Powerful Image Showing The Reality Of Many Vegan/Carnivore/Omnivore 'Discussions'.
This is a powerful image that I feel speaks to the subject of the 'debate' between vegans and non vegans directly.
I have seen countless arguments online and offline about this and generally, as this meme highlights, the attempts at arguing against veganism tend to range from absurd to insane.
Yes, there are nutritional issues to understand with veganism - but the benefits outweigh the challenges by an immeasurable degree. There are nutritional issues with not being vegan too and their costs are difficult to counteract.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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I think this image represent SUCH a huge issue in our culture. Whatever we choose to put into our bodies, I feel like everyone is entitled to their own opinion (DUH!). It's extra tough to get to the truth when years of misinformation and nutritional BS (in part due to honest ignorance, and another part intentionally to gain profit) have created a mystery around animal foods.
Being raised on the SAD, and Having been a vegan for 8 years and now only eat meat I hunt or raise and butcher, I feel like I have a wide range view of the topic. One concern is the long term health effects of not obtaining animal based omega 3s and fat soluble vitamins. Without these our health suffers. The one thing I think we can ALL agree on in the CFOs are BAD and that if we are going to eat meat, we ought to step our game up in the consciousness department.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, absolutely - but when free will is over-ridden by an opinion, the opinion is valueless. Obviously, I could hold the opinion that all meat eaters should be fired into space out of a cannon, but it over-rides their free will.. And so it is a valueless opinion. However, eating animals over-rides free will too. The issue then becomes challenging mentally, but not emotionally. The emotions that want to protect life will choose guidance and if that doesn't work then the cannon. ;)
I personally have no problems with sourcing vitamins and minerals, though I do absoulutely recognise the need to grow my own food and to use rockdust to impart the necessary (And usually missing) full spectrum of micro nutrients in to the soil. Usually, the problem is not that plants cannot provide our needs - it is that the soil has been devastated by decades of ignorant use and pollution. The animals are really nothing more, in that sense, than 'convenient' nutrition hoovers.. sucking up and storing denser forms of nutrients - which humans then eat because they find it difficult to achieve such high levels of some from plants. This though is due to ignorance, not necessity.
I am not speaking here with some kind of superiority posture - I didn't know any of this for most of my life.. But when I did take the time to learn and actually quit my job and the rest of my life just to make sure I had looked at the options in full - I learned how to meet my needs.
I am personally not aware of any need for animal based omega 3s vs non animal based omega 3s - what is the perceived difference?
interesting rebuttal. "when free will is over-ridden by an opinion, the opinion is valuelles" I totally agree. I have sought the diet and life way that would cause the least harm, and as I (like you it seems) am always learning and seeking deeper understanding, it seems the more i discover the less i know. The free will aspect does bring up many elements like, do plants have free will? Is weeding an undesirable plant in favor of a crop unduly imposing one's will over plants. One question I've always had is in regards to the bacteria, soil nematodes, fungi, archae, micro and macro beings etc.... Is their disturbance warranted as we till the soil to plant annual crops? There are millions if not trillion of beings that are killed each time a tractor passes through a field in tilling or harvesting pulses, grains or seeds. Or the numerous microorganisms that make up our body, what happens when we kill them in the process of breathing, bathing and metabolizing? One solution I am actively implementing is perennial agriculture, with a focus on native trees with improved genetics for increased yields. This is a common ground among ALL people, that the soil is the foundation of life on earth and we must seeks better alternatives.
Animals are indeed convenient hoovers, although the magic happens with their symbiosis with bacteria in their gut converting sunshine in food. If cows are raised in a natural setting (is eating only herbs and grass NOT grain) their are crucial elements like vitamin A, K and omega-3s that are present in their milk and meat. Vitamin K has been dubbed the X-factor to vigorous human health (discovered by he late Weston A. Price) who made connections of diets from traditional cultures. What make them healthy? vitamin K from animal sources was one of the main factors, unfortunately not available in plant in the right form or doses. To address the animal vs plant omega, humans are terrible at converting ALA to DHA, I've heard as little as 10% efficient in the best cases. ALA is not usable to us (form chia, flax, purslane, hemp etc..) and we need to convert in to DHA to nourish our nervous system. Fish, shellfish, insects, and pastured animal products contain DHA and therefore is available to our brains and an essential element in the diet.
"I am not speaking here with some kind of superiority posture - thank you for making that clear. I take no offense, and really don't mind what other people eat as it's none of my business. I feel it more important to build dialogue based on lived experience and in respect to our 200 000 years of human history.
Thanks for your response.
My understanding is yes, but not in the way that animals and humans do. They have the will to survive and need to be respected. Not for the sake of 'respecting the rights of dandelions', but because the will that permeates the universe is ultimately singular in origin. When will is being overridden anywhere it harms all will on some levels.
