I need to eat meat

dandelionfire

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hi, all!

i know this isn't probably going to get an incredible amount of positivity, but i am having a really hard time and wanted the opinions of vegs or others who have gone through something similar.

i've been vegetarian/vegan since i was 5 years old (17 years strong). i absolutely hate the idea of eating another living being and as soon as i found out what meat was at 5 years old, i couldn't eat it.

a few years ago, i was extremely sick and nearly died. now my immune system is all sorts of fucked up. i have a list of 100+ foods i'm allergic to or intolerant to. some of them include (in order of most severe to least severe): sesame, walnuts, pecans, brazil nuts, all other nuts, wheat, corn, peas, yeast, a ton of different vegetables, soy, beans, quinoa, + dozens of other foods.

i gained 20 pounds strictly from inflammation in 1 month after eating less than 100 calories a day. i'm getting sicker from how i'm eating and it's making me weaker and get more flares of my health and causing my migraines to get more frequent and severe. on top of this, i literally cannot afford this way of living. my groceries are about 800 dollars a month because i am so limited and have to eat everything organic and unprocessed.

the nutritionist i'm going to gave me several options, but all the evidence-based veg diet plans she has shown me and that i've found online are pretty much impossible for me to eat considering i'm allergic to over half of the foods on the plans.

at this point, the only feasible diet that will help me heal will include meat and logically i know there are no other options. hopefully, i would only have to eat meat for 6 months to a year while my body healed. has anyone ever encountered this kind of issue where their ethics kinda slapped them in the face and they had to put their health first?

please don't tell me other ways to eat veg. i promise you 1000000% percent i have exhausted my resources and tried every possible way of eating already and i'm really tired of getting guilted by my vegan friends who told me to put the animals first and see every specialist and try every diet first and that i'm not trying hard enough and that my debilitating health conditions aren't reason to ever eat meat and are just minor "annoyances". i already have and seeing second and third opinions is f***ing expensive and my body can't tolerate the lack of nutrients any longer.

is my health important enough?
 
Sorry to hear you're unwell and it must be very tricky and mentally exhausting to have to deal with so many allergies. Can I just ask about the meat - are you considering it simply because it is calorific and you need to eat "something" to survive, or is it because you believe there is something in meat specifically that will aid your body in healing in a way that your plant based options can't?

The reason I'm asking is because though you have a list of things you can't eat, a diet doesn't have to be overly varied as long as you get the nutrients you need and hit your calories/get your energy that you need to live and function. Can you eat potatoes? Avocado? Carrots? Bananas? Leafy greens? If so maybe sit down to see if you can put together 2-3 different breakfasts with what you CAN eat (trying to skip some of the overly expensive stuff), 2-3 lunches and 2-3 dinners and then try to eat those for a month and see how you get on. Though you may not have a lot of different options when it comes to food, you'll survive and hopefully feel better.

Where I live and shop I can't say meat is cheaper than buying plant based foods so personally I wouldn't be able to cut my grocery costs that way. It's more like the other way around, but having said that I only have a couple of nut allergies and totally respect that it means that I have many more options.

Good luck!
 
Sorry you've gone through all of this. No idea what the best solution is but best of luck to you. I hope you figure it out.
 
Hmmm that's quite a list of allergies I'm not sure how that can even be possible, I've never known anyone in my life with that many allergies. I can see like ok you're allergic to tree nuts, but you're allergic to quinoa, beans and soy as well? I'm not saying that you're being untruthful, but I have never encountered anything like this in my life, even with people who are prone to allergies (I am not, my mother breast fed me).

Yes, eating less than 100 calories a day will give you inflammation and poor health. That's typically referred to as starvation or anorexia. If you really can't eat, you should be hospitalized. A dear friend of mine who is vegetarian (not vegan) was hospitalized for Chron's disease because he was so malnourished. However, he is better now and still is a vegetarian...that's the part of your story that puzzles me.

I can't believe I'm saying this - but have you tried the Freelee HCLF diet? As far as I know she only ate things like tons of fruit, leafy greens, avocado, and then would eat something like baked potatoes at night. She got all of her calories from fruit, vegetables and starchy potatoes, maybe some rice. I never in my life have recommended that diet to anyone but...she's still alive and so are many of her fans.

Also - why jump to meat? I'm sure you're lactose-intolerant if you have that many allergies, but I'm not suggesting that you drink milk...I'm suggesting that instead of eating meat you find a local farmer, friend, or family member who has a beloved backyard chicken and obtain eggs from their hens. If that's impossible, don't look for "free range" look for "pastured eggs"...free range is a scam, but pastured eggs mean at least the chickens lived in a natural environment.
 
So yeah ...real quickly like...I looked up "quinoa allergy." It doesn't exist. It's not even listed as an allergenic food.

I'm considering three things right now:

1) You have a severe eating disorder. You need someone to help you overcome your orthorexia and/or anorexia.

