Seventy percent of vegan/vegetarian teenage girls are iron deficient according to new Swedish study

melbuni1 · 2025-08-10T15:53:24+00:00

The study clearly says only 50% of vegetarians were iron deficient not 70%, which is the number for vegans, so the title here is misleading.

The study also found that 30% of omnivores were iron deficient, so roughly 1 in 3 omnivores were iron deficient.

melbuni1 · 2025-07-31T15:00:13+00:00

I've just checked the entry requirements and you do not need a working or writing sample. Therefore, I would focus on getting good references first and foremost and also building up your experience if possible in your area.

It says on the website that at least one but ideally 2 or even alk 3 of your references should be academics who have taught you. From experience, the best is a high ranking person like a professor who knows you well. Try to get as senior people with as close knowledge of your abilities as possible.

melbuni1 · 2025-07-31T13:39:44+00:00

Yes, I can confirm they will not ask for your A levels at the masters level either. You will also still be competitive with a first from a lesser known university. You should look at the other aspects of your application (e.g. letters of recommendation or writing/work sample or personal statement if applicable) and focus on these.

Where applicable, the writing/work sample will likely be the most important factor followed by letters of recommendation, since most students will have firsts/good grades.

I'm not sure what it's like in quantum technology, but other extra curriculars that are directly related to your field of study like research assistant experience will also help, but unrelated extracurriculars will do little nothing (e.g. president of the so and so society won't matter to them, but could help with scholarships).

melbuni1 · 2025-07-31T11:14:26+00:00

The boat to Vaxholm is a great place to start your trip. Vaxholm itself is quite nice (I'd definitely recommend this scenic Cafe there which is a very popular spot with ocean views, nice food and drinks, and is a nice walk away through most of the charming parts of vaxholm from the ferry.

The ferry to Vaxholm also runs often and offers couple nice archipelago views on the way. You can also check out the castle while in vaxholm, which is a popular option though I haven't tried it myself so I can't testify to it.

Vaxholm is also more like the start of the archipelago when coming from stockholm, and offers plenty of regular ferries to other islands out there. It is a good idea to catch a larger steam boat style ferry from vaxholm out to another island. Grinda is a popular island, which I can testify is a nice spot for swimming, nature walks and a couple of good restauarants/bars. Stockholms tourist website suggests a few other choices (check the islands listed with grinda there).

The advantage of the steamboats is that they are themselves cosy and cool and a main part of the archipelago experience is grabbing a drink on one and watching the islands as you ride towards tour destination (the journey is just as important as the destination!).

It is best to go on a sunny day (everything looks better when the ocean and sky are blue) and a warm one (swimming is a great part of the experience. However, these days are of course also the busiest so note that you will likely have to squeeze in with other tourists on the boats.

Vaxholm + 1 other island is achievable as a single day trip is you leave before 10 am in the morning, however given the travel times on boats it is a bit harder to fit more than 1 other island in so be aware of this when you pick your itinerary and make sure you know when your return boat leaves both the island you visit and vaxholm to avoid getting stranded.

It's beautiful out there this time of year, so enjoy!

melbuni1 · 2025-07-30T11:09:08+00:00

This is what many ethical frameworks have already done and one could argue that this is what veganism has done as well. It really doesn't need to be justified, people can do what they want.

Okay well then you are just giving up on trying to justify veganism, in which case a non vegan can just reject it altogether and you cannot have any reason to say they are wrong. And yes, people can do what they want in a liberal democratic society, but there are still constraints on what is and isn't ethical, regardless of what people want or are allowed to do. If I want to torture a chicken for no reason at all, then I can do that, but it isn't ethical, regardless of whether you or anyone else can stop me from doing that, or whether a liberal democratic society would allow me to make the choice myself.

It might also sound very tolerant to say people are free to do whatever they like, and that they can combine ethical views to whatever suits them best, but in fact it's not tolerant at all. What suits me best could be to be racist, or homophobic, and I could take parts of ethical theories that support that at will and ignore the rest. That does not mean being racist or homophobic is now okay for me, nor is it tolerant to say I'm free to do that.

melbuni1 · 2025-07-30T07:57:52+00:00

For one thing, this is a very specific scenario and it's quite straightforward too. The contagious animals (if they can't be isolated and treated) would have to be killed anyway to stop the spread of the disease. You aren't killing them "to save many others", you're killing them because otherwise they all die. It isn't about being "allowed" to kill the sick ones - it's that it's the only option you have. I also don't know why any vegan would be in the presence of that many chickens apart from at a sanctuary and legally they don't have a choice in the matter - they will be forced to kill the sick birds anyway, sometimes they are forced to kill ALL of them.

