Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by oeuviz 2615 days ago
But neither do plants produce "naturally" food for humans. The produce it to reproduce and make the fruit delicios so animals eat it and transport the seed somewhere else to spread. Humans are very bad in spreading plants by means of eating and deposing the seed.
3 comments

Plants that humans eat are literally some of the most widespread plants in the face of the Earth. Apples, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, soy, and rice are all massive successes for the plants in spreading, that doesn't even get into sugar producing plants. This started as humans eating and distributing seeds. Farming just made this process not need to involve eating. It's not just about delicious either. We eat some bitter and spoiled (butter, beer) foods for nutritional value.
Could this argument not apply to animals also?

Are chickens not the most wide spread birds? Sheep and cows the most widespread 'large' animals.

Even rats are doing as well as they are because of humans.

Yes I suppose you can reduce the meaning of life to successfully creating the next generation, that applies equally to humans and amoeba, but I would contend its too reductive.

Pulses are some of the best, nutrient dense sources of vegan protein. And they’re called pulses because they grow very quickly from seed to crop.
The thing is, the plants that exist naturally in the wilderness are not particular tasty, delicious, or even produce apreciable sized fruits/crops.

Almost all that you are eating are plants, taken from the wilderness tens of thousands of years ago, and genetically selected over hundreds of generations.

If you went back to eating the plants in the state they exist naturally in the wilderness, you would have a very hard time feeding yourself.

I wonder if anyone is advocating dumping vegans into the middle of the jungle so they can live naturally ... albeit briefly.
... but they are vert good at speeading seeds by other means.

BTW, vegetable farming, be it organic or conventional (especially conventionnel) isn’t exactly non-human animal friendly.

Exactly. Though it’s reasonable to make a distinction between plants and animals of course.

But still, veganism isn’t as clearcut as it would first seem.