How to start being a vegan?

[Xirrohon]

I'm well aware of that, but did you read my post? There are several categories to chose from, hell since the topic became more and more relevant over the years you can even buy eggs from a local farmer (my little farm style). What's wrong with just going with that then?

First off, your farm style would not be sustainable. Secondly, eggs are full of cholesterol which contributes to heart disease, which is the number one cause of death.

[Gheld]

First off, your farm style would not be sustainable. Secondly, eggs are full of cholesterol which contributes to heart disease, which is the number one cause of death.

Oh my god. Can we please stahp this myth already?

Cholesterol is great, wonderful, and an essential part of life. It's a substance from which your body can build anything it needs to sustain or repair itself. It's the carrier proteins of cholesterol that potentially cause trouble. High cholesterol is caused by heart disease not the other way around. High counts of LDL vs. HDL are what is linked to heart disease.

And studies show that diets high in both cholesterol and saturated fats actually improve your HDL count. Not to mention your liver reduces it's own cholesterol production in response to increased dietary cholesterol. So eating cholesterol doesn't even necessarily cause high cholesterol count in the first place.

Sugars, starches, and monounsaturated fats are what cause high LDL ratios. aka a fucking vegan diet.

[Queen of Hamsters]

3% of the American population identifies as vegan. There's no way in hell you've seen more unhealthy vegans than unhealthy meat eaters.

Because everyone's an American, right? Veganism is pretty big in my SWEDISH city since we have tons of university students and artsy fartsy folk flocking here. Or at least it used to be, I left that world long ago.

[Malacrass]

First off, your farm style would not be sustainable. Secondly, eggs are full of cholesterol which contributes to heart disease, which is the number one cause of death.

Maybe it won't sustain everyone on the planet with eggs, but this thread is about the individual consumer and currently you can easily sustain yourself with farm style eggs if you want to. They cost twice as much, but yeah.

As the for cholesterol thing, I've read about that too, but every other year the opinion on that changes. I could grab you a dozen different articles claiming either your point, the opposite, or something inbetween ("only dangerous if you suffer from diabetes etc...").

[HumbleDuck]

Ignore all the stupidity in the comments, go vegan man.
Human beings have been vegans for a very very long time, and human body is best suited to digest veggies.
BUT don't forget variety. You should take a lot of veggies, different types in a rather higher frequency than a non vegan diet would suggest.

[Bodakane]

I'm well aware of that, but did you read my post? There are several categories to chose from, hell since the topic became more and more relevant over the years you can even buy eggs from a local farmer (my little farm style). What's wrong with just going with that then?

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...acked-up-to-be

Because its mostly a lie and when it isn't, its such a small percentage that its virtually pointless. Also, I know of not one single person who uses small farm "ethical" eggs that doesn't take time or care to make sure they aren't buying other things that are egg free form restaurants and stores.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Ignore all the stupidity in the comments, go vegan man.
Human beings have been vegans for a very very long time, and human body is best suited to digest veggies.
BUT don't forget variety. You should take a lot of veggies, different types in a rather higher frequency than a non vegan diet would suggest.

Oh, so now it's "natural vegan"? Before it was "natural vegetarian" and throughout it all, "natural OMNIVORE" keeps showing up. What with our ancestors being HUNTER gatherers...

https://www.vrg.org/nutshell/omni.htm

Humans are classic examples of omnivores in all relevant anatomical traits. There is no basis in anatomy or physiology for the assumption that humans are pre-adapted to the vegetarian diet. For that reason, the best arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical, and health concerns.

[Deleted]

It's called HERBIVORE.

[HumbleDuck]

Oh, so now it's "natural vegan"? Before it was "natural vegetarian" and throughout it all, "natural OMNIVORE" keeps showing up. What with our ancestors being HUNTER gatherers...

https://www.vrg.org/nutshell/omni.htm

Humans are classic examples of omnivores in all relevant anatomical traits. There is no basis in anatomy or physiology for the assumption that humans are pre-adapted to the vegetarian diet. For that reason, the best arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical, and health concerns.

Are you really suggesting that being an omnivore isnt an evolutionary step?

[Deleted]

Gotta love the stupid replies, why would you insult someone trying to not eat animals?