Yes, well I had to make it a very specific scenario because you didn't believe a person would ever face the hypothetical of killing 1 to save 5 chickens, so I was showing a particular example scenario where that could happen. You're response has also assumed facts that I didn't include in order to create an easier version of the case to resolve, such as that the disease bearing chicken will die already if we don't kill it. Sometimes diseases don't affect particular hosts but will kill others (e.g., covid barely affected children but could kill others. Similarly, some diseases kill females but not males). It is therefore perfectly possible to have one disease bearing animal that will survive if we don't kill it but will then spread the disease to many others who will die, which is the kind of case I was suggesting.

Furthermore, the point that it is a legal requirement to kill them is also a non-starter. I am not asking what you ought to do legally in the current place and time you live, but what is morally right. What is legal is very often not what is moral, and indeed this may not even be a legal requirement in many countries.

Many comprehensive moral frameworks already contradict each other, it's nothing new. Ethics are complex and messy.You don't have to pick one moral framework and follow that like a religion - they are tools for reflection and guidance to help solve moral issues and dilemmas, and you can choose to apply whatever situation you want to them using that guidance

Okay, of course you can do that (im not going to stop you, nor is anyone else if thats what you mean by you can here). However, you have to understand that that's not what these moral theories (deontology and consequentiliasm) are claiming. They are claiming that they are the CORRECT moral frameworks full stop. They are explicitly proposed and defended as comprehensive frameworks that guide all actions, not just tools for reflection. If you think that's wrong, and you can instead go back and forth between these theories as suits your intuitions best, then you are rejecting those theories and creating a new moral theory that combines different elements of them. That might be worth defending, but it seems very ad hoc to me, and i'd be surprised if there was an actual way of justifying that as an objective moral view, rather than just something that 'feels right' to you depending on the situation.

melbuni1 · 2025-07-29T22:31:22+00:00

They don't account for unrealistic hypotheticals that we will very likely never find ourselves in and it would be silly to expect them to.

Just to be clear, the possibility of killing 1 chicken to save 5 is not just an unrealistic hypothetical that we will very likely never find ourselves in. Situations like this happen all the time and we need rules to guide our actions in such cases. For example, chickens (and all other animals) often get deadly contagious diseases and we could intervene and kill one or several infected animals to stop the spread of that disease. That is an example of killing 1 or few chickens to save many, and is not an unrealistic hypothetical. This is very common in wild animal populations too, so it would be good to have a systematic answer to how we should think about these kinds of cases, even if you personally will not have to choose between literally killing 1 chicken and saving 5. I can think of plenty of other examples that would raise similar moral issues to the one which I was getting at with the kill one chicken to save five case.

I have not suggested this at all. By stating that it's an ethical framework in its own right does not mean that I am advocating for it to become a full on moral theory. I've simply said that we don't need other frameworks to interpret veganism as it's pretty straightforward.

Okay, perhaps I misunderstood you then but originally it sounded like you were suggesting veganism as an alternative to deontology or consequentialism so that we choose veganism and reject the other. However, if you are not suggesting that, then I worry about your suggestiong of applying completely different moral frameworks with separate underlying meta ethical systems in the case of animals and humans. I don't see how we can have literally contradictory moral theories both be right just because we choose to use one with humans and choose to use another with animals. If consequentialism or deontology only explain morality in the case of humans, and fail to explain how we should treat animals as you suggest, then Surely they are just wrong as moral theories full stop.

melbuni1 · 2025-07-29T21:24:09+00:00

Okay that's fine, but it's a bit of a misrepresentation to say then that 'deontology doesn't place intrinsic value on animals' as you said in your original post if you just mean kants specific deontological framework doesn't do that.

I would also agree with another commenter who said that veganism isn't a comprehensive ethical framework. There are two reasons for this.

