The reason people get so upset and angry about vegans, the reason they keep making fun of them, is that they do know that they can't form a coherent argument for why they are wrong.
There is no morally coherent argument for eating meat beyond "I care less about the suffering of animals than I do about my own pleasure". That is a valid argument you can make, though, but most people do know deep down it makes them look bad to make that argument, so they will instead just attack vegans for being annoying rather than face up to the consequences of their own choices.
I belief only a small % of people can be healthy without eating meat. It’s anecdotal but too many stories of devote vegans who fall ill after years and miraculously recover after eating meat again. A common argument is they must have done something wrong but I don’t buy it.
Well that's the problem - you are basing your belief on anecdote and gut feeling. The actual science behind this is overwhelming - there is nothing wrong with a vegan diet. You won't be able to find much that states otherwise. Beans and whole grains can provide all essential amino acids despite propaganda stating otherwise. Even meat eaters don't get enough B12 and should supplement, because B12 comes from the food animals eat, and their feed is insufficient. If you don't just eat Oreos and white rice, you should be fine as a vegan. The propaganda against veganism will eventually be seen as how the cigarette industry sold cigarettes as healthy.
nope. Eating a 100% vegan diet without taking any supplements and without having access to a great nutritionist will make you have a bad time. It’s stupid hard to get all the nutrients you need without meat and you need to be in a privileged position to start with to do this successfully.
Do you have any references? Other than supplementation of B12, which meat eaters should do as well, there is no scientific evidence that "it's stupid hard" and you need a nutritionist. In fact, the only thing you need to know is to eat plenty of whole grains, legumes, and green vegetables and you WILL get your needed nutrients and proteins. Prove otherwise please - which nutritional requirements would not be met?
Scientific studies would be better sources of information than articles. In any case, the evolutionary discussions are not an argument for modern diets, for obvious reasons. The only thing with any merit in the links you posted is about DHA. Your body CAN produce it from plant sources, but if you must insist on taking DHA, it comes from algae, and there are algal sources. Animal sources get it from algae as well. If you are suggesting nutricional deficiencies due to DHA you need to provide real references indicating that, and not general articles on the nutritional profiles of meat vs vegetables that make vague associations with health outcomes.
If you want to look at health outcomes, the average diet of the nutritionally ignorant is almost always going to be worse than a vegan diet, ignorantly planned or not. The majority of the US populace (mostly meat eating) is very unhealthy and sick due to nutritional ignorance, so this is a very weak argument. Furthermore, meat is a known carcinogen and inflammatory. Its absurd to me that health reasons are attempted to be used as an argument against plant based diets.
To be frank, using the argument that plant based diets are "privileged" is cynical and disingenuous.
almost always. isn’t that convenient? do you have any data to back this up?
average joe != nutritionally ignorant. You may understand a few things about nutrition, but if you don’t understand a lot of things you’re going to have a bad time being 100% vegan. If you eat meat and you stick to a diet of minimally processed meat + fruits/vegetables you’d be fine.
Is meat inflammatory and carcinogen? Here’s the thing: we’ve been eating meat since we turned homo sapiens sapiens. Is the meat or the way that it’s processed a problem? Can you put in the same bucket organic grass fed beef and mystery meat hotdogs?
Plant based and vegan eating are almost entirely the land of privileged people. I have never met someone who was a vegan and living on minimum wage, had a job that involved hard physical work or had a lot of responsibility/lacked free time and disposable income. Please prove me wrong and help me change my mind if it’s not the case and you have good examples/pointers.
normally I would just say: appeal to authority, but since it’s the CDC and they have royalty screwed up the pandemic response I’m gonna go the extra mile: “fuck the CDC”
I mean CDC lied about COVID repeatedly and issued guidance that was disastrous. Remember the whole “you don’t need masks unless you’re a doctor” in the beginning? How about withholding critical information about spread? How about underreported numbers? CDC is at this point a clown gathering and have 0 credibility. 0
> Plant based and vegan eating are almost entirely the land of privileged people.
You are making way too many wrong assumptions about why these people don't eat plant based diets. There's modern industrial society making meat cheap, ignorance about healthy diets, and the false impression that plant based diets are not cheap.
You can buy legumes, whole grains, and vegetables in bulk, which would give you a full nutritional profile, and there's no way this is diet would be too expensive for underprivileged.
you’re missing the point over and over again. guess this is where we go our separate ways, you with your bulk legumes and me with my ignorance. have a good day
I haven't had a chance to review all of these, but pretty much every one I've looked at is problematic, e.g. issues due to feeding newborns strict vegan diets, weird restricted diets like raw foods, differences in levels that aren't necessarily below unhealthy thresholds, effects on non-essential supplements, and other pathological cases. I could easily find a list of a hundred studies of problems with pathological meat eating diets, e.g. eating lots of salami, pure meat diets, etc.
