Vegan Probiotic Food
Feb. 6th, 2021 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis article about vegan probiotic food made me laugh.
What's wrong with that phrase?
The whole point to veganism is to avoid eating animals or anything made by or from animals.
Probiotic foods are made of animals. A live culture of teeming, tiny animals feed on the raw food and partially digest it, making it more nutritious for humans. These little critters include symbiotes beneficial to a healthy microbiome. (The human body is not actually a single organism, but rather a communal body more like a walking ecosystem. Try not to be a vengeful god to your symbiotes.) So probiotic foods are live foods. They're good for you. But because they are full of happy little animals, I would never call them VEGAN.
This is likely another example of humanocentrism, which is why a lot of people will eat fish or even chicken but not mammal flesh. Yet vegans often get all high and mighty about how they don't eat animals. Folks, if you're eating probiotics, you're eating swarms of animals -- they're just too small to see easily. If the idea of eating animals is gross or sad to you, skip the probiotics.
Me, I love the stuff because it is live food. I have further discovered that the more different cultures, the better. Brown Cow yogurt, which has 5 cultures, does a much better job than most brands which only have 1-2.
What's wrong with that phrase?
The whole point to veganism is to avoid eating animals or anything made by or from animals.
Probiotic foods are made of animals. A live culture of teeming, tiny animals feed on the raw food and partially digest it, making it more nutritious for humans. These little critters include symbiotes beneficial to a healthy microbiome. (The human body is not actually a single organism, but rather a communal body more like a walking ecosystem. Try not to be a vengeful god to your symbiotes.) So probiotic foods are live foods. They're good for you. But because they are full of happy little animals, I would never call them VEGAN.
This is likely another example of humanocentrism, which is why a lot of people will eat fish or even chicken but not mammal flesh. Yet vegans often get all high and mighty about how they don't eat animals. Folks, if you're eating probiotics, you're eating swarms of animals -- they're just too small to see easily. If the idea of eating animals is gross or sad to you, skip the probiotics.
Me, I love the stuff because it is live food. I have further discovered that the more different cultures, the better. Brown Cow yogurt, which has 5 cultures, does a much better job than most brands which only have 1-2.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-06 08:14 am (UTC)Actually that depends on your definition of 'animal'. Bacteria are not taxonomically classed with animals, and neither are yeasts, the former are prokaryotes and while yeasts are considered eukaryotes, having a proper nucleus and all, yeasts are not animals. We can certainly argue whether we would consider fungi to be animals or plants (being closer genetically to animals give them a leg up there), but I don't think that's the point.
As for probiotics, most of these cultures are a species of lactobacillus, and therefore every much in the realm of bacteria.
If your definition of veganism is "not eating anything that is or once was alive" well I'm sort of with you on this, but when we consider veganism as "not consuming products produced by animals" that's different. The definition is still fuzzy because bees pollinate fruit trees and cow and horse manure is used to fertilize fields, but that's a different discussion in that case.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-06 09:06 am (UTC)You are eating the bacteria, but you're not digesting them. The whole point is they can happily live in your gut. So it's less consumption and more relocation!
I think as such, it doesn't count, Nothing dies since you're just putting them in an environment where they can thrive.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-06 10:38 am (UTC)Meantime, I'll just continue enjoying my Marmite!
*laugh*
Date: 2021-02-06 10:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-06 10:45 am (UTC)Brown Cow is excellent stuff in general: it's more like pudding.
Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-06 11:02 am (UTC)Fair enough.
>> Brown Cow is excellent stuff in general: it's more like pudding. <<
Yeah, we use the vanilla kind for smoothies. I love the cream layer on the fruit ones.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-06 12:12 pm (UTC)I'm plain old veggie (a matter of never having liked meat or fish rather than anything political) but I notice that vegans constantly feel the need to give 'meat names' to the things they eat.
I never do that.........
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-06 02:52 pm (UTC)Vegan cuisine always intrigued me for following two very divergent schools of thought between either showing off how natural you can make it or doing hardcore chemistry to make it as close to something else as possible.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-06 07:09 pm (UTC)Do what you want, let others do what they want, and double-check if you're not sure what people will need from you.
(And maybe there's a tactful way object to dolphin-unsafe tuna or whatever else as a thing, but randomly lecturing people at lunchtime definitely ain't it.)
Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-06 07:21 pm (UTC)Do what you want, let others do what they want, and double-check if you're not sure what people will need from you. <<
That is my preference, as long as other people abide by it. Anyone attempting to take food off my plate gets a wolf in their face and deserves it.
Which works hilariously well with vegans and vegetarians because I have yet to see one whose totem isn't a fluffy little herbivore. :D
>> (And maybe there's a tactful way object to dolphin-unsafe tuna or whatever else as a thing, but randomly lecturing people at lunchtime definitely ain't it.) <<
"Have you thought about ...?" and variations are typically polite.
