Alas, no; milk chocolate is off limits. However, Goldberg's peanut chews (original, not milk) are vegan, as are Planter's Peanut Bars and a variety of hard candies.
I don't understand the vegans who won't eat honey. If your concern is living off of the work of the bees, you're pretty much gonna starve, considering what a large portion of a vegetarian diet comes from crops pollinated by bees.
Slate just had an article about vegans and honey (http://www.slate.com/id/2196205/) that I thought was pretty informative. Personally I don't worry too much about honey. To be honest, being vegan is a struggle for me most of the time (between my unhealthy love for cheese and a foreign boyfriend who doesn't even understand the concept of 'vegan') and my focus is on not eating cheese or dairy products that come from the industrial farming complex. I can't quite muster up the energy to care about the bees as much as I care about the chickens and cows, especially when, like Freddie points out, bees are also used to pollinate nearly all of the fruits and vegetables that form the foundation of my diet. Maybe someday I'll be able to eat nothing except what comes from my local farmers market. Until then, I have to prioritize.
I am happy to be listening to the podcast on the vegan-libertarian connection, and having been a libertarian longer than being a vegetarian/vegan, I have been dismayed by the anti-vegetarian/vegan bias in much libertarian writing.
I am a hardcore libertarian, and and a soft-core vegan (I do not have an issue with honey per se, and I do eat eggs). Eggs seem to me to be OK if two conditions exist: 1-the chickens are raised humanely, and 2-the eggs are not fertilized.
My vegetarian/vegan beliefs came about as a direct result of trying to live on a farm and having the fantasy of using dairy goats....well lactation doesn't happen without insemination, and insemination results in offspring (female offspring are great, more milkers; male offspring are only good for the fridge). Hence the step from vegetarian to "non-dairy" vegan.
Anyway, as a libertarian, there is already the feeling of being a lone voice in the wilderness, and being a veg/libertarian is being a minority of a small minority.
By the way, I also ride a motorcycle, and have been as leather free as I can (ain't no leather free motorcycle boots, though all my other shoes are vegan).
Wow. Just listened to the podcast and I love your manner and arguments on all those issues. Honestly I haven't paid much attention to you because I'm kinda turned off by a lot of libertarian policy, although I flirted with the ideas when I was younger. Long-time vegan, new DC resident here. You just made my list of top blogs to check.
On honey: My understanding is that removing the honey from the hive harms the bees in ways that merely allowing them to pollinate plants does not. So it's perhaps not completely ridiculous to avoid honey but not plant foods pollinated by bees.
I eat honey sometimes: I don't make much of an effort to avoid it, but neither do I seek it out. When I do eat honey, it's because it's the 14th ingredient in my salad dressing or something, not because I'm slurping up gallons of the stuff. It's a minor issue.
I actually don't particularly care for honey, so it's really not an issue for me--I don't scan anxiously to make sure it's not on the list of ingredients, but thankfully, it almost never is. If I'm desperately ill, I'll put some in my tea, but that's a once-a-year occurance if that. That said, I don't think we have the same moral obligations to bees that we do to mammals or even fish.
In my experience most vegans, including myself, tend to approach honey the way Johanna does. We recognize there's a certain intellectual consistency to avoiding honey, enough to avoid choosing to put it directly in tea or on toast, but not much else.
Freddie: I don't think its fair to analogize the use of bees for pollinating crops to consuming animal products directly. By that logic, crops raised in soil fertilized by animal waste would also be tainted. For me, veganism has evolved into more of an aesthetic than a ideology. I don't like the idea of consuming, wearing, eating animal products based on a live-and-let-live or first-do-no-harm kind of philosophy, but that doesn't mean I reject that other animals play an essential role in the natural world or circle of life.
In my experience most vegans, including myself, tend to approach honey the way Johanna does. We recognize there's a certain intellectual consistency to avoiding honey, enough to avoid choosing to put it directly in tea or on toast, but not much else.
Freddie: I don't think its fair to analogize the use of bees for pollinating crops to consuming animal products directly. By that logic, crops raised in soil fertilized by animal waste would also be tainted. For me, veganism has evolved into more of an aesthetic than a strict ideology. I don't like the idea of consuming, wearing, eating animal products based on a live-and-let-live or first-do-no-harm kind of philosophy, but that doesn't mean I reject that other animals play an essential role in the natural world or circle of life.
What about crops grown with fertilizer made from animal dung? I'm not sure whether this is even common, but I imagine the animals involved would probably be farm animals raised for slaughter.
