Surfing and Veganism

I'm a vegan, I don't drink and soon to be reformed virgin, it's sorta like being in a minority.

freeride76 wrote: The other , more general philosophical argument against veganism is that it draws an arbitrary line about reducing suffering to animals.

nothing wrong with drawing arbitrary lines of course....humans have spent their entire existances doing that....however i dare say freeride that if you saw an animal dieing on the side of the road you would at least consider your options to do something or not...but if you saw a dieing plant you wouldn't give it a second thought.

so you would appear to value one type of lifes [suffering] more than another?

Stok - what about honey?

Sheepdog wrote:

Tens of thousands of years of eating animals, first hunting, then farming, has allowed the human brain to grow, to the point where we can feel guilt and philosophize about not eating animals.... Irony.....

Yep basically what i thought and said, great minds think a like.

Its crazy when you think about it.

People justify their rationale for animal empathy as a story of the evolution of the human race .
But you can have compassion/respect for your prey if it is you that does your own " dirty " work .
Back on the evolution trail though . People think that they can change these things / like over night .
Reality is your body will go into shock . Evolution Is real , it's just that it usually takes generations to be able to successfully change . As many have said abstaining from anything is not the best for your health .
Except from abstaining from prophets / preachers that feel like they have ALL the answers ... That shit is just painfull to have to listen too .... And worry thing Is social media attracts them like mozzies to the light ... This thread is probably no different . Bring back MCD .

southey wrote:

People justify their rationale for animal empathy as a story of the evolution of the human race .
But you can have compassion/respect for your prey if it is you that does your own " dirty " work .
Back on the evolution trail though . People think that they can change these things / like over night .
Reality is your body will go into shock . Evolution Is real , it's just that it usually takes generations to be able to successfully change . As many have said abstaining from anything is not the best for your health .
Except from abstaining from prophets / preachers that feel like they have ALL the answers ... That shit is just painfull to have to listen too .... And worry thing Is social media attracts them like mozzies to the light ... This thread is probably no different . Bring back MCD .

McDonalds, More Core Division or Maurice Cole Designs?

A whirlwind of a thread. Are we talking about most sustainable diets now? If that's the case I'm Freeride or ID or Zen or whoever the hell said that it's more about where your food comes from and how it got there than what it is.

It's entirely feasible for most of us in Australia to buy food grown quite close to home - even in Sydney. In Tassie at least we are spoiled for choice; I can buy vegetables from the market (and even the local corner store) that were picked about 12 hours earlier, eggs from backyard sellers now that my chooks are old and dying, can buy meat from wild game producers (though I never have), and I could for a while and hopefully can again soon buy milk from a dairy that doesn't separate calf from mother or sell male calves off as veal. Plus they sell milk in a returnable glass bottle. Which was completely normal about 50 years ago and for some reason almost impossible today. Funny that.

I said it earlier but it's interesting to get a renewed take on it: my eating habits are mostly dictated by my goal to not create as much waste, so I try to buy things not wrapped in plastic. This means that most food comes direct from the farm and is in season, I do most non-veg shopping at Eumarrah (I think that is Aus wide?) and not much dairy beyond milk for coffee. I figure this is much better for the earth as a complex system than eating faux-meat made from Amazonian soy, though clearly it's not perfect. I've probably never felt healthier, never slept better and never had such an enormous fucking chip on my shoulder. Highly recommended.

Been a great discussion so far, thanks everyone for their input. I've learnt a lot.

happyasS wrote:

freeride76 wrote: The other , more general philosophical argument against veganism is that it draws an arbitrary line about reducing suffering to animals.

nothing wrong with drawing arbitrary lines of course....humans have spent their entire existances doing that....however i dare say freeride that if you saw an animal dieing on the side of the road you would at least consider your options to do something or not...but if you saw a dieing plant you wouldn't give it a second thought.

so you would appear to value one type of lifes [suffering] more than another?

Yes. I would value the life of my friends, family and fellow humans above other animals and plants, true.
If I saw a dying animal on the side of the road I would try to rescue it. If I see the plants in my care needing water I water them. I don't let them die.
I think I agree with you but not sure how your point relates?

