I chose my username to make fun of all the people who categorize vegans as militant anytime we speak out at all. It’s to highlight that the only vegan who isn’t seen that way is a vegan who stays silent and does nothing to speak out against the atrocities being committed against animals.
There is a vegan keto, and at least one study has found it to not have the same harms that other variants of keto has. The problem there is that it’s an extremely restrictive diet, so good luck to anyone trying to stick to that.
Aside from the one legitimate use it has - alleviating seizure symptoms - keto is just plain a diet that makes no sense for humans whatsoever.
What I’ve been finding so far about lemmy is that if I post something vegan that puts all the blame on corporations, the upvotes come rolling in. But anything else is either closer to a 1:1 ratio, or downvote abyss.
Umm, yes you are.
Sounds well reasoned.
Or, more memes. 🙃
It’s a sample size issue. What percentage of people make the effort to get swole? It’s maybe (maybe not) a similar figure to how many vegans bother to get strong. Now what percentage of all people are vegan? Estimates range from 1% to 10%, with 3-5% being probably the most reasonable estimate.
But you’re the one making the claim without backing it up. Vegans can get all the protein they need, even when strength training. And the best part is we do it without the heart disease, cancer risk, and autoimmune diseases.
Don’t compare veganism to anti-genocide? My anointed sibling (gnostic gender-neutral idioms >> orthodox gendered ones), every animal product eater/user is complicit in the largest perpetual genocide in human history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Hershaft
In the first place remember that veganism isn’t only about diet. And it’s about doing the best that you can, with what you have. Not everyone can go fully vegan, and that’s understandable and okay as long as they’re doing their best.
Also, I’ve never owned property. I’ve never worked a job that paid enough to afford it (or rent) on my own. When I started transitioning my diet, it was when I had switched jobs to a factory setting with 40-48 hour work weeks (post-covid it was almost always 48 hours), 10 hour shifts on my feet all day. Prior to that I was dependent on eating fast food every day (with predictable rapidly declining health). I also lived in a food desert where going vegan meant that I had zero options for takeout.
I had no one in my life willing to help, in fact all the people around me made it even harder to change. I also have adhd, and can’t stand the concept of meal prep. So what I did was save up for an Instant Pot, and started making the largest batches of grains and legumes that I could, along with frozen veggies (mainly broccoli). I generally cooked only once a week, and then would combine the helpings of leftovers in different ways each day (to keep it from getting too boring) for both my work lunches and dinners.
And I also sought community. Having vegan friends helps immensely.
Don’t assume that I’m as privileged as you think just because I’m vegan. On the other hand I know there are too many people who are far worse off than I am, and everyone who is struggling too much to go fully vegan should never be condemned, on the contrary we should seek to help - because our current food system is killing everyone who is most disadvantaged and impoverished.
Our capitalist wasteland, particularly when you factor in health outcomes, means it’s even more important to at least go plant-based (not the same thing as veganism), and to help others do the same.
Veganism isn’t a religion. It’s a simple moral framework, a practical moral baseline, and a social movement like any other. Would you call a social justice, anti-genocide, or lgbtq+ rights advocate a religious zealot?
The idea that a pure plant-based diet can’t provide all the protein we need has been thoroughly debunked for a long time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMwf_9wqWY0&pp=ygUdc3RhbmZvcmQgc2NpZW50aXN0IG9uIHByb3RlaW4%3D
The nutrient you’re thinking of is b12. Vegans need to supplement b12 (for now, discoveries are still being made on that front). But at the same time, in a sense, so does everyone else.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UUyiiNwDNLU&pp=ygUOZWQgd2ludGVycyBiMTI%3D
The devil is in the details, but in most cases it’s eating animal products that’s the luxury.
https://www.veganeasy.org/discover/news/oxford-university-researchers-finds-vegan-diets-are-cheaper/
Wild animal suffering is a hot debate in the vegan communities these days. There is no cut and dry answer for that. However, whatever we do or don’t do to alleviate or eliminate wild animal suffering says nothing about whether we also create and maintain our own system of animal suffering. We can end the human exploitation of animals, and doing so can teach us a lot about ending our exploitation of each other as well.
