Vegetarians more likely to have mental issues...

[Alcon]

I respect True Federalist choice to not be a self-centred primadonna, and I say that as someone, who make vegetarian meals, when I have a vegetarian visiting. Luckily veganism are rare in Denmark, but I'm still grateful that no one in family are vegetarian, because it would make Christmas dinners even harder to make.

Traditional Danish Chrismal dinner, really hard to make vegetarian replacement without risking a riot.

How can you think through this for 15 seconds without realizing how messed-up your argument is?  You're complaining that people are "self-centered" for adopting moral positions that inconvenience you when preparing traditional meals.  You're basically saying that, even if it involves doing something a reasonable person might think is wrong (consuming meat), it's "self-centered" to do anything besides cede to social harmony, convenience, and tradition.  Let's put aside how arbitrary it is that you've decided one is "self-centered" and the other isn't.  Do I even need to explain how screwed up it is to expect people to ignore a reasonable moral belief for the sake of social harmony and tradition?

This is, of course, assuming that anyone even demands accommodation.  I've been a vegetarian at traditional Thanksgiving meals, and you just don't eat the meat stuff.  I've never requested special foods for myself.  

I feel you and I have had similar discussions several times, and when I point out specious logic like this, you just pop up with another comparably weak argument in another thread.  It's like rationalization whack-a-mole.  You don't get to act holier-than-thou when you have such consistently weaksauce reasoning for it.  If you're not able to defend this flimsy nonsense, just stop replying to threads on this subject.  Wasting time with terrible arguments for your personal pet catharsis is self-centered.

[Alcon]

How any vegetarian can stick to their convictions after having a truly high-grade steak is beyond me.  I consider that to be a mental issue right there.  Props, guys.

Honestly, even before I went vegetarian, I found stake a pretty monotonous food.  It was a little like cake: the first bite was good, but the returns diminish quickly.  I guess there's a hell of a lot of interesting food in the world, and I wouldn't rank steak as interesting enough I miss it much.

I always do this. Also make a point of avoiding meat substitutes-- because it goes against the point. But I struggle with the "not on Sundays" part. It seems counterintuitive, and I'm uncomfortable eating meat on Sundays during Lent, so I don't even though this is forbidden. Is this sinful? Something I've struggled with.

Paging TJ!

What about the secular ethical issues, if ethics are something you're concerned about?

[Alcon]

Hmm, but less likely to have heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, etc.

Actually, eating meat is healthier than being vegetarian.  It's just that people who are vegetarian are healthier than the average because they're conscientious about their diet in the first place.  They would be even healthier if they added meat to their diet.  Not to say, it's unhealthy to be vegetarian, but it's not the optimal choice for nutrition, all other factors aside.

You might be right, but on what basis do you say this?

[Alcon]

Hmm, but less likely to have heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, etc.

Actually, eating meat is healthier than being vegetarian.  It's just that people who are vegetarian are healthier than the average because they're conscientious about their diet in the first place.  They would be even healthier if they added meat to their diet.  Not to say, it's unhealthy to be vegetarian, but it's not the optimal choice for nutrition, all other factors aside.

You might be right, but on what basis do you say this?

Protein, nutrients that are primarily available from meat and the fact that humans are a species that evolved to eat meat.  Do you disagree with my point?

As far as I can tell, yes, because you're arguing "all else being equal" and then not setting all else to be equal.  It's true that vegetarians are more likely to underconsume macronutrients...but how is that different than saying that meat-eaters are more likely to overconsume calories?

I can't really address the claim that it's healthier to eat meat because "humans evolved to" because that doesn't really mean much of anything.  If you're alluding to a mechanism, you'll have to be more specific.  Obviously our bodies aren't aware of some kind of biological intent or whatever.

[Alcon]

Sure, I'm aware that's not an air-tight argument.  The idea that natural = healthy is way overplayed.  And, for example of you could bio-engineer plants that had all the some nutrients as meat, that would change the game.  But, it is true that our body is geared towards eating meat and there were not vegetarians in prehistoric times.  That's a hint, not an airtight argument.

Sure, but I don't see the point of "hints" when we mostly understand how these factors work just fine.

My point was that there's a difference between a population study of group A vs. group B, and determining what the optimal diet is.  

OK, sure...but that's not "all factors aside."  You're controlling for the fact that vegetarians are on average more conscientious eaters and have lower calorie intake, but not controlling for the fact that vegetarians on average are more likely to have macronutrient deficiencies.  That seems totally arbitrary.  Either we're adjusting for nutritional competency or we're not.

To the best of my knowledge, the optimal diet is high in protein, high in vegetables, high in fiber and provides all the nutrients your body needs.  You can get by without eating lots of vegetables, without eating meat, by taking special vitamins and having blood tests to check your iron levels twice a year, you can get by with drinking a little too much, etc.  But, if we're saying "the healthiest possible diet," it's going to include some meat and fish probably.  

I'm not sure it makes much sense to say that there is a platonic ideal of "the healthiest possible diet."  There are effectively quotas we need to meet (basic macronutrients), and then whatever additional nutrition we need to achieve more optional ends -- energy, building muscle, etc.  After a certain point, almost every possible nutrient becomes redundant.  If you're arguing that it's easier as a non-vegetarian to make quotas, and get whatever extra you need for whatever needs you have, that's definitely true, although it's not particularly onerous either way.  But your argument was: "[a vegetarian] would be even healthier if they added meat to their diet...all other factors aside."  That's a very different claim, and I don't think it's true.

There's a separate discussion of whether you should value having the healthiest possible diet more than your ethical or environmental concerns in re eating meat.

You're phrasing it in a way that suggests that people weigh ethical issues against sacrificing "having the healthiest possible diet" -- and I don't think that actually represents the choice point for most people.  Outside of orthorexia-land, I don't think many people value having "the healthiest possible diet" as an absolute ideal.  Most people value having a healthy enough diet to achieve basic health (easy either way) plus whatever additional ends they want (potentially harder as a vegetarian).  

