Banned from c/vegan for this one. My bad.

Captions: Anakin Padme 4-panel:

  • “I’m going to make everyone go vegan and eat soybeans.”
  • “So we won’t destroy any more ecosystems, right?”
  • “We won’t destroy any more ecosystems, right?”
  • Aarkon@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    3 years ago

    Sorry, but false dichotomy/strawman here: I never said you should only eat vegetables, nor would any vegan I can think of. What I say is that maybe you don’t have to eat meat/eggs/diary products to have enough iron, B12 and what not. Do people substitute those when living vegan? Most surely they do, yes. Does that make an unhealthy diet? I don’t think so, no.

    Also, what would distinguish a “so called” vegetarian diet from a real one?

    • Zerush
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 years ago

      First the vegetarian diet include animal products, the vegan don’t, that is the significant difference. Yes, we can eat as omnivoros also a diet based in vegetables, but not only, we can’t sufficiently metabolize the necessary nutrients of a strictly vegetable diet. Just like other omnivores. A dog, a bear, a pig, and even our closest relatives, the chimpanzee, can eat vegetables, but they have to supplement this diet from time to time with animal protein to stay healthy. Of course, a strict vegan can make up for these deficiencies with the intake of supplements, vitamins, proteins and trace elements, but I don’t know, a diet that must be accompanied with pills, at least for me, is far from being healthy, sustainable and balanced.

      • Aarkon@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 years ago

        I’m well aware of the difference between vegetarian and vegan diets, thank you. 😉 I only wonder what you’d call a “so called” vegetarian diet, like I said.

        Other than that, I think that you’re a) falling for the appeal to nature fallacy, assessing things as good because they appear in nature (despite that, for instance, without artificial care your teeth will be likely rotten away by the age of 30), and b) taking stuff as natural only because it has been there for a long time: yet unless you’re eating raw eggs and meat, nothing about such a diet is natural in the true sense of the word. Consuming another species’ milk is even quite unique in the animal kingdom and by no means natural - it’s an artificial, a cultural thing.

        And culture can change. Not only are dairy products a rather European theme, I don’t see why it should be better to get proteins from highly processed and seasoned burger patties and sausages etc. (which, let’s be honest for a minute, are the dominant forms of meat consumption) than from e.g. pulses, or what makes iron from red meat healthier than iron from algea. If the presentation in the form of pills doesn’t appeal to you, I’m sure there is B12 powder as well.

        There are millions of living healthy vegans proving my point, as well as vegan athletes, performing no worse than their omnivore competition. In the light of all this evidence, I’m convinced that the health argument has mostly become a distraction from moral questions: Is it OK to consume feeling and at least somewhat sentient beings for culinary or traditional reasons while at the same time having a disastrous impact on the ecosystem?

        • Zerush
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          3 years ago

          There are millions of healthy young vegans, depending on their lifestyle and activity. Vegan diet is possible, but only well planned and with the needed complements. Because of this it’s better a vegetarian diet, wich aports these complements with some animal products, instead of artificial products. It’s correct that the human is the only species which have milk of other species in the diet, but this is irrelevant, because its a similar resource of calcium, and vit A, D and complex of B as in the own milk. Try to keep your young child healthy with soy milk, as I have seen in some cases of fanatical vegans, with dire consequences.

          But in general I mentioned dairy products, such as cheeses and yogurts, instead of milk, since milk as it is is not well digestible for an adult as it lacks the necessary enzymes to digest it well, only present in children, but this is valid regardless of whether the milk is their own or from a cow, goat or sheep, also a adult cow can’t digest well the own milk. These enzymes are not needed in cheese or other curdled milkproducts. Perhaps humans will evolve in the future with a 5m longer intestine, to allow us to take advantage of all the nutrients from vegetables, but until then there is no option to stay healthy in the long term.

          If it is for reasons of sustainability, it is better to use animal products in their proper measure and not abuse them as in our current society. It is better to have 1 top quality steak a week, than a steak from the supermarket every day. Or, switch to insect protein, as is done in many countries, which is certainly the most sustainable source of premium quality protein and nutrients, business as usual. Well basically there is not much difference between a shrimp or a grasshopper.

          • sexy_peach@feddit.deM
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            3 years ago

            Try to keep your young child healthy with soy milk, as I have seen in some cases of fanatical vegans, with dire consequences.