You should filter these to be relevant to normal vegan diets rather than try to overwhelm with a gish gallop.
I challenge you to find a study showing health problems in vegans with a balanced normal diet.
What are the consequences of my choice? An animal dies, and I eat it. I'm fine with that. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why it's bad for me to effect an animals death, but fine for a wolf. If it's actually wrong, let's kill all the predators on the planet. Or least capture them all and feed them kale.
There is no "why". We do, that is a fact of life and we can not, at the current time, do anything to change this. It is not due to a choice that we made, nor can we make a choice to change it.
If, one day, we are in a position where we can make that choice, then that will be a relevant moral question to decide.
For example, the argument that killing animals for food is immoral. If that’s true then nature is immoral. Perhaps because humans are uniquely sapient, we can avoid this. But that presumes that humans are uniquely superior to recognize this over all other carnivors.
Thanks for helping break it down. I'll address it using your help.
> But that presumes that humans are uniquely superior to recognize this over all other carnivors [sic].
It doesn't need to involve a value judgment that we are somehow "superior". It just requires recognizing the obvious, that we are indeed uniquely sapient. Furthermore the argument for killing animals is using the flawed appeal to nature, which doesn't work for rape or any other of the countless "natural" activities we overcame with our sapience.
To clarify, I wasn’t saying that because meateating occurs in nature, it is correct. I was pointing out that if meateating is wrong, then there’s lots of other things we have to deal with.
That is just one of the simplest, pragmatic I think, reasons to dispute “all meateating is bad.”
Note, I think we should eat meat in a humane way so actually think this california law is helpful. I just don’t think that all meat eating is bad.
Birds poop on car windshields all the time, so how come when I do it, it's "public indecency"? If that's true then nature is immoral. Why is this cop presuming that humans are uniquely superior to recognize this over all other animals?
And don't get me started on this law that I have to be clothed.... No other animal is clothed. Maybe humans are the ones who are wrong? Really makes you think.
It boils down to scale. Wolves are not running animal concentration camps.
Raising and slaughtering your own animals, or hunting wild ones yourself is much more humane/natural than industrial level farms and slaughterhouses. You don't eat animals that just "die".
I'm not saying that to argue anything, I eat meat like most people, it's just how I see it.
Then let's solve that problem, rather than abandoning meat, dairy, and, for reasons that no one I've encountered has ever been able to explain rationally, honey.
I totally agree that we have an awful problem with inhumane treatment of animals at factory farms in our society, but the logical answer to that is absolutely not veganism.
Why not? Why not both? As it is, there are huge powerful interests that drive factory farming are preventing much movement in the right direction on farms. In the meantime abstaining from meat is a fine option, especially since it is also healthy.
To be clear, I'm saying that veganism is not the logical solution to the problem of animal abuse by factory farms. The logical solution to animal abuse by factory farms would be measures preventing factory farms from abusing animals.
Veganism, specifically, is only a logical solution to the purported problem that killing animals for their meat, or getting any other animal product by any means, is unethical.
Personally, while I can see some logic in the claim that killing animals for their meat is unethical (I disagree with it, but see where it's coming from), I find the claims that milk, eggs, and wool are unethical to be highly questionable, at best, and the claims that honey is unethical to be truly absurd.
Yes, let's solve that problem. It will take decades, maybe centuries. It will require turning entire economies upside down. It will make meat unaffordable to many. And at the end of it, animals will still die, just less miserably. But yes, it would be an improvement, it is worth doing.
However, meanwhile, you can still stop eating meat, and save a few animals form their miserable torture and death.
Morality is not universal. Life is a series of trade-offs. It is impossible to live without causing suffering to other creatures. Others choose differently from you. All of those are coherent.
Oh wow. Let me try forming that argument: 1) meat is nutrient-packed and getting all your nutrients from a plant based diet is stupid hard 2) to be able to be a vegan and healthy you need (today at least) to be in a privileged position (how many poor vegans do you know?) 3) we evolutionarily got here by eating meat - our bodies do better when eating animal fat and protein. The grown and thriving survival of our species is anchored in killing other animals (sounds f’ed up but it is what it is).
Right, India is The Beacon of Light all western civilizations should be looking up to? No, thanks!
Your opuscule of a comment doesn't make a damn sense.
“One of the major causes for malnutrition in India is economic inequality. Due to the low social status of majority of the population, their diet often lacks in both quality and quantity.”
Correlation isn’t causation.
Much of India is very poor. There’s quite a lot of the US who is also poor and malnourished, but they’re often fat due to highly processed carbs and fatty meats with almost no fresh veggies.
American vegan food tends to be so processed and gross it’s the equivalent of vegan spam. Vegan food has a flavor and accessibility problem that’s not solved by calling meat eating immoral.
