A few years ago, I was your typical office-worker: stressed out, uneven energy, overweight, and inconsistent complexion. Now I'm just your typical 28-year old urban hunter-gatherer on a quest to be healthy, and having a few adventures along the way. See my full bio.
Many vegans, particularly female ones, come to their eating habits from a moment of disgust during their youth. Vegan books frequently depict eating meat as a disgusting act. These days, few people grow up on farms or grow up hunting, so it's become relatively easy to trigger the disgust reflex. All it takes is a grocery store turkey with the feet on, a little bit of blood in the meat, or a few vivid lines in Skinny Bitch.
An overly-sensitive disgust reflex is akin to an overly-sensitive immune system. This is not a stretch, it is a literal comparison. In fact, an overly-sensitive disgust reflex IS an overly-sensitive immune system.
When that mechanism becomes overly-sensitive, people can become disgusted by all kinds of things that aren't actually vectors of disease, often with negative health consequences. Enter veganism.
To the extent it is motivated by an overly-sensitive disgust reflex, VEGANISM IS AN AUTO-IMMUNE DISORDER.
Disgust is key to the spread of veganism. Therefore, it becomes imperative to raise children, especially girls, in ways that their disgust reflex isn't so easily triggered. I don't what that step-by-step process is, but I'm confident that there is a set of steps that can be taken to inoculate children with high reliability. It probably means purposeful exposure to dead animals via hunting or butchering at a young age. Schools will never do it -- and certainly not public schools -- so that makes it a parental obligation.
If we inoculate a generation of girls against veganism, then the whole thing withers on the vine.
We should also reform the factory farm system, which truly is disgusting.
Comments
I remember in bio class in
I remember in bio class in high school when we had to dissect chicken wings, and for me it was no more gross than making dinner, which I did a few times a week. And I loved boning and skinning chicken breasts.But the girl I partnered with refused to touch the thing. In Norway I visited a farm/camp where kids as young as 5 participated in butchering a pig as part of their education, because the camp believed it was important for them to understand where their food came from.Which is to say I agree with this!
A little to the side of your
A little to the side of your main topic, but maybe relevant as another example is how over-reactive some people can be to the sight of my bare feet somewhere THEY feel they shouldn't be - like the grocery store or the movies. The description of an overly sensitive disgust reflex could also be used to explain why some people become almost violently enraged when I don't respond with shame or embarassment to their pointing out how disgusting my lack of shoes is to them. Although they will couch it of course in protestations that they are just worried about MY health and safety - not their own sensibilities.
I thought this post was
I thought this post was humourous and accurate, even if the hypothesis is painted with a broad brush. I also agree that children (not just girls, I have a squemish 6 year old little brother) need to be exposed more to the realities of life and death in a gentle way. You start with dirt, then bugs and after that small animals, then big ones. Not the killing so much, that's not always necessary, but just how they work, no cartoons, just real live ones, those aren't cute or friendly. Once you see a lion take down a gazelle it's not so cute anymore, once you see ants breaking down a bird carcass they aren't so benign anymore. Seeing those things that aren't outright 'disgusting' but do cause you to take pause teaches you a new respect for the animal. A healthy respect that helps instill the importance of the circle of life and how humans fit into it. You might also consider the theory that vegansim is a form of devolution. I just posted about it here. http://prmlsrvvl.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/so-shoot-me/
My friend sent this to me he
My friend sent this to me he said "for laughs" but now that I see you wrote this article in seriousness I feel it is appropriate for me to reply. This post has false premises, invalid reasoning, and a nice zing of sexism to go along with it. I'll go through each statement and explain why it's wrong, just in case anyone actually reads and takes seriously this blog.Your claim 1: "Many vegans, particularly female ones, come to their eating habits from a moment of disgust during their youth"The idea that many vegans are so because of a visceral disgust response (I'll get later to different sorts of disgust that you fail to account for) is out of tune with reality. Many vegans are viscerally disgusted by the treatment of animals, and make a decision out of a compassion for animals. So if you had to identify an emotion that is a basis for vegans who adopt the diet based on a feeling, it is rather an empathetic compassion response. To suggest visceral disgust is the cause of adopting the diet is to confuse a symptom with a cause. Compassion