Vegan landlord bans meat-eaters

[Gifted Gourmet]

Hmmm... I am sure that this has come up on other threads on this subject but I will ask it again anyway.

Where do vegans stand on breast feeding?

You sure you really want to ask that question here? I presume they are proactive on the subject .. no one is harmed in the "production" of breast milk nor is the recipient negatively impacted ... and they might just buy into it based on the "bonding aspect" it involves ... or maybe not ...

information on this topic from vegsource.com

Edited August 3, 2004 by Gifted Gourmet (log)

[Jinmyo]

So this guy wants an entire block of flats full of Fagins?

edit (just to be sure it's obvious):

The Dickens. That's a twist.

Edited August 3, 2004 by Jinmyo (log)

[jschyun]

Where do vegans stand on breast feeding?

Though I don't know any vegans with kids personally, every one of the the female breeding vegans I've ever read about breastfeeds. In fact, I read that breastmilk from vegan moms were much less likely to contain PCB's and I forget what other stuff. Stands to reason, since they're eating lower on the food chain.

[tanabutler]

we could flip all this on its head and say that many meat eaters don't *really* choose meat--they just have it presented to them from day 1 (as with your example of indian vegetarians).

Hmmm... I am sure that this has come up on other threads on this subject but I will ask it again anyway.

Where do vegans stand on breast feeding?

There is nothing illogical about vegans breastfeeding. If they cut off a body part to feed to their child, it wouldn't be vegan. Nothing is healthier for a growing baby than its mother's milk. And no animals are injured in the process, unless you count me. My baby grew two little white razors in her bottom gums when she was 14 weeks old.

Talk about screaming. First me, then her.

Edited August 3, 2004 by tanabutler (log)

[Pan]

In fact, I read that breastmilk from vegan moms were much less likely to contain PCB's and I forget what other stuff.  Stands to reason, since they're eating lower on the food chain.

I would think that the higher you are in the food chain, the more poisons have had a chance to concentrate themselves, so that large fish (e.g., tuna) are more likely to have high levels of mercury and DDT wiped out condors. Sorry for going off topic...

Edited August 3, 2004 by Pan (log)

[Adam Balic]

You are supposed to be able to get everything from plant sources. The idea is, protein is protein, whether it comes from a cow or chickpea or bean or vegetable or potato. The percent of protein is where the rubber hits the road: do you want to eat a lot of chickpeas or a card-deck sized chunk of cow or pig or sheep.

Actually, not all proteins are equal (wold you rather eat a bowl of bean curd or hair for instance ), they are made up of different amino acids. Humans can't manufacture cetain amino acids form scratch so they have to come from the diet. It is proberly easier to eat a cow as they are helpfully made of similar stuff to humans, but you can get complete amino acid coverage from a vegetarian diet. Certain plants tend to lack some essential amino acids, but this can be covered by eating other plant types. Corn and beans is a good example of this type of complementary diet.

[Andrew Fenton]

It is proberly easier to eat a cow as they are helpfully made of similar stuff to humans

Yet another argument for Soylent Green...

[fresco]

Murderous vegan swine.

http://news.sympatico.msn.ca/Health/Conten...btitle=&abc=abc

This strikes me as potentially more dangerous and irresponsible than, well, fat and salt laden fast food. I think there is real merit in class action litigation against him and his kind.

[Katherine]

Murderous vegan swine.

http://news.sympatico.msn.ca/Health/Conten...btitle=&abc=abc

This strikes me as potentially more dangerous and irresponsible than, well, fat and salt laden fast food. I think there is real merit in class action litigation against him and his kind.

Here, a landlord can evict a tenant with 30 days' notice for no reason at all, which makes it much easier to do renovations and conversions, as well as getting rid of tenants who are annoying the heck out of you, though they pay their rent.

Most renters I know have been kicked out several times over the years on this basis.

It makes the landlord a weirdo to only rent to vegans, and possibly a bad businessman, if it increases vacancies, but hardly "murderous". And unless your laws are very different than ours, there's nothing to sue about. As was mentioned earlier, meat eaters are not a legally protected class.

[fresco]

Guess I should have added one of these

[jschyun]

In fact, I read that breastmilk from vegan moms were much less likely to contain PCB's and I forget what other stuff.  Stands to reason, since they're eating lower on the food chain.

