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Not directly related to the post, but what is it with people getting all pissy when they find out you’re vegetarian/vegan? More than once I’ve had someone act like I told them I punch babies for fun when they find out I don’t eat meat. I don’t bring it up unprompted, it’s always in relation to a dietary concern. For example, I ordered a veggie dish at a restaurant, and they brought me the meat equivalent. I politely let the server know I ordered something else (apologetically I might add, because I feel like I’m being difficult to a service worker even though it’s about a dietary restriction), and she acted like I was out of line. Rolling eyes, huffy, and asked me if I wanted her to take it back (um, obviously?).
This has happened to me or friends in various social settings, and I just don’t get it. I even attended a cookout once where the host got mad at me for not eating his burgers. After I responded to the dietary restriction email. And brought my own dish. People act like you’re being a bitch for not eating meat! I’ve never once pushed my diet on anyone or brought it up out of necessary contexts, but people still talk behind my back like I’m being dramatic for not eating things I don’t want to.
The BBC has a good article on this concept
The tension that results can make us feel stressed, irritated, and unhappy. But instead of resolving it by changing our beliefs or behaviour, it’s quite normal to blame these feelings on something else entirely – all without realising we’re doing it
In the case of eating meat, Rothgerber suggests we have a number of strategies – around 15 – which allow us to avoid facing up to the meat paradox. These include pretending that meat has no link to animals, imagining that we eat less of it than we really do, wilful ignorance about how it’s produced
[…]
Unfortunately, most of these are derailed by the presence of vegans.
According to Rothgerber, people tend not to think of meat eating as an ideology. The dominance of meat eating around the world helps the omnivores among us to avoid the idea that it’s a choice – it’s just what everyone else is doing. But when a vegan turns up at a dinner party, suddenly we’re bumped out of the comfortable “mainstream diet” category and into the unsettling “meat-eating” category. By their mere existence, vegans force people to confront their cognitive dissonance. And this makes people angry.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200203-the-hidden-biases-that-drive-anti-vegan-hatred
I’m always weirded out when people can’t just get over it. Things get hungry murder eat then shits it out. We all amount to nothing but one step in the great poop circle.
…or in some cases it’s much simpler: some of us have conditions that make it impossible for us to survive or to thrive on a vegan diet and we’re sick unto death of vegoons pushing Evangelical Veganism and acting like we don’t exist or we’re making it up to justify the moral failing of eating meat. And there’s the constant push to normalize veganism, which just expands the number of places I can’t eat and/or people I can’t eat with.
If that type of vegan didn’t exist I wouldn’t immediately start side-eying vegans until I find out of they’re safe or not.
What do you mean “can’t eat at”?
Do you have an allergic reaction when you consume non-meat foods?
Do you have an allergic reaction when you consume non-meat foods?
Something kinda like that, yeah.
Forgive my ignorance, but how tf are you alive?
Multivitamins and luck, mostly
Additionally, what conditions make it impossible to survive or thrive on a vegan diet? I’m not challenging you, I’m genuinely curious. Is it like multiple allergies? I know some people believe the “you can’t get nutritionally complete diet from veganism” thing, which isn’t true. All vitamins, proteins, and nutrients we need are available while vegan. Is it like a fiber sensitivity or allergy problem?
There are about a dozen common ones that limit bioavailability of things like vitamin A or iron from plant sources. I don’t keep the list in my pocket, and the enshittification of search has risen to the point where trying to find it again just gets me lectured by an AI about how I should go vegan.
Also:
some people believe the “you can’t get nutritionally complete diet from veganism” thing, which isn’t true. All vitamins, proteins, and nutrients we need are available while vegan.
While that’s technically true, it’s not actually easy to get things like Omega-3 from plant sources, and most of the nuts and seeds that have it are expensive and/or difficult to source.
You also have to basically spend a lot more of your free time figuring out a meal plan that will allow you to actually get all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients you need on a plant based diet, and you’ll still likely wind up eating the same meals every week bcs there’s only so many vegan sources of things your body really needs.
At the end of the day, veganism is a consumerist solution to structural problems. Much like snake oil to “reduce your carbon footprint”, it pushes responsibility for a societal problem back on the individual.
