Number of times I have been to the doctor for protein deficiency... zero.
I have found that the biggest problem with being vegan is depression, depression because you have no friends. You basically go through this very traumatic learning experience to learn the truth about where food comes from and then you are isolated. Friends make jokes about you, and become not so good friends anymore. Then you become depressed because of the isolation and then _some_ think it is because of the diet, which it could be, but likely isn't. And it is because of the isolation. (watch the film Happy)
The evidence based book Eat to Live will guide anyone interested in a vegan or plant-based diet to nutritional excellence, so they aren't missing any nutrients etc.
However, it won't get you friends and help others be more compassionate and open minded, it is quite miserable. So, I suggest that priority #1 if anyone goes vegan is to move. Yes, move to a city where there is a vegan community, along with that comes more compassionate individuals. We did that and moved to Portland, Oregon and now I have a TON of friends (I did work hard at it, meeting people in real life on FB groups) and I encourage more to come to Portland as well! There are over 40 vegan-only restaurants, 40 more that are vegan and vegetarian and over 80 more that have vegan menu items. This means there is quite the population already here, so move here, make it better, get in a good supportive bubble!
If you move here for the vegan community, hit me up and I'll introduce you to others!
It sounds like they weren't good people in the first place. I've been on the other side, having a friend that became vegan, and it's not that hard to plan a bit more ahead or ask if he's okay with eating something different.
Edit: something that I should add is that we both respected each other's boundaries. I didn't question his choice to not consume animal products, and he didn't question mine to consume them. I can understand that if you believe that animals are a really important cause you have to push other people to follow you, but I think that if I was constantly questionned we wouldn't have remained good friends. On the other hand, I also understand that some people wouldn't want to associate with people that consume animal products because their values aren't the same.
I have many friends/acquaintances who are vegan and none of them are like - "I am such a victim, no one will eat with me! All my friends left me for meat!"
Hell - people are much more judgmental these days to people who are just picky eaters! If you're vegan - no one cares. Picky eater though? You ain't getting married, buddy.
[1] not culture in general but places that already had lots of vegans
Sadly I think part of this is human nature. Doing anything so different from status-quo-of-your-social-circle is very very very isolating. Don't get me started on trying to plant flowers instead of a lawn. :D
> You basically go through this very traumatic learning experience to learn the truth about where food comes from and then you are isolated.
Definitely feels isolating, a special kind. Luckily there are subreddits to retreat to. The learning experience is not an easy one. Can't imagine not living in a big city. Happy cow plans my destinations now.
You don't have to go 100% vegan/plant based, just stop making meat/dairy/animal by products the only thing you eat. Once you start you begin to get repulsed at the lack of vegetable options available to you at most places. Why is it such a crazy view point to eat something actually nutritionally good for you.
Btw, I was hardcore meat eater most of my life, but then things changed, I realized what I’m eating, what impact it has on my health, on the environment and it just started feeling wrong.
I've been nutritarian vegan (Eat to Live book) for 16 years, fwiw.
I generalize that for many people less meat and meat products may lead to positive health outcomes, but I am no scientist.
Finding new vegan restaurants, recipes, or food staples has given my sense of culinary adventure. There are times when the food is not good or my expectations were too high, but there are plenty times when my taste buds are elated and my body fully satiated. ymmv
I've since transitioned to low-carb rather than proper keto, but the increase in keto foods (things made with healthy fats, allulose rather than table sugar, etc.) has made it much easier to do proper keto.
As parent said: YMMV, and we all have different bodies, needs, etc.
People I mention this to assume the toughest challenge is variety but as I love to cook it wasn't too hard to make it interesting each day. The toughest challenge was convenience, you grab a coffee or a lunch with friends and there's very few places that cater for all. The second most challenging aspect was cooking meals for the family, as I am the main cook for my wife and kids who did not at all buy into a vegetarian diet let alone keto, but that again wasn't too bad since I could just cook a normal meal, scrape out the bits I can have and whip something up for me afterwards.
After about a year on that diet I ran a sub-1hr 12km charity race which isn't exactly a world record, but not bad for a 40-something always-recovering alcoholic with weight and mental health problems. I'd definitely recommend keto (with proper medical supervision) but... maybe not at the same time as trying to eat less meat.