What about crops grown with fertilizer made from animal dung? I'm not sure whether this is even common, but I imagine the animals involved would probably be farm animals raised for slaughter.
Joseph Wheeler, I think the point freddie was making (certainly the point I was making) is that bees do actually suffer from being commoditized and used as pollinating agents by large industrial farmers. Am I going to stop eating vegetables because of this? Not practical in the least. After a point the marginal costs of cutting more and more things out of your diet, relative to the marginal benefits to animals, just get ridiculous.
Megan, you say that most vegans are surprised at how easy it is to turn vegan. Could that be a selection effect? Because I'm now on Day 3 of my 21 day vegan trial, and I'm not finding it easy in the least. I've been vegetarian before, which I did find easy, but I'm discovering I really miss cheese and eggs. I deliberately picked this time of year because the farmer's markets, and my little garden, are bursting with delicious fresh fruit and vegetables, but still, I find that almost everything I usually eat is now off limits.
Hang in there, Cardinal Fang. It gets easier. Are you taking time to explore new ingredients and new recipes? When I first went vegan, I sat down with a big cookbook, marked all the vegan recipes that appealed to me, and worked my way through them one by one. That helped me discover a lot of new things to eat in short order.
One of the first vegan recipes I tried was a Thai-style curry with cashews, coconut milk, and not much else. Hardly diet food, but proof positive (for me, anyway) that vegan food can be as rich and satisfying as anything with cheese or eggs. Hummus with extra tahini and olive oil might do the trick as well.
Megan, I grew up on a dairy farm, forced out of business by the cost of energy in the late 1970's.
Today, small dairy farms are threatened by both climbing energy costs and raw-milk bans.
According to Charles Waters of USA Acres, the raw-milk bans have caused a decline in sanitation on dairy farms, so unpasteurized mile is a hazard, a great example of a mandated safety laws turned self-fulfilling prophesy. The raw-milk ban also creates economic hazard. Because farmer's can't sell directly to consumers without expensive equipment, small farms become detached from their communities and it becomes difficult for them to survive. They loose the margin of a direct sale to the consumer and the potential of value-added products including cheese. Without profitable small, local dairies, large industrial farms where animals are mistreated meet the demand for dairy products.
My moral responsibility? Black-market milk.
But my real concern with veganism is its impact on farming. Animals are a crucial part of the farm ecosystem; particularly if a farmer attempts to be to be nutrient-neutral (nutrients are a resource, and every time a farmer uses Central-American guano on your organic lettuce, it shifts resources, at tremendous cost and loss to the region providing the nutrients.) I recommend two old books about nutrients and healthy soil as a resource, "Soil and Health" by Sir Albert Howard, and "Farmers of Forty Centuries" by Franklin Hiram King. Both were written in the early 1900's. Animal manure, properly composted, is the best manage the nutrient cycle.
I'm a fan of small businesses, including small farms. All too often, large businesses use regulation to strangle small; NAIS is a great example. I don't know a family farm that has the manpower necessary to keep up with it's requirements; requirements that favor industrial farms.
And a last thing: unless your food has been irradiated and sprayed with pesticides and fungicides, you're eating animals. You just can't see them.
zic - And a last thing: unless your food has been irradiated and sprayed with pesticides and fungicides, you're eating animals. You just can't see them.
I think the concern is more with vertebrates than bacteria for most people.
every time a farmer uses Central-American guano on your organic lettuce, it shifts resources, at tremendous cost and loss to the region providing the nutrients.
The best response to that would be to use iron fertilization on the earth's oceans, collect the nutrient-rich seaweed bloom, and compost it. The oceans have a huge reserve of nutrients, and we recycle very little of that back into our agriculture.
Try rice milk, oat milk, soy/rice milk blends, or almond milk. (Also, different soy milk brands taste radically different, and you might need to exhaust all possible options until you know if it will work or not.)
congratulations on going vegan! first 3 months are hardest. then it's easy.
you might have done this already but you really should look into some of the things that Gary Francione has written (http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/) especially regarding animal welfare, and why many vegans deride 'happy meat' as such.
after delving more and more into animal rights vs. welfare, i will never again support 'happy meat'. good luck!
hmmmm......I've always wondered about something, MM......can Vegans eat M&M's? That milk in the chocolate is a disqualifier, isn't it.....?
......just wondering......
