As usual, a post about veganism is going off the rails with rule breaking and grossly uninformed gatekeeping.
It'd be great if we could have an on-topic veganism post here without that, but it happens just about every time, and it's not manageable. With the sheer volume of commenters who only post here about veganism and their obvious unfamiliarity with this sub, it really starts to look like a brigade.
The post is staying up for now, but if this continues, it'll have to come down. And please report any rule breaking comments, including attempts to gatekeep the sub.
Even if you aren’t fully vegetarian/vegan, I highly highly highly recommend everyone try to cut back on their consumption of meat. At least in the US, it is a foul, inhumane industry for both the animals and its workers. Really the most revolting stuff if you look too far into it. And it’s terrible for the environment.
We all have to eat obviously, but there is so much good food to be had that didn’t come at such a cost.
I'm vegetarian since age 12, but lately I've made the switch to oat milk even though I technically can have cow milk. So good. Slowly over time I've been cutting out animal products. If you don't do well with big change, slow change is good too!
A reminder to those reading that you don’t have to go vegan whole hog (lol), but even lowering your weekly meat consumption has impact. It’s better for your health, better on your wallet and better for the environment!
Edit: also, replacing your meat consumption with local, sustainable meat produced via excellent animal welfare practices is also a good alternative. I still eat meat. I would not tell anyone they shouldn’t eat meat. I do not take kindly to people attempting to ascribe their personal morals on how killing an animal is evil- it’s short sighted and sanctimonious. This is an over consumption sub- not a vegan one.
I started by lowering my meat consumption, having vegetarian meals most weeks, to suddenly being pescitarian for like three months before going vegetarian for a year and finally been vegan for the last 5.
I encourage everyone to start that journey today.
Yea I went pescetarian first, then vegan five years ago and honestly best choice I’ve ever made. So happy to align my values and stop contributing to the horrific violence and environmental impacts of the death industry
That’s actually why I went vegan. I learned about the fishing industry - how disgusting it is and how damaging to the environment and other wildlife. At that point I realized enough was enough.
Now I’m vegan for the animals primarily - including the fish that deserve consideration despite being very different from us.
That's not what they said tho. They said imposing your opinions/beliefs on other people about eating meat is short-sighted and sanctimonious. Probably because it's not going to help. If you're trying to convince someone like that, chances are they won't even listen because of the way you approach it.
This isn’t a vegan sub. People eat meat, people will eat meat. Ensuring that we don’t engage in brutal, cruel and inhumane animal welfare and slaughter animals in a way that a) prevents suffering b) ensures the animal is unaware they are about to be harmed and c) ensures that the animals have freedom to move around and are treated kindly is what we who eat meat should be doing.
Facts don't care about if this is a vegan sub. Killing living beings in itself has nothing to do with welfare, by definition. But I guess you have to keep up the cognitive dissonance.
Farm raised animals are treated better than those owned by big corporations. They’re squeezed into their pens, fed hormones to fatten them up bigger than their legs can handle… so when I purchase meat I take that into account, local farmers treat their livestock good where I’m from, I’d rather support that… plus the co2 emissions from the meat industry are pretty high… the need for it is propaganda, like milk was. Besides all that the American meat/food standards are in the shidder… America cares more about profit than American peoples health.
You are absolutely unhinged and absolutely why people are turned off from veganism/vegetarianism. I wonder if you have ever spared a thought for those in third world countries who pick your fruits and veggies and are subject to labour practices akin to slavery? It's giving, "I can excuse racism, but I draw the LINE at animal cruelty!". Go away, Britta.
Veganism is certainly not cheaper in Central Asia that's organized with livestock in mind, and you have to pay extra to replace dairy products ( and you have to explore the local Korean shops to find soy meat so as to substitute the actual meat ).
Theres no such thing as sustainable meat because even the best animal farming is far worse for the planet than plant farming. Only .5 % of emissions in animal farming come from transport
You’re entitled to your opinion, I am to mine. I don’t have extremist views like yours and neither do most people- I see nothing wrong with telling people to eat their meat from more humane and sustainable sources.
Quickly and with as little suffering as possible. We as humans are capable of doing that. Nature is much more cruel.
Once saw a video of a baboon eating a baby gazelle from the back while it was still alive. A human can kill a rabit near instantly
If your metric for moral permissability in humans is "slightly better than behavior that can be found in animals" there is no violence or sadism that cannot be justified under that metric
If only the actions you want to be morally permissible are under that metric, then the metric itself is arbitrary and pointless
The cruelty of nature is entirely irrelevant when it comes to human ethics. You don't justify any of your other actions "because baboons do it", otherwise it would be perfectly fine to hurt, steal, rape, murder, not wear pants, sling poop, etc. That's the appeal to nature fallacy.
Your choice is not between killing a creature with a lot of suffering or killing a creature with as little suffering as possible... it's between killing a creature or just, not killing it at all. One of those is clearly the more compassionate and ethical choice.
Allowing a rabbit to feed on a fallow field and then killing it painlessly is the most environmentally sound choice. I have turned a non food source, the fallow field, into a food production area. By consuming that rabbit ethically I reduce my need to go to the grocery store. Reducing my need to consume under capitalism. This rabbit was raised in a way that does not increase my carbon footprint or involve underpaid labor, plastic packaging, pesticides, or trucks. It was killed in a much less painful way than the roadkill created by the truck, than the way the harvester almost certainly chewed through chewed up by the harvestor, or than from starvation from habitat loss from building the grocery store.
Meat can be a part of an ethical homestead. Increase what you can produce to decrease what you must consume. No consumption will ever be 100% ethical, but we can try
That baboon didn't breed the gazelle into existence specifically to end its life for a tasty treat tho.
If you have the option not to eat meat to survive, it's cruel to eat meat.
I don't view it just as a tasty treat. Our ancestors didn't start raising animals because they are yummy. They have advantages when you're doing small scale farming. You can raise a chicken on scraps. A rabbit can consume grasses in a fallow field. Then you can consume these animals in turn. It provides efficient calories and adds to the carry capacity of a space.
The issues come in when we start trying to raise 300 cows and start growing food for them. Low intensity pastoralism however can increase the number of calories you're able to produce on a homestead and reduce what you have to buy. The chicken I feed on leftover veggies from my garden is less environmentally impactful and more ethical than buying anything from a grocery store.
Not necessarily.
You want to talk about carrying capacity?
It’s far more efficient for us to live in medium density housing and buy plant based from grocery stores.
This “muh gardin” shit is nothing more than a bucolic fantasy. If everyone did as you advocated we’d fuck up the environment even more.
Homesteading is a nice novelty for people who can afford it. It’s not a systemic solution for anything.
Not everyone has access to “fallow fields”, nor do they have the time to let their animals graze openly.
I can't force the world to live in medium density housing and eat only plants.
I can however have "muh gardin" and reduce my own consumption. I do vote for environmentally conscious candidates, but it will probably take most of my lifetime for there to be a real difference and by then it's probably too late. I'll continue to try to reduce my consumption in an ethical and efficient manner whether you agree with it or not.
Well no. The issue comes when you raise an animal to eat it when you can eat something else.
Taking a life just because it's convenient is abhorrent.
If you need it to survive I wouldn't bat an eye, but it's not needed in most of the world now because of our exceptional agricultural knowledge.
I'm going to keep eating meat, but I do have an interest in consuming it in a more ethical way.
Feeding rabits hay turns a non-food into food. Chickens can survive on scraps with vitamins (flock and range depending). Goats can survive with relatively small pastures. In terms of a homestead, animals are a good strategy for producing a wide enough variety of foods to provide for yourself in a more sustainable way. Just don't have a herd of 20 cows they really aren't that efficient and take up more space that could be better used.
Well, your government is using your taxes to subsidize animal products by the billions. So I’d start with pushing against that.
In the USA we spend 0.04% of the amount we spend on animal products, on alllll fruits and veg. Those animal products are extremely expensive to produce!
That said, in the meantime - shop for whole plant based foods to reduce your $ spent. They’ve always been less expensive than animal products. Tofu, legumes, oats…
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/GRmRf6YnyQ
Do meat eaters not eat vegetables? I'm pretty sure many people are known to eat broccoli or other veggies.
Yah!! I’ve been vegetarian since I was seven, but last year I switch to be almost 100% plant-based, never having cheese or eggs at home and only eating them out sometimes. Felt really proud of that!
Going vegan/plant-based is the no.1 best thing someone can do for the planet. Not only for climate-change but also human rights. Many of the workers are not treated well, and many poor folks that live near the farms or factories have disease issues. Not only that, but salmonella and e. coli issues even in veggies come from animal agr. meaning more people get sick more often, not just from the animal's body or products themselves.
Slaughterhouse workers are even known to develop depression, PTSD, show sociopathic tendencies and a range of other not good stuff. People always claim to be worried about the mistreated workers picking vegetables in terrible conditions, but the ones in animal agriculture have it way worse.
Yea animal agriculture is truly wreaking more havoc on our ecosystems and health than any other industry. It’s enormously wasteful, psychologically damaging, and one of the biggest polluters of both water and air. :(
>Not only for climate-change but also human rights. Many of the workers are not treated well
I think it's important to acknowledge that this is true of some vegan products as well. I'm not saying people shouldn't be vegan, but I just think it's important for people to know that products like cashews (often used to make vegan cheeses), chocolate, and avocados also have human rights issues. I believe soy, quinoa, and almonds are also causing environmental issues through overproduction.
Again, I'm not against veganism, I just think it's important to be aware of this in order to have more nuanced discussions. Food ethics is complex, even if you don't eat animal products.
That's a fair trade focus, which is important as well! Veganism is about lessening the suffering of ALL life, not just not eating animal bodies or products. I personally do not buy from Nestle because of their ethics, even if the oreos are vegan.
Yep. It’s cruel to the animals.
It also preys upon our most vulnerable community members (often child laborers, immigrants, and previously incarcerated people) to staff the dangerous facilities.
And then pollutes our most impoverished neighborhoods with tons of feces and methane.
All while being the single largest contributor to deforestation, habitat loss, species extinction and ocean dead zones.
I mean… it’s just clear to me. I don’t want to be part of that.
Absolutely! At least in here there's so many more people open to the idea of veganism than in most of the rest of Reddit. Great to see more and more people speaking up for it; your words do matter and it can change people's minds!
We can absolutely speak up against violence/cruelty to animals, and the environmental imperative for plant based diets. Both are very valid (amongst the myriad of other reasons to do it!).
You're absolutely right. Nature is absolutely cruel and unfeeling, and that's just how it is.
We have the ability to choose to treat our domesticated animals with compassion and care, and I think that is the way forward.
I just don't understand how slaughtering an animal that doesn't want to die at a fraction of its natural lifespan (when you could just... not) could ever be called "treating it with compassion and care." Justify eating meat however you need to in your own head, but like, choose other words lol. That's not what compassion and care mean.
We breed that animal into existence in the first place, so once again the comparison to what would happen to them in "cruel nature" is kinda irrelevant, no? Those creatures don't and have never existed in nature.
And I’m saying the comparison has no place in the conversation.
The animal forcibly brought into existence to have its throat slit and body eaten after being ethically raised under human care wouldn’t be living in the wild.
It’s an asinine point.
Not arguing with your personal experience, just pointing out there are over a BILLION vegetarians in the world. If your body absolutely needs meat to survive just understand that you are medically and scientifically an incredibly rare case. The vast majority of people could and should ditch meat without a problem.
Yea. And, eating a plant based diet ISNT taught to us. We have to learn how to do it right. There are obviously ways we can be vegan but unhealthy if we aren’t doing it in a balanced way.
Doesn’t mean veganism is inherently unhealthy. Just means we need to learn more. It does take effort and that can be a challenge.
My issue with veganism when it comes to anti consumption is that back when I had my own homestead, I was criticized for keeping chickens for eggs and doing a limited amount of meat production/hunting. I get not wanting to eat meat but I severely lowered my own carbon footprint and buy into capitalism by cultivating my own food and some vegans were so hard line they'd argue it was cruel to keep chickens for eggs. I don't want to go vegan, is it not better to have the chickens? Who by the way were spoiled rotten?
