I want to be vegan but I'm trapped in a human body

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(Allie) #21

This is why I’m aiming at being as plant based as I can be for my body. I don’t believe 100% vegan can be healthy, based on my past experiences of it. I do actually know many vegans who tout “vegan for the animals, not for health” but I look after a LOT of animals in different ways, and if I didn’t have my health, I couldn’t do that.

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #22

Exactly Allie. I devoted most of my adult life to being a vet tech, working on a farm and rehabbing domestic animals and wildlife in my home on the side. Mentally I had conflicts eating meat but I didn’t begrudge the feline or ferret his carnivore diet. Heck even squirrels eat meat when times are tough. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need the protein in meat to survive. Now it’s just a matter of how much, how often and from what source.

#23

I raise the animals that end up in my freezer and on my plate, from beginning to end. It’s a lot of work from birthing to butchering, with deeply confronting and distasteful elements. However I don’t see that as an excuse for shirking those tasks. We’re developing a society that seems to think that avoidance is the best and most legitimate coping strategy.

(Bob M) #24

That’s incorrect. Totally incorrect. There is no way you can grow plants without killing things. If you don’t believe me, start following farmers on Twitter, you could start with Peter Ballerstedt (@grassbased), where many farmers communicating with him tell you how many animals they have to kill to grow and harvest crops.

Or listen to this:

You could grow plants hydroponically, but as discussed in the podcast above, the inputs into that system outweigh the outputs.

And try it yourself. Try to grow food without killing any animal, including insects. I put in an apple tree this year, which became covered in moth tents, which were killing the plant. I had to kill the moths. Every time we try to grow something, it’s either decimated by an animal (groundhog, chipmunk, deer), or we kill that animal. For us, since we can go to the store, we have not yet killed these animals but have definitely considered it.

(Bob M) #25

If there is one item I’d single out as being unhealthy to eat, it’s wheat. I’m convinced modern wheat is bad for us.

(Central Florida Bob ) #26

I guess that makes me Ovo-lacto-pesco-poultro-beefo-porko-vegetarian. How about carno-vegetarian?

I spent 20 years of my life doing the “I don’t eat red meat” stuff, eating only chicken or turkey and the occasional fish I caught. Plus following the “piles of pasta or rice with meat as a condiment” line of crap from Big Veg. The only advantage I can think of was that I didn’t get clinical malnutrition. All it really did was make me fat, which I fought for another 30 years.

Two days before New Year’s Day of 2000, my wife and I were out riding our bikes and we got hit by a truck. I was lucky; I broke a vertebra in a way that didn’t require surgery or a brace and broke my tailbone so I couldn’t sit comfortably for almost a year. My wife broke the same vertebra but it shattered and required massive surgery and about a pound of stainless steel implanted. While in the hospital she started thinking about how much life she wasted worrying about not eating beef and decided it was over. A few months afterward we started eating meat again.

I hate the idea of killing “big, brown-eyed, cute animals”, too, but it’s how the world works. Killing something so that we can eat is also known as recycling. The elements in our food come from the earth and eventually go back into the earth. Everything has a cycle. Not just carbon, nitrogen and water.

I’ve read several indigenous populations around the world give thanks and apologize to the animal they’ve hunted for food.

I grow tomatoes and peppers out back. We probably get 1/3 or 1/4 of the “crop”. Bugs get the rest. Heck, I can’t even grow an ornamental hibiscus without hand to hand combat against the bugs.

#27

Yes, Thomas O’Malley. I left the cinema in 1973 knowing my aim in life and that was to be Thomas O’Malley. Then science interposed itself on my young imagination and that dream was lost (but not totally). It is funny to think about as cats are obligate carnivores.

Kermit is cool too.

#28

It does speak to the equivalence in some societies of diet and religion. Social interaction is a non-scale, non-keto, well being requirement. Eating together is a social activity.

So, um, yes. Maybe not totes vegan. But at least able to munch away on vege cuisine without fretting over the carbohydrate content. “Carbohydrate content” is an oxy moron to me, in this keto mindset. Maybe I’m in too deep in the keto cult (is there a way out through the bottom of the pool?).

