Animals, being vegan, etc.

Very good post and I am in complete sympathy with the sentiments. Politically I believe it goes further than this - inefficiency of production etc.
My post concerning this on the other thread was pretty flippant and I feel a bit of a wanker after reading this. There was truth in it though as my main motivation for smashing windows was the pleasure throwing bricks afforded me.
I do like animals, have a pet dog that I like better than most humans and I keep chickens which are great fun and provide me with eggs but like most people my head separates the food on my plate with its method of production. This is not a reasonable justification, it's just the truth.
Another aspect of this is that poor nutrition impairs brain function and is not conducive to good mental well being and making the best choices. The revolution will be fuelled by green smoothies!!!

providing food that it is unnecessary for a healthy human diet

Hmm...I don't know Ultraviolet. There's a lot of food that's unnecessary for a healthy diet that I absolutely love. Human don't really need chocolate or coffee or sesame oil to sustain a healthy diet. So I know this might sound a bit semantic, but I think if that's the criteria, your critique would have go a lot deeper then animal products.

Also, I don't think anyone on libcom would defend factory farms. I think we all agree that animal production of any sort should be done as humanely as possible. However, I don't particularly think it makes me cold hearted if I think my desire for cheese trumps a cow's desire not to be milked. I mean, I'm a lazy vegetarian myself (mostly for health reasons and I do eat seafood). But, to be blunt, I think discussion of animal 'rights' basically distorts an already problematic term into meaninglessness.

I think you will find that Vegetarian/Vegans are well above the norm on libcom. Its just not something that people necessarily see as some sort of 'prefigurative' position to take re anarchism/communism. Having said that I think the consumption of meat and other things from animals that have caused them a level of pain for our enjoyment unacceptable, and so have been a vegan for many decades. But I can understand peoples piss taking, AR did have a almost cult like behaviour and hold in the anarchist subcultures and rather it being something to argue about occasionally down the pub became yet something else to 'be' before you would be accepted. There is still quite a lot of anger about that.

As for the rant about the ALF, you some of the stuff they do is good, some of it is mental. Not eating meat/animal products is a no brainer. Testing on cosmetics not acceptable, testing on medicines that have been testing ad-neusuem unacceptable. Though I would say that a very small amount of animal testing does need to happen. Sadly and Ive thought about this alot over the years computers just don't cut it compared with animals as a model. And faced with a terminal disease I would pretty much say yes to anything rather than die, even if it was accepting operations/medications that have been honed by way
of causing pain to other sentient beings.

People saying veganism not being relevant to the derailing of capitalism was always a strawman, anyway. It's relevant to animal exploitation abolitionism.

Here is a link to a leading healthcare provider in the states issuing a call to physicians to advocate for a plant-based diet http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/

Business interests have noted the sagging sales of animal products and a lot of these capitalists are turning their attention toward imitation meat, this stuff is also unhealthy but at least animals will be fucked with less - (I will try to find the link)

Things are most certainly changing - and if the cynical rush to give two fingers to vegans because it's not FOR THE REVOLUTION means someone can't see that, then that's a shame.

Mike S' irrational contempt for the concept is commonplace. He tries to pass a field mouse having less value than human life as self-evident, and moves on with his rant that I've heard a thousand alterations of. Well congratulations for the ruthlessly speciesist position, most people aren't quite so honest as that. Why did you go with field mouse though? Wouldn't a rhinoceros have served the same function in your argument? I am thinking that you think the fact that it is small makes it evidently less valuable. Have you read Mutual Aid? Even a few pages of that is sufficient to observe that animals have rather complicated lives amongst each other.

When some vegans compare the current state of animal affairs to the nazi holocaust, they are referring to the attitude of it being self-evident that it is the animals' duty to die - the attitude that brokers no consideration of whether an animal has its own interest to live. Additionally, the argument that because we have derived certain benefits from their exploitation makes that exploitation morally correct, makes no sense. If I shank my granny it's all very sad yes but she was planning on taking me out of her will - so it's OK? Animal rights can only be animal rights when we have to go without some benefit that they would have provided - the gain that we miss out on is irrelevant, otherwise their supposed rights are meaningless when they can just be turned off when we say that we need something. It's similar to that bit Chomsky likes to say 'If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people saying things you hate, then you don't believe in freedom of speech'. If you don't believe in animal rights when it benefits you to ignore them, then you don't believe in animal rights.

This world was most certainly not made for only humans, and Mike needs to stop believing that it is.

Ultaviolet, I agree with some of what you said, but most importantly agree that this is not something that can be solved until we have a rational economy. However, I don't think we should cut down on meat consumption for moralistic reasons, but for environmental reasons. In the mean time, I'm not sure how being a vegan or vegetarian now is a step towards making that happen?

Just with everything else, realistically we need to look at the collective self-interest of the working class. Not eating meat will have a positive impact on the environment, so I don't think we need an animal "rights" movement to make that happen. I just tend to find that moral arguments for things are far less effective or useful than material arguments.

So I eat meat at the moment because I'm not sure there's any positive impact in me not eating meat, and it's a pain in the arse to be veggie in the country I'm living in, but when we get the Full Communism I reckon we should save eating meat for christmas and stuff like that.

EDIT: just saw the above post. Speciesism? :wall:

Speciesism

Noun
The assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals.

commieprincess

EDIT: just saw the above post. Speciesism? :wall:

Though I cringe a little with the term speciesism, I do find it strange that people who accept evolution don't also accept that animals who have travelled down similar evolutionary trajectories as our good selves wouldn't feel the same quality of pain, there are very good evolutionary reasons for them to feel excruciating pain. That to me its pretty obvious. And I think to deny it or only seeing meat consumption from an environmental standpoint rather misses this fundamental point.

Wow, it's always amazing to see the correlation between animal rights folk and rude, anti-social folk in action.

You didn't stutter, you just used a term which I find non-sensical. Any definition I've seen in the past has included the fact that humans "discriminate" against animals - presumably comparible to discrimination against black people, women, disabled people etc? Because those forms of discrimination can only be combatted effectively when framed within the class struggle. How do we frame animal rights within the class struggle? How is it in the self-interest of the working class to take a moral stance on animals?

EDIT: cross-post with Mr Jolly. Good post, will have to reply later

Kureigo-San

People saying veganism not being relevant to the derailing of capitalism was always a strawman, anyway. It's relevant to animal exploitation abolitionism.

"Veganarchist" theory attaches "animal liberation" to the struggle against capitalism. As a matter of theory even suggests the domination of animals led to humans dominating humans.

Kureigo-San

Here is a link to a leading healthcare provider in the states issuing a call to physicians to advocate for a plant-based diet http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/

So what? Some people eat too much sugar, meat and dairy products. Yes, that is unhealthy.

Kureigo-San

Business interests have noted the sagging sales of animal products and a lot of these capitalists are turning their attention toward imitation meat, this stuff is also unhealthy but at least animals will be fucked with less - (I will try to find the link)

Global meat production and consumption has been on the rise over the last decade. This is what's driven so many to take "direct action". Because the guilt trip moralizing you're doing right now has been ineffective.

Kureigo-San

Things are most certainly changing - and if the cynical rush to give two fingers to vegans because it's not FOR THE REVOLUTION means someone can't see that, then that's a shame.

Nothing is changing. Global meat production and consumption is on the rise.

Kureigo-San

Mike S' irrational contempt for the concept is commonplace. He tries to pass a field mouse having less value than human life as self-evident, and moves on with his rant that I've heard a thousand alterations of. Well congratulations for the ruthlessly speciesist position, most people aren't quite so honest as that. Why did you go with field mouse though? Wouldn't a rhinoceros have served the same function in your argument? I am thinking that you think the fact that it is small makes it evidently less valuable. Have you read Mutual Aid? Even a few pages of that is sufficient to observe that animals have rather complicated lives amongst each other.

Yes, I've read Mutual Aid and it wasn't written to guilt trip people into not eating meat. My "ruthlessly speciesist position" is if experimenting on a rat, monkey or even rhinoceros (not likely to happen) is necessary for the advancement of medical science, as in, to save human lives then so be it. You on the other hand will conjure up all manner of pseudoscience to back up your pious morality.

Kureigo-San

When some vegans compare the current state of animal affairs to the nazi holocaust, they are referring to the attitude of it being self-evident that it is the animals' duty to die - the attitude that brokers no consideration of whether an animal has its own interest to live. Additionally, the argument that because we have derived certain benefits from their exploitation makes that exploitation morally correct, makes no sense. If I shank my granny it's all very sad yes but she was planning on taking me out of her will - so it's OK?

Your granny is a human being. No that wouldn't be OK. When I spray a roach with roach spray should I face the same consequences as a person who murders a human being? Insects feel pain as well. Anyhow, Gary Yourofsky here, a leading vegan activist, likes to directly compare the two (NAZI holocaust and "animal holocaust"):

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAnimalHolocaust

Kureigo-San

Animal rights can only be animal rights when we have to go without some benefit that they would have provided - the gain that we miss out on is irrelevant, otherwise their supposed rights are meaningless when they can just be turned off when we say that we need something. It's similar to that bit Chomsky likes to say 'If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people saying things you hate, then you don't believe in freedom of speech'. If you don't believe in animal rights when it benefits you to ignore them, then you don't believe in animal rights.

Animal rights and liberation are two separate things. No, I don't advocate animal liberation. I advocate humane treatment of livestock and humane slaughter. Gary up there in that video (and you) will say "how can there be humane slaughter?". You'll once again take the Buddhist/idealist position that all life is sentient and deserves the same treatment. I eat chicken. I drink milk with cereal. I eat honey. I eat fish, pizza and bread/cake products made with eggs. I'm also a communist as are countless other communists who eat animal products. We're concerned with human liberation and even that at the moment is a daunting task. You go worry about the chickens and I'll stick with worrying about the millions of human who are dying each year from starvation, the common flu, treatable diseases and such. The time and effort you people spend on liberating hamsters would be better spent trying to liberate humanity.

Kureigo-San

This world was most certainly not made for only humans, and Mike needs to stop believing that it is.

As do the majority of posters on this forum who also eat animal products and support animal testing for medical science. The difference with me is, as with other issues, I'm not afraid to speak my mind. I'm not going to capitulate and cower down to your idealist moral arguments. Especially when you make this about "Mike". And this is a perfect example of why you people annoy the living shit out of me which was the original purpose for bringing the topic up in the other thread.

Webby

I have a pet dog

Species traitor.

commieprincess

Christmas

Class traitor.

Kur, I have 100% confidence in saying my life is a whole hell of a lot more important than a field mouse or hippo. Simarly, the existance of humanity trumps the existence of any other species on the planet.

Regarding working class ethics, if anything the working class has more of a moral duty to support things like animal testing as it improves the lives of humans in a material way. Now, I'm not in favor of putting shampoo in the eyes of helpless cute little bunnies, but I don't care a lick how many monkeys have to die to cure aids or how many rats have to die to cure cancer.

Mike S.

Rant rant rant.

You sound as mad as the maddest AR fundie.

*** Edit you redeemed yourself a little further down the rant ***

Kur

It's similar to that bit Chomsky likes to say 'If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people saying things you hate, then you don't believe in freedom of speech'.

I don't care if Chomsky said this, it's f*cking stupid. No platform for fascists and I have no problem using force to prevent their 'freedom' or speech and assembly.

Also, it's a ridiculous and not even remotely analagous to compare free speech (something that can only done by humans) to animal rights.

What's next, the right of dogs to bark all night and keep up the neighbors? Direct action to defend the right to free barking!

Mt Jolly. Ya, sure, I'm either mad or I'm being singled out as being some sort of fascist for eating meat. "People once supported Chattel slavery and thought it was normal". That sort of shit does piss me off. Yes.

You redeemed yourself a little as your thought progressed. Getting that wound up is not good for your blood pressure which is ultimately not good for the animals.

I haven't been trying to guilt trip you. I made it 'about' Mike S because Mike S holds the opinions I'm responding to. What are you talking about?

RE: Gary Yourofsky, Am I damned by association? He's engaging in propaganda speech - I'm sure if you asked him about the matter in private he would admit some nuance. The human's ability to remember more vividly the past and to fretfully fear the future would have added considerable dimensions to the nazi human holocaust that are absent from the current animal "holocaust", of course - but the essential character of genocide remains. Is it OK to call it that instead? If not, why not.
What are, in your mind, the essential characteristics of my granny that make her slaughter more of an atrocity than an animal's? (Hope my granny doesn't start using libcom today of all days). What you did here:

Your granny is a human being. No that wouldn't be OK.

again was assume that superiority of human importance is self-evident. I don't know why I'm supposed to believe this in the first place, let alone how I'm supposed to accept it as the pretext to exploitation of animals.

edit: Mike, I don't think you're a bad person and never did.

Chilli Sauce

Webby

I have a pet dog

Species traitor.

commieprincess

Christmas

Class traitor.

Kur, I have 100% confidence in saying my life is a whole hell of a lot more important than a field mouse or hippo. Simarly, the existance of humanity trumps the existence of any other species on the planet.

Regarding working class ethics, if anything the working class has more of a moral duty to support things like animal testing as it improves the lives of humans in a material way. Now, I'm not in favor of putting shampoo in the eyes of helpless cute little bunnies, but I don't care a lick how many monkeys have to die to cure aids or how many rats have to die to cure cancer.

Well it's quite normal and healthy to prioritise your own personal existence, but I'm not sure how you're extending that to 'animals are mine to use'. They're not synonymous.

The thing about cancer is, that a plant-based diet has been shown over and over to halt cancer development and often reverses it. Cancer is our most popular apology for animal experimentation but the answer has been growing on trees the whole time. I don't want to expend too much energy convincing you of this, I just recommend T Colin Campbell as an author to start with if you want. On AIDs I am less familiar

What I find antisocial and backwards is the even more extreme vegan anarchists such as Walter Bond who place more value on a chickens life than that of humanity. In order to "end civilization" how many people must die (to end the "chicken holocaust") ?

http://anarchistnews.org/content/back-primitive-walter-bond

I can make use of Godwins Law as well. Who else placed more value on a chickens life over that of a humans?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ5_EX-_Ymk

I can even play on emotions as you people try to do as well. Why don't we tell this little girl we need to end a large portion of research into leukemia because lab rats are being harmed?

Kureigo-San

The thing about cancer is, that a plant-based diet has been shown over and over to halt cancer development and often reverses it. Cancer is our most popular apology for animal experimentation but the answer has been growing on trees the whole time. I don't want to expend too much energy convincing you of this, I just recommend T Colin Campbell as an author to start with if you want. On AIDs I am less familiar

And here comes the pseudo science. All we need to do to reverse cancer is become vegan! And I'm being aggressive with you for singling me out as some anomaly thus making it some sort of personal thing.

Kureigo-San

The thing about cancer is, that a plant-based diet has been shown over and over to halt cancer development and often reverses it. Cancer is our most popular apology for animal experimentation but the answer has been growing on trees the whole time. I don't want to expend too much energy convincing you of this, I just recommend T Colin Campbell as an author to start with if you want. On AIDs I am less familiar

You're in the realm of pseudo science here my friend.
You can spend a lifetime as a vegan eating chips and veggie-burgers and be as unhealthiest person on the planet.

I've been a vegan for 27 years and have to take cholesterol lowering medication. Im not over weight and have a uber healthy plant based diet and run 10 miles or so a week... genetics/bad luck innit.

Mr. Jolly

commieprincess

EDIT: just saw the above post. Speciesism? :wall:

Though I cringe a little with the term speciesism, I do find it strange that people who accept evolution don't also accept that animals who have travelled down similar evolutionary trajectories as our good selves wouldn't feel the same quality of pain, there are very good evolutionary reasons for them to feel excruciating pain. That to me its pretty obvious. And I think to deny it or only seeing meat consumption from an environmental standpoint rather misses this fundamental point.

I don't reject the fact that animals feel pain. Not at all. Of course I'm not into inflicting unnecessary pain. But this isn't the same as accepting that "speciesism" is a legitimate form of discrimination.

Also, I'm not sure how my being a vegan now is going to reduce animal pain? I'm also not sure how it relates to the class struggle? And if it doesn't, how exactly do people plan on ending meat eating?

On the other hand, I find it ahistorical and paternalistic that people think we can somehow selflessly "save" teh cute lambs as part of the class struggle. In reality, the struggle has to be fought for collective self-interest. It seems to me that the only collective self-interest we have in not eating lambs is an environmental one.

Mr. Jolly

Kureigo-San

The thing about cancer is, that a plant-based diet has been shown over and over to halt cancer development and often reverses it. Cancer is our most popular apology for animal experimentation but the answer has been growing on trees the whole time. I don't want to expend too much energy convincing you of this, I just recommend T Colin Campbell as an author to start with if you want. On AIDs I am less familiar

You're in the realm of pseudo science here my friend.
You can spend a lifetime as a vegan eating chips and veggie-burgers and be as unhealthiest person on the planet.

I've been a vegan for 27 years and have to take cholesterol lowering medication. Im not over weight and have a uber healthy plant based diet and run 10 miles or so a week... genetics/bad luck innit.

Chips and veggie-burgers have lots of fat content and the plant parts of them aren't in their whole, unaltered state which is essential. My failure to communicate that. Most fruits have about 80% carbs, and 10% each for protein and fat. On the other hand, the fat profile for veggie burgers usually ranges between 20-30% and sometimes beyond. The point to always come back to is that plants in their normal state have everything just the way we need it.

Health-wise, it's not a question of, vegan, vegetarian or whatever. It's a question of whole plants vs everything else.

Genetics are not the be all end all, as they can have certain aspects of them activated or deactivated by factors in our environment, the most important of which being what goes inside us. Case in point: People in rural china are lean and free from heart disease, stroke and cancer - when these same people go to USA or UK they would usually adopt that nation's dietary practices, and it is at that point that they also adopt that nation's disease risks. It ain't all genetics

edit: but bloody hell I'm being drawn in. You might be able to find The China Study for free on pdf - the book references 750+ studies to support what I'm telling you, so take it up with those guys.

Kureigo-San

Your granny is a human being. No that wouldn't be OK.

again was assume that superiority of human importance is self-evident. I don't know why I'm supposed to believe this in the first place, let alone how I'm supposed to accept it as the pretext to exploitation of animals.

edit: Mike, I don't think you're a bad person and never did.

If there's no hierarchy between species then in your vegan utopia a person who squashes a bug is no different than a person who kills his grandmother out of some deranged anger for being cut out of the will. We can't all be the dalai lama....not all of us embrace slave morality.

No, you may not think I'm a bad person you might simply think I don't know any better. That this "holocaust" has been normalized in my eyes so eating meat, to me, is no different than crossing the street. Just as people once thought it was "normal" to own chattel slaves. Most vegan activists literally do see themselves in the same light as abolitionists. The John Browns of meat consumption. I'm an unrepentant "speciesist". Yes. I'll own that label.

Mike S.

Kureigo-San

Your granny is a human being. No that wouldn't be OK.

again was assume that superiority of human importance is self-evident. I don't know why I'm supposed to believe this in the first place, let alone how I'm supposed to accept it as the pretext to exploitation of animals.

edit: Mike, I don't think you're a bad person and never did.

If there's no hierarchy between species then in your vegan utopia a person who squashes a bug is no different than a person who kills his grandmother out of some deranged anger for being cut out of the will. We can't all be the dalai lama....not all of us embrace slave morality.

No, you may not think I'm a bad person you might simply think I don't know any better. That this "holocaust" has been normalized in my eyes so eating meat, to me, is no different than crossing the street. Just as people once thought it was "normal" to own chattel slaves. Most vegan activists literally do see themselves in the same light as abolitionists. The John Browns of meat consumption. I'm an unrepentant "speciesist". Yes. I'll own that label.

Well squashing the bug would be permissable if it was self-defence or an accident - it's not the same as what we're talking about because you didn't consider the bug your property.

Kur

The thing about cancer is, that a plant-based diet has been shown over and over to halt cancer development and often reverses it.

You missed my point entirely. Besides, I think you'll find a huge percentage of cancers are caused by tobacco and alcohol, two products made from...you guessed it...plants.

Also, this absurdity about an animal "holocaust" or "genocide". I don't think any evolutionary biologist worth their salt would deny human developed to eat plants and animals. Furthermore, that animals eating other animals is normal, healthy behaviour for massive swarths of the animal kingdom.

In any case, I'm seconding Mike in calling out Godwin's law. You just lost the argument, my friend.

Chilli Sauce

Kur

The thing about cancer is, that a plant-based diet has been shown over and over to halt cancer development and often reverses it.

You missed my point entirely. Besides, I think you'll find a huge percentage of cancers are caused by tobacco and alcohol, to products made from...you guessed it...plants.

Also, this absurdity about an animal "holocaust" or "genocide". I don't think any evolutionary biologist worth their salt would deny human developed to eat plants and animals. Furthermore, that animals eating other animals is normal, healthy behaviour for massive swarths of the animal kingdom.

In any case, I'm seconding Mike in calling out Godwin's law. You just lost the argument, my friend.

1) Tobacco (usually requires combustion and isn't food) and booze (fermentation) aren't whole unaltered plants.

2) You didn't challenge any of my main points.

TBH, people using Godwin's Law as a submission cue in lieu of substance is just as bad as Godwin's Law. Not to mention the fact that I already acknowledged that the nazi holocaust comparison is propaganda speak, which is a style of communication quite apart from honest discussion..more than that, it was never even mine own claim. Some other guy said it, if you care to remember. My claim is that it is genocide in its own right, not to realistically be compared with any other.

You guys say I'm supposed to be the implacable dogmatist here?

commieprincess, you should have quoted post number 7 in your response. Shit's been edited now.

I didn't challenge any of your points? Do you or do you not deny that animals evolved to eat both animals and plants? Do you or do you not deny that lots of other animals eat lots of other animals?

Surely, it should be pretty self-evident that a genocide - a human behaviour and a moral choice that serves no fundamental evolutionary purpose - is not the same thing as eating meat?

commieprincess

Though I cringe a little with the term speciesism, I do find it strange that people who accept evolution don't also accept that animals who have travelled down similar evolutionary trajectories as our good selves wouldn't feel the same quality of pain, there are very good evolutionary reasons for them to feel excruciating pain. That to me its pretty obvious. And I think to deny it or only seeing meat consumption from an environmental standpoint rather misses this fundamental point.

I don't reject the fact that animals feel pain. Not at all. Of course I'm not into inflicting unnecessary pain. But this isn't the same as accepting that "speciesism" is a legitimate form of discrimination.

Sure and I dont like the term.

Also, I'm not sure how my being a vegan now is going to reduce animal pain? I'm also not sure how it relates to the class struggle? And if it doesn't, how exactly do people plan on ending meat eating?

It has nothing to do with class struggle as I have said. But people are more than the class struggle, and I dont think that come some communist anarchist revolution would automatically reduce animal suffering.

There are things outside of the class struggle which you can be passionate about. As for what does being 'vegan' do. Well not alot, but I suppose in my case its a very deep visceral empathy with other animals I guess, I just cannot kill them I when Ive been say rabbiting as a kid I have cried my eyes out hearing the sounds they make caught in the net. So its a personal thing, with a hope that other people who also have empathy with animals (which I think in large part a pretty universal phenomenon) would consider qutting consumption of animals is a MORAL and compassionate thing to do. But ranting on about it endlessly making analogies to the holocaust, is in bad taste. Pain is only a very small part of death for humans (sure other animals grieve, but they ultimately arent 'faced with death' framed by it, like we humans are, not that we have any evidence for atm).

On the other hand, I find it ahistorical and paternalistic that people think we can somehow selflessly "save" teh cute lambs as part of the class struggle. In reality, the struggle has to be fought for collective self-interest. It seems to me that the only collective self-interest we have in not eating lambs is an environmental one.

Not necessarily theoretically science may well be able to come up with very green intensive livestock farming.

Chilli Sauce

commieprincess, you should have quoted post number 7 in your response. Shit's been edited now.

I didn't challenge any of your points? Do you or do you not deny that animals evolved to eat both animals and plants? Do you or do you not deny that lots of other animals eat lots of other animals?

Surely, it should be pretty self-evident that a genocide - a human behaviour and a moral choice that serves no fundamental evolutionary purpose - is not the same thing as eating meat?

Yah I removed 'did I stutter?' in order to be less antagonistic. You got me, sheriff chilli.

Which animals are you talking about? It sounds like you're talking about every animal except us. Being able to eat meat without dying on the spot doesn't somehow mean we ought to be eating it (you could live on worms and cardboard for a few weeks if you had to), this doesn't illustrate that we're designed to do it but it does illustrate that the human body is fucking incredible. What we definitely do not want to do is conflate killing something and eating it when staring the prospect of starvation in the face, with the daily reality of most of us having access to shops or our own grown food.

I most certainly do not deny that other animals eat other animals, as if I ever did. Those animals do that because they're equipped for a carnivorous diet. Us on the other hand..

Humans vs. Carnivores
The following is an incomplete list of the major differences between humans and carnivorous creatures.
• Walking: We have two hands and two feet, and we walk erect. All of the carnivores have four feet and perform their locomotion using all fours.
• Tails: Carnivores have tails.
• Tongues: Only the truly carnivorous animals have rasping (rough) tongues. All other creatures have smooth tongues.
• Claws: Our lack of claws makes ripping skin or tough flesh extremely difficult. We possess much weaker, flat fingernails instead.
• Opposable thumbs: Our opposable thumbs make us extremely well equipped to collect a meal of fruit in a matter of a few seconds. Most people find the process effortless. All we have to do is pick it. The claws of allow them to catch their prey in a matter of seconds as well. We could no more catch and rip the skin or tough flesh of a deer or bear barehanded than a lion could pick mangos or bananas.
• Births: Humans usually have children one at a time. Carnivores typically give birth to litters.
• Colon formation: Our convoluted colons are quite different in design from the smooth colons of carnivorous animals.
• Intestinal length: Our intestinal tracts measure roughly times the length of our torsos (about 30 feet). This allows for the slow absorption of sugars and other water-borne nutrients from fruit. In contrast, the digestive tract of a carnivore is only 3 times the length of its torso. This is necessary to avoid rotting or decomposition of flesh inside the animal. The carnivore depends upon highly acidic secretions to facilitate rapid digestion and absorption in its very short tube. Still, the putrefaction of proteins and the rancidity of fats is evident in their feces.
• Mammary glands: The multiple teats on the abdomens of carnivores do not coincide with the pair of mammary glands on the chest of humans.
• Sleep: Humans spend roughly two thirds of every 24-hour cycle actively awake. Carnivores typically sleep and rest from 18 to 20 hours per day and sometimes more.
• Microbial tolerance: Most carnivores can digest microbes that would be deadly for humans, such as those that cause botulism.
• Perspiration: Humans sweat from pores on their entire body. Carnivores sweat from the tongues only.
• Vision: Our sense of vision responds to the full spectrum of color, making it possible to distinguish ripe from unripe fruit at a distance. Meat eaters do not typically see in full color.
• Meal size: Fruit is in scale to our food requirements. It our hands. A few pieces of fruit is enough to make a meal, leaving no waste. Carnivores typically eat the entire animal when they kill it.
• Drinking: Should we need to drink water, we can suck it with our lips, but we cannot lap it up. Carnivores' tongues protrude outward so they can lap water when they need to drink.
• Placenta: We have a discoid-style placenta, whereas the carnivores have placentas.
• Vitamin C: Carnivores manufacture their own vitamin For us, vitamin C is an essential nutrient that we must get from our food.
• Jaw movement: Our ability to grind our food is unique to plant eaters. Meat eaters have no lateral movement in their jaws.
• Dental formula: Mammalogists use a system called the "dental formula" to describe the arrangement of teeth in each quadrant of the jaws of an animal's mouth. This refers to the number of incisors, canines, and molars in each of the four quadrants. Starting from the center and moving outward, our formula, and that of most anthropoids, is 2/1/5. The dental formula for carnivores is 3/l/5-to-8.
• Teeth: The molars of a carnivore are pointed and sharp. Ours are primarily flat, for mashing food. Our "canine" teeth bear no resemblance to true fangs. Nor do we have a mouth full of them, as a true carnivore does. I am reminded of one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite retorts: "If you counted a sheep's tail as a leg, how many legs would it have?" Invariably, people would answer, "five." To which Lincoln would respond: "Only four. the tail as a leg doesn't make it one."
• Tolerance for fat: We do not handle more than small quantities of fat well. Meat eaters thrive on a high-fat diet.
• SaUva and urine pH: All of the plant-eating creatures (including healthy humans) maintain alkaline saliva and urine most of the time. The saliva and urine of the meat eating animals, however, is acidic.
• Diet pH: Carnivores thrive on a diet of acid-forming foods, whereas such a diet is deadly to humans, setting the stage for a wide variety

The most important thing is that we certainly do not require the consumption of animal products in order to live happy, healthy lives..so we shouldn't do it. If we physiologically did require animal foods, there would be a case for it. Before anyone mentions cholesterol, all the cholesterol you need is produced in the body providing that you are in good health in other areas.

Kureigo-San

Mike S.

Kureigo-San

Your granny is a human being. No that wouldn't be OK.

again was assume that superiority of human importance is self-evident. I don't know why I'm supposed to believe this in the first place, let alone how I'm supposed to accept it as the pretext to exploitation of animals.

edit: Mike, I don't think you're a bad person and never did.

If there's no hierarchy between species then in your vegan utopia a person who squashes a bug is no different than a person who kills his grandmother out of some deranged anger for being cut out of the will. We can't all be the dalai lama....not all of us embrace slave morality.

No, you may not think I'm a bad person you might simply think I don't know any better. That this "holocaust" has been normalized in my eyes so eating meat, to me, is no different than crossing the street. Just as people once thought it was "normal" to own chattel slaves. Most vegan activists literally do see themselves in the same light as abolitionists. The John Browns of meat consumption. I'm an unrepentant "speciesist". Yes. I'll own that label.

Well squashing the bug would be permissable if it was self-defence or an accident - it's not the same as what we're talking about because you didn't consider the bug your property.

Well, under the current system animal products are usually commodities produced for profit/sale on the market so the consumer doesn't see the animal as her/his property. I do understand how you meant to use the term property though. This is neither here nor there my goal is to expose the fact your line of thinking places all animals and insects on the same level as human existence.

don't care if Chomsky said this, it's f*cking stupid. No platform for fascists and I have no problem using force to prevent their 'freedom' or speech and assembly.

really??? that seems messed up

whats wrong with a few nutters on the internet? how would you manage who can publish and who cant???

..when certain practices are challenged consumers defend their entitlement to the use of animals as property.

I already explained that I'm not saying what you think I am. You're hearing the ghosts of a thousand arsehole vegans that you've met.

Pea shoot, I'm oot.

Kureigo-San

..when certain practices are challenged consumers defend their entitlement to the use of animals as property.

I already explained that I'm not saying what you think I am. You're hearing the ghosts of a thousand arsehole vegans that you've met.

Pea shoot, I'm oot.

When I go buy a hamburger I'm not using an animal as my property it's a commodity produced for sale/profit in the market by a capitalist. You mean to say we see animals in general as an exploitable resource. Like trees, water, land and oil. I'm just nit picking with communist terminology here and it doesn't really matter in relation to the discussion what does matter is the fact you think squashing a bug is comparable to killing your grandmother.

Seriously are we going to play that game Kur? Canine teeth, there you go.

Vicent, so for example, I think fascist marches need to be opposed by force and I don't care if they or anyone else thinks that infringes on their right to free speech. Similarly, didn't a hacker group shut down the EDL site recently? That's awesome and again, I don't give a shit if the EDL thinks it hurts their 'right' to free expression on the internet.

First off I think folk are driving each other into more and more extreme positions (or are at lease expressing them that way). On the balance of the argument I lean more toward the Mike S./Chilli Sauce take on things. I eat meat though have cut down considerably and feel the benefit. Perhaps I’m weak though I reckon whoever thought of putting eggs and bacon together was a bit of a genius.

Ultraviolet #1
I have a lot of sympathy with your position though I feel you do over state your case. Animals do have feelings though not ‘like humans’. I’ve been adopted by a small cat for the last three years and while lovable she appears to have little or no empathy with other creatures. I’ve several times curtailed her ‘happiness’ by stopping her playing (torturing) small animals she’s captured. A major pleasure in her life is mealtimes and she loves meat and fish. I think it would be perverse to attempt to ‘train’ her into vegetarianism.

As humans we have obligations to treat animals well, though we are not at all equal. The few folk I’ve met who argue like this are usually disillusioned idealists who despise humans and idealize everything else from Noah’s ark.

A few points:

You can't separate the food and pharmaceutical industries from class politics.
They exist for the interests of capital. Mass produced, high meat content national diets are inefficient and decadent as well as being very unhealthy, especially for the lower paid working class. Poor health creates more opportunities for capital to pursue its interests.
If science is carried out on a smaller scale and not financed by government or corporation that doesn't mean it's pseudo science. Obviously it also doesn't mean that it's good science either but it shouldn't be discounted. When it comes to testing of new anti cancer drugs etc by the the pharmaceutical corps, how the fuck can we trust their science? I don't want to come over all David Icke here but come on, who knows what dark shit is going on behind those doors.
Some of the ranting on this thread against the points put in favour of veganism sound like the ravings of an axe grinder rather than someone interested in a sensible debate.
I am generally with KS on this one.

I'm not really going to add much to this debate - it's already pretty cringe worthy on both sides. I can't stand vegan third-circling as much as I can't stand ill-informed attacks against non meat eaters.

I will say this though. I am vegan, and have been for about 7 months now. I don't think my choice is going to effect the way in which food production is made and capitalised upon. Avoiding meat isn't going to bring down the system. I also think that eating meat is pretty natural, just not in the amount, or in the process that we do now. Whilst it may not be "healthy", either is alcohol, fags, weed or the heart-attack inducing peanut butter and chocolate brownies I make, drink and smoke.

I'm vegan, because I looked into what I was eating, and basically just found it fucking disgusting. Vomit inducing. People have different thresholds with this kind of stuff, but when, for example, I found out what was inside a "chicken", I couldn't eat it any more. Same goes for the rest of it, and there's not much difference between "free-range", "organic", "cage-free", etc. to warrant the extra money spent on that stuff. It's the same shit, disguised in corporate semantics.

I won't go into what is in meat that makes me want to vomit, and the horrors that animals go through, but it is hard not to get all preacher-like when it is so shocking. I've caught myself doing it a few times, even though I said I wouldn't. Animals go through hell, just because the Capitalist likes to cut corners. And they have absolutely no say in it. Does that ring a bell? I may not consider animals my "comrades" as someone sarcastically put it earlier, but I do feel the need to stick up for them.

And from a selfish point of view, I feel great, as healthy as I've ever been (admittedly, not much). I do miss fish occasionally, but I can go without the rest.

Avoiding meat isn't going to bring down the system.

Obviously, but then nor is anything we do. Follow that line of reasoning and there is no point doing anything. As I've heard many times on Libcom, a small victory is still worth pursuing.
Animal lib activists can be pretty irritating but so can any type of activist. Their dismissal gets right up my fucking nose. I think the pro vegan arguments on this thread have been well expressed and given me a lot of food for thought. Standfield's explanation of his veganism is the perfect response to the anti vegan tub thumping posted earlier.
Finally, I thought posting the picture of a child cancer victim was really pretty poor. How about a picture of a thalidomide victim or maybe a type 2 diabetic amputee in response? Seriously man, that sucked.

Pointless sadism is obviously nothing to be cheered on, but I really can't say that I care in the least that some cow died in the process of making my cheeseburger. Certainly this animal liberation business has nothing to do with communism, either conceptually or as a social movement. I'm a bit surprised to see people appealing to morality and rights, since both of these are imagined social constructs that serve no purpose other than to give some appearance of objectivity to the social practices one prefers (e.g. I want to live in a society where myself and others can speak freely so therefore there's some "right" to free speech, and I don't want to live in a society where people randomly attack each other so therefore doing so is morally "wrong"). It's very problematic, I think, to act as if asserting that something is moral or immoral or that it's a right or not a right is anything more than a subjective assertion.