Alas, no; milk chocolate is off limits. However, Goldberg's peanut chews (original, not milk) are vegan, as are Planter's Peanut Bars and a variety of hard candies.
I don't understand the vegans who won't eat honey. If your concern is living off of the work of the bees, you're pretty much gonna starve, considering what a large portion of a vegetarian diet comes from crops pollinated by bees.
Slate just had an article about vegans and honey (http://www.slate.com/id/2196205/) that I thought was pretty informative. Personally I don't worry too much about honey. To be honest, being vegan is a struggle for me most of the time (between my unhealthy love for cheese and a foreign boyfriend who doesn't even understand the concept of 'vegan') and my focus is on not eating cheese or dairy products that come from the industrial farming complex. I can't quite muster up the energy to care about the bees as much as I care about the chickens and cows, especially when, like Freddie points out, bees are also used to pollinate nearly all of the fruits and vegetables that form the foundation of my diet. Maybe someday I'll be able to eat nothing except what comes from my local farmers market. Until then, I have to prioritize.
I am happy to be listening to the podcast on the vegan-libertarian connection, and having been a libertarian longer than being a vegetarian/vegan, I have been dismayed by the anti-vegetarian/vegan bias in much libertarian writing.
I am a hardcore libertarian, and and a soft-core vegan (I do not have an issue with honey per se, and I do eat eggs). Eggs seem to me to be OK if two conditions exist: 1-the chickens are raised humanely, and 2-the eggs are not fertilized.
My vegetarian/vegan beliefs came about as a direct result of trying to live on a farm and having the fantasy of using dairy goats....well lactation doesn't happen without insemination, and insemination results in offspring (female offspring are great, more milkers; male offspring are only good for the fridge). Hence the step from vegetarian to "non-dairy" vegan.
Anyway, as a libertarian, there is already the feeling of being a lone voice in the wilderness, and being a veg/libertarian is being a minority of a small minority.
By the way, I also ride a motorcycle, and have been as leather free as I can (ain't no leather free motorcycle boots, though all my other shoes are vegan).
Thanks.
Wow. Just listened to the podcast and I love your manner and arguments on all those issues. Honestly I haven't paid much attention to you because I'm kinda turned off by a lot of libertarian policy, although I flirted with the ideas when I was younger. Long-time vegan, new DC resident here. You just made my list of top blogs to check.
On honey: My understanding is that removing the honey from the hive harms the bees in ways that merely allowing them to pollinate plants does not. So it's perhaps not completely ridiculous to avoid honey but not plant foods pollinated by bees.
I eat honey sometimes: I don't make much of an effort to avoid it, but neither do I seek it out. When I do eat honey, it's because it's the 14th ingredient in my salad dressing or something, not because I'm slurping up gallons of the stuff. It's a minor issue.
I actually don't particularly care for honey, so it's really not an issue for me--I don't scan anxiously to make sure it's not on the list of ingredients, but thankfully, it almost never is. If I'm desperately ill, I'll put some in my tea, but that's a once-a-year occurance if that. That said, I don't think we have the same moral obligations to bees that we do to mammals or even fish.
In my experience most vegans, including myself, tend to approach honey the way Johanna does. We recognize there's a certain intellectual consistency to avoiding honey, enough to avoid choosing to put it directly in tea or on toast, but not much else.
Freddie: I don't think its fair to analogize the use of bees for pollinating crops to consuming animal products directly. By that logic, crops raised in soil fertilized by animal waste would also be tainted. For me, veganism has evolved into more of an aesthetic than a ideology. I don't like the idea of consuming, wearing, eating animal products based on a live-and-let-live or first-do-no-harm kind of philosophy, but that doesn't mean I reject that other animals play an essential role in the natural world or circle of life.
In my experience most vegans, including myself, tend to approach honey the way Johanna does. We recognize there's a certain intellectual consistency to avoiding honey, enough to avoid choosing to put it directly in tea or on toast, but not much else.
Freddie: I don't think its fair to analogize the use of bees for pollinating crops to consuming animal products directly. By that logic, crops raised in soil fertilized by animal waste would also be tainted. For me, veganism has evolved into more of an aesthetic than a strict ideology. I don't like the idea of consuming, wearing, eating animal products based on a live-and-let-live or first-do-no-harm kind of philosophy, but that doesn't mean I reject that other animals play an essential role in the natural world or circle of life.
Honest question:
What about crops grown with fertilizer made from animal dung? I'm not sure whether this is even common, but I imagine the animals involved would probably be farm animals raised for slaughter.
