Do vegans wear wool?

Thank you for the link Wilma . I have just ordered a vegetarian cookbook from Amazon that is highly recommended for students and young people which will hopefully help her and my son (her dad) to cook some simple but interesting dishes.

My daughter in law is vegetarian and I pointed out that if no-one ate meat there wouldn't be animals in the fields for my grand daughter to enjoy on country walks. My DiL replied that it was the cows rear end activities that were causing global warming so we would be better off without animals! I was shocked at the thought of a world without animals

Our teeth are not carnivores’ teeth quizqueen but omnivores’ teeth. Do you really think our pathetic canines could be use to hunt down and rip apart a large animal like a sheep or cow? Or even a rabbit? Nearly all mammals have canine teeth in some form or other, even herbivores. Gorillas have huge canine teeth and the most meat they eat is grubs.

I’m quite sure that a ‘natural’ diet for a prehistoric human would also have included small grubs and insects. We learnt to make tools and to hunt. Then to overcome our inability to digest raw meat (another indication that we are not in fact carnivores) we learnt to cook it using fire. I think this may have led to the success of the human species but I think it could also be our downfall. Not only does meat cause many diseases (in my opinion) I think it has caused us to lose our humanity. We have a brain, and a choice.

I think you are right to be concerned about your GD. My DD became vegetarian but only when she was leaving home because she knew I would not allow her to compromise her health as a youngster. DD is very thin and does not always look well, menstruation sometimes makes it difficult to keep iron levels up.
Sorry if this upsets people but I have no time for airy, fairy, arty, farty fads. Nutrition is important especially in girls reaching puberty.

No, quizqueen was not stupid. There is plenty of evidence to show that plants respond adversely to being damaged and cropped. Whether they experience pain is genuinely open to discussion . It is not a stupid question to ask.

How far down the chain does not harming animals go. What about pests that spread diseases and can damage homes, like rats or possibly cockroaches.

I have every respect for those who choose to be vegan but cannot see how it could be a viable global system.

Very interesting topic. I have been vegetarian for may years but one point I would like to make is that anyone who thinks that sheep shearing is not cruel for many sheep should have a look on you tube. Personally I avoid wool when at all possible and would not touch anything that contains angora or down. I agree with an earlier poster that if everyone took small steps to a kinder world then it would make a difference.

Why are non-vegans so obsessed with how vegan food is grown?
They would do better to concern themselves with how their own food is produced.

I really can't remember having such strong opinions when I was 11-12 as the young people seem to have today.

I would never force my DGD to eat anything she didn't feel comfortable eating harri and its not really my place to interfere or force my opinions, but I am concerned. As I said in an earlier post she is very small for her age and hasn't got an ounce of fat to fall back on, due to being extremely sporty.

I am not sure we ever had an inability to digest raw meat, but, undoubtedly the development of our brains to their current capacity that places such a huge development gulf between us and other primates was the result of us learning how to cook meat. This made it possible for us to absorb larger quantities of the high grade protein needed to develop our brains. Had we become vegan we would still just be primates living similar lives and with a similar mental development of other primates.

M0nica sorry, I get you now and agree it's difficult. Yes, even organic food can be raised with animal products as part of the process. My guess is that a lot of vegans grow their own food - there's a waiting list for most allotments. As I said before, it's not an easy option to become vegan and each person has to decide where lines are drawn. Although veganism has recently become fashionable (Beyoncé, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow), I doubt many people become strict vegans and the number of vegans in the UK is still small. Being vegetarian is a much easier choice.

gillybob I hope the book helps. I bought both of original student cookbooks (veggie and no-veggie) when they were the only ones available. The one thing that struck me about the veggie version is how simple it is to cook veggie food. I think people imagine it's a bit of a palaver, but a lot of what we eat fits in with a veggie diet, especially if you eat eggs (free range) and dairy products (watch out for gelatin in things like yogurt). Good luck.

Airy fairy arty farty fads, eh?
It's been a fad for me for over forty years, and my children and grandchildren are also faddish, then.
Never told them they couldn't eat meat or fish, just that I wasn't going to cook it any more.
My sons were 7 and 9 at the time.
None of them have had their health compromised.

Strange how vegans get criticised for imposing their views on their children, but harrigran says she would not allow her daughter to compromise her health.
That's definitely imposing your view.