If you want more folks to eat vegan make the food more accessible and flavorful. Stop trying to make vegan cheese and make semi proper vegan meals that are easily accessible and have good sauces and spices
Sounds like the pig-farming industry is trying to get some of that sweet subsidy money by waiting until the last minute to do anything. Don’t blame them from business side but totally avoidable of course
Or they intentionally want to cause a supply shock, to punish California voters for trying to improve animal welfare, and to deter other states from doing the same.
Or the cost of the changes are not compatible with their business model and it’s more profitable to not make changes and export what would have gone to california.
Could be. I think the pork industry probably believes this is a temporary anomaly that they can overcome with lobbyists and lawyers. Or that California voters will reverse themselves once bacon costs $10 a pound. If that's true, they wouldn't want to invest for that short time horizon.
If a similar rule were adopted nationwide, I'm sure they could make changes and pass the price increases along to the consumer.
> Barry Goodwin, an economist at North Carolina State University, estimated the extra costs at 15% more per animal for a farm with 1,000 breeding pigs.
> If half the pork supply was suddenly lost in California, bacon prices would jump 60%, meaning a $6 package would rise to about $9.60, according to a study by the Hatamiya Group, a consulting firm hired by opponents of the state proposition.
So let supply and demand work it out? If, as this pork industry PR firm claims, half the pork supply just decides to not participate in the California market, it's financially sensible on the margin for any individual pork farmer to sell meat for anywhere from 15% to 49% more. Note in particular 15% per animal means you're not counting fixed costs like labor, so probably the final price increase will be less than 15%.
(This does show the weakness of the California proposition system, though: it's impossible for the normal functioning of government to clarify this law etc. because it's the unchangeable will of the people.)
> This does show the weakness of the California proposition system, though: it's impossible for the normal functioning of government to clarify this law etc. because it's the unchangeable will of the people.
That's... misleading. Its true that there is more friction with, say, legislative revision. But its not immutable, the legislature would just have to refer proposed changes to the people. This is very much not an insurmountable barrier, such submissions are not uncommon.
I don’t think people understand the cruelty of factory farming especially when it comes to pigs. If they saw it first hand, they would almost certainly support this legislation full stop. I love bacon but what we do to these animals is sick and I won’t support it.
I'm a vegetarian, so take this with a grain of salt, but not giving "pigs enough room to turn around and to extend their limbs" seems needlessly cruel. If you can't afford pork, it's not like there aren't cheap protein alternatives.
The sad thing is this is all for a little bit of efficiency to get all the feces easily into a trough. Before most the cages could flat pack along walls so let pigs out for 15 minutes a day pack cages and run a front end loader up and down halls and hose it down. Housing 3-4 sows in a cage most likely one will get bullied a bit and produce some runts but acceptable losses to not treat an animal smarter than a dog like a meat factory.
Yay, government is leveraging capitalism for less suffering of pigs. Now the price of pork will skyrocket and new enclosures will be built to make some of that Cali money.
Our European visitors are important to us.
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Perhaps at least some of the blame should be borne by your government and what some (clearly) view as onerous, economically nonviable, misinformed, and poorly executed regulations?
That’s great for you, doesn’t mean companies want or need to comply. They’ve decided that it’s more worthwhile to block the EU instead of invest in complying with the GDPR. The EU knew this would happen.
Please don’t bet the farm on having done that little bit of work. GDPR compliance is not something you can finish but instead you have to continually demonstrate. It involves hiring specialists and 8–14 week consultation delays before launching features.
I'm more inclined to blame the US government for a lackadaisical approach to privacy over here. I'd love GDPR-style protections for the apps and sites I use; implementing them on our apps was a pain, but made me jealous.
I know people at PC Engines, a Swiss company and they had to deal with GDPR a couple of years ago. The owner just said fuck it and put this up: https://pcengines.ch/privacy.htm
I am pro-privacy, and generally agree with well designed and targetted regulations. There should be provisions for making it easy for GDPR compliance for the little guy. There are none.
> Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary... for compliance with a legal obligation which requires processing by Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject...
A criminal in the EU can't go issue a "right to be forgotten" request to the prison system, for example. They have a legitimate reason to decline it.
I am happy for them and can live fine without any sites that have blocked me like this so far.
> economically nonviable,
Please remember: Google was a massive success long before they started tracking people all over the web.
This isn't about being economically viable. This is to spite people because they are not content with not being able to squeeze the last few cents out each of us.
I don't think I've ever seen a news website with no cookie warnings. Cookies are necessary for the functionality of the ad networks and analytics tools that news websites need to survive. Not to mention the rest of gdpr requirements.
