I guess it depends on if people think roadkill is vegan; the dead wasp is part of the life cycle of the wasp/fig symbiosis so its going to die well before humans intervene.
Imo the argument could be made that by clearing land for vegetables there’s a large reduction in habitable natural environments. This results in things dying that normally wouldn’t. Especially true when you consider pesticides.
So is the problem the dead bug in the fig or the dead bug outside, say, an apple?
I’ve only been vegan for eight years. I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never really researched it. I just don’t need animal products. But it seems like eating anything that was an animal or has an animal in it isn’t vegan
Fuck goose down
And I mean, where do we draw the line? There’s microscopic organisms that we kill all the time
Imo, don’t think about it too hard. I think it makes more sense to eat creatures based on a mix of survivorship curve and whether they are intelligent enough to need to be confined.
If you’re building infrastructure more to contain animals rather than keep other ones out, imo that’s the pivot point.
Idealized survivorship curves:
Type 1 and 2 are easy no’s. Type 3 is generally fine as long as its not like an adult turtle or octopus. Type 3 organisms are probably going to get eaten a lot and early in nature while its rare for the adults to get eaten.
I’m a vegan, although not super strict. But I knew some terror vegans who do not consider vigs vegan.
The definition of “vegan” differs. Like, I don’t like products that had a nervous system. So technically I could eat oysters. But some vegans consider oranges not to be vegan because there might be an animal product in the pesticides used on oranges. Some claim they only use plant based products, but they get mad when I ask them about fungi, as their cell structure looks more like an animal cell than a plant cell (I love to make terror vegans mad).
Being vegan means you buy products which fit your idea of being vegan.
And sadly for some it means you need to be a fucking asshole to anyone you meet.
Regarding your last paragraph: that’s unrelated. There are also lots of insufferably vocal meat eaters who feel personally attacked when someone else doesn’t religiously stuff themselves with meat every meal.
Yeah, I usually don’t say anything, unless it’s unaoidable and then I usually just say I don’t eat all that much meat.
Most will leave it at that, but I’ll happily answer. I don’t really want to yuck people’s yums, and the food industry is a bit of a special interest of mine.
Advertising is one hell of a drug. Everybody running around eating bacon and butter, and beef tallow, and haven’t had a gram of fiber, getting colon cancer at forty.
Candidly, I think your vocal vegan is like your radical feminist, or social justice warrior, or diversity hire: mostly made up.
I live in Bavaria. There are multiple politicians who don’t get tired to performatively eat sausages and try to make laws that mandate calling oat milk “oat drink” and vegan burgers/schnitzel/… anything else. As if anyone would ever get confused by that. There’s a common joke that they should rename “scouring milk” to “scouring drink” otherwise people get confused!!!
The milk thing though. If it didn’t come from a mammal it isn’t milk, it’s a milk substitute. But milk of magnesia is another traditional thing which isn’t milk
Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. It’s not just about diet but also leather jackets/zoo visits etc. It’s not like being part of an animal that imbues the individual molecules with some mystic energy that renders them off limits, it’s that 99.99% of the time that obtaining these molecules in sufficient quantities requires overstepping boundaries of consent if not outright murder/slavery.
But I would consider scavenged meat for instance vegan, I still wouldn’t because meat gives me the ick now, but I don’t see how it is contrary to animal liberation (provided it doesn’t disrupt other animals mourning rituals or something similar). Or rescued sheep still require shearing. It’s not as brutal as farmers shearing and obviously not done with the wool in mind but rather the sheep. So the sheep are typically shorn(?) sooner than enslaved sheep and not as close to the skin, making “vegan wool” quite a bit harder to work with, but I would consider socks made out of that wool vegan.
Wild figs may be but as soon as you’re cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture. Much like honey or milk, the fact you don’t eat the animal’s flesh might still defy the spirit of ‘no animal exploitation’. Most pollinators do not explicitly perish as part of pollination; figs are one of the foods vegans may disagree on.
The good news is that there are a small number of fig varieties that can be fertilised without the wasp (either by hand, or self-pollinating clones). In a lot of countries this is the variety that may be grown because importing wasps could be ecologically dangerous.
Wild figs may be but as soon as you’re cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture.
