True enough.. I just mean it seems to me their target market is self-destroying based on how the stuff is made. That said, I think it's hard enough to get cheese that is simply cheese, let alone crafted/aged cheeses that I'll keep with cow/goat based cheeses for the foreseeable future.
Correlation, sure. But even as a non-vegetarian, I can understand the argument for not raising animals directly or indirectly for food, due to inefficiency. Vegans who believe that but don't really care about food being "natural" would still want this stuff; not all vegans are motivated to be vegan by the same things.
I would expect there's a stronger-than-average correlation there — mainly because they have the common prerequisite of caring about what you eat — but my hunch is that most vegans wouldn't object to this. I can personally say I'd buy it.
There are plenty of anti-GMO vegans. But I'm sure there are plenty of vegans who'd be fine with it. After all, there is a scientific case for veganism too.
Even the ethical case for veganism doesn't have much to say about GMO. The idea that hurting animals is wrong doesn't in any way entail that creating genetically engineered plants or microorganisms is wrong.
I am speaking from personal experience, but most of my vegan friends are also vocally anti-gmo... it just seemed to me that man vegans are also anti-gmo so it might be a self-defeating effort to target a subset of a subset market.
I'm a vegan who's motivated by opposition to animal agriculture, so I enthusiastically support research like this (and think it's the most promising path I've heard of to a vegan human future). I went to a vegan advocacy organization event a few months ago where this topic came up, and other attendees shared my enthusiasm for this kind of research, but the diversity of views and motivations in the vegan community makes me wary of claiming that that means this is mainstream.
To answer your correlation question, probably yes -- but vegans' attitudes toward "tampering with nature" vary widely from the view that it's the worst possible thing humanity can do, on through to the view that it's the best possible thing humanity can do (e.g., David Pearce), with a broad spectrum in between. (I don't have an ideal example of the former group in mind, but I could mention Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson, who advocates deep ecology and opposes GMOs.)
I think we will see sharper divisions between environmentalist vegans (especially advocates of deep ecology) and animal rights/animal welfare vegans over time. I don't know how the population breaks down in the west today, or how many people have even had to think about it that much.
Your last sentence is pretty interesting to me. After months of prodding from my girlfriend to go vegan, the book 'Abundance' and the chapter on the water inefficiency of factory farming is what finally turned me. It was reasonably easy for me to justify carnivorism as naturally occurring, harder to justify water waste with so many humans going thirsty. Without even starting down the emissions road.
That said, looking at it now (and especially once synthetic meats come online, out of cost efficiency if nothing else), I think our children might look back on the practice of animal slaughter as being pretty horrifically barbaric.
Exactly. California's drought has literally zero effect on anybody else. Maybe a bit on people downstream of California's rivers and such.
So the consideration that "people are going thirsty" should have zero effect on how Californians deal with their problem. It serves nothing more than as an emotional device to make people feel bad.
I'm not convinced by the water argument as a large-scale issue, for two reasons. First, water transport is expensive, in a relative sense. This means that as long as you're not farming in direct competition with people that lack water, stopping the farming won't help them. Second, the price of meat is high enough, and the price of desalination low enough, that all else equal we could easily feed cows by using infinite salt water.
In California water is a little bit fungible because of the California Aqueduct (and other aqueducts in the California water system), and because of some farmers' water rights claims over particular sources that might otherwise have been available to other users for other uses. But it's not completely fungible by any stretch of the imagination.
I don't know enough about the water system and the patterns of shortages to understand the prevalence of direct competition between sets of users. Of course a weird thing is that municipalities may have locked in particular sources, so there may not be anyone in competition with us at all (for example, we in San Francisco have near-exclusive access to Hetch Hetchy, so water demand from farmers elsewhere in the state isn't likely to threaten our municipal water supply, at least not very directly).
I guess I need to learn more about the extent to which different users actually compete with one another. Clearly livestock farmers in the Central Valley are in competition with crop farmers there for the same water resources, but their competition with city dwellers for sources of what might have been human drinking water is a thornier question.
