Stupid Things Omnivores Say

[miniboes]

(Yea, I haven't seen the whole thing, so sue me)

Neither have I. You and I both have done our part in preventing the cruelty shown and are certainly not contributing to it. Therefore I do not feel obliged to watch it at all.

[Red]

I don't think TheveganAtheist needs to worry anymore about finding stupid comments.

[EquALLity]

Yeah, we're only vegans because of Lisa Simpson.

[phileas007]

I'd like to make it into the top 5 video, so here goes:

1) If God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them so delicious!

2) You stupid vegans are depriving my food of its food!

3) Anthropologists and gastroenterologists all agree that the evolution of the human brain would not have been possible without the caloric intake of meat, so your lifestyle is not only unnatural, it's an insult to my superior intelligence!


So, how did I do?

Disclaimer:
I have to concede that the normal way of animal treatment in modern farming is disgusting and vile, whenever possible I make the effort to find meat products from certified organic producers who maintain a better standard for the conditions the animals are kept in.
However the real problem is that in modern agriculture you have to endure the risk of poisoning yourself slowly whatever you eat, and that is the result of overpopulation. I sincerely would love to make things better, but without any political progress, our world isn't going to change and I just can't give up the pleasure of tasty meat just like that.

[brimstoneSalad]

I'd like to make it into the top 5 video, so here goes:

1) If God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them so delicious!

2) You stupid vegans are depriving my food of its food!

3) Anthropologists and gastroenterologists all agree that the evolution of the human brain would not have been possible without the caloric intake of meat, so your lifestyle is not only unnatural, it's an insult to my superior intelligence!

I've seen those a lot. The third is the worst, because it pretends to be scientific while being the opposite.

See: http://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewto ... f=11&t=257

Disclaimer:
I have to concede that the normal way of animal treatment in modern farming is disgusting and vile, whenever possible I make the effort to find meat products from certified organic producers who maintain a better standard for the conditions the animals are kept in.

It's much easier (and more consistent) to just not eat meat. Have you ever actually tried it? It's like quitting smoking. Hard for a little while, then it gets easier. It's also about as important for your health.

However the real problem is that in modern agriculture you have to endure the risk of poisoning yourself slowly whatever you eat, and that is the result of overpopulation.

Um, no. You seem to misunderstand modern agriculture and food safety standards.

Meat is inherently problematic. With the exception of fish, animal products are rich in bad fat. There ARE also equally unhealthy plant products, like palm oil and cocoa butter (which are also unhealthy saturated fats), but those are rare exceptions in the plant world (unfortunately, very common in processed foods, but uncommon in whole foods).

Meat also contains more carcinogens and heavy metals per calorie than pretty much anything else. See the concept of bioaccumulation. The "higher" on the "food chain" you eat, the more poisons the material accumulates from lower levels. When you eat a cow, you eat all of the poisons that cow ate and absorbed in her lifetime. If something eats you, it will inherit the concentrated poisons in your body. Stuff like that doesn't disappear, it gets concentrated.

"Everything" is poisonous in some ways, and healthy in others, but you can't just generalize like that and pretend that makes everything equal. Some things contain much MORE poison than good stuff by orders of magnitude, and other things contain much more good stuff than poison.

If you choose intelligently, you can drastically reduce your risk of stroke, heart attack, and a large number of cancers. This is hard science.
It's also not just about living longer, but living more healthfully in old-age so you don't become one of those old people whose bodies are useless to them and they're always in pain and without the energy to do anything.

I sincerely would love to make things better, but without any political progress, our world isn't going to change

Bullshit.
The world is already changing, and it happens person by person. Meat demand has already reduced; the beef industry is feeling that most of all. And not because of politics, but because more people are choosing not to eat it.

It's not about politics, don't wait for somebody to pass a law to help you do the right thing, it's just economics. Simple supply and demand. Demand reduces, and supply reduces to match the demand. The Animal agriculture industry is incredibly flexible. There aren't a bunch of animals left over if people don't eat them, they simply are not bred. Every single person makes a difference.

Political changes would be great, but don't pretend that's an excuse.

and I just can't give up the pleasure of tasty meat just like that.