That’s still different to animal exploitation. Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. This is not contrary to that, “milk” and “honey” are produced by the animals for a specific reason, namely their young. Even if it were possible to obtain them without harming the animal (and there isn’t, both require animal death if they are to be produced in consumer quantities) there still is the problem of consent. It is clear that bees and cows under normal circumstances do not want to give away their milk/honey. The wasp however is already dead, it is not harmed by eating the fig and it’s consent is no longer part of the equation.
If the fig cultivation reaches a level where the wasps have to be kept under circumstances similar to the bees then yes I wouldn’t consider the figs that require these wasps to be vegan.
Not completely true. There’s a tick which can make you allergic to animal cell structures, basically making you vegan. So lab grown meat would still be a no no. For me, I want to eat plant (and fungi) based products so I don’t want lab grown meat (although I would like to try it once). I think lab grown meat is amazing, because people who desperately want to eat meat can do so without feeding the fucked up meat industry. Less livestock means less chance on virus mutation, so less chance of pandemics. I think this is the most important reason to reduce global livestock.
Being vegan means not using animal products. That’s different to a plant based diet. In sports a plant based diet became popular since a documentery on Netflix, but these people aren’t vegan as they do use leather, wool and bees wax for example.
This made me think whether in order to produce lab grown meat, wouldn’t they have to use real meat as a reference point? And if yes, is it truly vegan, then? If they’re just printing meat used from one real meat source?
I know nothing about lab grown meat, but I just wondered where they get the source material to grow it.
There are a lot of interesting ethical questions and how strict one should be about their veganism etc. I’m not judging, because it’s up to the individual to decide where the line is drawn. Personally I think labgrown meat is interesting and if it could become a way to have meat in the future and avoid most of the problems we see today, then I’m all for it.
I’m also not a vegan myself, but have cut pork out of my life and rarely eat beef. Mostly stick to chicken and veggie alternatives so I know the endless consideration of where the limit goes. We can only do our best at the end of the day.
But yeah, I just find the subject of lab grown meat interesting in how a vegan would handle that concept - which is different from person to person, I’m sure.
Ho yeah. I’m not vegan, I’ve been a vegetarian for the most part of my life now but I was alwaya quite lucid: I am not vegan because I do not have the courage to be. It is extremely easy to be a vegetarian in a rich country in 2026 but it still is not to be vegan.
Socially, vegetarian is acceptable and even often seen as brave or whatever. You can easily not eat meat when you’re invited or go out to eat. Veganism is often seen as extreme and it is hard to eat out or get invited.
I have sadly had my own run ins with the stereotype of a crazy vegan more than once due to the type of social environment I am connected to. There are some very extreme and annoying vegans out there, but honestly, I feel like times have changed enough these past ten years that I run in to way more normal and reasonable vegans nowadays. Veganism and the political issues they have been focused on for a long time are becoming more and more normal - at least where I live - so the crazy vegans are slowly being drowned out more and more by normal people who are either going vegan or choosing more vegan options.
I see shops and restaurants becoming more and more accommodating to vegan options so I think in the future, it will become much easier to go vegan both socially and practically.
TIL figs aren’t vegan
Idk isn’t that like saying all animal pollinated plants are not vegan?
I’m a level five vegan. I don’t eat anything that Casts a shadow
Well, this one’s got a literal animal inside of it… Is all I’m saying
I guess it depends on if people think roadkill is vegan; the dead wasp is part of the life cycle of the wasp/fig symbiosis so its going to die well before humans intervene.
Imo the argument could be made that by clearing land for vegetables there’s a large reduction in habitable natural environments. This results in things dying that normally wouldn’t. Especially true when you consider pesticides.
So is the problem the dead bug in the fig or the dead bug outside, say, an apple?
I’ve only been vegan for eight years. I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never really researched it. I just don’t need animal products. But it seems like eating anything that was an animal or has an animal in it isn’t vegan
Fuck goose down
And I mean, where do we draw the line? There’s microscopic organisms that we kill all the time
Imo, don’t think about it too hard. I think it makes more sense to eat creatures based on a mix of survivorship curve and whether they are intelligent enough to need to be confined.
If you’re building infrastructure more to contain animals rather than keep other ones out, imo that’s the pivot point.
