kicksystem @ kicksystem @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

What's wrong with phytoestrogens?

I don't know where you are getting these stereotypes, but there are nearly a 100 million vegans nowadays and they come in all shapes and sizes.

I'm personally connected to a group of vegan activists here in Amsterdam and they are very hard to stereotype. One is in fact a researcher who is currently working on organs on chips so as to provide an alternative to animal studies, another regularly goes undercover to film what goes on within factory farms and slaughterhouses, yet another is a columnist for one of our well known newspapers and often writes about the situation with animals, we've got a politician who is in fact lobbying for cutting meat subsidies (good friend of mine), we've got a neuroscientist, another is working in the field of artificial intelligence (myself), we've got a lawyer who works with a group of animal rights lawyers, etc. Yes, there are some that aren't too smart as well and will just spent their time arguing with people, but to think that vegans in general are too dumb to understand that arguing is not the only and not always the most effective way to affect change just goes to show that you know very little about vegans in general.

Look, veganism just makes logical sense from an ethical (if you care about animals) and climate perspective. That's it. People of all ages are coming to this conclusion. How they spent the rest of their time is as diverse as humanity is. Some will not shut up about it, others won't tell a soul and just move on with the rest of their lives (quite a few actually, but they are always overlooked by the stereotypers for obvious reasons).

That being said, humans have evolved over this millennia to occasionally or more often feed on the flesh of air vegetarian cousins. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as many species that have existed and exist today are in fact carnivorous. Well killing animals is never pretty, killing has been a core part of humanity since its inception including our ancestors like the chimpanzee.

These are appeal to nature fallacies. Whether something is good or bad has nothing to do with what other species do, what happens in nature and what we've done in the past. The choice has to be made today in 2023 within your context (income, society, social circles, location, education level, etc.).

There is a huge difference between a Maasai tribe member in northern Kenia killing a cow for his family and a German dentist going to the supermarket and choosing to buy a killed cow instead of one of the other gazillion healthy, affordable, plant based options he has available to him at the store.

Good that you've reduced your intake by 75%, but how do you justify that 25% in your context?

Dedicating time researching a magic pill isn't actually solving the problem today, while stopping animal consumption does. People who really only care about the climate and not the animals should go vegan today and then dedicate their time researching a pill, such that afterwards they can resume consuming animal products.

Full disclosure: I care about the animals and the climate. Nevertheless I belief there are no gaps in my logic.

Haha, this is such a rich come back. Indeed the logic is so lazy that perhaps even trying to dispel it does a disservice to the person who actually came up with it :)

Apparently you don't know the first thing about vegans.

First of all there are nearly 100 million vegans nowadays. They are not all the same. Second of all veganism isn't even about climate change, it's an ethical position towards the mistreatment of animals. Lastly, most vegans don't deny evolution or our history, but simply look at the situation that we find ourselves in today. Mass slaughtering 80+ billion land animals in factory farms annually may indeed be the result of our evolution, but evolution isn't finished either.

Even if you don't group meat and vegetables in naive ways you still reach the same conclusion:

"Regardless of whether you compare the footprint of foods in terms of their weight (e.g. one kilogram of cheese versus one kilogram of peas); protein content ; or calories, the overall conclusion is the same: plant-based foods tend to have a lower carbon footprint than meat and dairy. In many cases a much smaller footprint."

• https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat

We're at the start of an enormous climate crisis that doesn't have a single solution. We should definitely push each other to do much better on all fronts. Reducing meat eating happens to play a pretty important role. So when somebody tries to get you to do better, please be receptive. This needs all of us and we live in a closed densely connected social system.

You should read this:

https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat

Conclusion: "If you want a lower-carbon diet, eating less meat is nearly always better than eating the most sustainable meat."

I am sure @BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world would grant you the right to complain about the need for systemic change once you've taken personal responsibility.

One of the things that annoys me about vegans… is they always ..

And one thing that annoys me about non-vegans is that they always tend to stereotype vegans. There are nearly 100 million vegans in the world my friend. We are not all the same.

That's why professionals marinate tofu.

Ugh, I can imagine. I think gnostic $anything$ would be unpleasant to talk to.

Do gnostic atheist even exist? I think the distinction is only there to tease people who think that you can really know anything..

That's what most people think, but when you go on long meditation retreats the experiences that you can have are quite profound and very far beyond being calm and in control. Those experiences are transformative. Spiritual is not really a bad word for it, except that with meditation it is all so very clear. You can explain exactly what happened, what the transformative insight was and how it changes your perspective. It is spiritual, yet lucid and repeatable.

I practice meditation quite seriously, but I stopped telling people I'm spiritual. I really am not interested in ghost stories, gods and angels at all.

I reject any argument based on something supposedly being natural. Who draws the line? And nature is a bitch anyway.

Yeah, they're not the ones who have it hot. They've got airconditioning in their yachts.

The problem with fining industry is that industry isn't sentient. It's the C-levels and management types that need to be seriously punished for pursuing profits over human lives. As long as we don't do that, nothing is going to change. If you fine Shell 50 billion dollars, nothing substantial changes for the higher ups. Even if these guys would stop making money all together, it would just mean they would have to stop spending so much god damned money and just live of of the millions they've already made.

Read and weep https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food