Quote from: DAS THROWBACK on July 10, 2015, 12:38:42 AM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 10, 2015, 12:37:34 AM

You're playing roulette with an animal's welfare so you can chow down on a burger.

And in the end, I'm ultimately okay with that.

Stay mad, son.

Then why the weak attempts at justifying your actions?

I mean, either you aren't comfortable with admitting the stark reality of your choices, or you don't want others to see you in a certain way.

And yet you're still persisting, now with the excuse that it's not affordable, even though it's probably the cheaper option.

I just think it's a strange cycle: first there's the excuses, then when they're exhausted there's the cavalier confession that you don't care... then back to the excuses again.

That's congitive dissonance for you.

Well, whenever I say i just don't care, or that it's not a priority, y'all's kind get all uppity about that, so, yeah.

Quote from: DAS THROWBACK on July 10, 2015, 01:06:56 AM

Well, whenever I say i just don't care, or that it's not a priority, y'all's kind get all uppity about that, so, yeah.

I've never done that. I'm only annoyed by poor reasoning and faulty logic.

And a lack of readily available resources isn't good reasoning?

I get the distinct impression that you have done little to no research on this, yet are hinging your argument on vague ideas of what it would be like. I mean I probably had similar ideas before I realised I had no right to hold them without trying it myself. Only then did I realise how completely wrong I was.

What kind of advice would you give to somebody who's mildly interested in trying out veganism?

Now how do you propose we fix my "I don't really care" thing?

I don't think you should need emotional leverage to be a moral person; you just need to want to be a moral person.

I guess if you wanted to pull at your heartstrings you could watch Earthlings on youtube or something -- stuff like that helps drive it home for a lot of people -- but if you base your ethics solely on what affects you emotionally, your ethics are dubious at best.

Personally I could start eating animals again and be emotionally okay with it. But I like to think I value being a rational, moral person more than that.

What kind of advice would you give to somebody who's mildly interested in trying out veganism?

I'm going to try to avoid making this read like a sales pitch, so...

1. Research, obviously. Not a lot -- just enough to learn the fundamental differences between a vegan and an animal-based diet. Unfortunately veganism is littered with pseudoscience, so it's easy to be bamboozled or just turned off it altogether. These are the two best resources for vegan nutrition on the internet, by far:

www.theveganrd.com
jacknorrisrd.com

The first one in particular is a goldmine of information. Here's one of its introductory articles, but I'd recommend looking through the whole archive; seriously, it's full of useful and, from what I've seen, credible advice.

2. Don't sweat the small stuff. When I initially went vegan I was obsessed with avoiding all animal products at all costs. Which meant laboriously inspecting every product for suspicious ingredients like "preservative 401" of "natural flavours" or "sugar" that may or may not have been processed with animal bone. It was draining. And eventually I realized that most of these ingredients don't have any impact on animal welfare; they're just byproducts that are harvested from the meat and dairy industries. Nobody's killing a cow to filter sugar. Plus it's just not a reasonable way to live or promote the lifestyle to others.

Though I think cosmetics are where you need to be particularly careful, because a lot of them are tested on animals.

3. Make a shopping list. Seriously, the most daunting thing about veganism for me wasn't giving up certain foods, but not knowing how to replace them. My first week or so I was basically confined to the health food section because I thought that was where all the vegan foods were; later I realised that finding vegan food is remarkably easy and shopping became no more difficult than before.

Some of the foods I'd recommend, for both nutritional value and taste, are:

Basics

- Fruit, obviously. Bananas and dates are the greatest things ever produced by nature, and together doubly so
- Rice. I never really cared for the stuff until I got a slow cooker, but it really is a staple food
- Tofu. I know, I know. But seriously, it's the most versatile thing ever, and there's always a way to make it taste good. Cheap too
- Beans.
- Nuts. I adore nuts, and they're full of healthy fats. I'm starting to make my own nut butters too, thought you should know
- Grains, again, obviously. I couldn't live without toast.

Everything else to make veganism not boring

- Milk alternatives. A lot of people like almond, I prefer rice because it doesn't have a particularly distinct taste in my coffee. Coconut milk destroys everything for taste, but it's rather high in fat and low in calcium. Haven't tried Hazelnut and Macadamia milks.

- These babies. You will never crave "real" sausages again, trust me. Very good on pizza.

- You can still eat a lot of junk foods.

- Coconut milk chocolate is better than dairy chocolate, it's not up for debate.

- Coconut milk ice cream is better than dairy ice cream, it's also not up for debate.

- These taste exactly like chicken schnitzels. I can find all of these in generic supermarkets, btw, and they're not locally made, so hopefully you've got them too. Most of Fry's products taste good.