I would think that the higher you are in the food chain, the more poisons have had a chance to concentrate themselves, so that large fish (e.g., tuna) are more likely to have high levels of mercury and DDT wiped out condors. Sorry for going off topic...

Right. So that is why vegan moms should theoretically have fewer things like mercury, PCB's, and other foodborne toxins than meat eating moms. I read on some vegetarian site that this is actually true in practice, not just theory. Of course the source is biased. However, it is perfectly logical to me that this should be the case.

And to rephrase what Katherine said, meat eaters are not protected by fair housing laws. So even in lawsuit happy U.S., you would probably not have a case. Heck, even if they were protected by fair housing laws, there are some ways to get around it, including living in a house and just renting out a room in the house. Also, I could be wrong, but I believe another way to get around it is to sell rental units by yourself (without the help of a real estate professional), and you can discriminate as much as you want, as long as you're the owner and doing it yourself. But then you get screwed if the person that buys it from you turns around and sells it to a meat eater. I suppose you can do something about that though.

[Gifted Gourmet]

article from Santa Cruz Sentinel

Chand and Walker handed out literature showing dead chickens, a miserable looking veal calf, a roster of vegan celebrities, a list of vegan recipes...

"Eating meat can make you fat and lethargic," said the slim and muscular Chand. "I’m trying to tell the truth about meat. If you don’t want to be impotent, if you don’t want your sex life ruined, you should not eat meat.

"Vegetarians tend to be slimmer," Chand said. "They are sexier and tend to have more endurance, in and out of bed."

So this is why the vegan landlord claimed he wanted vegan tenants .. not so much for their "sensitivities" ... but for their sexiness and their sexual "endurance" ...

PETA has all sorts of defenders, on all sorts of moral grounds, but this struck me as one of the best rationales yet ...

[fifi]

we could flip all this on its head and say that many meat eaters don't *really* choose meat--they just have it presented to them from day 1 (as with your example of indian vegetarians).

Hmmm... I am sure that this has come up on other threads on this subject but I will ask it again anyway.

Where do vegans stand on breast feeding?

There is nothing illogical about vegans breastfeeding. If they cut off a body part to feed to their child, it wouldn't be vegan. Nothing is healthier for a growing baby than its mother's milk. And no animals are injured in the process, unless you count me. My baby grew two little white razors in her bottom gums when she was 14 weeks old.

Talk about screaming. First me, then her.

Ummm... I am not sure that is true. In the twisted logic, they should be eschewing breast feeding. After all eggs and milk are not allowable.

It is the same wacky logic that has Greenpeace calling for outlawing all chlorine production while running around in Zodiac boats that are made of Hypalon... yep... chlorosulfonated polyethylene.

[slkinsey]

fair enough, but this doesn't mean that gustatory considerations may not be important factors once they've made the choice. (consider also that no similar questionnaire can exist for meat-eaters since that's the default in the u.s.) i imagine if you asked vegetarians if they cared about whether their food tastes good almost all will say yes.

I imagine most would say this. But, my personal experience and the research results I've seen suggest that it is not the top priority for most Western vegetarians in preparing their meals -- and that the other priorities frequently get in the way of a delicious result.

For example, I have a vegetarian friend who regularly cooks what he calls "greens and beans" -- e.g., collard greens and black beans. Sometimes he'd do a fried egg instead of the beans. I asked him once why he did the beans or eggs with the greens or why he didn't sometimes do both. His answer had nothing to do with taste whatsoever, but rather had to do with making sure the dish had protein in it. In other words, the actual taste of the dish was of decidedly secondary importance to the nutritional qualities. He did his best on the flavor side, I suppose, but the fact remains that he didn't add the beans because he thought it would make the dish taste better (it's also notweorthy that he took the time to educate himself on the nutritional stuff but not on the culinary "making good-tasting food" stuff). Including/excluding "allowable" ingredients for non-gustatory reasons is a big stumbling block along the way to making food taste good. My feeling is that, when something other than "deliciousness" is the primary goal of a dish, the gustatory quality of the dish will necessarily suffer. A religious Indian vegetarian, for example, wouldn't just say "this cauliflower and potato dish needs more protein, so I'll just chuck in some dal."

