7 ms·

Here I am teetering on the edge of vegetarianism, and people are talking about blowing meat chunks off spines to extract that last bit of cash, and workers inha

Here I am teetering on the edge of vegetarianism, and people are talking about blowing meat chunks off spines to extract that last bit of cash, and workers inhaling aerosolized pig brains. Might be the push I needed!

mrits 10y ago
Me too. But then I think about beef fajitas.
venture_lol 10y ago
Just stick to honest to earth filet mignon
ergothus 10y ago
I've been vegetarian for a bit over a decade (no fish, but dairy and eggs okay) - If you live in the right area, and have the right tastes, it's downright easy. In other areas, it's quite difficult. My personal tips & notes: * If you otherwise enjoy meat, there are a lot of meat-substitutes out there and more being developed. These tend to do a great job of mimicking processed meats and a terrible job of mimicking "real" meat. They also vary greatly. Quorn, Morningstar, and Boca (for example) all have very different tastes and textures, so if you don't like one try a different one. (I personally prefer Quorn for chicken-substitutes and Morningstar for beef-substitutes). OTOH, some vegetarians never had a big attachment to meat, and this is not an issue. (I am very jealous of these people). * Eating out is by far the hardest. In areas with many vegetarians (say, Seattle), you tend to have multiple options, things tend to be clearly labeled, and waitstaff is used to getting questions. In other areas (say, Georgia), you have fewer options, no labels, and people act like you've accused them of something evil if you have questions. Either way, though, the majority of the menu becomes inaccessible to you. * If you are trying to be mostly strict, be cautious when dealing with regional/cultural boundaries. While Indian food tends to follow the same vegetarian definition as I do (Jainian food is even more strict than I am), others don't (Chinese and Japanese tend to not consider fish or other seafood as animals, thus you'll find oyster sauce on the "vegetarian" menu, or dishes that have oyster sauce or some sort of animal-based broth that isn't called out as such (oyster sauce, fish sauce, pork, beef, or chicken broth, and/or shrimp paste in some curries). In the American South, pork isn't just a meat, it's also a seasoning. Most purely vegetable dishes (such as "green beans" or "corn") aren't vegetarian there :( * How strict you want to be impacts how easy life is. Avoiding tangible animal-based meat = easy. Avoiding broths and lard = not as easy. Avoiding animal byproducts, such as most gelatin, use of bones in filtering, animal-based rennet in cheese , insect-based dyes and glaze = quite a bit more effort. Find a level you are comfortable with, because for most reasons, it is still far better to be a not-entirely strict vegetarian than a failed attempt at a strict vegetarian. I myself avoid gelatin and known insect products (no more Junior Mints :( ), and when cooking at home I get animal-friendly cheese and sugar, but when I'm out I don't worry about where they got their cheese, but will ask about broths and seafood-sauces. * If you are a picky eater such as myself, be warned that many places decide to make vegetarian dishes more "exciting" by putting in every form of vegetable/grain they can think of. Like a supreme pizza, some people are glad for the variety, but most have something in there they don't like. (I myself can't stand green bell peppers, which is in, like, 90% of commonly available vegetarian fare :( ) * I first went vegetarian cold-turkey (ha!) in college...but after 6 months I stopped because I was seeing stars constantly. (It's actually pretty easy to get all your nutrients as a vegetarian, unless you're living on a diet of rice and mac&cheese like I was) I had, however, lost the taste for red meat (suddenly felt oily and flavorless), and noticed that certain salads I had disliked I now enjoyed. A few years later I tried again, but this time I did it slow. I dropped a category of meat each year, giving myself time to adjust my diet and make sure I had a variety of options. I believe I dropped beef (from the first stint), then pork, then poultry, then all forms of seafood. The next year I dropped leather products as an ethical choice, and I've been this way for over a decade without too much effort. Some extra food costs, a limited range of foods, and limited eating out options, but not so much that it's hard. Dieting, for example, is much harder. * You will learn to hate the preachy, judgmental vegetarian-types that make life hard for us. Most vegetarians (in my experience) do what they do for reasons they consider good, and think it'd be great if others did the same, but feel no need to look down on others that don't, nor to inform them of their "evil ways". I mean, most of us ate meat for a long time and didn't switch the first time the thought occurred to us, so why judge others for being the same? Still though, people get very defensive and often assume you're one of the preachy types until you prove otherwise. * ...You will also learn to hate how defensive people are in general. This is not restricted to vegetarianism. If you say you're on a diet, people will talk about how awesome their chocolate cake is. Mention you have diabetes, and they'll list the sugary foods they adore. Say you're vegetarian, and they'll talk about how animals just taste so good, or how happy they are to shoot Bambi. I've collected a few vegetarian jokes to help break the ice and show I'm not a jerk about it. (My favorite: 'Vegetarian' is actually based on an old (insert culture here - I tend to say 'Native American') word, meaning "lousy hunter") * Oddly enough, holidays tend to be the EASIEST times. Everyone talks about the turkey, but a traditional big feast (at least in America) actually involves lots of non-meat dishes. I found this a good way to relax my family and friends - I provide a big meal that doesn't contain "weird stuff". Some of the more skeptical people still bring meat dishes, but even then they end up seeing that as a part of the whole, as opposed to be a contrast between "weird food" and "normal food". If you decide to take the leap, I hope this helps!
- ethbro 10y ago
