land where living things frolic - it's a dense soup of things that live, and things that once lived. The soil in which we grow our food is made of dead bodies mixed with sand, infused with nanobots that forever try to recycle the carcasses into more living things.
No, worrying about insect biomass is not the best thing to ground your ethical framework around. Otherwise, you'd best not breathe - the air is full of dead bodies too.
Ironically, the only kind of food that you can be absolutely 100% certain is definitely insect free is stuff like milk, eggs and meat.
However, thinking about it, it is very hard to draw a line. I know where line my personal line is, but it's very hard to explain why it makes any sense to anyone but me.
Why is it such a stretch to understand that someone might have the same reaction with a slightly different animal?
Also, in general it's a very weird comparison, but I'm not even making fun out of the guy for refusing a ride - I just think it's a weird moral stance to take, I can understand refusing to buy some leather seats, but riding in them? Especially as a favour? What does that change in the world? Literally nothing.
The only exception would be ivirt or like some threatened or near-extinct animal that you went out of your way to aquire, I know people who do that for handbags, and that is something i find appauling
You say that like people aren't often hypocritical. If I raised and slaughtered dogs for food you'd better believe I'd be hearing about it from people who eat meat with every meal!
Cars are basically sacrificial altar machines requiring a daily offer of blood and flesh from prehistoric animals to keep moving... and they are worried by the leather in other's cars while driving home, pfff.
They are very chill people. They don't really care if you eat meat and won't try to force veganism on you. They don't get caught up in issues like this.
The only "crazy" vegans I've heard are on Reddit. I didn't even think there were actual people like that until I went on Reddit. I think it's a problem with social media, not veganism.
I'll admit it's possible I've met healthy vegans who I just didn't know they're vegan, it's just that every vegan I HAVE met has fit in those categories.
> Strict Jains do not consume food that has been stored overnight, as it possesses a higher concentration of micro-organisms (for example, bacteria, yeast etc.) as compared to food prepared and consumed the same day.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
There is no such thing as a "vegan food", be it figs, honey, or lettuce. What does exist are vegan values, and their end goal is to reduce suffering of sentient beings and to have no part in promoting it by exploiting them or consuming products which do. Arguing whether there is any wasp biomass in figs should be irrelevant to veganism. What should matter is whether wasps are suffering and being exploited because we eat figs. I believe not, but what do I know, I am not a vegan.
A cow spends 18 months in a field living a generally quite nice life. In its last moments there is momentary discomfort as it is knocked unconscious by an explosive bolt to the head. Is this moment of discomfort so intolerable, so ruinous of the animal's prior worth, that it's better if it never existed in the first place? In my opinion, this conclusion is absurd to the point of being weird.
I say this as someone who has personally experienced the sensation of been knocked unconscious by a severe blow to the head; in my case caused by an involuntary backwards fall towards the ground. I did not "suffer" at all until after I woke up with a headache. Had this strike to the head proved fatal, I can't imagine how I could have suffered at all.
There are many aspects of the animal food industry which are cruel and should be made illegal. There are many aspects of the animal food industry which have serious externalities that are bad for human civilisation. But this doesn't make absolutism the moral high ground.
"Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a green salad?"
"I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point sir, which is why it was decided to cut through the whole tangled problem by breeding an animal that actually wanted to be eaten—and was capable of saying so, clearly and distinctly. And here I am."
"Glass of water?"
https://youtu.be/bAF35dekiAY?t=87
Cows are impregnated and kept in small fenced areas,l all their lives. Their babies are removed most often right after birth, sometimes a few days later. The calves are separated and kept with other calves, fed a small share of the milk produced by their mothers (or even just from the tank containing all cows' milk. The males are butchered as babies and the females raised for milk production and share the fate of their mothers - dozens of babies, taken away each time right after birth. All of them are fed various kinds of medicine (steroids, antibiotics, etc) to make sure they grow fast and survive, irrespective of whether they suffer.
