Every once in a while I get that ominous feeling that killing and specially making animals suffer just for me to eat meat, fish and lactose is extremely wrong, but then I kinda forget.
I kinda see myself hunting wild game though so it's weird.
No true leftist is an omni.
Dairy is a cruelty product, eggs are a cruelty product, the factory farming industry employs immigrants in exploitative conditions often undocumented giving the farmers control over their lives. Indentured servitude, modern slavery.
Unless you're hunting deer for your meat, which is still cruel, you contribute to this system that is very easy to avoid with slight inconvenience.
(Unless you're living in some food desert and must eat animal products to continue living, in that case there's no choice.)
Go vegan comrades, do we have a vegan comm yet?
You're right, but saying shit like
No true leftist is an omni
is fallacious and cringe
yeah that’s ultraleft deviation, the primary contradiction in human society is class, so ultra-vegans damning 99.999...% of people with normal diets and pretending they’re still doing politics, and that they just won it, isn’t going to work - colonizer thinking
but I liked the rest of the post and agreed with it
I do sometimes feel bad when I rip up my plants that are no longer productive or have been eaten too badly by bugs. They are still living things and respond to their environment. But then I start thinking about being consistent and it results in me eating nothing, or, I eat anything. Any time I think too hard about it, I come down to an absolute for or against thing.
When I think about animals being slaughter cruely, I also think about animals as they exist in the wild. I think about the pretty brutal videos on that r/natureismetal or whatnot subreddit, of baby creatures being eaten, of animals being ripped open. It is disturbing and brutal. But it's how it works out there.
No matter. I think that if we are going to eat animals then we should be as humane as possible. I really like the idea of eating lab grown meat and more plants.
I don’t think anyone believes that. All we’re saying is that leftism doesn’t revolve around dietary virtues, we’re letting the masses have their milk and honey
the masses... the masses must overthrow Burger King for themselves, and they’re going to do that through mass struggle, of which veganism-carnivorism is a secondary contradiction (yes we all align on the vegan side)
there’s this idea, that you can lead the vanguard through personal choice and extreme purity, that leads people to do this performative petit-bourgeois thing, to take extremely liberal positions (that are good) and declare themselves willing to use the worst of authoritarian revisionism to impose them on the rest of us, as if that’s how we determine party pecking order, as if that’s anything more than an unpopular and performative red fascism
extreme vegan agitation is helping tremendously, the original argument was against the exclusionary statement that no true leftists can eat animal products, which is of course absurd and alienating for everyone outside of the Whole Foods class of American leftists
I’m legit outside foraging for wild blackberries while posting this
Unless you’re hunting deer for your meat, which is still cruel, you contribute to this system that is very easy to avoid with slight inconvenience.
I get that it's slight inconvenience for some but you should be mindful of people who have history of eating disorders or other health issues that make it functionally impossible to be restrictive about their food. I opt for plant based protein when I can and have been working on adding more to my culinary repertoire but for the time being my mental health isn't in a place where I can fully drop meat and animal products.
There are few dietary restrictions that actually require you to eat animal products, they're far more unhealthy for you.
If it's some kind of protein deficiency there is plenty of non-animal protein sources, the vegan default is beans ofc and it's dead cheap.
I'm a picky eater to the point that it's an eating disorder. Without animal products I wouldn't have had any protein; beans make me vomit in disgust. But now I just drink a ton of Soylent so it's a mostly vegan diet.
I know that it involves cruelty, but everything in capitalism involves cruelty. The veggies that I buy get harvested by Romanian workers for 2€ / h, getting cramped near the farm and spreading covid like wildfire, working in every weather. Pretty sure humans died for my mobile phone retrieving copper in the Congo or get sick manufacturing the electronics in China.
I try to avoid meat and cruelty, but I think this fixation on food is pretty liberal and weird, since there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. I blame nobody for consumption choices, especially since those are often a financial necessity (the meat industry gets tons of subsidies here in Germany)
Those animals eat the veggies, you'e doubling up on immigrant slavery, environmental impact, resources wasted, etc. One is demonstrably worse because it first requires the other.
