Does knowing someone is vegan color (or colour if you like that) your perception of them?

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #41

There’s so much misinformation out there you’ve got to forgive someone’s Veggie or Vegan beliefs. That was me a few years ago.
It was only getting sick that made me question stuff. What if your young and haven’t got sick? You’ll believe your doing the right thing … It’s great to question the status quo and I guess vegans think they’re doing just that.
I do feel sorry for them though.
Ifods link is interesting, can’t argue with most of it … apart from maybe No17, ‘Take prescription medication’.

#42

Of course we judge. But there are levels. Being a very confrontational, hateful judgemental jerk isn’t a good look. And there are cases when it’s pretty stupid to judge too, like when it’s about very innocent and not even extreme tastes (I surely judge people with an extremely horrid one :D)… It’s stupid to judge one because they (sorry it’s the example coming to mind) don’t peel bananas “the right way” (never liked the “10 fruits you eat WRONG” things… if I eat it and I enjoy it, I do it right, thank you very much) or (this is extreme judgment but exists) they don’t eat the banana peel… Sometimes people judge other people without a good enough reason.
When it comes to the diet and its rightness, people still judge too harshly because they think only their own diet is right and it may be very far from the truth. We are all humans but we still don’t need or can handle the exact same diet. Sometimes not even similar ones… There are some facts, we all need fats and essential amino acids, there is no way around it but even our protein need is vastly different… Well protein is one part where veganism is no problem if one does it right. It may make things harder though, my protein intake plummeted down to merely adequate on my plant-based days… And of course, if one focuses on carbs like crazy (many vegans do), protein intake may suffer (somehow many other people can get satiated without much protein unlike me).

And I see throwing here vegetarianism still (when it’s not about the potential problem with meat eating, just the healthiness of the diet). We may argue about the healthiness of veganism (some supplementing is clearly needed but many ketoer supplement too, we can’t really consider it a very strong argument. I never did on any diet but I am probably lucky or just eat too much and get everything I badly need?), it’s clearly not right for many people (even who genuinely try with lots of effort and money and time) and tricky anyway but an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet seems pretty good to me. I can’t use my own example as even counting the years when I had <1 kg meat a year, it only lasted for a couple decades and I was young with good genetics… But my diet was well balanced and nutritious towards the end (it was too carby in the beginning) as far as I can tell, with tons of fat and animal protein (okay, I overate, there is a reason I really try to minimize carbs, protein and fat alike now)…

I never regretted going vegetarian. It was the right decision at that time. I was super close to it (meat a few times a year when eating out… then several times but still not every month) until carnivore :smiley:
Trying out carnivore was a great decision too :wink: But I needed my previous diets and the time being ripe for it.

(Chuck) #43

Yes I did and I am very much so sorry for that and doing my best to change my ways.

(Chuck) #44

There is such disinformation out there that is being placed on the internet that the average person is so mislead by that no wonder so many believe in the BS.

(Geoffrey) #45

That doesn’t sound like judgment to me but facts. Lol!

(Brian) #46

Yup. That’s a pretty big wake up call. And I sometimes wonder whether some of the things that have been challenges for me might have been different had I found a low-carb and nutrient dense way of eating sooner in life. But, I can’t go back, I can only go forward from here. Some damage is done and not reversible. Other things I believe can be avoided.

#47

Probably many of us wonder about it sometimes… I personally am fine with my decisions except the high-carb aspect - it wasn’t a decision though, I was grown up like that but everyone eats high-carb, it took a lot of time to realize I am better without :frowning: But fortunately I went low-carb and I was only 35 at that time! :smiley: My missing teeth won’t grow back (stupid sugar… and it’s everywhere as if it wasn’t easy to replace it with something else… though consider people’s different tastes, maybe it isn’t) but it’s better than messing up something more vital inside I guess… At least I had a nutritious diet all my life, some people eat in a way where I don’t get how they don’t break down in a year…
I am kind of glad I was fat (I still am, I am not happy about that part) as it made me focus on my diet. It went easy afterwards, I didn’t try stupid diets, I went low-carb almost right away (my first month was paleo and very carby but it was good enough for me to see the right direction :wink: I can thank that to calorie counting as I saw how much I need to eat if I have much carbs).

