This is my second year watching Ocean Robins' Food Revolution Summit and the topics sound great again! Curious if anyone here has heard of it or is watching along. The summit is 8 daily (11am EST) episodes that began today with great topics from great hosts and incredible guest interviews. Lots of great personalities from the vegan and whole food plant based communities, including my favourite, Dr Gregor!

The United States federal government allocates a staggering $38 billion annually to prop up the meat and dairy industries. These subsidies significantly reduce the price of meat products, including hamburgers. Research from 2015 reveals that these subsidies slash the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today

Here is my blog. It is mostly philosophy. It does cover veganism; however, it is only a minor topic.

Living in Finland in the EU, I am very confused as to why none of the vegan milk products contain added calcium. Children need a certain amount of calcium which they easily get through cows milk. But not so through vegan milk, because it does not naturally contain calcium.

Are there any laws that forbid adding calcium in your country? Is there any other reason as to why oat and soy based milk products don't get added calcium?

My BBQ Seitan. I'm very pleased with the photo, it came out very well. The BBQ Seitan was also delicious.

What's your favorite idiom replacement for common phrases that normalize violence against animals?

Does anyone have a good source for vitamin d supplements? I'm deficient and need to supplement it.

Most of the supplements I could find online were not vegan, and the ones that were are exorbitantly priced. Like, surely vegan vitamin d₃ can be bought in bulk for cheap? I'm probably not looking hard enough, but searching for "vegan vitamin d" kept giving me lanolin and "plant based".

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Edit: I'm from Australia, so things might cost more if importing from overseas.

This is the best one I've found:

www.uproar.org.au/shop/deva-vegan-d3-5000-iu/

90 x 5000 IU @ AU$32.95

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Edit 2 (2024-04-07): Adding this here just in case anyone reads this in future. I haven't received my order from uproar and have had no successful contact with them. It's been a month now, so I'm ordering much the same at iherb. I've opted with the deva brand.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/11732557

> Signal Group for Vegans > > If you're a vegan, or willing to go vegan, you may join this Signal group. > > https://signal.group/#CjQKIEL2AAqK0gGc3Q3MKdzY3yJzuzTg49ZOKuyMKHHkci6yEhDingsMPcJOH7bqsC7esBFg > > To prevent spam, I have turned on "Approve new members" option. > > ----- > > If you want a much more active group, you can join the Matrix group. > > To join Matrix, visit https://joinmatrix.org/. > > To look at all the rooms in Vegan space, visit https://matrix.to/#/#vegan.en:tedomum.net. We have rooms for all types of things, discussing tech, debating etc. > > General Room - https://matrix.to/#/#vegan.en.general:tedomum.net

Hi, just wondering if fuggs are vegan. As in, do they contain products made from animals?

As far as I can tell, "fuggs" is a portmanteau of "fake" and "uggs", and so fuggs are "fake" uggs, meaning fake ugg boots. Uggs or ugg boots are a kind of boots traditionally made from sheepskin/shearling, and sometimes with suede leather (cow skin) on the outside.

But there's a bit of confusion about what "fuggs" or "fake uggs" means. Unlike something such as "faux fur" or "faux/fake leather", where it's pretty clear that will be vegan and not made from animals like the traditional kind is, "ugg" has some weird brand authenticity thing going on.

I might get some facts wrong here, but from what I could gather, there are 2 companies, called "UGG" (American brand) and "UGG Since 1974" (Australian brand) which both lay some kind of claim to what can be considered an authentic ugg boot. Uggs were first made in Australia, but I think the American UGG brand often sues other companies, including those in Australia, for using the "ugg" name. However in some places ugg simply means the style of shoe rather than the brand.

So unfortunately due to this, I think there might be 2 different meanings of "fuggs" - one I believe indeed means vegan ugg boots which don't use animal skins/products, while the other meaning is simply an ugg boot made in the traditional way from animals but just not by the "official" UGG brand.

In all this confusion, how can we truly answer the question of "Are fuggs vegan?" Is the answer somewhere between "They could be, sometimes." or "No one knows, really." ?

I'm in a pretty vegan-friendly country with a long tradition of plant-based eating. Most people eat meat, but they are basically sympathetic to every meat-free argument: ethical, environmental, health. They sometimes do an awkward little shuffle & apologise for eating meat in front of me or say they're part-time vegetarians and so on. I think this is all quite nice.