The thing I want to be clear about here is that a vegan diet is nutritionally adequate for all our needs, and at every stage of life.
Most farm animals have been selectively bred for traits that fit human needs, at the expense of the animal’s own quality of life. For example, chickens being bred to produce so many eggs that they become calcium deficient and their bones break under the weight of their own bodies. Sanctuaries provide safe spaces for these animals to live out the rest of their lives in the most comfort possible, while going vegan is important for a future where we’re no longer breeding these poor beings into an inherently hellish existence.
A fair amount of vegans might say that their experiences made them change overnight. I was not one of those people, as addiction is significant in me. When I was transitioning, I would go all in and keep abstaining from animal products as long as I could. Then I would mess up, and fall back into bad habits for a while. But the key thing that made the difference is that I never gave up. I’d track how many days I went without animal products and count that as my high score. Then when I tried again I would gamify it by being determined to get an even higher score.
As time went on I became more skilled at cooking plant-based, which helped keep me going since the food I was eating was beginning to taste better. Likewise my palette was growing more accustomed to plant-based foods. Eventually I messed up one last time by eating some pepperoni, but the experience was different. Because I had gotten so used to eating more wholesome meals, the pepperoni was such an intense salt bomb that I found it inedible (and that’s coming from a salt-fiend).
But the other thing that changed was in my mind. Consciously I was already well aware that vegan diets are entirely adequate nutritionally. But a lifetime of unconscious carnist societal conditioning gave me this constant feeling as if I could not survive on plants alone. That was one of the things that always got in the way - this strange feeling like I was missing something and had to eat the stuff that was missing or I would die.
But when I bit into that pepperoni I suddenly had this calm recognition: “I don’t need this. In fact this isn’t food.”
And things have only gotten easier over time. Hopefully this helps?
Literally the only strictly necessary supplement for vegans is b12, and if you understand the science of b12, then you know that you either should be supplementing it anyway, or you’re just rolling the dice.
By contrast there are entire whole-food plant-based communities who routinely report the near-miraculous benefits they gain after adopting the diet, such as cholesterol levels that aren’t deadly.
I can respect that you mean well, but there’s a lot of issues with your comment, which I’ll get into.
The first problem here is that you’re still treating chicks like they’re commodities. What their carcasses are used for is irrelevant, because we’re never going to continue progressing morally until we can learn to see these beings - who think, feel, and have their own qualia - as someone, not something. We can discuss side issues all day, everyday, like the environment, health, and pandemic potential. But we also have to stop being afraid to recognize this as a matter of justice.
Protein is not the only nutrient that matters, and it’s generally effortlessly easy to get all the protein you need on plants alone. The view that people can’t get enough protein on plants is such a thoroughly debunked myth that it’s embarrassing that vegans have to dispell this nonsense in virtually every discussion still.
This is a dangerously bad take. In the first place, eggs do not contain all essential nutrients. Eggs either completely lack some essential vitamins and minerals, or have them in such low quantities that you would have to eat an insane amount of eggs to meet your daily needs. Just as importantly is that the nutrients are a package deal - eggs contain almost as much fat as they do protein, and are so high in cholesterol and saturated fats that the more you eat, the faster you are on your way to a heart attack, stroke, and/or erectile dysfunction.
Protein “incompleteness” in plants is so misunderstood that it’s effectively an outright myth. Virtually all plants have all 9 of the amino acids that are essential for humans. Where the incompleteness comes in is that human muscle tissue is composed of amino acids in a particular ratio. If we don’t have enough of even one of those aminos in our diet, our bodies can’t synthesize new muscle. For this reason it was believed that the closer a food matches the amino acid ratios in our muscles, the better that food is for gaining muscle. Obviously this way of thinking supports the idea of consuming other being’s muscle tissue since that’s naturally going to be the closest to our own (and yes that kind of thinking implies that cannibalism provides the “best” protein).
