We are a collection of atheists, agnostics and free thinkers many of us are humanitarian and pursue equal rights for all. We see equality and providing the same quality of life to be a basic human right. My question is how many here out of similar ethical reasoning are vegetarian or vegan to prevent suffering to sentient creatures ?
I tend to eat vegetarian for a variety of reasons, including the treatment of animals. I think it is healthier for all of us, including the planet. It is also cheaper, which is a contributing factor for my choices. I serve meat when my kids come for dinner, and I eat whatever they cook when I am at their house.
I do limit my meat intake in many ways. But if you are concerned about animal suffering, then the best way to prevent that would be to create and increase a demand for meat produced to high animal welfare standards. A lot of farmed meat is produced with great cruelty, but demanding high quality animal care in the meat you eat, would be a far better way to reform that, than total veganism. Most wild animals also live short lives of great suffering, so that turning over the land and other resources used to farm meat back to nature, would hardly be a reduction in suffering either. Perhaps the most happy and suffering free creatures, are those who are regularly hunted, since ( some ) human hunters, are the only predators who actually take care to kill quickly without suffering, and regular culling cuts down on the population pressures which cause the famine, disease, high infant mortality and other things which are the main source of misery in wild creatures. There is a good case therefore to be made for a, wild game and roadkill only, diet.
I am vegetarian. I do not like to kill or eat my fellow animals.
Didn't you ever hear a carrot cry when you cut it open?
@barjoe: No. Plants, unlike animals, have no brains and no consciousness. I eat plants without any unnecessary sympathy.
@BestWithoutGods Eventually there will be cultured meat. That might differentiate animal rights from health concerns people. Given problematic invasive animals conservation and animal rights can be at odds too. Hog hunting is a conservation benefit, but hogs are extremely intelligent animals…
@BestWithoutGods Deforestation for, cultivation, harvesting, and transportation of vegetables causes the death and suffering of animals as well. It is quite possible that someone who hunts a deer or raises a cow for slaughter and grows his own vegetables kills WAY fewer animals than most vegetarians. Categorical elimination of animal products from your diet is not the best path to reduce animal suffering.
I’m sympathetic to it but I eat meat, chicken and fish mostly but even with that I eat it sparingly.
I’m ill informed on how to maintain a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet and I know it. Plant based meat substitutes cost more than meat so it’s like getting punished for making the effort if money is any kind of consideration as it is for me.
Besides that piece of chicken in my salad was dead way before I considered entering the restaurant, it would be a shame and the waste of an innocent chickens life to not eat it.
If there was no market for chicken meat, there would be many fewer chickens in this world.
@Willow_Wisp @anglophone
I'm wondering if that was a tongue-in-cheek comment, because I've not known Willow to make a logically indefensible argument in earnest.
@JeffMurray I enjoy @Willow_Wisp's gentle humour.
@JeffMurray Well I'm not known for my lack of practicality.
I am not vegan (yet). However, I stopped eating red meat 15 years ago.
I've been a non-red meat eater for most of my life, having given it up on my 18th birthday. I think I'm much healthier for it, and don't have the guilt of harming the environment, or sentient mammals.
Vegans assume that plant life don’t suffer in anyway. There is no way to be certain that they don’t now is there!?
Of course there is. They don't have brains or central nervous systems.
@LovinLarge You assume life forms need brains or a nervous system to be sentient....can you offer any scientific evidence that “proves” this?!
Take a look at the veg groups here to make an assessment. Near vegetarian., Not a fanatic, but I draw the line at anything that has a highly developed nervous system. I will eat a cockroach raw before I'll consume anything that can communicate suffering. As science updates, so will I adjust.
What happens when we discover plants can communicate suffering (spoiler, some scientists say they already have)?
Give Jainism a go?
@JeffMurray I must eat to survive & plants have son sensory attributes . However they are not highly developed & plants are where the nutrition I need. Not corporate food sources that manipulate us with sugar laden death products. 3 Whoppers a day with chees, fries & a super sized coca cola is not nutrition. Gluttony, satiation, addiction & manipulation are killing Americans. Obesity, diabetes, pancreatitis, are the results. We are ancient Rome redux.
When I eat meat I eat fish 90% of the time. This is mostly for ethical reasons. Though I do not think eating meat is necessarily unethical.
its also the healthy road. i live on the filet wrapped "natural" salmon and talapia from walmarts seafood freezer. schrimp too for a change up. live long and prosper
@holdenc98 Yeah the secondary reason is health, though shellfish is unfortunately off the menu due to allergies.
I don't think you know what a "Right" is. You seem to be seeking equal wealth among all, and that certainly is not a right.
Did I say anything about money anywhere in my post ? Nope learn to read please and think before you comment.
This is a subject where my idealism can't quite be maintained. I haven't eaten red meat for decades, due to animal treatment and the environment, but I do eat white meat only, chicken and fish. Someone will point out how chickens are treated, and I quite agree. But a total vegetarian diet is just beyond me.
ok this is just me. Dexter Morgan as a vegan tickles my funny bone.
For me - I eat at least half my meals vegan mostly for health.
Half of most of my meals are vegan, too. The half of the plate that has the baked potato and asparagus sides for my grilled ribeye!
@JeffMurray lol! well that is one way to interpret my statement.
