Oh man, those preachy vegans; always shoving it down our throats with videos of animals being abused and slaughtered. How dare they push their beliefs on to me. I don't push mine on to them!
Do meat eaters really hold the belief that the cruelty, suffering and pain inflicted upon animals by the factory farming industry is justified by a desire to eat meat?
I'm not sure they do. I think the majority of people just avoid facing and admitting the truth.
There's a reason slaughter houses don't have windows. There is a reason that for so many years, until the power of social media began to remove the veil, that the abuse, which is perpetrated daily on a massive scale, was largely hidden from the public.
This veil, combined with clever marketing, which often features happy cows willing to hand over their milk, smiling pigs willing to hand over their flesh, and dancing chickens happy to be fried, disconnects the link between the animal's life/sentience and the meat/secretion on the plate.
I used to be a meat-eater. I have experience of living on both sides of the fence. And it is amazing just how different things look when you are able to lift the veil and stare the truth in the face.
The thing is this: if it were the case that we had to farm animals on this industrial scale to survive, I can understand people not wanting to be reminded of where their food comes from; no one wants to be continually reminded of a necessary evil, right?
But we don't. It is unnecessary.
So why do people get so angry and hateful towards vegans? Why is it that people are so anti those trying to reduce suffering, pain and destruction in the world?
It's weird.
I look back on 35 years of eating meat. I recall the times that I met vegans and vegetarians. My great uncle was a vegan. My uncle (a different one) was/is a vegan. Over the years, I worked with two vegans and a number of vegetarians.
I always respected their opinions and was interested in the decision they had made. However, it was completely contrary to what I was being taught, especially being heavily involved in sport.
I never felt any hate or resentment after debating their stance on animal agriculture / the meat and dairy industries. I certainly never accused them of preaching; perhaps because I didn't see them in a religious capacity.
In fact, the way they were living their lives was simply an extension of my own compassion for animals, yet I still ate animals because I thought that I needed to.
I was taught that those people had their hearts in the right place but that they were naive and would succumb to some kind of illness or disease through poor nutrition.
I recall a time when my uncle was handing out leaflets outside of McDonald's to educate people on why they shouldn't be eating the food. Some of my family members mocked his participation.
I thought that was unkind. I didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing, and at the back of my mind I knew that beyond the golden arches were something very cruel.
I was always an inquisitive person who asked a lot of questions, but not educated enough to go out there and connect the dots, at least not at that age.
In my early teens I began to refuse red meat. I distinctly remember telling my mother on a few occasions that the beef in my spaghetti bolognese “tasted like the cow”.
I look back on this as a turning point for me, but it would still be many years and take many other junctions in the road to lead me to a plant-based lifestyle.
We Used to Have an Excuse, Not Anymore
As the years went by and I met more vegans and vegetarians through different social channels, my general defence in debate was to use what I now understand to be pseudo-nutrition.
Much of this information was picked up in the gym, from football coaches and sports masters, and from magazines and other literature which I just took as gospel.
Years later, when social media started to lift the veil on the animal abuse and the environmental destruction, I would acknowledge it by saying that I tried my best to eat organic, so-called “humane” meat.
As an animal lover – or at least so I purported to be at the time – I'd wince at the videos I saw and look away, unable to watch the harrowing images.
One way to make myself feel better about the situation was to follow the paleo diet and eat “free range” meat and eggs. This also excluded dairy.
This diet also equipped me with the misinformation to debate on the premise that I was following the “diet of my ancestors”.
Unfortunately this movement was fairly quickly debunked by anthropologists, biologists and the like. There's also a mountain of scientific evidence to show that high animal protein, high fat diets like Atkins, Paleo and Keto are dangerous in the medium to long term.
Anyway, that's for another post…
The thing is, the argument for the nutritional value of meat and dairy may have, at one time, had a leg to stand on – particularly because people were subject to limited availability of knowledge.
No one should blame their parents or themselves for not asking more questions, not going to the library and digging into health journals, or using themselves as test dummy to see if an alternative diet was possible.
Looking back, we now know that there was a huge amount of evidence that excess animal protein negatively affects health and contributes to numerous diseases, but because it didn't fit the mainstream narrative, we weren't going to find out about it.
We didn't have the vehicle of social media, and the information resource that is the Internet. The average person just wouldn't have been able to uncover this knowledge, and if they had they most likely wouldn't have known what to do with it and how to get started.
Even today, doctors still only have handful of hours of nutritional training during the 16 years before fully qualifying. If their knowledge of nutrition is so basic, what hope does that hold for their patients?
Consider that the extensive findings of The China Study weren't published until 2005, and the work of Nathan Pritikin, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Dean Ornish, and biochemist Thomas Campbell was something largely buried in peer-reviewed medical journals, and only experienced by those lucky enough to come into contact with such progressive nutrition-focused doctors and researchers.
Of course, there were people who did seek this information out, my great uncle was among the few. Mother Nature rest his soul: he was by far the fittest member of my family and was walking everywhere, every day, slim and happy until the end.
It was people like my uncle that inspired the whole foods revolution of the 70s and 80s, and indeed influenced my mother, who raised me with the principle of eating whole, unprocessed foods.
But the lobbying power of the meat and dairy industries, and the championing of farming and its importance to the economy has meant that the food pyramid, and the food chain has always been controlled by those with vested interests in seeing the population consume as much meat and dairy as possible.
However, with what we know now, through the power of the internet and broad access to peer-reviewed scientific research, nutrition is no longer an acceptable excuse. In fact, it should be the primary driver in pushing for change.
That being said: because people are empowering themselves with nutritional knowledge, the picture is being deliberately muddied with misinformation to make us confused and second guess the truths we find.
But some things are undeniable. They are scientific facts.
We know that the standard western diet is harming us. We know that meat is carcinogenic, particularly processed meat.
We know that dairy is very unhealthy. We know a plant-based diet can reverse heart disease, type II diabetes, and can help prevent the development of certain types of cancer.
But still people persist with eating more and more meat and dairy products.
The American Cancer Society says that you have a 47% lifetime chance of getting cancer; if you are female it's still a whopping 38%.
The rates at which Americans die of cancer are among the highest in the world, except for types that are vetted for such as lung cancer caused by smoking. So even after 50 years of the war on cancer, hardly any progress has been made.
Yet we still spend billions of dollars worth of taxpayers money on bringing new, more efficient chemotherapy drugs to market. Why not spend some of that money on nutritional research?
…Because there isn't a lot of money in green vegetables, especially when people can grow them themselves.
Overweight Americans significantly outnumber those of a healthy weight.
According to the National Centre for Health Statistics, more than 1/3 of the adult 20 years of age and above are obese. Similar trends are occurring in children as young as two years of age.
According to the Diabetes Association, 1 in 11 Americans now has diabetes and the ratio continues to rise.
And then there's heart disease, which will kill 1 of every 3 Americans. According to the American Heart Association, over 60 million Americans suffer from some form of cardiovascular disease including high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease.
Yet everyone still continues to ignore the elephant in the room, which is the evidence that very close to a hundred percent of heart disease can be prevented and even reversed by healthy diet – consisting primarily of plant-based, whole foods.
Lifestyle diseases are out of control. A large percentage of them are preventable through dietary change, particularly within the first 60 years of life.
And then there is the environmental destruction. Farming meat, beef in particular, is destroying the planet; the very thing supporting the existence of our species.
Beef requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases. ~ The Guardian.
- 1 to 2 acres of rainforest cleared every minute to make way for grazing animals.
- 51% of greenhouse gas emissions are contributed by animal agriculture.
- 50%+ of the world's grain is fed to animals, and not to the 800 million people going hungry every day.
Factory farming and mass animal agriculture in general is highly unsustainable and impractical. It has a negative impact on our health, on the planet, and on the animals.
It is unnecessary.
I am going to stop there on nutrition and the impact to the environment because I cover this in many other posts, and indeed in my replies in the comment section of many of my posts.
Whether you agree with a particular statistic, or a particular study, it is undeniable that a person can live a very healthy, long life on a plant-based diet, while simultaneously reducing their negative impact on the environment and animals.
Sure, you can eat a small amount of “good quality” meat and remain healthy and fit, but when considering the broader ramifications, why would you?
Even if we say it's absolutely equal, that a plant-based diet and a meat-based diet are just as beneficial to health as each other.
Even if we level the playing field like that and call it a draw, it still begs the question: why would you unnecessarily pay someone else to cause immeasurable suffering to non-human sentient beings for the sake of unnecessarily desiring the taste of their flesh?
The reality is that this is simply a matter of right and wrong.
We have a choice.
As an intelligent species, with a healthier food alternative for every instance of flesh, we have a choice to not participate in cruelty and the destruction of our planet.
It is just a simple case of doing the right thing.
How Animal Creulty Videos Challenge Your Conscience
Out of the big three – animal welfare, nutrition, ecology – it seems as though vegans are most disliked for exposing animal cruelty.
Tell a meat eater to eat more vegetables because the Seventh Day Adventist study says they will live up to 6 years longer and they will happily take a look at the research.
Tell a meat eater to go vegan to stop cruelty to animals and they roll their eyes with that “Oh, God, stop preaching, will you” look.
Vegans are like so annoying. They bang on about animals feeling pain and how more than 3,000 animals die every second in slaughterhouses around the world. Actually, though, one did tell me that eating less KFC would make my skin clearer, so maybe it's not all bad.
Why is this?
Because there is no moral justification for selectively breeding animals to imprison them, raise them to a particular physical specification, feed them an unnatural diet in an unnatural environment, cause them pain, fear, and distress, and then slaughter them for their flesh, or keep them enslaved for their secretions.
There is no defence.
Exposing the video footage and images exposes the individual watching.
There is nowhere for the conscience to hide.
That is an uncomfortable feeling.
People hate on vegans because vegans become an unwanted mirror of conscience.
I had always considered myself an animal lover. We have always had a pet dog in our family. I could not bear the thought of someone abusing an animal in any way. I just could not watch animal cruelty videos.
Then, back in 2004 when Facebook started and I was exposed to horrific footage that I've never seen before and couldn't imagine happening, I would watch a few seconds and then just turn it off.
Had I forced myself to watch these videos, I would have had to look in the mirror and admit to myself that no, I don't love animals, that I am a hypocrite and that I am partly responsible for this horrific, unnecessary cruelty.
Facing the reality of the evil of factory farming doesn't just bring in to question your love of animals, but your entire moral compass as a human being.
I mean, what kind of person turns a blind eye to this?
What type of person does this unnecessarily?
Well, me, at one time.
When the truth is laid bare in front of you, all you can do is turn a blind eye and try to forget about it before your next meal; and of course hate the vegan who keeps shoving this truth in your face.
Rather than acknowledge the truth and accept that supporting the cruelty is wrong and selfish, people have a tendency to curse the messenger for trying to protect animals from suffering.
They chastise the vegan for their kindness and compassion. They shoot the messenger. It's easier.
It's madness.
What sort of world do we live in when the person defending suffering and destruction is verbally attacked for upsetting the status quo?
In the past I have thought twice about sharing such horrific videos with friends, because there's an unspoken etiquette surrounding exposing people to such horror without their consent.
Some would say it isn't necessary to keep sharing these videos and images because people are already aware and it causes upset.
But that is the point of sharing the video!
If you had footage of someone beating a child, you would feel compelled to take action and show that to the police.
You would probably do the same if you had footage of someone beating a dog.
These horrific acts are unnecessary.
They cause pain and suffering and emotional trauma. They should not happen.
The abuse that animals are subjected to from birth to slaughter in the animal agriculture industry does not need to happen.
The same way fox-hunting does not need to happen, fur farms do not need to exist, and 90% or more of animal testing doesn't need to exist.
The only difference is that slaughterhouses are not illegal.
None of the abuses that take place in a slaughterhouse are ever prosecuted, despite the video evidence of workers punching animals, kicking animals, stubbing cigarettes out on animals and going out of their way to inflict even more unnecessary pain and suffering onto the animals.
I understand it's awful to watch.
It's a really negative vibe to have those videos or images show up on your screen.
You're trying to have a good day, and then some vegan tries to pull at your conscience by reminding you where your KFC and McDonald's comes from.
No animal lover wants to watch animals being abused, do they?
You can't bear to look at that crippled chicken, who can barely stand up because he/she has been fed steroids to plump him up to an abnormal size.
Why? Because it's abhorrent. And you are having chicken for dinner.
You can't bear to watch a calf crying as it has its throat slit by halal butchers.
Why? Because that calf has been stolen from its mother 48 hours after birth, who by the way carried that calf for nine months. Moreover, it's an “inhumane way” to kill an animal for meat. It's darn right evil.
You can't bear to see a pig having its teeth pulled out and tail cut off so it doesn't attack other pigs, or become the victim of an attack, in the overcrowded and filthy pen it shares.
Why? Because you can hear the screams and almost feel the pain. it's haunting. But bacon, though!
You can't bear to watch live chicks being lobbed into a blender, or more cost-effectively smashed into the concrete floor.
Why? Because chicks are cute, they've done nothing wrong, and it's evil to end a life so callously.
The exact same reasons you don't want to watch these videos are the exact reasons you should watch them.
This is what you are contributing to.
You too are responsible for this suffering.
Your money pays for this torture.
The vegan gets the blame for unwrapping you from the cotton wool of the supermarket floor and exposing you to the prison and slaughterhouse that predates your shrink-wrapped flesh.
Don't think for a minute I ‘m saying that if you were stuck on a desert island with only animals to kill and eat that you shouldn't eat the animals.
This is about doing what is necessary.
All this suffering, however, is unnecessary.
If you knew a child was being sexually abused next door, would you keep quiet or go to the police?
If your neighbour offered you money to keep quiet, would you still go to the police?
I'm guessing you would go to the police.
Why? Because it's wrong to inflict pain and suffering onto another sentient being.
The crime is even greater when the person involved has no way of defending themselves.
Every being has the right to life, the right to be treated equally.
No man or woman deserves to be raped or beaten. Nor does any animal.
These Animals Need Help – So Why Should Vegans Stay Silent?
So why then do people expect vegans to hide the torture of defenceless animals?
Why do they expect vegans to stay silent and let voiceless sentient beings die in their billions behind an iron curtain of corporate exploitation?
If you think it's wrong for someone to stick up for a defenceless baby pig, to want that pig to stay with its mum and enjoy nature as you have had the chance to do so; if you think repeatedly raping a cow so you can steal the mil of its calf is acceptable; then I put it to you that you would have no problem turning a blind eye to the abuse of children.
Animals are like children, they look to us for protection. They are defenceless and vulnerable; they need our love and care.
There is no difference. Science tells us that animals feel parallel levels of anxiety, fear, and pain as humans do.
Animals are amazing, and that includes pigs, cows and chickens.
We are still learning about their social capabilities and ability to sense danger and experience emotions.
We are even using dogs to detect seizures in humans and other physiological problems.
We use animals to save our lives.
In a way, some of this does make some sense to me: Humans are conditioned to accept war and violence against each other from a young age. We are raised by politicians who excuse violence through a veil of policy and democracy.
So it really isn't that much of a stretch to then teach kids that is necessary to abuse and kill some animals and not others.
We teach kids that enslavement, torture and abuse of animals is okay, as long as we benefit.
We then contradict this with speciesism: telling kids that cute animals like puppies and kittens should never be eaten. We then look to countries in other parts of the world where they do eat the cute animals like cats and dogs and tell our children that this is evil.
How hypocritical and irresponsible is this moral compass?
Kids are still taught in school that they are omnivores, when any reputable biologist will tell you that by design humans are unspecialised frugivores.
Mis-education and manipulation of the truth regarding nutrition has misled generations of the past. But generations going forward have the ability to access truth. And the world is changing its eating habits accordingly.
Vegans expose truth. They should be commended for their actions. They should not be made to feel guilty in any way, or shy away from sharing the truth that the meat industry desperately tries to hide.
The meat industry deliberately keeps the media out of slaughter houses because they know that fewer people will eat meat when they witness such atrocities. It is no coincidence that veganism in the UK alone has risen from around 3% to 7% in just a few years.
This is because of a good few people standing up and not being afraid to go against the grain, against the food pyramid, against the status quo and narrative set by corporate advertising.
Of course, some people don't give a damn about the animals, and they are just into reaping the health benefits of being able to sustain a healthy weight, reverse health conditions and protect themselves against disease.
But even this aspect of eating a plant-based diet is something they probably wouldn't of realised had it not been for those people speaking out and revealing the truth about nutrition, environmental destruction and animal abuse.
So next time you see that a vegan has shared a video on Facebook exposing what happens in a slaughterhouse, instead of getting angry with the messenger, get angry with yourself.
Get angry with yourself for not being able to watch the videos and face the reality.
There really is only one reason you get angry with those preachy vegans, and that's because you know they are right.
There is no moral justification for this evil.
You are complicit with this cruelty.
I was complicit too.
You don't have to be, though. It is a choice.
This truth is a hard pill to swallow, especially when you realise your actions are causing pain and suffering on a daily basis.
Once you have taken a long, hard look in the mirror, get angry with the meat industry: the lobbyists and shareholders who prevent the truth surfacing for their own selfish gain.
Get angry with the government: those who pocket huge sums of tax off of animal agriculture and its sub-industries (particularly the fashion industry).
Get angry with the nobility who hunt animals for fun and “tradition”.
All of these people are responsible for the perpetuation of this barbaric industry.
To turn a blind eye to the evidence of abuse to animals or children is cruel and heartless. To ask others to suppress that evidence is reprehensible. To fund the abuse and enjoy its spoils is unforgivable.
If you can't watch the videos in this post because they put you off your dinner, ask yourself why.
A true omnivore or carnivore would be salivating, not wincing.
You can't make up for the past, but you can make a better future.
The real question is why vegans tend to be convinced that they are hated for being vegan.
Spoilers :No you are not.
Humans tend to hate and are angered by injustice, tyranny, disrespect for their traditionnal lifestyle and lack of human solidarity. Thats all. So for the most part you just created yourself a unreasonable fear of the average humans while trying to adress something very intimate that every human have to do everyday, eating.
So if you try to guilt tripp people for what they eat, you are essentially trying to emotionally manipulate them by blaming their very existence in the way it was going on before they met you. Only a tiny minority will have enough openness to let go of the natural step back reaction and actually suspend their disbelief and give a try to your premise. Guilt tripping people is the best way to behave if you want to trigger emotionnal reactions and looking for spectacular event to show to the camera. However not the best strategy if you are actually looking to solve the problem insted of milking it.
So in short, I think your mistake is to have way too high expectations for humans, and yourself.
Aug 04, 2019 at 11:24 pm
I think you’re partly right. Generally, people who have an awakening to unnecessary suffering, whether toward animals or humans, automatically think that if everyone else knew the truth they’d stop participating too. But this is not the case.
I often say to other vegans when they ask, “How can people do such cruel things / say such cruel things / carry on being part of it after having seen the pain and suffering”, that they have to accept that some people just don’t care. They are happy to be complicit as long as they have their bacon or chicken wings.
However, what I find strange are those who agree that what they see in the video footage of slaughterhouses, animal transportation, farms, etc., is evil, but only become offended when they realize that the implication is therefore that they are evil for supporting the unnecessary suffering. Because up until that point they have lived through a cognitive dissonance. The implication that being complicit in this horror while claiming to be an animal lover amounts to hypocrisy triggers animosity and gives rise to feelings of resentment towards the messenger.
I don’t agree on the guilt tripping. We’re not talking about someone who has broken a promise not to eat chocolate for a week. This is a perpetual holocaust of billions of sentient beings. It’s simply a case of:
– Don’t you think this is evil?
– Yes, I can’t watch it.
– Will you stop then?
– Errr…
Aug 05, 2019 at 6:36 pm
The reason why I hate vegans is not because of their diet. What the person eat is totally irrelevant to me, really. My problem with vegans is because they annoy me for the fact I eat meat. They like to slap the animal suffering in my face over and over again, to a point it became unbearable. The problem with vegans is that they don’t respect other choices, and they are so entitled by what they deem right that they want to push it down peoples throat. I have nothing against people who choose vegetarian ways, in fact I know several vegetarians, and many are great friends, people who I trust, because they respect me and I respect them. In fact they don’t even bright about the point of our choices, and it is totally irrelevant to them that I eat meat as for me that they eat veggies. The problem with vegans is their attitude toward others, and I just hate it. If I person I just meat and found interesting suddenly says he/she are vegan, there is 90% chance I will totally dismiss them for that fact, the same thing I would do if a person says is addicted to drugs. My life is just full at this moment for me to handle that sort of people.
Jun 03, 2019 at 6:03 pm
I know exactly how you feel. I mean it’s so annoying to have people try and make you feel bad for needlessly harming defenseless sentient beings like animals and children. It’s your choice. If you want to cause unnecessary pain and suffering and killing and simultaneously destroy the planet at the same time you should be left alone to do so.
I believe the same should apply to rape, child labor, and random acts of violence. It’s my life, my choice. I respect yours, so you should respect mine. Screw those vegans who want to stop unnecessary violence and suffering. Idiots.
Jun 03, 2019 at 6:22 pm
Agree. I don’t like evangelism in any shape or form and many vegans seem to do just that. It’s almost like a religion.
Jun 04, 2019 at 8:28 am
Just read your article. Peter, you seem to be one of the the few intelligent people on this entire post. Well, maybe I missed some that may have commented with educated and valid points since I did not read all of them. I think I saw a few but most of them were just riddled with ignorant and defensive comments. The majority spewed a lot of uneducated and uninformed comments. Funny how people that are not even really interested in plant based diet, the environment and animal welfare are even on this site. Until humans become much more evolved, we are all doomed. The animal welfare component is only one aspect of what these people don’t understand. They are just too self righteous, unaware, and not educated enough to understand that our survival on this planet is at stake…no pun intended. It is simply not sustainable for us to eat this way. I grew up like most everyone else who has commented. We ate whatever we wanted and were not at all mindful about the ramifications. However, now…the ramifications are very serious and basically, irreversible. There is unlimited amounts of scientific proof and evidence of this. It’s just all about lack of awareness, lack of education, ego and guilt. The world is full of these people and it’s an uphill battle. Keep up your good work, Peter. Here’s a quote by Richard Branson…he may not be a scientist but most people know who he is and he is known to be a genius, ahead of his time and a visionary….”I believe that in 30 years or so we will no longer need to kill any animals, and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based, taste the same, and also be much healthier for everyone.”
Feb 07, 2019 at 3:02 pm
Thank you Lori. You’re spot on; it’s not just about animal welfare it’s also about the destruction of the planet – the air we breath, the soil we need to grow food, the sea-life we need to keep the oceans healthy – and of course the health of the human species.
Feb 07, 2019 at 7:56 pm
Hi ,am an omnivore ,but do not like the industrial approach to animal husbandry ,traditional natural methods should be used ,even animals raised for food should not be brutalized they surrender their lives for us and should be respected and thanked for their sacrifice.Personally hunted and fished animals are the best in keeping with Indian traditions ,not to mention can stressed raised meat be good ?As for vegans ,I respect them and their views though in disagreement .I like my veggies ,fruits ,nuts, grains ,etc. as well as my meats ,also look to vegans for recipes ,especially for my non meat protein .Have question what’s your view on harvesting salmon after spawning as they will die anyway should their flesh go to waste ? Thanks. Ant .
Apr 19, 2019 at 1:34 am
Thank you for your article. I am vegan, and I just posted your article on my facebook. I have a really hard time internally liking people who don’t care about the suffering of animals but to eat them and drink their milk. That non caring, selfish attitude is like the devil…having his way with us all and over the animals. I don’t trust God who put man on earth who exploits animals so horrendously, it is all so unfair and unjust to the animals. IT is all too cruel.
May 02, 2019 at 2:01 pm
I think this article is excellent and puts it in a nutshell for me. I’ve been plant based for three years now. What started as a bit of a health drive became so much more as I read, researched and educated myself on the realities of my food choices. Like most meat eaters, I spent years justifying why I ate meat to myself (interestingly I never had much occasion to justify it to anyone else, no one ever aggressively challenged me as a meat eater). I found veggies mildly irritating and vegans just plain weird!
In my early phase as a vegan I admit I became somewhat evangelical on the subject. Not because I’m an annoying, self righteous narcissist but because I just wanted share with others. I wanted people to know what I wished I had known much much earlier in my life. I wanted others to avoid the guilt and emotional distress further down the road than they needed to, if they knew the reality of their food choices. I wanted people to experience the same awareness, the same paradigm shift. I wanted the huge penny to drop, as it had done for me. I’m still amazed at the general response to my efforts, as non aggressive as they were. The eye rolling, the irritation, the anger, the alienation. I swear I changed in the eyes of my nearest and dearest overnight and not in a good way. At best, I got the patronizing “I really admire you for sticking with it but I just couldn’t, humans need meat”. At worst I got “all those crap documentaries are full of biased, distorted rubbish, designed to play on our emotions and destroy the farming industry. Those things don’t happen in this country”.
So, I no longer proactively raise the subject with others, including my nearest and dearest, which makes me something of a hypocrite. I am as true to my beliefs as I have ever been on a personal level but I have been silenced by others ridicule and anger on the subject publicly. I no longer openly discuss or defend my beliefs and decisions. I am both angry and sad about this but the simple fact is that I am just exhausted by the constant assault via social media, the awkward conversations when eating in public, at work or on social occasions.
It beggars belief, when we are now provided with all the evidence we have ever needed ‘not’ to eat the products of a cruel and barbaric industry, that we are treated as the bad guy, the nut job, the militant.
I live in a farming community. I live and let live. Not so the farming community I live in. There’s barely a day that goes by when there’s not something posted on Facebook that’s a blatant attack on people who chose not to eat meat. Ridicule, insults to our intelligence and our rationale, falsehoods and lies. So I challenge those on here who say they just get fed up of preachy, aggressive vegans ramming our views down their throats, because my experience is that it’s more often the opposite way round.
And you really have to ask why is this? I’ll tell you why it is, it’s because the best form of defense is attack. No one is ever made to justify why they prefer Italian food to Chinese, beer to wine, apples to bananas, cats to dogs because no one really cares, no one is offended. Their preference doesn’t call into question their ethics, their moral compass. The choice to eat meat is a very different story..
Meat eaters expect us to follow the etiquette of respectful difference (one they fail to adhere to on a daily basis) but this is a social, moral, ethical, political, environmental issue and it’s huge. Those that post their phone footage of cruelty to domestic pets, companion animals etc are rightly applauded for outing the bad guys, being responsible, doing the right thing, getting justice. Those who post images of horrific cruelty in the farming industry are met with a very different response. How dare we ruin someone’s day with this unsolicited propaganda? So what’s the difference? The former is far less widespread than the latter and happens on a smaller scale so why does it matter more to our social conscience? The difference is that meat eaters know they play a part in the demise of the latter and that is precisely why they refuse to accept that it is wrong and to continue to justify it to themselves and others. Like I said, the best form of defense is attack. Instead of going at those who have turned their back on this horrific industry, by not wake up, wise up and channel your hostility towards the perpetrators of this unimaginable daily suffering and horror on a massive scale.
May 26, 2019 at 6:11 am
I have to say, that while I am not a huge meat eater, I am a big realist.
Do we need meat to survive? No.
Does good meat kill us? No.
Are taking care of animals and eating healthy two different subjects? Yes. Don’t say that ethics and nutrition are the same subject because that’s just plain false.
I get what you are going for though, so while I may disagree on some points, I applaud your ideals.
I will say, there is a fair amount of misinformation in the article though, and you really need to go back down and re check how the human body functions and actually why the Human populace(especially the US) is getting fat, and its not “because they eat meat”.
People are fat because of the quality and quantity of what they eat. Fried foods, mass amounts of sugars, and then salts, and then not only that, the sheer amount of it that people eat.
May 23, 2019 at 2:43 am
High fat intake from animal products such as meat and dairy is undoubtedly fueling the obesity epidemic. The way in which the body stores this fat and the density of fat in processed meats and dairy in particular, combined with the hormones that disrupt the endocrine system, are key factors. But I agree, calorie excess is the over-arching problem in modern day society. But types of foods really do matter.
