There was a post about making cats vegan. The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet. The Lemmy.world admins them stepped in stating that improperly feeding your cat constitutes animal abuse and is unethical. This made many die hard vegans very mad.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind. There bodies start breaking down without the proteins and amino acids found in meat. I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
Interesting enough, that’s not the case for dog. You can put a dog on a vegan diet as long as you are very careful and are constantly monitoring. It isn’t for the faint of heart and can have very sad outcomes. It isn’t something you can arbitrarily do.
It’s bizarre to me that harcore vegans want to own a pet to begin with. Keeping bees for honey is bad, but separating a kitten from its mother at an early age and castrating it for your convenience and deciding how they live (restricted to an apartment or not) is totally fine?
I understand that most pets live a good life, but man, I can’t bring myself to make choices like these. I mean there are ways to circumvent it (get an older cat from an asylum for example) but it doesn’t really remove the “pet dilemma” to me.
I am a vegan. While my dogs were alive they ate meat as well as veggies. It seems to me that a lot of vegans don’t realise that it’s a scale and not binary. The whole philosophy of veganism is “as much as you are able” so I guess there is extremism everywhere.
I’m vegan and I don’t know why these “vegans” are towing the line to to include non-human species. It’s just as gross for vegan humans to apply their values to values in a dominant manner as it is for non-vegans to. Literally vegans doing this is antithesis to the entire cause.
I’m glad they got slapped. You’ll always have idiots in a movement I guess…
Why do people even try to keep cats on vegan diet? It was your fucking choice, not the cats.
Im vegetarian, my cat eats meat. Im not gonna force anything on him unless he comes to me and tells me he wants to try it.
It’s a microcosm for science denial or misunderstanding of all kinds. Vegan cats and antivax may not seem related but the underlying misinformation is not dissimilar.
I tried following up on the vegan cat research being posted and it was very difficult to get a solid answer. There are multiple brands of vegan cat food marketed and sold, and it isn’t outrageous to believe that our industrial society could find an ethical way to source the necessary nutrients and enrich the cat food.
But also there’s very few studies that test the claims of the vegan cat food. What few meta-analysis exist, and anecdotes online, would suggest that all those foods lack certain critical nutrients for long-term feline health. But the anecdotes are drowned out by well-intentioned people who want to believe it works, and the studies are small, rare, hard to read, and locked behind paywalls.
A lot of vegans will hate this, but YOU’RE NOT A FUCKING SCIENTIST! Drop all the journals and research you want, but your pet is not a lab-controlled experiment. Besides, something being in a journal doesn’t make it true. If it is regularly cited as true, and has swept into general understanding of how to feed a pet, then it’s factual…
I’m all for vegans living their best lives. Don’t force it on a pet that doesn’t know better. Vegans harming animals through their own food choices isn’t a new thing, ask most vets and they’ll have seen the effects of malnutrition from someone that thought that they knew better.
Well put. Cats are OBLIGATE carnivores. They do not have anatomy to support extracting necessary nutrition from vegan sources that are available. It IS hypothetically possibly for them to survive and thrive on an engineered food source but, such a thing does not currently exist and the chemical complexity makes it unlikely in the near future.
Making dogs vegan still doesn’t sound like a good idea to me tho
The reason cats can’t be vegan is that they cannot produce an amino acid called taurine, which is something dogs and humans can produce (but which we also get sometimes from dietary sources).
Most dietary sources of taurine are meat. This is why dogs and humans “can be vegan” but cats “can’t”. However, vegan taurine is made and can be bought as a supplement, both for humans (if you want to ensure you get some taurine in your diet), but also in properly made vegan cat food.
It seems to me then that cats can be vegan, just not without intentional effort to ensure proper supplementation of taurine. That is, they couldn’t be vegan in the wild (where the only source of taurine is meat) and you can’t just start to feed them a vegan diet without taurine and expect the cat to be healthy and survive.
In fact, cats fed a proper vegan diet tend to have better health:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499249/
I think the question is really what you are feeding your “vegan” cat: if you have managed to find (or make) a properly fortified vegan cat food it is theoretically possible to feed your cat a vegan diet.
This all feels a bit like the “controversy” around feeding young children and babies a vegan diet: done poorly it can be catastrophic (pun not intended), but it’s entirely possible to have a healthy vegan diet when enough effort is put into ensuring nutritional needs are actually satisfied.
That said, I also know of two other vegan responses:
- for some vegans, having pets is not vegan to begin with, so a “vegan cat” is a contradiction in terms even if you fed them a vegan diet, you still wouldn’t be an ethical vegan by owning a cat. This is admittedly a less commonly held view which centers ethical veganism on the rights of animals to have autonomy, which if plausible in some ways seems at least impractical in the case of domesticated animals. There are questions of the harm that might be caused by choosing to treat cats not as pets but as autonomy-rights-bearing “wild” animals, but those ethical vegans might rightly point out this doesn’t undo the cat’s rights and the practical questions should be handled separately.
- most vegans I know IRL just feed cats a non-vegan diet, acknowledging it is safer and more reasonable for their cat than trying to figure out a way to feed them a vegan diet. Good vegan cat food isn’t that common or easy to find as far as I know, and I assume it would be outrageously expensive.
this is hilarious, and 100% on brand for a vegan community.
Thank you for the summary! I found myself in OP. I am eating mostly vegan, and I have a cat, and I believe people who force a vegan (or even vegetarian) diet on their cats need mental help.
Was this the article that started it? Do you have the thread or would an archived link be required to see it?