Is eating less meat, and having that meat be mostly fish and poultry a good thing for both your health and the environment? Absolutely. Is it nearly as impactful on either as getting rid of your car? I’d say probably not.
I agree, but every little bit matters. You’re preaching to the choir here, I’m a leftist that would very much like massive structural changes.
You’re taking veganism much too personally. I can count on one hand all the places that don’t serve meat at all within my city. Your options are not limited. Other’s dietary choices are not a slight to you. It is so easy to find a place that has at least one dish for either dietary preference. What if they were Buddhist, or another religion that restricts diet around meat, would that irk you as well? Why must others consume meat for your comfort?
I should note that technology is increasingly helping provide more options. With precision fermentation, there is a lot of ways to biologically identical proteins, enzymes, etc. For instance, you can now buy non-animal whey protein, egg white protein, non-animal heme iron, and more in the stores. It’s super cool stuff and ironically the dairy industry was a big pioneer of it in the 90s for one of the enzymes they use widely in cheese. There’s a lot more coming down the pipeline with it
Ah fuck. I didn’t know iron was derived from animals. Fuck, it’s basically blood!
Heme iron, specifically in animals, is in fact from blood. Heme being short for hemoglobin which is the protein in red blood cells that transfers oxygen around the body (both for humans and most non-human animals). Being able to make that from precision fermentation is pretty cool
I was joking about being a vampire and that being blood on Discord, I didn’t know I was twlling the truth 😭
There is also plenty of non-heme iron, to be fair, which is not from blood. Plants have tons of it from the ground and such
Huh. I haven’t heard of anything that explicitly requires meat protein for you to live, what do you have? And if you prefer not to say, obviously that is fine, I’m just curious. And not a vegan.
You must be like the only person in 100,000 to have a good reason to fear a vegan restaurant opening up nearby.
For me it’s a neuropsychological issue, not a digestive one.
I “can’t” eat most fruits and vegetables because they trigger my gag reflex so hard I can’t swallow them. After years of working with a dietician and a therapist, I’ve managed to get to the point where there are a few things I can eat that aren’t meat, bread, or ultra processed trash, but it’s hard.
Also: to be clear, I have just as much or more disdain for any other voluntary dietary restrictions. Kosher and Halal get the same side eye from me, having lived to middle age with both the constant side-eye from people who like to rag on “picky eaters” and the constant struggle of trying to find something to eat when out with friends, I view anyone who limits their eating options just because they can and they think there’s any kind of morality to what you eat as a person throwing away the massive gift of being able to just eat.
fuck that server though. what if instead of a voluntary dietary restriction you were allergic to meat?
What if – stick with me now – you wanted what you ordered and it was the server’s job to bring that to you? Fucking chaos, man.
I hear you. I was raised vegetarian (mom is awesome) and have flip flopped between that and veganism my whole life. Growing up meatless and male has been a weird experience, with countless people telling me I’m not manly be cause I don’t eat dead animals. Wtf.
Sadly, I’ve also received the opposite, telling me I don’t really care because I’m not vegan enough (sigh)
Remind yourself that a lot of people fall into the trap of boosting themselves at the expense of others around them because it’s a low-hanging-fruit way to make themselves feel better. Their comments aren’t really about you. Someone’s always going to judge, no matter what we do. At least you try, that *is *worth something.
A good friend of mine is vegan and has been actually assaulted (old lady slapped him, which isn’t exactly being attacked with a tire iron, but it’s still fucking assault) because of it.
Another good friend is vegetarian, and when we went out for pizza, he ordered this one fancy pizza, and told them to hold the meat (entire pizza is veggie except for prosciutto). They brought it out with prosciutto on it, and when he said “I don’t eat meat” the server replied “it’s very thin” as if that made a difference to it being meat. It was genuinely quite funny in the moment. Lol. They did replace the pizza without any qualms or attitude, but I’ll never forget that moment. It’s thing, so it doesn’t count!
… Also, I do wish they’d left that pizza instead of taking it back. It looked so good, and whenever I visit them they like to starve me to death because they’re all tiny people with caloric deficits D:
I think some cultures are entirely unfamiliar with the idea of not eating meat at all.
