Sam Harris going vegan, needs help

[knot]

I hope they will make more content about it. I don't know if they're aware of the related environmental issues or not, but it seems like they realize it's still a huge ethical problem even when completely ignoring that aspect. I more or less agreed with everything they said, except when they mentioned the health benefits of animal products. Once in a while it's nice when people just flat out admit that eating meat is morally indefensible.

[miniboes]

It would be really awesome if they did a show discussing it.

Yes, that would be quite the dream podcast.
I couldn't help sending him a second email, referencing himto Greger and Barnard.

[miniboes]

The reddit post is doing well, although I do not know if people are actually taking action. It is, with 75 upvotes, on the front page of www.reddit.com/r/vegan. You can view it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments ... ellectual/.

At first, there were some terrible comments:

pls god no keep sam harris out of this movement dont let him be the face of veganism ahhhhhhh

faints"

You can debunk religious syetms but you can't figure out how to eat plants???

Sam Harris is the "But humans have canine teeth" of Atheism.

But, really, him going vegan would be a good thing.

Paul Bloom is a retard. It's actually disappointing to see a Professor at Yale be such an idiot. Ethically raised meats? LOL

I like that Sam Harris understands that he is lazy and wants to change. Although it isn't that fucking hard. I didn't need a doctor and a nutritionist to help me go vegan. Just eat some fuckin beans, rice, fruits, veggies, and potatos and you'll be fine, dipshit.

It's one thing when idiots resort to the dumb arguments. But it really bothers me when "smart" people do. Although maybe this is proof that being intelligent in one area doesn't mean you will be in another.

One new vegan was a bit scared off by the intolerance of these people:

I joined /r/Vegan about an hour or two ago to try and learn more about how I can reduce the suffering of animals, but these comments are disgusting and extremely uninviting. All of what was said below might as well have been said to me as I'm in the exact same situation as Sam.

I'm glad a few of you enjoyed your opportunity to feel better than someone else, but it came at the cost of turning someone away. I wasn't even going to make a post as I didn't want to come off as attention seeking, but I just had to say something. Peace.

I invited him to this forum.
After that, comments got better.

I'm a fan of Sam so it was hard to hear him awkwardly talk about veganism in that podcast. Almost as bad as his interaction with Noam Chomsky. I hope he gets pointed to the Carnism ideology, Cowspiracy documentary, other philosophers, etc. I liked how he mentioned "restaurant questioning" vs laws to enforce humane food. We all know how restaurants refuse to publish what they actually feed us. Thanks @ContreteHorse for mentioning this. He could really turn on a lot of atheists to veganism.

Haters,

I also thought it was easy being vegan until I learned about a decade after switching that I had very low bone density (got a compression fracture of my T7 vertebra; bone scans revealed serious issues). It looks like it was due to a serious vitamin D deficiency which hinders the absorbtion of calcium. My calcium levels were OK. A few years before that a physician refused to test my vitamin D levels because he said the research is inconclusive. After 18 months on calcium/vitamin D tablets the scans showed huge improvements.

Going vegan is a radical change to one's diet and playing it down to being trivial is not constructive because, as we've seen, people do get it wrong all the time. Trivialising it probably hurts the movement in the long run because more people end up with serious health problems and then tell others about it. We should be telling them that it's totally doable but that it requires a lot of reading and dilligence. Not "Just eat some fuckin beans, rice, fruits, veggies, and potatos and you'll be fine, dipshit". None of those things would've prevented me from developing a vitamin D deficiency.

Sam Harris is smart for wanting to be properly informed before making such a radical change to his diet.

EDIT: Some of you may only be OK now because it's only been a few years. Certain deficiencies take much longer to manifest. Keep going for regular blood tests.

I hope people are going to actually do things. I will add the idea of a Barnard-Harris podcast to the post.

[brimstoneSalad]

Great update, thanks for that.

Unnatural Vegan is doing a video for Sam too. I don't know if she's posted it yet. (EDIT: No, not yet)

Maybe TheVeganAtheist could do a video for him as well? I'll PM him.


PCRM responded:

Dear friend,

Thank you very much for passing this along! I have forwarded your email to the appropriate parties at the Physicians Committee, and we will try our best to reach out to Sam Harris with information on vegan nutrition.

[brimstoneSalad]

PCRM said they'd let me know if they have trouble contacting Sam. So, we'll see in the next few days.

TheVeganAtheist said he's open to a script, 5 minutes max.
So, we should try to keep it below about 700 words.

Anybody, please feel free to contribute points and ideas. We'll need to edit it down, and re-write it all for brevity after, so don't worry about the exact wording.

Don't forget to listen to the whole podcast if you have time. Most of the discussion around veganism is at the end.

[miniboes]

Great update, thanks for that.

Unnatural Vegan is doing a video for Sam too. I don't know if she's posted it yet. (EDIT: No, not yet)

Maybe TheVeganAtheist could do a video for him as well? I'll PM him.


PCRM responded:

Dear friend,

Thank you very much for passing this along! I have forwarded your email to the appropriate parties at the Physicians Committee, and we will try our best to reach out to Sam Harris with information on vegan nutrition.

That's amazing!

PCRM seems like it's just an incredible organisation.

What would we say in a letter?

[brimstoneSalad]

Unnatural Vegan just uploaded her letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID_2ymmvW5w

What would we say in a letter?

Maybe an overview of nutritional mistakes some vegans and vegetarians make, and talk about "idiot proof" veganism, as Sam asked about.

[EmperorPalpatine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID_2ymmvW5w

Unnatural Vegan made a phenomenal video on the topic

[brimstoneSalad]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID_2ymmvW5w

Unnatural Vegan made a phenomenal video on the topic

Missed my post?

She already emailed the link to Sam, but hopefully we can plug it at the start of this one if TVA agrees.
That will help a lot, to limit the length and cover more that she didn't touch on in the video. No need to reinvent the wheel.

[garrethdsouza]

At some point in the podcast he talks about his uncertainty about whether or not a vegan diet's healthy and I do know unnatural vegan showed how the health associations were in favour of it . we could add studies that have revealed it to be in fact preferable health wise like this one which showed advantages over nonvegetarian and even vegetarian diets. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4073139/
Would suggesting one of gregger's annual talks (like 2012) be an idea as well? He said he was anemic when he tried vegetarianism, this could be a vitamin c issue as well, since its needed for iron absorption so vitamin c rich fruits may be a suggestion. I think the last time around he had talked about not getting enough protein so maybe quelling that myth of vegan protein maybe something that could be done.
I think the confusionists propaganda is why he seemed somewhat confused about diets, types of protein fats etc and said we still don't know what exactly is good or something similar.