For slaughter they are usually first stuffed in wagons or trucks and carted hours to whatever abattoir paid the best price. There they are in a long queue where they hear and smell and later see the animals in front of them being killed. The 'shock' is often hit or miss, meaning many are alive when they get the bolt into their skull, others even survive that for a bit. All that just so that you get a cheap burger.
Dozens of the quality labels are just lies: e.g. Grass fed means they got grass, not that they were ever outside. Most animals never see the sky in their lives.
I appreciate that it could be much more humane, but to ignore that the above is the reality today is just willful denial. Advertisements show you beautiful alps or Argentinian meadows, but these are not the reality in which your animal actually lived.
I'm not saying that the entire animal food industry is humane; I would be very happy to see a permanent end to caged egg production, as well as the bullshit ultra-factory "cage free" egg production. There's a lot to be concerned about and we need much better standards across the entire industry. It can be improved. But all too often the descriptions of the animal food industry are just so divorced from reality that one wonders if some vegan activists have ever actually visited a farm.
Not GP, but in the Netherlands we have all that. Tiny country, huge meat exporter. In recent years there is more political attention to change the horrible system, but nitrate emissions on nature, threats for disease are more prominent motives. Animal well-being maybe comes third in that. We have a "Partij voor de Dieren" political party (Party for the Animals) with seats in parliament.
It may not have the "concept" of an abattoir, however it's not entirely uncommon for them to know what's coming when being taken to slaughter [1] (as additional anecdata I knew a chap in Cornwall who was on call for dealing with this exact scenario).
[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/cow-shot-dead-police-a...
But to argue that fig wasps or bees are being exploited is free of reason. You can't till the fields without killing worms, you can't harvest grain without death of rabbits or mice living between the plants (but you CAN reduce pesticides and do less harm to insect life and the environment). You can't even make apple juice without an occasional worm in there. You also can't live in a modern city without exterminators killing mice, rats, pigeons, ducks, cockroaches, etc. You can't maintain a healthy forest without either wolf or man killing some of the deer.
The radials that can't see nuance or reality are not helping anyone.
100% agreement there. I worked in an abbatoir (pigs) for 10 years. It's a horror show for the animals AND the workers.
I am not vegetarian, but I only buy organic and/or free range meat now. I won't touch anything that goes through the industrial killing machine.
The only "vegan propaganda" I recall is displaying slaughter houses and intensive animal farming, which is disgusting and probably will be looked down with shame and disgust later by future generations. "We did that to animals?" will probably be popping in children minds, that are yet to be born.
History will tell.
I for once believe that in places where you buy meat there shouldn't be images of animals grazing in green fields, but actual footage and images of them being fed and slaughtered - at least people will see the real cost of eating so much meat. Maybe people would avoid those places more, and would have more consideration for every time they buy a piece of meat. It worked with tobacco, when images of the damages of smoking were introduced on packs in some countries.
I saw pigs and cows being killed as a kid, it's not fun or entertaining. A pig screeching it's a sound that gets engraved in your mind.
PS: I'm not vegan, but I'm increasingly dropping the amount of meat I eat for the past 5 years.
0,0001% 'holier-than-thou' extra points. Is a race for power in the olympic purity games. "I'm better than you" is the goal. Not more, not less.
"2 Ecology of or denoting a plant which is taller than the surrounding vegetation, especially a tall tree in a forest. • of or denoting a water plant with leaves and flowers that appear above the water surface."
Is this tree taller than others nearby?
Now, when the wasps emerge from the caprifigs with pollen, they go into the the edible figs and pollinate them, but they cannot lay eggs there due to their morphology. AFAIK they die inside.
That said, most varities, at least here in Portugal, don't require caprification. This list of varieties from Algarve shows few requiring caprification: https://www.drapalgarve.gov.pt/images/destaques/Livro_WEB_Fi...
What a strange sentence.
Reverse the two clauses and it reads much more naturally. "funds for the school in exchange for logging rights"
[0]: https://app.visualpedia.igg.cloud/stories/wasp-eating-fig
People in North London, where there is a big Greek/Turkish population, wrap the individual figs on the tree in small plastic bags to protect them from the weather as they grow.