Don't forget where we came from and what shaped us as a species. The Jungle.

Tfw keeping animals in cages and slaughtering them after 6 months of misery from the comfort of your 21st century life is different from being a feral animal living in the wilderness

Vegans: exist
People like OP: how dare you make your own choices about your own life that don't hurt anyone in any way whatsoever
- The amount of times I hear "yeah, but everyone else is just gonna eat meat anyway."
  Like...okay, fucking and??
- them: excuse me they hurt my feelings

I'm not even vegan, and I find that this meme both grossly misrepresents what veganism is about, and seems mean spirited.

eh, veganism doesn't work for my relatively unique anatomy (if I eat that much fiber I go to the hospital) but were it not for that I'd probably be eating a plant based diet. people tend to know what works for them, and i'm not going to judge them for their dietary choices. Except foie gras.
- Add veal to that list too
  
  you know none of the restaurants i go to serve veal, and i'm not sure whether that's a comment on my poverty or local society saying fuck veal, but either way i had forgotten about it and i think that's great.

does this look natural to u?
- I can side with the vegans that the meat industry needs to be clamped down on hard
  But eating meat in of itself is not wrong, that is what is natural
  
  If you prefer to live a natural life, be my guest. Go ahead, live by your logic as you expect from others. Hunt, kill, and process your own food ;)
  
  There are plenty of things that are 'natural' that are wrong to do, why is eating meat any different?
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
  
  Yes, but most people in the west don't have the option to eat meat that are not from the meat industry.
  That is exactly why veganism is attractive in the west.
  
  Murder and rape are also "natural."
  
  Yo this seems to be a bad take
  I think something that defines humanity is that we really try not to follow the "rules of nature", ie. the rule of the stronger over the weaker
  
  Yeah, I wash shocked to find out that Squirrels hunted and ate smaller mice when they felt the urge.
  
  99% of vegans dont say eating meat in itself is wrong and this bullshit narrative needs to stop
  Edit: I wrote "in itself" to make it especially clear, but it seems people are skipping that part. The act of eating meat can not be evil, carnivorous animals do it for survival. The context is always what matters.
- Pretty horrifying if you let yourself think of it.
- What ever horror humanity has done, we are still holding the beer of invertebrates.
  And yet nature's is is not a justification for aught. The fruit of the tree of wisdom (mythically) gave us empathy that we may live in harmony with neighbors, and in the late game, we have learned the imperative to see value in the fallow wilds.
  A century ago, a vegan diet for humans as extremely difficult, possibly impossible. And to quote Saruman the forests will burn in the fires of industry! And they have.
  We are not a vegan culture today because the food industry focuses on sales and profits, not on nutrition and health.
  Though to be fair our massive land-hungry industrial farms will affect the biomes around them regardless of whether we grow plants or ranch livestock. Veganism is part of a solution towards a more harmonious civilization, but misses several pieces.
  
  What the crap is this response?

\ Nature according to people who use that argument
- Well if the ants can do it, why can't we?
  (Btw, I'm opposed to caged chicken egg cultivation, and even had my own chicken in the past before I couldn't anymore for eggs. Now I just pay the premium and researched which were the most ethical eggs in the store available. Happy hens make better eggs anyway. I'm just pointing out we're not the only ones that raise animals for consumption in nature).
  
  Why would what ants do have relevancy to what we should do?
  
  ants can do it, why can’t we?
  (Btw, I’m opposed to caged chicken egg cultivation
  lol. Classic carnism.
- I invented a fictional society for stories in which you are allowed to buy and consume meat, but only if you have a “carnivore’s medallion”. The only way to obtain one is to have witnesses observe you personally slaughter a living being (eg, a chicken) with no assistance.
  Ideologically, seems like a good way to put friction on meat obsessions and get people to think about it.
  
  Isn't this just hunting?
  
  I like this idea. We're raising chickens and probably rabbits this spring. If you're going to eat meat, you should face the reality of the life you are consuming.
  
  Sounds interesting.
  
  90% alive today would not eat meat if they had to kill. You can grow up used to it of course.
- If they went to live naked in the woods and used their apex predator canines to tear out a deer's jugular, I'm not judging.

As much as I admire the morality and overall health of vegetarian/vegan folks, I would also super respect anyone who got all their protein by monstering whole live mice that they caught by hand.
- I'd support a "you can eat all the meat you can catch and kill with your bare hands" diet.
  
  Our ancestors have been using sharp sticks, heavy sticks, and sharp rocks since they could walk upright, so I’d support that, too.
  
  I’m vegetarian and my partner is vegan but neither of us are strictly against the “hunter and gatherer” approach.
  Where I live traditional hunting is almost nonexistent, but fishing and other ocean-based “hunting” (crabs, crays, oysters etc) is super popular. I’ve considered taking up spearfishing as it’s more intentional than throwing in a hook and dragging up whatever, and requires more (in my opinion) skill and nerve to pull off successfully. But even if I actually caught something the thought of cleaning it puts me off and I’d more than likely ruin it and waste a life for nothing.
  No issues with anyone that can fairly catch and prepare their own meat for themselves, but I’ll stick to my tofu and seitan for now.
  
