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Why I Am Vegan
People I know call me 'extreme' and classify me an extremist for going full vegan instead of vegeterian, ovo-, pesci-, whatever. If you understand and internalize the rationale behind going vegeterian, why half-step and still munch on fish, eggs, milk, etc?? That doesn't make sense to me. Maybe all or nothing at all is extreme, but that means slave-owners would have been rational in keeping slaves "only for dangerous jobs", etc....other than the extremist, all-or-nothing abolition. Why half-ass it? In somethings, moderation is good, in others not so much. How would you like your spouse or partner abusing you just a little? In the same sense, after viewing all the pain, cruelty and inanimal (since they're not humans) things we do to animals in the pursuit of agribusiness, animal husbandry and CAFO....why should a cow be pregnant every year for her whole life to give you milk? Many people I know, and I assume in the rest of the world, always forget that cows don't just lactate cuz they want to, like to, cuz its fun, or cuz that's just what cows do...they need to be preggers.... chickens too to give you them awesome not-chicken eggs....which if they were allowed to incubate, would indeed become chickens eventually. Don't fish have feelings?
All that's needed to be sentient is a backbone that is connected by a nervous system to a brain, however small and however miniscule. Anything with a face almost certainly will have a nervous system, a brain and a spinal cord, or an exoskeleton ( an outside skeleton vs the one in your back and connecting your limbs and protecting your inner organs...). A beetle has a face, a brain, a nervous system and an exoskeleton. Do you know how I know that this beetle wants to live? If it sees my hand reaching out to grab it, it will run away. If it doesn't think I pose a threat to it and does get on my hand, and I proceed to try and crush it, it most likely won't lay there dormant and loving it...it will fight for life. Most animals fight for life, for their right to live. This is why arguing that not eating beef or dog or horse makes sense, while eating fish & eggs, and drinking milk. I might go a step further and argue for honey, produced by bees for them to eat that humans steal, or 'harvest'...and I avoid it all together. Most health arguments against veganism [Vitamin B, protein, etc] have been dispelled, and I err on the side of caution with a (vegan) multivitamin, extra Vit B, zinc and the occasional protein shake, but if you eat a balanced, whole food diet, repeat, balanced (fruit, vegetables, nuts and tubers, grain, occasional junk if need be : ?) and whole food (highly processed soy pizza with daiya cheese etc isn't healthy either), going vegan is as natural as it gets.
In addition to the loudly touted evils of CAFO and agribusiness, as well as the false advertising such as "happy cows in california" (that love getting raped in a rape rack with a long syringe for artificial insemination and their babies taken away for veal or to suffer the same fate - they're happy alright), green, range or free-range farming, etc, all these belie the fact that humans don't seem to be made to be carnivorous much less steady omnivorous. Here's a condensed webbie that has some comparisons ( http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html ) but there are dozens others and books...but we share more in common anatomically with Mr Ed than Mufasa. Being a veggie or a herbivore is not lame, don't you think a horse is one of the most muscular things you'll see in the next eighty years...look at cows, bulls, antelope, buffalo, etc....of course they don't have the HFCS and fat-n-salt diet humans and their companion animals (pets) have...which is why you have obese cats and dogs now....humans are really a virus and a scourge on this earth much like Smith, the agent, in the Matrix movie said in his monologue with Morpheus ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_OJI ). Veggie is fuel. Drinking cows milk, that is meant to wean baby calf of the placenta feeding and make them fat to weather the first few years of their lives are not healthy for a human being...otherwise, we would be drinking our mom's milk from birthonward, why then do we think to drink another species' milk for the rest of our lives? That's like a grown-ass lion suckling on a gazelle's boobs, yummy.
If we were meant to eat meat, we would be able to eat it raw without it making it sick. It would smell awesome. Road kill would be fought for as a delicacy, after all, fresh meat for free!! But its not, and the thought of eating raw hamburger right from the meat rack or biting a chicken's leg before its been cooked and overcooked, literally makes my belly turn.Which is why some house pets hate cooked meat, but will eat it raw. There are exceptions obviously, and household animals can be trained to do a lot of stuff and change a lot of behavior.
Thirdly, all this food is killing us, or at the very best, making us sick Heart disease, cholesterol, clogged blood vessels, irritable bowel syndrome, obesity-related illnesses, introducing (new) strains of viruses and bacteria, etc. And it's still healthy for us? True, eating only fruit would probably make you gain weight from high sugar levels, etc, but who does that? In a balanced diet, fruit has its niche as a tasty snack and a pick me up. Why would I eat a disease? Why would I take anti-cholesterol medicine and then enjoy an omelette, a juicy steak for lunch, and pork chops for dinner? Just save your money and enjoy the bad food....why smoke to congratulate yourself for improving on your jogging time? Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food, said Hippocrates, father of modern medicine. Just because something is in our culture, doesn't make it unchangeable, or give it eternal tenure. To cite a past example, slavery or oppression against groups, etc.