Actually since you're dedicated to this zero sum game of bullshit, if I ate nothing but pure beef all the time, I would be minimizing animal cruelty and suffering while still eating meat. Eating a diverse diet means that more animals have to suffer. Plus you haven't even thought of the animals killed and displaced just for your palm oil, your house, your roads. But I guess it feels nice to feel self-righteous based on consumer choice.
No it doesn't genius, you're just eating several cows. Are you raising and butchering one cow yourself? Buying one wholesale that will last that many meals?
I also don't use palm oil and neither should you.
Look in the mirror, you're literally doing "yet you participate in society. Curious!"
Fragile fucking liberals.
Nah, you're just engaging in finger wagging over a consumer choice. Going vegan is going to save marginally more animal lives than not.
See at least in my choice, I'd still get to eat meat and the cows are fed with thresher-harvested grain which would result in fewer animal deaths overall, and eating a cow (in my case, buying one wholesale that would last me for awhile) would kill less animals than your average vegan.
Personally I'm not going to do that, but I like meat and will continue to eat meat. I will eat non-factory meat when I can get it and afford it. You can have a problem with that or whatever, but you're not really being honest with this argument. You only care about animals insofar as what can be done about their consumption for nutrition or clothing, but there's plenty more that could be done to minimize our overall impact and you don't seem to talk nearly as much about that.
Also lmao do you think Marx subsisted on carrots?
Going vegan is going to save marginally more animal lives than not.
What a fun take, it should if you do it right, save all the animal lives you would cause to die otherwise.
You'd think of all places this you wouldn't get losers who like to play leftist while doing nothing of substance but posting criticizing people that actually do make change in their lives.
I guess have fun with the heart disease
Again, do you think Marx ate nothing but vegetables? You cannot be a leftist if you're not vegan?
And again you're just peddling junk science, vegans have the same mortality rates as people with other diets. That and vegan diets are not recommended for children, pregnant women, and the elderly.
vegans have the same mortality rates as people with other diets.
You know this is wrong and are only saying it to make yourself feel alright with eating meat and dairy.
That and vegan diets are not recommended for children, pregnant women, and the elderly.
You're none of those things.
You know this is wrong and are only saying it to make yourself feel alright with eating meat and dairy.
You’re none of those things.
Why's it okay for kids, pregnant people, and elderly though?
Sorry there, misread that as morality. I don't know about mortality rates and don't care about if there's a difference, that's not my argument.
I also didn't say it was okay for children, I'm saying you're listing those things as some excuse not to switch to a plant-based diet despite not being any.
Usually people are here because of their ethical beliefs and claiming to be "leftist" but staunchly defending eating meat is laughable.
Sorry there, misread that as morality. I don’t know about mortality rates and don’t care about if there’s a difference, that’s not my argument.
Okay. Well, I do care. I like to eat meat. I am going to continue to eat meat.
I also didn’t say it was okay for children, I’m saying you’re listing those things as some excuse not to switch to a plant-based diet despite not being any.
Well no, I just don't get why this supposedly enlightened way of engaging with the world is bad for some groups of people.
Usually people are here because of their ethical beliefs and claiming to be “leftist” but staunchly defending eating meat is laughable.
I mean it's only laughable if you think animals are the same as humans, which I don't. Also there's a lot of leftists you'd be invalidating with your belief that you need to be a vegan to be a leftist, like literally all its founders and philosophers.
I guess have fun with the heart disease
Where is that take coming from? I don't believe this poster ever indicated that they were consuming the high levels of red meat associated (note the current sciences, to my knowledge, can not link the two) with heart disease?
The arguments that have been presented so far are all about how counterproductive it is to criticize people for not going full vegan for reasons outside their control. it really is hard to eliminate all meat from a diet on the kinds of budget people like me live on.