"Pointless sadism is obviously nothing to be cheered on, but I really can't say that I care in the least that some cow died in the process of making my cheeseburger."

If humans can sustain fantastic health from delicious plant foods that typically have large yields and require less resources than the feeding and watering of animals do, then we have to scrutinise the meaning of the word 'pointless' in this context. I contend that it's all pointless because we have superior means with which to sustain ourselves - rich tastes aside.

The overwhelming portion of the pain, suffering, and death that we impose on animals cannot be regarded as necessary in any sense. If we really are to take animal interests seriously, we can't treat animals as human resources. This does not mean that we must give animals the rights that we accord to humans, or that we cannot choose human interests over animal interests in situations of genuine conflict.

Christ.

Second rule of fight club: don't mention the animals.

Tyrion

Pointless sadism is obviously nothing to be cheered on, but cheers on sadism

Though others have been guilty of this. I've no truck with animal rights and I eat meat, but this sort of at best, indifference and at worst, callousness always strikes me as contrary for the sake of it. No one is going to think you're soft for contemplating the fact an animal had to die so you could eat a burger, and that it isn't particularly pleasant. Call it what you want, but we have no reason not to ensure animals' welfare and minimise their suffering.

Auld-bod

Animals do have feelings though not ‘like humans’. I’ve been adopted by a small cat for the last three years and while lovable she appears to have little or no empathy with other creatures. I’ve several times curtailed her ‘happiness’ by stopping her playing (torturing) small animals she’s captured. A major pleasure in her life is mealtimes and she loves meat and fish. I think it would be perverse to attempt to ‘train’ her into vegetarianism.

I don't think the reasonable vegetarians in this thread would promote training animals to be vegetarians. The argument is more along the lines of (and I'm reiterating ultraviolet and Mr. Jolly's posts): Animals, other than us, can eat other animals. Primarily, because we've evolved into a position in which we can reason. We require moral justifications for our actions and because we are the only ones who have the capacity to ask for and understand said justifications we need to justify to ourselves whether it is right to harm animals to satisfy our cravings.

It's true that humans and other animals differ in very important ways, but as Peter Singer writes in, All Animals are Equal...

If it is justifiable to assume that other human beings feel pain as we do, is there any reason why a similar inference should be unjustifiable in the case of other animals?
Nearly all the external signs that lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species...[in] the species of mammals and birds...behavioral signs include writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping or other forms of calling, attempts to avoid the source of pain, appearance of fear at the prospect of its repetition, and so on. In addition, we know that these animals have nervous systems much like ours, which respond physiologically as ours do when the animal is in circumstances in which we would feel pain: an initial rise of blood pressure, dilated pupils, perspiration, an increased pulse rate, and, if the stimulus continues, a fall in blood pressure.

The nervous systems of animals evolved as our own did, and in fact the evolutionary history of human beings and other animals, especially mammals, did not diverge until the central features of our nervous systems were already in existence

*

From this he and other vegetarians (including myself) draw the conclusion that however much we may differ from other animals, the one place in which we don't differ that much, or at all, is where it makes all the difference and that if we don't grant animals any other interest, we have to grant them the interest of not suffering, or avoiding suffering (at our hands, again we are the moral ones, not them).

Not related to the argument above, I think Mr. Jolly is right on the money when it comes to vegetarianism vis a vis class struggle. I also agree with ultraviolet regarding gathering eggs and milk from cows. I think the fact that humans can provide longer and safer lives (as well as allowing the animals enjoyment) makes up for whatever distress a chicken may be under when you take some eggs. Also, I think Kuerigo-san is doing much more harm than good. Once someone starts arguing that humans didn't evolve to eat meat, or evolved to eat less meat (or any variation thereof) all you have to do is call them on their shitty appeal to nature.

-----------------------------
*As reprinted in, Writings on an Ethical Life, p.41

If we stop eating animals can we start eating vegans instead?

Post removed due to me not wanting it widely known that I have unresolved grumpy, sanctimonious tosser issues.

flaneur

Tyrion

Pointless sadism is obviously nothing to be cheered on, but cheers on sadism

Though others have been guilty of this. I've no truck with animal rights and I eat meat, but this sort of at best, indifference and at worst, callousness always strikes me as contrary for the sake of it. No one is going to think you're soft for contemplating the fact an animal had to die so you could eat a burger, and that it isn't particularly pleasant. Call it what you want, but we have no reason not to ensure animals' welfare and minimise their suffering.

My indifference isn't contrary for the sake of it, it's quite genuine. I eat meat on a daily basis and I've never found myself wracked with the least bit of guilt over it. I doubt I'm especially unusual in this regard, though it's possible that I've missed the subtle pained expressions of my friends when we're having burgers. I meant by the first sentence that, although I'm not bothered at all by the deaths themselves, there's obviously no reason to kill animals in an especially torturous way when more "humane" methods are available. I'm sure this makes me a terrible speciesist, but I'm fairly certain that no one actually consistently cares about this great sanctity of non-human life; who hasn't swatted an annoying fly over the years?

Parts of this discussion are rather abstract anyway. Individual eating habits have no impact on the treatment of animals and the notion of veganism becoming widespread to the point where it's the "norm" for humanity is empty utopianism.

Ethos

Auld-bod

Animals do have feelings though not ‘like humans’. I’ve been adopted by a small cat for the last three years and while lovable she appears to have little or no empathy with other creatures. I’ve several times curtailed her ‘happiness’ by stopping her playing (torturing) small animals she’s captured. A major pleasure in her life is mealtimes and she loves meat and fish. I think it would be perverse to attempt to ‘train’ her into vegetarianism.

I don't think the reasonable vegetarians in this thread would promote training animals to be vegetarians. The argument is more along the lines of (and I'm reiterating ultraviolet and Mr. Jolly's posts): Animals, other than us, can eat other animals. Primarily, because we've evolved into a position in which we can reason. We require moral justifications for our actions and because we are the only ones who have the capacity to ask for and understand said justifications we need to justify to ourselves whether it is right to harm animals to satisfy our cravings.

So do you think it's morally justifiable for humans to keep obligate carnivores like cats as pets? Think about all the pain that could be prevented if we neutred all house cats and eradicated that species altogether.

Ethos

It's true that humans and other animals differ in very important ways, but as Peter Singer writes in, All Animals are Equal...

If it is justifiable to assume that other human beings feel pain as we do, is there any reason why a similar inference should be unjustifiable in the case of other animals?
Nearly all the external signs that lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species...[in] the species of mammals and birds...behavioral signs include writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping or other forms of calling, attempts to avoid the source of pain, appearance of fear at the prospect of its repetition, and so on. In addition, we know that these animals have nervous systems much like ours, which respond physiologically as ours do when the animal is in circumstances in which we would feel pain: an initial rise of blood pressure, dilated pupils, perspiration, an increased pulse rate, and, if the stimulus continues, a fall in blood pressure.

The nervous systems of animals evolved as our own did, and in fact the evolutionary history of human beings and other animals, especially mammals, did not diverge until the central features of our nervous systems were already in existence

*

From this he and other vegetarians (including myself) draw the conclusion that however much we may differ from other animals, the one place in which we don't differ that much, or at all, is where it makes all the difference and that if we don't grant animals any other interest, we have to grant them the interest of not suffering, or avoiding suffering (at our hands, again we are the moral ones, not them).

This idea that we shouldn't eat meat because animals can feel pain too has always seemed really odd to me. Humans are just another animal, so doesn't that idea imply it would be allright to kill people if only we anaesthetise them first? How about eating people with congenital insensitivity to pain, would that be immoral in some way? IMHO the moral prohibition of killing hasn't anything to do with pain and suffering. Neither do I think that the preventioun of pain is some absolute imperative - there's a reason that we have developed a sense of pain, i.e. it tells us quite important stuff about the world we live in, and the deepest and most important insights are usually derived from very painful experiences.

On a straightforward tactical level animals can't help us overthrow capitalism, so are irrelevant to that project. Any aid we render to the cause of animal rights is therefore done as an independent ethical decision which it's fine to advocate and argue for, but can't be exclusive of the section of the population which ain't interested or it simply becomes another divisive factor within the class.

That applies both ways mind - afaic anyone saying "you have to be an animal rights activist to be involved in anarchism" is fundamentally undermining our relevance as a movement, but it's also bloody stupid behaviour to go the opposite route and alienate vegans by dismissing their views.

Webby

Avoiding meat isn't going to bring down the system.

Obviously, but then nor is anything we do. Follow that line of reasoning and there is no point doing anything. As I've heard many times on Libcom, a small victory is still worth pursuing.

Animal lib activists can be pretty irritating but so can any type of activist. Their dismissal gets right up my fucking nose. I think the pro vegan arguments on this thread have been well expressed and given me a lot of food for thought. Standfield's explanation of his veganism is the perfect response to the anti vegan tub thumping posted earlier.

First off Webby, points for the pun in this post.

That said, I don't think the consensus on libcom is that nothing we do can bring down the system, only that the actions we take in the name of the class struggle should help us build the confidence, skills, and movement to eventually do that.

There's long-standing critique of activism and animal rights that's been fleshed out on libcom since the site was first started and it doesn't end in the idea that there's no point in doing anything, my friend.

Ethos, I f*cking hate Singer but that was a solid and well-reasoned post. That said, so was No1's response.

Chilli - I meant in that in isolation nothing we do is going to bring down the system. I believe there is a class struggle connection with this issue as pointed out in my post #37. I do t think this point has been addressed unless I've missed it somehow?

Webby

Avoiding meat isn't going to bring down the system.

Standfield's explanation of his veganism is the perfect response to the anti vegan tub thumping posted earlier.
Finally, I thought posting the picture of a child cancer victim was really pretty poor. How about a picture of a thalidomide victim or maybe a type 2 diabetic amputee in response? Seriously man, that sucked.

Webby, I was singled out by the poster I've been quoting and comparisons were made that bothered me. The whole comparing meat eating to human chattel slavery thing gets under my skin. It's extremely condescending to me and an insult to black people. I've also debated vegans since the early 1990's and appeals to emotion are made, appeals to idealist morality, comparisons to the NAZI holocaust are made, pseudoscience is employed etc. I already know how these discussions work out the majority of the time and fundamentally there is no middle ground with a vegan activist, perhaps with a vegan who's made a personal lifestyle choice who's not seeking to force that choice on the globe but the vegan activist in general and specifically veganarchists aren't that "personal lifestyle choice" vegan. I have no problem with a vegan who's an anarchist but when the "veganarchist" theory starts up, mixed with pseudo science, appeals to emotion, guilt tripping, militant direct action against other humans and equating a hamsters life to that of a humans I get annoyed. It's not always vegan activists who do this many times just plain old vegans employ the same in your face backwards guilt tripping based in the same opinion that an animal or insect holds the same value as a human. As I said in the post that "sparked" this thread I have nothing but scorn for that position/those tactics.

Posting the NAZI video where they place more value on a chickens life than that of a human and the subsequent picture of a kid suffering from cancer was me mirroring the arguments some vegans and veganarchist activists employ when they oppose meat eating, vivisection and civilization in general. Of course not all vegans are going to be evangelical but over the last 20 or so years most militant vegans I've come in contact with, as I said in the original post in the other thread, get nothing but scorn from me. This isn't to say I dislike vegans in general or will be rude or aggressive in any conversation concerning meat consumption it's just when certain tactics are employed my reaction is to be aggressive and I've only been half way aggressive with one person in this thread who I think kinda deserves a half way aggressive response.

It's a contentious topic in general and any "half way" middle ground with an animal liberationist and meat eater is basically impossible. I usually stay away from this debate and was happy to drop it in the other thread.

Time to drop some actual science.

The China Study: Campbell's interpretation of the data has been exhaustively debunked. He cherry-picked data, ignored statistical significance, ignored obvious additional variables, and so forth. See here. Campbell's interpretation of the data is a classic example of intentionally cooking data to fit ideology. Of course no science is completely free from ideology, but Campbell's work is on a whole other level. And while ideology and pure economic factors influence what research is done, how, and how it's interpreted, what is actually occurring in terms of biochemistry and physiology doesn't bend itself to anyone's ideology.

The human digestive system and metabolism is characterized by a high degree of adaptability - it's amazing the crap people can grow up eating, successfully reproduce, and live long enough to raise their children. With the Standard American Diet (which has rapidly globalized), it's amazing that the burden of chronic non-infectious disease is not higher and hitting earlier.

80% carbohydrates, 10% protein, and 10% fat is a horrible idea - no matter how whole the foods are, that amount of carbohydrates is likely to elevate triglycerides and cause the development of insulin resistance. 10% protein is the absolute bottom end of the Institute of Medicine (a very mainstream source) recommended range (10-35%). 10% fat is half the lower end of the Institute of Medicine recommended range (20-35%). Infants and young children need more (brain and nervous system development). IOM recommendations here. I quibble with their having the low end of the carbohydrate range a little high (though I'm not an advocate of very low carb diets for the majority of people), being too soft on added sugars and dated information on cholesterol and saturated fats.

The idea that humans evolved as anything other than omnivores is laughable - our big evolutionary advantages are our dietary adaptability and our big brains (made possible by consuming more animal proteins and fats, the larger brains than enabled more complex social structures and aided in both hunting and gathering). I would be shocked if you found an evolutionary biologist or physical anthropologist who argued against the idea that meat eating supported increased brain development in evolutionary terms. Also see this study here on carnivory and weaning time, and its impact on human evolution, as one example.

That said, I think that most vegans have a healthier diet than the Standard Western Diet. However, looking at the biochemistry and the research, it seems likely that the healthiest diet is not a vegan one. Even vegan dietitians agree that vegan diets absolutely require supplementation. Most notably B-12. The article also misses the iodine content of seafood, and misses fatty fish, eggs, and organs for vitamin D (to be fair, most omnivores don't eat organs anymore). It also ignores that grains and legumes contain significant quantities of antinutrients (well substantiated) and the ongoing research on links between grains and legumes and systemic inflammation. It also ignores proportions of macronutrients, fatty acid balance, and so on.

So the ethical decision around the treatment of animals has to be weighed against impacts on human health - you'll get no argument from me that testing cosmetics on animals is horrible, as are CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation). Necessary testing for important medical treatments and raising free-range animals eating their natural diets? I'll argue for, and I'll argue for those foods and medical treatments to be accessible to all, given that I'm horrible speciesist who values human life and health over that of other animals, which is not to say I don't value animal life or health - just that when it comes down to a cow or a human, I'll choose the human every time. If people want to be vegan for ethical reasons, that level of commitment (along with the health consequences of a vegan diet versus a more varied, healthful diet) is admirable, even if I disagree with the prioritization of ethical choices involved.

And there are plenty of actual class issues around diet and agriculture - the harmful effect of factory farming on the environment and communities around them, horrendous working conditions in industrial agriculture (including the hyperexploitation of undocumented immigrants in the US), government subsidies going to cheapen the production of unhealthy foods, the high cost of access to healthful foods and low cost to food that is horrible for you (high fructose corn syrup, heavily processed foods, etc), and so forth. Access to healthful food is a huge part of health disparities, and it's all about economics. I would certainly hope that, post-rev, everyone has access to a diversity of foods that aren't heavily processed and/or empty calories with little to no nutritional value. So, yes, issues around food are class issues, but not the way that animal liberationists would want them to be. And vegan diets - and animal liberation practice - do absolutely nothing to address those issues.

I know some folks are saying the thread is full of bad attitudes and stuff but honestly, this is one of the better attempts at discussing this hot topic.

My thoughts;

I've never bought any of the moral arguments about veganism. One cannot purchase any commodity in this system without implicating oneself in a mile long list of the most abysmally dark injustices to humans, our animal neighbours and indeed, the whole planet. In line with this, I'm super critical of "consumer power" strategies as a way to make any sort of change. They don't work, don't build power and they reinforce capitalist ideology.

I've also never bought any of the natural imperative crap for veganism or meat-eating for that matter. A long list of biological features that point to some sort of "natural veganism" is absurd. "Lack of claws" means absolutely nothing when we have a brain capable of manufacturing items for more powerful then claws as well as cognitive abilities keen enough to plan and organize with large groups. Pointing out canine teeth as some sort of natural evidence that we are supposed to eat meat is also silly. Gorrilas have the scariest canines on the planet and eat only leaves and fruit. All of this is sort of useless if you consider that whatever the diet was in the original environment of our evolutionary adaptiveness has ZERO relevance to everyone posting on this forum because its been shown that humans survive just fine on a wide variety of diets and I'm quite certain that everyone posting on this forum is not a short, furry 3 million year old hominid with a plucky can-do attitude and a penchant for clanging rocks together. I love you great-great. . . .. . . grandparents

I think there are good arguments for veganism concerning health and resources. However, the later argument is deeply troublesome. Basically agriculture as it is now is immensely damaging and dangerous to the planet, so focusing on only meat production as harmful seems silly to me. Yea, obviously we need to overturn some shit before we can make some serious globalized changes to food production.

Soooooo. . . Bigger picture sci-fi type stuff :P

I'm of the belief that humans as a species, are really an incredible phenomenon. I think we owe it all to planet Earth and its ecosystem. At the moment, we are mere infants, knowing not what we do, shitting and pissing all over the place. I think if we get the chance, we should reflect as a global population on how special this place is and the possibilities it still holds. Right now there are many species living with incredible "potential" to develop into our mental equals yet, as long as we are here, there is no room, no niche for them to fill and fully realize. I have lofty wishes that one day that my species will do the planet and its other inhabitants a "solid" and pick up and leave it completely fallow. Honestly, take our worst garbage and throw it at the sun or place it in subduction zones and then leave. Let some of these other creatures have some space to grow into the endless possibilities this earth offered to ourselves. I truly believe that it wouldn't be long before this planet produces yet another incredible sentient phenomenon. This is our best hope for finally finding another voice in the vast universe if you ask me, and this should be one our greatest priorities once we've got our own house in order. I know, I'm a loon, whatever, fuck off ;-)

Webby

A few points:

You can't separate the food and pharmaceutical industries from class politics.
They exist for the interests of capital. Mass produced, high meat content national diets are inefficient and decadent as well as being very unhealthy, especially for the lower paid working class. Poor health creates more opportunities for capital to pursue its interests.
If science is carried out on a smaller scale and not financed by government or corporation that doesn't mean it's pseudo science. Obviously it also doesn't mean that it's good science either but it shouldn't be discounted. When it comes to testing of new anti cancer drugs etc by the the pharmaceutical corps, how the fuck can we trust their science? I don't want to come over all David Icke here but come on, who knows what dark shit is going on behind those doors.
Some of the ranting on this thread against the points put in favour of veganism sound like the ravings of an axe grinder rather than someone interested in a sensible debate.
I am generally with KS on this one.

Go gather up hundreds of cancer patients who will be willing to take part in double blind studies where the only treatments they receive is a vegan diet. What would you choose if you had cancer? Chemo, radiation and hormone suppressing drugs or a diet of broccoli? On the other end of the "evil profit seeking capitalist" spectrum we have quacks that push all manner of snake oil on sick and dying people which largely depends on "free market" based conspiracy theories. To make the assertion that medical science is absolutely and totally corrupted by monopoly capital is the basis for much of the pseudoscience and medical quackery we see today.

Ethos, the things I have said haven't been of the appeal to nature fallacy because the appeal to nature fallacy requires that the conclusion of the claimant's remarks logically leads to nothing - nor am I saying that one thing is good and another bad. A moral claim is required for the appeal to nature fallacy. What you have called my appeal to nature pertains to actual observable skyrocketing health improvements in real life people, when they eat sufficient quantities of plant foods. Every animal has its own optimal dietary nature and it doesn't change very radically depending on their metabolisms and blood types or any of that nonsense. It's commonly observable that the more animal foods a person consumes, the quicker they encounter serious health challenges and/or are very overweight. Though problems aren't only limited to animal foods.

I may well be 'making things worse' by pointing this out, but it's not my job to please people by framing what I have to say in ways that don't offend them - I would if I could but that appears to be impossible on this subject.

Yo guys, you know they made a burger in a lab the other day, once that becomes cheap, I'm going to eat all of those. Right now I am a vegetarian for health reasons and I also don't think mass slaughter of animals is so cool*. Largely agree with Mr. Jolly up there, vis-a-vis animal testing where computer models won't suffice and people will die. Certainly people should probably tone down their meat conception.

- As for the rest, sorry, tl;dr.

* Anybody who thinks this is a corner stone of anarchist politics, however, is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. I BET BAKUNIN ATE BURGERS!

Go gather up hundreds of cancer patients who will be willing to take part in double blind studies where the only treatments they receive is a vegan diet. What would you choose if you had cancer? Chemo, radiation and hormone suppressing drugs or a diet of broccoli?

Mike - I was drawing a comparison between the trustworthiness of 'mainstream' and non mainstream science, not saying one was better than the other.
According to the NHS there is no evidence that Traditional Chinese Medicine will help with Hep C induced advanced liver disease, yet for 7 years the advancement of my condition has been minimal and the liver transplant that I had been told would be required imminently has so far been avoided. Coincidence? Luck? Placebo effect? Maybe, but probably not. That said, I recently underwent the latest antiviral triple therapy with the NHS. It failed, but if they offered something else I would almost certainly give it a go. Nothing to do with veganism as such but I think it demonstrates that there are halfway points in this sort of discussion.
I've read your posts on many other threads and they always seem to be well reasoned and well constructed but I this thread you seem to have gone into overdrive and have at times sounded like a machine firing out tabloid headlines - the cancer struck child typified this.

Operaista, that post was amazing. Seriously, just f*cking beautiful.

Boze, post 54 wasn't bad either.

[youtube]RNqj-zRbJY4[/youtube]

Webby

Go gather up hundreds of cancer patients who will be willing to take part in double blind studies where the only treatments they receive is a vegan diet. What would you choose if you had cancer? Chemo, radiation and hormone suppressing drugs or a diet of broccoli?

Mike - I was drawing a comparison between the trustworthiness of 'mainstream' and non mainstream science, not saying one was better than the other.
According to the NHS there is no evidence that Traditional Chinese Medicine will help with Hep C induced advanced liver disease, yet for 7 years the advancement of my condition has been minimal and the liver transplant that I had been told would be required imminently has so far been avoided. Coincidence? Luck? Placebo effect? Maybe, but probably not. That said, I recently underwent the latest antiviral triple therapy with the NHS. It failed, but if they offered something else I would almost certainly give it a go. Nothing to do with veganism as such but I think it demonstrates that there are halfway points in this sort of discussion.
I've read your posts on many other threads and they always seem to be well reasoned and well constructed but I this thread you seem to have gone into overdrive and have at times sounded like a machine firing out tabloid headlines - the cancer struck child typified this.

Hep-C advances differently for different people. The medical quacks LOVE promoting cases where cancer just goes away when a person rejects mainstream medical treatment but strange things do happen with the human body that aren't applicable to the average scenario. Sometimes the body heals itself. The topic was cancer and the poster said cancer is reversed from a vegan diet. That's pseudoscience I'm sorry and the basis of it is capitalists suppress natural cures because they can't profit from it. A family member of mine was almost duped by that conspiracy theory and almost embraced "alternative" treatments for cancer as her sole treatment plan. She had stage 3 breast cancer and was going to reject the doctors plans for the double mastectomy, chemo, radiation and drug treatment which specifically lowered her amount of cancer feeding estrogen. Her alternative plan was just that, a specialized vegan diet and get this, coffee enemas. I'm 99% sure if she went through with the vegan diet and coffee enemas as the sole treatments for her cancer she'd be dead right now.

Posting the picture of the cancer struck child was in relation to vegans who are anti vivisection and use appeals to emotion to fight animal testing. I guess you simply don't understand the point I was trying to make. That's OK. I'm not offended.

no1,

This idea that we shouldn't eat meat because animals can feel pain too has always seemed really odd to me. Humans are just another animal, so doesn't that idea imply it would be allright to kill people if only we anaesthetise them first? How about eating people with congenital insensitivity to pain, would that be immoral in some way? IMHO the moral prohibition of killing hasn't anything to do with pain and suffering.

You're spot on here, no1. I didn't provide any argument against killing animals, only against making them suffer. So, let me reply to the bit in bold by quoting Singer again (Sorry Chilli Sauce!):

...a rejection of speciesism does not imply that all lives are of equal worth. While self-awareness, the capacity to think ahead and have hopes and aspirations for the future, the capacity for meaningful relations with others, and so on are not relevant to the question of inflicting pain- since pain is pain, whatever other capacities, beyond the capacity to feel pain, the being may have- these capacities are relevant to the question of taking a life. It is not arbitrary to hold that the life of a self-aware being, capable of abstract thought, of planning for the future, of complex acts of communication, and so on, is more valuable than the life of a being without these capacities.

Killing a person, as it is implied above, is wrong because you end a life that was self aware, capable of abstract thought, planning for the future, etc. Other animals aren't capable of engaging in any of these things to the same extent that adult humans are, but (a) they are capable of some of them to a certain extent (self-awareness being the most important here) and (b) human newborns and toddlers also aren't capable of these feats to the same extent that an adult human is (for a while there dogs, dolphins, other apes, etc are much more capable of these traits than humans are). So, considering that we grant the "right" (I use the term loosely as I don't actually believe in "rights" per se, i.e. "natural rights", etc.) to not be killed to b, we should, on the pain of being arbitrary, grant the same right to a.

Further, the capacity to suffer (which can also be rephrased as I did in my first post, "the interest to want to avoid suffering") almost necessarily implies the capacity to have pleasures (it's almost a banal truth that, as an absolute minimum, if a being has the interest to want to avoid suffering it will take pleasure in just that, avoiding suffering) and on what basis to we justify our killing animals that have this capacity? The fact that pork is tasty seems rather arbitrary.

Neither do I think that the preventioun of pain is some absolute imperative - there's a reason that we have developed a sense of pain, i.e. it tells us quite important stuff about the world we live in, and the deepest and most important insights are usually derived from very painful experiences.

I never argued that prevention of pain is an absolute imperative. I agree that you need it to get around world. That said, and I realize that a personal anecdote is of little value, I've had painful experiences that have left me bedridden and I didn't get any important insights all I wanted was for the pain to stop.

Kureigo-San

Ethos, the things I have said haven't been of the appeal to nature fallacy because the appeal to nature fallacy requires that the conclusion of the claimant's remarks logically leads to nothing - nor am I saying that one thing is good and another bad. A moral claim is required for the appeal to nature fallacy.

1. Appeal to nature is not in itself a fallacy. I don't think I called it a fallacy.
2. (regarding the bit in bold) That's the problem, even if what you're describing is correct and we are not "equipped" to eat meat, this alone wouldn't explain why eating meat would be wrong.

Edit: I hit italics instead of bold. Fixed now.

Arbeiten

pull the wool over your eyes

SPECIESIST!!!

Mike - I guess I don't fully understand it, at least not fully, so fair enough, I'll leave it at that.
I think this thread has actually gone off on a number of tangents and I am pretty exhausted by it!

Boze's post was a bit special though, so at least that much has been saved from the wreckage!

Kureigo-San

Every animal has its own optimal dietary nature and it doesn't change very radically depending on their metabolisms and blood types or any of that nonsense. It's commonly observable that the more animal foods a person consumes, the quicker they encounter serious health challenges and/or are very overweight.

Repeat after me "correlation is not causation" (especially correlations that are statistically insignificant or based on manipulated data).

Research does not show a solid causation chain between "consumption of animal foods" alone and "serious health challenges and/or are very overweight" (see the debunking of The China Study). The Standard American Diet is horrible, and, yes, contains a good deal more animal products than a vegan diet. However, comparing a whole foods vegan diet versus SAD also eliminates things like high fructose corn syrup, added sugar in general, trans fats, and so forth. In other words, far more than one variable is changed at a time. I could find good research on multiple, very different diets, showing improved outcomes against the SAD. Those studies don't indicate one of those diets is best (to do so, large scale comparative studies between them would need to be done) so much as it indicates that the currently prevalent diet in the overdeveloped world is horrible (and becoming very similar in middle-income countries, if you poke through stuff like WHO data).

Blood type diets are nonsense, but the idea that the exact same diet will suit everyone for every purpose is, frankly, ridiculous. To pick one simple example, a sedentary person is going to have lower caloric needs than someone who is active and undergoing intense athletic training; furthermore, they're going to need less carbohydrates as a percentage of their caloric intake because the demands on glycolytic pathways are significantly less.

To the idea that every species has a single optimum diet - species vary greatly in the range of foods they can eat. Species that have incredibly limited diets tend to occupy a very specific ecological niche; in contrast, humans, as hunter-gatherers, managed to spread over all the continents (excluding Antartica) and occupied environments ranging from tropical to artic, and desert to rainforest. A hunter-gatherer in the Artic is going to have a drastically different diet than one in a tropical rainforest. Homo sapiens would never have been able to spread as much as we have without the ability to do well on a diversity of food sources. In fact, having a standard diet that doesn't vary by region is a product of modern capitalism.

As to diet and cancer: I'd be incredibly wary of generalizing diets that are effective for a severely pathological state to people who are healthy or have different, much less severe pathology. Also, "cancer" is not one disease, and different cancers are going to respond differently to dietary changes. For instance, preliminary findings indicate that ultra-low carb diets that have the body consistently relying on ketones for fuel starve some cancers (breast, colon, prostate, some brain tumors), and make some cancers more aggressive. I would find it highly unlikely that there is one diet that is an effective complementary treatment for all cancers, and I don't think effectiveness as an adjunct in cancer treatment tells us all that much in people who don't have cancer. I also think responsible studies could be done by comparing how a standard diet control group (receiving chemo)'s cancer outcome with chemo + various diets. In other words, controlling for other variables, was there a statistically significant difference in outcomes when diet was varied? Of course, each type of cancer would have to be tested individually. The wonderful thing about Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is the complementary part!

It is of course true that pharmaceutical companies aren't motivated to research and put onto the market treatments they can't profit from (the treatment being easily mass-produceable and patentable are significant factors in this). However, the idea that profitable treatments are in general not effective doesn't hold - between research requirements and the fact that if something is consistently observed to not work, it's not going to end up being successful in the market long term, especially given the amount of over healthcare spending that is done by health insurance companies and governments, who have a vested interest in spending money in ways that can be verified to be effective - not because they love us, but because they either need to be profitable (and thus don't want unnecessary costs) or need to run a healthcare system effective enough to guarantee an adequate workforce, in addition to more idealistic concerns among at least some administrators. Yes, there are problems with how evidence-based medicine is currently constructed (profit motive affecting what gets researched and developed and who gets it, drastically lower research quality and quantity for much CAM), but let's not throw out the empirical research baby with the political and economic bath water.

Bozemananarchy is of course correct that none of us are eating what our ancestors ate during evolution (which changed over time, and of course things like fire and stone tools drastically changed the diet) - evolutionary biology, studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers, reconstruction of prior cultures' diets along with examining their remains to provide information on their health status is only useful in so much as it provides some preliminary guidance on what to research and some possible explanation of epidemiological data (and epidemiological data is really, really hard to interpret - we don't have the ability to take a large number of people, control all other variables, and tweak their diet in one specific way at a time).

Oh, and thanks, Chilli!

Operaista for libcom's medical blogger!

Ethos

Kureigo-San

Ethos, the things I have said haven't been of the appeal to nature fallacy because the appeal to nature fallacy requires that the conclusion of the claimant's remarks logically leads to nothing - nor am I saying that one thing is good and another bad. A moral claim is required for the appeal to nature fallacy.

1. Appeal to nature is not in itself a fallacy. I don't think I called it a fallacy.
2. (regarding the bit in bold) That's the problem, even if what you're describing is correct and we are not "equipped" to eat meat, this alone wouldn't explain why eating meat would be wrong.

Edit: I hit italics instead of bold. Fixed now.

It would be wrong in the sense that health problems are universally considered to be a shitty experience. I don't want to go to far down the rabbit hole with this point that should be more common sense than linguistic and political theory.

I'm very familiar with the so-called debunking of The China Study, Operaista. It seems odd to me that you would say "Time for some real science" then link me to an undergrad's blog that hasn't been peer-reviewed, whereas every 700+ reference used in The China Study has been peer-reviewed (by people with precisely zero idealogical interest in a vegan diet) and in addition so has T Colin Campbell's own work been scrutinised to the nth degree.

Repeat after me "correlation is not causation" (especially correlations that are statistically insignificant or based on manipulated data).

Research does not show a solid causation chain between "consumption of animal foods" alone and "serious health challenges and/or are very overweight" (see the debunking of The China Study). The Standard American Diet is horrible, and, yes, contains a good deal more animal products than a vegan diet. However, comparing a whole foods vegan diet versus SAD also eliminates things like high fructose corn syrup, added sugar in general, trans fats, and so forth. In other words, far more than one variable is changed at a time. I could find good research on multiple, very different diets, showing improved outcomes against the SAD. Those studies don't indicate one of those diets is best (to do so, large scale comparative studies between them would need to be done) so much as it indicates that the currently prevalent diet in the overdeveloped world is horrible (and becoming very similar in middle-income countries, if you poke through stuff like WHO data).

You are right that correlation is not causation but that does not mean that correlations are useless and that they can't tell us anything. In my experience, every time somebody offers "the debunking of The China Study" article by Denise Minger it's very telling that they haven't actually read The China Study - because if they had read it they would be aware that the content of the book The China Study includes many hundreds of different supporting evidences, most of which are not of the population observation style like The China Study experiment from which the book is given its name. For this reason the author resents that his publisher forced him to accord the book such a confusing title - for good reason too as it muddies the waters and ultimately permits people to convince themselves that they've falsified the basis of the research..unfortunately not realising that that particular study was far from the only one performed, or the only type of study. Denise Minger's blog doesn't scrape the lid on a book that documents several decades' worth of accumulated study from various groups - all of which by the way began with the mission of finding ways to get people to eat more animal protein.

Blood type diets are nonsense, but the idea that the exact same diet will suit everyone for every purpose is, frankly, ridiculous. To pick one simple example, a sedentary person is going to have lower caloric needs than someone who is active and undergoing intense athletic training; furthermore, they're going to need less carbohydrates as a percentage of their caloric intake because the demands on glycolytic pathways are significantly less.

When I talked about a single optimum diet, I most certainly was not referring to quantity..because that would indeed be ridiculous. You've misunderstood me - which is probably a result of my bad communication but there's a limit to how much I want to do on a libcom comment. So, we don't even need to go to the athlete example, even though I agree with you - simply a child vs an adult will have vastly different appetites. I'm not proposing a regimented amount of food for everyone. I am saying that plants as a group accord to every nutritional need in the body - except for in some people, b12, because some people don't have the ability to absorb b12 - the b12 issue is not a dietary one, because even taking a supplement of b12 does not mean that you will absorb that ingested b12. b12 deficiency is not exclusive to any dietary practice. Usually the best course of action is injection for b12.

To the idea that every species has a single optimum diet - species vary greatly in the range of foods they can eat. Species that have incredibly limited diets tend to occupy a very specific ecological niche; in contrast, humans, as hunter-gatherers, managed to spread over all the continents (excluding Antartica) and occupied environments ranging from tropical to artic, and desert to rainforest. A hunter-gatherer in the Artic is going to have a drastically different diet than one in a tropical rainforest. Homo sapiens would never have been able to spread as much as we have without the ability to do well on a diversity of food sources. In fact, having a standard diet that doesn't vary by region is a product of modern capitalism.

I'm not talking about what animals can eat, I'm making a claim about which diet we thrive on. Of course, most of us can eat horrible food for many years seemingly without consequence partly because youth is forgiving and through a gene set strongly inclined in the opposite direction of disease formation. People can adapt to extraordinary circumstances, but they don't switch their digestive system for a new one when they do so - the optimum still applies. I don't understand the relevance of the last sentence, sorry.

