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2014: The Year of the Vegan
cvalue
Veteran
As public and celebrity support for compassionate plant-based cuisine keeps growing, could 2014 be the year veganism becomes mainstream?
Read more:
http://www.mfablog.ca/2014/01/2014-the-year-of-the-vegan.html
Read more:
http://www.mfablog.ca/2014/01/2014-the-year-of-the-vegan.html
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Comments
Vegan meat alternatives often taste better than meat these days.
http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/71/760716/restaurant/CBD/Fo-Guang-Yuan-Art-Gallery-Melbourne
Range free only means the chickens are not always penned up. There are many different definitions of free range that still allow for brutal animal living conditions. They are also short lived because when their egg production starts to drop, they are killed.
It's the vegans not eating honey that I have questions about.???
It became a bit of an old folks home for chickens.
Looking in their eyes, at their 'facial expression' is all I need to hail their not so distant ancestors. I have ducks and geese as well, and in geese especially it is easy to see the lumbering herbivores moving through the swamp. Well, my geese anyway. Herbivores have a very different 'look' in their eyes than the omnivores and carnivores in my life. (This isn't off topic, right?) They have a kind of placid contentment until they spot a source of high density energy foods (grains, my vegetable garden). They go a little insane around nutrition rich food as what's most available is grasses or brush, relatively low energy output for all the chewing and digestion it takes. Both goats and geese descend into a feeding ecstasy. They just glow, it must be a kind of herbivore's rapture.
Omnivores and carnivores have to outsmart their a lot of their food. Herbivores just have to wander by and remember where it is for next time(my goats NEVER forgot where I'd last hidden the oats).
I figure it is a mutually beneficial arrangement. I feed, shelter and protect the poultry folks and goats from predators. They even get human affection if they are they type that likes it. I then accept their eggs and milk for my consumption. It's called pets with benefits
I no longer want to eat the flesh of beings who value their lives, who's instincts are such that they defend or protect their lives. I don't care if that's vegan or vegetarian. Since my body has no choice but to eat other living things, at least I can eat things that don't try to run away from me. It's fortunate that we humans have developed tasty substitutes for animal flesh, that meet our nutritional requirements as omnivores.
This is just one more thing people get religious about, instead of deeply contemplating and experiencing the reality of what it means to eat flesh, how it's procured and produced, blah blah blah. If that is all there was to eat, I'd eat meat, unfortunately I find some of it rather tasty. Just thinking of a roast beef sandwich makes my mouth water. My body has no moral compass.
I worked with a Nepalese guy who was a Buddhist and he ate more meat than anyone I know!!
When those vegans give up vehicular travel in anything going over 20 miles an hour for the bug slaughter it creates, then I'll think that this is more about compassion than food ego.
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Bees love to work. They live for it.
It's quite easy, possible and practicable to not eat honey. The same can not be said about giving up vehicular travel. Not using honey, quite reasonable. Not using vehicular travel, not so reasonable. Also, "exploiting" and "accidental killing" are two very different things.
Whey protein powder and other vegan protein shakes help if one can't get enough from a meal.
The only argument/nice-nasty/attitude I've seen go
down at the monastery was over honey. Not the
monks and nuns.......2 visitors. I'll admit....it
surprised me. When an argument starts at a silent
veggie lunch...you know people are looking and grabbing
at views....hahaha
- Iceland, down is collected from discarded feathers in the nests of wild birds.
- India, I found a tin of condensed milk from a no-kill dairy. Admittedly, the story is that old cows are released to the street to become sometimes skinny, unhappy feral cows.
- Wool, eggs, milk could be from a no kill farm, but the expenses would be huge, especially if you couldn't let the non producing animals go & become feral.
- I've heard people speculate on harvesting farmed animals at point of natural death, but haven't seen examples in real life.
- Salmon, this is "near-death" harvesting. The spawning salmon reach the end of the river, spawn and die. So harvesting them doesn't shorten their life by much.
- Beached whales. Harvesting beached whales would also be near-death harvesting, but the story is killing the whale is really hard.
Here is a sample vegan bodybuilding meal plan that exceeds your protein requirement by almost 40%. Getting only 150g of protein would be even easier. It's very far from being impossible.
Approximate totals for the day:
3384 calories
207g protein
512g carbs
75g fat
http://breakingmuscle.com/nutrition/how-to-build-muscle-mass-on-a-plant-based-diet
Does this guy look like he's lacking protein?
. . . oops . . .
When my sister comes over for lunch tomorrow, we will be eating the carcass of an innocent free range fowl. I would be quite happy to be vegan but why upset the family carnivores? I may ask if I can say a mantra for the chicken which bemuses everyone and the chicken does not seem to mind.
Too wikid?
Yes I feel free range lesbian marriage and non religious/fanatical veganism is mainstream and a wonderful choice for those involved.
:clap:
Vegetarians eat calorie dense foods-- vegetable oils, grains, beans (and tropical fruits like coconut, avocado). Beans, peas and peanuts are going to be your basic vegan protein sources, with milk & eggs for the vegetarian proteins.
If you lose weight on a v*n diet, it means you don't know how to cook, or you are a hunter gather in an extreme environment, like the arctic or a deserted island. All potentially meritorious actions can be a motivator for arrogance. This seems like a poor excuse to give up on ethics or some subclass of ethics. In any case, at least in Chinese Mahayana (one of the few orthodoxly pro-vegetarian forms of Buddhism), its routine for people to dedicate all their merit earned to everyone else --doesn't matter if merit dedication doesn't have any basis in karmic reality, dedication of merit means giving up taking credit in the eyes of your peers for good works.
V*ns are more likely to put deer whistles on their cars, stop for dogs --and end up in the hospital when they get rammed by the car behind them-- happened to Aunt, although she isn't v*n.