Stok, to come back to your line in the sand, mozzies are fair game when they're irritating but you said animals with central nervous systems are the ones to worry about. What about our delicious larger bodied invertebrates, also without central nervous systems, crabs, bugs, lobsters etc? Come to think of it, what about the insect food revolution that Indo raised, would you eat them too?

All arthropods, just like the mozzie squished against your bedroom wall. Again, not having a go I'm just curious because we all draw the line somewhere. No judgement for that just curious about yours. Sometimes we even have a dotted line.

Benski.. Some people don't draw a line at all.... But most do, yeah...... Dogs, monkeys, live animals....
I very VERY rarely eat pig..... And when I do, I feel bad about afterwards.... Occasionally I might fuck up and indulge in something that may have a hint of bacon or ham (slice of pizza etc), but I do my best to avoid.. My father as a 15 yo worked at the slaughter yards in the late 1950s... Memories stuck with him forever.... "The pigs know, son..... They know.... Their screams haunt me.... The look in their eyes.... They're more intelligent than dogs, boy.... Would you eat our dog?"..........

Without going right back through the whole discussion, have we gone through the differences of the digestive tracts of humans as compared to other primates and herbivores?

In my limited study of biology and agriculture I'm under the impression that the human digestive tract is different from all other primates including gorillas by the size of our stomachs and colons.

Gorillas have a larger colon filled with bacteria to break down the cellulose material, that the human body doesn't, which it then turns into fatty acids, to fuel for their bodies. They must eat almost constantly while awake to consume enough plant material to break down into the required fatty acids to sustain them (approximately 20kgs per day). Now thats a lot of leaves etc.
The human body on the other hand can convert the fats in meat, fish, eggs etc into fatty acids readily and with a lot smaller amounts of food needed to get the amounts required for survival. Another thing in our favour is we are quite adaptable to other food sources, but to maintain optimal health we need fatty acids that our bodies can't produce by just eating a raw vegetarian diet.
Thats why vegans must consume processed soy products and other supplements to get the required nutrients to sustain health which gorillas don't need to do.
Cows and sheep have 4 stomachs to break down the cellulose with added bacteria to make the fatty acids.
Horses have an enlarged duodenum which does the same job.
Pigs have a similar digestive system as humans and are omnivores.

So basically humans are supposed to eat a variety of meats, eggs, fish, vegetables and fruits with limited grains to have a healthy natural diet not a vegetarian diet only.

Of course I can't be 100% certain of all my information as I'm only going on my recall of what I learnt whilst studying those subjects years ago but I'm sure there would be plenty of research articles that would back up what I remember if I'd care to look them up.

Stok wrote:

Sheepdog wrote:

Tens of thousands of years of eating animals, first hunting, then farming, has allowed the human brain to grow, to the point where we can feel guilt and philosophize about not eating animals.... Irony.....

This was raised before Sheepdog, and is true. It's ironic.

There's not doubt about it, as we progress as a society and become more developed we have become more compassionate, and animal suffering for human nutrition, enjoyment, health or fashion, I think is soon to be a thing of the past.

Thats a highly contentious point: humans are becoming more compassionate. You could easily muster as much evidence for the contrary point.
Homo Erectus, 2 million years ago on the savannah used to care for their old people. Mostly we shove our old people into homes so we don't have to care for them. Is that evolving towards a more compassionate society?
The way we treat our elderly is at least a strong indication of society as the way we treat animals. Like Southey said, we can still care and treat animals well in farming systems.

Sheepdog wrote:

Benski.. Some people don't draw a line at all.... But most do, yeah...... Dogs, monkeys, live animals....
I very VERY rarely eat pig..... And when I do, I feel bad about afterwards.... Occasionally I might fuck up and indulge in something that may have a hint of bacon or ham (slice of pizza etc), but I do my best to avoid.. My father as a 15 yo worked at the slaughter yards in the late 1950s... Memories stuck with him forever.... "The pigs know, son..... They know.... Their screams haunt me.... The look in their eyes.... They're more intelligent than dogs, boy.... Would you eat our dog?"..........

