living vegan has never been easier!
I just stopped eating all together. I’ve never had as much disposable income in my
R.I.P Sir/Madam Spacecowboy. You will be missed. We will remember your valiant hunger strike (not that they had a choice anyway).
Some people unfortunately do not have access to good vegan options. That being said, people can reduce their consumption of red meat significantly and make an impact.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
vegan options? like produce, grains, and legumes? are you in a food desert yourself?
the “vegan options” you’re referring to are at the supermarket, and they are the cheapest items in there.I have plenty of friends who are vegans. I also have a few who tried it and failed because it’s not a switch you just turn off.
Giving the advice “just go vegan” is bad advice and counterproductive. There should be research into what it means and how to eat healthy vegan meals. You don’t just turn off the meat, which is what a lot of people assume they should do.
As a matter of fact I’d give the advice “go vegetarian, keep the milk eggs and fish, and if you like it and want to go further look into replacing those with some good vegan options.” It should be a process. Unless you start buying Soylent (the product not the movie), but that’s disgusting.
I went vegan on a random Thursday a few years ago after learning about the ethical reality here, that harming animals for pleasure or convenience is unjustified.
It didn’t happen all in one day (the learning that is), but I didn’t do any meal planning. Didn’t even order vegan food before I decided to go vegan. Next time I went to the store I only bought vegan things. Since then anytime I have the ability to buy vegan goods, I do (which has been 100% of the time because I live in the west in the 21st century).
If you’re homeless in the middle of Palestine being bombed relentlessly by a genocidal state, yeah I’m not going to complain about you eating eggs that were given to you from a homeless shelter. If you’re rich enough to drive to the store and buy groceries yourself in the U.S or Europe, you have no excuse.
cost, convenience, and culture are the three reasons im not actively vegan. i drink soylent and huel. i do (a lot of ) my own baking. i have lots of vegan friends.
but nothing quite hits the convenience/cost equilibrium like 2/$1 gas station hot dogs. 500 hot calories available 24 hours a day literally on my way anywhere to do anything.
and i’m a community organizer. part of that is meeting people where they are. if i refuse to eat what they’re eating, it sets me apart. so i can’t very well turn down culturally relevant foods like burgers or hotdogs or whatever is at the picnic.
these aren’t excuses. they’re reasons. to overcome them, you’ve got to beat gas station hotdogs on cost and convenience, and convince my region to go vegan. i’m not spending my time on that.
I understand the reasons why people aren’t vegan. I also understand the reason why slaughterhouse workers have far higher rates of violence (domestic and non-domestic). I understand why people do terrible things, people aren’t born evil. Even Nazis weren’t born with some disposition to be evil. It’s not like literally millions of Germans just had some natural predisposition to be unbelievably evil and that went away once they lost WW2.
These are learned behaviors. I understand the reasons. They’re still not an excuse. You’re failing to do what you need to do, and just because I understand why you’re failing doesn’t mean you’re not failing.
Maybe you don’t care, maybe you like animal abuse, maybe you know you’re doing something wrong and see yourself as a failure. No matter your own views, the mass torture/genocide is still happening, and you’re supporting it. Hopefully one day you grow enough as a person to stop.
This comment is straight up vegan propaganda.
If you want to make arguments, do it. But leave emotion at the curb.
This comment makes me want to eat MORE meat.
the mass torture/genocide is still happening,
animal agriculture is not torture or genocide
Consuming meat doesn’t automatically make you have a balanced and nutrituous diet. If you cared about that, you should inform yourself even if your not vegan.
Also “go vegetarian, keep the […] fish”, lmao.
Oh no, I’m so sorry for your poor friends. It must have been so hard to not abuse animals. I understand, not abusing animals is hard. When I stopped beating my dog with a rolled up newspaper every day, I was so depressed. I’m sure your friends are going through the exact same thing as me now that they aren’t paying for companies to put animals in cages and kill them.
they aren’t paying for companies to put animals in cages and kill them.
no one does that.
If you don’t think meat comes from locking animals in cages and killing them, where the fuck do you think meat comes from?
i don’t pay companies to do that. no one does.
My recommendation is learn to love lentils. Replace the beef in your spag bol with them. So good and so much cheaper. Also beans, there are so many good things you can do with them.
Lentils r amazing, although they severely lack protein. Plus, they alone do not have all 9 required amino acids. To get them, u need to consume lentils AND beans.
The daily RDA for me is around 56 grams of protein. If I had to meet this demand via lentils and beans alone, then I would need to consume around 460 grams of lentils and beans DAILY. Yeah… Imagine the AMOUNT of gases after that lol.
HOWEVER, there still is a solution that I found. Say hello to “TVP”, ie., “Texturised Vegetable Protein”. This basically concentrates all this protein, while having all 9 required amino acids. To meet my RDA, I would need to consume just 120 grams.
I still do have lentils and beans sometimes. However, TVP is still always present in some form.
@UraniumBlazer @Nonameuser678 56 grams of protein from all sources. There is protein in almost everything you eat, and it combines to reach that goal. You don’t have to get all 56 grams from just lentils and beans
Also, it’s rice or some other grain you want to pair with lentils to achieve a complete protein, not beans – beans are legumes, and most legumes have a similar amino acid profile
Well wheat and rice have like under 4 gm of protein per 100gm. Vegetables are even less than this. I would have to eat kilos and kilos of stuff to meet my RDA this way.
Also, it’s rice or some other grain you want to pair with lentils to achieve a complete protein, not beans – beans are legumes, and most legumes have a similar amino acid profile
Oh yeah, I looked this up. I don’t see the beans lentil thing that I mentioned anywhere. So ig u’r right. I think I saw this in some YouTube video.