That is certainly a theory Monica, about how learning to cook and eat meat allowed humans to develop big brains and to become dominant in the animal kingdom, but it is only a theory. I think the important thing is how we choose to use that dominance now. Enslaving and torturing our fellow creatures (as well as finding new and more imaginative ways of killing each other) seems to be one of the worst ways we as a species have used our great intelligence.

Telly funnily enough, I wanted to get my Mum some very soft wool bedsocks for Christmas, but I knew how most the softest wool was collected and had to do some digging. In the end I found some made using baby alpaca wool from a woman in Cornwall who started off breeding Merino sheep because she couldn't find any ethically produced wool. She added an alpaca herd later. I was chuffed to bits with my gift. The shine was taken off my gift when it turned out that my Mum and Step-Dad were giving each other cashmere sweaters. Of course I couldn't say anything. Small steps.

wilma Thank for that bit of information, I had already gathered from other posts that not all vegans refuse to keep pets. I'm relieved to hear it though since there are a huge number of domestic animals requiring loving homes, and most, if not all of these animals would be unable to survive in the streets.

But even Giant Pandas eat a small amount of meat; ditto chimpanzees. I do agree that we eat far too much meat, and we should give more thought into how those animals are looked after. The amount of foodstuff that we have to grow to produce an animal that we can then eat is phenomenal [something I hadn't realised until recently]. Much as I'd like to, I could never cut out meat or fish from my diet, and I have to wear leather shoes because my feet are so painful anything plastic hurts them; producing plastic [or whatever such things are made of] is damaging to the planet also. But, I do feel we should think more about what we are doing when we throw huge quantities of meat into our supermarket trollies. And I'm having to give my elderly dog lots of meat combined with eggs and cheese in an attempt to build her up. Now that Christmas is over I shall probably eat very little meat. I agree with nightowl, though, in that I despair at the way we humans have used our so called intelligence to destroy our planet [and now seem to be using that 'intelligence' to find other planets to inhabit when we've ruined this one #youcouldn'tmakeitup]

'What about all the carrots etc. which you can't hear screaming as you bite their heads off!!!!'

That's not asking a question, Monica. Questions have question marks, not lots of exclamation marks.

If people worried about plants having feelings, they wouldn't eat anything and would die off.
I suppose that's the answer to having vegans. There wouldn't be any then.

Maddy, I am the only one in my family who doesn't have pets. They have dogs, cats, rabbits and a tortoise, but all of them have been rescued.
It's a bit worrying that so many pets end up in rescue shelters, quite often run by vegetarians or vegans.
We all give money to a horse sanctuary as well, run by vegans.

Two of my grandchildren, now aged 9 and 11, have been vegans all their lives. They are the right size for their age and build, neither fat nor thin and are amazingly energetic - more than anyone else in our family.

You shouldn't worry about vegan children being malnourished as long as their parents provide all the vitamins, etc they need. It is much easier to do that now that there are so many more vegetarians and vegans and the shops are stocking a much better range of food products.

I suppose its much easier if the parents are vegetarian or vegan too though varian . Much more difficult to get it right having to start from scratch.

My poor son is concerned that it will be difficult for him to cook seperate meals for one child, will she get the vitamins she will need? etc.

Can I ask what would be a normal daily diet for, say, a vegan child? I wouldn't really know where to start if I cut out all animal products from my diet but, as I often don't eat meat it would be interesting to take it one step further and try a vegan diet for a while.

There we have it, the one I expected to jump on me did. I did not say I held her down and force fed her meat.

That's not fair harrigran. Your description of vegetarianism being "... airy, fairy, arty, farty fads" is pretty confrontational. Hundreds of millions of people are vegetarian and vegetarianism has been around for thousands of years. I was going to ignore your post because jen replied and I didn't want vegetarians to be seen as judging people who are not vegetarian or vegan. But now it seems like you think it's OK to do just that.

Tegan I honestly don't know what the guidance is for vegan children (or if there is any), but if I was thinking about going down that road I would certainly do my research on the internet first. I can understand your concern and would be just the same.

I think the worry is that there may be people who just go vegan for themselves and their children without doing the research. A friend of my husbands stayed with us once; she was vegan but I noticed that she ate crisps that contained milk powder, so it made me a bit sceptical. And, of course, there is the school of thought that says grains [along with sugar] can feed certain cancers. I did try putting my dog on a grain free diet but she has become so finicky with her food I now give her anything that she will eat.

Tegan,
www.viva.org.uk

www.vivaactivists.org.uk/sillyquestions