Can it be done? sure. if you either know how to or have two years to learn how to cook; and access to a grocer that carries more veracity on its shelves that Rice and pinto beans; And the time to plan out a meal schedule and shopping list; AND your not ND in a way such as to have problems with any of the executive decision processes involved in all of that.
for a lot of people, it might as well be impossible.
so, if we agree that the cruelty in the process is bad and that as a group action must be taken to change it, don't go preaching about the moral superiority of your personal decisions.
so, if we agree that the cruelty in the process is bad and that as a group action must be taken to change it, don’t go preaching about the moral superiority of your personal decisions.
Which is basically my point, it's silly to shit on people for not going full vegan. If we were all vegan, capitalism would still exist and we'd still kill massive amounts of animals just to get our vegetables via factory farming.
I mean your take is my take, I don't think your diet is what makes you a good person. But if someone's gonna go there, I might as well punch some holes in their argument.
Wanna hear a good ideology? Ancap vegan. The only animal that should be exploited is humans.
Something that makes the liberals here feel exposed. Too many children here that love to LARP without making the bare minimum change in their lives.
Killing something is now more humane than not killing something TIL
Leftists: the world is fucked, no one should have to live in this hell
The same leftists: Having kids is a fantastic idea?????????????????????????????????
Not Vegan but I agree.
My love of Ben and Jerry's shouldn't triumph over ethics.
Oatly's good but I miss the mix-ins of B&J so I stick with that
Ben and Jerry's has a surprisingly good selection of their flagship flavours in vegan form. Honestly you can tell if they're next to each other but otherwise you probably wouldn't notice.
Ben and Jerry's almond milk ice cream rocks comrade, go for cookie dough or the brownie one!
Vegetables are a cruelty product. They use animal compost, pesticides, and involve removing wildlands for farming. Our technological level does not allow for a fully vegan society without the deaths of many of our population.
This is the issue of individualism. You aren't changing a system nor are you advancing technological progress. I do think society will eventually be vegan out of pure efficiency, but that will only happen with technology.
Yeah. It requires personal change. That doesn't happen without material conditions changing, and I fail to see how material conditions will change in favor of veganism other than technology.
That doesn’t happen without material conditions changing
Shut the fuck up, jesus christ. When the chapos or Brace mentioned people dropping "material change" as if that makes them smart on stream the other day I didn't think too much on it, but christ if this isn't the spitting image.
You can easily not eat animal products, they're fucking cheaper.
They literally aren't. One of the cheapest premade sources of protein is a damn McDonald's hamburger. The poor and the working class do not have a lot of time on their hands. Some aren't neurotypical and can make their own food. If you want to be strong enough to deal with fascists, you need around 30g of protein while working out. A single McDouble can handle that for cheaper.
And don't give me shit about whey protein, to make it cheap you'd have to use milk to mix it. You can't just eat powder like that.
And you can argue that maybe we should readjust our priorities, make certain products that are more vegan than other products cheaper. Sure, I agree with that. But you are arguing for people to choose specific, expensive things and acting like it is easily available to poor working class people right now. And the only thing that will change that situation are the following circumstances:
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SocDem electoral veganism (lol, I don't think they're even willing to begin that conversation)
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Revolution, which has pro-vegan elements (which requires certain material conditions)
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Technological advancement
If you want to be strong enough to deal with fascists, you need around 30g of protein while working out
I'm going to guess you look like a scrawny 20 something, buying into the "protein from meat" myth. You know animals don't make their own protein right, they get it from the plants they eat.
No one needs whey powder, eat normal food. Learn how to cook beans, eat broccoli, spinach, potatoes, even rice. Your body is not using 30 grams of protein each time you work out fucking lol
I'm personally scrawny. My boyfriend gave me this advice and he has ~32 inch thighs made of pure muscle.
Lmao your boyfriend was propagandized by the animal agriculture lobby, you'd think someone on Chapo would get that
Then give us a cheaper form of protein comrade, post a link. We're really excited to hear back on it because we're poor
Online vegans and barely veiled classism, name a more perfect pairing
Veganism has historically been lower class, that's only been flipped because your government gives your money to the animal farming lobby.
It's not classism to eat rice and beans you fucking moron.