It is possible to eat the food from food baring plants (controversial, I know.. lol) and not kill the plants. Tomatoes, apples and so on are all literally designed to be eaten and in doing so we create more plants, not less. The will of the plant to live includes the deliberate production of fruit to facilitate that in this dynamic environment. I am not aware of any evidence from any direction that eating fruit is against the will of the plants. I am, though, aware of some evidence of plants expressing suffering under certain other circumstances.
In terms of the micro-organisms, I don't know enough about what happens on that level when I walk in the soil, but I feel that industrialisation is a huge problem for this and many other reasons. When we respect the soil (soul) of the earth (heart), we walk lightly - not like monsters.
Absolutely.
It was specifically K2 that Weston Price's research pointed to.
You can read here about vegan sources of vitamin K and how they are converted to K2. There are various vegan supplements if people are still concerned and some mushrooms have high levels as I recall.
The following page explains about the issues of DHA, Omega 3 and other essential fats - I have never heard that ground chia and flax have any issues with absorption and nutritionfacts.org regularly recommends that for vegans.
My dad was very controlling and decided I was a vegan when I was 5. I wasn't asked. It was imposed. He was also very religious and decided I should not be allowed food on a Saturday out of respect to his god or something. Now that I'm an adult I'm quite slight and shorter than the average male. I wonder if this is because I was denied so many nutritional options. My tofu school packed lunch sandwiches I could not eat, they ended up in the bin. I ate very little during my teenage years and of course i was bullied for being different. I now love all the things that were denied to me - cheese, eggs, milk, meat, and all the fantastic recipes that contain these. Please, my message is don't enforce your beliefs and dietry requirements on your young kids. Give them the best available diet to meet their growing needs until they are able to make the choice for themselves.
Children fed vegan/vegetarian diets are at a significant developmental disadvantage to children that are fed a traditional diet of cooked meat and vegetables. I have not felt like devoting the time and mental/spiritual energy to write about it yet on Steemit because of how downright nasty and irrational people get on this topic, but someday I will because there are so many myths surrounding nutrition in the year 2018 (not hundreds/thousands of years ago when the earth was "clean" and not decades in the future when we clean it up again.)
Given the current state of our world's crop quality that often contains HUNDREDS of times less minerals than even a century ago, it is near impossible to live to 100 having eaten only vegan for one's entire life. Many of the most adamant vegans were luckily raised eating animal products (which contain the highest amount of etheric energy and are so nutritionally dense they can be considered superfoods compared to the depleted vegetables, even organic, grown today.)
Why do I mention vegetables, not fruits? They are mostly sugar and water, containing next to no minerals. They're not too important to consume because everything you can get from them you can get from cooked vegetables. It is basically impossible to find non-hybridized fruits unless you grow your own apple tree or berry vine. Why not raw vegetables? They are not well utilized by the body at all, most of the minerals are locked in their tough fibres.
Meat is not a perfect food, but in the current state of our world's food supply I find it is necessary for best health to consume a little high-quality animal protein daily. People that speak of depriving animals of their free will by consuming them are speaking through distortions. Everything is made of spirit and pervaded by the oversoul of all-that-is. Animals that are eaten are capable of making that choice, perhaps not cognitively, but energetically.
Victimhood/perpetrator thinking is a false dualism that mars the beauty of the cycle of life. Everything that lives is eaten. In many ways it is more humane how we slaughter and consume animals than how the universe slowly eats us over years and decades by siphoning off the frequencies produced by our energetic fields to help power the planet.
Before this comment gets any longer, I do want to say that as extreme as this may sound, I think it is an open question whether forcing a child to eat a vegan or vegetarian diet is a form of child abuse. Again, I am speaking for 2018, not 2200 when pollution has been eradicated and humans have near-total mastery over energy synthesis. It's important to be in the present and live rationally instead of living one's life based on ideologies.
Non overpowering the free will of animals is the key message of veganism and veganism isn't actually a diet per se. What many forget is that humans are animals too - so by overpowering humans to conform to anything, including veganism, we become non vegan.
It is unfortunate that you had to go through such heartless control. In my case I went through similar in different ways, but I took from that the importance of not overpowering anyone - including animals.
It is possible you didn't grow much due to not getting enough nutrition, yes - but that does not mean that it is impossible to be large on a vegan diet - as the numerous vegan bodybuilders prove.
There are obviously differences in social objectivity of what a 'natural condition' is. If you claim to own social objectivity more than some one else, your position becomes problematic very quickly.
When you attempt to shove someone in a cannon, don't be surprised if they end up putting you in the cannon you built for them.
That is the fundamental flaw in producing social justice guns, they can end up pointing in uncertain directions.