The best way I've found to motivate other people is to speak to their own advantage. They might not give a fuck about the dolphins, but they are more likely to care that dolphin-killing fishing practices tend to deplete fisheries, which makes fish less available to eat. Same goes for protecting parts of the ocean -- it's like investing, you live off the interest and don't touch your principal. The sanctuaries generate fish that spill over the borders into fishing areas. Most people can grasp that if you explain it as something that increases available fish around the edges.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-06 09:59 pm (UTC)Yep, enlightened self-interest.
Also, choose your moment well. (Which will be easier if you have the spoken parts prepared ahead of time.)
And these discussions are usually easier if the participants have a mutually respectful relationship, be it b/c of long term association, or sharing similar traits.
For vegetarianism specifically...if whatever you have (at the potluck or whatever) is /more/ interesting than the other offerings, people may be curious, and ask about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-07 07:23 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-07 07:47 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-07 08:11 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-07 08:26 pm (UTC)I can say that once food synthesis becomes readily available, more people tend to freak over the idea of eating things that used to be alive, especially animals but sometimes plants too.
That's a problem if it because difficult or even illegal to get real food, which some people require. They can starve without even realizing what's wrong or how to fix it.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-07 08:39 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-07 08:58 pm (UTC)The overlap of ethics and poverty food and /being able to eat enough/ is ... interesting? complicated? something?
Some people go vegetarian bc they feel it more honestly shares world resources. (Meat takes a lot more energy per unit than plants.)
Some people are functionally vegetarian because of crowding or poverty, and I think that will usually get codified as an ethical system if it goes on long enough. (See vegetarianism as practiced in China & India, by Buddhists and Hindus which affects the overall cultures.)
And there are some places where people can't even afford good plant foods (food deserts in US -> ultra-processed stuff, extremely poor communities in the developing world where people add nonfood fillers /because they cannot get enough of any food/.)
I could see farm-grown foods being considered poverty food or barbaric in a wealthy-founded spacer culture with infrastructure and a surplus of resources...
...but at the same time I could see a spacer culture founded by runaway slaves, pirates, vagabonds, and the unwanted, with very little stuff and far too many people evolving to use /absolutely everything/ to a degree that would be weird or unsettling to most modern humans. (World War Z has the astronauts dining on lab mice, just for one example.)
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-02-09 11:05 pm (UTC)Very true.
>> Some people go vegetarian bc they feel it more honestly shares world resources. (Meat takes a lot more energy per unit than plants.) <<
To some extent, that works. Something people tend to overlook is that once the meat exists, it's a much more efficient food than plants. Eating a healthy vegetarian diet is much more difficult than a healthy omnivore diet. That often requires seeking out exotic foods shipped long distance, especially during the cold season. This can wind up having a much bigger eco footprint than, say, a hutch of bunnies or chicken coop in your backyard. You can raise a pig in a small pen on kitchen garbage. Sure, cutting down a forest to raise cows is a bad idea, but that's not the only way to get meat, and is not what most people did until recently.
>> Some people are functionally vegetarian because of crowding or poverty, and I think that will usually get codified as an ethical system if it goes on long enough. (See vegetarianism as practiced in China & India, by Buddhists and Hindus which affects the overall cultures.) <<
Yeah, but it's a lot easier to create a survivable vegetarian diet in a warm place than in a cold place. It's even easier if you eat seafood but not red meat. You can actually see the impact of that on Buddhism -- the warm places where food falls from trees are the ones that still have a tradition where monks only eat food that is given to them. Other places had to take up farming and such.
>> And there are some places where people can't even afford good plant foods (food deserts in US -> ultra-processed stuff, extremely poor communities in the developing world where people add nonfood fillers /because they cannot get enough of any food/.) <<
Yeah, those are serious problems.
I watched a few episodes of one apocalyptic series in which aliens had taken over the Earth. The characters were making a very dangerous trip to forage for food in old supermarkets ... during the green season. With dandelions as far as the eye could see outside. Oh for fucksake, if they haven't learned to forage, they deserve to die out. 0_o
I would've hidden in the bush and then backtrapped the damn aliens.
>> I could see farm-grown foods being considered poverty food or barbaric in a wealthy-founded spacer culture with infrastructure and a surplus of resources... <<
That can happen.
>> ...but at the same time I could see a spacer culture founded by runaway slaves, pirates, vagabonds, and the unwanted, with very little stuff and far too many people evolving to use /absolutely everything/ to a degree that would be weird or unsettling to most modern humans.<<
Yep.
>> (World War Z has the astronauts dining on lab mice, just for one example.) <<
The Lacuna is passing around former lab animals as pets and livestock. I think rabbits and guinea pigs will be the most popular meat animals, but rats and mice are still edible.