Vegan versus meat-based cat food: Guardian-reported health outcomes in 1,369 cats, after controlling for feline demographic factors [Andrew Knight, Alexander Bauer, Hazel Brown | Published: September 13, 2023][1]
Abstract
Increasing concerns about environmental sustainability, farmed animal welfare and competition for traditional protein sources, are driving considerable development of alternative pet foods. These include raw meat diets, in vitro meat products, and diets based on novel protein sources including terrestrial plants, insects, yeast, fungi and potentially seaweed. To study health outcomes in cats fed vegan diets compared to those fed meat, we surveyed 1,418 cat guardians, asking about one cat living with them, for at least one year. Among 1,380 respondents involved in cat diet decision-making, health and nutrition was the factor considered most important. 1,369 respondents provided information relating to a single cat fed a meat-based (1,242–91%) or vegan (127–9%) diet for at least a year. We examined seven general indicators of illness. After controlling for age, sex, neutering status and primary location via regression models, the following risk reductions were associated with a vegan diet for average cats: increased veterinary visits– 7.3% reduction, medication use– 14.9% reduction, progression onto therapeutic diet– 54.7% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of being unwell– 3.6% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of more severe illness– 7.6% reduction, guardian opinion of more severe illness– 22.8% reduction. Additionally, the number of health disorders per unwell cat decreased by 15.5%. No reductions were statistically significant. We also examined the prevalence of 22 specific health disorders, using reported veterinary assessments. Forty two percent of cats fed meat, and 37% of those fed vegan diets suffered from at least one disorder. Of these 22 disorders, 15 were most common in cats fed meat, and seven in cats fed vegan diets. Only one difference was statistically significant. Considering these results overall, cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than cats fed meat-based diets. This trend was clear and consistent. These results largely concur with previous, similar studies.
Oh fuck. And here I was willing to side with the vegan mods because I assumed people were just shitting on vegans again.
I wish I would understand why people always have to take everything to the extreme. If you get mad about carnivorous pets not being able to follow your personal diet, you’re an extremist asshole who just chose veganism as your religion. You can be vegan without being an extremist asshole, so it must be something else causing this.
making cats vegan
For a second (or maybe longer, until I read the wlhole thing) I thought they wanted to consider eating cats as being vegan.
The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet.
Pets eat pre-processed food, and we’ve had vegetarian protein supplements for a while. How does this work for cats? Idk, ask a vet. But these foods have been around for a while and I’m not hearing about a mass die-off of indoor cats as a result, so I’m willing to give vegan cat owners the benefit of the doubt.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind.
The expected lifespan of feral cats in the wild runs around 2-5 years. House cats routinely live into their teenage years and can hit north of 20. The ideal lifestyle for a cat is indoors, regardless of the precise composition of their diets.
People are so weird. We’re animals, and herbivores, meat is just a thing we have been eating since before we were fully humans. I’m a vegetarian but my kids aren’t, and I prefer it that way cause I know that as they’re growing, it’s easier to provide a nutritious diet that way. I don’t particularly like to prepare or even smell the cooked meat but, it’s their food so you gotta do it. I think a lot of these people are just grossed out about having meat products in their house. If you want a pet who doesn’t eat meat, get a bird. (By the way, I have pet birds and even they love protein like cooked chicken and eggs)
Vegans argued that cats, which are obligate carnivores, can eat a vegan diet safely. Lemmy.world admin removed the posts for being misinformation, and the vegan community threw a fit over it.
Ask your vet what they think about a vegan diet for your pets. They will tell you “no”. That should really be the end to the discussion, but I guess these guys think they know better than actual experts.
It’s so sad, because veganism is a good force in our culture. Look at all of the vegan meat alternatives and more and more restaurants that have to have at least vegetarian options in certain areas. That wasn’t a thing 20 years ago.
Vegan diets help the environment and improve health. But many vegans get this brain rot, probably a consequence of a superiority complex where they have to police everything around them. It happens in a lot of communities.
I’m not a vegan. But the idea has me eating less and less meat every year.
I imagine most vegans are just ordinary people. And hell, good on them for making the environmentally friendly choice. I’ve been excited that my local stores are starting to carry plant-based alternatives that aren’t expensive as hell. Fuck are the weirdos loud, though.
Impossible burgers are better than beef burgers and I’m fully prepared to die on this hill.
But I still eat meat, I just like that there’s options
I wouldn’t mind switching to a complete vegetarian diet if they can get deep-fried chicken substitutes right.
I’ve had some baller chicken fried tofu.
I’ve made beyond smash burgers that are terrible for you, but sooo tasty.
KFC has a very good breaded fake chicken burger
I really really like Quorn (or however it’s spelled) as a chicken substitute. The flavor has to be added artificially but I think the texture is pretty satisfying and reminds me of chicken.
There was a recent blind taste test for chicken nuggets (not chicken strips/tenders) and all the plant based nuggets, even the cheap ones, beat out the actual chicken ones.
Now, chicken strips, I agree with you, sadly.
Not better…but 95% there. I will order it anytime I can if it’s reasonable price.
Some of it can be really tasty! Cooking vegetarian all the time isn’t as hard as it used to be. Gotta keep that cholesterol down 🤪
Remember you’re only seeing the very online vegan.
I’ve met over a hundred vegans IRL and they are just as obnoxious and self-sanctified
I knew a vegan who was a nice guy. He wasn’t obnoxious about his veganism. He was, however, obnoxious about his Christianity.
And to be honest, he looked a bit malnourished.
Okay, I troll the hell out of vegans online, because it’s easy and always entertaining. So, anyone coming along after this, take that into account.