We have an understanding that those who are vulnerable need protecting. Children are protected in such ways. Yet when it comes to animals there is currently a lot of 'cognitive dissonance', denial and beliefs involved that result in massive hypocrisy. Why does a rare rhino deserve to be protected, but not the dog on your local street corner? If they both deserve to be protected, then why not the chicken in the farm? If they ALL deserve to be respected and protected then we cannot eat them. Pretty simple.
Those of us who already think this way are put into a difficult position, along with the animals themselves - we recognise the need to protect them, but have no way to do that other than by direct action or education which may be rejected. There is no guaranteed way to protect them though, other than by force and that is what many people are resorting to now. Non violent rescue of animals from farms is on the increase and has legal precedence too.
If someone is born in a way that has them trying to eat other people alive, that does not mean that we should just let them do it because it's 'natural for them'. I have a fairly clear understanding of what really is natural now. The word 'natural' refers to birth and is from the root French word for birth. So what is natural is simply that which is birthed and which allows birth/conception/creation. Death is the opposite to this and will stop all of them. Therefore, to be fully natural, naturally means that we support life. We cannot support nature when dead or when causing death. We need to get to the principles of what life is here, if we are to get to real understanding.
My single dispute with this shows up in your first sentence. There will always be infinite need, but there will always be limited ability. If nature perceived ultimate protection of all life, then all life would be unlimited in its own protection.
At what point do you recognize the overwhelming history that extinction is the norm and survival is the exception?
What evidence is there for infinite need? What evidence is there that there must be a limited ability to meet needs?
If we look at the past experiences, we can agree that in most cases and in most time periods, there has been a lack of needs being met. However, this does not mean that this is the ultimate extent of possibility, not by a long shot.
Look around and feel deeply - you will find that many opportunities are missed constantly to meet needs - it happens so often it's almost impossible to keep track of.
The roots of all of this are ancient and it is not surprising that most of us have judged that things simply will never be any different or even that things cannot be any different. The problems are accelerated by such judgements though, since thoughts are themselves able to change and limit/liberate reality and potentials.
What IS nature? Do you not have your own nature? Do we not ALL have our own nature? So whose nature is it that you are pointing to here?
I do not accept that normal is a valid description in life. There is no real 'normal' to me, I see that it is a word that is used to describe only what is common experience for those using the term, but in other situations their normal may be anything but. It was once normal for people to apply leaches to each other to drain blood or even normal to burn women to death and call them witches.. It was all perfectly 'normal'.
The difficulty many beings have with survival is not proof that 'difficulty with survival' was ever the intended outcome of life or that it should be blindly accepted - where is the heart and courage in such a position? Heart is not present there at all. The reality is that the extinction threat, which is very real, exists because of DENIAL - including denial of emotions, denial of free thinking, denial of movement, denial of learning, denial of many things. This even includes denial of denial itself.. This is where we deny aspects of reality and then deny that we are denying them - resulting in us being utterly convinced that what we are thinking is actually the truth. However, if we were to realise the need to identify and end denial, we would discover our own self deception and change drastically. Even just thinking that 'anger is bad' is enough to deny our real emotions and to thus then reduce our capacity for empathy and to then also increase the chances of us harming someone else or even dangerously killing ourselves.
Yours is a position of infinite need. You need people to believe the way that you do. You need the social truth of 'denial' to mean what you say it is. You need gods truth to mean your truth to maintain a superior claim of morality. You need the 'imbalance' to be understood as you understand it. You need people to be what you think they should be in order for your balance to occur.
There are positions that see people as they are, that don't require vast amounts if social need/engineering as a starting point.
I disagree and see no evidence for that. You are welcome to provide some.
No, I don't. Actually I have written extensively on the need to dispose of all beliefs.
Again, no - denial has nothing to do with opinion or preference. Anything, pretty much can be denied and it is pretty much the dictionary definition I am using.
Again, no - you are judging here 100%. I actually understand that every human is a piece of God. I also understand that all is one.
My position began there.
You have listed several needs which you claim are mine, but which I know are not. Even if you were correct about them, that is still only several needs and certainly not anywhere near an infinite number of needs. I am not sure exactly how you thought that guessing/projecting/creating some needs would respond to my call for evidence of infinite needs anyway, since infinite literally means 'never ends' - so you would literally need to just keep writing new needs for the rest of your life to even come close to providing evidence of your claim.
Yep that's hard hitting! I am enjoying my 95% vegan lifestyle. It's hard at work with food being supplied, yes I could take my own but there are complications with this. 💯🐒
hmm.. well, hate to break it to you but there is no such thing as 95% vegan.. It's a bit like saying I'm 95% not a murderer at the moment... The police tend to frown on that ;)
True but it better than nothing and a big step. And when there is not vegan option at work and no space on my push bike to carry a lunch box I kinda struggle really 💯🐒
Absolutely, yes - best to do as much as is possible.