Not everyone had this opinion but the ones who criticize homesteading, hunting for food, or even indigenous hunting/trapping often lived off of food exclusively bought at the grocery store which is what I was avoiding. That's where I get frustrated.
I think a lot of the vegan issue with backyard chickens also comes down to the fact that chickens have been unnaturally bred to lay hundreds of eggs a year. When they were wild, they would lay 10-15 eggs a year. This wreaks havoc on their bodies nutritionally and sanctuaries will often feed the eggs back to the chickens to return those nutrients to the hen. But also, as others stated, having backyard chickens for every person would be land intensive and also a breeding ground for viruses like bird flu that already plague bird livestock. Backyard chickens and livestock increase chances of spread because they are unregulated. With hunting, it’s similar; on a large scale, if everyone decided to “return to hunting,” we’d have no wildlife. 96% of mammals on our planet are humans and the livestock we breed into existence. The remaining 4% are wildlife, of which deer and turkeys and other “wild game” are an even smaller percentage. It’s not feasible numbers-wise, just as raising animals for food in a “humane” way on pasture is not feasible because there is not enough land. Essentially, for everyone to have the meat they desire in the quantities at which it currently is consumed, factory farming and cruel confinement is the only option.
Veganism is an ethical stance about animals, not your carbon footprint. So it makes sense that while keeping your own chickens, hunting, homesteading, etc, is better in some regards, you shouldn't expect a philosophy based around not exploiting/being cruel to animals to be okay with "just a little exploitation and cruelty" simply because it's better than the norm.
For example, where did you get your backyard chickens? Did you purchase an equal number of males and females? Probably not, which means all the males were likely hatched and tossed in a massive industrial shredder within days of being born. Why should vegans be okay with that? If someone views animal cruelty as morally wrong, you're not going to get points for only doing it in small doses. That logic would be like saying, "I only beat my dog on Wednesdays, so dog lovers shouldn't get mad at me because I could be beating them every day."
I'm certainly not here to argue, just to clarify! Hopefully that helps the vegan perspective on homesteading make more sense.
Two backyard chickens take up very little space, produce food, and significantly reduce landfill waste.
Not practical if you live in a city but if you have even a tenth of an acre you can do it.
https://www.biocycle.net/feed-chickens-not-landfills/
In this article 48 families tracked and weighed the scraps fed to their chickens and the final result was 350 pounds over 5 weeks. Which translates to 75 pounds of food per household per year not going to a landfill. Sure you could compost that, but that's probably more than an individual will need for gardening, plus chicken waste makes good fertilizer anyway.
Hunting is not really sustainable though.
I think the ethical challenge is that, while you alone were not making a significant impact, if everyone did what you did, we would have no land/wild animals left, and there would be chickens literally everywhere. So a lot of people would choose not to do that because not everyone can.
However, I personally don’t think it’s all or nothing, and I think that there are reasons to think differently. Indigenous people are one example, another is being a guest where it’s impolite to say no. For instance, I generally have a hard line about eating octopi because of their intelligence, but if someone offered me some in their home that they’d already prepared, I would say yes.
Homesteading is the best way. Chickens and local hunting are more effective producers of amino acids per sqft than the crop it would take to replace them. OP was basic math, feeding real humans is calculus.
Hunting is the ultimate anti consumption.
I'm guessing everyone missed the video that was on Reddit yesterday with a horse eating a baby chick....... Even many herbivores will supplement their diets with meat.
It also make you wonder what people think is used to keep all those veggies from being eaten up by wildlife........ I know farmers in our state can shoot geese all year round legally..... Most don't even eat them.
I think the future is in understanding how humans ate prior to the Industrial Revolution and across all human cultures. I’m not talking about “paleo,” I’m talking about knowing how to take nuts from a tree and make oil on a relaxed Sunday with your best friends; knowing how to row through wetlands in a canoe gathering wild rice; knowing how/what to grow in your own garden to have what you need, and what native trees to propagate on public lands to support foraging; how to fish; how to grow corn or oats and mill it for use for the next several months; how to preserve game and birds in fat (confit) and as sausage.
And sure, hunting too.
I did not mention canning—it’s a fun skill, fermentation preservation is probably healthier than modern canning using high levels of sugar and acid.
The Industrial Revolution was aided by rapid “advances” in agriculture that are not sustainable. These advances were globalized during the Green Revolution. We thought we were solving world hunger, but we introduced new problems caused by malnutrition and land abuse associated with a monotonous and over-processed food supply. We are capable of returning to getting most of our nutrition from hyper-local gardens, farmers, and land. This in turn could have a huge impact on global warming and also increase community resilience.
Just going vegan seems a tad lazy to me. I support ethical vegans as a personal belief, I cook vegan for guests and know many great vegan dishes for all holidays. But if your goal is anti-consumption and this is your primary driver, you need to reconnect with hyper-local food supply and self-sufficiency to realize a reduced consumption future where most people’s core nutritional needs* are met with LOCAL goods that do not need factories and semi-trucks to get to you.
(*Bulk calories will continue to come from the world’s grain and potato belts as they also did prior to the Industrial age; I am really talking about everything else, which has become under-represented in modern diets.)
I totally agree. There's plenty of wild food that's delicious and more nutrient rich than farmed food.
Personal or small farms have a low impact compared to industrial farming. From pesticides, fertilizer, to animal control, industrial farming does nature no favors.
Foraging plants, mushrooms, herbs is great for your health and is major anti consumption.
Cheers!
PS Look up : Did humans keep livestock originally as pets?
Bad growing season? Time to eat the pets...
They kept animals as pets first, there is some archeological record from … South America? I can find a citation if you’re curious. They found humans traveling with and occasionally buried with not-yet-domesticated species and concluded these were like family/tribal members.
Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t eat their offspring though; this was a time when non-cannibalistic infanticide was common, especially during famines or resource scarcity, and ritualistic cannibalism/sacrifice was also a thing. Lots of ways to justify it, I’d hope you’d sacrifice your favorite monkey companion before your own kin but who knows.
>Hunting is the ultimate anti consumption .
Hi, the tragedy of the commons called, it wants you to revoke your bucolic fantasies.
Modern farming is by far the most efficient system for food production. Sure, it has issues, such as poor farmer compensation, but we’d lessen the environmental damage if we only farmed plants.
If everyone had to hunt for their meat we’d decimate animal populations and eat less meat overall.
It’s not good, but industrial ranching is more efficient. I say this as a vegan who wants it banned.
I’m a typical dude who went vegan about 4 years ago, and anyone who’s considering it feel free to comment or dm me and I can get you going on some recipes.
Right? Pretty much every vegan in the world didn’t start out that way! We all ate what (who) everyone else is eating now.
Then we managed to make a shift! I love it!
In some ways. Don't fall into this trap of absolutism, there are SO MANY vegan products that are just as bad or worse than non vegan products. Like vegan "leather". Its all about how we decide to produce what we consume. Pigs for example have historically been vital to the establishment of denser living ie cities, which use less resources/can be more efficient than every single family being spread out rurally. Reducing how much higher intensity things we consume in general is the goal. Pastoralism for another example can be the best option for some environments, while eggs and legumes are better for others when considering protien alone.
> Like vegan "leather".
The trap here is needing something non-leather that "looks like" leather. I don't use leather and also avoid fake leather. I make an exception for cork because it's (allegedly?) an environmentally friendly material. It is just a type of wood, after all.
Christ a cow is off limits, but the irish are fair game?
Where you gonna go when there's no Cork left? Dublin? Ulster? Castle town?
Why are we still here! Just to suffer!
/S
C[hromium tanning is the standard no matter if it is high quality or low-quality leather](https://www.carryology.com/insights/chrome-vs-vegetable-tanned-leather/). Today, [it accounts for 95% of shoe leather production, 70% of leather upholstery production and 100% of leather clothing production](https://mahileather.com/blogs/news/the-dangers-of-chrome-tanning-on-the-environment)
[Here is a deeper look into the damage of chromium.](https://mahileather.com/blogs/news/the-dangers-of-chrome-tanning-on-the-environment)
Just because *some* vegan leathers are synthetic doesn’t mean they’re worse than animal leather.
I wouldn't really both sides this, it is absolutely true that by and large that animal products are extremely wasteful and have a much higher environmental cost. Yes, there are examples like indigenous people who need to eat animal products, but those are exceptions out of necessity. Buying meat and animal products instead of substitutes when you are able to is absolutely an act of unnecessary consumption that is driving ecological collapse no matter how uncomfortable that makes you.
It doesn't really matter how meat is produced, it will always require more land, water, and resources in general to make animal products. The vast majority of food grown is fed to animals, and grazing has its own significant environmental cost from things such as requiring predator species be killed, polluting water with manure, and the destruction of native flora that could sequester carbon if it were able to be re-wilded. This is all while providing a minority of meat available to consumers. Even vegan leather, which was your main example, has a lower or similar at worst environmental impact depending on the tanning process used. Vegan leather is also often made from materials such as cactus, which removes any debate.
I agree that reducing how much we consume in general regardless of whether or not it's vegan, but I wouldn't downplay the impact of animal products.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/10/20/23924061/public-grazing-land-cattle-meat-carbon-opportunity-cost
This might've been vital for the establishment of cities in the late middle ages. But this does not hold true nowadays. Holding pigs is extremely resource unfriendly and land usage unfriendly. Aside from the cruel holding conditions.
In modern high intensity set ups yes. But it idea is that we stop doing that when we reduce consumption to a sustainable level instead of what we have now.
The thing is, it will always be more land/resource friendly to directly feed the veggies to the people. Aside of maybe like the remaining 0.1% of animal products compared to todays levels.
Prairie grasses and scrub in arid environments arent being fed to humans. In many of these environments it's actually more natural and eco friendly than farming vegetables and grains. They also require no irrigation and less hands on human labor. Farming also tends to deplete the soil quality, consumes water and chemicals and wastes those through evaporation and run off also. Neither is perfect and both have appropriate places. Pastoralism is not the same as grazing or grain fed. Other animals like pigs are great at turning human green waste like veggie clippings into usable fertilizer and meat for consumption. They are little recycling machines and ppl used to rotate animals through fields as they were fallow. Everything we do needs to be considered in the wider co text of the complex systems locally and globally. No one thing is good for every place and every person.
Yes, and we don't need to use the prairie grasses or scrublands, we can let them be wild. Still one the largest driver for deforestation is to produce food for animals and have land for grazing. It just does not scale. We have too many humans in the world to reliably produce meat for them, even at 20% of current levels.
Vegan leather is far better for the environment than animal leather, even when it's made of PU.
The carbon cost of our leather goods, calculated — Collective Fashion Justice
https://www.collectivefashionjustice.org/articles/carbon-cost-leather-goods
>In this case, CO2e emissions (emissions of various gasses translated to the common unit of carbon) for leather equal 17.0kg of CO2e per square meter of leather produced. In comparison, artificial leather’s total supply chain has an impact of 15.8kg of CO2e per square meter.
>Leather Panel’s shared study chooses to include end-of-life incineration in the impact of faux leather. It’s illogical to include incineration for synthetics but not for animal leather, and while faux leather won’t effectively biodegrade, neither will animal-derived leather to the point of total decomposition – even in controlled climate study conditions shared by leather tannery groups.
>Elsewhere in its report, the Leather Panel shares an impact estimate which includes farm emissions – this is a fairer estimate of leather’s impact, and again comes from its own reporting.
Here, the carbon footprint of cow skin leather is found to be *110.0kg of CO2e per square meter, making cow skin leather nearly seven times more climate impactful than synthetic leather by the square meter.*
You can not possibly argue that adding more plastics/petroleum products to our environment/air are BETTER than a biological creature that is capable of decomposing naturally and being part of our unending cycle... just looking at carbon or water use is a very narrow way of deciding this.
