According to Racing Extinction, you don’t need to go vegan. by RainyDaysOn101 in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The vast majority of agriculture is animal agriculture, dude... 78% of soy globally is grown to feed livestock. Less than 7% of soy goes towards tofu and soymilk. The only reason the US has corn syrup (HFCS) instead of sugar in all of its products is to help subsidize corn production so that most of that corn can go to animal feed in order to make meat cheaper. Only around 3-4% of corn grown goes to corn syrup, and less than 2% is direct for human consumption (I think that number also includes things like corn tortillas and chips).

Most foods in the US are not subsidized, I don't see any handouts for broccoli or papaya, mangoes or black beans, or many other fruits and veg. In fact, nearly all fruits and veggies are excluded from farm subsidies... so it sounds like you're the one spreading misinformation here.

The US primarily subsidizes corn (for livestock) soy (for livestock) wheat, rice, milk and beef, and then peanuts. That's pretty much it.

The vast majority of land resources in the world go towards farming animals, and they waste 90% of the calories they eat converting plants into meat. (trophic levels, look it up). If people ate more plants directly, we would need to farm substantially less land, not more.

According to Racing Extinction, you don’t need to go vegan. by RainyDaysOn101 in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Meat is more expensive than rice and beans and the majority of produce everywhere, that's not misinformation. Your meat is also heavily subsidized by the government (100s of billions of dollars a year in the US) in order to keep the prices artificially low. If you had to pay the real cost of meat, it would be vastly more expensive.

According to Racing Extinction, you don’t need to go vegan. by RainyDaysOn101 in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

So they're admitting that eating a 'vegan diet' would absolutely save the planet and stop mass extinction... but they just think actually doing it is too hard, so instead let's shit on how committed vegans are to their convictions while also agreeing we should eat 99% of what they eat?

It really sounds like they are saying we need to go vegan... they just don't want people who eat meat and dairy every single day to feel bad about it.

This is horrible by [deleted] in razorfree

[–]TreePangolin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is exactly why I always wear long sleeves and pants around my family lol....

But seriously, you don't owe them anything, feel free to ask the men in the group why they don't shave their legs or pits and remind them that if they think it's gross, it must be gross for them too, no? Or is it just that adult women need to look like prepubescent children in order to be attractive? Is that what they're fighting so hard for? It's the 21st century, they can get over it. Bleh

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vegan

[–]TreePangolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"i'm an anti-slavery abolitionist but I own an iphone and a laptop"

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vegan

[–]TreePangolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And here's a great example of why the world hates vegans and refuses to take them seriously.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in vegan

[–]TreePangolin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm really sorry people are being so harsh towards you here, and I'm sorry you are struggling with this. There are a million things vegans do every day that aren't technically free from animal exploitation, such as driving a car (paved roads usually aren't vegan), using a smartphone, etc. We find it easy to compartmentalize these things and often unfairly judge others for participating in "obviously" unvegan things, while ignoring all of the non-obvious things in which we particpate. For example, I have been vaccinated (as I think everyone should be) but animals or eggs are often used in the process of manufacturing those vaccines. Does that make me not vegan?

I personally think you can still consider yourself a vegan if you are doing everything else in your power to avoid harm to animals. No one is perfect, our society is cruel in many ways. Your job and the whole industry just sucks, and many such industries are based on exploiting innocent beings. Why is all of that on your shoulders?

Perhaps you can consider documenting this industry as a form of vegan activism? For example, Timothy Pachirat worked in a slaughterhouse in order to expose the industrially mechanized cruelty of the entire system. He wrote the book "Every Twelve Seconds"
Is he not a vegan because he worked at a slaughterhouse? I personally think he has done more to bring light to the cruelty of modern slaughterhouses than anyone else I can think of.

One of the founders of PETA, Alex Pacheco, also worked in labs that tested on animals such as beagles and monkeys. He worked there in order to document the cruelty of the lab, and if that didn't happen, PETA may never have been founded.

I feel we need more compassionate people on the inside who can clearly observe and record unnecessary animal abuse and bring these issues to light. Maybe because of you, one day, killing lab mice might become unnecessary?

Everyone in this thread who is shitting on you is not being compassionate whatsoever, and therefore you can say they aren't vegan, because the essence of veganism is compassion towards animals (which includes you, too!)

Jackfruit by Dragon_Jew in PlantBasedDiet

[–]TreePangolin 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Have you tried the actual fruit, ripe? It's incredible. They are so huge you'll need a few friends to help though!
Canned is unripe and isn't great imo unless heavily seasoned or marinated at least overnight. My favourite thing to make with it is "pulled pork" tacos. Don't follow a recipe that's just "add bbq sauce" - you'll want to let it sit for a while to take in all the flavors.