As to diet and cancer: I'd be incredibly wary of generalizing diets that are effective for a severely pathological state to people who are healthy or have different, much less severe pathology. Also, "cancer" is not one disease, and different cancers are going to respond differently to dietary changes. For instance, preliminary findings indicate that ultra-low carb diets that have the body consistently relying on ketones for fuel starve some cancers (breast, colon, prostate, some brain tumors), and make some cancers more aggressive. I would find it highly unlikely that there is one diet that is an effective complementary treatment for all cancers, and I don't think effectiveness as an adjunct in cancer treatment tells us all that much in people who don't have cancer. I also think responsible studies could be done by comparing how a standard diet control group (receiving chemo)'s cancer outcome with chemo + various diets. In other words, controlling for other variables, was there a statistically significant difference in outcomes when diet was varied? Of course, each type of cancer would have to be tested individually. The wonderful thing about Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is the complementary part!

Yes, low-carb diets are demonstrably dangerous, and I would even extend on what you're saying: low-carb necessarily means high-fat and high-protein (usually means animal products because their macro-nutrient profiles look like this). This is precisely the dietary condition that is outlined as causing cancers to become more aggressive - it's when you say things like this that I have to be skeptical that you've read The China Study - because your intention is to critique it or dismiss it, but you're unknowingly agreeing with its core proposition. Eating plants shouldn't really be considered a cancer treatment, as it also treats a lot of other diseases of affluence. These reviews of Dr Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes make for interesting reading - I can offer more strictly scientific material if the experiences of real, previously non-vegan people are found to be laughable.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neal-Barnards-Program-Reversing-Diabetes/product-reviews/1594868107/ref=sr_1_3_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

When something reduces or outright eliminates the symptoms of various diseases that we think are incurable, without a single negative side effect then it demands our attention.

Usually when someone concerns themselves with debunking The China Study, they miss the big picture that we ought to be eating plants if even a modest level of health is what we desire.

Whole by T Colin Campbell came out recently and he uses that book to explain what it's like trying to get funding in his government labs for what are considered heretical findings. It sheds some light on the machinations of why the public don't know these things or misunderstand them. Most of the time it isn't some villainous conspiracy; it's just people doing what they're supposed to do in the system that they find themselves within. For instance, medical journals are threatened consistently that their sponsor funding (from animal food industries) will be withdrawn if they appear too favorable to the health benefits of a plant-based diet. It's not necessarily an evil conspiracy but what it is, is a capitalist mechanism of trying to shield its corporate interests which has the knock-on effect of ultimately radically altering not only the information that the public consumes on the topic, but even the paradigms with which they consider the matters.

Tyrion

Pointless sadism is obviously nothing to be cheered on, but I really can't say that I care in the least that some cow died in the process of making my cheeseburger. Certainly this animal liberation business has nothing to do with communism, either conceptually or as a social movement. I'm a bit surprised to see people appealing to morality and rights, since both of these are imagined social constructs that serve no purpose other than to give some appearance of objectivity to the social practices one prefers (e.g. I want to live in a society where myself and others can speak freely so therefore there's some "right" to free speech, and I don't want to live in a society where people randomly attack each other so therefore doing so is morally "wrong"). It's very problematic, I think, to act as if asserting that something is moral or immoral or that it's a right or not a right is anything more than a subjective assertion.

arguments like this always confuse me when they come from communists. there's nothing "objective" in the idea that we should produce according to ability and distribute according to need, that we should prevent environmental devastation, that we should care about humanity as a whole (or in fact anyone), that equality is "good" or whatever. "objectively" we're just animate sacks of flesh on a rock in space. anything after that is, at least in part, down to subjective assertions about how society is and how we'd like it to be - ethics in all but name.

I find it quite baffling the way some folks seem to dismiss any mention of ethics or morality out of hand despite their politics being largely a product of rejecting the horrors capitalism has brought humanity and a desire for something better.

regarding animal rights - I'm vegetarian and have been since I was about 10, essentially because I figure if I can feed myself while reducing the amount of pain I cause to creatures capable of feeling pain then there's really no reason not to. it does come from the same place as my politics but not something I've ever really been engaged with in an activistey way, nor something I feel the need to bring up except when asked (or when I'm sleep deprived and on libcom, it seems).

fwiw, tho this is just anecdotal obviously - I tend to find far more people moaning about vegetarians always talking about their vegetarianism than I find vegetarians actually always talking about their vegetarianism.

(odd comparison - I don't find anarchists actually talking about Kronstadt that much; I do however find socialists frequently moaning about how anarchos supposedly talk about Kronstadt all the time.)

I do find sometimes that the more aggressively anti-veggie arguments come across as a bit macho - assertions that one simply doesn't care about the pain of animals (cos REAL MEN don't care about that stuff), patronising comments about "fluffy bunnies" (cos only a silly softie or wuss *would* care about that stuff), etc. Take that as you will.

jonthom

I'm vegetarian and have been since I was about 10, essentially because I figure if I can feed myself while reducing the amount of pain I cause to creatures capable of feeling pain then there's really no reason not to.

Not meaning to be arsey so sorry if it comes across that way, but how are you reducing animal pain by being a vegetarian? Are fewer animals hurt because of your individiual lifestyle choice?

commieprincess

jonthom

I'm vegetarian and have been since I was about 10, essentially because I figure if I can feed myself while reducing the amount of pain I cause to creatures capable of feeling pain then there's really no reason not to.

Not meaning to be arsey so sorry if it comes across that way, but how are you reducing animal pain by being a vegetarian? Are fewer animals hurt because of your individiual lifestyle choice?

fair point. I retract that statement - being vegetarian isn't going to stop animals suffering any more than buying fair trade is going to stop workers being exploited.

in my defence I've been awake since 6am yesterday so not really functioning properly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wxb7XPm_SxU

@Operaista and anyone who hasn't blown their brains out yet. The author addressing The Weston A Price Foundation.

jonthom

in my defence I've been awake since 6am yesterday so not really functioning properly.

Well in that case, kudos for being so coherant :)

I have a bit of sympathy because I used to do a less extreme version of this cherry-picking of data, and making some of the less obviously junk-science claims about anatomy and physiology. Actually getting educated in anatomy and physiology (which, say what you want about how we've locked health information away in programs that are hard to access, they do make you learn anatomy and physiology) dispelled that a good bit for me.

Given the amount of peer-reviewed research out there that contradicts Campbell's conclusions (which were not in a peer-reviewed book) - and the biochemists and nutritionists who have looked over the linked statistical analysis and support it. Also, really? The level of junk science you've thrown out about physiology, evolution, and nutrition? You've claimed that a handful of fruit is a sufficient meal, and, given the incredibly low fat intake you propose, you can't mean an avocado. Some examples of fruits:

A medium-sized apple is about a handful. It contains (select medium under serving size contain 95 calories, which, for all intents and purposes are entirely from carbohydrates. Six meals consisting of a handful of apples a day would thus be under 600 calories, well below base metabolic requirements for any adult. A pint of strawberries yields 1g of fat, 2g of protein - and 114 total calories (the rest of which are from carbohydrates). Six pints of strawberries a day would be under 720 calories.

The point are not that these aren't healthy things to eat (I think people should eat fresh fruit, and in greater quality and quantity than the Standard Western diet), but that basic nutrition holds that a handful of fruit (even an avacado) doesn't provide sufficient calories to be considered a meal. And for an avocado,

Kureigo-San said:

I'm not talking about what animals can eat, I'm making a claim about which diet we thrive on. Of course, most of us can eat horrible food for many years seemingly without consequence partly because youth is forgiving and through a gene set strongly inclined in the opposite direction of disease formation. People can adapt to extraordinary circumstances, but they don't switch their digestive system for a new one when they do so - the optimum still applies. I don't understand the relevance of the last sentence, sorry.

Peer-reviewed analysis of the diets of contemporary hunter-gatherers, published in one of Nature's journals. Things that are important to note: far lower burden of chronic non-infectious disease than Western societies. A majority of them eat more animal protein than the Western diet. And universally, adoption of the Western diet leads to CVD, Type II diabetes, and other diseases, whereas going back to traditional diets lowers the risk. Now, of course, there are protective lifestyle factors that do affect disease rates (no tobacco use, lower amounts of chronic stress, more exercise), but even just the diet switch back improves things.

And, actually, evolutionarily, our digestive system got smaller and less metabolically intensive as our brain got bigger and more metabolically intensive- which indicates an adaptation to more calorie dense foods. It certainly hasn't changed significantly since the appearance of biologically modern humans, but by then, the dietary adaptations that differentiate humans had occurred. And you ignored my point that different lifestyles have different macronutrient requirements. My last sentence means that there are a lot of foods that, without modern transportation and refrigeration, would not be accessible to most people, at least year round. I live in New England - there's no way that I'd ever get an avocado or a banana hundreds of years ago, and without modern transportation and refrigeration, fresh fruits and vegetables are going to be scarce in winter. To survive even temperate zones, we need to be able to do well on a diversity of diets.

To take the example of an extreme diet that is an adaptation to extreme conditions (pop-science article, though I think the composition of the traditional Inuit/Inupiat/other circumpolar peoples diet is not controversial), circumpolar people, by necessity, eat nearly nothing but animal proteins and fats for most of the year. If a direct causation from animal protein and fat consumption to chronic disease existed, we could reasonably expect the Inuit to get healthier on the Standard Western Diet. Instead, the health of the population deteriorates. And non-Inuit do well on their traditional diet.

I'm not advocating anyone eat like the Inuit - just pointing out that there is a wide range of possible diets that populations can do well on. If the claims you're making were true, we would never have thrived in even temperate environments.

Yes, low-carb diets are demonstrably dangerous, and I would even extend on what you're saying: low-carb necessarily means high-fat and high-protein (usually means animal products because their macro-nutrient profiles look like this). This is precisely the dietary condition that is outlined as causing cancers to become more aggressive - it's when you say things like this that I have to be skeptical that you've read The China Study - because your intention is to critique it or dismiss it, but you're unknowingly agreeing with its core proposition. Eating plants shouldn't really be considered a cancer treatment, as it also treats a lot of other diseases of affluence.

Low-carb alone is not incredibly dangerous. Atkins is likely to make you feel like crap in the gym, though, especially if you do any sort of activity that stresses glycolytic pathways. Getting a majority of calories from protein is (google "rabbit starvation"). People can handle higher protein than the western diet, but proteins alone are the macronutrient that we can't attain sufficient energy from - because of the limitations on the abilities of the liver to perform gluconeogenesis from protein, and the limitations on the ability to handle the biproducts of the process. However, a certain intake of protein is necessary - the figure the Harvard School of Public Health cites as a minimum is .8 grams per kilogram. In an 80 kg person, this is only 64 grams (256 calories a day of protein). The upper limit for an 80 kg person is probably in the 285 gram - 365 gram range, which means that protein alone is not going to provide sufficient calories (once again, "rabbit starvation"). As to the lower end, yes, I know all about selecting complementary proteins on a veg*n diet - but given the general lower bioavailability of plant proteins, and the fact that the low end of the protein recommendation is for sedentary individuals (and you really, really should be exercising), I'd advocate higher protein consumption than .8 grams per kilogram (but certainly not in the "rabbit starvation" range!)

I don't advocate low-carb in general - with the foods available and palatable to a Western palate, people are not going to end up eating like circumpolar peoples, they're going to be eating poor quality fatty meats, excessive amounts of cheese, excessive saturated fat, not getting adequate micronutrients, and so forth. However, if you pop in this pubmed search, you'll find multiple peer-reviewed articles on preliminary findings on ketogenic diets for some cancers - which supports my point that different cancers will respond differently to different diets, and that diets appropriate for severely pathological states are not the same as those relevant to relatively healthy people.

Also, everyone who debunks The China Study I've read - nutritionists, biochemists, and so forth - advocates more fresh fruits and vegetables (especially vegetables!) than the standard western diet. No one is arguing that a moderate amount of fresh fruit and high quantities of fresh vegetables are not an important part of a healthy diet.

I'm arguing that:
1) the standard western diet is horrible for you (we agree)
2) that animal proteins and fats themselves are not the causation mechanism for the vast majority of the burden of chronic non-infectious disease.
3) that the likely culprits in the standard western diet is excessive saturated fat consumption, poor amount and quality of mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acids, overly high omega-6/omega-3 ratio, trans fats, added sugar and other sweeteners, low amounts of fresh vegetables and so forth, heavily processed foods, along with lifestyles marked as being sedentary and with high amounts of chronic stress. Plus, you know, fun lifestyle things like excessive alcohol consumption and tobacco use. Oh, and probably things like pesticide exposure, industrial pollutant exposure, exogenous hormones and antibiotics routinely given to animals we then eat, and so on.
4) The way animals are raised contributes to the unhealthiness of the western diet: higher saturated fat, poorer omega-6/omega-3 ratios. Free-range, grass-fed (or other natural diets), antibiotic free, exogenous hormone free, and so forth, are not only more humane, they're healthier. The warnings around eating large amounts of fatty red meat that do hold up to review are almost certainly because commonly available red meat in the western world are fed grains and kept in incredibly confined spaces, and thus have much higher amounts of saturated fat and worse omega-6/omega-3 ratios.
4) a whole foods vegan diet is vastly healthier than the standard western diet; this is not because of the absence of animal proteins and fats, but because of lower consumption of saturated fats, generally better omega-6/omega-3 ratios, absence of trans fats, little to no added sugar, higher amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables.
5) a vegan diet is not *the* optimum for health. It is unlikely that there is a singular diet that is *the* optimum for health. There are micronutrients it doesn't provide, by necessity it must heavily rely on grains and legumes for adequate protein, with their accompanying anti-nutrients making ingested minerals less bioavailable (very well scientifically substantiated) and their likely inflammatory properties in a vast majority of people (ongoing research). I think more research is needed on what the rate limitations of conversion of 18 carbon chain fatty acids to 20 and 22 carbon chain fatty acids are, and also in exactly how semi-conditional taurine requirements are.
5) The phrase "diseases of affluence" is a bit weird. Yes, as the world has become more developed, they have greater preponderance. However, they hit the poor in high-income countries far harder than the rich - see everything else I've said about access to healthful foods. And they hit middle-income countries even worse than high income countries. And, pretty soon, chronic non-infectious disease will pass infectious disease for morbidity and mortality in low-income countries (in some places, they already have). They're more diseases of industrialization leading to unavailability of traditional diets *and* having inadequate resources or access to consume truly healthful food in an industrial society.
6) people shouldn't confuse the ethical argument for veganism with a health argument. On purely health grounds, I think people should adopt a diet drastically different than the standard western diet; I think there's a great diversity of what those diets can consist of (as demonstrated by the great diversity of diets in cultures that traditionally have very low rates of CVD and diabetes). However, I think a diet entirely absent of animal products doesn't maximize health, and is harder to follow.
7) I've noted that everyone I've ever encountered who is vegan for purely health, or more environment-focused reasons, doesn't remain vegan long-term (over the course of years). It's just too strict of a diet that without an animal liberation perspective, it just doesn't end up being worth it to people.

This holds true for other diets that are restrictive in our society. Look at the fad for gluten-free diets - outside of people with wheat allergies, celiac, or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, few people are motivated enough to be totally gluten-free longterm (which is not to say that gluten-free does nothing for the 90-93% of people who don't have a severe issue with gluten, just that restricting it completely is a pretty big thing in our society, and requires a lot of motivation to pull off, motivation that is generally absent long term if you don't have a major gluten tolerance issue). And being absolutely gluten-free doesn't have the same weight put on it that being vegan does - if you eat a pizza one day, it's not like being vegan and having some eggs once in a while (because pretty much everyone will agree that even occasional intentional consumption of animal products is not vegan). Hell, being completely gluten-free is hard for people with celiac, which is a powerful motivation to not consume gluten.

8) As someone who works in healthcare, who will be a primary care provider in a couple of years, I will absolutely advocate to my patients that they should exercise more, reduce consumption of added sugars and saturated fat, reduce consumption of processed foods, eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, increase exercise, don't smoke, limit alcohol consumption, eat higher quality animal products (and go with the absolute leanest cuts if those aren't accessible), limit or eliminate dairy, and so forth. I won't be advocating any highly restrictive diet other than in special cases (in other words, if someone has celiac disease, I will tell them absolutely no gluten). As population health interventions, highly restrictive diets are not going to have high adherence. If a patient tells me they're vegan for ethical reasons, I'm not going to try and convince them otherwise - I'll steer them away from "junk food veganism" and toward supplementation for missing micronutrients. To reiterate, a whole foods vegan diet is vastly healthier than the standard western diet for the majority of people. As someone who is in healthcare, and sees firsthand the ravages the standard western diet is causing, I'm concerned with giving people options that are accessible to them and that are going to be adhered to. I don't think strict diets are that - necessary motivation is a lot higher with strict diets - and we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I'd steer people away from Atkins. I think there are dietary options beyond the standard western diet, veganism, or Atkins.
9) I think the ethical argument for veganism works, given certain assumptions. I don't share those assumptions, but, veganism does follow from them.
10) You hurt your argument for veganism when you make junk science claims about evolutionary biology, physiology, and nutrition. You also hurt the argument when you argue veganism is the only healthy diet. The better argument is that a) vegan diets can be vastly healthier than the standard western diet and then shift to b) ethical reasons.
11) To talk about agricultural lobbies and subsidies, it's not just around animal products. There are massive grain subsidies. Look at corn - it's in everything, it's subsidized, and I don't think anyone who isn't getting directly paid by the industry would say that the addition of high fructose corn syrup to nearly everything processed isn't bad for you.
12) As a socialist, I'm way more concerned about food deserts, the horrible quality of food the US government has distributed to Native American reservations (and, I am not all that familiar with Australia, but there's similar issues there with food access for indigenous communities, I think?), what WIC allows, the artificially low prices of processed food, the high expense of fresh fruits and vegetables, inadequate knowledge of nutrition among primary care providers and how that affects nutritional education, particularly in the working class, and especially in marginalized groups, the effects of CAFOs and other factory farming operations on the environment of communities around them and the horrible working conditions in factory farming, the way patents on life and destructive farming practices forced on them by the overdeveloped world is affecting the underdeveloped world, and so on. Like, really, on a forum where everyone falls under the umbrella of revolutionary socialism (and under an even smaller sub-umbrella of that), the ratio of "debates over veganism" to "all the issues I talked about in this list item" is so high as to be a little depressing.

Chilli Sauce

Operaista for libcom's medical blogger!

I wonder how many regular posters here are in healthcare or closely related fields - I know there are at least a few others.

Operista is the man.

Just a quick question though, you don't seem to dwell too much on genetics. Given that humans are capable of living on a quite narrow amount of foods, as some have traditionally done you gave the example of the Inuit, and don't fare so well when moved onto the 'western diet'. There must a at least a contributing genetic factor?

No doubt if I ate nothing but an inuit diet but hail from a lineage that were agriculturalists for 8k years then I would assume I would not do so well.... Some people lack lactase other lack ability to metabolise alcohol well. And given how relatively quickly (evolutionarily speaking) humans can thrive on quite narrow ranges of foodstuffs could it be that there is 'active' evolution going on? That is mutations in the genotype the effect phenotypic changes in digestion metabolism etc (as well as epigenetic effects which is another story!), in humans that run at quite a high rate to accommodate our wandering species?

And given that this is the case there may well be no 'optimum' diet out there?

Mr. Jolly

Operista is the man.

Just a quick question though, you don't seem to dwell too much on genetics. Given that humans are capable of living on a quite narrow amount of foods, as some have traditionally done you gave the example of the Inuit, and don't fare so well when moved onto the 'western diet'. There must a at least a contributing genetic factor?

No doubt if I ate nothing but an inuit diet but hail from a lineage that were agriculturalists for 8k years then I would assume I would not do so well.... Some people lack lactase other lack ability to metabolise alcohol well. And given how relatively quickly (evolutionarily speaking) humans can thrive on quite narrow ranges of foodstuffs could it be that there is 'active' evolution going on? That is mutations in the genotype the effect phenotypic changes in digestion metabolism etc. in humans that run at quite a high rate to accommodate our wandering species?

And given that this is the case there may well be no 'optimum' diet out there?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/13/ST2008051302252.html

In this case it would be the Nenet paradox. The Nenets, the indigenous reindeer-herding people of this part of Siberia, have a menu that sounds like just the opposite of what the doctor ordered: They eat reindeer meat, most of it raw and frozen. From September to May they eat very little else, apart from the odd piece of raw, preferably frozen, fish. One would think that this extreme protein- and fat-driven diet would lead to a lot of health problems -- obesity, cardiovascular diseases -- but the opposite is true.

"It is my experience that the further away you come from the city centers of the Arctic, the healthier people look," says Lars Kullerud, president of the University of the Arctic, a network of more than 100 universities and colleges. He researches the diets of the region's indigenous people.

In this case it would be the Nenet paradox. The Nenets, the indigenous reindeer-herding people of this part of Siberia, have a menu that sounds like just the opposite of what the doctor ordered: They eat reindeer meat, most of it raw and frozen. From September to May they eat very little else, apart from the odd piece of raw, preferably frozen, fish.

Thats not what I was asking, this is the flip side of the vegan diet for health argument, seems to be pushing some kind of 'paleo' diet. I was asking whether humans are highly disposed in evolutionary terms to adapting to different foodstuffs.

Given the amount of peer-reviewed research out there that contradicts Campbell's conclusions

This ties in with the ways in which you talk about nutrition later on in your post.
It's a convention when talking about nutrition to talk about saturated fats, omega 3's, 6's as though they were divorced from the entire foods. We can't do this because we don't eat these things, we eat chicken; we eat bananas; we eat spaghetti. No one has ever eaten a plate of omega 3 or vitamin C - so to advocate for the consumption of certain foods on the basis that they possess some nutrients that are supposed to be good for us, misses a couple of vital points

1) That this fragmentary method of looking at a food's components operates on the assumption that it is the individual vitamins and nutrients that provide health when we eat plant foods. But if this were the case then the same results in health could be observed from a delicately balanced mixture of supplements as the results that ensue from a large consumption of plant foods - I will come to the calorie issue later

2) When we fixate on one or two ostensibly beneficial nutrients, we are likely to overlook those components which are harmful in whatever food it might be in question

3) There is the assumption that we understand the body's activity with any given nutrient. Considering that what the body does with any amount of ingested material is different at any given time based on stress, sleep habits, physical activity and incalculable other factors, a nutrient supplement or recommendation to eat fish based on the same line of thinking, is probably reckless.

A lot of the research out there is making these kinds of mistakes. Of course I'd be able to comment more specifically if I knew which research you were talking about that finds conclusions opposite to that of Campbell.

Pitfalls of fragmented thinking

The fragmented view does not so much look at foods as it does their component parts. It also fails to distinguish true well-being from merely looking good, feeling good, or removing symptoms of dis-ease--a grave error.
The fragmented approach extols the virtues of certain nutrients in a "pick-and-choose" fashion-the kind used in infomercial sales pitches. Excellently geared toward selling a specific product, this viewpoint never considers the full story, always omitting material that would give a more balanced view of the situation.
Like a person who makes a decision after listening to only one side in a debate, the fragmented thinker relies on skewed information, and the resulting incomplete picture provides a misunderstanding of nutrition that can only spiral out of control. Using the fragmented approach, if I were concerned about calcium, I would seek out foods high in calcium. I would not likely consider the foods that cause me to lose calcium, or even those that interfere with calcium uptake. I would not research the lifestyle factors that result in calcium losses, nor those that enhance calcium absorption.

Alternatively, I might choose to take calcium supplements, a prime example of fragmented thinking. It is unlikely that I would inquire about any possible adverse effects of consuming too much calcium. Nor would I tend to educate myself about the bioavailability of one form of calcium versus another. Perhaps most important, I would not know to question the wisdom of thinking in terms of isolated nutrients in the first place.
In nature, calcium (and all other nutrients) come packaged in a very precise combination in plant foods, accompanied by hundreds, even thousands, of other micronutrients that are designed to be consumed together. We cannot improve upon Nature's pristine design by extracting and refining one or even a few dozen nutrients-removing them from the cofactors they naturally accompany--and produce a positive result.
What is more, I have heard estimates that scientists today may only have discovered 10% of the nutrients in existence, particularly the so-called phytonutrients. In light of this, we might stop for a moment to wonder: How can any of us claim to have zeroed in on some specific nutrient deficiency and take informed action toward correcting it? It cannot be done intelligently, in my opinion.

The calorie issue about plants you raised..absolutely. There is no way anyone should be content with less than a 500 calorie meal. A sicky feeling of empty, unsatiated and premature fullness comes upon on when we ate greater quantities of fat than a couple of small avocados, so it would indeed be unwise to try to make a meal of them. The denser sweet fruits like Bananas almost match their caloric content with their weight in grams - off the top of my head a kilo is about 920 calories. An important part of the picture is that calorically dense animal foods which are high in prematurely filling fat, do not fill our stomach very much at all. A meal of potatoes of bananas would on the other hand fill the stomach almost to capacity.

I don't know if you saw it or not, I wouldn't blame you for not reading through the whole thread but I've said that healthwise the issue isn't one of vegan, vegetarian or anything like that. To my mind, good health consists in the greater majority of one's calories coming from plants. It does not need to be 100% in order to reap the benefits, only that whatever percentage isn't plants will detract from health rather than contribute to it, but if absence of sickness satisfies a person as a status of health then I doubt very much that less than 10% of calories coming from animal products will present significant health challenges. So we also always agreed that the better shouldn't be the enemy of the best. I don't encourage dietary purism despite my views about animals - as you have more or less pointed out, the feeling of restriction appears to be what causes people to throw up their arms and say "What's the use anyway?", throwing all their positive changes under the bus. Direction is more important than speed except in special cases of urgency like people who are teetering on the cusp of another, potentially fatal coronal event.

edit: I didn't mean to ignore your point about different macronutrient requirements for different lifestyles. Macronutrient ratios shouldn't alter too greatly from person to person, however the calories that an individual would consume would be the relevant variable.
more edit: @lurkers: I find the downvoting of everything I say to be quite petty in character at this stage. Why don't you 'like' concepts that I've spoken about? Also, I struggle to believe, given the length of the last few posts, that people find absolutely everything within them totally disagreeable.

jonthom

Tyrion

Pointless sadism is obviously nothing to be cheered on, but I really can't say that I care in the least that some cow died in the process of making my cheeseburger. Certainly this animal liberation business has nothing to do with communism, either conceptually or as a social movement. I'm a bit surprised to see people appealing to morality and rights, since both of these are imagined social constructs that serve no purpose other than to give some appearance of objectivity to the social practices one prefers (e.g. I want to live in a society where myself and others can speak freely so therefore there's some "right" to free speech, and I don't want to live in a society where people randomly attack each other so therefore doing so is morally "wrong"). It's very problematic, I think, to act as if asserting that something is moral or immoral or that it's a right or not a right is anything more than a subjective assertion.

arguments like this always confuse me when they come from communists. there's nothing "objective" in the idea that we should produce according to ability and distribute according to need, that we should prevent environmental devastation, that we should care about humanity as a whole (or in fact anyone), that equality is "good" or whatever. "objectively" we're just animate sacks of flesh on a rock in space. anything after that is, at least in part, down to subjective assertions about how society is and how we'd like it to be - ethics in all but name.

I find it quite baffling the way some folks seem to dismiss any mention of ethics or morality out of hand despite their politics being largely a product of rejecting the horrors capitalism has brought humanity and a desire for something better.

Why is that baffling? What do attempts to put an objective spin on one's social preferences (whether it be through appealing to morality, natural rights or law, or whatever else) have to do with wanting communism?

I want to live in a communist society because my loved ones and I would be far more able to enjoy our lives and the world without the enormous restrictions imposed by time spent engaging in wage-labor and the use of price to mediate access to goods and services. But this has nothing to do with communism being "moral" in any sense beyond it being desirable to me and billions of others (within the context of a revolutionary situation).

My point in this case was that saying meat production is no good because it's immoral, or that animals shouldn't be harmed because they have a right not to be, is tautological and a mystified way of saying meat production should be abandoned because it's socially undesirable. There's certainly nothing wrong with taking that view--after all, what better than desires and needs to guide social practices?--but I don't think there's any need to bring in mystical notions like morality and rights and doing so just clouds the whole issue.

jonthom

I do find sometimes that the more aggressively anti-veggie arguments come across as a bit macho - assertions that one simply doesn't care about the pain of animals (cos REAL MEN don't care about that stuff), patronising comments about "fluffy bunnies" (cos only a silly softie or wuss *would* care about that stuff), etc. Take that as you will.

If this is aimed at me, I think it's totally ridiculous to have been accused a second time now of engaging in some tough guy machismo because I don't feel any sadness or guilt when I eat meat. Yes, I feel sad when I see an animal in pain. I do not, however, see any animals in pain when I eat meat. Nor am I upset by the knowledge that a chicken was killed in the process of producing my lunch, since I don't feel any empathy or sympathy toward farm animals that I've never encountered and have virtually nothing in common with and never will other than being a living being.

I certainly don't think I'm tough or macho for not getting upset whenever I eat pork.

Whether or not one personally eats meat has no effect on the scale and methods of the meat production process, so it's silly to feel any remorse over one's own eating habits.

Mr. Jolly

Operista is the man.

Just a quick question though, you don't seem to dwell too much on genetics. Given that humans are capable of living on a quite narrow amount of foods, as some have traditionally done you gave the example of the Inuit, and don't fare so well when moved onto the 'western diet'. There must a at least a contributing genetic factor?

No doubt if I ate nothing but an inuit diet but hail from a lineage that were agriculturalists for 8k years then I would assume I would not do so well.... Some people lack lactase other lack ability to metabolise alcohol well. And given how relatively quickly (evolutionarily speaking) humans can thrive on quite narrow ranges of foodstuffs could it be that there is 'active' evolution going on? That is mutations in the genotype the effect phenotypic changes in digestion metabolism etc (as well as epigenetic effects which is another story!), in humans that run at quite a high rate to accommodate our wandering species?

And given that this is the case there may well be no 'optimum' diet out there?

Well, it's pretty clear that the standard western diet isn't particularly good for anyone - but the consequences differ a bit in different populations (varying type 2 diabetes rates, varying cardiovascular disease risks, and so forth).

With the Inuit as an extreme example, I think we need a lot more research to know - Inuit do have larger livers and higher urinary output, which is definitely an adaptation to their diet - but how much of that is genetic factors and how much is changes from growing up on the traditional Inuit diet is unknown (and probably very complexly interrelated). Our evidence for non-circumpolar people on the Inuit diet is incredibly limited - a handful of Scandinavian adults spending a long time in the Artic - and it seems they did much better on an Inuit diet (as in, they remained healthy) than a diet entirely of lean protein (but, once again, "rabbit starvation" would mean that even if you were relatively poorly adapted to an Inuit diet, you'd be better off on that diet than one consisting entirely of lean protein).

We definitely have had genetic changes (not huge ones, but some) since the adoption of agriculture - lactase persistence past early childhood is the big one, and most commonly found in populations that have consumed the milk of other animals for a while. There's a lot more that needs to be researched, though. It's also pretty clear that we've been selected for for quite a while to do well on a wide variety of diets.

For instance, there's much different prevalence of type 2 diabetes among different ethnic groups in the US. Now, type 2 diabetes arises through multiple factors (and the development of insulin resistance, the precursor to type 2 diabetes, is likely an attempt by the body to deal with both a caloric excess and an excess of sugar in the bloodstream by consistently preferentially pushing it into fat cells rather than through mitochondria). Rates are much higher among Latin@ people in the US, African-Americans, and Native Americans. A great deal of this is socioeconomic factors, and even controlling for socioeconomic status and diet, we would have greater chronic stress due to systemic racism. And chronic stress leads to elevated cortisol, which leads to elevated blood sugar, which leads to insulin resistance. Chronic stress doesn't equal type 2 diabetes, but it's definitely a contributing factor (as well as a contributing factor to a number of other chronic non-infectious diseases. The health benefits of controlling stress levels are inarguable). We know that family history impacts type 2 diabetes rates, so there is a genetic link, but we haven't determined the precise genes, so we can't evaluate whether whatever genes are contributing factors are more common in specific populations - and what those genes do in environments that don't predispose people to type 2 diabetes.

Celiac is also really interesting - we know exactly what genes are needed to predispose one to it (if you don't have those genes, you can have a wheat allergy or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but not celiac) and we know that increased permiability of the intestine is necessary so that the immune system can be exposed to gluten. What isn't perfectly understood is the exact environmental contributions - though breastfeeding seems to be protective against it, particularly introducing gluten before weaning (a good example of this is Sweden- rates went way up when it was advocated that gluten not be introduced until after weaning). There's also some interesting research being done on differences in gut flora between celiacs and non-celiacs. I think research into our internal biome is going to have big implications on how we view health and diet in general.

What's also interesting is that celiac is most common in people of European descent - Irish and Italians are particular populations with high rates, and at least for people on the Italian peninsula, wheat has been a staple part of the diet for a long time. And celiac is more common in the US than elsewhere, and rates are rising (and not just due to better diagnosis). There's the theory that our wheat has more gluten, it could be differences in breastfeeding rates...but genes for celiac very likely showing up more in European populations is really interesting (and leads me to conjecture that for the vast majority of people with the gene who don't develop celiac disease, that there was some sort of benefit to it at some point).

I definitely agree there's no singular optimum diet (in that we could come up with one meal plan for everyone), I think the best we can do is narrow down more what the dietary risk factors are for various conditions, check for confounding variables, and make recommendations for a range of diets that would provide for much better health than the majority diet in the overdeveloped world now. And also emphasize the other environmental factors involved (and how they influence how diet should be addressed). Also, I think following an overly strict diet all the time saps a lot of the joy out of life - we don't make food decisions purely on physical health, and obsession over every little thing we eat is another source of stress. And I think people need to individually pick their battles - given my personal response to gluten, avoiding it very strictly is worth it. Ice cream is certainly not a healthy food, but, you know, I still have some on special occasions. And that's individual to me.

And I think our understanding of diet and its impact on health is going to grow by leaps and bounds, and I think part of that will be everyone's biases being challenged at some point.

EDIT: I misspoke, confusing the Swedish situation (skyrocketing celiac in children born in the 80s and 90s correlated to the recommendation to not introduce gluten until after weaning) with Karelia, where the Finns have higher rates of autoimmune diseases such as Type I diabetes and allergies compared to Russians, despite being the same genetic pool; the Russian Karelian environment provides exposure to a greater number and variety of bacteria.

Kureigo-San wrote:

3) There is the assumption that we understand the body's activity with any given nutrient. Considering that what the body does with any amount of ingested material is different at any given time based on stress, sleep habits, physical activity and incalculable other factors, a nutrient supplement or recommendation to eat fish based on the same line of thinking, is probably reckless.

Wait, when have I ever denied a holistic view? We're getting better at knowing why the standard western diet is bad for our health (in ways that a wide variety of traditional diets aren't), and we can look for what differences we can identify...and then you experiment. Advocating for increased consumption of whole foods, consumption from sources that are themselves healthy, and avoidance of heavily processed foods is based, in part, on recognizing that we absolutely don't know everything about nutrition, and we should hedge our bets by eating whole foods.

Also, I know all about how lab-created mixes of micro and macro-nutrients are in general inferior to whole foods - in hospitalized patients, we keep their diet as close to whole foods as is safe. We strongly prefer people eating actual food by mouth, if people can't take sufficient calories by mouth, we then use tubes to get a thick liquid diet to various parts of the digestive system (either the stomach or the beginning of the small intestine). Only if the digestive system can't handle adequate caloric intake do we start to put nutrients directly into the bloodstream, and only if the digestive system can't be used at all do we put in everything through the bloodstream. And there's a huge degree of recognition that giving all nutrition that way is very, very non-ideal - for one, even in non-diabetics, glucose intolerance develops, and insulin is often needed. See here, also note that with TPN we don't have the option of buffering the acidity of protein (grains are also acidic) with alkalinity from fruits and vegetables, so our acceptable range for protein is smaller, long term (we need to avoid protein deficiency, but also want to avoid excess calcium being taken out of the bone to help buffer acidity).

And how is a blanket recommendation of "all animal products are bad for you" not an extreme version of what you're arguing against here? Fish is a particularly egregious example, because everyone from paleo diet advocates, to Mediterranean diet advocates, to the current ultra-mainstream diets advocated by public health agencies and major healthcare organizations are all about oily fish as a protein source. The consensus on oily fish as a good choice as part of a healthy diet is at the level of broccoli or brussel sprouts.