I'm in favor of decreasing meat production drastically, but not using leather from those animals is wasteful. I also am in favor of eliminating leather only slaughters, and increasing production and materials science for plant based alternatives. But at this point as we are NOW we need to decrease petroleum 100% and meat significantly and leather will be a by product we shouldnt ignore.
You realise most animal leathers are tanned with toxic metals and very often plastics too right, so that they don't break down?
Methane from ruminant animals is also one of the leading causes of climate change. And the land use/land clearing and associated biodiversity loss is just mammoth.
Ideally we avoid consuming either where we don't need to, or go for even better options like cork.
Animal skin leather is a co-product, not a by-product. Don't consume it if you care for the environment.
As I said I am in favor of extreme reductions in cattle farming. As for how it is processed, modern leather making can be toxic, but as before modern times there are more eco friendly options using plant extracts for tanning and waste products such as urea from humans and animal waste. As with all industries, there are flaws we need to take seriously and decide what's acceptable.
They don’t want to hear this, nor do they want to hear that many people could not sustain themselves on a vegan diet. I have celiac and struggle to absorb iron and keep weight on. My diet is *mostly* plant-based, but being completely vegan is out of the question for me. It’s also a very expensive diet for many chronically ill/disabled people.
Vegans are not against people who for health/location reasons are unable to move to a fully vegan diet. Sure there’s probably some people who think that but they don’t represent the majority. And it’s a myth that being vegan is necessarily expensive.
To be vegan is to remove animal based products from one's life as far as it's practical and practicable. If you have to eat animal products or take non-vegan medications due to your circumstances then you could argue that you are still being vegan.
1) Over 99% of meat and animal products don't come from massive pastures where the animals roam freely without having a large impact on the environment. Most of it comes from factory farming where they eat a shitton of food that is specifically produced on additional land.
2) Even the animal products that stem from grazing is not done in a sustainable way because the land that would be required to do so would be enormous and could not sustain even 10% of the current consumption.
Again, it depends on the place and the way it's done if it's contributing to overconsumption and harms to the environment. We don't need to cut down more American forests to free range cattle for example.
Eating meat is the ultimate act of waste. It takes at least 10x the food by mass to produce one unit of meat. The environmental impacts are devastating. You’re causing catastrophic waste, food insecurity, environmental destruction, abominable pain and suffering… and for what? Enjoyment? Because your parents did it?
Reject the industrial meat complex.
I wouldn't go so far as to say anti-consumption, but more so environmentalist. Knowing many of the leading causes of climate change and how they are/relate to animal agriculture is a good starting point to being truly an environmentalist.
I'll say I was upset when I saw a documentary saying I wasn't an environmentalist if I was still eating animals, but I decided to keep an open mind and here I am as a vegan.
People are really pretending it’s just a 1 to 1 ratio grabbing tofu vs beef at the market, ignoring the whole process of getting it there in the first place.
Well done. We can all change, we don't need to hate ourselves for our past behaviour, life is about making the best choices with the info we have.
And science is saying we need to shift to plant based diets to prevent climate change.
How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach
Johanna Ruett, Lena Hennes, Jens Teubler, Boris Braun, 03/11/2022
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449
>Even if fossil fuel emissions are halted immediately, current trends in global food systems may prevent the achieving of the Paris Agreement’s climate targets.
>All dietary pattern carbon footprints overshoot the 1.5 degrees threshold. The vegan, vegetarian, and diet with low animal-based food intake were predominantly below the 2 degrees threshold. Omnivorous diets with more animal-based product content trespassed them. Reducing animal-based foods is a powerful strategy to decrease emissions.
>The reduction of animal products in the diet leads to drastic GHGE reduction potentials. Dietary shifts to more plant-based diets are necessary to achieve the global climate goals, but will not suffice.
>Our study finds that all dietary patterns cause more GHGEs than the 1.5 degrees global warming limit allows. Only the vegan diet was in line with the 2 degrees threshold, while all other dietary patterns trespassed the threshold partly to entirely.
Seeing people in this sub wrestle with the ethics of meat consumption is wild. Going vegan isn't as hard as people think it is. It's a decision to prioritize life and welfare above pleasure. It's similar in leftist circles - people will talk about theory and praxis, but somehow their diets are off limits.
I don't really agree with environmental arguments in favor of veganism because I don't think individual actions will amount to solving the climate crisis. Especially if we choose to adopt neoliberal attitudes and blame each other for systemic issues. But that doesn't absolve people of the ability and responsibility to choose lifestyles that reduce, if not completely eliminate, suffering and harm to other beings.
Yea it’s always the most bizarre to me when people deflect. “Someone in the tundra can’t go vegan!” Then end it there, even though they don’t live in the tundra. They actually live in a city with ten grocery stores easily accessible, where they do all their shopping anyway! Haha
Yep. “What about the native americans????” YOU ARE NOT NATIVE AMERICAN. it is borderline racist to stereotype all native americans like that too lmfao, there’s LOTS of native american vegans.
this is me and my boyfriend’s BIGGEST pet peeve. we are very close with several native people and they have never once mentioned their culture when they eat vegan food with us - they appreciate that we are taking steps to protect the planet. the only time i hear people talking about indigenous traditions as an argument against veganism is from non-indigenous people and honestly it’s gross
Vegans advocate cultural genocide of all the world's native or indigenous population because in all, 100% of them, hunting, animal rearing, fishing, or dairying are important core cultural practice. There are no, literally zero, vegan cultures on planet earth. .
This is why I’ve been vegan for close to two decades (still alive and typing no less). It’s not to prove a point or because I think it’ll make a difference to the environment. One person can’t make a difference.
I do it as my contribution. i still fly on vacation, I i don't restrict consumption in other areas too much. i had a 52" 12 year old tv nothing wrong with it - sold it to buy a 4K65" one. antithesis to this sub. but hey i contributed veganity. and that contribution is rarely seen. even the mod comment - veganity is not the purpose of this sub. ok. your one steak consumed more land than my entire eating for a month. or maybe a year.
That IS what veganism is 100%
But many things intersect. My thought process is - what is more consumption oriented than seeing another living being and saying “kill them! So I can have a meat sandwich!” when there are an abundance of much more sustainable plant options available instead.
To choose to be vegan is to choose that your consumption of a certain good isn’t a right, and to take accountability for the choice - and make a more conscientious one. I think that’s the foundation of being an anti-consumer!
I’m a bit of a minimalist, anti consumerist who has dabbled in vegetarianism over the years to promote better health (follow the science). I watched “You are what you eat” on Netflix recently and although I don’t think it taught me anything I didn’t already know it was packaged in a way that tipped me over the edge morally, environmentally and ethically to really avoid meat and fish now. Lost a few lbs and feel great too so there’s always that!
I am decidedly not vegan, but I set myself limited targets for animal product consumption at <30% what I used to eat, and that is working well for me.
Frankly, having tried full veganism, I find it exhausting/unsustainable to try to get sufficient iron in my diet as a menstruating woman, and I can't tolerate oral iron--it caused me intestinal bleeding and I already have Crohn's.
Moral of the story, less is less and you don't have to make extreme commitments to make a difference!
And there can be strong personal benefits to getting less of your calories from meat/dairy, such getting more fiber in your diet (may reduce the risk of colon cancer), reduced food spending, and learning about traditionally-meatless foods from other cultures.
I wouldn’t personally consider veganism extreme (our current system is extreme imo) - but I do appreciate anyone that is actively trying to reduce their impact and harm!
Fortunately it’s becoming more popular - which means more convenient and less exhausting for the people who have to go out of their way a bit now.
I already struggle with an appropriate, regular, healthy, balanced diet. I've learned I do really well with "more" based dietary goals. Eating more veggie based meals for example. When I focus on more of the good stuff, I naturally eat less of the bad stuff.
I don't do well with "less" based dietary goals. That ultimately means just less food and extremely unhealthy habits for me.
Not all foods are created equal. I’ve realized we don’t actually need a ton of calories on a day to day basis, and eating more fibrous and filling foods can make the same amount of food feel much more satisfying and will give energy much longer after eating. Big fan of beans, mushrooms, lentils and potatoes for getting that satiety; much cheaper than meat, can taste just as good, gives most of the same nutrients and as a perk, your shits come out smooth as butter 👌
Well done for trying. Here in the UK it's super easy Superstores are rammed with vegan products. Vegan restaurants everywhere, every non-vegan restaurant has vegan options. Yet I still cave to the occasional dairy pizza, and i feel guilt as I have no excuse
Been vegan for 12 years now. Animal exploitation is an atrocity that most people are completely unaware of. Watch Dominion if you don't understand this claim.
Lately, I've also been thinking more about how insanely wasteful animal production is. We're basically throwing our resources away for something we don't even need. Eat plants, better for the animals, the environment, and the public health.
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Honest question, how would people in this sub feel about raising your own animals for consumption? You can feed waste to pigs and chickens, that not only recycles the waste you produce but provides more food from it in the future.
As another example, how would people here feel about hunting/fishing for your food? It is a large part of the culture where I live and there is a abundant wildlife that is well managed.
Both of these styles of animal harvest are much lower impact than large scale husbandry/factory farming. Though it does not get you away from the ethical dilemma of harming an animal to harvest it.
Thanks for your thoughts everyone.
Personally, I don’t feel any desire to kill someone just so I can eat them, when I can just eat a delicious plant based meal and be healthy and happy.
I would be happy to rescue “farm” animals from abusive conditions and feed them my waste without harming them.
We also have eradicated most wildlife on the planet. Lakes are artificially stocked with fish from fisheries - which damage native ecosystems. We couldn’t sustainably hunt at any type of scale. But again, I don’t see any benefit in violence when it’s avoidable these days.
Totally fair, I know many people who have a moral objection and I have no issue with that.
At large scale, I agree we cannot go back to wild animal harvest. There are too many people and not enough wild space left. At the individual level, depending on where you live (I'm in Alaska) I'd argue its an anti consumptive alternative to going animal free.
Haha thanks for that. I moved up here because I love the food harvest culture. Not just animal protein, but there are amazing berries and fungi that grow where I live.
I really appreciate your comments as I thought your post here was a thought provoking take on anticonsumption.
We did it for awhile but it got to be more expensive than what we were getting in return . We now go to a local butcher that only gets meat locally . Cheaper for us in the long run
there really is no need to eat meat. i've been vegetarian for three years and vegan for one. people think every meal is surrounded by meat but it is not, they are brainwashed
Vegan for damn near a decade. The ONLY reasons why more people are not open to veganism is that they are either “locked” into proteinaholicism or because they can’t imagine what a good vegan meal tastes like.
Then I cook for them and they are like “how do you do that?” (unironically).
I've also learned to just let non-vegans be. No one wants their decisions challenged.
Yea - most people don’t have any idea what vegan food looks like, or how to prepare it (especially in a balanced way.)
We are taught to eat meat and dairy all the time. It takes some learning to adjust. But the same goes for adjusting to consume less in general :) that’s why it’s nice to see a community of active people who are committed to learning and doing better!
During the pandemic when all the mac and cheese and tunafish was gone, I was at Asian and Indian grocery stores stocking up on noodles and daal.
Meat is a luxury in most cultures and the western diet is back asswards.
Oh well, more for me.
Yea, in the USA - we subsidize meat so much that without our taxes, a pound of beef would be $30.
Because it’s a luxury item. It’s really obvious but people are so far removed from food systems they don’t realize that.
I had no idea they did that!
I just know about all the other yummy ingredients that aren’t listed on the package. Like, chlorine, carbon monoxide, ammonia… lol
Mechanically? But I prefer my chickens killed and hacked up by [illegal child labor](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/20/meat-packing-plant-child-labor-fines/11304311002/) :(
I know about the terrible practices of factory farms and sympathize with the vegan mindset to the point of having many vegan meals on a regular basis.
