news flash: complaining that people who say veganism can be expensive really just don’t know what veganism is makes you a privilege denier.
first of all, folks can be educated and still disagree with you.
second, saying that “most vegan meals are just vegetables” as proof that they are cheaper than meat alternatives tells us
- you live in a privileged world that is clueless of the cost of vegetables
- you do not know what it is like to not have access to fresh vegetables, or to much variety of vegetables.
- you clearly don’t have to factor in the cost (both financial and otherwise) that goes into procurring vegetables, keeping them fresh & edible, etc.
i’m not saying anything against veganism nor suggesting that there aren’t less expensive ways to eat vegan at times. but overall, yes, it is more expensive. we shouldn’t lie and say it’s not. we shouldn’t shame people for having to make very difficult choices with their money. and i really don’t have an ounce of respect for someone who will rail “i hate it when people say eating vegan is expensive, they must not really know what vegan means”. your reality is not everyone else’s, and your inability to hear what people are really saying when they say they cannot afford, or struggle to afford, to be vegan is called privilege.
Even if such vegans have personal chefs to serve their mushroom pâté on silver platters, the facts surrounding the consequences of meat consumption do not change. So, those clueless vegans care more about piglets than poor people. It’s easier to poke fun at them rather than actively address the actual problems with food choices. Frequent arguments like this one attract more attention, while they conveniently leave out any of the important reasons that change is needed. Pointing out that food costs money, and some people have it while others don’t, doesn’t really require much thought.
The class argument is more complex than it is made out to be here. While access is a very valid concern for too many people, it is not for many who use it. And some people making the expense argument also ignore that a widespread omnivorous diet contributes greatly to pollution, climate change, world hunger, and the declining value of farm labor. Meat production is very expensive, far more expensive than veganism, and much of the cost related to these issues falls on the poor. Why is more time spent arguing back and forth about the out-of-pocket cost of different diets rather than advocating for more accessible and affordable vegan choices (e.g. by buying them when available)?
A large part of the accessibility/affordability problem is that those who can become vegetarian or vegan don’t. Maybe comfort food is comforting for a reason, and people find change uncomfortable. We advocate change all the time when when we feel that individual choices result in the subjugation of some group. Meat production does just that, not only for animals, yet we routinely deny it. We purposely ignore the facts. Maybe those who are able to give up meat sometimes don’t because it does require a sacrifice. Many of us grew up within a culture that is tied to animal consumption, and some feel it is not on them to deny that culture for the sake of these other issues. When you first acknowledge the facts and still admit that the cause is not worthwhile, then there’s nothing more to add.
Fat Head Trailer (via FatHeadMovie)
Now on Hulu, I really liked this documentary. Fat Head is the antithesis to Spurlock’s Super Size Me. And as you would expect, the filmmaker attacks Super Size Me. Some of this movie shows its libertarian bent with government regulation and free choice. And while I certainly don’t identify as a libertarian, I sympathize with aspects of it. But I still think restaurants should be required to indicate calorie amounts on their menu boards.
One of the main themes of this movie is that the low-fat diet we’ve been lead to is not as supported as we’ve been reared. We’re taken to this theme through talking-head scientists and by the producer that goes through his own month-long fast food diet (mostly McDonalds). Only with this producer, he loses weight.
At the same time, regardless of the truth or falsity regarding diet, I still think McDonalds is an asshole after watching McLibel. And I still find Fathead to be largely compatible with Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation. Issues like wages, meat packing, environment, and food safety are still relevant. Though the Fat Head producer seriously plays down advertising to children—a matter which Schlosser takes seriously.
This documentary does provide some informative mythbusting regarding diet and health. For example, there likely isn’t an obesity epidemic to be blamed on fast food. The incidence of obesity may not have really increased, but the number of “obese” people might have swelled when the inaccurate BMI was instituted as a health indicator. There hasn’t been conclusive evidence linking cholesterol, fat, and heart disease (though not mentioned in the film, the incidence of heart disease has declined in the last 50 years, just as fast food has increased in popularity). The low-fat diet myth was busted about ten years ago, with a response in the form of high-fat, low-carb diets. Furthermore, while alluded to but never fully addressed in the film, the health care industry has been careless addressing the well being of obese people, often dismissing any unrelated ailments with a prescription to lose some weight.
However, while Naughton criticizes nutrition scientists for ignoring pertinent health information regarding fat and cholesterol, he makes some pretty large omissions himself. True, nobody is forced to eat at McDonald’s, and they aren’t forced to get the largest meal. Most people know that McDonald’s isn’t healthy, they can easily access the nutritional info, etc. While people should have a free choice about what they eat, how can it possibly be mistaken as a fair choice? He never once mentions that the fast food industry is heavily subsidized, while healthier alternatives are not. He states that people are rational beings capable of making logical choices and that the poor are unfairly assumed to be stupid and lazy. Yet he forgets that the portion of income used to buy food is a large factor weighed when the poor make logical decisions. He argues that the big, bad government and big, bad health food lobbies would like to artificially double the cost of fast food through “taxation and regulation” in order to sway those choices. What if the big, bad government just eliminated the subsidies that currently support the fast food industry? The cost of a hamburger would be far more than double, and it would cost considerably more than produce and legumes. Oh, and we shouldn’t forget that the big, bad government can’t build adequate playgrounds, while the unfairly demonized private fast food industry is able to provide much more for kids—no doubt due to their “free market” success.
