Vegetarians!

[SlappyMcGee]

I've gone vegetarian over the last couple of weeks, and I'm wondering how many of you are, or what you think about it.

[29403]

I'm not vegetarian but I wouldn't eat a cute widdle baby animal they're soooo cute.

tbh I've always been indifferent to vegetarianism... it's sad to see the chickens go but that happens in nature all the time anyway.

Not sure how I could survive without the chicken at Nando's, mmmmm...

[scythe]

It's stupid.

[SlappyMcGee]

I'm not vegetarian but I wouldn't eat a cute widdle baby animal they're soooo cute.

tbh I've always been indifferent to vegetarianism... it's sad to see the chickens go but that happens in nature all the time anyway.

Not sure how I could survive without the chicken at Nando's, mmmmm...

Yeah but those chickens live IN HORRIBLE CAGES for their entire lives, until a machine TURNS THEM INTO BREADED CHICKEN FINGERS

[a happy song]

I was a vegan for a year, and a vegetarian for a year before that.

While vegetarian, my digestion improved and I found myself feeling a little more energetic. I was very careful to replace all the lost nutrients found in meat though.

Vegan too, but that was obviously a lot more hard work.

I had terrible cravings for meat though, and eventually buckled.

[29403]

It's all about free-range (even though it's probably a cover up)

[bobaganuesh_2]

I've been considering it for a few years now.

[smartalco]

I am probably the closest thing you will ever find to a human carnivore. If you don't count potatoes and onion rings, I probably average around 1 serving of vegetables... a week. And most of that comes from things like lettuce on a burger, or various small amounts of vegetables on pizza. My fruit intake in a week is mostly dependent on how much juice I decide to drink and if there is watermelon or peaches around.

I also call bullshit on most nutritional science, or I am just an extremely odd case, because my meat-bread-sugar diet has me weighing in at only 140 lb at 6' (with not much exercise), I basically never get sick, and my blood pressure and cholesterol are well within normal ranges, and I come from families with high numbers in both categories.

[otters~1]

I also call bullshit on most nutritional science

Excellent sample size.

I would never go vegetarian: my life is the pursuit of happiness and meat makes me extremely happy.

[heatwave]

Vegan since birth.

I've gone vegetarian over the last couple of weeks, and I'm wondering how many of you are, or what you think about it.

What about you? What do you think of it so far?

[Donfuy]

lol vegetarians
I'm kinda like smartalco.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I've looked into whether it was possible for humans to subsist entirely on a purely carnivorous diet. Turns out it isn't, but I was willing to go to lengths to follow such a diet if it did turn out to be possible.

For the most part, I don't really pay attention to what I eat. I get cravings for things, and often enough it's for fruit, salad, grains, or other healthy crap, so I just follow my stomach and don't worry much about my nutritional intake. I do happen to think meat is delicious, though, so if it's plentifully available, meat can easily be the majority of any given meal. But that all-you-can-eat situation doesn't happen terribly often. (Although my three roommates and I did demolish 10 pounds of bacon in about three weeks.)
I am by no means a picky eater. I destroy whatever's on my plate, and only know I'm finished when I bite into ceramic.

As for the meat industry, some part of me feels that it'd be "better" if the animals were treated more nicely, but I can't for the life of me come up with any supporting reasoning. I can't understand -- on an intellectual level -- why it's necessary to be nice to something you're about to murder. I can only find myself supporting humane treatment of non-humans if it keeps them healthier and thereby noticeably improves the quality of their flesh when I eat it.
Besides, you sentimental weirdos, if I don't eat that meat, it'll just be thrown out if there's not enough demand for it, and then that animal's suffering will have been in vain. It truly takes a sadist to be a vegetarian.

[smartalco]

I can't understand -- on an intellectual level -- why it's necessary to be nice to something you're about to murder.

If the animals aren't panic induced before slaughter, there is less adrenaline and other chemicals released in to the meat. Humanely murdered animals taste better!

I can only find myself supporting humane treatment of non-humans if it keeps them healthier and thereby noticeably improves the quality of their flesh when I eat it.