is the cause of motivation to adopt the diet, while visceral disgust may (or may not be) a symptom. Evidence of this idea comes from the fact that an overwhelming majority of people will be viscerally disgusted by the sight of an animal being slaughtered. However, an overwhelming majority of people still eat meat. Mere visceral disgust is clearly not a necessary, and usually not a sufficient condition for serving as a cause to adopt a vegan diet. Moreover, you also overlook the fact that there are many reasons why vegans adopt the diet that do not stem from emotion but rather a rational consideration of animal rights, the politics of the meat industry, health reasons, and environmental reasons. Particularly health and environmental concerns are very popular among vegans and vegetarians and have nothing to do with visceral emotions. I will also ignore your qualification about female vegans, because this is a obvious sexist generalization about the likelihood of a female to choose an emotional over a rational reason. But once again, even among those vegans who adopt the diet for emotional reasons, as I've showed it is not because of visceral disgust. In light of this your entire argument is already dead in the water (to be technical, it is unsound), but I'm interested in further showing how wrong your other statements are.Your Claim 2: "An overly-sensitive disgust reflex is akin to an overly-sensitive immune system. This is not a stretch, it is a literal comparison. In fact, an overly-sensitive disgust reflex IS an overly-sensitive immune system."I don't even know where to begin on this one. Let me try. First of all disgust is a complex emotion that is tuned into multiple sorts of stimuli. It is true that rotten things will trigger a disgust response. But more complex stimuli such as abstract social considerations also trigger disgust as well. If one is a staunch right-wing conservative, it is likely that a man french kissing a man in front of him will trigger a disgust response. If you are a "bleeding-heart" liberal, perhaps the mere sight of Rick Santorum's face will trigger a disgust response. The obvious point is that the disgust response tracks social, political, religious, and other cognitively-driven stimuli that have nothing to do with disease. Viewing disgust as a mere indicator of "vectors of disease" is parochial thinking at best which I doubt even the most crock-pot evolutionary "psychologists" would endorse. Of course now we can move to what (I think) was suppose to be your attempt at an argument to see that already you first premise is false.Your attempt at an argument:P1: Disgust is usually triggered by vectors of disease (feces, rotten meat)P2:The purpose of our immune system is to defend against diseaseC1: Disgust is part of our immune systemP1 is false. P2 is fine, let's go ahead and assume it's true though we might argue even it is an overly simplistic view of biology. Anyway, C1 apparently came out of thin air, because even assuming P1 to be true (which I have already showed it is not), C1 does not follow from the conjunction of P1 and P2. Your reasoning is claiming that X has a function to detect A, then you are claiming that Y has a purpose of defending against A. Then you claim that X is a part of Y? Clearly this is invalid reasoning. Here's an example to show how absurd it is: A bat's echolocation system has the function of detecting bugs. My insect lamp has the purpose of defending my house from bugs. Can I now argue that a bat's echolocation system is part of my insect lamp? Obviously not - this makes absolutely no sense, and of course notice it relies on your method of reasoning. Given how unsound and invalid your argument is, it should come as no surprise that your overall conclusion:To the extent it is motivated by an overly-sensitive disgust reflex, VEGANISM IS AN AUTO-IMMUNE DISORDER.Is false.--By the way - I have some general amusements with the so-called Paleo Diet. I'm not sure if evolutionary psychologists at Harvard actually study evolution, but here is one fun fact about natural selection: roughly speaking, biological traits are "selected for" insofar as they promote the most reproductive success.Now the Paleo diet is supposed to be based on our evolutionary past. We are supposed to eat what we would have eaten in the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation) because this is what our bodies are best at "handling" and thus we can be the most healthy if we adopt the EEA (aka Paleo) diet. But notice how faulty this reasoning is. What is the most healthy is a normative claim about what is best for our bodies in terms of longevity. Now if one is going for what is best for our bodies in terms of longevity, while in the world would you adopt a diet shaped by natural selection? A diet shaped by natural selection of course will be one that maximizes reproductive success. Notice that this has nothing to do with longevity. This has to do with achieving a reproductive age (say around 10-14) and producing the most offspring as possible. If anything, we should be afraid of following a diet that only had as its goal getting us to our teenage years and putting all energy into reproductive success.Why should we