What bothers me is when these same people talk about their pets. Eating meat, especially in contemporary urban settings where the origin is factory farms, indisputably objectively does more harm than keeping a pet, but people basically acknowledge meat-eating is a matter of habit/skill/knowledge. Whomst among us lives totally plastic-free, fuel-free, in the woods, etc? But people fucking rhasphodise about their pets. People will buy an animal from a breeder and keep it locked in the house or a cage completely bereft of any stimulation, they'll make it do stupid tricks to earn its food, they'll hound it or punis it for behaviours the owner finds inconvenient, use it for emotional comfort while having no real curiousity about the non-human animal's internal life or perception or needs beyond food and water and maybe some exercise, and then they'll talk about how it's their best friend. Guess what--I wouldn't "own" my friends! At least eating meat, in principle (though obviously not in practice in the modern world) is part of the natural circle of life and can be part of a respectful predator-prey relationship & sustainable ecology. At least people don't generally defend their meat-eating. But suddenly they're saints and best friends in their own eyes for taking a captive. To me, even though the objective harm is lesser, this is actually much more sadistic on an individual level.

Obviously there's a spectrum, bla bla. Dogs are an especially complicated case as a primeval co-domestication relationship with humans. One can absolutely make the case that because of the danger of our anthropocentric/anthropogenic built environments, it's the humane thing to do to keep a cat in the house instead of destroying wildlife or geting run over by a car or drinking antifreeze somewhere. The attuned, curious, considerate shelter-adopter is not the same as the owner who gives her dogs narcotics so they stop whining and disturbing the neighbours while she's gone 8 hours a day. But while interspecies companionship is not wrong, ownership imo aways is. I think people should at least be very self-critical and ambivalent about it. On the contrary, most people see it as unproblematic and a hobby.

To me, destroying non-human habitats and taking them into our own homes and completely flattening their internal lives & turning them into "good boys" and restricting their freedom (while calling them "friends"--friendship is a fucking voluntary dyadic association with no collars involved!) is a much blunter manifestation & affirmation of speciesist ideology imo. Every time I encounter it I find it very hard to deal with. I just stayed with someone who kept dogs leashed up 24/7 except for two daily walks who talked about how much he loved them and how ethical he was with them (there is no animal protection agency here, all of that is legal). A friend of mine just whined to me about how sad he is that he can't stroke his rodent because it died because another rodent pet of his bit it--well, don't fucking keep animals captive together in unnatural circumstances where they can hardly avoid conflict that was absolutely forseeably fatal?

Again, to me, it is just sadism. This is such a deeply-held position for me and it's so unpopular and impossible to talk about. I can't actually connect with anyone who is a proud or uncritical pet owner. I just smile and nod and think about how much muchness is in every consciousness and how close we are to most animals we keep captive evolutionarily and how much suffering that is both extremely easy to imagine and sympathise with if you bothered to consider it (no mammal or bird likes to be caged up/understimulated/told what to do/eating ultra processed garbage, fucking duh, Vox has a pretty good article critiquing pet ownership that lays it out convincingly & plainly) & difficult to understand bc every being has its own unique perceptions & desires & needs & skills many of which are opaque to humans...is created by pet ownership! And it makes me very very sad. I've distanced myself from relationships bc of it. Death to speciesism, death to anthropocentrism, death to the myth of human superiority.

Pre-note: When I mention "imitation products", I mean a food item that is trying to exactly replicate a non vegan item. Something like a black bean burger is not an imitation production, it's just an alternative.

I was bored so I started creating a tier list of vegan products and how closely they imitate non vegan products. I was trying to keep the list genericized with less emphasis on specific brands, but for some items the brand was really important.

What would you move around? What would you add? I only have a few items so far. I'll update the list as comments come in.

