Lifestyle Eating Animals

What best describes you?

  • I eat meat and I think there are no problems with doing so

    Votes: 166 54.8%
  • I eat meat but I have some moral reservations about doing so

    Votes: 103 34.0%
  • I don't eat meat but I don't mind others doing so

    Votes: 30 9.9%
  • I don't eat meat and I consider it my own moral duty to implore others to reconsider

    Votes: 4 1.3%

  • Total voters
    303
I'm a vegetarian who is strongly leaning to veganism.

Personally, I don't miss meat at all. Just the thought of eating an animal just feels wrong to me.

If others eat it in my presence, I don't like it, but I won't call them out. It's up to everyone to make decisions about this on their own. I don't want to push my beliefs down other people's throats.
 

S1nn0hC0nfirm3d

aka Ho3nConfirm3d
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a defending SCL Champion
Vegetarian gang!

Also why do some people think vegetarians eat fish? Like I got served some fish once because I was vegetarian. That was a fun one... Also, I haven't always been a vegetarian! I actually stopped stopped eating meat for good in January 2020. Before then, though, I'd eat chicken maybe once a month or once every two months.

My mother is a vegetarian, while my father eats chicken, mutton, and seafood. We also don't cook meat at home. I also just didn't like chicken, so switching to being vegetarian wasn't a big deal for me. It wasn't because of ethical concerns and stuff either. I just don't like meat.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure its a Catholic tradition. Catholics couldn't eat meat during Lent, and nowadays they still can't on Fridays (least that's how I was raised). However, meat was a big staple for nutrition and calories back in the middle ages, so having no meat in their diets was a lot harder to pull off then than it is now.

So, with both that and cravings in mind, the church came up with a lot of different excuses to eat meat without it actually being called "meat." Fish was the big one, where they thought the flesh of fish was something completely different than the flesh of land animals, and thus could be eaten during Lent. It went even more insane to include stuff like beavers and barnacle geese as "fish," despite it making not too much sense in the least other than that they came from the water...?

But anyways, fish meat not being real meat is a Catholic tradition I'm pretty sure.
 
Listened to Joe Rogan's podcast with Paul Saldino (aka CarnivoreMD) on my way home from school and thought it was very interesting. I only got through about 2 hours of it but the topic has always been interesting to me. It's mainly about different foods and their effects on our bodies, diets throughout history, and ultimately revolves around Paul Saldino's carnivore diet and why he's made a lot of the choices he has.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=joe+rogan+saldino
https://open.spotify.com/episode/38aFwbmJSYCezCcAVHbWk0?si=mjRcXV73R-OBOpRbG3X5Kw
 

Empress

33% coffee / 33% alcohol / 34% estrogen
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On one hand, it's perfectly reasonable to have reservations about eating another living being. But on the other hand, some animals are simply at the top of the food chain, and humans are no exception. For me, if the animal was hunted in the wild, or if it was raised and slaughtered properly, I don't have a problem with it.

That's the ethical side, though. As for the environmental side, I have a lot of research to do, it seems...
 
But on the other hand, some animals are simply at the top of the food chain, and humans are no exception.
The fact that we humans can reason morally should make us the exception. Animals can't fully grasp that their roles in the food chain inflict huge suffering; humans can. Animals can't feasibly choose to reduce that suffering by changing their diets; humans can.

The part of your post I quoted is essentially a "might makes right" argument. I think you'd agree that it's wrong to harm weaker people just because we're stronger, and therefore are able to harm them. Since animals feel, shouldn't we also apply this standard when we interact with them?

If we perpetuate the suffering that comes from our role in the food chain, we choose to treat humans more like animals. But if we refuse to cause that suffering, we choose to treat animals more like humans.
 
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The fact that we humans can reason morally should make us the exception. Animals can't fully grasp that their roles in the food chain inflict huge suffering; humans can. Animals can't feasibly choose to reduce that suffering by changing their diets; humans can.

The part of your post I quoted is essentially a "might makes right" argument. I think you'd agree that it's wrong to harm weaker people just because we're stronger, and therefore are able to harm them. Since animals feel, shouldn't we also apply this standard when we interact with them?