            Why would I give soy milk to young children?? Children have mothers milk or specially crafted formula and then start eating other foods.

            • Zerush
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              3 years ago

              Yes, without a doubt, but i’ve seen vegans who do this, because milk isn’t vegan and which don’t even use honey in their diet nor using yeast as complement. Works in young people some years, but all they finished with 40-50 years with several serious health diseases. As I say, fanatism is bad and it is idiotic to pretend that it from falling from one extreme to the other due to alleged unnatural excesses in the past in meat feeding to the other just as unnatural only with vegetals. https://www.newsweek.com/parents-convicted-feeding-baby-vegetable-milk-625626

              • Aarkon@feddit.de
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                3 years ago

                While it is true that certain dietary deficits take years to surface in actual somatic issues and probably as well that the majority of vegans is younger than the western average, neither is evidence that a vegan diet (especially a modern one) can’t be sustainable & healthy for a whole lifetime.

                Large fractions of the world’s population don’t eat diary products at all (like said before, lactose tolerance is rather the exception than the rule, globally), and others don’t have access to meat/fish, at least regularly, can’t keep certain animals or what not - do you consider all that unhealthy?

                • التنينوكس@social.touha.me
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  @Aarkon @Zerush I am not an expert in the domain but my area for lacking access to fish, has a high incidence of Goitre.

                  This is because of a clear lack of iodine and some minerals found in seafood. While most cope up with this, they do have thyroid issues.

                  I guess the same can be said for a lack of any other type of food.

                • Zerush
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Certainly are people in the third world without a regulary access to animal protein, but also there are normally a lessd lifespan as in the western world. Apart, there is a huge difference between not a regulary access to animal protein and never. Most of the people in these countries are also include insects and other recources in their diet, even in few occasions. This is just what a healthy diet include, which we don’t have in the western world with meet for every day, which is also not a healthy and balanced diet, as I mencioned before (depending on the climatic conditions, and activity. A Inuit with -30ªC need more fat and animal products as the people in Africa with 40ºC, also a worker in a fundition more than a officinist)

        • Zerush
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          3 years ago

          As I said before, the most used complement is yeast, by definition not vegan, because are bacterias, others are complements of vitamines and trace elements, made by the industry, obtained in artificial manner.

          • Faresh
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            3 years ago

            How is yeast not vegan? Also, yeast is not bacteria, but rather fungi. Vegans do not eat animals and animal derived products. Fungi, bacteria, plants, protozoa and all that stuff is not animals, although they are living things.

            And what is wrong with artificially produced complements?

            • التنينوكس@social.touha.me
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 years ago

              @Faresh @Zerush Don’t artificially created products generally harm the environment a bit more than regular food products? I mean not all the time and not that much harmful but a least one degree more hafumul. Like more heat oand CO2 emissions.

            • Zerush
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              3 years ago

              Yeast, also used in the elaboration af bread, beer and other alcoholic drinks, is a bacteria, not fungi. Artificial products are not generally bad, but for example sintetic vitaminic and mineralic complex are not so good metabolized as these in natural products, because they lacks of other substances which helps the own metabolism. More simple, you can’t substitude a lemon by a citric acid or ascorbic acid (vit.C). pill. Fungi also isn’t a plant, it’s a own specie between flora and fauna, because of this also not accepted by strict vegans.

              All of the living in this planet have the same bioquimic base, the human isn’t a exception, he also is a colective of billons of specialized living cells, apart ~3kg of bacterias in our intestine, without we can’t live. We have in 70% the same DNA as a Onion.

              • Slatlun
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                3 years ago

                Wow, doubling down for some reason. Not eating animals doesn’t mean only plants, and yeast is a fungus. Yep the one in beer, bread, extracts, etc. It is a single celled fungus and vegan by absolutely everyone’s definition.

                • Zerush
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Fungus isn’t a vegetal in the strict sense, because of this, it isn’t vegan.

                  • Faresh
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    3 years ago

                    You are completely misunderstanding the vegan diet. As I and @Slatlun@lemmy.ml said before, being vegan only means you abstain from animals and animal derived products. You can eat everything that wasn’t obtained from animals. So there’s nothing wrong with eating fungi. Some mushrooms, are in fact a very rich source of proteins.