Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don’t come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don’t really get upset by it IRL

  • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I don’t hate vegans. I even dated one for a while. She would eat veggies, I would eat meat. It worked because neither of us were dismissive of the others choice.

    I do hate being preached to. I think most people do. Many of my encounters with vegans were ones where they were very hostile to me. For just not being vegan. I wasn’t going around telling them veganism was bad or that they were a terrible person for being vegan. I have been told that by vegans. That I am a bad person for eating meat.

    I have to eat meat I have always had a high metabolism. At various times in my life my maintenance diet had to be at least 3,000 calories. Plus of course any additional food needed for non maintenance activities. Additionally I’m allergic to soy. This means that it would be nearly impossible for me to have gotten enough food without eating meat. I am pretty certain that if I had not eaten meat and animal fat. I would have died as a child, or at best had serious issues with nutrition. I was well fed as a child. I could eat as much as I wanted, still many of my memories of childhood were ones of hunger.

    I even explained this to someone once and they responded by saying “well you didn’t die” and then heavily implied they wish I did. As if me not dying made my point invalid.

    This is why I am skeptical of vegans and vegan ideology. It is often toxic, and actively tries to hurt and shame people. Even people like me who are effectively choiceless in regards to eating meat.

    Often even non-militant vegans will allow this behavior. I know how frustrating it can be to be told you need to police your own community. Though that doesn’t mean it’s okay to allow bad behavior amongst your peers.

    • icesentry@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      I’m not a vegan, but saying you need to eat meat because you ate around 3000 calories is a bit ridiculous. The fact that you are allergic to soy is way more of an issue than the calories. It’s really not that hard to eat a shit ton of calories with vegan food.

      • Sizzler@slrpnk.net
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        7 months ago

        They don’t realise how much soya is used as a filler in meat products I bet.

        • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          First off ground beef, a steak, a whole chicken is not going to have soy filler.

          Second most soy found in the process foods is soy lecithin. I don’t know why but I am not allergic to that.

          I am very aware of how much soy is used as a filler because I have to avoid it.

      • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        I’m not a vegan either but I too read that comment as “I’m a fat fucker” 😂

        • icesentry@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          No it’s not, 3000 calories isn’t that much for anyone that’s active. And that’s not at all how I read the comment. Like I said eating 3000 calories can easily be done with a vegan diet so I really don’t know how you interpreted that from my comment or OP’s comment.

          • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            I’d sympathise but I don’t speak medieval weights. That could be as much as a duck or a cow for all I know, old bean

      • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I really appreciate how you completely distilled my life in one comment without any understanding of the context. You basically did the exact same thing. That I was saying I found hurtful in my comment. Thanks

        • icesentry@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          What? I did none of that? I didn’t distill your entire life based on a single comment. All I’m saying is that high calorie food is not limited to animal products and saying it’s the reason you eat meat is weird. The reason you eat meat is your soy allergy, not any kind of high calorie need. There might be other reasons too, I’m not denying that, you just didn’t give any other, but the first one you mentioned is the calorie amount and that’s just a bullshit reason.

          • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Yeah there are other reasons but you know I didn’t really wanted to share them before. And now with your reaction I definitely don’t want to share them. Also you do know your maintenance diet is just the calories you need for your basic metabolic needs. It doesn’t take into account any calories needed to gain weight (something I have been trying to do all my life) or any activity. I remember days where I could have multiple 1200 to 1500 calories meals and still have snacks in between because I would get hungry between meals.

            You call bs on me without having context. Yeah I didn’t share context for reasons. Maybe you shouldn’t attack someone when they say they have been attacked in the exact same way and found it hurtful.

            • icesentry@lemmy.ca
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              7 months ago

              I don’t need context to know that eating 3000 calories is doable on a vegan diet. Not everything is about you. I specifically said, multiple times, that the only part I’m arguing is that you said needing a lot of calories is a reason to eat animal products. On its own it just isn’t true at all. You could need 1500 calories or 5000, it would still be possible for a human being to live on a vegan diet. It’s completely irrelevant to why you can’t eat a vegan diet. Like I said already, I’m sure there a reasons why you can’t eat a vegan diet and that’s completely fine, but needing 3000 calories is not a reason to not eat a vegan diet for anyone, including you.

              I don’t know why you want to talk about maintenance calories vs calories to gain weight. It still doesn’t matter what the number is or for what reason you picked the number, you can eat any amount of calories you need on a vegan diet. You yourself probably can’t because of your allergy and other factors, but not because of the caloric content of vegan food. I just don’t know why you think calories are even relevant when talking about whether or not you eat a vegan diet.