Vegan girl

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If god/higher power/nature didn't want us to do violence, it wouldn't be so fun.

Pretty weak arguments, are they not?

 

I've been incommunicado for a few days.

Drew, obviously you consider that I was too hasty in my condemnation of the parents. Fair enough -- on that score I guess we have to agree to disagree, as I think there was sufficient evidence in the article to conclude that the parents were at fault.

Like T2Bruno, all of the vegan / vegetarian activists I've met or read have come across to me like frothing, raging lunatics, so that's the direction I come from when I'm evaluating the relative merits of their claims. You and a few others have been reasonable in your arguments (you're one of the first I've seen who admits that meat CAN be a healthy food) Based on the majority of my experiences with vegans and animal rights activists (I know that one isn't necessarily the other, but they often are) I have a hard time taking them seriously, especially when a case like this girl's comes up.

That said, though, if a family that follows a traditional diet ended up having a kid with severe rickets, and there was any hint that they had malnourished the child either through malice or stupidity, my response and condemnation would have been just as severe.

 

Drew, i would like to offer you a public apology.
I (like LKD & T2Bruno) have never meet any other than the fringe side of the vegans. Even though we have had good reasonable discussions, i keep slipping up & putting you in that category. I think it's your responses to some of the posts on this thread that are doing it. Not necesarrily what you are saying but how they are phrased. Just read the first 2 lines of your answer in post #55 to Morgoroths post # 54. It came off as saying "you fool! non-dairy will ALWAYS be cheaper!!"
Now as far as that fringe side goes, if you know any of them, you might want to remind them that following a guy with a loaded weapon into the woods making lots a' noise isn't really smart. You're fairly safe from him however there are people out there who fire at sounds.

@ iku-turso, i'm assuming by your response that you have no idea what that smiley after my statement signified?

 

Actually, I agree with you that the parents were at fault*. My point of contention wasn't your insistence that the parents were at fault, but with your contention that they were at fault because they were sanctimonious nut-jobs too busy patting themselves on the back to notice that there was something wrong with their kid. From the article, we don't know that the parents were unaware of a problem (being unaware of a problem and unaware of the solution are two very different things), we don't know that they were sanctimonious, and we don't know that they were constantly patting themselves on the back. All we know is that they were vegan, prominent in the vegan community, and that their kid wasn't getting enough vitamin D. PETA is not the vegan community, by the way (the vegan community is much, much larger), and many of their members aren't even vegan.

It may (though it probably shouldn't) surprise you that most vegans do not advertise their lifestyle. Only one of my co-workers and a few of my friends realize that I'm vegan (most eventually figure out that I don't eat meat, though). It isn't that I hide it - this just isn't something that I, or most vegans, for that matter - tell people. A lot of people automatically assume that you're judging them when they know you're a vegetarian.

They stop basing their opinions of you on the content of your character or the merits of your words and instead discount everything you say on the basis of what you (don't) eat. Before you call me a reactionary for saying this, I'd ask you to keep in mind that I was 19 when I became a vegetarian. I didn't become vegan until I was 24. When I became vegetarian (and, again, when I became vegan) I was able to see firsthand the difference in how people that knew about my diet treated me.

* With one caveat. A disorder that hampers the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals could also cause something like this. While such disorders are rare and diet is by far the most likely cause, I can't in good conscience say that the parents' culpability is absolute. (I'd peg it at about 99.9%, if I had to pull a number out of my ass.)

 

Drew are you just a dietary vegan or a full vegan ?

 

Full is a relative term, actually, since absolute veganism is impossible in this day and age. Sugar, tap water, and most bottled water is refined using bone-char activated charcoal. The glue holding together my non-leather shoes and found in the binding of my extensive book collection likewise has animal bi-products in it. The Motrin I take after a hard workout was probably tested on animals, the Flu vaccination my kids get every year is cultured with some sort of poultry product (as are most vaccinations), the strep medication I took 2 years ago and the INH I was on for 4 months after I popped positive for a PPD test was also tested on animals. Do I avoid, meat, dairy, honey, leather, silk, etc ad nauseum? Absolutely. Do I carry it to absurd extremes? No.

 

Well yes that was what i was asking & you answered very well thank you. As you pointed out it would almost be impossible in todays world to avoid all animal products unless you wanted to make just about everything yourself & that just isn't feasable with a lot of things.
But, oh man, how can you give up honey!? It's nectar of the gods(well the bee gods anyway)

PS i've seen this stuff called sugar in the raw is it a less refined sugar? it looks like larger more irregular granules & is brownish.

 

It is. The molasses is still present in it, so it tastes quite different. I usually avoid it, though, since cane sugar has been found to be rather poor for the environment (it takes more from the soil than it gives in return), especially in Florida, where cane sugar production is ruining wide swaths of land in the everglades. Hawaii has the right environment for producing cane sugar and the damage to the land is fairly minimal, but the swamp lands of Florida are being ruined beyond repair from it.

Refined beet sugar tastes exactly the same as refined cane sugar and it costs less, too. In the US, any sugar that doesn't specify on the label that it's cane sugar is beet sugar. Another dead giveaway for beet sugar is that it is usually refined in the Midwest, while cane sugar is usually refined in Florida or Hawaii. If you're a cheapskate like me, you've probably been using beet sugar for years without even knowing. Beet sugar is also more vegan-friendly, since the refining process doesn't employ activated charcoal.

 

I now what you mean about being judged by your lifestyle. Just because i look like a brain-dead gym rat doesnt mean i am one. But it is funny the first time you try to get your buddies to eat tofu
They look at you like you have suddenly grown an extra head & started speaking martian!
What is this? soy bean what? I'm not gonna eat that! No! No! Hey that was pretty good Can i have some more?