We can reasonably surmise that prior to the development of agriculture (studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers, isotype studies of remains), most genetically modern human populations got a majority of their calories from animal sources. I would imagine that a caloric input from animal sources of 10% or less was rare to nonexistent. Given the well-documented dietary adaptability of humans, ethnographic and physical anthropological studies of contemporary and historic hunter-gatherers, and the comparatively short time since the advent of agriculture and whatever changes that selected for, claiming that animal products are universally unhealthy is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence.

Oh, and the fact that fat gives a feeling of satiety - probably why people lose more weight on lower carb diets and keep more of it off for a year than they do on low fat diets (and, yes, they found that people cheated on Atkins (they cheated on all the diets), and ate more like 150g of carbohydrates (600 calories from carbohydrates) a day. I'd prefer that people just plan on a far more reasonable than Atkins carbohydrate load (and I don't think carbohydrates that low have any long-term benefit in most people), and then plan healthy sources into their diet, rather than cheat on whatever sweets are available). Satiety is the entire point, and a big part of why there's a caloric excess in the standard western diet - it combines high caloric density with a lot of added sugar and excessively processed carbohydrate sources (alternated with a lot of the bad fat!) - it's a recipe to not feel satiated at sufficient calories, but to eat excess calories and put an incredible glycemic load on the body. We certainly can handle a pretty wide range of food volumes - but we do have a good bit of adaptation to higher caloric density. The fact that fats make you feel satiated is a feature, not a bug.

And you're still sticking with the idea that everyone is universally wrong about dietary fat requirements, and that aiming for the absolute lowest level of protein consumption to prevent malnutrition in a sedentary person is desirable. You're not even arguing for a healthily-designed vegan diet at this point, because I've never seen any vegan dietitians argue for protein and fat as low as you're advocating for.

I can't see the image I posted; I tried changing it around. Is it broken or what?

[Edit: Never mind.]

No one has ever eaten a plate of omega 3 or vitamin C

Maybe not. But in my high school there was a trend of folks buying powered vitamin C to snort to get a buzz. True story.

operaista wrote:

the likely culprits in the standard western diet is excessive saturated fat consumption, poor amount and quality of mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acids, overly high omega-6/omega-3 ratio, trans fats,..

The way animals are raised contributes to the unhealthiness of the western diet: higher saturated fat, poorer omega-6/omega-3 ratios.

The warnings around eating large amounts of fatty red meat that do hold up to review are almost certainly because commonly available red meat in the western world are fed grains and kept in incredibly confined spaces, and thus have much higher amounts of saturated fat and worse omega-6/omega-3 ratios.

a whole foods vegan diet is vastly healthier than the standard western diet; this is not because of the absence of animal proteins and fats, but because of lower consumption of saturated fats, generally better omega-6/omega-3 ratios, absence of trans fats,

Are you saying these things because you believe the diet-heart hypothesis ‘if people eat too much saturated fat the level of ‘cholesterol’ in their blood will rise’, you seem to have quite a few of its adaptations in there, or are you relating dietary fat to cancer?

As I'm sure you know, there is no structural similarity at all between Acetyl CoA, the building block of cholesterol, and any form of fat. It has a bunch of ring structures none of which are found in fats. as well as nitrogen, phosphorous and sulphur, the constituents of proteins not fats. Although the liver is an amazing processor and can convert almost any chemical into another, the synthesis of cholesterol doesn’t involve any kind of fat at any stage. The newspeak for cholesterol within the latest of the many incarnations of this undying hypothesis, is low density lipoproteins, a pretty little entity to be sure but same problem of how eating saturated fat raises LDL levels, since most dietary fat is transported inside chylomicrons straight to fat cells and any fats getting to the liver are not involved in cholesterol synthesis.

Given the liver’s huge processing capabilities, after the body’s 2000 calorie limit for storing glucose has been reached and the liver begins converting the excess into fatty tissue, why doesn’t it make supposedly healthier unsaturated fats rather than producung exclusively the hypothetically deadly saturated ones? Would you agree that a diet high in any form of fat has no causal relationship with blood cholesterol which itself has no bearing on CVD anyway since ‘high cholesterol levels’ don’t cause heart disease?

Chilli Sauce

No one has ever eaten a plate of omega 3 or vitamin C

Maybe not. But in my high school there was a trend of folks buying powered vitamin C to snort to get a buzz. True story.

Are you one of those people who always stands on the sidelines of interesting conversations interjecting with nonsense?

I hate that. Especially when it's an attempt to undermine someone for no good reason.

Anyway operaista it seems that your main issue with what I've said is the idea that 10% or less protein, all from plants, isn't sufficient for a serious athlete. I have to go into explaining that the amount of attention given to protein in the first place is largely a product of hype. Our protein needs are way overstated, by all official organisations.

Human breast milk's protein content is usually between 2.5 to 3.5 percent - considering that this is sufficient for a baby during the period of the most explosive growth they will ever do, we have to wonder why there are people recommending 20%+ of total calories as protein. Protein is of course important but getting enough protein is the same thing as getting enough calories.

You mentioned protein deficiency. What is protein deficiency as distinct from calorie deficiency, in your view?

milk is mostly water

Actually, I agree that overall level of dietary cholesterol influences blood cholesterol levels by about .5%, and that the cholesterol causes heart disease chain doesn't work (whereas I think poor ratios of blood lipids as a marker of a pathological process, not the cause, is more likely). And that the data only supports saturated fat leading to short term elevation, not long term, anyway.

I'm saying the problem with the standard western diet's fat content is not the amount, nor the presence of any particular fat, but rather that ratios of fat are imbalanced, making the diet inflammatory - there's a severe excess of omega-6 to omega-3. As to saturated fats, I don't think they need to be excessively limited - but even though traditional diets contained more animal fat than our diet, there was less saturated fat. Significance of that health-wise as opposed to the omega-6/omega-3 imbalance? I don't think we're sure if it is significant or how. I do think, that with the foods available to us, that we should eat more omega-3s (and get a good bit of them from animal sources) and less omega-6s, and we'll happen to have less saturated fat in our diet (which may not be all that significant, and isn't the goal we're going for). The fats we clearly should not have in our diet are transfats. I also advocate against very low fat diets (or obsessive counting of macronutrients or calories). I brought up the IOM's recommendations not because I totally agree with them (though I agree that the bottom range is the absolute minimum fat that the body *needs* to keep going - I think the top end of their range is low, because I think fat ratios matter far more than fat amounts), but to point out the claim of 10% of caloric intake as fat would be viewed as drastically too low by any person or group who is *at all* reputable in nutrition.

Moving on to Kureigo-San:

As to breast milk...you do realize that caloric intake is drastically higher in infants, and that the primary caloric source in breast milk is fat, and that breast milk composition varies greatly over the course of lactation. Infants need tons of calories and nervous system development is undergoing an explosion (high fat requirement). Infants and small children have higher protein needs per kilogram than adults or older children.

There is no singular standard for breast-milk composition. Total protein varies markedly as a function of the duration of lactation, providing from > 2 g/kg to the infant in the first weeks of life to ≈1.15 g/kg at 4 mo. During the same time, the whey-to-casein ratio changes from 80:20 in colostrum to 60:40 in term milk and is even lower in late-lactation milk (4). The different digestibility and kinetics of absorption of amino acids from casein and whey proteins (5) and the different amino acid composition of these fractions means that the protein nutriture of breastfed infants is continuously changing.

From here. Also, all the proteins in breast milk are animal proteins! And while protein needs as a function of weight go down (especially in sedentary individuals) in adulthood, how we metabolize protein doesn't drastically change (in the sense that animal proteins wouldn't go from "good" to "bad). Also, do you have a single scientific study or source that intense physical activity (which requires additional maintenance of muscle tissues, for one thing) doesn't impact protein needs? On differing macronutrient needs for different lifestyles, do you know the glycolytic pathway and why it would be more stressed in an athlete than in an entirely sedentary person? Do you know how exercise affects insulin sensitivity?

I was really charitable about how I read your comment about micronutrients and composition of foodstuffs. I read it as "I don't think we know everything about micronutrients so whole foods are best rather than processing micronutrients out of them and then enriching them" (which I agree with) rather than "detailed knowledge of nutrition is impossible, as it unknowable" which I absolutely disagree with, and makes nutrition sound like faith rather than science. You don't seem to want to talk about the nuts and bolts of nutrition (your arguments boil down to "low protein, ultra-low fat diets consisting entirely of plants are best because they're the best"), don't provide good (or generally any) support for your claims that are outside of the broad consensus on nutrition. Yes, my views are closer to Loren Cordain than the low fat/decrease animal products diets pushed super hard up until recently (and I think the general consensus in the healthcare field is getting far more reasonable on fat), but I recognize that when everyone, with otherwise wildly differing interpretations of data, agrees on something, that something is most likely very rock solid.

I definitely think people should get everything they need from diet; I also believe in hedging my bets with appropriate supplementation and that in actual cases of deficiency, supplementary micronutrients are very valuable.

In the spirit of remaining charitable in my interpretations, since you know the cure for *all* the cancers, to ask a very heavily micronutrient-oriented question - what would you recommend for someone who has megaloblastic anemia and neurological symptoms from B-12 deficiency?

On protein deficiency distinct from caloric deficiency: there are twenty amino acids we use. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins - which make up enzymes, important structures in the cell, are a major component of muscle, and they're necessary to repair tissue and maintain fluid balance, beyond their use as an energy source. 9 out of the 20 amino acids we cannot synthesize - we must get them from dietary sources. Without those 9 amino acids, enzymes can't be made, cellular structures cannot be made, muscle wastes away, you can't repair damage to the body, and you can't even keep fluid in your blood vessels. No matter how many calories you consume, if you have an insufficient dietary intake of the nine essential amino acids, symptoms of protein deficiency will occur because you can't produce enzymes, can't make new cells, can't maintain muscle, can't repair damage, and can't prevent fluid from leaking from the bloodstream. Early on, your body is going to catabolize what it sees as non-essential protein containing tissues to use the protein for more essential processes - which is why in severe caloric restriction, AIDS related wasting, and so on, skeletal muscle is lost - it's less important than maintaining metabolic processes or the muscle of say, the heart. Eventually things like the heart will be damaged, though.

This is why there is an absolute minimum protein intake, independent from calories, necessary to sustain life. This is also covered in the most introductory of nutrition courses, and anyone who has studied any cellular biology or biochemistry should be familiar with amino acid synthesis reactions and what an essential amino acid is. Obviously, since most foods contain protein, protein deficiency is more frequent with caloric deficiency, but it's certainly possible to get adequate (or even excessive) calories and be protein deficient. It's unlikely with a decently varied diet to get protein below survival needs in a healthy adult. It is common in the elderly, however, who have decreased appetite and tend to eat less protein rich foods - I see markers of inadequate protein consumption (blood work and physical signs) in elderly patients all the time.

All animal protein sources contain essential amino acids in the ratio we need them (because other animals need amino acids in the same proportions we do); plant sources do not contain all the essential amino acids in the proportions we need; however, different plant protein sources have different limiting essential amino acids (the essential amino acid that is severely limited in that source), which is why people who get all or a vast majority of their protein from plant sources must vary those protein sources (not necessarily at the same meal, but regularly).

Soy is a complete protein.

Mr. Jolly

Soy is a complete protein.

True, forgot to mention that. It doesn't contain taurine (no plant source does), but even though vegans have significantly lower taurine levels than non-vegans, the significance of that varies based on who you ask - the body can synthesize it, but there's limitations to how much it can synthesize from cysteine. It's only special cases where we know it is needed as a supplement.

The fact of an athlete's greater requirement for protein is not a requirement for the percentage of their macronutrient ratio to be altered as you seem confused about; As I alluded to in my last post, there is no deficiency in protein that is not a deficiency in calories in general. In other words, in order for an athlete to get the greater amount of protein that they need, they would simply consume more calories because protein is in all foods, the usefulness of which being the greatest in raw plant foods - preferably from various sources.

I most certainly do not have a single scientific study or source about how exercise doesn't impact an athlete's protein needs, because that wasn't the claim I was making. At all. They just need more calories, and protein follows.

< Guy that likes to run 100 mile races, all on plants and maybe a couple of glucose gels in the thick of it.

Another very incredible athlete, but of an anaerobic speciality instead. All plants.

To exclaim that breast milk is-a-ha!-an animal food feels intellectually dishonest. Of course mother's milk is good for us - let's not be silly. It's not good for us because there's some supernaturally inherent characteristic of it being "animal protein": it's that the specific animal is our mother, whom we are clearly supposed to, by decree of nature, consume the milk of.

I don't know the cure for all cancers, only that plant diets help with the situation - always as a minimum slowing the spreading considerably, which then affords the opportunity to try chemotherapy or other treatments if the cancer persists - as it sometimes does. I don't know the answer to your question - but it seems to have been posed with the false impression that I never find supplementation acceptable. Sometimes it is in special cases - my problem with supplementation is them being used in the pursuit of health in trying to emulate the benefits of eating plants.

You're not in a position to speak charitably because you're not my superior, so I'd appreciate it if you could speak normally.

As I alluded to in my last post, there is no deficiency in protein that is not a deficiency in calories in general.

That is absolutely, positively, demonstrably false and I already provided the reasons why. There are amino acids the body cannot synthesize and that you must get from diet. It is quite possible to eat sufficient calories for metabolic needs and not include enough of those essential amino acids in the diet. If you disagree with this, provide any scientific source that contradicts the idea that the nine amino acids that are referred to as essential cannot be synthesized in the human body.

I specifically asked about B-12 for a reason. Does eating plants provide the benefit of adequate B-12 intake?

As to cancers, a plant diet likely helps with some, while research is showing a ketogenic diet helps with others (very low to no carbs, high fat). Ketogenic diets do not normally consist entirely (or even mostly)of plants. Various cancers function very, very differently; broad assertions about cancer are generally like making broad assertions about infectious disease.

I'm speaking charitably because: a) you're not arguing from science, you're arguing from faith - any bit of evidence that contradicts your claims is ignored or dismissed without any actual counter-evidence. You dismiss basic biochemistry out of hand because it contradicts your assertions. b) you're clearly uneducated in all relevant scientific fields (and I don't care if people get that education from academia or are autodidacts), c) you are not providing any evidence or explanation for your assertions to begin with. By being charitable, I mean that I have not yet firmly concluded that you totally dismiss scientific knowledge, the scientific method, and the entire field of the life science, no matter how much reading your comments makes me suspicious of that.

That is absolutely, positively, demonstrably false and I already provided the reasons why. There are amino acids the body cannot synthesize and that you must get from diet.

I didn't deny that though? The majority of my last post was in support of eating to get enough protein

I specifically asked about B-12 for a reason. Does eating plants provide the benefit of adequate B-12 intake?

I've already commented on B-12 elsewhere, Some people are unable to absorb B-12, and injections are usually the best course of action. It should be noted that eating animal products that have B-12 doesn't provide B-12 to a person lacking the ability to absorb it. It's not a problem exclusive to any dietary practice.

As to cancers, a plant diet likely helps with some, while research is showing a ketogenic diet helps with others (very low to no carbs, high fat). Ketogenic diets do not normally consist entirely (or even mostly)of plants. Various cancers function very, very differently; broad assertions about cancer are generally like making broad assertions about infectious disease.

Which research, and who is it funded by?

any bit of evidence that contradicts your claims is ignored or dismissed without any actual counter-evidence

Didn't our exchange begin with you brushing off a book that includes multiple decades of intensive research because an undergrad wrote a blog that makes various mistakes in data interpretation?
I hold no animosity for the scientific method, if I did then I wouldn't read books like The China Study that are dripping with it. On the other hand though I don't view it as the only way to talk about the subject or indeed a lot of things.

I can suggest a good few authors who are actually scientists - because I am not, I admit it. I was, though, under the impression that this whole exchange is supposed to be about finding some truth, not about who gets to possess it.

Operaista

I'm speaking charitably because: a) you're not arguing from science, you're arguing from faith - any bit of evidence that contradicts your claims is ignored or dismissed without any actual counter-evidence. You dismiss basic biochemistry out of hand because it contradicts your assertions. b) you're clearly uneducated in all relevant scientific fields (and I don't care if people get that education from academia or are autodidacts), c) you are not providing any evidence or explanation for your assertions to begin with. By being charitable, I mean that I have not yet firmly concluded that you totally dismiss scientific knowledge, the scientific method, and the entire field of the life science, no matter how much reading your comments makes me suspicious of that.

The arguments against vivisection are far worse. Kinda like the current trend which asserts obesity isn't unhealthy. Kinda like free market capitalist theory. Kinda like religion.

Kureigo-San

Chilli Sauce

No one has ever eaten a plate of omega 3 or vitamin C

Maybe not. But in my high school there was a trend of folks buying powered vitamin C to snort to get a buzz. True story.

Are you one of those people who always stands on the sidelines of interesting conversations interjecting with nonsense?

I hate that. Especially when it's an attempt to undermine someone for no good reason.

THREADS. SHOULD. HAVE. NO. PERSONALITY.

Also, "undermining", what world are you living in? That's a seriously persecution complex, my friend.

Anyway, I'm actually a vegetarian and since I don't want to just stand on the sidelines, I do have a question for our medical panel here. I've always heard there were other non-soybean vegetable sources of whole protein: quinoa, buckwheat, apparently hempseed. What the assessment of them?

(The beef industry doesn't like quinoa, but no surpise there.)

protein is in all foods, the usefulness of which being the greatest in raw plant foods - preferably from various sources.

Is this true?

While I know the body can have more difficulty digesting animal products in general, I've always been under the impression that things like fish or eggs or yogurt (and even things like whey protein, from back in my weightlifting days) had the most absorbable protein, followed by things like chicken and soybeans.

This website seems to back that up, although fish isn't mentioned, oddly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Corrected_Amino_Acid_Score

operaista wrote:

the cholesterol causes heart disease chain doesn't work (whereas I think poor ratios of blood lipids as a marker of a pathological process, not the cause, is more likely).

What do you think of the hypothesis that Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal-axis dysfunction (and abnormal cortisol secretion) ties together the apparently disparate factors known to cause heart disease and in addition also explains where many of the 'classic' risk factors come from, including the low HDL and high VLDL/LDL you mentioned, as well as high blood pressure, diabetes, raised clotting factors and increased visceral (particularly abdominal) fat deposition? In your opinion would a vegan diet have any significant influence on HPA-axis dysfunction? Do you believe that dietary fats are causally connected with cancers in any way?

------

Kureigo-San

That is absolutely, positively, demonstrably false and I already provided the reasons why. There are amino acids the body cannot synthesize and that you must get from diet.

I didn't deny that though? The majority of my last post was in support of eating to get enough protein

Actually, no. You've stated that it is impossible to not have a caloric deficiency and have a protein deficiency. It is perfectly possible to eat enough calories a day from carbohydrates and fats and not meet protein needs. And you've consistently really, really given low amounts for daily protein requirements - I think almost any two to three thousand calorie assortment of fruit alone will not provide adequate protein for a typical sized human (name a fruit that has 10% or greater of its calories from protein - seriously, I'm drawing a blank on there being any, but I'm willing to look it up if I'm forgetting one).

they would simply consume more calories because protein is in all foods, the usefulness of which being the greatest in raw plant foods - preferably from various sources.

Actually, the plant foods that have the highest/most bioavailable protein (and no plant protein is as bioavailable/efficient as animal ones - soy is close, but it is the best plant protein) we can't eat raw - soy is not edible raw (staples in general, are not edible raw). In general, I think fire (which we've been using for probably millions of years) was a massive leap forward for our species in how it helps us pre-process food. Fire: it's pretty awesome. (maybe in addition to being a horrible speciesist, I'm a fireist as well, horrible oppressor I am, with my cooking of food). It would be hard to find a whole food with absolutely no protein, but there are plenty of whole foods that have very little protein (as a percentage of total macronutrients) or very little protein by weight (and remember, our guts are pretty small! We need nutrient dense foods, compared to many other animals).

Also, not to belabor a point, but a 95 calorie apple has half a gram of protein. 2000 calories of apple (which would weigh about 3.6 kg. I can not eat 3.6 kg of anything in a day, maybe I just don't have much of an appetite) would have about 10 grams of protein (or 40 calories of protein) - which would be 2% of calories from protein (lower than your numbers, even). In addition to be low in protein, apples are not a complete protein. An 80 kg person (who needs, at bare minimum, 64 grams of protein each day, with a balance of essential amino acids), would need to eat over 12,000 calories of apples to get sufficient quantity of protein, and they would have the wrong balance of amino acids, so they would still be protein deficient. That would also be about 23 kg of apples, which I pretty sure no human could successfully consume day in, day out. If you want to provide a raw vegan menu for the day (food items + quantities) I can come up with total calories and a nutritional analysis (or so can anyone else who can use google - the internet is a wonderful place). I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that it is difficult to impossible to get adequate calories, fat and protein on a raw, vegan diet, due to the plant foods that can't be eaten raw.

To jump over to veggies, raw kale has 33 calories per cup (67 g) and 2 g of protein. 2000 calories of kale would actually give you over 120 grams of protein (which is enough...until there's the missing essential amino acids. Bummer). However, to get 2,000 calories, you'd need to eat about 61 cups of solid food in a day! Also, you'd still end up severely fat deficient.

I could keep going on, but a diet consisting solely of raw plant matter that we can safely eat raw, would have an entirely unreasonable volume to make sufficient calories, and many of the safely edible raw plant foods are very low in protein or fat. It seems like we need to cook our food (making grains and legumes, which I'm not personally a fan of, but which are nutrient dense plant foods, edible) or eat animal foods (many meats you can eat raw (not that it's recommended, but it's possible), and a big chunk of the risk for parasites and other disease has a lot more to do with agricultural conditions than anything else).

I think most vegan diets (e.g. not raw) don't have a problem meeting minimal protein requirements - but a raw vegan diet, which eliminates staples, which are the main protein sources - I'm worried about. I hope that this has demonstrated that it's possible to construct a diet that provides adequate calories and doesn't provide adequate protein (humans are not adapted to be frugivores. Fruit is delicious, and healthy in moderate amounts, but you can't live on it alone. Nor are we ruminants).

I specifically asked about B-12 for a reason. Does eating plants provide the benefit of adequate B-12 intake?

I've already commented on B-12 elsewhere, Some people are unable to absorb B-12, and injections are usually the best course of action. It should be noted that eating animal products that have B-12 doesn't provide B-12 to a person lacking the ability to absorb it. It's not a problem exclusive to any dietary practice. [/quote]

Actually, insufficient B-12 from diet is a problem nearly exclusive to a particular dietary practice. Animal products are the only naturally occurring source of B-12. You are correct that if a person has the autoimmune disorder that leads to deficient intrinsic factor, dietary B-12 will not suffice (they'll need injections). However, without supplementation or fortification of food that does not naturally contain B-12, a vegan diet will eventually inevitably lead to B-12 deficiency, no matter how much intrinsic factor you have. The most common cause of B-12 deficiency is not an autoimmune disorder, but insufficient dietary intake - most often in the elderly, as they absorb it less efficiently, and tend to eat less in general and eat less animal products as a portion of their diet. For most elderly people, oral B-12 supplementation will prevent deficiency from developing. The only other population in the overdeveloped world where B-12 deficiency is common are veg*ns, particularly vegans. Now, this doesn't mean that people can't now be healthily vegan - we can culture bacteria that produce B-12 and make B-12 supplements - it does mean that healthily being vegan is impossible without modern supplementation and fortification.

This fact alone debunks your claim that veganism is the optimum, natural diet of humans - a diet that you can't survive on long term without supplementation is not the natural diet. Animals that are completely herbivorous (and other primates are omnivorous to some degree) have bacteria capable of fermenting food and producing B-12 *before* the intrinsic factor in their gut.

As to cancers, a plant diet likely helps with some, while research is showing a ketogenic diet helps with others (very low to no carbs, high fat). Ketogenic diets do not normally consist entirely (or even mostly)of plants. Various cancers function very, very differently; broad assertions about cancer are generally like making broad assertions about infectious disease.

Which research, and who is it funded by?

Already linked to a massive list of papers on pubmed, which will have had a variety of sources of funding. Look at my link earlier in the thread, click through the papers (see, one of the great things with actual science is that it's easy to point to a large number of people, working different places, doing different experiments, building coherent theories. Getting all of them to completely cook the books would take some doing!) Pubmed itself is run by the US National Institutes of Health; a lot of stuff they don't fund is in the database. If you're going to reject pubmed as a reference, you're pretty much rejecting peer-reviewed health and life sciences given that it's the big central database for 95+% of it. Perhaps you've followed trends in US nutritional suggestions over the years - all the big funding in diet research has been with the agenda of increasing grain and legume consumption and decreasing animal product consumption, right, not increasing usage of animal products? Low carb anything, or anything that does not argue for reduction of meat and eggs, for any reason is considered outside the mainstream (which doesn't have anything to do with its validity for any purpose either way).

Yes, politics and economics do affect research, and do affect public health education, but your implication that every single one of us in healthcare (and in cultural anthropology, and physical anthropology, and evolutionary biology, and anatomy, and physiology), with a diversity of views, are all faking massive amounts of research to obscure the idea that the only healthy diet for humans is absent of all animal products, low in protein, and ultra-low in fat. That research that must be all lies (and would have to be faked by a grand conspiracy because it impacts massive parts of the entire life sciences, and would have to draw in both researchers and clinicians) that states the following things:

That primates in general are omnivorous (though chimpanzees, for instance, don't eat the amount of animal proteins and fats we do, they definitely eat some); that there are amino acids that the body cannot synthesize and thus there is an absolute minimum protein requirement, that you can be protein deficient without being calorie deficient (if you, say, ate nothing but fruit); that there are essential fatty acids that you must get in quantity from your diet (quantities that require fat calories as a percentage of total calories far greater than 10%); that the majority of both historical and contemporary hunter-gatherers get the majority of their calories from animals, yet have a far lower burden of chronic non-infectious disease than we do; as biologically modern humans evolved, that the digestive system became smaller and less metabolically intensive as the brain became larger and more metabolically intensive (accompanying greater and greater amounts of nutrient dense animal proteins and fats in the diet); that something is somehow magically different about the proteins and fats in mother's milk that have the same exact structure of proteins and fats in other animal sources, and on and on and on.

Given that the other possibility is that hundreds of thousands of us are exceptionally incompetent, and in the exact same ways, and given that you've hinted at scientists being completely bought off, you are arguing that probably hundreds of thousands of scientists (across multiple fields) and clinicians are not only lying to people, but keeping all the lies coherent. Seriously, if I'm part of this grand conspiracy, why don't I know about it? Why am I not getting my kickback? I have huge student loans, you know - let me know where I can get my check!

Frankly, as a graduate student in a health professional program (so, yes, I am a scientist and health is my field), who educates patients/clients on nutrition, who is going to be a primary care provider, who deplores how little education primary care providers (in the US, doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician's assistants) get on nutrition because I think diet is the foundation of health - and who thinks that differential access to healthy food is a significant part of socioeconomic health disparities - nutrition is one of my big focuses. Access to a variety of quality foods is a major class struggle issue - the capitalist class keeps big sections of the working class sickly and weak by only giving us access to poor quality food - literally, capitalism is a system where capitalists are healthier than working class people, and the divergence in health will only widen as time goes on. I feel like you're advocating a vegan diet due to animal liberation reasons, and then trying to shore that up with wild health claims - health is completely irrelevant if one accepts your ethical arguments. Pseudo-science and claims that fly in the face of a mountain of evidence only make you look, honestly, like a wingnut. Don't look like a wingnut when you're trying to convince people of anything!

any bit of evidence that contradicts your claims is ignored or dismissed without any actual counter-evidence

Didn't our exchange begin with you brushing off a book that includes multiple decades of intensive research because an undergrad wrote a blog that makes various mistakes in data interpretation?
I hold no animosity for the scientific method, if I did then I wouldn't read books like The China Study that are dripping with it. On the other hand though I don't view it as the only way to talk about the subject or indeed a lot of things.

Various mistakes in the interpretation? The vast majority of Campbell's claims are based on correlations that are not actually statistically significant and confounding variables are ignored. Do you understand statistical significance? Or confounding variables (like chronic hepatitis B infection or schistosomiasis)? The book *is* poor science because it is an ideological manipulation of the data. Campbell had a conclusion that he wanted to show, then used only the portion of the data that could be manipulated to support his claims, and threw statistical significance and multiple variables out the window. The wonderful thing about science is that a conclusion's correctness has nothing to do with whether someone has a Ph.D. or no degree whatsoever (whether a lot of people will listen to them or not, however, unfortunately does) - the laundry list of problems with Campbell's treatment of the data stands no matter who points them out, and it's really elementary problems of statistical analysis. It's wonderful that we have access to the raw data Campbell used - because it shows how poor his analysis is.

Campbell's science is the worst pseudo-science, because it has just enough of a scientific veneer to draw people in. Campbell is either horrifically incompetent or completely unethical - no competent scientist could do a poor a job as he did with the data without unethical intent.

This conversation has been like discussing politics with a conspiracy theorist and evolution with a creationist. At the same time. As someone who used to be in physics, you're like the occasional person with no education or training who shows up to try and debunk general relativity or quantum mechanics. To put this in terms more familiar to libcom, the claims you are making - in terms of political claims, it's like you're claiming something that an anarchist-communist, an anarcho-syndicalist, an autonomist, a left communist, a Trotskyist, a Maoist, and a Stalinist all say is completely wrong.* It should lead one to question one's assumptions.

*most likely in a bar.

factvalue

operaista wrote:

the cholesterol causes heart disease chain doesn't work (whereas I think poor ratios of blood lipids as a marker of a pathological process, not the cause, is more likely).

What do you think of the hypothesis that Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal-axis dysfunction (and abnormal cortisol secretion) ties together the apparently disparate factors known to cause heart disease and in addition also explains where many of the 'classic' risk factors come from, including the low HDL and high VLDL/LDL you mentioned, as well as high blood pressure, diabetes, raised clotting factors and increased visceral (particularly abdominal) fat deposition? In your opinion would a vegan diet have any significant influence on HPA-axis dysfunction? Do you believe that dietary fats are causally connected with cancers in any way?

factvalue, I think you're confusing me for an advocate for veganism (I'm not). I don't know if I'm misreading what you're saying - I'm not sure what I've said that could be interpreted as saying people should choose veg*n diets for health reasons. People are going to make that choice for ethical reasons, and they should do it in the healthiest way possible (which I think can be healthier than the standard western diet; a vast number of different diets can be healthier than the standard western diet; the standard western diet is horrible). I think the only one here who is trying to argue that vegan diets are healthier is K-S.

I think for a lot of people, at least some grains and legumes are going to be consistently inflammatory. Excessive omega-6 to omega-3 ratios are going to be inflammatory - that's possible regardless of the amount of fat in the diet, and possible on a vegan, vegetarian, or ominvorous diet. It's not the amount of fat (though you can most definitely have too little) that matters, it's the ratios! I think processed seed oils are pretty horrible. The only lipid itself I don't think people should eat in any quantity are trans fats - I don't think I've ever seen anyone say they're any good in the last couple of decades.

On health grounds, I'd argue that people should at the very least avoid large quantities of grains and legumes, get their animal fats and their protein from free-range/wild animals, cage-free eggs, and oily fish (and when those are inaccessible, go for the leanest conventional cuts available - we're not trying to avoid fat, but we are trying to get the right ratio of different fats, and the ratios are off in factory farmed meat), eat lots of vegetables, moderate amounts of fruits, nuts, and seeds, and in general avoid dairy. People should avoid added sweeteners, trans fats, preservatives, and so forth. In terms of macronutrient breakdown, it would end up being a greater percentage of calories from fat and protein than the mainstream consensus, with less calories from carbohydrates. Of course, my biggest issue with the mainstream consensus is all the grains - and I'm certainly not the first person to have that issue. To somehow bring this back around to "relevant to socialists", of course a healthy diet is generally enormously expensive, and not even available in places where the lower strata of the working class generally live.

Chronic inflammation will lead to chronically elevated cortisol, which leads to all the negative consequences both you and I have mentioned. When I was studying herbalism, one of my big focuses was use of adaptogenic herbs to level out the adrenals and cortisol levels (this has been a huge deal to herbalists for ages). It's interesting that just like "leaky gut" (intestinal permeability), chronic elevation of cortisol was huge in the CAM community for ages, but is now increasingly a big thing being considered in mainstream medicine.

Dp

Actually, no. You've stated that it is impossible to not have a caloric deficiency and have a protein deficiency. It is perfectly possible to eat enough calories a day from carbohydrates and fats and not meet protein needs. And you've consistently really, really given low amounts for daily protein requirements - I think almost any two to three thousand calorie assortment of fruit alone will not provide adequate protein for a typical sized human (name a fruit that has 10% or greater of its calories from protein - seriously, I'm drawing a blank on there being any, but I'm willing to look it up if I'm forgetting one).

I will reiterate from my previous post, for the very last time:

The fact of an athlete's greater requirement for protein is not a requirement for the percentage of their macronutrient ratio to be altered

So, I say 10% (as a maximum) or less of total calories consumed is ideal. This does not mean that all individual foods consumed have to be 10% protein. Tomatoes are about 15% protein, cherimoyas/custard apples are about 7%, cucumber about 20%, watermelons about 7%, lettuce about 16% - if an adult eating in the range of 2800 - 3000 calories ate these foods, they would find that in the end their protein intake of total calories consumed would come between 6-8%. If we cast back to how considerably less than this protein level (mother's milk) is ideal for a period of our lives where we have to double in size, then I can't fathom why 10% isn't considered more than enough for an adult in whom any growth from resistance strength training is incremental to the point of being negligible.
You even yourself said infants require way more protein than we do, and the amount that they require is shown to be well below 10% of total calories.

What gives? :wall:

Chilli Sauce

protein is in all foods, the usefulness of which being the greatest in raw plant foods - preferably from various sources.

Is this true?

While I know the body can have more difficulty digesting animal products in general, I've always been under the impression that things like fish or eggs or yogurt (and even things like whey protein, from back in my weightlifting days) had the most absorbable protein, followed by things like chicken and soybeans.

This website seems to back that up, although fish isn't mentioned, oddly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Corrected_Amino_Acid_Score

These foods are popular in body building because they cause fat to marble in the muscles - what we see as the michelin man aesthetic. Also these foods are really dense in calories so it's the easiest way to get the day's 3 or 4000 calories. Protein supplements are so ass-backwards, for the reasons in my post before this one but also because someone pays, what, £40-50(?) for a tub of protein that's literally going to be pissed away in the urine flow because the body can't cope with it

Honestly the argument to be a vegan on health grounds is daft, its not what the majority of kevins do it for. Its demonstrably not true and to try and frame it that way imho takes it away from the more substantive arguments around ethics.

It's also really boring to read about calories and micro-nutrients, every crappy magazine is full of this stuff, ethics are far more scarce and therefore interesting.

Kureigo-San

Actually, no. You've stated that it is impossible to not have a caloric deficiency and have a protein deficiency. It is perfectly possible to eat enough calories a day from carbohydrates and fats and not meet protein needs. And you've consistently really, really given low amounts for daily protein requirements - I think almost any two to three thousand calorie assortment of fruit alone will not provide adequate protein for a typical sized human (name a fruit that has 10% or greater of its calories from protein - seriously, I'm drawing a blank on there being any, but I'm willing to look it up if I'm forgetting one).

I will reiterate from my previous post, for the very last time:

The fact of an athlete's greater requirement for protein is not a requirement for the percentage of their macronutrient ratio to be altered

So, I say 10% (as a maximum) or less of total calories consumed is ideal. This does not mean that all individual foods consumed have to be 10% protein. Tomatoes are about 15% protein, cherimoyas/custard apples are about 7%, cucumber about 20%, watermelons about 7%, lettuce about 16% - if an adult eating in the range of 2800 - 3000 calories ate these foods, they would find that in the end their protein intake of total calories consumed would come between 6-8%. If we cast back to how considerably less than this protein level (mother's milk) is ideal for a period of our lives where we have to double in size, then I can't fathom why 10% isn't considered more than enough for an adult in whom any growth from resistance strength training is incremental to the point of being negligible.
You even yourself said infants require way more protein than we do, and the amount that they require is shown to be well below 10% of total calories.