But that line of thinking breaks down under scrutiny. For starters, there are thousands of chemicals our bodies make that require amino acids, why are they not a factor in discussing “protein quality”? Second, a food being really high in protein is not necessarily a good thing. There’s growing evidence that animal proteins themselves may be harmful for health and longevity.
https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/plant-based-protein-lowers-risk-premature-death-heart-disease-dementia
Anyway, I really want to drive home the point that the protein incompleteness thing is damn near a nonissue. If you’re a person who is strength training on a vegan diet, yes, you will make your life easier by diversifying your protein sources. But for the average person, the low amount of methionine in beans can easily be overcome by either simply eating some grains from time to time (or daily, grains are fucking great), or the person could eat 4 servings of beans in a day to get their rda of methionine (and all other essential amino acids).
Food synergies are important for everyone, not just vegans. If for example you’re trying to get the antioxidant and antiinflammatory benefits of eating berries, obviously you would rather increase those benefits by getting the synergies that come from eating a mix of berries, as opposed to mixing those berries with milk or bananas which are known to reduce or cancel out the berries beneficial effects.
Anyway, I’ll finish my protein rant with a link to a YouTube video on the subject, from a real nutritional scientist who specializes in the subject. Tl;dw? The bottom line is that it’s not only possible, but easy to get all the protein we need on plants alone. Carnists seriously need to just drop the whole protein thing because y’all just do not have a case in your favor here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMwf_9wqWY0&pp=ygUqZXZlcnl0aGluZyB5b3Uga25vdyBhYm91dCBwcm90ZWluIGlzIHdyb25n
I’m not going to get into this one because other commenters have already done so. But no, that’s preposterous on the face of it. Any animal agriculture is fundamentally going to take more land and resources to produce food because those animals need to be raised on plants, so why not raise the plants for ourselves directly? And before anyone chimes in about the suitability of land for agriculture, maybe take some time to learn more about things like Permaculture and regenerative ag. If a person can grow a small food forest on an abandoned parking lot with 12 inches of manure in the midwest, or Geoff Lawton can re-green the desert, it warrants investigating just how many places we can make abundant. Anyway, Cowspiracy is a good documentary to learn more about animal ag land use.
No, the purchasing and consumption of eggs is what drives chick culling. They do it because male chicks are considered a waste product of that industry, and any commodities sold from it likely grew out of a way to recoup costs. If you want to end chick culling, the best way to do it is go vegan.
From a practical standpoint, raising your own chickens puts you at risk of getting h5n1. The more time goes by, the more that risk increases. From a moral standpoint, you might be causing less suffering to chickens this way, but you’d still be causing suffering as well as being an exploiter of that animal. Chickens have been unnaturally bred to produce way more eggs than their bodies can handle. Not only is this prodigious amount of egg laying an uncomfortable experience for them, it generally leads to nutrient deficiencies that end up causing their bones to break under their own weight. They can regain that lost nutrition by consuming their own eggs, which is something they sometimes naturally do.
As an alternative, consider either supporting an existing animal sanctuary, or start your own. As a bonus, you could use their manure to help grow a garden. Veganic agriculture can involve animals, as long as those animals are free-living, safe, comfortable, and they’re not being exploited.
But up there you just said… oh nevermind. 🤔 Yes, go vegan. Also, in most places it’s less expensive to be vegan, especially when you factor in the cost of healthcare.
A weekend bbq is a lot more special when it becomes fully uncoupled from the guilt of living on the commodification, exploitation, suffering, and atrocities of other sentient beings. Reducitarianism might be gaining traction, but it really hasn’t led to any appreciable results. Experts in fields like health coaching all insist that the most effective way to adhere to a more ethical diet and lifestyle is to go all in. If you mess up, that’s okay, just forgive yourself and try again. It’s absolutely worth it.