Naughton also makes a dangerous assumption regarding diet and evolution as he promotes a fast food version of Atkins. Unfortunately, our bodies evolved based on past conditions, not current ones. True, our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate fewer carbs, but they did eat grains and fruits. Unlike the McDonald’s diet, their diet was rich in fiber and essential micronutrients and low in sodium. True, they ate plenty of meat and thus animal fat. Yet the animals they ate and the lifestyles they had were much different than our current ones (though he does repeatedly stress the importance of exercise). Grass-eating wild animals were considerably leaner and lower in saturated fat than their modern day grain-fed factory counterparts. Hunter-gatherers did not consume dairy.
Yet we can’t go back to eating a basic hunter-gatherer diet, as slow foodies like Michael Pollan will advocate. There simply aren’t enough resources available for everyone to eat pasture-grazing livestock. It was the advent of agriculture and grain production that led to the human population explosion. And unfortunately, our bodies can’t adapt to current conditions. Most diet related diseases will kill people mid-life or later, after they’ve reproduced. So the outdated genes get passed on.
I agree that the USDA food pyramid is biased by an interest to promote commodity crops. But the answer isn’t to pack in foods high in saturated fats. Fats can be enjoyed in moderation, just as we’ve long been told. And also as we’ve been told, a balanced diet includes vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, complex carbohydrates, and yeah, exercise. Nothing new there. There’s no easy fad that will allow us to consume large amounts of the junk foods we crave. Sadly, since our genes developed under conditions that no longer exist, we now have to eat and do things we may not always enjoy in order to stay healthy.
Finally, I’m not sure how Fat Head is at all compatible with Fast Food Nation. Yes, issues like wages, meat packing, the environment, and food safety are still very relevant. Along with subsidies and factory farming, none of these things are ever mentioned. And these things should be considered far more relevant than an individual taste preference for Big Macs.
Caramel Baloney: catbus: hotblondecocktail: “If you choose to be a vegan- you choose…
“If you choose to be a vegan- you choose what you do and do not eat- you are doing so because you are a rich bitch with enough free mental space to worry about the general wellbeing of fucking cows, probably because mother and father send you money to your…
This was a joke, you damn idiot.
Sincerely,
Rich Bitch
LOL. Was this, too?
If you are choosing to be a vegan- you are choosing what you do or do not eat- that very fact alone means you come from a place of privilege, which is FINE, but then I also expect you to understand what the negative ramifications of widespread veganism would be.
It would would have way more of an impact than turning the steak factory into the tofu factory.
Please, enlighten us idiots. We’d like to know all the positive effects of ignoring those issues.
“If you choose to be a vegan- you choose what you do and do not eat- you are doing so because you are a rich bitch with enough free mental space to worry about the general wellbeing of fucking cows, probably because mother and father send you money to your artist’s commune in Portland, and also they don’t even sell animal products there.”
Better, catbus?
Something that makes fun of rich people is inherently better than something that doesn’t.
An argument that includes a single piece of credible evidence is inherently better than one that doesn’t.
Oh wait. Only rich people are vegan. And only rich people have the mental capacity to worry about their health, or the environment, or wasteful and harmful spending of taxes, or the abuse of undocumented workers, or the availability of clean water, or global poverty and hunger. Oh yeah, or fucking cows.
Maybe only rich bitches complaining about vegans on the internet can afford to trivialize such issues.
The View From My Brain: Dear Vegans
Didn’t I reblog a link recently about a book that debunked a huge chunk of the vegan statistics about water usage and etc and pointed out huge destructive effects of soy production and a few other things?
A lot of vegan stats are pretty heavy bullshit, on the same level as a lot of meat industry’s bullshit “facts”
True, soy production is very damaging. But far less soy would need to be produced if we ate it directly instead of feeding most of it to livestock. Maybe some facts are bullshit. But the UN report I cited contains 34 pages of references to the peer-reviewed scientific literature. That’s about as unbiased as we can hope for. As an environmental scientist, I agree with many of their conclusions.
The UN report is fine, “a lot” certainly isn’t all and definitely the meat industry needs to be changed intensely. I found the link too so read through that and figure out which of your stats are bad and which are good.
My concern is actually more how you’re inadvertently defending the ableism and classism of the other vegans involved in this by telling us not to get pissed at ableist, classist vegans because the system is mean to them.
Lemme make this clear, the system is super fucked up to trans people and it upsets me a lot because of how it screws me over. But that is never an excuse for me to act bigoted on any other axis of oppression when I’m upset. I do not have free reign to be racist anymore than they have free reign to be classist and ableist.
Do kindly leave your tone argument and apologism at the door.