Yep

manbat wrote:

Yep

Yep, you agree? Or yep you'd eat the dog? ;)

I don't agree with your post about not eating pigs, that's just weird, didn't you work in bakeries? Must be the only ones in Aus that didn't make bacon something.

No, I'm saying that I would eat dog, maybe not your dog but I would eat dog without any hesitation. The moral question of weather or not we would eat something based on its similarities to us seems like an anthropocentric mater with no logic behind it.

"Homo Erectus, 2 million years ago on the savannah used to care for their old people. Mostly we shove our old people into homes so we don't have to care for them. Is that evolving towards a more compassionate society?"

Most cultures still do care for their elderly.... It's only us in our western capitalistic "utopia" where even incarceration is being "privatized", that this "aged care for profits" is occurring.... That sort of links into what i was saying in the "whats what" thread about ideology... It's doomed to fail... Same deal with how we treat animals... Capitalism... profit.... I also very rarely eat bought seafood, unless I know the supply chain... I'd rather catch it and kill the animal myself..... These so called "piscatorial vegetarians" need to go out on a trawler or fishing boat and witness the slaughter..... Turtles, dolphins, dugongs, millions of dead creatures just for a few prawns, longlines hooking rare ocean birds..... A news report says turtle safe nets are now in use... Everyone sighs... Well bullshit......... Just keep spending...... But prawns or mulloway or turtles don't have cutey pie big eyes like a baby sheep to stoke the primal compassion.... "ddooonn'tt eeaatt meee liiissaa"..... Gotta love Lisa Simpson..... Generational game changer....
Whilst free market capitalism is king, for stoks sake, i don't see much change on a world wide scale.... Too much money, and greed will always rule.... It's biblical, people.... You may have pockets of change.. But there's billions of folk out there, and "my kitchen rules" is back on tv....... lol....

manbat wrote:

I don't agree with your post about not eating pigs, that's just weird, didn't you work in bakeries? Must be the only ones in Aus that didn't make bacon something.

No, I'm saying that I would eat dog, maybe not your dog but I would eat dog without any hesitation. The moral question of weather or not we would eat something based on its similarities to us seems like an anthropocentric mater with no logic behind it.

It's my choice not to eat much pig.... And I'm just telling you why i personally try to keep away from the stuff..... I'm in no way telling you not to eat pig... I'm not telling you to steer clear of mekong basa either... Knock yourself out.... These are just my personal choices and in no way a recommendation for the whole of society... I know that by farming and eating pigs, they will never be on the endangered list, unlike a lot of animals we don't eat..... It's just my personal emotional choice....

Sure your choice I just think the reasoning is odd

I hear you on the capitalism thing SD, only problem is any form of socialism hasn't done any better as far as looking out for the environment goes. In fact it's probably worse because they don't have any democratic checks and balances.

Agriculture has been a very mixed blessing for the human race.......

Batfink's point below resonates with me:

Let's remember in all this that 'lifestyle' diets are the privilege of the wealthy westerner, not an option
for those struggling to get enough food on a given day.

The quality, quantity and year round availability of grains, vegetables, fibre and fruit we westerners rely on is a relatively recent phenomenon powered by farming advances and trade but mostly by fossil fuels and Fritz Haber's ammonia process.

Fatness and/or the decision to forgo particular nutritious food groups is made possible because someone else (peasants) or an oil powered machine is doing most of the heavy lifting.

yeh what batfink said!.

I don't know if its already been raised, but usually sentinence is talked about when drawing these lines. its a bit different to intelligence it seems, but clearly they're related. sentinence is used to describe the minimum of consciousness and ability to be subjective, which no doubt is very subjective. others use it more minimalist, as the ability to suffer or feel pain.

does a fish feel pain? who knows, but it appears to suffer anyway when you put a hook in it's mouth and take it out of the water, not judging.

is a pig more sentinent than a dog? or a holy cow more than a pig? I think hindus would say so. apparently squid and octopus are as smart as a dog. I dont know if that means they are just as sentinent as a dog, but calamari isn't reasonably guilt free for me anymore.

an interesting but disturbing (if u like babies) quote from 1800s

The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor [see Louis XIV's Code Noir]... What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?[5]eh what batfink said.

Hey Sypkan, the word is sentience. The ability to feel, as opposed to cognition.

Using the definition from Voiceless, an animal rights org : An animal is sentient if “it is capable of being aware of its surroundings, its relationships with other animals and humans, and of sensations in its own body, including pain, hunger, heat or cold.”

Using that definition we'd extend the interests of an animal right down way past animals with a backbone and central nervous system. PLants? Possibly.

I went and caught some fish this morning. Did they suffer? Fish are used to having sharp, spiky objects in their mouth, they are used to being preyed upon. In fact that is the life of a fish.
A lot of fish have scars and slashes where predators have attempted to eat them.
I caught the fish, spiked them and bled them. There was instant death. Was that suffering? Or was that anymore suffering than the fish would have normally experienced in it's normal existence of fleeing from predation?

Thats the other thing about our human conception of animal suffering. Suffering, as we understand it, has been selected for by evolution as one of the chief interactions between organisms in the web of life. Suffering is natural.
You could easily argue that animals well looked after in humane farms experience far less suffering than animals in the wild.

Obesity is the major problem with western diets and thats mostly due to eating too much of the wrong fuel for what is burnt.
Vegans and Vegetarians rarely become obese because their bodies digestive systems are struggling to keep the supply of fatty acids up to them just to maintain fuel let alone produce enough excess to store.
Sugars and complex carbs are the foods that stack the weight on the most with the body storing any excess for the lean times (if we lived in a completely natural world) but us westerners don't really have many lean times.
Most processed foods are full of those items so we're slowly but surely eating ourselves to obesity unless we cut right down on those foods and burn what we do eat by keeping active.
Basically if we only ate what our body needs for the day to day lifestyle that we lead, we could survive on a lot less, but as someone else said, we eat for enjoyment, taste, comfort, habit, boredom or even social status and thats where the problem lies these days.

In ancient times we expended a lot of energy to catch or gather enough food to even survive and in times of plenty we could feast and maybe carry a bit of excess weight for the bad times but I could almost guarantee that if those ancient people tried to survive on a totally vegan style diet, the worlds populations would be a whole lot different to what it is now.
Man learnt to farm grains and keep animals to flourish which has led us to where we are now (not the best outcome granted) but I really can't see how that would have happened if the entire worlds populations had become vegans. Especially as they wouldn't have been able to process the soy products and take supplements in the ancient times that help Vegans gain the essential fatty acids not provided in just fruit and vegetables alone that they all seem to consume these days.
Do some serious research of human metabolisms compared to true vegetarian animals and you'll see becoming a vegan is a lifestyle choice not a natural thing for humans to adopt.

Not that i'm saying don't do it, i'm just saying it's not something that should be promoted as the be all and end all of healthy eating.

not sure if its been mentioned but the latest cult following is http://www.cowspiracy.com/ - you can youtube it for free. i aint seen it as yet - just had the message rammed down my throat by a mate..

thanks for the correction freeride, you just lifted my lame game for infiltrating the palace of the lofty vegan godesses. though they seem less schooled up than you guys.

yeh wasn't picking on fishing, that's just always presented as the guilt free meat, many would include squid in that category without even thinking about it.

yep some suffering is natural, but its hard to argue against reducing it, although I do have concerns about our tendency to overdo things against nature's ways. some suffering is character building.

I've met some more than chubby vegans, though they might be cheating with gelatin and dairy sweetness when nobody is watching

no wonder you meat eaters have to eat meat...all that energy expended in justifying your actions.

you'd have to eat an elephant to get the appeal to nature fallacy across the score line. suffering is natural...so therefore it's right for kids to be beaten to a pulp. no wait, therefore, it's great to eat a cow.

false dichotomy, try again.

freeride76 wrote:

I hear you on the capitalism thing SD, only problem is any form of socialism hasn't done any better as far as looking out for the environment goes. In fact it's probably worse because they don't have any democratic checks and balances.

Agriculture has been a very mixed blessing for the human race.......

Perhaps check what I wrote re' ideology, FR..... i stated communism was/is a total failure.. Not comparing communism to capitalism at all, bro....

You didn't say anything about communism in that post, that I can see anyhow.
But if not capitalism then what?
What economic/political system that has existed in the past or could exist in the future would be better.

Sheepdog wrote:

"Homo Erectus, 2 million years ago on the savannah used to care for their old people. Mostly we shove our old people into homes so we don't have to care for them. Is that evolving towards a more compassionate society?"

Most cultures still do care for their elderly.... It's only us in our western capitalistic "utopia" where even incarceration is being "privatized", that this "aged care for profits" is occurring.... That sort of links into what i was saying in the "whats what" thread about ideology... It's doomed to fail... Same deal with how we treat animals... Capitalism... profit.... I also very rarely eat bought seafood, unless I know the supply chain... I'd rather catch it and kill the animal myself..... These so called "piscatorial vegetarians" need to go out on a trawler or fishing boat and witness the slaughter..... Turtles, dolphins, dugongs, millions of dead creatures just for a few prawns, longlines hooking rare ocean birds..... A news report says turtle safe nets are now in use... Everyone sighs... Well bullshit......... Just keep spending...... But prawns or mulloway or turtles don't have cutey pie big eyes like a baby sheep to stoke the primal compassion.... "ddooonn'tt eeaatt meee liiissaa"..... Gotta love Lisa Simpson..... Generational game changer....
Whilst free market capitalism is king, for stoks sake, i don't see much change on a world wide scale.... Too much money, and greed will always rule.... It's biblical, people.... You may have pockets of change.. But there's billions of folk out there, and "my kitchen rules" is back on tv....... lol....

Yeah i did a week on a prawn trawler out in Moreton bay once…man it was an eye opener, after you have trawled you spill the nets and sort through everything getting the prawns out anyway there was more by-catch then anything else, all kinds of little creatures and heaps of small flat head and whiting, by the time it went back it was mostly dead, dolphins loved the free feed.

It was early season so higher by-catch than normal but as a recreational fisherman it made me very sad, for those that don't know prawn trawlers basically rape the sea floor, dragging chains in front of the nets to stir up the prawns in the mud so they get caught in the nets.

Stok wrote:

Interesting and disturbing post Sypkan.

Nigel Nosedive - true it is a luxury to choose your diet, this includes being vegan and being an omnivore. A healthy omnivorous diet is just as much of a luxury of the privileged, if not more, than a vegan diet.

Ah obesity, about time someone used that word. Don't see many obese vegans or vegetarians that's for sure.

Sheepdog some very valid points about the suffering of animals and the huge amount by catch associated with seafood.

I watched deckhands club a dolphin to a pulp... Same with turtles.... Coz they were upset that they got caught in the nets..... I was only young.....Never forget it...... Pulled up drowned turtles, submerged after a 4 hour shot.... Shoveled thousands of dead animals off the side of the boat - down the "shit shute"...... I walked away from commercial fishing never to return.... A changed man.... Didn't eat seafood for years....

freeride76 wrote:

false dichotomy, try again.

i recognise that one... it's a roy quote!

freeride76 wrote:

You didn't say anything about communism in that post, that I can see anyhow.
But if not capitalism then what?
What economic/political system that has existed in the past or could exist in the future would be better.

There's the forgotten 3rd wheel of collaboratives too.

what do you mean Mk1?

freeride76 wrote:

what do you mean Mk1?

Communal responsibility and ownership by those who use/benefit. Co-ops basically. So many flying under the radar with in our economies already and may have been the seeds of our current economic system- shared farming /land use etc.. They aren't capitalism nor communism, somewhere in between.

Stok wrote:

This goes back to my original post - humans are not in nature, and not in the food chain,

We're not? Where are we then? Are we not organisms that live and die in the natural world, reliant on the products of the Earth/ecosystem?

I think it's a bit early in our evolution to start saying we are not in nature, or somehow not part of it or the web of life.

I see your point; making a distinction between the human world and the "natural" world....but I think humans would be far better off facing the reality of our connection with Nature than trying to dismiss it and live as if we weren't part of it.

seal wrote:

Without going right back through the whole discussion, have we gone through the differences of the digestive tracts of humans as compared to other primates and herbivores?

In my limited study of biology and agriculture I'm under the impression that the human digestive tract is different from all other primates including gorillas by the size of our stomachs and colons.

Gorillas have a larger colon filled with bacteria to break down the cellulose material, that the human body doesn't, which it then turns into fatty acids, to fuel for their bodies. They must eat almost constantly while awake to consume enough plant material to break down into the required fatty acids to sustain them (approximately 20kgs per day). Now thats a lot of leaves etc.
The human body on the other hand can convert the fats in meat, fish, eggs etc into fatty acids readily and with a lot smaller amounts of food needed to get the amounts required for survival. Another thing in our favour is we are quite adaptable to other food sources, but to maintain optimal health we need fatty acids that our bodies can't produce by just eating a raw vegetarian diet.
Thats why vegans must consume processed soy products and other supplements to get the required nutrients to sustain health which gorillas don't need to do.
Cows and sheep have 4 stomachs to break down the cellulose with added bacteria to make the fatty acids.
Horses have an enlarged duodenum which does the same job.
Pigs have a similar digestive system as humans and are omnivores.

So basically humans are supposed to eat a variety of meats, eggs, fish, vegetables and fruits with limited grains to have a healthy natural diet not a vegetarian diet only.

Of course I can't be 100% certain of all my information as I'm only going on my recall of what I learnt whilst studying those subjects years ago but I'm sure there would be plenty of research articles that would back up what I remember if I'd care to look them up.

Read the book Sapiens recently, good book. The guy points out that digestion and the brain are the two biggest energy users, no animal is considered smart while having a slow digestion process. Human capacity seemed to expand about the time we harnessed fire started cooking, and our intestinal tract shortened (cooking breaks down the food and prepares it for digestion).

Another point - up to then we were mid-level scavengers who were effectively powerless and at the mercy of many other creatures, requiring a neurotic temperament to stay safe, and then we suddenly jumped to the top of the food chain without the pride/grace/confidence normally seen in the top hunters. So we have the physical capacity of the top but the mental toolkit of mid level scavengers.

How ofen do u get sick Stokie...!
Just a queztion.

6 moths?

Monthes!

Months:)

Woooweee Stokyie

Don t tak dem tings call ed Anti Bio otacs then,

Parently tha meaan "Life Kiling"

Stok wrote:

freeride76 wrote:

Stok wrote:

This goes back to my original post - humans are not in nature, and not in the food chain,

We're not? Where are we then? Are we not organisms that live and die in the natural world, reliant on the products of the Earth/ecosystem?

I think it's a bit early in our evolution to start saying we are not in nature, or somehow not part of it or the web of life.

I see your point; making a distinction between the human world and the "natural" world....but I think humans would be far better off facing the reality of our connection with Nature than trying to dismiss it and live as if we weren't part of it.

It depends what you define as the natural world.

Maybe we are just doing what comes naturally, as in, maybe it's in our nature for our population to grow out of control, for our science to cure diseases and for our actions to cause mass extinctions and immense levels of irreversible environmental damage. Then maybe it will be natural for us to move on to another planet in the not so distant future once earth is exhausted.

Thats what Stephen Hawkings reckons will happen.

If we burn out the planet, that would be a natural outcome. And if we somehow don't, well that will also be natural. A good example are indigenous cultures who often caused rampant destruction and extinctions when settling new areas but over time learnt to become custodians of the natural environment. Both aspects are therefore proven to lay within our "natural" capabilities.