  Great, now I have to replace all my beef with veal.
- Vegans and vegetarians are not often more healthy than meat eaters. In fact a lot of them subsist mostly on junk food and ultra processed shit.
  I dunno about their morals. For me it depends on whether they are opposed to meat because they think it’s murder (absurd notion: see op) or because they opposed the treatment of living animals in industrial meat farms, which is the real issue.
  
  OP's argument is far more absurd than its strawman.
  
  There is not only a treatment problem, but also that livestock eats a lot of calories that could be used elsewhere
  
  However you gotta justify your choices I guess.

Veganism isn't about respect for nature. It is a philosophy and way of living against animal cruelty and exploitation.
Congratulations on a legit shitpost.
- For me it's 70% about trying to do something about climate crisis and 30% wanting to eat healthier
- Whoosh.
  E: For those downvoting, remember this is a shitpost and some level of inaccuracy is almost required. It's the shit part of the post. Like, c'mon guys...
  
  Vegans have to deal with arguments like this but unironically on the daily. That hits a nerve, wether it's meant as a shitpost or not. Don't take it personally.
  
  Lmao. Look at OPs comments. They actually believe this shit. Based on all the other shitposts they post here and all throughout lemmy, they probably picked it up on reddit or some other trash site, thought it was funny, and came here to share.
  
  Imagine making this literal exact comment under a post about black people committing a bunch of crime
  "Remember this is a shitpost, and some level of inaccuracy is almost required. It's the shit part of the post" under a 13/50 meme

We’re destroying the Amazon for cattle but haha birds eat rodents lmao gottem
- Yeah I like meat but that is a stupid argument unless you hunt all your meals yourself.

I'll take "things actual vegans never say" for $500!
- it's not even a contradiction. One can respect something and not emulate it.
  
  I for one have great respect for the ocean, and the brave people who risk their lives sailing across it. I'm fine here in kansas lol

vegan.bingo
- Where with all the animals if all went vegan now?
  Why are the vegans sounding more like cavemen than the meat-eaters?

I feel like this is the “attack helicopter” joke of veganism
- Isn't that every joke on veganism?

Let the Bullshit Bingo begin!
- Well, the first bullshit here is the word "purely". While they indeed have a mainly vegan diet, they also opportunistically consume insects and even small mammals.
  
  Please fact check before posting, this is scientificaly inaccurate. Yeah they might eat a bug or two, but gorillas normally don't eat other mammals.
- Preach. This is why every Mr. Olympia is filled to the brim, just like non-vegan dudes' wives, with vegans. Boom. Nothing but power and rightness and winning. Bigger, stronger, smarter, righter, and better at internet discourse.
  
  The bit about non-vegans wives fucking sent me, little fucked we (people) joke about adultury as an own tho
- Where with all the animals if all went vegan now?
  Why are the vegans sounding more like cavemen than the meat-eaters?
- The human brain is fueled by about 20% of your caloric intake. We're evolved to be omnivorous. This isn't prescriptive but descriptive. It's going to take development to make vegan food delicious and something we want to eat (and then all the other features we want out of food: cheap, storage-safe, easy to prepare, etc.)
  For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables. Otherwise, we're used to receiving oddly-spiced bland mush from our vegan friends. But we could do better if we were putting billions into it, and not another more-addictive cheeto.
  But we live entrenched in capitalism, so no one is going to take this seriously until we're already dropping dead from natural disasters and famine.
  
  For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables.
  chop brussels sprouts in half, toss with avocado oil with some salt and pepper, and air fry for 15-20 mins. toss some balsamic on em after they're done.
  
  Wow, I asked for the bullshit and you seriously delivered! Not sure if I should take the time to reply to this, because would it even matter?
  One thing, though: Everything you eat is vegan, except for the animal tissue, the milk-stuff and eggs. We don't need capitalism to invest in more vegan meat alternatives, we fight it by eating plant based! No junk, just delicious fruits, nuts, legumes and vegetables, like we always did. It's cheap, great for your body and for our suffering planet as well!
  Omnivores? We were lucky apes who found out that fire kills enough parasites and bacteria that live in meat. Dogs are the real omnivores, pigs are, too. They eat a rotting squirrel if the feel like it! We die if our bleach-cleaned chicken filet wasn't in the freezer for a couple of hours.
  Do you know what elephants and hippos eat all day ... damn, I just started replying.
  
  No idea what you are talking about. I'm not even vegan, but I can make a delicious vegan meal without even trying. All my vegan friends make very tasty food, too. No need for billions.
  
  For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables.
  This is a joke, right? Have you ever tried pasta? Rice? Fruit?
  Edit: ramen, PB&J, Oreos, potatoes
  The skills you need to make vegetables taste good are the same as the skills you need to make meat taste good. I really hope you aren't just, like, boiling chicken breasts and eating them unseasoned
  
  In light of the west's heavily animal-centric diets resulting in most of the top causes of death in these places, it's not exactly accurate to call us omnivores. The centered on whole plant foods our diets are, the better off we are. Animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, at the very least, cannot be consumed without increasing progression and risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Ignoring a host of other harmful effects like cancer and autoimmune disorders, which is more contentious).
  It would be more accurate to say that we are primarily herbivores, but with an incomplete and dangerous emergency system for omnivory.
  