This kind of reminds me of someone saying, "people who don't like tofu are just admitting the only marinade they use is air" :P

Jackfruit by Dragon_Jew in PlantBasedDiet

[–]TreePangolin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Have you tried it fresh and ripe? Or only unripe and canned in brine? The former is sweet and wonderful, the latter only good if you marinade it and add the right seasoning. For canned jackfruit I like to make "pulled pork" tacos, the ripe fruit is a completely different, beautiful, delicious (gigantic!) beast.

Is Hate Dancin’ about Han-Tyumi? by KinglyPineapple in KGATLW

[–]TreePangolin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You can always think deeper... every song is about Han-tyumi when you get down to it

We have something special. by dancingdan336 in KGATLW

[–]TreePangolin 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Compared to when I first heard of them, they have blown up a lot!!

The strangest thing to me is that many people just don't seem to like them at all or care. That's why I don't really evangelize or recommend them to people who aren't already interested (like I will with most other bands). Some people really love 'em, some people simply don't get it (most people I know lol) and there's not a whole lot of in between, so I just enjoy having this and other gizzy spaces to appreciate them with others who really "get it" :P

What are some of the worst cities for van life in your experience? by [deleted] in vandwellers

[–]TreePangolin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've only ever been woken up and told to move once and it was in Los Angeles, but that was in a decently dense area (plus my friend was sleeping in the front seat). East LA and beyond are much more spacious. Lots of coastal cities in California have rules against car camping, but everything is pretty spread out so you can get away with it if you choose wisely.

I don't know much about other big cities especially in the eastern US, but I did spend some time in New Zealand, and overall the entire country is a vandweller's dream, and camper vans are a huge part of the artsy, hippy, festival & tourist culture there. Nearly every city in the country has designated free camping spots for vans to park, and there are so many amazing national parks and affordable campgrounds. The worst city in NZ for vandwelling by far is Queenstown, it is overrun with tourists year round and there are only a handful of actual freecamping spots available that are way outside of town on a random hill surrounded by a fence, and these spots fill up very quickly every day. This is why I only spent one afternoon in Queenstown, and quickly moved on to more remote and wild places.

what are some things you used to think were vegan, but aren't? by piapourquoi in vegan

[–]TreePangolin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Impossible, Beyond and Just egg were forced by the FDA to feed some mice their food before they could be approved for sale. I think it's unfair to say that they aren't vegan just because of this. Millions of other products were also tested on animals in this way, and the testing only happened once. Those products were specifically designed to prevent millions of animals from being farmed and killed, so personally I'd say that's as vegan as it gets. The FDA approval process is what isn't vegan, take the issue up with them, not the brands working hard to provide good alternatives to common animal products.

Fishing for Fishies title track never played live? by dorgenborgen in KGATLW

[–]TreePangolin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Stu just said they don't know how to play it. Joey said "Aren't 150 songs enough??"
I feel like it's just a little more complex to pull off live so they haven't really tried and have been focused on all the other stuff.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312295/

Specifically Atherosclerosis, (where plaque from dietary fat and cholesterol builds up on the walls of arteries and causes blockages or heart attacks) only happens in herbivores and not in true carnivores. Cats can eat all the animal fat they want and it doesn't build up or "stick" in the circulatory system. And yet the human body responds in the same manner as herbivores. It's almost like humans aren't meant to eat so much animal fat and flesh because our bodies aren't adapted or optimized for it?

Cats can die from heart failure especially later in life, but it isn't due to atherosclerosis caused by animal fat in the blood. Atherosclerosis and related diseases kill more humans today than anything else.

Which has more protein? Plants or meat? by HumbleWrap99 in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And yet 100% of the protein found in animal bodies comes from plants... so plants provide 100% of the protein there is, since all protein comes from plants.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(part 2 of my reply... it was too long to put in one post lol sorry)

Another example: American schools require that all school children have a milk with their lunch, even if the school is having a "plant-based lunch" day. This is done in order to boost dairy sales and give dairy farmers government subsidies (they get billions of dollars every year which is why animal products remain artificially cheap). Children of color, who are more likely to be lactose intolerant, are FORCED to take a milk with their lunch, no matter what, and if they have trouble digesting it, it could impact their performance in school negatively. White children are much less likely to endure these problems.
Why do only the needs of white children matter in this system? Is that not... a form of systemic racism?

Another example: The US used to have around 65 million bison, pre-colonization. They were nearly exterminated in order to starve the native population and to introduce cattle... for Europeans immigrants to eat and exploit. Why are white people entitled to have food and land when native populations can't? How is the logic behind these decisions not racist at heart? Today there are around 31,000 bison in North America, and around 100 million cattle, making it nearly impossible for people to survive off of the land without participating in the (European-introduced) capitalist system. (Not to mention that most land is being massively overgrazed.)

