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

(Bob M) #61

I’m not sure it’s great for us, although it can improve insulin response. But having eaten that way for years, decades actually, I’d much prefer the keto diet. The main problem with high carb low fat is that it’s low fat. Low or zero fat cheese, yogurt, etc., and if you do eat higher fat, then you’re no longer low fat. And it’s really easy to eat higher fat (pizza, for instance). When I started eating any fat, I got all kinds of issues, including mood swings, depression, hunger, etc. At some point, eating things like oats (only) for breakfast made me starving 10 minutes later. I somehow broke the diet or made the diet not beneficial to me.

Anyway, I mainly came here to apologize – I didn’t want to exclude vegetarians or vegans from trying the keto diet.

It’s just that when I went on Threads, the algorithm kept pushing me toward vegan accounts, and the people were militant. Things like cows are bad for the earth and we can grow crops everywhere, even on grasslands; eating a single egg a day leads to diabetes; eating cholesterol has been proven to cause people to die early. Many things like that.

I was getting a distorted view of vegans. Or at least I hope I was.

I have been blocking all these accounts and the algorithm is getting slightly better at pointing me to carnivore/keto/low carb accounts. As compared to Twitter, though, there does not appear to be as many carnivore/keto/low carb accounts on Threads, which is too bad.

#62

I don’t really have a problem with pastured cows although I don’t cook or eat veal of any kind. It is the feedlot cows that really bother me. As well as the feedlot chickens.

There was a vegan or vegetarian writer who came to the same conclusion as you did Paul, that even on an established farm there are worms and other creatures who are killed so nothing is truly bloodless and she started eating animal protein I believe. I look at it as yes some habitats are destroyed, do I care about squirrels, not really (have a problem with them under my shed currently which makes me less sympathetic, plus squirrels and mice are animals that depend on us for their existence, without us and our garbage they would die out.) Do I want them to suffer? No. However, I think feedlot cattle etc seem to have very sad existences. At least the mice were running around the field before it was destroyed. Plus on an established farm they hang out in areas of the farm not being cultivated and their homes are only destroyed once, the field is used for many years

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #63

Yes, Lierre Keith. Her health had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer continue on a vegan diet. It was a difficult transition for her to return to eating meat, apparently.

Yes, they have learned to take advantage of our presence, but no, they are hardy species and would be just fine without us.

Actually, some of them get killed every time the soil is disturbed. Unfortunately.

I agree with you that feed lots are terrible places and should not be allowed. The animals should be out in the field, fertilising the ground and building up the topsoil, instead of concentrated to the point where their urine and faeces become toxic waste.

Graziers find that when grazing is done using regenerative methods, the topsoil improves remarkably, instead of being depleted with every crop, and with the added benefit that they can stop using synthetic (petroleum-based) fertilisers–not to mention the diesel fuel needed to run the machinery to spread the fertiliser!

#64

Yes this is the Alan Savory argument using grazing animals to combat desertification


Although I am told his opinions have been challenged

I did not read the full report and wonder if it addresses desertification because in my lay opinion that is probably a greater concern than methane levels. The less usable land we have the worse we will all be. Here are some of the claims https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-bad-climate

(KM) #65

I agree with this. When I was looking at regenerative pasturing, I came across two generally positive ideas about it. 1. Cattle have big hooves and they’re heavy. In order to maintain healthy land it’s best to move them from spot to spot so they don’t compact the soil. 2. In areas where meat is confined to one area or the soil is especially vulnerable, it’s usually best to stick with animals that are smaller and have light, pointed hooves - deer, sheep, goats - because this tends to aerate the soil rather than compacting it.

I’m sure there are challenges to these ideas, but they made sense to me.

(Polly) #66

Yes. I assume they are going to adopt a morally superior stance. I have had vegan friends of my children visit our house and have gone the extra mile to accommodate their dietary requirements. My children are all grown up now so don’t bring friends home in the same way. But back in the day the vegan would at some point always proselytise for their choice of lifestyle. These days I would probably be more rude/less polite and tell them that one cow dies every six months to feed me whilst their dietary choices kill millions of little critturs from insects to rabbits, hares, frogs and even deer. So my past experience with vegans makes me less likely to want to engage with one. You also know who the vegans are when you meet new people, because they tell you within minutes of meeting. [old trope - but true]

(B Creighton) #67

Soil degradation or desertification releases the carbon sequestered in the soil - which is a lot, and which has totally been overlooked in the drive to clear and farm land. For example the push to use ethanol in gasoline resulted in much land clearing and farming of corn to produce the ethanol… Any new land coming under the plow is now releasing carbon which was previously sequestered.