Honest question:
What about crops grown with fertilizer made from animal dung? I'm not sure whether this is even common, but I imagine the animals involved would probably be farm animals raised for slaughter.
Joseph Wheeler, I think the point freddie was making (certainly the point I was making) is that bees do actually suffer from being commoditized and used as pollinating agents by large industrial farmers. Am I going to stop eating vegetables because of this? Not practical in the least. After a point the marginal costs of cutting more and more things out of your diet, relative to the marginal benefits to animals, just get ridiculous.
Ha. I noticed your Atlantic bio says you like the "occasional extra dry skim milk cappuccino"...
Interesting podcast.
Megan, you say that most vegans are surprised at how easy it is to turn vegan. Could that be a selection effect? Because I'm now on Day 3 of my 21 day vegan trial, and I'm not finding it easy in the least. I've been vegetarian before, which I did find easy, but I'm discovering I really miss cheese and eggs. I deliberately picked this time of year because the farmer's markets, and my little garden, are bursting with delicious fresh fruit and vegetables, but still, I find that almost everything I usually eat is now off limits.
Hang in there, Cardinal Fang. It gets easier. Are you taking time to explore new ingredients and new recipes? When I first went vegan, I sat down with a big cookbook, marked all the vegan recipes that appealed to me, and worked my way through them one by one. That helped me discover a lot of new things to eat in short order.
One of the first vegan recipes I tried was a Thai-style curry with cashews, coconut milk, and not much else. Hardly diet food, but proof positive (for me, anyway) that vegan food can be as rich and satisfying as anything with cheese or eggs. Hummus with extra tahini and olive oil might do the trick as well.
nice podcast, to you both
Megan, I grew up on a dairy farm, forced out of business by the cost of energy in the late 1970's.
Today, small dairy farms are threatened by both climbing energy costs and raw-milk bans.
According to Charles Waters of USA Acres, the raw-milk bans have caused a decline in sanitation on dairy farms, so unpasteurized mile is a hazard, a great example of a mandated safety laws turned self-fulfilling prophesy. The raw-milk ban also creates economic hazard. Because farmer's can't sell directly to consumers without expensive equipment, small farms become detached from their communities and it becomes difficult for them to survive. They loose the margin of a direct sale to the consumer and the potential of value-added products including cheese. Without profitable small, local dairies, large industrial farms where animals are mistreated meet the demand for dairy products.
My moral responsibility? Black-market milk.
But my real concern with veganism is its impact on farming. Animals are a crucial part of the farm ecosystem; particularly if a farmer attempts to be to be nutrient-neutral (nutrients are a resource, and every time a farmer uses Central-American guano on your organic lettuce, it shifts resources, at tremendous cost and loss to the region providing the nutrients.) I recommend two old books about nutrients and healthy soil as a resource, "Soil and Health" by Sir Albert Howard, and "Farmers of Forty Centuries" by Franklin Hiram King. Both were written in the early 1900's. Animal manure, properly composted, is the best manage the nutrient cycle.
I'm a fan of small businesses, including small farms. All too often, large businesses use regulation to strangle small; NAIS is a great example. I don't know a family farm that has the manpower necessary to keep up with it's requirements; requirements that favor industrial farms.
And a last thing: unless your food has been irradiated and sprayed with pesticides and fungicides, you're eating animals. You just can't see them.
Great podcast! I sent the link to my libertarian, cheese-loving husband.
zic - And a last thing: unless your food has been irradiated and sprayed with pesticides and fungicides, you're eating animals. You just can't see them.
I think the concern is more with vertebrates than bacteria for most people.
every time a farmer uses Central-American guano on your organic lettuce, it shifts resources, at tremendous cost and loss to the region providing the nutrients.
The best response to that would be to use iron fertilization on the earth's oceans, collect the nutrient-rich seaweed bloom, and compost it. The oceans have a huge reserve of nutrients, and we recycle very little of that back into our agriculture.
Try rice milk, oat milk, soy/rice milk blends, or almond milk. (Also, different soy milk brands taste radically different, and you might need to exhaust all possible options until you know if it will work or not.)
That is, you don't need to give up cereal!
congratulations on going vegan! first 3 months are hardest. then it's easy.
you might have done this already but you really should look into some of the things that Gary Francione has written (http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/) especially regarding animal welfare, and why many vegans deride 'happy meat' as such.
after delving more and more into animal rights vs. welfare, i will never again support 'happy meat'. good luck!