GDPR has teeth! US companies are used to just paying a token fine and continuing to do whatever they want. They are completely dumbfounded that they are being assessed billions in fines when their creative interpretations of the law get overturned.
> Our European visitors are important to us.
This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.
Sigh. Why does a local Fox station even bother. I would just ignore EU, aka foreign, regulations.
I wonder at what point it makes sense for the federal government to step in when state laws end up substantially hindering interstate trade. This isn't the standard American communication method where I'm actually insinuating that it's time right now by implying that; I just recognize that there is some point between "completely unrestricted trade" and "you're not allowed to trade with anyone in another state" that the federal government should probably get involved and override state laws restricting trade.
Obviously for firearms the federal government takes a pretty heavy involvement. I wonder where the line should be for food? Animal welfare is a pretty contentious issue.
Marijuana trade is already federally illegal in all 50 states and territories while many states have majorly unrestricted it, so that would be the opposite of what I'm talking about.
In this case, California is restricting trade in pork not raised to their opinions of what constitutes humane treatment. Federal standards are obviously less restrictive.
It's within federal jurisdiction to override the California law to permit California people to buy non-CA-compliant pork from Iowa.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out if California continues on its "ban everything" trajectory.
Bacon may not be the hill to die on, but food trade in general is possibly one of the things that could trigger federal intervention if enough leaf nodes get perturbed.
> Marijuana trade is already federally illegal in all 50 states and territories…
Interesting fact, the Federal government doesn’t have the power to make marijuana illegal, so instead the federal government taxes it, you just don’t see them offer very many tax stamps for it. That said the federal government does in fact grow and distribute marijuana to select individuals they approved under a compassionate care program. Few patients under the program are still alive, but one patient I knew received 300 pre-rolled joints from the federal government every month for over 3 decades.
>It's within federal jurisdiction to override the California law to permit California people to buy non-CA-compliant pork from Iowa.
That is a big legal “maybe”. The federal government can usually set regulatory minimums and the states usually have the right to set higher standards. If the federal government can show California’s law effects interstate commerce then the federal government might have supremacy under the commerce clause, but these cases are typically always decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court (and if the learned Justices can’t agree it is unlikely we would make much progress here on HN). Not coincidentally the commerce clause is how the federal government finds its power to regulate marijuana too.
> the Federal government doesn’t have the power to make marijuana illegal
It does and it has, under the Controlled Substances Act (or, at least manufacturing, distribution, moving across state lines, selling, etc., or possession for any of those purposes.)
> so instead the federal government taxes it
It used to under the Marijuana Tax Act, which the Controlled Substances Act replaced. But that was motivated more by leveraging propaganda about marijuana as an excuse to destroy the hemp industry than as a backdoor ban on marijuana (though it was also that.)
As long as in-state farmers are required to follow the same rules as others, I don’t know what anyone could legitimately complain about?
If the people of California, through their democratically elected government, establish stricter rules to protect the air they breath or animal welfare, then it’s all working as intended.
Guns really are the counterexample here, as plenty of communities, including the US as a whole according to polling, would chose to restrict private gun ownership to varying degrees. It’s prevented from doing so by a minority that is opposed and a Supreme Court that suddenly decided a few years ago that when the constitution talks about “well-regulated militias”, it really wants to establish an individual right.
I mean, the phrase "right of the people" occurs in 2A after the term "militia", so regardless of where you fall on the gun rights/control spectrum, the SCOTUS decision isn't entirely unreasonable or whole-cloth fabrication.
Additionally, the "minority that is opposed" is only a small minority. It's not clear cut. Gun rights will ultimately be a good test of US democracy in the long run.
I don't think they're a counterexample because when you trade in firearms between states, the actual interstate transfer must occur between federally licensed entities. The seller takes the gun to a federal licensee in their own state, who mails it to a federal licensee in the destination state, who transfers it to the purchaser. The federal government is expressly authorized to regulate interstate commerce.
Voters in California can't regulate animal welfare in Iowa; all they can do is ban trade in out-of-state animal products that are not compliant. The federal government can override those in-state decisions via the commerce clause, as I (not a lawyer!) understand it.
I wish there was some way to require meat eaters to at least visit a slaughterhouse every year to witness the animals that they eat getting slaughtered.
Even better would be if they had to slaughter some animals themselves rather than simply paying people to do it for them.
Farmers and slaughterhouse workers get desensitized to the slaughter of animals, but I suspect that if people didn't do it all the time but just, say, once or twice a year and saw what actually goes on in slaughterhouses most people would be horrified and many of them would turn vegetarian.
Even a single field trip to a slaughterhouse as a kid would probably make lifetime vegetarians out of a lot of people.
Most people don't want to think about what they're doing to animals (and certainly not witness, much less directly participate in it), though, so it would probably never happen.
