[quote]nighthawkz wrote:
Funny â?? I see way more omnivores bashing vegans than the other way around, and I know plenty of vegans.[/quote]
I’m not saying vegans bash omnivores, it’s more of a passive-aggressive “look at me” type attitude. I have several on Facebook and all of them constantly share stupid memes about it, pictures of dead animals, etc. It’s annoying as fuck. I don’t see why people can’t just eat whatever they want and shut up about it.
[quote]Iron Condor wrote:
I’m not saying vegans bash omnivores, it’s more of a passive-aggressive “look at me” type attitude. I have several on Facebook and all of them constantly share stupid memes about it, pictures of dead animals, etc.[/quote]
Soo… They are being ‘passive-aggressive’ by mentioning the food they eat and posting pictures of reality? Dude. I’m not a vegan. I’m guilty of male chicks being shredded. If you can’t bear that fact, being annoyed about the one who brings it up isn’t the appropriate response for an adult.
[quote]Iron Condor wrote:
I don’t see why people can’t just eat whatever they want and shut up about it.[/quote]
Me too.
I broke up with a girl once purely because she was vegan. I’m not proud of it, but jesus christ have you ever tried to take a vegan out for dinner? You have to go to like 6 restaurants before you can find ANYTHING they can eat.
Just FYI, when dating a vegan, Chinese restaurants are your friend, but there’s only so much Chinese food you can eat.
Not saying that you and I will have a problem, Brick. We’ve spoken a few times but I’ve never really gotten that kind of a vibe from you, so I’m sure we’ll be ok.
Brick, you’re one of the few people here I’d gladly seek out and have an ice cold beer with.
I do think this won’t last. And when the dust settles, you’ll walk away enlightened and able to find a viable compromise between both ideologies.
[quote]nighthawkz wrote:
[quote]Nards wrote:
There’s something telling about how people respond to someone who has chosen to become vegetarian or vegan.
They then try to find flaws in what you’re doing. You still use wood products? Well animals are used to haul the logs in some parts of the world or some shit so you’re a hypocrite.
Don’t listen to them. You’re doing a good thing that I wish I had the strength to do.[/quote]
Very much this. Whatever you decide to do, I respect you for at least considering the options and consequences.
[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
What about all the poor animals being killed harvesting crops? Do they not matter? All the pesticides? Even if you go organic, organic farming uses animal manure for fertility. Animal manures that come primarily from confined animals, raised for meat or eggs.[/quote]
It takes several pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef (and let’s not fool ourselves here, the majority of farm animals are fed wheat, corn, and soy). So even if we only consider the field animals being killed, vegans stil have LESS “blood on their hands”. Nothing’s perfect but you can always try to minimise factors.
[quote]Iron Condor wrote:
Just don’t be the stereotypical vegetarian/vegan guy who pushes his views onto everyone else when it’s not welcomed (not saying you are).[/quote]
Funny - I see way more omnivores bashing vegans than the other way around, and I know plenty of vegans.[/quote]
I eat grass fed/finished meat from small family farms.
[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
I eat grass fed/finished meat from small family farms.
[/quote]
I agree with a lot of your original post and have entertained the idea myself. One barrier would be that I tend to get hungry much faster if my meal didn’t contain some meat. I’m not sure a meat-free diet would be satisfying. I think going vegetarian would require more skill and creativity in the kitchen than I currently possess. Nutrient deficiencies and insufficient protein for strength training are also concerns. I guess you’d say I’m in the contemplation phase at the moment.
Anyway, best of luck, and if you log it I’ll follow along.
Chris Kesser makes some interesting points about it here
EDIT: This paragraph makes quite a cool point about the idea that vegetarians/vegans tend to be healthier due to them being less likely to do things like drink, smoke, etc.
“Thankfully, we have a study that did just that. It compared the mortality of people who shopped in health food stores (both vegetarians and omnivores) to people in the general population. This was a clever study design. People who shop in health food stores are more likely to be health conscious, regardless of whether they eat meat, which reduces the likelihood that the study results will be thrown off by the â??healthy user biasâ??. What did the researchers find? Both vegetarians and omnivores in the health food store group lived longer than people in the general populationâ??not surprising given their higher level of health consciousnessâ??but there was no survival difference between vegetarians or omnivores. Nor was there any difference in rates of heart disease or stroke between the two groups. (15) In other words, omnivores who are health conscious live just as long as vegetarians that are health conscious.”
I tried tofurkey today for the first time, with a lot of gravy, it was horrible.
Brick,
Given that your reservations about meat has to do with how they are raised and harvested, have you given thought to controlling that process yourself? There are essentially two options for taking responsibility for this, hunting and owning a small farm/homestead.
I’m pretty sure you live in New York city (forgive the assumption if I’m wrong - relying on memory of your posting history here) so having a small homestead may be out of the question for you right now, but how about in the future? I live in Virginia, and I have several friends who live farther out and have some animals that they raise for meat. The animals are free range, treated very well, and harvested in a humane way. But given your lifestyle and career, a small farm may not be a realistic alternative for you right now.
Which brings us to hunting. You can hunt with a firearm, or a bow. I hunt with a bow. Hunting places 100% of the responsibility of the harvest on YOU. And it’s big responsibility. I’ve gut shot a deer before and it’s a pretty shitty feeling - especially if you miss because you are taking a shot outside of your effective range (being immature and impatient). But for the most part, my shots have been very ethical and the animal has expired quickly. There are all kinds of animals that one can hunt, not just deer. There’s a season for just about everything. And what about fishing? Surely there’s nothing unethical about catching a wild salmon in a stream…
My point is, the main thing I “heard” in your post was that the thought of being part of an ignorant, consumer driven culture bothers you because of the suffering and waste that culture inadvertently creates. As a hunter, you are a steward of the environment, an honorable and “conservation” minded individual who takes 100% responsibility for making a clean and ethical kill. It’s actually kind of a spiritual experience if you have a proper mind set.