Thanks for the link. It’s true that humans can only obtain protein from the grasslands of the western US, for example, by eating animals that can digest grass. Pigs can be fed on crop residues, but most of those residues are coming from crops grown to feed animals. Neither of these arguments work because the demand for meat is way too high. Even the very few animals that are not factory fed have caused extensive overgrazing out west. Even this book states that if we ate only products from animals sustainably raised on marginal lands with minimal inputs and impacts, we might be able to produce half the current supply (though he doesn’t mention the really high cost). I’d be thrilled if everyone cut their consumption of animal products in half. Still, all of this ignores the animal rights arguments. While animal protein may have been vital in hunter-gatherer cultures, the deaths and suffering of animals have been rendered an unnecessary extravagance (not a “benign” one, according to the book’s title) by agriculture. But most people won’t listen to it.
I’m still unclear, after reading many posts, how vegan arguments are classist or ableist. Both of these statements seem to rest on the beliefs that vegan meals are either more expensive or more complex. Neither of these are true and have been refuted, yet those arguments against veganism have appeared repeatedly. For example, the USDA provides a database of simple, economical recipes by cost per serving. Not all of those listed as vegetarian are vegan, but many can easily be converted at often reduced cost. Just keeping them as is drastically reduces consumption of animal products. Vegweb is all vegan and full of simple recipes, but it is not searchable by cost. While a vegan diet is healthier for most people, vegans aren’t arguing that people truly requiring animal products due to health issues shouldn’t put their own health first. Furthermore, in response to accusations of culturocentrism: “I’ve never seen a vegan argue that those people living on subsistence farms with unfertile soils in abject poverty shouldn’t eat the animals they’ve raised. But that’s probably not most of us on tumblr.” It’s also not an excuse for the rest of us.
There is an important point, though, regarding access. Not everyone has the time or ability to shop at the local grocery store and prepare even simple meals. For example, maybe somebody works two or three jobs and only has time to stop for lunch at the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way between them. Everyone knows the burgers are cheaper than the salads. Maybe we should be asking why the most accessible foods for these people are those highest in refined sugars and saturated fats. Isn’t that classism/racism? From the National Institutes of Health: 6.6% of non-Hispanic whites, 7.5% of Asian Americans, 10.4% of Hispanics, 11.8% of non-Hispanic blacks, and 14.2% of Native Americans had diagnosed diabetes. It’s ridiculous that pop and chicken nuggets are subsidized when healthier foods are not. Many vegans protest these subsidies and the food pricing structure; perhaps others should as well.
By dismissing vegan arguments as bullshit, ableist, and classist, you are inadvertently defending animal abuse, excessive environmental damage, and further impoverishment of certain groups. I fully agree that the system is fucked up. But instead of wasting effort criticizing vegans, who are trying to make changes through individual choices or public activism, shouldn’t that effort be directed at challenging this system?
The View From My Brain: Dear Vegans
Didn’t I reblog a link recently about a book that debunked a huge chunk of the vegan statistics about water usage and etc and pointed out huge destructive effects of soy production and a few other things?
A lot of vegan stats are pretty heavy bullshit, on the same level as a lot of meat industry’s bullshit “facts”
True, soy production is very damaging. But far less soy would need to be produced if we ate it directly instead of feeding most of it to livestock. Maybe some facts are bullshit. But the UN report I cited contains 34 pages of references to the peer-reviewed scientific literature. That’s about as unbiased as we can hope for. As an environmental scientist, I agree with many of their conclusions.
The View From My Brain: Dear Vegans
I understand that you believe being vegan is the right thing to be/do. That’s cool. I support your right to work on the solution you believe is right for whichever issue motivated you, be it environment, animal rights or something else.
BUT I DO NOT FUCKING SUPPORT IT WHEN YOU CALL PEOPLE HYPOCRITES FOR BELIEVING IN ANIMAL RIGHTS AND NOT BEING VEGAN LIKE YOURSELVES.
FUCK YOU.
Being vegan is not an option for everyone. Fresh veggies can be fucking expensive depending on where you live, not everyone has access to a farmer’s market. Not everyone has the mental capacity and/or spoons to spend the time and care to plan and prepare vegan food, which often takes more time than non-vegan foods.
I do believe we should treat animals with respect and care, BUT I can not ever live vegan. Why? I cannot keep track of what’s in my fucking fridge. Too many veggies would go bad for me and I would have to throw away several pounds of food every single fucking week. Instead I frequently live off of yoghurt, bread and cheese and such, because that’s what I can manage to eat before it goes bad. ‘Cause you know, throwing away lots of food is totally better for everyone than eating a few animal products.
And yet, I still believe we should treat animals right. This apparently makes me a hypocrite in your holier-than-the-rest of-us-lowly-sinners eyes.
Well, fuck you. When you have abolished poverty and made sure that every single human being has access (location and finance-wise) to proper vegan groceries, then your claim of hypocrisy might ring true. When you have made sure that everyone with a cognitive disability or other issues that prevent them from organising their meals like you would gets respectful help with getting and preparing fod then you might have an ear for your claims.