Processed sugar really isn’t good on many levels but fatty meats and dairy will put on the pounds way before the sugar will simply because of the work the body has to do to convert carbohydrate to fat. The body uses carbs for energy; we are designed to eat high-carb diets (from whole foods). Fat is our storage for energy. Check this short video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3JM-QKmRXg
Of course, lack of exercise and a high fat, high protein, high processed sugar diet is going to make you fat.
May 23, 2019 at 10:49 am
Vegans ARE pushing their motto down everybody’s throats, and you needta accept that. I have no problem with vegans as a concept, but the way they go about it is awful. I’m an ex-vegetarian, and honestly, I still believe you all need to calm it. There aren’t sites such as meateatermotivation.com or some crap, so why veganism? Because you want to shove it down people’s throats! Yes, animal cruelty is awful. I’m a strong advocate for the ethical treatment of animals. We should give them a natural death for meat. If you think even smallscale farms that kill animals nicely are bad because killing for food is bad, then how about you go tell that lynx over there to refrain from bein a bully to that rabbit? We got canines as well as molars for a reason; that reason is omnivorous diets. I suffered from iron deficiency and health problems due to being vegetarian, and I stopped. My health became SO much better. Again, I don’t care what you eat, but consider health problems before you go back to eatin grass.
Dec 23, 2018 at 4:43 pm
If you suffered from a deficiency it’s because you were eating a nutritionally poor diet that lacked enough iron (mineral). My guess is you still are, most people are. If you were vegetarian you would have been eating eggs and cheese, both contain iron, plus eating plant foods like these https://theplantway.com/vegan-sources-of-iron/ , would have meant you were getting a lot of iron, so I wonder what were you eating?
Perhaps your diet contained too many processed foods and, which caused poor gut microbiome health and poor nutrient and mineral absorption in both intestines.
My family is plant-based and we have no such issues, yet I have friends who eat a meat and dairy based diet and are in very bad health – always ill, diabetes, obesity and deficiencies that require supplementation. Deficiencies happen when people eat nutritionally poor diets full of processed foods and foods which interfere with the gut microbiome and therefore impair nutrient absorption. Those who eat a whole foods plant-based diet, avoiding processed foods, alcohol and meat and dairy will rarely ever experience such issues. My daughter has been plant-based since birth; her blood work recently came back as normal – nothing deficient. She is the tallest girl in her class of her age and the most energetic kid I know. This deficiency thing is a myth and debunked by science. 99.9% of people walking into doctors surgeries with nutritional deficiencies are those eating the standard Western diet, not vegetarians or vegans.
We know that vegetarians and vegans experienced lower rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and obesity, and on average live longer than those on the standard Western diet. If people were taught the truth about nutrition they wouldn’t run into these problems. The scientific consensus is very clear: when you reduce intake of meat and dairy in the diet and increase the intake of whole plant-based foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, in particular berries and green vegetables that disease risk is greatly reduced.
You are not an omnivore, perhaps behaviorally, but not biologically. With the exception of rodents, rabbits, and pikas, nearly all mammals have canine teeth. In fact, several herbivores and primary plant-eaters have ferocious canine teeth including hippos and gorillas. scientifically you are an unspecified frugivore (we know this because the best indicator for ascertaining the diet an animal is designed to eat is to map its gut mucosa – the area of your gut that absorbs nutrients). I’ve been through this so many times before I’m not going to type it all out here again, but do some research and you will discover that nothing about your biology makes you remotely an omnivorous animal. You share no characteristics with an omnivorous animal. Try biting into an animal with those canines and see how long it is before you need the dentist. Try eating a rotting carcass and see how long it is before you need the hospital.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t eat meat (cooked, safely), but even herbivores like deer will eat meat in captivity. But as science shows, for optimal health, less than 5% of your diet should be made up of animal-based foods. See the Blue Zones as a starting point.
See this chart.
Watch this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXj76A9hI-o
Who eats grass? I eat real food, in large variety. I don’t eat diseased flesh with cancer causing nitrates and nitrites, IGF-1, steroids and growth hormones, and milk with high estrogen levels (hormones), puss, blood and all the other harmful properties. You do know that the world Health Organization classified processed meat as a Class 1 carcinogen, and “normal” meat as a Class 2 carcinogen, right? Societal health is at an all time low. Heart disease is the number one killer, and it’s a lifestyle disease that can only be reversed by a plan-based diet. Hmmm, I wonder why that is?
Before slinging insults, start reading the scientific literature. You don’t need meat to be healthy. It’s a myth.
Plants are powerful food designed by Mother Nature for human health. Eat more, get healthier. It’s simple.
Dec 24, 2018 at 12:09 pm
The power of a plant based diet is astonishing! And i always think of nutrients in meat to be more…2nd hand. i prefer the original source. Soooo many vitamins and minerals in a plant based diet. Why are all the top health boosing miracle food groups plant based? Lol. Any Doctor will tell you a very nutricious pland based diet is more than acceptable 🙂
Feb 16, 2019 at 3:06 pm
I believe that all humans should eat meat, non processed and animals slaughtered in a humane way after having a good life. One of the main types of food that humans were originally built for was MEAT. Like the person you replied to who said they had iron deficiency and health problem said it for a reason. You need to understand you cant just contradict everything that is said because most of it has a reason behind it.
I love all animals but I am writing this to help you to realise the truth. And if you try to contradict this(which you will) then you have not read this post. Many studies show that on average meat eaters live a more longer, beneficial and healthy life. I predict that in the future the population will be slowly manipulated to become vegan which will be one of the causes of human downfall as the average age expectancy goes down. Please see clearly what I am trying to get across.
Jun 02, 2019 at 12:54 pm
1. There is no humane way to kill an animal. An animal wants to live. It will fight for its every last breath, as you would. Murder is not humane, it is a contradiction of terms.
2. These animals do not live a good life. They are slaughtered prematurely and live an unnatural existence.
3. In my lifetime I’ve known numerous friends and colleagues who have been diagnosed with vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Not one of them fully plant-based or vegetarian. They all eat meat and dairy. The millions of people walking into doctor’s surgeries every single day around the world being diagnosed with deficiencies are eating meat and dairy. There are numerous contributing factors of a deficiency, but primarily a poor diet. Do some reading.
4. Show me these studies. I’m waiting.
5. “vegan” is not a diet; it’s a moral stance. I eat a whole foods plant based diet. I just happen to vegan because I think unnecessarily causing pain and suffering and killing is wrong.
Jun 02, 2019 at 3:34 pm
Kyu, the sooner u die through eating dead animals, the better. Barbarian peasant
Mar 24, 2019 at 11:48 am
lmao, who hurt you and told you you could behave this barbarically in response to a barbarian? arent you supposed to be the peace and kindness and justice advocate?
this is why vegans are so annoying. always putting yourselves on a higher pedestal but behave in inconsiderate ways to people who don’t share your point of view instead of engaging in mild manners. do you realize how angry and violent you guys sound when responding to opposing viewpoints? lol.
Apr 23, 2019 at 11:53 am
I can’t speak for Alix, but to address your stance…
You say…
“Behave in inconsiderate ways to people who don’t share your point of view instead of engaging in mild manners”
So if my justification for rape is that we’ve always done it and I need sex, can I call you annoying and accuse you of sounding violent and putting yourself on a pedestal when you are outraged by my actions? I mean, why are you so against rape? It’s just my point of view. You have to respect my opinion, right?
The reality is that factory farming is evil. It’s worse than barbaric. It’s abhorrent. Needlessly enslaving and slaughtering animals in such horrific ways is evil. To take a life just to satisfy taste is cruel and inhumane. The way we treat those we share a planet with is a disgrace, and people are angry about that. People can’t just sit by while others mock the pain and suffering. So if you support this evil then expect some aggressive responses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwxaxJ2UZ0w
We have the science, we have the technology. So why be a part of this cruelty?
Apr 23, 2019 at 12:38 pm
and then we can’t be aggressive in response to your aggression?
hypocrites, i say.
Apr 23, 2019 at 12:48 pm
AGGRESSIONCEPTION
basically killing things for pleasure is wrong if you don’t get that then you probably find ways to justify terrorism and rape.
Think these are wrong? What about the rape of cows and the mass murder of billions of innocents in murder houses?
Please stop being a hypocrite.
May 28, 2019 at 4:47 am
Yes Peter. Everything you write is true. The way we kill and process animals is barbaric for them and unhealthy for us. There is an augment that animals should be killed where they graze meaning less stress transporting them hundreds of miles to an abattoir. OK. MAYBE. But it is the waste that upsets me. The vast majority of food, in industrialised nations, is simply thrown away. It is kicking nature in the teeth and we will surely pay the price; I suspect quite soon!
Sep 27, 2018 at 7:52 am
People dont hate vegans.. what they hate are the narcisstic attitudes of many of the most outspoken vegans. While they wear faux leather that is extremely bad for the environment in its making, they act holier than though and attack those who are not vegan. I have vegan and vegetarian friends and they’re not annoying. I dont assault them with my science-based thoughts and they dont assault me with theirs.. consider your attitude and approach. Pushing beliefs, not having actually support facts, being hypocritical in your practices, etc the list goes on.. that is what non-vegans notice. That is what makes a lot of vegans annoying. Also, a lot of vegans are just plain mean and rude. Dont act that way. Pissing people off will not change their minds about eating animal products… this is why collectively people dont like vegans. If you’re cool, I’m sorry you’re grouped with the psychos. Tell your friends to stop acting so nuts and maybe people will listen better or at least respect vegans as a whole more..
Nov 27, 2018 at 12:04 am
You are suffering from the all or nothing syndrome. Read more here: https://theplantway.com/vegans-hypocrites/
No one is asking for your respect. Vegans are asking you to wake up and stop your willful ignorance. Those who are vegan (non-carnist) and are no longer under the cultural spell of carnism have been in your position and probably spoken with the same willful ignorance. We understand. The truth is that inflicting unnecessary violence on any sentient being is wrong, it’s evil. Selective breeding, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, rape, force feeding; none of these practices are acceptable in a civilized society.
Nov 27, 2018 at 11:40 am
No one is asking for respect, and in the same vein no one is asking for your opinion.
It’s frankly being rather confrontational and self-righteous to immediately accuse people of ignorance of how animals are treated. It’s arrogance to label people under an umbrella of carnism and being willfully ignorant. It’s also unforgivably insulting that you assume that all animals being provided for food is selective breeding, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, rape, force feeding, and other ‘practices not acceptable in civilized society’. That comment as well is arrogance, as how do you define civilized society? In what nation? In what belief? In what racial and religious understanding? In what period of time? Society is a fickle animal and what is right today is wrong tomorrow. It’s honestly poor rhetoric to make the assumption that it’s always the right answer.
This is frankly the attitude that you asked why people don’t like the majority of vegans out there. Look at what you said, and ask yourself… am I bringing the points that people need to hear? Or am I preaching at people and shaming them on something that they likely already know about and have already made deciisions on?
Yes, I’ma meat eater. I do so for health reasons. I do so because I enjoy the taste of animal flesh. I have a very balanced diet, I make sure nothing I eat has chemicals, MSG, corn syrup, or anything ‘processed’ as much as possible. The meat is always high quality from farms that provide care to their animals. But it’s my choice to eat how I eat after I have made a judgement call after research, medical professionals telling me my body needs, and coming up with the solution I want. It is not your decision to rant at me and others on assumptions on what you think they may or may not have done or have studied just because they don’t follow a strict vegan diet.
Please keep self opinions, self-righteousness, and grand-standing out of any talks about Veganism, and I think you’ll be received better in the long run. I’m just saying.
Mar 09, 2019 at 12:59 pm
You’re either against violence or pro violence. It’s simple. You decide.
Mar 09, 2019 at 5:48 pm
You are just proving their point.
No doubt veganism is the more moral choice. But the question was why do people dislike vegans. And the answer is apparent from your rant: because so many of them are sanctimonious and boring.
Apr 14, 2019 at 1:21 pm
The insult of being “sanctimonious” is a lazy cop out for not being able to provide an excuse for unnecessarily hurting and slaughtering defenseless sentient beings, not to mention considerably contributing to the destruction of the environment. I know this to be true, because I used to eat more meat than most.
What if I’m a rapist and have no moral justification for my infliction of pain and suffering, is it intelligent and reasonable for me to substitute my lack of justification by simply saying that you are sanctimonious and boring?
Are you sanctimonious because you oppose child sweatshop labour but I enjoy wearing the clothes and don’t give a crap about child slavery in third world countries? Are you boring because “you won’t stop going on about those poor children”?
Our goal, collectively, in our countries and communities should be to reduce pain and suffering in the world, and reduce destruction to the planet – the very thing that supports our existence. It’s very easy to opt out of hurting animals, as easy as opting out of not hurting children, women, or anyone else. It’s very easy to recycle, to not drop litter, to make ethical clothing choices.
It’s simple.
Apr 14, 2019 at 8:58 pm
You sound like you don’t want to admit that some vegans are obnoxious, regardless of whatever moral grounds in your standard definition is. Is it because you’re one, too?
Apr 23, 2019 at 12:03 pm
Just because someone is vegan doesn’t mean I automatically like them or want to befriend them, or even defend them. My expectation is that people should want to opt out of causing unnecessary pain and murder and destruction. I don’t congratulate people for doing so. This should be the default standard of an evolved human being in the modern age.
I mean, what kind of person would happily see baby calves bolt-gunned in the head just so they can have milk in their tea?
I couldn’t care less if someone was obnoxious; if they have opted to not unnecessarily and needlessly inflict pain and suffering onto defense sentient beings then that’s simply a normal thing to do; it’s the moral thing to do. It is the type of world we should all want the next generation of children to grow up in. Someone being obnoxious doesn’t affect my life, and it certainly doesn’t make me want to steal a lamb from it’s mother and slit it’s throat for Easter.
I’ll readily admit that I don’t warm to some “vegans”. This is normal. I don’t warm to all carnists either. We may not get on, we may have different political views: we may have differing views on immigration or religion. But as I’ve said before, the word vegan is irrelevant. I’m not a vegan; I just try to live my life by causing as little harm to other lifeforms as possible.
For example: last night a moth was in my bedroom. I could have squashed it in a bit of tissue; but instead of being a lazy twat I cupped it in my hand and released it out the window.
This is one of the advantages to having a brain capable of moral agency.
Apr 23, 2019 at 12:25 pm
I kill spiders, mosquitoes and insects (including moths) all the time. they dont matter, and they’re an inconvenience. there’s a reason why they’re called pests. why should i care? I’m sure those who stand for ‘no cruelty’ have eaten vegetables that are farmed with the use of pesticide. how do you justify for the lives of the mice and other pests that were lost to it?
same with cows. they’re convenient for meat. regardless of whether they feel pain or not, if i can have meat on my plate, i will have them. if you continue to be obnoxious, i’ll eat you too. LOL
Apr 23, 2019 at 4:30 pm
Hi ,I live by live and let live help when you can ,refuse to let any cause goad me into hatred no matter if I agree or disagree
thanks Anthony
Apr 23, 2019 at 1:56 pm
Agree. Why can’t vegans just stick to their way of life which suits them and leave others to their own. It all just feels like a cult which they are trying to convert us to. I have tried a lot of plant based food but don’t much like it – or the fake bacon, burgers or cheese (the latter is particularly ghastly).
Dec 01, 2018 at 11:27 am
Agree. Why can’t Anti-Slavery Abolitionists just stick to their way of life which suits them and leave others to their own? It all just feels like a cult which they are trying to convert us to. I have tried working the cotton fields without slaves but it was too expensive – or the house-cleaning, taking care of the children or taking care of the livestock (the latter is particularly ghastly).
Agree. Why can’t Dog-lovers just stick to their way of life which suits them and leave others to their own? It all just feels like a cult which they are trying to convert us to. I have tried a lot of fake dog meats but don’t much like it – or the humanely-killed dogs, other meat supplements or just leaving dog meat forever (the latter is particularly ghastly).
Agree. Why can’t women’s rights activists just stick to their way of life which suits them and leave others to their own? It all just feels like a cult which they are trying to convert us to. I have tried a lot of hiring more women but don’t much like it – or letting the women vote, go to good colleges or get a decent job for their hard work (the latter is particularly ghastly).
Your level of hypocrisy is astounding. Vegans cannot leave it alone because IT IS WRONG. Would you ask an anti-slavery activist to shut up because slaves are part of peoples lifestyle? NO! It is because you innately know that these things are wrong, and you are getting mad at the messenger. If you grew up in a slave family during the 1800s, I bet 100% you would be as passionate about slavery as you are about eating delicious fatty bacons.
Just because you grew up in a family that supports meat eating, doesn’t mean you have to be such a hypocrite that you get extremely defensive when your lifestyle is exposed for being inhumane and, to use your words, “particularly ghastly”.
Mar 22, 2019 at 4:10 am
What if I do realize that by simply eating meat I’m living a ghastly life but still want to do it? I also don’t particularly care about anything that doesn’t have to do with me, slavery and whatnot. It’s all done to drive prices down and a lot more of us as consumers need that low price. Vegan options are just not as affordable, especially here where I live in Indonesia. Soy milk, almond milk, any milk other than dairy often cost double and that’s a 100% price difference. Chicken is cheap and cost the same as a bunch of lettuce in the local grocery stores, and I think it’s obvious which one keeps me fuller longer. There’s no way I would only have rice with lettuce.
I’ve worked hard to be in this position, so I’m going to enjoy life as much as I want to. Living longer is also something I don’t mind sacrificing since my job in the premier banking industry is quite stressful. As long as I feel happy in the present, I don’t really care about the future. The world is dying regardless of what people want to do nowadays anyway. It doesn’t matter how quickly it is. You don’t see the big corporations who will make the biggest impact making the sacrifice, so why should small people like us try by sacrificing our own happiness? We’d be gone from the world before anything changed significantly.
Apr 24, 2019 at 1:59 am
Wow, what a bleak outlook for humanity..
May 08, 2019 at 5:28 am
Animals are meant to be eaten. They’re only purpose in life is to mate and survive but in the end prey almost always get eaten. Animals don’t have human feelings and you are trying to push our thoughts and feelings on to them which we can’t do.
Sep 21, 2018 at 2:36 pm
You’re wrong. And science says you’re wrong. I/we and not trying to push our thoughts and feelings onto animals, they have their own. You really should do some reading:
Firstly animals feel parallel levels of stress, fear and pain as humans do. Different species of animals have complex social interactions and hierarchies. In fact, science is only just beginning to understand the complex social interactions and communications that exist between different species of animals. For example, the infrasonic language of elephants.
Moreover, animals are capable of showing empathy, again something science is only just beginning to understand: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3839944/ – here is an interview and summary of that research article to save you reading the whole paper: https://phys.org/news/2011-12-animal-empathy.html
Dolphins can even recognise themselves in mirrors: http://www.pnas.org/content/98/10/5937.full And mice show pain on their faces like humans do: https://www.wired.com/2010/05/mouse-pain-expression/
We have known for decades that other primates also display empathy and emotions in the same way humans do, which is understandable because they are our cousins.
Dogs are used to detect disease, heart attacks and seizures in humans. So were these dogs only meant to be eaten? Or maybe you’d save these dogs and just kill pigs unnecessarily?
Thing is, pigs are more intelligent than dogs: https://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=acwp_asie
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201506/pigs-are-intelligent-emotional-and-cognitively-complex
Animals can also detect changes in the environment and warn of impending danger, which is how many elephants, primates, birds and dogs escaped the Asian tsunami in 2004.
Perhaps humans living 10,000 years ago would have thought like you do, but because most of us have developed our brains and gained what is known as moral agency: we are able to make moral judgments based on a notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions.
So we can deduce, using our moral agency and science, that while animals are a food source, causing unnecessary suffering to animals is immoral, because we don’t need to do it. We know that it is wrong to initiate violence on another conscious being without good reason for doing so, such as self defence. You wouldn’t do it to another human, and you probably wouldn’t do it to a dog, lion, elephant, giraffe…….. so why would you do it to a chicken, a pig, sheep, or a cow. Sure, if you are starving hungry and you have nothing else to healthily sustain your existence, then you have to do what you have to do.
We understand that animals do feel the same pain that we do, they do fight to the last breath to survive like we do, they do show affection to their offspring like we do, that pigs, cows and sheep are highly social animals that enjoy being in groups of their own species: they interact with each other, communicate with each other in ways that we only are just beginning to understand, they mourn, and they show empathy.
They also show affection towards humans; they form bonds with us and will step in to protect us from danger. In turn they look to us for protection, not to be mistreated and abused and exploited
We are also able to use nutritional science to understand that a whole foods, plant-based diet is the healthiest diet we can eat, and like our primate cousins this is the die biologically best suited to the body. Some people may still choose to eat meat and dairy products, and depending on where you live some people will have to do is so for survival, but regardless, science shows that the optimal diet is a diet very low in animal products. Science also shows us the environmental impact that large-scale animal agriculture is having on the planet. It is the biggest pollutant of our planet.
So with all this knowledge, why would we ignore science and live with a caveman mindset?
Just a thought: You do realise that humans are animals, don’t you?
What do you think the purpose of a human is? To survive and mate. Indeed, this is what mother nature designed us for, right?
So by your philosophy, because humans were merely born to survive, mate and then die, it would be perfectly okay to breed humans in captivity, keeping them in a completely unnatural environment that denies them of proper food, sunlight and exercise, and then slaughter them for their flesh. Or in the case of female humans, we could repeatedly rape them, take their milk after they give birth, and take away their babies and slaughter them for food too – so that their children don’t feed on the milk that they are supposed to and we can take it instead.
At the very least, we could do this to human beings with a very limited IQ, or humans who are incapable of contributing to society because of disability, right?
As for your point about prey almost always getting eaten: that goes without saying because we live in a world with big carnivorous predators. If I put you out into the wilderness where a hungry pack of wolves, or some bears that hadn’t eaten for a few weeks, or lions that hadn’t eaten for 72 hours were known to be roaming, you would become the prey.I can’t see what point you’re making here.
Sep 21, 2018 at 3:38 pm
Whatever you say I’ll keep on eating meat and pissing off your crack…!
Sep 25, 2018 at 7:35 pm
Good. You do that. If you think it’s acceptable to pay someone to initiate violence on defenceless animals, unnecessarily; if that’s the type of world you want to live in, then I guess it’s open season. You better just hope someone doesn’t do the same to you, or someone you care for.
Sep 26, 2018 at 9:01 am
If the whole world stops eating meat, what are we going to do with all the animals? They are blamed for producing methane gas which is bad for the environment, but if we stop eating meat the animal population will increase astronomically and with it, the gas they produce. Or do vegans propose to kill all these horrible poisonous gas producing monsters to save our environment?
Sep 26, 2018 at 11:50 pm
The animals we eat have been artificially bred to meet the demand for their bodies and their secretions. If the demand for animal products decreases, the number of animals brought into existence will decrease too. There was no problem with overpopulation of cows, chickens and pigs before humans started messing with their bodies and altering them for profit. If we stop breeding them out of control, they wouldn’t overpopulate.
If a large number of people were to suddenly go vegan and there were too many cows, pigs, and chickens, farmers would cut back abruptly on breeding, but sure, the animals who are already here may be abandoned, slaughtered, or sent to sanctuaries. None of these fates are worse than what would have happened if production continued, so the concern for what would happen to the animals is not an argument against veganism because in the medium to long term there is less forced breeding, selective breeding, exploitation and suffering.
What About Hunting and Wildlife?
Hunters may argue that if they were to stop hunting the deer population would explode. This is a false argument because if hunting were to stop, we would also stop the practices that increase the deer population. State wildlife management agencies artificially boost the deer population in order to increase recreational hunting opportunities for hunters. By clearcutting forests, planting deer-preferred plants and requiring tenant farmers to leave a certain amount of their crops unharvested in order to feed the deer, the agencies are creating the edge habitat that is preferred by deer and also feeding the deer. If we stop hunting, we would also stop these tactics that increase the deer population.
If we stopped hunting, we would also stop breeding animals in captivity for hunters. Many non-hunters are unaware of state and private programs that breed quail, partridges and pheasants in captivity, for the purpose of releasing them in the wild, to be hunted.
All wildlife populations fluctuate according to the number of predators and available resources. If human hunters are removed from the picture and we stop breeding game birds and manipulating deer habitat, the wildlife will adapt and fluctuate and reach a balance with the ecosystem. If the deer population were to explode, it would then collapse from lack of resources and continue to fluctuate, naturally.
Sep 27, 2018 at 8:53 am
Loving your wise words peter. Feeling down from people refusing to stop eating animals
Mar 16, 2019 at 1:21 pm
There is plenty room on earth for all living creatures.
But you are not eating the wild and free animals anyway, you eat those been force bred and multiplied by humans. Instead of hunting them, let nature control populations of animals, and if need be we can intervene to control their population; but science shows this isn’t necessary if you don’t interfere with the envionment.
Sep 29, 2018 at 2:46 am
Replying to Red Neck
If we stop eating meat, we will not be over run with animals. Cows are artificially inseminated to produce milk, their calves are taken away and sold as veal if they are male. If they are female, they are keep to continue in their mothers footsteps in the dairy industry. This process of inseminating cows with frozen bull semen by way of a human sticking his hand into the cows vagina (rape ) continues until she is no longer able to produce milk and then sold to be butchered for her flesh. The population of sentient beings such as cows would decrease when we no longer interfere in their mass reproduction.
Jan 13, 2019 at 3:37 am
There wouldn’t be so many animals if we didn’t breed them
Feb 28, 2019 at 3:08 am
Replying to Mason
You said, “Animals are meant to be eaten”- well by that philosophy then you should be eating your dog or other humans as we are also animals. You said, “Animals have no human feelings” – true, they have their own feelings but if you think their feelings are less than our own, go to a slaughterhouse see animals tremble in fear and squeal in terror and pain when they are being slaughtered. Then tell me, do animals have feelings?
Jan 13, 2019 at 3:19 am
Okay since you guys care so much about answering everyone else’s questions, how about answering my post.
The reason why people who eat meat and plants (By saying meat eaters you make it sound like that’s all we do, to dehumanize us) get so angry, at least where I come from is because suggesting to take out farms that have animals would mean so many of our family and friends who are farmers out of work. Abuse? Yea there is big companies who do keep animals in horrible cages and situations, but most farmers we know and can see take great care of our cattle. Only when it come times to send them to the meat factory, which might now happen if they are dairy cows, does the cows face any form of savagery. Before that they are happy cows who have everything they could ever want. This who thing about grain being given to cows seems weird to me as well. Every farm I’ve seen has the cows grazing until winter, where maybe then they will give them grain, but I always thought they where given hay. Many people don’t live by huge companies who treat cows and animals this way. I couldn’t imagine a butcher making a death last long either. Maybe the slit throat, but the way most “meat eaters” see it is that these cows wouldn’t be alive if not for there use for us later. It’s the same with hunting deer where I come from. Trees for miles around and tons of forests because people value hunting them. therefore it helps the environment and it helps humans. Sadly at the cost of there death, but if we did not kill them then they probably would be close to extinction. Not to mention about milking cows being distressing for them, most cows produce way to much milk for the calf anyway and will be sore and in pain. This is why most modern farms have a device where the cows can walk on up to it and be milked when they start to feel sore,
Then there are the vegans who make things more minimum. Like the ones who love to throw the fact that many Americans are obese, which causes cancer and yada yada, but don’t ever mention that obesity rose when the sugar in our food rose, not the meats. Not to mention isn’t obesity usual happen in the case where people eat to much? No one addresses that there are tons of people who are not obese who eat meat in moderation.
If you respond to any of this please respond to this next part. Why are you so hateful when so many people don’t have the choice? Born in poverty, and having the choice of eating a healthy vegan meal that is expensive or eating a Mc Donalds and being able to fill everyone’s bellies for a whole day? I only hear vegans hating on these people, with a rich mans mentality. They always say it’s the peoples fault for being poor, or that they should have made better life decisions, which is all true, but a lot of poverty is a loop. Parents who made bad decisions teach there children those same decision making skills and it continues. Vegans seem to have such a love of animals they hate everyone who can’t follow the diet for what ever reason. If fruit and vegitible prices where less many many more people would come around, but screaming that they are animal abusers and shaming them for things the can not control is why most people don’t like them. Not to mention the price for vitamins for this diet is way to high for many people struggling,
As for me I choose to eat meat. I wish I where rich enough to be able to only choose farms around where I live where animals are treated amazingly, but until then I have to do what I can to survive.