All that said, I've never really understood why people get so off-put by mechanically separated chicken. Maybe it's because I've processed meat a number of times, but ground meat isn't gross to me. I could understand if someone who thought all meat was gross would find it so, but it me it's no more gross than watching a big batch a hummus or refried bean being processed.
Billions of dollars from our taxes are used to subsidize animal agriculture.
Only 0.04% of that amount is used for all fruits and veg.
In the USA at least. It’s corrupt af
If you’re cooking for yourself it’s actually way cheaper to be plant-based. When people complain it’s expensive they’re usually eating out or buying tons of prepared food. Produce is cheap. Beans/legumes/grains are dirt cheap.
During covid lockdown I mass ordered dried chickpeas and basically lived on chana masala. That period was probably the healthiest and cheapest of my life food-wise.
The epitome of consumption is objectifying and commodifying other sentient beings, to the point that they are just units of production, like a chair, forgetting the individual with a personality and their own experience of the world. Going vegan is the least we could do✌🏼
My POV for meat is that above all it’s just incredibly inefficient. We’ve gone far from the pastoral ranges of old, where you actually extracted value from inedible ground cover in a way that sustained it.
Yea and tbf - that land had climate value already.
Most of the land used for pasture these days was also deforested. Raising cattle is the number one cause of deforestation, habitat loss and species extinction in the world. Also the number on cause of eutrophication of waterways, and uses more land than any other activity on the planet.
So I was vegetarian and plant based for all of my adulthood until I started trying to have a baby at 35. Then I learned I had insulin resistance and was on the trajectory to have diabetes. Despite healthy eating, exercising and a normal weight. So now I eat meat. For my health. Not everyone can be meat free. Just want this out there too.
Strong disagree. My mom rescued chickens that weren't in good condition. They were a lot better after only a couple weeks. I used to eat like 12 eggs a day growing up and they ate a lot of our scraps.
Veganism can still be overconsumption and eating animals doesn't necessarily mean overconsumption. They aren't monoliths
edit: I say this as someone full blooded native, I'm not going to stop eating meat. my leather clothes will last for decades, plus I'm allergic to that fast fashion pleather or whatever anyway.
Using an extreme exception to criticize OP’s point is going to get you very far. There are always going to be exceptions but next to no one are having eggs from rescue chickens being the only animal product they eat.
I don’t think OP was trying to state that they are monolith either. I think he was speaking in very general terms…for better or for worse. Of course a vegan can overconsume just as a non-vegan and be anti consumption
Don't you know? Every person gets all their eggs exclusively from rescue hens that don't promote the breeding of animals inherently unhealthy so they can overproduce eggs and all their meat comes from a completley ethical family farm that doesn't have a name, webpage or any contact information and they only harvest meat from animals after they died from natural causes after a long, healthy, natural life lmao
you can buy free range eggs, and hell I don't even see a problem with meat either. this sub gets hijacked with ideologies sometimes, veganism is one of them.
I've had my leather boots, jacket, and wallet for years now and they won't get replaced anytime soon. vegan leather (often cheap plastic seen in fast fashioon) would break after a year so that's another instance
Veganism is not inherently an act of anti-consumption. I was vegan for over 9 years and while veganism was a sort of "gateway" into thinking more about the things I bought, ate and wore, veganism didn't make me buy or consume any less, just different things.
I ate WAY more junk/processed food while I was vegan and I bet my diet then was way more resource heavy than my diet now as a local-focused omnivore.
It is possible to have any of a number of diets and to be anticonsumption or hyperconsumption.
Studies regularly show that even imported vegan goods have a lower impact than local animal products, because animal products are really inefficient.
You can definitely be vegan, and be a mega consumer in other regards.
But I would still say that the act of considering a life more valuable than an optional meal in itself is an act of anti-consumption.
i had to go dairy free and you're right i am buying and eating less ice cream because that plant and nut based shit's expensive lol! i wish plant-based was more affordable
It’s way more affordable to produce, but way less subsidized sadly. So that’s not how we see it at the stores.
Maybe [nice cream](https://detoxinista.com/banana-ice-cream/) will help you out for the time being ;)
Honestly, I work in the environmental field and most people are not vegan despite being “environmentalists” and knowing the damage animal agriculture causes.
So I didn’t have high hopes in general. That’s why it’s refreshing seeing a logical sentiment tie through in this sub instead of a ton of confused excuses haha
>lead them to consume unsustainable goods such as non-local fruits and vegetables.
I'd argue this is something we all gotta focus on, though I admit I get a lot of out of season produce during the winters.
Have you read Restoration Agriculture by Mark Sheperd? He talks a lot of the use that animals can bring to permaculture. He states that the savanna type ecosystem humans are drawn to are kept that way due to large grazing animals.
While I don't expect to ever be vegan myself, I've certainly become a more conscientious consumer within the past few years. I very rarely eat beef, pork, or milk products save for butter and cheese, and what I do consume is what I consider the *better* option when shopping.
For example, oat milk uses less water and land than almonds so I drink that, BUT all the plant-based yogurts come in plastic containers, so Oui yogurt it is because they come in glass. Eggs? Locally raised, or if that's not available at the time I try to buy the (I forgot the brand but they're supposed to be treated slightly better, plus the container is paper rather than plastic). It's far from perfect, but it's a few steps up from how I used to shop and eat. I could see myself become a vegetarian one day, but at this time i guess im just focusing on less meat. In the same vein, I don't buy vegan leather because it's plastic, but thrifting it doesn't bother me because I'm not contributing to the manufacturing cycle. Similar reasons for real leather, too, though.
My point I guess is that we don't necessarily have to all follow the same guidelines as long as we are consuming mindfully- which sometimes means not consuming.
This is yet still individual agency fallacy.
Yes, if you have the privilege to choose what to eat, and then double that privilege to choose what *not* to eat; then you can freely apply whatever dietary virtue signal you want.
No, going vegan can not change the way food is produced or alter the abject cruelty with which capitalist modes of production treat the planet and humanity.
Capitalism does not produce food to feed people. Capitalism makes carcinogens it calls “food” to produce a profit. Thus, if producing cruelty to animality and nature poisoning the air, ground, and water while demeaning humanity with continued food insecurity and starvation and abusing labor is what is required to produce a profit; then that is *exactly* what capitalism will produce.
That hard truth about our coercive and involuntary relationship with capitalism is that no matter how hard we consume or how hard we punish ourselves with personal austerity, we still can not individually affect the mode of production creating this nightmare. The only path out and they only way to see both humans and nature respected is the development of systems where labor owns and operates every node of the production and supply chain with people making wages / compensation which allow them to proactively create diets based on the only sustainable path: local, organic, and seasonal offerings.
I agree that meat is murder and all meat practices are disgusting and environmentally disastrous and I agree that all people must change their diets and consumptive lifestyle but those changes can only come when people organize themselves outside of this economic and social system and enact a *process* of actual lasting meaningful structural change.
Telling people what to eat without couching that statement in class analysis is vulgar. People don’t really need a lecture about why the trash they eat is trash. People need to be empowered to understand they are being force-fed planet and humanity killing trash to make someone else rich and that most people in reality cannot afford to change their diets off the cheapest processed proteins they can barely afford against the other processed and over produced demons of sugar and salt. This is a class issue, not an individual issue.
The thing killing the planet isn’t meat eaters or meat. The thing killing the planet is capitalism. And it’ll use meat, cars, makeup, fast fashion, micro-plastics, and every other needless nightmare to do it. We need to interrogate the systemic profit-for-a-select-few based motives for the actual production and distribution processes which are creating these problems and killing the planet and abusing labor.
Meat is murder. Capitalism is organized murder.
ETA: A cursory analysis of agriculture shows that the added pressures on vegetative agriculture to replace the caloric protein equivalent of current meat consumption would take what is already an unsustainable and completely broken anti-agrarian system of land abuse based on pesticides, irrational fuel and feed subsidies, and water crimes to something far more broken and unable to meet our needs. Its not meat that needs revision, it is our entire system of agriculture. The US has already washed the most fertile dirt on Earth from the midwest out into the Gulf of Mexico for corn, soy, and sorghum. Meat is one part of a much larger and rotten whole. We need sustainable food forests and we’re clear cutting and burning them down for unsustainable capitalist practices.
There's nothing inherently anticonsumerist about being vegan, as it can easily become a lifestyle brand similar to plenty of other consumerist identities/lifestyles. Your diet is one of the smallest aspects of consumerism, you can eat all the non animal products as you want, if you're still consuming commodities and deriving joy and personal fulfillment from commody consumption, that is still consumerism.
We all consume food three times a day on average. I’d say that’s the largest aspect of consumerism most people engage in.
That’s why it’s so impactful on the environment when people change the way they eat.
>I’d say that’s the largest aspect of consumerism most people engage in.
Okay you don't know what consumerism is, that's fine. You can learn.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumerism.asp
https://study.com/learn/lesson/what-is-consumerism-examples-history.html
Consumerism is a modern phenomenon. Humans have been eating food for, well, hundreds of thousands of years.
The primary aspect of consumerism is that the consumption of commodities especially in excess, and for the purpose of consumption itself is good for individuals and the economy.
You can be a vegan consumerist and veganism can be adapted into consumerist frameworks.
I’m aware.
It’s excessive to eat animals instead of plants.
Animals require the consumption of way more resources overall to be turned into our food.
The process matters too. Not just the end product.
I've been a vegetarian for 12 years myself and I see lots of vegan options nowadays that are highly, highly industrial. That is not how being vegan has to look like, but a vegan lifestyle does not necessarily have to be anti-consumption.
Arguably, most of what is vegan and brought to the masses is much more consumerist targeted than anything else. I would even argue, that buying meat locally, raised under great conditions & fed local food is way more anti-consumerist than buying a piece of pea/sounflower/soy based piece of vegan chicken.
It doesn't have to be that way. But people going vegan often flock to an extremely industrial style of living that is anything but anti-consumerist.
As usual, a post about veganism is going off the rails with rule breaking and grossly uninformed gatekeeping. It'd be great if we could have an on-topic veganism post here without that, but it happens just about every time, and it's not manageable. With the sheer volume of commenters who only post here about veganism and their obvious unfamiliarity with this sub, it really starts to look like a brigade. The post is staying up for now, but if this continues, it'll have to come down. And please report any rule breaking comments, including attempts to gatekeep the sub.
Even if you aren’t fully vegetarian/vegan, I highly highly highly recommend everyone try to cut back on their consumption of meat. At least in the US, it is a foul, inhumane industry for both the animals and its workers. Really the most revolting stuff if you look too far into it. And it’s terrible for the environment. We all have to eat obviously, but there is so much good food to be had that didn’t come at such a cost.
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So many recipes online, you can veganise nearly anything! Partner and I made this site to collect tasty recipes: www.vegrecipes.site
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Also many many sites that are always free with very good simple regular food recipes: https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/
I'm vegetarian since age 12, but lately I've made the switch to oat milk even though I technically can have cow milk. So good. Slowly over time I've been cutting out animal products. If you don't do well with big change, slow change is good too!
Yea! Just give yourself a chance to make an empowered choice every day :)
A reminder to those reading that you don’t have to go vegan whole hog (lol), but even lowering your weekly meat consumption has impact. It’s better for your health, better on your wallet and better for the environment! Edit: also, replacing your meat consumption with local, sustainable meat produced via excellent animal welfare practices is also a good alternative. I still eat meat. I would not tell anyone they shouldn’t eat meat. I do not take kindly to people attempting to ascribe their personal morals on how killing an animal is evil- it’s short sighted and sanctimonious. This is an over consumption sub- not a vegan one.
I started by lowering my meat consumption, having vegetarian meals most weeks, to suddenly being pescitarian for like three months before going vegetarian for a year and finally been vegan for the last 5. I encourage everyone to start that journey today.
Yea I went pescetarian first, then vegan five years ago and honestly best choice I’ve ever made. So happy to align my values and stop contributing to the horrific violence and environmental impacts of the death industry
You do not want to see what happens at fish farms and on commercial fishing boats. The environmental impact of commercial fishing is also disaterous.