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S tier - practically indistinguishable

• Beef burgers (impossible, beyond)
• Breakfast sausages (impossible, beyond)
• Chicken nuggets/patties
• Mayo

A tier - you can tell it's different but it's just as good

• Queso dip (cashew based)
• Ground beef (impossible, beyond)
• Egg (just egg)
• Butter
• Milk
• Ice cream

B tier - you can tell it's different and it's a slight downgrade

• Deli cheese slices (some brands are C or F)

C tier - you can tell it's different and it's okay but a significant downgrade

• Cream cheese (most brands)
• Pizza

F tier - you can tell it's different and it's not good

• Beef jerky

Synopsis from Tribeca Film Festival: Eschewing the glaringly color-blind format of many other documentaries interested in advocating for plant-based living, They’re Trying to Kill Us utilizes its specificity as an act of community care and offers up a new vision of what veganism might look like for communities of color who have been systematically targeted by nutritional and environmental racism. Executive produced by Billie Eilish and Chris Paul and featuring appearances from plant-based living advocates and cultural influencers such as Dame Dash, Angela Yee, Mya, Styles P, and Ne-yo, Kuhn and Lewis’ eye-opening film sheds light on ever urgent issues of food and health injustice. —Sarah-Tai Black

Link to watch film: https://www.theyretryingtokillus.com/

The site asks for an email address, first, and last name. If you don't want to sign up to their mailing list - which to be fair is how I learned about the free streaming this month - you can enter any info.

I should preface this by saying that I'm new to the DIY nut milk scene, despite being vegan for over two decades.

Not wanting to spend $300+ on a "nut milk maker", I figured I would try to use my high-powered blender first.

In addition to be being frugal, I also hate wasting time preparing/cleaning, so if a blender were to work, it needed to be quick and easy.

First I used a strainer, which did an OK job filtering almond and oat pulp, but the drinks weren't smooth, and you can feel some grit in the back of your throat.

Then I tried a cotton t-shirt (recommended by the Minimalist Baker) and a nut bag. Better results, but these are a bit of a PITA to keep clean.

Then I came across a video of a guy using a French press to filter his nut milk. Since I had a small one, I decided to try it. The experiment went so well that I decided to buy a 1L version of the bestseller on Amazon - fantastic quality.

The results are nothing short of incredible. Smooth milk, easy to gather pulp, easy to clean and sterilize, and it's a BIFL item that I can use for filtering nut milks or making coffee!

I think I just saved myself a few hundred dollars and some extra countertop space 😂

Has anyone else tried this?

I recently bought some multi grain cheerios (no honey in them) that I thought were vegan friendly. After finishing the box, I realized that they fortify it with vitamin D3, sourced from sheep wool.

Shame because they seemed like a healthy, plant based source of whole grains.

For a change from people asking who is your favorite vegan celebrity or person you didn't expect to be vegan or whatnot, I thought it would be interesting to see who is our least favorite vegan.

I know, vegans are usually good people (even outside of their veganism, that is), though not all of course, and we need to be able to admit that not all vegans are perfect, and be resistant against the association fallacy, which this is a test for. What is that?

In this context, association fallacy is assuming that because someone (or a sub-group within a group) shares something in common with a group of people, that group of people must automatically be similar to that person (or sub-group) in other ways. For example, Aileen Wuornos was a feminist, and a serial killer. Does that mean feminists are violent? Of course not.

The typical example of this fallacy is actually relevant but based on misinformation, which is that vegans are evil because Hitler was a vegetarian (not even vegan). This type of Hitler argument has become so common that it's known as its own class of association fallacy called ad Hitlerum. Well, apparently he wasn't actually even vegetarian, and it was a PR tactic deployed by Goebbels to make him appear peaceful, but even if he was, that's not evidence that vegans inherently share any qualities with Hitler.

A common relevant example that vegans come up against is, some vegans are X, or Y or Z (don't want to inflame people but I'm referring to different controversial political views that some vegans hold, even though they're in the minority of vegans), and therefore all vegans are X/Y/Z. I hope we can see how this is illogical.

By the way, answering this question with "all of them" is acceptable (though it misses the point) but completely expected, which makes it less funny. I'm interested to know of a particular well-known person who is vegan but who you also don't rate for one reason or another. And being "preachy" abour veganism I'm not counting as a reason because being outspoken about animal rights or the environment isn't a negative quality, and shouldn't be viewed as one. That said, name your target.

>Be it a matter of cost, principle, or just plain being landlocked, the idea of 3D printed vegan eel over the real deal is quite an attractive development. An Israeli company called Steakholder Foods has introduced this very thing — something they claim is the world’s first plant-based, printed eel.

This guy flicked my protest sign then told police I had said the chicken corpses were poisoned.

The manager of Chick-Fil-A called the cops on us before police spoke with him because we we're standing on a public sidewalk holding signs which is legal in the United States.

I used AI art to illustrate her police emergency call I obtained through an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request.

A comedy released in the spring, so somewhat old news.