But, you nailed it. There’s a subsection of vegans that treat it like a religion, and anyone else as infidels. That superiority complex, the smugness is a huge detriment to vegan living and principles.
But (and here’s why I made the disclaimer), they’re a minority overall. I know too many vegans irl that are chill, wonderful people following their beliefs and ideals without being jerks about it. Vegetarians too, though that’s tangential.
It’s really online that the asshole hats get put on the most, and usually only on sites/services that make it easy to be anonymous. Which is a good thing! Anonymous discourse is not just important, it’s vital to part of humans becoming better than what we are. But there will always be people that hide their true selves until they’re anonymous and can feel safe, and that includes people that are smug, arrogant assholes down deep. It also includes people that don’t feel safe being an outsider or dissenter, and people that are awesome down deep, but have to keep up a front irl.
Anyway my point is that we, the non vegans of the world, have to be careful to not forget the human. Vegans are mostly deeply compassionate, kind souls that want the best for anyone and everyone, including animals. We don’t have to agree with them, just remember that the loudest, most obnoxious voices aren’t the sum total of the vegan community.
I have a live and let live attitude to veganism vs carnism. No living being should be forced to be a vegan, no living being should be forced to be a carnist, and no living being should be forced to be a hamburger. Can’t we just end all the aggression and live peacefully?
I think people confuse the Political Based Vegan lifestyle and the Dietary Plant-based Vegan. They are not the same. Most people hate the political wing because they just cannot shut up. I do not want to be subjected to your religion, and you are not helping the animals you claim to. Dietary people just choose healthier options for themselves and don’t evangelize to others.
This checks the Vegan Bullshit Bingo:
Calling veganism a religion sounds like an attempt at discrediting it as unreasonable and irrational, just to not seriously deal with it. As veganism is based on facts, logic and common sense, it is the exact opposite of a religion. Consuming animal products though, mostly means blindly following irrational traditions and ignoring the facts or refusing them by reasoning: “That’s how we’ve always done it”. That sounds more like a religion to me…Einstein said that common sense is the sum of prejudices acquired by the average person by age 18. Religions survive because of common sense. Because of biases taught to children and taken as fact because of their ubiquity. Anything based on common sense is a religion. If veganism is based on common sense, then veganism is no different from any other cult. I’ll never agree with anything based on common sense.
I get the climate change vegans, but not the hurt animals vegans. We live on earth, and in case people haven’t noticed, we have to kill to survive. If you don’t eat meat, you’re still hurting plants to eat, and most of the time we’re eating the sexual organs or the offspring of plants.
The outrageous vegans make the more moderate ones look reasonable to carnists, which increases the rate of adopting veganism.
No, they definitely don’t. Because you don’t know what type you’re dealing with until it’s too late.
My MIL likes to pull out the phrase “indoctornated” anytime a doctor/vet/educated professional disagrees with her hardcore plant based diet views for all people and animals
“indoctornated”
Sovereign: “assuming direct control”
But they Did tHerY owN rEsEaRCH
They’re alumni of FBU.
“But someone who calls themselves a professor made a 4 hour long YouTube essay on how they caaan be vegan come on click the link!!!”
I think it can be done for dog if you are careful and know what you are doing. However, I still wouldn’t prioritize ethical views over the well being of my pets. That is very much animal abuse.
This. This exactly. I’m very poor so I can’t always afford to buy food for myself or my dog. So when times are tough, I kidnap the neighbours’ children and feed them to Fido. I’m not going to starve my dog, that’s animal abuse.
You lost me. Why are you feeding kids to your dog? Is this some sort of reference?
Jeez that is awful! People: if you want a vegan pet, get a rabbit! They are so sweet! There are tons of them in the shelter system, especially after Easter.
I swear they’re the funniest and most affectionate four legged friends around!
I have heard that they’re little fucks, they’ll just bounce to your leg to bite it and shit.
My rabbit never bit me even once over his entire life. He gave lots of kisses though. And he loved coming over for pets and then running and jumping and spinning around in the air.
Every rabbit has a different personality. They aren’t the smartest pets around but they can be trained not to do the things you don’t want them to do, such as biting. They remember best when you get their attention with something that provokes a fear based response, such as a sharp “no!” That’s all it took for my bunny.
As a vegan who spends no time associating with other vegans, because it’s not a large part of my identity (other than watching cooking videos), these people are idiots who are getting high on being righteous.
So much so they overdosed and became animal abusers.
Quite ironic. Funny, if it weren’t causing harm.
Until I joined Lemmy I had no idea how militant vegans could be. I sorta just assumed they were a different brand of vegetarian.
I’m not opposed to their ideaology in any way, but after reading the comments on a few posts that found their way into my feed… I had to block their communities. It didn’t seem likely that I’d be reading any productive discourse there.
I was vegan for 8 years and during that time I didn’t talk to anyone about it other than to say, “I don’t eat that.”
I say that to say this - vegans are insufferable and a large reason why I quit the community and went back to omnivore. Even after 8 years, other vegans were still ‘more vegan’ and would nitpick the dumbest stuff.
“Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
Shut up with that. Let me eat my damn fruit.
I was healthier though. But, to be fair, I was younger.
"Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
I’m a level 5 vegan. I won’t eat anything that casts a shadow.
Now it reminded me of Vladimir Sorokin’s “Horse soup”. Time to read it again.
Vladimir Sorokin’s “Horse soup”
https://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-horse-soup/#gsc.tab=0
(Reads blurb. What the actual fuck.)
I’m a level 2 proto-vegan, though it’s functionally equivalent to a level 8 in normal terms I think.