#48

Can’t see why you think it’s a problem.

You are entitled to your opinion like everyone else. If we need to refrain from every criticism because if “judges” someone, then we will never be able to speak our mind about anything and we will all become victims of a soft tyranny of non-judgment. I disagree with you in this particular regard, but I would like to encourage you to keep speaking your mind.

(Brian) #49

What I was kinda thinking about was what came before me. My decisions were “handed to me” at birth, things that I was raised to just accept as truth whether there was an actual basis for them or not. (Not just about food but food was a pretty significant part of it.) It took me a long time to have a really good look at some stuff rather than just accepting what I was told. And I lost a lot of friends when I finally decided that I’d been fed a whole bunch of lies for half a century. Most of my friendships were centered around a cult who happened to have a very skewed “health message”.

Neither will mine. Unfortunately, most were gone before I came to my senses. But even that situation had probably already begun before I was born as my mom n dad were well immersed in the cult by then and had adopted eating habits that did not tend towards getting enough protein and quality fat. I don’t hold a grudge against them, they really were trying to do the best they could and do what they thought was right.

I was never glad to be morbidly obese but don’t mind being in the category of what some call “overweight”. I have been thinner and do not find “stick figure existence” all that appealing. Muscle mass weighs something and I still have use for it. (I have a small farm and a lot of manual labor comes with that.)

As I was getting heavier and heavier, I did try to find some help with the “calories in / calories out” mindset. Bought some exercise equipment that gave me some numbers for the calorie outputs I should be using to accomplish certain things with it. And I sweated and grunted on that stuff, sometimes to the failure of the machines with pretty much zero success. Didn’t have any real progress with getting to a healthy weight until keto came into the picture, and then it was pretty dramatic.

Sometimes people are fooled and don’t know it. Sometimes people knowingly fool other people in all kinds of ways. That last group still trouble me. But I’m goin’ way beyond diet, and shouldn’t on a forum like this.

(Chuck) #50

I was raised to never judge others period.

#51

My heaviest was borderline obese, thankfully. Genetics, I ate more than many morbidly obese person, that’s sure… So I wasn’t extremely fat, I felt quite healthy and everything (except eye and teeth), I was young too… I probably would have changed my woe anyway but 35 years old was already decades later than ideal. That’s why I am kind of glad that my weight problems made me focus on my diet and I made changes. I started to care about health much more than my weight (good as I stayed fat anyway. I did lost some fat way before keto) and that was really good. I cared about my diet before! I ate lots of proper, nutritious food… That wasn’t the problem. The problem was what else I ate… Not knowing it’s a problem as I grew up that way, I ate like others, high-carb, high-fat, at least enough protein, sugars and pasta and everything (but meat. I never ate much meat until carnivore but that wasn’t a problem).

CICO works like a charm but I can’t just stop eating when hungry. I had to lower my carbs for that. I am so lucky/smart/whatever (probably lucky) to realize I need low-carb almost right away!
Not like it helped me much to lose my extra fat… But it helped in other ways :slight_smile:

Very true, sadly. I didn’t believe in dietary BS and myths, I just ate as I always did, ate whatever I liked and had NO IDEA it’s wrong and I need to look into it… For decades. It worked well enough, I enjoyed my food, functioned good enough, I was busy with zillion other things… And then I looked and made drastic changes. it wasn’t hard, I just had to LOOK, check, think a bit. I don’t remember being clueless about how to eat. It was very obvious I need to cut out the bad stuff (all added sugar, most high-carb items), focus on satiating, nutritious food…
And I am a curious one, I like to use my brain and read about things! I had time too… How many intelligent open-minded health-conscious (when they stop to think) persons don’t make an important dietary change just because things seem to be normal and good enough…? Some of us need a wake-up call :frowning: Why? It’s our diet, health, it’s extremely important, why don’t we think about it earlier? If the society doesn’t help enough with it? I don’t even remember learning about nutrition in school… Let alone the right things but I am not good at accepting things when my own body says otherwise, just putting a thought into my mind could have helped…

But I was moderately lucky as I got lots of nutritious food at home and no one ever told me I shouldn’t eat lots of fat or eggs :smiley: Later I heard about such things here and there but it wasn’t a thing when I was a kid and they were so vital to me that it was impossible to change me regarding them… It could have been much worse. I don’t know what I would have become on a low-fat diet. Sounds very scary. It may work perfectly for some people! I just strongly believe I badly need high fat and without much fat, my carb intake would be problematically high, even worse than my normal high-carb was.