I think it's more accurate to say the discussion is how much you value convenience/lower effort in having a very healthy diet, versus ethical/environmental concerns.  I realize that sounds a little like I'm stacking the deck, but I think it's basically the reality of the choice.

[Alcon]

For me personally, I love meat and as such could never go without it for an extended period of time, health issues be damned.  Genesis 9:3 FTW.

Going to ask you the same question I asked Simfan: why do you care about the religious morality here, but not care about the secular ethical issues?  Do you even put the slightest effort into trying to minimize or avoid the suffering associated with your diet?  No disrespect, but it drives me a little crazy to see someone being morally self-satisfied and then categorically ignoring a moral concern.

[Alcon]

"Secular ethical issues" just aren't really on my radar to be honest.   I just don't view animal lives as even close to as important as human lives.  If given a choice, sure, I'd probably by organic beef, I guess, but ethical considerations just aren't really a consideration when eating, as is the case with the vast majority of Americans, thankfully.

"Thankfully"?  Dude, wtf?  Even if you don't view animals lives as "even close to as important as human lives," you're actively happy that other people don't care about the unnecessary suffering caused by the way we do mass-production farming?

It makes me genuinely angry that you took time to brag about how religiously righteous you are, and yet you're apparently gratified that others are as actively disinterested in animal suffering as you are.  There is absolutely nothing in your religious beliefs, or the belief that human lives are superior to animal lives, that requires you to think like this.  You just have decided not to care about entities that, however inferior to us, are no less capable of experiencing fear or feeling unbearable pain.  You apparently think that your apathy toward suffering is not only acceptable, but you're even glad it's widespread.

"Thankfully"?  Seriously, what the hell.

[Alcon]

You raise good points so I should clarify.  If you were giving people information on how to eat healthy, you would tell them to eat meat, from a health perspective.  If they wanted to be vegetarian, you wouldn't advise against it, you would just give them some information about how to get a healthy diet without meat.

That's still a different claim than your original statement.  If you're arguing that it's better to tell people to eat meat, because it has better average health outcomes than eating vegetarian, maybe.  I'm not aware of evidence of this claim -- especially considering that obesity is a much bigger epidemiological problem it the U.S. than nutritional deficiency.  But even if it's true, that's still way different than the claim that meat-eating is better "all else being equal," because it's a claim that rests entirely on recognizing that all else is not equal.

And, I think you're underrating convenience and satiety.  People need to have a convenient diet for their life-style and they need a diet that doesn't leave them hungry.  Protein and animal fat are things that, along with fiber, make you less hungry, compared to carbs.  I find for myself.  I try to eat meat for every meal because it's a healthy source of calories and I stay full longer.

I also don't think you're stacking the deck there.  I truly value my convenience and happiness above the ethical concerns I have for animals.  I think anyone who eats meat has to basically agree on that if they're being intellectually honest.

In what sense am I "underrating convenience and satiety"?  I haven't said anything that passes judgment on what's a reasonable mixture.  I don't know what you're addressing unless you're arguing that, as a vegetarian, I must be under-prioritizing my convenience and satiation.  In which case...no.

Yes, meat is convenient for satiating hunger.  The opportunity cost associated with meat consumption (especially consumption of cheap meat) is an amount of suffering exponentially higher than the inconvenience we experience.  Especially as a non-poor person from a wealthy country, the inconvenience in getting full without meat is pretty small -- not zero, but pretty small.  For me to find this ethically acceptable, I'd have to prioritize my own convenience and taste preferences like tenfold versus the pain and suffering of animals.

I'm just going to blunt here: how much do you actually care about the ethical concerns in a non-abstract sense?  Do you regularly put any effort into mitigating the resultant suffering?  Have you even made information-gathering attempts to find out how much it would cost you to rely on more 'humanely'-produced meat?  How much time have you actually put into considering the scope of the resultant suffering and how much of your personal convenience is worth that suffering?

I simply don't think people generally weigh the ethical concerns against their convenience and come to an actual conclusion based on sincere ethical consideration.  I think they overwhelmingly avoid thinking about it, do whatever the hell they like, and vaguely rationalize it after the fact.  I also think it's screwed up and we're above this.

[Alcon]

I don't think the problem is any of these diets being severely unhealthy or people lacking basic nutrients.  Nobody is starving to death or getting rickets because they lack access to food in America.  And, a vegetarian diet is not unhealthy.  I never said that.

My point is that eating meat is a good thing in itself, purely from the selfish perspective of the person eating food.  Eating an omnivorous diet makes it easier to be healthy, satisfied, happy with what you eat and have energy/satiety in your daily life.  It's not a must have in any way, it's just a plus.  

That seems like a pretty banal observation: obviously, any restriction on anything we might benefit from or prefer doing is, from a purely selfish perspective, a "bad thing in itself."  A moral prohibition against murderous cannibalism is, from a purely selfish perspective, a bad thing in itself.  A moral prohibition against eating food stolen from orphans is, from a purely selfish perspective, a bad thing in itself.  You've basically reduced your original claim -- which explicitly stated that a given vegetarian would be "healthier" if they added meat to their diet -- to just stating that a moral prohibition against something with potential utility is "a bad thing in itself" from a "purely selfish perspective."  Well, sure, but who would contest that claim?  It's pretty much definitional.

[Alcon]

If we were going to try to come up with a healthy diet, with health as the end-goal, it's going to have meat.  Does that explain my point more succinctly?  I left it open that you might think that fact, if true, is still not that important.

It's more succinct, but it's also totally vague.  There are plenty of healthy diets that don't involve meat..so I'm back to not knowing what your claim really is.  I don't think the solution to that is vagueness .

If you went to a doctor with an obesity problem, would they tell you to stop eating meat?  Definitely not.  Some doctors would actually recommend something like the Atkins diet which is a high protein diet.