Then you're self admitting classism with your comment and projecting that on others. And that just makes you an asshole.
Could have fooled me browsing this site.
Unless you're saying you're vegan but don't mention it online? As if that's something to be proud of, "I believe strongly in not eating animals but I'll stay silent about it."
👍
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... you do realize that those vegetables you're eating are being harvested by the very same slaves, right?
For the most part, if you're eating meat in 2020, you're eating more vegetables indirectly through the animals you're eating, so whatever slave labor is used to grow the vegetables that the animals eat is still more than whatever slave labor is used to grow the vegetables a vegan eats.
So now we judge the quantity of slave labor that an individual indirectly causes? Does that mean that people who require higher calorie based are now more guilty based on the food to slavery index? I personally don't eat sweets, and for every 100 tonnes of sugar cane harvested, only 8 tonnes of sugar is produced. Does this make me better than the vegans who do eat candies and such then?
I hope you understand how pedantic and purposeless this conversation gets when we're trying to weigh how much slave labor each of our diets produce to artificially see who's the better person.
Slave labor is one metric, water resources is another. It's something that we all need and there is only so much of it. Veganism is just less wasteful than other forms of sustenance, from resources to labor.
Making a case based one the .1% of the population that requires a high calorie diet for things like ultra competitive athletics is bordering on ridiculous. Most people can function on a modest caloric diet.
Higher calory diets aren't just for pro athletes, some people just need to eat more food to sustain themselves, i.e. hetero men needing to eat 25% more than hetero women, or just larger and taller people needing to eat more in general.
But that's not even the basis of what I'm trying to say and I have a feeling you didn't attempt to read it past the first sentence. Like I said, I don't eat sweets, meanwhile crops like sugar and coco require huge amounts of raw harvest to produce only a small amount of the final product, and are infamous for abuses of slave labor and unlivable working conditions in places in South America.
Does this then make me, a non-sweet eating omnivore, better than a vegan who likes to have candy? Do we need to each determine how much slave labor our individual diets support to see who the best leftsist is? This whole argument applies to other foods like oils, grains, etc. too. If you want to be vegan, then that's okay, but attacking omnivores is just so unnecessarily devisive and counterproductive towards solving issues like slave labor.
I'm not sure what to tell you. It's my position that less slave labor is better than more. This is not a difficult proposition.
And yet I'm sure you still eat things, purchase things, take part in things that are completely unnecessary towards basic human needs.
In that case, what point does comparing the total percentage of slave labor you contributed towards do except create a moral hierarchy of good to bad leftists (or just people in general) that you want to put yourself in? Should the omnivore be shamed that they rank worse on that hierarchy than the vegan? Should the vegan be shamed that they rank worse than the monk? I would argue that it is the intent behind people's actions- do they oppose slave labor, do they believe in equality- that matters much more than individual lifestyle choices. And arguing that such a moral heirarchy should exist only serves to alienate and divide.
We can fix that by changing labor relations. There's no way to make animal agriculture not terrible.
There’s no way to make animal agriculture not terrible.
sure there is, it would just have to be scaled way down
And with that the price of meat would go up six times. You can already buy that meat but you choose not to.
"All suffering is equal, there can be no lessening of suffering without abstaining from all food!"
Every once in a while I get that ominous feeling that killing and specially making animals suffer just for me to eat meat, fish and lactose is extremely wrong
That's the unquiet ghosts of the animals you've murdered tormenting you for your crimes
Vegan btw
firstly, I'd like to have a healthy relation with food, before trying anything funny
Can't imagine how much of an asshole some one would have to be to downbear you for this. Same boat as you, would love to some day but right now I can't or else I'll stop eating altogether. Solidarity <3
I guess I get it, referring to veganism as something funny wasn't exactly respectful, that was a cheap and unecessary jab on my part, but I can't help it // e:wording
refering to veganism as something funny wasn’t exactly respectful
I wouldn't worry about it, if you've been to most vegan spaces online, we aren't great about that either lol
Yea, this comes up a lot in the vegan sub, and I always make a point to tell people their health has to come first. Part of being healthy about being vegan is knowing that you're getting everything you need from your diet, and if using a tracking app or something is going to fuck you up, definitely just do what you can to be healthy first and foremost.