Like that line from Big Fat Greek Wedding. “He doesn’t eat meat? Is okay, I make lamb.”
They treat it the same way we might treat the phrase “he doesn’t drink.” Which means no alcohol, not “no consuming liquid of any kind.”
No meat is just taken to mean no whole meats, like cuts of steak. So you get “no meat in the soup, just a bit of the chicken stock for flavour.”
Some people are just clueless. I was asking the hostess at a restaurant we were considering if they had anything vegan. And she said “we have shrimp?” Like, what rock are you living under?
Because your lifestyle choices are an affront to their lifestyle. In many places in the world eating meat is an important part of the culture. Saying that you don’t eat meat is seen as a rejection of the culture. And they will immediately label you as “the other”.
It’s like if a person says they are an atheist in a country where everyone is religious and religion is an important part of daily life. Even when the atheist isn’t judging anyone the atheist will receive negative reactions and even violence.
Hugs.
This is why I don’t bring it up to other people.
I try not to, but sometimes I have to for dietary reasons. I have to choose between going somewhere that has nothing I can eat, ordering a drink or a side, saying “I’m not hungry,” and eating at home, or risking peeving others with the audacity to not consume meat.
That’s fair. I usually keep quiet and don’t eat, ordering a drink or maybe fries. I can understand and I’m glad you speak up for yourself though.
I think it partially has something to do with the internet brainrot propaganda against veganism/vegetarianism
It points out how shameful and lazy meat eaters are to their face, and people don’t like having their poor choices pointed out to them.
weirdly ive noticed alot of behavior like this even on lemmy and even in leftist communities on here. people just get really mad when a post even mentions someone being vegan. similarly i see people demonizing people who for riding bikes and i just get so confused at why they are on lemmy (a very leftist platform) if they despise commonly leftist things
There’s a name for this in the broader sense, though riding bikes may or may not fill into this (can if it’s for environmental reasons)
Do-gooder derogation is a phenomenon in moral psychology where a person’s morally motivated behavior leads to them being perceived negatively by others. The term “do-gooder” refers to a person who deviates from the majority in terms of behavior, because of their morality
Coming off the back of an asshole vegan calling meat eaters ‘genocidal monsters’, yeah im not seeing this supposed unprompted hate on vegans.
That is when you also mention you need to speak to a manager. l know it is now considered a “Karen” thing, but sometimes it really is the right course of action.
You’re probably right but my social anxiety would never let me lol
Generally I don’t care. I prefer phrasing it as dietary restrictions. I can’t eat wheat or lentils. And a lot of fruit makes my lips tingle and itch.
No dhal tadka? Damn, sorry to hear that mate. I’d be morose for ages. Also my favourite type of veggie burger.
Yeah it’s weird, I thought what’s the difference it’s like beans when I tried a vegan diet. Nope, I’ve never had anything that made my body want to vomit unless it was spoiled.
It is the same when telling people that you dont drink or take other drugs…
“You don’t smoke crack?! If I couldn’t smoke crack, I’d kill myself.” ~ them, probably.
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I’ve never once pushed my diet on anyone or brought it up out of necessary contexts
And that’s a good way to go about it. But unfortunately that’s not the case for every vegetarian or vegan, and as for every demographic, the loud and confrontational ones are always the ones that get the most attention. And this is coming from an atheist that doesn’t talk about religion unless directly asked about it, so I can sympathize.
The sad fact is that most people that are wary of vegans and vegetarians are like that because they’ve run into ones that are varying forms of asshole about their diets. Some of the antagonists throw insults, some will be dishonest, most will be some mix of the 2. Of course it’s not fair that those bad impressions are being applied to you as an individual, but it’s unfortunately also just human nature.
Just going through the other responses on here. Pretty much every other responder is trying to come up with some complicated Psychology 101 argument as to why people don’t like vegans despite the answer being simple.
