A vegetarian, not a vegan. Open to arguments to go vegan.

[Maisy]

I find eating meat and eggs very gross for many reasons. But I too feel I need it for protein as I can't eat any dairy products due to a severe allergy.

[kris]

https://familydoctor.org/vegan-diet-...ents-you-need/


BTW, I am vegan.

[hazada guess]

I was a vegan for years until one day I was in a supermarket and saw a bacon and egg sandwich reduced in price. I'm afraid I succumbed.
After all that time, it was the best thing I ever ate.

[Native spirit]

I know a few people who have done that Hazada


Namaste

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Altair

The balance is gone when there are tens of billions of farm animals and billions of human beings.

Precisely

The farming is brutal, but that's not really a nutritional ethic per se. It's ethics pertaining to industrialisation and commodification which increases the value of consumables and devalues what is priceless, like life.

To illustrate, a tree in a forest, with all the intricate bark and leaves and its 'place' in nature is priceless, but it's only worth something if we cut it down and make a commodity of it.

There are sustainable ways of doing that, but with this many people, it's very difficult to stretch limited resources and provide for everyone, so we concentrate production and efficiency, one result of which is the mass slaughtering of animals...

If we were different, say a Bushman in Africa's wilderness, we'd spend two or three days chasing down an antelope, kill it, and carry it home to feed the mob. It's still violent and inhumane but since that animal didn't have the purpose of feeding people, we take something priceless, but also worthless, and never abstract a value apart from its ecological 'place', which includes being prey for predators, and humans, at least in those ecological conditions, are predators.

This is where the ethics get turned on their head. Firstly, if you compelled the Bushmen to be vegan moralists, they'd die, and the biggest irony is, veganism can only be viable within the industrialised, commodified system. In that sense, veganism is merely a symptom of commodification, just as much as factory farming and slaughter-houses are.

This means the issue at hand is a layer deeper, and isn't on the surface of diet. It's within the cultural-consumer hegemony that posits all people should live by the same (commercial) system regardless of environmental demographics.

[Lucky 1]

Originally Posted by AngelBlue

How you know ????
Were you a carrot once ? LOL....

Sorry, don't mind me, not only do I have a social conscience but I have an "all living things " consciousness.

Because we really JUST don't know do we !
If it lives it feels it knows .

Seems that scientists have discovered that plants make a variety of sounds in response to various stimuli from happy when it rains to panicked sounds when there's a drought or attack by something

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/world...scn/index.html

I once got the argument from a devout vegan over plants not having a nervous system and her position was that its okay to eat plants because they don't feel pain, no nervous system... yada yada. And I said...so what are you going to eat when the scientists of the next century figure out how to record the screams of wheat being cut and falling to the thresher???

Now it seems my position has been vindicated by science.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by Lucky 1

Seems that scientists have discovered that plants make a variety of sounds in response to various stimuli from happy when it rains to panicked sounds when there's a drought or attack by something

Now it seems my position has been vindicated by science.

I already knew you would post that.

So what ''position''? You jump to conclusions too quickly. Plants responding to external stimuli (which isn't news) does not equate having feelings.

Every species is different. We have certain feelings and experiences that other animals don't, and likewise they have experiences that we don't have.
Plants may respond to external stimuli but that in and of itself isn't ''proof'' of them having 'feelings' nor does it mean their experience is the same as that of animals, neither is it usable to argue that there is no difference to what we consume. It really does not tell us all that much.

[Lucky 1]

Originally Posted by Altair

I already knew you would post that.

Plants responding to external stimuli (which isn't news) does not equate having feelings.

Every species is different. We have certain feelings and experiences that other animals don't, and likewise they have experiences that we don't have.
Plants may respond to external stimuli but that in and of itself isn't ''proof'' of them having 'feelings' nor does it mean their experience is the same as that of animals, .

Oh...so now what you eat comes down to feelings???
Lol...Altair, eat what you want to eat.....i really dont care what anyone wants to eat. If you're happy with it....thats all that matters

[Altair]

Originally Posted by Lucky 1

Oh...so now what you eat comes down to feelings???
Lol...Altair, eat what you want to eat.....i really dont care what anyone wants to eat. If you're happy with it....thats all that matters

If you don't care then why continue to post here? It's clearly important to you otherwise you wouldn't post here so much. You feel ''vindicated'' and you ''lol'' about it, which proves your investment in it.

I didn't say it ''comes down to feelings''. What happens with this particular 'argument' is some people believe plants have 'feelings' because plants may react to external stimuli, which I'll state again is (1) illogical, as feeling and reacting are two different things, and (2) old news.

[Guillaume]

I would agree with Altair, Buddhism makes the distinction between beings if they are sentient or not. Plants are not sentient beings.