Fair call, I've always had a rotten relationship with food from depression / anxiety stemming from childhood abuse. Used to eat maybe once a day and starve myself for as long as possible on purpose etc. Funnily enough, since moving in with a vegan and doing a lot of the cooking that started to clear up. Once I decided to go vegan myself it got even better. It totally changed my relationship with food, but that might just be personal experience. I still have my bad times, and some really rough ones, but all in all my relationship with food is way, way better today than it ever has been.
I don't hunt
Boy I saw you hunting for the non-squishy grapes in the bowl BOY DON'T YOU LIE TO ME
Those same deer leave forests for parks during hunting season. They're aware of the looming threat to their lives.
Do you have a source on this? Not doubting you but it sounds interesting and I’d like to read more
It's a tale heard from some other mountain rats and uncritically repeated. Truth is I'm having a hard time googling it.
It's easiest to keep it out of the house entirely, and there's a lot of replacements out now for random cravings.
I will literally be walking down an aisle thinking "don't need that snack food, don't need it, don't need it, don't want it " and then I'll just grab it and put it in my car as if I'm defying myself
I think snack foods are fine - everyone deserves nice things, and if your nice thing is sweet things, then I won't judge. There's much worse cravings out there.
I just wish there was a way to buy biscuits without the packaging that goes into a landfill.
Yeah, there's little cure to that besides saving up your willpower for the hour of shopping instead of having to use it constantly to not eat the animal products in your home. It's tough to start!
Yea, I never said that I wouldn't ever eat those thing again and kind of just started cutting things out bit by bit. It started with "I won't buy cow products, but will eat them if other people buy them for a party or something" and I didn't really consciously change anything, but at this point, it's been almost two years since I've purposefully eaten an animal product, and I've barely noticed. I think the goal is to just do better than you are now. Don't tell yourself you can never eat this thing again, just make your decisions about what to eat and what to buy with the animals and the environment in mind.
Try framing it as an identity rather than a behavior. Not "I will stop eating meat" but "I am a vegetarian now."
I want to, but I function off of fish so consistently, through sashimi or salmon fillets. Need to read more info about fish ghosts compared to baby lamb. One I've cast off, but damn fish is so ingrained with local culture and lifelong dietary habits.
Fish I've gone off of more for the environmental impact of sucking the life out of our oceans
Fish was the last thing I cut out, and it basically just came down to the issue of over fishing oceans. Fish is kind of a pain to replace in your diet, because DHA and EPA fatty acids is pretty rare to find in the vegan world, and while your body does produce them itself, it requires you to be pretty careful with your diet, and too much omega 6 in your diet will leave you with insufficient DHA/EPA levels. I take a DHA/EPA supplement so I don't need to worry about it as much.
That's the first step.
The next is replacing dairy which is really easy now for any purpose. Except cheese, that's not perfect yet.
Odd, my experience has been the opposite, plant milk is three times the price of cow or twice the price of sheep/goat, but the "cheese" is pretty reasonable
I guess it varies pretty wildly by location
Yeah, it's roughly on the level of a cheap basic mature cheddar to me, the one vegan cheese I can get round here anyway (violife original)
Vegan CREAM cheese is fucking amazing, but yeah, the stuff like cheddar/gouda just isn't there yet, and it's why I'm not full vegan.
Vegetarian so easy. Just do it. Think about vegan after that.
I do really resent "no true leftist" gatekeeping.
I'd like to go vegetarian.
I love eggs too much to be vegan.
You're not going to convince many people to be class conscious if you immediately go at them for eating meat. I honestly think the left wide push for vegetarian/vegan lifestyle should take a back seat to much more important things. I don't particularly care about a chicken. I don't care if they like hugs. I care about people and a movement that has maaajor recruitment problems and is extremely weak as is.
