this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
5 points (53.0% liked)
vegan
2645 readers
238 users here now
Please also check out vegantheoryclub.org for a great set of well-run communities for vegan news, cooking, gardening, and art. It is not federated with LW, but it is a nice, cozy, all-in-one space for vegans.
We ask that the you have an understanding on what veganism is before engaging in this community.
If you think you have been banned erroneously, please get in contact with one of the other mods for appeals.
Moderator reports may not federate properly and may delay moderator action. Please DM an active mod if an abusive comment remains after reporting it.
Welcome
Welcome to c/[email protected]. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
What is Veganism?
'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
Rules
The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.
- Discrimination is not tolerated. This includes speciesism.
- Topics not relating to veganism are subject to removal.
- Posts are to be as accessible as practicable:
- embedded images of text require alt-text
- posts with an image of text should have a transcription in the body or alt-text
- paywalled articles must have an accessible non-paywalled link;
- use the original source whenever possible for a news article.
- Content warnings are required for triggering content.
- Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future.
- before jumping into the community, we encourage you to read examples of common fallacies here.
- if you're asking questions about veganism, be mindful that the person on the other end is trying to be helpful by answering you and treat them with at least as much respect as they give you.
- Posts and comments whose contents – text, images, etc. – are largely created by a generative AI model are subject to removal. We want you to be a part of the vegan community, not a multi-head attention layer running on a server farm.
- No brigading, either off-site or on-site. An incitement to brigade includes two elements: a call to disruptive action and a specific direction outside of this community in which to take that action. Exceptions include:
- Calls to boycott.
- Calls to in-person protest of a government, high-profile individual, or company/organization.
- Votes provided they have a sufficiently broad target audience or provably effective controls against vote brigading.
- Petitions.
- All Lemmy.World Terms of Service also apply.
Resources on Veganism
A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:
Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:
- You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
- Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)
Vegan Fediverse
Lemmy: vegantheoryclub.org
Mastodon: veganism.social
Other Vegan Communities
General Vegan Comms
Circlejerk Comms
Vegan Food / Cooking
Attribution
- Banner image credit: Jean Weber of INRA on Wikimedia Commons
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Correct. But these early humans had no supermarkets or global trade systems. We (and our food selection process) has very little to do with the constraints that these previous generations had. Your argument basically boils down to "it is natural for us to eat meat. This is called "appeal to nature" and is a logical fallacy (i.e. not a very good argument).
Kudos to you for acknowledging that.
I do not agree, as meat is lacking in some of the essential nutrients or has a suboptimal composition of them. But even if it was the best source, that would not necessarily justify everything we do (i.e. harm other sentient beings) to get it. To give you an (over the top) counter example: Human meat would even be much better in terms of it's nutrient composition - but no one would argue for canibalism because of that fact.
What I was getting at is that it's harder to fight evolution and it takes time. Advocating for meat free lifestyles would most likely push different evolutionary traits in a few million years. And you have to consider cultural influences as well. Additionally, veganism is more prominent in higher income countries because of food processing and "health food" taxes cost money, so many vegan items aren't inexspensive. Those people that are too impoverished to afford a full vegan diet would starve without meat. Also consider those places where the land can't be fertilized and farmed. Those people as well would starve. Trade could resolve that only if they can afford it.
So this is a bit of a non sequitur, I just think it's interesting.
We already evolved FROM being exclusively meat-eating animals. When the first land animals (our direct ancestors) enter the fossil record, there were no plants on land that were edible to them. We already evolved INTO herbivores.
See, I don't really understand why you think we would need any evolution for this. For what it's worth, we are already very well capable of thriving on a plant-exclusive diet with our current genetic setup.
Most probably not - or at least not to great extent. You need a selection pressure for evolution to happen. I.e. you need natural selection. And since our food-choices influence our chances for reproduction very little in our modern days. Humans removed them selves to a great extent form "evolution by natural selection" anyways in our age.
Cultural influences can be used as an explanation for a status quo, but are a bad justification for future behavior most of the time.
I can not agree with you on that statement in any way. The cheapest staple foods you could get are mostly vegan (Grains, Legumes, Dried goods, seeds, vegies, fruit, potatos). Meat and animal products are quite expensive to produce in comparison. Most of the time this just does not seem like it, because animal ag is extremly subsidized to keep this industry economically viable. If anyone would need to pay the FULL price of animal products, most of us would not be able to afford then on a regular basis.
Completely backwards. "Poorer" regions that have a climate suited to produce crops often have traditionally a very plant heavy diet, since things like grains and legumes have a great shelf life and are very cheap. Meat is fucking expensive. It boils down to basic thermodynamics. You need to put so much calories into an animal that you will never be ably to retrieve by consuming their body. It is wasteful.
No one in their right minds would say that some indigenous tribes or the Inuit need to be eating veggie burgers tomorrow. We are talking about the vast majority of people on this planet - like you and me. And we have the choice. Diverting the argument over to some hypothetical about foreign tribes or poor people is not necessary and also not at the heart of the arguments.
Did you read the articles?