The fact that veganism is possible in the modern world due to B12 supplementation doesn’t mean that it’s practical to expect a species to stop eating what it’s evolved to desire on a large scale.
I don’t understand your argument. I went vegan at age 51. Before I went vegan I was a meat eater and loved meat. I can honestly say I do not crave meat now.
I think it is just a case of developing your palette. It’s like when some children don’t like veggies but then grow to love them as part of the diet or cutting down on sugar.
This video presents a false dichotomy between meat-only eaters and vegans and treats a specific group as if it represents all humans. Also, there are not many people actually claiming all early humans only ate meat.
Pre-humans were omnivores as we are now, we evolved for adaptability. We can adapt to diet with virtually any ratio of animal to vegetable. Either can be healthy or unhealthy depending on exactly what’s eaten and how it’s processed/prepared. How much meat vs vegetable was eaten varied greatly between groups of humans and at different times/seasons. There was no single “cavemen” or “paleo” population that all ate the same diet.
If a person chooses to avoid animal nutrition for moral reasons, that’s great. Every animal counts. Counting on a majority of the world’s population to deny what biology tells them to eat to solve climate change or animal cruelty is a vain pursuit.
just because we’re adapted for something doesn’t mean we should continue that behavior.
So you’re saying, rather than consider how our population affects us and our world, we should go against what millions of years of evolution has come to as being appropriate for us?
Red meat is not carcinogenic, if it is, why don’t we see carnivores dying of cancer constantly? Cancer is a growth due to mutated DNA, are you saying red meat mutates our DNA?
And if what you take from me is that we shouldn’t consider how our population affects us and the world then either I seriously fucked up in communicating or your reading comprehension is garbage. The way our population affects us and our world is why people should be vegan in the first place. When we consider our impact seriously and without bias, going vegan is the biggest, easiest thing to do first to reduce our impact
Red meat consumption is associated with increases in cancer. Correlation does not imply causation. What is the alleged mechanism of cancer inducement?
I agree, more people should be vegan (well not really, just veganish), and I’m glad you are, but that’s not the solution to our problems. Asking billions to deny a huge part of their biological hunger imperative and changing fundamental aspects of long-term human culture is just not going to happen on a wide enough scale to help in time to do much about climate change.
our biological hunger imperative doesn’t imply eating animal products. Roadkill, freshly killed animals, dairy, eggs are not inherently appetizing to humans. If anything it’s the opposite, a dead body is repulsize to most people. A huge percentage of humans are lactose intolerant. Raw eggs are gross. Fruits are about as close as you can get to biological hunger imperative, the other stuff we learn to like and/or cook to make it taste good
Vegetarian and vegan diets have been around for thousands of years in parts of Asia, well before B12 supplements. Cultures sorted out the nutritional requirements through ingredients, and the lack of B12 in western vegan diets has more to do with common western ingredients than some inherent problem with a plant based diet.
I’m not even vegetarian or vegan, just annoyed with misconceptions about their feasibility.
Ancient and prehistoric peoples didn’t care about dogma, being “vegan”, that’s a modern thing. To these peoples veganism would’ve been dumb, a population that denies important nutrition isn’t likely to compete well against other populations that don’t. They didn’t have factory farms and YouTube videos showing how cruel they are. They didn’t have social media showing them cute cows and saying they deserve life. Animals were food if we were hungry.
I’m sure there have been groups that were mostly vegan for periods but B12 is essential and not available in plants. To think that most of humanity somehow acquired B12 and decided to forgo meat is silly.
Oh, and those “vegan” cultures for thousands of years, they probably figured out how to supplement such as via brewer’s yeast or were not completely vegan. Remember, they didn’t have their “vegan” dogmatic friends around them to shame them if they ate a bug.
I’ve been around these arguments enough times to see the discussion inevitably get to this point. We dance around the idea of “is it worth it to go vegan or not?” long enough, until eventually someone concedes that “yes it is better to do, but it’s not practical to ask everyone to do it/you can’t get everyone to go vegan/it won’t solve the problem if we go vegan and do nothing else/etc.”
