"we just don't want to hurt innocent animals"

I honestly don’t see how that’s a dig.

They are saying that meat eaters are basically murderers that are fine with killing innocent animals.

At least they accept it - they have to. How else would they be able to aquire meat? It's just easy to dismiss anything contradicting a belief or habit if a majority shares it.

Plants? Honestly? No they don't. Also no, of course carnivorous animals (which we're not, by the way) don't give a crap about the welfare of their prey, but as humans we have the amazing and awesome power of choice. When you know better you do better, it's that simple.

... the perfect example of bullshit claims and preachery - I couldn't make it up any better than you just did. Thank you for giving this perfect example of a preachy, self-righteous veg ... oh, wait, what's wrong here?

Yeah...I don't tell people that their food choices are wrong. Eat whatever you want and don't tell others what they should and shouldn't eat

Humans aren't carnivorous, they are omnivorous, and can survive very well as herbivores. Meat eating like not meat eating for most people is a choice but it can certainly also be situationally required. If you truly love something but you also consume it your love is paradoxical. I think most people only love some animals, and eat the ones they don't.

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"You can love your wife, but stull, to keep her in her place, she needs a little slap now and then!" - I'm sorry, but this love is not worse than the love to animals who end up on a plate. A sentient life is worth something. Mistreatment, even without taking the killing into account, isn't something that happens once in a while, it is the vast majority in animal use, it is only a very little fraction that even is somehow cared about a bit, aside from what so-called care is necessary in order to keep the system running. It may be inconvenient, but by buying stuff, we accept how it is made and agree to continue like that. I buy stuff made from a dead animal = either I'm ok with the killing and treatment, or I'm a self-righteous bigot.

A sentient life is worth something to you though because you're placing value on it. A cat can 'love' or care for its kittens or even adopt the kittens of another animal with maternal instinct and still eat and hunt other animals without remorse. To me, it's the same thing.

Aileen Grist, vegans like you are why people don't like vegans.

But you're smarter than a cat though?

And how much of your decisions do you base an the behaviour of cats? Or, the one I love the most: People claiming that I'd prohibit anything and asking if I'd do that to lions, too - if they never ate their stepchildren, they are clearly not following lionism as strict as they wanna imply they do. We understand things better. The knowledge of suffering bears an ethical implication to not cause it without at least a good reason, no matter if it is our fellow humans or our fellow animals in a broader scope. Also - no one ever angrily claims to be left alone when causing human suffering is mentioned. Why are we obligated to care about humans we don't know, while a lot more severe suffering of other animals , or the avoidance thereof, is reduced to "dietary choices"? Veganism is as much about eating as astronomy is about telescopes. It just happens to be the most prominent tool of execution, not the least bit more... At least, if it is the consequence of ethical reasoning.

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So you are happy killing something you love. Or is it that you should qualify it by saying you love some animals. That would be more honest

I love cows and think they are cute. I certainly don't like the thought of them being mistreated. I also enjoy eating beef. I respect and appreciate the animal for supplying me with food, I do wish there was more to be done to make animal farming more humane. I will say it again, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean others don't love the animals we eat.

I think the definition of love is in question, and rightly so, it's hard to define. If love means that you wish no unnecessary harm to come to what you love, then you can't both love a cow and eat a cow. I say unnecessary only because humans can survive as herbivores for the most part, so the killing of a cow for meat is not a necessary requirement for our survival.

Let's just state here that the eating of meat is what made homo sapiens. The eating of meat is the reason our brains developed as they did. Otherwise, we'd still be knuckle-dragging on the savannah. So perhaps it will be dangerous to future generations to turn to a total plant-based diet? Only a few thousand years will tell.

Oh no, let's not state that, because it's absolutely not true. For one thing, there are many places in the world where meat-eating has been non-existent or rare for thousands of years already, and their brains seem to be just fine. I'm deeply interested in how human brains got to be the way they are (for what it's worth, I like the social language hypothesis) but have yet to see a shred of scientific evidence that links the cognitive shift to meat-eating.

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I have read B3 (Niacin) is linked to brain development in early humans. This is in no way a reason to eat meat today. You can get it in many non animal based sources that are very available in todays world. You could also buy supplements, or just eat foods that are fortified with it. You could say we grew smart enough to not have to rely on meat at all.

By that reasoning, why eat at all? If you can get supplements to give you everything, lets just eat ultra processed vegan 'meat'/soylent green instead of eating vegetables for folate or eating a carrot for beta carotene, just take supplements. The simple best way of absorbing both b12 and iron are from animal sources. B12 straight up doesn't come from plants. Ask me how I know? I'm anemic and supplements do not help me. Moreover, you are forgetting that breaking down vitamins into their base parts and acting like thats the only thing that we need from foods we have been eating for centuries is reductive. There are other things, enzymes, proteins etc, that you ingest as a whole because foods are complex. If you feel better doing what you do more power to you, but you can't pretend you can take a complex food like meat and swapsies with an iron and b12 supplement and its all good. It's not the same, and for some people they dont have that option.

That's a real leap. Fortified foods are everywhere and they have been for a 100 years to help prevent nutritional deficiencies. As for iron, I get it. I am not telling anyone to not eat meat, but someone saying they eat meat because they worry in the future human brains might be smaller because early homo sapiens ate a lot of meat is ridiculous. Being a male is it much more likely my iron levels are good, they are fine, I even get ranked pretty high when I donate blood, but that isn't to say everyone's is. If you really want a vegetarian diet, there are lots of things you can try to up your iron, especially is you have money to spend. They might help, if you don't and meat helps, great. If you just don't want to go without meat, great as well.

Yes. Also many people have difficulty processing certain nutrients regardless of what they eat. I (and I think about 9% of white people worldwide) could literally eat raw steak all day long and still be B-12 deficient. Sometimes supplements are the only effective choice - and they are effective.

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Oh my ... a fairy tale from the land of a meat-friendly alternative to reality. Why does no one ever complain about their fellow meateaters making up stories of that kind? And why would this be a reason to continue as before? Other than this, it is totally out of question that burning stuff derived from petrol has taken humanity a lot further in a shorter timespan than any development before did ... but still, as burning petrol (and coal and natural gas) leads to heating up the atmosphere, we're currently in the transition out of the fossil-fueled society, and that for a perfectly good reason, while not even the means necessary to get rid of our oil-addiction would be anywhere in sight without us having used and burned oil and coal and whatnot. So, even if it were true that we needed meat to develop our brains, it is in no way a justification to do this today. God, if that's what the meateating side comes up with, how can you even NOT come across preachy?

Does it hurt to be that stupid?

But there IS something you can do to make animal farming more humane!