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Eating Meat Helped Early Humans Reproduce
PolygamousRanchKid writes "If early humans had been vegans we might all still be living in caves, Swedish researchers suggested in an article Thursday. When a mother eats meat, her breast-fed child's brain grows faster and she is able to wean the child at an earlier age, allowing her to have more children faster, the article explains. 'Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened,' said psychologist Elia Psouni of Lund University in Sweden. 'This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution.' She notes, however, that the results say nothing about what humans today should or should not eat."
Gee, I know a child of a vegan mother who's not that bright; obviously, you're wrong.
I know two vegan mums and their (vegan) kids weaned off early and are very bright, healthy little 5 and 9 year old kids.
And you're a doctor who has examined these children and are in a position to know how healthy they actually are, right? And not just some anonymous coward?
I hear there were some people who wanted to put together a cogent refutation, but they didn't get enough meat during development and they couldn't figure out how to post on Slashdot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Indeed it doesn't seem to indicate much at all as regards what mothers should eat today. I know two vegan mums and their (vegan) kids weaned off early and are very bright, healthy little 5 and 9 year old kids.
And as we all know, anecdotal evidence always trumps scientific research.
I like how the researcher feels the need to close off with a "don't antagonise vegetarian groups" political-correctness statement, lest she risks being eaten alive (pun intended).
Even today, children of vegans still die occasionally due to malnutrition. While careful vegetarians (such as many Hindus whose cuisine has adapted to this) can get everything they need from normal food, vegans need supplements to stay healthy. This is especially the case for children, who haven't built up a store of, for example, B12 yet. Childhood malnutrition quickly leads to retarded development and hence eventually poor intelligence.
Man was never made to be vegan and, judging from our closest relatives the Chimps, probably not vegetarian either.
Gee, I know a child of a vegan mother who's not that bright; obviously, you're wrong.
Why was this post marked "redundant" ... especially when it was one of the first? It's a nice, short, sarcastic jab at substituting anecdotal evidence for scientific study.
I saw a vegan a while ago. A true one, so no supplements, no cheating and I vowed I would NEVER be that 'healthy'.
I also know vegans who let their dogs not eat meat. Idiots. They apparently have no problem with animal cruelty, they just don't want to have it on a plate.
And then when I have a dinner, they are upset if I serve meat. I am not upset if they don't.
But back to the healthy vegans. I bet they take some sorts of supplements and thus support the companies who do the animal testing.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
<p>And as we all know, anecdotal evidence always trumps scientific research.</p></quote>
The scientific research says that vegetarian and vegan diets adequately meet nutritional needs and are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including infancy and early childhood (American Dietetic Association)
And before someone suggests that the American Dietetic Association is not qualified to make that determination.
The association has 72,000 members and ~72% are registered dietitians and ~50% of those hold advanced degrees.
Some feminist psychos will nuts of those results, and not over the mens' nuts. Here is an example of meat and sex, gone wrong... Seriously and dangerously wrong:
"The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Sexual-Politics-Meat-Feminist-Vegetarian/dp/0826411843)
"First published in 1990, The Sexual Politics of Meat is a landmark text in the ongoing debates about animal rights. In the two decades since, the book has inspired controversy and heated debate. The Sexual Politics of Meat argues that what, or more precisely who, we eat is determined by the patriarchal politics of our culture, and that the meanings attached to meat eating are often clustered around virility. We live in a world in which men still have considerable power over women, both in public and in private. Carol Adams argues that gender politics is inextricably related to how we view animals, especially animals who are consumed. Further, she argues that vegetarianism and fighting for animal rights fit perfectly alongside working to improve the lives of disenfranchised and suffering people, under the wide umbrella of compassionate activism."
That book can be seen as part of the ongoing degradation of general observations and science into something very dangerous - views and opinions based on random whims, often with a feminist, religious, sexual or otherwise subjective world-view.
One can hope these new results will help raising the arguments to a decent intellectual level.
Quite useful in the developed world, which in general, has birth rates below the replacement level.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
And have any opinion on his distillation of the research on weight gain and the optimal diet?
It seems compelling, and without any sort of effort other than cutting out carbs I've dropped nearly 20 pounds in two months.
I'm sure if he knows the mothers then they would let him know if they have any health related problems. Plus it doesn't take a doctor to tell if a kid is malnourished. It's always interesting when there's an article posted about veganism and all the haters come out trying to say it's an unhealthy diet. I've been vegan for 12 years and I'm a very healthy person and I don't take any supplements. My wife is pregnant with our first child and her doctor says she's totally fine to be vegan and have the baby. Not sure why people get so offended by vegans.
Can I bum a sig?
my cousin smokes a pack a day, and he's perfectly healthy. hell, he's much stronger than me. i don't understand all this "smoking is bad" advertising.
my sig pwns your sig
'Breathing air enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened from infinity to a few years', said slashdot reader Capta1n Obvi10us. 'This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution'.
An Anonymous Coward noted in a reply, however, that the results say nothing about what humans today should or should not breathe.
Because people are happier using anecdote to support their opinions than they are changing their opinions when confronted by facts.
It's all about feelings.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
And why is that bad? I mean, it certainly forces us to re-design our financial system that rely on population growth, but otherwise I think we could very well reduce even the number of people in the developed world.
Besides, nutrition is hardly the reason why we don't have more kids.
Dilbert RSS feed
Those "registered dieticians" are inside their own event horizon.
Did the mothers and the children follow a strict vegan diet the whole time?
It's not due to feminism; it's due to economics.
Having lots of kids in an agricultural society is an advantage. Having lots of kids in an industrialized country with child labour is an advantage. Havings lots of kids in a modern industrialized nation where they're not likely to start supporting themselves until well into their twenties is a liability. People have one or two to satisfy their need for procreation, but the days of 7 - 8 kid families as standard are gone. You'll only get that in families with a religious taboo against contraception, or a certain subset of the poor, who get greater welfare payments because of it (and therefore, many children becomes an advantage again).
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Cause it's got massive evidence indicating that it's very bad for you.
There are no such studies on veganism.
You don't need historical analysis. I've seen first-hand that buying a woman steak or lobster helps me reproduce.
I'd rather talk to Jehovah's Witnesses than vegans. In my experience they're a lot friendlier than vegan cunts.
Cause it's got massive evidence indicating that it's very bad for you. There are no such studies on veganism.
*swoosh*
They'll also push a high-carb, low-fat diet which won't do anything for you but leave you hungry and make you fat.
The medical industry bought into Ancel Keys early and misleading research on dietary cholesterol and heart disease, none of which has been scientifically validated over time, despite a ton of money (6 NIH studies, $100 million dollars).
Of course, once careers and status is on the line, nothing is let go, and we're still stick in a paradigm that insists that eating carbs and eschewing animal fat is somehow good for us when it's been scientifically well established for 75 years that insulin is the primary driver of fat accumulation.
If the ADA is so fucking smart about diet, why do so many people go on high carb, low-fat, reduced calorie diets and end up as fat as they were when they started? It's a false paradigm.
I also know vegans who let their dogs not eat meat. Idiots. They apparently have no problem with animal cruelty, they just don't want to have it on a plate.
Can you quote me a single study showing that properly supplemented vegan diets are inadequate for dogs? I'm guessing not, because there are none. Don't let minor details like lack of evidence stop you from passing judgement on others, though...
But back to the healthy vegans. I bet they take some sorts of supplements and thus support the companies who do the animal testing.
There's nothing non-vegan about taking nutritional supplements. There's also nothing wrong with vegan diets in general, your single anecdote and hasty post-hoc reasoning notwithstanding. But of course, leave it to Slashdot to mod up utterly inaccurate nonsense when it comes to veganism...
I find if I don't label people 'cunts' they're usually quite friendly.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
The scientific research says that vegetarian and vegan diets adequately meet nutritional needs and are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including infancy
Vegan infants? No mother's milk? Only soy milk or something?
insists that eating carbs and eschewing animal fat is somehow good for us
Hasn't Atkins been thoroughly debunked?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Well, dogs are kind of naturally predisposed to eat meat. That's why they have forward-facing eyes (better depth perception for hunting), big sharp pointy teeth (good for biting big holes in prey) and strong jaw muscles. It just so happens that they can prtty much survive on vegetables alone, but it's pretty miserable for them.
It's worth pointing out that you *cannot* feed cats a vegan diet at all; all felidae are unable to synthesize taurine and can only get it from meat. Without taurine, cats gradually go blind. Many spiders have quite a lot of taurine, which is presumably why cats eat them so readily.
Feeding any animal a diet that is unsuitable for it is nothing short of abuse. It is hypocrisy in the extreme to criticise feedlot livestock production for feeding cows an un-natural diet and at the same time force domestic pets to eat a diet they simply cannot make use of.
No, in fact, it has been actually validated.
http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/az.html
Meat, it's what's for dinner!
Obligatory:
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?!"
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Different animals need different kinds of food sources. Carnivores NEED to eat meat in order to survive. Their bodies cannot synthesize the amino acids necessary for function. Dogs are right on the edge, they can survive on non-meat diets, but they have to be tailored correctly so they get the right amino acids. Cats, on the other hand, are obligate carnivores and must have meat to survive.
So yes, it is cruel to not give an animal the food it needs to survive. If a vegan has done the research and feeds their animal a diet with the correct nutrients, fine. But just feeding your animal whatever you want because it makes YOU feel good, without regard for their nutritional differences ain't right.
As long as they don't yack into my meat lover's pizza, I don't mind them.
It's always the same. You go to a restaurant, order something and you may rest assured some militant Vegan is in the audience, coming over and asking whether you know where that meat comes from and what the animal had to endure... my standard answer is something akin to this:
Yes, the cow never saw a green leaf, it was raised on silo food, wedged in between its peers, with its horns and hooves cut and mutilated so they can't harm each other despite the constant stress of being so close to each other with no way to turn around and nowhere to lay down but in their own filth, being shot up with antibiotics every other day 'cause else they'd be swarming with disease. Then they get pushed towards the transport, with cattle prods because they don't know how to move, they never set one foot in front of the other so they have no idea what is expected to them, then they're wedged into a transport, without any food or water, often for days, the stress even killing already some, before they're again pushed with electric shocks towards the killing floor where they get wedged into a small box where they get a bolt to the brain stem. If they're lucky, sometimes they just use a large hammer to bash in their head, and even the bolt doesn't really kill them, there's still brain waves when the next step comes where they get cut open and cut in half, technically while still alive.
Can I fuckin' eat now or do I have to go on with the less savory parts?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't be so sexist, you have to include the vegan dicks, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So has vaccine autism and new earth bull. Did either stop people from believing in it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
.....bacon.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Yes, all through the world everybody is well-fed and not malnourished by being vegetarians. Now, if you believe that, go to India.
The real difference between between a vegan and a normal omnivore human, is that the omnivore (with a simple balanced diet) will provide the best for the infant. The vegan must work hard at it to get a balanced diet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You don't really think that's due to our diet, do you? It's by no means a problem for a woman to pump out a baby every 9 months and still have more than enough food for them. Hint: Baby food is available from stores.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
where do you live that vegans are hanging out in restaurants waiting for you to order just so they can give you their speech?
Can I bum a sig?
I'm sure if he knows the mothers then they would let him know if they have any health related problems.
Denial is not a river in Egypt, but a lot of people seem to live there anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Feminism? You think we'd have more kids if we didn't let our women work?
Ok, let's see. Mr. and Mrs. Average American just married. They're about 25 each. Yes, 25, way after their ability to have kids started. But they have to finish college first, ya know? You ain't really a human being in our society if you didn't go to college. Oh, ok, the bitch doesn't need to learn anything, let's make her 20. Before that, her parents would never let her go and have a family on her own, we're getting closer with every generation to extend childhood, I guess by 2100 you will go seamlessly from childhood into retirement.