And you fail to take into account the healthy user bias. Plenty of people become vegan because it's advertised as healthier, which means it filters people that don't want to be healthy more than some other diets. Also, vegans are very aware that they diet may lack X or Y so they pay more attention to nutrition. For example, lack of B12 was a meme against vegans at some point, which means now most of them are aware of B12. I can't say the same for the rest of the population.
Well, I’m not trying to be a vegetable.
I don't want you (or anyone) to feel tortured or self-flagellated about their diet.
I'm much less angry now I'm a Vegetarian.
The vegan cheeses (Miyako in particular), Oat Milk (the barista kind) and Just Egg are great substitutes btw. Impossible tastes just like meat to me now.
(1) https://bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/statistical-num...
(2) https://www.ibtimes.com/why-we-care-more-about-death-lion-th...
Placing animals in buckets of "useful" and "useless" is not empathy; that's back to the point of treating them like tools or exploitable resources.
Love and empathy is not intended to be conditional on what value you can reap from it. At best that's a business relationship, and at worst it's something very dark.
Everything is a resource regardless of whether it is exploited. The person saying empathy comes from having exposure to pets is in essence saying pets are a resource to cultivate empathy and should be exploited as such. The issue is resource constraints. Pets consume a lot of argicultural and pharmaceutical resources.
You talk of love and empathy being unconditional, but when you live in a resource constrained world, should we spend money creating, housing, and feeding pets? Or should we care for the vulnerable humans? Should we stop keeping pets so that we don't need the agriculture that is required to support them, thus feeding people or allowing the land to return to the natural world and it's native animals?
Resources are a part of the equation. It seems many people ignore the n-order impacts. It's the same as people buying their processed food or meat without ever seeing the source and process. Probably even more so with kibble since it doesn't look like food to us.
As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior which makes the world a better place. You could say it's a symbiotic relationship of wise exploitation.
(EDIT: To clarify, the difference here is that challenges which arise in such relationships serve to grow and enhance empathy and love. Whereas with a work animal / tool, challenges in the relationship means discarding the beast and replacing it with something more useful)
As far as the hypothetical situations go, it's a red herring that I don't have the time to dive into.
"As long as the animal is also happy and cared for, then utilizing a relationship with a pet to cultivate empathy is a healthy, normal, pro-social behavior which makes the world a better place." emphasis mine
This is a highly speculative opinion that provides no cost benefit analysis.
Here's an animal. The options are: - Owned/managed by a human - Living in nature - Not existing
The animal has consented to exactly none of those. But living in nature is not a bed of roses. Is it moral to subject an animal to that?
In that analysis, human ownership (if humane) seems like the most moral option. And "nature did it first" has nothing to do with the analysis.
It's also just a disingenuous argument. If our actual concern were the welfare and lives of animals in the wild, we would be capturing and caring for those individuals - not breeding new ones into existence.
Otoh, it’s trivial to get a complete nutritional intake on an animal diet. You’re made out of mammal parts, so it’s pretty much guaranteed you can get what you need by eating animal parts. Compare a serving of pâté to literally any plant.
Uh, is it even worth asking for a source for this?
You are just showing a bias.
If you search around a bit you'll also find numerous anecdotal reports from elite athletes who tried vegan diets and found that they seemed to have more difficulty recovering from injuries. There seem to be some subtle nutritional deficiencies which aren't fully captured in the USRDA. This issue is difficult to study in a rigorous, controlled way due to individual differences so we'll probably never get conclusive data one way or the other.
I am showing a bias and the silly vegan propaganda movie isn’t? OK.
Btw, if you want some examples of veganism not working as advertised, look up the ongoing “vegans: the epitome of malnourishment” series on YouTube. It tracks various vegan influencers throughout the years.
Why would you want to continue funding a cruel and biosphere destroying industry (factory farming) if you don't need their products to survive. In our society eating animal flesh is mostly to experience culinary pleasures. If you look at it from a logical perspective, it doesn't make sense, all that waste and inefficiencies in that system - tech folks should appreciate that.
Veganism doesn't mean you're automatically on a healthy diet. You can be vegan on Pringles and Coke.
Game Changers just shows you can thrive at an athletic level on a plant based diet.
We humans gave up other horrific practices from the past - so the future is vegan (reduced cruelty), but we don't have to wait - we can start now.
This religious marketing isn’t helping your cause.