- Daiya Cheese (site appears to be down atm) is the best vegan cheese I've tried (most of them taste like ballsweat). You may have to go to a health food store to find them though, and they aren't cheap, so I don't buy them often.

- Marmite. Like, come on. Good source of B12 too. (Also B12 is the one thing you'll probably need to supplement. You can get it from yeast products and fortified foods, but best not to take any chances. It's not hard to come by -- supermarkets sell it in capsules for dirt cheap.)

- Nutritional Yeast. Also known as Savoury Yeast Flakes. This is the stuff of legend. Add it to literally anything for a cheesy flavour; popcorn, spaghetti, nachos, make a cheese sauce, the possibilities are endless. Also rich in B12.

- Nut butters. Almond butter is quite possibly the greatest thing ever to come from putting almonds in a blender for 20 minutes (perhaps the only thing). It's incredible stuff. Bit pricey though. Peanut butter is cheaper and almost as good.

- Herbs and spices and stuff. This will make all the boring staple foods taste good. Personally I have cumin, and... some mixed herbs and that's it. Powdered onion or something.

- Herbamare is a seasoning that tastes almost exactly like the salt they put on your chips at KFC. And that salt is fucking badass. (Also while these are Amazon links, I can find them in my local supermarkets.)

- Plus Nando's chip salt is vegan and can be found at most retailers.

- Most dark chocolate is vegan. Cocoa butter and cocoa mass are vegan; it's milk solids you've got to watch out for.

- Tried Vege chips for the first time yesterday; really quite good.

- Jokerz Candy bars. Vegan Snickers, and it's bloody good.

- Curry paste. I like curry.

I may come back and update this if I think of more (I'm sure there are more) but for now that seems pretty extensive. Actually it wouldn't be a bad idea to go to an online vegan food store, browse through their products, then look for them later at the supermarket.

4. Cook your own stuff! I don't really do this myself, but I'd like to. So I don't have many tried and tested recommendations, but there's just a ton of good recipes out there for everything imaginable (I made cookie dough with chickpeas a while back -- 7/10; vegan nutella -- 8/10; and I'm going to try and make mars bars soon, if I don't eat all the ingredients first). Oh and I do make the occasional curry.

5. Generally just stay away from other vegans, lol. Well, maybe not -- I haven't met any fellow vegans IRL, but those that I've encountered online tend to run a spectrum of irrational to hostile to just plain bonkers. There's a lot of reasonable ones out there too, but they're kind of hard to find, and attempting to do so might leave a sour taste in your mouth toward veganism as a whole.

Here's a few vegan-oriented blogs I can recommend:

http://veganskeptic.blogspot.com.au/
http://skepticalvegan.com/
http://pythagoreancrank.com/


Bear in mind that I don't keep up with them, I'm just going by what I've read of theirs in the past.

Other than that, I don't really know. I suppose I could direct you to one of the many documentaries showing footage from factory farms, but I'm assuming you're familiar with all that [edit: just read your last comment; what'd you think?] and I haven't watched any of them myself except for 20 minutes of Earthlings before figuring there was no need to endure it when I'm already vegan. I'll do my best to answer any questions you've got, though. Just remember that going vegan is like jumping into a cold pool; the hardest part is the initial plunge. After that it's incredibly easy. Now I'm going to go for a run. Do you know how far I can run fueled by clean, pure veganosity? Really fucking far, I'll tell you that.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 10, 2015, 01:41:16 AM

What kind of advice would you give to somebody who's mildly interested in trying out veganism?

redacted for 2long

mind if i just take this all for future reference

this is good enough stuff to turn anyone--or at least, give them zero excuses not to
(not that they had any to begin with)

After reading Pendulate's post, and watching that documentary he mentioned.

I think I have no choice, morally, but to make the transition to a vegan lifestyle.

After reading Pendulate's post, and watching that documentary he mentioned.

I think I have no choice, morally, but to make the transition to a vegan lifestyle.

ayyyy

Good luck.

It's pointless imo and I would just be limiting my nutritional intake.

AFAIK, vegan diets are about as nutritional as standard diets, if you know what you're doing.

Being vegan is morally correct, and consuming meat is no less harmful than wearing clothes

I'd rather not wear clothes

Nice to know I'm not a hypocrite since I don't care what happens to my food before it is food.

Anything to say about Vitamin D, calcium, omega-3, iron and zinc?

Are there any foods which will meet your daily requirements? Or is it best to just take supplements?

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 10, 2015, 11:22:59 AM

Quote from: Mad Max on July 10, 2015, 11:15:13 AM

Nice to know I'm not a hypocrite since I don't care what happens to my food before it is food.

I'd still say that's immoral.

"I don't care" is a pretty neutral stance on morality.

It's also pretty stupid. . .

And borderline psychopathic.