There is no sense in reducing the entire human experience to the lowest common denominator one in order to fit more people on the planet. If that's in your plans, you have a literal fight on your hands.
You could say, that the only way to have the entire human experience, is to eat carnivores (lions, anyone?).
With carnivore diet how many people you think the planet would support?
Would there be a place for yourself, now?
What about your children and children of your children? For wildlife? For nature?
Come on, grow up, people.
A line in the sand will be drawn somewhere, here's mine. I don't believe in infinite growth, it will result in us all drinking Soylent in cages.
The objective for me is to have a high quality of life for a reasonable number of people, not a low quality of life for the maximum amount possible.
Care to clarify what this means, if not a hyperbolic statement about how much you enjoy eating meat?
And yes, much fishing and aquaculture is presently unsustainable, but that can be said about agriculture too. It's not nearly an adequate argument for abandoning it entirely.
The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people. Sustainability arguments won't cut it. If animals aren't people, you never get to full veganism, and if animals are people the sustainability argument is redundant anyway.
Eating fish is not sustainable. Overfishing and by-catch is a real problem (already more than 90% of sharks are exterminated), and in near future the seas could be totally devoid of life (except for jellyfish).
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy ]
> The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people
I don't agree.
(1) We shouldn’t be cruel to animals, i.e. we shouldn’t harm animals unnecessarily.
(2) The consumption of animal products harms animals and Earth.
(3) The consumption of animal products is unnecessary.
(4) Therefore, we shouldn’t consume animal products.
Every time I see that title I ask myself why they didn't go for "conspirasea"
Again: No matter how bad harvesting of sea resources is, it can't be enough to abandon the oceans entirely, any more than the vast land-use impact of agriculture can be used as argument for abandoning agriculture.
- They are unnecessary. Humanity lived thousands of years without them.
- They harm billions of animals.
- But not using them would condemn us to a subsistence economy.
Edit: though for thought lmao
I don’t think I’ll ever be pure vegan but I’ll see how far I can get. Except for cheese as noted elsewhere, most meals are not lacking anything in terms of taste or satiation.
So - it's already true! We grow all the barley we need to sustain ourselves, and the rest is given over to other produce that provides the other nutrients we need, as well as some luxury. Yay vegan sustainability!
Instead it's the very wasteful food culture especially the west has, let's take steak as an example, for the around 5 steaks a family of 3 will eat you could easily make a stew for 4 with only 3 of those steaks.
Is it a waste for me to use a nice keyboard because a cheap 5 quid one will do?
Pretty sure the bigger problem is still the tons of food we throw away after going through everything to grow and ship it.
What's the current academic consensus on nutritional deficiencies of vegan / lacto-vegeterian diet?
I grew up on a lacto-vegeterian diet in India. I can't shake off the feeling that I would've had a better physique and growth if I had access to non-vegetarian food during my youth.
Regardless, the bigger problem is the lack of long term research we have on mindful omnivores vs mindful vegetarians vs mindful vegans, etc. Most comparisons are between mindful vegans and omnivores living off of incredibly poor diets.
You can't just leave meat and eat the rest and call it vegan diet. Most anti-vegans never had a real vegan meal. We all have an idea of vegan meals - but your mum's vegetable dish, which left you hungry after eating it, is not a real representative of vegan diet.
You'll just need to learn to cook differently - or better, what to substitute with what.
No need to invent new recipes. There is a lot of vegan meals in India, Mexico, Greece, Ethiopia, even your country for sure has some. Just make sure you eat diverse food and don't forget your B12 supplement (in vegan variant, because B12 is from earth bacteria or seaweed, not from meat).
When searching for a recipe (burger recipe) on the net, just add "vegan" (vegan burger recipe) and you'll certainly find something you'll enjoy.
[https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-egg-replacer-guide/ - 24 Ways to Replace an Egg] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20replace%20meat] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20milk%20recipes]
Conversation might be a bit limited though. The need to tell everyone you meet, within 5 minutes of meeting them, that you're a vegan would be removed.
