MilitantVegan

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MilitantVegan ,

Easy to point the finger at everyone doing this, but every person who continues buying and consuming animal products are still most primarily to blame for this situation.

If this does become a new pandemic, we might be talking about an unprecedented ~50% of the human population killed. A real life Thanos event. Thanks omnivores.

MilitantVegan OP ,

Why are the animal's choices never considered in this equation? Freedom is something the west places a high value on, but it's generally agreed that freedom should never go so far as to harm others, yet your "freedom" to choose what to eat is resulting in a horrifying sort of perpetual holocaust.

Why is your fleeting sensory pleasure (something that can be had just as easily from plants) more important than the entire lives and wellbeing of all the animals you paid to have killed?

MilitantVegan ,

abstaining from the consumption of animal flesh isn't suffering. Quite the opposite.

MilitantVegan ,

Half the fun of the Christianities is endlessly debating what Jesus did or did not say.

https://christspiracy.com/

MilitantVegan ,

Implying vegans should be invisible or hard to spot?

MilitantVegan ,

only when it seems to be getting promoted.

MilitantVegan ,

I agree that is one of the more common things to debate, probably more common than what he did say. But that's also only true as long as you confine yourself to the Bible as it exists today. When you look into the history, archeological record, and textual criticism though, things get much more complicated as quite a few more groups wrote about what Jesus was purported to teach than the Catholic and Protestant churches would like you to believe.

Robert Price's, "Pre-Nicene New Testament" is a good introduction to just how diverse and radically different early Christianity was. Bart Erhman is another great author who clearly cares more about what's true, than what fits a churches dogma.

MilitantVegan ,

Some of them are, and it doesn't take long (maybe a year) on a plant-based lifestyle to start naturally preferring more plant-forward burgers.

MilitantVegan ,

Are you referring to plant-based burgers? That would definitely apply to Beyond and Impossible as they add way too much coconut oil, and salt. In other words they're unhealthy for some of the same reasons animal flesh is unhealthy, although they are still less harmful than their animal counterparts just by lacking the animal proteins.

MilitantVegan ,

Every person still buying and consuming animal products paid for this.

MilitantVegan ,

Humans don't intrinsically know what to eat to for nutrient deficiencies, that's a learned behavior based on finding out what the symptoms of a given deficiency are, and learning which foods have the necessary nutrients.

MilitantVegan OP ,

If you skip the mass produced stuff, there are plenty of great naturally fermented plant-based cheeses. But in my experience it always feels like something is missing, which probably has to do with dairy's addictiveness. How do you compete with drugs?

MilitantVegan OP ,

psilocybe-infused artisinal almond cheese. 🧑‍🍳🤌

MilitantVegan OP ,

I've definitely had some good hot dogs and brats. I don't remember which stadium style hot dogs I've tried, but I usually go for some flavor of Field Roast.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LwpAS5_RVxM

MilitantVegan OP ,

There was a time when the "definition" of marriage was a union between only one amab and afab person. Definitions change.

MilitantVegan OP ,

The point of vegan cheese is that they most certainly do not taste like murder. 😁

MilitantVegan OP ,

Agreed.

MilitantVegan OP ,

The lgbtq+ communities and vegans are both seeking justice in their own areas of concern, so it's most definitely not extreme to compare the two.

MilitantVegan OP ,

There are forms of discrimination that happen to vegans, but more importantly, it's the non-human animals who are being oppressed.

MilitantVegan OP ,

Plant-based cheeses are allowed in their competition. They technically got disqualified because one of the ingredients is some type of fat that currently doesn't have GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status. Except they only made it an issue after the plant-based cheese had won.

The whole resistance to reinterpreting culinary language is just nothing but anti-competitiveness.

MilitantVegan OP ,

This, thank you.

MilitantVegan OP ,
MilitantVegan OP ,

A baby human consuming their mother's breast milk is vegan, because the mother is consenting to it. A cow cannot consent to being forcibly, artificially impregnated for the sake of producing milk. They don't consent to having their horns chopped off. Nor do they consent to their children being stolen from them almost immediately after birth to be butchered for veal.

