Should one be vegan even in lucid dreams?

[Yogger]

just fail to have a lucid dream at all. Or to notice my dreams in the first place. I tried all the tricks in the book, but I just "won't" dream

I also had time in my life when I was forgetting my dreams instantly, but what really helped me was paper dream journal beside my bed and alarm clock that was set to longer periods of REM f.e. 4,5h+1,5h+1,5h. Good article is here: http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/ ... reams.html

[brimstoneSalad]

Eating meat three times per week is not comparable to smoking cigarettes. Before I went vegan 1,5 year ago we both ate meet and dairy every day so I fell that I already made some important impact on our common menu.

Sure it is; it just depend on how heavy a smoker you are.

Eating a lot of meat, smoking a lot. Eating less meat, smoking less.

My kids(1y and 3y) eat non-vegan food like yoghurts, fish and chickens. I can hardly imagine that I will give them oysters instead. Its more likely that I will start with plant based "dairy like" products and more legumes.

Why no oysters, if it will make it possible to stop giving them chickens? Chickens are very sentient creatures, and they're raised both in larger numbers, and suffer much more greatly due to a higher degree of human apathy than for cows, for example. Chickens may have smaller brains, but avian brains are more efficient than mammalian brains, so there's more going on in the smaller package -- look at the late Alex the parrot, and compare to other animal with comparable linguistic competence.

Chicken is probably far worse than beef from a moral perspective.

Fish in the very least contains Omega 3, DHA and EPA. Chicken has no redeeming qualities; it's high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and methionine (which is indirectly carcinogenic), among other substances like creatine which become directly carcinogenic when cooked at typical temperatures.

Oysters have the nutritional qualities of fish, but without the sentience (although they also have the common problem of high methionine content, it's the least of evils all around in terms of animal products).

If you just need a token animal product to feed the kids so your wife will not have to justify them being "vegan" to others, oysters would be the best choice.

The things parents teach their children to eat in childhood will affect them their entire lives.

You're absolutely right. I'll start with buying plant based yoghurts. ) And I'll start tomorrow. Thanks for kicking me

That's a good start, I hope you'll also try to eliminate the chicken. Chicken has a false health halo around it, because people use chicken to replace beef which is slightly more unhealthy. Chicken is still pretty bad for you, and there's no benefit to adding chicken to an otherwise balanced vegan diet. Sea food is more of a "grey area" in terms of nutrition.

[Lightningman_42]

Chickens may have smaller brains, but avian brains are more efficient than mammalian brains, so there's more going on in the smaller package -- look at the late Alex the parrot, and compare to other animals with comparable linguistic competence.

What do you mean by "more efficient"? That birds can demonstrate learning capabilities on par with that of mammals who have larger brain-to-bodymass ratios? What explanation of differences in brain structure can account for this?

Fish in the very least contains Omega 3, DHA and EPA. Chicken has no redeeming qualities; it's high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and methionine (which is indirectly carcinogenic), among other substances like creatine which become directly carcinogenic when cooked at typical temperatures.

Indirectly carcinogenic? How so?

[brimstoneSalad]

What do you mean by "more efficient"? That birds can demonstrate learning capabilities on par with that of mammals who have larger brain-to-bodymass ratios?

Brain to bodymass ratios are really not as useful as people think they are. Brain to surface area would probably be more useful.

Larger animals are usually more intelligent than smaller animals regardless of ratios.

There's a certain amount of brain that's need to run a body, and sensory input, and that amount only somewhat increases with larger bodies, but it does not do so linearly.
Larger brains are more efficient at running larger bodies than small brains with small bodies; there are certain subsystems that simply can not be diminished much more.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio

Compare ants and humans. Are ants smarter than you?
Small birds are mostly so high because of their light weights; just having a larger heavier body doesn't necessarily make them stupider.

Beyond that base required level, the rest of the brain can be used for higher level thought.

So, let's say a mouse has 101% of the brain needed to run basic systems - that 1% extra is the grey matter left over for higher level thought.

Let's say an elephant has the same 101%. Same 1% used for higher level thought, but this 1% left over is hundreds of times larger than the mouse because the brain itself is so much larger.

It's about how much extra brain you have, dedicated to high level thought, and this can vary quite a bit, even within animals of the same size and with the same brain to body mass ratios.
Something like echolocation, for example, might be more expensive in terms of sensory processing power than typical hearing.

The proper measurement is closer to somewhere between brain to body mass ratio, and total brain size. But it varies a lot, so it's a really crude measurement. It's probably more useful to compare close relatives, and body mass would be expected to be less important for birds due to the nature of their senses.

But, as I said, avian brains seem to be more efficient, just like avian bones are lighter and hollow. Birds are just more clever than mammals of comparable size (and probably comparable brain size), and exhibit some higher order thought which is often only observed in the most intelligent mammals such as elephants and great apes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_inte ... ry_of_mind

Maybe even more than other great apes (aside from humans).

What explanation of differences in brain structure can account for this?

Good question. I don't think much about brain structure; I look at brains as a black box, and consider behavior. It's not currently very useful in predictive terms to think about structure, because we don't understand it well enough to make claims based on those kinds of observations. That would be the modern equivalent of phrenology.

Indirectly carcinogenic? How so?

Methionine may be fermented into carcinogenic compounds. Also, excess methionine in the body is cancer food.