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Zeusthecat

Is It Wrong To Eat Meat?

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I feel the same way, except instead of finding the moral high horse vegans/vegetarians are on surreal, I find the moral high horse ridden by people who pull your line of argumentation to be pretty surreal. I mean, it's one thing to find "I'm vegan because I don't think it's okay to kill animals for food" weird because it ignores the fact that lots of food production hurts lots of things, even if it's vegetable production, but I find "I'm not vegan because horrible stuff happens with all food" weird because it ignores the fact that horrible stuff happens outside the realm of food production too. All the rare earth metals in your cell phone and your other electronics, your clothes, the gas in your car, everything else... I mean it's not like this is all morally unproblematic and food production is the only unfortunate morass. Getting wigged out by vegans who think they're one up on everyone else when in fact their "one up" is very small seems to me no more or less sensible than getting wigged out by people who say "almost all food production is evil" because production of all sorts of stuff is evil.

I mean, yes, if you want to say "there are problems larger than what happens to non-human animals in food production when people eat meat rather than just vegan food," then yes, you're correct. I don't think any sensible vegan has ever disputed this. I'm a vegan and I certainly wouldn't dispute it. But that's not really the point. There are problems larger than what happens in food production when people eat food rather than starve to death! They're the problems of global capitalism with respect to the production of almost everything. Totally true! But I take it that when I point this out, you're not about to withdraw your point about how almost all food production has moral issues.

And if you're not going to withdraw your point, I don't see why vegans ought to withdraw our point. Yes, it's true, there are problems in the world aside from the torture we inflict on animals on a massive scale for no reason other than that we'd rather eat a hamburger for lunch than a vegan dal. No shit! But that's not really an answer to the question "is it okay to kill and eat non-human animals for food, especially when it's not necessary for survival?" Because no matter HOW evil carrots are, the answer to the meat question seems to me worth asking just like the answer to the "is all food evil" question is worth asking even though products other than food face ethical issues as well.

 

As I attempted to clarify in a later post, the question was, "Is it wrong to eat meat?"  I didn't take that post in the most productive direction, which I already admitted.  My point was that our food economy is a ethical nightmare, and we're all guilty of various degrees of problems because of it.  The answer to "Is it wrong to eat X?" is going to be yes more often than no.  Is it wrong to eat meat, fucking yeah.  It's also wrong to eat bananas.  Wrong to eat tomatoes.  Wrong to eat chocolate.  Wrong to eat bread.  Unless you're growing your own food, or are incredibly discerning in who you buy it from, the answer for a whole bunch of foods is "yes". 

 

It's not a question of is it wrong.  The questions are: Why is it wrong?  How much can that wrong be mitigated?  Are there unintended consequences of that mitigation?  Is this an ethical calculus that I can win, or am I just going to have to make the decision I'm comfortable with and live with it?  If your primary concern is that we're torturing animals, then I'd agree that the conditions in several factory farm industries are atrocious and should be done away with.  If the argument is that the raising, killing and eating of any animal is torture or ethically wrong, then I'll disagree.  If the concern is that it is incredibly wasteful, in some cases that's correct, and in other cases its not.  There are certainly examples of meat production that are incredibly wasteful (I named the American beef industry as being the biggest as far as I know), but there are other animals and practices where are not nearly as wasteful and can use a wide variety of resources that wouldn't otherwise be going into food production.  We're pretty sure there are long term health risks to meat heavy diets, and the solution is moderation.  The problem there isn't meat itself. 

 

I also think it is actually worth bringing up the problems with other food supplies in this discussion, unlike bringing up say the rare earth materials in my phone, because if I'm not going to eat meat, then I'm going to be eating something else.  And if I'm going to think about the ethics of where my meat comes from, I should also probably be thinking about the ethics of where the rest of my food comes from.  I am not going to be eating my phone anytime soon, so I'm not going to worry about the ethics of its production in a conversation about the food I'm going to put in my stomach. 

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Do you feel similar about killing human beings, or do you think there can be reasons to enforce "one idea of morality" to prevent, for instance, people from killing other human beings?I'm vegan, other people in this thread are vegan, I can assure you it's possible...

 

No, obviously.. maybe I wasn't clear. 