And then again. No. You might not. ‘Cause some of us just don’t fucking believe that veganism is the solution to every fucking thing that ails this world and its population. We are not hypocrites if we disagree with your solution.
You are, however classist and ableist (and probably a few other -ists) in the extreme for expecting people to live vegan if they are for animal rights.
And don’t fucking compare animals to slaves, women, etc etc. Marginalised people have been considered animals for so fucking long that you’re REALLY not making a good case for your cause by using the same fucking comparisons that the bigots are.
Fuck you, you classist, ableist, racist fuckers. Just fuck you and stay the fuck off my feed.
PS: mandatory disclaimer. This is, of course only directed at the vegans, who actually think and say what I outlined above, and not at the presumably vast majority of vegans who are really cool people, who has a sense of reality and respect for real people’s real live experiences in the real world.
Also, this was, of course, triggered by the quote I reblogged and commented on a little while ago, so don’t tell me vegans are not like that, ‘cause the reblogged quote and some of the commentary shows quite well that some of you fucking are.
BUT I DO NOT FUCKING SUPPORT IT WHEN YOU CALL PEOPLE…
I don’t understand this. You are for animal rights but think it’s fine to eat factory farmed meat? How can you blame people for saying that you aren’t for animal rights. I’m not trying to be rude. I just don’t understand. Factory farming is the exact opposite of animal rights. Also, if you don’t want to be vegan…you clearly don’t have to be but “Too many veggies would go bad for me and I would have to throw away several pounds of food every single fucking week. Instead I frequently live off of yoghurt, bread and cheese and such, because that’s what I can manage to eat before it goes bad.” is kind of a silly reason. Don’t buy POUNDS of fruits and veggies. The good thing about produce is you can weight it before you buy it.
Also, why is it vegans job to abolish poverty so that people can afford vegan food? It’s not. I’m not ableist, classist, or whatever other ists you called me. I don’t hate people who are stricken by poverty and can’t afford to be vegan. I don’t hate anyone who isn’t vegan. I’m not an asshole. I just know that most people that I talk to can afford cigarettes or nights out in the bars, they can also afford to be vegan.
I think this is a common view that most people have…Vegans are the enemy. It really sucks because we are only trying to do what is right.
Fuck it. I can’t win. No matter what I do, I’ll always be a crazy asshole. I hate it. It’s fucking bullshit.
How about you fucking read what I write? Where did I say factory farmed meat? WHERE? Tell me that. It is, in fact, possible to raise animals with respect and care and eat them without them being factory farmed. Ever heard of ecology?
I wrote why it isn’t possible for me to keep track of what’s in my fridge. And you do NOT FUCKING LIVE WHERE I DO. It isn’t everywhere you can weigh your veggies before buying them. By far most places here do NOT have that option. You can buy 1,2 or 5 kilos of potatoes, those are your choices. End of fucking story. Unless, of course, you can afford to shop in the high end stores. Which… you can’ if you’re poor. How hard is that to understand?
Oh wait, I think I already fucking said that. Reading. How about it?
If you’re not an asshole, then maybe you should have READ MY FUCKING DISCLAIMER! If itøs not about you, then it’s not about you. But judging from you’re writing here, maybe it IS about you.
Here let me show you a week in my life. I’m autistic. Shopping is majorly triggering and not something I can do very often. So I must shop for a week at a time. That means I must plan every single meal a week ahead. This is not possible for me, because, you see, I cannot remember to COOK AND EAT my frigging meals. So by the time a week has rolled by, I have probably forgotten, or been too exhausted to cook half of the meals I had planned. What do I do with that food then?
And I just love (read: hate) how you refer to cigarettes and bars. I don’t fucking smoke and I haven’t seen the inside of a nightclub/bar in 7 years. So yeah, I guess that must totally be where my money is going, you ignorant failfuck.
It is not the vegans’ job to abolish poverty. But as long as it is vegans who claim that everyone who are for animal rights are hypocrites if they’re not also vegan ARE classist douchefucks who ignore the fact that poverty exists, and you just called a whole bunch of poor people who are for animal rights, but can’t afford fair trade/ecological goods are hypocrties simply because they happen to be poor. So yes, if vegans like you want to claim that we’re hypocrites, then you are hypocrites too as long as you haven’t abolished poverty.
You didn’t actually read my post did you? You just saw the word vegan and thought everyone hates you, didn’t you?
Did you actually read where I wrote that I respect you and your choices? Did you actually read where I said that I consider your choice valid and good, just not an option for me? Apparently not.
Vegans are trying to do what THEY/YOU think is right. You don’t have a monopoly on being right. People can disagree without being evil monsters who hate you.
Also, your ableism shows. Using crazy as a slur is not cool. But I suppose that’s totally okay when you’re telling me that my disability and the things it causes me to be unable to do is “silly”. Yeah thanks. When are you gonna tell wheelchair users that they’re silly for not just walking instead.