  The human brain is fueled by about 20% of your caloric intake.
  That explains most of shit vegans spread.

Not a vegan, but I don't think I've ever heard a vegan say that. We've all watched nature shows. Rationale is usually a little bit deeper. Overconsumption, abuse of animals in meat/dairy industries, responsibility of humans to aim for a higher level of morality than animals, etc. Sure some go overboard, but I wouldn't underestimate the complexity of the thinking behind it.

I think the problem isn't that we eat meat. It's that we torture the animals and have them live in deplorable conditions before we eat them. If we all hunted or raised our own animals or had the animals live in decent conditions it would be less of an issue for most REASONABLE vegans and vegetarians. I used to be vegan and vegetarian a decade so I get it a bit. I hated it when anyone would bitch about other people's food choices, but then complain when they did the same to them for their food choices. Both sides I mean. I had some non-veggies once they found out I didn't eat meat would attack me for it. When I did start eating meat again some vegans and vegetarians would attack me for it.
- we torture the animals
  don't do that
- I know that the industry is horrific. I have battled internally with becoming a vegan. And this isn't a but, it's just something i thought about once when thinking about the argument that whilst in nature, animals eat other animals, its not the same as what we do as we farma dn torture animals to get the meat....
  Its cats....
  Cats torture their prey....
  They play with it, and maim it and keep it alive for as long as possible so they can chase it, for fun...
  And sometimes they just fucking leave it there when it dies.
  And we love cats. Even vegans love cats.
  And that sort of makes me laugh a bit.
  
  For me, I think the difference is that I have the means and opportunity to reduce (an incredibly minor amount, I know) the suffering of animals everywhere by not eating meat, so I feel somewhat an obligation to do so.
  Whereas a cat does not have the knowledge or information or desire to make that sort of decision making. So I love them anyway...I just don't let them outside so they can't murder every living thing nearby for fun.
  To each his own, that's just my personal impetus to be meat free.
  
  Most of the time, adults don't torture their prey. Kittens aren't born with the ability to hunt, and their instincts need to develop too. So the mom brings home live prey for the kittens to play with. Sometimes adults keep this behaviour.
  
  Well fed house cats that don't need to bother eating their prey and don't necessarily entirely understand hunting will do that.
  I wonder if a wildcat in an environment that had plentiful mice would start to do the same?
- Absolutely, the meat industry needs to be clamped down on hard
  But, there are plenty of vegans who also rail against alternatives like lab grown beef which is still meat but bypasses all the problems with the meat industry of today
  
  If lab grown meat were readily available and affordable, I would switch in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I know for a damn fact I dont have the discipline for veganism, bad as the industry is. Also milk and eggs have to be produced somehow no matter what or the animal dies because we bred them like that millennia ago so like might as well eat those anyway

Humans "i dont rape because i respect other humans". Meanwhile nature ....
And in before "but i need to eat", you dont need to eat animal products. You can have a healthy life with a vegan diet, arguably an even healthier life. And to go back to my original point, just because you need to cum, doesnt mean that you have the right to cause suffering and death to other sentient beings.
Just masturbate. Just go vegan.
- you dont need to eat animal products.
  you don't know what anyone else needs
- But what about my sharp canine teeth? Check mate.
  
  perfect for biting into a nice thick crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside sourdough roll
  
  Look at this carnivore devouring their prey.
  
