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Is Veganism a Fad?

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PeterC

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It's a secondary unit of measure since 1965 but an accommodation in 1995 was made for those that still didn't understand counting in 10.
Some of us don't need to count on our fingers
 
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Bantamzen

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As a vegetarian of 28 years who eats vegan wherever possible and has sympathy for vegans, I would say that although human beings have eaten meat for thousands of years, there are plenty of people who have been vegetarian or vegan for a long time and are perfectly healthy, and biologically we are more like herbivorous than carnivorous animals. If we were meant to be carnivores, we would have claws to catch our prey! Eating meat is just a habit, not a necessity, and vegetarians have existed throughout history. From a health point of view, a vegetarian or vegan diet has many advantages compared to a meat-based diet: less saturated fat, less risk of cancer and heart disease, for example.

That said, as with any type of diet you need to make sure that you eat a good varied and balanced diet to ensure that you get all the nutrients that you need. In theory, there shouldn't be any nutrients that the human body needs that are only found in meat and fish. In practice, though, I guess everybody's body is different, and maybe some people's bodies find it harder to adjust to a plant-based diet or absorb nutrients such as protein and iron from plant-based sources.

I'd disagree strongly with the notion that meat eating is just habit. In many parts of the world plant based food is very much seasonal, and so more pretty much as long as humans have lived in such areas they have relied on animal protein to survive through months of winter. Its really only in the last hundred years or so that plant based foods have become more common place in such areas during winter months.

Human diets vary wildly depending on climate & resources. But overall as a species we are most definitely omnivore, although some choose not to be not through necessity but personal choices. That however doesn't change our classification. That would take thousands of years of 100% veganism for our DNA to recode our anatomies.

If you want to go down that route, why are out eyes not on the sides of our heads like pretty much all herbivores?

Additionally, why are our digestive systems more accustomed to processing purely vegetable matter, such as cows or sheep? or why do we have a mixture of teeth in our mouths?
 

trebor79

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Cattle must be easier to rear in the quantities needed for an expanding population than having to rely purely on plant based foods.
No. Because those cattle eat plants. Typically soya beans, cereals etc which it would be more efficient and cheaper to just feed directly to humans.
You get more food per hectare by growing plants and eating them than by growing plants, feeding them to animals and then eating the animals.
I do think meat consumption needs to reduce in the western world, and in those countries that are rapidly achieving western lifestyles.
Something like 90% of the population of India is vegetarian so to say people need to eat meat to stay healthy is a nonsense.
I do eat some meat. My wife is veggie which (in the words of Samuel L Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction) pretty much makes me a vegetarian too.
Someone further up thread threw a cheap shot about vegans eating quinoa imported from Bolivia. Well, a lot of beef and poultry is also imported from South America. Plants will always always always have a lower environmental impact that any meat, with the exception of exclusively grass fed lamb grazing upland areas that are otherwise useless for agriculture.
I've got no problem with meat eating, vegetarianism or veganism. But to suggest that continuing to chop down and burn rainforest to grow soya and ranch cattle is a good idea is pretty indefensible.
Along with aviation, meat is something that should be rationed. Everybody (globally) gets an equal allocation, and if you don't want yours you can sell it to people who want more.
 

Bantamzen

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Along with aviation, meat is something that should be rationed. Everybody (globally) gets an equal allocation, and if you don't want yours you can sell it to people who want more.

It risks going off topic, but I'd love to know how you'd even begin to administer that! Perhaps rather than going knee-jerk like after one or other form of human impact on the environment, we encourage everyone to make small incremental changes to energy use, contribute to things like carbon fixing, reducing food waste etc etc?
 

trebor79

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Well actually I've already thought of how to implement the aviation one, and actually have a meeting scheduled with a think tank to discuss it in the next few weeks.
For aviation it's almost trivial to implement, because everyone on an international flight has a uniquely numbered passport... The industry says it's too difficult or not feasible - which is nonsense but masks their real concern that it will massively reduce demand, but then that's the point! The industry will have to adapt, focusing on service again perhaps rather than a race to the bottom on price and putting ever more bums on seats to make the wafer thin margins work.

Food is more difficult but could be done with a bit of thought.

Unfortunately, I think we are several decades beyond the point where small incremental changes can make a meaningful contribution. Very rapid and very significant changes to how the world economy works, how we feed ourselves and how we manage resources are required.
Governments push small incremental change because most people accept that and it makes it look like progress is being made. But actually governments need to explain to people that massive change is needed, right now and have the balls to follow through.
 

Darandio

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Along with aviation, meat is something that should be rationed. Everybody (globally) gets an equal allocation, and if you don't want yours you can sell it to people who want more.

