4 ms·

You can continue to enjoy your meat, but still ensure your diet contains a responsible amount of it. A diet with proportionally less meat is both healthier and

You can continue to enjoy your meat, but still ensure your diet contains a responsible amount of it. A diet with proportionally less meat is both healthier and more environmentally sustainable. I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat. What makes it such an insulting proposition?

MiroF 7y ago
> What makes it such an insulting proposition? People are bred and raised with this axiomatic, individualist "you against the world" attitude from birth. There's a huge cultural divide. "Why the fuck should I have to ever give anything up that I don't want to, to help you? And fuck you for guilt-tripping me" is pretty much the standard fare.
TallGuyShort 7y ago
In many places in America, the only (or at least the most vocal / visible by far) vegans you'll encounter tend to be weak, unhealthy, and obnoxious about their veganism. The hypocrisy makes it hard to take a rational look at the health benefits. These are the last 4 encounters I remember myself or someone close to me having with vegans: (1) Someone who spent 2 weeks traveling with family to a country that eats mostly meat, and spent the whole trip complaining about the food and lecturing the wait staff about their local culture. (and this as an adult - they chose to join the others on the trip) (2) Guy at the gym who lectured several people in class about their protein choices, whereas he's sick every other week, very weak, and lacks the endurance that even beginners in the class quickly develop. (3) Someone who showed up to a kids birthday party and complained about the non-vegan cake. (4) Coworker who came with the team on a lunch paid for by the company. Rude to restaurant staff who clearly speak English as a second language and didn't understand the difference between vegan and vegetarian. Now that's not meant as an insult to all vegans - I've switched to a mostly vegan diet myself. But you can almost entirely cut animal products out of your diet without needing to be a dick to people when they graciously serve you something else, or without lecturing people about health when you look like a late-stage AIDS victim. I think that puts people off. And yes, there's plenty of American meat-eaters who are equally obnoxious and close to death. But nobody wonders why people don't like them. Just more polarization because the other side's too extreme, so people go further the other way.
- MiroF 7y ago
  I think has more to do with the fact that any sort of vocal veganism is considered obnoxious in the US. So yeah, anyone who tells you they're vegan will be labeled as obnoxious.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    Yeah if only we could figure out how it got associated with obnoxious people in the first place.
    - eropple 7y ago
      I guess, sure, you can chalk it up to "those annoying people" and just be done. Or you can look at the way that many Americans (for the purposes of this discussion; I am one, and I don't have sufficient insight into other folks) react to anybody suggesting anything is wrong with the status quo. America has not a conservative problem but a reactionary one, even outside of what is generally considered "political". This is part of the American hypocrisy about "leaving politics out of it"; most folks with a political education understand that life among other people is inherently and inescapably political, but it's only those who want to change things who are accused of "bringing politics into it", while the nature of the status quo is taken as implicitly apolitical. To this end, I often see people react as if somebody else being a vegan is translated into being an implicit threat to a non-vegan's way of life. Similarly, you see this with those "normal people" finding gay marriage to be a threat to the "sanctity of marriage" or whatever (gay people are gonna make heterosexual marriages worse, are they?) and you see it with the completely bent way that Americans have and historically have reacted to the notion of somebody being "a feminist"--well before the internet's even more bent notion of some kind of "SJW menace" arose. I tend to think that that has transmuted into this reputation as much as any "bad apple"/obnoxious jerk has been, if not more.
      - TallGuyShort 7y ago
        Only thing you can do about that, IMO, is to not be reactionary and not make arguments that seem in the slightest threatening to people. Taking the marriage example, if someone brings up "the sanctity of marriage", instead of just being against that idea, I point out that I agree marriage is sacred and as such I don't want it being subject to definitions in a vote, or having sacred religious ceremonies attached to tax incentives. I think I've changed more than a few peoples minds with that one. People are irrationally reactionary, I agree, but the best response is to not give them so much to react to.
navigatesol 7y ago
>I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat. I'm not American, nor can you have any possible idea what amount I eat, nor "should" be eating.

MiroF 7y ago

> What makes it such an insulting proposition? People are bred and raised with this axiomatic, individualist "you against the world" attitude from birth. There's a huge cultural divide. "Why the fuck should I have to ever give anything up that I don't want to, to help you? And fuck you for guilt-tripping me" is pretty much the standard fare.

TallGuyShort 7y ago

In many places in America, the only (or at least the most vocal / visible by far) vegans you'll encounter tend to be weak, unhealthy, and obnoxious about their veganism. The hypocrisy makes it hard to take a rational look at the health benefits. These are the last 4 encounters I remember myself or someone close to me having with vegans: (1) Someone who spent 2 weeks traveling with family to a country that eats mostly meat, and spent the whole trip complaining about the food and lecturing the wait staff about their local culture. (and this as an adult - they chose to join the others on the trip) (2) Guy at the gym who lectured several people in class about their protein choices, whereas he's sick every other week, very weak, and lacks the endurance that even beginners in the class quickly develop. (3) Someone who showed up to a kids birthday party and complained about the non-vegan cake. (4) Coworker who came with the team on a lunch paid for by the company. Rude to restaurant staff who clearly speak English as a second language and didn't understand the difference between vegan and vegetarian. Now that's not meant as an insult to all vegans - I've switched to a mostly vegan diet myself. But you can almost entirely cut animal products out of your diet without needing to be a dick to people when they graciously serve you something else, or without lecturing people about health when you look like a late-stage AIDS victim. I think that puts people off. And yes, there's plenty of American meat-eaters who are equally obnoxious and close to death. But nobody wonders why people don't like them. Just more polarization because the other side's too extreme, so people go further the other way.

MiroF 7y ago
I think has more to do with the fact that any sort of vocal veganism is considered obnoxious in the US. So yeah, anyone who tells you they're vegan will be labeled as obnoxious.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Yeah if only we could figure out how it got associated with obnoxious people in the first place.
  - eropple 7y ago
    I guess, sure, you can chalk it up to "those annoying people" and just be done. Or you can look at the way that many Americans (for the purposes of this discussion; I am one, and I don't have sufficient insight into other folks) react to anybody suggesting anything is wrong with the status quo. America has not a conservative problem but a reactionary one, even outside of what is generally considered "political". This is part of the American hypocrisy about "leaving politics out of it"; most folks with a political education understand that life among other people is inherently and inescapably political, but it's only those who want to change things who are accused of "bringing politics into it", while the nature of the status quo is taken as implicitly apolitical. To this end, I often see people react as if somebody else being a vegan is translated into being an implicit threat to a non-vegan's way of life. Similarly, you see this with those "normal people" finding gay marriage to be a threat to the "sanctity of marriage" or whatever (gay people are gonna make heterosexual marriages worse, are they?) and you see it with the completely bent way that Americans have and historically have reacted to the notion of somebody being "a feminist"--well before the internet's even more bent notion of some kind of "SJW menace" arose. I tend to think that that has transmuted into this reputation as much as any "bad apple"/obnoxious jerk has been, if not more.
    - TallGuyShort 7y ago
      Only thing you can do about that, IMO, is to not be reactionary and not make arguments that seem in the slightest threatening to people. Taking the marriage example, if someone brings up "the sanctity of marriage", instead of just being against that idea, I point out that I agree marriage is sacred and as such I don't want it being subject to definitions in a vote, or having sacred religious ceremonies attached to tax incentives. I think I've changed more than a few peoples minds with that one. People are irrationally reactionary, I agree, but the best response is to not give them so much to react to.

navigatesol 7y ago

>I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat. I'm not American, nor can you have any possible idea what amount I eat, nor "should" be eating.