@girard Probably did go in a little too hard here, but it’s hard to blame them given the way most BB threads about vegans go.
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(One of the choruses goes, "You’re my avocado baby . . . ")
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It’s interesting because fairly recent nutritional studies are looking not only at the nutrition content of food, but how it shifts due to processing and cooking.
A couple of examples included a six ounce piece of steak, and the difference between rare and well done is about 100 calories, and more saturated fat and cholesterol (in the well done meat),
Looking at snack foods, snacks like Pringles or Cheetos, are, for lack of better description, almost pre-digested in their structure, so when you eat them, you intake the nutrient content (for good or ill) more readily compared to something like a standard potato chip or popcorn.
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There’s vegans and there’s vegans.
What I consider “normal” vegans have no problem with breast feeding, and if they feed themselves well (i.e. there’s good nutrition in the mother’s milk), this should never have happened.
This appears to be a case of the kind of vegans that give vegans a bad name, by being stupid about it.
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Honestly…
People are incredibly stupid about food, period. It doesn’t matter which diets they follow, people are dumb about food. They either know too little about nutrition, or too much, is my impression. If they know too little, they are apt to shove into their face whatever comes their way and triggers a response from their hindbrain. If they know too much, they’re apt to over-optimize their diet. At best, they just strip all enjoyment from the feeding process. At worst, they follow a fad that isn’t sufficiently researched.
Either way, people are prone to damaging themselves through diet. In some cases you have malnutrition as a result, in other cases diseases of affluence. In the worst case, a mixture of both.
So people in general are stupid about food.
Here’s an important point, though: we report on malnutrition either when people are poor, or particularly stupid, as in this example. What we don’t do is report enough on the far more common diseases of affluence. Where I am currently residing, for example, the earth is rich and vegetables grow like crazy. The locals favour pork and alcohol. They favour pork and alcohol so much that the society here suffers from a gout epidemic. And we deal with epidemics of this kind with medicine, not with education.
This isn’t excusing what these parents did to their kid, they were being stupid. They have to be reported on as a warning to stop people from being similarly stupid. But please, let’s balance this with reporting on the kind of stupid just about everyone else is doing! Like taking statins when your cholesterol is high instead of cutting out the cholesterol in your diet, perhaps? It’s just a thought. Take your pick.
People are stupid about food.
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Actually, yes you do. I see LOTS of that kind of article, in fact.
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“Eggs” and “vegan” are mutually exclusive. Now “ovo-lacto vegetarian”, sure.
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[citation needed]
Remember, I didn’t say “Just any article about idiots feeding their kids garbage.” I mean specifically an article, in a non-vegan-centric publication, which specifically puts the bad parents’ omnivorousness on blast in the headline the same way this one thinks ‘vegan’ is worth noting.
Mmhm.
Sorry, but no. Why? Because when someone gets caught starving their baby, there IS note of it. Standard magazines don’t call out people as omnivores, because statistically, they almost always are; it’s simply not something most people think to bring up. People don’t tend to remark on the ordinary, compared to exceptions to norms; that’s just human nature.
No one really gives that much of a shit that they were vegans, you know. It’s just that so many vegans are such absolute, flaming shits to those who don’t share their views — yes, I can provide endless cites, if you are too lazy to use google yourself — that a little schadenfreude gets added to the mix.
My personal example of this type of person was a friend of an ex who insisted on trying to feed her cat a vegan diet. No, it didn’t live, “Vegecat” be damned.
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Popcorn without chilli infused garlic butter? Unpossible! (Actually slightly untrue: popcorn sprayed with a slightly watered down marmite mix is also possible. Still needs butter though)
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You generally won’t because this is about restrictive diet enforced upon a minor. Beyond lame jokes about vegans there’s little ideology to compare.
A closer analog among omnivores would be faith healers refusing medical treatment. Forcing quack beliefs on an unwilling victim.
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Ours thinks he loves avocado. He gets all excited when he sees it, squeaking and pointing and all. Then you give him a bit, he chews it a little, screws up his face and pushes it back out of his mouth. And then he gives you the ‘What the hell were you thinking…’ look. But we still let him try it each time, because you never know, one day, maybe.
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Some of it might be accidentally going in the kid, right? Right?
My kids like to eat home made guac with a spoon. So there’s that.
True, which is why I prefer to use the term “plant-based” to describe my eating; which is no meat, fish or dairy. If I said I was vegan, people would assume I was a militant animal rights person. I’m not against animal rights, but I do wear leather shoes. Plus I disagree with the vegan argument against eating honey. My reason for eating plant-based is not due to animal rights but because I physically feel better eating that way.