And honey-bun if you’re such a holy vegan. What the fuck are you doing typing on an electronic device made out of metal, heavy metals and plastic - all materials that are mined/produced without regard fr the environment or the workers who work with it. Oh yeah, an I suppose you’ve also made sure that the electricity that powers your computer/cell phone charger comes from wind/water energy, rather than the national energy grid which uses coal/nuclear energy - depending on where you live.
Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about. You didn’t actually read my post - or maybe you just didn’t understand it. Or maybe you don’t wan to understand. You did not even come CLOSE to addressing the issue of disability, which I ACTUALLY EXPLAINED in the original post. But I guess being disabled is just silly, because of people can afford cigarettes it’s also totally possible to ignore whatever disabilities you might have and become vegan.
Vegans are not the enemy. Classists, Ableists etc are. The two are not mutually exclusive, and living vegan does not give a free pass to be any kind of hateful ism in the name of righteousness.
Fuck you. You’re not crazy. You’re just an ignorant fuckjob.
Since the YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE I LIVE argument has come up, I’d seriously like to know where one can buy free-range, humanely slaughtered meat for less money than a meal without it. Maybe on a farm on marginalized land unfit for crops? I’ve never seen a vegan argue that those people living on subsistence farms with unfertile soils in abject poverty shouldn’t eat the animals they’ve raised. But that’s probably not most of us on tumblr. For everyone else, it is certainly not cheaper to eat an omnivorous diet than a vegan one. Sure, buying vegan soy sausage and milk is more expensive, but those foods are unnecessary. Who says you have to eat large amounts of fresh, organic produce from the farmers’ market? Frozen or canned vegetables, dried beans, and grains are widely available and cheaper than animal products, as well as many go-to processed “accidental vegan” foods. There’s nothing esoteric about a vegan meal that makes it more difficult to prepare than a non-vegan one.
Some people depend on others for their food and care and may have little choice as to what they eat. But couldn’t those people try to change what is offered? If they don’t care about animals or the environment, fine. Many people engaged in this conversation seem passionately dedicated to human rights issues. Why use that same passion to attack the people trying to make this change? In the US, grains are subsidized, which means the livestock that are fed grains (i.e. factory farmed) are also subsidized. It’s a shame that unsubsidized, fresh vegetables are more expensive, but then why just give in and enforce the status quo, instead of helping to change this system?
This isn’t just about animal rights vs. human choices:
- Livestock occupy 30% of ice-free land surface on the planet
- Expansion of suitable grazing land is capped, so extension into tropical forests is now the norm
- Ranching-induced deforestation is one of the main causes of unique plant and animal species loss in tropical rainforests in South and Central America
- In the Amazon basin, 88% of cleared land is for pasture, 70% in Costa Rica and Panama (and yes, meat from tropical regions is mainly for export to industrialized nations in order to satisfy our increasing demands)
- 60% of US pastures are overgrazed; 55% of total agricultural soil erosion is due to livestock
- Agriculture accounts for 70% of global water use and 93% of water depletion; more water is used for beef alone than for the US’s entire vegetable crop
- 60 lbs. water for 1 lb. of wheat; 2500-6000 lbs. water for 1 lb. of meat
- In US, livestock sector responsible for more than 50% of mineral N and P applied, causing eutrophication and hypoxia in major water bodies.
- 70% of US agricultural pesticide use for corn and soybeans
- Livestock contribute to antibiotic pollution and resistance, heavy metal deposition, and endocrine disruptors in our waterways. Half of all antibiotics produced in the US are fed to livestock.
- Example: In 1996, US CAFOs generated 1.4 billion tons of waste, polluting America’s waterways more than all other industrial sources combined.
- Livestock contribute more than 18% of global GHG emissions. That’s more than all forms of transportation (cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, boats) combined. Source for all above: Livestock’s Long Shadow, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (1996).
- Let’s also not forget about ridiculous health care costs. We now need subsidized health care, while also continuing to subsidize meat, which has been linked to: heart disease; ulcers; obesity; colon, breast, uterine, cervical, ovarian, and prostate cancers; osteoporosis; diabetes; arthritis; hypoglycemia; multiple sclerosis; etc. (Diet for a New America, John Robbins)
So even free-range, organic meats contribute to climate change, water waste, biodiversity loss, overgrazing, and erosion. All US cattle, even organic, must be slaughtered in certified slaughterhouses, largely filled with undocumented workers who have no power in one of the most dangerous jobs (see Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, for some horrifying accounts of abused workers). Some of these are human rights issues. We could feed far more people if we stopped feeding livestock. Who is impacted most by water shortages, and who will be impacted most by climate change? Those living in poverty. So it becomes easy to claim that it’s too difficult to become vegan, because we don’t really have to face the consequences of our omnivorous food choices. Both the IPCC and UN are now urging people to stop eating meat. Today, meat consumption is mostly unnecessary and wasteful. Nearly everyone has some power either to change what they eat or to try changing the system that feeds them. To know these facts and still argue for meat consumption, or to vehemently attack those who speak out against that hypocritical attitude, is really entirely selfish.