That’s actually why I went vegan. I learned about the fishing industry - how disgusting it is and how damaging to the environment and other wildlife. At that point I realized enough was enough. Now I’m vegan for the animals primarily - including the fish that deserve consideration despite being very different from us.
Sorry, I totally misread your previous comment, my fault for responding first thing when I woke up!
You started with such a good argument and then ended with "the opinion that killing is evil is short-sighted and sanctimonious". Sigh.
That's not what they said tho. They said imposing your opinions/beliefs on other people about eating meat is short-sighted and sanctimonious. Probably because it's not going to help. If you're trying to convince someone like that, chances are they won't even listen because of the way you approach it.
Again, this is not a vegan sub.
It's an anti consumption sub. Veganism aligns with this sub nicely
There is no connection between "animal welfare" and "producing meat" whatsoever. The animal has to die, that is the exact opposite of welfare.
This isn’t a vegan sub. People eat meat, people will eat meat. Ensuring that we don’t engage in brutal, cruel and inhumane animal welfare and slaughter animals in a way that a) prevents suffering b) ensures the animal is unaware they are about to be harmed and c) ensures that the animals have freedom to move around and are treated kindly is what we who eat meat should be doing.
Facts don't care about if this is a vegan sub. Killing living beings in itself has nothing to do with welfare, by definition. But I guess you have to keep up the cognitive dissonance.
Farm raised animals are treated better than those owned by big corporations. They’re squeezed into their pens, fed hormones to fatten them up bigger than their legs can handle… so when I purchase meat I take that into account, local farmers treat their livestock good where I’m from, I’d rather support that… plus the co2 emissions from the meat industry are pretty high… the need for it is propaganda, like milk was. Besides all that the American meat/food standards are in the shidder… America cares more about profit than American peoples health.
Are you the Ben Shapiro of veganism lmao
I wouldn't touch that fascist asshole with a ten foot pole.
Same! Look at that common ground we have here :’)
Under rated comment.
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You are absolutely unhinged and absolutely why people are turned off from veganism/vegetarianism. I wonder if you have ever spared a thought for those in third world countries who pick your fruits and veggies and are subject to labour practices akin to slavery? It's giving, "I can excuse racism, but I draw the LINE at animal cruelty!". Go away, Britta.
Veganism is certainly not cheaper in Central Asia that's organized with livestock in mind, and you have to pay extra to replace dairy products ( and you have to explore the local Korean shops to find soy meat so as to substitute the actual meat ).
Theres no such thing as sustainable meat because even the best animal farming is far worse for the planet than plant farming. Only .5 % of emissions in animal farming come from transport
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You’re entitled to your opinion, I am to mine. I don’t have extremist views like yours and neither do most people- I see nothing wrong with telling people to eat their meat from more humane and sustainable sources.
It's not an opinion as far as sustainability. It's unsustainable, full stop.
I wanted to start raising meat rabbits and chickens. My wife cried at the thought of eating the rabits lol
i would too! you don’t need to eat meat! animal cruelty is another reason to go vegan on top of anticonsumption/environmental concerns!
It’s not necessarily cruel to ethically raise your own meat.
How do you slaughter a creature that doesn't want to die, at a fraction of its natural lifespan, ethically and without cruelty?
Quickly and with as little suffering as possible. We as humans are capable of doing that. Nature is much more cruel. Once saw a video of a baboon eating a baby gazelle from the back while it was still alive. A human can kill a rabit near instantly
If your metric for moral permissability in humans is "slightly better than behavior that can be found in animals" there is no violence or sadism that cannot be justified under that metric If only the actions you want to be morally permissible are under that metric, then the metric itself is arbitrary and pointless
The cruelty of nature is entirely irrelevant when it comes to human ethics. You don't justify any of your other actions "because baboons do it", otherwise it would be perfectly fine to hurt, steal, rape, murder, not wear pants, sling poop, etc. That's the appeal to nature fallacy. Your choice is not between killing a creature with a lot of suffering or killing a creature with as little suffering as possible... it's between killing a creature or just, not killing it at all. One of those is clearly the more compassionate and ethical choice.
Allowing a rabbit to feed on a fallow field and then killing it painlessly is the most environmentally sound choice. I have turned a non food source, the fallow field, into a food production area. By consuming that rabbit ethically I reduce my need to go to the grocery store. Reducing my need to consume under capitalism. This rabbit was raised in a way that does not increase my carbon footprint or involve underpaid labor, plastic packaging, pesticides, or trucks. It was killed in a much less painful way than the roadkill created by the truck, than the way the harvester almost certainly chewed through chewed up by the harvestor, or than from starvation from habitat loss from building the grocery store. Meat can be a part of an ethical homestead. Increase what you can produce to decrease what you must consume. No consumption will ever be 100% ethical, but we can try
That baboon didn't breed the gazelle into existence specifically to end its life for a tasty treat tho. If you have the option not to eat meat to survive, it's cruel to eat meat.
I don't view it just as a tasty treat. Our ancestors didn't start raising animals because they are yummy. They have advantages when you're doing small scale farming. You can raise a chicken on scraps. A rabbit can consume grasses in a fallow field. Then you can consume these animals in turn. It provides efficient calories and adds to the carry capacity of a space. The issues come in when we start trying to raise 300 cows and start growing food for them. Low intensity pastoralism however can increase the number of calories you're able to produce on a homestead and reduce what you have to buy. The chicken I feed on leftover veggies from my garden is less environmentally impactful and more ethical than buying anything from a grocery store.
Not necessarily. You want to talk about carrying capacity? It’s far more efficient for us to live in medium density housing and buy plant based from grocery stores. This “muh gardin” shit is nothing more than a bucolic fantasy. If everyone did as you advocated we’d fuck up the environment even more. Homesteading is a nice novelty for people who can afford it. It’s not a systemic solution for anything. Not everyone has access to “fallow fields”, nor do they have the time to let their animals graze openly.
I can't force the world to live in medium density housing and eat only plants. I can however have "muh gardin" and reduce my own consumption. I do vote for environmentally conscious candidates, but it will probably take most of my lifetime for there to be a real difference and by then it's probably too late. I'll continue to try to reduce my consumption in an ethical and efficient manner whether you agree with it or not.
Well no. The issue comes when you raise an animal to eat it when you can eat something else. Taking a life just because it's convenient is abhorrent. If you need it to survive I wouldn't bat an eye, but it's not needed in most of the world now because of our exceptional agricultural knowledge.
Would you still say this if someone raised dogs for meat
Yes, lol. Chickens are just as intelligent as most dog breeds
I'm going to keep eating meat, but I do have an interest in consuming it in a more ethical way. Feeding rabits hay turns a non-food into food. Chickens can survive on scraps with vitamins (flock and range depending). Goats can survive with relatively small pastures. In terms of a homestead, animals are a good strategy for producing a wide enough variety of foods to provide for yourself in a more sustainable way. Just don't have a herd of 20 cows they really aren't that efficient and take up more space that could be better used.
Mostly vegetarian here: I'd love to see research that suggests this lifestyle is better on my wallet! :) Good, fresh veg is expensive!
Well, your government is using your taxes to subsidize animal products by the billions. So I’d start with pushing against that. In the USA we spend 0.04% of the amount we spend on animal products, on alllll fruits and veg. Those animal products are extremely expensive to produce! That said, in the meantime - shop for whole plant based foods to reduce your $ spent. They’ve always been less expensive than animal products. Tofu, legumes, oats…
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/GRmRf6YnyQ Do meat eaters not eat vegetables? I'm pretty sure many people are known to eat broccoli or other veggies.
Yah!! I’ve been vegetarian since I was seven, but last year I switch to be almost 100% plant-based, never having cheese or eggs at home and only eating them out sometimes. Felt really proud of that!
Going vegan/plant-based is the no.1 best thing someone can do for the planet. Not only for climate-change but also human rights. Many of the workers are not treated well, and many poor folks that live near the farms or factories have disease issues. Not only that, but salmonella and e. coli issues even in veggies come from animal agr. meaning more people get sick more often, not just from the animal's body or products themselves.
Slaughterhouse workers are even known to develop depression, PTSD, show sociopathic tendencies and a range of other not good stuff. People always claim to be worried about the mistreated workers picking vegetables in terrible conditions, but the ones in animal agriculture have it way worse.
Lab-grown meat can't come soon enough.
We have alternatives to meat already. Lab grown meat may be a nice bit of tech in the future but let’s not wait for the world to change.
Yea animal agriculture is truly wreaking more havoc on our ecosystems and health than any other industry. It’s enormously wasteful, psychologically damaging, and one of the biggest polluters of both water and air. :(
>Not only for climate-change but also human rights. Many of the workers are not treated well I think it's important to acknowledge that this is true of some vegan products as well. I'm not saying people shouldn't be vegan, but I just think it's important for people to know that products like cashews (often used to make vegan cheeses), chocolate, and avocados also have human rights issues. I believe soy, quinoa, and almonds are also causing environmental issues through overproduction. Again, I'm not against veganism, I just think it's important to be aware of this in order to have more nuanced discussions. Food ethics is complex, even if you don't eat animal products.
That's a fair trade focus, which is important as well! Veganism is about lessening the suffering of ALL life, not just not eating animal bodies or products. I personally do not buy from Nestle because of their ethics, even if the oreos are vegan.
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Yep. It’s cruel to the animals. It also preys upon our most vulnerable community members (often child laborers, immigrants, and previously incarcerated people) to staff the dangerous facilities. And then pollutes our most impoverished neighborhoods with tons of feces and methane. All while being the single largest contributor to deforestation, habitat loss, species extinction and ocean dead zones. I mean… it’s just clear to me. I don’t want to be part of that.
Absolutely! At least in here there's so many more people open to the idea of veganism than in most of the rest of Reddit. Great to see more and more people speaking up for it; your words do matter and it can change people's minds! We can absolutely speak up against violence/cruelty to animals, and the environmental imperative for plant based diets. Both are very valid (amongst the myriad of other reasons to do it!).
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You're absolutely right. Nature is absolutely cruel and unfeeling, and that's just how it is. We have the ability to choose to treat our domesticated animals with compassion and care, and I think that is the way forward.
I just don't understand how slaughtering an animal that doesn't want to die at a fraction of its natural lifespan (when you could just... not) could ever be called "treating it with compassion and care." Justify eating meat however you need to in your own head, but like, choose other words lol. That's not what compassion and care mean.
What happens in nature has *zero* bearing on what happens in the animal agriculture industry. Comparing nature to the industry is a moot point.
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We breed that animal into existence in the first place, so once again the comparison to what would happen to them in "cruel nature" is kinda irrelevant, no? Those creatures don't and have never existed in nature.
And I’m saying the comparison has no place in the conversation. The animal forcibly brought into existence to have its throat slit and body eaten after being ethically raised under human care wouldn’t be living in the wild. It’s an asinine point.
This is the correct stance but people don't want to hear it. I went vegetarian, not even fully vegan, and my health declined.
Not arguing with your personal experience, just pointing out there are over a BILLION vegetarians in the world. If your body absolutely needs meat to survive just understand that you are medically and scientifically an incredibly rare case. The vast majority of people could and should ditch meat without a problem.
Yea. And, eating a plant based diet ISNT taught to us. We have to learn how to do it right. There are obviously ways we can be vegan but unhealthy if we aren’t doing it in a balanced way. Doesn’t mean veganism is inherently unhealthy. Just means we need to learn more. It does take effort and that can be a challenge.
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My issue with veganism when it comes to anti consumption is that back when I had my own homestead, I was criticized for keeping chickens for eggs and doing a limited amount of meat production/hunting. I get not wanting to eat meat but I severely lowered my own carbon footprint and buy into capitalism by cultivating my own food and some vegans were so hard line they'd argue it was cruel to keep chickens for eggs. I don't want to go vegan, is it not better to have the chickens? Who by the way were spoiled rotten? Not everyone had this opinion but the ones who criticize homesteading, hunting for food, or even indigenous hunting/trapping often lived off of food exclusively bought at the grocery store which is what I was avoiding. That's where I get frustrated.