Ah, right, you covered that.

[SlappyMcGee]

I've looked into whether it was possible for humans to subsist entirely on a purely carnivorous diet. Turns out it isn't, but I was willing to go to lengths to follow such a diet if it did turn out to be possible.

For the most part, I don't really pay attention to what I eat. I get cravings for things, and often enough it's for fruit, salad, grains, or other healthy crap, so I just follow my stomach and don't worry much about my nutritional intake. I do happen to think meat is delicious, though, so if it's plentifully available, meat can easily be the majority of any given meal. But that all-you-can-eat situation doesn't happen terribly often. (Although my three roommates and I did demolish 10 pounds of bacon in about three weeks.)
I am by no means a picky eater. I destroy whatever's on my plate, and only know I'm finished when I bite into ceramic.

As for the meat industry, some part of me feels that it'd be "better" if the animals were treated more nicely, but I can't for the life of me come up with any supporting reasoning. I can't understand -- on an intellectual level -- why it's necessary to be nice to something you're about to murder. I can only find myself supporting humane treatment of non-humans if it keeps them healthier and thereby noticeably improves the quality of their flesh when I eat it.
Besides, you sentimental weirdos, if I don't eat that meat, it'll just be thrown out if there's not enough demand for it, and then that animal's suffering will have been in vain. It truly takes a sadist to be a vegetarian.

Is that because you are a psychopath who feels no empathy for other living creatures? I bet you also condone dogfighting and beating the shit out of foxes.

[Amadeus]

I've been a vegetarian for about 5 or 6 years, I don't really keep track. I think my rationale at the time was that if we as humans don't need meat to survive (or even be healthy) and if can consciously control our eating habits, there's no reason why we should make animals suffer for what's essentially our pleasure. Now I still think that but meat just seems gross, it's dead animal flesh. There are some really fucking good veggie products out there too.

EDIT: Also Tsukatu, since killing an animal is just really expediting its death,following the same argument there's no logical reason why anyone should be kind to other people who will eventually die (unless it's self-serving) which logically justifies the Holocaust and any other genocide.

[Geti]

Vegetarian for like 2 and half years now, or something. It might be 3, I haven't been keeping count. I started that huge Thread back when P&D was called something else and I was a grumpy midteen. That OP date says it's been more than 3 years, actually; time's crazy.

Looks like tsukatu's developed his stance towards it quite a bit, though. I have, but at the moment I don't have the motivation to sit down and type out a lot of words that a lot of people will disagree with anyway :/ I've got to write an essay, but this is a fun thing to discuss regardless, so I'll probably be checking in. Got to love that there's been 6860 threads between this and the last discussion on this topic though.

[smartalco]

I started that huge Thread back when P&D was called something else and I was a grumpy midteen. That OP date says it's been more than 3 years, actually; time's crazy.

--offtopic-- Holy shit we've been on ninjarobotyeti for over 3 years? I wouldn't have even guessed 2 o_O -/offtopic--

[sidke]

i can't look at meat in a grocery without my mouth watering, it just looks so delicious and appetizing. and that's /before/ it's been cooked! to each his own, but i really feel sorry for people who're adamant about not eating the lusciously succulent flesh of dead animals... it's the sheer pleasure they're forcing themselves to miss out on that makes me question their decision, but nonetheless i'll accept them as a different breed. an ultimately self-unsatisfying breed.

click here for delicious

[golf]

nevada, that picture really made me want some good salmon, that I can't afford to buy and cook... Thanks :/

On topic, I've never seen any appeal to vegetarianism myself. I enjoy my meats and fish (although not very often with the fish) too much to go otherwise.

[Tanner]

I'm far too lazy to be a vegetarian. If I were, for instance, living with a vegetarian and could be just an incidental vegetarian, I wouldn't mind that. I'd still crave the occasional burrito or burger or steak, though.

[smartalco]

click here for delicious

Click here for even more delicious

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Is that because you are a psychopath who feels no empathy for other living creatures? I bet you also condone dogfighting and beating the shit out of foxes.