![thedailywhat:
Tee of the Day: “Eat More Meat” by tjost.
The veggies have spoken.
Winner of the 10th Double-Take Derby. Presently sold out, but will be available again tomorrow.
[woot.]
I don’t get it. Is this trying to point out vegetarians’ hypocrisy, since fruits and veggies are living things, too? Even if we ignore all the environmental consequences of meat, it seems silly to forget that meat had actual faces, not cartoon ones (if this is indeed the argument). Also, thanks to the most sensible commenter:
“But if we eat more meat then the animals will have to eat even more veggies than if we’d just ate the veggies in the first place!! Oh noes!”](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/caramelbaloney/1020258992/1/tumblr_l7tffvMAuL1qzpwi0)
Tee of the Day: “Eat More Meat” by tjost.
The veggies have spoken.
Winner of the 10th Double-Take Derby. Presently sold out, but will be available again tomorrow.
[woot.]
I don’t get it. Is this trying to point out vegetarians’ hypocrisy, since fruits and veggies are living things, too? Even if we ignore all the environmental consequences of meat, it seems silly to forget that meat had actual faces, not cartoon ones (if this is indeed the argument). Also, thanks to the most sensible commenter:
“But if we eat more meat then the animals will have to eat even more veggies than if we’d just ate the veggies in the first place!! Oh noes!”
The best episodes are coming up today—
Uhh, Mr. McClure? I have a crazy friend who says it’s wrong to eat meat. Is he crazy?
Nooo, just ignorant. You see your crazy friend never heard of “The Food Chain.” Just ask this scientician.
The Naïve Vegetarian
- Animal farming is an efficient use of land. Much of the land used for animal farming, cannot be used for arable farming. With a rapidly expanding world population, a large proportion of whom are already starving, how can taking this land out of production help?
Actually, the vast majority of our arable land is used to grow feed for livestock raised in factory farms. This is the most inefficient use of land possible. Also, most of the rainforest loss is due to feed production and livestock grazing.
Following food web energy dynamics, the amount of calories received from the meat is only about 10% of the amount of calories that went into the animals, calories that could feed far more people. And that only counts the calories in the grain, not the energy inputs to plant, irrigate, harvest, fertilize, spray pesticides on, and transport that grain.
It is true that sustainable levels of livestock grazing on marginal land is an efficient use of those resources, namely because large ruminants can turn the calories in grass into something we can digest. However, almost no beef is raised in the US this way due to corn and soy subsidies. Cattle born on ranches and are then transferred to CAFOs and switched to an unnatural diet of grain.
- The killing of animals for food is morally wrong. Some animals are born to hunt, others to be hunted. This is natural. Does the lion have a moral right to kill an antelope? What are an antelope’s ‘rights’ not to be eaten by a lion? Such questions are meaningless.
I agree with this somewhat. In a hunter-gatherer sense, it is natural for humans to kill animals for food, just as many other animals would. What is morally wrong, however, is not just the treatment our livestock are subjected to. It’s also the loss of habitat to make way for feed, the use and pollution of land that could be used to grow far more efficient crops, the diversion of water to irrigate feed crops and water livestock in water deficient areas, the abuse of undocumented workers in slaughterhouses (even free range, organic cattle must be slaughtered in the same slaughterhouses; beef butchering is still done by hand and is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US—see Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation), the contribution of animal farming to climate change (the livestock industry is a greater anthropogenic source of greenhouse gases than all our forms of transportation combined), etc. So, even for those who remain unconcerned with the impacts of omnivorous diets in developed countries on animals, the impact of meat consumption on human populations is becoming difficult to ignore.
- If killing animals is wrong, what about fish? Four-fifths of the Earth’s surface is covered in ocean. Could the world’s rapidly growing population be sustained if we did not farm it?
Again, even if we argue that the sustainable harvest of animals is not morally wrong, there would still be far more food to feed a rapidly growing population if people stopped feeding it to animals instead.
- Vegetarianism is healthier. Many become vegetarians because they believe that such a lifestyle is healthier. But vegetables, fruit and salads are not as healthy as we are told. They are contaminated with sewage sludge, viruses, polluted irrigation water, pesticides and herbicides. Lettuce is the worst of all.
Comparisons of the health and longevity of cultures with different dietary habits confirms that meat eaters can expect to live longer than vegetarians and don’t need to visit their doctors as often as vegetarians. And, by the way, vegetarians have exactly the same risk of colon cancer as meat eaters.
While true that vegetables are contaminated with pesticides and polluted water, the feed that is fed to livestock is also contaminated with these things, and they eat far more of it. Perhaps this doctor doesn’t know much about food web ecology or biomagnification, but any pollutants become concentrated at higher trophic levels. This is what the recommendation to “eat low on the food chain” refers to. Aquatic food webs are far more lengthy and complex, which is why pregnant women are discouraged from eating fish out of the Great Lakes. This is becoming an increasing problem in factory farmed livestock. Cattle, for example, are herbivores that normally eat very low on the food chain. However, they are frequently fed the remains of other animals, including fish meal, in CAFOs. EPA studies have shown that breast milk of most meat eating women in the US exceeds drinking water standards for many pesticides and contaminants. The average contamination of vegetarian breast milk is much lower, and even less for vegans.
