Psience Quest

(2018-09-03, 11:07 PM)Hurmanetar Wrote: [ -> ]Most of the Christians I knew who got into veganism used Daniel and his compadres as their example.

For those not familiar: https://biblehub.com/niv/daniel/1.htm

[b]11[/b]Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, [b]12[/b]“Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. [b]13[/b]Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” [b]14[/b]So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

[b]15[/b]At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. [b]16[/b]So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

Plant source of B12, Omega 3 and protein comparable to whey.

Hello - I posted the below comment elsewhere, thought I would copy & paste as a follow up to my posts last year!:

There are many common misconceptions regarding veganism, many mentioned in the comments above, things such as unnatural, unhealthy, weakness, protein, calcium deficiencies etc are frequently mentioned. I myself also believed in a few of these myself, but thought the sacrifice for animal welfare was worth it.

I’m almost 42 years old, and turned lacto-vegetarian just before my 13th birthday. My decision to turn veggie was purely animal-welfare based, and health was never a consideration in making that choice. Nevertheless, I have been regularly going to the gym and working out for more than 25 years, taking care of my diet, ensuring I get good nutrition, supplements etc. Around 6 months ago, again purely due to animal welfare concerns, I decided to try to go vegan. I thought this may be difficult, that my health, strength and energy levels would, perhaps, be slightly depleted. But this was a sacrifice I thought worthy, but I was open to re-evaluating should my health deteriorate too much.

The first completely unexpected thing that happened after quitting dairy products was within a week a dry skin condition (mild but annoying) that I’d had all my adult life disappeared almost entirely. It has since returned, but I would say at approx. 20% of how bad it was before.

The second, completely unexpected thing, was the significant, measurable improvement in my recovery times from hard workouts in the gym, energy levels……6 months in, I am absolutely confident I have never felt so well in my entire life. Heavy weight workouts leave me feeling as if I haven’t even worked out immediately after & the next day……absolutely amazing. A discernible improvement, and I was already quite healthy before (was probably the fittest in our work football teams, as told by others, and there were several very fit and young guys there half my age).

I had absolutely no idea these benefits were associated with a vegan diet, so was a bit surprised by it. I mentioned casually to a meat-eating friend I feel so well nowadays and that recovery from workouts was almost unbelievable, and I think it may be due to cutting dairy from my diet. He replied with “oh yeah, dairy causes inflammation”. He then told me to watch a documentary called The Game Changers. I watched it last night and was blown away, and my experience with fitness improvements over the last few months now make so, so much more sense to me.

https://gamechangersmovie.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM

There is a reason why so many of the absolute best athletes in the world are eating a vegan diet! Messi, Djokovic, Serena Williams, Lewis Hamilton, UFC fighters, weight lifters etc etc. Seriously. The myth of needing meat and dairy products to build and maintain muscle, energy levels (as evidenced by some of the comments in this thread) are profoundly misleading and based on marketing by the meat and dairy industries.

I came for the animal welfare, but will be staying for the incredible benefits for health and fitness. I have literally never taken any supplement or diet change in my entire life that has resulted in such a clear & tangible improvement in physical wellbeing.

Try it, you absolutely will not regret it (probably). My only regret with my decision to turn vegan last year was that I hadn’t done it years earlier.

Peace.

Courtesy of the Daily Grail - here's an article from the BBC by Zaria Gorvett, entitled "How a vegan diet could affect your intelligence":
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200...telligence

(2020-01-29, 10:52 AM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Courtesy of the Daily Grail - here's an article from the BBC by Zaria Gorvett, entitled "How a vegan diet could affect your intelligence":
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200...telligence

And again courtesy of the Daily Grail, here's a point-by-point rebuttal by Clinton Stamatovich, who says "Nearly every claim is either totally untrue or misleading." Based on general experience of the state of BBC journalism these days, that wouldn't be very surprising.
https://medium.com/@clstamat/bad-intel-i...c3e48cfa97

To date, all the major health science organizations take the position that a planned vegan diet is nutritionally adequate for all stages of life so I don't panic about an unsubstantiated claim in some non-scientific article.

For example, the British Dietetic Association https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/british-...-ages.html

The American Dietetic Association  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864

"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes."

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200...gan-hatred

"In the case of eating meat, Rothgerber suggests we have a number of strategies – around 15 – which allow us to avoid facing up to the meat paradox. These include pretending that meat has no link to animals, imagining that we eat less of it than we really do, wilful ignorance about how it’s produced – helped by the cartoons of happy farm animals that we’re exposed to from childhood – and only eating meat from animals which are “humanely” farmed. 

Unfortunately, most of these are derailed by the presence of vegans."


"By their mere existence, vegans force people to confront their cognitive dissonance. And this makes people angry."

Every Argument Against Veganism | Ed Winters | TEDxBathUniversity

(2020-05-16, 02:23 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]Every Argument Against Veganism | Ed Winters | TEDxBathUniversity

How hard do you think vegans are going to push back against, ignore and deny the slowly but steadily growing evidence that plants do respond to trauma and anticipation of trauma, can learn, and are thus probably conscious, making them screwed either way? I'm guessing it's going to be quite a lot, but that's always been my contention. Something is suffering either way so you might as well enjoy the taste till there's a real solution like some form of safe lab grown food or full on Star Trek style food replication instead of make believing plants are really any different as a justification. It's pretty much the old "it's not murder because they're not really people" medieval war argument applied to food. Beyond that the economic and environmental arguments for vegans can't really be beat.

(2020-05-16, 05:18 PM)Mediochre Wrote: [ -> ]How hard do you think vegans are going to push back against, ignore and deny the slowly but steadily growing evidence that plants do respond to trauma and anticipation of trauma, can learn, and are thus probably conscious, making them screwed either way?

He did address that in the video. Check out his line of reasoning because it's pretty decent.

For what it's worth, my own perspective on it (complementing that of Ed's in the video) is this:

I accept - and have done for many years now - that plants are very likely sentient, and deserving of ethical consideration. For this reason, I consume a fruitarian diet.

(2020-05-16, 05:18 PM)Mediochre Wrote: [ -> ]Something is suffering either way so you might as well enjoy the taste

I don't think that that's a fair comparison. Have you seen what factory farms are like? The suffering of a factory-farmed animal is almost certainly orders of magnitude above that of a farmed plant, so even if you do accept that plants are sentient, you should ethically prefer to consume them rather than to consume factory-farmed animals.

One response to everything I've written above might be:

OK, but (1) even the fruitarian farming of plants entails plant deaths if only because land has to be cleared (and kept clear) for the crops anyway, so even a fruitarian ethic (in the world of modern agriculture) isn't one free from plant deaths, and (2) if I don't consume factory-farmed animals but rather animals which are free to roam and don't suffer, then I might even be causing fewer deaths in total.

The problem with this response is that given the human population, there isn't nearly enough land on which for enough farmed animals to roam freely so as to meet the voracious carnivory of the human population. Some people might be able to farm some animals with some degree of freedom from overt suffering, but it's not a solution that every person (or at least the vast majority) on the planet can adopt. Fruitarianism, or at least veganism, is.

The other problem is that land often has to be (or simply is) cleared to support even relatively free-ranging farmed animals, so the comparison again doesn't fall in favour of free-range animal farming versus fruitarianism (or veganism).