So they're now 25 and 20. But a kid, now, impossible. He has to pay off his tuition loan first, and they can't afford a home, let alone a house, and in their tiny apartment there is no room for a baby. A mortgage you say, to buy a house? Today? Good one, you're a standup, right?
She'll be about 25-30 until they have enough money to consider themselves stable enough to have children. And if she has one, he'll notice that if they have another one, he'll be close to retiring when junior two goes to college... better not.
THAT is the reason for the 0-1 child family today. We simply can't afford kids anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Rather than parrot some trendy position or swap anecdotal information, get the facts before you decide.
Google for "essential amino acids" and "essential nutrients"; those are the things that you MUST eat to maintain your health.
It's possible to get everything you need from a strictly vegetarian diet - but it's very, very difficult. Deficiency disorders are no fun at all; know what you're doing.
Right, but why would you abuse an animal by giving it un-natural chemical crap like that?
If you don't want to look after your animals properly, don't have animals.
Actually, the dogs are omnivores just like us. They can exists just fine on plants. The problem is that just like us, they need a varied diet that is difficult to do with just plants. For humans, knowledge enables it, but it is still difficult.
Yeah, I knew that cats were carnivores, but was not aware about spiders. Thanx.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For a long time, humans were pretty dumb doing little but make "the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years," says Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai. Then, 150,000 years ago, our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials. We started creating art and maybe even religion. To understand what caused the cognitive spurt, researchers examined chemical brain processes known to have changed in the past 200,000 years. Comparing apes and humans, they found the most robust differences were for processes involved in energy metabolism. The finding suggests that increased access to calories spurred our cognitive advances although definitive claims of causation are premature. In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, thereby freeing up calories for our brains. Today, humans have relatively small digestive systems and allocate around 20% of their total energy to the brain, compared to approximately 13% for non-human primates and 2-8% for other vertebrates. While other theories for the brain's cognitive spurt have not been ruled out, the finding sheds light on what made us, as Khaitovich put it, "so strange compared to other animals."
Ponca City, We Love You
Great point. I like how the study apparently holds it to be self-evident that faster brain development is inherently beneficial. There is a tremendous amount of activity, especially development of language processing, that occurs during the infancy phase of humans. We cannot possibly have controlled studies to adequately gauge the overall effects of this -- for ethical reasons alone.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
So you know they are in denial? How? Do you know them personally?
Can I bum a sig?
We absolutely co-evolved with cattle. Do you have some nutritional basis with which to reject milk as being a valid source of food for an adult?
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
My lady was once a raw food vegan fascist. One day she had the revelation that a carrot was alive and she couldn't bring herself to kill it. This led directly to the concept that all the food is alive, so fucking eat it. (or as I like to put it, THIS IS NECESSARY. LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON...) A few years ago we were in the habit of eating a lot of chicken sausage. One day she asked me "Why is this sausage so good?" The answer was "because it's made out of pork". The moral is, people can change.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So you know they are in denial? How? Do you know them personally?
There's a long list of reasons why veganism is stupid, but chief among them is that throughout time, nobody ever lived that way. Anyone who may have lived that way was probably eaten by someone else, because there are no vegetarian indigenes, let alone vegan. It's simply grossly inefficient. We did not evolve to eat plants alone, which you can tell by looking at our teeth or at our stomach, let alone at both of them. As for the moral argument that killing for food is wrong, tell that to a polar bear — or to a sparrow. Or to my parrot, who loves to eat chicken, and yes, she knows what it is. So if it's stupid in the front and stupid in the back it's probably stupid in the middle.
Far be it from me to force anyone to eat anything they don't want to eat, but don't ask me to believe that they're intelligent or moral because they're making ridiculous choices unsupported by any logic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not sure people are offended by vegans. I think sometimes they're offended by vegans taking offense at meat-eaters.
Vegan infants? No mother's milk? Only soy milk or something?
No, mother's milk is the only animal-derived product that most vegans will consume. Or, sometimes, placenta. But there's a bunch of fake vegans out there, too. "I'm a strict vegan except for blue cheese and bacon." Real quote from some yippie taking a workshop at Harbin Hot Springs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Forget breast feeding. If our ancestors were vegans and thus cared about animals feelings and were too "nice" to eat them, we'd all be toast as well.
Hasn't Atkins been thoroughly debunked?
No, in fact, not only has a low-carbohydrate modified fast been used for decades to treat seizures with no ill health effects (and generally good ones) but the health establishment has been steadily swinging over to acceptance of basically everything Atkins ever said. Stop watching/reading Fox and CNN.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And before someone suggests that the American Dietetic Association is not qualified to make that determination.
The association has 72,000 members and ~72% are registered dietitians and ~50% of those hold advanced degrees.
Was that supposed to be sarcasm? Or did you really think that second sentence supported your point?
I find if I don't label people 'cunts' they're usually quite friendly.
How odd, I find that if people are quite friendly, I don't usually label them as a "cunt". Indeed, they often have to go out of their way to get into mine before I will do that. And I've lost track of how many times I've had to hear from a complete stranger about how eating meat is bad, because I grew up in Santa Cruz which was at the time full of dippy hippies (and which is now too gentrified for me to afford, so I probably preferred it the old way -- Vegans > Valleys.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If my anecdotic evidence means anything, it's the kids with the small brains that pick on the kids with the big ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
Well, if you go into that, plants cannot give consent either. It seems like the only way out for vegans is starving to death.
"Giving consent" assumes being aware of the implications of what is happening. Unless you assume animals have the mental capability of understanding the abstract notion of property and the difference between stealing and buying, the act of giving consent has no meaning for them.
Not sure why people get so offended by vegans.
Because you get to be a vegan. But we have to be around a vegan.
I've been around vegans, mostly through work, but a few in social settings, and while it isn't universal, it's more like 90 percent:
We get to hear how they are a vegan within 5 minutes of meeting them.
We get to hear how they are healthier than us corpse eaters.
We usually get "looks" if they see that we are wearing anything leather.
In general, a lot of sanctimony.
There was one who I worked with who pretty much wrecked our department's social life. We used to go to lunch several times a week. When this priceless person came to work with us, she came along. Every restaurant waiter would get grilled about every thing. This woman was determined nothing that touched anything that touched meat would get past her lips. Then we'd get a lecture and more the condescension if we had the audacity to order anything with meat. Quickly whittled the lunches down to no one going. She was the extreme example, but most others had that thing going on to a lesser or greater degree.
When she left, we had a party the day after she left town. Cheeseburgers all around!
Why does this happen? I think that it is a sort of neurosis, where people believe that they have to eliminate evil from their life, and begin to gauge everything they do as "good" or "not good". Obviously there are some unpleasant aspects to killing animals to eat them, so they can quickly home in on that as in the "not good" category.
But a person who eats meat is no more or less good or bad as a person who eats plants only. Like it or not, almost all animals and a fair number of plants take their sustenance by depriving other animals or plants of their life. The Rhododendron in my yard that poisons the soil to kill other plants that take root there, and uses their composted remains, or the Venus flytrap plant or pitcher plant that traps and consumes bugs are not evil or bad - they are just what they are. And of course those composted remains mean that plants are practicing a form of cannibalism, taking nutrition from their dead ancestors.
So there is one answer to your question. The short version is that many Vegans are unpleasant to be around.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
>I also know vegans who let their dogs not eat meat. Idiots.
They let their dogs not eat meat. So they are giving permission to the dog to refrain from eating animal flesh?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It allows for faster brain development, and thus shorter infancy. Given the trouble women have with taking maternity leave, and given how long making a kid into a productive adult takes *anyways* it's an extremely good thing the period needed isn't any longer.
From the American Dietetic Association position paper on the subject where vegan diets are considered appropriate:
However, vegans and some other vegetarians may have lower intakes of vitamin B-12, calcium, vitamin D, zinc, and long-chain n-3 fatty acids.
Oh, oh. A vegan diet has a hard time fulfilling the above dietetic requirements. But not to worry. If you eat all day non-stop you can make up for that:
Research indicates that an assortment of plant foods eaten over the course of a day can provide all essential amino acids and ensure adequate nitrogen retention and use in healthy adults; thus, complementary proteins do not need to be consumed at the same meal (8).
How about other components such as EPA and DHA which are important for cardiovascular health as well as eye and brain development. Surely vegans are fine since the ADA says those diets are "appropriate"
Vegetarians, and particularly vegans, tend to have lower blood levels of EPA and DHA than nonvegetarians (15). DHA supplements derived from microalgae are well absorbed and positively influence blood levels of DHA, and also EPA through retroconversion (16).
Oops. The ADA suggestion is that you take supplements in the form of fortified soy milk..
How about B12? According to the ADA. the very "appropriate" vegan diet just cannot give you enough B12:
For vegans, vitamin B-12 must be obtained from regular use of vitamin B-12-fortified foods.
So the diet is appropriate so long as you take supplements to make up for its inappropriateness. Ok, got it.
If a vegan has done the research and feeds their animal a diet with the correct nutrients, fine.
No it is not fine. It's stupidity and just plain wrong. Dunno if you are vegan or not, but that sentence is typical of what I hear form vegans. It's like somehow you can just say "I believe this, and my belief makes it true."
Animals eat what they eat. And no amount of "I believe" makes it different. For a Vegan to inflict their beliefs on a frank carnivore is wrong and cruel. Vegans should only have plants for pets if that's how they think.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Your sample size of one isn't too helpful...even if you were to have a lot more I doubt it would mean much since today's humans have little to force natural selection. Meaning, the genetically weak and the genetically strong both have about the same chance to reproduce...only when there's outside pressure or stress placed on a species will an adaptation (e.g. shorter period between children thus more children) be useful.
Dogs are carnivores. They have evolved to be carnivores. There is nothing, nothing about a dog that suggests they just really want to settle down and eat a nice nut-roast. Anyone who believes that dogs want to be vegan are deluded hypocrites: they're engaging in nothing short of first hand animal abuse.
Minor correction, dogs are omnivores like us, but lean toward the meaty end of the scale. Otherwise I concur with what you wrote.
Plus we have to remember, there is a whole spectrum of veganism. I think I wrote it elsewhere here, but I knew a woman who is a fruitarian. Seems wild, but she only eats fruits. If it is moral for vegans to force their beliefs on their animals, then it is likewise good for this woman to feed her dog only the same fruits that she eats. Agreed? Of course not.
Why, maybe it's a good idea to feed animals and plants what they naturally want to eat.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
Well, if you go into that, plants cannot give consent either. It seems like the only way out for vegans is starving to death.
"Giving consent" assumes being aware of the implications of what is happening. Unless you assume animals have the mental capability of understanding the abstract notion of property and the difference between stealing and buying, the act of giving consent has no meaning for them.
please remember this topic started with breast-feeding. there is a huge leap from a mother "consenting" to give her own child her own breast milk and attempts at interpreting cow behavior as "consenting" the being treated in the industrialized way by which milk is largely obtained (in the u.s. anyway).
also, isn't it a bit absurd to think property has anything to do with consent? i suppose if you want to drape the term "property" over an animal's desired treatments of their own body, i'd have to believe any animal is mentally capable.
I've heard thats not true. a friend of mine told me that they had heard a story of someone who was ok with facts changing his opinions, and who didnt rely on anecdotal evidence for his beliefs.
The scientific research says that vegetarian and vegan diets adequately meet nutritional needs and are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including infancy and early childhood (American Dietetic Association)
That can be so, but it requires a little bit of care in diet planning and usually some supplements. Vegan diets often lack B12 almost completely, and without being careful, they can lead to deficiencies in iron, calcium, vitamin D, and other things. (The latter stuff can be found by eating the right vegan foods in sufficient quantity, but B12 is really a problem without supplements or fortified food.)