Idealized survivorship curves:
Type 1 and 2 are easy no’s. Type 3 is generally fine as long as its not like an adult turtle or octopus. Type 3 organisms are probably going to get eaten a lot and early in nature while its rare for the adults to get eaten.
This one doesn’t either, it’s just a ghost.
I’m a vegan, although not super strict. But I knew some terror vegans who do not consider vigs vegan.
The definition of “vegan” differs. Like, I don’t like products that had a nervous system. So technically I could eat oysters. But some vegans consider oranges not to be vegan because there might be an animal product in the pesticides used on oranges. Some claim they only use plant based products, but they get mad when I ask them about fungi, as their cell structure looks more like an animal cell than a plant cell (I love to make terror vegans mad).
Being vegan means you buy products which fit your idea of being vegan.
And sadly for some it means you need to be a fucking asshole to anyone you meet.
Regarding your last paragraph: that’s unrelated. There are also lots of insufferably vocal meat eaters who feel personally attacked when someone else doesn’t religiously stuff themselves with meat every meal.
I know zero (0) vocal vegans but 3 meat eaters who make a point on hating vegans and sometimes make it sound like they eat extra meat to spite vegans.
One of them once said to me a restaurant can only be good if it has no vegetarian options.
Someone has never tried falafel…
Yeah, I usually don’t say anything, unless it’s unaoidable and then I usually just say I don’t eat all that much meat.
Most will leave it at that, but I’ll happily answer. I don’t really want to yuck people’s yums, and the food industry is a bit of a special interest of mine.
Advertising is one hell of a drug. Everybody running around eating bacon and butter, and beef tallow, and haven’t had a gram of fiber, getting colon cancer at forty.
Candidly, I think your vocal vegan is like your radical feminist, or social justice warrior, or diversity hire: mostly made up.
Oh, do tell.
I live in Bavaria. There are multiple politicians who don’t get tired to performatively eat sausages and try to make laws that mandate calling oat milk “oat drink” and vegan burgers/schnitzel/… anything else. As if anyone would ever get confused by that. There’s a common joke that they should rename “scouring milk” to “scouring drink” otherwise people get confused!!!
The milk thing though. If it didn’t come from a mammal it isn’t milk, it’s a milk substitute. But milk of magnesia is another traditional thing which isn’t milk
By that logic it should be “peanut butter substitute” as well
Word meaning depends on usage. People call it “oat milk”, so it’s oat milk.
But do they realize all atoms eventually cycle through the ecosystem?
I’m sure all carbon atoms were part of animal at some point. I guess your fake vegans are just molecular vegans and not atomic vegans.
Hahaha next time I meet one who is starting a discussion to fish (pun intended) for something to trigger on, I now have the perfect comeback 😎
“you’re just a molecular vegan, not an atomic vegan, you’re just a poser”
Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. It’s not just about diet but also leather jackets/zoo visits etc. It’s not like being part of an animal that imbues the individual molecules with some mystic energy that renders them off limits, it’s that 99.99% of the time that obtaining these molecules in sufficient quantities requires overstepping boundaries of consent if not outright murder/slavery.
But I would consider scavenged meat for instance vegan, I still wouldn’t because meat gives me the ick now, but I don’t see how it is contrary to animal liberation (provided it doesn’t disrupt other animals mourning rituals or something similar). Or rescued sheep still require shearing. It’s not as brutal as farmers shearing and obviously not done with the wool in mind but rather the sheep. So the sheep are typically shorn(?) sooner than enslaved sheep and not as close to the skin, making “vegan wool” quite a bit harder to work with, but I would consider socks made out of that wool vegan.
I’m just saying this specific fruit has a literal animal inside of it
All fruits have that, if you enhance your view enough. Put any fruit under a microscope and it’s crawling with creatures.
Where do we draw the line? Seems like it’s impossible not to eat an animal
Wait until you find out what fossil fuels are made of
Mostly plant plancton.
Yeah, the point is they are technically not vegan so you have a supply chain issue with everything you consume.
Nitpicky, I know, and of course vegan+fossil fuel based supply chain (as long a I can’t do anything about it) is still good
Mostly plants and plankton?
Are zooplankton vegan?
They are most fruit require insect pollination, as long there is no forced labor or murder it’s still vegan
Depends on the vegan you’re talking to.