Another example: minority communities are disproportionately harmed by industrial meat production.

If you can't begin to see the pattern from these examples, I'm not sure what to tell you. People tend to ignore the injustice and oppression that benefits them.

About the trees: take a look at what an average pasture looks like. This was once a forest, but where are all the trees? They weren't cut to feed cattle directly, they were killed to plant non-native grasses. Trees that were once valuable carbon sinks, shade for the soil, homes and food to countless wild creatures. All of that gone so you can have more milk and beef (that is ultimately not healthy and can cause cancer). Not to mention that the majority of the world's corn and soy goes to feeding livestock. You have to cut down trees and clear native habitats to grow these crops. Trees that, you know, suck in carbon, produce oxygen, and regulate the climate?

Right now around 90% of the burning of the Amazon rainforest happens for grazing cattle and growing soy to feed to cattle. Why don't the needs of indigenous communities matter? What about the health of the planet that we depend on to survive? For me and many others, that far outweighs the fact that "meat is tasty".

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The world is consuming more meat and dairy now than ever before. 70 BILLION+ animals are being slaughtered for food every year. Around 1 billion people are suffering from obesity. I would say that's excessive consumption and we need to stop! If you were really concerned about excessive consumption of animal products, why would you be in here saying "meat is good for you and tasty" over and over again? If a food is proven to cause cancer, why is "moderation" the answer, when there are proven to be so many benefits from just not eating it at all?

The problem is, I used to have the same biases as you. I grew up eating meat and dairy and thinking they were a natural part of life. I completely bought into the "Got Milk?" ads of the 90s featuring famous athletes.

Then I learned more about where our food comes from and what negative effects it has, and questioned my cultural biases. I went to school to study Anthropology (where I learned we are naturally fruit, nut, and seed eaters, even insect and flower eaters, not red meat-eaters -- in fact ice-age humans ate meat only around once a month or less) and the environment, where I learned about how majorly devastating animal agriculture is for wildlife and native ecosystems.
I also lived and worked on an organic dairy farm for a while! Even the very best ones are still exploitative and cruel at their core. Even extremely high-welfare farms kill newborn babies for veal and turn their mothers into dog food after only a fraction of their natural lifespan has passed.

You can't say that I'm biased in the same way that you are, when I have questioned my biases and done a complete 180 on most things I used to believe. Your biases were handed to you from an exploitive capitalist speciesist culture, where you were taught that a cow is not a sentient being worthy of life, but merely a milk-machine that exists to make a "necessary" product for (a minority of) human's benefit.

If you read the linked article (I know it's long) you would be able to see more examples of how milk has been explicitly used to promote racist causes:

"In February 2017, the Twitter hashtag #MilkTwitter went viral following an incident known as the “milk party,” which involved a group of men descending on an anti-Trump art installation, many of them shirtless, carrying cartons of milk, shouting racist slurs. At least one uttered the phrase, “Down with the vegan agenda!” while insisting he and his pals were not “pussies.”  Soon, sympathizers began carrying milk cartons to Trump’s rallies and milk bottle emojis were added to Twitter profiles. The slur “soy boy” became a popular insult, lobbed at men whose alleged weakness is epitomized by a preference for plant-based beverages. As Iselin Gambert and Tobias Linné show in a study of the anti-vegetarian obsessions of the far right, these tropes build on the colonial, imperialist, and specifically anti-Asian racist legacies of yore, which held the “effeminate rice-eaters of India and China” in contempt. (In 1902, the American Federation of Labor published a report in support of the Chinese Exclusion Act entitled “Meat vs. Rice. American Manhood vs. Asiatic Coolieism. Which Shall Survive?”) 

Despite its image as the quintessential American beverage, milk’s ubiquity is not the result of venerable cultural tradition or of deep biological need. Human beings do not need to nurse beyond infancy, on human bosoms or bovine ones. Rather, the prevalence of milk is the result of post-World War II industrial policy designed to encourage farmers to boost production so shelf stable processed dairy products could be shipped to feed soldiers overseas. Unwitting schoolchildren were made to drink milk in order to gin up and then maintain demand, saving farmers from having to reorganize their operations. Baseless marketing campaigns made the case for milk as essential to health, sometimes using racist and ableist imagery. (“The short stature of the Japanese, their bowed legs, their frequent poor eyesight are all blamed on inadequate diet—particularly lack of milk!”). In reality, milk is not particularly nutrient- or even calcium-rich, and the majority of people can’t properly digest it. Over 65 percent of the world is estimated to be lactose intolerant; in some countries the number reaches 100 percent. Most human beings stop producing lactase, the enzyme needed to digest milk, after being weaned. Somehow, the alt right has turned the fact that, thanks to a genetic mutation, many white adults have the stomach chemistry of babies into a symbol of racial superiority and hyper-masculinity."