Well actually I've already thought of how to implement the aviation one, and actually have a meeting scheduled with a think tank to discuss it in the next few weeks.

You make it sound like some new fangled idea that you have just come up with.
 

trebor79

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It's not a new idea, just not widely accepted at present for the reasons I alluded to.
 

DynamicSpirit

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Governments push small incremental change because most people accept that and it makes it look like progress is being made. But actually governments need to explain to people that massive change is needed, right now and have the balls to follow through.

I think it's more than that. Certainly, what you can persuade people to support is important. But it's also that changes can be unpredictable: Most changes that impact the economy have all sorts of unintended side-effects, that are very hard to precisely predict. So you often don't know what the full impact of the change will be until you actually do it. That implies it's usually better to change things in small steps, because then it's a lot easier to adjust your approach to compensate for any bad side-effects before they become disastrous.
 

Bantamzen

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Well actually I've already thought of how to implement the aviation one, and actually have a meeting scheduled with a think tank to discuss it in the next few weeks.
For aviation it's almost trivial to implement, because everyone on an international flight has a uniquely numbered passport... The industry says it's too difficult or not feasible - which is nonsense but masks their real concern that it will massively reduce demand, but then that's the point! The industry will have to adapt, focusing on service again perhaps rather than a race to the bottom on price and putting ever more bums on seats to make the wafer thin margins work.

I don't think it needs a thinktank to get where you are coming from, price the majority out of the market, reduce number of flights, box ticked. Of course reducing social mobility can have other side effects. As countries become more isolated again, so does human territorial instincts, leading to mistrust, dislike, hatred and maybe even war. There is a lot to be said for having a much more mobile, worldly and thus educated society.

Food is more difficult but could be done with a bit of thought.

There could, but invariably this will end up being like the "solution" for travel, make it more expensive & less available. Reducing a society's social mobility might reap some negatives in the long run, reducing choice of diet, well you'd better start prepping the tear gas.

Unfortunately, I think we are several decades beyond the point where small incremental changes can make a meaningful contribution. Very rapid and very significant changes to how the world economy works, how we feed ourselves and how we manage resources are required.
Governments push small incremental change because most people accept that and it makes it look like progress is being made. But actually governments need to explain to people that massive change is needed, right now and have the balls to follow through.

But governments should be focusing on the big issues, moving the wheels away from legacy forms of energy consumption, storage & distribution. They should be pushing infrastructure that allows & encourages more public transport, helping industries involved in technologies to reduce our energy footprints without adversely affecting lifestyles, stopping building on green spaces, making better use of already urbanised ones, promoting widespread re-forestation in our own countries and beyond, and most of all educating people on how to make their bit of a difference count, and not just force the onus and blame onto them.

Bringing the subject back around on topic, vegans often ask why some people seem to resent them. And this can often be answered simply, that a small, but noisy majority try to make non-vegans (including vegetarians) feel guilty about their lifestyle choices. And people don't like to be made to feel guilty about something that they are (or feel they are) powerless to effect. So they push back, and this is exactly what is starting to happen with environmental issues. Pressure groups and governments are starting to focus on a handful of issues, and all the talk is of reducing and/or limiting them. Meat, air travel to name a couple. And whilst these might have some small effect, they do not address the wider issues. But the negative effect they have is that people disengage, which is why educating on incremental changes can have a positive effect.
 

trebor79

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Are 90% of the population of India healthy?
Depends what you mean by healthy I suppose. Given the level of clinical obesity in this country, I doubt 90% of the the population of the UK is healthy.
I do know that my veggie wife and vegan next door neighbours are healthy.
 

trebor79

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But governments should be focusing on the big issues, moving the wheels away from legacy forms of energy consumption, storage & distribution. They should be pushing infrastructure that allows & encourages more public transport, helping industries involved in technologies to reduce our energy footprints without adversely affecting lifestyles, stopping building on green spaces, making better use of already urbanised ones, promoting widespread re-forestation in our own countries and beyond, and most of all educating people on how to make their bit of a difference count, and not just force the onus and blame onto them.
To bring it back on topic, reforestation is both pointless if humanity continues to destroy natural forest, and incompatible with the maintenance of western meat consumption and the rest of the world catching up with that consumption. A major driver for the deforestation of the Amazon, for example, is the cattle ranching industry and soya industry to feed those cattle.
And I believe that adverse effects on lifestyles (if that is what reduction of meat eating constitutes) is necessary. Messing about with incrementalism and small behavioural changes will achieve nothing.
 

