Why are you not vegan?

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Ethics are objective, now?

No one's asking you to, so your angry reaction is not necessary. If you didn't want to answer the questions this thread pertains to, regarding the implications of commodification of non-human animals, then stay out of it, as opposed to jutting out your widdle chin, stamping your feet and shouting "I don't wanna!" like so many toddlers.

You got me- One diet for 7 billion people being far more sustainable than another is negated by it not being overly-feasible for SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND. Guess the vegheads gotta pack it in.

Make a cursory attempt to act like an adult.

right back at you. Try not assuming too much about strangers' medical or nutritional situations.

It is, indeed- I assumed everyone had heard about the fate of my other account.

And if challenging irrational and non-factual declarations made by others means I'm a "ranting nutter", I accept that label with a large amount of pride-
a quick review of this thread will show that it is in fact (some, not all) omnivores who have been more aggressive by far when asked to support the effects of their actions, to the point of appearing very emotional over even being asked. There is a certain obnoxious arrogance that comes from being in the majority.

Although most of the people espousing that view have just ducked into the thread, made a flat, overly-defensive declaration or two, and disappeared.

I assume nothing. The exception doesn't negate the rule, that being that for the vast majority of people a vegan diet is not only nutritionally-adequate, but may provide health benefits, and that,
in light of the affects of one diet versus another on the planet and the human and non-human animals who live on it,
plenty of people who have both nutritional absorbency & other issues and ethical, environmental, humanitarian, and health concerns have elected to be vegan along with nutrient supplementation.

It's amazing how hostile people become at the very idea that someone might challenge them.

Also- I've noticed that the primary discussion of veganism thus far has been centered around the diet portion-
what of, for instance:

abstaining from buying consumer products from companies whose distributors conduct animal toxicity tests
adopting any companion animals versus buying from breeders and pet shops
wearing no animal skins (and wool, and silk, etc) or clothing trimmed in them
etc

1. I get upset when I have to repeat myself and when people spread ignorance.

2. You know, my dad once said, "Products that aren't tested on animals are tested on humans." Just something to think about.

3. Do you mean strays? All the pets I had growing up were either strays or the offspring of strays, and I do not support modern breeding habits that encourage inbreeding and bad health (I do want to get a domestic fox, and I'm not entirely sure about the breeding habits of the company that sells them, though I'll have done that research by the time I can afford one).

4. Well, I can't wear wool due to sensory issues. In fact, I can't wear most cotton clothes. I may need to get some clothing in silk.

Consent.

I suspected so as the avatar is by the same artist as a previous one.

[italicised] This is a valid point for almost all the threads that move from discussion [the exchange of information between equally receptive minds] to debate [the art of argumentative one upmanship for sport]. The PPR forum is full of them and the lame method of debate that means constant redefinition of the terms of reference and idelogical bombast and sheer repetitiveness make engagement pointless - no one is actually listening to anyone

I am not accusing you of being a ranting nutter, merely suggesting that you would catch more flies with honey than you ever will with vinegar, I agree with almost all the points you have made except the tone of absolutism, in nature you will find there are no absolutes, I have offered human examples of this rule and ecological examples abound.
If you want to bang your head against the wall go for it, why you wouldn't rather save your energy for something more ultimately constructive is anyones guess, I will put it down to aspie sheer bloody minded perserverance - good luck with that.

peace j

Well your dad's an ignoramus, since products are tested on humans ANYWAY following animal testing,
a human volunteer is quite obviously the more scientifically-appropriate testee than a terrified, non-human captive,
there are computer software simulation testing options available supported by many scientists,
and,
more importantly
HUMANS SHOULD BE THE ONES GETTING TESTED ON FOR THINGS FOR HUMANS.

QFT.