What i'm saying is some people live in circumstances where hunting and living off the meat is necessary or a significant part of their life. To expect people to live by vegetarian values isn't fair because there are too many lifestyle variables in our current society. Folks living in very rural areas exist in a completely different situation than those in towns or cities and I think the value of meat eating has different values to each. That's why I think its up to the individual to decide for themselves.

If you see what I mean.

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How about this thought. Animals and vegetables are mistreated in the food industry in order to meet demand for food. The real problem is demand. So maybe we should ask if reproduction is wrong.

 

You really should read Conspiracy against the human race, I reckon you would have fun with it.

 

I am a vegetarian because I can't stand the taste of meat. Ethical and Moral debates are pretty much non-existant for me but I do think that there are ethical concerns to be had when it comes to the way that we, as a race, are hastening our own demise.

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Dude, I'm sorry but this is just absolutely false. You can literally find all of the essential nutrients on a purely plant based diet. You have soybeans, hemp seeds, rice/bean combo, or just a wide mix of veggies to get your complete proteins, nutritional yeast for vitamin B12, and so on and so on.

 

 

Just to clarify this point that Zeus makes.

 

You absolutely can get all the essential amino acids from a vegan diet, it's also very easy on a vegetarian diet thanks to eggs, cheese and milk. The reason many people don't is that if you don't eat a wide variety of the high protein vegan foods, you will not get all those essential amino acids as no vegan food has every single essential aa, unlike meat and dairy.

The problem comes when vegans or vegetarians are fussy or lazy eaters. They don't eat the full compliment of high protein foods and miss out on those essential aas leading to health problems. 

So basically the people who come off a vegan diet for health reasons are doing it wrong. 

 

This debate is weird for me. In the way SBM puts it, ethically, I think eating meat is bad. For health reasons (especially for people who do a lot of resistance training or intense sports like me) I think eating meat is important. Environmental? Yeah meat is wrong, there's no argument there.

I was vegetarian for 4 years, but I stopped because I like the taste and the feel of meat. I was dreaming about meat for the final 3 years of my 4 year vegetarianism to the point where my subconscious made me give up and eat it again. I found I ate a lot more healthily when I included meat in my diet, I lost a lot of weight too.

 

I also work on animals, so while mice are never used for meat, I think it's an important for me to consider and rationalise separately. In the end, I rationalise eating meat to myself because I would not have a problem killing an animal to eat it. Animals have zero responsibility to anything other than their progeny, which makes me think that they are less important than humans. While some people also have a similar level of responsibility to animals, we all have the potential for more, which absolutely separates us. We also have a much higher ability to suffer, whether a person is mentally impaired or not, compared to many animals. 

 

I guess you have to draw a line. I think eating primates is wrong. I think testing on primates is wrong. A cow and a chicken are not anywhere near the intelligence level/ability to suffer as a primate. Pigs...they come close but frankly I like their taste too much to care.

 

I find this hard because I'm well versed in many of the vegan/veg arguments, and I agree with most of them. I just choose to be selfish.

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I think it's important to point out that excluding meat from your diet and finding plant based substitutes for nutrients isn't always the most ecologically friendly/sustainable thing to do, if you take into account the ecological costs of importing a certain plant produce may in some cases outweigh the costs of a meat produce that is local. I just want to point out that it's a bit more complicated than 'meat is always bad environmentally speaking' (although yeah, pretty much).

 

Entomophagy (an insectivorous diet) has been shown to be more ecologically sustainable and having high nutritional density. Technically it's still meat but I think many people have different ethical/cultural views about insects compared to other animals.

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I would very much like some (more) vegan and vegetarian recipes from you all to be posted in one of the cooking threads, so I can cook and eat them.

 

This doesn't have anything to do with the ethical or moral questions of the whole thing, but I have a feeling for me personally the complexity of getting the full nutritional value out of a vegan or vegetarian diet might not be economically viable. When I'm doing it right, I can eat for under $5 a day including yogurt, cheese, eggs, with 40% of my intake being lean protein and all the frozen veggies I can cram in. I don't think I could do that without chicken or pork, though.

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I would very much like some (more) vegan and vegetarian recipes from you all to be posted in one of the cooking threads, so I can cook and eat them.