Please take this as offering alternatives, and not as criticizing your choices. What you eat is your business! But how you feel about what you eat can be entirely within your control.
Good Luck!
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Brick,
Given that your reservations about meat has to do with how they are raised and harvested, have you given thought to controlling that process yourself? There are essentially two options for taking responsibility for this, hunting and owning a small farm/homestead.
I’m pretty sure you live in New York city (forgive the assumption if I’m wrong - relying on memory of your posting history here) so having a small homestead may be out of the question for you right now, but how about in the future? I live in Virginia, and I have several friends who live farther out and have some animals that they raise for meat. The animals are free range, treated very well, and harvested in a humane way. But given your lifestyle and career, a small farm may not be a realistic alternative for you right now.
Which brings us to hunting. You can hunt with a firearm, or a bow. I hunt with a bow. Hunting places 100% of the responsibility of the harvest on YOU. And it’s big responsibility. I’ve gut shot a deer before and it’s a pretty shitty feeling - especially if you miss because you are taking a shot outside of your effective range (being immature and impatient). But for the most part, my shots have been very ethical and the animal has expired quickly. There are all kinds of animals that one can hunt, not just deer. There’s a season for just about everything. And what about fishing? Surely there’s nothing unethical about catching a wild salmon in a stream…
My point is, the main thing I “heard” in your post was that the thought of being part of an ignorant, consumer driven culture bothers you because of the suffering and waste that culture inadvertently creates. As a hunter, you are a steward of the environment, an honorable and “conservation” minded individual who takes 100% responsibility for making a clean and ethical kill. It’s actually kind of a spiritual experience if you have a proper mind set.
Please take this as offering alternatives, and not as criticizing your choices. What you eat is your business! But how you feel about what you eat can be entirely within your control.
Good Luck![/quote]
None of that solves the core issue which is the “killing” part that he mentioned in the first post.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Brick,
Given that your reservations about meat has to do with how they are raised and harvested, have you given thought to controlling that process yourself? There are essentially two options for taking responsibility for this, hunting and owning a small farm/homestead.
I’m pretty sure you live in New York city (forgive the assumption if I’m wrong - relying on memory of your posting history here) so having a small homestead may be out of the question for you right now, but how about in the future? I live in Virginia, and I have several friends who live farther out and have some animals that they raise for meat. The animals are free range, treated very well, and harvested in a humane way. But given your lifestyle and career, a small farm may not be a realistic alternative for you right now.
Which brings us to hunting. You can hunt with a firearm, or a bow. I hunt with a bow. Hunting places 100% of the responsibility of the harvest on YOU. And it’s big responsibility. I’ve gut shot a deer before and it’s a pretty shitty feeling - especially if you miss because you are taking a shot outside of your effective range (being immature and impatient). But for the most part, my shots have been very ethical and the animal has expired quickly. There are all kinds of animals that one can hunt, not just deer. There’s a season for just about everything. And what about fishing? Surely there’s nothing unethical about catching a wild salmon in a stream…
My point is, the main thing I “heard” in your post was that the thought of being part of an ignorant, consumer driven culture bothers you because of the suffering and waste that culture inadvertently creates. As a hunter, you are a steward of the environment, an honorable and “conservation” minded individual who takes 100% responsibility for making a clean and ethical kill. It’s actually kind of a spiritual experience if you have a proper mind set.
Please take this as offering alternatives, and not as criticizing your choices. What you eat is your business! But how you feel about what you eat can be entirely within your control.
Good Luck![/quote]
None of that solves the core issue which is the “killing” part that he mentioned in the first post.[/quote]
He wrote this: (emphasis mine)
My reason for doing this is purely ethical, after seeing the utterly horrifying and tear-jerking scenes on factory farms, including those for clothing.
I had been buying organic meat and eggs for some time, despite the expense because I was of the belief that so long as the animal is treated humanely while alive, it is alright for it to be killed swiftly for food in the end. I thought and sometimes still think, despite it seeming juvenile, something like, “Well, we are animals, just we humans are animals might be at the top of the food chain in some cases, and like how other animals kill animals for food, we do the same.” The counter thought I have buzzing around my head is that although that might make some sense, I believe we are at a point in which we are killing, breeding, and eating animals in such gross excess. Look at how freely people grossly over eat all food products, including blitzing though burgers, wings and blue cheese dressing while being entranced by a ball game. I myself, even being a dietitian and gymrat myself never thought about how my food wound up on my table or how clothing wound up on my body till recently.
I took this to mean he had a problem with the WAY they were killed and the gross excess of the food industry in general. I heard him say he doesn’t like the concepts of raising and breeding animals strictly for consumption and that they are not treated or harvested in a way he can support.
If I’m wrong, I’m sure he’ll let me know.
Hunting has nothing to do with any of that.
Here’s some “food for thought” ba dum pshh that addresses some of what I HEARD him saying.
personally if I could afford it I would go down the route of getting all my meat from local, ethically raised, organic, grass fed blah blah blah farms in the area. Not possible for most people but where I live it would be. I just can’t afford it, sadly.
[quote]Yogi wrote:
not posting this to be a dick, just showing that once you start thinking about how to remove animal products from your day to day life, it gets kinda tricky[/quote]
I don’t think an objective person will see this as a troll post.
There’s idealism, there’s reality, and somewhere in between there’s compromise.
It’s unsustainable for humans to continue consuming meat/fish at our current rate. The methane from cows is killing the atmosphere (not suvs) and the oceans are being over fished and will probably be dead soon.
I have ZERO intention of becoming vegetarian/vegan but those facts are not lost.