I got where you’re coming from but meat is one of the most nutrients packed food you can eat. Also, evolutionary people did not become the top of the food chain by eating plants.
Yes, it’s terrible how animals are being treated and yes mass consumption of meat has some terrible side effects.
With that being said: do you think that in the wild a predator will think twice about killing and eating their pray? do you think that every person on Earth could turn vegetarian and be able to get a healthy diet tomorrow?
> do you think that every person on Earth could turn vegetarian and be able to get a healthy diet tomorrow?
That’s an unrealistically high bar to set. Almost anyone can turn vegetarian and have a healthy diet today. Our agricultural sector regularly adjusts for changing tastes of the population, and while this adjustment doesn’t happen overnight it happens regularly.
I've often argued this. I'm a meat eater, but have in the past slaughtered pigs and chickens myself. I've told people this, and they often express disgust, while happily munching on a hamburger or chicken wing.
As far as I'm concerned, if you're not willing to face up to the fact that you're killing a sentient animal to feed yourself, then you shouldn't be eating meat.
I’ve had the same thought about capital punishment: it should be televised so that people can see what they are supporting. It might not turn out the way you or I wish, though.
That would be a strong, compelling argument, but it would be emotional only.
Logically we gain nothing from improving animal rights, except insofar as the meat may be healthier/tastier or that we don't feel so bad. The first may be worth it, the second can be achieved by hiding factory farming more efficiently.
Of course if you think animal suffering is bad, that is a different pov, but why should you?
I support this, and I suspect a more practical thing is that humane slaughterhouses will gain in popularity. A lot of the problem in our current era is how thoroughly you can outsource the job - but humanity has a large history of farmers/ranchers/hunters and their community being entirely willing to eat meat.
Also, this is what kosher/halal rules about slaughtering are trying to do. (There is some debate about how effective those specific rules are.)
I’m seeing the meat departments of grocers in western Nevada and Arizona becoming very busy, and lots of small vans in their parking lots around opening time.
China is still recovering from nuking of their pork industry and vacuuming up all pork we can send them. Even if more states jump on bandwagon not much will change till we commit to not exporting unethical pork
Keep in mind the new standard sets breeding sow's enclosure to be no less than 24 sqft, (think 6x4 feet). I think it's a reasonable and humane standard to be met. It's a good thing the industry is under pressure due to this, and the benefits here outweigh the consequences of pork shortage and higher prices.
This is great! Pricing in externalities is exactly what regulation is supposed to accomplish in a functioning market. The meat production industry is full of unpriced externalities[0], and decades of propaganda[1] convincing us that everything is fine and dandy[2].
Not to mention the current (now-historical) market solution isn't an efficient allocation of resources by any means[3]. Livestock account for only 18% of global calories and only 37% of protein! It's a myth that eating meat is the way we get protein. To boot, 45% of crop yields go towards feeding that livestock[4].
I have nothing against eating meat as such, and I'm all for using grazing land for grazing. But the fact that we waste good crop land on highly inefficient food/nutrient/protein production is not good.
We have to use regulation to price in these inefficiencies and allow the market to deal with realistic pricing levels for meat.
"At the beginning of next year, California will begin enforcing an animal welfare proposition approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2018 that requires more space for breeding pigs, egg-laying chickens and veal calves. National veal and egg producers are optimistic they can meet the new standards, but only 4% of hog operations now comply with the new rules."
This is wonderful news. We're finally putting an end to an unethical factory farming practice - forcing animals to live in inhumanely cramped conditions.
There's little chance bacon will disappear from California. Instead, the price will probably go up:
"If half the pork supply was suddenly lost in California, bacon prices would jump 60%, meaning a $6 package would rise to about $9.60, according to a study by the Hatamiya Group, a consulting firm hired by opponents of the state proposition."
I'm totally fine with paying more for bacon if it means that pigs will be treated more humanely.
the answer you are suggesting has higher deadweight losses to the economy and will make the poor (and everybody else) worse off, full stop. In exchange for which you claim a hypothesized benefit to pigs which I don't believe and also don't believe you have a basis for believing, and which sits on a very shaky foundation, see Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene"
I was thinking more of bacon when I wrote that, but yes, pork is more staple. It doesn't change my opinion about the balance of rights though.
As a sibling comment says, disadvantaged families could receive additional benefits to offset meat price rises.
You could subsidise welfare improvements but pushing costs up has the benefit of allowing more environmentally beneficial alternatives to break through on value for all consumers.
This is great for consumers worldwide short term as prices will fall. Expensive for California customers. The best thing for animals and if this spreads everyone will be on an equal playing field until than Californians will lead by example.. I predict bacon falling out of popularity quickly.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadThe reason people get so upset and angry about vegans, the reason they keep making fun of them, is that they do know that they can't form a coherent argument for why they are wrong.