Bantamzen

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To bring it back on topic, reforestation is both pointless if humanity continues to destroy natural forest, and incompatible with the maintenance of western meat consumption and the rest of the world catching up with that consumption. A major driver for the deforestation of the Amazon, for example, is the cattle ranching industry and soya industry to feed those cattle.
And I believe that adverse effects on lifestyles (if that is what reduction of meat eating constitutes) is necessary. Messing about with incrementalism and small behavioural changes will achieve nothing.

Those small behavioural changes will lead to bigger ones, but over-impose too quickly and you drive people in the opposite direction. Its how society works in the industrialised world, you can see it playing in real time right now.
 

Robin Edwards

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Is veganism a fad? No and I would expect (and hope) for our planet's sake that the trend away from consuming meat continues. If the reason for the question is that you hoped it was a fad and would 'go away', I think you might be disappointed.

I can't find the source right now but I read that there are more people in the world that don't eat meat, than do. Many of these billions of people will likely be more healthy that you or I :)
Convincing us that we're big meat eaters by nature is also stretching the truth slightly otherwise we would have evolved differently and not needed to invent tools and weapons to catch and eat anything much bigger that a rat! Having said this, we are not unlike bears and are mixed-diet omnivores yet not designed to eat a slab of red-meat daily. Our diet is 'designed' for our species and should be nothing like the 21c western diet that we might somehow imagine is 'normal'.
On the flip side, our genetics will not have evolved very much since the time we were hunter-gatherers and our biology is not well adapted to cereal/wheat based grains. (Ref The Real Meal Revolution by Noakes, Proudfoot & Creed if interested further)

I also hate to disappoint those that might like the narrative that not eating meat makes you unhealthy There are many athletes and people at the pinnacle of their sport that don't consume meat. I'm most certainly not one of these people but at a point in my life where I eat the least meat and dairy that I have ever done, feels like the point where I'm also the most healthy in body & mind. Don't dis if you haven't tried it I would suggest.

As individuals caught up in the consumer led capitalist society we're part of, it's difficult to do everything right for ourselves and our environment yet there are what I considered three simple things which have been straightforward to reduce my carbon footprint in recent years. I don't for one minute preach to anyone to do likewise but it's a fact that our planet is 'challenged' and as someone who has children, I care that I do what I can, even if nobody else does.
  • Stop taking flights and reduce my annual mileage in family car
  • Eat less red meat & dairy
  • Make clothes and material goods last til they're worn out
I believe the fourth but slightly difficult one for me since I have three grown up children, is to bring less children into the world! If I knew 40 years ago what I know now would I have made different choices in the past - yes, most definitely.
 

fowler9

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I work with two girls who are vegan and the only people who ever bring it up are young lads taking the mick asking if what they are eating is vegan and telling them they never shut up about it (Which they never ever start doing). If anything I am more annoyed by the carnivores who won't shut up about their right to eat meat even though no one is trying to stop them. Irritating little sh*ts.
 

Bantamzen

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Is veganism a fad? No and I would expect (and hope) for our planet's sake that the trend away from consuming meat continues. If the reason for the question is that you hoped it was a fad and would 'go away', I think you might be disappointed.

I can't find the source right now but I read that there are more people in the world that don't eat meat, than do. Many of these billions of people will likely be more healthy that you or I :)
Convincing us that we're big meat eaters by nature is also stretching the truth slightly otherwise we would have evolved differently and not needed to invent tools and weapons to catch and eat anything much bigger that a rat! Having said this, we are not unlike bears and are mixed-diet omnivores yet not designed to eat a slab of red-meat daily. Our diet is 'designed' for our species and should be nothing like the 21c western diet that we might somehow imagine is 'normal'.
On the flip side, our genetics will not have evolved very much since the time we were hunter-gatherers and our biology is not well adapted to cereal/wheat based grains. (Ref The Real Meal Revolution by Noakes, Proudfoot & Creed if interested further)

I also hate to disappoint those that might like the narrative that not eating meat makes you unhealthy There are many athletes and people at the pinnacle of their sport that don't consume meat. I'm most certainly not one of these people but at a point in my life where I eat the least meat and dairy that I have ever done, feels like the point where I'm also the most healthy in body & mind. Don't dis if you haven't tried it I would suggest.

As individuals caught up in the consumer led capitalist society we're part of, it's difficult to do everything right for ourselves and our environment yet there are what I considered three simple things which have been straightforward to reduce my carbon footprint in recent years. I don't for one minute preach to anyone to do likewise but it's a fact that our planet is 'challenged' and as someone who has children, I care that I do what I can, even if nobody else does.
  • Stop taking flights and reduce my annual mileage in family car
  • Eat less red meat & dairy
  • Make clothes and material goods last til they're worn out
I believe the fourth but slightly difficult one for me since I have three grown up children, is to bring less children into the world! If I knew 40 years ago what I know now would I have made different choices in the past - yes, most definitely.