Keto is the current default ‘normal’ eating for me. But in this brave new world of university the normal is vegetarianism.

These are, after all, the foggy, afternoon nap* needing minds that will be our future leaders of industry, creativity and politics.(So far I observe lecture = nap time).

(Allie) #29

He’s the best, but I always had a soft spot for Toulouse.

One of my lovely friends has ordered me this book which will be here by the end of the week.

(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!) #30

Yeah. I’m not an idiot. I said “philosophically speaking”, not “practically speaking.”

(Dirty Lazy Keto'er, Sucralose freak ;)) #31

In fact Bob M, I’ll take that one farther; Their is no way a life form can live, without causing the death of others.

#32

Since me and the wife have (in our opinion) achieved “metabolic flexibility” when we’re in those situations we’ll typically eat what we want, or not, don’t confuse that with rationalizing eating garbage though, some things are just too terrible. But we definitely wouldn’t worry about carbs from veggies and stuff that realistically won’t do any real damage.

Not through the bottom! Gotta backtrack. I can absolutely say me and the wife were card carrying members for years, which was good for us and our goals, we’re still not 100% where we want to be but we’re a lot more realistic at this point. We’re still very much keto minus some stuff here and there but we now refuse to allow it to be the restrictive diet that people always claim it is. Funny enough given this particular conversation, we both said we refuse to become the keto equivalent of vegans. With all that said, don’t change for others, if you WANT to eat something they’re eating that’s a choice you need to make, but don’t do it for them!

(Randy) #33

If you view this as a cult, you’re doing it wrong. I’m carbohydrate intolerant. So I eat few carbs, and my health has greatly improved.

#34

Yeah, fair enough, Randy. I might be doing it wrong. The way to “do it right” has a high amount of variation, as variable as every individual participant. Some observed benefits are evident and can actually be self evident. But the norms of this new reiteration of low carb eating society have not yet been set.

It seems a lot like Bizarro world veganism in some conversations.

I do allow for the evangelistic enthusiasm of the recent converts. They are quick to don the coloured robes and head out into the main stream to preach (and dance due to the new found energy). But the hardening viewpoints (as their coronary arteries do not) of some of the long-term inmates has me concerned for the sustainability of keto-contrarians within the community.

#35

I do like Lierre Keith @ctviggen Bob. She puts that point of view very clearly. She suffers lifelong for her food ethics choices and presents a convincing cautionary tale. I heard it on the Peak Human podcast interview, but I imagine the anecdote where she tries to grow her own food is also in her book “The Vegetarian Myth” (2009).

There is likely a way to philosophically reconcile the ideals of vegetarianism with the reality of biological life cycles. It just takes some thinking time and not to be tempted to stop exploring those thoughts when enjoying a good story.

It’s interesting to observe that people who have an emotional bond to animals seek not to cause harm to them. The pragmatic meat eaters interpret that as providing a good death. Probably that is what they would seek for themselves. A quick, painless transition from life to death. It’s a nice thought. But the complexity of death is myriad. Not so much for the participant(s), more so for the witnesses. The more death we witness the more we understand the emotions around it. Kids at funerals, or on the discovery of their recently deceased pets present us with the raw form of grief, for example. Some people seek to budget that emotional experience by looking around the death of an animal for signs of life, or ways around it. And that is fair enough as well.

(bulkbiker) #36

Sweet thought. but life thrives on death… plants are the ultimate expression of this.

They thrive in the remains of their predecessors for what is soil made of apart from the corpses of dead plants and other living things?

We all die (absolutely everything dies) the timing is the difference.

(Randy) #37

Some good points. There are going to be “evangelists”. And it can be disconcerting.
I’m not sure why “keto-contrarians” would want to be part of this community, other than to cause rancor.

I try to look at the science of everything, and I self-experiment with various concepts and theories. But I’m always “trying” to avoid “digging in” on any point that gives me no room for other ideas.

(KCKO, KCFO) #38

Couldn’t give this enough hearts.

(Raj Seth) #39

FIFY

(KCKO, KCFO) #40

:joy::rofl::joy:

I guess I will call myself a fatatarian now then. Since most of what I consume is fats. It is on the meats, it is on the veggies, it is in my coffee.

This is a good thread.