Wild figs may be but as soon as you’re cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture. Much like honey or milk, the fact you don’t eat the animal’s flesh might still defy the spirit of ‘no animal exploitation’. Most pollinators do not explicitly perish as part of pollination; figs are one of the foods vegans may disagree on.
The good news is that there are a small number of fig varieties that can be fertilised without the wasp (either by hand, or self-pollinating clones). In a lot of countries this is the variety that may be grown because importing wasps could be ecologically dangerous.
That’s still different to animal exploitation. Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. This is not contrary to that, “milk” and “honey” are produced by the animals for a specific reason, namely their young. Even if it were possible to obtain them without harming the animal (and there isn’t, both require animal death if they are to be produced in consumer quantities) there still is the problem of consent. It is clear that bees and cows under normal circumstances do not want to give away their milk/honey. The wasp however is already dead, it is not harmed by eating the fig and it’s consent is no longer part of the equation.
If the fig cultivation reaches a level where the wasps have to be kept under circumstances similar to the bees then yes I wouldn’t consider the figs that require these wasps to be vegan.
I agree with you, but this fruit has a literal animal inside of it
See my comment here https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/19570004
So vegans could eat unemployed animals that die of natural causes?
scavenging is considered yucky but I don’t see any reason to consider it unethical per se unless it disrupts other animals mourning rituals
Vegan can eat meat produced in labs.
Not completely true. There’s a tick which can make you allergic to animal cell structures, basically making you vegan. So lab grown meat would still be a no no. For me, I want to eat plant (and fungi) based products so I don’t want lab grown meat (although I would like to try it once). I think lab grown meat is amazing, because people who desperately want to eat meat can do so without feeding the fucked up meat industry. Less livestock means less chance on virus mutation, so less chance of pandemics. I think this is the most important reason to reduce global livestock.
Were you to try poisoning me to make me stop eating meat, I would eat fish, and birds
Birds and fish don’t have meat?
It depends if you consider veganism as a philosophy or a diet. I consider it a philosophy because I do not eat leather yet veganism prohibit its use.
Being vegan means not using animal products. That’s different to a plant based diet. In sports a plant based diet became popular since a documentery on Netflix, but these people aren’t vegan as they do use leather, wool and bees wax for example.
As I said, veganism can be considered a diet or a philosophy. At least that’s what Wikipedia and every online dictionaries say.
This made me think whether in order to produce lab grown meat, wouldn’t they have to use real meat as a reference point? And if yes, is it truly vegan, then? If they’re just printing meat used from one real meat source?
I know nothing about lab grown meat, but I just wondered where they get the source material to grow it.
Ofc, as almost everything in life, it comes with a “it depends”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat
There are a lot of interesting ethical questions and how strict one should be about their veganism etc. I’m not judging, because it’s up to the individual to decide where the line is drawn. Personally I think labgrown meat is interesting and if it could become a way to have meat in the future and avoid most of the problems we see today, then I’m all for it.
I’m also not a vegan myself, but have cut pork out of my life and rarely eat beef. Mostly stick to chicken and veggie alternatives so I know the endless consideration of where the limit goes. We can only do our best at the end of the day.
But yeah, I just find the subject of lab grown meat interesting in how a vegan would handle that concept - which is different from person to person, I’m sure.
Ho yeah. I’m not vegan, I’ve been a vegetarian for the most part of my life now but I was alwaya quite lucid: I am not vegan because I do not have the courage to be. It is extremely easy to be a vegetarian in a rich country in 2026 but it still is not to be vegan.
Socially, vegetarian is acceptable and even often seen as brave or whatever. You can easily not eat meat when you’re invited or go out to eat. Veganism is often seen as extreme and it is hard to eat out or get invited.
Yeah I get you.
I have sadly had my own run ins with the stereotype of a crazy vegan more than once due to the type of social environment I am connected to. There are some very extreme and annoying vegans out there, but honestly, I feel like times have changed enough these past ten years that I run in to way more normal and reasonable vegans nowadays. Veganism and the political issues they have been focused on for a long time are becoming more and more normal - at least where I live - so the crazy vegans are slowly being drowned out more and more by normal people who are either going vegan or choosing more vegan options.
I see shops and restaurants becoming more and more accommodating to vegan options so I think in the future, it will become much easier to go vegan both socially and practically.
🤗