I can't help but think back to the thread about Saddam Hussein just before he was executed. A number of people were saying that he should be castrated, beaten, or humiliated in some way, whereas I didn't agree because it was totally unnecessary. When a doctor excises a tumor, he doesn't take the time to taunt or torture it -- the point is to get it out so that the patient can recover from the damage it has done; the tumor's death and any "suffering" it might go through is incidental. The point in killing Saddam Hussein was to help Iraq, not to cause him pain or teach him a lesson.
Similarly, the point in farming animals is to harvest their flesh for my consumption. If there's a way to do this without making them suffer, then great, I don't care, do that instead. I didn't have any particular desire that they suffer in the first place. Their suffering is not the point, so I don't care if that circumstance changes so long as the product stays the same: delicious piles of bloody meat on my plate.

Dog fighting is entertainment; the entire point is that one or both suffer. That is the end goal. The difference is that the meat industry does not place an explicit priority on the animal's suffering, and that it takes a psychopath to enjoy watching an animal suffer whereas it does not take a psychopath to enjoy a steak.
If you were to bring me to a slaughterhouse, I would of course feel sorry for the animals and be disgusted by the murdering, draining, and packing process. Anyone who enjoys watching that process, I would argue, would be something like a psychopath. But it does not make sense to shut down an industry on the grounds that the process is distasteful (assuming produces no negative side-effects beyond that, e.g. a company that excessively pollutes the environment should of course be shut down because its process is also destructive). You could say that humans don't need to eat meat, but neither do we need indoor plumbing, proctology, brain surgery, or any other institution whose process a typical person would find distasteful.

If you earnestly believe that the meat industry should be made to do things differently because a sentient creature is suffering, you should at least be consistent in applying it to other issues.
Divorce, for example, only exists for the purpose of dissociating yourself from someone you find unpleasant, in correcting a mistake you made. If your divorce is successful, the end result is your own liberation and therefore your own enjoyment, while causing the other party a considerable amount of grief. If divorce was not an option for you, however, you'd just have to grin and bear it.
In this way, divorce and the meat industry have these characteristics in common: one party is suffering for the enjoyment of another, and abolishing the institution would only create inconvenience. So if you earnestly believe that the meat industry is evil because it makes animals suffer, then why are you not equally critical of the social institution that is divorce?

Ultimately, my disgust at seeing something suffer is an emotional reaction that was selected in my ancestors because it helped them survive in Africa and Southeast Asia. It's a holdover from a solution to a no longer present problem. Biology and modern, first-world society no longer speak quite the same language. We ought instead to make decisions based on reason, rather than rely on what helped us get our fuck on more often in the Serengeti.

since killing an animal is just really expediting its death,following the same argument there's no logical reason why anyone should be kind to other people who will eventually die (unless it's self-serving) which logically justifies the Holocaust and any other genocide.

Expediting an eventual death was not one of my reasons for supporting the meat industry. That would make no sense.
I also couldn't help but notice that you were stressing what (you mistakenly thought) would logically follow. Logic is my homie, so I don't take kindly to that. It sounded like you had some alternative in mind -- what would you have suggested we use instead of logic?

[capt_weasle]

[Geti]

In this way, divorce and the meat industry have these characteristics in common: one party is suffering for the enjoyment of another, and abolishing the institution would only create inconvenience. So if you earnestly believe that the meat industry is evil because it makes animals suffer, then why are you not equally critical of the social institution that is divorce?