On the methane issue… grass fed cattle release far less methane than grain-fed beef. The solution is to stop feeding american cattle grains such as corn to make them grow faster… and become metabolically sick… and need more antibiotics, and release much more methane than they would on their natural diet of grass from pasture land rather than land plowed to grow grains for the cows… which releases much more carbon… and makes us all metabolically sick along with the metabolically sick cows we eat.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #68

There is a rancher in the Sonoran Desert who has satellite weather images showing how clouds form over his regeneratively grazed ranch, because the soil temperature is cooler, whereas his neighbor’s ranch has such a high soil temperature that clouds cannot form over it. It’s weird to look at the images, because the clouds follow the property line.

Moreover, restoring topsoil greatly improves its ability to hold moisture, which reduces and even eliminates flooding and runoff. This means that farmers can do more with the rain they get, however much or however little. Allen Williams of the Understanding Ag consultancy group estimates that flooding of the Missisippi dainage basin could be eliminated if all the ranchers and farmers along the Mississipi-Missouri system were to take up regenerative practices.

(Edith) #69

I agree with this to a point but I feel that the vegan message is deliberately misleading and maybe even somewhat criminal.

As I was stuffing my face with pork rinds dipped in bacon fat the other day, my husband was reading through the Costco monthly magazine. In one of the articles it mentioned considering going vegan and asking your friends to do it, too.

It made me angry because veganism is being promoted without providing any of the caveats. The Costco article just makes it sound easy. Go vegan! Tell your friends! It didn’t mention the fact that the vegan diet NEEDS supplementation.

How many people actually research diet change? Veganism is being promoted so casually that I’m sure the majority of people think they just need to stop animal products and that’s it. I really believe it is a at the least negligent and at the most criminal to promote veganism without letting people know how challenging it is.

Edit: added the quote for reference.

(KM) #70

STEM is unpopular. It requires a certain level of intelligence, a certain level of education (personal or public) and a certain level of pragmatism that cuts off “touchy feely” responses that don’t agree with the findings. People turning away from STEM seem, often, to feel that amost by definition, any promoted philosophy is as valid as any other.

(Chuck) #71

I love vegetables and fruit and sometimes have a veggie meal but it is normally prepared with bacon grease when cooked. And I laughed at a sister in law for claiming to be a vegetarian when in fact she cooked with lard and bacon grease.

(Geoffrey) #72

30 to 100 million bison that grazed the American plains prove that out.

#73

Then if the number was 100 million, there are actually fewer cows today in the US than there were Bison?

According to this article India has the most cows worldwide

https://www.agrovetmarket.com/en/vet-pharma-news/detail/top-10-countries-with-the-highest-number-of-cows-worldwide#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20United%20States,country%20has%20301.6%20million%20cows.

(Geoffrey) #74

The estimates for herd sizes vary quite a bit as no one back then could really make an accurate count but they do estimate on the low side 30 million and as high as 100 million.
I’ve studied and followed a lot of history from our western heritage and the accounts of the bison migrations were amazing.
Have you ever stood in the open plains of the Texas panhandle, the vast rolling prairies of Kansas, Wyoming or Montana? Looked all around you where you can see for a hundred miles or more in any direction ? Now imagine that for as far as your eyes can see in any direction all you can see is the backs of bison. A virtual sea of brown from horizon to horizon and this goes on for days. Hard to imagine but that is what our earliest pioneers recorded. I would have loved to have seen it.

#75

Meanwhile Hungary had many big sheep herds… And now I can’t buy mutton almost anywhere… :frowning: That’s sad as it’s lovely meat.
(Not like beef would be particularly available but big town supermarkets have a few cuts.)

I gladly would try bison. But I want my mutton, Racka if I can choose as I ate it once and it was the best ruminant meat I ever had.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #76

The topsoil was also around 16 feet (nearly 5 m) thick. People said they could plunge their arms into it up to their armpits. The bison were exterminated so that farmers could till the land. Now the topsoil on the Great Plains is at best two or three inches thick.

The Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona and northern Mexico was arable land within living memory. You can see spots where the weight of a rock prevented the topsoil from eroding underneath, and it was evidently a couple of metres thick. Taller than a man, in some spots.

#77

Sounds amazing! The closest I have been to any of those places is Dallas which I don’t think counts.

I cannot believe as @PaulL said that the US desert had arable land but then parts of the desert were reversed in Israel 100 years ago!

I think Alan Savory may have the right idea and it should at least be tried. As noted there were millions of Bison 200 years ago and no one complained about the methane

(Geoffrey) #78

Yeah not so much these days but back in the early settlement days of Texas, Dallas was the very edge of the frontier. Beyond that were vast lands full of bison and game.