> Why would you want to continue funding a cruel
I am strictly opposed to animal cruelty. Killing animals at all is a net negative for me. However, it’s not my primary concern and I also don’t think the marginal improvement veganism provides animals is significant.
> and biosphere destroying
This is mostly bullshit.
> (factory farming)
I am opposed to the most abysmal methods of meat production.
> if you don't need their products to survive.
I need them to be healthy. Vegans can object all they want but the truth is right there for me to see. Whenever a scrawny balding vegan with sunken eyes tells me they’re perfectly healthy, I know they’re deluded and not giving me good advice.
> Game Changers just shows you can thrive at an athletic level on a plant based diet.
It’s a few cherry picked examples. In reality going vegan will tank your athletic performance and injury resistance. https://www.lonesomelands.com/new-blog/2019/9/16/t2amoscp1u1...
> We humans gave up other horrific practices from the past - so the future is vegan (reduced cruelty)
I actually agree with you on this. People in the future will view animal consumption like we view slavery.
> but we don't have to wait - we can start now.
Unfortunately this is not true, if we want to stay healthy. Give it 100 years and maybe the tech will be where it needs to be.
> This religious marketing isn’t helping your cause.
Why is it religious marketing? What is religious about it? It's about ethics - not religion.
Most humans not practicing slavery for example, is that also being religious? What's wrong with having moral principles? We say killing other humans is wrong. We say animal cruelty is wrong and yet a lot of humans practice or support it on a daily basis. Mostly because people don't know the reality of where their animal meat comes from and what the externalities are.
This is down to some very good propaganda campaigns by the meat and dairy industry actually.
Funny that there are things like Ag-Gag laws. What is this industry afraid of? That people would find out how horrific it is and god forbid making the right choice and not buy their products anymore?
There is also the human cost. Could you work in a factory farm? Or just a slaughter house that kills any animals whether from factory farms or 'happy' farms? Could you kill animals day in day out, hearing their screams, smelling the blood and feces?
Reports by folks who did that said they had to suppress their compassion and actually suffered from PTSD. A guest on Joe Rogan's show said he worked in that industry and couldn't last more than 2 weeks and he was an MMA guy, so could be considered tough.
> This is mostly bullshit.
Can you provide your sources? My comment was based on studies by the UN, Oxford University and other academic sources [0] [1]. Not just merely a blog post by some bloke with an opinion.
> It’s a few cherry picked examples.
And yet you're cherry picking yourself. Here are more athletes who chose to give up meat: https://www.greatveganathletes.com/all-athletes/ - it's a long list.
Have you actually watched the documentary?
It's funny - the creator of the documentary, ex MMA fighter, actually said his performance went up. This is echoed by many other athletes.
But they didn't say they are injury resistant.
But most of us are not professional athletes, so it's a moot point. But if we chose to operate at a more athletic level, a plant based diet can still provide all we need.
If you choose not to pay for cruelty - you still have to make an effort to eat healthily, which is easier to find out how nowadays. We are not carnivores. Yes we can eat meat, but it's not required for our survival if we have other food sources.
> I need them to be healthy.
You can be healthy on a plant-based diet. Check this resource by medical experts: https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/plant-based-diets/nutrit...
If people absolutely can't give up animal meat, then at least hunt or raise and kill your own to ensure that suffering can be minimized to an absolute minimal level. But guess what, most of us couldn't do that and it's not scalable.
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[0] https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur...
[1] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environme...
Yes actually; it was a specifically Christian endeavor to globally eliminate slavery. Modern political Veganism is also Christian in origin, although it's been adopted as a religious crusade by Western State Secularists as well (which I suspect you are from what you've said so far).
> Can you provide your sources
I just think about it for 5 minutes; most of those UN reports are manifest nonsense. E.g. the feat mongering about cow farts. Here are two key terms for why I don't care about cow farts: bison, and fungal decomposition.
> Have you actually watched the documentary?
Why would I bother watching that piece of garbage? I've read the synopsis, and I see why it's total bullshit. https://www.biolayne.com/articles/research/the-game-changers...
> the creator of the documentary, ex MMA fighter, actually said his performance went up
Wow! They found a who guy claims his performance went up! Amazing!
For every person who claims they're doing better on veganism (questionably, in most cases) there are dozens who match the stereotype.
> We are not carnivores.