A deceptive statement, since the point of animal testing is to determine products that are too dangerous to test on humans. He also said this before simulations were available. I also never said that it was right to test on animals, but a lot of the groups that protest animal testing tend to treat it like it's just sadistic. By the way: If you've ever taken prescription medication, you've used something tested on animals. Personally, I'm against a lot of the things that they test on animals (certain chemicals (Edit: Basically, the ones that need to be tested on animals) and pretty much all cosmetics, for example). A lot of the things we test on animals, we just don't need. However, I'm not going to say that it's terrible in every case. Considering the fact that I have taken prescription medication in my life (three times, I believe) and I always make sure my mother takes her medication (several different pills each day), it would be rather hypocritical of me to say that we shouldn't use products tested on animals (Edit: Aside from that, computer simulations are years away from being able to accurately predict total body response to chemicals).

By the way, as far as consent goes... look up the issue of informed consent in medicine.

In case you never clicked the link to the paper by Mary Enig: One of the things it pointed out was that, in the studies that tracked this, people who consumed less animal fat were more likely to die by suicide and violence. Suicide I can understand. Vegans and vegetarians have higher levels of nutrient deficiencies, and some of these can cause depression. I thought the increased violent death statistics couldn't be accurate because, let's face it: That's a little absurd.

So I looked up the statistics for pork consumption per capita (which is the only statistic for meat consumption I could find at the time). I took out Eastern countries, since the diets are so different, pork wouldn't be any good at all for a rough estimation of animal fat intake. I then looked up total fat intake statistics and crime statistics, and I found a that, the more pork consumption in a country, the less the crime rate was. There was an even stronger correlation when I looked at total fat intake relative to pork intake (I was trying to roughly estimate how much fat comes from animal fat vs. how much comes from vegetable fat). This existed outside of income, because Hungary and Poland had the lowest income in the countries I compared, but also high pork intake and low crime rates (by the way: Germany and Denmark were the only countries that didn't make the graph form a perfect line).

I had a few problems with this, though, that I decided to fix:

1. I doubted the accuracy of my sources (as an example, I later tried to find a crime rate for Russia [which, at the time, I didn't have a pork consumption statistic for] from this source, and crime per 100,000 was lower than homicide per 100,000... obviously not much sense there)
2. I only had 9 countries
3. The crime rate could also be affected by reporting (for example, some countries are more likely to report small, non-violent crimes)

So I went and I found different sources. This time, I added together pork and beef consumption (since some countries consume them at different ratios) and focused only on homicide statistics.

The correlation is still there. The more pork and beef a country consumes relative to total fat, the lower the crime rate (this time, Greece was the one that didn't follow the pattern, and that may be because their main source of animal fat is lamb, fish, or chicken).

However, there are still a few problems (some of which were present before):

1. Some of the countries included homicide attempts, but most did not. After taking out the countries that include homicide attempts, I ended up with only 10 countries
2. I don't have statistics for animal fat consumption totals, only different kinds of meat consumption and total fat intake. For pork, the part of the animal that the meat comes from is VERY important, and for both, the leanness of the meat can vary by country, too. Not only that, but some countries have higher intakes of fat from other sources (such as lamb).
3. There are other, minor issues, but I'm not going to go into them (feel free to nitpick every one, since I know that's going to happen anyway).

By the way, I am perfectly aware that correlation =/= causation, but this argument also throws any possible health benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet (Edit2: By the way, I would be remiss if I did not point out how dubious the correlative evidence for health benefits is, especially when you take Mary Enig's points into account). In most cases (especially when it comes to nutrition) all we have is correlative evidence.

You'll notice that I didn't include charts or graphs. The reason is this: I really rather dislike the whole, "He has a chart! That must be proof!" mentality we seem to have. Don't blindly believe (or disbelieve) what I've said here. Look it up yourself. Find the statistics for meat consumption and compare it to violent crime rates. In fact, if anyone can find statistics on animal fat consumption (rather than meat type consumption), I would really appreciate it. I want this information to be more accurate, because I really can't wrap my head around this (if you saw me last night, when I made the first of these charts, you'd understand just how shocked I was). If you can adjust for income, that would be even better.

Again, I encourage you to look up this information yourself and analyze it. In fact, do the research on every point I've made (plant intelligence, for example, is difficult to show a source for simply because different people have different requirements for what makes something intelligent) in this thread. Do it with an open mind (unbiased either way).