If we perpetuate the suffering that comes from our role in the food chain, we choose to treat humans more like animals. But if we reject that suffering, we choose to treat animals more like humans.
We're not all going to be able/want/need to change our diets to reduce the suffering of animals. Obviously large scale factory-style farming is not the humane way of preparing meat for consumers, but when a country like the United States has such a high demand for it, it's difficult to drop it. We should be trying to establish more regenerative/sustainable farms for the animals' sake (and other environmental factors too) but I'm not certain whether it is entirely possible right now to shift away from meat as much as some people think we should.
 
We're not all going to be able/want/need to change our diets to reduce the suffering of animals.
I think we do need to for the reasons I gave above. I realize that many people don't want to, and that people in some developing countries with harsh environments might not be able to. But that doesn't change what most of us should be doing.

when a country like the United States has such a high demand for it, it's difficult to drop it.
It was difficult for agrarian economies to drop the use of slave labor, but they did. When pressured enough to change, even a society's most deeply rooted practices can eventually be abolished.

I'm not certain whether it is entirely possible right now to shift away from meat as much as some people think we should.
Not knowing whether something is possible is no reason not to attempt it. If it was, we would never have developed flight, the internet, or most other great inventions or reforms.


I know my points might seem idealistic. But I do think that slowly, society is moving away from killing animals for food unnecessarily. I'm even more convinced that it's a cause worth striving for.
 
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It was difficult for agrarian economies to drop the use of slave labor, but they did. When pressured enough to change, even a society's most deeply rooted practices can eventually be abolished.

Not knowing whether something is possible is no reason not to attempt it. If it was, we would never have developed flight, the internet, or most other great inventions or reforms.
Not gonna give you my full response here to prevent the thread from devolving, but you can't compare human slavery to killing animals that are raised to die. Even if animals are sentient, I just can not agree that the two are equal.

You also can't compare eliminating the farming of animals for human consumption to any of those things. One is developing something that is yet to exist, while the other is eliminating something that is already established and plays a large role in society already.
 
Not gonna give you my full response here to prevent the thread from devolving, but you can't compare human slavery to killing animals that are raised to die. Even if animals are sentient, I just can not agree that the two are equal.
I think you've misconstrued my example, since I wasn't equating the severity of human slavery with that of slaughtering animals. I was using the institution of slavery as an example of something that seemed ineradicable because of how ingrained in society it was, but was nevertheless eventually ended.

Happy to continue this discussion in PMs.
 
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BP

Beers and Steers
is a Contributor to Smogon
Sorry for the bump but as of today I've decided to go back to eating meat. I've been on a pescstarian diet ever since last Christmas with one slip up while I was blacked out drunk in March.

The reason why I've decided to go back is because of my constant lifting and such. I thought the Pescatarianism would help me lean out and do something for my endurance lifts. It's done the exact opposite and it's hurt me physically and mentally. It has caused a regression in the past year or so. It's hurt my energy levels, max lifts, and overall workout routine. I've decided it's time to change and go back to my omnivore diet. I'll give it 5 months and see if it helps my lifts. I haven't devised a backup plan yet but I all goes well in the weight room.

If you have further questions let just reply and I'll answer them accordingly. I didn't feel like making a whole new thread since this one already existed. Hopefully I can provide first hand insight.
 
If moderation is the underlying principle in personal diet decisions, then I don't think eating meat is necessarily a problem.

That being said, the basic pre-cooking requirements of having to:

1. hunt, trap or raise an animal -> 2. slaughter it -> 3. dress, clean and butcher it

are almost completely removed from modern society, to the point where human consumption of other animals has been reduced to purchasing prepackaged, precut meat in glorified snack form, as a commodity. That's assuming you even bother to cook it yourself. The convenience promotes excess; and the excess breeds indifference towards the animal that was killed.

Meat is, for humans, some of the most nutrient-rich food available; in leaner periods of human history no one held any obfuscations regarding this as it was not necessarily easy to procure and was also first food to disappear in times of economic hardship. You waited to slaughter the lamb for Easter, or whatever.

