Beyond Carnism and towards Rational, Authentic Food Choices

steamboat28 wrote: Can you provide some scientific backing for the idea that plants have nothing analogous to pain receptors?

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Basically they don't have a brain

To use Endel Tulving's view on memory, plants seem to operate only in the procedural domain, and do not have the architecture for semantic or episodic conceptualization and therefore animal awareness.

steamboat28 wrote: I will always have a pro-meat bias. It is a nutrient- and calorie-dense food, and even though I'm turning chunky, my metabolism is about Goku-level. This makes meat (red or white), in conjunction with a balanced diet, really efficient for the way my body processes food. I could, theoretically, live without meat. But I've done it before, and I have to eat so much more food to maintain the same levels of energy that it would take me a lot of gardening or consume my entire income to try to eat vegan for a prolonged period of time.

if yours is goku level and you can actually maintain your energy level without meat for any amount of time i'm scared to figure out what my level would be....every time i've tried going without meat i make it at most 3 days before i lack the strength to support myself...during those 3 days i'm eating nonstop and the hunger is never sated and i can feel myself getting weaker....

There is scientific evidence that plants "feel" hunger and seek light and nutrients as a result, and that injury can shock them (into over growing or dying, not producing fruit, etc). Some plants can retract all their leaves if only one of them is injured, etc. Their behaviour can be conditioned in ways similar to humans and other animals.

Check out Frank Kuhnemann's work, he seems to think plants scream when sick or in pain.

Adder wrote: Basically they don't have a brain

Neither do lots of people, but you see them cry all the time.

I didn't ask if a plant had a nervous system, I asked if there was any scientific evidence that an analogous system did not exist. That is to say, we know that plants respond to stimuli when being threatened or harmed. What we don't (and arguably cannot) know is how they interpret those responses.

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RyuJin wrote: if yours is goku level and you can actually maintain your energy level without meat for any amount of time i'm scared to figure out what my level would be....every time i've tried going without meat i make it at most 3 days before i lack the strength to support myself...during those 3 days i'm eating nonstop and the hunger is never sated and i can feel myself getting weaker....

I think I've gone a business week without any non-dairy animal products, and I was drinking nearly a gallon of milk a day at the time.

they bleed they breathe they communicate with each other and rap music kills them

"they" meaning trees

OB1Shinobi wrote: ...and rap music kills them...

:laugh: hahahahahahaha :laugh: I really hope that's true. What an argument against rap.

Goken wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: ...and rap music kills them...

:laugh: hahahahahahaha :laugh: I really hope that's true. What an argument against rap.

Not to terribly derail, but rap music is actually very technically impressive, from a writing standpoint and a performance standpoint. It's actually quite complex.

I can offer no scientific evidence that plants feel pain in the same way that we(or "brain" things do) but that doesn't mean suffering is not taking place. "They don't really feel it" was an excuse used about slaves at one time when they were beaten or whipped.

I balance this with many plants benefiting from that suffering. Like pruning.

I balance THAT with animals benefiting from suffering. Like physical training.

Cows are flourishing. They have done nothing different then us, allowing some one to "keep us safe" for the small price of what we could produce for them. We just know how they are going to die. Rightly, we know how WE are going to die. I've seen slaughter houses. I've been there. Within seconds the arterial spurt shuts their brain down...and those are the ones not tazed before they are killed. Show a video of a cow being mistreated and I counter with a thousand cows with good health care, regular feed, and protection from predators.

And anybody who thinks we are not being farmed as humans is just naive. And OUR suffering is prolonged and infinity more unnecessary.

All that said, I wish we were just hunters, and then, only when we ran out of supplies and had no other choice.

Until then, I won't let the animals who have died go to waste.

i did a "jedi rap" in the poetry thread

i like making lyrics and poems and ive written a lot of raps
that being said, yes its true

first the study was done with music

aggressive abrassive music was found to be harmful to plant physiology

classical music was the most beneficial i belive

gangsa rap was the worst

then researchers found that simply talking to plants made a difference

in one group researchers would yell and FEEL MEAN towards the plants and in another group they would be loving and talk affectionately

the latest study actually demonstrated that plants recognise different researchers who were mean vs those who were kind

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imo

the food industry is extremely unhealthy; i consider spiritual or moral health to be simply an aspect of physical health and vice versa - without getting into the meat of it lol i just say its become unhealthy

organic home and community farming and aquaponics are the appropriate next evolution of food production

we are a part of a system which is predicated upon mutual absorption

we feed each other and feed off of each other

all life is equally alive

grow and kill your own food - at least from time to time, so youre not completely letting others do your dirty work for you and you stay reminded.of your place in the system

when you die give yourself to the earth in return for all the life it gave you - in return for all the things that had to die for you to live

dont pump yourself full of chemicals and lock yourself in a metal box that the earth cannot open and would be poisoned from if it did

steamboat28 wrote: What we don't (and arguably cannot) know is how they interpret those responses.

Even people without a mind of their own still have a brain....

The guy in the video wrote this book and is a Prof in the field;

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-a-plant-knows-daniel-chamovitz/1110779351?ean=9780374533885

He says they have not found pain receptors. Plants have the capacity to detect gravity, light, can smell, and touch and have these things influence growth and health - but these are local responses which get propagated to trigger other local responses - as opposed to in animals where local responses go to a central hub to be processed and tasked out as appropriate responses based on other data, the brain is where the processing occurs that enables consciousness. So is your point that consciousness occurs outside of the brain? Perhaps you reject that consciousness is a requirement for feeling pain - but what is it then which is feeling pain if not consciousness?