There is no morally coherent argument for eating meat beyond "I care less about the suffering of animals than I do about my own pleasure". That is a valid argument you can make, though, but most people do know deep down it makes them look bad to make that argument, so they will instead just attack vegans for being annoying rather than face up to the consequences of their own choices.
also, start with this and do a bit of research:
https://michaelkummer.com/health/plants-vs-meat/
there is no way average joe can figure all these things out on a limited budget + limited time
evolutionary considerations are a part if everything. you cannot ignore how you got here and biology
To be frank, using the argument that plant based diets are "privileged" is cynical and disingenuous.
average joe != nutritionally ignorant. You may understand a few things about nutrition, but if you don’t understand a lot of things you’re going to have a bad time being 100% vegan. If you eat meat and you stick to a diet of minimally processed meat + fruits/vegetables you’d be fine.
Is meat inflammatory and carcinogen? Here’s the thing: we’ve been eating meat since we turned homo sapiens sapiens. Is the meat or the way that it’s processed a problem? Can you put in the same bucket organic grass fed beef and mystery meat hotdogs?
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/114/1/175/6178922
Plant based and vegan eating are almost entirely the land of privileged people. I have never met someone who was a vegan and living on minimum wage, had a job that involved hard physical work or had a lot of responsibility/lacked free time and disposable income. Please prove me wrong and help me change my mind if it’s not the case and you have good examples/pointers.
Eat delicious healthy meat, lift, and let these people enjoy their metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and dementia. It's not your problem.
The CDC begs to differ: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
I mean CDC lied about COVID repeatedly and issued guidance that was disastrous. Remember the whole “you don’t need masks unless you’re a doctor” in the beginning? How about withholding critical information about spread? How about underreported numbers? CDC is at this point a clown gathering and have 0 credibility. 0
You are making way too many wrong assumptions about why these people don't eat plant based diets. There's modern industrial society making meat cheap, ignorance about healthy diets, and the false impression that plant based diets are not cheap.
You can buy legumes, whole grains, and vegetables in bulk, which would give you a full nutritional profile, and there's no way this is diet would be too expensive for underprivileged.
> Even meat eaters don't get enough B12 and should supplement, because B12 comes from the food animals eat, and their feed is insufficient.
Nope. Not having enough B12 is a rare condition.
> If you don't just eat Oreos and white rice, you should be fine as a vegan.
And yet, even vegan influencers get sick and start to eat meat again. And the argument is always “they must have done something wrong”.
High fiber diets reduce serum half life of vitamin D3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6299329
Vegans have weaker bones due to lower calcium intake and vitamin D3 levels: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullart... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21092700
Vegans have a worse memory compared to non vegans due to creatine deficiency in vegans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21118604 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14561278
Vegans have less gains compared to non vegans: http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/6/1032.full
Vegans are deficient in omega threes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16087975 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16188209 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12323090 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12323085
Vegans are deficit in carnitine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21753065 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2756917 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1628441/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11043928
Vegans are deficient in taurine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3354491
Vegans are deficient in iodine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12748410 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21613354
Vegans are deficient in Coenzyme Q10: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16873950
Vegans are deficient in iron due to the fact that iron from plant sources is less bioavailable than iron from meat sources: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-HealthProfessional/...
You should filter these to be relevant to normal vegan diets rather than try to overwhelm with a gish gallop.
I challenge you to find a study showing health problems in vegans with a balanced normal diet.
Is it possible that evolutionary consuming meat gives you an advantage?
If, one day, we are in a position where we can make that choice, then that will be a relevant moral question to decide.
For example, the argument that killing animals for food is immoral. If that’s true then nature is immoral. Perhaps because humans are uniquely sapient, we can avoid this. But that presumes that humans are uniquely superior to recognize this over all other carnivors.
> But that presumes that humans are uniquely superior to recognize this over all other carnivors [sic].
It doesn't need to involve a value judgment that we are somehow "superior". It just requires recognizing the obvious, that we are indeed uniquely sapient. Furthermore the argument for killing animals is using the flawed appeal to nature, which doesn't work for rape or any other of the countless "natural" activities we overcame with our sapience.
That is just one of the simplest, pragmatic I think, reasons to dispute “all meateating is bad.”
Note, I think we should eat meat in a humane way so actually think this california law is helpful. I just don’t think that all meat eating is bad.
And don't get me started on this law that I have to be clothed.... No other animal is clothed. Maybe humans are the ones who are wrong? Really makes you think.
Raising and slaughtering your own animals, or hunting wild ones yourself is much more humane/natural than industrial level farms and slaughterhouses. You don't eat animals that just "die".
I'm not saying that to argue anything, I eat meat like most people, it's just how I see it.
I totally agree that we have an awful problem with inhumane treatment of animals at factory farms in our society, but the logical answer to that is absolutely not veganism.