What gives? :wall:

i pointed this out before, but milk is mostly water. of the non water content of milk, that is the nutrients approximately 8.6% (by weight)* is protein (based on this) this is significantly more than the "2.5 to 3.5" percent you claim in your previous post. as for what this says about adult requirements, babies are vary small and so loss heat rapidly, they may well require more carbohydrates and fat as a proportion of there diet.

*i don't know how to calculate the energy contained in a given mass of protein

Mr. Jolly wrote:

Honestly the argument to be a vegan on health grounds is daft, its not what the majority of kevins do it for. Its demonstrably not true and to try and frame it that way imho takes it away from the more substantive arguments around ethics.

The health and ethical questions are to a certain extent inextricable here though. How ethical is it to under-nourish our own class if we actually want to achieve and live in a world where everyone gets what they need and how does that relate to the rest of the lifeforms on the planetary surface which all contribute to making it livable? To put it crudely, factory farms need to go but huge grain monocrops that have destroyed uncountable species and unrecoverable climax ecosystems do too.

Pikel wrote:

It's also really boring to read about calories and micro-nutrients, every crappy magazine is full of this stuff, ethics are far more scarce and therefore interesting.

Depends what you’re in to but I like trying to find out how things work so that I am not as exploitable as I would otherwise be. Like you said on the ‘things lib-communists say’ thread we should be capable of knowing enough now to make correct choices. Stressing all the time about what’s on the end of your fork in itself causes disease but I find it easier to be here at all if I know more than I’m supposed to know.

factvalue, I think you're confusing me for an advocate for veganism (I'm not). I don't know if I'm misreading what you're saying - I'm not sure what I've said that could be interpreted as saying people should choose veg*n diets for health reasons.

Not at all operaista, I couldn’t confuse what you’ve been writing as an advert for a vegan diet even on mushrooms, and I agree with you on trans fats. It’s just that the multiple ad hoc hypotheses that have been produced within capitalist medicine over the years and presented to us as ‘science’ so as to save the diet-heart-cholesterol hypothesis from justifiable homicide at the hands of its thousand imaginary paradoxes can most elegantly be avoided by switching to a model of disease which actually fits the data, such as a stressed HPA-axis leading downstream to endothelial dysfunction. I was simply asking if you believed that a vegan diet could be included as an unhealthy stressor of the HPA-axis.

Having previously emphasised the importance of reducing stress you have also said that you believe that blood lipids are a marker and not a causal factor for coronary disease but you seem to adhere to things like the Omega-6/Omega-3 ratio, which first emerged in exactly the ad hoc manner I am talking about in order to save the lipid-heart hypothesis from its ‘Israeli paradox’, where despite having one of the highest polyunsaturated/saturated fat ratios in the world and e.g. an 8% higher consumption of Omega-6 PUFA than the US, they ‘paradoxically’ also had much higher CVD, hypertension, obesity and non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Therefore, since it couldn’t possibly admit that the model was wrong, capitalism’s coronary medicine establishment responded by suggesting that Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats are dangerous, at least if the proportion of Omega-6 to Omega-3 exceeds a ratio of 4:1. Omega-3 seems to prevent against heart arrhythmias and has a reasonably strong anticoagulant effect and I’m not arguing it down but the ratio idea looks to me like just another Ptolemaic epicycle purpose-built to insulate a phoney model from falsification. It seems to me currently to act as another protection of the statin profits of Pfizer, Merck, Crestor, Novartis and the others, in addition to being just another of the endless applications of leeches which have brought us HRT and radical mastectomy and any of capitalist medicine’s thousands of crimes against humanity, as well as making medical science sound like an oxymoron.

Isn’t it also claimed that statins protect against cancer, which they achieve by being given to people who are less likely to die of cancer in the first place precisely because they have high cholesterol levels? Are there any randomised, interventional, controlled clinical studies (and not controlled and ‘peer-reviewed’ for a bigger swimming pool by corporations ‘scientists’ right through publication) showing a reduction in the incidence or mortality rate of total cancer from a low fat diet? I couldn’t find any on www.pubmed.org at any rate, last time I looked. And on the subject of referencing in this thread and in general, I understand the urge for people to only choose references that support them but unless a specific passage is invaluable to the argument IMHO it would be more scientific to reference by indicating key words to search for along with directions to general locations and allow people to make their own minds up.

Last post, (EDIT: skip to the very end for important summary points) as I've written a small book on nutrition at this point that focuses on broad points of consensus rather than advocating for my specific diet (or any other one - seriously, my diet is very very far from vegan or the standard western diet, but that's irrelevant), linked to dozens of peer-reviewed sources, many of which have different views on specifics of diet (I'm not even getting into "Mediterranean" versus conventional high-carb/low-fat, versus balanced cooked food vegan versus the Zone versus various versions of Paleo). I've referred to anthropological and evolutionary evidence, and so forth. You've ignored anthropological and evolutionary evidence, ignored the recommendations of such major health organizations as the Institute of Medicine, and have cited a grand total of one non-peer reviewed book with serious methodological flaws in how it looked at its data set and that directly contradicts all the evidence of evolutionary biology and physical and cultural anthropology with its conclusions. And that really only gets attention because it's a celebrity fad. The entirety of the data that Campbell gathered doesn't support his conclusions.

So, I say 10% (as a maximum) or less of total calories consumed is ideal. This does not mean that all individual foods consumed have to be 10% protein.

To achieve a certain level of protein consumption, not all foods need to contain that portion of protein in their macronutrient breakdown. I also agree that as calories go up, if a macronutrient stays the same in ratio, the overall amount of that macronutrient will go up (that's simple math). However, you are arguing the exact opposite of what I am saying when I am talking about protein requirements - I am saying that there is an absolute minimum protein need (adequate intake of protein such that all essential amino acids are ingested in sufficient quantities to do everything the body needs protein to do). You are saying that there is a very low maximum safe amount of protein, which is generally less than the amount of protein literally every researcher or clinician recommends; the maximum safe amount of protein, in actuality, is far higher than the minimum required (see, we're really adaptable); the minimum fat consumption tends to be much higher than what you recommend as a maximum.

Once again, if you consistently fall below .8g/kg/day of protein, you will be forced to break down lean body mass to prioritize other protein needs. This is a state of malnutrition. If this state continues long enough, eventually, you'll go from just losing lean body mass to losing protein from places where it's essential (things like the heart, enzyme production, albumin in the blood to keep fluiding from pouring out of the blood vessels). That continues long enough, you will die, no matter how many calories you consume. For you to be correct about protein, there would have to be no such thing as essential amino acids (amino acids we can't synthesize); in addition, humans would have to be able to perform nitrogen fixation (take in nitrogen from the atmosphere, undergo controlled chemical reactions such that it is held in the body as part of a solid or liquid compound) or be able to digest things like ammonia and urea (many simple nitrogen containing compounds are our waste products; we can't digest them). However, it's bacteria that perform nitrogen fixation, taking it from the atmosphere and put it into the soil. Plants then take up that nitrogen and use the energy they generate by photosynthesis to form it into amino acids and then proteins. Animals eat the plants, breakdown the proteins, take the amino acids, and build them into other proteins. Other animals eat those animals, and use their amino acids to make proteins. The process of decomposition and animal elimination of waste ultimately results in nitrogen being released back into the atmosphere or soil (the purpose of fertilizers is generally to increase nitrogen content of soil).

We can get our amino acids from other plant or animal sources - all the amino acids only present in animals we can synthesize from amino acids provided by plants. I think there are good reasons to eat animal products; however, one can meet protein needs entirely from plant sources. However, since we can't fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, we must take in all the amino acids we need, and for nine of them, we need to take in those specific amino acids as we cannot synthesize them.

To support your wild claims about protein (no minimum and a very low maximum) provide any evidence at all that we perform nitrogen fixation, or that basic biochemistry is fundamentally different than what any chemist would say. Or, alternately, provide your absolute minimum amount of protein needed per day, and provide any evidence supporting that assertion (you've never once said "at least X amount of protein" just "very low amount or less"; if I'm wrong in thinking that you don't think that dietary protein is necessary, you should be able to put forth a minimum amount; your minimum amount would be much lower than the scientific consensus, as your maximum amount is at or below the consensus absolute minimum), at least that wouldn't require humans to have the ability to perform nitrogen fixation.

We talk about macronutrient requirements as a percentage of total calories consumed for a few reasons: the math is easier for people to figure what they should eat; put a bit of a safety factor into your ranges, and, due to the not-all-that-big fluctuations in the number of calories most adults need, they only need to figure out one number (calories required per day), make decent food choices, and they're going to be fine. It's hard enough to get people to eat a healthful diet, let's not make it unnecessarily difficult for them; also, we tend to eat plenty of protein and fat anyway in the overdeveloped world.

Actually, adults can put on lean body mass through resistance exercise and proper diet (it's normally slow and in small amounts, nothing like the various rates of growth in childhood, but it's generally one of the goals of resistance exercise - helps you get stronger and it raises your basal metabolic rate). This is not the only reason adults would need greater than .8g/kg/day of protein. Exercise causes small amounts of damage to muscle tissue, which, through the repair of that tissue, people get stronger (in addition to improved muscle fiber recruitment and, for real world applications, learning the movement). This means that protein requirements are higher per kg. Now, exercise itself both burns calories beyond base metabolic needs (though not as much as people would like!), and, through increases in lean body mass, causes increased caloric needs at rest. However, for serious athletes, caloric requirements aren't going to go up as fast as protein requirements will.

For instance, the American Dietetic Association, Dietitians of Canada, and American College of Sports Medicine, have a position statement from 2009 here. The abstract is freely available on pubmed (sorry that the full piece is behind a paywall if you don't have institutional access). Highlights include:

Protein recommendations for endurance and strength-trained athletes range from 1.2 to 1.7 g·kg-1 body weight·d-1 (0.5-0.8 g·lb-1 body weight·d-1). These recommended protein intakes can generally be met through diet alone, without the use of protein or amino acid supplements. Energy intake sufficient to maintain body weight is necessary for optimal protein use and performance.

You're not going to die if you start rigorous athletic training and don't increase protein consumption above the needs of a sedentary individual, but you will not have optimum athletic performance and will not be able to increase lean body mass. As an aside, their fat range recommendation is 20-35% of calories, and they strongly advise against going below that (I don't think 35% is the max if the ratios are good, but, whole other discussion).

As to the protein and caloric needs of newborns - children are not little adults. Term newborns need 120 calories per kilogram per day to provide sufficient energy for metabolic needs and growth (fast growth, high surface area to weight ratio, and so forth). They also need 2g/kg/day of protein (though I've seen sources as low as 1.65kg/g/day - still higher than all but the most intensely training athletes. The point stands either way). So it's both accurate to say they have highly elevated (compared to adults) protein requirements by weight, protein as a smaller portion of macronutrients in their diet - why can this be? Because an infant has drastically elevated caloric requirements. An 80kg adult would not eat 9,600 calories a day (seriously), and they don't need 160 grams of protein per day (not that that would cause them any harm).

You can find the Institute of Medicine equation for estimated energy requirementshere. We'll say our 80kg adult is sedentary, 30 years old, male, and 1.73 meters tall. We'll name him Bob. Bob has a crappy office job and capitalism is crushing his will to live. He should probably organize with his coworkers and his neighborhood to improve their lives. He also should exercise. If you want to check my math, look for the TEE equation in the link at the start of this paragraph. His daily caloric requirements as a 30 year old, 80 kg, 1.73 m, male leading a sedentary life is a tiny bit under 2600 calories. He also should probably eat at least 64 grams of protein a day, for a total of 256 calories of protein a day (about 10% of his daily caloric intake). He could safely eat a good bit more (and probably does, in the overdeveloped world).

If he's trying to lose weight, he needs to eat less calories; losing 4 kg a month is near the high end in terms of safe prolonged weight loss. This would require a caloric deficit of around 31,000 calories over the course of the month (or, for a 31 day month, 1,000 calories a day). He's getting about 1600 calories a day; however, he still needs 64 grams of protein, so protein now needs to be at least 16% of his caloric intake (not hard to do at all, really).

Bob has been hitting the gym hard. He still weighs 80kg, he probably has lost some fat and gained some muscle (this would be reflected in the adjustment to his caloric needs based on activity). He's doing intense cardiovascular exercise and a lot of strength training. It's fair to say that he's now very active, which raises his caloric requirements to a little under 3700 calories a day. As a hard-training athlete, his protein needs for optimum performance are now 136 grams per day (again, he can exceed this number by a good bit and be fine - it just won't increase performance any more). This is 544 calories a day of protein (14.7% of calories). Once again, he's certainly fine to eat more, and these aren't hard values to hit on most diets, however, let's say he's highly active, trying to lose 4 kg a month, and wants to maintain athletic performance and lean body mass as much as possible. Now he's eating 2700 calories a day, but still wants to get 136 grams of protein a day - this would be a little over 20% of his calories from protein, minimum. He could eat a good bit more and it would be totally fine!

A few points arise:
1) protein needs as a percentage of macronutrients consumed vary based on activity level and whether maintaining weight, gaining weight, or losing weight is the goal. For active people, protein needs for optimal performance are a good bit higher.
2) Protein requirements as a percentage of calories consumed are pretty much always at least 10% in adults, and often higher. Your recommendation of less than 10% protein will lead many adults to suffer from protein malnutrition, particularly sedentary ones. Very active ones are not going to get enough for good athletic performance at that level. You absolutely must have sufficient protein intake.
3) On the vast majority of diets, it's pretty easy to get sufficient protein - the vast majority of people don't need protein supplements. It's pretty easy to eat more than the protein required for a hard training athlete, and it's completely healthy and fine. We're talking about minimums, here, not safe maximums.
4) There is a wide range between "minimum protein needed for both basic bodily functions and one's lifestyle" and "maximum safe consumption". There are other benefits to eating more protein than required, because as an energy source, it doesn't lead to the fluctuations in blood sugar and large insulin loads that carbohydrates do, as it has to be put through gluceoneogenesis first. (Carbs aren't the devil any more than fat is, though). Bob's safe maximum of protein is 285 grams to 365 grams of protein at the very least, likely higher. There are a wide range of diets were Bob will have protein intake between what he needs for optimal athletic performance but is still safe, and have consume sufficient fat to meet his energy and essential fatty acid needs. The diet you are proposing is not one of them.
5) For someone getting all their protein from plants, I think making the minimum slightly higher is a good idea - plant protein isn't as bioavailable as animal proteins (particularly plant proteins that aren't soy). However, it's still not hard to do if you're into that.

A pro-vegetarian and vegan diet article at Scientific American (very respectable science magazine for the layperson) by a doctor who is vegan even warns of the dangers of a raw vegan diet. Once again, I don't think vegan diets are the key to health, but when even doctors who are vegan say that raw vegan diets are a horrible idea...

EDIT: IMPORTANT SUMMARY POINTS: radicalgraffiti's suspicion that infants have greatly increased caloric needs because it's harder for them to maintain body temperature is correct, that's one of the reasons.
Mr Jolly is absolutely right that the health argument is daft.
Pikel is right that this is boring...but spouting out pseudo-science about one thing makes someone look daft in general (like, I think it's important if we're going to talk about the actual class struggle issues around diet and food production, that we don't sound like wingnuts).
factvalue: I think we need to have a lot more research on fat. I think omega-6/omega-3 fat ratios health effects should be further investigated - just because diets that are healthier than the standard western diet have lower omega-6/omega-3 ratios doesn't mean that's the reason. I also agree that statins...can be a bit problematic.

Have mercy on us, please!

Mike S.

Operaista

I'm speaking charitably because: a) you're not arguing from science, you're arguing from faith - any bit of evidence that contradicts your claims is ignored or dismissed without any actual counter-evidence. You dismiss basic biochemistry out of hand because it contradicts your assertions. b) you're clearly uneducated in all relevant scientific fields (and I don't care if people get that education from academia or are autodidacts), c) you are not providing any evidence or explanation for your assertions to begin with. By being charitable, I mean that I have not yet firmly concluded that you totally dismiss scientific knowledge, the scientific method, and the entire field of the life science, no matter how much reading your comments makes me suspicious of that.

The arguments against vivisection are far worse. Kinda like the current trend which asserts obesity isn't unhealthy. Kinda like free market capitalist theory. Kinda like religion.

Whoever downed my post can completely and totally kiss my ass :) Arguments against vivisection, as in, animal testing for medical science aren't anything but pseudoscience based in idealism. Same with the arguments that obesity isn't unhealthy. The same idealist approach is also used in free market theory and religion. I was pretty much criticizing idealist morality and analysis which much of the vegan lifestyle is based in.

Well, I would certainly take issue with animal testing in the case of great apes (like chimps and bonobos), and there's plenty of primatological research to back up such concerns.

jura

Well, I would certainly take issue with animal testing in the case of great apes (like chimps and bonobos), and there's plenty of primatological research to back up such concerns.

Over 95% of animal testing is done on mice and the monkeys used for aids and other research is done on small monkeys not great apes. The research is necessary and important. Vegans think computer models can 100% cover all necessary research just because they morally want it to be so. We're simply not at that point yet but when we do get there of course research on animals should stop.

http://speakingofresearch.com/

On obesity:

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-obesity-20130816,0,1789948.story

And I shouldn't have to defend criticizing idealism in regards to free market theory and religion.

Kureigo-San

Chilli Sauce

protein is in all foods, the usefulness of which being the greatest in raw plant foods - preferably from various sources.

Is this true?

While I know the body can have more difficulty digesting animal products in general, I've always been under the impression that things like fish or eggs or yogurt (and even things like whey protein, from back in my weightlifting days) had the most absorbable protein, followed by things like chicken and soybeans.

This website seems to back that up, although fish isn't mentioned, oddly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Corrected_Amino_Acid_Score

These foods are popular in body building because they cause fat to marble in the muscles - what we see as the michelin man aesthetic. Also these foods are really dense in calories so it's the easiest way to get the day's 3 or 4000 calories. Protein supplements are so ass-backwards, for the reasons in my post before this one but also because someone pays, what, £40-50(?) for a tub of protein that's literally going to be pissed away in the urine flow because the body can't cope with it

That didn't answer my question at all.

This is getting a bit closer, however:

For someone getting all their protein from plants, I think making the minimum slightly higher is a good idea - plant protein isn't as bioavailable as animal proteins (particularly plant proteins that aren't soy).

The US still (as one of only two countries in the world) allow chimpanzees to be used for medical testing. Many subjects of the research done by the likes of Savage-Rumbaugh were former medical research subjects. Given how much we've learned about primates in less than the last 30 years (i.e., their tool-use, symbolic culture, ability to acquire language etc.), I think we should be more subtle than "the research is necessary and the girl with leukemia needs her meds".

http://www.janegoodall.ca/chimps-issues-labs.php

jura

The US still (as one of only two countries in the world) allow chimpanzees to be used for medical testing. Many subjects of the research done by the likes of Savage-Rumbaugh were former medical research subjects. Given how much we've learned about primates in less than the last 30 years (i.e., their tool-use, symbolic culture, ability to acquire language etc.), I think we should be more subtle than "the research is necessary and the girl with leukemia needs her meds".

http://www.janegoodall.ca/chimps-issues-labs.php

I agree chimpanzees shouldn't be used. I didn't know the US was still using chimps. Thanks for the correction.

Mike S. wrote:

Whoever downed my post can completely and totally kiss my ass

I've upped it because this is a health thread and being dislocated from the surounding population/culture is a psychological stressor that creates an unhealthy stress response and you did say that you are feeling vulnerable to pleasing the anonymous downers. Sure you can't please every manner of gobshite you come across you know, don't worry about it. :D But if you're adhering to some nineteenth century mechanistic version of materialism then scientifically I don't agree with you.

Mr. Jolly

Honestly the argument to be a vegan on health grounds is daft, its not what the majority of kevins do it for. Its demonstrably not true and to try and frame it that way imho takes it away from the more substantive arguments around ethics.

The health discussion is rolling out because it is related to whether or not we must consume animals in order to sustain our health - the notion that we need to do it for protein, among other fad-of-the-day nutrients, comprises the most common defence of the practice of mass slaughter.

So, admittedly, things did go a little off track in my arguing that plant-based is a necessary part of an optimal diet; it is sufficient to say that for the relevant topic of ethics, we can live healthy lives without eating animal products, as many people have in the past and continue to do now.

Also most vegans eat as much, if not more garbage, than "regular" folk. You'll find no contest from me on that count. This even includes a lot of people eating "raw vegan" - they guzzle nuts, seeds, oil and avocados as a matter of daily course and so end up consuming head and shoulders more fat than the meat eating citizen. Most vegans are really unhealthy, but vegan is too broad of a term to make any sort of dietary argument about: what I have spoken about is specifically eating calorically sufficient amounts whole and unaltered plants. (Commercial nuts and seeds are heat treated so they don't go off. We could only consume these strictly naturally during a small window of time in the season cycle, usually at the end of autumn.)

But yeah, these things are totally relevant to each other. Isolating the matters makes them quite meaningless.

protein, among other fad-of-the-day nutrients

Fad of the day? It is a basic macronutrient that we need to survive! I get that you might mean an over-emphasis on protein is faddy, but come'on, protein is not exactly co-enzyme Q10.

RE: Use of chimps

Does anybody think we enter a tricky territory when we pick and choose which animals are OK to experiment on? Especially when the argument for not using chimps center around them being too similar to us?

There's a similar trend with dolphins and other animals perceived to have above-board intelligence, (though dolphins aren't used for experimentation, as far as I know) that we should abstain from hurting those animals because they're clever.

Chilli Sauce

protein, among other fad-of-the-day nutrients

Fad of the day? It is a basic macronutrient that we need to survive! I get that you might mean an over-emphasis on protein is faddy, but come'on, protein is not exactly co-enzyme Q10.

That is what I meant, yeah. I'm wondering, is what I'm saying coming across as protein-need denialism? If that was the case I would be advocating a nice little 0% as opposed to 6-10%.
Protein obsession is the biggest fad going.

Koreigo-San wrote;

Does anybody think we enter a tricky territory when we pick and choose which animals are OK to experiment on? Especially when the argument for not using chimps center around them being too similar to us?

I do, it’s seems so obvious as to be mundane that tests carried out on animals anatomically closer to us should be of more clinical relevance. Like when Nikolai Anitschkov fed rabbits a high cholesterol diet: rabbits are carnivores - rabbits normally eat a high cholesterol diet - and the thickeings they get in their arteries are exactly the same as those humans get - therefore food high in cholesterol causes heart disease, QED!

Also most vegans eat as much, if not more garbage, than "regular" folk. You'll find no contest from me on that count. This even includes a lot of people eating "raw vegan" - they guzzle nuts, seeds, oil and avocados as a matter of daily course and so end up consuming head and shoulders more fat than the meat eating citizen.

In terms of fat and heart disease the most dangerous type of fat is visceral fat around our abdominal organs. Dietary fat intake is not the cause. Visceral fat build-up is caused by dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis which is itself caused by smoking, depression, spinal-cord injury, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, steroid use and several other factors. HPA-axis dysfunction then leads to raised cortisol levels which damage the endothelium and increase blood clotting, plaque growth, heart disease.

On the subject of dietary fat and cancer, let me ask you the same question I asked operaista:

Are there any randomised, interventional, controlled clinical studies (and not controlled and ‘peer-reviewed’ for a bigger swimming pool by corporations ‘scientists’ right through publication) showing a reduction in the incidence or mortality rate of total cancer from a low fat diet? I couldn’t find any on www.pubmed.org at any rate, last time I looked.

It does get to the point where faith-based beliefs prevent anything real from happening and people refuse to see black swans as swans since they ‘just know’ all swans are white.

On the subject of dietary fat and cancer, let me ask you the same question I asked operaista:

Quote:
Are there any randomised, interventional, controlled clinical studies (and not controlled and ‘peer-reviewed’ for a bigger swimming pool by corporations ‘scientists’ right through publication) showing a reduction in the incidence or mortality rate of total cancer from a low fat diet? I couldn’t find any on www.pubmed.org at any rate, last time I looked.
It does get to the point where faith-based beliefs prevent anything real from happening and people refuse to see black swans as swans since they ‘just know’ all swans are white.

I think, at least in my case, that's a bit of goalpost moving - I think there's good evidence that a lower omega-6/omega-3 ratio will reduce inflammation, as omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. Most of the good studies I've found about increasing omega-3s to reduce inflammation have focused more on cardiovascular disease risk. Good summary of research on inflammation and diet, good summary on omega-3s. It seems that the best ways to reduce inflammation are: reduce glycemic index of carbohydrate sources consumed, reduce overall glycemic load, increase omega-3s, higher protein intake, ensure adequate intake of several micronutrients, and exercise.

I think it's becoming increasingly clear to everyone in the health and nutrition fields that the constant push to lower fat and raise carbohydrates over the last several decades has been a disaster as a public health measure. I think it's becoming increasingly clear, as well, that the conditions in which food is raised and grown, along with excessive processing, are contributing to public health woes.

Edit: on the economic end of things, the low fat crazed was a sales bonanza for food corporations who were constantly introducing new, highly processed low-fat foods, which also conveniently created a huge market for high fructose corn syrup.

You're still going to die.

Mr. Jolly

You're still going to die.

Not me.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/girl-ages-unravel-secret-eternal-youth/story?id=19974247

I think, at least in my case, that's a bit of goalpost moving - I think there's good evidence that a lower omega-6/omega-3 ratio will reduce inflammation, as omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. Most of the good studies I've found about increasing omega-3s to reduce inflammation have focused more on cardiovascular disease risk.

Yeah Omega-3’s are just lovely but why the ratio?

You're still going to die.

Without decent health awareness and a sense of well-being people die early without ever really being properly alive.

factvalue

without ever really being properly alive.

Thats quite a patronising statement. You think that obsession with diet and exercise is 'being alive'?

I think that not taking care of yourself for whatever reason including being misinformed about how to eat so that you get sick and can't fully take part in your own life and the lives of those you care about and who need you to be around for as long as possible would mean being not quite as dead as the straw man you've created but it's certainly not my idea of taking life by the short and curlies.

Hey UV, good to see you site again. I don't know you saw, but someone nominated your "Venting" thread for the best of libcom in the past 10 years.

I'm going to leave most of your post alone as I think we're going to have to agree to disagree, but I did want to pick up on this point:

providing therapeutic rehabilitation in a pleasant if confined setting. But for animals, we think it's ok to imprison them in nightmarish conditions that amount to torture

I think just about everyone on this thread is opposed to factory farms and has expressed the idea that animals should be treated humanely as possible when they're being reared for consumption.

The other thing - and I know this is a bit cliched - but nature is not exactly a spa resort vacation. Most wild animals die a violent death of getting eating by other animals or, best case scenario, die of starvation/exposure once they become weak or old. That's not a scenario I would want to happen to humans, but I don't see even the most dedicated vegan in the world arguing for animal old age homes.

I'm also going to guess that the vegan bodybuilder is taking a lot of supplements. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I don't think you could find a doctor in the world (even vegan ones) who wouldn't tell vegans to take some sort of supplement. That would suggest a vegan diet isn't complete.

EDITED.

ultraviolet

* (and i for one dream of a future... WAY in the future... where we can genetically engineer all animals to be vegetarians... of course we'd have to figure out how to engineer ecosystems so they didn't become wildly off balance through the elimination of predators... so when i say WAY in the future, i mean like advanced star trek shit, a thousand years or more ahead... what seems laughably impossible now may one day be achievable! for now it's just a pleasant dream.)

mmm think this is taking things a bit far, sounds like you are trying to rid the world of the inevitable which is slightly scary.

Yeah. I'm with you on everything else you've said in this thread, but that last para is a bit extreme. I agree it would be nice to imagine a world where no animal suffered or was exploited, but saying things like 'let's play with their genes' is a bit mad scientist.

We're lucky that we're both omnivorous and smart. My cats, for example, are neither; and I would never try to get them to eat carrots or teach them empathy. They're capable of neither. The important thing is that we as humans have a choice about how we treat each other, and how we interact with non-human animals. The natural world might be a bitch to live in for most animals, but that's no reason that we should follow suit and add to the problem.

Also, having to take one pill of vit B12 a day is hardly an inconvenience comparable to the suffering in the meat/ dairy industry, and doesn't in any way invalidate the position. Older people struggle to get enough B12 in their diets, and have to supplement their diets this way too.

All that said, it isn't a dealbreaker for me that most libcoms aren't vegan. Though it would be interesting to see the kind of people who would work in an industrial abattoir if their livelihoods no longer depended upon it.

ultraviolet

(and i for one dream of a future... WAY in the future... where we can genetically engineer all animals to be vegetarians... of course we'd have to figure out how to engineer ecosystems so they didn't become wildly off balance through the elimination of predators... so when i say WAY in the future, i mean like advanced star trek shit, a thousand years or more ahead... what seems laughably impossible now may one day be achievable! for now it's just a pleasant dream.)

This is really problematic so many ways.

Devrim

Tian

All that said, it isn't a dealbreaker for me that most libcoms aren't vegan. Though it would be interesting to see the kind of people who would work in an industrial abattoir if their livelihoods no longer depended upon it.

I am neither a vegan or a vegetarian, but I did work in a chicken factory for a few months when I was young. It was the most unpleasant job I have ever done in my life (and I am somebody who doesn't have a problem skinning and gutting animals I have shot, or killing sheep at religious festivals). There is no way I would have done it if I hadn't needed the money, and I think in a communist society very few people would be happy to do it.

Devrim

[* (and i for one dream of a future... WAY in the future... where we can genetically engineer all animals to be vegetarians... of course we'd have to figure out how to engineer ecosystems so they didn't become wildly off balance through the elimination of predators... so when i say WAY in the future, i mean like advanced star trek shit, a thousand years or more ahead... what seems laughably impossible now may one day be achievable! for now it's just a pleasant dream.)

One way in which this is problematic is its assumption that genes are exclusively, deterministically and reductively associated with morphogenesis i.e. that we can write a 'program' for the formation of complex, large-scale living systems. It also seems to take disrespect for the uniqueness and integrity of lifeforms to a level beyond even what those in the capitalist meat and medical industries would dream up in their wildest fantasies.

Quote:
[* (and i for one dream of a future... WAY in the future... where we can genetically engineer all animals to be vegetarians... of course we'd have to figure out how to engineer ecosystems so they didn't become wildly off balance through the elimination of predators... so when i say WAY in the future, i mean like advanced star trek shit, a thousand years or more ahead... what seems laughably impossible now may one day be achievable! for now it's just a pleasant dream.)

i completely agree with this, but i dont think genetic engineering would be necessary, for example if we terraformed mars we could have a chance to create ecosystems from scratch using various species from earth to create an ecosystem free of predation and competition and instead based on complex symbiotic relationships!

in fact the theories on the importance of predation in keeping ecosystems balanced is highly contentious, and is constantly debated as the 'green world hypothesis' ie how does the world stay green, what keeps herbivores from overconsuming vegetation, many argue that it is mostly by plants constantly evolving new defence mechanisms.

i think the attention given to predation and competition is largely capitalist propaganda

some important examples of mutualism and symbioisis - cleaner fish, pollination and seed dispersal, gut flora and nitrogen fixation by fungi. The evolution of all eukaryotes (plants, animals, fungi, protists) is believed to have resulted from a symbiosis between various sorts of bacteria: endosymbiotic theory. coral reefs etc etc etc

Dunno if this has been discussed before: World's first lab-grown burger is eaten in London

How do you feel about that, ultraviolet? Does anyone see this kind of technology factoring in to future attitudes towards farming animals?

Ultraviolet #133

‘…WAY in the future... where we can genetically engineer all animals to be vegetarians...’

Though I am not interested in ‘primitivism’ I really feel you’re going in the wrong direction. My idea of a good future society would be one which has learned to respect and not seek to dominate the natural world - this would obviously include its animals.

John Berger writes of the unsatisfactory relationship of the urban dweller with animals (why zoos and circuses are disappointing) and the inherent sadness of our love of pets. In his trilogy of novels, ‘Into Their Labours’, he traces the history of the European peasant and the historical forces affecting them and I was struck by their intimate relationship with the land and animals. Here is a measure of what has been lost – not that anything will turn the clock back (thank goodness) though we must try and heal the alienating wounds of capitalism – if only for our own wellbeing.

Always the peacemaker and host delux. Lets forget the dietry squabbling and have a nice bit of nose bag. How about we all give this one a whirl and see how we feel after?

CHICKEN CURRY
Ingredients
Serves : 6 

3 tablespoons oil
1 red onion, thinly sliced
salt, to taste
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons water, divided
1 tablespoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1kg chicken breast chunks (or chicken thighs)
1 tomato, thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3 pods cardamom, lightly crushed
3 whole cloves
1 (5cm) cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon ghee
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 large bunch fresh coriander, finely chopped
Directions

Prep:15min  ›  Cook:1hr  ›  Ready in:1hr15min 

Heat the oil in a wok or casserole over high heat. Add 1/3 of the onion, sprinkle a little salt and fry for a few minutes, or until golden brown and crispy. Remove from oil and set aside on kitchen paper.
Add the bay leaf and the rest of the onions to the oil. Season with a little salt, and fry until golden brown. Add a spoonful of water and stir so that the onions break down – the water should turn a caramel colour. Add the turmeric, chilli, paprika, ginger and garlic; stir well. Reduce heat to medium high. When the fat leaves the sides, add a spoonful of water, and stir again.
Add the chicken and the sliced tomato. Season with salt and sugar; stir. Add the cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ghee and a spoonful of water. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 or 35 minutes.
Remove the lid, if there is water left in the pan, raise the heat to medium. Add the ground coriander and cook until all the water has evaporated (or you can leave as much sauce as you like).
Spoon onto serving plates and sprinkle with fresh coriander and the reserved fried onions. Serve with naan or basmati rice.

Aw man, that's a bit mean.

have a nice bit of nose bag.

Bit early in the day for a Class A, don't you think, mate? ;)

To me meat seems to be a vestige of a tradition which is becoming obsolete. Insofar as meat is eaten for pleasure, it seems crude for humans to kill animals. Animals have feelings and a rudimentary existential condition that is similar to ours. But this cannot be an argument because for the most part you can only appeal to someone's kindness, kind of like communism. Most animals seem to like life to me. Taking that away for pleasure places your existence above another living being's. It's only a matter of individual conscience though, in most cases. The main thing the vegan movement needs to do is destroy the murder-machine food industry, which is why vegetarians and meat-eaters should be part of the movement too.

cresspot

To me meat seems to be a vestige of a tradition which is becoming obsolete. Insofar as meat is eaten for pleasure, it seems crude for humans to kill animals

That's a very Eurocentric view. The dirt poor Palestinian and Egyptian farmers I've met, eat meat because sometimes it's one of the few food things they actually have access to.

Poor farmers aren't the problem though, it's meat as a metropolitan delight, which has nothing to do with life anymore.

cresspot

But this cannot be an argument because for the most part you can only appeal to someone's kindness, kind of like communism.

I don't think I'm an unkind person, but what I find most appealing about communism is that my loved ones and I would be much more able to enjoy our lives and the world around us. The communist movement has never been primarily driven by some sense of altruism (as you seem to be suggesting), but rather by the efforts of the proletariat to improve their own lives in quite tangible ways.

Khawaga

cresspot

To me meat seems to be a vestige of a tradition which is becoming obsolete. Insofar as meat is eaten for pleasure, it seems crude for humans to kill animals

That's a very Eurocentric view. The dirt poor Palestinian and Egyptian farmers I've met, eat meat because sometimes it's one of the few food things they actually have access to.

Thats one example, but even there there is a certain issues around turning an animal into food, hence the use of religious slaughter (in the muslim population there at least). Humans to a greater or lesser extent have always problematised the killing of animals for food, and rather as you assert a Eurocentric view, its the view of 100's of millions of people throughout the world, in non western societies its why vegetarianism is practiced more in dirt poor populations of the world than in the west (obviously heavily weighted to the indian subcontinent)

I would go as far as to say that given the rituals around slaughter (and the avoidance of eating it all together) from many diverse cultures, and geographical locals, suggest its a theme that has been in the minds of humans probably stretching back into our dim and distant past.