 

I'll go a step further and suggest that Meat is overconsumed. I want to look at other sources to see how to eat healthier (as part of dropping 50 plus pounds).

Back on page one, I criticized the deliberate portrayal of the slaughterhouses as cruel to animals, claiming that they are overblown and divert people from the information they may otherwise seek by looking at diets that work for vegans. You challenged my comments, describing the slaughterhouse proceedures and the Dairy Industry. I didn't want to bait you into anything, but rather you went where I was trying to avoid (at first anyway).

Which should be more of an indictment of the corporate factory farm industry, rather than the people who eat meat. The article I posted abbove, suggests that the meat they produce is of a lower quality, Drew's information suggests that their methods are ineffective and unsafe. Perhaps several smaller scale operations might be the key to producing better quality meat for the population.

I've heard the same logic about sex and drunkenness. Weak I admit, but I like the line...

But at what point should the parents realize there was something wrong?

I'll go one step further and suggest that the absurd extremes or pure Veganism would be impossible. Isn't the best source of fertilizer manure? That's an animal by product...

 

@ Gnarff,

Try this http://www.nutrition.org.uk/upload/BNF%20Healthy%20Eating(5)(1).pdf

Doesn't tell you quantities but advises on how much of the plate it should make up. Note the amount of non-meat alternatives in the "Meat" category.

Key for dieting is to get rid of the fat - trim it off, remove skin, buy leaner cuts.

 

A quick question. How do vegans feel about a mother breastfeeding her child? I mean, it is an animal product, but there's hardly any cruelty and you can't get more natural (and would be hard pressed to find more safe food for the child).

 

I'd like to know how vegans feel about someone else than the baby drinking the mother's milk

Feast your minds on that image

 

That image will scar me for the rest of the day, Iku-Turso!

I'm sure there are a lot of people who are vegan who don't make a big deal about it. I myself have some dietary restrictions due to my religious beliefs. I don't drink alcohol. But I'm not a zealot about it. When I associate with friends at a restaurant, I don't start going off, like this:

"oh, vodka is so BAD for you, you shouldn't drink it, do you know how many people die per year because of liver disease and anyway there's still a huge black market and do you know how little a Russian potato farmer MAKES and he works so hard and then he's forced by the Russian government to sell his potatoes for a PITTANCE and then the vodka makers just jack up the prices and the conditions in those Russian distilleries are just FILTHY and anyway over 34% of that stuff is smuggled, they didn't pay a penny in excise tax when they brought that stuff to Canada, and drunk drivers kill SO many people every year, I just can't imagine you can LIVE with yourself drinking knowing all the damage you are doing to yourself and the economy, not to mention the damage to your EVERLASTING SOUL and . . . ."

The previous ill-constructed rant, along with my attempt to reproduce the breathless, histrionic quality that goes with these sorts of people, is an example of the kind of person I want nothing to do with, and represents the midset of many vegans I have frequently interacted with in the past. It does NOT represent Drew, however, and I want to make that clear. So when you sense some lack of respect on my part toward vegans, remember that it is THIS kind of vegan to which I am referring.

 

Do I even have to answer this? Giving up animal products doesn't mean giving up your common sense.

This wasn't the taunting I was talking about, and what you actually said was this:

This is, quite frankly, not true. The claims about industry practices coming out of animal rights groups like PETA are almost* always factually accurate. I specifically suggested that you look up the procedures to which I referred in industry manuals (rather than on animal rights sites) because I felt that seeing the procedures that animal rights activists complain about spelled out in industry manuals and publications would drive the point [that the complaints about industry practice coming from animal rights activists aren't being pulled out of their own asses] home much more effectively than I ever could. The presentation coming from animal rights activists is often over the top and melodramatic, but their facts are usually easily corroborated by simply consulting industry publications.

Gnarff, had you instead argued that there was nothing wrong with current industry practices, I would have left your argument alone (since that is an issue of subjective ethics and I have no desire to get into another such fruitless debate), but what you argued was that the claims about industry practice coming from animal rights activists weren't true.

* It would be disingenuous to say that they are always factually accurate because we do have a few genuine nut-cases out there who care more about shock value than accuracy. The animal rights community does its best to muzzle people like that (since libel suits aren't exactly helpful), but isn't always successful.

 

On animal industry practices it would be good to read what Temple Grandin writes about them. She works in the industry and she's good at it. Yet her perspective on the matter should be of special interest to everyone as she has a somewhat outsider's point of view into human concerns...

 

Exactly what I hoped to avoid. How effectively has that derailed the topic at hand?

Exactly the point I wanted to make with the line in the first place. Animal rights groups derail the discussion with the exceptional melodrama...

Which I no longer believe. It may be unsafe and produces lower quality product and increases the fat and corn content, making it unhealthier. Increasing the number of facilities and spreading out the production requirements would increase quality and reduce the incidents that these groups bitch about.

Caracoth: I've saved the PDF that the site offers so I can look at it later.

 

If that's the point you wanted to make, that that is what you should have said. I wouldn't have argued it. Instead, you said their claims weren't true.

 

Unfortunately, yes, you do. They may not equate to each other, but in my experience (and apparently those of many people on these boards) they have an unusually high correlation.

I'll admit that you seem to have avoided that daily ritual, Drew, and I'm not trying to say otherwise, but please realize that there are zealots out there. How do they feel about this

 

I will again re-iterate that giving up animal products doesn't mean giving up your common sense. That said, as long as the lactating mother isn't kept in a confinement pen, fed an unnatural diet, and routinely impregnated (to make sure they continue to lactate) only to have her children slaughtered at birth for an acid found in their stomachs or sold to a facility that deprives them of light, confines them so closely that they can't even turn around, puts them on an iron deficient diet, and slaughters them a year later, vegans aren't against breastfeeding.

Sorry, NOG, but when you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer.