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[-] weeeeum@lemmy.world 139 points 1 month ago

I feel like instead of a giant push for veganism, there should just be a push to eat what's sustainable.

Beef and dairy? Causes huge amount of greenhouse gasses and with current methods of production, it is not sustainable

Blue fin tuna? These things have been way over fished and are endangered. Not sustainable, just try it once and move one with your life.

Tilapia ? These things grow like weeds and can be fed efficiently. Go ahead, good source of protein for your diet.

Honey? We need bees and they are an important pollinator for crops. Go nuts (just watch your sugar intake}

Almonds? Takes huge amounts of water to grow and exacerbates droughts in the areas they are farmed. Eat less of these.

Potatoes? Grow stupid easily in all sorts of conditions. Go nuts.

[-] Rob@lemmy.world 34 points 1 month ago

I’d already be very happy if everyone took your approach, but it’s not the entire story for veganism. Sustainability is an important factor for myself and many others, but so is animal welfare.

It’s a bummer that animal welfare is pretty much inversely correlated with emissions. Packing chickens together and making their lives miserable is much better for the environment than having them roam free.

Veganism happily aligns with environmental sustainability. But when you believe we shouldn’t exploit animals at all, just pushing to eat what’s sustainable ignores a lot of pain and cruelty.

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[-] srestegosaurio@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 month ago

Potatoes are kinda OP imho.

(I also agree with you btw).

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[-] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

About honey: we do need bees. But taking away their honey which they work really hard for to sustain their colony during the winter and replacing it with sugar water is really bad for them and makes their colony weak. They can get viruses, bacteria and fungi much faster, which they can spread to other colonies or when splitting up when their queen dies.

Next to that, bees we use for honey are a very aggressive territorial species. They claim their territory and all the other bee and whasp species are killed and pushed out. There are many bee and whasp species who do not live in colonies but are very important for the biodiversity. Replacing them with our bees, which will die and get sick faster because we take away their nuteician rich honey, is a bad idea.

We do need our bees, but in reduces quantities to keep the balance. But we shouldn't take their food.

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[-] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 131 points 1 month ago

I've had an unreasonable number of arguments against people who seemed to think animal was a synonym for mammal. Thankfully, we're now in an era where you can look it up and show them now mobile data is cheap, so it's become a winnable argument.

[-] OpenStars@discuss.online 98 points 1 month ago

Except they still don't care, and resent you for edumacating them. Whatever you say, they "win". Welcome to the post -information age.

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[-] Hylactor@sopuli.xyz 23 points 1 month ago

Historically I still "lose" these types of arguments as my willfully ignorant interlocutor spams potential strawman and ad hominem "arguments" until they feel sufficiently convinced that my pesky facts and I are safe to ignore.

In my experience there are very few people worth arguing with, as there are very few people willing to argue in good faith. Most people see arguing as a battle to be won or lost rather than a mechanism by which to vet assumptions. How can you expect to argue with a person who is unable to argue with themselves?

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[-] angelmountain@feddit.nl 97 points 1 month ago

Stupid discussion. It does not matter whether something is in the box "vegan". Ask yourself why you would or would not eat something. If you don't want to eat(/drink) dairy because of the way the animals that produce the dairy are treated, would you be ok when they are treated differently? Are bees treated in the same way? Does it matter if you treat them in this way? Those should be your questions, not "does it belong in this box?".

[-] Toofpic@feddit.dk 35 points 1 month ago

But it will ruin the achievement badge I want to show in my profile!

[-] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 27 points 1 month ago

Animal ethics isn't just about whether other animals are being harmed or killed, it's also about being against exploitation. They might not be able to think in quite the same way that we do, but it's still clear that they have their own wills and lives of their own that they want to live. It's worth asking ourselves if we really want a society that's willing to exploit and turn other thinking beings into commodities, even the ones whose thinking appears to be so much more rudimentary than our own.

It's easy to dismiss them because they're "just bugs", but presently bugs of all species are facing radical population declines with all the ecological instability - maybe even looming collapse - that brings. Maybe we collectively might be more willing to protect bug populations and do more to protect our environments if more of us stopped to analyze our anti-bug bias and considered that they have a natural right to life like we do. The planet does not exist solely for us.

Also, honey is essentially a refined sugar that's no better healthwise than table sugar. Date sugar/powder is a sweetener made of whole fruit and is a much better choice. Plus, it's just weird to want to eat the vomit of other species anyway.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 35 points 1 month ago

As for the exploitation, all living things have their own lives. Even plants seem to be able to communicate to some degree and can be stressed and stuff. Either you're OK exploiting living things to some degree or you die. The level of exploitation is what should be discussed. Is beekeeping harmful to bees? I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it.

As for it being sugar, sure. Sugar isn't bad though. Sugar is bad when consumed in the quantities the average American consumes it. It also has other properties that make it pretty good for your health. For example, I think it's good for preventing allergies because it contains pollen (I might be making this up, but it seems like I've read that somewhere).

Plus, it's just weird to want to eat the vomit of other species anyway.

Do you realize that fruit is the ovary of a plant? Life is weird. Get over it. Weird is not a word that should come into a discussion of ethics.

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[-] Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 92 points 1 month ago

I feel like bees are a bit of a grey area. We're not eating them, we're kind of like landlords that give them a nice place to stay and they pay rent in honey. I'm not vegan so I'm not quite sure what the rationale is for bee stuff.