I'm not saying anything bad about vegan diets. But it is actually significantly harder to get adequate quantities of certain nutrients than with omnivorous diets or even vegetarian diets.
And before someone suggests that the American Dietetic Association is not qualified to make that determination. The association has 72,000 members and ~72% are registered dietitians and ~50% of those hold advanced degrees.
While I fully admit there are a lot of smart people involved in nutrition science, we just need to look at the HUGE swings in suggested diets that have been recommended by the "experts" for the past century and a half to see that there's a problem. Adequate nutrition is hard to quantify, and it is certainly more than just a few vitamins and minerals (which is why we see new "essential" things coming up all the time... antioxidants, fatty acids, probiotics, etc., etc.).
The fact is that most diets where you eat a wide variety of foods that are relatively non-processed can probably be healthy. But some restrictions on variety may make it harder to "balance" things than others, including strict veganism.
As opposed to "scientists" like the ones in this article? The flaws of this supposed study are layered so deeply they form a nice, comfy mat you could sit upon and contemplate the existence of anything coming from it, conclusions upon conclusions that have no basis other than the fact that they reinforce each other in some way based upon chosen parameters. Real science requires allowing for many possibilities, not going with some random wacky-ass idea for correlation and running with it to the logical ends of the Earth.
Wow I knew vegans are really preachy.
I never knew they were this myopic, too.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Indians (who can manage to get the calories) do actually eat meat.
Those who don't get quite a lot of cheese and butter and milk.
Anyway, it is certainly possible to get plenty of dense calories as modern humans.
Whether it was possible for our caveman ancestors when the choice was foraging alone or foraging plus hunting is another matter.
The article presents evidence that human diet seems to correlate with a shorter breastfeeding period than that for animals which are quite a lot like us but eat something completely different
If you believe this is of equal weight than someone pulling pompous claims out of their arse, and attempting to blame "patriarchy" for yet another from a line of utterly disjoint things, then you have been thoroughly hoodwinked by ideology
There was an old joke in the eastern block where i'm from that the main problems of a socialist society are five - spring, summer, autumn, winter, and western imperialism. Feminists seem to take the stance this was poking fun of up to eleven.
In my situation it's always the other way around. The only time I tell people I'm vegan is when they want to go somewhere to eat. Which in the USA is a lot of the time. All of the aggression comes from the other side though, not mine. But I have noticed that over the years the aggression has turned more into a curiosity and more people like to ask me about the diet. Some of the time they want me to bring them some vegan food to try. But online its a totally different story. Aggression and name calling always starts with the non-vegans. Everyone's got some story about how a vegetarian made them feel bad about themselves. So you met one asshat, I meet a lot of non-vegans that are turds on a regular basis, but I don't assume it's because they eat meat and I don't lump all non-vegans with that person. I bet that person you worked with isn't even vegetarian any more if they are that aggressive with their believes.
Can I bum a sig?
A week? Might want to check your facts. The transit time for all matter is on average 24 hours, regardless of source.
Difference is, we actually digest the meat. Meanwhile, much plant food must make it to the large intestine for bacterial fermentation. Once there, the body absorbs the fatty acids created by fermentation. Highly inefficient. In fact, we don't even need to eat plant food to survive, it's just an omnivorous adaptation -- starch is easy energy (though nutritionally void).
You're right about the canines. Chances are, like many primates, is that early homonids scavanged rotting meat. To this day, humans prefer partially putrified meat - also fire came about to help.
Oh, and I have a PhD in metabolic biochemistry, thank you very much -- I know a lot more than some quack "nutritionist".
All food items consumed can be broken down to their constituent chemicals. Simply because a configuration comes from a non-animal source doesn't automatically make it inferior to one derived from animals. In fact, denying any possibility of a balanced diet to be constructed based on scientific principles through an assertion of the use of chemistry and biology is rather dishonest.
In adding a sig, for no other reason, than for aesthetics.
Wait, you're telling a fairy tale. It's called Red Riding Hood. And it's obvious that the wolf really wanted to dig in to the vegan cookies the girl had in her basket.
Indeed it doesn't seem to indicate much at all as regards what mothers should eat today. I know two vegan mums and their (vegan) kids weaned off early and are very bright, healthy little 5 and 9 year old kids.
You really can't compare a well educated Vegan, who's diet is a balance of wheat, legumes, and corn to provide all essential amino-acids for protein synthesis, who also eats a diverse group of vegetables and fruits from all over the world to provide all essential vitamins and minerals to prehistoric people. personally I'm too lazy to eat like that.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Fact is there's plenty of scientific evidence that humans do better on diets that include fish. We may survive as vegans but that doesn't make it less silly. Veganism is more of a religion than anything - helps people feel superior and good about themselves, rather than actually making them healthier.
The sad thing is pollution is making fish less safe, while overfishing and poor fishing practices (bycatch) is likely to cause massive extinction.
No. Atkins was mostly correct. The early stages of the Atkins diet are too carb restricted, particularly in the first 4-8 weeks. Yes, I understand why it's that restricted, but it presents a risk of gout and other complications for people who don't/can't drink enough water to flush the acids and toxins from their system. His diet is scientifically sound, but the specifics in the early stages are not realistic for a large segment of the population.
Still, his theories were correct, and the long term diet he proposed is both easy to follow, and very healthy.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
You are wrong. It does not take meat a week to be digested. All foods take 24 to 72 hours to complete their journey through the digestive system. You will get more or less nutrients from foods depending on how easy it is to extract the nutrients, but the trip takes the same time. Some foods have to be cooked to get any nutrition from them. Some foods are better eaten raw as the heat of cooking will destroy the nutrients. Know your foods. Most meat should be cooked. Many beans and grains should be cooked. Most fruit and many vegetables are best eaten raw.
Colon cleanses are not needed for your health and are more likely to harm you than do any good. Your natural processes do a fine of job of keeping your digestive track clean and healthy.
Anarchists never rule
I agree with you on the whole "don't call vegans stupid...". But the rest of your logic doesn't flow common science. If anything the rest of your post supports the grandparent's point more than yours.
Meat does not take a week to process. It hits the blood stream much faster than veggies. Fruits are only slightly faster but only in terms of energy. Armies incorporated meat into thier diets cause it was the fastest way to power them. Given choice, they would eat meat over veggies.
Our canines don't need to be anywhere as lethal as wolfs, cause we don't eat raw or full game meat. We don't take down live game or rip through hide to eat. We cook our food. Our teeth are much closer to omnis than herbs. Compare to apes or bears and you will see that if they had cooked food, they wouldnt need their rippers. As for their vegi side, they don't consume heavy veggies. They primarily go for softer, sweeter veggies like berries, and simple leaves.
As for the stomach, we have very small stomachs relatively compared to most other species. This is because cooked food digests easier. Compare that to a cow that needs four stomachs and multiple regurgitations to extact energy from grass. And a good portion of the waste is still in grass form. Most carnies have smaller relative stomachs than herbs.
The reality is that meat is a far more energy dense, and higher nutritional source than veggies. That doesn't mean we have to consume it, cause we are humans who can think in terms of morality and we aren't anywhere as limited as the rest of the species on this plant. But from a raw biological point, let's not kid ourselves.
Also to add, unless you only eat fruit, you are killing things... or worse!
The supplements are synthesized in factories, using processes that are so modern that it's impossible for the animals to have evolved to consume them.
I'm convinced.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The modder's mother was vegan.
Low carb diets work because they are also low calorie. An extreme low carb diet can be bad for you, but most "mainstream" low carb diets won't do any harm.
Anarchists never rule
All depends on where. My wife's family on her dad's side is from Chennai and she hates to eat meat. As such, many on her father's side are smaller due to their vegan approach.
Her mom is from Kerala and will eat fish, but typically would not eat other meat when growing up. But as such, they are taller then those from Chennai. Then you have northern India. Up there, anything goes. As such, they are bigger.
And milk is really not a good enough source of protein. Basically, you still need more, OR you require a tightly controlled diet (which almost all vegetarians lack except those that are educated ).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The scientific research says that vegetarian and vegan diets adequately meet nutritional needs and are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including infancy and early childhood (American Dietetic Association)
No it doesn't. It *can*, if you are careful about it, but as a blanket statement, it's not true in practice, and veganism is exceptionally difficult for children, who have very high dietary needs.
Vegetarian and vegan diets tend to consist of bread, pasta, rice, all sorts of fake processed shit, and ironically, very little actual vegetables. And there's good reason for that. It's exceptionally difficult to meet one's caloric needs on vegetables alone. Grains are nutritionally bankrupt, except for calories. Vegetarians, in order to meet their nutritional needs, need to either be rather careful to make sure they are getting sufficient nutrients, or eat processed, fortified crap.
Omnivores, on the other hand, rarely have to worry about malnutrition. Red meat is embarrassingly nutrient-dense.
No, veganism encourages breastfeeding. While definitions of veganism may differ somewhat, this one captures it's essence:
British Vegan Society broadened its definition of veganism to "the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals."
Breastfeeding is not considered "exploitation" because the mother does it by choice.
I'm not vegan, but I since I make fun of them in some of my stand-up comedy, I did some research. Having a flawed premise can really mess up a good joke if you don't know about the flaw and work around it.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
There are jerks everywhere who believe in everything. I do think the jerks tend to be more vocal when they feel like they are in the dominant culture -- vegans in a crunchy part of a hip town will look down a little more on meat eaters, while vegans in "barbecue country" might have to deal with some banter and mild insults.
But sometimes people are just jerks. And they can be unpleasant, no matter what their beliefs.
In the end, people in the world are different. It's the people who don't accept that who make life unpleasant for everyone. If the vegan mentioned had been relatively laid-back during lunch, but still asked a few questions of a server, it might have gotten everyone talking. Maybe some people might have even been convinced to cut down on meat or try some sort of vegetarianism or something. At a minimum, you could have had an interesting philosophical debate, but if you all were pleasant people, you could eventually just accept things and move on and have a good time. If someone didn't want that or was too offended by someone else's behavior, he or she should have simply excused him/herself from the future lunches.
Unfortunately, I've noticed that most people tend to just get very nervous when anyone actually wants to talk about these things beyond just declaring what their own behavior is. I tend to eat very little meat, but I don't object to it occasionally, nor do I view either side to be fundamentally flawed. But I've occasionally had conversations with stricter vegetarians and vegans where I just tried to sort out what they believed, and they got very anxious -- even though I was just asking out of curiosity.
The problem, in the end, is that for many people this is sort of a gut instinct that tells them which way to go, just like some people are drawn to particular religions or whatever. They just feel it is wrong to eat cuddly things or whatever, and someone probing their views makes them nervous... just as if you started asking someone about "why" they go to church, and why that particular church, or why they believe in some political perspective.
Vegetarians and vegans seem to have a little more of this sort of complex, in my experience, because their perspective is not the dominant one in the U.S. For some people, that insecurity leads to acting out like out like you describe.
well, if you must have scientific study, you can start with this list. or, if you want to go beyond just the "family and children" category into general veganism, you can go up a level. the articles seem to focus on how a plant-based diet avoids many of the common childhood health problems, particularly obesity.
there's also this series of blog posts by a physician who is trying to evaluate all the scientific publications on the topic of vegan pregnancy out there. the basic takeaway in 10 different categories reviewed so far is that a well-planned vegan pregnancy is safe. while it does rely on supplements, a quick googling seems to indicate taking supplements is recommended for non-vegan pregnancies as well.
there's also this, which also relies on supplements, but the same source recommends all pregnant women take supplements and, again, i don't think they're unique in this regard.
there's also this already-quoted-and-bashed-below article from the american dietetic association.
Because people are happier using anecdote to support their opinions than they are changing their opinions when confronted by facts.