  As a, for lack of a better term, total vegetarian, do you have any moral thoughts on different types of animals? Was the herbavore vs omnivore vs carnivore thing a consideration? Did you debate mammal protein vs fish? Curious how people arrive at "their" vegetarianism.
  - molloy 10y ago
    The term you're looking for is lacto-ovo vegetarian.
    - ergothus 10y ago
      That's the term, but most people that don't deal with vegetarians don't know it. (I've also seen a number of vegetarians & pescatarians that don't know it, which is somewhat surprising to me). But yes, I'm an ovo-lacto vegetarian.
  - ergothus 10y ago
    Speaking for myself on a very subjective issue: I do. My gradual elimination of meats was done on a roughly sliding scale of animal awareness - pigs seem more aware than turkeys seem more aware than chickens, and most fish come in below that. I based this mainly on my understanding of there general awareness of the world, which is hardly a strict scientific method, but I was trying to acknowledge the concept you're describing, figuring that while it was all bad, if I wasn't going to immediately do totally right, I should choose to do it in the least bad manner. Insects are actually a point of confusion for me. My general rule of thumb for whether I think I should kill something to eat it (or have someone else kill it for me to eat) is based on my instinctive empathy: If I saw the animal injured, would I feel bad for it? land-based animals - Yes. Fish - Yes. Eggs? No. (lots of issues in the egg industry, but the base concept didn't bother me). Bacteria? No. But this leaves insects in a weird place. I will kill an insect that is a pest to me without much concern. Mosquitos are dead if I get a chance, houseflies are welcome to leave, but if they don't, I can swat them without guilt. Ants, while an absolutely favorite creature of mine, also fall prey to my self-centeredness. BUT - the idea of hundreds/thousands of insects getting ground up DOES bother me. I _think_ that's because I don't empathize with the bugs the way I do with animals, but I don't like what it says about us to kill in such numbers even if I don't empathize directly, Regardless, while I don't have a solid answer, it was easy enough to give up the few foods involved. (Pretty much Junior Mints, in my case)
mseebach 10y ago
Once you've killed the animal, don't you owe it to eat as much as possible of it? Isn't it a bigger sin to throw away edible meat for aesthetic reasons?
- wahnfrieden 10y ago
  Yes - and given that's the situation with meat consumption, it's no wonder some of us decide on throwing out the whole premise and going vegetarian :)
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago
    Have you carefully examined how the dairy industry works? I'm not convinced that a vegetarian diet that includes factory farmed dairy involves much less cruelty than an omnivorous diet. Maybe more, if the omnivore were to avoid factory farmed meat and dairy. That said, I'm not a vegetarian myself, because I don't believe it's in my rational self-interest.
    - dkersten 10y ago
      There are plenty of forms of vegatarian: lacto-vegetarians that eat dairy, ovo-vegetarians that eat eggs, lacto-ovo-vegetarians that eat both, vegans that eat neither (don't eat any animal products), raw-vegan that only eat raw foods, etc If you believe that factory farmed dairy is just as cruel, then don't consume factory farmed dairy. I don't believe its in my rational self-interest Unless you count the environmental impact, it shouldn't be about your self-interest, but rather doing something that some see as cruel and unethical treatment of other living creatures. (PS: I'm not vegetarian either, so I'm not attempting to change your opinion)
      - duncan_bayne 10y ago
        > Unless you count the environmental impact, it shouldn't be about your self-interest, but rather doing something that some see as cruel and unethical treatment of other living creatures. This might clarify my position a bit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism
late2part 10y ago
I went veg 12 years ago and life has been so much simpler!
menacingly 10y ago
It's easy for conversations like this to unintentionally turn elitist, but that "last bit of cash" is also more accurately depicted as just not throwing away protein. Pro/Anti-meat aside, there is a huge segment of the population for whom "just eat steaks" is not actionable advice. They've already killed the animal. Why not be efficient?
- Clownshoesms 10y ago
  Yes fair enough, maximizing what we do with the carcass once the animal is dead is only fair. I guess I was leaning more towards the lengths we've gone to, for something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place (i.e. we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out). Although in this case getting parts of the spinal cord/fluid/brain in with sausages also sounds like a hazard.
  - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
    > we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out Is this true? Plenty of humans are reaping the benefits of this industry existing. While beef, dairy et al may be disturbing from multiple points of view, few industries are as subsidized as the corn industry in the united states. If there was a single vulnerability to be used as an entry point to tear apart the elaborate farming empires and thoroughly tackle waste with respect to output, it'd be corn. It just doesn't make sense, irrespective of animals.
    - ivanbakel 10y ago
      That's a different kind of waste. It's indisputable that meat production is a waste of land, crops, and resources, if your main metric is producing as much food as possible. If you're talking about money waste instead, it works pretty well. But while corn may be over-subsidized, I'd rather eat it than starve.
      - swerner 10y ago
        That metric only applies under the assumption that all land can be used equally to feed livestock or for crops. However, humans don't eat grass, and some land cannot be used to grow vegetables on. There, grazing livestock is one of the few methods available to generate food for humans. Grazing is also better for biodiversity than planting crops.
tonmoy 10y ago
Isn't it better that the animals are being efficiently utilized preventing the need for killing more animals. I