Jul 03, 2018 at 8:27 am
Joan, some valid points but why are you answering a question with a question? The actual question in the discussion thread here is why do carnists, if you don’t like the term “meat eaters” hate vegans and you’re projectively turning it around and asking why vegans are so hateful? Before choosing vegan( on the breadline i might add) only just a year ago, I’ve personally not experienced any hate from vegan friends or strangers or in the media. Maybe check your perception and feel into why your adversity button is being pushed… Maybe your moral compass is off and the reaction is perfect being disguised as advocating for the ‘others’ who can’t afford etc,etc. You can choose and afford to buy and eat animal flesh, so I’m assuming you are not in financial struggle… I’m richer than ever in both heart and pocket since choosing compassionate eating. The world has opened up and gifted the treasures of nature and has softened my self to share all I have with others… easy come, easy go… I’m anything but angry on a daily basis! The fact that you are engaging here speaks volumes that you are already asking the REAL questions that are worth asking- your heart ones… Very best wishes on your journey to your own truth🖤
Jul 04, 2018 at 10:14 am
Vegans are generally hateful. Pompous and uncaring to other humans. Like mentioned before, you are cruel and judgmental to those who are poor and have no better options. Vegans also tend to be “skinny fat” which is medically preven to be just as bad (if not worse in some cases) than being heavy. You’re not healthier being vegan when you deprive your body essential vitamins and minerals not found in a strict plant based diet.. you increase your risks for certain cancers too. All the vegans I know look malnourished and that they may need a blood transfusion. Gross. This is backed by medical science. The best diet is balanced, not restrictive. And again.. people dont like vegans because they are self righteous and pushy. It comes across as being vegan isnt actually about the animals but about feeling superior over other humans. Perhaps you should consider your perspective and how you and your vegan brethren present yourself to others..
Nov 27, 2018 at 12:13 am
None of what you have said is backed by science. Show me one scientific study that backs up your claims. Vegan doesn’t automatically mean healthy, because junk food can also be vegan. A whole foods plant based diet is the healthiest diet a person can eat because it is nutrient dense and aligned with human physiology, which is that of an unspecified frugivore. Not all vegans follow this diet, so do distinguish between the two. If you want to talk science, let’s do it, but don’t simply spout nonsense and expect it to go unchallenged. The healthiest societies with the lowest rates of disease and highest rates of centenarians eat a largely plant based diet, a low fat-high carb diet. They eat meat on average less than 5x a month. All long term cohort studies show that a reduction in meat and dairy consumption leads to lower rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, the list goes on. A plant based diet is the only way of eating proven to reverse the number one killer of humans – heart disease. If you still want to unnecessarily inflict violence onto animals to satisfy your cravings for their flesh and secretions then just admit that’s what you want to do and stop making excuses about nutrition, because science does not support your claims.
Nov 27, 2018 at 11:36 am
Yes, I still want to unnecessarily inflict violence onto animals to satisfy my cravings for their flesh and secretions. I want to eat my pork broth ramen, grill beef tongues at yakiniku house, eat fresh sushi and sashimi. It’s still part of my culture. You can’t force us to change our culture and tradition as a whole.
May 02, 2019 at 11:18 am
Right. And some people still want to marry children, carry out female genital mutilation, and skin dogs alive (Yulin festival) as part of their culture. Is that morally acceptable? You can’t force them to change; it’s part of their culture.
At least you admit that you are prepared to accept and carry out evil deeds on the basis of tradition and culture, which in a strange way I respect – because at least you aren’t making lame excuses and trying to defend the indefensible.
I’m different to you though. I don’t want to live in a society where there is unnecessary suffering and pain carried out in the name of culture, whether that be to children, women, animals or any other sentient being. Maybe the world will evolve where people like you and I will live in different countries. So you’ll live with all those who like animal suffering, FGM, child marriage, rape, etc., and I’ll live in a country where those things are opposed. That way we can both freely live out our choices.
May 02, 2019 at 12:43 pm
Do you remember as a child, when your parents said ‘you must eat your vegetables…they are good for you…’ Well they were right! There’s no need for multi-vitamin supplements, or supplements of any kind. Such supplements are mainly for those who don’t get enough fruit and vegetables. With a little research, you will find that a plant based diet is actually very cheap and will save you money whilst doing wonders for your health! Much cheaper than a McDonalds.
oh and…i don’t hate you! 🙂
Aug 12, 2018 at 4:46 pm
It’s been said that 85 MILLION animals are killed daily for meat. I have recently became vegan again and already feel so much better and lighter. Honestly, revisiting the meat/dairy/egg industry again after so long, I have felt very depressed about it all because that any of this goes on times the billion+ animals affected Daily by all this horrific abuse and deaths is impossible for me to accept.
So yes my bitterness towards most of humanity is At an all time high, but all of you (especially OP Peter) posting and commenting amazing rebuttals and showing you care as much as I do helps me feel immensely better that we are and will continue to doing what we can. And as Peter said, we will keep fighting that fight!
As vegan spiritual teacher teal swan first stated facts about humans being designed to eat plants only and how animals feel as much was we do emotionally/physically. She also ended with “we have to have compassion for the meat eaters”. Can anyone help me with that so I can be more elevated going forward in my life and helping with these animal rights endevors? I appreciate you fellow animal loving Warriors.
Jun 19, 2018 at 9:53 pm
I am not sure that someone eating meat would want our compassion because they see it as perfectly normal. And in one sense it is a normal thing to do, because historically, since humans have been able to create fire and create tools that enable them to hunt and kill animals, humans have eaten meat. So a person eating meat would view compassion as condescending and misplaced.
For me personally, it is about having an understanding of where people are at, mentally. The large majority of vegans used to eat meat – it isn’t very common to come across someone who has been vegan since birth. So most of us should be able to have an understanding of the culture that people have grown up in and why they feel compelled to eat meat even though it is unnecessary for human health and harmful to animals and the environment.
The problem is that people have very limited education of human biology and the evolution of our diet. Even at the basic level of nutrition, very few people understand what vitamins and macronutrients they need, and what these vitamins and micronutrients do in the body.
People believe they need meat. Rather than seeing meat as a secondary food source that serves as a good calorie source in the absence of plant-based foods, which our bodies are designed to eat, they see meat and animal secretions as primary food sources that are superior to plant sources.
There are many nutritional myths that have existed for decades and despite science disproving them they are still taught in schools and passed down from parents to children, and thus society is dealing with many health epidemics relating to obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease, and cancers. We pour more and more money into health care and developing drugs to cope with disease but no one wants to address the elephant in the room and look at the science, which shows us that it is down to lifestyle/nutrition.
The reality is that no one would eat a plant-based diet if it was proven to take 10 years off your life, but did save some animals. That would not be a normal thing for species to do: to sacrifice itself to save another. But in many ways this is how meat eaters see vegans; as if we are doing something that is harmful to ourselves because of our moral crusade to save the animals. But as we know that is not the case.
The fact is: we do not need to keep killing 85 million animals a day to be healthy. We do not need to eat meat or dairy to be healthy. We can all thrive on a plant-based diet. This not only helps our own species be healthier, it also helps the planet be healthier, and it prevents this unnecessary suffering that animals are experiencing on a daily basis.
As I always say, if I was in a situation where I needed to eat meat to survive, of course I would.
So for me it is not so much about having compassion, it is about education. It is about governments, schools and parents teaching our children real science and educating them on what a healthy diet looks like and what causes all of these diseases that have plagued our society. It is about showing some tough love. And that means NOT normalising obesity, and NOT normalising type II diabetes, and telling the truth about heart disease and the fact that it is a lifestyle disease and is preventable, and even reversible with a plant-based diet — as proven by Dr Dean Ornish and Dr Esselstyn.
The problem is that there is so much misinformation about diet being circulated that is very difficult for people to find the truth. So in that respect I do have some compassion for people, because I have personally been a victim of that. I’ve spoken before about the information I was given as a young lad regarding protein and high level sports performance, and the misinformation about carbohydrates. Had I had even just a basic education in school on biology and nutrition, I would have known that the majority of the information I was being given was false. It took me 20 years to educate myself to a level where I could understand the nutritional science and begin to unravel the misinformation.
I also have some compassion with parents, being a parent myself. You want your child to eat the best diet possible, well at least most of us do. And with all this misinformation floating around it is very hard to know what to do and what not to do. Doctors have very little nutritional training and cannot give proper advice to parents on what to feed their children. So most people just follow what everyone else does, what their parents did, or what the food pyramid recommends.
But as we know being a vegan is very different from simply eating a plant-based diet. Many vegans don’t actually care that much about nutrition, indeed they are eating lots of processed foods that are very unhealthy. Their main priority is animal rights. Some people do not have the compassion for animals that others have. Some people do not care about animals and see animals simply as a food source provided by nature. So we have to accept that a large percentage of people would not give up eating meat on the basis that it was cruel to animals or unnecessary to kill animals. People are generally more responsive though when they realise that animal protein and the dietary cholesterol and saturated fat that comes with it is detrimental to their health.
As I have pointed out in this post, I do not believe that people want to unnecessarily cause harm to animals. Even if you are not an animal lover, is not natural that you would want to see animals suffering and in pain for their entire lives, unnecessarily. People are often surprised that I am not a big fan of farm animals such as cows, sheep and pigs. I’m not one of those people who wants to jump in a field and give a cow a hug as I see some people doing in pictures and videos on Facebook. But I do enjoy seeing animals in their natural environment and I have no desire to harm any animal or any person that has not initiated violence towards me. And I think that is the type of society we should all one future generations to grow up in.
If people were educated with the truth: that for 99% of our existence we have been eating primarily plant-based diet that consisted of quadruple the amount of fibre that we consume today, and that they should be eating less than 5% animal protein in their diet to maintain good health and ward off disease, then I think society would naturally begin to move in the right direction.
In terms of what you can do in helping people understand the pain and suffering, the anxiety and stress, that these animals go through to provide us with their flesh and secretions. Well, education is the way forward. People need to understand that is completely unnecessary. People need to understand that by going vegan and adopting a healthy, whole foods, plant-based diet you will be having a hugely positive impact on your own health, the health of the planet and the health of animals.
Jun 20, 2018 at 9:50 am
Education will not convert many people who simply don’t care anyway. I have read all the pros and cons and still not interested in veganism. We have one life. Let people live it as they wish as you also can.
Jun 26, 2018 at 12:55 pm
I don’t believe that all. People are so confused and misinformed about nutrition, and let’s face it nutrition and health of our planet are the two issues people would put before animal welfare; largely because naturally people care about how long they live and not how long other animals live, and impact of the planet is directly related to that too. what we need to do is change the education system to reflect the science regarding food. I live in the UK and they are still serving free milk to children in reception class, despite all the scientific research over the last 40 years that shows how detrimental dairy is to health.
I cannot believe that you have read all the pros and cons and still come to the same conclusion:
1. I cannot believe that you would not want future generations of children to be healthier and free of the lifestyle diseases that the majority of the population is suffering from, certainly in the West anyway. I’m talking about heart disease, type II diabetes, liver and colon cancer, the list goes on.
2. I cannot believe that you would want to continue such a high level of intensive animal agriculture, which is destroying our air, land and oceans. It is insanity for a species to want to destroy its own environment, to knowingly and actively participate in destroying its own environment.
3. I cannot believe that you would want to unnecessarily initiate violence on other sentient beings. As I’ve said a million times: I have no problem with slaughtering an animal and eating it if I need to for the reason of survival. But as science shows, my body was designed to thrive on plant-based foods. My body also has the capacity to any animal flesh and secretions, but this not optimal and is unnecessary if I have an abundance of plant-based foods. So why would you continue to support the animal agriculture industry, which causes so much pain and suffering and destruction, when is completely avoidable – and you can have a healthier, potentially longer life?
Surely, as adults, we should be leading by example and where possible eliminating suffering and pain and unnecessary cruelty in the world? Surely this would lead to a better world, in that it would have a knock-on effect in other areas of society?
Of course, I can accept the stance that some people simply don’t care about animals and want to eat them. That’s fine. If you feel like a real hunter gatherer, go out into the woods and hunt your meat: kill it, skin it, gut it, cook it. The reality is of course, that humans are highly inefficient hunters. This process takes a long time and a lot of energy, and is highly unnecessary if you have an abundance of non-animal foods.
If you do indeed care about these issues, but you don’t want to go vegan, you could always cut out meat and dairy and go fishing a couple of times a week? in fact, Dr Longo, the world’s leading scientist on ageing recommends a plant-based (vegan) diet with the addition of a little bit of fish each week.
You say live and let live, but that’s not very helpful when the actions of others are directly affecting the way I live.
For example, in the UK our health system is buckling under the pressure of lifestyle diseases – but no one wants to talk about it. It is the elephant in the room. “Pay more tax”, they say. Why should I? I rarely ever have a need to visit a doctor’s surgery, let alone go to the hospital, whereas millions of other people who continue to eat a high animal protein and high saturated fat and cholesterol diet, compounded with a huge amount of processed food, are in and out of doctors surgeries and hospitals, clogging up waiting lists so that kids with brain cancers and the elderly who need urgent care can’t get the attention they need.
You say live and let live, but if your lifestyle is deliberately polluting the air that my daughter breathes, and contributing to ocean dead zones and the destruction of rainforests, then how can I simply turn a blind eye?
You say live and let live, but how can I when children are being mis-educated in schools about nutrition, where foods that are now classed as class I and class II carcinogens are still being offered as “good food” choices?
Forget the word vegan, because all you associate that with is a bunch of people telling you that your actions are immoral and that you should change. Despite having to fall under the umbrella of the word ‘vegan’, and indeed the title of this website, I do not see myself as a vegan: I am simply someone who does not unnecessarily initiate violence towards others, the planet, or myself in terms of carcinogenic and unhealthy food that will do my body damage.
Of course the latter not all vegans adhere to, and that is why I am heavily focused on the nutritional aspect of veganism (a plant-based diet); because you will never convince anyone to adopt a way of living if they think they will become unhealthy as a result; and let’s face it, there are a few people around these days who could afford to become much unhealthier than they already are.
Jun 26, 2018 at 1:22 pm
Hi I am 67 years old, in pretty good health, rarely eat processed food or visit the doctor. I also tolerate plant based foods for a mixed diet but really dont like them. I have no wish to prolong my life if it means I eat stuff I don’t like. By the way why suggest I could still eat fish.! ? Are they not sentient beings?
I have no problem with the slaughter of animals for food, only the way they are kept and the way they are killed which could be changed.
The problems with the modern diet is not meat or dairy per se. It is the sugar, fat and salt which the processed stuff contains.
Parents today have no idea how to cook decent food which is why their kids are getting fat and the adults around them. The stuff I see shoved into many family shopping trolleys is loaded with crisps,cakes, pizzas,chips, fizzy drinks, sugary cereals. THAT is the problem. My childhood diet was plain food -meat,
poultry, fish and veg, sweets being a treat. My 83 year old brother is also pretty fit.
I only have 4 fillings in my teeth the last one being done in 1983! Bad diet – I don’t think so.
These people and their kids are the ones who will end up in hospital with health problems.
Having worked in the NHS there are many other reasons why we wait so long for treatment. Bad/ wasteful use of resources for one and too many treatments which in my opinion should not be available on the NHS at all.
I should also say that I decided long ago not to pollute the world with yet another mouth to feed. The world needs to reduce its population. It’s a mystery to me why we continue to keep adding to it but hey I digress.
Sorry I do not share your view that education will somehow change basic human nature: humans are fundamentally the nastiest, greediest species on the planet and that ain’t gonna change anytime soon. There is no excuse for it but it’s the way we are. It is why wars will never end.
When you have worked in the mental health field dealing with victims of the worst tortures that humans inflict upon each other you cannot undo that in your mind. So, I respect your views but I am entitled to mine too. So you might think why do I tolerate violence against animals. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way if we find better methods of keeping animals and handling slaughter. That said I have given up on this world and its problems. At my age I just want to have the food and drink that I enjoy.
Jun 26, 2018 at 8:58 pm
I suggested cutting down to just a couple of pieces of fish a week because for someone who is vehemently opposed to the idea of veganism, I thought that after considering my comments regarding environmental destruction and the abhorrent animal agriculture industry that this might be a more reasonable option for you.
Indeed, many people who no longer want to eat red-and-white meat and dairy choose to cut down to just a small amount of fish, and this also acts as a transition period towards a fully plant-based diet, or not – as the case maybe. As I also mentioned, if you are someone who just isn’t bothered about animals and the environment, but you are interested in prolonging your life, I cited the leading ageing scientist Dr Longo, who recommends a plant-based diet with the addition of fish. So I thought that might be of interest to you.
Yes, there is evidence that fish are sentient.
Also, you are around the same age as my mother. Her diet has always consisted of primarily fruits, legumes, vegetables, seeds, nuts and whole grains but with the addition of fish perhaps twice a week. At 70 years old is unlikely that she is going to change her way of eating now, particularly because she is in very good health and would out walk most people 30 years her junior. However, she is very much interested in doing what she can to reduce the suffering of other sentient beings and environmental destruction. That being said, in a local meet up I go to there are a couple of women well into their 60s who have made a transition from a standard Western diet to a plant-based diet.
I absolutely agree with you that processed foods are a massive problem. Sugar is only a problem because it is consumed in high amounts and therefore people end up with loads of empty excess calories.
If you look at top athletes such as runners and cyclists, they consume huge amounts of processed sugar to fuel the body for performance. The body is a carbohydrate (sugar) sugar burning machine. It is the body’s primary source of energy. The reason people get Type II diabetes is because fat blocks up the cells and the insulin cannot unlock those cells to let the sugar in, thus raising blood sugar. So as we now know, and all leading diabetes experts will tell you, it is the fat that is the problem, and primarily saturated fat from meat and dairy, though trans fats are an issue too.
That being said, I do not advocate a highly processed sugar diet, because in the medium to long term causing sudden spikes in blood sugar has been linked to cardiovascular problems. We can get all our sugar naturally, in its whole foods form, along with all that healthy fibre and nutritional content.
But of course, this is again the elephant in the room. No one has the power to challenge the mighty meat and dairy industries. They will rig studies, sue you for libel, and lobby government to make sure their foods are primary sources in the food chain.
But yes, I agree. The large majority of food people are eating isn’t even food. Something like 70% of food on the shelves at the supermarket is processed. So yes, it isn’t just meat and dairy, it is also process foods. But dairy contains casein, which is carcinogenic.
This is why I advocate a whole foods plant-based diet. There is a reason that nature designs fruits and vegetables in the way it does, and a reason why they are optimal for our health. If you break them down they are these amazing compositions of phytonutrients and antioxidants that have the ability to optimise our health and heal the body. have a read of the book Whole by T.Colin Campbell, PhD.
We can all reference people we know who have lived into old age eating very few vegetables and fruits, smokeed, drank, hardly slept, etc., but this is anecdotal and not supported by science. Research shows that when you decrease the amount of animal protein and saturated fat in your diet the risk of disease goes down, exponentially. When you study the healthiest societies, that live the longest around the world, known as the blue zone societies, and when you look back through history, we see that these societies lived on a primarily plant-based diet, with a very low animal protein intake. You can also see that during war time in Europe, when meat and dairy was scarce, heart disease drastically reduced.
What is clear is that it is okay to eat some animal protein, but as I always say to people who don’t want to go vegan: based on the science, I would recommend reducing the intake to 5% or below to ensure good health. Humans are simply not designed to eat a lot of animal protein. Look at the biggest killer in the US, heart disease. This is a lifestyle disease and one that is reversible with dietary changes. This is why the American Cardiology Association recommends reducing meat and dairy intake, because all the dietary cholesterol and saturated fat that comes from animal protein (dairy and meat) wreaks havoc on the cardiovascular system. But don’t take my word for it, talk to any cardiologist. It causes atherosclerosis (plaque on the arteries) and vascular constriction. Even the outgoing president of the American Cardiology Association changed to a plant-based diet after having a cholesterol test – he thought he was healthy but was actually at risk of a heart attack. Read more on that here: https://theplantway.com/dont-mind-dying-just-dont-want-my-fault/
It isn’t just fat people that get heart disease, you can be seemingly very healthy but have very poor artery health. We know for decades that animal protein is carcinogenic, which is why normal meat is classified by the World Health Organisation now as a class II carcinogen, and process meat as a class I carcinogen.
Anyway, I get where you are coming from: heart disease and cancer is not something that’s going to happen to me, those are things that happen to other people, right? And as you say, you just want to enjoy the food & drink that you want. But like I said in my last message, if your food choices are causing pain and suffering to animals – unnecessarily, and contributing to the destruction of the planet, and the money that you’re spending on those foods is encouraging dietary guidelines to remain unhealthy then that is a selfish and negative thing to do, don’t you think?
I do understand your dystopian view of the world, I feel like that myself at times. I look around me and I cannot believe the irresponsible and immoral behaviour of other people, and the lack of ability to critically think. But what can we do, throw in the towel, and say screw it, I don’t care, if you can’t beat them join them!
No, because I don’t want to be like them. And there are millions of other people like me who don’t either. I want to exist and cause the least amount of suffering to others as possible. I also want to contribute positively to other people’s lives and to the environment. Eating a plant-based diet is so easy and so positive. And if I want ice cream I can have it, if I want chocolate I can have it, if I want a burger that tastes like a beefburger I can have it, but all without the negative aspects of the animal agriculture industry.
There are no better methods of enslaving animals in an unnatural environment, feeding them an unnatural diet, pumping them full of antibiotics and steroids, and certainly no way of handling slaughter in a humane way. It just doesn’t exist, every animal wants to live, they will scream and fight for their life right down to the last breath.
For all these words I have written, much of it is completely irrelevant because at the end of the day, in a nutshell, we can live a healthy life without having to needlessly take the lives of other sentient beings, while at the same time preserving the health of our planet. Sure, if we are facing a food shortage let’s eat the animals. But why do so otherwise?
It is simply a choice. And it is a choice that I’m sure will bring a lot of positivity and happiness to your life.
By the way: I agree with you that the world needs to reduces population and people need to stop having children. Unfortunately, it would seem, there are some cultures/people in the world whose primary goal is to reproduce as much as possible. I think it is easily manageable in the west. Simply implement a two child policy.
Jun 27, 2018 at 9:41 am
Hey Pete! I think your post is very “bullying” towards people, namely meat-eaters… who are people too! And no offence, but I would work on being less cruel to your fellow man than worry about the animals in the world. Heaven forbid this happen, but if you or family or friends do get sick, many medications are made from plants, fungi and yes; animal products, in order to heal you. And if you have children you should value that information. Also, the physician, and other healthcare team will show compassion to you while treating you or your family or friends in whatever medical centre you would visit. Taxes are part and parcel of living where you are, so get over it! You say education is very important, and I agree. I think etiquette is a course that you would definitely benefit from! Have some compassion to humankind and their free will to choose what they eat, drink, etc. I don’t think your bullying and aggressive manner is appreciated on a forum that is trying to defend being vegan. The post is “Why Meat Eaters Get Angry With Vegans”, not the other way around. By the way, if you’re going to be full-on vegan and berate people for not eating that way, DON’T recommend that they eat fish. Like, really?! And just because someone eats a burger, doesn’t mean that they want to slaughter innocent animals. Animals provided food to your family for generations, who gave birth to you and raised you. I hope you’re not this mean to your family too. That would would be a sad and lonely way to live, Pete. Good luck.
Aug 14, 2018 at 6:02 pm
Hey Britt,
This post isn’t bullying anyone. It is as much about me as anyone else. This post is a reflection of the person in the mirror who ate meat for 34 years and claimed they loved animals and the natural world. Animal agriculture is destroying our planet and is inherently cruel.
It is the animals and the planet being bullied.
It is unnecessary.
I have compassion for all sentient beings, human and non human, who choose not to inflict unnecessary pain and suffering onto others.
If I need to eat animals to survive, or take a medicine created from an animal to save a member of my family then of course I’d do that. What is your point?
The point is that you avoid causing suffering and pain as much as possible. This should be our default position as human beings with moral agency.
The point is that we don’t need to enslave, exploit, rape, torture and murder animals to be healthy and thrive. We don’t need to wear their fur or skin, we don’t need to wear make-up and perfume that requires dripping chemicals into their eyes and burning their skin.
We don’t need to support an industry that is destroying the planet:
• Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.
• The amount of water used to produce 1lb. of beef vary greatly from 442 – 8000 gallons, with 2500 gallons a widely cited figure.
• Animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, and habitat destruction.
• Animal agriculture is responsible for up to 91% of Amazon destruction.
I’m not recommending people eat fish? You’re taking me out of context. I was discussing the health implications of a meat-heavy diet and referencing the advice of a longevity scientist to make a point to a reader about the need for reductionism even in those who completely reject veganism. My forte is actually nutrition; I am not an animal rights activist. Though through critical thinking it was fairly easy for me to identify that enslaving, abusing and slaughtering animals unnecessarily is wrong.
Aug 14, 2018 at 9:55 pm
peter,
the fact you say that dairy is detrimental to a child’s health is rather ironic given that all human beings adopt a primarily milk based diet during the first period of their lives. The fact that you are trying to manipulate the truth in a desperate attempt to justify the ludicrous principles of veganism. Your rather laughable argument suggesting that the consumption of animal products is ruining our planet doesn’t however display the detriment that the absence of the human being from the animal kingdom would consequently cause to the ecosystem.
The idea of having a vegan society is both unrealistic and depressing, various climates throughout the world do not allow for this plant based diet due to weather behaviour such as sand storms, blizzards, frosts, fires. The occurrence of these natural disasters would prove fatal to a crop however the effect these disaster would have upon animals would be dramatically less severe. I also previously read on this forum (either you or perhaps one of your sick vegan playmates) stating that humans are no longer omnivores. A omnivore is a being that has the ABILITY to consume both plant and animal based products. You don’t seem like the brightest spark so allow me to simplify it for you. Take a baboon who can survive on only a plant based diet but due to it having the ability to consume meat, or other animal products it’s a omnivore. You claim that the water used to produce 1lb of beef is around 2500 gallons, due to meat being greatly higher in nutrients than it’s plant based counterparts i would like to know the amount of water used to produce a portion of lettuce with equal nutrients of 1 lb of beef, i would suspect significantly more. Not sure how animal agriculture results in water pollution however the use of pesticides on crops in order to prevent them from being ruined is detrimental to creek eco systems. It is also estimated that 15 wild animals per hectare are slaughtered as a result of crop harvesting. Yep thats right your kale smoothie has murdered the lives of innocent animals. As avid hunter, i would like to debate your suggestion that humans make incapable predators, no other animal has the success rate of a human spraying bullets out of a helicopter. God has provided animals for the provision of mankind. Well, all i can say is that i hope you are cured from the disease of veganism in the near future, now you must excuse me as i have a eye fillet on the barbie to attend to.
Sep 19, 2018 at 1:56 am
Oh man, it’s so tiring.
Dairy has nothing to do with human babies drinking their mother’s milk during the early stages of life. Humans are the only mammal that interferes with the breeding cycle of another mamamal to rape it, take away its children and consume its milk. Dairy is hugely detrimental to human health (full of bovine growth hormones) and implicated in everything from type 1 diabetes to cancer to asthma to auto-immune diseases such as MS. Don’t be a sheep and follow what the dairy industry tells you; don’t be lazy; do the research. Check out all the references at the bottom of this infographic as a start: https://theplantway.com/20-ways-dairy-destroys-your-health/
When it comes to nutrition, my stance on veganism has no relevance. I have a daughter and her health always comes before animal welfare. I feed her the healthiest diet possible, which as proven by science is a whole foods, plant-based diet; the diet the body was best designed to consume.
You wrote: Your rather laughable argument suggesting that the consumption of animal products is ruining our planet doesn’t however display the detriment that the absence of the human being from the animal kingdom would consequently cause to the ecosystem.
Have you done any research on the impact of animal agriculture on the planet? It’s the biggest pollutant. By the way, the planet would survive just fine without humans. Did you do history at school? My word, you wrote from an edu address. I sincerely hope you’re not a teacher.