It's all about feelings.
totally agree. vegans are faced with the opinion that they and their children can not be healthy, pretty much daily. yet when the omnivores expressing this opinion are confronted by the fact that healthy vegans exist, it's very rare that said opinion changes.
Every legitimate low carb diet I've read about is not calorie restricted. There is no calorie counting, and those following the diet are encouraged to "eat until they are full".
Such diets are also high in fat; fat has more than double the calories than carbohydrates, so it is unlikely that such diets are inherently low calorie, although the satiation associated with high fat consumption often produces a decrease in calorie consumption comparied to a high carb diet.
Low carb diets result in weight loss because they suppress insulin production and because they are ketogenic which results in body fat conversion via gluconeogenesis.
Starvation diets slow metabolism, reduce energy consumption (tired, hunrgry, etc) and do not produce sustainable weight loss, and what weight loss they produce is generally the result of the reduced carbohydrate consumption that follows from overall lower calorie consumption.
Atkins specifically, yes. But he wasn't promoting a healthy diet, he was promoting a weight-loss program. And although he had some correct ideas, his diet as outlined was neither healthy nor successful as a weight loss program in the long run.
But some of the things he got right are that it's perfectly fine to be low carb (it's also perfectly fine to be relatively high carb, but one needs to be careful about certain metabolic issues that can ensue). The idea that low carb is somehow better for weight loss is flawed. Some people will eat less on low carb, and some people will eat more, and ultimately, calories decide weight, so Atkins works for some and not others. A good portion of initial weight loss is not fat, but water and glycogen, which gives a false initial impression, especially compared with other diets. Even if you overeat on Atkins, at first you will lose non-fat weight, while you are actually gaining fat! Though I doubt that's too common, and that most people are under eating, and thus losing fat as well.
Ultimately, however, because Atkins tends to be difficult for most people to follow for more than a year (too restrictive relative to the culinary milieu in America), people fall off the diet, and without some solid guiding principles, go back to their old ways of eating, and regain all their weight (as well as making up for lost time, go beyond it). It's essentially a magic trick (water/glycogen), a bio-hack (low carb, *high protein*, medium fat, which helps people naturally eat less (really, low carb, high fat, medium protein, is superior for long-term health)), in the short term, and unsustainable in the long term (for most people).
Two things that I don't think he ever touched upon, but would definitely help to make his diet more balanced and reasonable, is that saturated fat does not cause heart disease, and in fact is extremely healthy (your body absolutely *loves* using it as a fuel. So much so that it turns carbs into it and stores it for use later, and burns it every night while you sleep, and every day between meals!), and cholesterol does not cause heart disease. Cholesterol is an important molecule for life (why would your body make it if it wasn't?), but abnormally small, damaged cholesterol (which is uncommon except for people eating a junk-food type diet, which in America now means almost everyone), gets trapped in damaged arteries. Cholesterol is normally too large to do so (HDL, what is commonly called the good cholesterol). So is LDL, but VLDL is not, and that's where the correlation comes from.
Anyway, Atkins took a few correct notions, and over applied them resulting in a reasonably OK, but ultimately inaccurate weight loss theory.
I wouldn't be too hard on such people. I don't see what's wrong with being <something>, with exceptions.
It would be one thing to claim being a vegan, but eating meat or dairy or something regularly, without admitting to it. But it's another to be a vegan, but have certain, admitted, exceptions. The idea that you have to be all or nothing in most anything is absurd and strikes me as a sort of mental illness.
Vegetarian and vegan diets tend to consist of bread, pasta, rice, all sorts of fake processed shit, and ironically, very little actual vegetables. And there's good reason for that. It's exceptionally difficult to meet one's caloric needs on vegetables alone. Grains are nutritionally bankrupt, except for calories. Vegetarians, in order to meet their nutritional needs, need to either be rather careful to make sure they are getting sufficient nutrients, or eat processed, fortified crap.
I actually agree with you about the deficiencies in vegan diets (see my previous post on this thread), but you are really overstating your case here. I don't know any vegans who eat like you describe, and the few vegetarians I know who eat like this are stupid. (For the record, I'm an omnivore.)
It is difficult to meet calorie needs on vegetables, but with fruits too, the calorie quantity goes up significantly.
Grains are not "nutritionally bankrupt" -- only processed things like white flour, white rice, etc. are. Most actual vegans I know eat all sorts of whole grains (whole-grain wheat, rye, barley, oats, quinoa, millet, sorghum, barley, amaranth, etc.). These can't provide all nutrients, but they are a heck of a lot better than white bread or white rice. Add in some seeds or nuts to these grains to make bread, and you end up with something that actually has quite a bit of nutrition.
I notice that you completely omit beans and legumes, which are an essential part of vegan and vegetarian diets, and a place where a lot of protein and nutrients absent from grains comes from.
For vegetarians that supplement a diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds with some milk and a few other derived animal products, there is rarely any problem in creating a balanced diet. For strict vegans, getting enough calcium, vitamin D, and sometimes iron (and a couple other random minerals) can be an issue, and it does require care.
The only major issue that will require supplements or fortified food is B12.
I'm not saying there aren't people who eat only "bread, pasta, rice, all sorts of fake processed ****, and... very little vegetables." But that is not representative of any vegans I know, who in general tend to eat much more wholesome grain products and other food than the omnivores I know.
Then go ahead and undo them. Stand up for affordable education and the ability to sustain a family on one income.
You cannot force people to reproduce. You can only convince them. And the most convincing argument is still that having kids doesn't mean being worse off than you are when you have none.
And that's simply the case now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My lady was once a raw food vegan fascist. One day she had the revelation that a carrot was alive and she couldn't bring herself to kill it. This led directly to the concept that all the food is alive, so fucking eat it. (or as I like to put it, THIS IS NECESSARY. LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON...) A few years ago we were in the habit of eating a lot of chicken sausage. One day she asked me "Why is this sausage so good?" The answer was "because it's made out of pork". The moral is, people can change.
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
Being a vegan has nothing to do with sugar, just animal products.
It's not ecologically terribly sound, though, is it? You could either keep your cat shut in the house (where it won't be happy, because they like to roam about) and feed it industrial mush derived from waste food products and chemical additives. This isn't a very good way to look after a cat, though, because it's not a particularly natural environment for them.
Alternatively, you could let your cat go outside and eat squeaky things, bugs and grass (the latter helps them pass bits of undigested squeaky thing and furballs). Your cat will be much happier, and you won't have mice in your house.
No, in fact, it has been actually validated.
http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/az.html
how is this validation exactly? sure, atkins provided the greatest weight loss, but there are lots of unhealthy ways to lose weight.
Eating Meat Helped Early Humans Reproduce
Slashdot, your innuendos are getting worse.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
The modder's mother was vegan.
When modern modders stoop to folly,
They know the arts their sins to hide:
They smooth their hair with automatic hand,
and put another MP3 on the gramophone.
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
Or perhaps the moral is that we generally eat food that was previously alive. Where we draw lines about exploiting that "life" is usually based on arbitrary divisions projecting human feelings and morals onto things that have a very different experience of the world.
For most of the vegans I know who have a problem eating honey, I think the carrot really represents a conundrum. It is really a greater problem to exploit the work of bees than it is to rip a living organism out of the ground and kill it completely to consume it? Some people say that the bees still have a nervous system that can feel pain or something and harming or exploiting them is a problem... but have you never had a garden and stepped on a plant, or tore a leaf, or made some sort of other damage or barrier or whatever to the plant's growth? The plant will respond (albeit more slowly). It is a living thing, and it has systems designed to react to the environment, as all animals do.
The line is always arbitrary. For most people in my experience, it's primarily about "cute and cuddly" things more than anything else... and I'm not sure that's a good thing to build a moral philosophy on.
I couldn't agree with you more. I have no issues w vegans who say that they are healthier and have more energy when they don't meat and cheese; nor do I have problems with people who do so on religious grounds. I have a problem with the holier-than-thou types who say that eating meat or animal products are immoral as you're exploiting animals. My common reply is bring up bees: if bees were not "working" we wouldn't have any plant life.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Aside from characterizations of common eating habits, I don't disagree much, except for whole grains vs processed grains. I was referring to whole grains. They are embarrassingly deficient in nutrients, and even worse when you look into bioavailable nutrients!
Wheat is made up of bran, endosperm, and germ. White flour is just the endosperm. Bran is basically just fiber, and germ is fat and a small amount of nutrients. The endosperm is also where most of the nutrients are. It's a myth that whole grains are notably more nutritious than processed white flour. There's more fiber in whole grains, which *can* be beneficial (but is not nearly as important as commonly believed), and overall there is more nutrients (not a lot, and because the germ and endosperm are surrounded by the bran, they aren't even given the chance to be absorbed!).
The primary basis for this assertion is observational studies where people who eat whole grains over processed grains live longer. This shows a correlation, but not a causation. The correlation is readily explained by two factors. One, people who deliberately chose whole grains are also more likely make other healthy choices, with the choice in grains specifically indicating overall habits, and not a cause in and of itself. The other is that processed grains (white flour, specifically), are more likely to be used in junk food and as bread for processed meats, while whole grains are more likely to be included in healthier dishes.
But, ultimately, grains can't hold a candle to meat when it comes to nutrients, and what little nutrients grains have is locked away behind bran, as well as being bundled with phytates and lectins, which limit their ability to be absorbed and used, as well as affecting other nutrients in the body, in animals like humans which lack a means to break them down.
That's why flour and bread in America are generally fortified. Back at the turn of the century, Americans were extremely malnourished, and bread was the primary culprit. Leading up to WWII, the US Government looked into this, and paid the bread makers to add a vitamin pellet to the dough so that the military would have a healthy population from which to draw on. Since then, the manufacturers have kept adding the relatively inexpensive nutrients, first (in the 50s and 60s) to promote sales of something traditionally seen as unhealthy and for poor people. Bread is very cheap, easy, and quick to make, and thus a perfect commercial product. Tying it to health claims made it desirable to consumers. It's rather funny today the way people think of bread as healthy, when it's always been known to be unhealthy and lead to malnutrition when a primary food, and weight gain when added to more nutritious diets. Same with pasta.
So, when I say "fake processed shit", I'm including things you might be mistaking for being healthy.
In my experience vegans and vegetarians who are so for health reasons are a pleasure to be around. But, here in NYC there are many holier-than-thou zealots. If I go to dinner with someone who doesn't want to eat beef (hindu) or pork (muslim or jew) or meat (vegetarian) or alcohol or whatever --- fine. But when I start getting lectured, or am on the receiving side of snarky remarks (eating corpses, murdering innocent creatures) then it IS a problem.
I'm a foodie so discussing food is fine. I'm interested in health and nutrition and evolution so discussing the benefits and adverse consequences of lifestyle choices is of interest; having to endure sanctimonious comments while eating dinner is not something I enjoy.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
And what about our teeth says we evolved to eat meat?
They're not all flat grinders. In fact, they're mostly shaped for cutting and tearing. Only 3 out of 8 are grinders.
Please don't say canines because if you look at real canines and then look at a humans canines they are totally different. Same name, but functionally not the same. Real canines tear through flesh a lot easier than the human canines can.
That's because we don't chase down our still living (and running) food and try to bite them to death. We have omniovore canines.
Look no one can predict what we are supposed to eat...
We don't need to _predict_ it, we _know_ what we're supposed to eat. Our teeth, digestive systems and metabolism tell us what we should eat. Our history tells us what we eat. Our pre-history has left us evidence of what we eat and how we evolved to eat it.
...but to assume that being vegan is a stupid diet isn't logic speaking, that's culture speaking.
Veganism is also a cultural artifact, driven by emotion, not logic, and by your logic, stupid. "Aw poor cute animal, I have to kill it to eat it. I'll eat plants instead." Guess what? You have to kill most plant foods to eat them, too.