Anyway, our food is cultivated in an open source orchard (the genomes are all fully sequenced) using plea bargains with the surrounding woodland, where we encourage feral animals to aerate and urinate on the soil and we sensually assist in the procreation of the plant reproduction taking a 1%-5% crop yield over what the flies do not touch.
You know what, it’s so much easier to say you’re an omnivore and end up eating meat once a year than to say you are a vegan who makes an exception about once a year. The first label would earn you a “wait so you’re basically vegan?!” vs “you’re not vegan then and you’re a dirty cheater”.
exactly. you choose your labels to best express your positions.
As you might have experienced, it’s pretty hard to be vegan in a carnist world. People talk about animal abuse all the time, they confront you all the time, make fun of you. Most don’t want to talk about it, they want to shut you up. The hate and ignorance is strong and different people react diffrently to that situation. Some stay quiet, like yourself, some get vocal. Some debate, some get angry. Calling vegans insufferable is like calling gays insufferable, or feminists. Some might be. We have recognized a major injustice and we want to change it.
“Bro, did you eat a date? That killed a bee or something. Not cool.”
That’s rage bait and you made it up. Why would anyone say that?
Hey bud you really need to get off the cross. You just compared your eating preferences which are 100% a choice to someone being born homosexual and not wanting to be killed for it or being born/transitioning to a woman and wanting the same basic human rights as the other half of our species. Honestly you need to just shut up and think about that for a hot second.
I oppose racism, sexism, trans- and homophobia. And I oppose speciesism as well. It’s the same system: One group considers another group as less valuable and exploits, abuses or fights them.
You just draw the line at you own species.
Animals are innocent, vulnerable and easy to abuse because they don’t have a voice and don’t understand the situation we put them in. If they were human children or mentally disabled humans, we would protect them from harm because of who they are. Instead, we do the most horrible things to them, we take their freedom, their babies, their lifes. In factories, on an industrial scale. Because a pig is just a pig, right?EDIT: Please reply, don’t just silently downvote. What’s your refutation?
What are you talking about? Don’t you also draw a line when you choose to eat plants? I don’t think they would agree to that. Untill humans develop the ability to photosynthesize, we are going to have to eat other species, there’s no way around it.
Don’t you also draw a line when you choose to eat plants?
I think there’s a reasonable distinction here. You would presumably also draw a line between a conscious human and a brain dead human that won’t ever be conscious again. As far as we can reasonably tell, consciousness requires a brain. Dogs and pigs have brains, so maybe we shouldn’t torture and kill them on factory farms. We can also see them suffering and measure their physical reaction to it.
Of course there’s a possibility that plants have some kind of consciousness too, but 1. that’s speculation and 2. there’s no way around farming them, as you have said yourself:
Untill humans develop the ability to photosynthesize, we are going to have to eat other species, there’s no way around it.
Farming animals will always require far more plant deaths than growing plants for human consumption. These animals have to grow for months before being slaughtered and literally eat tons of animal feed in that time.
Therefore, plant-based food minimizes both animal suffering and deaths as well as plant deaths.
I’m not convinced that plant deaths are an ethical issue in of themselves, but farming has environmental implications so it makes sense to minimize the food that needs to be grown and make the farming as environmentally friendly as reasonably possible.
PLANTS HAVE FEELINGS TOO
is #22 on the Vegan Bullshit Bingo:No, they do not. There is no serious study to suggest that they do. Plants do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli. If you really care that much about the welfare of plants, you should go vegan, since many more plants “die” for animal feeding. Do you feel bad while mowing your lawn? And would you rather rescue a potted plant than a dog from a burning house? Is docking pig tails the same as branch trimming to you? Question upon question…
The comment you responded to says nothing about feelings. Nor does it say that the commenter has any issue with the consumption of plants.
You are not the animals.
At best you’re a shitty white knight for the animals. You’re not even an ally if this is how you conduct yourself.
You just compared your eating preferences which are 100% a choice to someone being born homosexual and not wanting to be killed for it
All the animals on factory farms didn’t choose to be born there and don’t want to be killed either.
It’s not about the sensitivities of humans, but the insane suffering of animals in this system of oppression.
If all yall got off the crosses we could donate all the wood and nails to Habitat for Humanity.
Just goes to show how little you care about others suffering. Social justice for me but not for others (those who I consider interior).
Correct.
You’re not the animals. You’re not even a good spokesperson for the animals.
You don’t give a shit about the animals. You’re just a pathetic histrionic giving into your tendencies here to tank a conversation for a hit.
You’re not the animals.
I literally wrote that this isn’t about me/humans, so yes, obviously.
There are many groups that are suffering and that I’m not part of, and I still care about what’s happening to them and want the suffering to end. It seems like most lemmy users share that sentiment when it comes to oppressed humans, so I really don’t get what’s so hard to understand about that when I extend it to animals.
You might have the opinion that factory farming isn’t a social justice issue, fine. Me having a different opinion doesn’t negatively affect you in any way. Why are you so pissed at me just because I see it differently?
You jumped in on a conversation where a person compared veganism as if it’s a persecution comparable to the LBGTQ.
Veganism is A diet choice. That’s all it is. That is all you’re doing here.
This is not you living as a member of the LBGTQ.
You are not a suffragette.
There will be no pivoting off of it here today and play shitty white knight for the animals.
he is confused with figs. which are pollinated by wasps. and some vegans choose to eat them and some don’t. it’s really not that controversial.
What in the actual fuck. You are comparing yourself to LBGTQ and what they’ve had to endure???