California water issues are very complex as you state, but one big issue is going somewhat unaddressed by government - use of non-renewable underground sources. Currently, farmers are able to even increase production in the drought, but few know how long they'll be able to keep this up because underground water is not unlimited.
Isn't agriculture (crop farming) the biggest reason of the water problems in California right now... it seems to me wasteful water usage applies to plant growth as much as animal farming.
Most modern styles of animal farming just use more water (per kg or kcal of resulting human food), especially those that are growing human-edible crops like corn and soy in order to feed them to farm animals.
Just a feeling, but I think there is quite some correlation between veganism and being anti-GMO, although there are certainly also vegans who are expressly pro-GMO. Would there be any research on the subject?
It looks like people are studying it quite a bit, but the nutrition and diet literature is less open-access than the math and CS literature. I searched on Google Scholar for "vegan attitudes GMO" and found several articles, often in the journal Appetite, that seemed relevant but were behind a paywall. The first result is "Attitudes towards genetically modified and organic foods", by Saher, Lindeman, and Hursti.
I also did a Google web search for the same terms and found, among other things, several articles by pro-GMO vegans complaining that it was common for other vegans to be anti-GMO (based on their personal experience, not studies). The former felt that widespread vegan opposition to GMOs was unfortunate because it would make it less appealing for people to go vegan (for example because the range of available foods would appear more restricted), or because it could make vegans appear indifferent or hostile to scientific progress, among other concerns.
I'm anti-GMO, anti-dairy, pro-cheese, and pro-beef (so Im not in the vegan crowd at all)... yet I'd at least try this especially if it produced high quality cheeses on par with the best unpasteurized cheeses I've had.
Why am I anti-diary? The pasteurization process produces denatured proteins (linked to cancer), contains hormones that are not biologically inert for humans (we are not baby cows), and contain huge amounts of lactose (a sugar that some people are allergic to, and is not a particularly good thing to have in our diets).
The production of most hard cheeses and some soft cheeses tends to remove a lot of the hormone and lactose content, as well as some of the denatured proteins. Cheese does not require pasteurized milk, nor does it benefit from it in any way, as cheese was the first viable method for long term storage of milk.
It could go both ways. I can't speak for the OP, but I can say that I've found it's sometimes easier to explain sensitivities as allergies to people who don't understand the differences. So, giving that poster the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume they either don't know the difference themselves, or they DO know but don't want to split hairs on the matter in case someone doesn't know.
As a personal anecdote along these lines and since discovering my own sensitivities to canola (and rapeseed oils in general), I've learned that simply calling it a "sensitivity" doesn't always convey the need to avoid certain ingredients. So, sometimes I tell people instead to "think of it as a food allergy," which they usually understand.
I think that at least part of the problem is that, to a layperson, sensitivity doesn't sound as urgent or at least is suggestive of "optional avoidance." For some people, chemical sensitivities are anything but optional avoidance...
DiabloD3 said: lactose (a sugar that some people are allergic to
maxerickson said: Lactose intolerance is not an allergy.
You replied: I can't speak for the OP, but I can say that I've found it's sometimes easier to explain sensitivities as allergies to people who don't understand the differences.
Then I suggested the idea that lactose intolerance was not even a chemical sensitivity. I definitely meant to reply to you.
But it looks like the term "sensitivity" has been defined that way, no matter if it's misleading. A sensitivity defined by total lack of interaction, ugh. I guess I'm sensitive to breathing a bunch of argon, too.
Given the life threatening nature of many allergic reactions, I think people should be careful to not trample the definition.
So calling the simple inability to digest a sugar that causes some digestive discomfort an allergy is pretty much entirely off the table.
The situation with chemical sensitivities is harder, but I guess I still don't want people in general deciding for themselves what chemical sensitivities they have that are equivalent to allergies, they should talk to an allergist about it.
> Given the life threatening nature of many allergic reactions, I think people should be careful to not trample the definition.
