I’m vegetarian for 16 years, but because of my eating disorder I am not vegan. I don’t want to go into any more detail here. But that’s the reason why I don’t ultimately live a 100% vegan lifestyle.
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16 years without meat is no small feat! I would never hold anything against you for choosing your own health over veganism. I hope you’re getting by. ED’s are no joke.
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Thank you 
I try my best, and I prefer many vegan things to vegetarian (for example oat milk to milk), but sometimes it’s better for me not to think so much about food and eating, and then I take what’s there, and if it contains cheese or eggs, then it is what it is 
But I would say that 80% of what I eat and use (even cosmetics and cleaning products) is vegan, and I’ve made my peace with that 
It’s the best I can do, and I still live healthily with my condition.
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That’s honestly a great way to go about it. I’m very adamant about it myself, but I could totally see having small leeways making it so much easier. Because, if I’m being honest, the biggest hurdle to adhere to veganism is the social aspect to me. It can feel so ungrateful at times to deny food and I’m not a fan of it. People are usually understanding though and most will even make a portion that caters to me.
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Honestly a good deal of my diet is protein based food such as meat. Trust me I’ve tried to drink protein shakes and eat those protein bars you see in shops but they taste horrible. Without meat a solid chunk of my diet goes with it and that would not be healthy. Annoying situation to be in as it would be a great lifestyle change, even if i just cut my variety of meat I’m eating.
It’s been a number of years but I once cooked some ham… I had been craving it a few days beforehand. So there I am. With my ham. Cooked and lightly seared. I said thanks and grace, but then my eyes teared… I began to cry, I began to weep. Thinking of the poor pig who will forever sleep. “Did they have a family, or a friend? How afraid were they when they met their end?” But I could not bring myself to just throw it out! For doing so would deny the pig’s sacrifice, no doubt.
I had typed out the events of that when it was still in the other topic, but didn’t reply it because it was already getting derailed. Except this time it rhymed.
It is a sad reality we as a species need meat for what it requires to be obtained. That’s the balance and price… Another thing I was almost going to post was that not culling some wild animal populations does more harm than not. Competition for food resources becomes too great or said resources become too scarce due to overeating.
Not sure if this is related, but it was a few years ago some former coworkers invited me to go up to a river to fish. One of them swore we’d catch a lot because it had recently rained and it was spawning season. Between us we ended taking 4 or 5 fish home, not even very large fish. Way under expectations. But I recall when purchasing my fishing license that it was stipulated/required that a pole with a lure/bait was used. Other methods were… forbidden? Like catching them with your hands. Apparently, it’s supposed to be easier that way, and thus - not “sporting”. Or maybe using a net for instance.
I ended up taking all of those fish… Probably since I was the one that drove them all the way up in my vehicle. It was a 45 minute drive. I was thinking “Gee. If y’all wanted fish they sell some at the market. It’s way closer and way less hassle than buying lures that you’re going to lose when they snag on limbs in the water.”
But, as I said. Hunting fulfills a role in the ecosystem. And it wasn’t all bad. Except for ruining a pair of shoes. Shoes… probably made from leather. 
I don’t know if this relates to you, but tell you what, I used to be a very picky eater. I was allergic to any vegetable that wasn’t a potato lol. Going plant based has greatly enhanced the variety of food I eat.
It doesn’t necessarily have to start with an all or nothing approach. You no doubt have some dishes you make more than others. If you want to tip your toes into plant based, try making one dish veggie. If it doesn’t work, who cares. Then try another. You’re bound to find something you like.
And you’ll be surprised, but plant foods are also “protein based”. Granted, some has more than others but even lettuce has all the essential amino acids!
The thing is, we really don’t. Most all of health organisations recommend a whole foods plant based diet for longevity and health. There’s a massive body of scientific literature on the topic and a lot of vegan people living their best life. It’s honestly great, you should try it.
You should especially try it if you make the connection that animal based foods has victims, so much that you got emotional from it once. Eating cruelty free can maybe give you a peace of mind.
I’m not too averse to hunting with the purpose of population control. Might be heretical for me to say lol, but I at least recognise the function of it. Hunting for sport though, that I can’t agree with.
I don’t know where you fished but it’s probably not by chance your catch rates are low. The fish industry is known for rampant overfishing, with huge nets that has a lot of by catch (things they’re not meant to catch but can’t avoid due to the method). They fish to the point of almost extinction, then wait for the fish population to recover and do it all over again. 
Animal husbandry also has a big effect on ocean health. The massive amount of waste produced by it inevitably ends up in the ocean. It causes causes oxygen depletion so living organisms just die.
If you have Netflix, I recommend you watch Seaspiracy.
