A question for Vegans

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Hello Vegans.

Preliminary stuff to make sure were on the same page:
Vegans do not eat anything from an animal, only plant matter. Is this correct?
You consider yourself to be a Herbivore. is this correct?

Now the Question:
What is your stance on Breast feeding a baby?
Cows are Herbivores (Vegans) and they breastfeed their young.

If your answer is a formula that is bottle fed to the baby then what do you do if this is not available, ie: wilderness situation or possible plant ingredients not available.

I ask this because Breast feeding your child is contradictory to Vegan beliefs but is also perfectly natural among all mammals regardless of their diet meaning that technically there is no such thing as a Vegan or a strict Herbivore for that matter.

Originally posted by Raivan31
Now the Question:
What is your stance on Breast feeding a baby?
Cows are Herbivores (Vegans) and they breastfeed their young.

I am a vegan sorta, getting there! and i think it is perfectly fine, infact it is best! a mother milk is designed to make a baby put on suffceint weight and give it all the vitamins and nutrients it needs, there was even research that was prooven to show breast feed babies are more inteligent and they reckon it was to do with emzymes in the milk.

The only reason we do not drink cows milk it that it is designed to make a baby calf go from 80 pounds to 1000 in one year!!! it also has a protean in it called Casein it is the primary protein in cows milk and it may well be one of the most potent chemical carcinogens ever identified! It also has in it casomorphines and are addictive it designed to keep the calf near its mother also cows milk has been linked to multiple sclerosis, cancer and juvenile diabetes. We humans have not nutritional need for cows milk what so ever infact as adults we cant digest it properly well 60% cant.

So my conclusions for your question is yes it good infact i would say its the best for the mother to feed the baby her milk, but cows milk.... hell no

P.S excuses my crap spelling

reply to post by definity


I agree but it wasn't a complete answer to my question.

If you breastfeed a baby and you intend for it to be a Vegan then it can't be a Vegan because it has consumed something from an animal, namely, you. (no offence intended, we are all animals after all)

As other mammals also breastfeed then none of them are Herbivores either, ie: not a Vegan.

reply to post by Raivan31


Ha, I see your point, and it is a clever one.
I'm not vegan myself (I'm vegetarian...aka vegan-lite?) but I would imagine (hope) that most vegans understand that milk from the mother is meant for the child, and therefore the best option, and would therefore have no problem making 'one exception.'
Now, if a vegan on here claims otherwise....then we got ourselves an interesting conversation!

Originally posted by eleven44
reply to post by Raivan31

 

Ha, I see your point, and it is a clever one.
I'm not vegan myself (I'm vegetarian...aka vegan-lite?) but I would imagine (hope) that most vegans understand that milk from the mother is meant for the child, and therefore the best option, and would therefore have no problem making 'one exception.'
Now, if a vegan on here claims otherwise....then we got ourselves an interesting conversation!

To be honest i kinda blew my own mind when i thought of it
I'm a Vegetarian-lite, meaning i rarely eat meat.

My questions for "vegans":
Do you eat honey? Its an animal product isnt it??
Do you drink beer? Yeast is an animal of sorts??

I have another question I ask "vegans" but for the sake of manners and decorum I wont write it here..

there are that many animal based products on the market, from cosmetics to cleaning products, that I doubt anyone living in the modern world is truly vegan.

hello,
cows milk is for its baby
similarly human milk is for the mothers baby
honey is not typically a bee food....its 'made' by the bees but doesnt come from it to threaten its own existence.
Chicken legs however threatens existence of chiken because the chicken will no longer have legs to use.
Why doesnt anyone eat only beef tail ? answer: because they miss the 'murder on the plate' but people may say it doesnt taste good or something.it is false, because meat doesnt taste good at all unless it is prepared.
i dont support vegan ideas, because it is an extreme(artificial). but i dont support meat eating fantasies because it seems to be another extreme(restless).

now a story to conclude: A great emperor, the OP commanded to the vegetarian that he eat meat. Perplexed, the veggean said yes yor royale highness but also said that he shall eat meat for the very first time only at a picnic. the OP hurried and called a picnic that very same day(asshole). on the banks of the river during the picninc, the OP gave the very first chicken leg to the veggetarian. the Veggetarian accepted it (well it was from the highness),caught it firm and exposed it to the running water. The emperor was amazed but kept waiting untill the veggetarian lost his sainthood.Finally the veggetarian took the leg out and offered a bite of it to his great majesty, and said that he would eat it once the king felt good.The king put it in his mouth and !@#$% yuck !@#$, the spices r gone, this chicken leg smells.....yuck and threw it. The vegetarian was saved and the OP learnt his lesson.