I'm trying to get more vegan/vegetalian meals, although I doubt I ever will stop eating meat, just look around for some recipies. I made a really badass tasting vegan meal the other day, the recipe is in french, but it's basically tofu, bell peppers, onions and a home-made BBQ sauce (Chili+Honey+Garlic+Hot sauce), it was delicious.

So just look over the net, make sure you always get enough protein, vary what you eat, and just research some more.

Other meals I'd like to try would be tofu burger/black bean burger, black beans burritos, something with chickpeas...

Honey is not vegan or so my vegan son says.

[I Push Buttons]

I enjoy how a lot of posts in this thread argue that just because we are able to eat meat doesn't mean its good for us or that we should...

Whilst advocating a diet that requires you to take supplements in order to survive because the diet contains very few of the vitamins and minerals a human (omnivore) needs and will literally kill you otherwise.

[saltytoes718]

Yea, we live in such a moderate society. Where Heart Disease is the number one killer. Where diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate. Where obesity is at an all time high and is expected to get to 60% of the world population in less than a decade. Such a good and healthy society we are making here.

If you knew ANYTHING about nutrition you would see that modern science has concluded that most modern coronary diseases, high cholesterol and diabetes is more closely related to sugar and processed white flower products such as pastries, cake and donuts NOT MEAT.

[Xirrohon]

If you knew ANYTHING about nutrition you would see that modern science has concluded that most modern coronary diseases, high cholesterol and diabetes is more closely related to sugar and processed white flower products such as pastries, cake and donuts NOT MEAT.

Youre an idiot

You know that they have been curing diabetes and heart disease with plant based (starch based) diets for years right? Look up Walter Kempner. He basically financed Duke University with his studies. Youre just regurgitating some garbage you read in Mens Health, Maxim or WebMD.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh my god. Can we please stahp this myth already?

Cholesterol is great, wonderful, and an essential part of life. It's a substance from which your body can build anything it needs to sustain or repair itself. It's the carrier proteins of cholesterol that potentially cause trouble. High cholesterol is caused by heart disease not the other way around. High counts of LDL vs. HDL are what is linked to heart disease.

And studies show that diets high in both cholesterol and saturated fats actually improve your HDL count. Not to mention your liver reduces it's own cholesterol production in response to increased dietary cholesterol. So eating cholesterol doesn't even necessarily cause high cholesterol count in the first place.

Sugars, starches, and monounsaturated fats are what cause high LDL ratios. aka a fucking vegan diet.

You must get your information from studies funded by the Egg industry. Please look at unbiased studies.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

As if being vegan would automatically lead to malnutrition.

It's been confirmed through many studies that a regular diet and vegan diet is just as healthy if they both watched their intake of food as much as the vegetarian HAS to do. The main reason why a "non vegan" diet is less healthy is because it's not required to watch what you eat as closely where as a vegetarian will need to watch their food intake to ensure that they get the proteins and such they need.
In other words there's no benefits to going pure vegan, the only proven benefit is to watch what you eat more carefully...

- - - Updated - - -

If you knew ANYTHING about nutrition you would see that modern science has concluded that most modern coronary diseases, high cholesterol and diabetes is more closely related to sugar and processed white flower products such as pastries, cake and donuts NOT MEAT.

It's both actually, Japan and south-east Asia is a prime example of what happens with economical growth. Before the 1980s and 1990s most of south-east Asia was still a developing economic culture, most people were farmers and ate more vegetables than they do now. However since the economic boost in the late 1990s there's been an increase to obesity and lifestyle diseases and it's been directly linked to the economic growth. Meat is expensive, more money = more meat and processed foods.
Like I said in a previous post: There's no proven benefits to going vegan, studies have proven that 2 people watching their diets equally have been just as healthy. The differences were in costs, amounts of foods consumed (in weight) and general mental state (happiness, depression, anxiety etc). The test subjects that got to eat meats had to eat less in weight, cost less money and they were happier than those who didn't get the meat diet. What 90% of the meat eating people don't do is simply to ignore their needs and just eat what they want, that's a life style problem and not a problem with the foods they eat.

There's a lot of examples in foods where the problem is the people and not the foods, lack of self control / poor education (or none) is the primary cause for lifestyle choices- none of those have anything to do with Meat, Eggs, Grains or anything- people and animals have consumed these foods for tens of thousands of years... What we haven't had is the overflod of food readily available at low costs, that's our issue.