Mr Jolly, i was commenting on the statement "eating meat for pleasure." I found that statement to be horribly eurocentric. Problematizing the eating of meat isn't, but arguing pleasure eating is not even that.

I don't know what you mean when you say that
Tyrion

The communist movement has never been primarily driven by some sense of altruism (as you seem to be suggesting), but rather by the efforts of the proletariat to improve their own lives in quite tangible ways.

As everyone has someone else more brutalized by the titanic pyramid of life below them, I was merely thinking that not taking that person, or creature, into consideration, and considering their struggle yours, would fall short of the purpose of communism.

cresspot

I don't know what you mean when you say that
Tyrion

The communist movement has never been primarily driven by some sense of altruism (as you seem to be suggesting), but rather by the efforts of the proletariat to improve their own lives in quite tangible ways.

As everyone has someone else more brutalized by the titanic pyramid of life below them, I was merely thinking that not taking that person, or creature, into consideration, and considering their struggle yours, would fall short of the purpose of communism.

My point is that the appeal of communism doesn't rely on kindness, as you appeared to be saying. Kindness isn't a necessary trait for someone to recognize how much more enjoyable their life would be in a communist society.

plasmatelly

Always the peacemaker and host delux. Lets forget the dietry squabbling and have a nice bit of nose bag. How about we all give this one a whirl and see how we feel after?

CHICKEN CURRY
Ingredients
Serves : 6 

3 tablespoons oil
1 red onion, thinly sliced
salt, to taste
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons water, divided
1 tablespoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1kg chicken breast chunks (or chicken thighs)
1 tomato, thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3 pods cardamom, lightly crushed
3 whole cloves
1 (5cm) cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon ghee
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 large bunch fresh coriander, finely chopped
Directions

Prep:15min  ›  Cook:1hr  ›  Ready in:1hr15min 

Heat the oil in a wok or casserole over high heat. Add 1/3 of the onion, sprinkle a little salt and fry for a few minutes, or until golden brown and crispy. Remove from oil and set aside on kitchen paper.
Add the bay leaf and the rest of the onions to the oil. Season with a little salt, and fry until golden brown. Add a spoonful of water and stir so that the onions break down – the water should turn a caramel colour. Add the turmeric, chilli, paprika, ginger and garlic; stir well. Reduce heat to medium high. When the fat leaves the sides, add a spoonful of water, and stir again.
Add the chicken and the sliced tomato. Season with salt and sugar; stir. Add the cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ghee and a spoonful of water. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 or 35 minutes.
Remove the lid, if there is water left in the pan, raise the heat to medium. Add the ground coriander and cook until all the water has evaporated (or you can leave as much sauce as you like).
Spoon onto serving plates and sprinkle with fresh coriander and the reserved fried onions. Serve with naan or basmati rice.

This is a shocking post. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Devrim

Devrim

This is a shocking post. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Devrim

I guarantee all the vegans/ veggies on here have been on the end of a lot worse. I think most us have developed thick skins, and can take a jibe or two (I'm almost disappointed nobody has mentioned how delicious bacon is yet...).

A recipe is shocking! I think it's shocking to be called, basically, a psychopath for eating meat. As in, lacking empathy to the point where non meat eating humans should separate themselves from meat eating humans. I find the vegan moralizing shocking. I especially find the anti-vivisection for medical science movement shocking. I think it's also shocking when intersectionality is used to wrap the flag of communism around Veganism.

I think his/her post was meant to be rude, yes, but it's by far not shocking Devrim. These sort of rude interactions happen in reaction to the moral posturing vegans display. The name calling, the accusations, the downright hostility shown to people who eat meat. I mean, just a few posts ago a vegan essentially called meat eaters psychopaths who she/he must avoid at all costs. What do you do with that? Vegan separatism? All I can do is laugh but it's kinda sad.

cresspot

I don't know what you mean when you say that
Tyrion

The communist movement has never been primarily driven by some sense of altruism (as you seem to be suggesting), but rather by the efforts of the proletariat to improve their own lives in quite tangible ways.

As everyone has someone else more brutalized by the titanic pyramid of life below them, I was merely thinking that not taking that person, or creature, into consideration, and considering their struggle yours, would fall short of the purpose of communism.

I think it's in the self interest of the working class to liberate themselves. It's kinda funny to see the right wings conception of communism to be paraded around by communists. Ayn Rand comes to mind. Her fixation on "collectivism" and the non viability of altruism. She had her mind made up that communism, at the theoretical level and in practice, was about some homogenous blob of love circles.

I mean, read this stuff, it's laughable:

http://www.atlassociety.org/egoism-and-capitalism-vs-altruism-and-communism

Tian

All that said, it isn't a dealbreaker for me that most libcoms aren't vegan. Though it would be interesting to see the kind of people who would work in an industrial abattoir if their livelihoods no longer depended upon it.

I wonder who would work a whole host of jobs without their livelihoods depending on it. I would think in an advanced communist society production/consumption in general would decrease. More localized farming, more small scale extremely decentralized local production of just about everything. I don't think fast food restaurants would exist. There would probably be more local veggies grown as well almost like pre industrial economies- just with industry being used to provide the very important things (housing, medical care, transportation and a reasonable amount of leisure technology).

I have a sort of organic vision of what communism would look like. Slower paced lives, more emphasis on community, less "consumerism" if any at all. People would do more things for themselves. I would have no problem slaughtering chickens or a cow for food. Not sure if I'd want to spend my life in some factory hacking away at dead meat but I also wouldn't want to work in some factory building technological widgets for an eternity.

Who are we going to call when our toilets overflow and fecal matter is purged from the toilet all over our bathroom floors? What about mining? Who's going to want to build roads standing out in the heat pouring hot asphalt? Who's going to really want to do anything? Hell, we may as well just forget this whole industrial communism thing. My god, I think I'm becoming a primitivist ;)

I think it's shocking to be called, basically, a psychopath for eating meat

Where is that Mike? I can't find it anywhere.

What I don't get is your seeming refusal to even consider the vegan side of this debate. Your attitude is so dismissive that it detracts from your arguments.

Hostility? Maybe I'm being thick, but there's only one place I'm seeing this and it hasn't come from the keyboard of a vegan.

This is a shocking post. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Devrim

Devrim - get a grip. This whole thread is embarrassing. Shame? Shocking? Don't be stupid. You'll be comparing me to Hitler next. You eat meat, you go hunting, you can't have it both ways laughing boy.

I thought plasmatelly #143 post of the chicken curry recipe was a joke and Devrim #154 was meant to be ironic. I’ll never know, though it rather messes up my understanding of the up/down tally!

A relation of mine, just returned from visiting India, now prefers to eat only vegetarian curries as there is more variety and they taste better. However he still thinks an Aberdeen-Angus steak is heaven on a plate.

Sorry Tian #155, see my post #36. :cry:

EDITED: for lazy spelling

Webby

I think it's shocking to be called, basically, a psychopath for eating meat

Where is that Mike? I can't find it anywhere.

What I don't get is your seeming refusal to even consider the vegan side of this debate. Your attitude is so dismissive that it detracts from your arguments.

Hostility? Maybe I'm being thick, but there's only one place I'm seeing this and it hasn't come from the keyboard of a vegan.

The end of animal oppression will have to be democratically agreed to, but like the end to any oppression, it's a goal we must strive for. Honestly, if your vision of an anarchist future is one where animals continue to be deprived of decent lives so they can be a food source for us, then you're a jerk, you break my heart, and I rather keep you at a distance so I don't have to be reminded of how lacking in basic empathy and compassion people can be for those they've been taught to believe don't matter.

^ I can be hostile while being passive aggressive as well. It's just not my style. All the contrarian posturing coming my way on this site is getting old by the way. At this point I'm pretty sure I could make a post saying gravity exists and people would "down it" and challenge it. The same poster compared meat eaters to people who condone the torture and murder of people. Just because his/her name calling is passive aggressive doesn't mean I'm going to fall all over myself to be "nice" when being called a psychopath.

Mike, that just doesn't answer my question. That quote does not imply that you or anyone else is a psychopath.

All the contrarian posturing coming my way on this site is getting old by the way. At this point I'm pretty sure I could make a post saying gravity exists and people would "down it" and challenge it.

I don't think that's true, it certainly isn't for me. Only yesterday I PMd Steven to find out if you we're going to be unbanned because I thought you had posted some good stuff previously.

you're a jerk, you break my heart, and I rather keep you at a distance so I don't have to be reminded of how lacking in basic empathy and compassion people can be for those they've been taught to believe don't matter.

Mike, it's not how I don't see how this statement could offend you.* However, it seems that it's quite clearly not intended maliciously. And I don't think it's passive-aggressive either, it's an emotional response to something UV cares quite deeply about. You're free to disagree, of course - and I think the overwhelming majority of libcom posters do.

Your posts come across as attacky though and this thread - for all it's fucking silliness - has been pretty toned down. That changed when you came on and I think that's why peoples' back are up.

*It's probably worth noting that "lacking in" does not equate to "lack of" as well.

Theres not been many emotive arguments on here for a while, keep it up, good work.

With whatever differences there are between vegans and non-vegans, factory farms are sickening microcosms of capitalism and the state that human supremacy over the rest of nature has taken, and possible focal points for exposing the inhumanity of the overall system; it's hard enough for many people to simply behead a chicken in a field but the systematic slaughter and exploitation of animals in morbid workplaces, etc... it's one of the nethersides of modern civilization whose sole purpose is to keep places like McDonald's selling proletarian fodder.
I envision a similar regionally-bound world too where humans are reintegrated into nature and factories are superseded by smaller productive centers, and that whatever production occurs in food and animals is primarily for feeding people and is sustainable within the local ecosystem... but the communists of tomorrow's world will still have remains of the old worldview in them, and indifference towards animals is to be expected. that's why the ALF will have them all shot when the animal revolution tears communism into two like phony-baloney

cresspot

With whatever differences there are between vegans and non-vegans, factory farms are sickening microcosms of capitalism and the state that human supremacy over the rest of nature has taken, and possible focal points for exposing the inhumanity of the overall system; it's hard enough for many people to simply behead a chicken in a field but the systematic slaughter and exploitation of animals in morbid workplaces, etc...

If you want to eat meat regularly (ie. a few times a week) what would be your alternative to factory farms, cos you're going to need them, capitalist system or not. You talk of "smaller productive centers" but given the human population, how can you keep similar levels of animal protein production to what we have now without factory farms?

To eat meat should not be confused with an indifference to animals:

‘A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and and not by a but.’
John Berger ‘Why Look at Animals?’ About Looking (1980)

But to continue the mass-processing of animals as simply products would be indifference- the difference between meat factories under property relations and under communist relations is that those opposed to this system would have democratic influence over its production.

plasmatelly

This is a shocking post. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Devrim

Devrim - get a grip. This whole thread is embarrassing. Shame? Shocking? Don't be stupid. You'll be comparing me to Hitler next. You eat meat, you go hunting, you can't have it both ways laughing boy.

It isn't the eating meat that I was complaining about. I don't have a problem with that. It is the trying to wind people up just for the sake of it that I sort of find problematic. I think that is quite unpleasant. I expect moralistic ranting from vegans because they are...well essentially moralists, many of whom think that their particular obsession should be of upmost importance to everyone, which is essentially what moralists do. I don't think that mocking them helps though. It just makes them worse.

Devrim

Aren't we all moralists? Why should we consider morality and practicality as mutually exclusive? if we act to prevent exploitation of workers are we not taking a practical AND moral position? When you boil it down, what's right and what's wrong is strongly linked to what works and what doesn't.
I don't think that holding a strong view equates to an obsession, although it's easy to look at someone else's particular interest and see it as obsessional if it holds no interest for yourself. My family and friends seem to think I'm obsessed with politics, I think they would do well to take an interest themselves. Who's wrong there?
Maybe this is one of those topics where people have their position and just don't 'get' what the other side is saying? If you are a meat eater it's going to require a strong effort to have an open mind to a view that questions the way you live on a daily basis. If you are a vegetarian or vegan you probably have a lot invested in your position and are unlikely to reconsider the stance you've taken. All that said, I don't see why this debate couldn't have been had without so much fucking headbanging.

Webby

If you are a meat eater it's going to require a strong effort to have an open mind to a view that questions the way you live on a daily basis. If you are a vegetarian or vegan you probably have a lot invested in your position and are unlikely to reconsider the stance you've taken. All that said, I don't see why this debate couldn't have been had without so much fucking headbanging.

I think this is the problem.
Most vegans are attracted to the position based on emotional arguments. Meat is murder, cow farts will destroy the planet, meat is cruel, meat is slavery etc. It's what got many of us to completely overhaul our attitudes to food and animals in the first place, and its very tempting to use these same arguments back (and annoy a lot of people in the process).

Like many of the newly converted (or enlightened, depending on your view), vegans can be unpleasantly strident, and it makes other people very uncomfortable. Then comparisons to human slavery, genocide, psychopathy all crop up and it just muddies the water and any common ground there might have been just evaporates. Both sides wind up thinking the other is full of irrational loons. Vegans can come across as judgemental, holier-than-thou, interfering, self-righteous arseholes. The fact that it has an associated 'lifestylist' and faddish diet scene only compounds the problem.

But look at it from the other point of view. We're being forced to watch what we consider to be a massive injustice perpetuated on an industrial scale on a daily basis, billions and billions of animals killed for convenience and pleasure (and where alternatives exist for the vast majority). Even if you disagree with the premise that animals have any intrinsic worth, or that diets could be a source of revolutionary action, you can see why many vegans struggle to keep quiet about it, and adopt the live and let live approach. It'd be like asking an anarchist in a board meeting to settle down.

Many libcoms should have firsthand experience dealing with this kind of thing. It's a minority position. We're forced to see the consequences of it every day, every time we sit down to eat or turn on the telly, and most of the people around us just take it for granted. And, just like capitalism's or liberal democracy's adherents, many of the counter-arguments we hear over and over again are laughable (protein, B12, 'natural', cavemen, crispy bacon, etc.). The discussion here has been largely civil and thoughtful, but for the most part it never is, and it can be very frustrating to hear something you believe in passionately and have considered at length dismissed out of hand, often with a derisive smirk.

In the end, I think most libcoms must agree that meat will become a luxury rather than a staple in any post-revolutionary society, and the consumption of animal products on the current industrial scale would probably be untenable. All I ask is that there's a vegan option in the commune cafeteria.

Webby

Aren't we all moralists? Why should we consider morality and practicality as mutually exclusive? if we act to prevent exploitation of workers are we not taking a practical AND moral position? When you boil it down, what's right and what's wrong is strongly linked to what works and what doesn't.

No, we are not. The basis of communist politics is the working class acting in its own self-interest. veganism is different. It is not animals acting in defence of their own interests. There is a difference.

Devrim

No, we are not. The basis of communist politics is the working class acting in its own self-interest. veganism is different. It is not animals acting in defence of their own interests. There is a difference.

I guess I'm no communist then. There would seem to little difference with a capitalist saying 'I'm just exploiting workers in my own interest', or a cannibal saying 'I eat people in my own interest' to your statement.
I see a revolution as an event that would improve life for everyone, working class or not. Without the lives of the vast majority being improved surely we'd be entering a period of unending conflict. Yeah, I know that the material position of the wealthy would be reduced but that wouldn't be to their detriment. If this is only about an improvement of the material position of the working class then I would call that a pretty shallow aspiration. Of course that's very important and also the starting point but there has to be more to it than that! Any philosophy that is based purely on self interest has to be a flawed one. If communism isn't a purely material endeavour then what else is it? I thought social equality and justice were at the heart of it. To me that's a moral ideal. Inequality is immoral isn't it? Slave labour, torture, murder, war, famine - aren't they all immoral?
I've recently quit certain financial activities because my conscience won't shut the fuck up about them. It certainly wasn't in my financial interest to do so but it was the best thing for me. I made a moral choice and I think the revolution will involve an enormous amount of moral choices.

Tian - Your post is spot on.

Devrim wrote -

I don't think that mocking them helps though. It just makes them worse.

Devrim I'm not mocking anyone - or certainly not trying to (and apologies I came over a bit harsh on post #160). Basically, I was trying to crack a joke - tbh, something I feel is sorely needed in these meat vs cornflakes debates (another joke).
If I have to be perfectly serious - and this is why I usually feel reluctant to chip in - I think there is no place for some people's mistaken belief that diet should take centre stage in class struggle politics. That's not to say that people's customs or peculiar beliefs shouldn't be accommodated, moreso they should be protected.
I can't win an argument why I shouldnt stop eating meat - hell, even my high cholesterol is against me (traitor) - the argument for vegetarianism tends to win hands down; but that doesn't mean I or the overwhelming majority of people give a hoot. My mind is made up - I eat meat, I want full communism. Can normal service please be resumed?

Plasmatelly - I saw straight away that your post was a joke and it did make me smile but I really think that there has been such a dismissive attitude here. Your last post exemplifies that. Personally I think that the vegans case deserves careful consideration at the very least. To say I can't really argue against it but I don't give a fuck so can we all stop talking about it now just won't do. I mean, I could say I want full communism but I also want topless gogo dancers to wash my underpants for free, and sorry, I know I can't justify it but seeing as I don't give a shit can we just move on. Come on man, surely we can do better than that? Still, your honesty and humour is a whole load better than some of the po faced arrogant toss that's been thrown about here.
Finally, I do eat meat(maybe not for much longer!) but as someone else said, when it comes to a curry, it's veggies every time!

It disappoints me how frequently conversations about veganism have a tendency to become arguments based on character assassination: "Vegans are self-righteous arseholes" - what, in seven hells, does this or any other flavour of this statement have to do with anything? Shouldn't whether or not they're right be the main concern, rather than the affront to your sensibilities and lifestyle?

I suppose this tendency is an inevitability when/if people just genuinely don't care. But when that is the case, the person should say so. That doesn't make it OK in my view, but it is preferable to shrill name-calling any day.

The problem is of course that some vegans are indeed self-righteous arseholes, but we know that it's not necessary to respond in kind if you find someone's behaviour distasteful. A self-righteous person's attitude tempts us like hell to ignore his/her arguments, but anti-veganism is the one peculiar area in life (at least to my observation) where "they started it" is viewed as a legitimate, adult response.

Sometimes people say that even the harvesting of plant foods results in the accidental killing of rodents and bugs, so veganism is a misnomer and illusion. This is only valid argumentation if your understanding of veganism is as a purity crusade - which can be an easy enough idea to adopt of veganism if you've had clashes with tactless vegans, but it is definitely an intellectual failure to conclude that their lack of diplomacy is the defining and relevant characteristic of veganism. True enough that rodents and bugs are often killed during harvesting, but what kind of logic is it to say that: If we can't avoid killing anything, sod it kill by the billion. Striving to achieve a minimum of harm is my understanding of what veganism is, if we can bin the stereotypes and war drums.

Sorry if it comes over like that Webby. I guess I'm just genuinely worn out by what is almost always 2 positions of inflexibility vying for the upper hand in an argument that that very few care about and what has a habit of tainting us all as cranks. I apologise in advance for using the word crank - it's not necessarily how I'd choose to call veggies or to be viewed as because some anarchists are veggies, but that is often how we may look.
I'm afraid Webby you are right, it is a dismissive attitude - and not wanting to be rude, but possibly coming over as - I do dismiss these arguments. There may be a time in the future to review what we eat, but for now, for me, I just don't care to listen to these arguments (and I've served some time listening to them).

Plasmatelly - as KS said, it's so much better to be honest if you don't care, so fair enough. I do have an interest in this - I first heard about anarchism on a record cover(Flux of Pink Indians) when I was 16. The piece on this cover was about all the usual flimsy Crass anarcho stuff but mostly about animal rights. I know all of the Crass type stuff isn't well thought of around these here parts but I think it at least opened a lot of eyes. So my route to where I am now started with this issue. I've taken a few beatings as a hunt sab and got myself a criminal record for window smashing/graffiti type activity which has been a huge pain in the arse. When I realised I didn't really give a shit and just wanted a ruck I packed it all in and started eating meat again.
I think that this is just one of many issues that needs looking at and certainly don't see it as central to the struggle. The real problem here isn't the subject matter but, as you say, people trying to 'win' an argument. I just don't get this at all. Why the fuck people cannot just have enough humility to realise that there is always a chance, even if its a small one, that they may be wrong is beyond me. Some people seem to pick up there beliefs in the absolutes aisle of the revolutionary supermarket and then stick with them come hell or high water. What a fucking bore.

Webby - those are fair comments and good on yer for disclosing something about yourself.
I'll dip out of this one now as I've said my bit, and as I say it doesn't motivate me beyond making me curious as to why people throw what they prefer for tea in with the class struggle mix.

Just out of interest, how do the vegetarians and vegans here feel about eating insects? What about things like killing bedbugs and headlice? I hope that doesn't sound sarcastic, I'm genuinely interested as to where people think the line should be drawn?

Webby, with morality, it's entirely subjective. So some people think abortion or drinking or homosexuality are immoral. I'm not sure if this is quite the right word, but it's basically an emotional or knee jerk response to things. While of course people's emotions and personal moral outlooks can be relevant, they're not very useful tools for analysing society and certainly not for trying to change it. We need a material analysis to do that (whether that's implicit or explicit). We need to recognise our collective self interest, as a class.

I'm gonna add to this later but my dinner is ready. Except I might have the pasta sleeps so maybe I'll leave it here.

Just out of interest, how do the vegetarians and vegans here feel about eating insects? What about things like killing bedbugs and headlice? I hope that doesn't sound sarcastic, I'm genuinely interested as to where people think the line should be drawn?

I'll weigh in, as a vegetarian.

As preface, I have two different categorical outlooks on meat and animals. I think it is a political issue to oppose factory farming because of the disastrous environmental, societal, health, etc. effects of that industry, not to mention the hellish working conditions for the humans involved. You don't have to be vegan or vegetarian to oppose factory farming, as it is in the interest of the vast majority of us to end it.

The second outlook is of purely personal choice. I wouldn't want to eat meat even if it was produced locally and humanely (or even communist meat ATR for that fact) because I personally don't like that the idea of making another living thing die just cause I feel like it. If all meat was produced without the disastrous effects of factory farming, then I don't think there would be any political element to it.

So, to actually answer your question, I see insects as falling under the second category. They're not factory farmed. I personally wouldn't eat them, but I don't think it is a political point.

As for the second part, if you have good reason for killing something, either because it is a pest or a threat to public health, then of course it is fine. I knew a friend of a friend who took his veganism so far that he would not kill mosquitoes in his apartment, even though his baby was suffering from immune system problems and a mosquito bite could have easily proven fatal. That's just fucking insane.

Webby

Mike, that just doesn't answer my question. That quote does not imply that you or anyone else is a psychopath.

then you're a jerk, you break my heart, and I rather keep you at a distance so I don't have to be reminded of how lacking in basic empathy and compassion people can be....

What is Psychopathy?

Psychopathy is among the most difficult disorders to spot. The psychopath can appear normal, even charming. Underneath, they lack conscience and empathy....

If you thought animals held the same value as humans would you not think a person who farms, slaughters and or eats animals is a psychopath?

Just on the emotional/material stuff, JK's most recent blog touches on a lot of those issues (although about workplace organising, not meat) and is well worth a read in any case:

http://libcom.org/blog/capital-cant-be-reasoned-importance-affective-politics-19092013

cresspot

With whatever differences there are between vegans and non-vegans, factory farms are sickening microcosms of capitalism and the state that human supremacy over the rest of nature has taken, and possible focal points for exposing the inhumanity of the overall system; it's hard enough for many people to simply behead a chicken in a field but the systematic slaughter and exploitation of animals in morbid workplaces, etc... it's one of the nethersides of modern civilization whose sole purpose is to keep places like McDonald's selling proletarian fodder.
I envision a similar regionally-bound world too where humans are reintegrated into nature and factories are superseded by smaller productive centers, and that whatever production occurs in food and animals is primarily for feeding people and is sustainable within the local ecosystem...

And we have a good post....

cresspot

but the communists of tomorrow's world will still have remains of the old worldview in them, and indifference towards animals is to be expected. that's why the ALF will have them all shot when the animal revolution tears communism into two like phony-baloney

And we have a bad post.....

I'm assuming you, whoever downed the above post, think the ALF should murder people who show indifference to animals. I'd really like to get to know you better....whoever you are.

Mike, I'm pretty sure it was quite obviously a joke.

I mean, "the animal revolution"? Probably a reference to something like this:

http://libcom.org/forums/general/kill-humans-use-them-rut-part-ii-16052013

Lighten up, dude.

Chilli Sauce

Mike, I'm pretty sure it was quite obviously a joke.

I mean, "the animal revolution"? Probably a reference to something like this:

http://libcom.org/forums/general/kill-humans-use-them-rut-part-ii-16052013

Lighten up, dude.

Sounded serious to me. There are vegans who actually advocate violence against people to stop "the animal holocaust". They already do it. In England a woman ran a livestock truck driver off the road. In the US they have firebombed peoples cars, placed bombs at peoples houses and have threatened staff at workplaces that create animal products and or use animals in medical testing. Arson has been used as well which has serious potential to harm others. Violence is "on the table" for this new generation of vegan activists. People like Steve Best are churning out a more "radacalized" vegan activist culture which at times gets as mental as the post I quoted calling for a violent revolution facilitated by people in the name of animals.

The joke thread you linked to was obviously a joke showing animals attacking people. The post I quoted was a persons view of a future communist society that sounded quite rational until the animal revolution part. Was it a joke? I hope so.

Of course it was a joke. This sounds awfully similar to 'all Muslims are terrorists'.

Webby

Of course it was a joke. This sounds awfully similar to 'all Muslims are terrorists'.

Oh stop it. You and I both know I dont think nor did i say all vegans or even a relatively meaningful number of vegans are open to the use of violence in order to "save" animals. Animal liberation activists are who I'm speaking of. The sort that will take part in "direct action" in the name of ALF.

Mike S:

I read it as a joke, a sardonic take on the sort of portentous hyperbole you hear people spouting. People often use humour on this site.
Maybe there are vegans who advocate violence, and as far as I know the bulk of this tiny, tiny amount of violence has been directed against property. I don't think there are many, if any, posters here who advocate blowing shit up and endangering people. On the other hand most vegans are by and large pretty ordinary people who have just made a personal choice about their diet. I was generally of the opinion that making personal choices about how you live your life shouldn't be too controversial here. Some vegans even do things like this:
http://themidnightkitchen.wordpress.com/about/
Hustling food, which would have otherwise gone to waste and turning it into affordable, free if you haven't got any money, meals. Very tasty meals, if I may add. These vegan activists are radicalized into feeding people, including homeless people and providing meals for activists.
As Webby said, it does sound a lot like the "all muslims are terrorists" argument. Because someone has animal welfare on their agenda, it doesn't mean that they have a casual contempt for human wellbeing.
You say

Violence is "on the table" for this new generation of vegan activists.

Which sounds a lot like a "how awful the youth of today" are sort of comment, which I'm always wary of. Every generation seems to think that the following generation are somehow worse than they were, which is obviously not true. And it's certainly not fair to lump all lump all people together and assume they share the same opinions and tactics of a very few.

There are many political issues around food, not least the appalling inefficiencies and waste built into the system of food production under capitalism, such as a third of the world's food being thrown away uneaten or prime agricultural land in East Africa being used to grow roses for European supermarkets. The appalling welfare conditions of animals in industrial food production is a product of this and it's not surprising that people get very emotive about it. I have no idea what food production would look like in a communist society, very different I expect and far more locally and seasonally based I imagine but I expect people will have to work that out as it happens. But right here and right now as individuals, or groups of individuals, we have very little influence over the food industry beyond the personal choices we make concerning what we eat. And that's all it is a personal choice and I don't think it's fair to judge people on what they chose to eat, which is what this argument so often degenerates into.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

Mike S:

I read it as a joke, a sardonic take on the sort of portentous hyperbole you hear people spouting. People often use humour on this site.

I hate having to quote sections of posts and this discussion doesn't really warrant it but oh well...here I go.

I think sometimes humor, online, can get mixed up with some really silly world views that actually exist. Especially the way the persons post was structured. If it was humor then the poster mixed it in with some rather rational views.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

Maybe there are vegans who advocate violence, and as far as I know the bulk of this tiny, tiny amount of violence has been directed against property.

People as well. Mostly slaughter house owners/workers and medical research doctors and assistants who take part in animal testing. The medical researchers have taken the worst of it. Also, I wasn't speaking of "vegans" as some homogenous blob I was referring to animal liberation activists in the post you're "criticizing".

fleurnoire-et-rouge

I don't think there are many, if any, posters here who advocate blowing shit up and endangering people.

I don't think so either.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

On the other hand most vegans are by and large pretty ordinary people who have just made a personal choice about their diet. I was generally of the opinion that making personal choices about how you live your life shouldn't be too controversial here.

I don't think vegans who make a personal lifestyle choice and leave it at that are controversial at all and a lot of vegans are this type but even then they like to guilt lash people. No, I don't think most vegans advocate violence. Again, I was speaking of animal liberation activists.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

These vegan activists are radicalized into feeding people, including homeless people and providing meals for activists.

Good for them but "FoodNotBombs" isnt really my cup of tea.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

As Webby said, it does sound a lot like the "all muslims are terrorists" argument. Because someone has animal welfare on their agenda, it doesn't mean that they have a casual contempt for human wellbeing.

Let me clear this up for you. I was speaking about animal liberation activists not vegans in general.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

You say

Violence is "on the table" for this new generation of vegan activists.

Which sounds a lot like a "how awful the youth of today" are sort of comment, which I'm always wary of. Every generation seems to think that the following generation are somehow worse than they were, which is obviously not true. And it's certainly not fair to lump all lump all people together and assume they share the same opinions and tactics of a very few.

You simply haven't spent any time educating yourself concerning the new "vibe", if you will, in animal liberation activist culture. Leading activists from Gary Yourofsky and Steve Best to knuckle heads like Derrick Jensen are out there making theoretical excuses for violence to liberate animals. Funny seeing Jensen isn't even a vegan. You see, one need not even be a vegan to hold completely idiotic views on "animal liberation". It was my fault when I said "vegan activist". I should've said animal liberation activist. The two cultures are entwined so my use of language should've been more specific.

Again, let me stress the difference between a personal lifestyle choice vegan and animal liberation activist. Huge difference in attitude/world view. Huge. Yourofsky even went as far as to say people who wear fur should be raped and murdered. This is one of if not the most prominent animal liberation activists in America. "Dr" Steve Best is as well and he's big on promoting violence. Again, let me stress the difference between a personal lifestyle choice vegan and an animal liberation activist.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

There are many political issues around food, not least the appalling inefficiencies and waste built into the system of food production under capitalism, such as a third of the world's food being thrown away uneaten or prime agricultural land in East Africa being used to grow roses for European supermarkets. The appalling welfare conditions of animals in industrial food production is a product of this and it's not surprising that people get very emotive about it.

Most leading animal liberation activists would still oppose humane non capitalist animal slaughter for food and animal testing for medical science.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

I have no idea what food production would look like in a communist society, very different I expect and far more locally and seasonally based I imagine but I expect people will have to work that out as it happens. But right here and right now as individuals, or groups of individuals, we have very little influence over the food industry beyond the personal choices we make concerning what we eat. And that's all it is a personal choice and I don't think it's fair to judge people on what they chose to eat, which is what this argument so often degenerates into.

It hasn't on my part. I could care less if a vegan makes a personal lifestyle choice to not eat meat and in the process points out how inhumane farming/slaughter is under capitalism. Quote me saying such please.

Fleurnoire-et-rouge #191

A good post!

Mike S. #192

Mike now you’re getting a bit emotionally carried away.

‘Most leading animal liberation activists would still oppose humane non capitalist animal slaughter for food and animal testing for medical science.’

How can you possibly know what ‘most leading animal liberation activists’ would think in a future society? Sweeping generalizations only weaken your argument.

This made me smile:

Edible: good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906)

Mike, again though, it's not that there isn't some truth to your argument. The problem is your assumption that folks on libcom are likely to share those views.

Libcom basically started as a response to the activist element within the anarchist movement - and unless a poster states it pretty explicitly to the contrary, you can safely assume they're in the class struggle camp and have critiques of activism, privilege politics, animal liberation, third wave feminism, etc, etc.

Case in point: just about everyone else picked up that cresspot was joking. In the future, I'd ask folks to clarify their politics before you assume that the worst kind of misanthropic activists casually post on libcom.

This thread is getting even worse. If people come to libcom to be persuaded one way or about eating meat then something is horribly wrong. It's a lifestyle choice (unless religious, cultural or medically advised), NOT a class imperative, inherent to socialist thought or an organisational method, nor is it something that should be dismissed as necessarily unimportant (people's lifestyle choices should be respected on balance).
This thread means something to some people, but nothing to others.
Ask yourself this - is this the type of discussion that needs more input, more posters and more related threads? If you think it does and that is a positive thing, then you're either naive to say the least or you knowingly wish this site to fucked by crazy people.
Vegetarianism has lingered on the fringes of politics for a hundred years, and despite some people's best attempts to bring it centre stage, it remains (and the current trend in meat consumption supports this) firmly a lifestyle choice pure and simple. It may be a very emotive subject to some people, especially teens and twenty somethings (most of whom will drop vegetarianism despite being completely cock sure of being right) - but the thing that has to be realised that class struggle politics isn't about creating a sanctimonious ghetto of puritans just like yourself, it's about having to mix with other less holy people, and to do this you need to accept there is no universal right or wrong on this one - your choice is your business.

This thread is getting even worse.

your choice is your business

I totally agree with the above quotes - this thread is going nowhere slowly and certainly the decision regarding your dietary status is no one else's but your own, but that of course applies to everything and because it is personal choice it doesn't mean that we shouldn't debate it or try to relegate to 'unimportant' non political status. There are plenty of reasons given(and ignored) as to why this is a political issue as well as a social one.
What has fucked me off most about this thread though is how so many people on both sides seem to be so deeply entrenched in their position that there is no chance of them giving any real consideration to another view. Are these forums a place for us to develop our ideas both personally and collectively or a place to point score against and scoff at those we don't agree with or (as I suspect is the case here) make us feel uncomfortable?

Oh yes, and 'sanctimonious'' applies equally well to some of anti vegan meat heads(boom boom, see what I did there?) that have been exposing their incredibly closed minds here.

Relegating it to the status of personal choice doesn't cut it - if it's a choice one could ask 'why then would you make such a choice?'.

Something belonging to the realm of decision making doesn't act as a waiver for moral responsibility; in fact logically it amplifies it.

So it was a bit direct, but Plasmatelly's last post was spot on.

especially teens and twenty somethings (most of whom will drop vegetarianism despite being completely cock sure of being right)

So I think there's at least one older vegan in SF, but of all the vegans I've known in my friendship circles, they've never outlasted 25. Ironically, some of my vegans friends that always told me my vegetarianism (which, almost 30, I still subscribe to) didn't go far enough are the ones who are now eating steak and sushi!

So veganism is an infantile disorder?

I wonder how many anarchists last until their mid twenties.

I am sorry for igniting more than I wanted, indeed the phony baloney revolution remark was a joke, and it's bad what some animal liberators will do to attain their ends. And despite what prominent activists say or do, I don't think violence is an enduring or substantial part of animal liberation and veganism, just like attentat fell out of favor among radicals in the 20th century.
However it's hard to agree with meat eating being strictly a matter of personal choice, I'm not saying it isn't but the more one considers the implications of exploiting animals for food, some sort of concept of animal rights develops and what it means to be a human and what it means to be an animal takes on different meaning; but the more you take on an opinion like this doesn't mean you can justify it as truer than the opinions that don't go in the same direction as yours.
Though I am wondering, after thinking about this, what if a father argued that hitting his children to discipline them was best for them? Aren't children in a similar state as animals? Not that they are anywhere near as simple as animals, but they have a generally lower level of consciousness than adults do (though not in all respects), thus a parent could justify doing harm to them, like a human can justify killing an animal for food- because they don't have the same rights as their natural superiors. This is another topic altogether, but how can society interfere with what goes on in someone's domestic life for matters like these? Obviously spanking does not appeal to me, but it does to other people, and yet children deserve as much freedom from arbitrary injury as anyone else does, even if they are "misbehaving".
And I hope this doesn't incite any more anger even though it will HA HA but I am merely putting it out as something that I MYSELF am PONDERING- so I please ask you all civilly and rationally to refute or do whatever you like with such an analogy- I am just trying to think out how animal rights can emerge in our relation to them.
So for heaven's sake, please try to take this in good humor. PLEASE, COMRADES!