You think your struggle is anything like feminism???
Maybe throw in some slavery there. Ya know, get all your basis of inappropriate covered.
Might as well go whole ass with the bullshit you’re pulling here.
you are choosing a lifestyle. Not even that. You’re choosing what you consume. That’s it. You are not persecuted for something that is NOT a choice you made. You are NOT being persecute for what appearance you were born into.
It is a far cry from being watched out for and spotted and then targetted to how vegans target others.
Stop appropriating an actual minority group that had to defend their rights just to live with the same rights as others.
You talk like you’re the actual cow getting slaughtered for burgers.
you’re not that cow either.
And you’re not even a good spokesperson for that cow. At best you’re just a shitty white knight. You don’t even care about cows that are getting slaughtered cuz you wouldn’t tank a conversation so badly as you had if you actually gave a fuck and wasn’t just stroking off to your own ego for picking dumb fights with shit ideals about your grandeur. Worst ally ever.
Between them and Linux evangelicals, this place can be pretty annoying at times.
Spoken like a meat eating windows user
Windows eating meat user
Do you think that’s an insult?
meat eating windows user (derogatory)
Can I get this on a name tag?
No. If he wanted to insult you, he’d call you a MacOS User /s
Oh you must also be a reddit uaer… Here you go: /s
Lol pretty sure /s has been around LONG before Reddit
I wish we could take these two comments and have them always show up on the front page.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as vegan, is in fact, GNU/vegan, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus vegan.
Linux evangelicals
We just want to save your code from eternal damnation
I’ve just discovered a new game: start posting how you love windows, meat and Elon, place bets who will attack you first
My money would be on Elon. Windows users and carnivores are quite common here, but hatred of The Musk is near universal.
It was honestly more fun to irk the “grammer” police on reddit using misspellings and improper vocabulary.
to irk the “grammer” police on reddit
Hmm…
*Squints*
You done messed up.
to irk the “grammer” police on Reddit
FTFY
I see, I still giggle when I do it, on Lemmy to!
Don’t forget to support capitalism as well!
I use arch btw
You know I really hate vegans, but I FUCKING REALLY HATE Linux evangelicals, and they are FUCKING EVERYWHERE HERE.
Anyway, fuck veganism and linux
Exactly my experience. I often heard stories of vegans being like that, but I never ever saw it so I thought it was just made up to belittle vegans.
Then I joined lemmy and found out that I’m apparently in favour of massacres, slavery and rape because I consume meat/milk/eggs from time to time.
I imagine the vast majority of vegans just go about their lives and resprectfully discuss the ethics of animal consumption when the topic comes up, but these loud militant members really make vegans look bad and they sure as hell make it so that even less people consider going vegan
Yes, them calling me a rapist totally made we want to be like them and adopt their ideology.
Their strain of it appears to be poison religion like fundamentalist Christianity or Islam. A fanatic is a fanatic, whatever paint they’re dipped in. Guess they’re just trying to fill a hole in themselves.
any movement will have more or less militant members. that’s life.
I’m curious. You eat meat, but you’re not in favour of massacres. Alright, explain it to me.
I’m not in favor of it, but I’m not going to stop eating meat. The second lab grown meat is available to people in my economic tier I’ll switch exclusively to that.
I’m really hoping that lab grown meat will be available soon. I have a weird genetic issue where my body doesn’t like to absorb certain vitamins from food so I get basically nothing from raw veggies, negligible amounts from cooked veggies, and a tiny bit more from meat, eggs and dairy.
I take prescription vitamins, but according to my Dr I need to eat meat/animal products with them or risk going into a deficiency again… the last time I was deficient I had seizures and serious neurological issues.
I hate the meat industry and factory farming, but also want my brain to function and to not have seizures.
Lab grown meat will solve this dilemma for me.
I also have severe malabsorption and can’t process most veg at all. I have been told hundreds of times that I am lying, and that I don’t need to eat meat. To some of these people it is better for us to suffer than to eat meat, while they claim to subscribe to a philosophy of reducing suffering.
Yeah, it’s frustrating to say the least.
If I went vegan I’d probably suffer a very slow, agonizing death from my brain going haywire and seize until I go into psychosis and die. If my body could take it I’d probably be a vegetarian and eat only local eggs and cheese, but it’s a bad idea according to my doctor. It sucks.
Dam, man, that sucks. Hey, quick question, if they made lab grown human meat, would you try it?
Grown from my own cells? Fuck yes.
What about someone else’s? My body sucks I don’t want to eat any part of it
This is how you get prions…
Absolutely! I’m hoping it’s available soon since it’s more ethical than my current options.
Edit - missed the human part lmao. I would probably try it if it hurt no one and was offered to me
Ah, so you’re saying you don’t like it, but you find it an acceptable sacrifice to make in exchange for yummy food?
100% yes. I am fully aware that being vegan is, in my opinion, the more ethical option but I can and will continue to eat meat because 1 it’s cheap, it’s plentiful, I know how to and can cook with it well and because yes it tastes so fucking good. I don’t mean this as a 3edgy5me thing but fuck me I love a nice ribeye stake with butter and garlic cloves and a baked potato.
Okay, but you have to know about plant-based steaks and vegan butter. And of course you know about vegan garlic and vegan potato, because all garlic and potato is vegan. What’s the extra cost of a vegan steak compared to an animal steak in your area? In mine it’s around 3 dollars.