[imabanana]

You should read this book written by some vegan called Adolf to develop the proper attitude towards non-vegans.

Hope this was a consciously-self-awarded-Godwin-Award.

Not only the idea behind this post makes absolutely no sense, but on top of that, the link explains he was NOT vegan, but (kind of) vegetarian, the first few lines of the articles talk about him eating eggs, ham and caviar.

10/10.

[tankbug]

Sigh.

Being vegan isn't about saving every single animal from death. That's stupid, living things die all the time.

You're ignorant on the subject so it makes sense you're confused. The animals that are factory farmed are not out there just breeding like natural and have such large numbers we need to eat them or they take over. Factory farmed animals are forcibly & artificially bred. Cows don't just produce milk all the time. They have to be pregnant or just have given birth, so these cows are kept on a constant cycle of being pregnant. They achieve that by artificially insementating them. That makes the males born unnecessary which are then tiurned into veal calves, which looks like this:

We slaughter 15 billion animals a year, the majority of which are bred specifically to be slaughtered.

Then why not fight for better animal welfare instead of stop eating meat? Face it, most people will rather eat their burgers in peace in blissful ignorance about animal cruelty than going cold turkey on all meat. As you said, living things die all the time. The problem is not the concept of hunting or farming animals.

[Deleted]

Hope this was a consciously-self-awarded-Godwin-Award.

Not only the idea behind this post makes absolutely no sense, but on top of that, the link explains he was NOT vegan, but (kind of) vegetarian, the first few lines of the articles talk about him eating eggs, ham and caviar.

10/10.

It progressed gradually. By the time of his death, H. had given up practically all meat products, and even food cooked using animal-based oils gave him a tummy ache.

[Annoying]

Ignore all the stupidity in the comments, go vegan man.
Human beings have been vegans for a very very long time, and human body is best suited to digest veggies.
BUT don't forget variety. You should take a lot of veggies, different types in a rather higher frequency than a non vegan diet would suggest.

Are you really suggesting that being an omnivore isnt an evolutionary step?

At virtually no time in the history of humans were we anything but omnivores. A huge reason we were able to evolve our massive brains was due to the absolutely massive amount of energy that meat afforded us. Homo erectus to homo sapiens was around 400,000 years ago. We have artifact records from 2.5mya of animal bones with teeth marks in them from before the genus homo was even around (australopithecus teeth marks). Eating meat predates our genus, much less our species.
It's certainly an evolutionary step to eat meat, but that evolutionary step far predates humans, and saying that human beings have ever primarily been vegans isn't correct.

[Gheld]

At virtually no time in the history of humans were we anything but omnivores. A huge reason we were able to evolve our massive brains was due to the absolutely massive amount of energy that meat afforded us. Homo erectus to homo sapiens was around 400,000 years ago. We have artifact records from 2.5mya of animal bones with teeth marks in them from before the genus homo was even around (australopithecus teeth marks). Eating meat predates our genus, much less our species.
It's certainly an evolutionary step to eat meat, but that evolutionary step far predates humans, and saying that human beings have ever primarily been vegans isn't correct.

It's like I said.. humans are kind of oddball, because our evolutionary ancestors developed all of the tools and fire and stuff that we used to harvest and cook our food. We were literally born, as a species, into using technology to elevate us beyond our bodily capabilities. Meat and grains are the two biggest caloric sources in our diets and yet we need to cook both to some degree in order to benefit fully from them.

But because we were born into tool usage there really is no "natural human diet". For my own purposes for answering the enigmatic but fascinating question I just look at human physical capabilities without tools versus our nutritional needs. I see fruit, tubers, insects and eggs. So definitely not vegan, but not as carnivorous as some suggest. Either way, fuck that. Give me a nice juicy steak or a pork chop or some bacon.

[Bodakane]

Then why not fight for better animal welfare instead of stop eating meat? Face it, most people will rather eat their burgers in peace in blissful ignorance about animal cruelty than going cold turkey on all meat. As you said, living things die all the time. The problem is not the concept of hunting or farming animals.

I do fight for it first of all. Secondly, its not possible to meet the demand and improve conditions. Factory farms aren't evil because a Disney villain is sitting back and yelling into a loudspeaker for the workers to be more cruel. The conditions are bad because 15 billion animals have to be processed EVERY YEAR to meet demand.