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I’ve been a vegetarian since 2011-ish and almost all of the cooking I do for myself is vegan. I think there are a lot of good reasons to go vegan and there are very few reasons to keep eating meat/dairy beyond it being what people are used to. People don’t want to “give up” foods they love and I get that. But I think I’ve gained a lot more than I’ve given up because the range of what I eat has become broader and I enjoy so many different types of foods now, instead of leaning on poultry and beef for every meal.
Imitation meats are fun but mostly useful as junk food or as a crutch for people who are starting out.
The primary reason I became vegetarian was animal welfare but today my #1 motivation to keep going is the environment/climate impact of animal agriculture. I’m drawn more to the health benefits as I get older as well.
Changing our diets and the way we produce food is one of the easiest things we could do today to reduce CO2 emissions but highly unpopular because people are emotionally attached to their steaks and whatnot. There are a lot of valid reasons why food has that emotional place in people’s hearts but I think we need to think past that and do what’s best for the planet, its critters, and ourselves. The book to read about this is Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.
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You have the guts to come here and ask everyone to go vegan, I’ll give you that. However, if the whole world went vegan, we would have some serious problems.
There ain’t enough area to plant, meaning we’d have to put down forests. Plants Harmed.
Several animals like cows would likely become exitinct, because they don’t have a very strong defence system. Also they would run out of food.
Our diet would be gravely affected.
And I can’t deny a good old steak!
I’m not really telling anyone to do anything. I’m just talking about how it is. People can hopefully come to their own conclusions.
Please think about this for more than two seconds. What do you think 80 billion farm animals live on? The reason we are already cutting down forests is to grow food to raise them. It’s estimated that 75% of farmland could be freed up if we didn’t eat animals.
?
It’s funny that you mention extinction because the main driver for it is habitat loss. Guess what causes habitat loss.
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Hello 
I think the debate on veganism is much like that of climate change (and it’s no mystery they’re linked), in that we know we should switch to renewables and not killing animals, but that the world has been so reliant on the old system that a sudden switch would cause global disruption.
The meat industry employs millions and generates billions in revenue, as does coal and oil. To switch overnight would cause massive lay-offs, bankruptcies and stock crashes. But this isn’t a reason not to do it, instead it’s a reason to do it gradually.
There will come a day when nobody eats an animal or a product derived from one caged for its production. Like smoking, alcohol, tape worms, bodices, drinking blood and owning slaves, future generations will ask “Whoa, people actually did that back then?”
We’ll get there eventually, but I believe in a transition period To eat less animal products, like one less meal per week containing it, or even just one less pork chop on the plate. And do you need a freezer full of meat products, or could you buy it for specific recipes as a treat?
The issue is as much an economics one as it is an ethical one, and if demand were to gradually lower, then farmers would breed one less cow for slaughter. Operations would shrink. And the farmers for their part, would have an uncomfortable adjustment to make, but the blow will be soften by the fact that in a reduced meat world, animal products will be more valued for their scarcity. The price of meat and other animal products will rise, becoming a luxury commodity.
As a luxury commodity, greater regulations and restrictions can be placed on them without angering the greater number, because meat will only be affordable to the middle classes or as the occasional treat to the working class. Animal-per-farm maximums can be set, more frequent and rigorous welfare checks can be performed if there are less animals to inspect, contagious diseases will spread slower and quality will be prized over quantity, with animals selected for traits beyond simply fattening up quickly and dying young.
Ultimately, when animal products become niche luxuries that comprise maybe 1% of the world’s diet, like caviar and truffles, then I think we’ll be in a position to propose national bans through referendums. With exceptions for survival situations, native tribes and animals who died of natural causes
Sorry for the economics essay . What do you guys things about animal products like eggs and milk? Are you against them because it’s taking advantage of an animal, or because of the inhumane conditions in which commercial animals are kept for those products?
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That seems like a big ask. It’s cruel that birds eat worms, I dont think we’ll ever stop birds from eating worms
I think there levels to the exploitation. I’m not going to say that backyard hens and the local farm’s Bessie the cow is as inhumane as the industrial counterpart to milk and eggs.
The issue comes with scale and how profits inevitably trumps the wellbeing of living beings. The industry call them stock and give them production numbers, because that’s what they are to them. A means to make money.
There’s also the fact that dairy and meat is intertwined. Either they are raised for meat with intensive feeding for a little over a year and then slaughtered, or they are continually impregnated until they can’t stand and get slaughtered either way. If you look at at from that perspective, many people actually think dairy is a worse fate.
No one is asking for that? Ecosystems exist as part of nature. What we do to animals is nothing like it. If we look at biomass distribution of the entire planet, farmed animals make up about 60%, humans make up about 35% and wild mammals are about 4%.
We kill approximately 80 billion land animals per year. If we also factor in marine life, a low estimate is over 1 trillion. 1,000,000,000,000. Every single year.
