[_9d3x]

Humans are not naturally herbivores. This is true. We're also not naturally vaccinated. We also don't naturally wipe our ass with toilet paper and wash our hands with soap and clean water.

What we are and what we should be are two very different things.

We have decade-long studies showing that a plant-based diet is at least as healthy if not healthier than typical omnivorous diets.

This makes killing billions of sentient creatures in monstruous factory-farming conditions with constant suffering all the more morally reprehensible.

We're not torturing them because we need to. We're torturing them because they taste nice.

[loudtieblahblah]

i eat them bc i dont want to gave to take unregulated supplements to make up for nutrtional deficiencies you wouldnt have if you just ate meat.

i belive in striking a balance between the fact that we want to minimize suffering and the reality that existing implies devouring and consumption. these last two things will not only induce suffering to animals but also to other humans.

and its unaviodable. and im not giving myself further neuroticism and anxiety bc i put the weight of the globe and its myriad of problems onto my shoulders which already burden enough selfishly and empathetic ally.

i eat for health.

period. I have a family to take care of. My health isn't just necessary bc I want my own life but bc people depend on me.

and the science isnt settled between vegetarianism and being an omnivore.

not by a long shot.

i will concede those in the west eat too much meat.

so ill extend the olive branch and meet you half way.

but i put my health above that of chickens, fish and the occassional cow.

i feel for them but theyre not people. i barely am capable of processing the horrors that happen to people on this earth.

i dont have room to consider everything that breathes.

Your moral finger wagging, BTW, isn't a way to win hearts and minds. People will just double down as a rebellion against your moral superiority complex. Youre kicking the legs out of your own political cause with your self righteousness

People who talk like this are why redneck "roll coal" as opposed to adopting hybrids and EVs..

Meet people half way.

This was a discussion about health and lifespan and like clockwork here you people come.

[dhruvbehl]

> i eat them bc i dont want to gave to take unregulated supplements to make up for nutrtional deficiencies you wouldnt have if you just ate meat.

B12 isn’t reliably absorbed from meat. Everyone should be taking a b12 supplement unless they eat b12 fortified cereals or get regular blood work but supplements are the cheapest method for most.

“ A careful look at 3,000 men and women in the ongoing Framingham Offspring Study found 39 percent with plasma B12 levels in the “low normal” range--below 258 picomoles per liter.

While this is well above the currently accepted deficiency level of 148 pmol/L, some people exhibit neurological symptoms in the higher range, said study leader Katherine Tucker... The researchers also expected to find some connection between dietary intake and plasma levels, even though other studies found no association. And they did find a connection. Supplement use dropped the percentage of volunteers in the danger zone--plasma B12 below 185 pmol/L--from 20 percent to 8. Eating fortified cereals five or more times a week or being among the highest third for dairy intake reduced, by nearly half, the percentage of volunteers in that zone--from 23 and 24 percent, respectively, to 12 and 13 percent.

Oddly, the researchers found no association between plasma B12 levels and meat, poultry, and fish intake, even though these foods supply the bulk of B12 in the diet. “It’s not because people aren’t eating enough meat,” Tucker said. “The vitamin isn’t getting absorbed.””

https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2000...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10648266/

>...reality that existing implies devouring and consumption

I don't understand why it implies that. Eating meat probably did play a big role in human evolution. But that's actually a really good reason to avoid meat!

Evolutionary adaptations almost universally trade long-term fitness for short term reproductive success. That's an inevitable consequence of natural selection. This principle is called Antagonistic Plieotoropy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antagonistic_pleiotropy_hypoth...).

The same thing applies to meat-specific adaptations. Which could explain why high-meat diets seem so bad for longevity in a lot of studies (Not this one because this is just a bunch of cross-sectional studies with virtually no adjustments, and they used GDP as a proxy for socioeconomic status. Far better nutritional epidemiology studies are out there).

But my main concern is the ethical issue. The conditions in which factory-farm animals are kept is absolutely abhorrent.

Watch Dominion on YouTube. It's heartbreaking and i don't think most people are aware of what animals go through to come to your plate.

https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko

(Joaquin Phoenix is one of the narrators btw)

> but i put my health above that of chickens, fish and the occassional cow.

> i feel for them but theyre not people. i barely am capable of processing the horrors that happen to people on this earth.

I'm not asking you to personally save every animal suffering out there. I too value humans more than animals and would give priority to humans problems.