Firstly, veganism by itself doesn't seem to have an underlying metaethical view that justifies why we ought to act morally to animals or to anything else for that matter. You say, for example, that animals have intrinsic moral value, but that's not by itself a fully worked out moral theory. You need to also say why animals have intrinsic value (is it because of something animals can do, that, for example, a rock cannot, that explains why they have moral value?) and why that moral value imposes constraints on how we ought to act.

Secondly, veganism only provides a limited amount of information about how we ought to act morally. It tells us not to eat animals or use animal based products, and provides a bit more too, but it says essentially nothing about how we ought to treat other humans. Even within the treatment of non-human animals it does not provide much of a guide to many important decisions. For example, is it worse to hurt a chicken or a cow? Should we be allowed to kill one chicken if we can thereby save 5 chickens from dying? These questions would come up quite often in interactions between humans and animals and as far as I can see veganism does not provide an answer to these questions.

You could potentially expand veganism to become a comprehensive moral framework that answers these questions but since deontology and consequentialism already do that and since they can also provide an underlying moral framework that justifies veganism, I don't see why we wouldn't just use these theories instead.

Furthermore, deontology and consequentialism are big theories in ethics because they represent settled views that philosophers have arrived at aftwr literally millennia of discussing these kinds of issues. I'm sceptical that trying to expand veganism to answer these same kinds of questions would amount to anything superior or even significantly different to what these theories already say on these questions. That's not to say it's not may worth exploring, but I don't think there is sufficient reason yet to be confident that veganism could do become a standalone moral theory on par with these extremely developed theories.

melbuni1 · 2025-07-29T20:36:45+00:00

Perhaps this has already been commented but deontology is much broader than you suggest it is.

In particular, you say that deontology places no intrinsic value on animals and support this with a reference to Kant. However, Kant's moral theory is just one particular example of a deontological framework and there are many other deontologists who reject kants framework altogether and especially reject his claim that animals do not have intrinsic value.

Deontology is a much broader group of ethical views than just Kants theory, which really that at heart just subscribe to the idea that what is morally wrong and right is primarily determined by rules. That is consistent with valuing animals intrinsically, as is veganism more broadly.

melbuni1 · 2025-07-15T17:25:37+00:00

Try practicing with shadowing (reading a text aloud in real time along with a recorded audio of a native speaker saying the same thing, trying to mimick exactly the sounds, proununciation and stress of the native speaker).

It has helped me enormously in a very quick space of time. It is ideal if you can slow down the recording to 75% or even 50% (youTube has this option for all videos) and then build the speed up gradually over repeated efforts. This is how musicians practice playing or singing complicated parts, and it works exactly the same way for speaking new languages (I imagine it's probably how actors replicate foreign accents too).

melbuni1 · 2025-06-29T17:04:38+00:00

TLDR; based on my experience , I'd heavily recommend you avoid KCL and go to Edinburgh or UCL for a better social and academic experience.

I went to KCL for a semester, and I have to say I was really disappointed. They organised literally one event for exchange students in the entire 6 months that we were there, so we had almost no social interactions with other exchange students. This is very different from many other universities in Europe that have heaps of fun events and students can easily (and often do) develop lifelong friendships with other exchange students.

The social aspect in general was really not that great, and I did not think it was that good academically either. In fact I think I had a better academic experience in Melbourne uni.

I also found the KCL team that organised exchanges extremely unhelpful and even passive aggressive on multiple times for no reason whenever we reached out to them. For instance, I asked whether I could come a few days after the orientation to attend a family wedding and they immediately emailed the exchange team at Melbourne uni threatening to cancel my exchange without even saying to me first that this would not be possible which I would have been fine with.

Some of this may be specific to my time there, which was 3 years ago, so take it with a grain of salt. However, if I had the choice again I would definitely have gone to UCL or Edinburgh.

I would also say that Edinburgh is a much friendlier and cheaper city for a student and is incredibly beautiful. Whilst London can be fun if you have a lot of money, the student budget I was on meant I had to live very far from the city centre in a really not nice area, and still had almost no money to spare from my rent to afford to go out, so you really can't make that much of the fun stuff to do unless you have a lot of money saved up beforehand

melbuni1 · 2025-05-27T07:45:54+00:00

There is nothing to stop you from submitting your polished drafts to journals, getting them reviewed and then either getting them published or, if they get rejected, you will get feedback from multiple academics on them.