Life involves a lot of killing-- mice in the fields during harvest, bugs get ground up into the orange juice, the farmers of nuts kill squirrels, taking medicine for parasites involves killing tape worms, renting apartments involves landlords who like to spread rodent and insect poisons. The point isn't to make it all premature death go away --although the Jains sure do try--, the point is to pragmatically minimize it, a process that evolves over time as we learn more about how to kill less.
This is possible if you have all the time and money in the world - then choosing different kinds of food will be possible, if not easy. Do you think the average guy going to work, living a busy life, has the time or resources to buy/cook these different varieties of food? Most of us are lucky to grab a quick bite and rush off.
And if you are going to put time and effort into bodybuilding, all bodybuilders are already spending time and focus on what they eat as diet is important. No bodybuilder worth his salt just gets a quick bite of whatever and rushes off to begin with.
I know people who get physically repulsed by meat and always have been. I also know people who, after a few days without meat, feel weak and their minds are clouded.
Here's a thought: what if not people are all the same? What if some people do well on vegan/vegetarian diets and some don't? For instance, most of us accept that some people have intercourse with those of the opposite gender and some with those of the same gender. Or that some people need constant socialization and some are loners. Or that for a blood transfusion to be safe the donor and the recepient need compatible blood types.
Why such a dualistic, black-and-white view on diets, then?
All potentially meritorious actions can be a motivator for arrogance. This seems like a poor excuse to give up on ethics or some subclass of ethics. In any case, at least in Chinese Mahayana (one of the few orthodoxly pro-vegetarian forms of Buddhism), its routine for people to dedicate all their merit earned to everyone else --doesn't matter if merit dedication doesn't have any basis in karmic reality, dedication of merit means giving up taking credit in the eyes of your peers for good works.
V*ns are more likely to put deer whistles on their cars, stop for dogs --and end up in the hospital when they get rammed by the car behind them-- happened to Aunt, although she isn't v*n.
Life involves a lot of killing-- mice in the fields during harvest, bugs get ground up into the orange juice, the farmers of nuts kill squirrels, taking medicine for parasites involves killing tape worms, renting apartments involves landlords who like to spread rodent and insect poisons. The point isn't to make it all premature death go away --although the Jains sure do try--, the point is to pragmatically minimize it, a process that evolves over time as we learn more about how to kill les
@matthewmartin
All of what you say is true. Been rehashed many times here at NB. I respect anyones attempt to minimize harm. My focus here though is on the suffering that results from attachments to ism's(Buddhism or veganism) which in my mind is just as harmful.
I am not suggesting that Veganism isn't worthwhile, but often becomes an
ego trap that veganism on its own, seems to think is OK.
I don't mind attachments to abstractions. In the battle between attachment to concrete things like hamburgers and attachments to rules that deny you an hamburger, I think I would rather suspect that I'm more attached to that hamburger than to that rule.
Anyhow, the whole attachments-to-rules/attachments-to-religion/attachments-to-buddhism thing is too close to antinomianism for my tastes. re: black and white
This is the battle of strawmen, where we each misrepresent the other camps with extreme views so as to make it easier to be complacent (admittedly, I enjoy being a vegetarian, so my bias will be towards arguments that favor vegetarianism-- I hope in a fair fight I could be dissuaded if I were wrong).
Omnivores draw the line somewhere, sometimes only at eating their own species, sometimes only at eating their own species' brains (causes kuru). So omnivores are a sort of vegetarian-- the all-animals-but-humans sort. More are of the sort that don't mind eating animals as long as they don't have to do the butchering themselves.
Most vegetarians do conceded that at certain points in history and in certain geographic locales, there isn't anything to eat except other animals, cats do appear to be obligate carnivores and many more edge cases. If certain humans are obligate carnivores-- that's a question of science-- I haven't seen any serious attempts to say humans are obligate carnivores.
The vegetarian argument is that if almost no one occupies those edge case conditions of being an obligate vegetarian, a hunter gatherer in the arctic, etc, then you can really use that as an argument for complacency.
Omnivores are crappy vegetarian chefs though and by the way they try to feed me, they think I live on grass and tree leaves. The omnivore's stereotype of a vegetarian diet is enough to make anyone light headed and feel sick. Personally I think omnivores aren't very picky about what they eat, so naturally I'm surprised when they don't like the raw road kill I offer them, after all it's got iron and protein to fuel their special metabolisms and it was only the natural order that that animal should have been run over to feed someone.
I think people are attached more to a beef steak than to a carrot
I think we typically attach to whatever best supports our identities story
line.
For a Buddhist, it can be minimizing the un necessary suffering we create in our diet and life choices...AND......minimizing the un necessary suffering we create in clinging to our diet and life choices.
It is just basic 4NT/8FP. Antinomianism is about exceptions to the rules where I am stating that sufferings cause makes no such exceptions..
I never thought of crickets as food till I ate one the other day. Now I think I could eat a bag of them like peanuts. Tasty but fiberous with all the legs and wings.
Eggs are definetly food for me.
My enthusiastic about spreading veganism is because I want to help saving lives. So if I can persuade people to eat less meat, then less animals are killed. It's not arrogant, I would like to say it's compassion, but at my current level now I can't say it's purely just compassion. Rather, it's my greed to do good to create good karma. I hope, one day I will get to the level where I just think of compassion alone without greediness for rewards.
Well, that's not exactly the myth, but you get the idea.
http://www.nomeatathlete.com/
Also, there's a UFC fighter by the name of Mac Danzig who is a vegan. MMA isn't exactly a sport where you can skimp out on muscle building.
And that's all before they start on the cannibalism....
You have been warned . . .