this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 136 points 6 days ago (24 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 days ago (9 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Potatoes are kinda OP imho.

(I also agree with you btw).

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 6 days ago (127 children)

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?".

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (6 children)

Entirely true. My favorite stupid argument is about lab-grown meat. People don't seem to understand that veganism is practiced for a variety of reasons. Is lab-grown meat vegan? It depends on the vegan.

My rule of thumb is that I'll eat it as long as nothing was permanently injured or killed to make it. Factory farmed eggs? Nah, I've seen videos of macerators. My neighbor's chickens' eggs? Hell yeah, I'm friends with those chickens

ETA: then there's the breast milk "debate." Can't tell you how many times I've seen numbskulls try to argue that breastfeeding isn't vegan because "milk is an animal product"

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[–] [email protected] 139 points 6 days ago (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 103 points 6 days ago (14 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 94 points 6 days ago (78 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 6 days ago (12 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with my landlord harvesting my vomit as rent.

"I'm eating it, I promise it's not a sex thing."

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 days ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The state of California consider bees as fish.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 6 days ago (11 children)
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 days ago (13 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Non vegan here. 🤔

Soooooo honey is not extracted directly from the bees, so that would be an argument to declare honey vegan.

On the other hand, even with modern beekeeping tech and modular hives, one could argue the act of taking honey to be a serious intrusion on the bees' life, so that could be an argument that honey is not vegan.

One could argue where the line lies with eusocial organisms. Do you consider the individual bees or do you consider the whole hive? Whole hive? Honey may not be vegan. Individual insects? Honey could be vegan.

It really depends on your standards. One vegan friend of mine does drink mead (honey wine, for the uninformed) for instance.

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