mrits 10y ago

Me too. But then I think about beef fajitas.

venture_lol 10y ago

Just stick to honest to earth filet mignon

ergothus 10y ago

I've been vegetarian for a bit over a decade (no fish, but dairy and eggs okay) - If you live in the right area, and have the right tastes, it's downright easy. In other areas, it's quite difficult. My personal tips & notes: * If you otherwise enjoy meat, there are a lot of meat-substitutes out there and more being developed. These tend to do a great job of mimicking processed meats and a terrible job of mimicking "real" meat. They also vary greatly. Quorn, Morningstar, and Boca (for example) all have very different tastes and textures, so if you don't like one try a different one. (I personally prefer Quorn for chicken-substitutes and Morningstar for beef-substitutes). OTOH, some vegetarians never had a big attachment to meat, and this is not an issue. (I am very jealous of these people). * Eating out is by far the hardest. In areas with many vegetarians (say, Seattle), you tend to have multiple options, things tend to be clearly labeled, and waitstaff is used to getting questions. In other areas (say, Georgia), you have fewer options, no labels, and people act like you've accused them of something evil if you have questions. Either way, though, the majority of the menu becomes inaccessible to you. * If you are trying to be mostly strict, be cautious when dealing with regional/cultural boundaries. While Indian food tends to follow the same vegetarian definition as I do (Jainian food is even more strict than I am), others don't (Chinese and Japanese tend to not consider fish or other seafood as animals, thus you'll find oyster sauce on the "vegetarian" menu, or dishes that have oyster sauce or some sort of animal-based broth that isn't called out as such (oyster sauce, fish sauce, pork, beef, or chicken broth, and/or shrimp paste in some curries). In the American South, pork isn't just a meat, it's also a seasoning. Most purely vegetable dishes (such as "green beans" or "corn") aren't vegetarian there :( * How strict you want to be impacts how easy life is. Avoiding tangible animal-based meat = easy. Avoiding broths and lard = not as easy. Avoiding animal byproducts, such as most gelatin, use of bones in filtering, animal-based rennet in cheese , insect-based dyes and glaze = quite a bit more effort. Find a level you are comfortable with, because for most reasons, it is still far better to be a not-entirely strict vegetarian than a failed attempt at a strict vegetarian. I myself avoid gelatin and known insect products (no more Junior Mints :( ), and when cooking at home I get animal-friendly cheese and sugar, but when I'm out I don't worry about where they got their cheese, but will ask about broths and seafood-sauces. * If you are a picky eater such as myself, be warned that many places decide to make vegetarian dishes more "exciting" by putting in every form of vegetable/grain they can think of. Like a supreme pizza, some people are glad for the variety, but most have something in there they don't like. (I myself can't stand green bell peppers, which is in, like, 90% of commonly available vegetarian fare :( ) * I first went vegetarian cold-turkey (ha!) in college...but after 6 months I stopped because I was seeing stars constantly. (It's actually pretty easy to get all your nutrients as a vegetarian, unless you're living on a diet of rice and mac&cheese like I was) I had, however, lost the taste for red meat (suddenly felt oily and flavorless), and noticed that certain salads I had disliked I now enjoyed. A few years later I tried again, but this time I did it slow. I dropped a category of meat each year, giving myself time to adjust my diet and make sure I had a variety of options. I believe I dropped beef (from the first stint), then pork, then poultry, then all forms of seafood. The next year I dropped leather products as an ethical choice, and I've been this way for over a decade without too much effort. Some extra food costs, a limited range of foods, and limited eating out options, but not so much