As for disease statistics, the link at the bottom provides references. However, other studies have shown a significant increase in disease risks associated with omnivorous diets when all other factors are controlled for: heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, prostate cancer, obesity, etc. are all less frequent in vegetarians (see Diet for a New America by John Robbins, former ice cream heir turned vegan, for chapters on health data with references). Some of these are likely linked to the way animals are now raised.
- Vegetarianism — a form of child abuse. Many aspects of vegetarianism are harmful, particularly to growing infants. An infant’s nutrient needs are great but it has a small stomach. Nutrient-dense foods are essential. Most foods from vegetable sources are nutrient poor. Doctors have suggested that vegetarian fad diets should be classed as a form of child abuse.
Of course, vegetarians have to be careful when selecting foods for themselves and their children. Vegetarians don’t just survive on salad, and careful selection of nutrient-rich foods is sufficient. There are plenty of cultures around the world that are entirely vegetarian, so this statement is just misinformation.
- The vegetarian’s dilemma. Being a lacto-ovo-vegetarian (those who eat milk and eggs) carries little or no health risk for its adult adherents. But while these vegetarians don’t kill animals for food, they rely on the rest of us to carry that burden of guilt for them — for a cow to produce milk a calf must be born each year. What are we to do with those calves? They cannot all be kept and fed. They must be killed — there is no other option. Isn’t it a waste not to eat them?
What a compelling argument for veganism! While I’ve argued above that meat consumption in itself is not morally wrong and is natural, dairy consumption remains completely unnatural. In fact, the majority of humans have some degree of lactose intolerance, but most of us just put up with the minor cases. Yes, dairy cows must have calves every year to continue producing milk. Milk that is for their calves. Humans begin on a diet of breast milk, but at some point they are weaned. No other species steals the milk meant for another species offspring in order to fulfill its own desires. Kind of perverse, if you think about it.
The Western vegetarian at the moment is in a very privileged position. So long as not too many join him, he can afford to indulge his naïve dietary fads in a way that is denied to most of the people of this Earth. While he ponders on this fact, he might also apply himself to Kant’s Categorical Imperative which may be rewritten: What would be wrong for all, is wrong for one
Again, far more healthy and environmentally friendly foods would be available if wealthy Western societies quit indulging their selfish, destructive tastes. It isn’t an easy switch for many, due to the food subsidy structure in the US. However, both the UN and the IPCC have begun urging people to adopt vegetarian and vegan diets in order to combat global environmental destruction and climate change. Even just a reduction in animal product consumption would do far more for human health and the environment than probably any other individual consumer choice.
Caramel Baloney: What does it mean to be a vegetarian?
…Vegetarianism differs from the other political beliefs and lifestyle choices in that it is perceived as carrying a value judgment. To non-vegetarians, vegetarianism is implied criticism. And to some other vegetarians, vegetarianism is a moral criticism of animal…
You raised many good points and I really appreciate you taking the time to read and respond at such length. A few thoughts:
I do not think that vegetarianism is so different from other political and lifestyle choices, except for its strictness of definition. Almost all of our decisions, aside from the most trivial ones, involve our values. Saying hello to your friends instead of punching them in the face is a value-based decision. Many vegetarians believe that it is never morally permissible to eat meat. How many cyclists argue that it is never morally permissible to drive a car? In both cases we have a value judgement; the vegetarian thinks it’s wrong to eat steak and the cyclist thinks it’s wrong to drive a big SUV. What I don’t quite understand is why the former is so much more strict than the latter. Perhaps because eating meat is seen as an especially egregious offense? But then we also have the example, as you duly noted, of a hunter-gatherer type of situation where it would seem permissible to eat meat. Or a more contemporary version, I have a friend who has a personal rule to only eat meat that he, or someone he knows, has personally hunted. This makes him effectively a vegetarian for ten months of the year, but do those other two months prevent him from being called a vegetarian?
I suppose my overall argument is that we shouldn’t try to rigidly define vegetarianism as “one who never eats meat.” There should be room in the definition for people who generally try to abstain from eating animals, but do so on occasion. I think this is what you are saying in your last paragraph, that we shouldn’t ostracize people who eat meat but still try to reduce their consumption of it.
We’re definitely in agreement that vegetarians who occasionally consume meat shouldn’t be ostracized, and we’re both questioning the basis for that exclusion. Maybe it has to do with the consequences? Certainly, the intentional killing of a sentient animal is different from tooling around in an SUV. But a cyclist who has stated that driving an SUV is wrong would likely be questioned for buying one. An anti-choice woman who finds herself unintentionally pregnant would likely be questioned for going through with an abortion. In both cases, the participants would be betraying some sort of value they had declared.