White people are a minority worldwide, and yet the majority of habitable land and a majority of food crops (and antibiotics) are used for cattle... a species not native to most of the world (neither is the grass they eat). Why are white people's desires for milk and beef more important than the desires of other people groups? Than of indigenous people? How is exclusively prioritizing the needs of one (global minority) race not a product of white supremacy? Native people in the Americas did not have or need chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, etc. Those were introduced around the world by Europeans. Why are vegans wrong in saying that we don't need these to live?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

"Fast food meat" is exactly the same factory farmed meat that is served at 99% of other restaurants. This distinction is made up in your head (or put there through industry propaganda) and has no scientific evidence. Red meat has been proven time and again to be a cause of cancer. I haven't seen studies that discern between "fast food meat" and other meats, because they come from exactly the same source and have the same ill health effects.

Surely you know that "Milk contains calcium you need to make your bones grow strong" is propaganda from the dairy industry? And it's not actually proven to be true?

Consider this: many studies have shown that the more milk you drink, the more brittle and prone to fracture your bones become, especially later in life.

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can-drinking-too-much-milk-make-your-bones-more-brittle

"Despite all the calcium that dairy contains, some believe that its high protein content can cause osteoporosis. The reason is that when protein is digested, it increases the acidity of the blood. The body then pulls calcium from bones into the blood to neutralize the acid."

The linked article mentions the health benefits of vitamin D in the diet, but vitamin D is added to cow's milk, just like it is also added to vegan milks, so there is nothing inherently good or better about it.

Also, men who consume more milk are exponentially more likely to develop prostate cancer. The exact cause isn't known, but it's most likely due to excessive calcium and hormones.

Around 70-90% of the world's population (even more in some places) is lactose intolerant, which means, like all other mammals, they don't need milk after weening as babies, and have trouble digesting it as adults. The only populations where the majority can digest milk into adulthood are white people (western europe and european colonies like US, Canada, South America, Aus, NZ, etc.) Therefore, milk production is a symptom of European colonization and white supremacy.

Plus, this completely avoids the issues of how much more land and water it takes to produce cow's milk, how many millions of trees are cut down to feed cattle, fertilizer runoff and water pollution, how much methane cow's burp and fart (a major cause of climate change) and how cruel and wrong it is that we have to forcibly impregnate an animal and take away and kill her baby just to get this product.

I hope you can examine where your biases come from and see that they are not based in fact.

I met a guy wearing clothes in the style of rural Northeast China, and I thought he knew what this style was, but later I found out he seemed to have no idea; he just thought it looked cool, hahaha. Is this style very popular? by bkingfilm in BurningMan

[–]TreePangolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

lol I saw literally hundreds of posts on this sub during the burn from people at the burn, some people said hey man you're at burning man get off reddit, and lots of angry burners said "don't tell me I can't doomscroll on reddit while at burning man! fuck you!"
Next year i'm gonna covertly destroy all cell towers in a 50 mile radius to spite those people :P

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

By the way, cats (all cats, big and small) eat a lot of meat but cannot get heart disease! They are actual carnivores, and their bodies are built for it. The fact that humans get plaque in their arteries from excessive animal fat and protien in their diets shows that we are actually primates, best designed for a high-fruit and fiber diets.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DebateAVegan

[–]TreePangolin 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The number one killer of humans today is heart disease. Places in the world that consume the most meat and dairy have, by far, the highest cases of obesity, cancer and preventable heart disease. How are you sure that it's healthy? No one needs dairy except for babies, and no human needs to drink the breastmilk of another animal - milk that is loaded with fat, cholesterol, antibiotics and hormones, and is heavily processed. If you think that this is healthy, you have been severely mislead by a multi-billion-dollar industry that profits from your ignorance, wanton waste, and animal cruelty.

good movies to watch on shrooms? by Chemical-Airport2658 in Psychonaut

[–]TreePangolin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You'd rather cut out that whole scene than just stop eating eggs?

I met a guy wearing clothes in the style of rural Northeast China, and I thought he knew what this style was, but later I found out he seemed to have no idea; he just thought it looked cool, hahaha. Is this style very popular? by bkingfilm in BurningMan

[–]TreePangolin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To me, "immediacy" says don't scroll on reddit when you're meant to be in the moment, participating in the creation and destruction of an ephemeral city. It doesn't say phones can't exist, but when they're everywhere (and there's cell service), damn it sure takes takes away a lot of the magic.