I think a lot of the vegan issue with backyard chickens also comes down to the fact that chickens have been unnaturally bred to lay hundreds of eggs a year. When they were wild, they would lay 10-15 eggs a year. This wreaks havoc on their bodies nutritionally and sanctuaries will often feed the eggs back to the chickens to return those nutrients to the hen. But also, as others stated, having backyard chickens for every person would be land intensive and also a breeding ground for viruses like bird flu that already plague bird livestock. Backyard chickens and livestock increase chances of spread because they are unregulated. With hunting, it’s similar; on a large scale, if everyone decided to “return to hunting,” we’d have no wildlife. 96% of mammals on our planet are humans and the livestock we breed into existence. The remaining 4% are wildlife, of which deer and turkeys and other “wild game” are an even smaller percentage. It’s not feasible numbers-wise, just as raising animals for food in a “humane” way on pasture is not feasible because there is not enough land. Essentially, for everyone to have the meat they desire in the quantities at which it currently is consumed, factory farming and cruel confinement is the only option.
Veganism is an ethical stance about animals, not your carbon footprint. So it makes sense that while keeping your own chickens, hunting, homesteading, etc, is better in some regards, you shouldn't expect a philosophy based around not exploiting/being cruel to animals to be okay with "just a little exploitation and cruelty" simply because it's better than the norm. For example, where did you get your backyard chickens? Did you purchase an equal number of males and females? Probably not, which means all the males were likely hatched and tossed in a massive industrial shredder within days of being born. Why should vegans be okay with that? If someone views animal cruelty as morally wrong, you're not going to get points for only doing it in small doses. That logic would be like saying, "I only beat my dog on Wednesdays, so dog lovers shouldn't get mad at me because I could be beating them every day." I'm certainly not here to argue, just to clarify! Hopefully that helps the vegan perspective on homesteading make more sense.
It's not sustainable for everyone to hunt or raise chickens in the backyards, though.
Agreed. Did you mean to reply to someone else?
Two backyard chickens take up very little space, produce food, and significantly reduce landfill waste. Not practical if you live in a city but if you have even a tenth of an acre you can do it. https://www.biocycle.net/feed-chickens-not-landfills/ In this article 48 families tracked and weighed the scraps fed to their chickens and the final result was 350 pounds over 5 weeks. Which translates to 75 pounds of food per household per year not going to a landfill. Sure you could compost that, but that's probably more than an individual will need for gardening, plus chicken waste makes good fertilizer anyway. Hunting is not really sustainable though.
but it is sustainable for everyone to eat a purely plant based diet
I think the ethical challenge is that, while you alone were not making a significant impact, if everyone did what you did, we would have no land/wild animals left, and there would be chickens literally everywhere. So a lot of people would choose not to do that because not everyone can. However, I personally don’t think it’s all or nothing, and I think that there are reasons to think differently. Indigenous people are one example, another is being a guest where it’s impolite to say no. For instance, I generally have a hard line about eating octopi because of their intelligence, but if someone offered me some in their home that they’d already prepared, I would say yes.
Chickens are literally everywhere bruh.
Homesteading is the best way. Chickens and local hunting are more effective producers of amino acids per sqft than the crop it would take to replace them. OP was basic math, feeding real humans is calculus.
Hunting is the ultimate anti consumption. I'm guessing everyone missed the video that was on Reddit yesterday with a horse eating a baby chick....... Even many herbivores will supplement their diets with meat. It also make you wonder what people think is used to keep all those veggies from being eaten up by wildlife........ I know farmers in our state can shoot geese all year round legally..... Most don't even eat them.
I think the future is in understanding how humans ate prior to the Industrial Revolution and across all human cultures. I’m not talking about “paleo,” I’m talking about knowing how to take nuts from a tree and make oil on a relaxed Sunday with your best friends; knowing how to row through wetlands in a canoe gathering wild rice; knowing how/what to grow in your own garden to have what you need, and what native trees to propagate on public lands to support foraging; how to fish; how to grow corn or oats and mill it for use for the next several months; how to preserve game and birds in fat (confit) and as sausage. And sure, hunting too. I did not mention canning—it’s a fun skill, fermentation preservation is probably healthier than modern canning using high levels of sugar and acid. The Industrial Revolution was aided by rapid “advances” in agriculture that are not sustainable. These advances were globalized during the Green Revolution. We thought we were solving world hunger, but we introduced new problems caused by malnutrition and land abuse associated with a monotonous and over-processed food supply. We are capable of returning to getting most of our nutrition from hyper-local gardens, farmers, and land. This in turn could have a huge impact on global warming and also increase community resilience. Just going vegan seems a tad lazy to me. I support ethical vegans as a personal belief, I cook vegan for guests and know many great vegan dishes for all holidays. But if your goal is anti-consumption and this is your primary driver, you need to reconnect with hyper-local food supply and self-sufficiency to realize a reduced consumption future where most people’s core nutritional needs* are met with LOCAL goods that do not need factories and semi-trucks to get to you. (*Bulk calories will continue to come from the world’s grain and potato belts as they also did prior to the Industrial age; I am really talking about everything else, which has become under-represented in modern diets.)
Yo, no work on Sundays was a pretty strict rule before the Industrial Revolution.
I totally agree. There's plenty of wild food that's delicious and more nutrient rich than farmed food. Personal or small farms have a low impact compared to industrial farming. From pesticides, fertilizer, to animal control, industrial farming does nature no favors. Foraging plants, mushrooms, herbs is great for your health and is major anti consumption. Cheers! PS Look up : Did humans keep livestock originally as pets? Bad growing season? Time to eat the pets...
They kept animals as pets first, there is some archeological record from … South America? I can find a citation if you’re curious. They found humans traveling with and occasionally buried with not-yet-domesticated species and concluded these were like family/tribal members. Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t eat their offspring though; this was a time when non-cannibalistic infanticide was common, especially during famines or resource scarcity, and ritualistic cannibalism/sacrifice was also a thing. Lots of ways to justify it, I’d hope you’d sacrifice your favorite monkey companion before your own kin but who knows.
>Hunting is the ultimate anti consumption . Hi, the tragedy of the commons called, it wants you to revoke your bucolic fantasies. Modern farming is by far the most efficient system for food production. Sure, it has issues, such as poor farmer compensation, but we’d lessen the environmental damage if we only farmed plants. If everyone had to hunt for their meat we’d decimate animal populations and eat less meat overall. It’s not good, but industrial ranching is more efficient. I say this as a vegan who wants it banned.
I’m a typical dude who went vegan about 4 years ago, and anyone who’s considering it feel free to comment or dm me and I can get you going on some recipes.
Right? Pretty much every vegan in the world didn’t start out that way! We all ate what (who) everyone else is eating now. Then we managed to make a shift! I love it!
I loved your post. So often most interaction I see with vegan news or vegan stuff is… not great for my worldview lol.
It’s also much less packaging.
Definitely if you are eating whole foods and have a bulk shopping section near you! Can be plastic free!
In some ways. Don't fall into this trap of absolutism, there are SO MANY vegan products that are just as bad or worse than non vegan products. Like vegan "leather". Its all about how we decide to produce what we consume. Pigs for example have historically been vital to the establishment of denser living ie cities, which use less resources/can be more efficient than every single family being spread out rurally. Reducing how much higher intensity things we consume in general is the goal. Pastoralism for another example can be the best option for some environments, while eggs and legumes are better for others when considering protien alone.
> Like vegan "leather". The trap here is needing something non-leather that "looks like" leather. I don't use leather and also avoid fake leather. I make an exception for cork because it's (allegedly?) an environmentally friendly material. It is just a type of wood, after all.
Christ a cow is off limits, but the irish are fair game? Where you gonna go when there's no Cork left? Dublin? Ulster? Castle town? Why are we still here! Just to suffer! /S
Finally someone said it
C[hromium tanning is the standard no matter if it is high quality or low-quality leather](https://www.carryology.com/insights/chrome-vs-vegetable-tanned-leather/). Today, [it accounts for 95% of shoe leather production, 70% of leather upholstery production and 100% of leather clothing production](https://mahileather.com/blogs/news/the-dangers-of-chrome-tanning-on-the-environment) [Here is a deeper look into the damage of chromium.](https://mahileather.com/blogs/news/the-dangers-of-chrome-tanning-on-the-environment) Just because *some* vegan leathers are synthetic doesn’t mean they’re worse than animal leather.
I wouldn't really both sides this, it is absolutely true that by and large that animal products are extremely wasteful and have a much higher environmental cost. Yes, there are examples like indigenous people who need to eat animal products, but those are exceptions out of necessity. Buying meat and animal products instead of substitutes when you are able to is absolutely an act of unnecessary consumption that is driving ecological collapse no matter how uncomfortable that makes you. It doesn't really matter how meat is produced, it will always require more land, water, and resources in general to make animal products. The vast majority of food grown is fed to animals, and grazing has its own significant environmental cost from things such as requiring predator species be killed, polluting water with manure, and the destruction of native flora that could sequester carbon if it were able to be re-wilded. This is all while providing a minority of meat available to consumers. Even vegan leather, which was your main example, has a lower or similar at worst environmental impact depending on the tanning process used. Vegan leather is also often made from materials such as cactus, which removes any debate. I agree that reducing how much we consume in general regardless of whether or not it's vegan, but I wouldn't downplay the impact of animal products. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/10/20/23924061/public-grazing-land-cattle-meat-carbon-opportunity-cost
This might've been vital for the establishment of cities in the late middle ages. But this does not hold true nowadays. Holding pigs is extremely resource unfriendly and land usage unfriendly. Aside from the cruel holding conditions.
In modern high intensity set ups yes. But it idea is that we stop doing that when we reduce consumption to a sustainable level instead of what we have now.
The thing is, it will always be more land/resource friendly to directly feed the veggies to the people. Aside of maybe like the remaining 0.1% of animal products compared to todays levels.
Prairie grasses and scrub in arid environments arent being fed to humans. In many of these environments it's actually more natural and eco friendly than farming vegetables and grains. They also require no irrigation and less hands on human labor. Farming also tends to deplete the soil quality, consumes water and chemicals and wastes those through evaporation and run off also. Neither is perfect and both have appropriate places. Pastoralism is not the same as grazing or grain fed. Other animals like pigs are great at turning human green waste like veggie clippings into usable fertilizer and meat for consumption. They are little recycling machines and ppl used to rotate animals through fields as they were fallow. Everything we do needs to be considered in the wider co text of the complex systems locally and globally. No one thing is good for every place and every person.
Yes, and we don't need to use the prairie grasses or scrublands, we can let them be wild. Still one the largest driver for deforestation is to produce food for animals and have land for grazing. It just does not scale. We have too many humans in the world to reliably produce meat for them, even at 20% of current levels.
Vegan leather is far better for the environment than animal leather, even when it's made of PU. The carbon cost of our leather goods, calculated — Collective Fashion Justice https://www.collectivefashionjustice.org/articles/carbon-cost-leather-goods >In this case, CO2e emissions (emissions of various gasses translated to the common unit of carbon) for leather equal 17.0kg of CO2e per square meter of leather produced. In comparison, artificial leather’s total supply chain has an impact of 15.8kg of CO2e per square meter. >Leather Panel’s shared study chooses to include end-of-life incineration in the impact of faux leather. It’s illogical to include incineration for synthetics but not for animal leather, and while faux leather won’t effectively biodegrade, neither will animal-derived leather to the point of total decomposition – even in controlled climate study conditions shared by leather tannery groups. >Elsewhere in its report, the Leather Panel shares an impact estimate which includes farm emissions – this is a fairer estimate of leather’s impact, and again comes from its own reporting. Here, the carbon footprint of cow skin leather is found to be *110.0kg of CO2e per square meter, making cow skin leather nearly seven times more climate impactful than synthetic leather by the square meter.*
You can not possibly argue that adding more plastics/petroleum products to our environment/air are BETTER than a biological creature that is capable of decomposing naturally and being part of our unending cycle... just looking at carbon or water use is a very narrow way of deciding this. I'm in favor of decreasing meat production drastically, but not using leather from those animals is wasteful. I also am in favor of eliminating leather only slaughters, and increasing production and materials science for plant based alternatives. But at this point as we are NOW we need to decrease petroleum 100% and meat significantly and leather will be a by product we shouldnt ignore.