Story taken from akbar and birbal and the idea taken froma non voilent person.

reply to post by Raivan31



Hello sir,

Myself and my long term girlfriend have been vegans for 7 years straight. I think the first thing we have to get straight is that Veganism is a choice of what you eat and wear and how you don't support the industry. It is not a religion, it is not some kind of dogma or sect, but a choice of how to eat. Now that we have that out of the way let's address your question. You see we disagree with drinking milk from other creatures ,animals and what have you. We don't find it natural that we are the only species in the world that continues to drink milk after infancy and it's not even our milk it is from another animal. Now that is the basis of the rejection of milk. Is it natural to drink your mothers milk and survive on it? Well of course it is every other animal does why shouldn't we? However sucking my mom's tits for my whole life or making coffee with her milk just isn't my style if you know what I mean.

I hope that answered you question. Veganism is about living a natural life on plant based grain based tofu based soy based products and nothing more!!

reply to post by mutualfeelings


Eating a chickens egg does not threaten the existence of the chicken, nor would it threaten the existence of any potential chickens if the egg was not fertilized. Vegans dont eat chickens eggs tho?.

Raw meat is eaten in a number of dishes--Steak Tartar, Raw seafood in Japanese dishes; if it was that displeasing to the pallet then such dishes would have never entered our diet.

Cows milk does not threaten the existence of the cow, neither does making said milk into cheese. What was your point again?

reply to post by Raivan31


I don't think that the feeding of breast-milk to a baby is an issue that is ever questioned / held by a vegan. In fact - it is very much a non-issue from my vegan perspective.

From personal experience, my dietary change to vegan was made to improve my own health as I experienced very bad inflammatory reactions to diary and meat-products. There was also an ethical factor in my vegan decision-making process in that I do not believe in the enslavement of animals and the abuse of the "innocents" on this planet in our commercial farming practices (and the resulting yucky stuff introduced onto our plates such as heaps of antibiotics, steroids etc).

But human breast-milk is meant for a human baby. As the cow's milk is meant for that cow's baby. The cow was not meant to be kept pregnant on an artificial and permanent basis in order to feed adult humans! The nutrition derived from human breast-milk is best for the human baby and CANNOT be improved upon by any measure. In the same vein I do believe that milk-consumption is only nutritionally appropriate for the infants of mammals, and that it should not be ingested in adulthood as it is not beneficial to the adult body.

It basically comes down to what foodstuffs are biologically appropriate to what species and at what age...

yeah well i dont agree with people that are that extream vegans and especially doing that to a poor baby

Well everyone has given reasons here and there for choices made, one poster even seemed to think i was asking about cows milk as a food for humans. Then there was the rather difficult to read story about the emperor (I eat unspiced chicken legs btw and won't eat raw meat because it would make me sick from bacteria)

Here is a thought for the Vegan couple, oil is a fossil fuel, meaning it was originally an animal.

Plants frequently use dead animal matter as a source of food.

And almost everyone missed my point.

The whole world and every living thing in it is part of a system, one big symbiotic system.

There is no such thing as a Vegan Mammal, because every Mammal has at some point consumed something from an animal.
Most plants have consumed nutrients from an animal, even if it was just manure.

To live on this planet means using and/or consuming Animal matter, it's unavoidable.

I'm not being mean, just pointing out the reality of the situation.

I called my self a vegetarian-lite because i don't often 'eat' meat but that is more financial then a matter of personal choice, and yes I have watched 'Earthlings'.

Everything is omnivorous on one level or another, that's kinda the point of this entire ecosystem. It's natural.

reply to post by Raivan31


I agree with you that this is a big and beautiful symbiotic world wherein all creatures and plants are omnivorous to some extent (good point with regard to feeding off the nutrients of dead animals).

But you must agree that we have taken what was given to us in the natural world completely out of context, and twisted it into a whole new and very unnatural paradigm.

Mass-farming of animals (fed on unnatural diets, kept alive with medications, stressed and oftentimes ailing or dying) whom have been reared for the sole purpose of slaughter, is a far cry from the world of old where the hunter would stalk, quickly kill and pay homage to his prey. At least his prey had experienced freedom its entire life, was healthy from a nature-appropriate diet, and then fed an entire and very grateful community in need.