Not sure why you get offended by veganism, but you should look into it more before you criticize it.
I have looked into it. It's a denial of human nature, an attempt to feel morally superior and an arrogant deceit of one's self. It's like self-flagellation, which is almost as offensive as veganism. The truth is simple: all things that live, eat. And for all living things to eat, something must die. This is the cycle of life.
You should ask a nutritionist about the vegan diet and how healthy it is. Get a professionals point.
So you consulted a professional vegan nutritionist for this objective, balanced point of view?
Like I said, I've been a strict vegan for 12 years (no honey or processed sugars).
Ah yes, avoid the evil animal-based processed sugars to be a strict vegan.
I don't know if it's contributed to my health, but it definitely hasn't hurt it.
Based on your post, I rather doubt both those statements.
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
...including Abbott Nutrition, CoroWise, General Mills, Kellogg's, Mars, McNeil Nutritionals, Pepsico, SOYJOY, Truvia and Unilever. In addition, the ADA lists Aramark, The CocaCola Company, The National Dairy Council and the Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition as partners.
Cereals, soda and chocolate, nice.
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
I see ~300 comments and nobody has gone the route of "first she eats my meat, then we reproduce" ? What happened to all the /. pervs today anyway?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It's been my observation that vegans feeding their dogs a vegan diet generally do so in order to keep their household meat-free. They don't want it in their house; it's a moral component that is served by not handling or storing typical dog food (dry or wet).
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
You're right - she was being philosophically rigorous.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Yes, but there was a problem with eating raw meat. A large brain requires a lot of energy, before cooking the pre-humans couldn't evolve bigger brains because they couldn't collect and consume enough calories to support it. That's the gist of the cooking/meat/bigger brain theory.
In his book "Why We Get Fat", author Gary Taubes makes the point (which the Paleo diet advocates also make) that humans didn't develop anything like organized agriculture until about 8,000 years ago, too recent in our physical evolution to have developed a predominantly grain-consuming physiology.
Actually, at least two.
First being the implication that humans are somehow not adapted/meant to eat grain. As if were talking rocks and not plants.
Plants, which humans found SO tasty, they decided to plant them.
We planted what we could eat already. We did NOT plant random things and then tried to eat them.
Second error lies in the fact that not only did we not need to evolve the ability to digest each kind of food one at a time, we actually simply picked up the ability to digest locally available food.
How? By ingesting such food (as in trying to eat it). Along with the bacteria already feeding on it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100413072046.htm
So, instead of evolving our own abilities to digest certain food for thousands and thousands of human generations - we picked it up from the millions and millions of generations of the local bacteria.
Who adapted to living in our intestines where it's warm and safe and the food is plentiful all year round.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Pre Homo Sapiens had an accelerated development cycle, Closer to that of a Chimpanzee, and undoubtedly a very similar diet.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Yes, all through the world everybody is well-fed and not malnourished by being vegetarians. Now, if you believe that, go to India.
The real difference between between a vegan and a normal omnivore human, is that the omnivore (with a simple balanced diet) will provide the best for the infant. The vegan must work hard at it to get a balanced diet.
Thousands of years ago, this would have been true (which is what TFA is about). Today in modern countries you won't have trouble getting all nutrients and providing a balanced diet. Even if you decide not to eat meat, kill lives and contribute to the economical catastrophe keeping livestock is.
Vegans are more likely to care about their diets, so they have that advantage. Contrary to 1 in 3 babies in the US being born adipose.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The healthy eating debate is only one side of this whole argument. Although, I tend to agree we American's need to eat way less meat for health reasons. The real issue is that the meat industry in the U.S. alone produces 15% of the WORLD'S green house gases, which is much more than the entire world's transportation. Maybe instead of making hybrid cars we should be looking at the meat industry to cut down on green house gases, it would certainly be more effective. Again, 15% of the entire world's green house gas emissions come from the U.S. meat industry, which shows how ridiculous the amount of meat that we eat is compared to the rest of the world. America is also the most overweight country, wonder if there is any correlation here? Rhetorical question, overeating meat is a large contributor to our unhealthiness in America and has been linked to increasing all sorts of health risks. Meat is not bad, I really REALLY love meat, but we need moderation for, not only our individual health, but the health of the entire planet.
http://saveourbones.com/osteoporosis-milk-myth/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/lean-challenge_b_1432765.html http://www.llli.org/FAQ/bflength.html http://www.notmilk.com/ http://www.naturalnews.com/031255_milk_health.html Hell, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+milk+is+bad+for+humans Cow's milk is essential only for their calf, and only when they are growing, just like human breast milk for their children. It is a myth that more milk is good for our bones and yadda yadda. The USDA pushes the milk campaign to keep making money.
I'd rather talk to Jehovah's Witnesses than vegans.
Why thank you. If you're interested in the Bible and how you can apply God's principles to your life, you can always search the JW web site for pages that mention vegetables. You can start with a few verses from the Bible: it's OK to do so (Genesis 9:3), but make sure to drain the blood out first (9:4), and don't try forcing other people into eating what they don't want (Romans 14:2-3).
Curiously, it doesn't seem to have helped me.
Early humans didn't read Slashdot either.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You're problem wasn't that your coworker was a vegan. Your problem was that your coworker was a sanctimonious asshole. One does not require the other.
I've been vegan for eleven years, and vegetarian for 10 before that. I know lots of vegans and vegetarians. I have never met one who acted like your coworker: to the contrary, they all, to a one, go to great pains not to impose on anybody, or to (to use a commonly-applied phrase) "shove it down [your/our/their] throat[s]." As the commenter blow notes, it's usually exactly reversed: my most common vegan introduction experience involves some variant of "oh, so it's going to piss you off if I eat meat in front of you, right?" And your comment marks you as little different.
Vegans are wrong. There is no evidence i know of for any traditional societies being vegan. if veganism was so good for people, you would find at least some tribes practicing it.
Veganism is more about what's good for animals than what's good for people to eat.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
except that there isn't enough naturally-occurring taurine in any processed cat food, so it's all supplemented with synthetically-derived taurine.
This is one of the most insufferable arguments against vegan pet food. Do some research before you spout off nonsense, ffs.
but have you never had a garden and stepped on a plant, or tore a leaf, or made some sort of other damage or barrier or whatever to the plant's growth?
Yeah, and sometimes I even apologize to it when I do it, reflexively. Doesn't stop me from coming back for Squash come harvest time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's not the way it works. When the hypothesis is: "children of vegans are necessarily developmentally disadvantaged", a single counterexample is a significant data point.
Eating meat helped early humans reproduce...when it wasn't helping them not reproduce.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...then what is all the argument and furor about? This just means that PETAscum and anorexic Hollyweird types who think their opinions about what the rest of the world eat and wear will eventually Darwinize themselves out of the gene pool. In the long run they and the rest of their population subgroup will not-eat themselves out of propagating the species, and once more logic and rationality will rule the human psyche. People will gleefully eat red meat to their hearts' content, and the odd idiot who makes a fuss about how cows and pigs and chickens are people, too, will be laughed into nonreproductivity.
Truly, it's a bright bright future we can look forward to.
Life, ultimately, boils down to the Four Fs: Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding, and Mating.
Confirmation bias. It's because you're on the same side, the In Group. If you were in the Out Group, you would have gotten a lot nastier reception. Correlation does not mean causation, but correlation does mean correlation. I've certainly met vegans who were quite vocal. Who hasn't? What's the point of being morally superior to others if you don't mention it constantly?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's a myth that whole grains are notably more nutritious than processed white flour.
Hmm... do you have a reliable citation for this claim? Not some paleo or Atkins diet page or something, but something, say, peer-reviewed?
And, yes, in a raw form, whole grains often are hard to digest and release nutrients, but if they are cooked, soaked, or spouted, it gets easier to absorb these things. Regardless, I'd hardly say it's a "myth" that whole grains are more nutritious than processed counterparts. Except for the few vitamins that processed wheat and rice tend to be specifically fortified with, whole grains generally contain more vitamins, minerals, protein, other useful fats, etc. If you eat them raw, you won't absorb most of them, but if you break down the grain by grinding or cooking or soaking (as almost everyone does), you'll get more of the nutrients out.
The primary basis for this assertion is observational studies where people who eat whole grains over processed grains live longer. This shows a correlation, but not a causation.
Okay, fine. I'm on board with your "this is only a correlation" business. Yet, your alternative proposed explanations are again only hypotheses: they don't mean that whole grains don't have any benefits over refined ones.
But, ultimately, grains can't hold a candle to meat when it comes to nutrients
You're comparing apples to oranges here. Grains shouldn't be seen as replacing meat in a diet. If you switch from an omniverous diet to a vegan diet, grains aren't where you need to add foods to replace the meat. Instead, you need to consume many more nutritious vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds, and nuts, all of which are much more nutritious (in terms of providing vitamins, minerals, and other trace nutrients) than grains. And, notably, most of these are just as or more nutritious by this standard than meat is.
Meat is best at certain vitamins and minerals, as well as a good source for complete protein. If high in fat, it is also a good calorie source. But, with the exception of B12, you can get those vitamins and minerals in plant sources (though admittedly you have to work harder for some of them, particularly if you won't drink milk or eat any eggs). As for protein, a mix of grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts will give you a pretty good source of protein too. For the rest of the trace nutrients, vegetables and fruits are better than meat or grains.
That's why flour and bread in America are generally fortified. Back at the turn of the century, Americans were extremely malnourished, and bread was the primary culprit.
I'm not sure why you bring up this nice story, which I'm well aware of. But it has nothing to do with a discussion of whole grains, since Americans (even poor ones) had mostly been eating white flour for long before 1900. This malnutrition says nothing about whether whole grains are better or worse.
If you want to argue that placing too much emphasis on grains in the diet is a problem, I'll gladly agree with you. Grains are mostly for calories, not for (most) nutrients. But if you are going to eat grains, which most hard-working people in the past had to do to get enough calories, whole grains are probably better in part because they are harder to digest. While some of the benefits of whole grains are in question or unproven, I do think a link between diabetes and processed grains makes a lot of sense, given the way processed white flour and rice is almost like pure sugar in the way it screws with our body chemistry. For that reason alone, I'd say whole grains are usually a better choice.
So, when I say "fake processed shit", I'm including things you might be mistaking for being healthy.
Great. So, the fact that I bake my own bread, which generally includes at least a half dozen whole grains plus some seeds or some other stuff is no better than Wonderbread. Forget about cooking up some quinoa -- I'm just as good eating that cheap white rice. Thanks for educating me.
Cholesterol isn't the problem. Cholesterol is a small molecule and the buffer between blobs of fat and their surface covered with proteins. Hence lipoproteins. The problem is the size and structure of the fat blobs. We should not use the term "cholesterol" for lipoproteins, it is outdated and wrong.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I've been vegan for 12 years and I'm a very healthy person and I don't take any supplements.
I have no reason to disbelieve you, but I am quite curious about one thing: how do you get enough B12 in your diet? It's only produced in nature by bacteria, and there's almost none to be found in vegetables. I ask because I need to be more careful than most people to make sure I get enough on a day to day basis. (chronic low platelett count.)
Good, inexpensive web hosting
except that there isn't enough naturally-occurring taurine in any processed cat food
[citation needed]
Furthermore, you shouldn't have a cat if you're not going to let it hunt.
What's good for animals is being domesticated by people.
One of the primary reasons people domesticate animals is for food.
Being eaten by people is good for animals.
Just because you buy her a steak, doesn't mean she's GOT to sleep with you!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If the [citation] request is an ironic reference to the fact that the information can be found in the first paragraph of the wiki page for cat food, then you get points for being meta. Otherwise, you're just indolent.