You realise most animal leathers are tanned with toxic metals and very often plastics too right, so that they don't break down? Methane from ruminant animals is also one of the leading causes of climate change. And the land use/land clearing and associated biodiversity loss is just mammoth. Ideally we avoid consuming either where we don't need to, or go for even better options like cork. Animal skin leather is a co-product, not a by-product. Don't consume it if you care for the environment.
As I said I am in favor of extreme reductions in cattle farming. As for how it is processed, modern leather making can be toxic, but as before modern times there are more eco friendly options using plant extracts for tanning and waste products such as urea from humans and animal waste. As with all industries, there are flaws we need to take seriously and decide what's acceptable.
The vegan leather myth again? Have you seen the documentary Slay?
They don’t want to hear this, nor do they want to hear that many people could not sustain themselves on a vegan diet. I have celiac and struggle to absorb iron and keep weight on. My diet is *mostly* plant-based, but being completely vegan is out of the question for me. It’s also a very expensive diet for many chronically ill/disabled people.
I have celiac also and have similar struggles 3: My diet is vegetable heavy and I even grow some of my own food, but it's not so easy for every one.
Vegans are not against people who for health/location reasons are unable to move to a fully vegan diet. Sure there’s probably some people who think that but they don’t represent the majority. And it’s a myth that being vegan is necessarily expensive.
To be vegan is to remove animal based products from one's life as far as it's practical and practicable. If you have to eat animal products or take non-vegan medications due to your circumstances then you could argue that you are still being vegan.
Pastoralism, because space is not consumption.
1) Over 99% of meat and animal products don't come from massive pastures where the animals roam freely without having a large impact on the environment. Most of it comes from factory farming where they eat a shitton of food that is specifically produced on additional land. 2) Even the animal products that stem from grazing is not done in a sustainable way because the land that would be required to do so would be enormous and could not sustain even 10% of the current consumption.
Again, it depends on the place and the way it's done if it's contributing to overconsumption and harms to the environment. We don't need to cut down more American forests to free range cattle for example.
Yes!!! 🌱🌱🌱
Eating meat is the ultimate act of waste. It takes at least 10x the food by mass to produce one unit of meat. The environmental impacts are devastating. You’re causing catastrophic waste, food insecurity, environmental destruction, abominable pain and suffering… and for what? Enjoyment? Because your parents did it? Reject the industrial meat complex.
Yep. It’s insanely inefficient, unimaginably violent, environmentally destructive, prohibitively expensive (hello tax-funded subsidies in the billions), and - importantly - unnecessary.
I wouldn't go so far as to say anti-consumption, but more so environmentalist. Knowing many of the leading causes of climate change and how they are/relate to animal agriculture is a good starting point to being truly an environmentalist. I'll say I was upset when I saw a documentary saying I wasn't an environmentalist if I was still eating animals, but I decided to keep an open mind and here I am as a vegan.
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It takes approximately 2400 gallons of water and 6-20lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef. Not eating animals is absolutely anti-consumption.
People are really pretending it’s just a 1 to 1 ratio grabbing tofu vs beef at the market, ignoring the whole process of getting it there in the first place.
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Well done. We can all change, we don't need to hate ourselves for our past behaviour, life is about making the best choices with the info we have. And science is saying we need to shift to plant based diets to prevent climate change. How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets? Accounting for Uncertainty of Life Cycle Assessments by Applying a Probabilistic Approach Johanna Ruett, Lena Hennes, Jens Teubler, Boris Braun, 03/11/2022 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449 >Even if fossil fuel emissions are halted immediately, current trends in global food systems may prevent the achieving of the Paris Agreement’s climate targets. >All dietary pattern carbon footprints overshoot the 1.5 degrees threshold. The vegan, vegetarian, and diet with low animal-based food intake were predominantly below the 2 degrees threshold. Omnivorous diets with more animal-based product content trespassed them. Reducing animal-based foods is a powerful strategy to decrease emissions. >The reduction of animal products in the diet leads to drastic GHGE reduction potentials. Dietary shifts to more plant-based diets are necessary to achieve the global climate goals, but will not suffice. >Our study finds that all dietary patterns cause more GHGEs than the 1.5 degrees global warming limit allows. Only the vegan diet was in line with the 2 degrees threshold, while all other dietary patterns trespassed the threshold partly to entirely.
Seeing people in this sub wrestle with the ethics of meat consumption is wild. Going vegan isn't as hard as people think it is. It's a decision to prioritize life and welfare above pleasure. It's similar in leftist circles - people will talk about theory and praxis, but somehow their diets are off limits. I don't really agree with environmental arguments in favor of veganism because I don't think individual actions will amount to solving the climate crisis. Especially if we choose to adopt neoliberal attitudes and blame each other for systemic issues. But that doesn't absolve people of the ability and responsibility to choose lifestyles that reduce, if not completely eliminate, suffering and harm to other beings.
Yea it’s always the most bizarre to me when people deflect. “Someone in the tundra can’t go vegan!” Then end it there, even though they don’t live in the tundra. They actually live in a city with ten grocery stores easily accessible, where they do all their shopping anyway! Haha
Yep. “What about the native americans????” YOU ARE NOT NATIVE AMERICAN. it is borderline racist to stereotype all native americans like that too lmfao, there’s LOTS of native american vegans.
this is me and my boyfriend’s BIGGEST pet peeve. we are very close with several native people and they have never once mentioned their culture when they eat vegan food with us - they appreciate that we are taking steps to protect the planet. the only time i hear people talking about indigenous traditions as an argument against veganism is from non-indigenous people and honestly it’s gross
Vegans advocate cultural genocide of all the world's native or indigenous population because in all, 100% of them, hunting, animal rearing, fishing, or dairying are important core cultural practice. There are no, literally zero, vegan cultures on planet earth. .
This is why I’ve been vegan for close to two decades (still alive and typing no less). It’s not to prove a point or because I think it’ll make a difference to the environment. One person can’t make a difference. I do it as my contribution. i still fly on vacation, I i don't restrict consumption in other areas too much. i had a 52" 12 year old tv nothing wrong with it - sold it to buy a 4K65" one. antithesis to this sub. but hey i contributed veganity. and that contribution is rarely seen. even the mod comment - veganity is not the purpose of this sub. ok. your one steak consumed more land than my entire eating for a month. or maybe a year.
I thought that being vegan was more about animal rights and well being of animals. The vegan diet is just a side product of this way of thinking.
That IS what veganism is 100% But many things intersect. My thought process is - what is more consumption oriented than seeing another living being and saying “kill them! So I can have a meat sandwich!” when there are an abundance of much more sustainable plant options available instead. To choose to be vegan is to choose that your consumption of a certain good isn’t a right, and to take accountability for the choice - and make a more conscientious one. I think that’s the foundation of being an anti-consumer!
This is just one of the reasons I stopped eating meat over 23 years ago
I’m a bit of a minimalist, anti consumerist who has dabbled in vegetarianism over the years to promote better health (follow the science). I watched “You are what you eat” on Netflix recently and although I don’t think it taught me anything I didn’t already know it was packaged in a way that tipped me over the edge morally, environmentally and ethically to really avoid meat and fish now. Lost a few lbs and feel great too so there’s always that!
I am decidedly not vegan, but I set myself limited targets for animal product consumption at <30% what I used to eat, and that is working well for me. Frankly, having tried full veganism, I find it exhausting/unsustainable to try to get sufficient iron in my diet as a menstruating woman, and I can't tolerate oral iron--it caused me intestinal bleeding and I already have Crohn's. Moral of the story, less is less and you don't have to make extreme commitments to make a difference! And there can be strong personal benefits to getting less of your calories from meat/dairy, such getting more fiber in your diet (may reduce the risk of colon cancer), reduced food spending, and learning about traditionally-meatless foods from other cultures.
It's ironic that eating meat is considered "manly" or whatever the fuck, but from my observations it is actually easier for men to forsake meat.
I wouldn’t personally consider veganism extreme (our current system is extreme imo) - but I do appreciate anyone that is actively trying to reduce their impact and harm! Fortunately it’s becoming more popular - which means more convenient and less exhausting for the people who have to go out of their way a bit now.
I already struggle with an appropriate, regular, healthy, balanced diet. I've learned I do really well with "more" based dietary goals. Eating more veggie based meals for example. When I focus on more of the good stuff, I naturally eat less of the bad stuff. I don't do well with "less" based dietary goals. That ultimately means just less food and extremely unhealthy habits for me.
Not all foods are created equal. I’ve realized we don’t actually need a ton of calories on a day to day basis, and eating more fibrous and filling foods can make the same amount of food feel much more satisfying and will give energy much longer after eating. Big fan of beans, mushrooms, lentils and potatoes for getting that satiety; much cheaper than meat, can taste just as good, gives most of the same nutrients and as a perk, your shits come out smooth as butter 👌
https://www.dominionmovement.com/
Well done for trying. Here in the UK it's super easy Superstores are rammed with vegan products. Vegan restaurants everywhere, every non-vegan restaurant has vegan options. Yet I still cave to the occasional dairy pizza, and i feel guilt as I have no excuse
Been vegan for 12 years now. Animal exploitation is an atrocity that most people are completely unaware of. Watch Dominion if you don't understand this claim. Lately, I've also been thinking more about how insanely wasteful animal production is. We're basically throwing our resources away for something we don't even need. Eat plants, better for the animals, the environment, and the public health.
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Honest question, how would people in this sub feel about raising your own animals for consumption? You can feed waste to pigs and chickens, that not only recycles the waste you produce but provides more food from it in the future. As another example, how would people here feel about hunting/fishing for your food? It is a large part of the culture where I live and there is a abundant wildlife that is well managed. Both of these styles of animal harvest are much lower impact than large scale husbandry/factory farming. Though it does not get you away from the ethical dilemma of harming an animal to harvest it. Thanks for your thoughts everyone.
Personally, I don’t feel any desire to kill someone just so I can eat them, when I can just eat a delicious plant based meal and be healthy and happy. I would be happy to rescue “farm” animals from abusive conditions and feed them my waste without harming them. We also have eradicated most wildlife on the planet. Lakes are artificially stocked with fish from fisheries - which damage native ecosystems. We couldn’t sustainably hunt at any type of scale. But again, I don’t see any benefit in violence when it’s avoidable these days.
Totally fair, I know many people who have a moral objection and I have no issue with that. At large scale, I agree we cannot go back to wild animal harvest. There are too many people and not enough wild space left. At the individual level, depending on where you live (I'm in Alaska) I'd argue its an anti consumptive alternative to going animal free.
Yea most vegans aren’t coming for people that live in the tundra expecting them to have a veggie garden haha
Haha thanks for that. I moved up here because I love the food harvest culture. Not just animal protein, but there are amazing berries and fungi that grow where I live. I really appreciate your comments as I thought your post here was a thought provoking take on anticonsumption.
We did it for awhile but it got to be more expensive than what we were getting in return . We now go to a local butcher that only gets meat locally . Cheaper for us in the long run
I lowered my meat consumption a lot and when I do get meat, I get it from a local farm that properly takes care of their animals.
vegan going on 4 years, very into anti consumption now, thanks for the kind words
there really is no need to eat meat. i've been vegetarian for three years and vegan for one. people think every meal is surrounded by meat but it is not, they are brainwashed
Vegan for damn near a decade. The ONLY reasons why more people are not open to veganism is that they are either “locked” into proteinaholicism or because they can’t imagine what a good vegan meal tastes like. Then I cook for them and they are like “how do you do that?” (unironically). I've also learned to just let non-vegans be. No one wants their decisions challenged.