Unfortunately, the correct answer to which is healthier, an omnivorous, vegetarian, or vegan diet is nobody really knows. Every group can point to one study or another supporting their position, and all can be equally valid. As to whether one is better for the environment, its tempting to agree with vegans. However that would in part depends on where in the world you live, the more variable the climate, the more likely that a purely vegetable diet is going to impact on the environment. The further food has to travel, and the more it requires certain conditions for transport the more it will impact.

But as far as this country goes there really is something we can all do which will not impact our lives one jot, indeed it will benefit people immediately. And that is to stop wasting up to a third of the food we buy. Learn how to recognise when food is still edible instead of relying on a date on the packaging, and where we recognise food may be about to turn wherever possible put it to use. But most of all stop buying food we don't really need. One of the biggest things my wife and I do to this end is to use as much as possible, and keep our food buying to a minimum meaning that we only throw out a tiny fraction of what we buy. Hell we will even ask for a doggy bag if we eat out and don't eat it all, it will always do for a lunch.

Imagine the entire country reducing it's footprint by a third just by being a bit more careful and understanding their food better. Now imagine the rest of the industrialised world doing the same. A simple win, yet where's the campaign for that?
 

AM9

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As a vegetarian of 28 years who eats vegan wherever possible and has sympathy for vegans, I would say that although human beings have eaten meat for thousands of years, there are plenty of people who have been vegetarian or vegan for a long time and are perfectly healthy, and biologically we are more like herbivorous than carnivorous animals. If we were meant to be carnivores, we would have claws to catch our prey! Eating meat is just a habit, not a necessity, and vegetarians have existed throughout history. From a health point of view, a vegetarian or vegan diet has many advantages compared to a meat-based diet: less saturated fat, less risk of cancer and heart disease, for example. ...
Why do some vegetarians/vegans like to use the black and white categorisations of Herbivores and Carnivores? It just shows a lack of awareness about the spectrum of diets across the animal world. There are examples of omnivorous animals in birds, mammals and reptiles, - so have they just acquired a habit for eating meat? However much you might respect animals, their sanctity of life and their freedom to live as they see fit, they are just part of the food chain, firstly as living food for other animals or secondly as dead and decomposing food for others. The latter includes nearly all humans who aren't cremated by other humans and in some unfortuante circumstances, the former can include humans. It is the way of the world. Why pretend otherwise by ignoring the existence of omnivores in the natural world?
 

fowler9

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Why do some vegetarians/vegans like to use the black and white categorisations of Herbivores and Carnivores? It just shows a lack of awareness about the spectrum of diets across the animal world. There are examples of omnivorous animals in birds, mammals and reptiles, - so have they just acquired a habit for eating meat? However much you might respect animals, their sanctity of life and their freedom to live as they see fit, they are just part of the food chain, firstly as living food for other animals or secondly as dead and decomposing food for others. The latter includes nearly all humans who aren't cremated by other humans and in some unfortuante circumstances, the former can include humans. It is the way of the world. Why pretend otherwise by ignoring the existence of omnivores in the natural world?
Apparently in the developed world we eat much more meat than we ever used to as a species. Continuing this process is warping the planet. We are now apex predators with a little something else. The natural world isn't balancing out after we have our fill as we do it on an industrial scale.
 

AM9

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Apparently in the developed world we eat much more meat than we ever used to as a species. Continuing this process is warping the planet. We are now apex predators with a little something else. The natural world isn't balancing out after we have our fill as we do it on an industrial scale.
Nevertheless, humans as a species are still omnivores, not carnivores. All humans as a species are omnivores. Failing to acknowledge that undermines any argument to decry a diet that includes animal products.
 

Bantamzen

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Why do some vegetarians/vegans like to use the black and white categorisations of Herbivores and Carnivores? It just shows a lack of awareness about the spectrum of diets across the animal world. There are examples of omnivorous animals in birds, mammals and reptiles, - so have they just acquired a habit for eating meat? However much you might respect animals, their sanctity of life and their freedom to live as they see fit, they are just part of the food chain, firstly as living food for other animals or secondly as dead and decomposing food for others. The latter includes nearly all humans who aren't cremated by other humans and in some unfortuante circumstances, the former can include humans. It is the way of the world. Why pretend otherwise by ignoring the existence of omnivores in the natural world?