  I'm not your waiter, and this isn't Australia
  
  Those are to hold on to your victim more tightly
- Telling boys to just go masturbate got us the Immorten Joe's Warboys ^† that are the alt-right, that got Trump into power twice. The boys we told to literally go fuck themselves when they raged over their sexual frustration got us the army of militants and voters behind the white Christian nationalist movement. I was among them in the 1980s, when the society gave a meager few more fucks about them than they do in the twenty-first century.
  I suspect similar movements exist through Europe, which is generally rejecting neoliberalism for fascist-thick movements towards one-party autocracy.
  No, I don't have a solution, and I've been working on it for thirty years. Christianity's proscription against sex (later limited to non-reproductive sex) figures largely into the problem and it's served so far as a sufficient distraction from class consciousness and effective response to industry's effect on climate, and the imminent climate crisis.
  We don't have a way to let our young guys sow their wild oats, while we're careening towards multiple great filters we are unprepared to navigate.
  I know: 🧶📌📇
  Maybe even: 🐰🎩🫖☕
  And yet, very few people think about it, still. Those who do ponder the angry-young-men problem discount them as ineligible or feel they are too repugnant to civilized folk to consider. I've heard otherwise rational content creators actually say (I paraphrase) these guys were mistreated as kids and are now a societal problem. But they suck, so fuck those guys.
  It might be a failing of the human species itself, that we are compelled to cast our young men out the way gorillas cast out their adolescent females (but welcome strange females), and capitalism intentionally only has limited seats where they can pick themselves up, so the system teaches them from the beginning to be aggressive, ruthless and transactional. Not to get completely nihilist, but maybe our capacity for civilization is limited and we just can't overcome the paradigms that served us as migratory bands of hunter-gatherers.
  In the meantime, our boys are taught they suck in our Christianity-heavy abstinence-only sex-ed, ^‡ from which they descend into the incel movement, the manosphere, gamergaters, etc and from there into the transnational white power movement. Our society gave Trump his instant army, and it was ready for him the moment Trump went into politics. And our lack of interest or concern about the new batch of warboys we churn our from the US education system every year, is going to literally kill us all.
  Just go vegan is going to end the same way, especially since the food industry cares not about actual nutrition but profit. Taking a page from Fourth International Posadism, we may have to end capitalism before we can create an ethical food production system (probably incorporating farming invertebrates as well as vegetables), but the problem right now is not what's the end result ( Fully Automated Gay Space Communism ) but how the heck we get there and not crash and burn with the global ecology.
  Totally open to ideas, but I'm not the guy you have to convince.
  † Not to be confused with Warboyz of W4K fame.
  ‡ Twenty six states mandate abstinence-only sex ed, that stuff that teaches girls they are chewing gum, or someother one-use safety-sealed metaphor, and that boys aren't allowed to think about sex until they have a salaried job and a ring. Seriously, this is still what is taught.
  Three states mandate comprehensive sex ed: The west coast. And none of them require discussion of consent. (Some teachers include it anyway, as an elective topic). Of course, if we demanded opt-in consent in our sexual relationships, we might demand opt-in sex in our other contracts as well, say our jobs, our devices, our software, etc.
  
  Ok, I only read the first paragraph, but the poster said that instead of raping, you could masturbate. Are you suggesting that they should go raping instead?
  
  Am I supposed to read more than a sentence of this

There are too many people for us all to hunt our own meat, and the same amount of farmland that can feed x amount of livestock can feed significantly more people than the livestock would.
- Not all crops are created equal.
  Crops intended for livestock are way easier to farm, require less water, less pesticides, less fertilizer, and less taking care of.
  Many times crops intended for livestock are a necessary part of rotatory crops. As they tend to be easier on the land.
  Farming is not as easy as "you can grow anything in any given land".

Non-vegan, hearing that vegans exist: "Hey, these people are different from me! I hate them!"
- It's because the very existence of veganism implies that a) eating animals and the things they produce is harmful and b) you don't need to eat animals or the things they produce. Omnivores have to argue against one or both of those claims, or acknowledge that they're doing something wrong, and humans will commit a lot of evils to convince ourselves that we're not doing anything wrong
  "I'm a good person, good people don't do bad things, therefore nothing I do is bad"
  
  Nah I think most ppl honestly don't care. We don't even care about each other as the western world's entire lifestyle is based on the exploitation of other countries and their ppl.
  You expect someone to suddenly give a damn about a cow 500 miles away?
- "Hey guys, check it out. I jus came up with this HILARIOUS owl-meme!"

Our species were shaped as omnivores, meaning we have a choice of what we want to eat. Don't forget where we don't live anymore: the jungle. Just because we used to live in caves doesn't mean we should live in caves now. Also, they didn't have McDonald's in the jungle.
- excuse me the children yearn for the mines
- First and foremost: You are correct.
  Now allow me to try to be funny: Well... Apartments are just pretty square-ish caves.
  (Note that I said "try to be funny")
  
  After the second world war we also said "never again" but apparently some people missed that memo too.
  My man cave is so much more sophisticated than caves from the stone age. I have cats, instead of mountain lions. I have some paintings on the wall... Oh wait, no, that's not much different. I have central heating instead of a camp fire. And I have to pay a ludicrous amount of rent. So yeah, my cave is much better than ancient caves. I guess...

So we domesticated fire, that's one step out of the swamp and steppes.
Then there was agriculture and animal husbandry, we became sedentary.
Writing developed, accelerating growth in the arts, math and engineering, the sciences... we had domesticated knowledge and memory - data storage.
Before we knew it, the printing press popped up and soon after we domesticated something abstract and invisible, awesome and truly fundamental - electromagnetism. That's is the big game changer right there.
We have figured out our physical place in the universe.
We can image distant supermassive black holes, we have mapped the farthest, faintest reaches of the visible universe using the oldest light there is - the Cosmic Microwave Background (which started out as orange light 13.7 billion years ago).
We are now in the process of harnessing sunlight and the wind; the genome; we can now even perform data operations using quantum superimposed electron states, harnessing the subatomic wave function itself.
Surely we can now domesticate cruelty-free protein chemistry. So many steps away from the swamp and steppes already, so far we can't turn and go back again. What's one more step?
- Next step is extreme longevity IMO. Such a bummer people only have a couple of decades to perfect their skills before it all runs out in the sand.
  Get me a lab grown steak any day though!
  
  Lab grown meat is not getting better nor cheaper since a decade, it's still an ungodly block of stem cells. This is not a political statement, I don't care if people eat lab grown, but it's not there yet and to me, it's off-putting and unnecessary.
  Give plant based alternatives a try, there is already a huge variety that differs in taste and texture. Some are okay, some are great. At the moment, capitalism is stuffing it's pockets with vegan meat money but this stuff is super cheap and easy to make and prices will fall if production numbers go up and there's even more competition. So no need wait! Choose the food that reduces land use, water pollution and co2 emissions by at least 60%.
- Very edgy. Care to elaborate?