Sure, 100 grams of raw spinach has only 2.9g of protein. But spinach cooks down a lot.
And remember, if you’re trying to get to 50g of protein a day, you add everything together. Was your breakfast a slice of toast and some berries? You might have eaten like 5g of protein there, and you haven’t even had an egg or anything that’s a real protein. If you add an egg, that’s 12g of protein at breakfast.
Ate a pb&j for lunch? That might have been another 10g of protein in that sandwich. Add a small side salad with some chickpeas and you’re easily at 15g of protein.
Then for dinner, a serving of lentils is like 13g. Suppose you ate that with some raita and spinach, and you’re easily at like 20g of protein at that meal already.
So that’s like 47g of protein. Eat a handful of nuts or two oranges and you’re at 50g of protein.
The good news is that the methane emissions are so damn bad that it also means that relatively modest reductions (in global percentage) will go a long way toward the problem.
carbon tax wouldn’t fix this, meat tax?
If it covered methane emissions on the basis of CO2e, it could.
A carbon tax has been politically really tough to pass in the US though.
yeah, would never pass federally. there’s got to be a state where this type of thing could get a foothold.
if it were me, if start in a place with a high gasoline tax, eliminate it, and replace it with a carbon tax that costs less.
now there is precedence. a foot in the door
The highest gas tax in the US is California, at $0.51/gallon. That’s not high at all.
I found 78¢ in CA. CA is a top three fuel consumer, so a carbon tax there would impact lots of folks. once someone does it, others may follow
That’s what happens when you add in sales taxes, which are applied to everything. It’s not going to happen so long as it looks like a backdoor way to increase the tax over time.
so many reasons why it won’t happen:
- backdoor to increase rates
- hurts automotive industry
- hurts ff industry
- hurts poor people
- hurts agriculture
- hurts manufacturing
- hurts retail
- hurts small businesses
- hurts big businesses
- etc
ultimately, one cannot make an omelette without cracking eggs
You need to get it past the WSPA first, and they know what it is.
Have you met a rich person who can’t avoid taxes? No but seriously even if every steak cost them $1000 it would not deter them because of the current wealth concentration.
Meat got expensive AF for me and my family. I’m actually surprised how easy it was to switch.
A lot of vegetarian alternatives are now catering towards former meat eaters, so the taste lines up better. And I also found a secret weapon. Asian mock meats is really really good.
Once in a while, I treat the family to those beyond meats, which taste pretty real. But they’re also expensive so…
Plant based for the environment, vegan for the animals🖖
So many good reasons to eat less meat.
Beef is the biggest mass consumed culprit. I think mutten might be worse, but it isn’t eaten nearly as much.
My point is, if you struggle to reduce meat consumption, just reducing beef consumption would make a big difference. Next time you are out, get a chicken sandwich instead of a burger. It’s that simple.
Just 12% of Americans - mostly men between age 50 and 65 - are responsible for half the beef consumption in America
Next time you are out, get a chicken sandwich instead of a burger. It’s that simple.
I wish it was that simple, but it isn’t. If consumers replace chicken with beef, chicken will get more expensive and beef will get less expensive. Maybe some factory farmers and slaughterhouses will change species and ranchers will hire a PR firm to start a “eat more beef” add campaign. A new equilibrium will be reached with no significant impact on animal welfare or the climate, because the meat industry is well aware that consumer preferences shift over time and is happy to accommodate those shifts as long as consumers keep eating meat.
What sends a message is vegetarianism or veganism. And, to a lesser extent, buying your meat from a local cooperative or raising your own. Taking money out of the pockets of the factory farm industry as a whole saves animals and sends a message. Just eating less beef doesn’t.
Ideally, more people would eat way less meat.
I stand by it being that simple. Beef production has more than 3 times the emissions per pound than other meats.
It isn’t about sending a message, it is about reducing GHG emissions.
As far as prices, maybe. I don’t know the ins and outs of raising animals for food. I don’t think meat prices are entirely supply and demand due to different costs in raising different animals.
A reminder that oil companies invented “carbon footprint” to distract you while they continue to pollute. Form unions and solidarity networks to overcome harmful systems. Don’t argue over hamburgers.
Reminder that this doesn’t absolve you from your personal responsibilities. You do need to be making choices that move the world towards a better future.
Besides that the number one reason for land loss, the loss of biodiversity, nitrate pollution, and methane production is still the bio-industy. Let alone the ethical implications of killing billions of animals a month.
You can do both. No, you’re obliged to do both. Stop supporting bio-industy and fight for rights.
In my country, the standard argument against climate action is “well China isn’t going to stop polluting so why should we?” This stock argument ignores the following facts:
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Our per capita emissions have always been worse than China’s
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China is already beginning to outpace us in green technologies
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Even if China were behind us, our positive actions would still save lives because climate collapse affects us by degrees
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I have no idea why the fuck all these “patriots” are opposed to the idea of us being better than China. I’d love to be better than China, and I think our government is illegitimate. Why the fuck am I a bigger patriot than these losers?
Apparently, the mainstream animal-abusing left gets their whataboutisms from the same place as my racist uncle, because now it’s capitalism’s fault that people have no obligation to do good things ever.
So, if you think of yourself as a leftist but you eat meat and drive a car, I’d just like to remind you that you chose to pay a killer to kill for you, and you chose to worsen the flooding and draughts in poor countries, and no, a corporation did not put the money in your hand and force you to do this.
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No! Make them eat MORE meat. All meat all day, 5x a day. +meat snacks.
Clog those arteries as fast as possible and we are finally rid of these idiots who think meat is an essential ingredient to their masculinity.
This is why they need viagara!
And someone send them some cigarettes, unfiltered.I’ll take things that are never going to happen for $500, Alex