@Donna_I And I guess even my joke was a lie. I forgot I never eat baked potatoes vegan. I smother them in butter and sour cream, sometimes add bacon and cheese too.
Why couldn't Dexter be a vegan or vegetarian just because he kills humans. Human beings are a plague the most violent destructive creatures and mostly driven by greed.
@JeffMurray well you can always have a salad with a vegan dessing to make it up! or just step back to a half vegetarian meal (if you leave the bacon off).
@dextermorgan75 He could be but as a sociopath I would think it wouldn't be for altruistic motives after all the code from his dad was because he was caught killing animals as a kid.
I'll take a cheesesteak over a Cuban steak sandwich any day of the week.
@barjoe I don't believe in the whole 'you have to be [here] to get a good [food]' argument. I went to Mexico and left the resort to get authentic Mexican, but the best I ever had was in Painesville, Ohio. If you're good in the kitchen and you can source the ingredients you need, it doesn't matter where that kitchen is.
Also, the Super Philly at Tommy's Subs in Mentor, Ohio are fuckin' killer.
And if pigs have to die so that I can continue to eat Cuban sandwiches, then that's the way its gotta be.
@JeffMurray Tommy's Subs might be good. They had good rolls in Cleveland. My friend was from Parma Ohio and her parents had a place called Longo's, they had good hoagies, but not as good as Philly. No way their "Super Philly" is authentic, it might be good tho.
@barjoe "Authentic" is another thing I don't put too much stock in. I know I used that word earlier, but that was probably misused. For me, if something tastes better than the "traditional" or "authentic" version, that sounds good to me. So if a cheesesteak has melted cream cheese in it (how I make them at home) instead of Cheese Whiz and it tastes way better, I'm not really concerned some people call it inauthentic.
Longo's is pretty tasty. I used to live a 5 min walk from the one in Mentor.
@JeffMurray Longo's is still there? Wow! Whiz blows Jeff! A cheese steak should be fried onions and cheese. White American (never yellow), Cooper Sharp or Provolone and hot peppers if you like them. No sauce, green peppers any of that stuff. Cream Cheese? No way. Only on a bagel.
@barjoe See, this is what I'm talking about. Everyone has their own idea of how it should be made, but "traditional" has Cheese Whiz according to Wiki.
Personally, I'm onions, green peppers, steak on a toasted hoagie with cream cheese that melts into a cheesy sauce, then melted provolone over it all. I would never put Whiz on mine.
And only bagels? Come on bro. There are a million dips that have a cream cheese base and tons of other dishes & desserts that have it as well.
@JeffMurray There's a right way to make a cheesesteak and then there's a bogus way. No fucking cream cheese on a steak sandwich. If you want to make it that way at home, that's you but no self respecting restaurant should serve that.
@barjoe Have you tried it? There are plenty of people that will tell you your way is wrong too and that it has to have Whiz.
@JeffMurray Whiz blows. Pat's and Geno's named in Wikipedia both blow. Other parts of Pennsylvania make cheesesteaks with sauce and bell peppers. In Philadelphia a cheesesteak comes with or without onions, that's it. I guess cream cheese is better than whiz but it should be White American or Provolone. Yellow American is for places like McDonald's. I'm very opinionated about this stuff.
@barjoe Everybody is. That's what I'm saying. My point was, what came first isn't better by default. I'd venture to guess that it's almost always worse because letting the rest of the world trial and error your recipe will most likely result in some improvement. Like right now, the thought of a melty white American over a stringy provolone sounds amazing to me. I never thought to do that, but I'm definitely going to try it. I strongly recommend you try a light smear of cream cheese on one or part of one the next time you make them. It might surprise you, but if not, no big deal, right?
Also, for clarification, I did mine with cream cheese AND provolone.
@JeffMurray I used to have customers order American and provolone mixed on a cheesesteak. It's delicious. I have other rules. Cheesesteak should be thinly sliced ribeye or sirloin, processed steak meat like Steak-um or Philly Gourmet is garbage. Steaks shouldn't be finely chopped, the good places don't do that. If you do use cream cheese (shudder) I assume you apply it to the roll and don't mix it with the meat. That's another no no. Cheese should be melted in top, not incorporated with the meat. So if you do the American and Provolone, use white American, yellow is fugazi.
If the goal is the reduction of suffering of animals, the best things you can possibly do are not reproduce, and eat as small of a quantity of responsibly-sourced calories as possible. The categorical elimination of animal products from your diet is nothing but a banner that reads: I'm more interested in looking like a good person than doing what's right.
@JeffMurray
Being childfree? I got that covered.
@Scott321 It's also the best thing you can do for the environment by a factor of 25. Any time someone with kids tells me I shouldn't be driving a supercharged Cobra or I should be recycling, I get to tell them to go fuck themselves because they're way worse for the environment than I could ever be.
If ethical reasoning is the dominant determinant of human decorum then simply subtracting human is this sentient sentence's sentence.
I tend to eat meat like I always did before but I try to make better choices of it. My opinion of where Corona virus came from seems to favor bad conditions in animal slaughter and I have recently noticed that some bacon is not really fit for human consumption. Greed has done this to us. Everybody is competing to be your food provider now and not enough vegan.
I also feel some bacon is not fit for my plate, I prefer all the bacon.
@JeffMurray I have to have a big enough plate so all the bacon will fit, for my consumption.