Humans are, at best, behavioural omnivores. This is the label we give ourselves. Scientifically we are unspecified frugivores. Some will say that biologically we are closest to herbivores, but that’s a slight simplification. One way you can tell if animals are natural carnivores, folivores or frugivores is to map the area of absorptive mucosa — the area responsible for absorbing and transforming nutrients — in their gut versus their functional body size. When you chart humans this way we fall into the distinctive category of fruit eater. This is science. Nothing to do with veganism. It’s just a fact.
Just because a species has the ability to consume meat, doesn’t mean that meat is or should be a main component of its diet.
Take chimps for example: People consider chimpanzees to be omnivores, but 95-99% of the chimp diet is plants, and most of the remainder is NOT meat, it’s termites. If humans are omnivores, then the anatomical evidence suggests that we’re the same kind: the kind that eats almost exclusively plant foods.
The fact is, if you look at a chart comparing the biology of carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, humans have all the attributes of herbivores.
Saying we’re omnivores because we’re capable of eating meat is just silly. We’re capable of eating cardboard, too, and tree bark. And by the “capable” argument, then cats are omnivores too, since nearly every commercial cat food has plant ingredients. Nobody would ever make the argument that cats are omnivores based on what they’re capable of eating. But they make that argument for humans.
You think beef is nutritious? Do you know where beef comes in on the ANDI scale? I’ll tell you. it gets a score of 21 out of a possible 1000. It comes in just above white pasta and white bread. You do know it contains 30% cholesterol, 30% saturated fat and zero fibre, right? Please don’t insult me by saying I’m not the brightest spark and make such uninformed statements.
Please, do yourself a favour and get a coronary calcium scan and cholesterol check. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) — heart, stroke and blood vessel diseases — is the leading cause of death in Australia. Must be all that healthy beef, pork and eggs they’re eating.
One thing we do agree on is pesticide use. I am absolutely anti pesticides and anti industrial pollutants. I am also anti the antibiotics used in animal agriculture, which make their way into the environment and poison the food chain. Any sane person would be.
You go on to make the case that crop harvesting kills animals. I advocate sustainable farming, who wouldn’t? As a vegan, my position is to reduce suffering and destruction wherever possible. As I have said a million times: there will always be some animals or insects killed in the creation and harvesting of crops, but that doesn’t provide an excuse to start raising and slaughtering animals unnecessarily. This is the good old “all or nothing” argument, which I cover here: https://theplantway.com/vegans-hypocrites/
Ah…and so we get down to the real issue. You’re a hunter. You like to kill defenseless animals for the sake of it. You are desperately clinging to excuses to justify your evil actions. The truth is that you can live a perfectly healthy life without shooting animals for your pleasure.
Oh, and you believe in God. So if Jesus were alive today, he’d be okay with slaughtering animals unnecessarily? He’d be cool with toxic hog farms that destroy communities? He’d be okay with slaughter houses? He’d be okay with the destruction of the planet? He’d be okay with all this: http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/ (read that link and learn something)
You might want to start reading your Bible properly. I quote:
1. “And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” —Genesis 1:30
2. “But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the royal rations of food and wine … Then Daniel asked … ‘Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink.’ … At the end of ten days it was observed that they appeared better and fatter than all the young men who had been eating the royal rations.” —Daniel 1:8, 11–12, 15
3. “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like an ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” —Isaiah 65:25
4. “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you.” —Job 12:7
5. “The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.” —Proverbs 12:10
6. “I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety.” —Hosea 2:18
7. “How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither? For the wickedness of those who live in it the animals and the birds are swept away, and because people said, ‘He is blind to our ways.’” —Jeremiah 12:4
8. “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight.” —Luke 12:6
9. “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.” —Psalms 36:6
Enjoy your fillet, and your coronary heart disease. I strongly recommend you order this book before it’s too late.
I hope God forgives you for continuing to murder defenseless animals with absolutely no justifiable reason. Personally, I don’t think St Peter is going to let you in.
Sep 19, 2018 at 9:25 am
Peter
Thank you for your reply. I wasn’t expecting it to be perfectly honest. I have no problem with you relying on a plant based diet as your primary means of sustanence as long as you refrain from forcing your principles upon others.
What I was refering to was the fact that a mothers milk is also classified as dairy, so if your supposed claims are correct the breast feeding of children is consequently causing various long term health implications.
After thousands of years of humans dominating the animal kingdom to claim that the immeadite absence of humans from the food chain wouldn’t have any negative effect I believe is obscure.
Well, due to humans having the brain capacity to make there own dietary conditions the classification of humans as omnivores or herbivores would entirely depend on the individual. Not sure if that was what you meaning.
On the subject of pesticides, without their use amongst crops the yield is significantly lower, maybe to low in fact for the world to rely on in a plant based diet.
Yes I am a hunter, I now hunt regularly on NSW state forests. All animals harvested are feral and extremely damaging to our natural habitat whilst also competing with other native animals. The primitive feeling of being amongst nature, not only observing but actually being amongst the food chain provides satisfaction to the primal streak which has been installed within our DNA. You should be thanking me for my services, your welcome.
Yes I am a Christian, do you mind me asking your belief? Let me draw to the scripture in John 21 where the lord instructs the disciples where to find the fish “cast to the right side of the ship and Ye will find”
Luke 15
“Bring the fatted calf and kill it for this my son was dead and has come to life, was lost and has been found”
Those are just a few off the top of my head. Yes I do need to read my bible more, I don’t think any of us could claim to be exempt from that.
Thank you, the steak was great. Just by the way you should research into the top 5 humans to hav lives the longest ( within the last 500 years not biblically)
The bible is littered with references of animals being provided for man. You should look into it, it seems you have a lot of time on your hands. Thankfully I am not part to St. Peter’s do not endeavour to do not future. Yeah definitely not a teacher, am in yr 11.
Ps have a look at acts 10 v 11
Have a good one Pete enjoy the rabbit food. 👍
Sep 20, 2018 at 10:53 am
Hi, i’m not of a religious persuasion, but I’ve met a lot of vegan Christians in the last few years and debated both religion and veganism with them. One in particular I keep in touch with via Facebook. I put your comments to him and the verses you noted in your reply. Here’s what he said:
On John 21: Jesus rebuked the disciples for backsliding & returning to fishing & once again called them to preach. He asked Peter 3 times “Do you love me more than these things?” Each time Peter answered that he did. Jesus replied, “Then feed my sheep.”
Jesus clearly made them choose between fishing & preaching.
———————-
Luke 15: twice Jesus says; “I desire mercy not sacrifice.” So he was not a fan of sacrificing any animal. It is also written that animal sacrifices never did remove sin & the sacrifice of Christ is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. (See Hebrews 10:1-18).
More specifically on Luke 15: Eating the “fatted calf” was a sign of joy and celebration that, presumably, Jesus’ audience understood. This was a parable, and no calf was actually killed.
When people today use language and metaphors such as “to kill two birds with one stone,” that doesn’t mean that we actually approve of such behavior. Furthermore, if Jesus had approved of animal agriculture in his day, it would not follow that he would endorse modern factory farming.
I could go into detail as to why the Bible tells us that killing animals is not permitted, and there are numerous examples where hunters are despised or passed over. Nowhere can your reader show that their statement stands up to theological scrutiny. To believe as they do sadly puts them very far from God.
Sep 26, 2018 at 3:52 pm
I’ve personally never seen vegans or vegetarians have a decent rebuttal for these statements
1. You say veganism is more environmentally sound when it can do just as much damage to the environment as farming for meat. Nitrate run-off and soil erosion. Even if you use all natural forms of the chemicals used in farming it still will have those problems.
2. Veganism will not be able to provide enough food for everyone because if you do organic growing your yields are quite a bit lower than normal farms.
3. God forbid a drought would come by. If that was to happen you may as well say by bye to crops that year.
May 05, 2018 at 4:53 pm
1. Growing vegetables and fruit is nowhere near as damaging to the environment as animal agriculture, particularly on the mass scale that we see now. This is scientific fact. In terms of nitrate specifically, you would be correct in saying that fertilizers used to grow crops cause nitrate run-off into rivers and other water sources but this is nothing compared to what is caused on a daily basis by animal agriculture. Livestock operations on land have created more than 500 nitrogen flooded dead-zones around the world in our oceans. We must also acknowledge that cars have a role to play in nitrate nitrogen pollution.
Let me say that I am not an advocate for mono crop farming. Biodiversity, organic farming and encouraging people to grow their own food on smallholdings as millions and millions of people around the world used to do just 30 or so years ago is the environmentally friendly way to feed ourselves. Farming in line with ecological cycles and stopping the use of chemicals and genetic engineering of crops and animals will save the environment.
Ammonia is the most potent form of nitrogen that triggers algae blooms and causes fish kills in coastal waters. The North Carolina Division of Water Quality estimates that hog factories constitute the largest source of airborne ammonia in North Carolina, more than cattle, chickens, and turkeys combined. In 1995, Hans Paerl, a marine ecologist from the University of North Carolina, reported that airborne ammonia had risen 25% each year since 1991 in Morehead City, 90 miles downwind of the hog belt.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/33/11996.full
The sheer volume of waste caused by animal agriculture every day is unsustainable and causing serious environmental damage:
[v] -Dairy Cows, 120 lbs. of waste per day x 9.32 million dairy cows
-Cows, 63 lbs. of waste per day x 83.68 million cows
-Calves, 30 lbs. of waste per day x 34.3 million calves
-Pigs, 14 lbs. of waste per day x 74 million pigs
-Sheep and Goats, 5 lbs. of waste per day x 7.84 million sheep and goats
-Turkeys, .87 lbs. of waster per day x 77 million turkeys
-Broiler Chickens, .50 lbs. of waste per day x 1.74 billion broiler chickens
-Laying Hens, .25 lbs. of waster per day x 350.7 million laying hens
The fact is you need far less land and far less resources such as water to feed people vegetables, grains, fruit, nuts and seeds et cetera then you do to feed them and me in dairy-based diet: 1.5 acres can produce 37,000 pounds of plant-based food. 1.5 acres can produce 375 pounds of beef.
2. the gap in yield is much closer than you think, and in some parts of the world and with certain crops there is no gap at all. Moreover, with new technology and growing techniques, combined with traditional farming techniques that utilise natures natural ecological cycles people are waking up to the fact that organic farming can feed the world, and indeed if you empower people with the knowledge to grow their own food – something that I am doing, there would be no need for anybody to be hungry. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4060
You are also missing an important point here. More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans. Another estimated 40% in the US is used for biofuels, used for farming and other purposes. So an estimated less than 20% actually goes into feeding people in the US, and looking at the world in total it’s more like 10%. So let’s pause and think about this for a second: all that food being used to feed animals to produce meat to feed already obese people while 800 million people in the world go hungry.
Worldwide, cows drink 45 billion gallons of water and eat 135 billion pounds of food each day. Why not feed some of that food to humans?
The resources required to eat a plant-based diet are far less, so you have more available land and more available water to grow food: A person who follows a vegan diet produces the equivalent of 50% less carbon dioxide, uses 1/11th oil, 1/13th water, and 1/18th land compared to a meat-lover for their food.
3. I don’t quite understand your last point about drought. What are you suggesting to do in a drought, to give your water to the animals and fatten them up to eat? If we were facing starvation for a drought, then the first thing you do is stop giving the animals your remaining water and eat those animals first while you still can. If you keep the animals alive then they will graze on your crops and use up your water as well, leaving you with nothing. Animal agriculture, as I have pointed out above on numerous occasions, uses huge and unnecessary resource in terms of land, water and feed.
Whether you have vegetables or animals to feed, a drought situation is a grim one, but ultimately one that can be prepared for by being resourceful, i.e. by not feeding millions of tonnes of grain/corn to animals and instead ensuring that you always have a years worth of food stored to feed the local community should such an event arise. When you made this point you seem to be forgetting that crops like corn and potatoes are fantastic starvation foods and can keep you going for a long time. With our intelligence and ability to organise and plan, coupled with the technology to create moisture which can grow food, I am sure we can put in place a plan that will protect us in a drought situation. Regardless, I don’t see how animal agriculture is an answer to this in any way, since animals take up huge labour and land resource, and meat doesn’t keep well.
This argument is a bit like the “what would you do if you’re stuck on a desert island and there was only chicken to eat” one. Of course I would eat the chicken to survive. And in a drought situation, who knows, perhaps I would be forced to cook someone who had already succumb to the conditions.
May 10, 2018 at 8:41 am
We have incisors for a fucking reason. Enough said. You can’t argue factual, evolutionary science. You are a vegan because it’s cool and you are a hipster. Humans were genetically formulated to eat meat. It’s called survival of the fittest douche. Read a book.
Jun 15, 2018 at 4:36 am
That’s a simplistic assumption NOT based on science. Humans are unspecified frugivores = scientific fact. However, out of the three major classifications we would be biologically closer to herbivores than ominivores or carnivores. Sure, we can eat cooked meat. It’s a great calorie dense food when we are struggling to make up our calorie intake. But for 99% of our existence we have eaten primarily plant foods. Our hunter gatherer ancestors ate over 100 grams of fibre a day. They were eating primarily plant foods. Meat contains no fibre. Humans need a lot of fibre to prevent disease and digest food properly. This is what the body is designed to eat. Animal protein causes high inflammation and subsequent disease in humans, particularly cancer, and it’s cholesterol content raises LDL cholesterol which is a primary driver in the development of cardiovascular disease. By all means carry on hunting meat, if that’s what you want, but the current scientific literature would suggest that no more approximately 5% of your diet should be made up of animal protein.
If you think you’re incisors were designed to tear apart meat, then try going out hunting with just your hands on your teeth as your tools. I assure you you will not get very far. You would not even be able to bite into a small animal and chew through its skin, muscle and cartilage.
Consider the the Saber-Toothed Deer, the Hippo, the Gelada Baboon, the Camel? All plant eaters with huge canines. You need to look deeper than teeth.
By design we are like herbivores: we have fleshy lips, a small mouth opening, a thick and muscular tongue, and a far less stable, mobile jaw joint that facilitates chewing, crushing, and grinding. We also lack sharp claws. Our qualities are well-adapted to the eating of plants, which provide nutrients when their cell walls are broken, a process that requires crushing food with side-to-side motion rather than simply swallowing it in large chunks the way that a carnivore or omnivore swallows flesh.
Herbivores have digestive systems in which the stomach is not nearly as spacious as the carnivore’s or omnivore’s, a feature that is suitable for the more regular eating of smaller portions permitted with a diet of plants (which stay in place and are therefore much easier to chase down), rather than the sporadic gorging of a predator on his prey. The herbivore’s stomach also has a higher pH (which means that it is less acidic) than the carnivore’s or omnivore’s, perhaps in part because plants ordinarily do not carry the dangerous bacteria associated with rotting flesh. The small intestines of herbivores are quite long and permit the time-consuming and complex breakdown of the carbohydrates present in plants. In virtually every respect, the human anatomy resembles that of herbivorous animals (such as the gorilla and the elephant) more than that of carnivorous and omnivorous species. Our mouths’ openings are small; our teeth are not extremely sharp (even our “canines”); and our lips and tongues are muscular. Our jaws are not very stable (and would therefore be easy to dislocate in a battle with prey), but they are quite mobile and allow the side-to-side motion that facilitates the crushing and grinding of plants.
Our stomachs are only moderately acidic, a fact that becomes salient around Thanksgiving, when even slightly undercooked dinners of turkey flesh result in many cases of food poisoning from the illness-causing bacteria that easily survive in our stomachs. Like herbivores and unlike carnivores and omnivores as well, we have long small intestines, enabling the digestion of complex carbohydrates, a process that begins in our mouths, where we, like the committed herbivores, have carbohydrate-digesting enzymes as well.
Does any of this mean that people are incapable of eating and digesting animal products? Of course not. With weapons to kill animals, we do not need dagger teeth, and with fire to cook flesh, we can usually avoid the pitfalls of a stomach that is ill-equipped to kill the pathogens that populate raw flesh.
Despite our flexibility in accommodating animal-based foods, however, it nonetheless remains clear that we are anatomically well suited to plant-based eating. Animal-based foods are unnecessary for us, and they carry significant costs and risks. While it is beneficial to have complex plant carbohydrates slowly make their way through our very lengthy small intestines, the same cannot be said for having meat rotting in our intestines for extended periods of time.
Mammalian carnivores and omnivores share a number of physical attributes that make them well suited for killing and tearing apart their prey. They have a wide mouth opening, relative to head size; a simple jaw joint that operates as a stable hinge for effective slicing but which is ill-suited to side-to-side motion; and dagger-like teeth spaced apart to avoid trapping stringy debris. They also have sharp claws. The mammalian carnivores and omnivores additionally have huge stomachs that enable gorging, an important capacity in animals who tend to average only about one kill per week. These animals also have a very low gastric pH (which means their stomachs are very acidic), enabling the breakdown of highly concentrated protein as well as the killing of dangerous bacteria that typically colonize decaying flesh.
Each of these traits enables the lion or bear to use her body to kill prey. Herbivorous animals, by contrast, have fleshy lips, a small mouth opening, a thick and muscular tongue, and a far less stable, mobile jaw joint that facilitates chewing, crushing, and grinding. Herbivores also generally lack sharp claws. These qualities are well-adapted to the eating of plants, which provide nutrients when their cell walls are broken, a process that requires crushing food with side-to-side motion rather than simply swallowing it in large chunks the way that a carnivore or omnivore swallows flesh.
(Source: Sherry F. Colb – Cornell University)
Jun 15, 2018 at 9:04 am
The only reason why I never really take articles like this more seriously is because they always focus on why meat and all industries related to animal products’ consumption are bad and not acknowledging that vegetables, too, are grown on farms that are mostly unethical as well. Labeling organic tags on them don’t ensure that they are less cruel (companies really love to exploit this to get into the niche hype and earn more profits from lying to their customers) – and more often than not, the farmers employed on those farms are underpaid illegal immigrants living at ‘detention centres’ on the farms, and treated like – you guessed it – animals. There’s a reason why your vegetables are 3 dollars a bunch instead of 30 dollars a bunch.
I have nothing against both meat-eaters’ point of view and vegans’ point of view. I just wish both sides would actually clearly state and acknowledge that there isn’t a single pure and sacred choice – and there will never be. At least until technology advances enough to provide more humane and less cruel alternatives to the methods we currently know of and use to produce the things we require to live and survive in this modern era. It’s not as simple as meat eaters avoiding the truth about animal abuse and exploitation.
So, don’t condemn anyone for the choice they make. Don’t start picking fights over why you love a stick of celery or why you love to chew on BBQ beef. I believe it’s everyone’s rights to choose for themselves – and I do believe that everyone should acknowledge that nothing is infinitely better than the other. Pros and cons, ladies and gentlemen. They’re always there. Everything is interconnected, and whatever your choice is there’s always a consequence that follows and they may not all be positive or negative. That’s why we should be grateful for the privilege we get to enjoy. Making a choice is one of those privileges.
Apr 24, 2018 at 7:30 am
Hi Janice,
I have made this point many times before in the comments section, but to clarify: veganism is not a perfect way of living, or a sacred way of living. It is not a religion and does not claim to be puritanical. Veganism seeks to reduce the suffering and exploitation caused to animals and the environment.
By nature of life there is inevitable suffering; indeed the large majority of us will suffer with illness into old age, and animals are no exception. But surely we should be living by the rule that unless we need to act in self-defence, we should not initiate violence upon another sentient being unnecessarily.
I can’t understand this viewpoint that because somewhere in the supply chain of vegetables someone has been mistreated or underpaid, or because someone somewhere in a second or third world country has contributed to making a piece of your clothing, that veganism is somewhat invalidated and we should just all continue to do evil, violent things based on the fact that nothing is perfect and everything is inherently corrupt and causes suffering in some way.
If there is a person who is being underpaid or exploited for picking fruits and vegetables, then this is something that can be addressed. This is why people vote. Fortunately, in most Western countries there are unions and laws to protect people who are exploited in such situations. And if you look into it, there are hundreds of organisations around the world fighting on behalf of slave labour, child prostitution, exploitation through low wages, and many other areas of social injustice. And veganism is an extension of that. It is part of the same movement. People can be helped in such situations, and there are organisations working to rescue people from hostile environments.
But this is not a justification for enslaving animals in unnatural conditions, feeding them in a natural diet, feeding and growth hormones, causing them disease and then treating that disease with antibiotics, and then slaughtering them unnecessarily. This is not a justification for destroying 1-2 acres of rainforest a minute so that you can graze cattle for big burger brands. This is not a justification for feeding children known class I and class II carcinogens.
With all due respect, this is a ridiculous standpoint. There is no moral argument against veganism. If you can live a healthy life while reducing the level of suffering and violence to animals, and help the health of the very planet that supports our existence, then why would you continue to contribute to the animal agriculture.
You say not to condemn anyone for the choices that they make and everyone should acknowledge that nothing is infinitely better than the other. I’m sorry, but that is a vacuous statement. What does that actually mean? Does that mean a paedophile can argue that what they are doing is natural and therefore morally permissible? Does that mean that to save money a government should be allowed to damage the Earth’s crust by digging into it for shale gas rather than invest in green technology that will preserve the planet for our children? Does it mean that a regime should be able to make the choice to bomb another country based on the fact that they don’t like the colour of their skin? Does it mean that I can beat up gay men because I think it’s unnatural to be gay? It’s ridiculous.
So do extend this same non-condemnation of choice to those who hunt foxes for fun? Do extend this same non-condemnation of choice to those who farm fur? Do you extend this same non-condemnation of choice to those who club baby seals to death every year in Canada? which extend this same non-condemnation of choice if I entered your garden, took your cat or your dog, kept in my shed for two weeks feeling it grain, injected it with growth hormones, and then slit it, hung it up by its legs and that the blood drain out and then cooked it for dinner?
I think you’ll agree that that would be pretty horrific. I think most people would condemn my actions. Strange that, isn’t it?
Is it because is illegal to do that to a dog but not to a cow, or a pig?
You talk about pros and cons and how they are always there. This is so flippant. We are talking about sentient beings that feel parallel levels of stress, fear and pain as we do. They are like children, they are defenceless. Yes, the pros and cons are always there; but surely you always choose the lesser evil. Surely you always choose the pathway that causes the least and violence, suffering and destruction.
Those who inflict violence upon others should be held accountable and made to explain their actions. Over the years the meat and dairy industry has done a very good job of hiding animal agriculture behind closed doors, slaughterhouses without windows and smiling cows, pigs and chickens on advertisements. We are educated in cognitive dissonance, to have beliefs that are inherently contradictory.
I will give you an example: I posted a video of a drowning puppy on Facebook the other day. A man risks his life in the floodwater to save the puppy. People were commenting that they were crying and how wonderful it was. When I post a video of a cow being abused, a pig having its teeth pulled out with pliers or its tail cut off, or dairy cows on their last legs in horrific conditions, or an animal desperately fighting took for its life as it succumbs to halal slaughter, people hide away. people tell me they can’t watch. They tell me how evil is. How disgusting and brutal it is. But then a bacon, or hotdog. Oh, but when I put up a post about the dull slaughter festival in Yunan province in China, everyone is up in arms about how cruel is. Do you not see the hypocrisy here?
If you are facing starvation and you have nothing eat. I would not condemn you for going out into the woods and shooting a rabbit, or a wild boar. But to proactively contribute to a system that is so violent, and causes so much suffering and pain, and is contributing to massive health problems in society — type II diabetes, heart disease, certain types of cancer, autoimmune diseases — and causing planetary destruction is wrong. It is unnecessary.
When presented with a choice to either A) cause suffering and inflict violence unnecessarily upon another being that is able to feel stress, anxiety, fear, and pain, or B) to not do that and take the viable alternative that causes none of this, why would you argue that no one should be condemned for choosing A?
You speak of technology and progress, well this is exactly what plant-based nutrition and a vegan lifestyle is. With the intelligence we have and the technology at our disposal, we have identified that is no longer necessary to farm animals in the way we do and cause the subsequent damage to the environment and our health. We are even able to produce lab grown meat that does not require any farming methods.
It isn’t about picking fights, it is about educating people to ask themselves the right questions, and free their minds from the cognitive dissonance and cultural indoctrination. It is about asking people to look at the overwhelming evidence, to look at the people, organisations and brands who are already making positive change outside of the old paradigms that the majority are still stuck in. It is about waking up and looking at those animals in the face, looking at those slaughterhouse videos, looking at the abuse and the exploitation, looking at the destruction of the rainforests, ocean dead zones, at greenhouse gas emissions, at the health of our children; and being honest with yourself instead of hiding behind cowardly excuses. It is about stepping up, admitting the truth, educating yourself further and being motivated enough to actually care and want to do something positive in order to leave behind a better planet for the next generation.
Or you could just say. “Well, whatever you do, someone somewhere is going to suffer. So what’s the point?” And look the other way.
May 01, 2018 at 2:14 pm
G’day Mate, I’ve read both sides and it seems that this argument sounds very Americanized. You talk about all this horrible culling of cattle and sheep. Where I live(New Zealand) everything is much more ethical than the issues your pointing out. Our country is much fairer on stock than America. The issue of ethical problems in New Zealand is basically non existent. America on the other hand hasn’t progressed very much and isn’t focusing on sustainable farming whereas New Zealand has focused on the industry because it’s our main export. Our environment is being sustained by our great advances in agricultural and horticultural processes. Now that our country has progressed we have made our processes the literal best that we can do for all the cattle. The minimal amount (less than 5% of the people who farm in New Zealand farm incorrectly). For a small country we have probably progressed the most out of most countries in the world. Just saying that you should state that this information isn’t “everyone”, it’s Americans. Cheers Luke
Jul 29, 2018 at 7:10 am
Yes but if you eat meat you will almost certainly eat veggies too so that’s double the damage. I accept vegetables can also be damaging but at least I’m only using one damaging industry instead of two like meat eaters
Feb 28, 2019 at 9:37 pm
Just as they’re is advice on this issue, how do you think we can fight against slavery? I think fair trade is one thing, but I don’t know if you might know about this since veganism has similar ties to fair trade goods.
Thank you!
Apr 18, 2018 at 6:08 pm
Hey Peter! Congratulations on this great article and your impressively patient, courteous, eloquent and well-researched answers in the comments. You’re an inspiration. 🙂
Apr 07, 2018 at 1:06 pm
Thank you Ash. I appreciate your kind words.
Apr 07, 2018 at 8:15 pm
A vegan giving well researched answers, no such thing.
Apr 30, 2018 at 5:55 pm
I have found completely the opposite. The lies I was fed for 30 years of my life regarding nutrition is just unbelievable, and not one person can still present a credible argument, either practical or moral, to support the continuation of mass animal agriculture.
The reality is, whatever way you look at it, the current scale of animal agriculture is seriously detrimental to the environment and to the health of the animals. On top of that, all nutritional science shows us that the healthiest diet is one that is predominantly plant-based. Humans have no need to eat animal protein through the form of meat or milk. You can live a very healthy life without it, and in turn stop causing unnecessary suffering to the animals and the environment, and drastically reduce your chance of heart disease, type II diabetes and certain cancers.
The World Health Organisation officially classified processed meat, including hotdogs, bacon and salami, as a Class 1 Carcinogen. This means those things cause cancer. Pork, beef and lamb have been classified as Class 2 Carcinogens, which mean they probably cause cancer. They did this on the basis of decades of research into the links between meat and human health. The World Health Organisation does not have a vegan agenda, and I very much doubt any of the people who decided on these classifications eat a fully plant-based diet. In fact they probably all grew up being fed the same cultural indoctrination that we did.
Even hospitals in the US are now being advised to stop serving meat and dairy and instead offer plant-based alternatives because they are more conducive to reducing illness. When you look at all the studies into nutrition and disease in the last 50 years and more, the overriding theme is that the closer a human moves towards a plant-based, whole foods diet the healthier they become. Every single health institution in the Western world knows this, including the American Cardiology Association and the American Diabetes Association, both of which have published literature on this matter.
So it is without doubt that a plant-based, whole foods diet is the best option for your health. So why would anyone continue to needlessly unnaturally breed and slaughter animals for the sake of it? Why would anyone knowingly contribute to the destruction of the very planet we live on and the air out children breathe for the sake of the taste of meat?