I don't know about you, but my evolutionary ancestors (early Northern Europeans) were carnivores for at least 30-40% of the year. This is obvious if you think about it for 5 minutes. They almost certainly were still heavily meat-oriented most of the rest of the year.
> then at least hunt or raise and kill your own
I have done this in the past, and would recommend it, but as you say it's not scalable. That said, I think it's possible to meet net meat demand using acceptable (to me) farming practices.
> You can be healthy on a plant-based diet. Check this resource by medical experts:
There is almost no group of people in the world I trust lest than dietary "medical experts", and quite frankly people who take them seriously are gullible.
In order for me to seriously consider the idea that veganism might be healthy, you need to explain something to me: why do 90+% of vegans look like crap? I'm not trying to be mean here; I am just completely unwilling to adopt a diet which will make me weak, androgen deficient, and emaciated, which seems to describe almost every vegan I know.
My comments:
> Yes actually; it was a specifically Christian endeavor
I wasn't aware of that. But I'm talking about how it is today. Most humans, religious or not, agree that slavery is wrong. Same with people choosing to adopt a vegan mindset.
It's wrong to oppress and exploit billions of sentient beings every year, just so we can enjoy a burger, when it's not necessary anymore for our survival. Nothing religious or cult like about that. Just being principled and saying no to cruelty and destruction. Simple as that.
> I just think about it for 5 minutes; most of those UN reports are manifest nonsense
It's not just the UN. The other link I shared was a 5 year Oxford Uni study. Is that nonsense too?
There are countless of other academic studies about the damage our current large scale animal agriculture causes. It's not just GHGs. It's pollution and habitat loss which causes biodiversity loss.
Damian Mander, ex special forces guy who now uses his skills to protect endangered animals, said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUMGBwgGYWw&t=100s
> That said, I think it's possible to meet net meat demand using acceptable (to me) farming practices.
Any more details on this? With what would we replace factory farming, which is already highly optimized to get the most out of the land and animals (hence why animal welfare is so low or non existent).
> There is almost no group of people in the world I trust lest than dietary "medical experts", and quite frankly people who take them seriously are gullible.
I wasn't clear on this one. These are not just some dieticians. PCRM - the Physicians Committee combines the clout and expertise of more than 17,000 physicians.
Again, have a look at https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/plant-based-diets/nutrit...
> why do 90+% of vegans look like crap?
There are millions of people out there who don't eat meat or don't consume any animals products. I doubt you've met them all.
Again, vegan doesn't necessarily mean healthy. You have to make an effort to eat healthily. Likewise eating meat doesn't mean you're automatically eating healthily.
> Why would I bother watching that piece of garbage?
Thanks for sharing the biolayne article. I've not come across that one yet. He claims Gamechangers was biased, probably to an extend, and yet he is very biased and even funded by the egg industry[1].
But the most important point is that he agrees that you can function at an elite athletic level on a plant-based diet[0]. That was my whole point. Most of us are not elite athletes, so if they can do it, it should be even easier for folks not operating at that physical level. A lot of our food is already fortified with B12 or vitamin D, so you don't really have to do anything special. So many great meat free and nutritious recipes out there. I'm not bald (btw, a plant based diet doesn't cause someone to be bald) or scrawny and my doc said my blood work looks excellent and I should continue with whatever I'm doing.
My thought process goes as follows:
- We know that our current meat addiction is not sustainable and it can't be our main source of protein to feed the world.
- We know animals suffer immense cruelty when they are being factory farmed or when they are being processed in slaughter houses.
- We know the working conditions are horrendous in these slaughterhouses. Why would we want other fellow humans to go through that? I'd rather chop up vegetables all than killing and gutting animals all day. Which one would you choose?
- We know we can survive and thrive without having to kill animals and consume their flesh.
The most important step is that people say no to factory farming and vote with their wallet. This will force the market to come up with more sustainable alternatives, which is already happening.
So given this choice, why wouldn't we go with the option that causes the least harm on multiple levels?
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[0] "I’m not saying you can’t be an elite athlete and be vegan, you certainly can, but you can also be an elite athlete and NOT be vegan [...]"
[1] In summary, Layne throws out accusations of cherry picking and bias, and yet exhibits unbelievable bias and cherry picking. His critique of the movie is more a critique of veganism. I really don’t think he watched the whole movie, and I am certain most of the on line critics have not seen a single minute.