that it's hard. Dieting, for example, is much harder. * You will learn to hate the preachy, judgmental vegetarian-types that make life hard for us. Most vegetarians (in my experience) do what they do for reasons they consider good, and think it'd be great if others did the same, but feel no need to look down on others that don't, nor to inform them of their "evil ways". I mean, most of us ate meat for a long time and didn't switch the first time the thought occurred to us, so why judge others for being the same? Still though, people get very defensive and often assume you're one of the preachy types until you prove otherwise. * ...You will also learn to hate how defensive people are in general. This is not restricted to vegetarianism. If you say you're on a diet, people will talk about how awesome their chocolate cake is. Mention you have diabetes, and they'll list the sugary foods they adore. Say you're vegetarian, and they'll talk about how animals just taste so good, or how happy they are to shoot Bambi. I've collected a few vegetarian jokes to help break the ice and show I'm not a jerk about it. (My favorite: 'Vegetarian' is actually based on an old (insert culture here - I tend to say 'Native American') word, meaning "lousy hunter") * Oddly enough, holidays tend to be the EASIEST times. Everyone talks about the turkey, but a traditional big feast (at least in America) actually involves lots of non-meat dishes. I found this a good way to relax my family and friends - I provide a big meal that doesn't contain "weird stuff". Some of the more skeptical people still bring meat dishes, but even then they end up seeing that as a part of the whole, as opposed to be a contrast between "weird food" and "normal food". If you decide to take the leap, I hope this helps!

ethbro 10y ago
As a, for lack of a better term, total vegetarian, do you have any moral thoughts on different types of animals? Was the herbavore vs omnivore vs carnivore thing a consideration? Did you debate mammal protein vs fish? Curious how people arrive at "their" vegetarianism.
- molloy 10y ago
  The term you're looking for is lacto-ovo vegetarian.
  - ergothus 10y ago
    That's the term, but most people that don't deal with vegetarians don't know it. (I've also seen a number of vegetarians & pescatarians that don't know it, which is somewhat surprising to me). But yes, I'm an ovo-lacto vegetarian.
- ergothus 10y ago
  Speaking for myself on a very subjective issue: I do. My gradual elimination of meats was done on a roughly sliding scale of animal awareness - pigs seem more aware than turkeys seem more aware than chickens, and most fish come in below that. I based this mainly on my understanding of there general awareness of the world, which is hardly a strict scientific method, but I was trying to acknowledge the concept you're describing, figuring that while it was all bad, if I wasn't going to immediately do totally right, I should choose to do it in the least bad manner. Insects are actually a point of confusion for me. My general rule of thumb for whether I think I should kill something to eat it (or have someone else kill it for me to eat) is based on my instinctive empathy: If I saw the animal injured, would I feel bad for it? land-based animals - Yes. Fish - Yes. Eggs? No. (lots of issues in the egg industry, but the base concept didn't bother me). Bacteria? No. But this leaves insects in a weird place. I will kill an insect that is a pest to me without much concern. Mosquitos are dead if I get a chance, houseflies are welcome to leave, but if they don't, I can swat them without guilt. Ants, while an absolutely favorite creature of mine, also fall prey to my self-centeredness. BUT - the idea of hundreds/thousands of insects getting ground up DOES bother me. I _think_ that's because I don't empathize with the bugs the way I do with animals, but I don't like what it says about us to kill in such numbers even if I don't empathize directly, Regardless, while I don't have a solid answer, it was easy enough to give up the few foods involved. (Pretty much Junior Mints, in my case)