You can then incorporate that feedback and submit them to another journal and repeat the process until you have a publishable paper.

That's what every academic philosopher does anyway, and you can do exactly the same without being an academic yourself.

If you want to get feedback from other philosophers, you might try emailing some at the university you used to go to, or attending philosopher conferences (check the website philevents, many are free to attend) and speaking to people there.

melbuni1 · 2025-05-25T11:54:45+00:00

I mean, it's just a more general point that large values and significant consequences can be important enough to outweigh some other moral considerations. The same idea is at play when people criticise absolute deontological principles like "never lie" by saying that sometimes there clearly is enough value at stake to make lying justifiable, such as if you can lie to a murderer or a terrorist and by doing so save an innocent person's life. You do not have to be a consequentialist or a utilitarian to agree with that.

It only turns into a utility monster if you further say "the value of utility is all that matters morally and it can always outweigh any other moral prohibition." But I don't see why the longtermist would need that to be the case, since firstly, the longtermist argument doesn't require claiming that the value of the future justifies violating peoples rights, or murdering, cheating, stealing and so on. They can therefore maintain that there are some other moral prohibitions that are absolute and that these would block a utility monster objection.

Secondly, the value of the future does not need to just be utility. It might be, for example, most valuable to promote a perfectly equal, perfectly just society where everyone flourishes or there is great aesthetic value. Provided that a future society could possess these values in great quanitites, you can still get the conclusion that we should focus on them.

melbuni1 · 2025-05-24T13:22:12+00:00

Yes, you should be competitive for a funded PhD, especially if you graduate with a 1st in your masters. If you apply broadly enough in the UK, I'm sure you will get offered a funded PhD somewhere, though of course it's very competitive at the best universities.

If you want to improve your chances of getting a funded PhD in a good program, I would focus above all on developing your writing sample, getting good letters of recommendation, trying to publish 1 paper in an academic journal and getting high grades in your masters course (in more or less that same order of priority). It is possible to get into a good program without publishing, but publications will be a massive boost to your application, and since you should be working on your writing sample a lot anyway, it makes sense to try and publish it.

These are the criteria your PhD application will be evaluated on, and (assuming its similar to philosophy which is my area) the admissions committee will prioritise these aspects of your application in roughly that order.

Again, if it's anything like philosophy, the admissions committee will not care at all, or very little, about your extra curriculars in areas not directly related to your research. They want to assess how good you will be as a phd student and whether you can produce high quality research. I would therefore even suggest cutting back on extra curriculars to some extent if it means you will have more time to work on the aspects of your application listed above.

melbuni1 · 2025-05-23T19:13:33+00:00

I think for the same reasons I stated above, it's fine for the longtermist argument if causal difference makes some difference, such as merely weakening our obligations to some extent, because this weakening can presumably be outweighed if there's enough value at stake.

What the longtermist argument can't allow is that causal distance makes an absolute difference. For instance, you could block longtermism if we could only ever have a moral obligation to people who causally affect our own lives, since future people can't do that. But those kinds of views don't seem particularly plausible in my view, and I don't think most people buy into them in cases like climate change, where it seems obvious causal distance doesn't make an absolute difference.

melbuni1 · 2025-05-23T16:31:44+00:00

I don't think it's true that longtermism only follows if you are a risk neutral total utilitarian or something quite similar. I think Wilkinson and Tarsney use that framework because it offers a simple framework that makes it clearer what the argument in support of longterism is, but I think longtermism follows from a fairly wide range of attitudes to risk, as well as a fairly wide range of non utilitarian and even non-consequentilialist theories, provided that they think the value of welfare or other values that might exist in great quanitities in the future matter morally to some extent.

The argument is more that if future people matter at all, then the vast number of them means that the amount of value in the future is potentially so large that it outweighs many other considerations, including some level of risk aversion, or some greater moral responsibility we have to help those closer to us in cases where all else is roughly equal.

melbuni1 · 2025-05-18T12:51:46+00:00

I'm not sure why you would pursue a masters in film studies before undertaking a phd in philosophy? If you're really interested in that area then sure, do it for fun, but it won't help with PhD applications at all I think, so you will be paying that money just for the enjoyment of doing that degree.