This is for real shit post

Hawks eat meat cause they have to. WE eat meat cause it's delicious. The Hawks dies if there are too many Hawks in one feeding ground. The human fucks up his and everyone elses Habitat for centurys cause he's too lazy to change.
- A balanced diet with some meat along with fruits/veg/nuts is the most healthy for most people.
  Vegans can downvote me until the end of time but that doesn't make it less true.

The survival of the fittest narrative was debunked almost as soon as it existed, and that debunking is what forms the ideological basis of mutual aid. That people continue to spread this toxic misinformation over a century later is a testament to the unfortunate tenacity of lies.
Even in the most brutal depths of the natural world, cooperation is still the overarching basis of ecosystem health. It's known in Permaculture, for instance, that too much competition results in resource depletions.
A vegan ethic is inline with a growing awareness and need for us all to learn to expand our capacities of empathy and compassion, from those who are most like us, to those who are most unlike us.
On the topic of wilderness areas, vegans are divided on what the right approaches are. Some of us compare natural biomes to sovereign nations - while we dislike the harms that occur in those places, we feel a need to allow other species their independence to have their self-determination, if for no other reason than the fact that nature is the basis of maintaining a habitable planet, and interference in ecosystems should only be done with the utmost care.
But there are other vegans who do believe strongly that we should be intervening in wild places as well, with the goals of eliminating predation all together, and managing wildlife populations in more ethical ways.
It's a highly contentious topic to be honest.
- "fittest" in "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean strongest or most dominant.
  \ It means "best adapted".
  \ It can be rephrased as "the species most likely to survive are those best adapted to their environment"
  So it wasn't really debunked, per se, the strange perversion of "alpha" survival was debunked. Mutual aid is absolutely an excellent environmental adaptation that leads to survival.
  
  This is a good way of putting it.

Falcons didn't fuck up by inventing tofu, so they have an excuse. We don't.

Some people just don't feel comfortable killing and eating animals. Let people live their own lives.
Anyways, less people eating animal products leads to lower prices for those who do (you).
- Temporarily lower prices. A large consumer base is needed to support the infrastructure that provides meat food products. More people eating more meat will normally produce lower prices in the long-term.
  
  Marginal cost doesn't always decrease. More people buying gold or whatever won't decrease the price of gold. The cheapest way to feed cattle is to just let them graze, but there isn't enough land on Earth for everyone to eat as much beef as Americans, even if using intensive agriculture to grow feed (which degrades the soil over time and results in large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions). I don't think there's enough land on Earth to maintain the current human population for very long. I.e. I think we are in the overshoot phase of a boom and bust population dynamic. Saw this graphic a while back, and it's wild how much of the biomass we've took over:
  
  It may be made up for in quality though, having a smaller consumer base may result in ensuring higher quality meat on average. Perhaps even a situation where lab grown meat is used for things like hamburgers or chicken nuggets.

Imagine being this much of a naive child.
https://kellyjonesnutrition.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/manure-lagoon-1024x608.jpg

Don't forget where we came from and what shaped us as species
Isotopic evidence of high reliance on plant food among Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers at Taforalt, Morocco
- I don't think anyone argues that we should live solely eating meat
  
  I think you have managed to completely change the subject in a single comment.

Killing Humanly

It's way easier for me to have a vegetarian diet when I'm eating at home. At restaurants the vegetarian options almost always contain the one thing I'm allergic to, so I often have no choice but to eat meat when I go out.

The redditization of lemmy.world is finally complete. Congratulations, you have ruined the internet.
- This is a reddit as fuck comment. Just have fun. Goddammit
  
  I'm not having fun.
- it's been Reddit bro. as much as some still wanna deny, it was cut from the very same cloth.

Actually, I believe current thinking is that we came from grassland, hence the advantage of upright walking.
- Depends on how far you go back. Grasslands came after jungles/forests.
  Based on some of our traits (nose shape good for diving, can control our breathing voluntarily, fingers get more grippy when wet, lack of fur), we might have even been semi-aquatic for a while.
  
  Source on the semi-aquatic part? Looking it up only brings up the aquatic ape hypothesis which is pseudoscience.

I’m a vegetarian and also native. Humans have this weird hubris where they think they’re not part of the natural world. Humans are designed to be omnivores, meat jumpstarted our evolution. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with eating meat, but what’s wrong is the ease and disregard for meat and the animals that provide it through the factory farming industry.
But at the end of the day there’s no more wrong with a person eating meat, than with that Hawk eating a mouse. We’re part of the circle. We just have the privilege to live in a time and place where not eating meat is a realistic choice
- Humans are part of nature, but what call nature is the mostly well balanced group of ecosystems and food chains. Humans turned nature into a devilish food machine. There's very few animals that hunt and kill for pleasure the way humans do, and even then the vast majority of humans could never kill an animal. So we pay someone else to do it. Killing meat for pleasure is evil, buying it at the supermarket is both evil and cowardly.