Well, that's just being lazy. You can give it up, you've just convinced yourself you can't. Like people who say they can't give up religion, or they couldn't live without god/Jesus/etc. - yes, they can, they just haven't tried it. They're speaking from ignorance and emotional laziness and fear.

Like I said, it's like smoking. At first it can be a little hard, because it is an addiction to the fat and metabolic products of the meat. But once you give it up, it gets a lot easier, and then you don't really want or need it anymore after a while.

[phileas007]

Thank you for your answer, I am however disappointed that you were not impressed by the statements

The third is the worst, because it pretends to be scientific while being the opposite.

The link you provided wasn't very helpful as it was a general discussion about pseudo-science. Here is a link for starters for you to see what I'm on about:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 195122.htm

Um, no. You seem to misunderstand modern agriculture and food safety standards.

No I'm quite sure the problems are still the same, yeah we don't use DDT any more but the level of toxicity is not gone. check out:
http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/food-agr ... KwNu9LF-So
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9195000909

You are absolutely right about the dangers of a bad diet, i.e. too much low quality fats and salt etc. and about the phenomenon of bioaccumulation. I'm not trying to suggest that vegetarian food is not better for you, because it certainly is. All I'm saying is that if you take care of your diet, you can still enjoy meat, fish and dairy products without totally screwing up your health in the process.

Meat also contains more carcinogens

Not an expert on this, but is seems that the real problem is the charring that occurs when proteins are being heated. This is not per definition inherent to meat, if you throw vegies on the BBQ and overcook them, you have the same issue. There are many chemicals that are considered carcinogenic or anti-carcinogenic and we don't fully understand their effects yet, however for example in beef you have also the good stuff - the anti-carcinogens.

The world is already changing, and it happens person by person. Meat demand has already reduced

Absolutely, but that's not what I meant. I was referring to the conditions of livestock and agriculture.

Like I said, it's like smoking. At first it can be a little hard, because it is an addiction to the fat and metabolic products of the meat.

I'm afraid I disagree for two reasons.
First of all it's not an addiction (at least not for me), I don't feel any urge to eat animals for the sake of satisfying a physical desire, as a matter of fact I can easily go on without meat and I certainly don't like too much of it.
Secondly you are defending your position with a rather arrogant presupposition of moral superiority, i.e. I can easily turn the argument around and explain to you how easy it is to quit the "religion" of vegetarianism.

My position is very simple: to each his own! I don't have anything against vegetarians/vegans or any other diet, where I take a stand is when you try to convey a sense of guilt onto meat-eaters and moralize OUR conscience for doing wrong. And this is simply not the case! You can ruin both your health and the planet regardless of whether you consume meat or not!
And I don't feel ashamed for not being one of you!

[brimstoneSalad]

Here is a link for starters for you to see what I'm on about:

The link you provided had nothing to do with brain development.

I know what you're actually on about (which has nothing to do with that link), and like I said, it's pseudoscience. Not only did you get the original theory backwards (and ignore the fact that it only referred calorie dense foods, such as meat, but also possibly fruits, tubers, etc.), but the theory itself has been disproved.

The original theory (which you bastardized and corrupted almost beyond the point of recognition) is called the expensive tissue hypothesis.

Humane Hominid already addressed one of those here in a discussion he had with somebody:

http://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewto ... 3221#p3221

-- Then there's your point number 4: "It was only when we started eating animal foods/fish that our brains doubled in size, this is a proven scientific fact, allowing for the modern human and all our advances."

-- You are referring here to an idea called the expensive tissue hypothesis, first formulated by Aiello & Wheeler in 1995. While there are some problems with the idea, I won't go into them here, because it isn't necessary. You got the hypothesis backwards.

The ETH does NOT say that meat-eating doubled human brain size. it says that an increase in brain size necessitated a dietary shift to more calorie-dense foods, in order to compensate for the caloric demands of said bigger brains. In other words, bigger brains led to more meat-eating, not the other way around. The evolution of bigger brains came FIRST, followed by the increase in meat-eating.

And further, while Aiello & Wheeler postulated that meat was the most likely candidate food, they were clear that ANY calorie-dense food source would have sufficed. They specifically cited fruits, tubers, and oil-rich nuts and seeds as other potential candidates.