As a former meat eater, I can’t understand what is so objectionable to people about a group of people who want to reduce suffering and destruction and improve health?
Apr 30, 2018 at 6:27 pm
Vegans are right, we know this.
But that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to publicly shame me on social media.
I understand that you guys are reacting to the animosity meat eaters express. I get all that. But vegans are super, duper angry with meat eaters.
Someone in a group the other day announced that all activists who are not vegan are not activists. Meanwhile a young woman just got killed in Brazil last week. I had to bite my tongue.
It definitely turns people off from the conversation path.
Maybe I can find an article somewhere to help me with that.
sigh
Mar 28, 2018 at 11:52 am
“conversion path” Is what I meant to say above
Mar 28, 2018 at 11:52 am
Oh, also, I should have added (no edit function here)
…I’m specifically talking about being shamed for not converting faster.
For having one thing on my plate that wasn’t vegan in a photo. GOOD GRIEF people.
I know you get crap from meat eaters, but don’t give it back to the people who get you.
Mar 28, 2018 at 11:54 am
The reason some people react that way is partly because they see reducing consumption in the same way they would see the claims of people eating “humane meat” or “humane milk”. There can be no humane way of killing a sentient being that does not want to die. Animals, like us, fight until the last breath to stay alive. So if people perceive that you are simply cutting down as a way of offsetting the impact to animal slaughter, they will generally not feel this is acceptable.
But I do not agree that people should be attacking you over that picture. I think it would be far better to engage you in conversation and talk about your opinions, current diet, and any concerns you have over how a plant-based diet might affect any existing medical conditions you have, things like that. Taking a cheap shot at you is not going to positively bring them towards you, is going to make them more distant.
Mar 28, 2018 at 1:42 pm
That right there is the reason that meat eaters don’t like vegans. They want to impose their views on others. They want to convert you. They judge you.
Now I’m not saying ALL vegans are like that, but a disturbingly loud portion of them are.
I’m insulin resistant, in order to keep myself healthy I either have to eat meat or heavily processed “food”, else my blood sugar is constantly elevated. I don’t need someone telling me that I’m being cruel, that God meant for me to eat plants, or anything else.
I helped to raise animals on my family farm, I’m quite familiar with raising a living being for the use of their body parts in various ways.
I disagree with the biblical argument in that if God didn’t want one animal to eat another, he would have not given them the capability to consume them, let alone have that consumption be beneficial to health.
I am making an informed choice based upon my position as an animal and how other animals function, my capabilities, my requirements, and my morals. Do you know why animals are treated as cruelly as those PETA videos (which are cherry picked, always keep in mind the biases of your source of information)? Because there are incentives to treat animals that way and no disincentives to treat them better.
You will never be able to convince a notable fraction of people to work against their natures, and sorry, but our nature is omnivorous. Just think about cheese, bacon, hamburgers, steak, omelettes, ham, fried chicken, or any number of other meat dishes. Notice how they make you feel? Hungry. That’s what our bodies want. What should be focused on instead is sustainability and humane treatment. Reductions in consumption and shifts to better alternatives. I eat a relatively vegetarian diet. I personally have to be careful about carbohydrate consumption, which means I don’t eat cereals or starchy vegetables like gourds and tubers, but I eat meat in an amount sufficient to appropriately supply my body with the complete proteins it needs to function well. I also eat complementary plant proteins when I can. I buy my meat from local farmers, despite the expense. But for me, Veganism is an extremist position, and the one thing life has continually drilled into me is that extremes are bad.
Apr 16, 2018 at 2:31 am
Hi Jacob, the argument presented by veganism is that there is no moral argument against it. And indeed philosophers like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have discussed this at length and come to the same conclusion. So if a person feels judged, it would be reasonable to put it to that person that they feel that way because they are doing something wrong. Participating in an industry that is inherently cruel and causes immeasurable suffering to animals who feel parallel levels of stress, fear, anxiety, and pain as humans do, when it is unnecessary to do so, is clearly doing something wrong.
If I take myself as an example: I used to eat meat and dairy. But when all the evidence was laid out on the table, and I looked into whether it was possible to live a healthy life and not contribute to this suffering and destruction to the environment, there was absolutely no choice to be made. There was only one correct moral choice, and that was to follow a plant-based diet and advocate for change.
I understand that your position would be that you have to eat meat because you are insulin resistant. However, with all due respect, you are misguided in your understanding of what causes insulin resistance. And it’s not your fault. For many years I had simply followed the nutritional advice of my sports teachers, and the government’s food pyramid.
But if we look at the science, we know that animal protein and saturated fat is a major cause of insulin resistance. A meat-based diet causes insulin resistance, but a plant-based diet can reverse type 2 diabetes. Fat in the muscles cells prevents the insulin from being able to unlock the cells and let the blood sugar in. Those who eat less saturated fat, and trans fats from processed foods, have a decreased chance of developing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/what-causes-insulin-resistance/
There are many studies that demonstrate this:
https://academic.oup.com/cdn/article/1/4/e000299/4555135
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/0010480616
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10027589
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23122836
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC507380/
The evidence for the positive effects on insulin resistance provided by a plant-based diet have been documented for decades. In fact, the evidence is so strong that it would seem like absolute madness that a person with insulin resistance would not undertake a plant-based diet:
I quote, from this meta analyses: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466941/
There is a general consensus that the elements of a whole-foods plant-based diet—legumes, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and nuts, with limited or no intake of refined foods and animal products—are highly beneficial for preventing and treating type 2 diabetes. Equally important, plant-based diets address the bigger picture for patients with diabetes by simultaneously treating cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, and its risk factors such as obesity, hypertension, hyper-lipidemia, and inflammation. The advantages of a plant-based diet also extend to reduction in risk of cancer, the second leading cause of death in the United States; the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research recommend eating mostly foods of plant origin, avoiding all processed meats and sugary drinks, and limiting intake of red meats, energy dense foods, salt, and alcohol for cancer prevention.
Even the Diabetes Association state the following on their website:
Plant-based foods – which are a large part of a vegan diet – particularly fruit, vegetables, nuts, pulses and seeds, have been shown to help in the treatment of many chronic diseases and are often associated with lower levels of Type 2 diabetes, less hypertension, lower cholesterol levels and reduced cancer rates.
Some studies also show that vegans are less likely to be overweight and tend to have a lower percentage of body fat, which in turn will reduce the risk of many other diseases.
Here’s another study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4512604/
In conclusion, it appears that meat intake, particularly red and processed meats, is associated with higher levels of insulin resistance in middle-aged women without type 2 diabetes. Among the many potential confounders examined in this study, BMI and body fat percentage influenced the association significantly. Consequently, both a lower meat intake and lower levels of body fat appear important in reducing the likelihood of insulin resistance, especially in this sample.
Honestly, I could go on all day with this. The evidence is overwhelming.
So given that the science shows that you would be better off not eating meat and eating a plant-based diet for your health, and potentially reverse your insulin resistance, what other reason is there for you not to take on a plant-based diet?
I can’t understand your point regarding the fact that you need to eat processed foods as well. Leaving the vegan debate aside for a moment, I would strongly advise you to eat whole foods over processed foods. Processed foods are nutritionally deficient, and lack the fibre your body requires to maintain good health.
Moving on to your next point regarding the videos, which you say are cherry picked. There is no such thing as a good or human slaughterhouse. And these videos are not simply cherry picked; there are thousands of videos spanning decades. Every week there is a new scandal involving farming practices. The number of farms in Europe that do not comply with EU standards and regulations for the treatment of animals is astonishing, as it is in the US. That said, we are all aware that there are farmers who do their best to take care of their animals. But at the end of the day everything is about profit and loss. How well the animals are treated boils down to profit margins. When those margins are squeezed, they look for ways to reduce the costs of care for the animals.
Just out of interest, if I was an advocate for rape, and then you showed me a bunch of videos of women being violently raped, would it be acceptable for me to say that you are cherry picking videos and not all rapes happen in this way. Quite often, a man will caress a woman beforehand and speak to her nicely before raping her. That’s a ridiculous example, right? Because she’s a human, and rape is unnecessary, right? But science has shown us that animals feel parallel levels of fear, anxiety and pain, and keeping them in an unnatural environment causes psychological damage. Moreover, is it not unnecessary to rape cows over and over again, and take away their calves immediately at birth so that they cannot complete the natural process of rearing their young with their milk?
You don’t need milk. It is not even good for you. Similarly, you don’t need eggs either. I bet you didn’t know that in the US you can’t advertise eggs as healthy or safe, or nutritious! Why? because the FDA won’t allow it. Because eggs do not meet the requirements to be considered healthy or safe.
Anyway, back on topic… Don’t get me wrong here, I am not a welfare activist. There is no humane way to slaughter an animal. I would not slaughter an animal unless I had to. An animal will fight for its life until the last breath. Whether you beat the animal, imprison it for months on end and feed it an unnatural diet, let it out to pasture for three hours a day before locking up again, is irrelevant. If there is no need for you to do this, because you have access to food sources that are very healthy for you and are a better choice for the environment, why would you unnecessarily slaughter the animal?
I agree that cows, pigs, and chickens are a wonderful food source in a situation where you face starvation and have nothing else to eat. But you are not in that situation. If I was on a desert island with nothing else to eat, and there was a bunch of chickens there, I would be the first to grab a chicken and wring its neck. But we now live in a society with the means, the intelligence and the technology to grow lots of healthy food that can feed everyone. But instead we choose, because of financial interests, and the interest of big Pharma in keeping you on meds, to advertise a diet that we know is detrimental to our health, to the environment and very cruel to non-human sentient beings.
Coming to your last paragraph, I’m not sure what your nature is, but if you look back through history and the societies of the world, humans have eaten a primarily plant-based diet, bar except maybe one or two such as the Inuit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8&t=722s
Anatomically humans are herbivores, culturally we have become omnivores. But the diet that best suits our physiology is a plant-based diet. There is no disputing this, it is a scientific fact. Do the research.
Humans evolved to be able to eat cooked me, not raw. We can’t even kill an animal with our hands and teeth and bite into its flesh. There is nothing about us that resembles an omnivore.
Our survival has been due to our ability to adapt to our environment. If need be we can eat tree bark and leaves, and even cook our food in engine oil.
So isn’t it about time we began adapting properly to our current environment? And stop cutting down 1 to 2 acres of rainforest a minute to graze animals for meat that we don’t need, and using 660 gallons of water to produce one hamburger, and feeding tons and tons of grains to animals to fatten them up and produce meat that we don’t need when we could be giving those grains the people who don’t have food? Isn’t it about time we stopped overfishing and killing the oceans, one of the most important aspects of our planet’s ecosystems (along with the rainforests)?
Sure, humans can eat cooked meat, and eggs, and drink the milk of other mammals, but this is not the optimal diet for us. Moreover, with the amount of people on the planet and the destruction that animal agriculture is causing, we need to do what we have done for thousands of years and that is adapt to our environment in the best way possible to ensure that we thrive and the environment thrives.
So, yes, you are absolutely right: we need to do what is natural and has been natural for us throughout history. Why are we engaging in behaviours that are destroying our health and promoting disease, and destroying the environment, and causing immeasurable suffering to animals? Does this sound natural to you? Does it sound natural for a species to want to destroy its own environment, and itself, and become reliant on prescription drugs for numerous diseases that are caused by an unnatural diet that is high in dietary cholesterol, nitrates, heavily processed foods, carcinogens…the list goes on.
BTW: I have no idea why you are concerned about carbohydrate consumption. You do realise that your brain uses up to 25% of the energy/calories you consume every day. Where does that energy come from? Carbohydrates (glucose). Low carbohydrate diets cause brain fatigue, low energy and promote disease. Look back through history at ancient societies and you will see that our diet has always contained loads of starch based foods. This is simply a fact.
You mentioned cheese making you hungry. You do know why you crave cheese don’t you? Look up casamorphins. Casamorphins are the smaller strings of amino acids. They attach to the brain’s opiate receptors to cause a calming effect in much the same way heroin and morphine does. You see, cows need to ensure that their calves suckle on their teats and get milk to survive. One of the ways that nature does this is by including casamorphins in the milk which make the calf essentially addicted to the milk, and along with the chemical reactions in its brain that tells it to seek protection from its mother, this element in the milk ensures that it suckles and gets the nutrition it needs.
The cheese, which is a heavily processed food with numerous unhealthy additions, was not meant for you. The milk from which it comes was meant for baby cows. 75% of the world are lactose intolerant. This figure is higher in some groups such as African-Americans and Southeast Asians. This milk was not designed for your consumption, thus the reason dairy has been shown to contribute to the development of numerous modern day health conditions.
Your last comment regarding bacon, hamburgers, etc, made me laugh. These foods do not make me hungry. That is just cultural conditioning and depends which part of the world you are from. But sure, if you’re starving hungry you will eat anything edible.
These are terrible foods. Process me is a class 1 carcinogen; that’s in the same class as smoking cigarettes. How can people even consider feeding these foods to their kids? Processed foods like this are the cause of cancer and insulin resistance (diabetes). When you do the research and gather the knowledge, you will start making the link between these foods and how bad they are for your health, the negative impact on the environment caused by breeding animals to create these foods, and the horrific suffering caused to the animals to produce these unnecessary, antibiotic-laden, chemically raised, heart disease causing foods.
Veganism is not the extremist position, carnism is the extremist position. It is destroying the environment and is destroying our health.
Apr 19, 2018 at 12:47 pm
I agree with you, no one should be publicly shaming you on social media. I try not to engage in debates about veganism on Facebook, etc, because actually it doesn’t matter whether it is about vegansim or about politics or other forms of social justice, there is a tendency to make a judgement about the type of person someone is and the type of views they hold based on the image or the comment that they have posted.
So this doesn’t make it a good platform to engage in sensible debate, and normally just descends into someone calling someone a name or making a presumption, which is perceived as being judgmental, overly critical, or insulting.
The problem is, the longer someone is vegan and the more they become involved in activism and see the unnecessary cruelty against animals and the needless suffering, they become increasingly upset and frustrated that people they know, and seemingly intelligent other people around the world, are not making the same changes as them when they so easily could.
This is quite natural, and I feel this way myself sometimes. I was only looking at some of the save vigil videos last night when the animals are being driven in on trucks to go into the slaughterhouse. The animals are so desperate for water, and anxious because they can sense that something bad is going to happen to them. They sense that they have been taken from their previous environment to a new one. They can smell the death and fear in the air – animals are highly sensitive and in many ways have greater senses of what is happening in the natural world than we do.
So when I watched these videos, I just can’t believe that my friends, some of my family, and wider society isn’t just saying no, I don’t want to be a part of this, because it is absolutely unnecessary.
It is not only evil, but it is destroying the environment, and by and large science shows us that a diet without animal products and one based on plant foods is the best for us.
So it doesn’t make any sense for this to be going on. So I think this is where a lot of the upset, frustration, and anger comes from.
Moreover, when a vegan sees that someone is campaigning against sexism, racism, or prejudice of some kind, they can’t understand how another person can be so against oppression, violence and evil acts but still eating mea / going to McDonald’s and ordering a burger. So this leads for them to speak out and say something that that person might perceive as offensive.
But what I have to continually remind myself, and I would ask other vegans to do the same, is to remember back when you were not a vegan, and when you were making the transition, which is normally one to vegetarianism and then to veganism after some time.
Everyone is on their own journey. It is very very difficult to undo the indoctrination: the lies about nutrition, the lies about farming practices, the lies about the food pyramid and what we should eat.
If I take my own situation, I spent the best part of 30 years as a non-vegan. My teachers, my parents, the media, my sports club teachers, my gym trainers, every aspect of my life was telling me that I needed to eat animal products in some capacity. I was so far removed from animal cruelty that I no longer associated leather with the animal. It was a necessary part of our culture, and that was that. A vegan was depicted as some malnourished weirdo who wanted to opt out of society in various ways. Years later, my health tells me exactly the opposite.
So the point I’m making here is that vegans need to consider where people are at. To suddenly have your whole world turned on its head, and to have to admit to yourself that you’ve been a part of something that so unnecessarily cruel, and that by and large you’ve been lied to by all the important people in your life, and the government and teachers and people who are supposed to care about you and tell you the truth, is a really hard thing to do and come to terms with.
And some people can’t deal with it, some people can’t face it, some people can’t face up to the truth and they want to remain in their bubble, because it’s more comfortable for them – it’s an easier ride.
It’s the same with many of the issues we are dealing with in life today, not just nutrition and animal rights. For some people, the way to protect their bubble is to say evil things like screw you vegan, I’m going to kill a cow now and eat a burger.
This is immature, it’s childish and it’s pathetic, but the important thing is not to rise to it. It is pointless engaging someone when they’re in that mode on social media, because you will end up insulting them and come off looking the bad one.
In my opinion is better to get off-line and live your life in a positive way, spreading a positive message to show people that this way of living is absolutely possible and that everyone can thrive in this way.
Vegans do have to remember that at one point we were similar, if not the same as those people that we are frustrated or angry with. The animals are not the only victims in this; that is important to remember. We are all victims of the system that creates unnecessary suffering for the sake of profit. And again, this is not exclusive to veganism.
I would encourage every vegan who wants to speak out about this subject, to first learn to do so as eloquently as possible. To understand your position on every aspect of the subject so that you can put your points across clearly and concisely and justify them with facts and scientific research.
State your case positively and assertively but calmly, and if someone wants to have a sensible conversation with you or a debate then do so in the same way. Attacking people either verbally or physically, will never bring about positive change in others; it will only bring about animosity, an us versus them environment. Don’t shy away from the truth though, always be truthful and expose things for exactly what they are.
People respond well when they see a positive pathway forward. You need to be the positive example, you need to lead by example. It’s human nature that when we see someone else thriving we want to know how they’re doing it and how we can do it too.
Mar 28, 2018 at 1:35 pm
I think many people are just sick and tired of preachy vegans. And, sorry, but boy they really do preach! Let people eat what they want. I actually dislike most plant based foods and only tolerate them for nutritional reasons. I see no problem in principle of slaughter of animals for food. The problem is that it is not necessarily humane. Do vegans kill slugs or snails, wasps, flies? Are they bothered about child slave labour and where their cheap clothes come from?
Jun 26, 2018 at 12:33 pm
I have covered the answers to those questions extensively, You might care to read this post titled vegans are hypocrites: https://theplantway.com/vegans-hypocrites/
Jun 26, 2018 at 1:01 pm
I should add to this that if you dislike most plant-based foods and only tolerate them for nutritional reasons, you should probably work with a nutritionist to realign your palate with your natural biology. As an unspecified frugivore (biologically), this really shouldn’t be the case. If you are eating a mainly meat and dairy based diet then you are putting yourself at high risk of cancer, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease. you will most certainly be lacking the high volume of fibre that humans required for optimal health, in addition to the phytonutrients and antioxidants only found in plant foods. I can sympathise with this though, as I got myself into a similar position in my younger years having been given bad advice by sports coaches. The ratio of animal protein in my diet was way too high, and I was lacking the fibre required to prevent disease. My LDL cholesterol was way too high for someone who was supposedly muscular and fit.
Jun 26, 2018 at 1:38 pm
I’ve watched these videos and to be honest, I’ll continue eating meat and still savour it like before.
As a meat loving African I find them as an attempt to convert people mediocre. It’s kinda similar to the priest who shouts that non-Christians will burn in hell for eternity.
To me the idea of veganism is stupid and pretentious. Not eating meat because of animal cruelty? Smartphones and clothes are made from child labour and you still buy them. Then there are those who claim we are naturally vegatarians… that’s a proven myth.
Although that’s not really what I want to talk about. I’m not going to give some stupid excuse about eating meat because there’s nothing wrong with it (which there isn’t. it’s a matter of perspective). The reason I eat meat is simply because I love it, just like most of you love your vegan lifestyles. But I wouldn’t go around trying to convert every meat hater I meet (never actually met a vegatarian, much less a vegan)
Normally I would not care about such a post but it irks me that vegans are trying to take the moral high ground. Animal cruelty is bad, I acknowledge that. Only sick people would cut up animals before actually killing them. The meat I eat is dead though and has no feelings. It also has the added bonus of tasting like heaven. So I will continue to eat it. I’ve never cared much about healthy diets. That stuff should be preached to the smokers and drug users.
The idea of not eating meat does not bother me at all but trying to justify it is another matter, especially when claiming to be in the ‘right thing to do’. Let’s be honest here: no one loses sleep over the animals being killed for our pleasurable consumption. They are as nameless and faceless as the children forced to slave in factories.
P.S: Having read the above I’m actually curious. Do vegans breastfeed their children? What do you think of eating honey? Do you think it’s cruel to take it from bees? What about crushing bugs underfoot? Does it count as animal cruelty?
Apr 03, 2018 at 11:50 pm
You start off by saying that veganism is stupid and pretentious: for the record, the definition of pretentious is attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed.
So your statement is either wildly inaccurate or you are simply using the wrong word to describe what you want to say. Because this issue has great importance and huge impact on three very key areas of our lives, which I will get onto in a minute. Vegans are not trying to impress anyone. We have simply come to understand, through the evidence presented by scientific research, that it is completely unnecessary to systematically breed and enslave animals into a unnatural environment that is inherently cruel and causes horrific suffering for the sake of eating their flesh and secretions.
Of course, I would be the first to say that if this was necessary for the health of our species and our planet, then we would need to do it without question. But it simply isn’t. So why would you knowingly inflict such pain and suffering on a sentient being just for the sake of it.
You immediately argue the case for child labour, yet don’t for one moment think about the parallels between animals and children. Science shows us that animals feel parallel levels of stress, fear, and pain as humans. Animals like cows, pigs, chickens and dogs are all vulnerable beings. Like children, they want our protection, not to be exploited, abused and slaughtered.
Replace the animals that you see in the slaughterhouse videos with children, or even your pet dog or cat.
Your argument that vegans are in some way hypocritical because smartphones and clothes are made by child labour is a tired one. In terms of the critical evaluation of the intention of veganism and its value to humans, animals and the planet, it makes no sense.
By your reasoning, it is okay for me to commit a random act of unnecessary violence on a member of the public because I can justify it through the fact that this person inadvertently harms people in some other way. Imagine what type of world we would be living in if your reasoning was our guide for living?
You’re misappropriating the intention of veganism. The intention is to reduce unnecessary suffering, exploitation and violence towards animals as much as possible. And of course, someone who takes this stance would naturally want to reduce exploitation against children, too.
It is not one or the other: you can be against child labour and also be someone who advocates for the unnecessary killing of animals. In all areas of our lives, we should all be collectively working towards a better world for our children, that’s a given.
It’s a strange comment to make, so I must ask you: is that your justification for contributing to the destruction of the planet and the very air that those children breath, and your justification for feeding children a diet full of carcinogens and animal secretions that promote disease?
Do you say to yourself: “Oh well, I’m using a smartphone and wearing clothes that were probably made in unethical circumstances by underpaid child labour, so I might as well not give a toss about those children full stop and harm them even more by continuing to consume as much meat as possible?… While knowing that 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture, and that 1-2 acres of rainforest are cleared every minute to make way for grazing cattle to feed the world’s meat addiction (91% of rainforest destruction), not to mention the ocean dead zones caused by the pollution of animal agriculture and overfishing, etc”.
Oh, and it’s probably worth mentioning that there are children starving in the world while the very grains that would give them the nutrition they need to survive is being fed to animals – which by the way is not even the animal’s natural food source – so that the meat and dairy industry can feed hundreds of millions of overweight people more of than meat that they love the taste of so much.
By your own admission you love eating meat. You would not sacrifice eating meat to stop this suffering, torture and exploitation, even though we have so many better, healthier food options, and even though the body of scientific evidence dating back to the 60s and 70s shows that a plant-based diet is the healthiest diet for human beings. There is no debate about this. It is absolutely set in stone.
A plant-based diet is the only diet proven to reverse the biggest killer in the USA, which is heart disease, and the 7th biggest killer, type 2 diabetes. It is also an effective way of preventing a number of cancers too. And I haven’t even covered other everyday ailments and health issues that people experience.
And even if this were not the case, and it was simply the case that a plant-based diet was the equivalent of a meat and dairy based diet. Let’s say we will both live in optimal health until 85 years old. What sort of person, when presented with the evidence of environmental destruction, and the horrific, evil practices of the animal agriculture industry, would not abstain from eating meat?
You say that the meat you eat is dead and has no feelings. It is dead because its life was taken against its will, unnecessarily. No. This is not a desert island situation. I would be the first to eat the chicken if I was facing starvation on a desert island. But we aren’t.
We are a supposedly intelligent society with great knowledge of nutrition at our disposal, and the ability to replicate the texture and nutritional blueprint of meat, all without killing animals. Yet we still engage in such primitive practices. In fact, they aren’t even primitive, because any anthropologist will tell you that at no time has any society, bar perhaps the Inuit, eaten such a heavy meat-based diet. Historically, the healthiest civilisations have been largely plant-based. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8
You don’t need to care about healthy diets. That is fine. If you read around this blog you’ll see that I regularly state that vegans are not necessarily healthy people. I have met vegans who live on a diet of vegan junk food. A plant-based diet is healthy. There is a difference between someone who is a vegan and someone who eats a plant-based diet, though most vegans generally eat a higher percentage of fruit and vegetables and nuts and seeds. So because of this high-fibre, nutrient dense diet, they tend to be healthier – as the scientific research shows.
It is strange that you see vegans as perceiving that they are taking the moral high ground. I’d be interested to know what a moral high ground means to you?
Surely there is nothing more moral than wanting to protect vulnerable beings that do not want to die and just want to live freely in their natural environment?
Surely you wouldn’t hurt a defenceless child?
Surely you would take a moral stance against pedophilia?
Surely you would take a moral stance against rape?
Would you say I was taking the moral high ground if I were to speak out publicly against these things?
So what is it that offends you so much about taking a stance against butchering animals unnecessarily: herding them into cramped spaces and forcing them to eat an unnatural diet, feeding them growth hormones and antibiotics – just so people can feed unnecessarily off of their flesh and secretions?
What is it that offends you about raping cows to impregnate them, only to take their calves away from them within 24-hours and listening to them wallowing in the grief of losing a child, just so that you can steal their milk, which you don’t need because you stopped breastfeeding from your mother when you were two years old or less. Are you not fussed that their babies are then shipped off to make veal for your plate?
Not to mention that dairy is incredibly toxic for the human body and seriously bad for your health, as research has shown. Indeed, Mother Nature has shown that the body rejects it: 75% of people are lactose intolerant.
Just to go back a bit to your earlier comment about those who claim we are naturally vegetarians, and that being a proven myth. It’s not a myth; humans are herbivorous. Everything about our physiology shows that we are herbivorous. However, we have evolved to be able to consume cooked meat. We cannot safely eat raw meat like a true omnivore. We don’t even have the ability to kill and skin an animal with our hands and teeth. We cannot even bite into an animal and chew its flesh; our teeth would simply break.
Sure, you can eat meat. Humans can also eat tree bark, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It is no coincidence that when humans reduce the amount of meat and dairy in their diet and increase the amount of plant-based foods that they become much healthier, and when they increase the amount of meat and dairy in their diet they become sicker.
Three quarters of the illnesses suffered by people living in industrialised countries are long-standing chronic conditions such as obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis and cancers. What do the people in these regions have in common? A diet dominated by meat, dairy, fat and processed foods.
When we replace these body-burdening foods with healthy starches, vegetables, and fruits, we can reduce or eradicate chronic disease. Seriously, if you think you are an omnivore or a carnivore you seriously need to do some research. I’m not saying you cannot eat meat, but in terms of your physiology you are not omnivorous and you will thrive best on a plant-based diet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZckC9k3lk8A
You finish by saying that no one loses sleep over the animals being killed for our pleasurable consumption. They are as nameless and faceless as the children force to slaving factories. But I think you’re talking about yourself here, and sadly a lot of other people, but not everyone.
The massive rise in veganism in the past few years is testament to the fact that people are waking up to the truth, and facing the cold, hard fact that they have been lied to about the environment, about health and nutrition, and about animal welfare by successive governments and the education system.
People are realising that overwhelmingly the evidence shows that reducing meat consumption and animal agriculture in general will create a better world for our children and their children. Who wouldn’t want that? Would you want that? Or do you just want to keep eating meat for the sake of it – because you love it so much?