Except its scientifically proven, that our possibility tonevolve was Not from Hunting, but agricultural Farming. But great Shitpost
- Modern humans are around 300.000 years old .... we've only been farming for 10.000 years. Doesn't quite add up.
- No it wasn't.
  Otherwise humans wouldn't have been smart enough to figure out farming in the first place.
  Also humans were already humans when farming was invented. We're not pokemon.
  
  the first crop was rare candy and evolution stones
  
  Don't fucking tell me what I can and can not be!
  With the power of friendship I will finally become a Glurak (also screw English Pokémon names)
- That's not how evolution works. Evolution doesn't have a plan, it doesn't wait, or speed up. Evolution just happens and our human ancestors would have continued to evolve regardless of agriculture. The path that evolution takes could have been very different but it would have happened. The human species is still evolving and will continue to do so until it's extinction.
  
  Nope, there is the Evolution aspect of physique, that you are referring to, but there is also the socio economic aspect. As linked in the other Response: https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/College_of_the_Canyons/Anthro_101%3A_Physical_Anthropology/12%3A_Homo_sapiens_our_History_and_our_Future/12.4%3A_Agriculture_and_its_Effect_on_Humans
  Agriculture allowed us to stay in one place, changing the shape of the Landscape, fitting it to our needs, Form larger Packs of Peoples because of sustainable food income, therefore forming societies and developing introcate communicatio Mechanisms, growing large (ready efficienter) brains for that purpose because we could expedite more energy to it. Without agriculture, we would still roam the World in Hunter & Gatherer Fashion, Not having so much of a society and would still be dump as bricks because our whole thought Processes and physique would be targeted towards Hunting and gathering.
  Yes, Evolution does Not have a plan, but it does Not Happen spontaneously, AS the environment selects against unfavorable traits (and genes thereof) and towards favorable ones by breeding. If you have a better Chance If survival, you have a longer life and more chances of passing your expressed traits (by the means of genes) by means of breeding tothe next Generation.
- It was fire ya dingus.
  Fire allowed us to cook our food, making us die less from pathogens and bacteria AND making more food digestible. ESPECIALLY meat.
  Agriculture was what provided our exponential expansion.
  You can’t just say “it’s scientifically proven” and make it so.
  
  Except that all Species of Human Like apes Had that - homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, homo erectus etc. What US AS Homo Sapiens Sets US apart is agriculture: https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/College_of_the_Canyons/Anthro_101%3A_Physical_Anthropology/12%3A_Homo_sapiens_our_History_and_our_Future/12.4%3A_Agriculture_and_its_Effect_on_Humans
  It allowed is to stay in one place, developing it instead of living nomadic Livestyles in Hunter & Gatherer Fashion.
  Before insulting someone on a discussion Platform, you should consider the possibility of checking their Claims yourself First.

And the angel of the lord came unto me Snatching me up from my place of slumber And took me on high and higher still Until we moved to the spaces betwixt the air itself And he brought me into a vast farmlands of our own Midwest And as we descended cries of impending doom rose from the soil One thousand nay a million voices full of fear And terror possessed me then And I begged Angel of the Lord what are these tortured screams? And the angel said unto me These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots! You see, Reverend Maynard Tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust And I sprang from my slumber drenched in sweat Like the tears of one million terrified brothers and roared "Hear me now, I have seen the light! They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers!
- The first time I ever heard this was the night that album released. Lived in a house in Cape Coral Florida with a bandmate, and a few members of another local band as roommates.
  I think the other band’s drummer had gotten it earlier that day. Anyway… later that night, we pretty solidly cooked and listening to it, and when the album ended, no one wanted to get up and start it over or put on something else… so we all just sort of quietly sat there.
  And then, after a looooong silence, we heard this….
  I swear to god- no one moved an inch, no one said a word. We were absolutely floored! What the hell were we hearing! Visions of a white haired Amish preacher, glasses swinging from a chain, as he stomped through a farm plot, yelling at us….
  Needless to say… Minds were blown that night.
  Such a good memory!
  
  I was sitting around stoned out of my gourd with a coworker (pizza delivery). We were listening to music with the stereo way up and he played this album. He was watching me when it started, kept a straight face through it, died laughing when it got to rabbits wearing glasses. Damn, that's a good memory.

I read The Jungle in highschool. Not good book about food.

Ah yes, the anti-vegan. Nearly as annoying as the vegan.
I have the same advice for you as I have for vegans: let people eat what they want to eat, mind your business, and keep your preferences to yourself unless you're asked.
That said there is some irony here because you're framing this as unreasonable, but we do this all the time with other humans. As an outsider you should treat members of a group differently than they treat each other - unless you're saying white people should be allowed to drop N bombs lol
- I have the same advice for you as I have for vegans: let people eat what they want to eat, mind your business, and keep your preferences to yourself unless you're asked.
  It seems you fundamentally misunderstand what veganism is
  
  I can't tell if this is tongue in cheek or not.
  In case not, you can be secretly vegan, you don't have to get up in people's business about it. You can just privately adjust your own diet

I had thought that veganism was more of a beliefs thing: to not eat products of exploitation, but then I heard the honey thing. The honey thing might be just from an overbearing vegan, or I just don't know the details, but beekeeping just looks so peaceful
- OTOL honey thing?
  