The movie was designed to show that you can get enough protein and be successful as a vegan athlete, even at a very high level of competition.
From: http://proteinaholic.com/response-to-layne-nortons-review-of...
All of them at once??
Human teeth, like human metabolism, support the consumption of plant material, but not very well.
I'd like to read more about this.
My teeth have not fallen out yet and my dentist gives an OK after many years on a plant based diet.
Are you being ironic? We know what a ruminant digestive system looks like and why humans can’t do what they do.
If anyone want to get some high quality info from an actual registered dietitian, check out Simnett Nutrition https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpyhJZhJQWKDdJCR07jPY-Q
Read the book Eat to Live. It is evidence based, written by an M.D. and has nearly 1,000 references/studies. I've been doing the ETL lifestyle now for 16 years now, and feel great on it!
Then why is almost every vegan so malnourished?
> It is evidence based
I doubt it. Nutrition “science” right now has abysmally low evidentiary standards. We don’t have a scientific (i.e. experimental) basis for making strong low-level nutritional predictions beyond “if you don’t get any of this you will die eventually”. Basically the only thing you can do right now is make sweeping observations (“what is the apparent health of populations on this diet?”) and a-priori reasoning (“what is my prior on the evolutionary optimization criteria affecting my metabolic system?”).
> I've been doing the ETL lifestyle now for 16 years now, and feel great on it!
I’ve been eating keto/carnivore for two years now and I feel great (so not looking to improve on that front). I also don’t have any health problems associated with nutritional deficiency (in fact I am in perfect health, and I wasn’t when I ate the S.A.D.), and I don’t have to put in any special effort to maintain that state of affairs.
On the other hand, here is every large nutrition institute around the world agreeing that veganism can be totally healthy for all stages of life: https://youaretheirvoice.com/pages/the-clear-consensus
They’ll usually tell you pretty quickly.
> here is every large nutrition institute around the world
Why would you ever trust a “large nutrition institute”? Who is the kind of person who would come to power at a place like that? Certainly not someone who is dispassionately interested in promoting human health. It’s mostly vegans, seventh day adventists, and other dietary-religious groups.
When has a “large nutrition institute” ever released dietary advice that stood the test of time?
So, do you actually have any sources on why we shouldn't trust them?
The Game Changers was manifestly stupid propaganda. If you fell for it, this is a really bad sign wrt your ability to filter out dietary-pseudoscientific nonsense.
> Do you look at all the obese people and say, man, that non-vegan diet you are on looks really malnourishing
The average obese American is on a diet much closer to a vegan diet than a meat-based diet. They get most of their calories from bread, rice, peanut oil, soy products, corn syrup, canola oil, etc. etc.
And meat, cheese and eggs.
How is watching olympic athletes, proving they are getting even better, propaganda?
I feel like you didn't even watch the film.
I wonder if it's almost always the case of folks making a dietary switch and not making sure they know how to get everything they need in a balanced diet from non-animal sources, which is actually not hard.
EDIT: I may have misread your comment and interpreted your misery as being due to the diet itself, not the psychological toll of the veganism, so apologies if that's the case! Still interested in any research for what I asked about though, if anyone has it handy!
From what I've heard from carnivore people, it's usually the opposite. It's not that eating meat prevent health issues, it's that eating some vegetables causes them. Carnivore is a form of elimination diet, which can help some people. For example, if you are gluten intolerant, being carnivore will make you feel better. If you are sensitive to nightshades (some people claim to be and I don't want to dismiss their experience), carnivore will work too. Veganism can work the same way for some people (lactose intolerant people for example, people that get allergic to mammal meat due to Lyme's).
I personally think that we tend to underestimate the variations from individual to individual, and that studies don't help with that as nutritional studies are usually self reported and not really solid, and don't take into account confounding factors. For example, vegans and carnivore both have a huge healthy user bias compared to the standard american diet. I think everyone should try different diets and use what's best for them.
One big difference between carnivore (or even keto) and veganism however is that veganism is also a diet based on moral and values. As such, it's hard to see vegans as less biased than keto followers or carnivore followers.
Besides, even if we accept your premise that nutritional data are unhelpful in understanding the effectiveness of any diet, this can said of both plant-based and carnist diets, meaning we can’t say one or the other is better, or worse, or more or less nutritious.
In that case, I think we should then choose the diet which we definitively know causes the least suffering.
