Neil
New
Neil,
I can't help but notice the irony of your first response: on a psi forum besieged by "skeptics", in whose arguments and dismissals you, as a "proponent", no doubt see the bias and prejudice, on this subject you are behaving exactly like one of them!
I do not maintain a mainstream position.
Laird said:Sure, the cat study looked at only the blood levels of two nutrients - I assume that that's because those are the ones most sensitive to a vegan diet. There's no reason to dismiss it on that basis. Sure, "caregiver’s perception of the cat’s health status" is not as expert as a vet's or an independent clinician's, but this is no cause to dismiss it out of hand. Your claim was categorical: that feeding pets a vegan diet is "abuse". This study does not support that statement in any way, even accounting for its minor deficiencies.
As for "35% of the cats in the vegan group had access to the outdoors, so it is not known if they were in fact vegan or if they would hunt and eat animals" - that 35% is not significantly different to the remaining 65%. In any case, have you ever kept a cat with access to the outdoors? They might very well hunt, but if they are being fed by you, they are not interested in eating their catches - they are only interested in presenting them to you on your doorstep or pillow.
As for the dog study, you criticise it for its participants being solicited through PETA's newsletter: how else do you think you are going to find vegan dogs? The average carnist like yourself sees it as abuse - who else but vegans are going to try out a vegan diet on their pets, and where better to find such people than through the major national (nominally) animal rights organisation?
Yes, it would have been better for there to have been a control group, and yes, it would have been better to not have relied upon self-reporting, but, again, this is no reason to dismiss the study out of hand. The vast majority of the dogs were healthy. That speaks for itself.
You claim that the participants "belong to an extremist group and subject to enormous bias", but this is simply a convenient way to hide your own bias.
No, it's not just a way for me to hide my bias. Those studies cannot be used to support your position. They aren't good evidence at all, let alone the "strong" evidence you claimed. They are full of so many flaws as to be almost useless.
Laird said:Of course it is. All choices are informed by beliefs. Eating animals is a choice.
Eating foods natural to one's species is not a "belief system." Choosing to eat an unnatural diet because of personal beliefs is.
Laird said:No, I'm saying that the healthfulness of a vegan diet is supported by the fact that people survive healthily on it today. That we have survived with little meat in our diets in the past is just a helpful reminder that vegan-fruitarian diets, or something approximating them, were just as possible in the past too.
Having little meat to eat in times of scarcity has nothing to do with supporting a life-long vegan diet for oneself, pets, and children.
Not everyone reacts the same to a vegan diet! To ignore the people that do poorly and insist that the should eat it any way is just plain unethical. I'll be damned if my mom doesn't do well on a vegan diet and I have someone like you telling her that she should eat vegan to do the least harm to animals. Hell no, she is going to ditch the vegan diet if she doesn't do well on it because it would be unethical to have her continue.
Laird said:The "so what" is that your original claim was that animal products are the basis of human health. If many Jains have been living without them for millennia (according to Wikipedia, Jainism was founded in perhaps the 9th-7th century BC), then this puts your claim to rest.
So for sake of argument, I will grant you this position. My response is that this cannot be applied to everyone! Again, due to genetic and epigenetic differences, you cannot take results from a particular outlier group and extrapolate it to everyone. Again, not everyone reacts the same.
Laird said:Maybe not, but vegans today come from all sorts of different ethnicities. I've heard of no evidence that veganism is impossible for any specific ethnicity.
Again, not everyone reacts the same. Not to mention, it is up to you to provide convincing evidence for your position since you are recommending throwing out traditional evolutionary ways of eating in favor of your unnatural way of eating. So far you have not accomplished that.
Laird said:Individual differences can be readily managed by the variety possible in a vegan diet. Eliminating animal products does not remove all variety from a diet: far from it.
What evidence do you have for this claim?
Laird said:Not at all. They show that the human form is capable of handling changes that some people wouldn't consider "natural". This is totally applicable to dietary considerations.
So us watching TV means that a vegan diet is healthy?
Laird said:To adapt and paraphrase Gary Yourofsky from his well-known speech: for every study that you can post showing that "veganism isn't all sunshine and lollipops", I can post two showing that consumption of animal products is worse.
Now animal products are unhealthy? Give me a break. So much of the research saying animal products are unhealthy are very flawed, or perhaps you haven't been skeptical enough on this to actually look into it.
Laird said:Vegan diets are adaptable; anybody can do well on them. If you do badly, then consult a vegan dietitian; fix your diet. There are all sorts of options. I've mentioned some of them already.
Oh, so blame the person, not the diet?
Laird said:All I've rejected is your claim (whether explicit or implicit) that all vegans are necessarily deficient in some set of nutrients in a way that cannot be corrected - or at least that these supposed deficiencies are leading to actual and widespread health problems in vegans. That's simply not true. Many people adopt veganism because it is so healthy
Not everyone reacts the same to diet! It seems like you want to blame a person if they aren't doing well on the diet, ignoring that there could be genetic or epigenetic factors or disease states.
Laird said:Seriously, expecting a vegan to trust an article on vegan nutrition from the Weston A. Price Foundation is like expecting an environmentalist to trust an article on climate science by a climate change denial lobby group. These are guys who pimp animal products; they have a vested interest in talking up the supposed problems with veganism. I'm not saying there's nothing useful in that article, but it's not going to be my first choice for advice.
Ok, I purposely posted an article by Chris Masterjohn because of how thoroughly he investigates the research and how well he cites his articles. Go ahead and ignore the research he cites and go with your PETA surveys that you are trying to defend as meaning anything. Give me a break.
Laird said:Here is how a committed vegan handles health problems: Facing Failing Health As A Vegan. She doesn't just cave in at the first sign of trouble and abandon her ethics: ethics are the whole point of veganism. I admire this woman, her courage and commitment so much, not to mention how beautiful I find her both inside and out.
This is starting to go nowhere, I think. You refuse to see that people react differently, and say that if someone does poorly that basically it is their fault and they just aren't doing the diet correctly. This is dogma. People react differently, and there are real metabolic differences. To ignore this is unethical. Your dietary recommendations are therefore unethical and racially biased.
Laird said:You need to get your story straight, dude. First it was "Weston Price did not find a single example of a vegan tribe". Now it's "The long-term vegan groups which Weston Price found had abnormal dental arches".
I said that he found no healthy vegan groups. Get YOUR story straight.
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