Hell, I’ve run into vegans criticizing keto (which is weird because you can be vegan/vegetarian on a keto diet), and their tactic was to throw out something like 14+ research papers and pretend that they all backed up their claims. I went through all of the papers, and 1/3 were completely irrelevant, 1/3 weren’t even looking at proper keto (or even properly low-carb) diets, and the final 1/3 contraticted their points.
While this may have seemed like a tangent, it’s relevant to my point: people are messy, and they’ll sometimes be dishonest and/or contradictory, especially when they think they have the moral high ground. And people that are on the fence or disagree can see that dishonesty and it leaves a bad impression for the whole group.
To recap: just like with atheism, a lot of the issue is a small number of bad apples that give the group a bad name. All you can do is mind that fact and try to avoid being one of the bad apples yourself.
I, too, hate it when people get all uppity about something.
Warning!
Instructions Unclear…
You have acquired a new skill:
[Cannibalism]
hmmmm I should load up Rimworld again
Ironically I did yesterday. Got a good spawn area as well.
No, no it’s fine they were free-range, cage-free and organic humans /s
You said they were cage-free! This one has a call center name tag!
Lying about what a label means? That would be crazy
Bringing up a Tyson competitor, the farm manager wonders how other poultry companies handle supposedly free-range-raised chickens. The short answer: They don’t, really.
“Those birds don’t go outside — you know that,” the technician replies. “They don’t all go out … Look that up online.”
The manager chimes in: “It’s not like they make it like all of ’em come out and enjoy the sun.”
“That is strictly for commercial [advertising] purposes,” the technician says.
[…]
In 2017, the Intercept reported an investigation into a dozen California farms owned by a free-range chicken company that found no evidence of any animals spending any time outdoors. The chief animal care officer for Perdue Farms, a major chicken producer, has even said the vast majority of its free-range chickens stay indoors.
lol yeah that was fun to read when I first read that. Tyson is such a shit company, I’ve been boycotting them so long
This is kind of an industry wide thing that’s more than just Tyson, I should note
self cannibalism or just cannibalism??
I recommend veganism to everyone - at least for a while- just because how different you can see farm animals. When I look inside the eyes of a pig I feel a connection. I know the kindness of this animal just by mutual respect. Try it, it feels great.
Pigs aren’t vegan though. They’ll eat your dead corpse in a heart beat.
I’ve known some real asshole pigs too, though most I’ve interacted with are usually pretty chill.
Hell, pigs will eat their dead family members. And not like a dog, which will wait several days and only do so when starving. More like cats where it’s within an hour and there’s still food in their bowl. Pigs don’t give a shit
I’m pretty sure my cats may not even wait until I’m dead.
Humans too are often cruel to one another, but we rightly don’t think eating them is justified
but we rightly don’t think eating them is justified
That really depends on the society in question. Go look up “kuru” also known as “laughing sickness”. There’s tribes that historically ate parts of their dead relatives.
That being said, for health reasons it’s a bad idea due to the spread of prion diseases. But the tribe didn’t know about that hence why it’s wasn’t taboo.
And acceptable cultural practices around death vary wildly across cultures. Catholics used to think (and some still do) that cremation is an abomination. But for many cultures cremation is more the norm. Historically (though less so now) there were cultures that practiced sky burials, even though most people would find that horrifying.
I more so meant the killing for consumption part. The cultures that did that were not exactly intentionally killing them to eat them like we are with non-human animals
That’s because humans take too long to grow; they’re inefficient as livestock. 9 months to gestate a single baby that would take 16 to 18 years to get to adult size for harvest? The American South has already plumbed the depths of “humans as livestock.” It was just missing modern, industrial equipment.
Humans are competing against: cows that get to adult size in 2 years and then you can milk or eat them, or pigs that give a whole litter of new pigs?
If humans grew to adult size in like a year, prior to learning about the health risks, humans would definitely be farming other humans for food.
People don’t think in terms of species, they think in terms of relations. That’s why some people feel worse for a dog in the pound than they do for the countless numbers facing genocides across the planet.
I think this is missing the point? None of that is a moral justification?
The American South has already plumbed the depths of “humans as livestock.” It was just missing modern, industrial equipment.
Which very notably become morally apposed by an increasingly larger and larger group at the time and we now think of horrific
Oh, I’m not morally justifying any “contrapoint” to your statement.