I'm just asking you to consider minimising your personal contribution to it as far as practically possible.

I just haven't heard of any valid justification for why slaughtering an animal for food is ok but slaughtering humans would be wrong. Every argument I've heard leads to a contradiction or an absurdity.

If it's because humans are more intelligent than animals, then is it morally acceptable to kill a mentally disabled human being? (Most people would say no, thus entailing a contradiction since they're fine with killing the animal of equivalent intelligence).

If it's because humans have moral agency, then is it ok to kill babies and severely autistic people?

If it's because we gain some unique health benefit from eating animals (not convinced of this btw), would it be ok to kill humans if studies showed eating humans also conferred a unique health benefit?

> Your moral finger wagging, BTW, isn't a way to win hearts and minds...

I wasn't trying to :)

Just expanding on the ethical implications the parent comment brought up.

I don't think you can avoid the ethical implications here.

I won't press you on this but I just want people to consider the externalities of their consumption habits.

[loudtieblahblah]

>Humans are not naturally herbivores. This is true. We're also not naturally vaccinated. We also don't naturally wipe our ass with toilet paper and wash our hands with soap and clean water.

I understand the naturalistic fallacy at play here.

But diet is a different ballgame consisting of a lifetime of complexity via consumption as it interacts with both our genetics and our genetic expression in reaction to our external environment far beyond food.

Acting like it's comparable to wiping our ass with paper is like comparing toddlers rolling a ball on the ground to each other to say... smashing sub-atomic particles together

The level do complexity is so frigging vast and there's a reason its 2022 and its not settled science.

A real grass fed burger is endlessly healthier than a processed "beyond meat" one. For example. Oreos are vegan. Veganism or vegetarianism doesn't imply health automatically

I know vegetarians, keto folk, plaeo crowds, vegans, fasters and even carnivores like to repeat cherry picked studies and cite them for upvotes in their cloisters and communities... But it doesn't make the truth settled in regards to health span and life span (which are not the same thing).

There's zero doubt athletic and even intellectual performance increases with the addition of meat to a diet in a way vegan diets can't compete with.

There's centurains who ate meat all their lives. There's ones who are vegetarian and did. My grandmother in 98. She's a meat eater. Hell, she goes to burger King and Imho, eats badly and has for the last 10 years of her life.

Its just not an easy subject thats going to be solved by tribalism and divergent moral codes.

[dhruvbehl]

>A real grass fed burger is endlessly healthier than a processed "beyond meat" one.

False.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32780794/

> Objectives: We aimed to compare the effect of consuming plant-based alternative meat (Plant) as opposed to animal meat (Animal) on health factors. The primary outcome was fasting serum trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). Secondary outcomes included fasting insulin-like growth factor 1, lipids, glucose, insulin, blood pressure, and weight.

Conclusions: Among generally healthy adults, contrasting Plant with Animal intake, while keeping all other dietary components similar, the Plant products improved several cardiovascular disease risk factors, including TMAO; there were no adverse effects on risk factors from the Plant products.

> I know vegetarians, keto folk, plaeo crowds, vegans, fasters and even carnivores like to repeat cherry picked studies and cite them for upvotes in their cloisters and communities...

I never claimed a vegan diet is optimal for health span. You can have a healthy diet with or without meat.

Strictly from a health perspective, you're right. We don't need to give up meat to be healthy.

I just meant well-planned vegan diets have shown to be health promoting compared to standard omnivorous diets.

I was just expanding on the ethical concerns the parent comment hinted at. Why subject sentient beings to such suffering when most people can be healthy without them?

My point with the toilet paper comment was that just because we did things in the past is not a valid justification for doing that thing in the present. I was speaking more from a cultural and ethical perspective rather than a health one.

> There's zero doubt athletic and even intellectual performance increases with the addition of meat to a diet in a way vegan diets can't compete with.

Citation needed.

As far as I know there aren't any studies where vegan diets are associated with cognitive decline (but saturated fat from meat was in some studies, but the link was tenuous).

And as for the athletic part, at least for the muscle-building side of things, both plant-based and omnivorous diets have shown to produce similar muscle growth at protein intakes ~1.6g/kg/d or higher.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33599941/

[yucky]

>We're also not naturally vaccinated.

Sure we are. How do you think we get natural immunity? Ever heard of Chicken Pox parties?