Divorce ideally involves two parties agreeing that they'll both benefit from dissociation, though, whereas the meat industry ideally lets one thing suffer as little as possible before killing it for the culinary and economic benefit to various third parties that it's bodies components will bring about. These are quite different "intended" outcomes, one involves cooperative legal action and one involves making money out of killing things.
I understand, however, that we're talking about reality (at least at this point, maybe later on we'll get to idealisations) and that divorces happen in social situations ranging from stressful to downright catastrophic or concerningly malicious, resulting in harm to one of the parties involved at the potential immense benefit of the other (and an economic benefit to the bureaucratic party (or whatever the correct word for the involved court and associated lawyers, clerks, whatnot) involved as well). The issue is that the meat industry for the most part - especially in countries involving very high volumes of livestock - don't care at all how much pain or stress the animal is receiving until the last few hours of it's life where that could negatively effect the quality of the product, they just want the greatest "meat and therefore money output":"time and money spent" ratio possible per head of livestock.
Even in these more realistic, less nice situations, the two situations have fairly different ramifications - one involves possible monetary loss and emotional/psychological trauma for the most negatively affected party (but can also function ideally and does quite often), while the other involves definite death and many facets of possible trauma for the equivalent party. My judgement of this analogy is that while it is possible for divorce to function in a similarly "harmful" way to the meat industry it also quite often doesn't. In my experience (never having been divorced and only knowing second hand of about four divorces of family or family friends, giving me a pretty small sample size I'll admit) divorce usually ends with both parties being sad and then moving on. Sure, there are permanent negative emotional/psychological effects but never as pronounced as death in either party, as far as I'm aware.

Oh fuck, I'm rambling.

Tsukatu, your (and everyone else's) judgement of whether it's "okay" to harm stuff in the industry is a moral decision, and thus subjective. I'm entirely in agreement with your logic behind the argument presented in that first paragraph but you need to understand that the judgement to be vegetarian isn't usually made with a moral understanding that it's fine and dandy to kill stuff to get its meat when the consumption of its meat is unnecessary for your survival. The fact that you see it as morally acceptable is your choice, but you're entering an argument of opinion at that point.

If we want to get into a discussion of moral codes in relation to veg*nism, however (because it could be quite an interesting discussion, as it's considered normal to make assumptions about people's morals in most areas but usually produces incompatible arguments when it comes to anything based on what your moral stance on something is), mine can be summarised into "It's not good to harm something when it is unnecessary for you to harm it", where necessity is usually defined as "allowing your to achieve a comfortable lifestyle" but is context sensitive (for starving people, necessity is a matter of life and death. For people in 1st world countries, necessity is a matter of being happy) and therefore, I suppose, my code is quite biased.
I understand that that rule implies that I should be vegan, but at this point in time I'm pulling the "cbf" card that everyone pulls in relation to vegetarianism. I'm finishing school and have no money, and I'm not dedicated enough. It makes me a bit of a bad person, but not enough for me to have a problem with it.

Pleh, got to go. I like these kinds of talks though, they usually invoke some moments of clarity for me, though textually enunciating them is hard.

QUICK@capt_weasle: just cause you can make all that stuff using things from cows doesn't mean you have to. This is going to be quickly put together as I literally have to walk out the door but fertiliser can be made synthetically or from vegetables, pasta (whut) is usually made without blood, many medicines aren't cow or animal related at all (yo E. coli what's cooking), many adhesives are purely synthetic or mineral based, a lot of oils and lubricants are fossil based or synthetic, biodiesel can be made from corn (why would you use animal fat? you have to feed the animal stuff you could make into biodiesel so it grows O_o), chalk is a rock, we haven't made instrument strings from gut in mainstream commercial production in a long while (heloooooo nylon, or heck just nickel-wound steel), insulation can and has largely been entirely synthetic for ages, how the fuck can you use cow hooves in wallpaper?
That's a stupid chart, made by a stupid person, or a clever troll.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

one involves possible monetary loss and emotional/psychological trauma for the most negatively affected party (but can also function ideally and does quite often), while the other involves definite death and many facets of possible trauma for the equivalent party.

The meat packing plants that effectively enforce regulations about humane treatment of their animals often enough deliver animals which only suffer from boredom. If they were allowed to roam free, they'd be standing around bored in a grassy field, and eventually die much more slowly of some disease, or worse yet, killed by some predator. If you ask me, I think the quality of their lives might be improved by putting them in a meat plantation. They'd be extinct if humans weren't so interested in them anyway.

"It's not good to harm something when it is unnecessary for you to harm it"

While I also agree with and try to follow this, I think it's reasonable to have a "fuck it" clause that limits the amount you're willing to go out of your way to prevent unnecessary harm. For me, personally, animals at a meat plantation fall under the "fuck it" clause.