beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
Well, yeah
I know where my food comes from. I know exactly what’s involved. What’s your point?
Do angry vegans turn you against going vegan?
- Thread starter Watermelon Man
- Start date
I know where my food comes from. I know exactly what’s involved. What’s your point?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I think if you’re going to go vegan or even veggie and be optimally healthy, though, you need to know a bit about nutrition and cooking for yourself.
Vegan is a big step from an omnivore diet if you don’t know these things and want to plug any nutritional gaps. Most people learn from their parents and most of them won’t be vegan.
This is assuming you’re starting from somewhere at least reasonably healthy, obv.
editor
hiraethified
Thankfully there's no shortage of useful dietary tips to be found on the internet - and, of course, some people's omnivore diets can be seriously lacking too. It's not that hard to enjoy a perfectly healthy vegan diet.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Are you a vegan by the way? I thought you were a veggie. Though I think moving from veggie to vegan is a lot easier than from full-on omni - fewer animal foods and fewer memories and associations tied up with them that you need to move away from or replace.
You say yourself about the internet- that’s still a fair amount of research for a meat eater to find a healthy varied diet that will be satisfying for them and tick all the boxes.
That might get better as more materials become available for people who have lived for years with a meat eaters’ palate, though.
And I did say I was assuming that was starting from a place that was at least *fairly* healthy. Omni diets can of course be appalling.
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
I disagree. Regardless of whether you are vegan or not, you should still know a bit about nutrition and cooking anyway. It just so happens that vegans on the whole tend to know a bit more than "omnis" which is reflected in their lower rates of all the major western diseases.
I believe that the opposite is true, if you are an omni, you need to pay a bit more attention to diet and nutrition given that veg*ns according to most of the metrics appear to be better off wrt health.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
The biggest thing that reduces your rate of having the major western diseases is being middle class (or further up the hierarchy), so I'd be interested to know how the stats have been interpreted - correlations can be misleading for all sorts of reasons. I know you and some others don't like the class reference, but plenty of vegans are aware of it, and also how it can limit take-up of the diet/lifestyle (I use the word lifestyle because we had some discussion earlier about the boundaries of "being vegan" as opposed to just not eating foods of animal origin).
Note that I'm not disputing that eating lots of certain animal-based foods is bad for you, nor I am I making assumptions about your personal class background - I'm not trying to start a fight about it agin.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Regardless of the truth or otherwise of that statement, I'm curious about the spelling there...
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Or to put it another way, before the knives come out, it looks likely to me that vegans are probably doing a lot of other things, and living in particular situations generally, where they are likely to come out healthier, and disentangling the overall health outcomes and their causes when looking at a single well-correlated variable isn't easy.
edit: Though I did find what looks like a decent meta-analysis suggesting reduced incidence of cancer and ischemic heart disease (with no significant effect on all-cause mortality, nor on cerebrovascular or all-cause cardiovascular disease). Which isn't that surprising given bacon/carcinogens etc. As more people take it up it should get easier to gather good evidence, though.
edit: Though I did find what looks like a decent meta-analysis suggesting reduced incidence of cancer and ischemic heart disease (with no significant effect on all-cause mortality, nor on cerebrovascular or all-cause cardiovascular disease). Which isn't that surprising given bacon/carcinogens etc. As more people take it up it should get easier to gather good evidence, though.
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editor
hiraethified
What do you mean by that? What particular living situations?
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Well, as you are the one making the claim that vegans need to pay more attention to getting the right nutrients than omnis, perhaps you can present the evidence showing veg*ns to have worse health than meat eaters, with the correction for their financial status.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
The country you live in has a massive effect. Your degree of social isolation/integration has a massive effect. Education level has a massive effect.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
There are some nutrients that are in few non-animal sources in the amounts required to be healthy. I've known people try to go vegan and pack it in for health reasons. I don't doubt they were 'doing it wrong' . Those who stay doing it for a long time are likely to be doing it right and be really healthy.
It's not so much that vegans need to pay particular attention, but when making a large change to your diet (one which hasn't been adjusted culturally to cover all the bases*) it's easy to miss these. It would be the same for any big change to diet, I think. People sometimes get deficiencies when moving country for the same reason.
The NHS agrees, as do many vegan sources - I don't think this is controversial.
I expect if I was to go vegan I'd rely on a few heavily-engineered products to cover the bases, which might make it a technically vegan diet but I don't think I'd be entirely up with the ideological requirements of all vegans.
* - though ours has been fucked up by culture - different argument, mind
PaoloSanchez
Well-Known Member
Is this from your own personal experience? Have you actually tried it yourself or is this more in the way of speculation. Having spent most of my life as a meat eater, 10 years as a "vegetarian" and 20 years as a vegan, I think I have a reasonable grasp of what it takes. The concerns raised by some omnis regarding alleged missing nutrients and deficiencies appear to be at odds with the data. It would appear that it's even easier for omnis to "miss out" than veg*ns.
editor
hiraethified
I've assumed that this discussion has been UK based, so care to break the rest of that down?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I wouldn't mind seeing this data. But from personal experience I've seen quite a few people struggle with veganism, and a few with long-term vegetarianism. A common issue seems to be "the cold that never goes away", as does feeling generally lethargic. I've not tried it but I think I'd be more likely to struggle with the psychological and lifestyle aspects of it (finding a satisfying and varied diet, dealing with eating out with mates etc.) - I read a lot about nutrition after being ill a little while back -really needed to sort myself out.
And what's with the variant spellings of "vegan"?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
What would need breaking down exactly, are you seriously trying to dispute any of that?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Yeah, I was aware of that and obliquely referred to it earlier.
editor
hiraethified
Can you point me to some research supporting the "massive" effect education has on a person's decision to be vegan? What kind of level of education is required for this to be noticeable?
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Oh, I see. You just misread my post. Fair enough.
mojo pixy
...שלא נמצא בשמאל
Re. that picture of a chopped pig. Whoever made it, presumably in order to shock hasn't been watching horror or listening to hip hop or metal these last 20 years or so. A chopped pig is just, meh. So what? That never really happened because if it did someone would be in trouble for it, it's clearly photoshopped, so what's shocking?
EtA, the gatefold inside image from Carcass' 2nd album Symphonies of Sickness (1990) for reference.
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editor
hiraethified
You said: "...vegans are probably doing a lot of other things, and living in particular situations generally, where they are likely to come out healthier, and disentangling the overall health outcomes and their causes when looking at a single well-correlated variable isn't easy."
I asked: "What do you mean by that? What particular living situations?"
You replied: "The country you live in has a massive effect. Your degree of social isolation/integration has a massive effect. Education level has a massive effect"
I asked you to provide some detail on this all these "massive" effects, and in particular asked you to elaborate on the connection between education and a vegan diet, which you failed to do.
I don't think I misread anything you said. You really do seem to be inordinately negative about people electing to eat a vegan diet, which earlier on you were doing your best to dismiss as being one big fad. Why is that?
ddraig
kicking against the pricks...
are you serious?? do you want the stories of the many people who feel a lot better from going vegan, or those who've had long term health complaints go away or vastly improve?
how better people feel, hear it all the time
or would that be preaching and selective?
editor
hiraethified
I'm not shocked but it's not something I'd choose to look at.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I said data. The data you mentioned earlier.
ddraig
kicking against the pricks...
are you denying it won't make some people think?
if it makes a few thousand think and change their shopping and eating habits to cut out meat that's good enough
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