tigerofintegrity wrote:First of all, I'd like to ask you this. What are the reasons you would list for you being a vegan? Is it merely to do with being more environmentally friendly or do issues like animal cruelty (to livestock etc.) and supposed increased health come into play?
Hi Tiger - thank you for your well-thought-out and considered response! To answer this question - my main initial reason was health - my father died of bowel cancer, which automatically puts me in a much higher risk-group for that nasty illness - I was struggling to eat a carnivorous diet and incorporate fibre and stuff into that - I then studied a book called 'The China Study', along with several other articles (sorry, this is all covered in the other thread i referred you to earlier in this), and, of course, my wife went from vegetarian to full vegan - i followed some time after - her reasons are more for animal-friendly (to massively over-simplify!), mine
were primarily for health, but have been transforming since then to also see animal life (including us) as one big picture - humans herding and slaughtering animals for the various reasons we trot out (justifications and rationalisations all) i now see as harmful, to the environment, to the animals, and to us, both physiologically and psychologically, in the bigger picture. Apologies - i seem to struggle greatly with short answers. It's now a way of life, and I've never felt better, physically - I seem to have a keener appreciation now than I did before too of the whole holistic nature picture (getting a bit hippy-tree-hugger here, i know).
To put it in an impossible nut-shell, I see a vegan diet as physiologically the best possible from a health perspective, and I have moved, finally, away from the 'I, it' paradigm and much more into the 'I, thou' view that really feels more natural to my way of seeing things (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber for more on this).
tigerofintegrity wrote:I mean, many of the things you say are true and the science behind it is sound but many scientists know how to manipulate data to show it to you in a much more dramatic fashion that it really needs to be. Global warming debates are a clear culprit of this, often citing worst case scenarios rather than median projections. You have to be a little bit wary of the data presented to you sometimes.
I am amongst their number Tiger (scientists) - my undergraduate degree was in Applied Physics and Mathematics (Bsc Hons from Trinity College Dublin) - i strenuously avoid scaremongering 'worst case scenarios' where I can, and will always attempt to show the background to any numbers i trot out - agreed re sensationalism occurring in the media (scientific too). In this case, I don't want to split hairs about kJ or kCal - we're largely in agreement I think with the differences, if not the exact ratios?
On a final note for this entry - Villaj man...I echo Tiger's question - perhaps you sought to lighten the tone a little - I can see no other really sensible way of viewing your comparison with an archaic English law which the legislators never got round to removing (there are thousands of these, incidentally), but rather wrote new ones to supersede - comparing that archaic, redundant law in the UK to new one's being installed in the US which serve no purpose other than ensuring no outside light get's turned on very questionable (from an ethical, environmental, health & safety to name just a few) practices...well - the comparison is meaningless in any sensible way - sorry, but it is.
That these laws are being 'pushed' (and in some cases
written) by people directly involved in the factory farming sector (i.e. foot in both camps)
should have right-thinking American's metaphorically up in arms - if not for the protection of animals, then at the very least for the protection of freedom of speech and expression - I'm sure I once heard that they (our American cousins) have some important laws centred on that kind of thing.....foundation-laws.....