If you're not completely committed to being an ignorant tool, read this:
http://paleovegan.blogspot.com/2011/11/ ... issue.html

If you do, you will learn something important.

All I'm saying is that if you take care of your diet, you can still enjoy meat, fish and dairy products without totally screwing up your health in the process.

You don't understand how cancer works.

Have you heard of the game called "Russian roulette"?

Did you know that, played in moderation, you can still enjoy the occasional game of Russian roulette without blowing your brains out?
Well, sometimes anyway. Sometimes you play once, and you die.

That's how cancer works.

Carcinogens work in a statistical way.

For everybody who has ever gotten lung cancer, they got it from ONE particular cigarette (the straw that broke the self-replication inhibition's back). It's the way they bounce around in your body causing DNA damage. Sometimes they cause cancer, and sometimes they don't. There are just a few key mutations that have to occur, which happen randomly, and then -- cancer.

There are two issues with animal products; one is cumulative, and that is true for saturated fats and arteriosclerosis. You can eat a little saturated fat, and your body can heal from that. And I really mean just a tiny bit.

With carcinogens as are prevalent in meat in much higher concentrations than in vegetables (vegetables that inhibit cancer far more than they cause it), you're playing a fool's gambit.

There are a small number of carcinogenic vegetables too, and I would also suggest avoiding those. Tobacco is a good example (even if you chew it instead of smoking it).
If you care about your health, just avoid carcinogens as well as you can -- that means no smoking, no animal products, and unfortunately for some of us, maybe no avocados (I just learned that one recently -- the jury is still out, but I'm off avocados until we get more information).

Luckily, there are loads of yummy foods that inhibit cancer rather than cause it, like garlic, broccoli family foods, and most vegetables generally (with few rare exceptions).

Not an expert on this, but is seems that the real problem is the charring that occurs when proteins are being heated. This is not per definition inherent to meat, if you throw vegies on the BBQ and overcook them, you have the same issue.

False.

Look up the protein called Creatine.
That may be the main culprit; when it is heated, it is chemically altered and becomes carcinogenic.

Then there's also this:

http://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewto ... f=22&t=652

We don't even know all of the ways that meat causes cancer. The bottom line is that it does, because when you look as associations between meat and cancer, you find strong correlations that (by statisticians who understand this stuff better than you do), are also found to be causative.

You really shouldn't grill your veggies black either, but that isn't the issue at hand. Meat is inherently bad for you for many other reasons.

If there's an exception to that, it's a rare exception (maybe certain kinds of herbivorous fish, raised in clean water, eaten raw -- but only maybe), and it's not what you're eating. Oysters have been proposed as healthy, and that may be (very simple organisms, very low on the food chain, and they are said to actually help clean the water and improve the environment).

If you want to look on the fringes, at the rare exceptions, we can do that, but it isn't what you're eating now, and you'd have to admit you have some changes to make.

however for example in beef you have also the good stuff - the anti-carcinogens.

Really? Because I know what you're talking about, likely carnosine (which may inhibit telomere degradation), and the human body MAKES it on its own.

Most of the "good" stuff in meat is also made by the human body. And do you know why? Because we ARE meat.

We're very closely related to all of these other animals, and anything 'good' in those products we produce on our own in more than adequate amounts.

One of the issues with supposing the carnosine in meat is health promoting is that the half-life (do you know what that is?) in the body is very short. That is, you eat it, and your body gets rid of it pretty much right away. The antioxidants in vegetables are not made by the body, and their half lives in your system are much longer. They get to stick around to do good.

The 'good' in meat is vastly outweighed by the bad, and in terms of health, it is not health promoting in the way vegetables are.

If you're starving to death, in that context, obviously meat is better than swallowing air. But when you have available, as you do in the first world, ample vegetable sources of protein and calories, you'd have to be delusional or addicted to choose the meat instead. If you really want extra carnosine, you can also just supplement with it.

Absolutely, but that's not what I meant. I was referring to the conditions of livestock and agriculture.

Then can you rephrase your claim?

