Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too

[groovedaddy]

I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham. A couple of years later, I gave up on all mammalian meat, period. I still eat fish and poultry, however and pour eggnog in my coffee. My dietary decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent, and when friends ask why I’m willing to try the duck but not the lamb, I don’t have a good answer. Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held. And lately, debates over food choices have flared with particular vehemence.

In his new book, “Eating Animals,” the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous, oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets” to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like himself, avoiding all products derived from animals, including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “eternal Treblinka.”

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html?th&emc=th

[rcrush]

1. We should just eat each other.

That way no cute furry animals will be harmed and no plants will die.

[MrScorpio]

4. Cannibals...

[ipfilter]

14. I hear some tribes like long pig.

[Blue_Tires]

11. soylent green kinda tastes like people...

[MrScorpio]

2. Biological imperative

In order to live, we have to consume something derived from another life

[groovedaddy]

3. Or, as I heard someone else put it: "We're all food for something else." n.t

[Fleshdancer]

5. This reminds me of the scene from Notting Hill

where the blind date says that she's a fruitarian and only eats fruit that has naturally fallen off the tree/vine because she doesn't want to murder vegetables.

[soleiri]

6. Lies

Every brussels sprout I've meet has taunted me with promises of deliciousness.

[Swede]

7. We need food replicators already,its 2010.

Or cloned bacon. MMMMMMMMmmmmmmm bacon.

[groovedaddy]

9. Check back Friday of next week. We'll see then. ;-) n.t

[Critters2]

8. Nice long, scientific-sounding rationalization. But plants lack

central nervous systems. However complex they may be, they do not feel pain. And their lives are way more pleasant than those of animals in factory farms. Also, a good many plants, like corn and soybeans, live out their natural lives before being harvested.

So, call me back when carnivores start eating cows who die of old age.

[dysfunctional press]

10. "call me back when carnivores start eating cows who die of old age. "

'aged beef' is only good when the aging occurs after the butchering.

[TZ]

13. I'm not a vegan, nor am I likely to be but you are right

Calling that science is the same as saying astonomy and astrology are the same thing. Shows what the Times know putting a piece of pseudoscientific opinion in the "science" section.

[TZ]

12. Ha! I beat the flvegan-meister in on this one...

:popcorn:

[flvegan]

15. But not by much!

[NYC_SKP]

16. This is why I'm a strict Fruitarian. I don't eat or kill anything living.

I wait until an orange falls from the tree, perfectly ripe.

Or nuts to fall or beans, or corn stalks to die their natural death so that I may use their seed.

As our glorious creator intended...

...Of course, if a crow or squirrel gets in my way, tries to beat me to it.

I'll club the bastard and cook 'em up!

[flvegan]

17. Posts like this always make me hungry for extra faux bacon.

:rofl:

[TZ]

18. faux bacon...

makes me faux hungry!!:P

[arcadian]

19. Is faux bacon made from brussel sprouts?

If not. It should be.

[jmowreader]

20. Whatever it's made from...

it takes more non-faux money to buy it than to buy the real thing.

[flvegan]

21. A better product usually costs more.

Sad but true.

[BarenakedLady]

25. Mmmmm faux bacon

[SoxFan]

22. I've heard the screams of the vegetables

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM

[Solly Mack]

23. Hey..I just get the water ready..if the sprouts mistake it for a hot tub

that's on them

[AngryAmish]

24. Vegtable rights and peace, man.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

26. I've got you vegans beat. I'm a petrophagian.

I eat only rocks. They are crunchy, non-fattening, full of minerals, and I don't have to kill anything, even Brussels sprouts.

[femmocrat]

27. Sheep don't die to give us wool.

:eyes:

Not sure about silkworms though.

[jmowreader]

29. Vegans have three problems with wool

It's using an animal to fulfill a human need--hence exploitative.

Factory sheep farming is cruel. Sheep are animals designed to live on hills, but it's easier to raise them on flat land. This causes all sorts of problems. In England, people eat a lot of lamb so there's a financial motivation to overbreed, to force them into heat with hormones, and of course to butcher lambs at a very early age. (There's also the Easter Lamb problem--the traditional Easter meal in GB seems to be lamb. If the ewes were allowed to reproduce as nature intended them to, the lambs would be born after Easter. Not good for business.)

And when you shear a sheep, it generally gets cut to hell.

[LeftyMom]

28. That is the stupidest thing I've read in a while.

But I haven't been to GD yet today, so that could change.

[Critters2]

30. LOL!! True dat. nt