So we were talking in the car the other day about how yeast is alive (until it isn’t). How do vegans feel about yeast? Honestly asking; I don’t know any vegans irl that I can ask.
Since it’s a fungus, I would expect there is no issue, just like eating any other mushroom. Plants are alive too; that’s not the important category from a vegan perspective, I’d expect.
That is rather kingdom-ish of them them. I will eat things in these 3 kingdoms, but not these 2. There must be more to it, but I also no little about veganism.
To be fair, that sounds like something a legit person would argue. Veganism as a topic is strongly influenced by Poe’s Law - people are bound to think you’re serious, because they’ve heard stupider things being argued in sincerity.
I’ve been asked which ingredient in butter comes from an animal. I’ve been offered chicken, and had to gently respond that chickens aren’t plants. I’ve been told that plants scream on an ultrasonic level when they’re cut and therefore eating plants is just as bad as eating animals (so much to unpack there.) And almost everyime, I wished I could’ve responded, “Dude, I’m just trying to eat my lunch,” but ended up having to educate people between each bite.
It’s just too hard to out-stupid reality sometimes.
There are loads of different reasons that people become vegan. Some of those reasons might include not wanting to harm any living being, and if that’s the reason then yeah it is a little arbitrary to draw the line at plants or types of plant-life, but I’m not sure it’s really fair to place the expectations that vegans do not make any arbitrary choices like that.
Everybody sets those kinds of boundaries and makes those kinds of choices all the time, because it would be very hard not to, and I think making an honest attempt to reduce the harm you do to living beings is better than nothing 🤷♂️
That being said, I’m not vegan, so don’t want to talk out of turn.
I think making an honest attempt to reduce the harm you do to living beings is better than nothing
It sounds like you get it. That’s the real vegan philosophy: regardless of one’s reason for choosing the lifestyle, the point isn’t to be perfect - it’s to do the best you can to reduce harm. Sometimes we have no choice - car tires require gelatin, a prescribed medicine may contain lactose, and of course all the animals that might get hurt incidentally through production or transportation of food plants. None of us can perfectly control everything, but there are a lot of things that we can make choices about. Those are the choices that matter.
I’m pretty sure most of everything you could possibly ever eat (even “chemicals”) comes from something alive, so the alternative would be starvation.
if it’s not made from animals, plants or fungi then from single celled organisms like bacteria and slime mold.
and veganism isn’t just a blind disagreement with eating one kingdom of biology, it’s a means to reduce harm, suffering, exploitation and killing. of course other kingdoms are alive, and in case we make it and sometime in the future we can somehow find viable, plentiful, cheap dead sources of all our nutrients there might be people who want to switch to those exclusively, but right now i think it’s a fairly measured movement.
Well it’s a fungus, and we eat fungi the same as we eat plants. We’re more concerned with undue human-driven suffering, which generally requires a central nervous system, and only animals have that.
Vegans on the whole recognize the biological complexity of life (i.e. multi-cellular organisms with the capacity to experience pain and pleasure through a nervous system and beyond, compared with uni-cellular or even multi-cellular organisms that don’t have such a system) and balance it with the quantity of pain and suffering throughout the world.
Basically, vegans by and large care about reducing the greatest amount of suffering for the most complex life on the planet (especially animals on the brink of extinction).
Usually we direct this goal towards rescuing farm animals, fighting elephant or lion poachers, saving rainforests, banning fishing in sea sanctuaries (or at least the use of purse seines that dredge the ocean floor), etc.
Yeast isn’t the biggest concern because 1) it isn’t considered towards the complex end of the spectrum of life as we know it on this planet, 2) we don’t have good evidence to show that yeast experiences pain, and 3) there are closer goals to achieve, like advocating for reduced animal consumption, alternative clothing to leather or fur, increased organic farming to offset nitrogen runoff in oceans, etc.
Achieving policy paradigms is one of the most impactful ways to improve animal suffering the world over, whether that’s increasing taxes on animal based products, reducing incentives for producers to make those products, capturing externalities and embedding them into businesses’ bottom lines, or straight up refusing permits and zoning to allow these kinds of economic activities.
Welcome to the world of veganism, where nuance is your best friend, and yeast is fine to eat
So we were talking in the car the other day about how yeast is alive (until it isn’t). How do vegans feel about yeast? Honestly asking; I don’t know any vegans irl that I can ask.
Since it’s a fungus, I would expect there is no issue, just like eating any other mushroom. Plants are alive too; that’s not the important category from a vegan perspective, I’d expect.