Why not? Why not both? As it is, there are huge powerful interests that drive factory farming are preventing much movement in the right direction on farms. In the meantime abstaining from meat is a fine option, especially since it is also healthy.
Veganism, specifically, is only a logical solution to the purported problem that killing animals for their meat, or getting any other animal product by any means, is unethical.
Personally, while I can see some logic in the claim that killing animals for their meat is unethical (I disagree with it, but see where it's coming from), I find the claims that milk, eggs, and wool are unethical to be highly questionable, at best, and the claims that honey is unethical to be truly absurd.
However, meanwhile, you can still stop eating meat, and save a few animals form their miserable torture and death.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28027495 was a terrible HN comment too. Please stop that.
https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/brain-food-children-nutr...
https://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/
Historically humans didn't eat as much meat as humans do today.
Correlation isn’t causation.
Much of India is very poor. There’s quite a lot of the US who is also poor and malnourished, but they’re often fat due to highly processed carbs and fatty meats with almost no fresh veggies.
Are you, personally, too poor to afford it?
If a similar rule were adopted nationwide, I'm sure they could make changes and pass the price increases along to the consumer.
hacker news pileon
> If half the pork supply was suddenly lost in California, bacon prices would jump 60%, meaning a $6 package would rise to about $9.60, according to a study by the Hatamiya Group, a consulting firm hired by opponents of the state proposition.
So let supply and demand work it out? If, as this pork industry PR firm claims, half the pork supply just decides to not participate in the California market, it's financially sensible on the margin for any individual pork farmer to sell meat for anywhere from 15% to 49% more. Note in particular 15% per animal means you're not counting fixed costs like labor, so probably the final price increase will be less than 15%.
(This does show the weakness of the California proposition system, though: it's impossible for the normal functioning of government to clarify this law etc. because it's the unchangeable will of the people.)
That's... misleading. Its true that there is more friction with, say, legislative revision. But its not immutable, the legislature would just have to refer proposed changes to the people. This is very much not an insurmountable barrier, such submissions are not uncommon.
WARNING GRAPHIC: https://youtu.be/XPGIMCmpfxU
I do love me some bacon though.
I am pro-privacy, and generally agree with well designed and targetted regulations. There should be provisions for making it easy for GDPR compliance for the little guy. There are none.
This is a complete misunderstanding of GDPR, which carves out common-sense limitations for exactly this sort of scenario.
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/
> Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary... for compliance with a legal obligation which requires processing by Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject...
A criminal in the EU can't go issue a "right to be forgotten" request to the prison system, for example. They have a legitimate reason to decline it.
> economically nonviable,
Please remember: Google was a massive success long before they started tracking people all over the web.
This isn't about being economically viable. This is to spite people because they are not content with not being able to squeeze the last few cents out each of us.
I saw this though memeorandum.com (still goin', still heavy on the right wing sources)
Sigh. Why does a local Fox station even bother. I would just ignore EU, aka foreign, regulations.
This is the way that Americans can ignore EU law: not interfacing with EU citizens and their data.
Obviously for firearms the federal government takes a pretty heavy involvement. I wonder where the line should be for food? Animal welfare is a pretty contentious issue.
In this case, California is restricting trade in pork not raised to their opinions of what constitutes humane treatment. Federal standards are obviously less restrictive.
It's within federal jurisdiction to override the California law to permit California people to buy non-CA-compliant pork from Iowa.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out if California continues on its "ban everything" trajectory.
Bacon may not be the hill to die on, but food trade in general is possibly one of the things that could trigger federal intervention if enough leaf nodes get perturbed.
Interesting fact, the Federal government doesn’t have the power to make marijuana illegal, so instead the federal government taxes it, you just don’t see them offer very many tax stamps for it. That said the federal government does in fact grow and distribute marijuana to select individuals they approved under a compassionate care program. Few patients under the program are still alive, but one patient I knew received 300 pre-rolled joints from the federal government every month for over 3 decades.
>It's within federal jurisdiction to override the California law to permit California people to buy non-CA-compliant pork from Iowa.
That is a big legal “maybe”. The federal government can usually set regulatory minimums and the states usually have the right to set higher standards. If the federal government can show California’s law effects interstate commerce then the federal government might have supremacy under the commerce clause, but these cases are typically always decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court (and if the learned Justices can’t agree it is unlikely we would make much progress here on HN). Not coincidentally the commerce clause is how the federal government finds its power to regulate marijuana too.
It does and it has, under the Controlled Substances Act (or, at least manufacturing, distribution, moving across state lines, selling, etc., or possession for any of those purposes.)
> so instead the federal government taxes it
It used to under the Marijuana Tax Act, which the Controlled Substances Act replaced. But that was motivated more by leveraging propaganda about marijuana as an excuse to destroy the hemp industry than as a backdoor ban on marijuana (though it was also that.)