Yes plant-based cheeses are intended to mimic animal cheeses. But that doesn't mean they have to be identical. Guilt puts a tint on the things we experience, and the way we feel can be considered a dimension of flavor. I would imagine a lot of people would argue they don't feel guilty about consuming animals or their secretions, but that's only because they've never experienced any time without that guilt. If you're used to feeling a certain way every day, you start to forget about the feeling all together, even though it's still effecting you in the background.

The idea with plant-based alternatives is to have all of the good properties of their animal-counterparts, and none of the bad. Cheese that's free of the shame and guilt of causing unnecessary harm and suffering to thinking, feeling, sentient beings inherently tastes better.

MilitantVegan OP ,

"The plant constituents of that product, a vegan blue cheese, are hardly exotic. The top four ingredients are pumpkin seeds, coconut oil, lima beans, and hemp protein powder. And yet Dominique Crenn, a Michelin-starred chef, described it as “soft, buttery, and surprisingly rich—beyond imagination for a vegan cheese.”"

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/24/1091118/climax-foods-vegan-blue-cheese-ai-dairy-free-machine-learning/

MilitantVegan OP ,

It'll be interesting to try when it comes out, but there are already plenty of good brands out there.

https://www.tastingtable.com/1134914/best-vegan-cheese-brands-ranked-worst-to-best/

MilitantVegan OP ,

Here are more details (and more context is in the article):

"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).

The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.

“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php

MilitantVegan OP ,

I'll just copy and paste the same thing I replied with, above:

Here are more details (and more context is in the article):

"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).

The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.

“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php

MilitantVegan OP ,

With this username I am quickly finding out I should be charging one quarter every time someone says this.

MilitantVegan OP ,

Good luck with that.

MilitantVegan OP ,

Here are more details (and more context is in the article):

"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).

The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.

“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php

MilitantVegan OP ,

It's not available yet, but here's their home page.

https://climax.bio/

MilitantVegan OP ,

Here are more details (and more context is in the article):

"Someone had tipped off the foundation on something that disqualified Climax, Good Food Foundation Executive Director Sarah Weiner told the Washington Post. The complaint potentially arose from Climax’s use of the ingredient kokum butter, which has not been designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the Food and Drug Administration. However, Zahn told the Washington Post that the company has replaced the ingredient with cocoa butter, which was the version he said he submitted for the awards (although Weiner contests this).

The Good Food Awards also didn’t require GRAS certification for all ingredients back when contestants submitted their products — rather, the foundation added this to the rules later on. Zahn claims the Good Food Foundation never reached out to Climax to inform the company of the new requirement, although Weiner told the Washington Post it attempted to. SFGATE could not reach the Good Food Foundation for comment in time for publication.

“It would have been very easy for them to reach out to us and tell us about the new requirements,” Zahn told SFGATE. “… The thing that’s upsetting to me is that they were kind of unprofessional by changing the rules a week before the event.”"

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/berkeley-vegan-cheese-good-food-awards-19431532.php

MilitantVegan OP ,

Yeah something about the economics doesn't make sense, especially comparing the price of, say, dry beans, to a box of plant-based burger patties.

MilitantVegan OP ,

Technically it can't be all animal products, since honey is about 98% sugar, and despite the hate campaign currently hitting carbs, sugar is not quite as harmful (in and of itself) as it's made out to be.

But if we're referring to all animal products in the sense of meat, dairy, and eggs - those three foods have nutritional properties that are all very similar and they do have some overlap in terms of health issues.

The biggest thing they have in common is being a package deal with high amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol. Heart disease is generally the industrialized world's number one killer, and all three animal foods initiate the onset and progress the state of heart disease.

Then there are issues that are less settled, like to what degree do these foods cause various cancers?

And then this one is even more in need of further study, but there might be a link between these foods and autoimmune disorders.

https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/meat-bad-you-and-environment

https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/processed-meat

https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-about-dairy

https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-with-eggs

MilitantVegan OP ,

There's nothing ancient or valuable about a relatively new industry that's built on lies and unnecessary suffering and death for all.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=roIWg4ntj9k&pp=ygUTZGFpcnkgaW5kdXN0cnkgbGllcw%3D%3D

MilitantVegan OP ,

Clearly it doesn't need luck - it's already winning awards despite underhanded tricks.