  Oh, you haven't heard about "bee enslavers"? 🤣
  
  AFAIK many (?, please correct) vegans don't eat honey, and that's consistent with most of the people I know IRL. It tends to sway between "I try not to eat animal products" and "harvesting honey hurts/exploits bees", the latter of which may be true for industry-scale honey, but I don't see why local honey isn't an option

Oh wow OP, I didn't know you were a hunter!
Or are you just a sweaty fatso that posts trash boomer memes and gets meat delivered and wrapped in plastic?
Yeah, thought so.
- Aww someone got their fefes hurt in c/shitpost lol, lmao even
  
  Who, you? Because I called you a fatso?

nom

So, after reading a lot of the comments, I figured I’d offer my two cents:
What I eat depends on what I feel I need at the moment a lot more than what I’m in the mood for. And because of this, I try to eat as healthily as possible and as a result- it usually ends up being on the vegetarian side of things. Think pastas, fruits/veggies, etc. Occasionally though, it’s a burger, or something else that is meat-based.
What I don’t do however, is spend any time at all being concerned with what others choose to eat, and that is because it has no relevance to me whatsoever.
For the life of me I cannot understand why this is a thing that matters so deeply to so many people when there are FAR more important things to worry about.
If vegans don’t want to eat meat, who cares? They are happy living their life this way. Leave them alone about it. It’s their choice, their diet- and none of your business.
If someone wants to eat a steak, who cares? They are happy living their life this way. Leave them alone about it. It’s their choice, their diet- and none of your business.
The sooner we all stop actively participating in the habits and interests of others unsolicited, the sooner we can start taking on some of the things that actually matter.
/rant.
EDIT: Realizing now the mistake one makes when trying to remain neutral in a discussion where vegans are involved. I really tried to be neutrally supportive of one’s dietary choices, and I remain so, but man… these few people are making it difficult to not see how people can find them obnoxious.
I’m sorry I really didn’t want to be made to feel this way for having tried to make a civil statement of opinion.
- Not vegan, but to play the vegan’s advocate—vegans are acutely aware of the level of cruelty in the factory farm system, as well as it's affect on the environment and don’t want to partake in those systems of harm and taking without consent. To them, it’s not just a dietary choice but an ethical stance against suffering and exploitation. To someone who sees the life of a cow as just as sacred and important as a human's, you can imagine why it would upset them to see you eating a steak. Just like you might be upset if you saw someone eating a dog or a fellow human. To them there's no difference.
  It’s similar to how evangelical Christians genuinely believe they’re trying to save people from eternal damnation when they get preachy. Just as annoying. The difference is that one is rooted in observable reality—documented animal suffering, environmental damage, and ethical concerns—while the other is a matter of 'faith.' and the latter is given a lot more leeway. So when vegans speak out, it’s not necessarily about policing your diet; it’s about trying to reduce harm in a world where harm is often hidden or normalized. And for what it's worth I have known a lot of vegans and not one of them was ever preachy or judgemental, in fact most tend to keep it to themselves because vegans are so often the subject of ridicule, the butt of played out jokes, or made to host a session of 20 questions and feigned health concerns from people who eat nothing but processed meat and carbs.
  I believe everyone should be able to do and live as they want as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else's ability to do the same, and I can fully understand how to a vegan someone eating a steak would break that rule.
  
  And if a vegan wants to help that by abstaining from animal-based products, that’s awesome for them, a great and healthy thing to do, and I wholeheartedly support it! But they don’t need to be telling others that they must do it also.
  They have make the effort to put the info out there, and did their part by staying true to their own beliefs, and it should stop there. They shouldn’t be getting involved in the decisions others make on what to eat or what to buy any more than anyone should be telling them they are wrong for their vegan ideology.
  That’s all I’m saying.
  I will not debate the moral implications as that is not relevant to the point I’m making and is a different discussion altogether.
- What omnivores eat should actually matter to vegans because theyre responsible for stress and suffering, which many see as their moral obligation to oppose. Funny how its mostly the other way around.
  Imagine people going around raging about how you dont beat your wife and kids or dont rape and kill children.
  
  Also the environmental impacts. I don't own a huge polluting coal powerplant that is actively contributing to fucking up the planet that I live on, and I'm still allowed to criticise them for it. Why should the meat industry be any different?
  