To put that into perspective, throughout all of earth’s history there has only been about 120 billion humans.
We should also consider that wild animals eat to survive. The vast majority of humans have access to excess calories and the majority of studies show that a plant predominant diet is beneficial to our health and longevity. The comparison doesn’t really work if you consider these things.
Mmhmm, once you put a price on a lifeform, they become a commercial commodity to mass produce and optimize for efficiency. Even in my reduced meat scenario, the animals would still have a high value and so would be open to abuse.
It could be argued that it’s immoral to keep animals at all, even pets, but I think it would be okay to have some cows or chickens. If they’re well looked after, I don’t see the harm in collecting their eggs or their excess milk. The same with shearing sheep for their wool. This is especially true as these animals have been selectively bred for generations to produce more than they would naturally need in the wild. In a perfect world, the only time someone ate an animal outside of a survival situation is if your pet cow died, you had them tested for diseases, and you decided to send them away to be butchered. Though by that point, you might not want to eat a pet 
It’s what I’d called ‘incidental farming’. You look after some animals - including ones that aren’t your traditional barnyard inhabitants - and if they incidentally lay an unfertilized egg, you can have it. Incidentally pregnant? You can have some of the milk. Incidentally died? You could have the meat if it’s not tainted, as long as you didn’t deliberately hasten their death. It doesn’t count if you raise 100 pigs and they all happen to have a little ‘accident’ 
I wonder how many people would be interested in kind of ‘guilt-free’ incidental acquiring of animal products. You wouldn’t necessarily need to stop eating meat, it would just be that the only meat available is from cared for animals that died of natural causes. Though to make that available to the public, you’d have to sell it, which again puts a price tag on animal life and invites abuse.
The only downside to veganism will be a drastic reduction in animals, because cattle, pigs and chickens only exist in the millions because they’ve been mass produced for human use. Not only that, but many of them have been genetically modified for short telemeters to encourage quick turnaround.
But imagine a world where animals are kept for the love of them, there are varieties beyond those strictly selected for yield, and more people go to petting zoos because of how uncommon such animals are. That would be neat, but I think eventually barnyard animals becoming pets will result in them being commodified as such, like how reptiles are farmed as pets, selected for color, and sold en masse.
Would you happen to have a link to some of these? No rush, I’m just curious. I’ve read studies about certain meats being linked to cancer, but they’ve lacked objectivity and had methodological flaws
I don’t see incidental farming ever being a realistic option.
The reduction of animals is not a downside, it’s feature. As I said in my previous post, these animals are perpetually raised to suffer and die. Ending the cycle of violence would be preferable. Not only for the victims of the practises but also for all the potential wildlife that could inhabit the ca. 70% of farm land we wouldn’t need anymore.
The vast majority of health institutes echo the same sentiment based on the science. I’m not going to link any studies. You have a computer and a keen interest, go for it.
I wasn’t being combative 
I was thinking if I should add a “friend” at the end there. I didn’t mean to antagonise. Sorry if it came across like that.
Research into the health benefits of a primarily plant-based diet are mixed in their findings, but I have found something interesting 
Diets containing whole grains, fruit, vegetables and unsaturated fats have been confirmed as beneficial to human health when consumed in appropriate portions, but after accounting for saturated fats, there appears to be no direct benefit to a plant-based diet over an omnivorous one.
This is despite the fact that multiple studies in plant-based diets have indicated a link to weight control, improved blood pressure, LDL and (tentative) links to improved insulin resistance.
Parker et al. (2019) concluded that it was the quality of the diet, and the inclusion of the foods I mentioned above, that had an effect on health outcomes.
This could be because while omnivores can eat food without needing to check for the presence of meat/animal products, those following a plant-based diet have to check the packaging and labels. This closer scrutiny of information, and more mindful adherence to recommended nutrient levels could be the reason why plant-based diets are perceived to be healthier.
Always read the label! 
Sources:
Parker et al. (2019)
https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article-abstract/77/3/144/5280773?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
Huang et al. (2015)
Lopez et al. (2019)
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(19)30171-8/abstract
Williams & Patel (2017)
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2017.06.006
P.S. I also read studies into the benefits of plant-based diets on diabetes, cancer, inflammation and all-cause mortality, but found the results were either limited, mixed, or actually found plant-based to detrimental, like in the case of bone health or strength training. Ultimately it’s down to diet quality and following government guidelines on consumption
P.S.S Ready made plant-based meals are loaded with sodium and their manufacture may be worse for the environment
The food system and climate change: are plant-based diets becoming unhealthy and less environmentally sustainable? | Proceedings of the Nutrition Society | Cambridge Core
I think we can all unanimously agree that food is good