First time I heard of veganism I thought it was a crazy thing, a sort of cult from people who hate animals and want personal purity. I understood the interest of going vegetarian but I had no idea why anyone would go further than that. But that was a long time ago. I went vegan more than one year ago, after a few months of considering it and reducing my animal product intake. I was aware of how bad industrial meat was for health and environment in addition to being hugely cruel to farmed animals. But I realized that dairy and "humane" meat were bad too and stopped eating them outside of social situations. I also learned how bad most egg farms are and eventually bought only organic eggs, because while there are good reasons why humane meat and dairy are not realistic, "humane" eggs are fine since it doesn't require killing animals or their offsprings and refusing them is just extremist mental gymnastics, right? I eventually learned how virtually all commercial eggs are terrible for the welfare of hens and stopped wanting to eat animal products altogether. I finally admitted it when I was struggling eating some beef - I literally couldn't eat it if I didn't have beans in my mouth too to mask the taste and texture of the meat - then didn't want to eat cheese either.
As I also became interested in losing weight about the same time I learned about the ethics of veganism I read a lot of things about nutrition especially after going vegan, however it was for me hard at the time to distinguish pseudoscience from legit things. For a small while I took the useless habit of drinking a glass of water with lemon juice before eating my breakfast because it was supposed to help digestion and detoxify the body and remove acidity from the blood. I also remember I once cooked kidney beans at low heat, inspired from the raw food mantra that food cooked at high temperature is less nutritious; it felt unpleasant after a few hours! I also was taking the methylcobalamin form of B12 for several months while supplementing the doses recommended for cyanocobalamin, because I thought the methyl form was "better recognized by the body" due to being "more natural", and developped pain in my left harm after a few months of veganism; it felt like I randomly got electrical shocks when I moved it, so it seemed likely to me that the cause was B12 deficiency as I knew such a deficiency could cause nerve damage.
I also read things online because I'm curious, and there was plenty of things I actually got confused about. Do plants have feelings? Are vaccines dangerous? Was the 9/11 tower collapse the result of a controlled demolition? What are the dangers of GMOs? (I was always told that they were unethical but the anti-GMO vulgarization always felt poor and incomplete to me) I felt a sort of cognitive dissonance, because I was on the fence on these things, but I knew deep inside me that truth isn't subjective and that one of these camps had to be wrong, and that truth felt hidden to me by how confusing it was to make my own opinion. Then I discovered the notion of scientific consensus, based on the accumulation of a lot of scientific knowledge that converge into one theory, and critical thinking in general. It made me have a more settled worldview, based on evidence and what's more likely to be true rather than my own ideology, and gave me the intellectual tools to identify good arguments from worthless fallacies. Especially the appeal to nature - I remember I felt a sort of cognitive dissonance at a time because having to supplement B12 felt "unnatural" but I eventually understood that there's nothing wrong about it, and I now hate this fallacy with a passion because of how wrong its premises are and also because I personally suffered from it - btw I changed to cyanocobalamin form for B12 and I really felt the difference.
I didn't enter that I'm an atheist or religious in my profile because while I believe God and the Holy Spirit as told by Christians, or any deity for that matter, are merely a cultural construct for which there's zero evidence that they actually exists, my mother is very religious and this had a huge impact on how I was raised, and because of that I still frequent other Christians in a religious context. But I don't publicly tell that I don't really take religion as anything more than a personal belief based on no evidence. Consider me as an atheist spy if you want
Asides from that, I currently am in the waiting list of a software development training course. As someone who likes logic and computers it feels perfect for me, and before I start I'm trying to learn a bit so I can start my future training course with some knowledge already - for example I'm currently learning the C++ language, which so far confirmed my interest in computering, and once I know enough of it I'll try to learn another language that isn't object-oriented so I can learn a new way to program. As I also have some interest in biology as well maybe I could later evolve to have interdisciplinary knowledge and become a bioinformatician especially since it could potentially allow me to get a job that consists in developing vegan alternatives to animal products thanks to biotechnology - but we're talking about something very hypothetical and very far into the future here! (But maybe there's necessary animal experimentation to do such a biology training course in which case I'd be much less enthusiastic about it.)
And for anyone wondering why I have nettle as my avatar - it had three opposite leaves at each node instead of two which I'm sure is pretty rare, I found and photographed it myself. Most likely the result of a random genetic mutation
Oh, and by the way- I made a typo while writing my username. Could a mod fix that please? Change "Canasterard" into "Canastenard" (it's supposed to come from the word "canard" - "duck" in French)
! Nice to meet you!