I have never seen a plant based stake at my local grocery stores. The next time I am there to pick out a stake, I will also look and ask specifically for a plant based one, and I will try it. But I have had other stuff like plant based burgers, and while they are ok, they just can’t hold up to the taste of a meat burger.
plant-based steaks
I’ve tried plenty of different plant based meat substitutes and so for, not one of them can hold a candle to the real taste. Like, it is not even close in my opinion. I can see the market for it, but plant based diet can be incredible when not trying to impersonate meat. Like lentils with curry. Not meat required and super tasty.
So would argue that meat substitutes are the wrong way to go if you want to eat tasty non meat stuff.
Never fails in a discussion about how fundamentally shitty vegans are that there will be a ton of vegans invading the thread to prove the point definitively.
the vast majority of vegans are not represented by a tiny segment that has found lemmy.
If Lemmy had its version of r/atheist users, they’re either vegan, Linux obsessed, or politics obsessed.
Hey. Do you have time to talk about our lord and saviour, Linus Torvalds?
Oh yeah, I love Linus Tech Tips, it’s one of my favorite YouTubes.
Savior? Do you mean Terry Davis, AKA King Terry the Terrible?
It would have to be the Linux crowd, just by force of numbers.
oh there’s a shitton of r/atheists here too, and some are supermods.
Quite a bit of their content is antagonizing and alienating. What a shame.
Vegans being annoying was a thing awhile ago, but they really chilled out. This is a smaller band of die-hards.
“Chilling out” is of course a terrible metric when animal abuse is on the line but being good to animals would make you vegetarian, not vegan, and yet that was never where the righteousness was coming from.
‘Plant based’ was a rebrand of veganism because of what vegans did to veganism.
I like how they expect everyone to share there ethical views. Fun fact: most people don’t.
In 5+ decades of living I have never once met a sane vegan, not once.
And I’ve met hundreds…
For the most part, the “unreasonable vegan” stereotype comes from two places.
- Confirmation bias. Veganism makes people uncomfortable with their own decisions, so people spread around the most outrageous stories about vegans as a defense mechanism. This is the same thing that happens in various circles with anyone whose mere existence makes other people insecure; e.g., teetotalers, or polyamorous people.
- Just plain disagreeing with them. There are lots of vegan arguments that are logically valid, but they sound outrageous if you don’t already agree with them. People have trouble looking past their initial emotional reactions, so they respond to logically valid arguments with mere incredulity.
There’s a 3rd source: Trying for 3 decades to have a reasonable conversation with one, with hundreds of attempts made.
I’d be interested in seeing a trace of one of those conversations.
No you wouldn’t, they never go anywhere except to heated exchanges of unpleasant labels.
There’s really no use in talking to them, nor anything to be learned or won. It’s just losses for everyone.
I am a vegan. Is this conversation unreasonable?
Are you talking to the same person, or the same few people, repeatedly? There certainly are people out there who just are unreasonable. You can’t expect individuals to change.
Otherwise, I guess (and I admit that this is biased in my favor) that you simply disagree with each other at a foundational level, and that’s causing you to talk past each other.
I think that most people don’t really know how to discourse with people who have differing ethical foundations, because it can lead to situations where a person who meets all the societal criteria of a “good person” is nonetheless committing (according to whatever ethical precepts) a horrible crime. But, in this context, accusing someone of committing a horrible crime is not unreasonable; in fact, it’s too reasonable; it involves prioritizing reason over tact and politeness.
Are you talking to the same person, or the same few people, repeatedly?
Roughly 10% are repeat conversations, though I’ve rarely had a contact be kept past 3 exchanges, and not a ‘few’ people by any metric.
you simply disagree with each other at a foundational level, and that’s causing you to talk past each other.
I appreciate how you are trying to make this a ‘both sides’ thing, but it really isn’t and I have no way of imparting 30 years of frustrating experience in a way you will find meaningful.
Since you claim to be a reasonable vegan, then maybe this is the best place for this:
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What are your plans for all the currently living domesticated animals if, hypothetically, meat eating is made illegal?
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Have you ever considered that being raised by humans for consumption is literally the most wildly successful species survival strategy that natural selection has ever thrown up? Literally no wild animal thrives as well as a cared for domesticated example, and domesticated animals released in the wild have an abysmal survival rate. (it is literally animal cruelty to release most domesticated animals into the wild, with the exception of pigs. They can re-adapt no problems)
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Meat is one of the most nutrient dense foods out there and is likely the entire reason we were able to develop these incredibly energy and nutrient expensive brains, have you considered what the long term species ramifications are for us if we choose to stop a standard practice that has been with us since before our species was even human yet?
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What is your stance on pets?
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Do you not think the critical need for specific supplements to maintain good health is a sign that the diet was never intended for our normal operation?
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I would like to hear your opinion on parents raising their infants to be vegan from birth.
These are the questions I would usually ask to vegans I meet in the world and online. Most responses are immediate verbal abuse and a refusal to continue communications.
I sincerely hope you are a better person than that and I can FINALLY have this discussion start to finish.
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Having personally known several perfectly normal and sane vegans, maybe your “reasonable conversation” is a bit more combative than you believe. Vegans are just normal people. Some will be crazy. Some will be normal. If your experience with your hundreds of vegans you’ve met is 100% unreasonable, then you’re definitely the problem. Someone choosing to avoid animal products for personal health or environmental reasons, or any other personal reason, is inherently not unreasonable. They might be unreasonable if they try to force their ideas on others, but defending their own choices isn’t unreasonable. Tone down your confirmation bias and aggression, and you might find that just like every large enough group, people are still people and they vary.
Edit: for the record, I’m not vegan.