Don't get me wrong: I agree, but it's sometimes counter-productive to resort to such pedantry if all you're doing is ordering a meal and wish to avoid a specific substance that causes discomfort (or worse). Further, allergies can present with such a broad spectrum of symptoms that it's almost pointless to suggest it shouldn't be used as an analogy for someone who doesn't understand why sensitivities may be problematic is somehow adulterating the definition. Though, sensitivities/intolerances are, AFAIK, never fatal. (Strictly speaking, allergies are a response to foreign proteins; it's important to note that the word itself doesn't convey the nature or severity of the reaction.)
That said, if you're speaking with a layperson who might be providing some service in a capacity that it's important they understand you need/want/wish to avoid a particular ingredient because of the effects it has, using a term that's fairly readily understood (such as allergy) can be useful to avoid misinterpretation.
And, speaking from personal experience, certain sensitivities don't necessarily require speaking with an allergist to determine whether or not they're somehow "equivalent," and I think a GP is better equipped to make the decision first regarding what type of specialist (if any) you should see if you do suffer from sensitivities. Of course, if you have a sensitivity and it's blindingly obvious both in terms of the cause and the symptoms it presents, it's easy enough to determine on your own how bad it is and to what extent you should avoid the substance that causes it. :)
The sane definition of a sensitivity is an allergy to something very specific (so just literal, the persons immune system is sensitive to that thing). Of course that is not the common definition.
In my world, people that are lactose intolerant should just carry some lactase pills and not bother the server about it. They shouldn't conflate their inability to digest a particular sugar with a life threatening condition.
So no, I do not agree that people should express their food preferences to restaurants in terms of self diagnosed "allergies".
It is commonly, but incorrectly, listed as an allergy, even though it is not an immune response. Lactose intolerance is a syndrome stemming from lactase deficiency.
Why? The overwhelming scientific consensus is that it's perfectly safe.
>The pasteurization process produces denatured proteins (linked to cancer)
I think someone may have been playing a joke on you when they told you this. Denaturing proteins is a critical part of the digestion process. Our body can't really do anything with proteins that maintain their secondary/tertiary/quaternary structure through digestion.
> [lactose] is not a particularly good thing to have in our diets
What makes you say this? Sure, some people don't produce lactase and can't digest it, but it's fine for the rest of us.
No, the overwhelming scientific consensus is it must be proven safe first on a case by case basis, and that GMO in of itself is not good or bad. However, it is not the science I am worried about, it is the willingness of companies to put profit before human lives.
Denaturation of proteins is, as you have said, removing the secondary/tertiary/quaternary structures. However, that doesn't mean that the pasteurization process produces the same resulting denatured proteins our body does.
Lactose is a sugar, and we simply do not benefit from diets high in sugars and carbs.
Proteins are digested to no larger than tripeptides prior to absorption in the intestine. Once absorbed, these oligopeptides are hydrolyzed to single amino acids before moving into circulation. Whether you eat raw milk or milk with denatured proteins makes no difference, you only absorb small protein fragments.
> it must be proven safe first on a case by case basis
Do you hold "natural" foods to the same standard? On average they tend to have far more genetic variation away from "known good" genomes, yet I don't know anyone who thinks that clinical trials are warranted when Farmer Bob's corn cross-pollinates with Farmer Joe's corn.
> that doesn't mean that the pasteurization process produces the same resulting denatured proteins our body does.
It's possible that there's a significant difference, but assuming we process denatured proteins similarly a reasonable null hypothesis that one probably shouldn't reject merely on the basis of a single p=.049 study. Just how strong is the evidence that convinced you it causes cancer?
> Lactose is a sugar, and we simply do not benefit from diets high in sugars and carbs.
Yeah but you didn't mention sugar and carbs in general, you mentioned lactose specifically. Why? Was it just an example (it didn't come across that way)?
> contains hormones that are not biologically inert for humans (we are not baby cows)
I remember looking up the concentration of the hormone in human milk for comparison and finding that it was 50x higher than what people were whining about in cow milk. Do you think human milk is dangerous too?
>On average they tend to have far more genetic variation away from "known good" genomes, yet I don't know anyone who thinks that clinical trials are warranted when Farmer Bob's corn cross-pollinates with Farmer Joe's corn.