I don't think its fair to label all veggies / vegans as thinking in this polarised manner, generally speaking in my experience it is only a noisy minority that do.

But you do still raise a good point. Evolutionary & genetically speaking we are most closely related to the chimpanzee and other similar great apes. And whilst these often have an almost totally veggie / vegan diet, they will hunt & eat other animals if / when the opportunity arises. The same is true of humans through the ages, where meat is often scarce or cattle is difficult to raise, veggie diets are far more common. Conversely where vegetables & fruit are harder to come by, more carnivorous diets are common. So human dietary patterns are complex, and often based on environment, availability and seasonality. Its really only as human mobility has improved have the kind of options such as veganism become a more popular choice of diet.

Apparently in the developed world we eat much more meat than we ever used to as a species. Continuing this process is warping the planet. We are now apex predators with a little something else. The natural world isn't balancing out after we have our fill as we do it on an industrial scale.

There is certainly evidence that meat consumption is on the rise, especially as economies grow in the developing world. Of course one way to tackle this is to reduce our food waste in the first place. As I mentioned earlier, in this country we waste on average around a third of the food we buy, and I believe it may be even worse in the US potentially approaching 40%. This is a shocking statistic, not only because of not just the waste of the food products & energy used to grow, package & transport this wasted food, but because it is such a simple issue to resolve through better food education.

I can remember back in the 70s when my family was pretty poor, food was considered such a value commodity that waste was simply unthinkable. So we used to as a family make it our responsibility to make sure we wasted as little as possible, and that is something I've taken into adulthood. It is simple things like knowing when food is off or not, stopping for a moment when faced with the myriad of "Buy one get one free" and similar offers and asking yourself will you actually use it, and most of all making the most of the food you do bring home instead of simply throwing it out because it is a day past a "best before" date. Anyone growing up where I was born in Liverpool will probably remember the classic eat-uppery dish that was Scouse, which was basically a stew made up of all the bits of Sunday lunch and other meals that would today often head for the bin. With just a few simple tweaks to our lifestyles as a society, we can massively reduce our impact on the environment, and our bank balances!
 

Robin Edwards

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Nevertheless, humans as a species are still omnivores, not carnivores. All humans as a species are omnivores. Failing to acknowledge that undermines any argument to decry a diet that includes animal products.
worth adding that most people in the western world cannot claim to be carnivores as such because they don't kill animals but rely on animals killed and processed by others (carrion eaters). Like bears and dogs, humans will have evolved to eat carrion or flesh that has already died or been killed, most of us are doing this when we consume meat in our diets.
Again on a personal level, I would struggle to kill any animal although I acknowledge that this attribute has become unnecessary whether I chose to eat meat or not. I could not personally slaughter a pig, lamb or cow so feel it unreasonable to allow someone else to do that for me.
The points made about sourcing food ethically is helpful in reducing carbon. For instance, Tesco may insist on offering me apples from NZ or SA but I won't buy unless they are from UK.
Food waste also a good point well made. I'm lucky here as my wife used to be a chef so knows how to make the most from the food that we buy and very little goes in the bin.
 

AM9

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This. End of thread.
Not really, - the thread title is: "Is Veganism a fad". The answer to that lies somwhere between: to many vegans, their attachment to a vegan'ish diet is a fad, to no, it is a diet not relying on animal products rooted in a culture where animals aren't available or suitable for food. To add to the sometimes fad'ish following and preaching by it's adherants, veganism has sometimes been adopted as a religious doctrine by some geographical cultures.
 

JohnB57

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worth adding that most people in the western world cannot claim to be carnivores as such because they don't kill animals but rely on animals killed and processed by others (carrion eaters). Like bears and dogs, humans will have evolved to eat carrion or flesh that has already died or been killed, most of us are doing this when we consume meat in our diets.
The word "carnivore" derives from Latin elements for "meat" and "eat" (we use the similarly derived words "devour" and "voracious") so meat eaters are carnivores in every sense.
 

AM9

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The word "carnivore" derives from Latin elements for "meat" and "eat" (we use the similarly derived words "devour" and "voracious") so meat eaters are carnivores in every sense.
Either way, human beings as a species are Omnivores, which of course means they can eat meat, (including poultry, fish and insects*) as well as fruit, vegetables and funghi. The fact that some may choose to not eat meat doesn't make them a different species however much they might claim. There are a few cultures in the human race that don't eat anything but vegetable products, occasionally because there isn't access to suitable meat, and sometimes through choice. Much more rare are humans who eat only meat or fish which is typically those living in a polar climate where little can grow and sometimes there isn't anything suitable for humans so they must rely on eating animals that survive on vegetable products.
 
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