If the people of California, through their democratically elected government, establish stricter rules to protect the air they breath or animal welfare, then it’s all working as intended.
Guns really are the counterexample here, as plenty of communities, including the US as a whole according to polling, would chose to restrict private gun ownership to varying degrees. It’s prevented from doing so by a minority that is opposed and a Supreme Court that suddenly decided a few years ago that when the constitution talks about “well-regulated militias”, it really wants to establish an individual right.
Additionally, the "minority that is opposed" is only a small minority. It's not clear cut. Gun rights will ultimately be a good test of US democracy in the long run.
I don't think they're a counterexample because when you trade in firearms between states, the actual interstate transfer must occur between federally licensed entities. The seller takes the gun to a federal licensee in their own state, who mails it to a federal licensee in the destination state, who transfers it to the purchaser. The federal government is expressly authorized to regulate interstate commerce.
Voters in California can't regulate animal welfare in Iowa; all they can do is ban trade in out-of-state animal products that are not compliant. The federal government can override those in-state decisions via the commerce clause, as I (not a lawyer!) understand it.
Even better would be if they had to slaughter some animals themselves rather than simply paying people to do it for them.
Farmers and slaughterhouse workers get desensitized to the slaughter of animals, but I suspect that if people didn't do it all the time but just, say, once or twice a year and saw what actually goes on in slaughterhouses most people would be horrified and many of them would turn vegetarian.
Even a single field trip to a slaughterhouse as a kid would probably make lifetime vegetarians out of a lot of people.
Most people don't want to think about what they're doing to animals (and certainly not witness, much less directly participate in it), though, so it would probably never happen.
Yes, it’s terrible how animals are being treated and yes mass consumption of meat has some terrible side effects.
With that being said: do you think that in the wild a predator will think twice about killing and eating their pray? do you think that every person on Earth could turn vegetarian and be able to get a healthy diet tomorrow?
That’s an unrealistically high bar to set. Almost anyone can turn vegetarian and have a healthy diet today. Our agricultural sector regularly adjusts for changing tastes of the population, and while this adjustment doesn’t happen overnight it happens regularly.
Don’t get me wrong. Eating a mostly-plant based diet is okay and doable but I’m talking the last 5-10% territory.
As far as I'm concerned, if you're not willing to face up to the fact that you're killing a sentient animal to feed yourself, then you shouldn't be eating meat.
Now most people ask "who would choose death?". We'd be surprised.
I've watched and slaughtered animals since I was little and still eat meat, but others could change.
Logically we gain nothing from improving animal rights, except insofar as the meat may be healthier/tastier or that we don't feel so bad. The first may be worth it, the second can be achieved by hiding factory farming more efficiently.
Of course if you think animal suffering is bad, that is a different pov, but why should you?
Also, this is what kosher/halal rules about slaughtering are trying to do. (There is some debate about how effective those specific rules are.)
Not to mention the current (now-historical) market solution isn't an efficient allocation of resources by any means[3]. Livestock account for only 18% of global calories and only 37% of protein! It's a myth that eating meat is the way we get protein. To boot, 45% of crop yields go towards feeding that livestock[4].
I have nothing against eating meat as such, and I'm all for using grazing land for grazing. But the fact that we waste good crop land on highly inefficient food/nutrient/protein production is not good.
We have to use regulation to price in these inefficiencies and allow the market to deal with realistic pricing levels for meat.
[0] (graphic, but short and info-dense) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI
[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/4/19/8447883/milk-health-benefit
[2] <this is fine>.jpg
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
[4] https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel...
(not thrilled about posting Vox links but they're just the tip of the iceberg if you start reading about this stuff properly)
This is wonderful news. We're finally putting an end to an unethical factory farming practice - forcing animals to live in inhumanely cramped conditions.
There's little chance bacon will disappear from California. Instead, the price will probably go up:
"If half the pork supply was suddenly lost in California, bacon prices would jump 60%, meaning a $6 package would rise to about $9.60, according to a study by the Hatamiya Group, a consulting firm hired by opponents of the state proposition."
I'm totally fine with paying more for bacon if it means that pigs will be treated more humanely.
The problem is that these price increases are regressive, and disproportionately affect the poor.
Humans' rights to luxury meats should not exceed animals' rights to a humane existence.
As a sibling comment says, disadvantaged families could receive additional benefits to offset meat price rises.
You could subsidise welfare improvements but pushing costs up has the benefit of allowing more environmentally beneficial alternatives to break through on value for all consumers.
(also, I note Google translates "the meat-bosses" into "the butchers")
Thanks, I needed a good laugh today.
I certain bacon's popularity is safe everywhere outside CA.