Many of us do lose sleep over it. Many of us spend our lives trying to prevent the unnecessary evil acts of violence committed against animals every single day. And not just in slaughterhouses and on farms, but on fox hunts and in fur factories, or during ancient cultural practices such as halal slaughter or other sacrifice – which have no place in a intelligent, compassionate, forward thinking society. And for the record, I also advocate against child labour and have boycotted brands because of this. I encourage other people to do the same.
At this point I should probably ask the question: would you stop having animals slaughtered on your behalf and eat lab grown meat instead? Which would be safer, just as “tasty”, if not tastier, and probably much healthier because they would reduce the amount of saturated fat and dietary cholesterol? Or would this be too much of a victory for those evil vegans?
On your last two points, I think you completely lose the plot and end up pulling at straws. I get quite tired of answering these ridiculous questions because they come from a place of non-critical thinking. But then I have empathy with you because I was also put through an education system that doesn’t teach you to critically think or analyse your opinion before you speak. It doesn’t teach you to look at the data, to look at the research, and to put a fine toothcomb through the words in your mind before you say them and end up ultimately saying something that is inherently flawed from the start. But I believe that everyone has the capacity to educate themselves: I did it and continue to do it, and I encourage you to do the same.
Of course vegans breastfeed their children. The World Health Organisation recommends that you breastfeed a child to a minimum of two years old. Some women are unable to do this due to medical reasons, and I sympathise with those women and hope that we can continue to find even healthier alternatives to supplement or replace breast milk.
I’m not sure what this question has to do with veganism. In case you didn’t know, breastfeeding is absolutely natural. On the other hand, drinking cow’s milk comprised of pituitary, steroid, hypothalamic and thyroid hormones, pus, blood cells, and antibiotics throughout your childhood and adult life is completely unnatural, unhealthy and one of the main dietary contributors to disease.
No, vegans do not eat honey because the farming of honey is a destructive process that unnecessarily interferes with the breeding cycle of bees and destroys their natural environment. There is some information about that here: https://theplantway.com/why-vegans-dont-eat-honey/.
One common practice I don’t think is listed in that article is when they tear off the wings of the Queen and place her in a nest so that she can’t fly away. As I mentioned before, veganism seeks to reduce the unnecessary suffering to sentient beings. It isn’t necessary to eat honey, or disrupt hives in any way. Honey isn’t even that nutritious anyway; you’d be far off better using date syrup or one of the many other plant-based alternatives.
Killing bugs is an inevitable part of being alive. In many cases it has been proven that certain species of bug do not have sentience, but regardless I try not to kill anything if I don’t have to. Why would you?
It is strange though that some people suggest that accidentally stepping on a bug means that your argument for reducing the exploitation, suffering and butchering of animals in the factory farming industry is somehow inherently flawed. No world is ever going to be free of some accidental killing or suffering. For example, you can grow vegetables without killing slugs and snails, but if you had an infestation that risks wiping out your whole crop then you might have to take that decision.
The emphasis is always put on “unnecessary”. The same way it should be for any kind of killing and suffering in the world. It is unnecessary to use chemical warfare on children in Syria just to prove a political point? It is unnecessary for a pedophile to abuse a child for sexual gratification? Is it unnecessary to force a child to work in a factory making clothes just because it’s cheap labour and you can make more money?
Do you see the point here? Or will you continue to be deliberately facetious?
Apr 04, 2018 at 9:57 am
! I eat meat!,
Just because we can’t do it all, we shouldn’t stop doing what we can. I start from not killing, eating and abusing animals and I believe this is mother of all cruelties.
Child labor is bad but nothing in comparison to what we do to animals. (“Children making cell phones!?” This is only a cold war accusation against countries like China)
To answer your questions: -I do not eat Honey – I believe in breastfeeding if a mother can -I do not deliberately step on insects. If I find a carpenter ant in my house I put it out side, I do not do anything about spiders and I am very careful to not vacuum them.
Apr 05, 2018 at 11:22 am
“Do meat eaters really hold the belief that the cruelty, suffering and pain inflicted upon animals by the factory farming industry is justified by a desire to eat meat?”
Yes, yes I do believe that. To live is to consume life. I enjoy meat and Im willing to do worse to animals to get it. Sure, they are cute, but only because humans are social creatures and mistaking bonding with food. People evolved eating meat and animal products provide important nutrients while also satisfying my cravings.
Show me all the slaughterhouse videos you want, they just make me hungry. The only people turned off by those type of videos are the entitled bourgeoisie that are so far removed from nature that they don’t know where food comes from and the costs that come from existing.
Dec 12, 2017 at 6:58 pm
Charles,
FBI should keep eye on you!
Even meat eaters do not want to be neighbors with you. Hypothetically if you happened to be alone with your blood relater someone alone, with no source of food what so ever. What would you do with that person? Nature law is cruel and you are going to justify that but I do not believe God buys it.
Mar 01, 2018 at 11:58 pm
You guys need to show videos about seafood and show how crab’s are boiled alive and how fish are ripped apart while still alive.
Sep 25, 2017 at 2:51 pm
I know, I’ve seen some terrible treatment of seafood while living in Asia. The overcrowded tanks, being dropped into boiling pots, cut up alive. I can never understand why there seems to be a compulsion to increase suffering as opposed to reducing it. I guess people are just detached by ignorance.
Sep 25, 2017 at 4:34 pm
It’s not me doing the killing, so my hands are clean. I’m just a scavenger. I don’t believe in killing plants either. So I couldn’t be a farmer.
Aug 05, 2017 at 7:41 pm
Actually, Timothy, it is you doing the killing in a technical way. By eating meat and supporting the domestication of cats, dogs, cows, chickens, sheep, sea animals, and pigs, you are supporting animal abuse. Now, I am not saying that eating meat is like gutting an animal, I am saying that every person matters, and if one person goes vegan, 100s of animals will be saved from pointless slaughter. Plus, the farmers that are killing the animals and plants are doing it so YOU have food on your plate.
Jan 16, 2018 at 8:28 pm
Hi Timothy. This is just a point to think about. Not saying ur wrong and I’m right but just think about my point. X
If you payed an assassin to kill your friend, would you still be jailed for it and classed as a murder? The answer is yes. It’s the same thing with meat. Sup,y and deman
Feb 07, 2018 at 12:05 am
Sometimes, I actually find it difficult to live in this world because I can’t stand the level of ignorance that surrounds me. I feel so freaking helpless to stop all this cruelty and evil. I can be vegetarian myself, but I’m only one person against billions of people who continue to eat meat and refuse to change their minds. Tens of billions of animals die every year and I can’t do anything to stop it. Then to have people act as if my actions are the same as a religious fanatic trying to stop condom usage is infuriating. Why can’t people just use their damn brains for once. A religious fanatic is moralizing something that doesn’t actually hurt anybody, therefore it makes no sense to moralize it. I’m moralizing something that is causing immense suffering, it should be moralized because it is immoral to take someone’s life for the sake of your taste buds.
Jul 12, 2017 at 7:12 am
Absolutely. And to think we now have all this scientific evidence that eating meat and dairy is absolutely unnecessary. Plants give us everything we need, and it’s a far healthier diet.
There is one key problem I have identified though: People have been weened by government advice on what to eat. Even with all the science, and all the doctors speaking out against meat and dairy , even with all the environmental implications and suffering of the animals, people have been wired to believe that meat and dairy are necessary dietary staples. To change this, they have to admit they have been lied to an manipulated, that essentially half of what they know about nutrition is a lie. They also have to change their lives, their fundamental daily routine – and for humans to change eating habits is a huge deal in itself.
People need to be re-educated, but not just that, they have to want to be re-educated. They won’t get this from the government or from schools, because the meat and dairy industries have too much influence in the food chain and education, and their assault on distorting the truth has never been stronger because the rise of veganism/vegetarianism means they are currently facing the biggest challenge to their profits ever
The reality is that most people don’t even read books, or watch documentaries. They are happy just plodding along in life and for them it’s easier just to turn a blind eye, and ear, and continue as they are. I don’t blame people for that; the majority of us have had the same educational experiences – the same indoctrination. Luckily for me I was born with a personality that always wants to know “why”, and “is there a better way”.
Jul 12, 2017 at 8:27 am
I was a vegan quite happily until I developed thyroid disorder. Synthetic replacement hormones didn’t work for me so I had no other choice but to take dessicated pig thyroid. Gross!
On top of that to reduce the attacks I’ve had to eliminate gluten, goitrogens and unfermented soy which inhibits thyroid hormone uptake. It is a living hell – back as a vegetarian.
Oct 05, 2017 at 1:53 pm
they should uthinize them before griding them up or whatever
Nov 06, 2017 at 12:25 pm
Hey, hey, I feel the same way.
Nov 23, 2017 at 6:52 am
My real question though is who are these people these companies hire that are so willing to kill animals? I mean its one thing to be a consumer and eat this without knowing exactly where the meat came from or what happened on its way, but its another thing to be the person actually doing the killing. What’s their excuse? That’s really sad. I am glad that there are people like you who are spreading this information, but my thing is I won’t stop eating meat just because some people do it wrong, but I would avoid the places that do this. The problem is how do we know where the meat came from? Seems the only solution is to buy from a local farm you have visited yourself. I think you could reach more meat eaters, by helping them find cruelty free ways to consume meat because for myself and others its really hard to stop doing something we have been trained in since birth. I don’t see anything wrong with eating a dead animal or killing an animal in a quick humane method. I would like more information on how to stop these places of cruelty though.
Jul 11, 2017 at 7:55 am
Best way to stop them is, not buying their products at all. Also, we are cruel to our children when teaching them to eat meat. After all there may be a God and serve justice for animals by punish those whom twisted God’s words to their advantage
Nov 23, 2017 at 6:56 pm
You are dead wrong about your comments on meat eaters. The reason we don’t want to watch these videos has nothing to do with us eating meat later that evening. Just because you were that way, doesn’t mean all meat eaters think like that. I’m sure there are many reasons why, but I don’t like watching those videos just like I don’t like watching videos of children being hurt or people being murdered. I know it happens and I don’t want to see it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try to make it better. I also disagree with you saying that meat eaters are responsible for that animal abuse. I personally do not see meat eating as wrong, but I do see animal abuse as wrong and I try to avoid companies with known animal cruelty, but I can only do so much as one person. To that extent I do try to buy meat and eggs from cage-free/ free-roam farms/ grass-fed cows that are known for better practices.
In order to motivate people better you need to give them a vision of hope, not a vision of fear. Showing us hurting animals just causes despair. How can one person going vegan make a difference when these companies control so much of our land, advertising and government money? What can we do? You need to be working on how to answer that question because just scaring people away from meat won’t solve anything. You gotta show them a better way and give them hope that they can make a difference.
Jul 11, 2017 at 7:47 am
Hi Corrine, thanks for taking the time to share your opinion. Regarding watching the videos, I take your point and I think you are right in one sense, but let me add some further context….
The reality is, the majority of people could not watch an animal being slaughtered and then immediately sit down to eat a plate of meat of the same animal. Why is that?
If we were natural carnivores we would not have a problem with this. In fact, we would salivate at watching it.
People don’t want to be reminded of where the meat they are eating came from and the suffering it causes. Watching an animal suffer is not a natural thing to enjoy and watch. People want to maintain a clear, clean conscience; to separate their action from the cause and distance themselves from this.
I still have trouble watching those videos, despite being vegan, and like you I don’t like watching videos of children being hurt or people being murdered.
And that’s the point: All of these things are morally wrong and make us feel uncomfortable, sad and want to look away. It just so happens that one of these things – mistreating and slaughtering animals – is legal.
Humans have a voice. Humans have a legal system protecting their rights. Animals do not talk like we do, but science has proven that they feel parallel levels of stress, anxiety and fear, and that many species have very complex ways of communicating and socialising, many of which we do not fully understand. We know animals feel that stress, fear and pain, so of course we are uncomfortable watching these videos, in the same way we are uncomfortable watching children being abused…it’s sickening. Imagine watching a video of a child being abused and then sitting down to eat one, or abuse one. Can you see that parallel?
I have to disagree with you that eating meat does not implicate you in the suffering of the animal. If you eat an animal knowing that it has suffered in captivity and then been slaughtered in a horrific way, you are complicit in that chain of events. If a company knowingly hires a person who has been trafficked from another country to work for less than minimum wage to benefit from cheap labour, even though they did not source the labour or accompany the person across the border, are they not complicit in the exploitation?
I could give you 50 more examples like this.
I absolutely agree with you that to motivate people you should give them a vision of hope. But in the same way I would not sugar coat a story of child abuse, human trafficking, corruption or any other immoral activity, I think it is necessary to present the whole story and an accurate representation. Pretending that these horrific actions are not taking place, or that they are a thing or the past when they are very much a part of the present, will not bring about the necessary change that the animals deserve. Neither will it improve the state of the environment, which is seriously damaging the health of our children.
But as I mentioned, abusing children is illegal; we as a society are actively protecting children. But if a cow gets kicked and punched at a slaughter house, or of a pig has its tail cut off and teeth pulled out with pliers while conscious, who gets arrested for that? Who speaks up for those animals? Who lobbies government to stop the abuse?
These videos are necessary. There is good reason slaughter houses do not have windows. People couldn’t bear to look inside if they did, in the same way they can’t bear to watch the videos; because they most probably wouldn’t want to eat meat that night for dinner. And the meat industry really doesn’t want that.
If you look over this blog, you will see that I rarely write about animal abuse and that the majority of articles are based around positive improvements people can make to their health and ways to incorporate more plant-based products into their lives. I don’t really post graphic content on Facebook either, but I will still defend those who do for the aforementioned reasons.
Lastly, don’t underestimate the impact you as one person can have on making change. A whole field of a crop can start with just one seed. It takes time, but it grows.
Jul 12, 2017 at 10:16 am
I can watch the videos, and it doesn’t mean anything to me. I can watch videos of Auschwitz with no reaction. It’s not me doing the killing. I don’t know the victims. Doesn’t mean a thing. It’s pragmatism.
Aug 05, 2017 at 7:44 pm
There is no such thing as humane slaughter. It is an oxymoron. You can’t brutally murder something against its will kindly. It just can’t happen. Did you know that pig testicles are torn out at birth WITHOUT anesthetics???
Jan 16, 2018 at 9:00 pm
I am a meat eater. I have been a vegetarian. My daily diet consists primarily of live foods but I do eat cheese, honey, eggs and fowl (turkey/chicken).
I have never in my life heard a meat eater say, “… that the cruelty, suffering and pain inflicted upon animals by the factory farming industry is justified by a desire to eat meat?” No one talks like this. We eat meat because 1) we were raised to do so, 2) we just do and 3) we know animals are killed for food, but in today’s society we don’t see it so we don’t think about it.
The issue isn’t that vegans post videos of animals being slaughtered on Facebook, it is when vegans invade your personal space, lecture you incessantly and make rude comments when you walk past them or don’t listen to them.
Be a beautiful, healthy, radiant vegan who knows personal boundaries. It is easier to lead by example.
Jul 11, 2017 at 5:47 am
Really? I hear that all the time. When I speak with friends about eating meat, or am socialising at a bar or party and get into a conversation about dietary choices, veganism, etc., I always hear very familiar lines:
“I know, the cruelty is terrible. I think I could give up beef but I’d really miss chicken”.
“Oh come on, you must crave bacon!”
“Okay, meat I could do without, but cheese… I’m addicted to cheese”.
There is always a running theme around taste and the desire to eat particular foods. Humans are creatures of habit, and as you point out, we have been raised on this diet and indoctrinated to believe we need it to be healthy.
Don’t get me wrong though. If someone openly says to me; “Look, I love eating meat and I don’t give a crap about the suffering of animals or the harm to the environment”, I respect that honesty. I’d rather hear that truth than some lame excuse about protein or calcium.
And a person like this wouldn’t have a problem seeing videos on Facebook of animals being slaughtered, tortured or in immense pain, or in real life for that matter. Because they don’t care, right?
On your third point: 3) “we know animals are killed for food, but in today’s society we don’t see it so we don’t think about it.”
But we do see it. We have access to see it now. That’s the point. Animal activists are putting windows on slaughter houses and labs. They are now able to expose the lies of the meat and dairy industries by posting videos on social media, and videos of animal testing labs and fox hunting, etc.
Sharing the truth is why so many people are making more compassionate choices. Is this not a good thing for the world?
And if you have all the evidence you need but still eat meat, then why else are you doing it, if not for taste?
The same goes for the fashion industry and slave labour, the construction industry, human trafficking and more — but no one says. “Don’t invade my personal space with stories about human trafficking or child slave labour. Stop preaching! If I want to traffic a few humans or exploit a few children I should be free to do so”!
Lastly: to address your point on lecturing….
I have never heard a vegan lecture someone. I have heard a vegan in a debate, but not start lecturing someone for no reason. 99% of vegans I have met are not out to offend or hurt anyone’s feelings, but instead create a platform for the voiceless and share the truth about the impact of animal agriculture on the animals, the environment and the modern diet.
Perhaps some vegans do get angry and end up insulting someone. I don’t condone that, but I’d imagine this happens mostly out of frustration at perceived ignorant comments.
Veganism is not a proclamation of perfection or a pathway to it. Do politicians not insult each other sometimes? Do teachers not occasionally shout at their pupils? People lose their heads in debates all the time. Not all of us are good at expressing ourselves. It takes a lot of practice.
I do see plenty of comments mocking vegans. Nothing has changed there. As a kid growing up, vegans were fair game for mocking. We were told that vegans were weird, weak, and would get sick because they didn’t drink milk or eat meat.
Jul 12, 2017 at 9:36 am
“The same goes for the fashion industry and slave labour, the construction industry, human trafficking and more — but no one says. “Don’t invade my personal space with stories about human trafficking or child slave labour. Stop preaching! If I want to traffic a few humans or exploit a few children I should be free to do so”!”
Best point ever Peter, amongst a LOT of other excellent points!!
Meat eating has become so normalied and I attest to this as I have fooled myself ‘for health’ reasons between periods of vegetarianism. I also lost empathy, capacity for compassion and became super defensive, just like the some of the people commenting here.
Case in point!
Nov 04, 2017 at 9:51 am
Hi November, you pointed very well that why people eat meat. If we raise our children vegan then they live vegan.
Of course vegans and animal rights people trying to teach others in professionally through books and webs , but in every day life, usually this is meat eaters that open the conversation by kind of funny comments to us.
Wish you the best and happy Thanks giving! Just don’t eat turkey! ha ha ha, sorry I couldn’t help it
Nov 22, 2017 at 5:00 pm
Fuck the humans! Whoever created humans, give me a break !
May 11, 2017 at 5:38 am
Penny,
I totally agree with you. Humans are Gods biggest mistake.
Nov 23, 2017 at 7:18 pm
even as a kid, I felt something is just not right with the double standard of “pets or food”
I can understand (barely) the reasons for killing for survival if there is no choice, but not just to stock your freezer.
I believe that, in my own little weird way, I will have to answer for every death/murder of creatures I have directly or indirectly caused. Tho, I am not a vegan, yet anyway, I HAVE stopped hunting, fishing or otherwise directly harming animals.
I WILL NOT go into places that just sell “sporting goods” for killing animals. Several places come to mind that have displays of trophy game. Yup, it was the biggest one on record, so we killed it….makes me want to puke.
May 09, 2017 at 6:30 pm
Very powerful article!
May 04, 2017 at 12:16 pm
I agree with vegans on the horrific nature in which meat is delivered to the public. The industry definitely needs an overhaul. But where I strongly disagree is the idea that it is morally wrong to kill and eat an animal. I don’t believe I am superior or above the animal because of my higher state of consciousness. I am the same as the ant or the tiger. Therefore, if I go out, shoot a deer and eat it, it is no different from the lion hunting the gazzele, or from the spider catching the fly. Just because there are other ways to get nourishment from the earth does not make another way bad or immoral. You are what you eat. The animal doesn’t just die in vein. He becomes a part of me. There is honor in the hunt for both parties involved.
Apr 18, 2017 at 8:52 am
But then this moral stance must surely include humans vs. humans. Is there honour in one human hunting down another as a food source? It must also include dogs and cats, or any other pet. Any potential food source is fair game under your stance.
I agree, if it is necessary to hunt to survive then that is what a being has to do. But for humans it isn’t, at least not in a society where plant-based foods are abundant. So to cause unnecessary suffering and death is immoral.
Regardless of that point, do you hunt and kill your own food? Have you ever ripped apart flesh with your hands and eaten raw meat? Have you tried to bite through the skin of another animal? Humans are not carnivorous hunters. We are not equipped to be so. We can’t even safely eat raw meat. So your comparison with lions and other hunters is not a valid one.
Moreover, humans thrive on a plant-based diet, and in doing so avoid the many associated health risks involved with eating meat. This isn’t just an assumption; it’s science.
So the bottom line is: If you live in a society where you can eat really healthy foods in abundance, and not cause any suffering to other sentient beings, or negatively impact the environment by contributing to the animal agriculture industry, why would you not choose to live that way?
Apr 18, 2017 at 10:34 am
I hear your points my friend. I have hunted and eaten my own meat. I haven’t eaten it raw obviously. My comparison to the tiger or to the spider was not meant in the way they hunt but the hunt itself. As strange as it may sound, I feel a deep connection with the earth when I hunt. It feels like home. I could spend a while trying to come up with my philosophical reasons for hunting but I suppose, and I’m sure this will be met with heavy criticisms, they main reason I do it is because I deep down truely love it. I don’t think hunting is cruel. There is definitely a kind of praise that you and others like you should receive, but the forrest calls to me. I need to express my inner true animal self.
Edit: As a side question, I’m sure you don’t miss eating meat much if you ever did, but how can vegans live without cheese? It just so damn good.
Apr 18, 2017 at 6:43 pm
I agree that we can’t argue that it is intrinsically wrong to hunt and kill an animal, but then, is anything intrinsically “wrong”? Doesn’t this argument that we can, and perhaps should, do as other animals do simply undermine human constructs of moral value? After all, we can find any behaviour in the animal kingdom, but surely what distinguishes us from them in this context is the capacity to evaluate and choose? If we don’t need to hunt to live, then by our commonly understood ideas about good we should choose not to. The only benefit in your scenario, Barry, is your pleasurable experience. It’s so easy to make your case when it’s not you that suffers from the hunt. Your ethereal appeal to nobility falls flat because we haven’t heard from your victims. As for cheese, nah. It’s just a taste – whether I chose a plant-based diet or not would never have revolved around cheese! 🙂
Apr 19, 2017 at 12:54 am
If you love hunting so much, for all the reasons you say you do, I suppose you hunt with bare hands, using your nails and teeth?? Because that”s the only acceptable way of hunting for me. You see, that ‘s how it happens “naturally” as you say that you like to see it..
Apr 19, 2017 at 6:15 am
Honestly trying to figure out whether this is a troll post or serious. It can’t be serious….can it?
can it?
Feb 14, 2017 at 10:15 pm
Just to add – always think of something else to add on – it isn’t just vegans who are preachy. I have had veggie friends of mine say they have had meat eaters give them a hard time about their diet. One said she was sitting eating her lunch when one guy went on about what she was eating and started to dangle meat at her.Pretty pathetic really.
I do wish though that vegans would not call artificial insemination of animals as rape.Okay,it is forcing a procedure on them,but it isn’t rape.
Jan 31, 2017 at 8:33 pm
The “preachy vegan” theory is a case of the the pot calling the kettle black. For 30 odd years I was preached at about the importance of meat and dairy and why I must swallow the suffering and abuse of animals because my body needs the flesh and bodily fluids of animals to survive healthily. Turns out it was all lies and manipulation, and in fact the truth is exactly the opposite.
The preaching doesn’t stop there either. The adverts, the government guidelines, the manipulated studies, the lobbying, all designed to brainwash our kids like they did us in a bid to prop up their interests in the meat and dairy industries.
Where unnecessary suffering and abuse takes place in the world, be it carried out on a defenseless child or a cow, we all have a duty to speak up and say this is wrong, it doesn’t need to be this way. I don’t walk around evangelizing about veganism all day, but I speak up for the voiceless where required and certainly won’t turn a blind eye just so people don’t think I’m a “preachy vegan”.
In terms of the use of the word rape, what other word would you use?
By definition, rape is “an outrageous violation”, and “usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will – usually of a female”.
To forcibly put an instrument inside the sexual organ of a female sentient being and impregnate her is to violate her (sexually) against her will.
Jan 31, 2017 at 9:17 pm
Oh It VERY much IS RAPE! Being inseminated without your consent is RAPE..NOTHING LESS..i see you trying to wriggle out of that one..it IS what it IS! Rape does NOT have to involve Penile penetration..any object that enters into the vaginal Area of a woman or anal of a Man or Animal without prior consent is still RAPE!
Apr 17, 2017 at 7:20 pm
I have recently gone vegetarian – not vegan – myself,so can see it from both sides.. The people laughing at the lamb slaughter video were just crass and cruel
The reality is that people are not going to just give up eating meat. I know a lot vegans seem to have a complete zero tolerance for eating meat and read of one saying how making animal welfare better will just encourage people to eat meat if they know welfare is better, but people are still eating meat regardless. Why not push for better conditions?
To be honest,if the issue is “factory farming” as vegans point out then maybe the problem isn’t just meat.Okay,the environmental effect certainly is a factor, but then surely the onus should be as much on reducing meat. Why not push for an end towards factory farming. This is what “Compassion in world farming” does. Not all farms are like this and then vegans will say it is about taking a life, so it isn’t just about “factory farming” then and is about killing period.
Not everyone can go vegan as there are some people who have heath conditions and some parts of the world where there isn’t enough arable land.If it was so easy to just go vegan then nearly everyone would do it I think there are other options than to just get people quit eating meat.
Jan 31, 2017 at 8:18 pm
To add,other options than to get people to quit meat totally.Perhaps encourage people to have less,hand out fliers to restaurants that are veggie. I have mentioned my change to people I know in a positive way and one girl I know said she might go vegetarian.
Jan 31, 2017 at 8:24 pm
Hi. I am vegetarian. For some reason, I always laugh at animal abuse videos. The lamb video was the funniest. Perhaps it is because I am overly frustrated and stressed that non-vegetarians just don’t care about it. I show these videos sometimes to my close friends that eat meat, but they just don’t care. They just close their eyes and say “EWWW”. If it is so disgusting, then why do you eat it??? I have been vegetarian my entire life, and I can’t seem to persuade anybody to at least try to make a difference in their life. My mom has always been impartial on this topic. My family has been vegetarian for generations, but she is biased towards meat eaters, at least from my point of view. Whenever I get disgusted by other peoples food choice, she always tells me, “It is their choice. They can eat whatever they want to.” I responded with a quote I heard once. It went like this: You can choose what you eat, but not WHO you eat. I personally love this quote. It captures my thoughts exactly. Animals are whos, not whats. Animals are him and her, not it. I also talked to my mom about becoming vegan, and I told her that I wanted to become vegan. She replied with this: Sorry, you will not become vegan! I refuse to buy soymilk or almond milk.
Jan 16, 2018 at 9:17 pm
What’s really annoying about vegans is they simplify all people into vegan or non-vegan. Feel free to “believe” what you want. Life is more flavoursome with a few animal products included – that is my view. And as a generalisation it seems to be the overwhelming popular view of people or humans, across the whole planet. So please, stop referring to the majority as non vegans, we are just people – flawed in many differential ways, trying live and enjoy life whilst we’re here, without resorting to oversimplistic and childish labelling for the convenience of vilyfying billions of people in order to make yourself feel better about a highly limiting lifestyle choice you’ve made. Good luck to you if you have. Stay healthy. But learn to accept your views on food contain you, not the whole world.
Jan 31, 2017 at 9:06 am
Well said.
Jan 16, 2017 at 9:34 pm
Major factory farming is actually pretty horrific. Those Vegans aren’t wrong about that. Why do you think it’s so difficult for us to see what’s happening on these farms and in those slaughter houses? There is a reason people have to go undercover to get the truth. Cage free and free range are very misleading phrases so yeah, it is often not much better. I have a friend who grew up on the east coast and her family still has a little farm. They sell at their local farmers market but have to supplement their income with other forms of employment (they can’t compete with factory farms). I went to that farm once and it really was the pastoral green valley, clean spacious coops for the chickens at night and honest to God, free range in the day. The goats are well cared for and loved by the family. That is an anomaly. For the most part farm animals are treated as a commodity rather than living beings. There is a way to demand better. It is possible. I’m not a vegan John so don’t go screaming at me. I’m simply saying vegans aren’t exaggerating about farming conditions.