I'm not Vegan because the lifestyle is very difficult. I have issues with eating meat as I am very fond of animals(biology nut). I am sort of all right with eating fish and I might eventually become a pescatarian, but maintaining a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle would be very hard for me.

I realized that people who like to instantly disbelieve anything that goes against what they've heard won't bother researching this and will insist that I'm just making it up, so here are the charts that I did:

[img][800:648]http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3295/chartsu.png[/img]

The first one contains all the countries that don't include attempted murder in their murder statistics. The second one leaves out Greece (the reason why I made a chart that does not have Greece is that Greek cuisine contains a much higher ratio of lamb to pork and beef than the other countries I included, so the pork + beef statistic is extremely deceptive. Greeks eat much more animal fat than those numbers would imply).

As you can see, there is a correlation.

For those that would point out the fact that the countries aren't completely on the line, keep in mind that I already pointed out the issues with that, such as the fact that this doesn't include all animal fat (along with the fact that things like poverty and culture affect it as well... though note that Poland is the furthest from the line in the second chart, and the average income in Poland is lower than in most other countries I included, with 17% below the poverty line). For those that insist that, because there's scatter, it can't be true: There's a chart out there by Ancel Keys about fat percentage in diet correlating with CHD. Find the chart that Uffe Ravnskov did when he included 18 other countries (It's in The Cholesterol Myth).

As I've said, though, please do research on your own here. I'm sure that, if even just a few of you did the research (rather than automatically believe or disbelieve), we could improve upon this and actually find out if a correlation exists or not (especially if someone adjusts for poverty).

Edit: My apologies for the squished chart. it's rather deceptive compared to the non-squished chart:

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3295/chartsu.png

Edit2: By the way, if anyone could find per capita consumption of lamb (kg/year, though I can obviously calculate that if you find, say, oz/day) for those countries, I would really appreciate it. As I've said, Greece is very deceptive on that chart, but I don't like just leaving it out.

Edit3: A few more things:

1. That's total meat, not the fat itself. The reason why I chose beef and pork is that they're similar in fat content overall. This is why I didn't include chicken (though I did find that, if I adjust the meats for average fat content, the correlation is still there and, in fact, stronger)
2. If someone would be willing to adjust for poverty (not something I would be willing to put the effort into myself), I could include a lot more countries. I was unaware the rather high poverty rates in some of the countries, or I would not have included them.
3. Again, do the research yourself.

I just got to this discussion. I only got to page two before being confused. Twisted Evil makes some rude comments. Redhanrahan pulls him up on this, but then feels that it's okay to threaten violence in exchange for rudeness:

"I am generally a low key and quite tolerant person but speak of or to me in public in this manner - then you will find me pretty damn intolerant and even violent - play nice Twisted Evil"

So vegans will not hurt animals. Indeed, some vegans will even let their babies starve because they think breastfeeding* and modern day medicine* are wrong, but apparently it's okay for vegans to hit people simply because of the words that come out of their mouths.

I eat animals because I enjoy the taste of their charred flesh and I hope the animals I eat enjoyed their lives. I do not hit people who disagree with me or stoop to name calling. If someone did hit me, I would call the police and have them arrested for assault. I hope that's cleared up that little moral issue.

* a couple in America fed their baby nothing but apple juice. It died.
* a couple in France took their baby to doctors because it was sick. They then ignored the medical advice and bathed it in clay instead. It died.

Humans were predators for thousands and thousands of years. It is still very much a part of our genetic code. Some people enjoy meat more than others. The biological fact remains that if we weren't meant to eat meat we wouldn't still possess canine teeth. They are there to tear meat not to munch on lettuce.

We create our own theories as to why we should or should not eat it, but it is certainly a part of our nature as human.

I don't doubt that some geographical areas are comprised of people that have adapted more toward the ability to tolerate a vegetarian diet and vice/versa. Maybe someone should do a study on the proportionate size of their canine teeth, testosterone, and agression. I wonder if there is a correlation.

That is no sort of representation of vegans. Those people are just idiots. The entire vegan "community" condemns them.