Auld-bod

Fleurnoire-et-rouge #191

A good post!

Mike S. #192

Mike now you’re getting a bit emotionally carried away.

How can you possibly know what ‘most leading animal liberation activists’ would think in a future society? Sweeping generalizations only weaken your argument.

Because I've read their papers and watched their videos. It's animal liberation activists we're talking about (and the most vocal/prominent ones), not animal rights people or just vegans making moral arguments. They think, by in large, killing and skinning an animal then eating it under any circumstances is unacceptable. Not just factory farming. Not just the commodification of animals and the treatment they receive as a result of being profit machines but the actual subjugation or ill treatment of animals (which includes humane farming/slaughter) is off the table for most of the leading animal liberation activists.

Please don't make me compile a list with quotes and videos. Either way, for whatever odd reason this post will be downed and yours upped so whatever you say is correct and whatever I say is wrong. I'm just "being emotional". Over what I don't know, I didn't even really want to respond to your post in depth.

cresspot

I am sorry for igniting more than I wanted, indeed the phony baloney revolution remark was a joke, and it's bad what some animal liberators will do to attain their ends.

Glad it was a joke. Sorry I'm "too slow" to catch it it's just....I've actually heard people seriously say things like that.

plasmatelly

This thread is getting even worse. If people come to libcom to be persuaded one way or about eating meat then something is horribly wrong. It's a lifestyle choice (unless religious, cultural or medically advised), NOT a class imperative, inherent to socialist thought or an organisational method, nor is it something that should be dismissed as necessarily unimportant (people's lifestyle choices should be respected on balance).
This thread means something to some people, but nothing to others.
Ask yourself this - is this the type of discussion that needs more input, more posters and more related threads? If you think it does and that is a positive thing, then you're either naive to say the least or you knowingly wish this site to fucked by crazy people.
Vegetarianism has lingered on the fringes of politics for a hundred years, and despite some people's best attempts to bring it centre stage, it remains (and the current trend in meat consumption supports this) firmly a lifestyle choice pure and simple. It may be a very emotive subject to some people, especially teens and twenty somethings (most of whom will drop vegetarianism despite being completely cock sure of being right) - but the thing that has to be realised that class struggle politics isn't about creating a sanctimonious ghetto of puritans just like yourself, it's about having to mix with other less holy people, and to do this you need to accept there is no universal right or wrong on this one - your choice is your business.

Well, as a matter of theory (intersectionality) the vegan "personal choice" is being melded with communist theory, or I should say, communist culture. It then becomes not a "personal choice" but political. We have racism, we have sexism, we have homophobia (all things we should combat) but now we have speciesism. Fighting speciesism, they say, isn't about a "personal choice" but is being framed as a necessary struggle if all of the other struggles are to be waged successfully. So it would be like saying "it's just a personal choice not to rape women". At least in the eyes of the person who's trying to weave animal liberation in with human liberation.

I'm not saying libcom is "like this" I'm saying this is a "thing" now and is growing momentum, at least in the US, within the radical community.

http://persephonemagazine.com/2011/04/three-cheers-for-intersectionality-from-a-feminist-vegan-lesbian/

Recently Our Hen House produced a video The Gay Animal interviewing Nathan Runkle of the animal rights organization Mercy for Animals. Nathan, a gay man who has experienced homophobia-driven hate crimes, connects the oppression of being openly gay in a homophobic society to the oppression of farm animals living in a society that discards their suffering.

and on and on.....

http://veganjusticeleague.wordpress.com/why-vegan/intersectionalit/

http://vegansofcolor.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/intersectionality-includes-animals/

Chilli Sauce

Mike, again though, it's not that there isn't some truth to your argument. The problem is your assumption that folks on libcom are likely to share those views.

Libcom basically started as a response to the activist element within the anarchist movement - and unless a poster states it pretty explicitly to the contrary, you can safely assume they're in the class struggle camp and have critiques of activism, privilege politics, animal liberation, third wave feminism, etc, etc.

Case in point: just about everyone else picked up that cresspot was joking. In the future, I'd ask folks to clarify their politics before you assume that the worst kind of misanthropic activists casually post on libcom.

Point taken.

Mike S. #201

Mike you completely miss my point unless you are claiming second sight. People change their ideas as living conditions change and a future non capitalist society will reshape us all.

Auld-bod

Mike S. #201

Mike you completely miss my point unless you are claiming second sight. People change their ideas as living conditions change and a future non capitalist society will reshape us all.

lol. Second sight. Ya. As if a change in modes of production will manifest in the world turning vegan and or animal liberation activists accepting even decentralized/localized farming and slaughter of animals.

Mike S. #206

‘lol. Second sight. Ya. As if a change in modes of production will manifest in the world turning vegan and or animal liberation activists accepting even decentralized/localized farming and slaughter of animals.’

Ouch! Mike, I never took you to be such a cynic. ;)

Edited due to my post being just a vent of frustration and serving no purpose.

Auld-bod

Mike S. #206

‘lol. Second sight. Ya. As if a change in modes of production will manifest in the world turning vegan and or animal liberation activists accepting even decentralized/localized farming and slaughter of animals.’

Ouch! Mike, I never took you to be such a cynic. ;)

I'm really a swell guy. I promise. I just don't want to have a change in the base create a superstructure of vegan hippie social relations. I'd commit suicide. My luck everyone will be running around pushing trigger warnings like evangelical Christians. I'd have to check my privilege as a prayer before I eat meat. Maybe a little self flagellation. Total Dystopia.

Chilli Sauce

So it was a bit direct, but Plasmatelly's last post was spot on.

especially teens and twenty somethings (most of whom will drop vegetarianism despite being completely cock sure of being right)

So I think there's at least one older vegan in SF, but of all the vegans I've known in my friendship circles, they've never outlasted 25. Ironically, some of my vegans friends that always told me my vegetarianism (which, almost 30, I still subscribe to) didn't go far enough are the ones who are now eating steak and sushi!

Ive been a kevin since I was 15 some 28 years... The shouty ones are always the complete cunts.

Mike S.

My luck everyone will be running around pushing trigger warnings like evangelical Christians. I'd have to check my privilege as a prayer before I eat meat.

I'm surprised Mike managed to go this long in this topic without bringing in his other favorite topics to rant on about ad nauseam.

Feminists taking over and imposing a dictatorship of the privilege-checking vegan trigger warning? File under 'things orders of magnitude less likely than communism'.

Mike S:
Firstly, the part of my post which you highlighted, in which I said that these arguments often degenerate into people judging each other, which you aked me to quote you on that, was not directed at you, rather a general point about this thread. I put a paragraph break in, but I should have made that more obvious.
You said

You simply haven't spent any time educating yourself concerning the new "vibe", if you will, in animal liberation activist culture.

Quite true, I really have better things to "educate myself" with. There is simply not enough hours of the day, or much inclination on my part, to trawl the internet looking for every batshit marginal group posting on their blogs and tumblrs. That's one of the funny things about the internet, if you throw in a few keywords you can find just about anything. It depends on what the new vibe is really, about a decade ago the FBI declared animal rights activism to be the number one domestic threat in America, and continues to give it a priority, rather than putting in as much effort to investigating right-wing violence which has grown exponentially in the last decade. On the other hand, it was only a couple of years ago that the UK police declared anarchists to be the UK's number one domestic terror threat & instructed people to report any anarchists they knew to them (later rescinded) so I do take a rather jaundiced view of who we are supposed to be scared of at any given time. I prefer not to get swept up in moral panics.
And how new is this vibe? My understanding is that the bulk of the arson, sabotage etc in recent years was carried out by the Earth Liberation Army, now defunct, either having stopped activities or gone to prison. As for the ALF, I remember being evacuated from work as a result of a bomb threat, some 23 years ago, when I was working in a university building, where the medical department did animal based research. The ALF fired the University of California-Davis veterinary lab in 1987. Hell, if you want to go back far enough, the London Hospital's doctors received death threats from anti-vivisectionists at around the turn of the twentieth century. There is nothing new about violence, or the threat of, being used by extreme wings of the animal rights movements and if anything it has been on the wane in recent years. Which is a good thing, in case there's any ambiguity here as to whether or not you think I support it.
Yes, there are high profile, well high profile in very small circles because most people have never heard of them, individuals who advocate objectionable things who now have a platform which is bigger than previous generations thanks to the internet, but that doesn't mean that they are actually Svengali figures, directing hordes of cult-like followers. There really are bigger things to worry about, stuff that's in plain sight which doesn't require dredging tumblr to locate.
You have a very combative, competitive posting style, arguing against something that no-one was advocating in the first place. You said "don't make me compile a list with quotes" (nobody's making you do anything) and then promptly posted up a bunch of links and a quote, without any prompting, some 5 minutes later. It is very wearisome and not at all conducive to decent discussion to be in an argument with someone who is in it for the win. Mostly, people just walk away.
And dammit, someone else has called bingo on intersectionality, privilege-checking and trigger-warnings.

Joseph Kay

Feminists taking over and imposing a dictatorship of the privilege-checking vegan trigger warning? File under 'things orders of magnitude less likely than communism'.

Ya no shit. Hence the joke. You do realize the post was joke right? Lighten up man, people have a sense of humor on libcom.

Mike S., earlier.

fleurnoire-et-rouge

Mike S:
Firstly, the part of my post which you highlighted, in which I said that these arguments often degenerate into people judging each other, which you aked me to quote you on that, was not directed at you, rather a general point about this thread. I put a paragraph break in, but I should have made that more obvious.
You said

You simply haven't spent any time educating yourself concerning the new "vibe", if you will, in animal liberation activist culture.

Quite true, I really have better things to "educate myself" with. There is simply not enough hours of the day, or much inclination on my part, to trawl the internet looking for every batshit marginal group posting on their blogs and tumblrs. That's one of the funny things about the internet, if you throw in a few keywords you can find just about anything. It depends on what the new vibe is really, about a decade ago the FBI declared animal rights activism to be the number one domestic threat in America, and continues to give it a priority, rather than putting in as much effort to investigating right-wing violence which has grown exponentially in the last decade.

You have to understand a couple things, I live in Berkeley where there's an abundance of animal liberation vegan types and in teh overall Bay Area a lot of what you perceive to be "tumblr" acivists who meld in with the overall leftist/communist community. A lot of my gripes concerning what you perceive to be "tumblr" activism come from my experience within the community where I live. I'm not on libcom implying this site has these problems I'm basically complaining about the state of the left where I live. Call it venting if you will. I understand this has gotten on your and others nerves but there is a point to it- the way I see it, the Bay Area is a sort of "vanguard" (excuse my Leninist vocabulary) as far as setting the culture on the left in America (The pacific north west as well- Seattle). I complain about it often and honestly am considering walking away from "revolutionary" or radical politics/activity all together. I honestly see the left where I live morphing into an absurd spectacle. I'm 40 years old so I've seen my share of useless tactics and cultural fads but, honestly, I've just about had enough.

Whatever criticisms I have for animal liberation activists and vegans largely come from my experience battling them in the arena of animal testing for medical science. I have a family member dying of Alzheimers and these people are trying to pass legislation banning animal testing and some are actually destroying research/threatening researchers. I come into contact with these people, face to face, within the community where I live (same with the so called "tumblr privilege activists"). Again, you need to understand Berkeley is a sort of Mecca for vegan hippie leftist lifestyle's and shitty activism. Intersectionality, as far as pushing animal liberation, isn't just an "internet thing" where I am. But you can go on framing my posts as some illogical out in la la land pointless diatribe against some irrelevant tumblr culture if it pleases you. I mean...you know...I'm here to please :)

I live in Berkeley where there's an abundance of animal liberation vegan types and in teh overall Bay Area a lot of what you perceive to be "tumblr" acivists who meld in with the overall leftist/communist community. A lot of my gripes concerning what you perceive to be "tumblr" activism come from my experience within the community where I live.

To be fair to Mike, I first became politicized living in the US - and certainly not in a vanguard NW town ;) - and it my town was dominated by some pretty cringey activism. I used to be known as "class war Chill"* just because I thought class was, ya know, worth talking about. So it very much does go beyond Tumblr.

What I would say Mike, is that I don't think anyone on libcom particularly considers themselves on the left. I mean, the left has all sorts problems - activism is only one of many. And while bad activism cuts across the leftist/anarchist mileu, I think it's worth noting that most regular libcom posters have a criticism of the left that goes far beyond activism.

*Not really Chilli, don't worry.

Mike S.

You have to understand a couple things, I live in Berkeley where there's an abundance of animal liberation vegan types and in teh overall Bay Area a lot of what you perceive to be "tumblr" acivists who meld in with the overall leftist/communist community. A lot of my gripes concerning what you perceive to be "tumblr" activism come from my experience within the community where I live. I'm not on libcom implying this site has these problems I'm basically complaining about the state of the left where I live. Call it venting if you will. I understand this has gotten on your and others nerves but there is a point to it- the way I see it, the Bay Area is a sort of "vanguard" (excuse my Leninist vocabulary) as far as setting the culture on the left in America (The pacific north west as well- Seattle). I complain about it often and honestly am considering walking away from "revolutionary" or radical politics/activity all together. I honestly see the left where I live morphing into an absurd spectacle. I'm 40 years old so I've seen my share of useless tactics and cultural fads but, honestly, I've just about had enough.

Whatever criticisms I have for animal liberation activists and vegans largely come from my experience battling them in the arena of animal testing for medical science. I have a family member dying of Alzheimers and these people are trying to pass legislation banning animal testing and some are actually destroying research/threatening researchers. I come into contact with these people, face to face, within the community where I live (same with the so called "tumblr privilege activists"). Again, you need to understand Berkeley is a sort of Mecca for vegan hippie leftist lifestyle's and shitty activism. Intersectionality, as far as pushing animal liberation, isn't just an "internet thing" where I am. But you can go on framing my posts as some illogical out in la la land pointless diatribe against some irrelevant tumblr culture if it pleases you. I mean...you know...I'm here to please :)

I think it's important to keep in mind that the Left (in the sense of Leninist groups and other left-wing activist types) has virtually no influence on class struggle in the US or really on much of anything outside its own subculture, though I am unfamiliar with this Alzheimer's legislation in your area and the issues surrounding it. As far as I can tell, the American Left has been something of absurd spectacle ever since it became largely detached from class struggle after World War II, and its attachment in the couple decades before that was primarily in the reactionary form of the Stalinist CPUSA and its influence in the CIO.

I've encountered similar tendencies to what you describe in my own experience on the East Coast and it is very grating, but I think that scene is irrelevant enough that it's more sensible to just dismiss it than devote much time and energy combating it.

I forget who made the point but a few pages ago someone suggested that for purely practical, nutritional reasons a future libertarian communist society would necessarily have to be rid of large-scale meat production and I’ve been wondering since then what, if anything, people think about (and in particular if anyone has any solid evidence that contradicts) these notions and numbers from the much maligned and controversial The Vegetarian Myth (sorry for the long quote):

'“The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of
beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a
world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and
malnutrition,” writes Jim Motavalli.17 Yes, it is a waste, but not for the
reasons he thinks. As we have seen in abundance, growing that grain
will require the felling of forests, the plowing of prairies, the draining
of wetlands, and the destruction of topsoil. In most places on earth,
it will never be sustainable, and where it just possibly might be, it will
require rotation with animals on pasture. And it’s ridiculous to the
point of insanity to take that world-destroying grain and feed it to
a ruminant who could have happily subsisted on those now extinct
forests, grasslands, and wetlands of our planet, while building topsoil
and species diversity.

So you’re an environmentalist; why are you still eating annual
monocrops?

“According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support
60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people
growing corn and only two producing cattle,” Motavalli continues.
And he believes them? Set aside the fact that a diet of soy, wheat,
or corn will result in massive malnutrition—along with fun stuff like
kwashiorkor, pellagra, retardation, blindness—and ultimately death.
The figure of two cattle might be true if you assume grain feeding,
though I can’t make the math come out. By contrast, a ten acre farm
of perennial polyculture in a mid-Atlantic climate could produce:
3,000 eggs
1,000 broilers
80 stewing hens
2,000 pounds of beef
2,500 pounds of pork
100 turkeys
50 rabbits
Not to mention a few inches of topsoil.18 This is the amount of
food that Joel Salatin—one of the high priests of the local, sustainable
movement—produces on ten acres of his Polyface Farm in Virginia.
The chickens get some supplemental grain; everything else eats grass.
That’s 6,800,050 calories.19 Figuring 720,000 calories a year (2,000
x 365) per person, if they eat nothing but the above, that’s enough to
support at least nine people and support them in full health by providing
essential protein and fat. Add in the organ meats and the vast
quantities of nutritious bone broth that could be prepared, and you
have more crucial animal fats and fat-soluble vitamins.

As I have said, two-thirds of the world is utterly unsuited to growing
grain. And not just mountain tops in far distant Nepal, but right
here in, say, New England. Cows are what grow here. So are deer,
in their forest-destroying abundance. To eat the supposedly earthfriendly
diet Motavalli is suggesting means that everyone in a cold,
hot, wet, or dry climate would have to be dependent on the American
Midwest, with its devastated prairies and ghostly Limberlost, and its
ever shrinking soil, rivers, and aquifers. It also means dependence on
coal or oil to ship that grain two thousand miles. So you’re an environmentalist;
why are you still eating outside your bioregion?

“A pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water,
whereas a pound of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds.”20 One
more time: only if you’re feeding them grain. On pasture, beef
cattle will drink eight to fifteen gallons of water a day. The average
pasture-raised steer takes 21 months to reach market weight.21 That’s
630 days, at eight pounds a gallon, for a total of anywhere between
40,320-75,600 pounds of water total for an entire cow. That’s 450-500
pound of meat, with another 146 pounds of fat and bone trimmed
off, which in an earlier, saner era would have been valued for food as
well. Taking the mean of 475 pounds, the midpoint of 57,960 gallons
yields a figure of 122 pounds of water per pound of meat, not Motavalli’s
2,500 to 6,000, a much more appropriate use of resources and
a more accurate fact. And I’m only figuring for the muscle meat, not
the organ meats, which are the most nutritionally dense and historically
valued parts of the animal.

A dairy cow will drink more water, anywhere from twenty-five to
fifty gallons, depending on the breed, the temperature, and how many
gallons of milk she’s producing. For nine gallons of milk, she drinks
about eighteen gallons of water, a roughly two-to-one ratio. Never
mind water into wine: this is the original life-affirming transmutation.
More importantly, compare the nutrition in that pound of wheat
against that pound of beef. The beef contains almost twice as many
calories (592 vs. 339, per 100 grams). Calories are simply energy,
which means the beef is providing substantially more. If you want to
compare pounds of water for calories (energy) produced, wheat and
grass-fed beef end up almost even. For wheat, sixty pounds of water
produces 1524.45 calories, or 25.7 calories per pound of water. For
grass-fed beef, it’s twenty-two calories from a pound of water.

And there’s more than simple energy: those beef calories contain
more nutrients, especially essential protein and fat. The numbers on
those are 21 g vs. 13.7 g, and 8.55 vs. 1.87 g, respectively.22 It’s also
crucial to understand that the protein in the beef contains the full
spectrum of necessary amino acids and is easy for humans to assimilate,
while the protein in the wheat is both low-quality and largely
inaccessible because it comes wrapped in indigestible cellulose. For
the water used, beef is better.

More importantly, cows are not the most water-efficient ruminants.
They’re inappropriate for many arid environments, particularly
landscapes where they didn’t evolve. Their hooves and teeth are too
destructive to the native plants and they simply drink too much. An
antelope, a buffalo, a bighorn sheep, a zebra, or a camel would be better
suited to those biotic communities—and the water per calorie and
water per nutrient ratio would further outstrip wheat.

But most importantly, animals aren’t ever-expanding water balloons.
For a steer, almost all of that water will be returned in the form
of urine and feces laden with nutrients and bacteria, value-added as
it were, to the land that needs it. For a dairy animal, there’s also milk.
In an area like Massachusetts—cold, rocky, steep, with forty-three
inches of rainfall a year—dairy makes sense. That’s why if I say “Vermont”
you’re likely to picture a cow. Or you might cut right to the
chase and picture Ben and Jerry. In a dry area like New Mexico, dairy
makes a lot less sense. And plowing up that New Mexico land for
annual grains makes even less. Attempting annual crops will destroy
that land forever. That is the point the political vegetarians need to
understand. In the end all our calculations don’t matter. Who cares if
more food can be produced by farming when farming is destroying
the world?

The logic of the land tells us to eat the animals that can eat the
tough cellulose that survives there. But the logic of the vegans leads
us away from the local, our only chance of being sustainable, back to
the desperate Mississippi and her dying wetlands, her eroding delta.
Yes, eating grain directly is less water-intensive than eating grain-fed
beef. But why eat either? Animals integrated into appropriate polycultures
destroy nothing.'

factvalue

I forget who made the point but a few pages ago someone suggested that for purely practical, nutritional reasons a future libertarian communist society would necessarily have to be rid of large-scale meat production and I’ve been wondering since then what, if anything, people think about (and in particular if anyone has any solid evidence that contradicts) these notions and numbers from the much maligned and controversial The Vegetarian Myth (sorry for the long quote):

'

Where I live, writing, advocating or publicly speaking about the points in that book would get you a pie in the face at anarchist events (buy skinny little teenage boys in all black with masks on). The absurd spectacle. Then another anarchist event will be boycotted because it's taking place in a building where porn is produced. Then at one of the largest anti capitalist events in our lifetime privilege theorists will call anyone and everyone at "Occupy" racist for A. using the term occupy B. speaking (if you're a white male) C. call you privileged while guilt lashing you if you're not a homeless mentally ill woman of color.

Anyway, Lierre brings up some good points and for doing that she was humiliated. Imagine what happens around here if you dare question any other leftist/activist dogma that has to do with actual human beings.

Joseph Kay

Mike S., earlier.

More like this

i swear to God that's a young Zack Morris.

Mike

Where I live, writing, advocating or publicly speaking about the points in that book would get you a pie in the face at anarchist events (buy skinny little teenage boys in all black with masks on). The absurd spectacle. Then another anarchist event will be boycotted because it's taking place in a building where porn is produced. Then at one of the largest anti capitalist events in our lifetime privilege theorists will call anyone and everyone at "Occupy" racist for A. using the term occupy B. speaking (if you're a white male) C. call you privileged while guilt lashing you if you're not a homeless mentally ill woman of color.

You forgot lesbian.

But seriously man, let it go. If you want to start a thread discussing the short comings of the scene in your town, go for it. But it's not appropriate for every single thread.

[youtube]_TqyKsnQD38[/youtube]

dp

'

Chilli Sauce

Mike

Where I live, writing, advocating or publicly speaking about the points in that book would get you a pie in the face at anarchist events (buy skinny little teenage boys in all black with masks on). The absurd spectacle. Then another anarchist event will be boycotted because it's taking place in a building where porn is produced. Then at one of the largest anti capitalist events in our lifetime privilege theorists will call anyone and everyone at "Occupy" racist for A. using the term occupy B. speaking (if you're a white male) C. call you privileged while guilt lashing you if you're not a homeless mentally ill woman of color.

You forgot lesbian.

But seriously man, let it go. If you want to start a thread discussing the short comings of the scene in your town, go for it. But it's not appropriate for every single thread.

In case you weren't aware Lierre Keith, the person who's quoted above, was attacked by anarchists, 3 men, at a bookfair here in San Fransisco. It's kinda relative to the thread. I think she might be a sort of primitivist though, she argues that civilization is unsustainable and these idiots probably didn't even read her book as she argues against the meat industry/factory farming.

Chilli Sauce

i swear to God that's a young Zack Morris.

His name is Brent Rambo and he approves of this thread.

[youtube]Ir7UmJ_foHs[/youtube]

Mike S:

I didn't realise that you lived in the Bay Area ( the mention of which alone is likely to elicit some eye-rolls.) As far as I'm aware the area's been attracting this sort of folk since the Grateful Dead played the Fillmore, earlier probably. You have my sympathy, you're living in the belly of the beast. However, that's not really what this site is about and as Chilli Sauce suggested, why don't you start a thread to have a good vent about this? I understand the cathartic ( if only temporary) value of having a good vent, there's 101 things that piss me off and having a good rant, just getting it off your chest, it's just not conducive to discussion to do it in every thread.
Activisty shit? You think your Occupy was bad? We had an actual card-carrying, uniform-wearing, run around in the woods with guns, fascist militia at ours....well, they had really good tents and survival skills :eek:

Sorry to drag this thread back up but I think the last word should go to a chap with unparalleled authority on this topic:

http://youtu.be/KmjLqddPqZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mOdCiWjuVQ

Hehehe! This guy is pretty funny - I've seen him before calling David Wolf a fat fucking fraud, which is about right. There are so many charlatans trying to make a quick buck from veganism and one of the worst is vegan goddess Shazzie. Absolutely fucking revolting.

fruit the fuck up!

he has a good point.

There are loads of fuckin' hucksters in the vegan or raw food world.

The best ones are the ones who advocate a ketogenic diet (low carb, hardly eating), and then they take racing gels (mega sugar and GLYCOGEN) to finish a running race.and then afterwards go back to their advocacy of a ketogenic diet.

'Without carbs I would fall flat on my face in a running race but DON'T EAT CARBS'

Some of these low carb gurus even sell starch based supplements, which is carb-based. It's just too audacious.

Seasons Greetings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX9EAavxrus

Presumably this guy ears some protein though? From what source.
I'm type 1 diabetic - I wonder how I'd get on going massive on the fruit. I think maybe I'll give it a go. My current diet doesn't do it for me ad I'm always hungry. 20 bananas at one sitting though?
Ok, things to do so I'd better split now! Groan - cue the tumbleweed!

Auld Bod - that was a fucking corker!

Webby, I've only heard positive things from diabetics about Dr Neal Barnard's books, he advocates a plant based diet..which doesn't ask you to eat 10's of bananas in one sitting, don't worry about that.

'Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs'

Is the title

From what I gather from the reviews, the type 2's eliminate or almost eliminate their symptoms, whereas the type 1's manage to reduce the amount of insulin they use and they have better energy levels generally.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check him out.

Kureigo-San:

I am assuming you are making the common mistake of confusing type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, type 1 being an autoimmune disease, which cannot be cured or "reversed" in any way. I expect the diabetics which have said positive things about Bernard have type 2, because he's only had criticism from doctors and nutritionalists with expertise in type 1.
With type 1 you will always be insulin dependent. The long acting insulin is calculated at a baseline which is more or less constant and is not dependent on what you eat over the day. The rapid action insulin you take at meals is calculated upon how many grams of carbohydrate you consume, so there's a bit of a no brainer going on here. If you eat a carrot, you are going to need far less insulin to process it than a quart of ice cream. The insulin you take is the amount you need to process the carbohydrate in that meal. You will (probably) have better energy levels if you reduce the amount of fast-acting, processed sugars in your diet - whether or not you are vegan - however the suggestion that the goal should be reducing the amount of insulin is not only fallacious, it's bloody dangerous.
Bernard calls his book "Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs" Note, he does not specify type 2 diabetes, of which diet and exercise is a useful way of managing the condition. It's implication is it is good for all forms of diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, little or no insulin is produced by the body and it must be replaced. In gestational diabetes, a strict vegan diet is problematic for other reasons.
It's fair to say that anyone with experience of type 1 diabetes will dismiss this book as not very useful. The problem is that it is very expensive to be a type 1 diabetic. My daughter's insulin bill alone is more than $200 a month, which because we live in Canada is covered by the medical system. In the US, insulin is more expensive and people regularly endanger their health to cut costs. People skimp on the amount of insulin they inject, don't test their blood often enough (the test strips cost about 25 cents each, and you need to test at least 4 times a day) don't visit a doctor to get their A1C checked often enough. People get sick, have complications, including amputations and blindness, their life expectancies are lower. Implying that being vegan can somehow improve the condition is just rubbish. So to suggest, as Bernard does, that you can "reverse" diabetes or that you should be cutting back on your insulin, is nothing more than snake oil.

Common sense was assumed, that before any lessening of insulin doses that your doc shoud be consulted. I wasn't saying 'go vegan and diabetes disappears'. You basically just made the assertion that veganism can't cure anything and used that same assertion to conclude this is snake oil. Which doesn't even make sense because he's not selling any repeat products, he doesn't sell fruit, veg and starches. Quit wasting your time reaffirming what you already believe with me and email somebody who has left a review stating their improved condition. Makes sense to do that, no? I think so. Seems a much better modus operandi than shouting "bollocks!" ad infinitum..

Nope, because you still don't know the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes.Common sense is that if you had type 1 diabetes and asked your doctor to reduce your insulin, they would tell you to take the amount your body needs. Less insulin is not winning at type 1 diabetes. I have no idea whether veganism can cure anything, it certainly cannot cure type 1 diabetes, which "The scientifically proven system for reversing diabetes without drugs" would imply. Cutting out meat and dairy will not magically kick-start back to life the islets of Langerhans which the body's immune system has killed and it won't arrest the 24/7 attack on the pancreas that type 1 diabetes is. It is an extremely stupid assertion to suggest that a type 1 diabetic should take less insulin. In any case, the consumption of meat has makes bugger all difference in how much insulin people need to take, as it's used to metabolise carbohydrates. In fact, if your diet replaces meat with plant based foods - carbohydrates - your insulin requirements will rise. Some people with type 2 diabetes also take insulin, in which case getting their health back to a point where they don't need to is a good idea, but suggesting that a type 1 diabetic should be reducing their intake is complete bollocks. Your body needs exactly as much as it needs, not more, not less. I'm assuming you know that before insulin was sythesised that type 1 diabetes was 100% fatal?

he's not selling any repeat products, he doesn't sell fruit, veg and starches.

Very true. But he does sell a fuck ton of books
http://www.nealbarnard.org/books/

I really enjoyed the OP, but then I had to comb through the endless garbage to find the posts which actually responded to the points raised in the OP. That was a poop experience, let me tell you.

It's a bit more complicated than what you say about replacing meat with carbohydrates means greater insulin need. The presence of fat in the bloodstream is quite a hitherto ignored factor in the way we talk about diabeties - the main effect of which is the pancreas struggling more to function because of the thicker blood impeding circulation. That's definitely true and you didn't mention it so it would be worth following this strand. You can find a fair few rather long seminars of his for free on Youtube, posted by himself in some cases..the content of which is not guilty of mystification , advertising or any other behaviour snake oil salesman get up to. Releasing 12 books in your professional life since 1990 makes someone a con artist? Science discloses new information as time goes on; his own personal professional familiarity with both regular and exceptional cases would develop over time, presumably sometimes prompting the need to correct or clarify things printed in earlier books. Free and informative lectures on youtube, no repeat products, 12 books over the course of 23 years, and most importantly good results is not the resumé of a snake oil fraudster. Hopefully you realise how reactionary it is to think that.

There are, as I think we would all agree, a whole bunch of shitpots out there that prey on people's health problems, body image etc. Obviously you have the corporate ones - Slimfast, fat binders, mainstream vitamin products etc. The vegan/raw food advocates often fall into a sort of self help/positive thinking/new age mystic category which I find particularly offensive. The thing is though, that amongst the dross there is almost certainly some valuable info, and I would rather give the benefit of the doubt than write something off completely.
I was diagnosed type 1 just over a year ago but took to using insulin like a duck to water and have had almost perfect control of my BG from day one. So, reducing my insulin requirements is not something I've given much thought to. The problem that I have is that I'm ALWAYS hungry, crave sweet things and am overweight. I want a diet that will help with these issues and will also be helpful for my primary and my other secondary illnesses. A bit more energy would be good too. I try not too eat a lot of fruit because of the sugar content but think that I may experiment with larger amounts even if that means more insulin. The truth is I've never eaten fruit and though 'aw, that's made me feel like shit'. That's happened plenty of times with all other food though.

The presence of fat in the bloodstream is quite a hitherto ignored factor in the way we talk about diabeties - the main effect of which is the pancreas struggling more to function because of the thicker blood impeding circulation.

Again, you are talking about type 2 diabetes. Type 1 and type 2 diabetes are completely different things. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, you need a faulty gene to get it. It is completely incurable it cannot be "reversed without drugs." Type 1 and type 2 both involve the pancreas. Alzheimer's and epilepsy both involve the brain, but they're not the same either. In type 1 the pancreas is not "struggling to function because of the thicker blood impeding circulation," it's not functioning because the beta cells which produce insulin are dead. In type 1 diabetes the pancreas produces no, or a negligible amounts of insulin. In type 1 diabetes you need to inject the right amount of insulin not because you have too much fat in your bloodstream but because you are not making any insulin yourself. You are not going to get that pancreas working again. Not with any diet. It's actually a very simple concept - they are two totally different conditions. The thing is, type 1 diabetes is very controllable and the modern insulins are excellent - providing you do it properly and suggesting that somehow aiming to reduce your insulin intake as a type 1 diabetic belies not only an ignorance about the condition but can be very dangerous thing for a type 1 diabetic to do. How much insulin you take is not a signifier of how good or bad you are at diabetes, it's just how much your body needs. In the words of this man
http://www.otago.ac.nz/dsm/people/expertise/profile/index.html?id=721

My main concern, however, is that some of the claims made by the author are over-rated; in particular, to imply that Type 1 diabetes can be reversed is mischievous.

Too fucking right I'm being reactionary about this. I'm reacting to a decade of people with a glancing, day-time TV knowledge of type 2 diabetes, having read an article, talked to Auntie Flossie with type 2, watched Dr OZ or a youtube channel and decided they can throw around hinkey advice about some miracle therapy for type 1 diabetes. It is not reversible. It is, however very manageable and the miracle therapy is insulin.

Webby: the reason why you feel hungry all the time is that you're not producing amylin, which would have been co-secreted with insulin. It's the hormone which tells your brain that you're full. You can take sythesised amylin, but you can work around it without it by tricking your brain a bit. I know it sounds counterintuitive if you're really hungry but it helps if you eat smaller meals and snack on slow carbs in between, it helps with the cravings and stabilising the blood sugar levels. Adding some protein helps.

Webby: the reason why you feel hungry all the time is that you're not producing amylin, which would have been co-secreted with insulin. It's the hormone which tells your brain that you're full. You can take sythesised amylin, but you can work around it without it by tricking your brain a bit. I know it sounds counterintuitive if you're really hungry but it helps if you eat smaller meals and snack on slow carbs in between, it helps with the cravings and stabilising the blood sugar levels. Adding some protein helps.

Thanks Fleurnoire. I already eat smaller meals and graze on oatcakes, nuts and small portions of fruit etc but I still end up consuming a lot of calories without ever feeling satisfied for more than about 5 minutes. I really crave sweet stuff as well and regularly succumb to the dubious delights of chocolate etc - these don't make me feel full either.
I'm a bit overweight(6'2'', 14 stone) which is shite, especially as I got used to weighing less than 11 stone before I was diagnosed, but the main problem is that feeling hungry all the time is such a fucking bore.

Come the revolution, I think I'll throw a massive tantrum if fleurnoire-et-rouge isn't elected to position of general coordinator for the international soviet for diabetes management.

Come the revolution, I think I'll throw a massive tantrum if fleurnoire-et-rouge isn't elected to position of general coordinator for the international soviet for diabetes management.

