vegan
Please also check out vegantheoryclub.org for a great set of well-run communities for vegan news, cooking, gardening, and art. It is not federated with LW, but it is a nice, cozy, all-in-one space for vegans.
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Welcome
Welcome to c/vegan@lemmy.world. Broadly, this community is a place to discuss veganism. Discussion on intersectional topics related to the animal rights movement are also encouraged.
What is Veganism?
'Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals ...'
— abridged definition from The Vegan Society
Rules
The rules are subject to change, especially upon community feedback.
- Discrimination is not tolerated. This includes speciesism.
- Topics not relating to veganism are subject to removal.
- Posts are to be as accessible as practicable:
- embedded images of text require alt-text
- posts with an image of text should have a transcription in the body or alt-text
- paywalled articles must have an accessible non-paywalled link;
- use the original source whenever possible for a news article.
- Content warnings are required for triggering content.
- Bad-faith carnist rhetoric & anti-veganism are not allowed, as this is not a space to debate the merits of veganism. Anyone is welcome here, however, and so good-faith efforts to ask questions about veganism may be given their own weekly stickied post in the future.
- before jumping into the community, we encourage you to read examples of common fallacies here.
- if you're asking questions about veganism, be mindful that the person on the other end is trying to be helpful by answering you and treat them with at least as much respect as they give you.
- Posts and comments whose contents – text, images, etc. – are largely created by a generative AI model are subject to removal. We want you to be a part of the vegan community, not a multi-head attention layer running on a server farm.
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- Votes provided they have a sufficiently broad target audience or provably effective controls against vote brigading.
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- All Lemmy.World Terms of Service also apply.
Resources on Veganism
A compilation of many vegan resources/sites in a Google spreadsheet:
Here are some documentaries that are recommended to watch if planning to or have recently become vegan:
- You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again
- Dominion (2018) (CW: gore, animal abuse)
Vegan Fediverse
Lemmy: vegantheoryclub.org
Mastodon: veganism.social
Other Vegan Communities
General Vegan Comms
Circlejerk Comms
Vegan Food / Cooking
!homecooks@vegantheoryclub.org
Attribution
- Banner image credit: Jean Weber of INRA on Wikimedia Commons
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No offense but let's just skip processed garbage and just learn how to cook and eat healthy, taste full, food.
I don't care about the arguments on how it is easier to aid people stop eating meat or whatnot. It's just over processed junk food nobody should be eating.
this is not about junk food or eating healthy. it's about environmental impact. your home cooked meat is still not environmentally friendly.
So if I opt for not eating ultraprocessed vegetable matter nor meat and instead base my diet on fresh vegetables, grains and other unprocessed vegetable food sources I'm not being environmentally conscious?
are you hoping to grow your own vegetables? then yes. if not, you're still feeding the industry. it's not like the environmental impact starts and ends with the processing.
And now the concern is if I grow my own food. Before it was about between eating processed food over eating meat. For the sake of environmental impact.
Where is the next goal post move to?
If processed vegetable based foods are less impactful than meat, then unprocessed vegetables are even less impactful, considering we are removing an entire step (technically two) in the chain.
Is this reasoning sound?
no it wasn't. you made that comment, and I specifically replied to tell you that this isn't about that. it was you who moved your position from saying it doesn't matter as long as you cook your own meals to saying how maybe you don't even eat meat at all.
My first comment was about skipping processed foods, as those should not even be considered a part of any diet, instead opting for cooking and thus having a healthy diet, with this being more relevant for people trying to have or already having meat exempt diets, while the focus on the posted content was how plant based "meat" is less impactful and by default good.
In a cruder, more tongue-in-cheek fashion:
Look everyone, now you can pretend you are having meat when not having meat while liying with all your teeth to yourself you actually changed to a better diet.
Plant based "meat" is a marketing gimmick, not the deep cultural and ethical change it tries to sell itself as.
I don't say in any of my comments what my diet is or is not. What I do is ask, in a hypothetical fashion, if opting for a diet with no meat and only based in plant staples, with no processed foods in it, would I not have a less impactful diet, to which you responded by asking if I also intend to grow my own food, as if not, I wouldn't be making any change at all.
Am I being capable of following the thread of this conversation?
Because I am aware what the focus of the post is, I only lack the will to applaude it as an advance.
Processed does not mean bad. A carrot smoothie is processed.
We can say you are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, but it is not in that sense I mean processed.