That being said, unless you're a cage fighter or something you're not going to need exceptionally high amounts of animal protein to function. Sitting around eating red meat every day means may very well kill you in a few decades when the prostate cancer comes; on the other hand curbing gratuitous animal consumption makes you physically healthier, reduces the overall economic impetus to construct more human-shaped food-raising ecologies, and doesn't place you on some mental island where you can't fathom the situation of people who barely have even staple crops to eat. None of that means you have to suspend meat from the human diet, though.

Bring on the lab grown meat I say

I don't trust that lab grown meat stuff because A. it just assumes that we should maintain our current hyper-inflated levels of meat consumption and B. is the apex of transforming animal flesh into a commodity- boring, unnatural and divorced from life.

It's all first-world fine tuning in the end, I suppose. Herding societies like in central Asia who completely rely on animal protein and dairy are fine with me, though the diet may not be particularly the healthiest. Personally I have no problems with vegans or vegetarians either, unless it comes from too much of an anthrocentric place. Appetite cannot be dictated solely through intent- and that's my philosophical closer to these thoughts.
 
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Happy carnivore here. I do have some moral issues re: Factory farming conditions and environmental impact, but the act of eating meat itself is just nature (also, delicious). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Since I'm wanting to try veganism in the future I decided to try some vegan snacks, since that's what I do most of the time during the day, and I can't imagine vegan meals are too hard to come up with. I envision myself eating pasta, soup/stew, big salads, and potato stuff most of the time, but I'm just uncreative.

First I tried something called a "no cow" bar...and I honestly hated it. But then i tried a Good To Go bar and I actually really like it. It's a different experience than dairy chocolate, but I really like the Brownie/Cake texturing, and the flavor is pretty nice too. I also got some Pig Out Pork rinds (I really love that pun) and some Avocado chips, which aren't the only vegan chips (I'm pretty sure Lays potato chips are vegan anyway) but I wanted to try it anyway

ETA: The Pigless Pork Rinds (at that point what are they? just rinds? what's a rind) are delicious. I think it helps I've never had Pork Rinds before so I'm not trying to compare it to anything, they just taste good.

Any other good vegan snacks anyone can suggest?
 
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Fishy

tits McGee (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)
i think when biology has given you teeth meant to rip through meat and grind through grain, attempting to deny that and live alternatively is a bit silly

also, i'm not sure it's valid to contest meat-eating within animals by saying that if they were more intelligent, they would have the capacity to stop causing suffering. nature is vicious and chaotic, not because anyone is trying to hurt someone's feelings, but because nature is vicious and chaotic

i think meat should either become insanely expensive or we keep creating protein alternatives--using animals as a food source seems the least barbaric of all the ways animals are abused. not all cosmetic companies are cruelty free, and so many people obtain pets which end up abused. i think we should respect our meat more, honor it before consumption maybe, but i can't see myself ever living without it. as someone who struggles to eat sometimes because my palate becomes randomly revulsed, i rely on a classic hamburger or something to satiate me.

protein is a fundamental core of our bodies, there are alternative ways of obtaining it but perhaps human intelligence has muddled the morality of it past the point of no return, for better or for worse
 
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure its a Catholic tradition. Catholics couldn't eat meat during Lent, and nowadays they still can't on Fridays (least that's how I was raised). However, meat was a big staple for nutrition and calories back in the middle ages, so having no meat in their diets was a lot harder to pull off then than it is now.

So, with both that and cravings in mind, the church came up with a lot of different excuses to eat meat without it actually being called "meat." Fish was the big one, where they thought the flesh of fish was something completely different than the flesh of land animals, and thus could be eaten during Lent. It went even more insane to include stuff like beavers and barnacle geese as "fish," despite it making not too much sense in the least other than that they came from the water...?

But anyways, fish meat not being real meat is a Catholic tradition I'm pretty sure.
So the reason I heard for beaver being considered fish, was when the French-Canadian trappers (French people being almost entirely Catholics) went out trapping, they needed food that could be made into jerky easily, and what-do-you-know Beaver works great for that, and they'd have alot of that. So it was more of a dispensation kinda thing.

As for the actual subject of the thread, I'm totally not vegan or vegetarian, and never will be until either eating meat gets way too expensive OR becomes illegal.
 

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