I'll assume you're just as insistent about condemning all the cat owners who 1) don't feed their pets freshly-prepared, nutritionally-balanced food, and 2) don't live somewhere where they can let their cats roam freely; and not, say, using your apparently poor grasp of domestic pet nutrition as a red herring to denigrate vegetarians and vegans.
"I have mod points...."
The moderation system on /. sucks. Mostly because moderators punish those of politics with which they do not agree.
When i had mod points they vanished before i found suitable targets.
I suggest that mod points last for weeks, and that the count of negative points be restricted to 1/5 of allocations.
Grains are mostly for calories, not for (most) nutrients.
Really? I had to read though a bunch of irrelevant handwaving just to get to that point? Why waste so much space disagreeing with me, only to agree to my premise? Contrarianism?
But if you are going to eat grains, which most hard-working people in the past had to do to get enough calories, whole grains are probably better in part because they are harder to digest.
Please explain how. Grains consist of bran, endosperm, and germ. Bran (what makes grains brown, like brown rice or wheat bread), is fiber. It's what makes grains hard to digest, and completely, 100%, without nutritional benefit. Eating it doesn't help anything aside from bowel regularity.
The germ, which is also removed from white flour, is fattier and less nutritionally dense than the endosperm. Eating germ is fine, but not as good as eating the endosperm.
The endosperm is where it's at, nutritionally, for wheat, and even this part, the best part is woefully lacking in nutrients. That's why we fortify flour.
So, please explain why you think taking what was once 1 part endosperm, the best part, and replacing it with 1/x parts endosperm, 1/x parts germ, and 1/x parts bran, adding up to 1 part, is *better*! You've removed some of the best part, and replaced with with indigestible fiber and some fat.
What's worse, whole grain has the best part, the endosperm, locked away behind a bran coating from being digest, which is what it's there for, to protect the seed (the grass's offspring) in the first place.
While some of the benefits of whole grains are in question or unproven,
I'll state it outright: aside from calories, and the impact on bowel movement, there's absolutely zero benefit to eating whole grains over processed white flour, in terms of nutrition.
I do think a link between diabetes and processed grains makes a lot of sense, given the way processed white flour and rice is almost like pure sugar in the way it screws with our body chemistry. For that reason alone, I'd say whole grains are usually a better choice.
By sugar, of course you mean glucose. The benefit isn't in any of the germ or the bran, it's simply in eating less glucose (and I'm not against glucose, but too much is known to be correlated with diabetes). But this only comes into play when one is eating too much glucose and fructose in the first place. A better hedge against diabetes is to be more thoughtful about that than replacing refined grains with whole grains.
However, the people who are likely to do so are also more likely to be conscious about added fructose. Hmm...
So, when I say "fake processed shit", I'm including things you might be mistaking for being healthy.
Great. So, the fact that I bake my own bread, which generally includes at least a half dozen whole grains plus some seeds or some other stuff is no better than Wonderbread. Forget about cooking up some quinoa -- I'm just as good eating that cheap white rice. Thanks for educating me.
Yup, glad I could help. But more to the point, there's nothing wrong, as far as I'm aware, with eating whole wheat, it's just not doing you any good outside of bowel regularity, the calories it provides, and the enjoyment it provides. Nutritionally, it's fairly lacking.
Similar experience here: my sister was vegetarian for a number of years (half a dozen or so), and when she came out of it, the first meat she ate was bacon.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
2) don't live somewhere where they can let their cats roam freely
If you don't live somewhere you can let your cat go out, you shouldn't keep a cat.
Also, if I'm denigrating anyone, it's people who intentionally maltreat animals with inadequate food and living arrangements.
"The scientific research says that vegetarian and vegan diets adequately meet nutritional needs and are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including infancy and early childhood (American Dietetic Association)"
The problem with that is that it is not specific. Some vegan diets lack essential foods. Some meat diets lack essential foods.
So the statement is meaningless.
No, but apparently the OP does. I was only arguing about one aspect of his post (Oh no! Malthus is going to kill us all!). You could have taken the other.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
And milk is really not a good enough source of protein.
Maybe your cows aren't eating enough meat.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Dead animals taste good!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm sorry. I thought you actually had a clue about what you were talking about. That's why I actually bothered to have a conversation. Now I'm not so sure.
Bran (what makes grains brown, like brown rice or wheat bread), is fiber. It's what makes grains hard to digest, and completely, 100%, without nutritional benefit.
Umm, wheat bran contains a bunch of B vitamins, among other things. That's, in fact, why white flour is fortified with all those B vitamins in the first place: scientists know they are lost in white flour, and so they are added back in (even more than is usually there). There are also essential fatty acids and other things there. If you ate a whole wheat berry (which wouldn't be pleasant), you'd probably get very little nutrition out of it. But when you grind it up, which is how everyone eats it, you can get some of the nutrients out of it.
The germ, which is also removed from white flour, is fattier and less nutritionally dense than the endosperm.
Nope. Wrong again. This is actually where the most vitamins and minerals in wheat are concentrated, and it is also high in fatty acids.
Seriously, go to any nutrition website and look these things up. It's not that hard. Heck, even take the time to note why the bran and germ are generally removed even today -- it's not for nutritional reasons. It's because white flour can be stored longer. It doesn't go rancid as fast because it contains all those fatty acids and other nutrients. I don't know how dense or brainwashed someone has to be to believe this nonsense.
What's worse, whole grain has the best part, the endosperm, locked away behind a bran coating from being digest, which is what it's there for, to protect the seed (the grass's offspring) in the first place.
No, no, no. Nobody eats whole wheat berries. You grind the damn thing up. That's how you get access to the endosperm, the germ, and everything else. As for other grains, if they aren't ground, they are either spouted or soaked and cooked until they swell and release their interior.
I'll state it outright: aside from calories, and the impact on bowel movement, there's absolutely zero benefit to eating whole grains over processed white flour, in terms of nutrition.
Give me a single citation of a scientific resource where they have actually chemically measured the nutrients in grains where this is shown to be the case. You can't.
By sugar, of course you mean glucose. The benefit isn't in any of the germ or the bran, it's simply in eating less glucose (and I'm not against glucose, but too much is known to be correlated with diabetes). But this only comes into play when one is eating too much glucose and fructose in the first place. A better hedge against diabetes is to be more thoughtful about that than replacing refined grains with whole grains.
Glucose response in the bloodstream is greatly affected by the mix of foods you eat at any given time, not just the sheer quantity of any particular sugar. The glycemic response to whole grains is significantly lower than to "white" grains, presumably because of the mix of other stuff. Regardless of whether this other stuff has significant nutritional value (which it does), the fact is that it significantly changes the way our bodies digest the food, probably in a way that is beneficial.
But as a larger point, of course reducing actual sugar is important first and foremost. Yet, our bodies respond to things like white wheat flour, white rice, potato starch, etc. in ways that are almost equal to a response to sucrose. (Most people don't encounter glucose by itself, except when in a fructose/glucose mix like honey, or when they are bonded together as in sucrose.)
Anyhow...
From the absolute nonsense in your last post, I have to conclude that you are either a troll or are hopelessly lost to some propaganda, so I'm signing off.
Cheers.
One correction: "It's because white flour can be stored longer. It doesn't go rancid as fast because it contains all those fatty acids and other nutrients."
I obviously meant "[White flour] doesn't go rancid as fast because it doesn't contain all those fatty acids and other nutrients found in the whole grain version.
Hehe, you put that Tool reference in there masterfully.
I have yet to meet a vegan that doesn't "kill lives". In fact, they are well known for eating their prey alive.
Plants are only more efficient if you discuss efficiency of digestion. The longer digestion time of meat is more efficient for every other activity in a humans life, which includes the act of getting more food.
Vegan children can absolutely be healthy - never said otherwise! - provided that they get the opportunity to snatch an occasional beef burger when no-one is looking. ~
So how many people here have actually researched human nutrition for at least 15 minutes before posting their precious opinion?
There's a lot of ignorance here. A society's diet becomes so much a part of it's culture and so much of a part of each individual's identity that people will irrationally defend it in a similar fashion as their theist beliefs.
Go look for some facts. You might find that:
- Being a Vegan is the healthiest diet there is.
- Nutritional deficiencies are no more common amongst vegans than it is amongst meat-eaters.
- Milk is a crap source of calcium as it's animal proteins make your blood more acidic which your body counters by leaching calcium-phosphate to balance.
- Humans are not any more carnivorous than cows (which have much bigger canine teeth).
- There are many ignorant, obnoxious and preachy meat-eater 'cunts' in the world too (see above).
- Not all vegans are extremist hippies. I became a vegan on my own accord after extensive research made me reluctantly choose to be one so as to not feel like a hypocrite. This was a rational decision supported by just about every major heath organisation (including the WHO) in the world. It was much a choice about ethics as it was about health.
- People from vegan cultures are smaller because they've generally been starving for ages. You think Indians are skinny because they're vegan or are they vegan because there's not enough food to go around over there?
- Nutritional concerns with Veagnism is a lack of B12 and a lack of a couple fatty acids that are not produced enough in the body unless you eat algae like fish do. B12 used to be in all fresh water supplies but the sterilisation process which prevents cholera also kills the bacteria that makes B12. B12 making bacteria enjoys making love on meat carcasses though, so that's why meat eaters get it; though all demographs in western societies could use much more B12 in their diet. In regards to the fatty acids only coming from fish sources; good nutrition and not being too much of an alcoholic allows your body to produce these long-chain polyunsaturated n-3 fatty acids in more than sufficient quantity. Being defficient in these essential fatty acids is just as common amongst meat eaters.
- Being a vegan does not mean munching on rabbit food for the rest of your life. I miss steak and cheese
- Many vegans are simply too well informed of the kind of practices used in the mass-production of animal products to continue eating meat in good conscience.
- Most meat eaters seem blissfully ignorant (I certainly was) of many aspects of industries producing animal products. The fact that 800,000 'bobby' calves are killed each year just so I can drink milk and eat cheese cannot be justified as an ethical practice not a necessary one.
I used to be a barbecue-loving steak-munching Australian; I still am, but without the steak. I don't preach at you, and I don't even want to talk about it- you won't be able to tell that the sausages I bring to your barbecue aren't meat. If you're a rational person who asks me about it I'll just tell you to >>> Go research the facts without bias academic sources here, but instead I'll just recommend people try out Google Scollar for the first time in their lives! It's great; you get to read interesting things that are actually true!
There are plenty of studies on health effects of veganism, and they are almost invariably detrimental. I won't even bother giving any references because just googling "vegan health problems" will give you several dozen to start off with.
Ovo-lacto vegetarianism is different - there are ways to replace all the nutrients that come from meat in that regime, even if they aren't as efficient. Better yet if fish is not off limits. But vegans have to take a lot of dietary supplements to balance things out, and even then it's walking on the edge. We're just not designed or evolved to live on a strictly vegan diet, as simple as that.
A single counterexample is not a significant data point. Statistical likelihood is all that matters. Otherwise we should reject all medicine that is not guaranteed to heal you, even though, in 90% of the cases, it will produce a healing effect.
Because, as you claim, a single counterexample is a significant data point.
It isn't a question of "can vegans have smart children?" but rather: "does a mother eating meat speed and boost cognitive development for her child?". So in the case of anecdotal evidence stating "a vegan had a smart child", what is actually at issue is "could that child have been even smarter, or developed more fully". That said, this study is referencing a time period where supplements and many alternative forms of protein weren't readily available, so it isn't commentary on modern diets.
I'm primarily vegetarian, but after a lot of thought (raised vego as a child) and questions from others, I've decided that my main reason is that most meat is an inefficient method of producing protein (especially beef). I sometimes have fish, or kangaroo (no cute fuzzy problems for me there), and I have enough energy to go to yoga once a week, play 2+ hours of volleyball the next day, and have Lots of energy left over for other stuff. My activity levels are usually more impacted by sleep and actually eating 3 decent meals a day than anything else. YMMV. It's very easy to have a balanced vegetarian diet in a 1st world country, probably not so easy in most 3rd world nations.