Some real world examples of foods being dangerous is Solanine in potatoes. All potatoes contain a small amount of it, and they can sometimes mutate or be accidentally bred to contain harmful amounts. Tomatoes also have small amounts of solanine and tomatine, especially in their leaves.
A similar idea in the works is using bacteria to produce sugar and other nutrients. One company claims they can make more than 30 times as much sugar per acre as regular agriculture.
The article mentions proteins can be produced by yeast, but an additional fat (such as palm oil) will need to be added. Yeasts don't produce fats? Can something else be modified to produce fats identical to milk fat? A plant maybe?
E. coli can be genetically modified to produce fats. Yeast can too. The fat content is just more varied requiring many different yeast clones to be developed for production.
Amateur cheesemaker here - coincidentally the research side of commercial cheesemaking is already doing very similar things because separating milk into its constituent components is more profitable than actually making cheese. I attended a class about a month ago where the message was that in the future we won't make cheese from milk, but rather we'll start with just those caseins that have been extracted and concentrated. The thinking is that even the water in the milk may have other commercial value apart from just the cheesemaking, or at a minimum can be captured and used in lieu of needing an additional water source. Wish they would have gone a little deeper on the science in the article - they mention chymosin for example, but as far as I know the vast majority of chymosin used in commercial cheese production today is already vegan (at least in the US - Europe not necessarily).
From the standpoint of animal welfare, I think milk and cheese are some of the least offending products. For about 7000 kilos of milk "only" one cow has to live for a year, and birth one calve. With about a 50% chance of this calve being raised for slaughter. And both cow and calve also yield meat. Compare that to the one chicken per chicken.
If you don't want to go vegan, but reduce your animal welfare "footprint", avoid meat from small animals like pigs and poultry.
I stand to disagree. While animal "welfare" can be measured in individuals, we also need to consider the impact on the environment.
Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... it says that the water consumption per quantity of meat is 3-4 times lower for poultry and pork than for beef.
The environment supports many more animals that we do not eat, so resource use is more important than headcount in my opinion. You could count the number of flies that died because of industry, but what would that accomplish?
This belief is unfortunately misguided; there is much suffering involved in industrial milk production [1]. It begins with the cow being separated from its calf, usually when it is just newly born. The cow generally responds by searching frantically for its lost calf, repeatedly crying out for it until its throat becomes sore. The cow might also become sick and lose weight due to the separation. It continues with the milking process, which is painful and terrifying for the cows, as evidenced by their response. Milk-producing cows have been bred to maximize milk production, which means they have oversized udders that lead to illness. These are just a few examples of many. Generally speaking, cows in the dairy industry lead a short and exceedingly miserable life.
If the goal is to minimize suffering without going vegan, I think that wild-caught fish provide the least offending animal-based food. But wild-caught fish are generally bad from an ecological perspective.
I've spent time at an organic dairy farm, and I was not upset by anything that I saw there. Although it's not a natural way of life for a cow, the animals were treated very well. There were some processes that cause the animals short-term pain, like removing horns to ensure they don't hurt each other, but there was definitely no long-term suffering; certainly not around the milking process.
I do completely agree that the vast majority of milk production is done in an unethical way and I find mass-produced milk to taste terrible, but I've done my research and I am satisfied that milk can be produced in a responsible way.
I consider myself somewhat of an expert on that matter, and I do believe that cows are suffering much less than pigs and chicken. And I didn't even try to judge if any of these sufferings are justified.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadTo answer your correlation question, probably yes -- but vegans' attitudes toward "tampering with nature" vary widely from the view that it's the worst possible thing humanity can do, on through to the view that it's the best possible thing humanity can do (e.g., David Pearce), with a broad spectrum in between. (I don't have an ideal example of the former group in mind, but I could mention Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson, who advocates deep ecology and opposes GMOs.)
I think we will see sharper divisions between environmentalist vegans (especially advocates of deep ecology) and animal rights/animal welfare vegans over time. I don't know how the population breaks down in the west today, or how many people have even had to think about it that much.