 

This doesn't have anything to do with the ethical or moral questions of the whole thing, but I have a feeling for me personally the complexity of getting the full nutritional value out of a vegan or vegetarian diet might not be economically viable. When I'm doing it right, I can eat for under $5 a day including yogurt, cheese, eggs, with 40% of my intake being lean protein and all the frozen veggies I can cram in. I don't think I could do that without chicken or pork, though.

 

I'm right there with you. And I'm sure that someone (maybe not necessarily someone here) could respond to this thread and layout exactly how one could do it, but for me health and cooking is largely intuitive and not only would changing my diet cause economic stress but it'd just take a lot of work to learn enough to intuit cooking with ingredients that are not familiar to me in order to meet nutritional needs.

 

That said, I make every effort to cook without meat whenever possible. I really enjoy mushrooms, so I often find myself making stuff like shepherd's pie but with a rich vegetarian filling instead of with meat because I know I can make it tasty. I doubt I could do that with all of my meals every day without a lot more work.

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I was at a vegetarian restaurant the other day, this little Tamil/Indian cafe. It was so very very good. If you want to start eating more vegetarian, then i think a really good place to start would be with delicious curries and other foods from india. I get these amazing chana masala and dahl spice mixes from the farmers market (an indian man imports them and makes the mixes) and they are just the best. Really good for a freezer dinner. Outside of that, i have a lot more trouble dispensing with meat in some form, even if it is just a small bit of bacon in pasta to add some flavour.

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I was at a vegetarian restaurant the other day, this little Tamil/Indian cafe. It was so very very good. If you want to start eating more vegetarian, then i think a really good place to start would be with delicious curries and other foods from india. I get these amazing chana masala and dahl spice mixes from the farmers market (an indian man imports them and makes the mixes) and they are just the best. Really good for a freezer dinner. Outside of that, i have a lot more trouble dispensing with meat in some form, even if it is just a small bit of bacon in pasta to add some flavour.

 

Oh yeah, I love curries with vegetables. The spices can really elevate anything, whether it's meat or veg. I once made a curry which practically only swapped chicken stock with veg stock and chicken with roasted butternut squash that was absolutely amazing.

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Ya, i find a good curry is usually strongly enough flavoured that adding chicken or some other mild meat is really only for texture. If you can replace the texture then you are onto a winner. Mutton is another matter, but that is pretty rare these days^^I make my dahh a little undercooked so there is a lovely texture to the lentils. Dry roasted spiced cauliflower (add potatoes if required) is excellent too as the dish has a great crunch. Make some yoghurt sauce for the side.

 

Actually, one thing i really like is halloumi just dry fried in a pan. Have it with lots of salad and some guacamole or something.

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Okay so why do I keep hearing about people that have to come off vegan diets for health reasons? I'm aware that vegans exist because I read the thread and I'm not a fucking idiot.

Because some people are bad at feeding themselves? I know people who eat everything, meat included, who have gotten scurvy, iron deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, etc. Some people just aren't good food eaters. Meanwhile I've been a vegan since forever and I'm perfectly healthy.

No, obviously.. maybe I wasn't clear. 

What i'm saying is some people live in circumstances where hunting and living off the meat is necessary or a significant part of their life. To expect people to live by vegetarian values isn't fair because there are too many lifestyle variables in our current society. Folks living in very rural areas exist in a completely different situation than those in towns or cities and I think the value of meat eating has different values to each. That's why I think its up to the individual to decide for themselves.

If you see what I mean.

Would you say the same thing about human sacrifice?

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You absolutely can get all the essential amino acids from a vegan diet, it's also very easy on a vegetarian diet thanks to eggs, cheese and milk. The reason many people don't is that if you don't eat a wide variety of the high protein vegan foods, you will not get all those essential amino acids as no vegan food has every single essential aa, unlike meat and dairy.

 

Just wanted to point out that there are two that contain all 9. Soybeans and hemp seeds. Rice and beans together also get you all 9 so that is a pretty easy option too.

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Would you say the same thing about human sacrifice?

Yes. Wouldn't you?

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Because some people are bad at feeding themselves? I know people who eat everything, meat included, who have gotten scurvy, iron deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, etc. Some people just aren't good food eaters. Meanwhile I've been a vegan since forever and I'm perfectly healthy.

Would you say the same thing about human sacrifice?