First of all it's not an addiction (at least not for me), I don't feel any urge to eat animals for the sake of satisfying a physical desire, as a matter of fact I can easily go on without meat and I certainly don't like too much of it.

That's good news for you, it means you can just stop eating it.

Secondly you are defending your position with a rather arrogant presupposition of moral superiority, i.e. I can easily turn the argument around and explain to you how easy it is to quit the "religion" of vegetarianism.

It's not a presupposition, and vegetarianism isn't a religion. This has been demonstrated. It's a matter of empirical fact. Some things are harmful. Somethings help others. It's not up to some idiot's opinion to decide what is good or bad; things just are good or bad based on how they help or harm others.

I never said all vegetarians are more moral than all meat eaters. I wouldn't even say all non-pedophiles are more moral than pedophiles. Whether you're a good or bad person comes down crudely to the sum of all of your good and bad actions in life.
It's easy to find a number of other terrible actions somebody could do that would make them bad people despite neither eating meat nor molesting children (like blowing up a building), some actions, however, are harder to make up for than others.

Pedophilia is a bad action. It's deeply harmful to children. There's nothing good about it.
Eating meat is a bad action. It harms animals, it harms the environment, and other humans. There's nothing good about it.

You might also volunteer to care for orphans, or do something else decent in your life, and that would be a good action. Does it balance the scales?
Maybe the pedophile is a doctor, and goes to Africa every year and saves a thousand lives. Does it balance the scales? Hard to say.

If you do those bad things, you've done something bad, and that does make you a bad person if you can't make up for it in some other way. But that's a little more complex.

Or do you think it's all just an opinion, and we should leave pedophiles alone to practice their sexual orientation as they see fit?

It sounds like that's what you're saying:

My position is very simple: to each his own!

Let's try a slight change on that latter part:

I don't have anything against non-pedophiles or any other sexuality, where I take a stand is when you try to convey a sense of guilt onto pedophiles and moralize OUR conscience for doing wrong. And this is simply not the case! You can psychologically scar or physically abuse children regardless of whether you have sex with them or not!
And I don't feel ashamed for not being one of you!

Yes, it's true, there are many many other horrible things you can also to do children that are not having sex with them. Does that make pedophilia OK, because there are bad people who aren't pedophiles too?

No. It does not.

Yes, there are a few vegetables foods that are also unhealthy. Yes, there are other ways to destroy the environment if you try hard enough, and even other ways to torture hundreds of animals every year. That doesn't make eating meat, which does all of those things very efficiently, somehow OK just because there are other ways to also do horrible things.

If you see a non-pedophile abusing children, tell them to stop too. If you see a vegetarian eating palm oil, or lighting a bonfire, also tell them to stop.

Anybody doing bad things should just stop doing those bad things. It's not a difficult concept to understand.

[TheAddict]

I've read most of these, and hands down, my mom's comment is the best.

"I grew up on a farm, we decapitated chickens and saw them running around until they died and we milked the cow with love. Therefore:

1. Chickens are dumb animals that don't really understand they're in pain
2. The dairy industry isn't cruel. The cow gives the milk away for free and she loves it"

I win.

[Viktorius_the_Third]

Something i found on youtube just now:
(this link "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqh-r8TQgs")


its about how organs of a dog could be reanimated and experiments are done.

"handy monkey
vor 1 Woche

What does being a vegan has to do with this? i don't eat dogs...

handy monkey
vor 1 Woche

but I still don't see the link between doing this experiment on dogs and eating a piece of meat. Can you explain that to me?

E.C. Mann
vor 1 Woche

+handy monkey I agree with you... not much connection between those two things. "


they really exist...
could SOMEONE!! please reply to them WHY and WHAT THE FUCK?
i did not connect my account to G+ (i do not support a forcing of using g+) so i can't reply! please do that
would ease my mind

[Viktorius_the_Third]

same video:

oldnotweak
vor 4 Monaten

what kind of fuckin asshole does this to a dog?! why do it to one of our only allies, do it to one of our enemies or our prey... like a deer or mountain lion or something


ApplesauceChica
vor 4 Monaten
Plus, every time I saw those scientists "loving" on that dog, I cringed. They're murderers. They aren't allowed to touch that dog like that! It's beyond immoral!