I don't intend to see people eat all their food raw (although some do go that route; my respect, more power to them) and cooking tends to make things more digestible.
But industrially processed foods are not healthy. Yes, exceptions exist, like frozen vegetables (and even then, some companies add preservatives to it) but those are exceptions, not norms.
Why? What makes them unhealthy?
I'd invite you to read the label of a few processed (junk) food items for answers on that.
Oh no, chemistry! How scary!
Cheeky!
I'm not fearful of chemistry. Well, perhaps of nitroglycerin. That is scary chemistry.
What I don't enjoy is having unnecessary chemicals added to my food. Or any food. Like excess salt, sugar, fat, artificial colorings and sweetners, flavor enhancers, etc.
No offense, but this fucking bullshit about us solving the climate crisis through small personal action while massive polluters continue INCREASING THEIR CO2 OUTPUT and fucking sucking up all available freshwater while they keep fucking telling us to change our meals is fucking absurd.
None taken.
Purity tests just make adoption of positive change slower.
on the other hand, plant based nuggets are delicious!!
I've had 6 different kinds and have gotten wildly I'll every single time. Idk what the fuck they're putting in the nuggets, but it's bad shit.
How will that advice have any effect on the environment? That's what this article is about.
Because why?
Which part?
Why should nobody be eating processed food?
Because processed foods have been demonstrated as being unhealthy and inadequate to a proper diet due to additives present?
Ok. So in order to do that we would need to pay everyone enough to have both the funds and free time to purchase and cook decent food.
Until then, let's not shame people for finding ways to survive.
I do not know where you speak from but basic fresh ingredients are cheaper per mass unit where I live than processed foods and these are also taxed higher than basic food items because of being deemed unnecessary for a balanced diet.
Cooking also does not take very much time and it is easier today to have access to cooking aids that almost cook by themselves or require minimum atention.
And where in particular have I shamed anyone for eating junk food? What I stated is that junk food should not be considered an option for a diet, even less when trying to move people away from meat consumption, which is also considered a bad dietary option both by health and ethical reasons.
LOL your comment goes against the data right in front of you. You see that meat is the problem, and that processed plant based alternatives are not. Yet you decide to say the exact opposite.
We should be cooking more natural and less processed though, I agree. But implying processed plant based junk food is worse than non processed meat is completely incorrect.
If I misunderstood your argument, excuse me.
In what part of my comment have I advocated for meat consumption?
What I'm trying to convey, with obvious very little success, is that processed foods should not be option for any diet and even less if a person is moving towards or on a meat exempt one.
Processed foods have been demonstrated, ad nauseam, to not be a good option for anything, due to the amount of additives being put into it.
I like the idea of plant based meat.
The issues it has are
Cost
Processing
Market
The first problem is solved with more companies making more meat and competition so we can ignore that as it's inevitable to come down.
Processing though is hard to ignore. 1 pound of ground beef is MORE HEALTHY for you than 1 pound of impossible burger. Just looking at fats and sodiums.
The final problem is market! Who is this for? Do you really think that something marketed as "just like meat in every way" has an appeal to a vegetarian or vegan that has been with their diet for 2+ years?? So meat eaters, are expected to make the LESS healthy and more expensive choice
People who want to be vegetarian/vegan, but not give up on the taste and feel of meat products entirely. That is a lot of people.
Also, the whole "processed" thing is a bit overblown. Meat replacements are in large parts healthier than your typical highly processed foods.
No it isn't. Processed food is the worst thing you can eat hands down, extremely bad for you and hard to digest for your body.
Do you perhaps have a link to a study that says that converting peas into impossible burger yields food healthier than actual meat patty?
Because all I can find says otherwise.
Heck, there was even a SouthPark episode about it.
That is not what I claimed. My claim was merely that not all processed foods are equally unhealthy, as it depends a lot on the actual ingredients and additives, and meat replacements are often on the healthier side of that.
To reduce the environmental impact of our diet, our family cut down; a few years back; from meat with every evening meal, to meat 3 nights a week. It didn't take long to get used to the change, and out diet probably became healthier for it.
We are lucky, in that we have the time to prepare most foods from scratch. There is very little ultraprocessed food in out diet. These meat alternatives give me pause, I like the idea of plant based meat alternatives, but the amount of processing to generate the product is concerning.
As far as market goes there are plenty of people who want to become more vegan but just can't completely kick meat. This is for them. You also have people like a friend of mine that have meat alergies but still miss being able to eat meat. All in all more oprions is never a bad thing.