I have no reason whatsoever to believe that someone feeling good on a carnist diet but bad on a plant based diet is anything other than not knowing how to have a balanced plant based diet, which is easy to do when armed with the knowledge.
That's where we disagree. I think they are because I think we underestimate the differences between people.
> Besides, even if we accept your premise that nutritional data are unhelpful in understanding the effectiveness of any diet, this can said of both plant-based and carnist diets, meaning we can’t say one or the other is better, or worse, or more or less nutritious.
Again I disagree. My conclusion is that everyone should experiment with different kinds of diet and see what works. We may not know at the humanity level, but we can learn more at the individual level.
> In that case, I think we should then choose the diet which we definitively know causes the least suffering.
I don't agree with your premise (or maybe put individual suffering of humans at a higher level than animals), but I do agree with your conclusions. I don't know if you count climate impact in "suffering" in general but that's a good argument for veganism too.
> I have no reason whatsoever to believe that someone feeling good on a carnist diet but bad on a plant based diet is anything other than not knowing how to have a balanced plant based diet, which is easy to do when armed with the knowledge.
I think that's shortsighted of you for two reasons. First, as I said, I think you underestimate the individual variations between people. Second, considering how many people suffer from obesity in America, I don't agree that having a balanced diet, be it plant based or anything else, is easy.
People on carnivore diet do not have that overarching ethical stance which guides their decisions.
So saying "people don't have to go full blast vegan" is not the same as "people don't have to go full blast carnivore" because people rarely go vegan because of the diet, they do it because of the animals.
Doing it only because of the diet would probably be called "plant based" eating now a days.
Further, many nutrients are far more bio-available than their plant based counterparts. Supplementing for them also isn’t the best substitute.
There’s still a demonization of saturated fats despite the heart claims being largely falsified by the sugar industry, and claims of unprocessed meats causing colon cancer being exaggerated substantially (even for processed meats, there’s an increase, but as I recall it’s minimal. Larger chance of lung cancer from city living than colon cancer from occasional processed meat)
Each person I believe (key word) has ancestral lineage that describes what foods they can handle best. Hence why we see some people thrive on plant based, and others (like myself) was completely miserable despite taking all the necessary steps. Going the opposite (carnivore) was better in blood markers and we’ll-being for me.
"Vegan and vegetarian diets are both very healthy ways of eating. They’ve been linked to multiple health benefits and a lower risk of excess weight, heart disease, and even some types of cancer."
Which was an interesting choice for you, I think. Also there are some seriously misleading facts in the article:
B12 doesn't from from meat, and meat only has B12 today because animals are supplemented with it.
DHA comes from algae, so again, the animals you eat have it as a result of having eaten plants.
Creatine, carnosine, and taurine are considered nonessential, in the very article.
And with regard to iron: "However, iron deficiency is easy to avoid on a well-planned vegan diet", according to the article.
But this is kind of irrelevant, because even if these things _were_ hard to get for vegans and supplements were needed, it still makes veganism a moral imperative, because the small price to pay of taking a pill to save billions of sentient animals every year is a no brainer.
I'm not trying to be glib. If humans did not ever eat meat, we would not have ever domesticated cattle, but we did. So if everyone stops eating meat, what happens to all of cattle?
We can set them free, but we have bred out most of their ability to compete in nature on their own, we would be leaving most for death. Or we can continue to farm historically domesticated animals benevolently.
That way we ween off of livestock, their suffering ends, and we avoid an ecological disaster. Farms will have top adapt, because we don't want all the folks in animal agriculture to be out of a job all of a sudden, so it'd take some time. But we can do it, for sure.
But asking those kinds of questions is really important, so thank you for posing it.
Staying vegetarian is easy enough because it didn't take long before the concept of consuming animal flesh started to repulse me. Even after about 6 years I still feel occasional impulses, probably because I grew up on southern BBQ, but it's really small and easy to pass.
So here's what I will say about this. Not everyone's dietary choices are rooted in ignorance. Everyone has different bodies; different hormones and chemistry; different synapses. All we can ask is for everyone to try eating mindfully at minimum. That alone is a great start and will make a huge impact.
As for how we feed our pets, I agree with this article, and I'll add pets have such short lifespans, and very few needs, the least we can do is try to give them the highest quality version of the few needs they have. For better or for worse, my cat is a spoiled princess because of this.