Which only leads to more questions, like “are 40k Orcs vegan?”
In the same way that Jesus was a communist: When viewed through a modern lens, technically yes.
Basically what a vegan explained when I asked the same
I mean, plants are alive as well
That is rather kingdom-ish of them them. I will eat things in these 3 kingdoms, but not these 2. There must be more to it, but I also no little about veganism.
Veganism is about not viewing animals as a product. It’s about taking a moral and ethical stance against the animal industry.
Plants and fungi are vastly different from animals in behavior, looks, genetics, etc. You’re creating a strawman argument here.
I was trying to be funny, not argue.
To be fair, that sounds like something a legit person would argue. Veganism as a topic is strongly influenced by Poe’s Law - people are bound to think you’re serious, because they’ve heard stupider things being argued in sincerity.
I’ve been asked which ingredient in butter comes from an animal. I’ve been offered chicken, and had to gently respond that chickens aren’t plants. I’ve been told that plants scream on an ultrasonic level when they’re cut and therefore eating plants is just as bad as eating animals (so much to unpack there.) And almost everyime, I wished I could’ve responded, “Dude, I’m just trying to eat my lunch,” but ended up having to educate people between each bite.
It’s just too hard to out-stupid reality sometimes.
I’ve had to contend with “What would cows do if they didn’t have farms to live on” multiple times IRL.
Sorry.
There are loads of different reasons that people become vegan. Some of those reasons might include not wanting to harm any living being, and if that’s the reason then yeah it is a little arbitrary to draw the line at plants or types of plant-life, but I’m not sure it’s really fair to place the expectations that vegans do not make any arbitrary choices like that.
Everybody sets those kinds of boundaries and makes those kinds of choices all the time, because it would be very hard not to, and I think making an honest attempt to reduce the harm you do to living beings is better than nothing 🤷♂️
That being said, I’m not vegan, so don’t want to talk out of turn.
It sounds like you get it. That’s the real vegan philosophy: regardless of one’s reason for choosing the lifestyle, the point isn’t to be perfect - it’s to do the best you can to reduce harm. Sometimes we have no choice - car tires require gelatin, a prescribed medicine may contain lactose, and of course all the animals that might get hurt incidentally through production or transportation of food plants. None of us can perfectly control everything, but there are a lot of things that we can make choices about. Those are the choices that matter.
I’m pretty sure most of everything you could possibly ever eat (even “chemicals”) comes from something alive, so the alternative would be starvation.
if it’s not made from animals, plants or fungi then from single celled organisms like bacteria and slime mold.
and veganism isn’t just a blind disagreement with eating one kingdom of biology, it’s a means to reduce harm, suffering, exploitation and killing. of course other kingdoms are alive, and in case we make it and sometime in the future we can somehow find viable, plentiful, cheap dead sources of all our nutrients there might be people who want to switch to those exclusively, but right now i think it’s a fairly measured movement.
We need to bring back the /s sarcasm marker.
It’s not a question of “Is it alive?”, but rather “Is it capable of suffering?”.
Well it’s a fungus, and we eat fungi the same as we eat plants. We’re more concerned with undue human-driven suffering, which generally requires a central nervous system, and only animals have that.
Vegans on the whole recognize the biological complexity of life (i.e. multi-cellular organisms with the capacity to experience pain and pleasure through a nervous system and beyond, compared with uni-cellular or even multi-cellular organisms that don’t have such a system) and balance it with the quantity of pain and suffering throughout the world.
Basically, vegans by and large care about reducing the greatest amount of suffering for the most complex life on the planet (especially animals on the brink of extinction).
Usually we direct this goal towards rescuing farm animals, fighting elephant or lion poachers, saving rainforests, banning fishing in sea sanctuaries (or at least the use of purse seines that dredge the ocean floor), etc.
Yeast isn’t the biggest concern because 1) it isn’t considered towards the complex end of the spectrum of life as we know it on this planet, 2) we don’t have good evidence to show that yeast experiences pain, and 3) there are closer goals to achieve, like advocating for reduced animal consumption, alternative clothing to leather or fur, increased organic farming to offset nitrogen runoff in oceans, etc.
Achieving policy paradigms is one of the most impactful ways to improve animal suffering the world over, whether that’s increasing taxes on animal based products, reducing incentives for producers to make those products, capturing externalities and embedding them into businesses’ bottom lines, or straight up refusing permits and zoning to allow these kinds of economic activities.
Welcome to the world of veganism, where nuance is your best friend, and yeast is fine to eat