[-] dharmacurious@slrpnk.net 91 points 1 month ago

Best friend's a vegan who raises bees. He doesn't clip wings or use smoke. From what I gather he basically just maintains their boxes, feeds them sugar when it's too cold for em, and collects honey when it's time. Someone is about to come along and say "he's not a vegan. Sounds like a vegetarian" and then I'm going to think "sounds like you're gatekeeping a lifestyle like it's a religion, and not even all vegans who don't use honey agree on whether or not a vegan can use honey" but I won't, because I don't wanna get wrapped up in the nonsense.

But either way, yes, some vegans do use honey. And some, like that theoretical commenter, don't eat anything that casts a shadow.

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[-] TherapyGary 29 points 1 month ago

Well landlords are the badguys so...

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[-] multifariace@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago

I find vegan intellect fascinating. I love hearing their responses to my epistomology. They all make it up as they go along. It's very similar to religious beliefs in the way it is personal. Each has their own set beliefs on where to draw the line of what is vegan and what is not.

My personal understanding of the world is that plants aren't so different from animals that they can be classified separately from other food sources. For example, how much different is r-selected reproduction from a fruiting plant. Plants react differently to different colors of light and so do we.

It helps to understand the goal of a vegan. The extent to which we are tied to every living thing on Earth means that many vegans have set impossible goals.

Just fascinating.

[-] ebc@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 month ago

I've always wondered if vegetables from a farm that uses horse-drawn tills instead of tractors would be vegan... It's a real question, but everyone I ask thinks that I'm trolling.

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[-] Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I mean I think it can be boiled down pretty simply: cause the least harm to living things that you can personally manage, according to your definition of harm. Having impossible goals isn't necessarily a bad thing. If your impossible goal is to make a billion dollars ethically, and you get to 50 million being 95% ethical, you could still consider that a win, even though you didn't reach your impossible goal.

Even the simple goal of "always being a good person 100% of the time" is probably impossible to achieve over an entire lifetime while meeting every person's definition of it. That doesn't mean it's useless for someone to strive for that within their definition of "good person".

In fact I'd say the vast majority of meaningful, non trivial goals could be considered "impossible".

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[-] Bosht@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago

So my wife went vegan for a bit and the logic is basically any living thing we take advantage of or make their lives more of a labor. So eggs, honey, milk aren't vegan because companies put those animals in situations they normally wouldn't be in in the wild to take advantage and harvest products from them.

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[-] SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyz 45 points 1 month ago

Some folks believe that fish aren't animals, either.

[-] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 36 points 1 month ago

The state of California consider bees as fish.

[-] wizzor@sopuli.xyz 22 points 1 month ago

I thought you were kidding but no, they do and the reason is otherwise they wouldn't fit under environmental protection laws.

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[-] Lux 35 points 1 month ago

Reasons that I, as a vegan, do not use honey:

  1. I cannot guarantee that the bees consented to their product being harvested. Some beekeepers clip the queen's wings, which can prevent the colony from leaving.

  2. I cannot guarantee that bees were not harmed in the process of harvesting (potentially getting crushed by the honeycomb frames, for example) or in the process of controlling the colony (like clipping the queen's wings).

[-] Akareth@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago

Regarding your second point, you also cannot guarantee that small animals like rodents are not harmed in the process of harvesting plants.

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[-] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 34 points 1 month ago

Kinda tongue-in-cheek questions, but: Honey isn't an animal body part, it isn't produced by animal bodies, so if it is an animal product because bees process it, is wheat flour (for example) an animal product because humans process it? How about hand-kneaded bread? Does that make fruit an animal product because the bees pollinated the flowers while collecting the nectar?

[-] Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 38 points 1 month ago

Bees make honey for their hive. Honey also does indeed contain bodily fluids from the bees.

The bread making human consents to you taking the bread (presumably). Breast milk and other human bodily fluids can be vegan for the same reason.

And insects pollinate plants not because they use the fruit, but for the nectar. They don't care what happens after they leave the flower.

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[-] Rhaedas@fedia.io 23 points 1 month ago

I've always found it interesting that using animals is a bad thing, but using plants in similar ways is fine. I guess there has to be a line somewhere, otherwise such a person would simply starve to death.

[-] Rozauhtuno 24 points 1 month ago

Animals aren't just used, they are tortured on a industrial scale. That's mainly why vegans oppose animal products.

[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 18 points 1 month ago

Are bees tortured to get honey?

[-] shneancy@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

yea of course, never heard of the bee grinder? bee grinder

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[-] Mrs_deWinter@feddit.org 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

One good argument for this: A vegan diet not only minimizes animal deaths but plant deaths as well, since livestock obviously has to be fed on many, many individual plants before they can get slaughtered. So even if we for some reason prioritized saving the lives of plants going vegan would still be the way to go.

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[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 month ago

it isn't produced by animal bodies

Sure is, it's concentrated bee spit with sugar. And spit is made of water and body cells.

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[-] bstix@feddit.dk 29 points 1 month ago

Honey is a by-product of bees, the same way that all human made food is a by-products of humans.

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago

so if I buy food from people I'm basically a cannibal

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[-] pewgar_seemsimandroid 21 points 1 month ago

if it needs to be pollinated by bees or wasps, then it's not vegan (insert troll emoji i guess)

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[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

Honey can be vegan. I have a friend who keeps endangered bees and as an unintended side effect of fostering their growth has honey that she has to give away because she doesn’t want it

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[-] NutWrench@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago

Can you milk a bee? I didn't think so!

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this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
678 points (100.0% liked)

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