OK...but don't you think that's probably because of non-compliance rates, not because -- as you seem to be arguing -- eating vegetarian has inferior average health outcomes?  If you do think it's because of that, what evidence are you basing that assumption off of?

I don't see the point of looking at some vague secondary correlation like this when we have much more specific, variable-controlled evidence available.  I'm also honestly not sure what concrete claim you're making here, either.

I don't think there's anything morally wrong with eating meat.  I do see a problem with factory farming that really hurts the animals or puts them in a tiny cage or whatever.  It's even more of a problem with it's a pig or a cow or any mammal that is fairly smart.  How much cruelty is too much?  I don't know.  It's hard to evaluate from the consumer end. 

Is it really particularly hard to evaluate?  What information do you feel you're lacking?  Do you not understand the extent of suffering factory farming indicates, or are you struggling to figure out whether avoiding that suffering is worth $0.75 or having to buy a $20 monthly supplement?  And in the absence of whatever information you're lacking, your apparent tactic is to set the disutility of cruelty to nearly zero...?

I'm not trying to be mean -- you're one of the smartest, most intellectually honest posters here, bar none -- but this topic seems to result in a lot of post hoc justification.

[Alcon]

Oldiesfreak --

Every direct study I'm finding indicates that the incidence in anemia and osteoporosis isn't statistically significantly different among vegetarians than omnivores.  The only studies I've seen that indicate otherwise studied primarily vegetarian cultures, but weren't conducted with demographic controls.  In fact, there is a positive correlation between dietary animal protein intake and osteoporosis prevalence between countries.  How the heck did you conclude from that body of evidence that the rates are "much higher"?  That doesn't seem like an honest interpretation of the evidence at all.

[Alcon]

Another nutrient deficient in the vegan and western diet is vitamin K2.  This vitamin is seeing increased scrutiny by scientists because it may be extremely beneficial in preventing heart disease and cancer... which is pretty huge.

Unfortunately it is almost exclusively available from animal products... they are by far the highest in organ meats.. especially poultry.  But the most complete form comes from beef liver.  (It used to be that a weekly meal of liver and onions was considered good for everyone).

Other good sources:
Hard cheese
Egg yolks
Beef
Chicken
Whole milk
Butter

So the official nutritional guidelines to limit meat and organ consumption and to limit dairy to low fat is actually causing vitamin k2 deficiencies in the western diet.

The only western food commonly consumed based from plants to contain K2 is sauerkraut.  Japanese natto is also a decent source (contains 8 times more than sauerkraut which is a poor source.. but the only western vegan option).

Similarly, can you provide a citation that Vitamin K1 conversion is nutritionally insufficient?  This is something I researched about a month ago, and I don't recall scientific support for this claim, either.

[Alcon]

Oldiesfan --

Did you just Google "protein vegetarian myth" or something...?  You've given me a bunch of web sites that mostly address a different claim, have overlapping citations, occasionally misrepresent their citations, and one of them is Mercola.com, which is a "natural health" web site that promotes vaccine denialism.  Promoting vaccine denialism doesn't make you wrong about everything else, but it does make me wonder why you're trusting them...

First, it's important to keep in mind that correlation does not always mean causation--that also goes for the study that was mentioned at the beginning of this thread.

Yes, if you've read my posts in this thread, you'd know I was aware of that.

Vegetarian advocates frequently contend that eating meat leeches calcium out of your bones and causes osteoporosis, but the evidence indicates otherwise.

No one in this thread has made that claim, and that's not the claim you made that I'm challenging.

And second, here are examples of evidence of osteoporosis in vegetarians:

http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/news/20050328/more-osteoporosis-seen-with-raw-foods-diet (from a site that toes the low-fat line)

That's specific to a raw foods diet, which few vegetarians are.  This may be more of a problem when you cut out dairy products, but again, your claim was about eliminating meat.

http://authoritynutrition.com/8-ridiculous-myths-about-meat-and-health/

Here are the studies cited:

Bonjour - "There is no consistent evidence for superiority of vegetal over animal proteins on calcium metabolism, bone loss prevention and risk reduction of fragility fractures."  Says nothing about higher rates of osteoporosis in vegetarians.

Munger - "Intake of dietary protein, especially from animal sources, may be associated with a reduced incidence of hip fractures in postmenopausal women."

Rizzoli and Bonjour - "Increasing dietary protein to the normal intake is beneficial to bone health."

Only one (Munger) supports your claim, and it's a narrow-demographic study that doesn't explicitly compare vegetarian vs. non-vegetarian populations.

http://authoritynutrition.com/is-too-much-protein-bad-for-you/

None of these citations address your claim.

http://nutritionmyths.com/do-acid-forming-foods-cause-osteoporosis/

Citations repeat the Bonjour study.  One of the citations (Kerstetter) doesn't even really conclude what the web site is claiming it does.  Do you even understand the language of the De Santo study -- if so, what does it say?  It's highly technical.

http://www.businessinsider.com/myths-eating-red-meat-2014-8

This doesn't even have citations at all.  That just wasted 2:21 of my life.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/04/02/vegetarian-myths.aspx#!

I'll put aside that Mercola is a crazy web site and this guy is a doctor of naturopathy who's published a book on "non-toxic AIDS treatments" (ughh).  

How can you take this person seriously after the first sentence?  He points out that meat consumption couldn't be responsible for higher cancer rates, because cancer is "primarily a 20th century occurrence."  To be clear, I do not believe that meat consumption raises cancer rates.  But why the hell would you use this argument, which fails to account for the fact that life expectancies are much higher now, when you have apples-to-apples studies with demographic controls?

I could check every citation, but the claim he is addressing is not the one you made that I challenged.  Moreover, I'm really not convinced you've checked these citations, and it's disrespectful to waste my time like that.

SO: I just spent 30 minutes on what you gave me, and came out with ONE relevant citation.  You have not explained why you accept this study over the other studies that do not find this result.  So, why is that?  I certainly sure hope it wasn't because you defer to the people you've linked to (Mercola.com!)