If you truly think that it’s worth doing, either do it, or admit that you selfishly don’t want to. Don’t try and pretend the climate science backs up your opinions though.
As an aside, this is basically my goodbye letter to Lemmy, so so probably not going to follow up on this thread. The platform is so small that people can’t help but creep into communities that show up in the overall feed. Say what you will about Reddit, but at least there, spaces created specifically for in-groups (like a space called “vegancirclejerk”) didn’t constantly get commenters from the wider world knocking on the door and starting flame wars in the comments. Like, can there be no space for vegans to just fuck around and post memes in peace?
Maybe finally I’ll get some peace by logging off and touching some grass. And then eating the grass, bc I’m vegan btw
Conventionally raised animals get all sorts of drugs, vitamins, etc. I’m sure.
Cows and other ruminants wouldn’t normally need to be given B12 as it’s created by their gut microbiota and available to their bodies. If they are indeed supplemented with B12 I wonder if it’s because a corn based diet doesn’t support a microbiome that can create B12?
@mojo_raisin It’s because of factory farming which is 97%+ of all production. Factory farmed animals don’t have access to a healthy soil where they would normally get their B12 and other nutrients. That means rising animals for mass consumption is totally wrong.
Same goes with humans. People today are so separated from the healthy soil, they lack B12.
First part makes sense. Humans, like other primates get B12 (outside of supplementation) from either eating animal/dairy, bugs, or feces, since humans can produce B12 in our guts, but really only in our colon where it’s not available to us.
Neither did we for 200,000 years.
The fact that veganism is possible in the modern world due to B12 supplementation doesn’t mean that it’s practical to expect a species to stop eating what it’s evolved to desire on a large scale.
I don’t understand your argument. I went vegan at age 51. Before I went vegan I was a meat eater and loved meat. I can honestly say I do not crave meat now.
I think it is just a case of developing your palette. It’s like when some children don’t like veggies but then grow to love them as part of the diet or cutting down on sugar.
Yeah but muh ideals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc8XTLpqxLw
This video presents a false dichotomy between meat-only eaters and vegans and treats a specific group as if it represents all humans. Also, there are not many people actually claiming all early humans only ate meat.
Pre-humans were omnivores as we are now, we evolved for adaptability. We can adapt to diet with virtually any ratio of animal to vegetable. Either can be healthy or unhealthy depending on exactly what’s eaten and how it’s processed/prepared. How much meat vs vegetable was eaten varied greatly between groups of humans and at different times/seasons. There was no single “cavemen” or “paleo” population that all ate the same diet.
If a person chooses to avoid animal nutrition for moral reasons, that’s great. Every animal counts. Counting on a majority of the world’s population to deny what biology tells them to eat to solve climate change or animal cruelty is a vain pursuit.
Yeah, I mean if you look at how carcinogenic red meat is to humans, it’s unlikely we ate all that much of it
but even so, just because we’re adapted for something doesn’t mean we should continue that behavior.
So you’re saying, rather than consider how our population affects us and our world, we should go against what millions of years of evolution has come to as being appropriate for us?
Red meat is not carcinogenic, if it is, why don’t we see carnivores dying of cancer constantly? Cancer is a growth due to mutated DNA, are you saying red meat mutates our DNA?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu9w4klc-B4 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34455534 and more sources in the description. Red meat definitely is carcinogenic lmao.
And if what you take from me is that we shouldn’t consider how our population affects us and the world then either I seriously fucked up in communicating or your reading comprehension is garbage. The way our population affects us and our world is why people should be vegan in the first place. When we consider our impact seriously and without bias, going vegan is the biggest, easiest thing to do first to reduce our impact
Red meat consumption is associated with increases in cancer. Correlation does not imply causation. What is the alleged mechanism of cancer inducement?
I agree, more people should be vegan (well not really, just veganish), and I’m glad you are, but that’s not the solution to our problems. Asking billions to deny a huge part of their biological hunger imperative and changing fundamental aspects of long-term human culture is just not going to happen on a wide enough scale to help in time to do much about climate change.