(Robin) #52

You and me, brother.

(Allie) #53

Because they’re so blinkered and sleep arguing even when there’s masses of evidence against what they say, and they won’t back down. Too much stress that I can’t be bothered dealing with.

(Chuck) #54

There are experts that say the same thing about keto, carnivore, fasting and every other diet plan out there. The key is to eat what works for you, as the individual you have to do what works for you and stop listening to everything else.

(Allie) #55

Agree absolutely, and this is why I moved away from being vegan / veggie as I knew it wasn’t working for my body, but I know plenty who hang on to it out of fear / guilt even when it’s making them unwell. It’s very sad.

(Chuck) #56

I tried keto and it did help lose weight, and at first I had more energy but it didn’t last, I just felt something was missing. I move to a moderately low carb diet and fasting I was feeling mostly better for almost a year but my blood pressure was climbing, I discovered it was that I was stressing my body by forcing it to go too long without nutritiousment. So I have cut my fasting time I have add more real food, meaning more carbs in the way of fruit. My Blood pressure is coming down, but my weight went up about 6 pounds but it is now coming down again. To accommodate the added carbs I have lower my protein and fat intake. For me it is finding that balance of nutrition that gives me the energy, and lowers my stress and blood pressure.

(B Creighton) #57

You may know that cows are one of the animals that is able to produce more protein than it eats. There is a reason for that. We, of course, are not able to do that. There is a reason for that too. Unless, I want to spend my entire day eating food, I may need to consider other sources of nutrients than grass. It’s kind of funny that most vegans don’t expect their dogs to be vegan…of course some do…that is even funnier. Cows generally experience a much more humane death than being eaten alive by some wild animal… which is their fate in the wild.

(Chuck) #58

No we are all individuals with our own likes and dislikes. I never judge others and don’t give a damn about what others think of me.

#59

I don’t care if an actor or musician is a vegan. I’m not watching their show for nutrition advice. Too many performers think they should be commenting on science or world events that they have not researched anyway. Not sure why anyone cares what they think about food, I care that they can act or sing well.

With people that I know in real life, it depends on what else they say or do. I have a friend who I have known for well over 30 years who has been a vegetarian for a couple of years. This is someone who is highly intelligent, has struggled with her weight for the entire time I have known her, her mother did as well. She has been on everything including medifast about two decades ago. She’s currently as heavy as I have ever seen her. I don’t think her diet is helping her. She claims that meat is too heavy on her digestive system. I smile and nod. I tried to say something, she shut me down so I don’t bother. We are still friends and go to restaurants that can accommodate us both. I really do think she has not looked well but she seems content.

I have grown children who are dating, one of the first questions I ask about a new relationship is their food preferences. So far no one has brought home a vegan. I would also smile and nod and make them pasta! I think if you are very careful and really focus on your food, you can be a healthy vegan. I also think that is rare. I have one kid who would love to be a vegetarian if they got my blessing, I don’t give it. I personally do think about animal suffering, although it does not stop me from having steak. I try to buy grass fed organic although TBH I really don’t like it as much as conventionally grown meat, I still buy conventional at times. If anyone has suggestions on making grass fed taste better, would love to hear

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #60

I’m actually on the side of the field mice, rats, voles, ground squirrels, woodchucks, moles, ground-nesting birds, and other animals who are killed or whose homes are destroyed when the tiller, harrow, and plough come through. So many lives given to produce a crop, and at the cost of measurable soil depletion, whereas one life given can provide meat for many people while fostering habitats for all the little animals and building up the soil.

I guess the lives of lots of little animals just don’t weigh as much in the scale as the life of a cow, sheep, or pig does. As a keeper of pet rats, I find that makes me sad. My little friends have taught me that body size has nothing to do with how big your heart is.