[Alcon]

As far as being so "righteous," I'm simply saying that my morality is Biblically-oriented and largely based on Reformed theology.  Animal rights just aren't one of the top issues for me; there's plenty to be justifiably sad about in this world, but fretting over animal suffering just seems silly to me for the most part.

My point is that I believe there are a lot of moral issues that are real problems and very concerning,  but I simply don't consider animal rights to be one of them.  Furthermore, getting too worked up about animal rights distracts from the fact that humans are rebelling from God's moral law as we are secularizing, and relying on "secular ethics" (your words, not mine) can cause us to focus on the wrong issues.

Have you ever watched a video of a non-human animal being tortured or bleeding out from an injury?  Have you ever watched a deer who got hit by a car and is writhing in agony as its brain floods it with extreme pain?  You are going beyond indifference to this sort of suffering, and actively claiming you think it's unfortunate other people care.  That is intensely screwed up.

Your argument that this is somehow "distracting" from more compelling moral issues is also ridiculous.  You are on a political forum where your recent posts include analyzing your politics compared to some random guy on the Internet, talking about your grades, and endorsing your favorite brand of cheese curds.  Apparently, this completely pointless activity is just fine with you, but you're "thankful" more people don't focus their mental energy on animal suffering, because that is spending time/energy on excessively trivial things?

I see absolutely not a single post in your recent history where you're trying to advocate for "God's moral law" or against the substitution of secular principles.  If you're so bothered by advocacy of animal rights, because you think it distracts from engaging "God's moral law," I assume it's because you think time would be better-served advocating for "God's moral law" -- so let's do that.  Want to start a thread on it?

If you're not interested in that, it makes me wonder what mental energy you think considering animal rights would deplete from you, and makes me wonder whether this is all because, when you strip away your philosophical pretenses, you just don't really give a damn about animal suffering.

Which, not to get all secular-ethics on you, is not required by your religion at all, and is just totally deplorable!

[Alcon]

I found a few things:

The human body can convert vitamin K1 into MK-4 (a subset of vitamin k2) which is beneficial for routing calcium from the blood into bones.  It cannot convert any of the other subsets of vitamin K2, including K7, which is potentially very important for preventing calcification of the aorta and preventing bone density loss.

Instead, gut bacteria can convert K1 into various forms of k2.  But this varies widely from person to person based on your gut flora.  

It also means vegans should avoid antibiotics because this can reduce your ability to convert vitamin k1 to k2 by up to 75%.

The main stickler is a study by (Geleijnse et al., 2004) (no link, sorry) that found that while intake of vitamin k2 reduced the risk of osteoperosis and heart disease... intake of vitamin k1 had no impact.  This would suggest that our gut flora don't convert enough vitamin k1 into k2 to have the beneficial impact that dietary k2 can have in regards to those diseases.

This is super weird: that study doesn't appear to be available in any of the common academic databases.  Where did you see it originally?  I've found a few studies that seem to contradict it, so I'd like to see if it addresses them at all in the discussion.

[Alcon]

First, I'm not in favor of animal cruelty and certainly not seeing a deer die as you described.  I have posted my religious considerations a lot on AAD.  Here, I post a lot on more on off-topic threads.

Fair enough, although it doesn't really address the point: how can you find it objectionable that other people spend mental energy on lesser moral/ethical concerns, when you seem to think it's morally acceptable to spend time on stuff that's entirely morally pointless?

I apologize for the tone of my previous posts; it's just that I think people should be able to enjoy a steak in good conscience and think radical environmentalism and animal rights stuff can become its own religion, which was actually a sermon my pastor preached about:  meat is a gift from God, and is one of the few good things to come from the Fall.

Why should someone be able to "enjoy a steak in good conscience" if it's derived in a way that inflicts unnecessary suffering for mild convenience or cost savings?  Your initial position seems to have been "it's totally morally acceptable, so much so that I actively dislike anyone with moral concerns."  Now you seem to have shifted to "maybe there are valid moral concerns, but I hope no one would ever think about them in a way that would distract them from dinner."  That's still a ridiculous position.

Yet again, let me reiterate: your religious belief that meat-eating is intrinsically morally acceptable does not dismiss the concerns I'm bringing up about animal cruelty/suffering.  It seems like you're trying to refocus this conversation on the intrinsic acceptability of meat consumption so that you can dismiss the concerns of cruelty/suffering with your religious beliefs, but that doesn't make sense.

Also, what about the suffering inflicted by other animals on themselves?  Can that not be equally grotesque?

Of course it can be, but animals lack the cognitive capacity to be held responsible for those actions.  We also don't hold humans who lack such cognitive capacity capable for their actions.  (And, for that matter, we don't hold that humans who lack this cognitive capacity are morally acceptable to kill.)

I think slaughterhouses should be given enhanced FDA regulation to ensure consistency in procedure.  It just so happens that, like most Americans, I do not see animal rights at the top of my list of concerns.

I'm still getting the sense your position is "I'm OK with doing something about this so long as it doesn't even mildly inconvenience me, cost me additional money, or give me bothersome thoughts."  No one is asking for this to be "the top of your list of concerns."  I'm asking you to actually think about the disutility you would incur to help mitigate much more disproportionate suffering.  Considering your knee-jerk dismissiveness, where you actually bemoaned that other people care about what you now seem to concede can be valid moral concerns, is this actually something you've given much clear-eyed thought to?

[Alcon]

I almost forgot: Vitamin A is only found in animal products.  Plants contain beta-carotene, which your digestive system converts to Vitamin A.

It took me like 30 minutes to do the research responding to you, and you completely ignored it.  It's not like it was a trivial point; you stated it as if it was one of the tentpoles of your argument.

But  neither argument you've substituted is any good, either:

And as for the arguments about animal cruelty: there is absolutely NO moral advantage to a vegetarian diet.  The harvesting of plants for food very frequently kills them as well.