This goes to my primary point. It's not the case that most Western vegetarians simply to confine their diet to certain products and proceed from there directly towards a quality gustatoty result. That's more like the religion model. Kosher cooks or religious vegetarian cooks are able to start with a restricted list of ingredients and proceed directly towards a goal of gustatory quality. This is because the restricted list of ingredients isn't the result of some other agenda -- it is the agenda. Someone who chooses to be a vegetarian for perceived health reasons, for example, has a fundamentally different outlook in their cookery. The first question is not "what can I do to make dinner taste good?" but rather "what are the health implications of dinner, and what do I have to do in order to make dinner comply with my health-related philosophy?" This is the kind of thinking that makes someone dump a can of pinto beans into a pan of collard greens purely for health reasons without considering whether the dish will taste better as a result.

there just isn't enough cooking knowledge or restaurant/frozen food choices out there yet for all american vegetarians to always have easy access to amazinly tasty food. thus for some taste can't help but get pushed down the scale, since they're not going to start eating meat just because they have a smaller range of tasty pure veg. options.

It's definitely true that Western vegetarian cuisine is still not very mature and there aren't a lot of good choices. But, until gustatory quality becomes the prime consideration, I am not sure there ever will be -- especially since the different concerns of most Western vegetarians are so fragmented and different. It's also the case that someone who restricts his/her diet for health, ethical, political, etc. kinds of reasons will inevitably end up working in a much narrower range of possibility than someone whose diet is more-or-less automatically restricted by religion, culture or environment.

we could flip all this on its head and say that many meat eaters don't *really* choose meat--they just have it presented to them from day 1 (as with your example of indian vegetarians).

Well, exactly. That's my point. And, as a result, Western omnivores have worked with the ingredients available to them with the primary purpose of making those ingredients taste good. As a result, we have a strong Western omnivore tradition of great-tasting omnivore cookery.

[Andrew Fenton]

Ummm... I am not sure that is true. In the twisted logic, they should be eschewing breast feeding. After all eggs and milk are not allowable.

Nonsense. The reason for not eating (cow) milk is because it exploits the cow. A breastfeeding mother isn't being exploited.

The overwhelming majority of vegans recognize this: there's a slogan to the effect of "milk should only be for baby cows".

[stovetop]

How is it exploitation? A cow is breed to raise milk.

That is what it does.

It is part of the food chain

Just like us, we are part of the food chain

We are part of nature

If we were actually in nature, we would be eaten.

Going to a grocery store is just as unnatural as lets say arguing about meat not be natural to humans.

steve

[Katherine]

How is it exploitation? A cow is breed to raise milk.

That is what it does.

It is part of the food chain

Just like us, we are part of the food chain

We are part of nature

If we were actually in nature, we would be eaten.

Going to a grocery store is just as unnatural as lets say arguing about meat not be natural to humans.

steve

Here's my take on this.

We are all omnivores. It is the design of our species. It is our destiny.

People can choose to eliminate all animal products from their diet, but they're still omnivores. You can change yourself into a vegan, but you can't change yourself into an herbivore, nohow, noway.

[Jinmyo]

Vegetarians (prey) have eyes on the sides of their heads to see carnivores and omnivores (predators) with eyes in the front of their faces (like us) coming after them.

Then there's bacon which kind of just sits there.

[Andrew Fenton]

How is it exploitation? A cow is breed to raise milk.

Of course it's exploitation. Breeding an animal to produce milk and meat is as close to a definition of exploitation as you can get. Suppose I had a farm on which I raised human slaves to produce milk and meat: this would obviously be a horrible form of exploitation. Ethical vegetarianism is therefore based on a judgment about the personhood of animals.

But even if (as I do) you choose to eat animal products, and believe that it's ethically okay, it's silly to hide from that choice by calling it a "fact of nature", rather than a conscious decision.

[Katherine]

How is it exploitation? A cow is breed to raise milk.

Of course it's exploitation. Breeding an animal to produce milk and meat is as close to a definition of exploitation as you can get. Suppose I had a farm on which I raised human slaves to produce milk and meat: this would obviously be a horrible form of exploitation. Ethical vegetarianism is therefore based on a judgment about the personhood of animals.

But even if (as I do) you (?)choose to eat animal products, and believe that it's ethically okay, it's silly to hide from that choice by calling it a "fact of nature", rather than a conscious decision.

None of these animals would exist did we not breed them into existence. Vegans would have us believe that if we didn't enslave animals, they would be happily frolicking in green pastures, living lives of fulfillment and dying of old age, surrounded by their friends and relatives.