  As I already stated, I’m not getting baited into a morality debate.
  If you don’t like eating meat- don’t eat it, but leave others alone about. It’s not your business what they choose to eat.
  And WTF? This has nothing to do with beating kids, or raping children, and I don’t appreciate the disgusting false equivalency you feel you need to use in order to make a point.
  So instead, here’s an actual equivalency:
  Imagine people going around and telling you that you have to do something you don’t want to do because of their belief. Like for instance….
  forced birth.
  You are actually telling people what they should or should not do, based on how you morally feel about something.
  What I’m suggesting, is simply a dietary version of pro choice. You should be free to eat how you feel you need to in order to satisfy your needs, as well as your moral code- provided it remains within the limits of the law. EVERYONE should have this freedom. Even if you or I don’t like it.
  So maybe leave people alone about it and put that energy towards something that has a better chance of success
- If someone wants to eat a steak, who cares?
  The cow
  Realizing now the mistake one makes when trying to remain neutral in a discussion where vegans are involved.
  "Realizing now the mistake one makes when trying to remain neutral in a discussion where abolitionists are involved" ~ someone in 1850s Kansas, trying to remain neutral in a discussion about slavery and complaining about those damn abolitionists who can't see the nuance in owning people
  
  inb4 some room temperature IQ replies with "are you really equating eating meat with slavery?"
  No, slavery is worse than animal agriculture. That doesn't mean that animal agriculture isn't wrong for the same reasons that slavery is. You're driving a demand for unnecessary harm to be done to sentient beings for a product you don't need to survive.
  
  Well, here’s how it is, and I offer no apologies that you don’t like it:
  You say the cow cares? I say the cow never asked for your advocacy. And we both know you cannot prove it has. So, in reality, it’s easily just as safe to assume that the cow never asked for your support as it would be to assume they did. And it’s also safe to assume they are entirely clueless about the concept of meat consumption, and even if they were, they’d be entirely indifferent to it because they lack the ability to conceive even the slightest notion of their own mortality- because they’re cows.
  Look… People love to install human emotions and complex thought processes in everything we see. Up to and including inanimate object. It’s how we can connect with the world around us. If it feels what we feel, we can understand it better.
  It’s a cow. It doesn’t think about shit. It has a natural preservation of life because that is built into survival instinct because that is part of how propagation of species works.
  And no one asked your opinion on the moral responsibility of consuming meat either. You just offer it. So when I say that people should butt-out of others legal decisions regarding dietary habits- it’s shit like what you’re song here that illustrates my point.
  What someone wants to eat, provided it is legal- is only considered to be your business to you and you alone- not to them. So your opinions of their consumption of cheeseburgers is every bit as important to an omnivore as the opinions of Christian fundamentalists are to the LGBTQ.
  They don’t care.
  Done arguing this. It’s obnoxious and a waste of time to bother. The only lesson learned here is a neutral stance doesn’t exist in a discussion with vegans.
  Mistake only made once. Trust me.

Where we came from is less important than where we are going. The problems with veganism are not that they don't eat animals, in fact I don't think the problem is with veganism at all but with moral imperatives in general that promote black and white, oppositional political positioning. But moral imperatives are one of the most popular and effective rhetorical methods to make a point (and split opposition) so we are just kind of raised in it. If you're someone who has strong opinions you learn to express them in a certain way.
But veganism is good, but primitivist "return to nature" types have a dubious track record aka they tend to be chuds or on their way to chuddening. "Retvrn to the past" is a conservative talking point, but what separates us from nature is capitalism, not veganism.
- Veganism is not return to nature. Quite the opposite. And it's definitely not a return to the past. Veganism is a modern view of society where we look at the possibilities we have today, granted to us by technology and science, and decide to spare the lives of animals. We have a surplus of food and supplements that makes meat consumption less healthy, efficient and ethical than plant based. It's was virtually impossible to do be 100% plant based 100 years ago in full health.
  
  Wait that isn't what I meant at all, I was contrasting the "return to nature" view with the vegan view.
  I tried editing for clarity

Plants can cry/scream. Checkmate, plant eaters.
- So does my phone when the battery is low. Do you reckon I'm hurting it by not plugging it in right now?
  
  Your analogy basically boils down to Descartes' hypothesis about "animal machines".
  There is a legitimate debate to be had about about the spectrum of consciousness/awareness and where it apparently stops. Most people would agree that mammals and birds are on it. I've seen the need for a central nervous system seen pop up a lot, but there is also octopuses, which are highly intelligent without having one. You can even find something that I can only describe as "intelligence" and a decent level of awarness in spiders, best example being the genus Portia. So where does the spectrum really end?
  Some plants are capable of some impressive actions, like beansprouts systematically moving and "searching" for stuff to grab on, a lot of plants use pheremonal communications to warn each others of predators ... there is good stuff here. So are the just totally off the spectrum of awareness and purley operating on a mechanical level, like a phone? I'm not sure.
  The point is, we don't really know what consciousness is. And while this video is quite dated, I'm not aware of a better take (though it doesn't really do much in practice).

Watch out the one vegan with the finger strength left to press the downvote button is gonna come for you.
- Meanwhile, the weakest vegan in the comments
  
  linking to instagram is uniquely weak
- And another one will report his post. They are surprisingly oversensitive 😂
  
  I dated one for over a year. Mentally unstable that lot. I think the whole time she was introducing me to people I only met like two vegans that I would have considered mentally sound.

Don't get all logical, their heads may explode.
- OP's argument is a fallacy so common it has a formal name. But I don't want to get "all logical" and put anyone's scalp at risk.
  
  Which fallacy are you talking about in this case? Like that consciously choosing not to eat meat as an individual does not mean being against all meat consumption?