No.  Keep in mind that, because of trophic levels, feeding the animals we eat prompts us to harvest a considerable number of plants -- so switching to a vegetarian diet would not, in fact, decrease the number of plants we harvest.  Moreover, pigs are probably more aware of their own suffering than, say, insects.

And even when it doesn't, consider this: many animals kill and eat other animals, and there's a reason for it.  If it's not cruel or "barbaric" for them to do it, then why is it for humans to do that?

I have already addressed this argument in this thread, and it's really bad.  It may very well be cruel or barbaric for them to kill people, but they're not aware of right or wrong.  As I mentioned before, we don't hold entities (including humans) morally responsible if they're unable to understand right and wrong.  If you're arguing that it's acceptable for a human to do whatever an animal does, then you're arguing that animal cruelty by humans is totally acceptable.  Do you believe that?

[Alcon]

I don't think I would ever choose to be a vegetarian.  To me, there is a huge moral difference between a human and an animal.  I don't think our obligations towards animals is to respect their rights.  Animals don't have rights because they're not part of society.  

Can you expand on that a little?  I assume you also think humans should have rights, even if they are incapable of understanding and fully participating in society.  Why do you grant rights that way, and if you do, do you think animal cruelty is morally acceptable?  It doesn't necessarily make sense to oppose animal cruelty as "morally disordered" if animals aren't rights-bearing, after all.

The relevant principle is suffering, and I think you agree.  It's wrong to make an animal suffer in a sadistic way that goes beyond the natural order of things.  Animals get eaten in nature, and they nasty, short, brutal lives.  We don't have a responsibility to raise them up beyond that and take care of them.  But, if we're going to farm them and eat them, we should do it in a conscientious way that doesn't cause more suffering than necessary.

It's not like the alternative here is that they're going to be frolicking in the forest.  We specifically breed these animals to slaughter.  The question in determining the morally superior outcome is whether mass-breeding them for consumption is a morally superior outcome than not doing so.  Even with "conscientious" mass-farming techniques (which, despite how often people pay lip service, almost no one does) I doubt that's the case; I expect they always cause more suffering than "necessary."

Essentially, we have to make uncomfortable trade-offs between human gain and animal suffering.  There's no easy principle there.  The more human-like, the more we care.  For example, I think it would unconscionable to farm apes for food.

I think it's dangerous to start delineating moral rights based on a subjective standard of how much entities resemble us, versus how much they possess the substantive properties that we think justify rights.  For instance, I don't think we should justify ignoring the cognitive advancement of pigs with subjective dissimilarity -- their lack of superficial visual similarity seems a lot more important.  I mean, would you support the "subjective similarity" standard when granting rights to people instead of analyzing substantive properties?  I think the "subjective similarity" standard is directly responsible for a lot of the moral atrocities of history.

And, it's the level of suffering versus the gain for people.  The worst factory farming practices are too cruel to impose on a pig or a cow, I'm sure.  The exact dividing line between ethical farming practice, I don't really know.

Do you really think there's a remotely credible argument that it's anywhere near what we're doing now?  It seems like the whole "the line is hard to draw" response almost always ends up being used as a convenient rationalization to not draw a line at all, and put zero or near-zero effort into being conscientious.  

And, you're right I should do my research and be more conscientious about my diet.

Fair enough.

[Alcon]

Animals are tasty. End of story.

Are you being glib, or is this seriously your argument?  I know you're not dumb, and you must know how disastrous "it's morally acceptable for me to do whatever I want as long as I want to do it" is.  How well has that sort of moral glibness worked in history?

I found it.  It seems here to deal only with coronary heart disease or all cause mortality.  No specifics on osteoperosis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15514282

Abstract:

Vitamin K-dependent proteins, including matrix Gla-protein, have been shown to inhibit vascular calcification. Activation of these proteins via carboxylation depends on the availability of vitamin K. We examined whether dietary intake of phylloquinone (vitamin K-1) and menaquinone (vitamin K-2) were related to aortic calcification and coronary heart disease (CHD) in the population-based Rotterdam Study. The analysis included 4807 subjects with dietary data and no history of myocardial infarction at baseline (1990-1993) who were followed until January 1, 2000. The risk of incident CHD, all-cause mortality, and aortic atherosclerosis was studied in tertiles of energy-adjusted vitamin K intake after adjustment for age, gender, BMI, smoking, diabetes, education, and dietary factors. The relative risk (RR) of CHD mortality was reduced in the mid and upper tertiles of dietary menaquinone compared to the lower tertile [RR = 0.73 (95% CI: 0.45, 1.17) and 0.43 (0.24, 0.77), respectively]. Intake of menaquinone was also inversely related to all-cause mortality [RR = 0.91 (0.75, 1.09) and 0.74 (0.59, 0.92), respectively] and severe aortic calcification [odds ratio of 0.71 (0.50, 1.00) and 0.48 (0.32, 0.71), respectively]. Phylloquinone intake was not related to any of the outcomes. These findings suggest that an adequate intake of menaquinone could be important for CHD prevention.

I'll look at the full abstract ASAP, but this appears to be a single study correlating K2 (but not K1) consumption with a decreased risk of CHD and all-cause mortality.  That's interesting, but your original post stated that K2 is receiving "increased scrutiny" because it may be "extremely beneficial in preventing heart disease and cancer," and explicitly claimed that "the official nutritional guidelines to limit meat and organ consumption...[are] actually causing vitamin K2 deficiencies."  There's no way that this single study can warrant those statements...especially since several of your claims clearly don't refer to this one study.

In any case, it appears vegan K2 supplements are available and not particularly expensive (certainly less so than meat), so this seems like a fairly weak argument either way.

[Alcon]

I think the portion that reads "We examined whether dietary intake of phylloquinone (vitamin K-1) and menaquinone (vitamin K-2) were related to aortic calcification and coronary heart disease (CHD) in the population-based Rotterdam Study." Should clarify that.