I don’t see anything wrong with hunting for personal or communal sustenance - pretty much every omnivorous animal on earth does it in some form. I know several leftist vegans who feel the same way, but I don’t think that fits the mainstream vegan narrative. Either way, I do think that factory farmed food products are immoral and I wish I were better about avoiding them.
Ideally, I’d like to set up an aquaponics-based veggie greenhouse using a breeding tank of tilapia. I also want to keep chickens for eggs but not for meat. I’d occasionally hunt when the need arises, but at least I’d be completely free of factory farms - that’s enough for me to feel like I’m living ethically.
"hurting" does nothing equal "killing". There are ethical ways to kill, like the guillotine
That point wasn't really made in your previous comment, which seems to just conflate suffering and killing. And furthermore I don't really see the parallels here between eating meat and genocide. seems like a bit of a stretch. Humanity has evolved eating all kind of meats, and your point about the genocide killing being 100 percent set isn't even true: the nazis had considered deporting european jews for a while. And where is the abstraction with hunting? The hunter is a discrete entity who manages the whole process. it isn't some factory farm operating behind a veil, everything is plain to them, and the concrete, end goal is the acquisition of food.
Sorry, and on a re-read I don't see the main distinction you make either. I'm not defending hunting defined as the killing of any animal, but as the sustainable and humane (as I define it, which may of course be a sticking point) killing of animals for the maximal use of their products. If you broaden the category of hunting out so far, you could do the same thing with the analogy and say that humans kill humans because of jealousy, self defense, sport, or any other reason. Likewise, it doesn't matter what Bolshevik killed the Romanovs, or if they did with a noose, bullet or bayonet; and it doesn't matter which specific royalty there were, only that they are a species of royalty... the only defining matter is that of class: the same way that class defines the hunter and the prey.
Thanks. I don't find any of the (sustainable) anti-hunting or fishing arguments very compelling, but I did like the bit about extractivist vs participatory vs productivist objections. On a purely hypothetical level, I do find myself aligning with the producitivist view -- if the mad landlord is really going to buy and cook the food anyway, and there is nothing we can do to stop him, is it bad to consume it?
Also, I don't see why the line should be drawn at plant matter? why are plants ok to eat?
If anybody's on the fence about going vegan, watching slaughterhouse footage will help you make up you're mind real quick. I don't think so many people would eat meat if this stuff wasn't completely hidden from view.
That did very little for me. I've seen tons of that footage. I'm aware where meat comes from.
Meeting living cows made me want to eat less beef. I could really do without it.
Really the ecological damage is what really makes me want to stop eating any meat that isn't locally and sustainably sourced, but living anywhere not rural makes that hard. I rather raise some chickens to get their eggs.
Its also weird to think about bringing on extinction of the modern cow, pig, and chicken. Without anyone eating them, people wont pay to feed them into old age or bother raising them just to look at em. Can't exactly let them go wild either.
Ages ago, I went vegetarian for a year just to learn what it was like. It was, surprisingly at the time, not bad at all. I gave it up, but I've gone almost full fish and eggs for protein these days. Pork and beef are rare for me, at least compared to my previous diet. Still doing fowl, but less of that, too. If I had to go full hardcore vegan all of a sudden I don't think that would disrupt my life too much. The reasons I still use animal products are economic mostly. It's the mostest for the cheapest in this sick market where I live.
Already am.
It’s good for you.
Shoot for just adjusting your diet to include more fiber and fruit and vegetables until you’re getting to the point where you have meatless days, or to the point where you only have meat on the weekends.
Your mind and body will adjust to it over time and within a few months you won’t even want to eat much meat. Your microbiome will begin to adjust immediately, and this will mediate the psychological changes.
Sometimes if I’m going on long bike excursions for the guerrilla war and have to resupply in small towns I end up needing to pack kielbasa or something for the calorie density and protein. If you need to eat, you need to eat.
It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing! Communists can and will eat anything.
Been veggie for almost 4 years, it's not really that hard or inconvenient. Give it a try for a short period like a week or a month and see how it goes.