 

You got on my case for bringing up the ethics of the global food economy, and you go with human sacrifice.  Nice. 

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i get the distinct feeling idle thumbs is suddenly infiltrated by big hemp.

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I thought we could conduct this conversation respectfully. I think it is an interesting conversation and I would appreciate it if people could be respectful of each other's choices and avoid hyperbole and personal attacks.

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Just wanted to point out that there are two that contain all 9. Soybeans and hemp seeds. Rice and beans together also get you all 9 so that is a pretty easy option too.

 

Didn't know that! I've never had hemp seeds, they're not readily available in supermarkets here. And yeah, mixing different veg is a pretty easy way to do it. Apparently broccoli has a decent level/profile too. 

 

In agreement with dibs, if I make curry, it's vegetarian every time. I usually eat 3/7 days a week without meat. I also forgot to mention the economic argument. In the UK at least, eating vegetarian is significantly cheaper.

 

I saw a sketch on the Mitchell and Webb Look, where a meat eater was irritated that a vegetarian household didn't make a meat dish for him, despite him making a vegetarian dish for them at a previous dinner party. Kind of interesting way to look at it. That vegetarians are unlikely to cook for a meat eaters preference, but expect to be catered for individually. 

 

The restaurant my father works at has no vegetarian dish on the menu, and so any vegetarians get their food special ordered (I always order veg food there because I know it'll all be fresh). 

Edit: Not trying to make a point with this, I just find it interesting. I understand what it's like for people to be angry that you don't eat meat, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The number of times people told me I was wrong for being vegetarian was innumerable and that was only for a short amount of time. The "eating meat is natural" argument was the most common, and by far the most irritating.

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The restaurant my father works at has no vegetarian dish on the menu, and so any vegetarians get their food special ordered (I always order veg food there because I know it'll all be fresh). 

 

This has always been really frustrating for me. There are a lot of restaurants that either have no vegetarian option on the menu or you are limited to just getting a house salad or some other modified dish. I think it's better now than when I was growing up but you would think there would be a more even split.

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I saw a sketch on the Mitchell and Webb Look, where a meat eater was irritated that a vegetarian household didn't make a meat dish for him, despite him making a vegetarian dish for them at a previous dinner party. Kind of interesting way to look at it. That vegetarians are unlikely to cook for a meat eaters preference, but expect to be catered for individually. 

 

Any vegetarian I have ever cooked for has been very easygoing and only requested that I don't give them anything that has meat or meat products in it. They have always been happy to go with just the veg etc. from the meal i have cooked. I, on the other hand, feel bad about that, so i always make a veg version of the meal (stuff like having meat chilli and bean chilli as options is very easy, and bean chilli is damn good in any case; if i'm doing indian i'll always have two dishes one of which is veg). (my vegetarian friends range from hardcore vegetarians since childhood, to Hindu vegetarians, to a formerly Hindu vegetarian who doesn't follow the practice anymore, but simply can't stomach meat - also, one who fell off the wagon and demanded rare beef; I am a committed omnivore).

 

As for meat eaters crying that a meal doesn't contain meat? I find it so odd that people can't enjoy their meal without knowing there is meat in it. Do other omnivores have a compulsion to eat meat with every meal? Do they slice sausages into their breakfast cereal?

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Well I don't eat cereal but I do typically have bacon/eggs for breakfast (when I actually decide to eat/make breakfast).

 

Also I've been thinking about it a lot since this thread came up and I think I cold give up meat but I could never ever ever give up cheese. I fucking love cheese all right. Also eggs. So maybe I could be a vegetarian, but definitely not a vegan. Wait, vegetarians eat eggs, right?

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I always ask about eggs. I think they generally do eat them, but don't quote me on it. Some vegetarians eat all cheese, but some don't if there is animal rennet in the cheese (i know this for years, from when i was a vegetarian for a week as a teenager). 

 

 

Brb. I have an idea.

 

 

Excited \o/

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Well then I could totally be a vegetarian!

 

EDIT: Except for the part where I eat like shit anyway and I wouldn't know how to eat and I mean you know I should probably just be more responsible like I dunno an adult but uhhhhh. (Honestly, when I actually do cook at home, I very very very rarely eat Meat. Which just means I need to learn how to cook, I guess.)

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