The difference, though, is that in both cases, those individuals might be excluded from their own groups, but not the groups they are entering. SUV drivers aren’t going to care about bicyclists driving SUVs, and pro-choice advocates will welcome and support anyone who needs to terminate a pregnancy. Vegetarians who eat meat are sometimes excluded all around, which is tough to understand. It’s almost as if the omnis feel betrayed, and I’m unsure why. In some circles, maybe there is some deep down, unacknowledged respect of vegetarians. Or like I said before, maybe omnis feel silently criticized around vegetarians, so for a vegetarian to eat meat would be ultimate hypocrisy. SUV drivers likely don’t feel any effect of cyclists’ criticism, and pro-choice advocates certainly aren’t vulnerable to anti-choice criticism. But like I also said, vegetarians are doing far more to reduce waste, pollution, and animal cruelty than omnis, so they shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks. If it’s within any vegetarian’s personal values to eat a piece of meat (or within any vegan’s values to eat a piece of pizza) once in a while, then they should do so freely.
What does it mean to be a vegetarian?
I once had a conversation with some of my housemates about vegetarianism. One of them remarked that she had been a vegetarian for the last ten years and has since occasionally started eating meat again. This led me to think about how we define what it is to be a vegetarian.
The word itself simply means: Someone who does not meat. Yet, it seems that our use of the word implies a slightly different meaning: Someone who does not ever eat meat. You may have heard someone say that they are a vegetarian who eats chicken or a vegetarian who eats fish. It is also likely that you have heard someone else say that such a person is not a vegetarian.
I’m curious as to why we define a vegetarian to be someone who never eats meat. Why not simply call anyone who, in general, does not eat meat a vegetarian? To make a parallel argument, we do not define a liberal or conservative as someone who always votes on the liberal or conservative side of an issue. We do not define a Roman Catholic as someone who always follows the dogma set forth by the Catholic Church.
The question is: Why do some define vegetarianism so absolutely? It is true that there are people who proclaim themselves to be pesco-vegetarians and the like, but these people are often marginalized by strict vegetarians.
Perhaps there is some distinction to be made in political beliefs versus lifestyle choices. One might argue that there is a difference between defining one’s eating habits rather than one’s voting record.
If there is such a distinction, I can’t think of it. In fact I would argue that there isn’t a difference in defining lifestyle choices that would lead one to be an absolutist. Take the example of cycling. We do not define a cyclist as someone who rides their bicycle for every trip they take. Furthermore we do not define a cyclist as someone who never drives a car.
In summary, it’s silly to exclude people who occasionally eat meat from being called vegetarians. A practice of inclusion rather than exclusion might even attract more people to eat a more plant-based diet.
Vegetarianism differs from the other political beliefs and lifestyle choices in that it is perceived as carrying a value judgment. To non-vegetarians, vegetarianism is implied criticism. And to some other vegetarians, vegetarianism is a moral criticism of animal consumption, so for a vegetarian to consume animals would be a betrayal.
More than any of these other choices, vegetarianism is held up to constant scrutiny. Vegetarians frequently have to respond to statements such as, “plants are living things, too,” or “animals would eat you, so why is it wrong to eat them?” I sometimes wonder if people feel a defensive need to challenge vegetarians because, around vegetarians, they feel forced to face their own sort of uncomfortable existential shame. Of course plants are living things; humans are unable to harvest sunlight energy to fix atmospheric carbon into a chemically reactive compound, and we must thus consume other living things with this ability in order to survive. And we all must kill to live.
There’s definitely a reasonable philosophical argument against eating other sentient beings, but as a vegan, I don’t believe it’s morally wrong to eat animals. It makes sense to eat animals from a hunter-gatherer perspective, because the caloric return per time and energy of investment would be much greater for hunting than gathering. It makes sense to eat grazing animals, because we cannot digest grass. Cows and bison can convert the sunlight energy locked in grasses on marginal land into a form we can utilize.
However, there is a HUGE difference between eating sustainably fished and hunted animals and our current practices of overharvesting and factory farming. The return on investment has completely diminished; we must now input far more energy and resources than we get out from the meat. There are moral issues with converting the rainforest and most of the natural environments in the Midwest to ag fields that are mostly used to feed livestock in feedlots. Loss of habitat, water consumption, fertilizer and pesticide pollution…all to feed far fewer people than vegetables grown on that same area of land would feed. There are moral and health issues with the conditions under which animals live in those feedlots. Cows are supposed to eat grass, not corn. Crowding and disease result in antibiotic pollution. And humans are supposed to drink human milk as babies, but at some point we need to be weaned. It seems strange to then steal the milk intended for other species’ offspring.
So, certainly, there are many reasons to be vegetarian besides strict animal rights. If one chooses to be vegetarian because they feel it is completely wrong to eat animals, then they should probably never eat meat. But many vegetarians are probably more concerned with health, the environment, inhumane treatment of food animals, etc. I agree that they should not be condemned for consuming an occasional animal product, because anyone who considers themselves a vegetarian is doing FAR more to reduce their impacts in these areas than the average omnivore. And we do need more of them.
