I support many of the aims of vegans and share many of their motivations, but find the almost religious dogmatism many have about it very off-putting. I eat meat rarely and if i do, i usually eat meat from non mammals or from responsibly farmed animals or game. But I still am what some vegans call a speciescist. I put the well being and non suffering of humans above the well being and non suffering of animals and i make distinctions between different species of animals.

The most compassionate and the most selfish thing one can do is go vegan. We have huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. We're overfishing fish that are full of plastic bits and toxic chemicals. We're killing the soil by spraying it with pesticides, fungicides, herbicides. (The soil needs to be alive in order to sustain life.) Antibiotics are becoming useless because we keep livestock in squalid and horrid conditions that without antibiotics they would be diseased. We're dumping a lot of crap into the atmosphere just to transport inexpensive (subsidized) meat to the US.

The planet can sustain all its people if they were to eat vegan. It can't sustain all its people on a meat-based diet.

To eaches iwn i could and would never choose to be vegan vut that's me besides most vegans have an over inflated sence of self righteousness they vlow out their ars other than that like i said to eaches own

humans have so overpopulated the planet it doesn't matter what we eat anymore. what does matter is how efficiently food of all sorts has to be produced because of this. The human cycle is a huge machine that needs to keep working faster and faster with less and less space so animals suffer so badly for our needs whatever we eat.without death, there can not be life. without the wolf, there will be no plants. without insects their can't be elephants. we are entwined in a world that was balanced with nature keeping the strong as the weak are plucked away. humans just completely destroy all of this and try and get nature to work for them. that can't keep up. we want to do infinite things on a finite planet.

There are genuine reasons for someone to decide to go vegan.
It CAN be (depending on where you get your food from) more environmentally friendly than eating meat, I have been about a 95% vegetarian for the last two years for environmental reasons but I try to buy as much local produce as possible otherwise the environmental benefits are almost completely canceled out.
It CAN have some health benefits (although it can also have some major health detriments as well).

I have two reasons why I dislike some vegans as individuals (not veganism as a concept) 1) Many vegans do it for stupid reasons. "Think of the cute animals" is a bad reason to be a vegan (or vegetarian for that matter) "veganism brings you closer to nature" is a stupid argument because we evolved the ability to eat meat thus veganism could very easily be considered "unnatural" 2) If you're the kind of vegan that goes around telling people that they are terrible for not also being vegan you're an elitist. At the end of the day veganism can be a very expensive lifestyle choice, especially when buying non-food products. Many people simply can't afford to go vegan and saying that that makes them animal murderers make you the terrible person.

At the end of the day as long as you don't try to forcefully push it on others I am more than happy with your decision to be vegan

Well we are omnivores, so we are lucky enough that we are able to choose meat or vegetables, whatever kind people prefer, that's up to them.

The only real issue for most people is that a vegan diet is seldom as tasty as one that includes meat.

When I had leukemia, I went on a mostly vegan diet, as I knew it was healthier. Non vegan items I ate at the time were only eggs and sometimes seafood.

I do think that the way animals are treated when raised for food is nto healthy, in that they are injected with hormones and drugs, and lead virtually theri entire lives under great emotional stress, and their meat when butchered in loaded with stress hormones and the things they are injected with, which cant' be all too healthy for humans over the long run.

If you tasted a steak form a rain fed factory farm cow and then tasted a steak from a grass fed, range raised cow your would taste a world of difference. It is not quite as dramatic as a store bought tomato versus one you've grown organically in your own garden, but it is still highly noticeable.

One of th reasons why Americans are so fat is that they get a high calorie, but poor nutrition diet. Processed foods retain calories, but lose nutrition. When calories have no real nutritional value, it is said to have "empty calories". Peopl in the U.S. are nto educated about proper nutrition without a lot of effort on their own part to educated themselves.

You can eat a vegan diet, and as logn as you vary your diet and eat a large variety of foods, you will be healthier than the average meat eater, even without much exercise. You will also, over time, not age as quickly. Your body uses nutrients (not calories) to maintain your body and build new cells. If your body doesn't get enough nutrients, over time your cells will not be as healthy and your body will tend to age faster.

In ancient Greece, the best Olympic athletes were almost all vegetarians. Several top athletes today are also vegetarians, although not quite numerous enough for the general public to take notice of.

Heck Yes! It's about sustainability. It's about compassion for self and others. It's about resources and not burning down rainforests for cheap feed for cheap burgers and exploiting (killing) the local farmers to steal their land in the Global South. It's about health for the planet, self, others, and animals. It's about saving money, lives, and sharing resources. It's about community. Vegan potlucks and get-togethers are fun. It's about giving a fuck for something more than your stomach. It's about the evolution of humans. I don't want to hear about how and what we ate when we were "cave people." And I don't want to hear about protein from animals being superior. It's not.
I've listed sites below from well known and respected physicians who advocate a healthy whole food plant diet. Kaiser hospital in LA advocates for a plant-based diet. Canada, a whole country, advocates for plant-based diet.
[huffingtonpost.com]

As a committed vegetarian I say, absolutely. I did not develop my eating habit 'cold Turkey' (pardon the pun). It was a process that developed over a couple of years. At first it was about personal health but then it became a moral issue (there are huge environmental repercussions).
One thing I discovered that by closing a few doors one opened far more. Meat can be limiting to seeing other food sources.and there are far more than most realize. More and more meat replacement foods are being introduced. In the end eating is a sensuous endeavor and I dare anyone to say otherwise. We eat for pleasure and it involves all the senses. One should question at what cost does that pleasure entail? There is one other gross thing that 95% don't recognize. I think it best to talk about a program highlighting this. In Seattle's Woodland Park zoo there is an income generating program called 'zoo doo'. Animal scat is decomposed to make fertilizer and it is so popular there is a raffle drawing for the stuff. There is a 'doctor doo' in charge (I kid you not). He has tours on how the program works. You go outside and see a huge pile of scat. There is a thermometer with a long probe which he inserts into the pile. It shows how hot the center is. He then asks is there something one notices? Usually one doesn't notice anything and that is the point; no odor. He said this pile comes from herbivores only. The carnivore poop is totally unfit (slimy and smelly) and is sent through the city's sewer line. Tell that to your carnivore friends and listen to the laughter!

Veganism seems to make common sense and should to critical thinkers who have escaped religion. I’m vegetarian and almost vegan but i like eggs too much! This happened at the same time i became an atheist as i could see the meat trap as very similar to the religion trap. I used to be a big meat eater but since finding out about the lack of ethics in raising our food i find it easy to be vegetarian.

I don’t like the idea of preying upon other animals, but we all eat something else. I can easily conceive of our species becoming the food for other species. That’s disturbing. But, in the end, we all live off something else. Plants gave a right to live just like animals. Who are we to make a distinction. Ultimately it just doesn’t matter. I choose not to kill otter beings, but I still eat their bodies.

I like animals , but I don't think that they have a future to look up to , so if we don't use them as food , what are they for? each animal has a purpose , we ride some , we raise some , we find things with some , it is not cool to say that animals are there for the sake of human , but that's the way it is actually , and I do get those who are vegans and I think they are too kind , I can never live without eating meat .
Maybe one day I would change my mind , who knows!