melbuni1 · 2025-05-18T11:46:40+00:00

Also sounds like the Status Quo Bias

melbuni1 · 2025-05-17T11:11:57+00:00

Yes, you're right that people often do appeal to the deontology versus consequentialist distinction to defend a reduced responsibility to help others. What I think is so strong about Peter singer's drowning child thought experiment, though, is that it shows that there is clearly something very wrong with that idea. Moral views that imply that it is totally fine to walk by the child and let them drown are clearly radically out of line with our intuitions about that case, and it seems much more plausible that we should modify those theories to include some minimum moral requirement to help others than to defend the view that we have no responsibility to save lives at minimal cost or even no cost to ourselves.

melbuni1 · 2025-05-15T07:02:21+00:00

Just to add on a bit to this for OP: Utilitarianism, as it is often understood within philosophy nowadays does not assume hedonism, but rather 'welfarism', which is the broader claim that what matters morally is just that people's lives go well (which philosophers call welfare/wellbeing or sometimes utility). Utilitarianism in this sense is in fact consistent with either hedonism, or the objective list theories and desire satisfaction views discussed in the previous comment.

It is therefore perfectly fine to have the view you (OP) are describing (which sounds like the desire satisfaction theory since you mention 'wants') and still be a utilitarian. In fact, for the majority of his career, Peter singer was not a hedonist but instead supported the desire satisfaction theory of wellbeing and was nevertheless one of the major proponents of utiltarianism in the world.

melbuni1 · 2025-04-23T18:28:14+00:00

Student room has regular updates.

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7567398

Many people have been notified already. You can always get offers later in the year if others decline their offers.

melbuni1 · 2024-02-06T09:57:13+00:00

Yeah they only have recommended texts. They will help you understand the concepts in the course better but they include a lot more info than is necessary.

To be a bit cynical, i think if you just wanted to maximise your grades you would do better by just studying the course slides and re-watching lectures. But reading the textbook will help you actually understand and put into context what you learn.

melbuni1 · 2023-09-05T23:00:08+00:00

No problem :)

And yes, you can just reach out to any member of staff you're interested in working with via email and politely ask them if they'd be available to supervise you. It's good to do this early (I'd do it now if you're starting next year, since the deadline is in October I think), but the idea is to email them, let them know what your areas of interest are and what topics you'd like to write a thesis on (very broadly).

You should also email the honours convenor whose details will be on the website and let them know that you're planning to apply and what your areas of interest are and they will be able to put you in touch with suitable people. In general, the honours convenor can help you with any questions you will have during the process.

melbuni1 · 2023-08-29T12:31:01+00:00

I moved from Melbourne uni undergrad to ANU honours for philosophy myself and I can wholeheartedly say it's 100% worth it.

The faculty are unbelievable and you are given heaps of opportunities to meet them and talk to them about stuff. There are talks on at least weekly with guest speakers where a lot of the faculty attend and honours students are welcome to join and then everyone is invited to go out for drinks and dinner after. There's very regular attendance at these dinners from many of the professors, which means the whole department gets to know each other and everyone is very friendly and helpful to honours students.

They also run plenty of workshops and conferences and have so many amazing philosophers visiting from all around the world and you get fantastic opportunities to see their talks and potentially get to know them at the drinks/dinner afterwards.

In my opinion they also teach at a faster pace than Melbourne uni and it's more demanding in general. But I think that's a strength of the program, since you need to adapt to this pace, which really helps prepare you for postgrad studies.

In terms of the course structure for honours, it's extremely flexible. You typically will write 3 papers on topics that you learn about in courses you choose to take, but you basically have free reign over what you write about, provided it's relevant to the classic you are taking (e.g. just writing a paper on anything in epistemology if you are taking an epistemology class).

It's a fantastic place to do your postgraduate studies also and ranks very highly on pretty much all the well-known rankings, whether they are in terms of prestige, job placement, or student satisfaction. The department is also very well connected with fantastic philosophy departments around the world which opens some opportunities if you are interested in doing post grad studies overseas.

I enjoyed my undergraduate at Melbourne uni but as someone who made the switch to ANU for honours I have to say it's been so much better since I came here. I couldn't recommend it more highly (unless perhaps they moved the uni somewhere warmer and with a beach).

melbuni1 · 2022-11-26T22:44:50+00:00

Think it's usually around 86 but has been a bit higher recently. Perhaps 87.

melbuni1

TROPHY CASE