Jan 16, 2017 at 9:31 pm
Nice to see a balanced viewpoint here. The reality is that we have the capacity to be intelligent, compassionate individuals that don’t need to harm other sentient beings to live long, healthy, happy lives. We can’t and won’t create a perfect world free of suffering, but all of us can start by not contributing to the evil meat and dairy industries. Moreover, animal agriculture is ruining the planet!
Jan 17, 2017 at 9:39 pm
End terrorism….than maybe we can talk
Jan 19, 2017 at 2:53 am
See, I just dont understand what that has to do with anything we are saying at all here.
Apr 17, 2017 at 2:23 am
Michelle Nerlin, animal abuse, murder and torture IS terrorism. If there is injustice anywhere, it threatened Justice Everywhere. -MLutherKing. This is the crux of the vegan ethical lifestyle choice, to end terrorism. If we, as an intelligent capable species don’t care for the.most vulnerable of our society (animals) then how can we care for each other and stop the violence toward our fellow children and man? Waiting for someone else to end terrorism is an excuse to bot take responsibility.
Jan 17, 2018 at 11:24 am
That’s why we need to learn compassion and not to kill. All terrorists are meat eaters.
Jan 17, 2018 at 7:26 pm
You eat wheat, sugar, soy and alcohol but you won’t eat meat.
Don’t tell me your diet is for health reasons.
Jan 14, 2017 at 6:22 am
I’m gonna take a wild stab in the dark that you’ve not looked much as what those on a vegan (or plant based) diet actually eat?
Either way, different people; different reasons. But generally it’ll be for health reasons, to reduce their environmental footprint and of course; for the animals
Feb 14, 2017 at 10:13 pm
I don’t do it for the health reasons, and consume all of those things. Even if I were, eating it in small quantities isnt going to destroy my health. You can occasionally have those things and be healthy.
Apr 17, 2017 at 2:22 am
I actually loathe non-vegans and more so today than usual. Just read an article in the DM. A Dutch woman who has spent her entire life in Switzerland has been refused citizenship because she is a vegan and objects to the heavy bells that the Swiss force their dairy cows to wear around their neck and has been making a noise about this. The DM vegan haters are out spitting their usual blood-soaked venom and marvelling at the Swiss decision – this is the same country that is having problems with certain migrants but paedophiles and rapists are less of a bother than vegans are apparently. A DM commenter actually said recently that “he would rather leave his daughters in the care of a paedophile than a vegan” how much hatred is it possible to feel. I’m sick sick sick to godforesaken death of non-vegans and their disgusting cruel behaviour they sicken me to core of my soul and I HATE THEM HATE THEM HATE THEM with a passion – I hate being incarcerated on a planet where these arseholes exist – I actually got spat at by one of them once at a demo – their rotten meat eating offspring were laughing at footage of ‘lamb slaughter’ – at the moment I’m feeling so much hatred towards these people and so much upset at this story ……
Jan 11, 2017 at 12:11 am
I would never spit at you, teach my children to laugh at slaughter or deny you citizenship. I’m rather surprised to hear that about Switzerland because they are the same country that has made it illegal to own only one guinea pig for fear they would be lonely. Your Vegan diet would not keep me from forming a friendship with you and I would respect your way of eating when together (going to appropriate restaurants and fixing appropriate meals). This attitude, the one you are displaying now, is what people don’t enjoy. This is what many are annoyed by and want to stay away from. I don’t appreciate being called a moron. You’ve never met me and don’t anything of my intellect, values or morals but you’re very sure you do. You said you were at a demonstration (I’m sorry you were spat on), but who were you demonstrating for? Were you hoping to bring attention to something you view as a problem and possibly educate people? Or were you demonstrating for yourself? To toot your own vegan horn, so to speak? You have a very “I’m right, you’re wrong” way of presenting your ideals. It really does sound (based on your statements here at least) that you are in self perceived elevated group and those stinky meat eaters are “The Other.” In my experience people who need an “Other” are often searching for something within themselves, searching for a solid identity. Which is what my earlier comment was about. Well partially. In any event I may often be irritated by a lot of the vegans I meet but I’m irritated by a lot of people who I still love and have in my life. I’ve never thought they were jerks, or rude or assholes just because they were vegans. You however, are behaving in a very rude way and it is decidedly unpersuasive. If you truly do value this and believe it is the only moral way of living, don’t you want people to be open to your opinions? If you love animals and the planet, shouldn’t you love your fellow man and want to reach out to them rather than assigning sides as if life is a competitive sport?
Jan 16, 2017 at 9:16 pm
Good thing that you’re not succumbing to the vegan stereotype of being hateful, arrogant, and preachy. LOL
Jan 25, 2017 at 1:55 am
This is really not why vegans irritate me at all. When I was 7 I saw one of this horrid videos. My mother worked at a library (this was years ago when you needed a library) and I stopped eating meat for many years. I understand the horror of it all. I began eating meat again for a couple important reasons. Vegans irritate me because there is this annoying, I drink wheat grass and I do bickram yoga and name my children words like apple, thing that seems to happen when you follow a behavior, there suddenly is this whole subscription to a club, a way of life that seems to follow and it always sickens me. I am never attracted to that type of thing no matter when, where or how and it does seem to be very prevalent with vegans.
Nov 19, 2016 at 7:28 am
What in God’s name are you wittering and twittering precisely you stupid meat eating/milk drinking moron.
Jan 11, 2017 at 12:00 am
What in God’s name (as if you even recognize what that is) are YOU doing attacking someone for posting their opinion on this?? What a POS bully! Go eat your plastic corn pasta idiot!
Apr 16, 2017 at 11:22 am
You’re bullying too, you’re no better than she is. Just saying.
Apr 17, 2017 at 2:24 am
I’m not the one who called the commenter “stupid” and a “moron”. Get some glasses and learn to read. Or get a brain to help you decipher right from wrong.
Apr 17, 2017 at 11:14 am
can u shut up, please? You aren’t very nice, Len. His opinion is a bad opinion. I didn’t even know there was such thing as a bad opinion.
Jan 16, 2018 at 9:29 pm
I know more non-vegans who drink wheat grass, do yoga, go backpacking and “connect with the earth” than I do vegans who do these things. But what’s wrong with that, anyway? Surely peace-loving people that want to eliminate suffering in the world should be commended, not ridiculed? Surely the identity of numerous other groups of people annoy you more? You know, like war-mongering politicians, greedy bankers who cause global suffering, Beer-drinking football louts who start fights for no reason? Evil dictators perhaps?
Jan 17, 2017 at 9:36 pm
My diet consists of organic fruits, vegetables, raw nuts, (bitter apricot seeds (b-17) ,(I soak all nuts over night before eating them) cultured diary (yogurt, kefir, cottage cheese)raw milk (sometimes),almond milk, soy free free range eggs, once in a while grains from Ezekel Bread, (they are sprouted grains), cold pressed flax, hemp oils and coconut oils. I have meat once a week,only if it is free range, grass fed. I would never eat any meat that was not grass fed for lots of reasons and we all know about the toxic grains, hormones, antibiotics they feed them and the inhumane way they slaughter them. Grass fed meat means they are free to roam and eat plant food (grass). They are humanly treated right to the end of their lives and have omega-3s, verses none in regular super market meat. I am a bodybuilder (65 yrs old) and feel much better with grass fed meat once a week. I might add, I always take digestive enzymes with every meal for proper digestion, especially with meat (pancreatin with hydrochloric acid and pepsin enzymes). Use common sense, do research, educate yourself about health and make your own mind up which way to want to go whether its vegan or not.
Oct 23, 2016 at 8:00 pm
I will tackle your fallacies per paragraph.
You’re missing the point, systemic usage of animals as tools forces ethics and your inner conscience to be completely subdued. Objectification is the key problem here, that is precisely what occurred in the death camps in WW2 as well.
Another fallacy, supply and demand force the equation to be heavily slated against the animals, meat eating is completely unsustainable, I could point you to economic papers on this, not just ecological. A burgeoning planet does not have the resources to indulge our whims, deal with it. Since veganism has been adopted (more from health rather than ethics), more choices are available now. The food problem on the planet is being targeted with synthetic and plant based meats (search supermeat). Grassroots movements HAVE started one person at a time, what you have stated is completely and utterly the opposite of what actually occurs in reality
This paragraph(3rd) seems a repetition of the above, where for some reason, you’re trying to postulate that an individual can do nothing unless in a position of power, I truly feel very sad that you on the one hand seem to think we are all individuals (and not even remotely social) while on the other deeming each powerless. History has proven this false again and again. Social media makes your reach far more than before today, so sadly this is another false and disingenuous position.
Human free will is exactly the point. Change peoples hearts and minds and they will foster change of their own. Didn’t people say the same thing about slavery?
The first sentence in the last paragraph was probably the first time I truly kinda agreed. Life is short, and the message is to educate and bring others around to the ecological, environment, economical and ethical benefits of not eating meat, dairy and eggs.
Lastly, India has +300million vegetarians, look up Jainism an entire religion based on reducing harm for each individual living being. Being civilized(as humans perceive themselves to be) requires you to hold yourself to higher standards, if you want baser instincts to prevail, then let’s go naked, defecate in the streets, rape and violate whomever we can subdue physically, I don’t get why we need to be civilized one way and be an animal in other ways.
Oct 17, 2016 at 2:53 pm
I love when vegans compare the act of eating meat to the mass murder of human beings in world war 2. Eating meat is natural. Mass genocide is not. The chickens killed in slaughterhouses feed people. The attracities Hitler committed in WW2 were acts of pure hatred. Big difference. I find the fact that vegans compare humans killed in concentration camps to chickens to be pretty pathetic really. Again, you people wonder why the vast majority of people don’t like you. You are like a cult. Saying things like “people who eat meat smell like corpses” is exactly why vegans are viewed in such a negative light. Why would any guy want to date a girl who says stuff like that
Jan 12, 2017 at 3:38 am
Again provably false. First fallacy that mass genocide is not natural, it actually is, and has been there for ages (since Cro Magnon vs Neanderthal, and down the ages). It’s “atrocities” by the way and no it wasn’t hatred. Hatred is what people feel with emotion, the Nazi pogrom was based around extermination of a perceived pest. I have been in Rwanda and talked to militia who thought the “others”(Hutu or Tutsi doesn’t matter) were equivalent to roaches. Let me be very clear, in their hearts and minds they truly believed that they needed to be exterminated, once you convince yourself there really isn’t any going back.
I did not directly compare, I contrasted the objectification of living beings, either from your own species or others. That is EXACTLY the same mental stance in factory farming and concentration camps (find out about soap in Nazi camps)
I don’t give a hairy f&ck if no one likes me, its a fact that truth nearly always makes you unpopular. And by the way thats just your opinion, I have some meat eating friends so just like the people I cite above, you have convinced yourself of a position and put “vegans” as “those people”.
It’s not a big stretch for you to go from “vegans” should be disliked, to don’t date, to … where? You’re already going down a familiar path yourself.
Lastly vegan is not a cult it’s just a diet for Christ sake. It’s far more ethical and sustainable but again that’s just a truth that you are welcome to hide from if it makes your life easier, you can even continue believing in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus too if it makes you feel better, doesn’t make that true.
Jan 22, 2017 at 4:10 am
Actually, Alex Hershaft is a concentration camp survivor and founded Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) because the first time he visited a slaughterhouse, for his job, it reminded him so much of the Nazi concentration camp he was in, he felt compelled to do something to stop it. He says what we do to farm animals is the modern Holocaust. Sad, but true.
Oct 17, 2017 at 1:57 am
i cannot stand vegans. at all. i would never even date a vegan, or a vegetarian for that matter. it has nothing to do with us feeling “guilty”. i dont place a moral evil on what someone eats. vegans can choose to be vegan and thats fine, but most people find vegans to be completely intolerable. i would take a normal girl over a vegan girl any day. thankfully my wife is normal and not vegan.
Sep 28, 2016 at 1:24 am
“I don’t place a moral evil on what someone eats”. So babies, people’s pet cats and dogs, these are all fair game? If I beat one to death with a baseball bat, I’m just choosing what I want to eat, right? I’m choosing to be a carnivore, that’s my right?
By your own standards, you suggest vegans / people who eat a plant based diet are inflicting their diet on others. But it is you who is inflicting your diet on animals, in the same way I’d be inflicting mine on the baby or the pet dog in the aforementioned example.
No sentient being should have to suffer enslavement and torture just because you like the taste of bacon, especially since science has demonstrated time and time again that humans thrive on a plant-based diet.
But if you hate animals that much, and are cool with people exercising their moral right to eat pet dogs, babies, and any other defenseless, vulnerable being, then that’s who you are. So be it.
Moreover, we know through our scientific progress that pigs, chickens, cows, sheep (the list goes on) feel parallel levels of fear, stress and pain as humans. In fact, I quote:
“Pigs are highly intelligent, curious animals who engage in complex tasks and form elaborate, cooperative social groups. Pigs were once considered wicked and dirty, but science has helped to shed light on the depths of their remarkable cognitive abilities and to extend a greater appreciation for these often maligned and misunderstood animals.”. (Source: The Humane Society)
You refer to a “normal girl” as a meat eater. I hate to break the news to you, but science has shown that our physiology resembles that of a herbivore not a carnivore and that our bodies are designed to eat a plant-based diet.
We evolved to learn how to cook meat because we can’t digest properly, or safely, raw, and we can’t eat it straight off the animal like a real carnivore. Cooked meat became a preferential food source only in environments where seasonal /terrain conditions made food scarce. Fatty meat is calorie dense and therefore a meal could sustain someone in the jungle for a good few days. If you want to go and live in the jungle and catch, skin, gut and cook your meat, be my guest. The rest of us evolved primates will stay here.
Here’s just a few of the reasons science tells us we aren’t meat eaters:
Meat-eaters: have claws
Herbivores: no claws
Humans: no claws
Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly
Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.
Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding
Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding
Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat
Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater
Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.
Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits
Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits
Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains
Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue
Herbivores: perspire through skin pores
Humans: perspire through skin pores
There’s about 30 more….
Sep 28, 2016 at 3:21 am
Humans are classified as omnivores. The intestine size has nothing to do with it. Do you understand biology at all? The surface area of the intestine matters, not the length. Omnivores, by definition, can utilize plants and meats for energy. Humans are omnivores. That is a fact. Read into that from a non vegan source. I don’t hate animals. In fact I used to volunteer at an animal shelter in Portsmouth Virginia. I accept that eating meat is a natural aspect of life. Nature allowed and encouraged life to feed on life. Animals “force” their diet on other animals, and those that don’t serve a role in the food chain in other ways (prey). That is reality. Vegan girls are not attractive to me. Sorry but they just are not. Everyone has their preferences. I want a girl I can share a steak with. Not one who says things like “meat eaters smell like corpses”. I went on a date with a vegan one time and it was horrible. Never again. She was not at all normal and it felt like going on a date with a cult member. Not at all attractive.
Jan 12, 2017 at 3:47 am
Although most of us conduct our lives as omnivores, human beings have the characteristics of herbivores, not carnivores. The appendages of carnivores are claws; those of herbivores are hands or hooves. The teeth of carnivores are sharp; those of herbivores are mainly flat (for grinding). The intestinal tract of carnivores is short (3 times body length); that of herbivores, long (12 times body length). Body cooling of carnivores is done by panting; herbivores, by sweating. Carnivores drink fluids by lapping; herbivores, by sipping. Carnivores produce their own vitamin C, whereas herbivores obtain it from their diet.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312295/
When was the last time you chased down a dog, cat, lion, or any animal, killed it with your bare hands and bit into its flesh and enjoyed a raw meal?
Regardless, for the sake of argument, let’s just say we are omnivores….
“When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”
~ William Clifford Roberts, M.d., Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Cardiology.
You see, the issue is this:
We have the ability to eat cooked meat, but as science has proven time and time again, albeit suppressed by the lobbying and study manipulation powers of the meat and dairy industries, it is not good for us and contributes to a number of major diseases, particularly heart disease. This is because cholesterol comes from eating animals, not plant-based foods.
When we eat meat, atherosclerotic plaques develop, which is what leads to blocked arteries and subsequent heart disease. And we now know that atherosclerotic plaque starts building in childhood.
A plant-based diet is the only thing in the world capable of reversing heart disease. Have you not heard of Dr Esselstyn?
Meat eating animals do not get atherosclerosis. It affects only herbivores. If we were supposed to eat meat, it certainly wasn’t meant to be anywhere near the quality people do today. It is simply better to avoid it. It simply isn’t necessary. Why cause all this suffering to animals and damage to the environment unnecessarily?
And then there is prostate cancer, diabetes….the list goes on…
Jan 17, 2017 at 9:29 pm
just one observation about your post. Humans use tools to hunt because we can. most animals cannot, otherwise they would. The otter uses rocks to open shellfish for example.
I myself eat only meat or dairy I or my family have raised, eat only vegetables that we have grown. only purchasing some staples such as sugar, flour. All of our consumable water is filtered by us. Although I am against animal cruelty, we do this because of the unwanted chemicals in processing. Even our dog and cat food is homemade.
most people do not have the ability or resources to live as we do. Who am I to judge?
I have been called a savage by vegans just for eating meat, yet everything I do is done as humanely as possible. Some of them church-going “Bible-Thumpers” that forget that fish were produced to feed and animals were sacrificed. mote: I’m not against religion, just hypocracy.
If you want tolive Vegan, go for it. Go ahead and offer the info (with links even)
If you want to promote your religion, feel free (with links to resouce materials even)
Just don’t try to ram it down my throat and don’t call me names and I’ll do the same for you.
Jan 07, 2018 at 10:29 am
Hi Bill, but conversely, humans use tools because they can’t hunt effectively like obligate carnivores or omnivores. I take your point, though.
If a human wants to hunt, kill, gut and skin their food in 2018 then there is land where this is legal and they have the right to do that.
But 99.9% of people I know who eat meat can’t bear touching raw meat; they can’t stand even stand the smell. So I object to those people paying others to breed, enslave and keep animals in unnatural, cruel conditions and then butcher them in the way slaughter houses do. This is immoral and evil, not to mention unnecessary since we simply don’t need to do it.
Jan 10, 2018 at 5:28 am
Bill W,
I know that animals would make hunting tools if they could. Definitely this is not a pretty world, but in my part, I do anything to make it better. We, all livings, are physically different, and yet again it is not about whose stomach or teeth does this or that. I know that human can choose to be evil or angel. We don’t want to put chemical in our body but what about our consciousness or soul.
Bill, do you ever look in their beautiful eyes before killing them? I know you are going to become vegan sometimes
Jan 11, 2018 at 8:53 pm
Comparing humans to carnivores will of course be different. We are not like a cat. We also don’t have four chambered stomachs like a cow. A snake functions entirely different from a lion. So does a jelly fish. And a starfish. Pigs are omnivores. Not all carnivores or omnivores share specific traits. The classification of omnivore is based on the ability to utilize plants and meats for energy. Comparing us to a lion or certain predators is meaningless. A Venus fly trap is carnivorous. Does a Venus fly trap use a tongue for anything?
Jan 12, 2017 at 3:52 am
The prejudice just drips from you unfortunately. You seem to dislike some vegans based on personal problems, not facts. Also “normal” implies vegans are abnormal? Your hate implies a more deep seated issue here, and please don’t lie with silly opinions of yours like “most people find vegans intolerable”… really? By a census that you conducted around the globe?
Oct 17, 2016 at 2:40 pm
I cannot imagine that a vegan female would want you anyway as generally speaking non-vegans smell like corpses in the morning – actually not just in the morning you stink 24/7
Jan 11, 2017 at 12:14 am
“Non-vegans smell like corpses.” And you wonder why most guys avoid vegans like the plague? Lol
Jan 12, 2017 at 3:32 am
Aaron, you were the one that dished out the insult first by saying you woould prefer a “normal” girl over a vegan,so you can’t be surprised as people insult you back.
Jan 31, 2017 at 8:22 pm
You’re making the point for us.
Jan 14, 2017 at 6:21 am
Can you please calm the fuck down? ” i would take a normal girl over a vegan girl any day.” Why are you such an ass lmao?? Do you realize how arrogant and prejudice you sound??? Take a step back and evaluate yourself, buddy, because you’re not being too kind right now.
Apr 17, 2017 at 2:26 am
I still don’t like vegans. I honestly don’t like the preachy, self righteous condescending attitude of most I have encountered. My wife just recently went vegan and I am having a hard time living day to day with her. Of all the bad luck in the world. I really think all of you should be beaten to death with a leg of veal. Just kidding ! It is really difficult for me though and I am here trying to understand desperately her motivation so I can stay attracted to my wife.
Aug 14, 2016 at 7:30 pm
I think you’re extremely lucky. Your wife is taking a stand against violence, abuse and exploitation, surely this would make her more attractive in your eyes? You can’t be preachy and self-righteous about wanting to prevent pain and suffering. It’s wrong to knowingly inflict pain and suffering onto another sentient being to satisfy a desire (taste). There is no moral argument against veganism, especially since science has debunked the need for meat and dairy myths.
Aug 19, 2016 at 5:35 pm
He’s only “lucky” if she places him before her furry friends and doesn’t compromise their relationship for her “stand” lol.
Apr 16, 2017 at 12:22 pm
damn man that sucks. i couldnt do it. i am so glad my wife has not jumped on the vegan bandwagon. i honestly could not be attracted to someone who was vegan, i just couldnt. but that is just me. hopefully everything works out for you and she doesnt drive you crazy with that stuff.
Sep 28, 2016 at 1:26 am
Divorce. No not really. If she’s bugging you, be honest but kind and see if you can’t find some way not to fall out of love because of the way you two eat. It’s just food. Think of it this way, if she had a medical condition that altered the way she ate, you’d be accepting and loving right? Of course if she had a medical condition she probably wouldn’t be annoying about it, but that’s where the talking and honesty comes in.
Nov 19, 2016 at 8:06 am
To vegans it’s not “just food” it’s a religion. That’s the problem. And comparing a medical condition which one has no control over to what one chooses to put in one’s mouth? Very poor analogy.
Apr 16, 2017 at 11:45 am
Haha I can relate having moved on from a fanatic vegan to a normal loving woman. My ex made my and our kids lives miserable from the moment she became a vegan. She changed almost overnight from a loving smart and sweet caring wife to a sanctimonious preachy intolerant woman. She became consumed with hatred. One day she and a friend came home after another one of her violent protests to “stop the violence” and said in front of the kids how she regretted having children because there were too many horrible people in the world and thought all humans should just die. That was it for me. After two years of living like this myself and the kids were out. My kids still don’t like even visiting her. My advice; make sure you don’t let it get to the point where your happiness and sanity are severely compromised like mine was. Good luck.
Apr 16, 2017 at 12:16 pm
It’s a cult. Get a psychiatrist. Seriously it’s a cult.
Apr 19, 2017 at 12:43 am
Looking at this objectively, which option sounds more like a cult to you?
1. A group of people who seek to reduce the suffering of animals and promote compassion and kindness towards all living things, and in doing so simultaneously reduce the serious damage animal agriculture causes to the planet that supports our existence. And who also encourage healthy eating to reduce illness and disease in humans.
Or
2. A group of people who are complicit in, and promote the unnecessary enslavement, torture, rape, killing and general suffering of other sentient beings to satisfy a pseudo-primal desire for the taste of flesh and animal secretions. And who couldn’t care less that animal agriculture is the biggest pollutant to the planet, nor that science has consistently shown that eating meat and dairy causes and contributes to serious health problems in children and adults.
Apr 19, 2017 at 8:46 am
Your argument is completely one-sided and therefore neither side can never convince the other.
Any sources you suggest will have a vegan spin on it. Any sources a meat-eater suggests will have a meat-eating spin on it.
Largely, no it is not possible to get a rounded natural diet being vegan unless you seriously want to deplete your B12 and D vitamins. Taking pills created in a lab to support a ridiculous diet of only plants (which, by the way, are still living things) and grains that you are only able to consume by the bucketload because of modern manufacturing is nonsensical to those of us who want to eat as naturally as feasible (no I am not going to go hunt my own food unless I want rat for dinner).
Agriculture is a big factor in global warming but it’s not at all the biggest, or most dangerous. Nor does eating a meat-based diet cause disease. The major factors of health problems in diets hasn’t even been proven yet. Because there is simply no way to prove one diet is unhealthier than the other – a person eating fatty foods, smoking and drinking all their life can still live to a ripe age, similarly a vegan can die young due to genetics. There is not enough data and far too many varying factors to state that meat causes health issues. Another point I may make is excessive consumption of ANYTHING causes problems. Bar vitamin C, which your body just expels if too much is taken.
The problem with the meat industry is regulation, rules, and other factors that are easily combated by driving change to the industry. You are not going to do that by preaching veganism. If you want to do it for health reasons (i.e. because you believe it’s healthier) then go right ahead. The majority of vegans on the Internet though is issues around animal welfare in the industry, which will only get better through change from all sides – more importantly from meat-eaters, because if meat-eaters won’t buy, no-one will. The meat industry really don’t care about the issues vegans throw up. Even if legislation was better, vegans would stay vegans.
Actually, it’s not just “for the taste” that meat eaters eat animal flesh. In part, it’s natural, easier and cheaper to have a balanced diet including meat. I don’t have five hundred billion pounds to spend on tofu lentils and veg. I make the best decisions I can in regards to eating meat the same as anyone else not comfortable with the process of it in some farming.
The way the meat industry is going, I don’t agree with pumping chickens with hormones to make them fatter. I don’t agree with messing with science and nature to get bigger cows to satisfy our insatiable need for beef. I don’t agree with eating unnecessary amounts of “luxury” meats such as lamb, veal, and venison just because it’s tastier.
I do agree with letting people do what they want in regards to their diet. Eating meat isn’t harming anyone or anything, it’s the way it’s produced causing the problems.
Jul 26, 2017 at 1:43 pm
But Nikki, thanks for your comments.
Just to clarify, B12 doesn’t come from animals/meat.
Microorganisms, primarily bacteria, are the only known organisms that manufacture B12. These bacteria often live in bodies of water and soil.
Animals get B12 by eating food and soil contaminated with these microorganisms.
Did you know that B12 is added to your meat? Because the animals are not grazing naturally as they would say 50-100 years ago.
The fact is all humans, vegan or meat eater, need extra B12 in their diet through fortified foods because of the way we live now.
Like our progenitors, our relative the gorilla obtains B12 from bacteria present in the wild – living on plants, in the water they drink, and from the consumption of soil or their faecal matter.
This is why when primates are in captivity, they often develop B12 deficiency.
You see, if you were to eat organic vegetables and fruit from the outdoors without sanitizing it as factories do, and drinking spring water from a natural source, you wouldn’t need to eat B12 injected meat, fortified B12 foods or take a supplement.
This is not a vegan or meat eater issue; this is an issue with how we grow and sanitize our foods.
Vitamin deficiencies are not seen more in vegans than in meat eaters. In fact, there is far more likely to be nutritional deficiency in a meat-based diet than a pant-based diet, simply because doubling your intake of veg, fruits and seeds and nuts means doubling your nutrient intake. Friends of my daughter have been asked by the doctor to make dietary adjustments because of low iron and vitamin D levels, yet my vegan daughter has only had one cold in 3.5 years of life.
D3 is another issue for all of us. We spend way too much time indoors and not enough time outside in the sunshine which means vitamin D deficiency is becoming increasingly common. So eat more mushrooms, and algae – that’s where the fish get it from.
On the issue of killing plants; come on, please, this is classroom science:
Plants do not have a central nervous system. They are not sentient. They do not feel fear, pain and anxiety in the same way animals and humans do. When you trim a plant it grows back. When you cut off the leg of an animal it causes immense pain and will not grow back. The animal will struggle to survive without assistance. Do you see the difference.
