O/T... Vegetarianism in the workplace...

You can eat what you like: it's legal.

Just like if you want to smoke, though, I imagine you'll be punished financially for it in the future. There's minimum-tariff pricing on alcohol in Scotland - why not the same deterrent on meat? It's cruel and probably not that good for you, so my hope is that it'll become so expensive as to put people off.

And I do believe I am correct about the homosexuality/slavery angle. Things which used to be normal are now regarded with horror or amusement. What? You could smoke at work and on aeroplanes? Bill Whatshisname used to drink 15 pints during a snooker match? People ate dripping sandwiches? Miss World and Page Three were a thing? The British state drove Alan Turing to his death because he loved men and not women? Are you serious? The past is a foreign country.

 

I'd like to think Iam but you can only do your best .. I try very hard to be the full on vegan.. I have refused prescription medication before due to tablets been bulked out with milk.. I can be a nightmare in fact I've just changed doctors because I'd become the problem not my ailments.. Lucky for me my new doctor actually listened and didn't give me the impression he wanted me back through the door before I'd sat down and spoke... Actually agreed with me but that's another story.... I do avoid buying leather products totally although my trouser belt is leather.. Its ancient and belonged to my dad who passed away some 6 years ago ... Shoes are stuck together with glue from animal bones although now you can purchase full vegan shoes...like I say I can only do but try...

 

I'll have a vegan burger with you any day, mate.

 

Take a look at the human digestive system and then take a look at the digestive system of a true herbivore, you'll notice they're different because we as creatures are not designed for a solely plant based diet. To suggest we are flies in the face of all evidence. Evidence actually suggests that without eating meat we would not be able to speak.

 

My Doc Martens were costly, but they're vegan and I only rarely suffer from cold feet. Over a hundred quid, though. ARRRR MUCH?

 

A good read. I can't ever see me being a vegan, but I've dropped my red meat intake my 95% & chicken & fish by more than half. I eat loads of eggs & can't see why other than as an ethical vegan eggs are bad. If the planet & our own health is to have improved prospects these things need to be listened to for sure.

 

I look at Jermain Defoe, who is a four billion year-old vegan and still banging goals in. If a professional sportsperson can do it, I can do it.

The evidence I need comes from doing it, feeling healthier and not guilt-tripping about another pig being murdered for my pleasure.

If I drop dead at 45, my ghost will accept you had a point.

 

I think you are probably right. I went veggie for 8 months a couple of years ago and didn't miss meat at all. Can't remember why i fell off the wagon, possibly due to my girlfriend at the time.

I think in the future it will become totally unacceptable to eat meat- I don't know when but there are a lot of people going veggie and vegan now. I am not ready yet but im pretty sure i will. I will do it on my terms and dont agree with the militant way in which some go about it. It gets people's backs up big time. I like how you have explained your views though

 

This thread has some excellent posts but also one or two signs of the virtue signalling, “you just watch - I’ll be proven right” smugness that is, rightly or wrongly, often associated with vegans.

I know only four people personally who are vegan (to my knowledge - despite the old joke there may be more who haven’t said).

Two I interact with little these days, old acquaintances, but other than the odd Facebook share of something they don’t come across particularly militant.

Of the other two, one, Laura, is vegan and is bringing up her toddler as vegan too. Her husband is ‘vegan around laura’ but readily admits he sneaks the odd Big Mac and Wetherspoons breakfast here and there. She is aware of that too and respects him for admitting it and not doing it at home. Her older (adult) daughter is not vegan but tends not to have anything animal related at home. Laura has strong views and lives her life as she chooses but doesn’t force anything on anyone, though is happy to talk about it if asked.

The other I know well, who shall remain nameless, is the stereotypical militant vegan who is on a crusade to tell the world that you are a murderer if you have so much as a cheese sandwich or a glass of milk. The same person who when she started the relationship with her now husband stated she’d never force her views on him, even cooking him steaks. A few years down the line he’s full on vegan, initially reluctantly but he didn’t really have a choice if he wanted to stay in the relationship.

I, amongst many, of her friends and family had a bit of a ruck with her when she posted something comparing a meat eater to a paedophile, the essence of it being that ‘my choices don’t effect you, I’m not doing any harm’ etc etc. She remains perfectly happy that it was a sane and reasonable comparison.

 

Mmmmm dripping sandwiches .
Thanks Baka for reminding me that I haven't had any for a while .