An entirely sensible suggestion. Still, fuck that, let's have Raw Food Goddess Shazzie instead! It's all about love you know - I'm gonna love my pancreas back to life!
Let the light shine! http://www.shazzie.com/love/song/light_shines.mp3
Here's the words http://www.shazzie.com/love/song/ altogether now!

leomarinus wrote:

Come the revolution, I think I'll throw a massive tantrum if fleurnoire-et-rouge isn't elected to position of general coordinator for the international soviet for diabetes management.

Fuck that. People can self-manage their own medical conditions. :) (With full access to current, relevant medical opinion.)

As for the hunger, Webby, it's always going to be with you but snacking is your friend (along with regular monitoring of your BS) but upping the protein content does help, as does having a drink(non-sugary) with it because fluids help fill your stomach. Unfortunately, if you've got a sweet tooth, snacking on chocolate etc will make it worse because it causes your BS to spike and drop. If it's any consolation, and I doubt that it is if you're a chocoholic, the less you eat of it, the less you crave. I did without dairy in my diet for a few years, which pretty much meant no chocolate and vegan cakes, with the best will in the world, can be a bit cacky, and I never really went back to wanting the sweet stuff much.

Even better!

I don't even remember saying anywhere that type 1 can be reversed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qae1KoPuFdc

Here in this video is a rare specimen, a type 1 diabetic and he eats thousands of calories of sweet fruit.

Is he lying?

Fuck that. People can self-manage their own medical conditions. (With full access to current, relevant medical opinion.)

Are you sure? There's only so far you can go with revolutionary zeal, rubber gloves and a mirror.

Kureigo-San:

I don't even remember saying anywhere that type 1 can be reversed.

I think it was Dr Neal Barnard

'Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs'

Does he specify type 2 in his title, or even often refer to the fact that type 1 is irreversible?
Was it not you who endorsed it by saying

whereas the type 1's manage to reduce the amount of insulin they use

?
If Dr Bernard had written a book called
"Eating a sensible, controlled, reduced fat diet, in conjunction with exercise will make everybody, regardless of whether or not they have diabetes, feel better" then it would be different. However, that's just common sense and wouldn't sell in a world where people want miracle fixes. And it wouldn't be adding to the mountains of miracle cures marketed at diabetics. In a world which habitually confuses the different types of diabetes, the best you can say it's misleading. Even suggesting that you can "reverse" type 2, is very dodgy ground. Managing it would be more accurate, but that doesn't sound so sexy. At the worst, it's dangerous, especially to newly diagnosed diabetics, (as evidenced in that video, which I'll come back to later,) especially in the places like the US where if you're not armed to the teeth with medical insurance, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes can very easily push you into poverty and where people habitually play russian roulette with their health in order to reduce their medical bills. But there again, Dr Barnard is a specialist in psychiatry and a lobbyist, so endocrinology is not his area of expertise. If he was, he might actually go out of his way to point this out. I'm not noticing it on his homepage.
http://www.nealbarnard.org/books/diabetes/

Perhaps it's worth pointing out that Barnard, his books and the organisation he fronts is not ideologically neutral. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (members of which who are actual physicians numbering less than 5%) is largely funded by Nanci Alexander, multimillionaire vegan activist and PETA (also largely bankrolled by Nanci, ) so there's an inherent bias in it's work anyway, given it's primary interest in animal welfare, that it recommends veganism as a cure for just about everything is one from the no shit Sherlock file. However, the PCRM concern for the welfare of animals in medical research does not extend any pressing concerns with dangerous medical experiments done on poor people in countries without acceptable standards of medical consent. They are associated with Henry J Heimlich (of the Heimlic maneuver fame) - in fact they have an award named for him - who has been trotting around the globe for the past few decades, injecting patient who have HIV/AIDS with malarial infected blood. At no point has any of his test subjects (who are incidentally denied anti-retroviral therapy) leapt up, miraculously cured by being infected with a disease which kills around a million people a year. In fact nobody except the PCRM and his local newspaper has anything positive to say about this.
http://www.circare.org/malariotherapy.htm
Heimlich and associates were last spotted doing this in Ethiopia, much to the surprise of the Ethiopian Health Ministry. But at least no animals are harmed the the pursuance of this research. So, I will pour scorn on something which comes out of an organisation who's primary concern is for animal rights but names an award for medicine and is associated with a man who has no compassion when it comes to infecting sick people with a deadly disease, with no credible oversight, in order to prove a dangerous theory which was discredited decades ago. I don't call that responsible medicine.

However, the PCRM do throw spectacular galas, in which celebrities turn up and give each other awards. Which is nice, if you like that sort of thing.

Here in this video is a rare specimen, a type 1 diabetic and he eats thousands of calories of sweet fruit.

Is he lying?

Still not getting the difference between type 1 and type 2? You can eat whatever you like with type 1 diabetes. That's why you take insulin, to cover the carbohydrates you consume. You count carbs not calories. I have absolutely no reason to believe he's lying. I do, however, have every reason to believe he's a complete idiot. 30 bananas a day's not going to be good for anyone, whether you produce your own insulin or inject it. For one thing it's likely to give you hyperkalemia (too much potassium.) Also, if you live off a raw fruit only diet, you're going to be deficient in fatty acids, amino acids, certain minerals. A young, fit active healthy man will feel fine on it, probably, but the long term deficiencies will add up. As for his idiocy? He says:
"Type 1 is a little tougher to reverse." Much tougher, an account of it being irreversible. Maybe Banana Man should be spending a little less time on the beach and a little more time informing himself about his own medical condition. Then he goes on to talk about someone Kirk/Kurt Someone or other, who he said reversed his type 1 diabetes. No he didn't, whoever he was. Banana Man says that Kirk (?) got an early diagnosis and fruit blahblahblah all better. Nope. That is what is known as the Honeymoon Period, and like all honeymoons, it doesn't last. An early diagnosis means that some beta cells are still working - they won't be for long - they will soon be completely destroyed. It often occurs when you start insulin therapy and you start getting low blood sugars. It's not the pancreas repairing itself, it's it's dying gasps. From wikipedia:

The honeymoon period for patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 is the period that often follows diagnosis and initiation of insulin treatment. It is often suggestive of remission, but it is important to note that the two are unrelated - it is not a cure for type 1 diabetes.[1] During this period some of the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas have not been completely destroyed yet and produce unpredictable amounts of endogenous insulin. This period does not occur in all patients.[2] If the honeymoon period does occur, it lasts for varying lengths of time and can affect diabetics differently.

Whoever Kirk/Kurt is, he's either taking his insulin properly now or very sick.

Plasmatelly wrote:

Are you sure? There's only so far you can go with revolutionary zeal, rubber gloves and a mirror.

Absolutely. However, I'm kind of hoping for a world where people can have access to decent medical care, without resorting to hokey crap and quackery because they can't afford to see a doctor.

The honeymoon period for patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 is the period that often follows diagnosis and initiation of insulin treatment. It is often suggestive of remission, but it is important to note that the two are unrelated - it is not a cure for type 1 diabetes.[1] During this period some of the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas have not been completely destroyed yet and produce unpredictable amounts of endogenous insulin. This period does not occur in all patients.[2] If the honeymoon period does occur, it lasts for varying lengths of time and can affect diabetics differently

Yep, I experienced this myself and actually had to cut my insulin out completely to avoid hypos. In my ignorance, the first time it happened I almost convinced myself that I had been wrongly diagnosed. Wishful thinking and after a second(and final) apparent remission I accepted my fate.
I looked up Amylin but couldn't really find much useful info - do you know if it is available on prescription in the UK and whether or not it's considered safe?

fleurnoire-et-rouge

Plasmatelly wrote:

Are you sure? There's only so far you can go with revolutionary zeal, rubber gloves and a mirror.

Absolutely. However, I'm kind of hoping for a world where people can have access to decent medical care, without resorting to hokey crap and quackery because they can't afford to see a doctor.

Hi fleurnoire - have you read Suckers by Rose Shapiro?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suckers:_How_alternative_medicine_makes_fools_of_us_all

Ok, I'll come out of the closet now. After tracking this thread I decided to be open minded and give a high carb low fat vegan diet a go. To tell you the truth, I was more motivated by my annoyance at the the meat headed attitude(see what I did there?) of a certain anti vegan poster than anyone else although UV and KS had quite an impact too.
So, within weeks of changing I had more energy, more enthusiasm and all round better health than I've had for many years. After about a month my insulin requirements started to reduce and I started to lose weight despite the fact that I now consume around 900 grams of carbs and 4000 calories per day, mostly from sweet fruit. I NEVER feel hungry simply because I eat whatever I want. Seven months down the line I have lost 11lbs in weight and my insulin requirement is around 60% of what it was before Christmas. My last A1C result was 26 which is in the low levels for a non diabetic person. My attitude towards animals has changed massively too but I don't want to reignite all the headbanging so I'll leave that stuff out for now.Frankly, this whole experience has been incredible. It is pretty expensive but well worth and it can be done much more cheaply with cooked carbs replacing a lot of the fruit.
The only downside has been watching vegan YouTube videos that unfortunately serve up a load of trite new age/self help mumbo jumbo alongside their excellent nutritional information.
I know that a lot of people will sneer and stick their fingers in their ears but I have no agenda here, this is simply my experience.

Fucking awesome, Webby. I'm glad you finally decided to share it! Quality knowledge shouldn't lose out to..well, the contents of this thread.

Makin' all kiiiiindsa gainz.

That's great Webby. I've heard so many stories like that, positive effects on health issues by going vegan. My partner actually became vegan because she saw first hand her auntie's arthritis - apparently she couldn't even walk down the shops - practically disappear through a vegan diet. Don't ask me the science, I have no idea, but it's incredible what diet can do. I've been vegan for over a year now and feel great. For the first time I feel the weight I should be if you know what I mean. I'm the opposite to you in that I've actually put on an extra half stone, which I've always wanted but never could do. And by eating healthy. Great stuff. My cooking has also go a lot more interesting too. I've always enjoyed it, but exploring different tastes and stuff is cool. I'm not saying you can't do this on a meat diet, but it probably did contribute to getting stuck in a culinary rut. And yeah, like you, my compassion for animals has grown with it.

I know what you mean about youtube. Thank Satan for this guy.

[youtube]CeZlih4DDNg[/youtube]

Thanks guys. I'd be interested to hear some debunking from the anti crew as well though.

So, I'm not too keen on vegan Nazis although I'm sure they're kind to their mothers, I positively embrace vegan black metallers, but I'm starting to worry about jazz - if I get wind of any vegan saxophonists it's straight to McDonalds for me.

There's nothing to debunk, and nothing to congratulate. In a food rich country like Britain, if you can choose what to eat, your diet should work for you. To be honest, Britain's media is obsessed with food, this thread isn't any different; beyond issues around availability and malnutrition - a real class issue in Britain - why would anyone care what someone eats?

why would anyone care what someone eats?

How about Type 2 diabetes epidemic, heart disease, cancer, my 16 year old son being 2 stone overweight, etc. I'm sure there are plenty more.

Sorry Webby, but you found a diet that works for you - that's good. But you're only a couple of posts away from sounding like Jamie Oliver mate! There are class issues with food in Britain, but non of them have been raised in your post on your new veggie diet.

You should say specifically what class issues you're talking about if I'm to believe you're bringing them up for anything other than to scold Webby for succeeding.

KS - have a look in post 262. This isn't about scolding Webby.

I know that Libcom is a class struggle resource but there are loads of non class related threads that come up from time to time. Also, you asked me for reasons to care about what people eat that weren't class related and I gave you some. That said, whilst I have no figures to hand I'd take a pretty large bet that there are more incidents of obesity and related illness amongst the working class. If so then this is very relevant to class struggle.
The problem here I think is that lifestylers, hippies and nicey nicey middle class do-gooders have so put the backs up of many of the class conscious amongst us that the blinkers have gone on and they refuse to engage with anything like an open mind.
And now PT, the most important point - I would rather sound like Adolph Hitler than Jamie fucking Oliver so easy on the slander there comrade. I'm not angry, just little hurt. Sob.

Oh, that? I saw that but thought it was strange, as having a wider selection of food like in the UK options makes the average person's diet considerably worse. Without the education, which is trying to succeed here, there will continue to be diet related diseases. Especially for workers whose easiest and most common sense is something processed and fast on their lunch breaks etc. No one is necessarily saying that plants are the easiest thing to do, but it is what it is in the end.

Take it in jest mate! The quality of cheap food is a class issue. There's a large estate near me that has Greggs, take aways, BoozeBuster, pubs, bookies - but no fresh food (or vegetables). Is this because there is not enough demand? Very possibly. Whether this is because they need Jaimie to work his magic, I dont know.
I'm sure we agree there should only be one standard of food - the fact that there are variations is a class issue. Inexpensive food almost always means shit ready meals, take aways, monotony and malnutrition - again, class issues.
Obviously, not all working class people eat poor diets, but too many do. I appreciate that on Libcom, we talk about most things - but personal diet and identity are two topics that often tend, in my view, to trample roughshod over everyone else.

KS - there's so much wrong with that tone, maybe it's the way it's written or comes across -

...as having a wider selection of food like in the UK options makes the average person's diet considerably worse.

Really? My experience is that choice is restricted for people with less funds. Good quality slow or fast food is more expensive - to assume that it is simply a choice thing, or ignorance is insulting. Maybe you should have a rethink.

but personal diet and identity are two topics that often tend, in my view, to trample roughshod over everyone else.

Never a truer word said and this thread exemplifies your statement. The question is, which side of the debate did the most trampling? The answer to that is real easy. I for one can't be accused of being partisan - for the majority of this thread I was chowing down on meat and cheese whilst straining to hear the vegan voices through the cacophony of tub thumping and 'ner ner ner not listening'
Coming to this site with an open mind, I've changed my politics, changed aspects of my lifestyle and have now changed my diet and along with it my physical wellbeing and hope for a decent length life. What's not to like?

The dishonesty of Kureigo-San and similar vegan campaigners makes me feel like eating meat again, just to piss them off. Not that their aren't people who are cunts about eating meat, but they don't seem to be nearly as meany or as blatant manipulative, plus a lot of it is in reaction the evangelical vegans.

This whole debate IS PASSÉ! OR, only people who have gone without food for 3 days or more should comment on this topic, because I qualify, and I'll tell you this, a stale crust of bread or bar-b-qued cow hoof is beyond any moral judgement when it comes down to survival, and they taste beautiful. You look at how the French fucked up food preparation, (as if we all live in the palace of Louis the 4th) Only a privileged society engages in debates about environmental consequences when they themselves are the perpetrators of the real grossest systemic destruction of it, guilt reflex hmm! Marie Antoinette complained about cake and peasants, rather, let food return to its primordial craving propensities!

' primordial craving propensities' being necessary biological needs devoid of moral exclusions and the dogma of ideological preferences!

Simiangene

I seen some desperate posts on this thread but your's takes the fucking biscuit.
I have qualified on many occasions for entry into your exclusive club for those permitted to have an opinion about food...
Fuck it, I cannot be bothered even addressing such a breathtakingly stupid post.

Nah PT I'm not saying that at all. Availability is a massive problem, one of the main ones. Jamie Oliver is a twat coz he thinks "personal choice" is all there is. I don't , please don't otherise and pidgeon-hole me as somone I don't like, at all. That said, we have agency and it does smack of paternalism to view "the masses" as living deterministic lives and are incapable of rational pursuit of knowledge and decision making. People have different levels of opportunity to even basic health - do not compare me to Jamie Oliver.

Webby, just curious ->

Has your diet changed beyond excluding meat? Like, do you eat more raw, colorful, uncooked foods? I noticed you mention the sweet fruit, is that a new addition?

I had stomach/digestive issues for some time. I changed my diet so I got more of my total calories from colorful raw foods and I've felt pretty good for a number of years.

Yep, no meat, no dairy, no eggs, low fat. Most days the only cooked food I eat is my evening meal although occasionally I eat raw food for the whole day. I have smoothies and juices but apart from that I only drink water. The main thing I eat though is whole fruit, whatever I can get that tastes good and that I can afford - bananas, grapes, apples, melons, cherries, berries. Anything fresh and tasty plus some dried fruit like dates, raisins etc. I've come to like eating salad as well which I've eaten for years but never liked, now I really enjoy it. My digestion has transformed. It's fucking great!

Kureigo-San

Nah PT I'm not saying that at all. Availability is a massive problem, one of the main ones. Jamie Oliver is a twat coz he thinks "personal choice" is all there is. I don't , please don't otherise and pidgeon-hole me as somone I don't like, at all. That said, we have agency and it does smack of paternalism to view "the masses" as living deterministic lives and are incapable of rational pursuit of knowledge and decision making. People have different levels of opportunity to even basic health - do not compare me to Jamie Oliver.

This is spooky.. someone else now who doesn't like Jamie Oliver! First off, I never compared you to him, I only made a joke about Webby - and only a joke, mind you. I haven't pidgeon holed you, I only responded to what you said in post 268. Health awareness is a fine thing; raising nutritional standards a fine thing also - but I'm reading in what you say as being that people opt to eat crap food given real choice. Correct me if I'm wrong but it would seem to appear that you believe that it is education alone that will prevent people from eating such meaty crap and thus save them from all the ills of the world. Now, I'm sure any amount of quotes from either side of the fence could be wheeled out to debunk or strengthen an argument. The bottom line is that most people have enough wherewithal to balance their diet so as to avoid premature cardiac arrest. But crap food is cheap - sometimes crap food is the only food available to skint people; also (and I'm very guilty of this..!) crap food can be comforting. So I'm a bit cautious to believe that the road to a balanced diet and the consequential health benefits lie in education alone. Up till recently, I only put salad on my daughters plate - I always have known that it's good for you (and have started eating it too), but I have chosen for years to dodge it... It's a personal choice thing, just like being a veggie.
I might be wrong but to me it looks like this whole thread is about one side believing people shouldn't eat meat for the animals but going about it by denouncing meat as unhealthy.

I might be wrong but to me it looks like this whole thread is about one side believing people shouldn't eat meat for the animals but going about it by denouncing meat as unhealthy.

Definitely wrong there mate. For a start, UV has made it quite clear that her reasoning is purely about animal welfare and the associated wider social issues. Whilst I had a small amount of sympathy to her position my decision to give a very specific type of veganism a try was to see if it helped with my health issues which have taken a fairly serious turn over the last few years. I have now become interested in the practical and moral aspect of the subject but that has happened through unintended exposure to information whilst researching vegan nutrition.
I am not the least bit interested in evangelising, guilt tripping or anything else. I am just very excited about the amazing improvements in my life that have happened to me since I tried this way of eating and I wanted to share it with you guys.
BTW, I am aware that the JO jibe was a joke - so was my response. That said, the fat tongued one is a pet hate of mine, if you have any doubts about that just look at the Jamie Oliver thread!
Anyway PT, I believe you'll soon crack under the force of my propaganda. The next job will be to convince you to like disco - remember, 'disco good, meat(and cheese) bad!!!

It's working already. Bring on the mung beans!

Webby

Yep, no meat, no dairy, no eggs, low fat. Most days the only cooked food I eat is my evening meal although occasionally I eat raw food for the whole day. I have smoothies and juices but apart from that I only drink water. The main thing I eat though is whole fruit, whatever I can get that tastes good and that I can afford - bananas, grapes, apples, melons, cherries, berries. Anything fresh and tasty plus some dried fruit like dates, raisins etc. I've come to like eating salad as well which I've eaten for years but never liked, now I really enjoy it. My digestion has transformed. It's fucking great!

OMG!! How boring your life must be! So you never indulge in the pleasures of alcoholic brews? Remind me not to invite you to my wake celebrations dude, and get a life before you die!

OMG!! How boring your life must be! So you never indulge in the pleasures of alcoholic brews? Remind me not to invite you to my wake celebrations dude, and get a life before you die!

Listen up sunshine, as someone that used to drink Tenants Super for breakfast as an aperatife before shooting up some heroin or smoking some crack I know all about the pleasures of alcohol. Boring not to drink? Maybe, but compared with my previous 'exciting' lifestyle I hope that my remaining years are one long round of unending monotony.

plasmatelly

Health awareness is a fine thing; raising nutritional standards a fine thing also - but I'm reading in what you say as being that people opt to eat crap food given real choice. Correct me if I'm wrong but it would seem to appear that you believe that it is education alone that will prevent people from eating such meaty crap and thus save them from all the ills of the world. Now, I'm sure any amount of quotes from either side of the fence could be wheeled out to debunk or strengthen an argument. The bottom line is that most people have enough wherewithal to balance their diet so as to avoid premature cardiac arrest. But crap food is cheap - sometimes crap food is the only food available to skint people; also (and I'm very guilty of this..!) crap food can be comforting.

Like you said, it's a mixture of things. But I do believe education plays a bigger part than you realise. I can't count the amount of times people have asked me, "...but what do you eat?!". I myself had no idea - and I'm still learning - about nutritional benefits of some foods, what's in them, etc. And I'm not just talking about veggie stuff, meat and dairy too. I'd say most people are quite unaware. I was never taught any of this at school; only how to make flapjacks. Luckily for me, I've always enjoyed cooking, so I've kind of explored on my own.

Time is a big factor though. Like I said I've always enjoyed cooking, and I'll quite happily spend one - two hours cooking up a decent meal. But I understand the people who don't, it's a fucking long time to be stood in the kitchen. I spend a lot more time now reading bloody labels in supermarkets, walking around like a lemon. That can be frustrating, especially after working 9 hours in a physically demanding job. And for the record, that's what I do. I'm grew up in a working family, money and time always tight. I've never been on much more than minimum wage for the last fourteen years, and living in London, it's tough.

This leads on to money. Hand on heart, I don't think I pay any more than I used to before I was vegan, perhaps even less. The things I buy now may be a bit more expensive initially, but they go a lot further. Of course, if I were to buy substitute stuff like vegan mayonaisse, vegan cheese, it would cost more, but I only do that when I fancy comfort food as you say.

Availability is a problem though, yeah. I only have to go and stay with my nan for a bit in a small town on the south coast and suddenly my choices are reduced substantially. Whereas back home I could just walk down to the market in 15mins and have a choice of anything I want from around the world, there I have to jump on a bus and travel 45 mins to the nearest big supermarket. Not everyone can afford that journey, or physically do it.

So you're right, lot's of class issues involved. And that's not even mentioning the people on the other side of food production, which I won't go into, for fear of being labelled "evangelical" and playing on people's emotions. This label actually irks me a bit, especially when it comes from people who actively get involved in promoting certain political ideologies. I'm 30 years old - sob - and I've been vegan for one year. I drink, smoke weed, and I may even eat meat again one day, who knows, so I'd be a bit hypocritical for judging people and forcing it down people's throats (boom boom). It's a personal choice based on what I've learnt - right or wrong - just as not voting is, so don't accuse me of being "manipulative" just for giving honest reasons for why I choose to do this. Saying that, I have seen and met these types of people, but they don't just come in the shape of vegans.

Webby

OMG!! How boring your life must be! So you never indulge in the pleasures of alcoholic brews? Remind me not to invite you to my wake celebrations dude, and get a life before you die!

Listen up sunshine, as someone that used to drink Tenants Super for breakfast as an aperatife before shooting up some heroin or smoking some crack I know all about the pleasures of alcohol. Boring not to drink? Maybe, but compared with my previous 'exciting' lifestyle I hope that my remaining years are one long round of unending monotony.

I apologize wholeheartedly kindred spirit, survivors become enlightened by their previous indulgences, thus you are exempted from my vicious vitriolic attack!

Actually I think some of the foods that are most associated with luxury are some of the worst ones for us. Even all the posh chefs on TV who chide us about not having the brains to consume some fancy product from the mediterranean or what have you, actually don't look like healthy people in the least - with their foie gras, their local virgin olive oil(it's vegan!), and all these kinds of things.

As far as the sheer affordability/health-producing ratio goes, potatoes are number one, then bananas, rice, pulses. If someone doesn't have the time or means to prepare these things, then it falls under the umbrella of the other social concerns that I'm willing to work on. It would be absurd to go on to bicker about how the preparation time required of rice and potatoes means dietary education isn't taking class interests into consideration. If this is the case - that a person has no time to take basic care of themselves thanks to wage slavery - then clearly there are bigger faux fish to fry, though I am not trying to dish out absolutes, basically someone should do what they can and precisely that.

I've personally never browbeaten someone for what they eat in my life, contrary to the popular imagination. I only say that if health is the goal, my recommendation is x, y, and z and it just so happens to be vegan, but I've said elsewhere that there are so many vegan foods that are as damaging to your health if not more so than some non-vegan ones - that part seemed to fall on deaf ears. Considering that most of the working class will develop either heart disease, stroke or diabetes (type 2), and also autoimmune diseases, as a result of diet and lifestyle factors at some point in their life, with a civilisation gearing itself toward private, utterly unaffordable health care, pray tell what could possibly be more of a class issue than this.

Standfieid wrote:

so don't accuse me of being "manipulative" just for giving honest reasons for why I choose to do this. Saying that, I have seen and met these types of people, but they don't just come in the shape of vegans

.
Nobody did.

Sorry as i was typing it felt a bit aggressive, it wasn't targeted at anyone in particular, it was meant in a plural sense if you know what i mean. I've just noticed some people using this language in this thread as an argument against veganism. I should have typed, '... don't accuse vegans...'

Fair nuff mate. Look, there shouldn't be anyone taking a stance against veganism - that's worse than being lectured by vegans. Personal choice. Anything else is debatable, but not that.

Standfield

Sorry as i was typing it felt a bit aggressive, it wasn't targeted at anyone in particular, it was meant in a plural sense if you know what i mean. I've just noticed some people using this language in this thread as an argument against veganism. I should have typed, '... don't accuse vegans...'

I'll accuse vegans of being manipulative when they spread blatant lies about nutrition, health etc. the issue isn't the veganism its the trying to trick people into a desired action it by telling people anything that the person spreading the disinformation thinks will be convincing, regardless of truth. the same applies to people talking about peak oil, voting, petitions, anarchism, class struggle, antifascism, etc.
I just really fucking despise people who spread politically convenient lies because they thing the cause is important.

Not that you have been doing this Standfield

Kureigo-San

Actually I think some of the foods that are most associated with luxury are some of the worst ones for us. Even all the posh chefs on TV who chide us about not having the brains to consume some fancy product from the mediterranean or what have you, actually don't look like healthy people in the least - with their foie gras, their local virgin olive oil(it's vegan!), and all these kinds of things.

As far as the sheer affordability/health-producing ratio goes, potatoes are number one, then bananas, rice, pulses. If someone doesn't have the time or means to prepare these things, then it falls under the umbrella of the other social concerns that I'm willing to work on. It would be absurd to go on to bicker about how the preparation time required of rice and potatoes means dietary education isn't taking class interests into consideration. If this is the case - that a person has no time to take basic care of themselves thanks to wage slavery - then clearly there are bigger faux fish to fry, though I am not trying to dish out absolutes, basically someone should do what they can and precisely that.

I've personally never browbeaten someone for what they eat in my life, contrary to the popular imagination. I only say that if health is the goal, my recommendation is x, y, and z and it just so happens to be vegan, but I've said elsewhere that there are so many vegan foods that are as damaging to your health if not more so than some non-vegan ones - that part seemed to fall on deaf ears. Considering that most of the working class will develop either heart disease, stroke or diabetes (type 2), and also autoimmune diseases, as a result of diet and lifestyle factors at some point in their life, with a civilisation gearing itself toward private, utterly unaffordable health care, pray tell what could possibly be more of a class issue than this.

I think you have eloquently hit the nail on the head. However, THIS >>

"with a civilisation gearing itself toward private, utterly unaffordable health care, pray tell what could possibly be more of a class issue than this"

And so the naive radicals juxtapose political agendas as if they are the wishes of the multitudes?! As an anarchist I oppose any idea of another opinion which wishes to impose a choice in taste or substance. Just as the Zen masters non-doctrinized consciousness and forged an alternative amoral spontaneous approach to existence, thus realizing Sartre's theoretical probe into the Western wall of ideological reinforced concrete. In the 18 th century I think, the monk confronted the traditional master and ate meat and drank wine, and thus enlightened the school of its traditional moral burdens.

I'll accuse vegans of being manipulative when they spread blatant lies about nutrition, health etc

Could you give any examples of this RG? I know the vegan promoting world is full of wankers but I don't think I've seen what you're suggesting. Wouldn't surprise me of course but still I'd like to see some evidence.

Edit: just for clarity, I've seen loads of vegans lying to make money but not to promote animal welfare.

KUREIGO-SAN.

I went off at a tangent with my previous comment. But its not a class issue,I know from factual data and as a witness to the choices people make regardless of their class. I have witnessed indigenous people consuming unhealthy junk food just as I have witnessed white trailer trash types doing the same, and I AM AT A LOSS to differentiate between race or class, it comes down to expendable income and available cooking facilities. Most indigenous communities dont have a pot to boil porridge in because fire and pots are alien appliances, and everything alien is of no value, everything is thrashed and driven into the ground, where it belongs, its not like I'm criticizing the spontaneous use of material tools which have no actual value within a culture which is totally spiritual and regards machinery as worthless. The Luddites attacked technology from a wage perspective whereas the indigenous exploit it as an expendable tax on those that inhabit their lands! What angers me are these vegan activists who somehow fully support indigenous culture, and its eating of meat, yet are vegans and apply censure upon all non-indigenous folk! The hypocrisy is blatant and I make it my my mission to call out these hypocrits!

[quote=Webby]Yep, no meat, no dairy, no eggs, low fat. Most days the only cooked food I eat is my evening meal although occasionally I eat raw food for the whole day. I have smoothies and juices but apart from that I only drink water. The main thing I eat though is whole fruit, whatever I can get that tastes good and that I can afford - bananas, grapes, apples, melons, cherries, berries. Anything fresh and tasty plus some dried fruit like dates, raisins etc. I've come to like eating salad as well which I've eaten for years but never liked, now I really enjoy it. My digestion has transformed. It's fucking great![/quote

Simiangene wrote .
Hey mate sorry about the diss, is there some program online to get me to stop spiraling down on a liver destruction path dude. But maybe I'm an addictive personality, hey I've run my innings, there are a million children that dont reach 5 years of age, and maybe it is my vanity that requests your advice?!

radicalgraffiti, 4 years ago I was laughing at vegetarians. Changed my views due to testimonies of people getting better from serious diseases with plant foods. In your imagination, the hardcore extremist vegan ideology came first and then I rearranged the facts to suit myself. Actually the information I'm putting out came first in the story of me, and is why I give a shit at all. I wouldn't be vegan if I believed animals were necessary to eat in order to live. I'm not "lying" or "manipulating" though..indeed, I am trying to convince but that's because I really believe it, with the information and experiences I've had.

The personal choice thing is a trope that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. In nothing else in life do we get to make our personal choices in a bubble, the logical question that follows is 'why did you make that choice?' Not to mention, what if my personal choice is to see to the reasonable continuation of an animal's life?

Whoops, the personal choice machine is broken.

Kureigo-San #295

'The personal choice thing is a trope that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. In nothing else in life do we get to make our personal choices in a bubble, the logical question that follows is 'why did you make that choice?' Not to mention, what if my personal choice is to see to the reasonable continuation of an animal's life?'

I like it.

Edit: A wee bit ambiguous - I mean a good point

Kureigo-San wrote:

Changed my views due to testimonies of people getting better from serious diseases with plant foods... I wouldn't be vegan if I believed animals were necessary to eat in order to live.

The first part is just vegan bullshit. Webby has diabetes - any doctor or nutritionist would say cut out the foods he did, not many would say go as far as he did. It sounds like he was making himself feel shit because he ate too many diabetes unfriendly types of food.
If you think the crux of the argument is about not killing animals then that is the battle you fight; after all, it's possibly your stronger hand.
The personal choice thing then would be examined to see if it stands up - whereas the vegetables make you feel magic argument doesn't.

Sorry PT, wrong again! Apart from eating some chocolate, which incidentally my NHS nutritionist said was ok a few times a week, I was eating pretty much exactly what I was recommended to eat and had excellent blood glucose control. The problem was I was always hungry but couldn't eat more because I kept putting on weight. I also lacked energy. Also, type 1 diabetes is a secondary illness to me, my primary illness is far more debilitating. My nutritionist thinks the way I am eating is crazy but she doesn't understand the difference it has made. She has never had a patient try this before and I'm really disappointed that she hasn't filed me under 'unconventional but let's watch his progress with interest, maybe he's on to something'. Instead it's blinkers on and fingers in ears. I even offered to print off my Cronometer.com results which show that I am exceeding my RDA for every single required nutrient apart from B12. She even came out with the classic 'you can't be getting enough protein' even though I told her twice that on average I make 130% of my protein requirement. It's pitiful, it really is.
To say that suggesting people are finding relief from illness with a vegan diet is vegan bullshit is, well, anti vegan bullshit. I am experiencing it and I have chatted on line with many others that are having similar results. Anecdotal evidence, yes. But the drug companies aren't going to be paying for major studies in this. What research have you done, what evidence do you have? Fair enough if you're not interested enough to check this out properly but if that's the case you really shouldn't be condemning something as bullshit.
Maybe it's possible to get the same results another way but I am getting them with a vegan lifestyle and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I haven't enjoyed my food as much as I do now EVER. I am deprived of nothing that I desire. I've tried other ways and they haven't worked.
I just don't understand why so many people are so dismissive.

Webby - I'm not dismissive of what you say, but you got to see how you come over - you're a vegan on the Internet who says that your diet has flown in the face of medical science and sorted out your illnesses.
I don't really have to read anything - the onus to prove that diet alone can succeed where medicine has failed (bear in mind that diet is part of modern medicine) is on Kureigo-San, and also yourself if you believe this too? I'm afraid Internet testimonies from people who at the same time admit they believe animals shouldn't be killed for food is far from independent. I'd quicker believe it is wrong to kill animals for food if there is a veggie alternative than to believe in the magic power of vegetables. It's Gillian McKeith territory.

Well, what proof do you want? You see, what you are really saying is that only evidence presented by corporations is credible. Funny position for an anarchist. It's impossible for me to present my experience in such a way but as I see it there are only a 4 possible conclusions to apply to what I have said:

1. I'm lying.
2. I'm deluded
3. An unprecedented change for the better has spontaneously occurred with my health that just happens to have coincided precisely with me changing my diet but has nothing to do with that diet.
4. My change in diet has worked.

Take your pick.

Tell me this though, why aren't you or anyone else that has posted negatively about this thinking that whilst unusual, this information is at least worth considering?

BTW, the percentage of veg that I eat in relation to my entire intake of food is very small. This is nothing to do with the magical power of veggies and to use that term demonstrates that what I'm saying is not really being listened to. Uses such phrases also trivialises something that is far from trivial. It's actually more about ratios of nutrients than anything else although there are other very important aspects.
Medical science has developed excellent techniques to deal with acute problems but has not done anywhere near as well with chronic problems. Certainly it is not a yardstick to measure absolute success by.
Really, I just don't think that you and others want to listen and maybe I could be accused of the same thing. I kind of wish I'd just kept it to myself because we are wasting our time having this conversation.

Edit: I haven't said it has sorted out my illnesses. It has cured nothing. However it has relived some symptoms and improved my general health dramatically.
As for insulin, I didn't mention it because I think I'm on the way to a diabetes cure - I'm type 1 so that ain't gonna happen - it's just that according to medical science, as prescribed by my nutritionist with the 'carb counting' system I should be using an extra 200% but am actually using around 40% less. Some of this I'm sure is to do with the increased amount of exercise I am now doing but again the role of diet is key to this - my energy levels increased so dramatically that I had the energy to start exercising.
I'm not a fucking idiot. I don't just fall for any snake oil bullshit. I have bought no books or DVDs. I use no supplements. I have no agenda and I have no aims other than continuing to improve my health, I am not(at least not yet) any sort of animal rights activist. I simply listened to some people that seemed to be getting good results and gave it a try. It worked. End of.

Can I intercept this debate urgently out of desperation to enlighten the debate and choose

3. An unprecedented change for the better has spontaneously occurred with my health that just happens to have coincided precisely with me changing my diet but has nothing to do with that diet..

I believe genetics has 95% of the whole friggin health issue involved, and what seems to be spontaneous occurrence is in fact genetic determinism.