None of the plants you or I eat would exist if we had not bred them in exactly the same way we have bred animals. They are just as unnatural.

"Ethical" vegetarianism is based on the premise that it is ok to eat non-sentient vegetables, but not ok to consume animals, which have brains. We are mentally capable of choosing not to eat meat, therefore it is immoral not to make that choice. Well, you are capable of choosing not to eat any living thing, and surely that would be even more moral.

Humans have consumed meat for as long as humans have been humans, and on the savannah of Africa, there was darned little beans, wheat, fresh fruit, and succulent vegetables.

Tim Sample, a Maine comedien, did a character who was a carnivore. He had made the conscious decision to stop eating vegetables when he looked in the eyes of a cow and saw that it was ready to die. Vegetables, he realized, were innocent and unsuspecting.

I was born a carnivore. My digestive system was designed to digest meat, not leaves, twigs, and grasses. My father was a carnivore. Lucy was a carnivore. I'm ok with that. If you can't come to grips with the fact that you were born a carnivore, too, that's, well, whatever.

[klc14]

Actually, not all proteins are equal (wold you rather eat a bowl of bean curd or hair for instance ), they are made up of different amino acids. Humans can't manufacture cetain amino acids form scratch so they have to come from the diet. It is proberly easier to eat a cow as they are helpfully made of similar stuff to humans, but you can get complete amino acid coverage from a vegetarian diet. Certain plants tend to lack some essential amino acids, but this can be covered by eating other plant types. Corn and beans is a good example of this type of complementary diet.

[klc14]

Ummm... I am not sure that is true. In the twisted logic, they should be eschewing breast feeding. After all eggs and milk are not allowable.

The twisted logic? --I should just let it go, but....The logic is not that "milk", all milk, any milk, is not allowable. The logic is that "cow's milk" or "goat's milk" is not allowable because it is an animal product, from another species.

Breastfeeding is allowed because as mammals, female humans produce milk to feed their own young, then wean them to plant sources. Cow's milk is supposed to feed calves, not humans. Honey belongs to the bees, etc.

Twisted logic: grinding nuts in water and calling it nut milk. Well, it's a prettier name than nut slurry.

[JAZ]

To exaggerate wildly for a sec, Hitler was a meateater but so I believe was Albert Schweitzer who was one of the great humanitarians of his time.

Hitler was a vegetarian. Not sure about Schweitzer.

[Andrew Fenton]

None of these animals would exist did we not breed them into existence... None of the plants you or I eat would exist if we had not bred them in exactly the same way we have bred animals. They are just as unnatural.

Humans have consumed meat for as long as humans have been humans, and on the savannah of Africa, there was darned little beans, wheat, fresh fruit, and succulent vegetables.

You seem to be arguing two things simultaneously. First, that eating meat is okay because it's unnatural (i.e., because we breed animals). Secondly, that eating meat is okay because it's natural (our ancestors ate meat on the savannah). I'm not sure, therefore, what your point is.

For myself, I'm not convinced that the naturalness or unnaturalness of an act is connected with its moral status. Incest occurs regularly in nature; that doesn't make it right for humans. Contrariwise, as far as I know animals aren't racists; but racism's unnaturalness doesn't make it right, either. So I don't see (un)naturalness as a moral factor in either direction.

"Ethical" vegetarianism is based on the premise that it is ok to eat non-sentient vegetables, but not ok to consume animals, which have brains.  We are mentally capable of choosing not to eat meat, therefore it is immoral not to make that choice. Well, you are capable of choosing not to eat any living thing, and surely that would be even more moral.

It's true that the line that vegetarians draw (eat plants, yes; eat meat, no) is in a sense arbitrary. But that doesn't mean that it's absurd or susceptible to this sort of reductio. We can take it in a different direction. A cannibal, for example, could make the same argument to you: your decision (I presume) to not eat people is also arbitrary. But it's not (necessarily) an absurd decision.

And finally, I think you mean "omnivore", not "carnivore." Lucy was an omnivore, as am I; there are probably carnivores out there, but I've never met one. Even among the Atkins folks.

[tryska]

considering all the side effects of a purely vegetarian diet, i'll stick with omnivore myself. with the added caveat of not eating cultivated grain.

i mean if we really want to talk about natural v unnatural.