Your palate and taste will change with time. I have been vegan for the past six months and I am getting used to some things, and missing some things. I miss pizza so much! I could go for a steak any day. I used to live on breakfast sausages and scrambled eggs, for all three meals. But at some point, one needs to evolve once new evidence is presented. If I told you spitting in your palms and rubbing it vigorously while singing Abba would make your dreads grow longer and faster and kinkier and stickier than ever, if I could present an airtight case, with verifiable facts, etc, wouldn't you be spitting and singing "Karma Chameleon"? (Of course, your dreads would not grow, cuz that ain't Abba.
Anyway, try it. Maybe one day a month, maybe one day a week, maybe work days or weekends only. My final proof ( ). Haha, gross. The Abba mention threw me on an 80's tangent.
If it has a face, don't eat it. If it breathes, or walks, or swims or flies, don't kill it for pleasure or as an unneeded food source. You can get your protein elsewhere. Not I, or any one else, can tell you what to eat or dictate your food ethics. However, given a set of facts to contrast and compare, as a mature, thinking individual, one should come to some guilt-free middle ground on matters that directly affect us, e.g. what we eat, whom we vote for, whether climate change is real, etc.
Sorry for the long read.
Not aggressive or preachy, you were just talking> as we should, especially with people we disagree with. I didn't know agave had that much fructose, that's crazy for as unsweet as it is IMO. The only thing I dislike about stevia is its licorice taste. Yeah, fructose doesn't register in the part of your brain that says "I'm full".
About the bees, sir, we are making them extinct with our pollution, climate change, deforestation and general nogoodery that we as humans do. We are saving bees as much as we are saving the pandas and tigers and deer with big antlers. We are the probable cause, amongst natural events e.g. the bacteria etc and we are the solution. I'm sure you've seen "Vanishing of the Bees", as well as another I plan on watching, "Colony". I'm not anti-science, I'm against humans feeling we have zero impact on the Earth even though our way of life has dramatically changed.
Lastly, if your girl, or someone you cared about or knew, or just someone you were talking to, had dreads, and they were loading them up with wax daily and ironing them and not washing them ever, etc, would you say something? There has to be some way we can dispense what we believe in our hearts as knowledge or info, without being labelled preachy or bossy cuz we have opinions. I'm doing the same thing, and I feel you: my wife is NOT vegetarian, my 2 year old is not, but I try feed her whole food & she has a dairy allergy, and when she is old enough to reason, which I hope will be early the way I am raising her, I will hope she can make her own mind up about stuff (food, religion, sexuality, gender, career choices) to a reasonable extent.
Either way, to each his own, peace.
Sorry if I sounded preachy. I was tired and not in the mood to write a long response but one came out anyway. So Iapologizeif it soundedaggressive.
Agave is one of the most deeply kept secrets in the food industry. The Huffington post came out with a 20 page article on it a few months ago. You should check it out. The problem with Agave is that it is made from the root of the plant, not the nectar pf the flowers. The roots are so high in fructose that agave is roughly 95% fructose whereas HFCS is only 55%. This sharp increase in fructose in agave is worse for you than most any other food you can put in your body. Stevia is much better than either. I choose honey, but that's mypreference.
Bees are going extinct because of human actions, but not because of human farming. Bee farms actually save the species. Farmers are the ones that are trying to do the most to bring them back. It's pollution and loss of other habitats that are killing them. Es well as bacteria that are spreading through their populations.
I try not to preach. I am avegetarian. My girlfriend eats meat. I cook it for her because she's not allowed near my stove. So I have no problem with anyone's choices. I have my reasons for what I eat just like you do. And I respect both
"What it was once used for was processing raw meat and bones and such" while its exact use is debatable now, I have never come across this fact re: the appendix...The three uses I've heard other than 'unknown', are immunity purposes, harbor of good bacteria in the body(basically a backup if you deplete your good bacteria supply), and for cellulose digestion. In our over sanitized world, we don't need this so much. And you can take a probiotic if you need extra bacteria. We only became hunters once we discovered fire. We used to be scroungers and gatherers (eating veggies and fruit).
Anything is better than HFCS. Corn is viable in our bodies, my argument is that meat isnt, and therefore, arguably HFCS is better than meat : ) its the quantity of HFCS you take in.
Agave nectar is bad because its highly processed, old-school agave as it was used by Mexicans etc, is awesome & natural. I use liquid stevia when I don't drink stuff plain.
Again, I have never heard the fact about bees going extinct were it not for human involvement. Any references or do you remember where you heard this? I've heard of what we're doing to the bees in making them extinct, but I've never heard the angle of the bees needing us to exist. What were they doing for the millions of years before we were actively studying them?
Lastly, my point on the beetles was that if you try and kill it, it will run away. Its running away from your smell because it is preserving its life. Squirrels get used to people when people dont harm them as well as feed them or are linked with a food source. If you start beating your cat up, it won't stay there and look at you lovingly, it will try and escape, for its life. If you cut it with a knife, it will try and escape. I grew up in the coast on summers, but most of my year was spent on a farm. Farm animals are loving and have personalities, and usually will do you no harm, but if you are mean to them, they will try escape or even to attack you back. Pitbulls aren't horrible dogs, but when bred or trained to be a particular way, they can be anything, just like some tea cup poodles think they are as big as a barn. Life wants to continue, and its a fight.