Also further down
"Phylloquinone intake was not related to any of the outcomes. "

More study is needed on the subject because what's there is limited.  But there is at least one robst study that correlates dietary vitamin k2 intake with lower coronary heart disease and lower overall death rates...that simultaneously found no such correlation with dietary intake of vitamin k1. 

Right, I read that just fine, and that matches the paraphrase I just gave.  I'm all for more study on this.

Regardless of my claims, you have to admit that a vegan diet cannot get you all of the vital nutrients needed to live a healthy life without artificially made nutritional supplements.  And there is plenty of research that shows many nutrients from supplements are not absorbed readily into the body while they usually are from natural food sources.

What do you mean by "absorbed readily"?  The uptake of synthetic vitamins is less effective per-unit, sure, but are you claiming that artificial supplements are insufficient to meet nutritional requirements?

Your claim was that the body can adequately convert k1 into k2.  I disagreed and showed you a study contrary to your claims.

No, I didn't "claim" that.  I said I researched the topic month ago, and didn't find any scientific support for the inverse claim.  It would have been a "claim" if I stated something to be true, like you did when you called K2 "extremely beneficial in preventing heart disease and cancer," and explicitly claimed that "the official nutritional guidelines to limit meat and organ consumption...[are] actually causing vitamin K2 deficiencies."

I'm still confused about how you are stating those linkages unequivocally, when there's no proposed mechanism for the K2 discrepancy (from what I can tell), and other studies appear to show contrasting results.  I'm also not sure where "extremely beneficial" came from...is that your interpretation of the effect sizes here?

In fact, vitamin k2 is seeing higher scrutiny and its low consumption in the western diet could be bad because in order to get enough of it from food rather than supplemental sources would mean going outside of the recommended dietary guidelines which tell us to limit strictly the foods that contain the highest amounts of k2...like butter, hard cheese, whole milk, egg yolks, organ meats, and fattier muscle meats.

I'm confused about what you're arguing here.  It's bad that we don't consume enough, because in order to consume enough, we'd need to eat foods that are otherwise bad for us?  I assume whatever you're saying is unrelated to vegetarianism (unless I misunderstand)?

[Alcon]

Oldiesfreak: Don't you ever wonder if, when you're constantly abandoning arguments and shifting to new ones, you might be rationalizing something you actually can't defend particularly well?

Animals should have some rights, but the needs of humans must come first.

No one is arguing that animals should have equal or greater rights to humans.

I don't like to kill animals, but if I have to in order to protect myself and my family, or to provide for them, then I will.

You don't.

Now your argument about factory farming is relevant to me, and I certainly think the cruelty of those conditions needs to be addressed.

You don't seem to show much interest in addressing these issues.  You seem to outright refuse to restrict your diet at all, and besides vague references to maybe preferring organic food (which barely does anything to address the concerns here), you seem unwilling to make any changes that have more than the slightest cost to you.  Am I wrong?

Free range, grass feeding, etc. is much uses far fewer natural resources than grain feeding animals on factory farms, and it produces meat with much higher nutritional value.  Grass-fed beef, for instance, is one of the most nutrient-rich foods you can eat.

As Ebowed points out, you're not going to be able to square this circle -- it takes more energy and resources to provide nutrition for the cultivation of lifestock than it is to consume the energy put into livestock cultivation more directly.  Trophic levels, dude.  It's a massively inefficient use of resources.

It's kind of amazing: you just used inefficiency as an argument against vegetarianism, and when someone points out that the inefficiency argument works against meat-eating, suddenly you're like "well, there are things we can do to limit the inefficiency!"  How can you not realize you're rationalizing here?

If you want to go vegetarian, then by all means do.  (And don't judge other people because they choose not to.)

I think you're doing something unethical and can't defend it well intellectually.  Even when you recognize ethical problems, you seem unwilling to bend much to mitigate them.  Now you seem to be complaining that other people might think that reflects poorly on you...

It just means more meat for the rest of us.

That's obnoxious.  You do realize that you're basically saying "well, if you don't do this thing I think is unethical, I'll just do it more"?  Try that with something else: well, if you're not willing to partake, more orphans for me to punch!.

It's especially annoying considering I've spent a lot of time replying to your various arguments in this thread, including one which required trawling through a bunch of academic articles, and you've abandoned each of them without even recognizing that you don't have a defense.  Now you're being patronizing, as if I were the one who can't substantiate my position here.

[Alcon]

If you feed animals on their natural diet instead of feeding them grains, you free up more of those grains to feed to people.  Of course, research is showing that grains probably aren't all that good for you, but if we're trying to feed starving people in the developing world, it's better than nothing.

Are you, or are you not, arguing that it is less resource-intensive to cultivate livestock for human consumption than it is to have those same people eat a vegetarian diet?

Do you realize how resource-intensive it is to raise livestock?  Also, do you understand that -- whatever you feed livestock -- some of those resource are wasted on the livestock living?  You're basically adding a "middleman" that wastes the input energy to maintain homeostasis.  How can that possibly be more resource-efficient (unless the source food can't be consumed by humans and the resources involved can't be transferred to something that can), putting aside the other resources (like water use) required?

[Alcon]

There have been some instances where I have.  If hornets were nesting on the roof of my house, would I not have to kill the nest to protect myself and my family?  If mice and/or rats were infesting my house, would it not be right to protect them (and me) from the diseases they could potentially spread?  Or, how about this: if a bear attacked you in the woods (also most likely in self-defense), would you not try to kill the bear in some way to protect yourself?

Granted, these are hypothetical, but there have been many cases where I have had to remove nests of stinging/biting insects from my house and yard, and plenty of times where we have had to work to keep mice out of the house.

OK, but what's your point?  None of these cases have anything to do with the topic at hand, and the idea of self-defense is hardly novel even with other humans.  There are some distinctions between the two instances (we prohibit vigilante self-defense in cases where a risk is non-imminent), but I don't see why those distinctions make this example any more relevant to the topic at hand.  Dairy cows are not doing anything to you or your family.