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If you want to try the vegan diet you have to understand that their are dietary supplements you need to take. For example you just can’t decide to live on vegies and fruit, you have to find out if you are getting enough protein to continue living.
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People talk so much shit about vegans that I think we can forgive vegans for being a little defensive sometimes, right?
Causality is complex. There are many different types of diets that could qualify as “vegan”, and different human beings have different nutritional needs. It’s certainly hard to argue that the veganism isn’t relevant, but that doesn’t mean “veganism caused this case of malnutrition.” It means that particular diet caused that case of malnutrition.
Look at it this way: if a young child develops severe diabetes due to childhood obesity, do you blame that on the fact that the child had “an omnivorous diet”? Hell no! You blame it on the particular aspects of that diet that are unhealthy! Plenty of omnivores raise children who don’t develop diabetes.
Lots of other subsets of classes of people are flaming shits to those who don’t share their views. Atheists are a great example; but so are fundamentalist Christians. Hillary supporters, Trump supporters, and Sanders supporters – some subset of each group are a bunch of fucking assholes.
However, suppose you are an atheist, or a Hillary supporter and someone says “atheists are assholes” or “Hillary supporters are assholes.” You feel like you want to disagree, right? Here you are, an atheist Hillary supporter, and you don’t really consider yourself an asshole. It’s really an unfair leap to make – that because someone is an atheist or Hillary supporter, that they are also an asshole. Given the fairly large proportion of atheists and Hillary supporters who are not assholes, surely the assholishness has some other cause, potentially unrelated to the person’s membership in those groups?
Is it really so terribly surprising when vegans feel the exact same fucking way?
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Except I didn’t indict all vegans, merely a subset, so you really don’t have a leg to stand on, sorry. Once again, I can supply endless examples of exactly what I’m referring to, so it’s not like it’s my imagination, or even particularly rare. Would you care to argue otherwise? Do I need to supply cites?
As an anecdotal example, I don’t recall ever attempting to imply superiority to, shame, yell at, impugn the morals of. or otherwise “correct” vegans’ food/lifestyle choices, as long as they affect no one else directly, against their will. Why should I; It’s not even remotely my business, and I firmly believe in your right to murder yourself, even, if it comes to that. I can’t say the same for the opposite case, however!
Nor is “but everyone else does it” a particularly good excuse for unacceptable behavior, true or not.
I didn’t claim you did, so it’s actually you who don’t have a leg to stand on. You need to pay attention to what people are actually objecting to when they disagree with you.
In this case, you are talking down to a vegan by trying to justify why it’s OK to be dicks to vegans.
I reply to this by saying, “Hey, I bet there’s lots of cases where the same exact logical argument applies, but where you don’t try to justify being a dick to group X. Maybe the veganism isn’t really all that relevant, and maybe schadenfreude is a bad thing? Maybe you shouldn’t perpetuate this shitty standard of discourse?”
You’re applying a double standard. I’m explaining why. And I’m standing firmly on two legs.
That is certainly anecdotal! I’ve heard lots of omnivores shame, yell at, impugn the morals of, and otherwise “correct” vegans’ food/lifestyle choices. Implicitly, that’s what the OP is doing, in fact!
So I counter your anecdotal evidence with equally meaningful anecdotal evidence in the opposite direction.
(And this is really an absurd means of arguing this point, even taking into your account that it is anecdotal. You are saying, “of the tens of thousands or more vegans in the world, at least one has given me shit about not being vegan. I, one person, have never given any of the tens of thousands or more vegans in the world any shit about being vegan.” Surely you see the statistical asymmetry there?)
Perhaps not, but holding vegans in general to a higher standard of behavior than non-vegans and then shaming them when they only live up to your standards for non-vegans is not an especially good excuse for being a dick, either.
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a) I didn’t say you said I did, I said your argument doesn’t work, as I’m NOT indicting all vegans. You need to pay attention to what people are actually objecting to when they disagree with you.
b) Where did I talk down to you, or any other vegans beyond my ex’s idiot friend?
c) Where did I imply schadenfreude is a good thing, instead of understandable in the given context?
And yes, the veganism IS relevant, your argument aside. Is it the only relevant fact in the case? Certainly not! Is it even a primary cause, of some sort? I highly doubt it, although the given information is lacking. Is it a contributing factor? Damn straight; while not impossible, it IS relatively difficult to properly raise a baby as fully vegan. It doesn’t help that breastfeeding while vegan adds its own complications that you have to take into account.
I’m afraid you’ve pretty much proven my point for me, O Defensive One.