I don't preach to anyone about lifestyle choices, but I am not embarrassed or unsure of my beliefs. I can be proven wrong, but I welcome any dialogue over hard headed sureties as is the case usually with these things. I appreciate your opinion on this matter, and wish more people were able to understand the impact of their dinner choices on other people, animals and the environment.
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I am not in the mood to go into a whole diatribe , maybe later, so I'll pick 1 point right now:
I am a vegetarian, just so you know. But I am not against people eating meat. I do try to advocate against getting their food from CAFO's and more from local farms.
But if you look at the evolution of the human anatomy, you'll find anappendixin everyone. This is avestigial organ. It exists but no longer has a use. What it was once used for was processing raw meat and bones and such. Once man found fire and was able to harness it, they realized that they could cook their meat. In time we only cook meat and finally lost the use of our appendix. So humans really were designed to eat raw meat. We just moved away from eating it raw because of evolution.
As for why we get sick if we eat it after going long periods without, has only to do with the fat content. I'm not saying meat is good for you. But it's not the worst thing in the world. I'd rather eat meat that HFCS or other processed ingredients.
Oh, and the thing with Honey. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, if it weren't for people trying to farm bees, they'd be extinct by now because of the virus's and bacteria that are floating around killing them all. And NEVER replace honey with Agave. Agave is one of, if not the worst products you can put in your body.
And beetles run away from you because you are not natural to their habitat. The chemical signals your body sends out by smells and such make them afraid. If they encountered you on a daily basis, they'd stop running away. It's like squirrels in the city vs. rural area. In the city they are not afraid of people because they see them all the time. But in the sticks, it's uncommon, so they are more skitish
Tara, I'm not picking a point in history. This logic examines humans today, and compares them with other animals today. Humans haven't been around that long in the grand scheme of things.It is claimed that goldfish have such a tiny memory that they remember only the last 30 seconds of their life. If they're having a blast in the last 30 seconds, its been a blast all their life...and vice versa. Memory is relative, and subjective.I'm not advocating that eating meat is evil, but the industry eating meat promotes is horrible. If you are vegetarian or vegan for health reasons, then that's a lot different Look at our history, in the past, cigarettes were promoted as 'good for you', as good destressors and such, alcohol was illegal, coffee was illegal back in the day, there were the Dark Ages, there was ice ages when bulking up was probably humankind's only goal, etc. Remember if you believe in creation theory, all bets are off: since man is the chosen one in most religions, and thus all other life is to be subservient and usable by him. If you subscribe to evolution, we came from less complex forms, but we have differentiation with our closest cousinns. For example, some chimps are carnivorous, eating ants and small animals. They have different physiological features, longer canines etc.Cooking veggies or eating them raw and as complements to other meals makes all the difference. I eat less salads as a vegan than I did as a meat-eater, because its not all about salads. And in today's world, there are so many plant-based substitutes for most food.In the future, we are looking to getting off non-renewable oil and switching to greener methods, say biodegradable forms such as biomass, or even green electricity from solar and wind, but to get there means a lot of sacrifice. Nothing easy comes without sacrifice, if you wanna lose weight, sacrifice some time and work out, if you wanna get a degree, sacrifice some time and forego some stuff to go to class, if you want to buy something, sacrifice some stuff and save, right?If we want to reduce our carbon footprints and be less of a strain on the earth, we need to change some parts of our lifestyle: travelling, eating, what we consider recreation, etc.I'm not pontificating or preaching the gospel of vegan, I just wish for someone who might not have all the information to go out and research it for themselves and compare their current lifestyle to the greenest, lowest impact, most efficient lifestyle they can attain. I have a daughter, I want her to have a future and an earth as my grandparents had, etc... (insert doomsday prophecies here, and scene).
tara i dont like many many vef=ggo[ies either but been vegatarian 28 or 30 years u dont got to like veggies just cut out meat
I'd like to go vegan but I couldn't even cope being vegetarian. I tried, but...I hate vegetables, and no matter how much I tried to force myself, it just wasn't working. That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with eating meat in itself. There's plenty wrong with the business of it, the slaughterhouses, the disregard for animal suffering, etc., but the actual consumption of animals is normal. Maybe humans aren't meant to eat meat, but we do. We evolve, we change. Humans weren't meant to walk on the moon, but we have. We can't just pick a certain point in history where you think we lived right and stop time from that point on. Just doesn't work like that, things can never go back, only forward. So maybe we're not meant to eat meat, but we do, and because we do, I don't think it's any different to other animals eating animals. The difference being that because we have the awareness of suffering and pain, we should always seek to minimise that pain. I used to hate the idea of hunting, whereas now I can respect it when done for food, because the idea of killing an animal who's lived its whole life as it should, and then is killed quickly and whose life isn't wasted, is much better than being confined in small areas, bred to be killed, living in misery.
But also, not everyone is vegetarian out of morality, so why would they go the whole way? Different people have different reasons, and also their sense of morality differs, so some people think it's bad to kill animals, but OK to use them for milk, eggs, etc.