From the absolute nonsense in your last post, I have to conclude that you are either a troll or are hopelessly lost to some propaganda, so I'm signing off.
Spoken like a true troll.
Meat trumps vegetables for vitamins, and grains are pathetically low in vitamins. Flour isn't fortified with B simply to replace what was removed, it's fortified with B, and many other vitamins, because eating wheat leads to malnutrition.
And, Trolly McHypocrite, demanding citations, without providing any yourself, here's where you can learn a thing or two:
USDA Food Database. You'll see that meat is extremely rich in nutrients, wheat is poor in nutrients, and that's even before realizing that the nutrients in meat are highly absorbable, while the nutrients in plants, and especially cereals, are more difficult to absorb.
Right, they're not calorie restricted. But eating fat and protein makes you feel full quickly, so you end up eating less.
The scientific research says that vegetarian and vegan diets adequately meet nutritional needs and are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including infancy and early childhood (American Dietetic Association)
No it doesn't. It *can*, if you are careful about it, but as a blanket statement, it's not true in practice
Omnivores, on the other hand, rarely have to worry about malnutrition. Red meat is embarrassingly nutrient-dense.
You have to be 'careful' about doing everything in life. It's a given that if you do something without being 'careful' that bad things may happen. For example- If you fail to cook some meat properly you may get sick. If you eat lots of fatty meat you may die an early death. Care must be taken with everything.
They are, in part, funded by food companies.
...including Abbott Nutrition, CoroWise, General Mills, Kellogg's, Mars, McNeil Nutritionals, Pepsico, SOYJOY, Truvia and Unilever. In addition, the ADA lists Aramark, The CocaCola Company, The National Dairy Council and the Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition as partners.
Yeah, that's true, but its only around 10% of their funding. I think their reasoning for doing it are acceptable, considering the degree of funding.
It’s important for ADA to be at the same table with food companies because of the positive influence that we can have on them. For ADA, relationships with outside organizations are not about promoting companies’ products; they are about creating nutrition messages that people can understand and act upon to improve their health and that of their families.
Yes, care must be taken with everything in life. I fail to see any reason to repeat this fact in every conversation. I don't really want to live in a world where everything includes a reference to 'the need to being careful' while doing things. Its a given that we should be careful and do things the right way.
Spot on.
This is similar to the human race not being able to develop technologically without the discovery/use of fossil fuels. However, we are (probably) not going to be able to continually progress without moving onto more advanced power generating/harnessing/whatever technologies (which would have been impossible to discover/develop without having a good fuel source to begin with). IOW, you cannot jump straight to solar electric energy without first having a useful fuel source to develop it, in our case fossil fuels.
WRT to eating meat, it is perfectly possible to reproduce now without every eating meat and it having zero net affect on brain development of the child etc etc. However, the human race might not have become what it has done without eating meat back in the day.
Yes!!!! Cats are viscous and nasty... we should eat them!!!
In any case, its not the milk but the products derived from milk that most adult people are interested in... cheese, yogurt, cream, butter, etc.
Not sure why you get offended by veganism, ...
I don't know anyone who's offended by veganism -- but I know plenty of people that are offended by vegans. There's a major difference. I fall into the classical liberal camp of "I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own home -- I don't care what you do with your own body." But I do want you to extend me the same courtesy -- and too many vegans don't.
I don't know if it's their low self-esteem that causes them to have to force their world view on everyone else or some other mental defect common to totalitarian do-gooders everywhere. In general, they pull the same bag of psychological tricks as Catholic priests of old -- a combination of guilt and moral superiority (of course, it is only more moral in their own eyes -- the rest of the world thinks "man, you should experience what you're missing.").
Again -- I don't care that you're a vegan. Good for you. But don't try to interrupt me from enjoying my steak.
I think your username gives the game away ... most people would prefer to flush their poo than drink it.
You can do both with AIWPS.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seems a pretty broad statement to make about a group of people based upon one person whom you found unpleasant.
I've known/worked with maybe 25. I was just using the most unpleasant one as an example. I knew one who wasn't a jerk, he was a good friend. One of the Groomsmen at my wedding. The rest, not so enjoyable to be around.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Even today, someone eats a little meat... and before you know it, surprise, babies happen!!!
I've been vegan for eleven years, and vegetarian for 10 before that. I know lots of vegans and vegetarians. I have never met one who acted like your coworker: to the contrary, they all, to a one, go to great pains not to impose on anybody, or to (to use a commonly-applied phrase) "shove it down [your/our/their] throat[s]." As the commenter blow notes, it's usually exactly reversed: my most common vegan introduction experience involves some variant of "oh, so it's going to piss you off if I eat meat in front of you, right?" And your comment marks you as little different.
Sorry to quote so much of your text, and I can't say this applies to you, but the woman in question also spouted off how she was persecuted because of her veganism. She could have written your post. People were constantly "being mean" to her, demeaning. She was seeing her being an ass about food as right and proper, and when people reacted or just stopped socializing with her, it was because they were cruel and unfeeling or worse.
And as far as me being a mean meatist as you assert, Sorry, but I never ever argued or discussed the issue with any Vegan/Vegetarian with the exception of a good friend who was a groomsman at my wedding, and that was all just curiosity and friendly discussion. The other 24 or so, if they got on their high horse, I just finished the dinner politely, and never socialized with them again. Life is too short to spend with condescending people, and meals are to be a pleasant time. The vegetarian bud in my wedding? We shared many a vegan meal together. Drank a good bit of Tequila too, but that's another story.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's pretty insightful, actually.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What? So if you met a Celiac, and the Celaic grilled the waiter on what used gluten, I guess you'd consider her annoying too.
If she lectured me that I shouldn't eat wheat gluten, then glared at me while I ate my dinner rolls, maybe asking, "How can you stand eating that?", I wouldn't be too wild about it. But it's a bad analogy, because most celiac sufferers would like nothing better than to eat anything they would like to eat. Theirs is a forced food distinction.
Or a Muslim or Jew, who would ask about the meat.
Likewise, if they insisted that I partake of their particular religious prejudices, and were unpleasant about it. Given the circumstances, I'd probably just eat as they did. Your point is a difficult one to work with, because both types of food preparation and slaughter are riddled with a myriad of minutiae. I can say that anyone with me may eat as they like.
Or someone lactose intolerant.
You read, yet you do not comprehend. And no, I don't insist that a diabetic eat a load of carbs, a big dessert, and forgo their insulin shot either
Your feeble attempts to make me seem like the bad guy in this whole thing is acting exactly like the sanctimonious jerks who come out to break bread with you, and then spend their time delivering a sermon on your shortcomings, and how they are superior because they are Vegan. I never lectured, never told anyone that they were morally deficient, and certainly never argued with anyone about what they were eating. You are actually arguing that that sort of behavior is acceptable?
I suppose everyone different must be annoying.
No, but you've reached that point.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Just look at the vegan and lick your lips. Repeatedly. Until he or she gets nervous and leaves.
It's all about feelings.
it is all about concrete thinking over abstract understanding.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Modern vegans and vegetarians have massive global agricultural and transportation systems to support their choices, including efficient domesticated (enslaved if you prefer) animals for food production.
It absolutely is not hereditary. My wife's father stands 162 cm. His son is about 182 cm. Likewise his 'brothers' (we call them cousins) are similar sized, and again, the kids that grew up in the west are over 182 (a couple are over 190 cm). While genetics will explain a small growth, a jump of 20-30 cm in one generation of multiple children is a sign that the parents height were physically stunted, not genetically. And yeah, the kids got loads of meat. Very little beef, but loads of pork, chicken, turkey, fish, and even some geese (from having spent time in UK). And when my wife's grandparents came over, the families would revert to pure vegetarians. :)
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Faster anything development is beneficial when you and your child is in considerable danger of being eaten.
If you believe that, you've never met a cow. Cows are dumb, slow, mostly defenceless and delicious. If we didn't eat them, they wouldn't exist. The same goes for domesticated pigs, chickens and any other species that is widely used for food.
My cats were always happiest when they were allowed to not only eat spiders and flies, but worms and the occasional small bird or mouse that wasn't quite fast enough... Having had 3 that lived past the age of 17 (one until 23) shows that a little natural diet seems to work quite well for them...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'm only replying to empathize with you. People treat their diets like religion in that most of what they "know" to be true is based on faith and how they were raised. No amount of rational argument will convince someone who has made up their mind that anything less than eating bacon for breakfast, hamburger for lunch, and steak for dinner will starve your stupid hippie body of much needed "nutrients." I used to lift weights with a good friend of mine, who is a professor of biochemistry, and he remarked that I should enter some kind of "vegan weight lifting competition" because he was convinced that vegans couldn't ingest enough protein to build muscle. A close relative of mine is a gastroenterologist, who spends half his day treating people for diabetes and liver failure, eats red meat at almost every meal and puts away a half a fifth of scotch with dinner.
There is just something about diet that drives people to willful ignorance and to cherry-picking whatever anecdotes fit their narrative. Diet is so much more complex than "carbs, proteins, minerals, and vitamins" (i.e., "nutrients"), but you will never make someone realize how important something as seemingly trivial as regularity is until they experience colon cancer, polyps, acid-reflux, etc. for themselves.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
We need more meat to become even smarter, yummy, fire up the BBQ and lets see what we can cook up tonight! http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=meatatarian
Are all morals arbitrary?
Is drawing a line between eating people and lettuce arbitrary?
"appropriately planned vegetarian diets"
That's really the issue, isn't it?
I don't have to spend any real time planning my diet. A vegan does.
If the vegan doesn't, then he/she risks serious physical and mental harm.
This alone should tell us that a hard vegan diet may not be the most sensible idea. A pure meat eating diet isn't brilliant either. How about a balanced omni diet? Well, turns out that then the ONLY thing you have to think about is eating appropriate amounts when you're hungry. All nutrients are covered, all energy requirements are covered. We're not talking about large doses of meat either. You could almost fit the daily dose of meat into a shotglass... voilá, all your nutritional needs are now met.
No one is asking you to believe anything but to compare the morality of a polar bear/sparrow to a human is rather idiotic.
People make their dietary choices for many different reasons. It's a *choice*. Polar bear does not have a choice.
The romantic times where animals happily enjoy they lives on a farm and are humanely killed for "greater good" are long gone. You see, people like you either do not care (fair enough) or imagine that this is still the case when they buy plastic package in the supermarket that simply looks like any other product. There is this constant defending by meat eaters of, what is primarily their choice, what they eat?! Why do you ridicule people's choice not to eat meat?!?! Is it ignorance and guilt? Killing for food is not wrong but for (massive) profit it certainly is.
Whether you believe it or not, they are more moral than you.
You end up eating less in terms of calories than you may have eaten on a high-carb diet, but the reduction in calories is only a small contributor to weight loss.
The metabolic changes, namely the reduction in insulin levels, is what drives fat loss and hence weight loss on a low carb diet, not a reduction in caloric consumption. The types of calories matter as much or more than the quantity of calories.
"But vegans have to take a lot of dietary supplements to balance things out, and even then it's walking on the edge."
If by "a lot" you mean a B12 supplement, you are still exaggerating. The only nutrient not available in plant form is B12, and it's remarkably easy to supplement... the RDA is less than 3mcg/day.
Educate yourself before pretending to be equipped to educate others.
where is sue? sue is idle.
Dude, I'm a vegetarian too. Of course I know what the damn pulses are.
Hell. Was raised vegan.
I'm just not stupid about it.
I also know it is a lot easier for moderns to be vegans than our ancestors.