That said, looking at it now (and especially once synthetic meats come online, out of cost efficiency if nothing else), I think our children might look back on the practice of animal slaughter as being pretty horrifically barbaric.
Where are there humans going thirsty? Honest question.
So the consideration that "people are going thirsty" should have zero effect on how Californians deal with their problem. It serves nothing more than as an emotional device to make people feel bad.
I don't know enough about the water system and the patterns of shortages to understand the prevalence of direct competition between sets of users. Of course a weird thing is that municipalities may have locked in particular sources, so there may not be anyone in competition with us at all (for example, we in San Francisco have near-exclusive access to Hetch Hetchy, so water demand from farmers elsewhere in the state isn't likely to threaten our municipal water supply, at least not very directly).
I guess I need to learn more about the extent to which different users actually compete with one another. Clearly livestock farmers in the Central Valley are in competition with crop farmers there for the same water resources, but their competition with city dwellers for sources of what might have been human drinking water is a thornier question.
California could go the desalination route, but so far that progress is painfully slow and the methods being selected may result in significant harm to local marine ecosystems: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/15/us-usa-desalinatio....
Something like this would be much better: http://waterfx.co/. Unfortunately, last update in their blog is a year ago...
I also did a Google web search for the same terms and found, among other things, several articles by pro-GMO vegans complaining that it was common for other vegans to be anti-GMO (based on their personal experience, not studies). The former felt that widespread vegan opposition to GMOs was unfortunate because it would make it less appealing for people to go vegan (for example because the range of available foods would appear more restricted), or because it could make vegans appear indifferent or hostile to scientific progress, among other concerns.
Why am I anti-diary? The pasteurization process produces denatured proteins (linked to cancer), contains hormones that are not biologically inert for humans (we are not baby cows), and contain huge amounts of lactose (a sugar that some people are allergic to, and is not a particularly good thing to have in our diets).
The production of most hard cheeses and some soft cheeses tends to remove a lot of the hormone and lactose content, as well as some of the denatured proteins. Cheese does not require pasteurized milk, nor does it benefit from it in any way, as cheese was the first viable method for long term storage of milk.
(I'm not sure that is what you mean or not though, and some people do indeed have milk allergies.)
As a personal anecdote along these lines and since discovering my own sensitivities to canola (and rapeseed oils in general), I've learned that simply calling it a "sensitivity" doesn't always convey the need to avoid certain ingredients. So, sometimes I tell people instead to "think of it as a food allergy," which they usually understand.
I think that at least part of the problem is that, to a layperson, sensitivity doesn't sound as urgent or at least is suggestive of "optional avoidance." For some people, chemical sensitivities are anything but optional avoidance...
Did you mean to reply to your comment's sibling?
maxerickson said: Lactose intolerance is not an allergy.
You replied: I can't speak for the OP, but I can say that I've found it's sometimes easier to explain sensitivities as allergies to people who don't understand the differences.
Then I suggested the idea that lactose intolerance was not even a chemical sensitivity. I definitely meant to reply to you.
But it looks like the term "sensitivity" has been defined that way, no matter if it's misleading. A sensitivity defined by total lack of interaction, ugh. I guess I'm sensitive to breathing a bunch of argon, too.
So calling the simple inability to digest a sugar that causes some digestive discomfort an allergy is pretty much entirely off the table.
The situation with chemical sensitivities is harder, but I guess I still don't want people in general deciding for themselves what chemical sensitivities they have that are equivalent to allergies, they should talk to an allergist about it.
Don't get me wrong: I agree, but it's sometimes counter-productive to resort to such pedantry if all you're doing is ordering a meal and wish to avoid a specific substance that causes discomfort (or worse). Further, allergies can present with such a broad spectrum of symptoms that it's almost pointless to suggest it shouldn't be used as an analogy for someone who doesn't understand why sensitivities may be problematic is somehow adulterating the definition. Though, sensitivities/intolerances are, AFAIK, never fatal. (Strictly speaking, allergies are a response to foreign proteins; it's important to note that the word itself doesn't convey the nature or severity of the reaction.)