I would love to switch to organic, free range, grass fed, etc. if it were possible, but in many cases it is cost-prohibitive for me, not to mention many other people who would be inclined to purchase those foods.  I actually think we should quit subsidizing factory farms and agribusiness, and instead provide incentives for more sustainable farming methods.

This seems completely shallow to me.  Vegetarianism is not really especially difficult for most people -- I've been doing it for years -- so why should I consider this anything but hand-wringing?

I'm familiar with trophic levels and the efficiency argument.  But there are many plants that use resources inefficiently as well, such as strawberries.

So what?  This started because you argued that a meat-consuming diet is more efficient than a vegetarian one.  The fact that strawberries aren't particularly resource-efficient doesn't negate that.  (Strawberries are obviously a trivial part of anyone's diet, since they have virtually no calories.)  If your argument is that it's unreasonable to demand that a diet absolutely maximize resource-efficacy, OK, sure.  But you were the one who led with resource-efficacy as an objection to vegetarianism!  As far as I can tell, you're criticizing your own argument now that it realizes it runs against your conclusion.  This is ridiculous.

YOU ARE RATIONALIZING.

Humans have been eating meat for thousands, maybe millions, of years.  Certainly, we have been eating it longer than grains, and longer than we've been farming.  In those days, an entire group of people could survive for several days on the meat of a single animal.  If it wasn't inefficient to eat meat in the days before factory farming and big agribusiness, then doesn't that imply that those things are the problem rather than meat itself?

This is like the 25th consecutive half-baked argument you've provided.  Please, dude, think through your arguments before replying.  Obviously, the reason meat-eating was effective back in the day was because we didn't have systematized agriculture.  It would have been more resource-effective if we could get our caloric and nutritional requirements from one source, but we got it from a central source (meat) instead, because we didn't have the resources to grow a diversity of crops.  That's obviously not the case anymore...as exemplified by the availability of the very mass-scale agriculture we're talking about.

Besides, the way we grow crops in this day and age is hardly a good use of natural resources.  Most farmers today grow their crops in huge monocultures that attract pests (thus requiring more pesticide use) and use countless amounts of water, fertilizer, etc.  Palm oil, for instance, has led to the destruction of rainforests at a similar rate as cattle ranching.  Companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and ConAgra get millions of dollars in corporate welfare subsidies from the government to continue these practices.  At a time when our national debt and deficit are at all-time highs, that seems like an easy place to start cutting back.  I don't care how much they may wail and whine--their business practices are unethical, unhealthy, and unsustainable.  That's not exclusive to meat production; that goes for farming practices in general.  If you feed a cow grass instead of grain, the meat will have more nutritional value because the animal is being fed on its natural diet.  Humans don't eat grass in the first place, so the grains that would have been fed to the cow can now be fed to us.

A lot of this is mostly irrelevant, but OK...

You do realize that the reason these companies feed grain instead of grass is probably because it's cheaper, i.e., less resource-intensive?  I gather you're arguing that, even if that's the case, the resultant meat is so much more nutritionally rich that it not only justifies the greater resources required by a "natural" diet, but it also eliminates the efficiency gap between getting energy through meat and getting it through vegetable matter.

If so, please provide any sort of citation for this claim.

If you go the grass-fed route, the entire issue of trophic levels disappears.

No, it doesn't.  Why would it?  You clearly don't understand what trophic levels are.  You're BSing your way through this exchange, and you probably know you are, yet simultaneously are committed to not changing your mind.

The simple fact is this: people are going to eat meat, whether you like it or not.  If you choose not to, then more of the meat that is produced can be consumed by people like me.  It's a simple equation of resource allocation.  If you use less of the available resources, then I can use more.

That's not how supply and demand works.  Do you somehow think that, if half the world became vegetarian, you would respond by consuming twice as much meat?

As for the issue of trying to rationalize my behavior, maybe there is an element of that.  I come from a long line of hunters in my extended family, and their carnivorous appetites may have rubbed off a bit on me.  But how is it unethical to eat meat when you kill plants for your food?  Given, you may not always kill plants when you eat, but some plants do die when you pick them.  Life is life, whether it's a plant, an animal, a microorganism, etc.  Based on your logic, you could argue that it is unethical to use paper, lumber, or other wood products because it kills trees, or to use soap and hand sanitizer because it kills bacteria.  If you were merely killing an animal, plant, etc. for fun, with no intention of using it, then that would raise ethical issues.  But if you're killing the animal to feed yourself and your family, then how is that immoral?

You're being obtuse.  I never argued that non-sentient, non-conscious, non-thinking life warrants the same protection from suffering or killing.  You've already conceded that you think it's wrong to impose unnecessary cruelty on animals, and here you are, making virtually zero effort to avoid doing it.  We could have a discussion about why we think it's intrinsically wrong to kill a human, even in the absence of suffering, but not other animals, and whether I think it's intrinsically wrong to kill self-aware, non-human animals.  But you're defending eating a meat-based diet, and there are much less philosophically complex issues with what you're doing than a debate over the intrinsic wrongness of killing.

[Alcon]

Supposing that animals actually do have rights, the most fundamental among them would certainly be the right to life. Would every member of Kingdom Animalia be entitled to these? What would the human responsibility be to protect those rights? Do animals have rights protecting them against intra-species violence, or merely against the slings and arrows of Homo sapiens? It's a concept too problematic to be meaningful.

I think that animals have "deserts", i.e. a measure of respect owed to their autonomy and intelligence. This is a far more subjective and fluid concept than the idea of rights, though a more accurate one, since the idea of rights is incompatible with the occasional human need to kill animals. The concept of desert requires that when killing animals is unnecessary, humans should refrain; similarly, our treatment of living animals ought to be more reverential than it is repressive. Otherwise, animals generally deserve to be left unmolested.