That's what I do 💯🐒
What an awful response.
Should i line up the deaths that the current farming practices cause on your door step?
Many more lives are destroyed in getting you that head of lettuce than to get you a head of cattle.
And then comparing killing for food to killing another sentient is really troubling to me.
And what would you say to me?
@BuilderOfCastles you should just die. Since you can't survive on a vegetarian diet, than you should just end your life!
If you analyzed my eating practices, you would find that you would love to eat 90% of what i do. So, considering me a akin to a murderer for that last 10%... is not nice.
No, there aren't. I grow my own lettuce and nothing dies in that process specifically.
I am not aware of any proven cases of people who require meat to survive. I welcome being shown otherwise. In general terms, what you put out is what you get back - if you put out 'it's ok for me to kill sentient beings' - then you will get that back and possibly sooner than you think. I can guarantee you that I met with random violence due to my points of attraction within this attractive (karma) based universe while a meat eater and I have never been involved with any violence whatsoever since then. There is no judgement in this, we get to experience the results of our choices. I recall being a deer in a past life too, I have no desire to cause myself such harm!
I don't consider myself to be above animals in any way and as I said, I remember living the life of one at least once (probably many times). So for me, if anyone is a murderer for killing humans, then we also are for killing animals. I have done it too.
Well, now you know one verified case that requires meat to survive.
I will not discuss the specifics as the conversations go as such (hundreds of times):
Me: what can i eat that provides protein?
Veg: this and this and this...
Me: i am allergic to all those things.
Veg: than this, and this...
Me: i am allergic to all those things.
Veg: well, i am sure there is something... you just have to become a vegetarian.
Or in other words, every one of them told me to die for their view of animal lives matter.
And when i raise a chicken nothing dies in the process specifically...
except the chicken and the lettuce.
I can understand being against modern farming and ranching industrial practices. They are abhorrent.
However, we, on this planet are in a symbiotic relationship with all life. All the life exists to be consumed by other life. There isn't one piece left out.
If it was left out, it wouldn't exist.
Reincarnation exists. Life exists to create new life.
Sure we can rise above the need to ingest food and live off of prana directly, but we have a long way to go before even a decent percentage could do that. Further, when a planet does that, all those supporting species stop existing.
I have never heard of anyone else describing such allergies to vegetables and fruits, but ok. I had allergies growing up to various things but over time I learned to consciously de-condition them and I don't have them now. That's what I would do in such a situation. There are therapists who do this or it can be done internally.
It is common for people to mistake life for death - amazingly. If life consumes life against it's will, then that life dies and some of it changes form. The vibration of the will decreases when it is overpowered - that is the cause of death in general on Earth.
Unfortunately the image doesn't make any sense.
Cows exist on earth because of their symbioses with man.
If man stops eating cows, than the cows will cease existing.
Further, if you were to draw it correctly, the top half should be brown, not green. Just like the bottom half was drawn in red, one must not delude themselves into thinking that vegetarian diets do not have consequences on the land.
Producing food baring plants results in greenery. Eating food from food baring plants tends to involve eating seeds, which when pooped naturally, will result in more plants and more greenery. Without this basic principle, there would not be mammals.
What evidence is there that cows exist because of humans? As far as I am aware they are descendents of wild Ox and:
Read more: Difference Between Ox and Cow | Difference Between http://www.differencebetween.net/science/nature/difference-between-ox-and-cow/#ixzz5UVke3ZGH
They are many 1000s of years old at least.
Without humans there would be less cows, yes - and less suffering as a result.
How many vegans actually know what it takes to farm? Yes it would be nice if animals weren't consumed for food but that's never gonna happen because even an orchard only produces for a short period of time after a lot of intensive maintenance and it's almost always dependent on the climate. Yes we could grow everything indoors under lamps but the resources to do aren't feasible in feeding everyone. Meat grows year long and requires less intensive care than vegetables or orchards. It can be grown by grazing and foraging, and it can be offered a more pleasant and easy life than if it was out in the wild among predators. Yes we need to move from the animal factory and twords a more humane treatment of our meat. Eggs are easy to harvest and so is milk and the oceans will never be overfished because in terms of their abundance there's no match for the life found in oceans. Jesus feed people with fish, the Buddha talked about how killing is bad yet expounded that neither veganism or vegetarianism will lead to enlightenment, and he ate meat when offered and never chastised people for consuming it. Veganism is a deluded ideal that doesn't come into contact with exactly what it takes to farm and the loss of biodiversity from the monoculture it requires or how much land would be necessary to feed the world and maintain a redundancy when spring frost, summer drought, or torrential fall rain demolishes entire regions vegetables, grain and fruit production.
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