If anything, I’m saying that the appeal to human morality is an unstable basis. Slaves weren’t freed because it was the right thing to do. And “we now think of [as] horrific” is a claim that needs qualification, if the rise is far-right ideology is anything to go on.
Many things humans have done is for expediency, dressed up as something else. Livestock is expedient for food and clothing and all else, so the belief that those animals are the ones that it’s fine to eat gets draped over it all.
Even though humans are the only animal that could meaningfully consent to being eaten. It’s an interesting (if uncomfortable) moral quandary.
I disagree, things eat each other. It’s just an exchange of resources. What matters is intent, process, and waste. I an fine with eating animals that were raised in non-cruel conditions(which is also a food safety issue), killed humanely, and all parts are utilized.
Also like, if some animal gets the drop on me and returns the favor, them so be it, good on them,
It sounds like you’re saying that they deserve to be eaten due to their personalities.
no, it’s just that calling a pig a friendly animal probably isn’t the best example to use for this argument
They are talking about the pig’s intelligence and understanding of the world. They are sentient, is the point
How’s that messed up? This is literally how the natural world works. Predators eat prey. We are the apex predator species.
Natural does not mean we should do something? Cannibalism is also natural, but we rightly find that horrible
Brushing aside moral considerations, cannibalism leads to things like kuru, so that’s a no go either way.
I have no qualms eating animals, provided they weren’t factory farmed.
On a related note, it’s worth mentioning that factory farming is the vast majority of global meat, dairy, egg, etc, production
We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1]
https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates
We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present. By species, we estimate that 70.4% of cows, 98.3% of pigs, 99.8% of turkeys, 98.2% of chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9% of chickens raised for meat are living in factory farms. Based on the confinement and living conditions of farmed fish, we estimate that virtually all US fish farms are suitably described as factory farms, though there is limited data on fish farm conditions and no standardized definition.[1] Land animal figures use data from the USDA Census of Agriculture[2] and EPA definitions of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.[3]
https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates
That’s why I prefer New Zealand or Australian lamb. Just lamb living their best lamb lives out on pastures.
Can’t wait for deer season this year so I can restock on venison.
New Zealand’s pasture based systems aren’t exactly the idealistic visions people have of them. Even just environmentally, their attempts to scale them up have required huge amounts of fertilizer and lead to huge amounts of pollution. For instance for their dairy production:
The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.
[…]
The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.
Hoards ravaging neighboring communities and killing everyone up to the children is perfectly natural for humans but you don’t have to do it.
it’s all stars maaaaaaan
Sounds fake.
Someone couldn’t just be trying to be funny after they’ve gone vegan?
It just sounds like a vegan wrote this story
From the collection of made up stories.
Or maybe they were just trying to be funny after going vegan?
You might underestimate the effect of suddenly thinking about something differently.
I became vegetarian when I saw the “How to Serve Man” episode of the Twilight Zone in high school. It horrified me and I didn’t look back.
They stopped being “their” gains when they ceased to live, and became “your” gains when you ate them.
The same statement is true for plants, too.
(Saying this as someone who eats very little meat for animal rights reasons, and merely wishes to be padantic right now for some reason)
That’s why I mostly eat the muscles of plants
That seems just like a strange interpenetration to me, like the point is that is should be theirs?
For the plants part, it’s worth mentioning that it takes more plants for animal products than it does to eat them directly
1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
like the point is that is should be theirs?
But the “gains” weren’t really “theirs” either, since they previously belonged to an organism lower in the food chain. It’s the circle of life.
For the plants part, it’s worth mentioning that it takes more plants for animal products than it does to eat them directly
I’m not arguing for or against eating anything, I’m saying that no matter what you eat, you’re “getting their gains.”
But that is not entirley true since humans don’t eat grass. And not all land is good for crops.
Important to note: “grass-fed” doesn’t actually mean grass-fed, they use plenty of supplemental grain almost everywhere. Trying to scale a pure grass-fed system up works rather poorly and even increases methane emissions
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
Cropland use goes down on plant-based diets, so we don’t need all land to be usable for crops
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