We have a wide variety of calorie dense foods available to us.
We are aware of risks like B12 deficiency and how to supplement with animal sources (yes, those sources may be as simple as bacteria in a miso soup, but again, this gets back to varied options for moderns).
And what's particularly nonsensical is the article wasn't focused on protein. Somehow people veered wildly off on that front.
Fact is animal products are dense in proteins, vitamins *and* calories. You know, stands to reason given they've been accumulating it specifically to pass on to the next generation or build their bodies.
So of course people depended on them throughout history (including in India) to provide them with all those essentials. Heck. You or I might not find a milk and blood milkshake very tasty, but it sure works for the Masai.
Look, if you want something more sensible to propagandize with...
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/21/12045.abstract
Your liver can hold and retain a sufficient quantity of B12 to hold you over for, potentially, years (not recommending that you experiment with this).
To answer your question, though... The easiest non-pill supplement I've found for B12, as a vegan, is Nutritional Yeast. Internet or healthy food stores.
Here's a link if you want to read up on sources a bit: http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/b12.htm
where is sue? sue is idle.
Shhh, don't break the myth that only eating plants is better than eating plants and animals. Most ideologically motivatied eaters haven't come to grips yet with the fact that they survive by consuming the corpses of other organisms.
# touch universe # chmod +rwx universe #
http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-meat-eating-reproduction-20120420,0,2388092.story
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
Or perhaps the moral is that we generally eat food that was previously alive. Where we draw lines about exploiting that "life" is usually based on arbitrary divisions projecting human feelings and morals onto things that have a very different experience of the world.
For most of the vegans I know who have a problem eating honey, I think the carrot really represents a conundrum. It is really a greater problem to exploit the work of bees than it is to rip a living organism out of the ground and kill it completely to consume it? Some people say that the bees still have a nervous system that can feel pain or something and harming or exploiting them is a problem... but have you never had a garden and stepped on a plant, or tore a leaf, or made some sort of other damage or barrier or whatever to the plant's growth? The plant will respond (albeit more slowly). It is a living thing, and it has systems designed to react to the environment, as all animals do.
The line is always arbitrary. For most people in my experience, it's primarily about "cute and cuddly" things more than anything else... and I'm not sure that's a good thing to build a moral philosophy on.
yes, indeed, the line is arbitrary. i have yet to come across a philosophy where the placement of that line lower on the food chain is less moral. perhaps the carrot presents a conundrum to those who need absolutes in their philosophy. but to those who simply want to shift that line, it's not a conundrum at all.
You may want to check the original source of B12. It's not animals (although animal products tends to contain B12) nor plants (although plants can contain trace amounts). It's from bacteria. Which tends to be veg-friendly.
Really though, a veg*n diet can be bad or good.. An omni diet can be bad or good. It just depends on what you're eating. It's not hard to find omnis in America with horrible diets. And its not hard to find junk-food veg*ns either.
Everyone, regardless of whatever dietary philosophy they choose, should take the time to examine their diet and make sure it's healthy. Oh, and go get some exercise as well. It's good for you. ;)
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
You're right - she was being philosophically rigorous.
then her philosophy really is too simple, as i suspect your understanding of the vegan community is.
For most of the history of the human species, people didn't live with climate controlled HVAC systems. But I'm not going to give up central heat anytime soon. ;)
As for inefficient, it tends to take about 10 plant calories to make 1 calorie of meat. That's not bad when your meat is consuming plants you can't consume directly (such as grass, especially in areas too arid to support farming). But when meat is consuming grains that humans can eat, it's pretty inefficient. It also may not be sustainable - we're drawing more water from some aquifers than is naturally replaced, and a lot of that water goes to grow feedstock for animals.
If we aren't supposed to eat animals then why are they made out of food?
You may want to check the original source of B12.
I'm quoting the paper from the ADA which states there is a documented B12 deficiency in vegans.
It's from bacteria.
From bacteria in the gut that process ingested animal protein.
Really though, a veg*n diet can be bad or good.
Not when it comes to B12. This is a scientific fact proven in numerous studies, hence the universal recommendation that vegans take supplements. Ever heard of Veg-1? This is a suplement created by vegans for vegans.
"Children of Vegans are necessarily developmentally disadvantaged" is a hypothesis that can be disproven with a single valid data point.. "This medicine has a 70% chance of healing you", on the other hand, requires a lot more evidence to disprove. It depends on how strong a claim you're making. If, for example, people are merely saying that children of Vegans are more likely to be developmentally disadvantaged, then you need a lot more evidence to disprove it. The difference between the claims should be obvious.
I see: you're taking suppliments, just not in the form of pills. Thank you. Personally, I'm an omnivore and if it weren't for my blood condition I'd be quite comfortable getting my B12 from such things as meat, shellfish and (yum!) liver. As it is, one little capsule each morning with breakfast is all it takes for me to be sure I've got enough. Again, thanx for the info.
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In humans, as opposed to some other animals, its unlikely we produce enough B12 from intestinal bacteria to meet our needs, vegan or not, due to our digestive system. When we eat an omnivorous diet, we are absorbing B12 from the food directly.
Also, B12 production does not necessarily require animal protein. If that was the case, herbivores would be screwed.
Soymilk, at least Silk, tends to be fortified with B12. Same with breakfast serials. So no problems there. Just make sure your diet has some fortified foods (get some vitamin D as well to be on the safe side) and you're done.
Actually, you are wrong. Dogs are NOT omnivores. They are carnivores.
Their digestive system cannot efficiently break down plant matter unless it is cooked and/or pureed. Feed a dog a handful of raw whole carrots, green beans, etc. and you'll see it in their poop the next day.
The reason dogs eat anything to fill their stomachs is because of how digestive enzymes in the stomach are triggered, which is by food coming into contact with the stomach walls. Wolves in the wild eat by gorging and fasting.
Heh, I also grew up in SC so I know *exactly* what you mean. Then again, I ended up veggie, but not militantly so. I don't try to impose my views on others, but it would probably be better for one's health not to intentionally wave a steak in my face ;-)
I think the whole SC culture was a major backlash against a lot of the rest of the US, and I like to think that I managed to find a happy medium.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
then her philosophy really is too simple, as i suspect your understanding of the vegan community is.
There's no such thing as a 'philosophy of the vegan community' - there are millions of individuals each with their own ideas.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What is this .. science for idiots? This has been known for decades, but what's this got to do with computers or tech?
Is that we don't need to be eating meat. We don't need to raise billions of animals for slaughter, we shouldn't be subsidizing meat production and we pollute the planet terribly trying to raise so much meat. Further, almost half the water we use is to raise meat. /. is pretty Earth friendly as a rule but most people here are dancing around this one.
All these people that say "well I get my meat from a local guy I trust" is a poor argument. It takes far more land and resource to raise meat organically and humanely. It's ultimately impractical. Google "The Myth of Sustainable Meat". Further, would you ever let someone kill you just because they were really nice to you and fed you well? I know there's a joke coming in the comments, but no, you wouldn't. Why should we kill these animals?
A lot of arguments here are trying to frame vegetarians and vegans as either arrogant, inconsistent or hypocrites. You know, we're not some political party or religious group. Some join the ALF, but most of us are just trying to do as little harm as possible while on this planet. That's a noble goal. We're not going to be perfect at it. I'm not a perfect husband, father, son or brother, either. But damnit I try every day.
Further, you are all guilty of the same. We all love our dogs and cats and can't bare to see them hurt, yet we love eating pigs, which are more intelligent than both. We love the earth but not if it means less hot wings. And meat eaters start arguments with vegans at equal rates. People are irrational *no matter* their leanings, big surprise.
Also, B12 production does not necessarily require animal protein. If that was the case, herbivores would be screwed.
This is a specious argument. Herbivores are equipped with a completely different digestive system. For example, they can thrive on grass whereas we humans can't.
So no problems there. Just make sure your diet has some fortified foods (get some vitamin D as well to be on the safe side) and you're done.
Which is exactly what I said. A vegan diet is deficient on certain nutrients and thus needs to be supplemented.
You will need to cite the "not ecologically sound part". I have on hand a few journals that do scientifically quantify the ecological impact of an animal-based diet versus a non-animal-based diet for humans. I am a vegan by virtue of the scientific arguments, and the ecological argument is bar far the most soundly proven. http://www.ajcn.org/content/89/5/1699S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/660S.full.pdf http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/664S.full That said, I do wish to point out that at no point in my post did I mention caging an animal for the entirety of its life - but simply to correct a view I find misleading that somehow a scientifically established balanced diet from non-animal sources is inferior to that of animal-based feed (and as a volunteer for the SPCA, I can confidently say some of the well-known products can cause kidney failure if you were to only feed your cat with those products, and they are neutered males). Your arguments that seeks to disparage vegan products as "industrial mush" and "chemical additives" smacks of hypocricy when you consider the animal-based stuff you do put into your cat's face, or whenever you visit the vet.
In adding a sig, for no other reason, than for aesthetics.
Only my own data, but I've had a half dozen cats, all indoor, some on a vegan diet some not. The vegan ones lived longer and much better their last years. That is enough data for me.
For any indoor cat, their diet is nothing like natural anyway. The taurine is not naturally there anymore in any processed cat food meat based or vegan. (I know YOUR cat eats only the finest steak, but most cats eat kibble.)
I let my cat hunt; she gets tinned food when the weather is too bad for her to go out and eat squeaky things or if she's feeling a bit stiff (she's 13, and starting to get a bit of arthritis). I'm slightly annoyed that she prefers the cheap stuff, because it's probably the feline equivalent of eating crappy franchise burgers. Oh well.
Regarding ecology, there's nothing inherently great about a vegan or vegetarian diet. We don't have enough arable land across the planet for everyone to eat that way. The US is a bit of an aberration, because cheap subsidised grain is fed to cattle in feedlots producing inferior quality cheap meat. You tend not to find that anywhere else because it's not cost-effective. TL;DR - you get crappy meat and all that grain costs a fortune, and it turns out that cows can't actually eat grain.
It's not possible to use most of the farmland that is used for raising livestock for arable farming. It's either too hilly, or too rocky, or just plain the wrong kind of soil. This isn't Farmville and you can't just click a wee square and decide what you want to put on it. Round where I live, it's mostly hill farms where sheep and cattle graze on rough moorland. You can't grow crops there, because it's too wet to cultivate and the soil is too acidic. We humans can't eat the tough grasses and heather that live there, but sheep manage just fine on it.
One of the greater concerns with food production is soya. The amount of oil required to produce soya is incredible, between soil preparation, fertiliser, harvesting and transporting it. The main source of soya beans throughout the world is South America, where immense swathes of rain forest are cleared every year to grow more soya. This comes back to the problem of preparing unsuitable ground - cultivating it requires massive amounts of diesel and petrochemical-derived fertilisers. This just isn't good for the environment.
So, this all sounds a bit negative. What can we do that is positive? Well, you can try eating foods that come from near where you live. I try to avoid eating anything that wasn't grown or raised further than about a day's cycling from my house. You could cycle it if you want; I do sometimes but I figure that the gallon or two of diesel my truck uses for an 80-mile round trip is an acceptable dent in my carbon footprint. By buying only locally-produced food, you'll be helping the local economy by putting money in the pockets of local shopkeepers and farmers, and you'll be helping yourself by eating better, fresher food. Sure, it costs a little more, but it's worth at least trying to make a difference.
then her philosophy really is too simple, as i suspect your understanding of the vegan community is.
There's no such thing as a 'philosophy of the vegan community' - there are millions of individuals each with their own ideas.
i'm not sure why "philosophy of the vegan community" is in quotes. i never put those words next to each other in that order.
i agree with you. there are lots of ideas. any that removes carrots from consumption on philosophical grounds is not representative of even a small portion of vegans.