be afraid? Because in our society we are after what is best for us in terms of longevity, not mere reproductive success. This means doing things that that may not perfectly align with what our bodies "evolved to do". Numerous examples abound. Ever heard of evolutionary explanations of obesity? Yes indeed, we have unruly urges for high fat and high sugar diets because this could have possibly helped us in the EEA, but in today's society it is horribly unhealthy due to the change in environment (we now have a surplus of every kind of calorie possible). The lesson? If we strive for being healthy we should not assume (and in fact, probably think the opposite) evolutionary sources will provide us with means to achieve our goal.So in conclusion, I think this argument you've presented is wildly false, and I also think that the entire premise that the Paleo diet is based on falls out of similarly faulty reasoning.I welcome any responses to open conversation. I'm not here to bash but to get at the truth. Yours,Billy
I don't want to get into the
I don't want to get into the argument about John's original post. But I do want to reply to your general criticism of the paleo diet. You are completely ignoring the empirical evidence supporting the positive results of eating paleo, both from observations on contemporary hunter-gatherers and from the multitude of people in modern society who benefitted from changing their eating habits to an ancestral diet.But even your argument against the evolutionary premise for the paleo diet doesn't seem very valid to me. For instance, the reproductive age for men certainly spans from puberty to very high age. And why would a diet that lets you thrive all your live from childhood to, let’s say, the age where women lose the reproductive ability suddenly cause you to keel over and die after that age?
My point isn't that you
My point isn't that you should "keel over and die", but rather the simple point that if our goal is to be healthy in terms of longevity, then we shouldn't expect a diet based on repoductive sucess (a much different goal) to achieve it.
Actually, one hypothesis for
Actually, one hypothesis for why there might be longevity benefits of vegetarianism is lower testosterone levels, lowering sex drive. Eunuchs live very long lives. There is a well-known evolutionary trade-off between resources devoted to reproduction vs. survival.
So the reason that I look 33
So the reason that I look 33 at 20 is because I am a sex god? I thought it was a side effect of no exercise/junk food/horrible sleep for the middle 10 years of my life.
And on the other side it's a
And on the other side it's a neurological disorder. Humans are self-interested. It's and adaptive advantage. If you went around giving away your food to rival tribes then you died. If you let the other guy cross the bridge first with a lion closing in you died. People who harm themselves to help creatures of a different species have something broken in their heads. Whether it's a vitamin deficiency (is SAD the cause of veganism?) or one too many hits to the head (that explains Tyson), you're crazy. And I disagree about the factory farming thing. Yes it's cruel but if it came right down to it I'd replace the corn with grass and keep it going before I went without meat.
I have to think disgust is
I have to think disgust is more of a culturally learned response than an innate defense against disease. You can seperate disgust from its source, it's not reflexive. You're being a little overzealous I think. I do think veganism is derived from disgust, perhaps even disgust with people associated with meat, but I do not think it is an auto-immune disorder.
Banning anthropomorphic
Banning anthropomorphic cartoon characters would probably help. I wasn't overly affected by them, but I was lucky enough to come from a hunting family and was out shooting bunnies by the time I was 7. I have several friends, though, who aren't completely vegetarian but who refuse to eat anything that was a Disney character. (Some conveniently forget about Ferdinand the Bull though.)Being part of a cow share (milk share) has actually really helped us with our own daughter - she knows that when each calf is born, it's cute for a while, then it gets turned into steaks. I remember when she was 3 and we had steaks from one of the milk byproducts she said something to the effect of "It was nice of Tabasco to give us her steaks." She knew full well what it meant - that Tabasco was dead and we were eating her - she was just expressing gratitude in the way the 3-year-olds do.
Your analysis is right on the
Your analysis is right on the money, as is your prescription for how to head it off in kids.
You can always do what my
You can always do what my dad did... I came home from school and couldn't find the snapping turtle I'd had in a makeshift tank for the past couple days.At dinner, I asked my dad about it and his response was, "How's your soup?" "It's great... yea so where's my turtle?""How's your soup?"While I am more of a fisher than a hunter (I'll leave that to the Alabama born and raised husband) the disgust reflex is quite under control... with the exception for some reason to the smell of warm ketchup.