I do not agree with that, but there's no denying there's less cruelty in that method than buying store brought turkey's

Don't be a douchebag. I'm a couple of weeks out from having been a vegetarian for 25 years. A lot of you guys look like idiots when you start eating meat again 9 months later.

How long have you been vegan, how long were you vegetarian, and how old are you?

But hey, buddy. Read A Diet For a New America (think it's world now) by John Robbins (Baskin and Robbins' son) if you want to get more radical. Got to give it to the guy, he totally disavowed his inheritance because they use dairy to produce the ice cream they sell.

I'm 26. 9 months vegan. I was never a vegetarian. I'll check the book out

Okay. Change that to 3 years when you go back to meat or dairy then. Seriously, don't be the born again vegan douchebag.

Also, just to pick nits, it's impossible to be 100% vegan. Domino sugar...? Not vegan (bone char). Prescription you picked up at the pharmacy...? Tested on animals.

So are you pure vegetarian (vegan diet) or vegan (diet and clothes, shampoo, etc)?

I don't wear wool leather or silk. Not sure about shampoos, hadn't looked into what I use, I will in the future.

My car actually has a leather interior, but I bought it before I was vegan and am broke and can't afford a new one.

People talk about not being able to give up meat, imagine walking around with a cloth belt the rest of your life. No thank you.

lol, there are plenty of nice fake leather belts. I don't think anyone really goes the cloth route.

and yeah, stop being a dbag about thanksgiving. ask them to have some sides you can eat, offer to bring some food yourself, and enjoy hanging out with your family (which is what the holiday is really abt anyways). it's behavior like that that makes people dislike vegans/vegetarians - you'll never get anywhere forcing your ideals on people. I say this as a vegetarian of 13 yrs, btw.

I can chime in here.

First, the theory that a complete, optimal diet wouldn't require fortification or supplementation is no longer true.

The issue we face is that humans are changing their environment far too rapidly for evolution to provide the sole dietary adaptations.

B12 is an example of this. This vitamin is made by bacteria pretty much everywhere (including in the guts of some people). In our past, humans received plenty of B12 from the water they drank, the soil they ingested while eating plants, nuts and seeds as well as the animals and fish they ate.

In modern times, Vegans have a natural difficulty with this vitamin because our water is now sterilized as well as our fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds being very clean and free of these bacteria as well as the vitamin they synthesize.

Meat eaters and dairy consumers have an easier time with B12 because the animals still eat "dirty" food containing B12. They store up the vitamin in their tissues and pass it on to people who eat them. It is important to mention that many meat eaters are deficient in B12 as well. I do not know the mechanism for this, but it is cause for concern if you are a meat eater as well.

Myself, I get a lot of B12 from nutritional yeast which is often fortified as well as the nut milks that I drink, also fortified. On top of those sources I also supplement. B12 and vitamin D are the two "vitamins" I recommend supplementing (unless you live in a tropical climate for D). Everything else, you can and should get in the right quantities with a proper diet.

I use cronometer to track my vitamins and minerals as well as macronutrients. If you are interested in eating well, I can't recommend this tool enough. It has taught me a lot about my personal nutrition successes and failures.

I like talking about this stuff and I'm reasonably informed, so if you have any questions about a vegan diet, I'll do my best to answer them here.

Make sure you avoid any capsule or liqui-gel as well, they both obviously contain gelatin. It's insanely hard to be pure vegan in this age. Who knows where many of the ingredients in pharma products come from.

The guy at the compounding pharmacy.

Who knows, but they all were tested on some type of living subjects who don't have a voice, so that violates vegan doctrine, as well.

I think too many people make eating healthy, being vegan/vegetarian, etc. an all or nothing, when they should just try to do the best they can. With an open mind and a desire to improve yourself, great things are accomplished a little bit at a time.

Agreed. One person can only do so much. Luckily I haven't had to do so but I'm not ever risking my health if it comes to that. A whole lot of good can be done just from tackling the lower hanging fruit and not fretting so much about the smaller/more difficult things if they can't be helped.

What's BS about it? What's unethical about raising dairy cows on a pasture? You can visit those farms and see how happy those cows are (whereas try entering the premises of a factory farm). Are you also against having pets?

There are dairy brands with BS front labels giving a false impression of pasture-raised cows, but there are also legit pasture-raised brands.

I can recommend Dr. Bronner's liquid soap as a shampoo (and as a soap ofc). Cleans your hair, doesn't give you dandruff (like all shampoos seem to give me), and doesn't have triclosan or other nasty ingredients.

Source on bolded? Interesting. Who is likely to have those bacteria in their stomach? Non-negligible amounts though? I'd also appreciate sources on that when you have a chance.

That's weird. Maybe because they're eating corn-fed cows? Don't ruminants have to eat grass to produce most of their B12? And besides cows, all factory animals are fed basically junk-food instead of the nutritious things they're supposed to be eating.

Cool I'll have to look that up, never even heard of that.

From nutritiondata.com grass-fed and industrial beef look to have the same amounts of B12, around a third of the RDA per 100 g.

I think most cattle are raised outside eating grass and whatnot and only eat tons of corn to fatten them up for a few months before slaughter.

You are correct.

Just recently decided to go 95% vegetarian. Not like I was eating ridiculous amounts of meat before - probably 2/3rds of non-breakfast meals had some form of meat in them - but now I'll only eat meat if I know it's top-quality and from an ethical source, which means I don't end up eating meat very often (haven't had any for 2 weeks, having gone mostly veggie 3 weeks ago). Not good for your social life but it beats having beliefs and then ignoring them.

I don't always eat meat, but when I do, I make sure it's top-quality.

Because I have beliefs, dammit.

yer pretty much this

I'd just go vegetarian at that point. Vegetarian is pretty easy.

Take up hunting, fishing and foraging.

Yea kill those bastards

It's actually pretty easy if you shop at the right spots.

I've been vegan for 2 years now, and granted it's ridiculously easy when you have 8 vegan restaurants walking distance from your house and a sports/whole foods 3 minutes away driving, but I also did it in Biloxi for a week so it can be done haha.