That said, if you're speaking with a layperson who might be providing some service in a capacity that it's important they understand you need/want/wish to avoid a particular ingredient because of the effects it has, using a term that's fairly readily understood (such as allergy) can be useful to avoid misinterpretation.
And, speaking from personal experience, certain sensitivities don't necessarily require speaking with an allergist to determine whether or not they're somehow "equivalent," and I think a GP is better equipped to make the decision first regarding what type of specialist (if any) you should see if you do suffer from sensitivities. Of course, if you have a sensitivity and it's blindingly obvious both in terms of the cause and the symptoms it presents, it's easy enough to determine on your own how bad it is and to what extent you should avoid the substance that causes it. :)
In my world, people that are lactose intolerant should just carry some lactase pills and not bother the server about it. They shouldn't conflate their inability to digest a particular sugar with a life threatening condition.
So no, I do not agree that people should express their food preferences to restaurants in terms of self diagnosed "allergies".
Allergies are a serious issue for people. Confusing other things with allergies makes it harder for people that do have serious allergies.
Why? The overwhelming scientific consensus is that it's perfectly safe.
>The pasteurization process produces denatured proteins (linked to cancer)
I think someone may have been playing a joke on you when they told you this. Denaturing proteins is a critical part of the digestion process. Our body can't really do anything with proteins that maintain their secondary/tertiary/quaternary structure through digestion.
> [lactose] is not a particularly good thing to have in our diets
What makes you say this? Sure, some people don't produce lactase and can't digest it, but it's fine for the rest of us.
Denaturation of proteins is, as you have said, removing the secondary/tertiary/quaternary structures. However, that doesn't mean that the pasteurization process produces the same resulting denatured proteins our body does.
Lactose is a sugar, and we simply do not benefit from diets high in sugars and carbs.
Do you hold "natural" foods to the same standard? On average they tend to have far more genetic variation away from "known good" genomes, yet I don't know anyone who thinks that clinical trials are warranted when Farmer Bob's corn cross-pollinates with Farmer Joe's corn.
> that doesn't mean that the pasteurization process produces the same resulting denatured proteins our body does.
It's possible that there's a significant difference, but assuming we process denatured proteins similarly a reasonable null hypothesis that one probably shouldn't reject merely on the basis of a single p=.049 study. Just how strong is the evidence that convinced you it causes cancer?
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/everything-we-eat-cause...
> Lactose is a sugar, and we simply do not benefit from diets high in sugars and carbs.
Yeah but you didn't mention sugar and carbs in general, you mentioned lactose specifically. Why? Was it just an example (it didn't come across that way)?
> contains hormones that are not biologically inert for humans (we are not baby cows)
I remember looking up the concentration of the hormone in human milk for comparison and finding that it was 50x higher than what people were whining about in cow milk. Do you think human milk is dangerous too?
Some real world examples of foods being dangerous is Solanine in potatoes. All potatoes contain a small amount of it, and they can sometimes mutate or be accidentally bred to contain harmful amounts. Tomatoes also have small amounts of solanine and tomatine, especially in their leaves.
For adults? I'm not positive that it is, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it were. Adults aren't babies.
Sounds like a stupendously safe example to me.
Some discussion and links on that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future...
If you don't want to go vegan, but reduce your animal welfare "footprint", avoid meat from small animals like pigs and poultry.
The environment supports many more animals that we do not eat, so resource use is more important than headcount in my opinion. You could count the number of flies that died because of industry, but what would that accomplish?
If the goal is to minimize suffering without going vegan, I think that wild-caught fish provide the least offending animal-based food. But wild-caught fish are generally bad from an ecological perspective.
[1] See for example http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/real-talk-milk/ , http://www.farmsanctuary.org/learn/factory-farming/dairy/ , and the documentary films Earthlings and Food Inc. A quick google search will reveal many more sources.
I do completely agree that the vast majority of milk production is done in an unethical way and I find mass-produced milk to taste terrible, but I've done my research and I am satisfied that milk can be produced in a responsible way.