On points regarding health…
There is a huge amount of data dating back to the 50s regarding the negative health effects of animal protein consumption. The link between saturated fat and heart disease and a number of cancers is now beyond the doubt of the biggest doubters – the 2 biggest killers in the US.
There is a reason the meat and dairy industry spend 1/2 billion USD combined to lobby government and partner with food chains to ensure their products are promoted as “good for you” and included as much as possible in people’s diet. But they are losing ground because the evidence is just too strong to be suppressed anymore.
Processed meat is now classified as a class 1 carcinogen (the same category as smoking) and red meat as class 2.
Even the president of the American Cardiology society Dr Kim Williams began eating a plant based diet after he discovered his cholesterol was 160 on a diet of white meat and fish. He bought it down to 90 – no Statins required.
https://theplantway.com/dont-mind-dying-just-dont-want-my-fault/
You say any studies I suggest will have a vegan spin on it, but that’s ironic, since all of us have been lied to since kids through literature based on studies financed by the meat and dairy industries, which as a result have shaped the food pyramid and made us sicker than ever.
I only ever note independent, peer reviewed studies. The first thing I look at is who is funding the study. If you want real independent study summaries you should follow Dr Gregor. He has a team that goes through every study released analysing its credibility and reliability before releasing a video providing an overview: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCddn8dUxYdgJz3Qr5mjADtA
I agree that the large majority of people won’t start eating a plant-based diet just because vegans bang on about animal rights. Because most people don’t really give a shit about animals, at least not enough to give up burgers and bacon. I accept that. But kill and gut your own then; don’t make someone else do it for you so you don’t have to feel guilty.
Others, like you, will read this post and say “No, this isn’t why I can’t watch these videos”. And that’s fine. If you can sit down and watch these videos while chowing down on some meat then do that, but I am yet to find one person that can, which is strange for a supposed carnivore.
But that aside, this article is a rarity for me, because I usually engage people on health and environment first rather than animal rights. Why? Because people inherently care more about themselves than others, so why would they put the taste of bacon before a pig’s welfare, right?
Sure, if being vegan was unhealthy and I needed to eat animal tissue or drink the secretions of a cow I would do it, but I don’t, which is great. I feel much healthy, have naturally cured the couple of health problems I did have, i have more energy, sleep better, can exercise more and very rarely get sick. And my B12 markers are way above average.
You suggest that eating plant-based is expensive. I gave up meat and dairy products 5 years or so ago and my food bill dropped by a 1/3. I also grow my own veg as a hobby = extra B12 for me!
The fact is that a plant-based diet is a very healthy way to live, and the bonus is that no animal has to suffer for it. Why would you cause pain and suffering to animals just to eat their flesh, which you don’t need to be healthy.
Moreover, animal agriculture is killing our planet. It is the number one pollutant. See this infographic here: https://theplantway.com/32-reasons-give-up-eating-meat-today/
Jul 26, 2017 at 3:17 pm
But then I can’t believe anything you say when you claim that B12 doesn’t come from animals and isn’t found readily in their meat. You can obtain meats rich in B12 if you shop smartly. To clarify, the EU (and subsequently the UK) have far higher regulations and restrictions than the US in terms of meat production so I totally get where you’re coming from (in fact I want to move to USA in the future and will likely cut down on meat simply because I don’t want the extra hormones!).
But anyway, I didn’t state where B12 comes from, I’m saying I’m not aux faux with taking it in pill form, and the easiest way for me to do that is to eat meat (whether or not it’s added in).
I can sit down and watch those videos while eating meat because I know that those videos represent the cruelest part of the industry – it is definitely not all like that. Plus, just because one vegan is healthy doesn’t mean all vegans are healthy, so you can’t say the same for anything else, such as the meat industry (while I accept there are changes that need to be made).
Saturated fat is found in a lot of things, and if one were to eat a lot of it, for example in chicken and pork, of course your risk of ill health increases – the same reason that man reduced his cholesterol, is wasn’t because he was on a vegan diet, it was because he cut out white meat. It’s entirely possible to live on a balanced diet with meat, the problem is a lot of people eat a lot of meat and the wrong kinds. I don’t. So my health is much like yours. When I buy cheap meat (as I sometimes have to) I feel worse, when I buy better meat I feel better, and that’s just short term.
I absolutely understand why you believe a vegan diet is the only healthy diet, but it’s just not based on real life facts. Everything is looked at through rose-tinted glasses in the vegan world, and people believe what they want to believe.
I do personally put an animals’ welfare before I consider buying my produce. I can’t get away from buying certain things (for example I am diabetic – not type 2 – I simply can’t get by without some form of sugar in emergencies and if there’s no vegan option I’d literally die). But many people I know who are vegans preach this lifestyle but then buy products that are tested on animals – I also make this choice when I buy non-food items, but I bet a lot of people (vegans included) don’t. To me, spraying rabbits and mice with perfumes to report reactions is far worse than providing the majority of the world with food.
It’s not meat making us sicker, it’s processed sugar and CRAP (Carbonated drinks, Refined sugar, Artificial sweetener, processed foods). You’d know this if you looked into the history of sugar and how we have changed sugar content in food and drink, and in fact one of the first things a doctor will tell you if you’re diabetic (t2) is to cut down on carbs and increase fat intake – primarily from meat, though you can live on a veggie diet if you want to put the effort in.
Eating a plant-based diet IS very expensive, but not in countries like the US because you guys grow a lot of your own stuff. We only grow strawberries and potatoes here (well, that’s a simplified version of it but you get my drift) in the UK so it’s either spend hundreds on fruit and veggies or plant my own but I haven’t met anyone yet who’s as pathetic as me at growing stuff (I also have ADD so I forget to take care of things that don’t meow).
As a human species agriculture has been prevalent in our history since time began (not literally of course). The rise in global warming shot up exponentially since the 1950s, and nearly all factors involved in producing meat can be severely reduced if we all just used renewable energy.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with veganism, but it’s 100% a personal thing. The meat industry will still prevail, because there will always be more meat-eaters than those who are not, so if you’re going to fight, you may as well fight for better conditions and tighter regulations (something that infuriated me about Brexit is people’s cheer over “getting our fishing back” when actually being in the EU meant fish populations could grow. The British just rape the waters until there’s nothing left and then complain the price of fish has gone up!).
For me there are far worse things harming the planet and far better ways in which to tackle them. Meat eaters are not harming the planet by eating meat, it’s how it’s delivered and how much of it we consume which is causing the issues.
Why would I cause pain and suffering to animals? I don’t. I’m lucky enough to live in a country intent on having Halal as everything so that’s half way to ensuring animals are killed properly (though the Halal industry also has irregularities in slaughtering and care). Plus, many animals we eat would most likely become extinct if we didn’t rear them for food. I think it’s a good idea to reduce how much meat we eat, but not cut it out completely if you don’t want to. If all the issues vegans had with meat eating were solved tomorrow (better regulations, reduced harm to the environment, better health) it would literally boil down to personal preference, so why argue the point?
Jul 26, 2017 at 4:23 pm
Let me explain one more time: B12 doesn’t come from animals, it comes from bacteria. The animals graze and eat dirt, water and poop and consume that bacteria. You then eat the animal and get B12.
Humans and animals both need B12.
But the point is you don’t need to eat animals to get B12. It is one way of getting it, but historically humans would not have had an issue getting B12 from plants/soil and water.
The other point I made was that animals are now kept in unnatural conditions and fed an unnatural diet, which means they do not get as much of the micro bacteria forming B12. Therefore, factory farmed meat is fortified with B12, just like milks and breakfast cereals.
Diabetes:
Sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Science has proven decades ago that sugar has nothing to do with diabetes. It is fat that causes diabetes.
This information is readily available from the diabetes association:
In Type 1 diabetes, the insulin producing cells in your pancreas are destroyed by your immune system. No amount of sugar in your diet – or anything in your lifestyle – has caused or can cause you to get Type 1 diabetes.
With Type 2 diabetes, though we know sugar doesn’t cause Type 2 diabetes, you are more likely to get it if you are overweight.
You can see a quick explanation of how diabetes is caused here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S51D07bvlPY
But yes, I agree, processed sugars, fizzy pop, artificial sweeteners, processed oils are all bad for our health too. But complex carbs are absolutely fine. Keep your diet as unprocessed and full or whole foods as much as possible.
Halal
This practice of killing animals to me is just brutal. Halal slaughter should be banned with immediate effect. Such medieval practices have no place in modern society. I am sure most people would object to their pet cat or dog being killed in this way, so why is it acceptable to do it to other animals?
“Plus, many animals we eat would most likely become extinct if we didn’t rear them for food”.
So that is a reason to keep a species in a perpetual cycle of suffering? To keep them in conditions completely unnatural to how they would live in the wild, to cage, imprison, rape, slaughter them?
Wild pigs still exist, so do wild chickens.
Besides, Mother Nature takes care of evolution. We need not interfere. Have we not done enough damage to the planet already?
I think you have your head in the sand regarding the damage that animal agriculture is doing. It is unsustainable; it is destroying the planet and we need to change how we eat. This is fact.
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/agriculture-and-food-systems-unsustainable
http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/
http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
If you want to kill and eat meat then that is your choice, but please take the time to read up on the latest research regarding health issues such as atherosclerosis and heart disease and diabetes, and the environmental impact of meat production.
Without wanting to sound patronising, I get where you are coming from. It took me many years to get to the bottom of all the lies I had been sold regarding nutrition and animal farming practices. We are raised in a carefully curated marketing bubble put together by a very powerful industry.
Jul 27, 2017 at 10:34 am
I can see why you readily believe what you are told and what you search for on the Internet, you clearly don’t read things properly or choose to ignore the points being made.
I never said B12 is naturally-occurring in animals. I know where B12 comes from. I’m saying if you buy cuts where you know the animal isn’t pumped with B12 but has had a diet which has allowed them to have it when they are slaughtered then you will be able to get B12 from meat.
On diabetes: Seriously, reread what I put. I never stated sugar excess causes diabetes! Are you seriously trying to school me on this disease? I know how type 1 occurs actually, having had the disease for over 20 years. I know I didn’t get diabetes through my diet / lifestyle. I’ve known this since I was 8.
Diabetes type 2 is caused by a number of factors, not only being overweight (though this is one of the most common causes). T2 is also triggered by eating too many complex carbs, and some people have a disposition to it (e.g. someone eating tons of carbs won’t necessarily get the disease), hence why ‘skinny’ people also get T2.
Complex carbs are NOT fine for someone suffering from T2 diabetes. It’s essentially exactly what they can’t have. That was my point. I was not trying to link unhealthy eating and diabetes in anyway. I simply stated that I couldn’t probably easily be a vegan even if I wanted to because I need quick energy to live – that’s sugar, there is no other form of quick energy diabetics can have, bar ‘hypo-gel’ which tastes like poop and isn’t easy to buy.
Now it’s my turn to say you have no idea what you’re talking about. Halal slaughtering is actually better for animals than brutal brunt-force shots to the cranium. There are factors that make it a difficult thing to do, but you’ll actually find that the halal industry are becoming far more advanced in changing the way they process meat because there is a huge community that request it.
I do not have my head in any sand about any issue to do with agriculture. I know the impact of meat farming on the environment and on health, I am not denying it’s issues it causes, I am saying there are far greater ways to impact and change this other than a person cutting out all meat and by products.
I know exactly what nutrition I need as I am diabetic and a runner, so I am well aware of fat content and causes of illnesses. Red meat in huge consumption can increase risks of illnesses and diseases, but that’s still mere speculation. As I said, there is not enough evidence and there are too many varying factors to claim categorically that meat causes diseases. It’s how much we consume and how we consume it, not the food itself (chocolate is good for you but eat it by the bucketload and that saturated fat will kill you).
I don’t believe any lies. I am not some ignorant potato farmer willing to listen to anything that comes on TV. I do my own research and I make my own choices based on that research. And I’m a marketer. I smell BS a mile away and I do not believe every stat or piece of information I read.
There’s nothing wrong with a balanced diet – vegan or meat eater – in fact if more people had better balanced diets there wouldn’t be some much meat going around or so many diseases caused by poor life choices.
But this is the thing. I don’t need to justify why I eat meat. Vegans almost seem to have this insatiable need to justify why they don’t want to eat animal products and the biggest part of that is meat is evil and anyone who eats it is partaking in ruining the world. It’s simply utter BS.
To be clear, I am not for maintaining standards in the meat industry or the animals in it, I too want change like a lot of animal lovers who eat meat do. I think we’ll do a far better job of it than vegans though. People are beginning to care more about what they put into their bodies and where their meat’s coming from. As a species we are also becoming more and more sceptical of what we see and read about these types of issues. I also believe Europe are more savvy to meat industries and what it really means to be a meat eater than the USA do. The USA’s poor meat practices will not fare well over here, and certainly our government is already blocking any import of chickens pumped with hormones. So absolutely, I get why you’re vegan. In the UK though, it’s a humble diet most people shut up about because they know it’s for their own personal beliefs, not because they think it will change the world. It really won’t.
Jul 27, 2017 at 11:54 am
You have diabetes but eat a diet high in saturated fat? The advice of the diabetes association is to eat a diet low in saturated fat, and science goes further than they do.
Anywa… I am from the UK, and I won’t shut up because I think it is an absolute injustice that we are feeding food to our kids that is making them sick.
Veganism is far more than a personal belief. It is not a religion. It is based on science. It is something we know, not just a belief.
And there is a reason a plant-based diet (vegan) is the fastest growing diet in the UK.
People are waking up to the scientifically proven benefits and shocked at finding out they’ve been lied to for years by the meat and dairy industry. Sure, some people care about the animals too and engage in activism.
People are feeding their kids carcinogenic meats and ruining their health with dairy because they are misled about nutrition. Animal agriculture is the biggest environmental pollutant, more so than car emissions. I think these things are worth standing up and being counted for.
Heart disease is on the increase
Diabetes is on the increase
Asthma is on the increase
Cancer (especially childhood) is on the increase
Our NHS is buckling under the weight of diseases and obesity, and simple dietary changes would solve the problem. FACT.
A plant-based diet is the only diet capable of reversing heart disease and diabetes. This is scientific fact known for decades. It is happening every day.
But the pharma companies love it. People get sicker, they take more medicine. Win win, right?
If you don’t care about animals that much then at least do it for yourself and the planet that supports our existence.
But think about this…
A. You don’t need to eat meat or dairy to be healthy; in fact you can be much healthier without it – especially dairy and processed meats.
B. This fact means that you don’t have to make animals suffer continuously and be murdered for nothing more than taste. We aren’t cavemen anymore. We have the science and the resources.
As I have said before, we now know that animals feel parallel levels of fear and pain as humans, so why would you and I UNNECESSARILY inflict that upon them. In the same way I would not inflict pain unnecessarily on a human being.
Maybe it is the word ‘vegan’ that offends you; because of the stereotype that vegans are crazy hippies that care about animals and the environment. Man, imagine that!
I can’t understand your point about not having to justify eating meat. Why not? You don’t need meat and animals and the environment are suffering, so surely you can give a reason. I’d much rather you just be honest and say “I like the taste of meat to the point where I’m happy for animals to die for it and for the planet to be worse off for it”.
All conversations I have end this way. I’ve been through it a hundred or more times. There is no justification; not knowing what we know. Just be honest. One of my good friends agrees with everything: he knows the science, the impact on the environment, the positive impact on health, the suffering of animals, but says he still won’t stop eating meat. I respect that honesty over flimsy, worn out arguments like the animals would go extinct, or what about B12.
As for Halal slaughter….
The animal has to be alive and healthy, a Muslim has to perform the slaughter in the appropriate ritual manner, and the animal’s throat must be cut by a sharp knife severing the carotid artery, jugular vein and windpipe in a single swipe. Blood must be drained out of the carcass.
Why would anyone want to do this to an animal when they don’t need to eat meat?
Oh, they can use a stun technique that causes cardiac arrest, but the animal has to be alive, so that’s out.
Jul 27, 2017 at 3:07 pm
Saturated fat does NOT cause diabetes type 1, nor does it make the disease worse. I can eat whatever I like (and suffer the consequences if I eat too much or don’t inject insulin). Please, stop this discussion about diabetes because you don’t have the first idea about it, and no amount of ‘research’ will make you more of an expert than anyone who has the illness.
And besides, just because I eat meat does NOT mean I eat a lot of saturated fat. I eat lean meat 90% of the time (10% the occasional sausage or bacon sandwich).
You’re really from the UK? That surprises me. The meat industry is not nearly as unregulated as the US and the videos and information you’ve gleaned is merely a depiction of some of the worst cases. We don’t, for example, pump our chickens full of hormones, and it’s very easy to buy cuts of meat that’s healthy and doesn’t involve the cruel acts some industries commit (but then, all acts are bad to you aren’t they?).
All those issues you mention can and are attributed to diets high in saturated (trans) fats and sugar – the biggest culprit of saturated fats that are ‘bad’ for you does not come from meat (typical fatty foods such as bacon, sausages and pork, fair enough).
Yes I agree parents have been told the faux ‘triangle’ of food, meat and diary, but this doesn’t mean people are going along with it. If meat causes so much health problems won’t children be getting heart disease? Like I said – these issues have too many variable factors and you simply fail to see the opposing evidence, stuck in your little “vegan bubble” as usual vegans are. It’s fine if you want to be vegan, seriously, it’s not my problem, but don’t impose your misinformed twisted information onto other people who you’ve no idea what their dietary habits are.
A person who eats healthily can also eat meat! Stop assuming because we eat meat we’re having it left, right, and centre. Some people do, sure, but those of us who enjoy a balanced diet do exactly that – it’s balanced!
Children are not getting cancer from meat stop being so thick. All these issues are on the increase because of poor lifestyle choices (and that can include EXCESSIVE amounts of meat, particularly red meat, but there are far too many factors to state categorically what causes these issues).
Like I said, diabetes type 2 is caused by many varying factors, and a LCHF (low carb, high fat) diet is almost 100% recommended for T2.
Maybe you should look up your fat types and see the differences between them. Not all saturated fat is bad. In fact we need fat to live.
I’m not reading a BS study twisted by your vegan mind that was written in 1995. New ‘studies’ on foods and our health are published seemingly every week, so this paper stopped being credible in 1996.
As far as I’m aware there’s no medicine you can take for obesity, only for the symptoms caused by it – in fact T2 diabetics can manage their illness on diet and exercise alone, so that analogy of pharma loving that people get sicker is BS.
I said I do care about animals and I won’t do it for myself because I’ll repeat for the third time it’s difficult for me to get a balanced diet on just plants, plus I actually like including a variety of everything in my diet, vegan, vegetarian, any kind of recipe I’ll try anything.
Plus, I’m more than doing my bit for the environment which makes a far quicker impact than not eating meat – if you haven’t realised already, quite a lot of the world eat meat, so like I said. You ain’t changing the world.
A. I never said I need to eat meat and dairy to be healthy (I don’t actually eat much diary and avoid lacto milk). I’m not even claiming people who eat meat are healthier than those who don’t, I’m simply saying it’s possible to be healthy on a diet that also includes meat (note I’m not saying eat it until it bleeds out of your eyes, which is what you seem to think).
B. When done correctly, animals do not have to suffer at all. In fact, left to the wild it would harm wildlife and cattle much more if they were hunted naturally (if at all, I doubt a fox could take one down) – so if we all stopped eating meat tomorrow the vast number of animals bred for meat would be slaughtered, and NOT humanely, because there’d be no more standards to uphold.
I’m not offended by anything, it’s you who’s getting shirty with me (if you note my friendly tone in my first comment you’d see that!).
I don’t have anything to defend. I believe in giving people a choice. I am strongly for ensuring non-renewable plastics are eliminated but I’m not going to convert anyone to recycle properly by throwing a load of nonsense articles in their face and trying to teach them about an illness they have and I don’t.
No, I’m not happy to eat meat so animals and the environment have to suffer – it is possible to produce meat which doesn’t do either, imagine that!
I don’t have an argument about B12. I just said I’m not comfortable substituting natural foods with pills.
Again, stop talking about things in which you have no clue. Yes, that’s how halal slaughter is done. No, if done correctly the animal does not suffer.
Your problem is you’re being anthropomorphic. Draining of a human and draining of an animal (not all animals) are two very different things.
Once again, stop trying to argue your point. I have no argument to make. I am simply stating that there is no conclusive evidence to suggest eating meat period causes health problems.
I could say similarly that vegans should just be honest and say it’s due to personal preference, because you won’t convert meat eaters and you won’t change the world by not eating meat, no matter how hard you believe you are.
If meat was ruining the world why aren’t world leaders gunning for less meat production? Is it because they will miss the money? No, it can’t be that can it as car manufacturing is one of the biggest industries in the EU and what are they proposing? Less big cars so we spend less on fuel – that thing that’s part of the reason why countries go to war?!
You’ve got you’re head up your vegan arse and not only are you unwilling to allow any different opinion you’re also being a dick about it as well.
Pricks don’t change the world.
Jul 27, 2017 at 4:11 pm
Anywho, thanks for trying to convert me to veganism and for defending your dietary choice down to the ground unnecessarily. Misinformation is like a fight – if you look for it you will find it 100% of the time.
Part of heart disease causes is stress and I find it somewhat stressful to try to reason with a dummy.
So for the sake of my health I am no longer following this thread. Now I’m going to eat a bacon sandwich and think of you as I’m chewing it. Happiness saves lives.
Peace.
Jul 27, 2017 at 4:27 pm
Thanks, both myself and the kids saw someone for a while and we’re pretty much recovered now. Just glad we got out before she completely destroyed our lives. Sad to see so many people here who care more about animals than they do about humans. You are right. It’s a cult, a highly destructive cult.
Apr 19, 2017 at 9:31 pm
Now you can find a woman from real CULT who is cold hearted just like you and who enjoys roasting pig. Most likely, she is planning to kill you for insurance money at the same time that she is making love to you.
Jan 14, 2018 at 12:09 am
This post is bang on Peter. I think it’s important that vegans (most) remember that they were
once meat eaters and that we once used the same excuses and the same defense mechanisms to challenge veganism. We are raised in a meat culture, and culture is difficult to break free of. People are naturally resistant to change and certainly don’t like being told they are wrong or immoral. By showing that we understand where they are coming from because we were once there too (empathy), we have a greater chance of making inroads for compassion for animals.
Jul 13, 2016 at 5:21 pm
“This omnivore myth they sold us in textbooks in school is part of the indoctrination. We are not naturally omnivorous; we evolved to be able to digest cooked meat.” Spot on.
Jul 12, 2016 at 10:33 pm
This post is bang on Peter. I think it’s important that vegans (most) remember that they were once meat eaters and that we once used the same excuses and the same defense mechanisms to challenge veganism. We are raised in a meat culture, and culture is difficult to break free of. People are naturally resistant to change and certainly don’t like being told they are wrong or immoral. By showing that we understand where they are coming from because we were once there too (empathy), we have a greater chance of making inroads for compassion for animals.
Jul 12, 2016 at 10:14 pm
This is a letter I recently received in my email from my sister in law. Honestly, my whole family is unwilling to view any of the videos- they don’t even want to hear about it. I used to eat meat too, but I never felt good about it, and as soon as I saw the beginning of Meet Your Meat, I never went back. It wasn’t long after that that I became vegan, after learning about the horror there. How can people resist when they know it causes harm?
” Coleen, I love you dearly, but I would respectfully ask
that you not post/share negative images of cruelty to animals on my FB.
I know it exists and it saddens me greatly. I may not yet have adopted a vegan life style
but I really don’t want to see so much negative behaviour towards animals.
Guilt belongs to the RC church and has never been an inducement to change my
behaviour or attitude.
I do however,
greatly appreciate the positive posts towards saving or loving
animals. I feel as if those of us that
are not vegans are being judged as lesser beings and I am beginning to resent
that judgement. It is not a positive
attitude as I see it. Negativity seeps
into our beings and does nothing to improve attitudes. Please accept my thought as a positive rather
than a negative.
Love you very much.
Lor xo”
Any thoughts on the best approach would be appreciated.
Jan 18, 2016 at 4:22 pm
Hey Coleen, I have experienced similar feedback, which is why I decided to write on this subject.
My approach is to simply state that while others might be able to turn a blind eye to abuse, I can’t.
If a person feels as though they are being judged, the question is why they feel like that?
There is no debate on whether the systematic abuse of animals is right or wrong. If you agree with it or are complicit in its existence then you are in the wrong. If you love animals and are against torture and abuse then stop being a part of it, or expect others to tell you that you are wrong.
No one would stand by and let a pet dog be beaten to death in the street. No decent person would turn a blind eye to child abuse or rape, so why when a vegan brings the truth to the table to show people the horrible abuse of animals do people want to shoot the messenger? The truth is that people don’t want these pictures and videos posted on Facebook or sent to them by email because it forces them to look in the mirror and confront what they are part of – which is something that they know is wrong.
A pet hate of mine is that ‘guilt belongs to the Church’ reply. We are not talking about being frowned upon by a Christian for smoking or having sex outside of marriage. We are talking about the unnecessary suffering or billions of animals. We’re talking about helpless sentient beings enduring horrific lives of stress, fear and pain. If Jesus were alive today, do people really think he’d be eating factory farmed meat? No, he’d be showing everyone these videos and pictures and trying to get people to be compassionate towards animals.
Slaughter houses DO NOT have windows for a very good reason. The animals can’t speak and no one can hear their cries. They need people like you to speak for them and spread the truth that the big food companies don’t want people to hear and see. Standing up for the oppressed can never be negative. Fighting for equality and compassion is a courageous, positive cause.
Jan 18, 2016 at 10:45 pm
spot on Peter , thank you , hope you don’t mind but i’m going to share and memorise it – such a good answer
Aug 02, 2016 at 4:30 pm
No worries, Dee. Please go ahead and share it. Keep fighting the good fight!
Aug 02, 2016 at 5:11 pm
Thanks Peter- that is an excellent reply.
Feb 09, 2017 at 11:19 pm
Hi All,
Many abattoirs in Australia do have windows and it is possible for a member of public to view the slaughtering process. In Australia, (and New Zealand), animals are farmed, transported and killed to the highest standards in the world. An abattoir must be comply to extremely stringent standards of animal welfare (RSPCA) and hygiene (FSANZ & MSA). This ensures there is no stress to these animals. Cattle, pigs & sheep are first stunned which instantaneously makes them unconscious before they are bled. This is a far more comfortable death for them than if they were in the wild, where animals are either killed by a predator (prolonged terror and extreme pain for the prey), or grow old, lose their teeth and starve. Once again, a prolonged & agonising death.
It is deceptive for vegans to publish images of third world abattoirs to show mistreatment & cruelty to animals. The humans in these areas also live in poor conditions.
I am Australian and buy locally farmed and processed meat to the above RSPCA & FSANZ & MSA standards which has duel benefit; peace of mind that are treated better (by far) than they would exist in the wild, and, the best quality tasting and consistency of meat due to the stress free killing process.
Finally, if Jesus were alive today, he would be ensuring the above highest standards of treatment to animals and also enjoying the consumption beef, lamb, goat, pork, turkey, chicken & fish which is what he created them for.
Oct 17, 2018 at 10:05 pm
Yes but your saying they would go through a harder death by growing old and loosing teeth. Is this not suggesting we should slaughter old people as it is a long death? For me there is no difference be it human or animal and I believe we should not end life unnaturally. I do however, also respect your opinion and think it is nice that you are at least trying to buy meat from the most ethical sources
Oct 17, 2018 at 10:47 pm
Colleen me too my family and friends exactly the same – i have not dealt with this issue well, so many friends i do not even talk to anymore , i don’t go out because seeing people eat meat makes me want to throw up & my family only speak to me when i contact them…. My mum is the only one who had no opinion but she’s not on Fb so hasn’t seen the gory images, until after a conversation with her about it a week ago she said ” okay enough , can we change the subject now ” would appreciate anything constructive :/
Aug 02, 2016 at 4:27 pm
Hmm, maybe you should find vegan friends, make sure they are to be trusted, if you explained to people the horrors, then leave it at that , they don’t want to hear it, but remind them that if their going to continue to eat meat, then buy it from a non cruelty place, at the end of the day, you explained it to them and did the best you could. About the smell, maybe you could tolerate it?
Oct 17, 2018 at 12:19 am