Yep, that’s always the response. 'it’s not the inherent radicalism of vegan ideology that is the problem, but the fact that you didn’t talk nice to them (which I am assuming because I wasn’t there).
Reported and blocked.
What radicalism? What part of that ideal is radical? Also, a bizarre reaction. “My beliefs were challenged in the slightest, therefore this person must be silenced.” Weirdo.
Calling a group of people insane is so cool and good 👍🏻
I’m not vegan. But I find it very shady to talk shit about people like this.
Some seeming innocent ideals breed significantly more fanaticism across all class and culture lines, we should all have learned that by now.
I have met 1 and married her. But yo be fair she is just vegetarian whi developed a dairy allergy knocking out the non veg part of her diet
Makes a dumb good steak too
I have to admit, diet restriction vegans (and not the ones that just think meat is icky and can get a doctor to sign off on it) do not fall into the general stereotype but then only one of them ever had a chance to speak to me and she would sneak chicken occasionally so I don’t really consider her vegan as such. Also she was a work associate and I normally never bring up the subject in the office.
There may be reasonable vegans out there, and I have actively sought them on forums and IRL through school clubs and protests. I have never IRL raised my voice, never used a derogatory label harsher than ‘leafeater’ and that only once. Yet I am so ridiculously burned out by the arguments and harsh words I’ve endured that I’m done holding any hope out any longer.
You sound like what I like to call a “debatist.” No one wants to be challenged on their personal choices. You don’t seem to be approaching this concept with an open mind. Can you define what makes anything they say unreasonable? I am not vegan, but I can recognize, definitively, that veganism is better for the environment (by far), healthy (if you make sure you’re getting all the nutrients you need, just like any diet), and less cruel to animals. You can choose to disagree that those conclusions mean you need to cut out animal products, but those aren’t opinions up for debate. Farming meat is far worse for the environment, vegan diets are perfectly healthy, and obviously, killing animals isn’t something the animal wants.
Again, you can disagree with their conclusion that those reasons mean you shouldn’t eat animal products, but denying that they’re true is like denying climate change. I’m not vegan, so clearly I didn’t come to the same conclusion, but I’m not trying to purport that anyone that does is somehow unreasonable.
No one wants to be challenged on their personal choices.
Yet that is what every vegan does to carnists, in many cases very viciously. I am NOT going up to vegans and telling them to stop being vegan, nor am I judging them for their dietary choices. I ask them questions like ‘What would be your plans for all the current living domesticated animals in the hypothetical situation where eating meat is outlawed?’ and they flip their shit on a regular basis. I go out of my way to present everything I ask as neutral as possible but all my effort has never once mattered.
illing animals isn’t something the animal wants.
I think you are attributing human qualities to nonhuman consciousnesses. There’s a lot of evidence that the concept of death doesn’t even exist in most animal minds, as well as the fact that animals in the wild suffer FAR more disease, discomfort, illness and death than domesticated and cared for livestock.
“debatist”
That isn’t even a real word… I’m sorry I can’t take you seriously anymore.
Every vegan
Factually incorrect and anecdotal
the concept of death doesn’t even exist in most animal minds
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8602129/
Good read, though anyone that’s seen a pet mourn their owner or their friend knows that’s not true already.
can’t take you seriously anymore
It’s a portmanteau of debater and statist. Frankly, I don’t care what you think about me. You’re clearly biased beyond any reason as to the motives of others, to the point of making false blanket statements about entire groups. Any time someone says “all _____ are _____,” there is a problem and they should be questioned. Did the vegans you approach solicit your question? If they did not, then mind your own business. If they did, and “flip their shit,” (X to doubt on the reliability of this narrator) then that one person had an issue. The sheer fact that you can easily find very chill vegans online or irl without much effort means you’re a statistical anomaly, an asshole, or misrepresenting the truth.
I call those ideolgical vegans and yes they drive me nuts too
In respect for your wife and those like her, from now on I will try and use ‘ideological vegan’ to describe the specific subgrouping.
Thanks for being the one sane person in this thread.
Crazy, I know tons of vegans and never met an insane one.
Context: official c/vegan post, lemmy.world admin post 1 of 2
TL;DR: Debate over whether claiming that plant-based diets for carnivorous animals could be safe constitutes encouraging animal abuse + whether an admin’s reaction to demote the entire mod team was justifiedWow that is a proper trash fire comment section! Haven’t seen one that stinky since I left reddit
“Meatsplained” made my day though fr.
I read it as “meatspinned” the first time and was confused on how that was relevant to veganism.
Genuinely the stupidest word I have ever read in my entire life
It’s almost like someone who uses that word is actually plantspalining.
I mean, they’re vegans. What exactly did you expect?
Man, they don’t take kindly to being called out, do they?
vegan ideology is welded directly to their identity.
When you suggest that veganism may not be the eternal elixir of life and the cure to all the worlds woes, you are attacking their identity.
No one EVER rationally responds to identity attacks.
deleted by creator
You know I’m kinda okay with vegan cats being the most controversial topic on Lemmy. Could be doing a lot worse.
Personally I believe the only ethical way to enjoy a cat steak is if the cat is vegan and that’s the TRUTH here’s a study:
Veganism: Great lifestyle. Wretched, toxic community (mostly).
EDIT: I want to add I’m very much pro-vegan. They’re literally right. I probably will go vegan as soon as I work out a solution to my eating disorder (ARFID). You just won’t see me in any community. They just seem psychologically unhealthy.
People started arguing about whether cats can eat vegan, mods on c!vegan got involved, then an admin got involved. People’s personal feelings about veganism overtook any actual discussion about when it is or isn’t inappropriate for Admins/mods to step in, hence the pinned post on the front page.