Let's take the omnivore-versus-herbivore issue out of this debate. The fact remains that most things being dished up on our plates today (animal-and-plant-based) have been removed out of the great symbiotic cycle during production, and is not ideal anymore for a perfectly healthy existence.

Breast-milk remains about the best stuff around me thinks...

Instinct.

One of the most important things any and all living things posses.

Humans have created a world where we have become like cattle ourselves.

We originally began farming animals by taking advantage of their instincts. We are the shepherd right up until the cattle's final moment at which point we reveal ourselves as the predator.

Instinct kicks in all the same, even though we have distanced ourselves from it, as though it is beneath us.

Instinct keeps us alive, to over ride it is to become food.

Death = Food, no matter how you swing it, something dies so something else can eat.

Vegan is a concept not a real thing, it's an idea. for some, a moral imperative but still just an idea.
It doesn't actually exist in the strictest sense in reality but only in the minds of those that choose to live this way.

If your about to starve to death you will react in one of two ways (and only humans do this btw, our big brains in action)
1. You let instinct keep you alive and eat whatever you can.
2. you over-ride instinct and choose to die, at which point something else eats you.

Be a Vegan, go for it. good for you for making a difficult choice and choosing a more complicated lifestyle. But don't assume that you are morally superior, your still an animal and part of the earths eco-system, like every other living thing on this planet.

And therein lies the irony. Vegans take a 'moral' stance but the truth is your only distancing yourself from the rest of life on this planet, trying to rise above it. You can't. You ARE it.

ADD: There is not a single living creature on this planet that is not in a symbiotic relationship. The human body is like a micro-cosim analogue for the world, we live with millions of different kinds of bacteria on and in us, without which we could not exist.

Most people want to do the 'right thing' and we still have a LONG way to go before we manage to live a perfectly balanced and natural, symbiotic life. NO ONE has it right, Vegans are just another extreme, their motivation is good but the thinking behind it is incomplete, THIS is what i am trying to point out here.

Vegans, don't rest on your laurels, you still have more to work out. The journey is not yet complete.

reply to post by cartenz


I would agree with your statement and would hope that although it truly does seem that to be a vegan as explained in your statements is not really achievable, that those who choose to call themselves vegans are at least making sure that they are getting all the vitamins and minerals they need to stay healthy! Your statements leave one to wonder the true meaning of vegan!

Not all vegans became that way because of a cause or belief system. I became vegan for health reasons. Animal products act as an inflammatory in the body, and I have spinal arthritis. Since going vegan (I'm actually a raw vegan), I have not suffered from any pain at all. In fact, it's like it doesn't even exist anymore. And if you believe the Gerson Method of healing the body, then maybe it is gone. I plan on going get new x-rays this summer to see if there has been any rebuilding. But now I get to live a life pain free. I can sit on the couch and watch an entire movie pain free. I can work out now, pain free. I can go outside and run and jump and play with my 3 year old daughter, pain free. Life is finally good again. And if that means I just have to avoid meat and dairy, so be it. I'm healthier, so I can't complain. I eat mostly fresh organic produce and it tastes amazing now that my body is clean. I did my blood test, and everything was perfect. As a bonus, my hypoglycemia which has plagued me since I was 17 (I'm 35 now) is completely gone. I drink 24 ounces of fresh squeezed oj every morning and it doesn't even touch my blood sugar levels. They have never been so stable.

And yes, I breast fed my baby for her first year. My only regret was that I didn't continue on through her 2nd year. Mother's milk is the best thing for baby.

Death = Food, no matter how you swing it, something dies so something else can eat.

Ever heard of fruitarians? The really hard core ones don't believe in killing anything for food, even plants. They only eat fruit which falls from the tree. They will not pluck it. They believe the tree is offering food to us when it drops it's fruit on the ground. When you eat the fruit and scatter the seeds, you help the tree to reproduce. I guess you can say from there point of view, life = food.

Fun Facts about fruitarians: They also believe this was the diet originally meant for man. Fruit is sweet and tasty to man. It doesn't need to be cooked to be enjoyed like some vegetables. If we were wild, and surrounded by broccoli plants and apple trees, we would probably pick the apple. They also believe their diet is in line with the story of the garden of eden. And they like to point out the recent discovery that the earliest man was indeed, a fruitarian. Also, Steve Jobs was once a fruitarian, that's where the name "apple" came from.

I'm not a fruitarian, just thought I'd share their views in this thread.