Inflamation caused by heme iron, iirc
our biological hunger imperative doesn’t imply eating animal products. Roadkill, freshly killed animals, dairy, eggs are not inherently appetizing to humans. If anything it’s the opposite, a dead body is repulsize to most people. A huge percentage of humans are lactose intolerant. Raw eggs are gross. Fruits are about as close as you can get to biological hunger imperative, the other stuff we learn to like and/or cook to make it taste good
Vegetarian and vegan diets have been around for thousands of years in parts of Asia, well before B12 supplements. Cultures sorted out the nutritional requirements through ingredients, and the lack of B12 in western vegan diets has more to do with common western ingredients than some inherent problem with a plant based diet.
I’m not even vegetarian or vegan, just annoyed with misconceptions about their feasibility.
Ancient and prehistoric peoples didn’t care about dogma, being “vegan”, that’s a modern thing. To these peoples veganism would’ve been dumb, a population that denies important nutrition isn’t likely to compete well against other populations that don’t. They didn’t have factory farms and YouTube videos showing how cruel they are. They didn’t have social media showing them cute cows and saying they deserve life. Animals were food if we were hungry.
I’m sure there have been groups that were mostly vegan for periods but B12 is essential and not available in plants. To think that most of humanity somehow acquired B12 and decided to forgo meat is silly.
Oh, and those “vegan” cultures for thousands of years, they probably figured out how to supplement such as via brewer’s yeast or were not completely vegan. Remember, they didn’t have their “vegan” dogmatic friends around them to shame them if they ate a bug.
That is why I was clear about the diets being around. Diets can exist without the dogma.
i hear what you’re saying, but we’re in 2024 now and large-scale veganism is definitely practical
It is practical, it’s not gonna happen though, not in time to save our environment. We need to be looking elsewhere for solutions.
I’ve been around these arguments enough times to see the discussion inevitably get to this point. We dance around the idea of “is it worth it to go vegan or not?” long enough, until eventually someone concedes that “yes it is better to do, but it’s not practical to ask everyone to do it/you can’t get everyone to go vegan/it won’t solve the problem if we go vegan and do nothing else/etc.”
Convenient that any time an environmental initiative requires even tiny changes to our day to day lives, suddenly we need to look for the solutions vaguely “elsewhere.” I guess let’s ignore the fact that emissions from food alone are enough to push the planet over the 1.5C degree warming threshold for the planet, and that the average US consumer eats an order of magnitude more red meat than could ever be sustainable.
If you truly think that it’s worth doing, either do it, or admit that you selfishly don’t want to. Don’t try and pretend the climate science backs up your opinions though.
As an aside, this is basically my goodbye letter to Lemmy, so so probably not going to follow up on this thread. The platform is so small that people can’t help but creep into communities that show up in the overall feed. Say what you will about Reddit, but at least there, spaces created specifically for in-groups (like a space called “vegancirclejerk”) didn’t constantly get commenters from the wider world knocking on the door and starting flame wars in the comments. Like, can there be no space for vegans to just fuck around and post memes in peace?
Maybe finally I’ll get some peace by logging off and touching some grass. And then eating the grass, bc I’m vegan btw
@mojo_raisin @toxicbubble Did you knew they supplement farm animals with B12 and other vitamins and stuff?
Conventionally raised animals get all sorts of drugs, vitamins, etc. I’m sure.
Cows and other ruminants wouldn’t normally need to be given B12 as it’s created by their gut microbiota and available to their bodies. If they are indeed supplemented with B12 I wonder if it’s because a corn based diet doesn’t support a microbiome that can create B12?
@mojo_raisin It’s because of factory farming which is 97%+ of all production. Factory farmed animals don’t have access to a healthy soil where they would normally get their B12 and other nutrients. That means rising animals for mass consumption is totally wrong.
Same goes with humans. People today are so separated from the healthy soil, they lack B12.
First part makes sense. Humans, like other primates get B12 (outside of supplementation) from either eating animal/dairy, bugs, or feces, since humans can produce B12 in our guts, but really only in our colon where it’s not available to us.