I have lots of friends that are vegan/have been vegan, or are sympathetic to the cause. IRL I have had some wonderful conversations about veganism and the ethics of our diet. But on the Internet it’s the vegans ironically that need to get out and touch grass. It’s like there’s no nuance to any conversation, like sorry I can be Peter Singer, it’s actually kinda difficult to be that moral.
Some vegans decide all cats, like all other animals, should join their club, whether they want to or not. Deemed dubious practice by some but not impossible by others.
Admin loses mind, power trips.
You’re caught up.
“we taught a lion to eat tofu!”
“Veganism needs to become a protected belief in every country” … I spit my drink out laughing. What in the actual fuck?!?.
Just no. Why? Well beyond it’s idiotic lunacy, I absolutely do not want any other dietary belief systems protected. Good God would that make a living legal nightmare.
For context, the story I read a similar comment under was about a decades long vegan forest firefighter who was unable to receive vegan meals through his employer (given that they’re very much “in the field” they can’t really bring their own). After complaining, he was suspended without pay by the employer and he tried to fight that, arguing that his vegan lifestyle was a creed.
That context changes things for me at least, maybe not for you.
Not for me, he should have arranged his own meals or not taken the job if his employer won’t cater to his particular snowflakeism.
I’m low carb but I don’t get to complain if all they have in the canteen is chips and candy.
It’s not really possible to arrange his own meals, and they told him they would give him vegan food.
If a person were sent on a work trip where it was impossible to get outside food, and their boss told them they could get them appropriate food, then didn’t, I think they should complain. Especially if it means that they essentially went hungry for weeks while doing a really active job. That’s crappy of their job to do, and they shouldn’t stand for it.
Snacks in the canteen is a totally different deal and I agree that a complaint is not really appropriate, but it’s reasonable to ask if they can supply a broader range of foods.
Ok then breach of contract, he sues and all is good. In the meantime just eat the salad bar and get a big can of mixed nuts shipped to him.
Of course they shouldn’t stand for it but workers protections are only as good as SCOTUS wants them to be and in that environment when it comes to food maybe it’s time to compromise till you can get your documentary on it out. Everything is public opinion now, justice varies based on clout. It is reality and I hate it but it is reality.
Salad bar and shipping at a forest fire? If they have reliable access to those, I’d be very surprised. He also probably won’t be able to digest meat after 25 years of a vegan diet, so he’d be putting everyone in danger if he made himself sick at the scene of a forest fire. It’s not like there’s much to forage in that situation, so he just has to choose between hunger and illness.
The court ruled that his moral veganism doesn’t count as a protected belief system (this is in Canada), so when he did sue, they ruled in favor of his employer. I’m not sure why breach of contract didn’t apply, but his right to vegan food would have been protected by the court had he been vegan due to religious beliefs (the example given is Jainism). That’s why the comparison is to a protected belief.
Next up we need to officially protect Star Trek fans
Make it so.
Babylon 5 too then.
What if I like both?
And could I register as a member of a sub-belief? Like, I’m a true believer of the unified collective of the Borg?
Lets do that first.
In order to understand that, you have to realise that veganism is not a diet, but an ethical belief. A huge part that often comes up is diet, of course, since we all eat, and often in a social setting. But it also concerns, for example:
Not using wool and leather
Not visiting for-profit zoos
Not using cosmetic tested on animals
Not riding horses or attending horse-related entertainment
It is an all-round ethical standpoint, and not just a diet fad. You may or may not agree with it, that’s how beliefs work, but ridiculing the thought of it being a protected belief seems narrow minded.
Eh, I’ve lived with vegans, almost married a vegan, and spent a lot of years in Portland. I’m well versed thank you.
I do not believe in ‘protected beliefs’ any more than I do in religious rights. They have no place in the modern world.
Protection from unjust persecution and discrimination for holding beliefs should always be a thing, providing those practicing those beliefs do not in turn subject others who do not hold the same tenets to persecution or discrimination.
People have rights. Ideas, ideals, and beliefs do not, no matter how noble it may seem.
I wonder if we need some kind of middle ground like Twitter where you leave the content up, with a big banner saying “this content is bullshit and here is the evidence”?
While I agree that harmful information should probably be hidden so that impressionable people don’t act on it, I also don’t like non-experts being the arbiters of censorship.
Lock the thread with a pinned comment to some actual evidence proving them wrong would be the closest alternative we have.
Yeah, but here the Admins had to step in because the mods would do the exact opposite, so that’s also not really an option.
Yeah, and that’s… Ok.
But I’d like something that was more visible without going into the comments, so people could see it in their feedNot to mention how much it puts on the shoulders of moderators to have to fact check every post/comment and find reliable sources to ensure false information isn’t spread. It would likely be unsustainable without a lot of funding if the platform expands furrher over time.
Ideally the mod should’ve pinned a comment with the risks and a disclaimer about the serious ethical concerns. They instead deleted legitimate information.
One of the pinned posts on the community is literally a list of studies about the topic?
Absolutely, first he lumps dogs and cats together, they have extremely different dietary needs.
Second, I couldn’t find anything specific to cats dietary needs being met by a vegan diet. The video’s sources seem to be based on self reporting surveys. Not science.
I just had a look over there, every post bar one in the last week is about vegan cats.
They’re not handling this well at all.
if cats were vegan, they’ll be eating grass like the gazelles in the Serengeti.
you don’t feed lions a vegan diet just like you don’t feed giraffes a meat diet.
not that hard.