 

There is a difference between being able to survive on something and being designed to eat something. I'm pretty sure that some people can survive on McDonald's every day. In fact I'm certain that there are people who do. Likewise there are people out there smoking 40 a day and living til they're hundred. Is that therefore evidence that we should all start smoking?

The only actual evidence we have is that humans have, since the dawn of time, had a diet that consists of both meat and plant. Other than that we can only say you can do this and you can do that but the only large scale evidence we have is that our natural diet is mixed.

The other evidence that our natural diet is mixed is gorillas, chimps, etc. In fact all hominids like us have a natural mixed diet. To suggest that nature doesn't dictate we eat meat despite our closest relations doing so, our bodies being designed to and all the historical evidence shows it does is just crazy. Now I'm not saying you are claiming that but quite a few do.

Your argument seems to be more of a moral one. If we CAN survive without meat then it is kinder to animals not to eat it. That's fair enough but is the evidence there that all humans can survive and get the required nutrients at a reasonable price without meat? I don't think it is. I think it's there that some can but not all. Add to that the fact that there is evidence showing that earth can't sustain the entire population becoming herbivores plus evidence shows that certain species would go extinct if it were not for humans eating meat and you have to ask even more questions.

I've got nothing against anyone being vegetarian or vegan or anything else but I do find it extremely wrong for those people to push and force their views and lifestyles on everyone else and to tell others to abandon their natural diet because they don't like it.

 

I know a few, most are the kind who are vegan but don't push it, one thinks she owns everyone and will dictate what we all eat.

On one end of the scale I know a vegan who doesn't mind people eating meat at all. She will cook meat for others, will sit there while you eat it etc and if something is essentially vegan but has been cooked on the same griddle as a burger she will still eat it because it being cooked there is purely incidental. She will often explain to me what she's had to eat and how it compares to meat, saying some is good and some is crap.

On the other end is another woman who will walk out if somebody is eating meat. Will stand and comment trying to guilt trip anyone who is ordering meat, eating it or has eaten it. Will study the ingredients and small print of food and it fits been in the same building as an animal at some point in its life it goes in the bin. Regularly makes comments about how people eating meat are killing the planet. Oh and drives big 4 litre diesel car and refuses to walk to the shop. The irony is lost on her

 

I know quite a few vegans, some are militant on FB and I tend to do 30 day snoozes on them regularly. There are quite a few in my office and they talk incessantly about it every day. The only conclusion I can draw from that is a sense of "look how virtuous I am" and it is this I don't like just as much as the people who will actively try to dissuade you from your diet. It is bizarre. I don't understand why vegans feel the need to broadcast it so much, you can still be a horrible **** and be vegan. I am not saying they are all like that, but my experience is not great.

I love animals and I am very conflicted about it, but I would like to do it in my time not due to peer pressure.

 

Fair play to you,

Yes, the last one is the reasons I and many others tar them all with the same brush, like I said earlier, stood in morrisons around a tin of spam and a leg of lamb having a mock funeral and screaming at little old Dorris who only wants a tray of 5% of fat mince to make her and Albert a cottage pie

 

I do not think it will be incredible in 100 years to think back that humans ate meat, when lots of other animals eat meat. And even survive by eating each other.

It's nature.

Good luck with offering a lion a lettuce for supper.

Homosexuality has taken a long time to be accepted in society. There's not only nature in why it goes on, but nature in why it has taken so much time to get to where at least we are in Britain with it now.

Slavery has been going on for hundreds of years. All manner of colours and creeds have inflicted/suffered it. Not sure why black slavery is more remarkable.

Bracketing meat eaters with homophobics and slave traders seems a bit extreme.

 

I have a non-scientific theory, but it works well in my own life, that it takes one month to change something.

I was horrible to my then-girlfriend for the first month. Thanks for RUINING MY LIFE. I want meat, but THANKS TO YOU RADICALISING ME I can't have it because of the guilt. I wish I had never met you. You cow. Oh, sorry, that's anti-animal. You bit of fvcking cucumber.

She was totally unsympathetic about my wailing. Shut up. I just cooked x, y or z. Try it - it's veggie and it's really good.

After the month passed, I never looked back. But I needed her lack of sympathy to keep me on track. Were it not for her, I'd have not done it. Now I do not miss it. I thank her daily.

 

Albert really is a t**t

 

In Rome apparently you were OK if you were doing the loving, usually to a slave, rent boy or minor.

With the Greeks it was apparently older blokes deflowering young uns.

So not quite today's Elton and his husband.