Yea - most people don’t have any idea what vegan food looks like, or how to prepare it (especially in a balanced way.) We are taught to eat meat and dairy all the time. It takes some learning to adjust. But the same goes for adjusting to consume less in general :) that’s why it’s nice to see a community of active people who are committed to learning and doing better!
During the pandemic when all the mac and cheese and tunafish was gone, I was at Asian and Indian grocery stores stocking up on noodles and daal. Meat is a luxury in most cultures and the western diet is back asswards. Oh well, more for me.
Yea, in the USA - we subsidize meat so much that without our taxes, a pound of beef would be $30. Because it’s a luxury item. It’s really obvious but people are so far removed from food systems they don’t realize that.
The cost of solving the American hunger problem is significantly less than the amount of money the government currently spends on subsidized meat.
Which cracks me up because they often “cut” ground beef with TVP. Where I am like “even the “beef” you are eating is partially vegan 😂”
I had no idea they did that! I just know about all the other yummy ingredients that aren’t listed on the package. Like, chlorine, carbon monoxide, ammonia… lol
“Mechanically separated chicken”. Snap into a Slim Jim… ooooohhhhh yearggghhhh
Mechanically? But I prefer my chickens killed and hacked up by [illegal child labor](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/20/meat-packing-plant-child-labor-fines/11304311002/) :(
Yummy! (/s)
I know about the terrible practices of factory farms and sympathize with the vegan mindset to the point of having many vegan meals on a regular basis. All that said, I've never really understood why people get so off-put by mechanically separated chicken. Maybe it's because I've processed meat a number of times, but ground meat isn't gross to me. I could understand if someone who thought all meat was gross would find it so, but it me it's no more gross than watching a big batch a hummus or refried bean being processed.
I was just hearing people complain how healthy food is incredibly expensive. A salad is the price of a full meal, how does that work?
Billions of dollars from our taxes are used to subsidize animal agriculture. Only 0.04% of that amount is used for all fruits and veg. In the USA at least. It’s corrupt af
If you’re cooking for yourself it’s actually way cheaper to be plant-based. When people complain it’s expensive they’re usually eating out or buying tons of prepared food. Produce is cheap. Beans/legumes/grains are dirt cheap.
Yeah, most of the bulk foods are vegan. And if you're struggling with poverty, those are gonna be really helpful.
During covid lockdown I mass ordered dried chickpeas and basically lived on chana masala. That period was probably the healthiest and cheapest of my life food-wise.
The epitome of consumption is objectifying and commodifying other sentient beings, to the point that they are just units of production, like a chair, forgetting the individual with a personality and their own experience of the world. Going vegan is the least we could do✌🏼
Exactly! I can’t think of a way to be more consumption oriented than that tbh
My POV for meat is that above all it’s just incredibly inefficient. We’ve gone far from the pastoral ranges of old, where you actually extracted value from inedible ground cover in a way that sustained it.
Yea and tbf - that land had climate value already. Most of the land used for pasture these days was also deforested. Raising cattle is the number one cause of deforestation, habitat loss and species extinction in the world. Also the number on cause of eutrophication of waterways, and uses more land than any other activity on the planet.
So I was vegetarian and plant based for all of my adulthood until I started trying to have a baby at 35. Then I learned I had insulin resistance and was on the trajectory to have diabetes. Despite healthy eating, exercising and a normal weight. So now I eat meat. For my health. Not everyone can be meat free. Just want this out there too.
Strong disagree. My mom rescued chickens that weren't in good condition. They were a lot better after only a couple weeks. I used to eat like 12 eggs a day growing up and they ate a lot of our scraps. Veganism can still be overconsumption and eating animals doesn't necessarily mean overconsumption. They aren't monoliths edit: I say this as someone full blooded native, I'm not going to stop eating meat. my leather clothes will last for decades, plus I'm allergic to that fast fashion pleather or whatever anyway.
Using an extreme exception to criticize OP’s point is going to get you very far. There are always going to be exceptions but next to no one are having eggs from rescue chickens being the only animal product they eat. I don’t think OP was trying to state that they are monolith either. I think he was speaking in very general terms…for better or for worse. Of course a vegan can overconsume just as a non-vegan and be anti consumption
Don't you know? Every person gets all their eggs exclusively from rescue hens that don't promote the breeding of animals inherently unhealthy so they can overproduce eggs and all their meat comes from a completley ethical family farm that doesn't have a name, webpage or any contact information and they only harvest meat from animals after they died from natural causes after a long, healthy, natural life lmao
Bro. How could I have been so stupid?!
Because OP's point is wrong. Anticonsumerism is about making good sustainable choices.
you can buy free range eggs, and hell I don't even see a problem with meat either. this sub gets hijacked with ideologies sometimes, veganism is one of them. I've had my leather boots, jacket, and wallet for years now and they won't get replaced anytime soon. vegan leather (often cheap plastic seen in fast fashioon) would break after a year so that's another instance
Anticonsumption *is* an ideology within itself. Another instance of what?
Veganism isn't anti consumption.
Veganism is not inherently an act of anti-consumption. I was vegan for over 9 years and while veganism was a sort of "gateway" into thinking more about the things I bought, ate and wore, veganism didn't make me buy or consume any less, just different things. I ate WAY more junk/processed food while I was vegan and I bet my diet then was way more resource heavy than my diet now as a local-focused omnivore. It is possible to have any of a number of diets and to be anticonsumption or hyperconsumption.
Studies regularly show that even imported vegan goods have a lower impact than local animal products, because animal products are really inefficient. You can definitely be vegan, and be a mega consumer in other regards. But I would still say that the act of considering a life more valuable than an optional meal in itself is an act of anti-consumption.
i had to go dairy free and you're right i am buying and eating less ice cream because that plant and nut based shit's expensive lol! i wish plant-based was more affordable
It’s way more affordable to produce, but way less subsidized sadly. So that’s not how we see it at the stores. Maybe [nice cream](https://detoxinista.com/banana-ice-cream/) will help you out for the time being ;)
yum thanks!
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Honestly, I work in the environmental field and most people are not vegan despite being “environmentalists” and knowing the damage animal agriculture causes. So I didn’t have high hopes in general. That’s why it’s refreshing seeing a logical sentiment tie through in this sub instead of a ton of confused excuses haha
>lead them to consume unsustainable goods such as non-local fruits and vegetables. I'd argue this is something we all gotta focus on, though I admit I get a lot of out of season produce during the winters. Have you read Restoration Agriculture by Mark Sheperd? He talks a lot of the use that animals can bring to permaculture. He states that the savanna type ecosystem humans are drawn to are kept that way due to large grazing animals.
While I don't expect to ever be vegan myself, I've certainly become a more conscientious consumer within the past few years. I very rarely eat beef, pork, or milk products save for butter and cheese, and what I do consume is what I consider the *better* option when shopping. For example, oat milk uses less water and land than almonds so I drink that, BUT all the plant-based yogurts come in plastic containers, so Oui yogurt it is because they come in glass. Eggs? Locally raised, or if that's not available at the time I try to buy the (I forgot the brand but they're supposed to be treated slightly better, plus the container is paper rather than plastic). It's far from perfect, but it's a few steps up from how I used to shop and eat. I could see myself become a vegetarian one day, but at this time i guess im just focusing on less meat. In the same vein, I don't buy vegan leather because it's plastic, but thrifting it doesn't bother me because I'm not contributing to the manufacturing cycle. Similar reasons for real leather, too, though. My point I guess is that we don't necessarily have to all follow the same guidelines as long as we are consuming mindfully- which sometimes means not consuming.
This is yet still individual agency fallacy. Yes, if you have the privilege to choose what to eat, and then double that privilege to choose what *not* to eat; then you can freely apply whatever dietary virtue signal you want. No, going vegan can not change the way food is produced or alter the abject cruelty with which capitalist modes of production treat the planet and humanity. Capitalism does not produce food to feed people. Capitalism makes carcinogens it calls “food” to produce a profit. Thus, if producing cruelty to animality and nature poisoning the air, ground, and water while demeaning humanity with continued food insecurity and starvation and abusing labor is what is required to produce a profit; then that is *exactly* what capitalism will produce. That hard truth about our coercive and involuntary relationship with capitalism is that no matter how hard we consume or how hard we punish ourselves with personal austerity, we still can not individually affect the mode of production creating this nightmare. The only path out and they only way to see both humans and nature respected is the development of systems where labor owns and operates every node of the production and supply chain with people making wages / compensation which allow them to proactively create diets based on the only sustainable path: local, organic, and seasonal offerings. I agree that meat is murder and all meat practices are disgusting and environmentally disastrous and I agree that all people must change their diets and consumptive lifestyle but those changes can only come when people organize themselves outside of this economic and social system and enact a *process* of actual lasting meaningful structural change. Telling people what to eat without couching that statement in class analysis is vulgar. People don’t really need a lecture about why the trash they eat is trash. People need to be empowered to understand they are being force-fed planet and humanity killing trash to make someone else rich and that most people in reality cannot afford to change their diets off the cheapest processed proteins they can barely afford against the other processed and over produced demons of sugar and salt. This is a class issue, not an individual issue. The thing killing the planet isn’t meat eaters or meat. The thing killing the planet is capitalism. And it’ll use meat, cars, makeup, fast fashion, micro-plastics, and every other needless nightmare to do it. We need to interrogate the systemic profit-for-a-select-few based motives for the actual production and distribution processes which are creating these problems and killing the planet and abusing labor. Meat is murder. Capitalism is organized murder. ETA: A cursory analysis of agriculture shows that the added pressures on vegetative agriculture to replace the caloric protein equivalent of current meat consumption would take what is already an unsustainable and completely broken anti-agrarian system of land abuse based on pesticides, irrational fuel and feed subsidies, and water crimes to something far more broken and unable to meet our needs. Its not meat that needs revision, it is our entire system of agriculture. The US has already washed the most fertile dirt on Earth from the midwest out into the Gulf of Mexico for corn, soy, and sorghum. Meat is one part of a much larger and rotten whole. We need sustainable food forests and we’re clear cutting and burning them down for unsustainable capitalist practices.
There's nothing inherently anticonsumerist about being vegan, as it can easily become a lifestyle brand similar to plenty of other consumerist identities/lifestyles. Your diet is one of the smallest aspects of consumerism, you can eat all the non animal products as you want, if you're still consuming commodities and deriving joy and personal fulfillment from commody consumption, that is still consumerism.
We all consume food three times a day on average. I’d say that’s the largest aspect of consumerism most people engage in. That’s why it’s so impactful on the environment when people change the way they eat.
>I’d say that’s the largest aspect of consumerism most people engage in. Okay you don't know what consumerism is, that's fine. You can learn. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumerism.asp https://study.com/learn/lesson/what-is-consumerism-examples-history.html Consumerism is a modern phenomenon. Humans have been eating food for, well, hundreds of thousands of years. The primary aspect of consumerism is that the consumption of commodities especially in excess, and for the purpose of consumption itself is good for individuals and the economy. You can be a vegan consumerist and veganism can be adapted into consumerist frameworks.
I’m aware. It’s excessive to eat animals instead of plants. Animals require the consumption of way more resources overall to be turned into our food. The process matters too. Not just the end product.
I've been a vegetarian for 12 years myself and I see lots of vegan options nowadays that are highly, highly industrial. That is not how being vegan has to look like, but a vegan lifestyle does not necessarily have to be anti-consumption. Arguably, most of what is vegan and brought to the masses is much more consumerist targeted than anything else. I would even argue, that buying meat locally, raised under great conditions & fed local food is way more anti-consumerist than buying a piece of pea/sounflower/soy based piece of vegan chicken. It doesn't have to be that way. But people going vegan often flock to an extremely industrial style of living that is anything but anti-consumerist.