mseebach 10y ago

Once you've killed the animal, don't you owe it to eat as much as possible of it? Isn't it a bigger sin to throw away edible meat for aesthetic reasons?

wahnfrieden 10y ago
Yes - and given that's the situation with meat consumption, it's no wonder some of us decide on throwing out the whole premise and going vegetarian :)
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  Have you carefully examined how the dairy industry works? I'm not convinced that a vegetarian diet that includes factory farmed dairy involves much less cruelty than an omnivorous diet. Maybe more, if the omnivore were to avoid factory farmed meat and dairy. That said, I'm not a vegetarian myself, because I don't believe it's in my rational self-interest.
  - dkersten 10y ago
    There are plenty of forms of vegatarian: lacto-vegetarians that eat dairy, ovo-vegetarians that eat eggs, lacto-ovo-vegetarians that eat both, vegans that eat neither (don't eat any animal products), raw-vegan that only eat raw foods, etc If you believe that factory farmed dairy is just as cruel, then don't consume factory farmed dairy. I don't believe its in my rational self-interest Unless you count the environmental impact, it shouldn't be about your self-interest, but rather doing something that some see as cruel and unethical treatment of other living creatures. (PS: I'm not vegetarian either, so I'm not attempting to change your opinion)
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      > Unless you count the environmental impact, it shouldn't be about your self-interest, but rather doing something that some see as cruel and unethical treatment of other living creatures. This might clarify my position a bit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism

late2part 10y ago

I went veg 12 years ago and life has been so much simpler!

menacingly 10y ago

It's easy for conversations like this to unintentionally turn elitist, but that "last bit of cash" is also more accurately depicted as just not throwing away protein. Pro/Anti-meat aside, there is a huge segment of the population for whom "just eat steaks" is not actionable advice. They've already killed the animal. Why not be efficient?

Clownshoesms 10y ago
Yes fair enough, maximizing what we do with the carcass once the animal is dead is only fair. I guess I was leaning more towards the lengths we've gone to, for something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place (i.e. we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out). Although in this case getting parts of the spinal cord/fluid/brain in with sausages also sounds like a hazard.
- xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
  > we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out Is this true? Plenty of humans are reaping the benefits of this industry existing. While beef, dairy et al may be disturbing from multiple points of view, few industries are as subsidized as the corn industry in the united states. If there was a single vulnerability to be used as an entry point to tear apart the elaborate farming empires and thoroughly tackle waste with respect to output, it'd be corn. It just doesn't make sense, irrespective of animals.
  - ivanbakel 10y ago
    That's a different kind of waste. It's indisputable that meat production is a waste of land, crops, and resources, if your main metric is producing as much food as possible. If you're talking about money waste instead, it works pretty well. But while corn may be over-subsidized, I'd rather eat it than starve.
    - swerner 10y ago
      That metric only applies under the assumption that all land can be used equally to feed livestock or for crops. However, humans don't eat grass, and some land cannot be used to grow vegetables on. There, grazing livestock is one of the few methods available to generate food for humans. Grazing is also better for biodiversity than planting crops.

tonmoy 10y ago

Isn't it better that the animals are being efficiently utilized preventing the need for killing more animals. I