MilitantVegan OP ,

I was going to post the original wapo article, but then I saw wapo wouldn't even let me read the whole thing. I don't knowingly link to articles that are paywalled.

MilitantVegan OP ,

They were slated to win, close enough.

MilitantVegan OP ,

No, they had advance warning that they were the winners. That victory was stolen from them based on rules that were added after the fact.

MilitantVegan OP ,

Relatively low if you compare it only to other meats or animal products. So while you can choose animal products that might progress these chronic metabolic diseases slower, you are still advancing them. But there are lots of factors that complicate things. For example the health impacts of animal products also depend on how you cook them, and what you eat them with. Cured meats are unanimously considered one of the worst things you can consume, right up there with smoking. Steamed fish would probably be about the least harmful (except that fish have some of the highest levels of bioaccumulated toxins and heavy metals). Actually, bugs are likely the least harmful, for those who are comfortable with that. Eating a source of fiber mitigates some of the harm from animal products as shown in this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C08mqjMuwyY

Further complicating things is that single nutrients often behave differently depending on context. For example antioxidants other than some of the essential vitamins have never been shown to produce their purported effects outside of laboratory conditions, and some supplemented sources of antioxidants have even been shown to be a little harmful. But when we test the whole foods that contain those antioxidants, we get data like how increasing leafy green consumption has been correlated with a longer life expectancy.

And it's similar for saturated fats and animal products. In the most established science on the matter you'll see they don't just talk about saturated fat alone - the science appears to show a relationship between the ratio of saturated and unsaturated fats consumed, particularly polyunsaturated fats. This book describes that science quite well-

https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/eat-drink-and-be-healthy/

But going back to that nutrients vs whole foods, there might be more than just the fats at play. This piece by Colin Campbell is a bit of a manifesto against nutritional reductionism, and suggests that the animal proteins themselves might play more of a role than we had thought:

https://nutritionstudies.org/is-saturated-fat-really-that-bad/

When you put whole diets to the test, what starts to become most consistent is how the most whole-plant-dominant diets by far achieve the most remarkable results. It's apparent in the Adventist Health Studies, the Esselstyn Heart Disease Reversal diet, as well as Dean Ornishes full lifestyle intervention program. The latter two claim they can reverse heart disease, which is a controversial claim. More study is needed to prove whether that's true or false, but regardless it's still apparent that these fully plant-based dietary interventions do more than any others to restore people to good health.

And it's a thing where science and personal experience match. If you check out the online whole-food plant-based support communities, you see people routinely report almost miraculous changes to their health and wellbeing in a matter of weeks or even days. It's the kind of thing that once you experience it fully enough, you don't want to go back.

https://adventisthealthstudy.org/studies/AHS-2/findings-lifestyle-diet-disease

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/wellness/integrative/esselstyn-program

https://www.ornish.com/

MilitantVegan OP ,

Only replying to your last point, and on that I only have to say that perfection is the enemy of greatness. The vegan philosophy is about doing the best we can, within practical limits. I can't stop myself from breathing or my mere existence causing harm to beings I can't even see, but doing more feasible actions like abstaining from animal consumption and electing not to purchase or use other animal products has substantial benefits that are felt.

MilitantVegan OP ,

Compared to the other 90% of our evolutionary history? Not by a longshot.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/flashback-friday-the-problem-with-the-paleo-diet-argument/

MilitantVegan OP ,

I do think the name itself is problematic. To anyone unfamiliar to the ideas, the word hints at something to do with vegetables, and yes that currently plays a role, but it's not the point. It's more of an animal rights milieu, and plants are only relevant at this point in time because it's the least harmful way humans can sustain themselves for now. But that ignores that animal rights go far beyond diet, and that fact tends to get lost during any outreach since all most people are thinking about is the foods they dread to give up.

MilitantVegan OP ,

The interesting thing is finding that maybe not as many animals are "obligate carnivores" than we first thought, though this is definitely something that needs more study.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/13/cats-may-get-health-benefits-from-vegan-diet-study-suggests

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