In this mode of thought one can find plenty of zoocentric justification for vegetarianism, though I think there's probably a stronger case to be made for an anthropocentric justification. Humans would probably be better off, to say nothing of other animals, if we ate less meat. Energy, water and land could be used more efficiently, calories could be produced more cheaply and on a broader scale, and no one would have to live downwind of a massive, unstable reservoir of pig shit.

n.b. Be wary of conflating "animals" with "mega-" or "meso-fauna", though certainly there's an unconscious temptation to do so.

I think this is a very reasonable way of looking at the underlying issue.  The idea of a "right to life" is even slippery when it comes to people, and I think we mostly think of it as unequivocal because we live in a stable society that emphasizes disallowing individual violence.  However, there are plenty of instances (war, perhaps capitol punishment) where we think the state can revoke the "right to life."  That's not to say that I don't think differentiating "rights" and "deserts" isn't reasonable.  I just mean that the "right to life" is even a somewhat confused concept when it comes to people, and that doesn't prompt us to abandon it, so I don't think "it's hard to conceptualize rights/deserts for animals" warrants abandoning the concept for them.  (I know you seem to agree...it's just a common argument, so I figure it's worth addressing preemptively.)

[Alcon]

True, but if I have to kill and eat a cow to provide food for my family, then I will.

You don't.  Period.  It's moderately more convenient to you and fits your taste preferences.  I don't know why you keep invoking ideas like self-defense as if this was anywhere near a necessity.

To each his own.  What I was saying is that buying free range and organic foods is often too expensive for most people to afford.  But I'm not going to give up meat simply because it's not grass-fed or free range, although that would be my preference.

"To each your own" is a pretty bad defense when we're talking about something that causes unnecessary suffering.  The point is that this does affect other entities (albeit non-human ones), and you've already conceded it affects them in an undesirable way.  Why do you keep reverting to acting like this is some matter of personal preference, instead of an ethical concern?

I never said that a meat diet was more efficient than a vegetarian one.  I said that there is really no difference.  But eating grass-fed meat is much more efficient that grain-feeding, because humans don't eat grass, but they do eat grains.  If you quit feeding grain to animals, then humans will be able to eat the grain.  If you grass feed, the trophic levels argument is irrelevant because you can't eat grass, even if it provides more energy than a steak.

...

It may not be more resource-effective to eat from a single source, but it does not provide all the nutrients your body needs.  You statement is exactly the point I was trying to make.  The unsustainable farming practices we use in the present day apply to both meat and plants, and both are very inefficient at using resources.  I am advocating for more traditional forms of agriculture to increase resource efficiency.

...

Yes, I realize that grain feeding is cheaper and fattens the animals more and quicker.  What I am advocating is that we provide incentives for meat producers to grain feed and end factory farming practices.

Sigh, dude.  Of course it's still relevant.  It doesn't matter if we can't eat grass.  It takes resources to produce that grass, which would not be used if we reduced the number of cattle we had to feed grass.  This is one of those instances where you'd really benefit from thinking about your own argument for like 15 seconds before posting it.

You are simply wrong that there is "no difference" in terms of resource intensity.  You keep saying that feeding animals with grass instead of grain somehow removes the problem of trophic levels (animals expending energy as a "middleman" in the food chain), by somehow making the meat so much more nutritious that it eliminates the need to consume more meat to meet nutritional requirements -- or something.  You haven't provided a citation for this, and I think it's obviously untrue that this eliminates the difference in resource-intensity; a lot of resources are required to maintain livestock, and even doubly nutritious meat probably wouldn't eliminate most of this gap.  It's logically impossible for it to eliminate all of the gap.  But, seriously: where does this belief come from?  Do you have any sort of citation that even begins to substantiate this claim?

That IS how supply and demand works.  No matter how many vegetarians there are in the world, there will still be people who eat meat.  I was making a joke with that comment (hence the smiley face), and you are taking it seriously.

Dude, if fewer people eat meat, the demand for meat is lower, so the need to supply meat is less.  It doesn't have to become zero to be less.  You seem to be implying that vegetarianism is pointless, because the amount of meat produced is finite and not responsive to consumer demand.  That's exactly what "more meat for us" means.  That's not true.

I am taking it seriously, because: 1) it doesn't make sense; and, 2) it's literally you saying "I will negate an action you think is ethical," which is dickish.

Certainly we need more humane slaughtering methods, but what is the difference between killing an animal for food and killing a tree for wood?

I already answered this "objection" in the very post you're quoting, but I'll expand on it:

We do not have evidence that trees are self-aware in a way that leads them to suffer.  They may have chemical reactions, but they don't have minds that consciously experience that suffering the way humans and other mammals clearly do.  The same goes for bacteria that pose a threat to your health, which again, cows and pigs don't.

You seem to be arguing that there's not a rational reason to differentiate, say, cutting down a tree from torturing a pet cat or dog.  Do you really think that's the case?  Do you really reject the idea that it's wrong to inflict suffering on beings that can obviously consciously experience its tortuous efects?  Do you actually think that causing suffering to a conscious mammal is more analogous to killing bacteria than it is to causing suffering to a human?  I'm nearly 100% sure that you already know and accept the answer to your own question.  I don't think you actually think that torturing a mammal is clearly the same as cutting down a tree.  Correct me if I'm wrong -- but if I'm not wrong, please stop wasting my time.

I think you're trying to throw every imaginable argument out there, and trying to muddle every issue, hoping that you can act like this is some kind of subjective call.  The problem is that these objections seem totally inconsistent with your expressed positions (like opposing animal cruelty), or seem to obviously be defeated by 45 seconds of pausing to think (seriously, most of these resource use defenses you're giving are obviously nonsensical).

I really encourage you do a little reflection before your next reply.  Do you really think you're doing a fair-minded job of evaluating opposing arguments and equally scrutinizing your own here?  This is like playing Whack-a-Mole -- whenever one of your arguments is struck down, you scramble to pop another one up as quickly as possible, and you seem totally unaffected by any dissonance, considering that all of these arguments keep getting struck down.