From the movie's website:

>Coffee Wars is committed to the health of the planet and the welfare of its occupants. The film is produced by VegGood Films, which invests in entertainment that supports human rights, civil rights, animal rights, and the preservation of the planet that is our host. > >All of the products used in the film are ethically sourced and vegan, including all "milk" and brands used in wardrobe, hair, and makeup. All animals featured in the film were rescued by the production team and are living happy lives at animal sanctuaries. > >VegGood Films has announced that 100% of all proceeds from the film will be donated to environmental and animal welfare charities.

Edited to add: interview begins about 00:20:26

What started with the question, “Is there a spiritual way to kill an animal?” has become the newest investigative documentary from Kip Anderson, of Cowspiracy fame, and Kam Waters. Join the journey to discover why so many religions who hold compassion as a sacred tenet turn a blind eye to animal suffering.

Kip Andersen has changed the way the world looks at eating animals. After producing some of Netflix’s most-watched documentaries, Cowspiracy, What The Health, and Seaspiracy, working alongside the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Leonardo DiCaprio as executive producers, Christspiracy is his biggest chapter yet.

Kam Waters is a former gospel songwriter and musician for Sony and Interscope Records turned filmmaker. After growing up in the bible belt with a family lineage of gospel singers and a minister, Kam was entrenched in the church from the day he was born. It wasn’t until he realized how people use Christianity to justify animal abuse that he started this journey and, eventually, co-created this revolutionary documentary.

More info: COP28 Declaration on Food and Agriculture

This is a community for vegans by vegans. Its aim is to enable discussions about veganism first and foremost. We don't owe it to carnists to let them come here and walk all over our values just because they feel offended by our existence. This place is meant to be a safe space that is welcoming and kind.

After several incidents of brigrading by carnists and at the request of community members, I (and others on the mod team) have decided to be more strict in enforcing the rules here and ensure that the conversation isn't overrun by anti-vegans.

I've cleaned up the rules a bit and made it a bit shorter, I'd like feedback on that (also any mods feel free to change them up, it's more of a draft lol). I've also started following up by looking at the modlog and banning repeat offenders.

We also have new mods and I am sure that there would be room for others once we organise what we have currently. If you want to help now, please report comments/posts especially the ones that make the community unsafe for vegans.

I'm committed to making this place much less hostile, but oh my, some of these posts really do blow up at the worst of times.

Please, please, please be kind, not just to other humans and yourself, but to all the earthlings ✌️

I decided I would be willing to date a non-vegan since despite the conveniences and shared ethics of other vegans, it can be hard to find them in general, and maybe I could influence people positively, though probably without any expectation for them to go vegan (but still hoping society will move toward it one day anyway).

But online questions asking people (non-vegans) if they would date a vegan really shocked and surprised me when most of the answers were no, mostly for reasons of inconvenience and a fear of being pulled into veganism. This leaves me feeling like finding other vegans may be my only option after all. Is this somewhat accurate?

Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association (2005)

>Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia reasoned that the government had a First Amendment right to promote its own message regarding beef. “The message set out in the beef promotions is from beginning to end the message established by the Federal Government,” he wrote. “When, as here, the government sets the overall message to be communicated, and approves every word that is disseminated, it is not precluded from relying on the government speech doctrine merely because it solicits assistance from nongovernmental sources in developing specific messages.”

>In the main dissent, Justice David H. Souter, joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens, wrote that “if government relies on the government speech doctrine to compel specific groups to fund speech with targeted taxes, it must make itself politically accountable by indicating that the content actually is a government message, not just the statement of one self-interested group the government is currently willing to invest with power.”

More info:

What Farm Subsidies Are and Why They Matter, Explained

The Real Cost of Meat [14:14]

The Meatonomics Index

Probably the only reason I would watch the series is to see something about veganism (it's pretty long otherwise). If anyone knows that might save me watching it. Thanks

For info, the anime, based on a popular movie, has a returning character named Todd Ingram who is vegan and has "vegan powers" that he loses if he eats animal products, or at least that was the case in the movie. And it spawned a bunch of vegan memes that non-vegans always quote to me.

And I feel powerless to stop them. Does anyone else feel like this?

Documentary about Murphy-Brown's (a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods) shitty practices in North Carolina.

Website: https://www.smellofmoneydoc.com/

More info: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23003487/north-carolina-hog-pork-bacon-farms-environmental-racism-black-residents-pollution-meat-industry