2) This is a troll post made by a meat eater to test what vegans will say if a person claims to "need" meat to stay alive. Why? Because nobody has that many allergies. Gluten sensitivity? Fine. Nuts? Ok. Everything on Earth? No. It's a common myth among meatards that veganism makes you sick, ruins your immune system, and is expensive because everything is organic. The glitch in your magical plan is that organic or grass fed or wild caught meat is more expensive than your current diet, and due to something called biomagnification (a real thing that scientists know about, not something pushed by New Agers) the further up you go the ladder to eat, the more toxins you are ingesting. Your premise that organic meats would be less expensive, less toxic or cause less inflammation is so scientifically flawed that it's absurd.

3) You are a mentally unwell hypochondriac, because if you have allergies which don't even exist, eat less than 100 calories per day (then complain that it made you feel ill), and irrationally jump to meat without stopping at eggs, your mind isn't functioning as it should and you should still seek help (see number 1). The entire tone of your post reads like hypochondria and orthorexia.

If it's 1 or 3 I wish you all the best. If it's number 2, I definitely don't.

EDIT: I actually did some more reading, and if you had that many allergies you'd probably be dead or wouldn't be able to go out in public. An allergy is something that will literally kill you. It doesn't cause vague "inflammation"...even gluten sensitivity in Celiacs is not considered an allergy, because it makes you sick but doesn't kill you instantly. Furthermore, all the allergies you named take different forms and come from different biological mechanisms. For example, fruit "allergies" are pollen allergies which cause irritation of the mouth, nose and throat. Nuts in the allergic can lead to shock and death, and people with milk, egg and meat allergies projectile vomit. Pretending you have a bunch of allergies you don't by going down a list on Web M.D. and trying to avoid every possible irritant there is not only hypochondria or orthorexia, it's obnoxious and dangerous to people who actually could die from their allergies. One last fun tidbit - meat is one of the top 8 common allergies. You're more likely to have a meat allergy than a "quinoa allergy," Troll-y McTrollston.
 
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Also - why jump to meat? I'm sure you're lactose-intolerant if you have that many allergies, but I'm not suggesting that you drink milk...I'm suggesting that instead of eating meat you find a local farmer, friend, or family member who has a beloved backyard chicken and obtain eggs from their hens. If that's impossible, don't look for "free range" look for "pastured eggs"...free range is a scam, but pastured eggs mean at least the chickens lived in a natural environment.

Every egg laid by beloved backyard chickens, if they are truly beloved, should be hardboiled and ground up, shell included, and added to the chickens’ feed. Egg laying hens have been bred to lay 250-300 per year on average, the world record being 371 eggs in one year, compared to the 10-15 eggs per year the red junglefowl lays (the wild ancestor of the chicken). It is unnatural and very bad for the health of the birds to lay all of those eggs, causing them to lose huge amounts of protein and calcium, and to collect the eggs and eat them or give/sell them to another human is exploitative and unethical. Feeding the eggs back to the birds at least helps to mitigate the lost nutrients, but it does not address the pain and stress that laying all of those eggs causes the birds and this is one of the reasons why they should not be bred in the first place.

Instead of exploiting clearly sentient beings, I suggest entomophagy. Insects are very nutritious and you can buy them freeze dried or in powdered form, or farm them yourself in an aquarium in a spare room. The insects most commonly eaten by humans are crickets. Insects are not known to have emotion, so their sentience or ability to feel is undetermined, unlike that of chickens or fish, etc.

It is possible that insects are sentient, and if they are then they have the right to not be exploited. So with bees, most vegans think it is best to not exploit them, and that’s good. But if animal exploitation is going to be taking place anyway, then I think an animal that may be sentient, such as a cricket, should be exploited over one that is definitely sentient, such as a chicken or cow.

Another option is a freegan diet, which consists of getting animal products and other food out of grocery store dumpsters. It is not exploitative of animals but can lead to engaging in animal exploitation if eating retrieved animal products causes someone to begin buying them as well. I used to have something like a freegan diet to the extent that I was vegan unless someone was going to be throwing away animal products, in which case I would eat them, so I was actually a reducetarian. But this led to me buying my own animal products so I stopped doing that and now I just let people throw away leftover animal products, and I believe the net effect of this helps animals more than if I were still eating these animal products that would otherwise go to waste.
 
Every egg laid by beloved backyard chickens, if they are truly beloved, should be hardboiled and ground up, shell included, and added to the chickens’ feed. Egg laying hens have been bred to lay 250-300 per year on average, the world record being 371 eggs in one year, compared to the 10-15 eggs per year the red junglefowl lays (the wild ancestor of the chicken). It is unnatural and very bad for the health of the birds to lay all of those eggs, causing them to lose huge amounts of protein and calcium, and to collect the eggs and eat them or give/sell them to another human is exploitative and unethical. Feeding the eggs back to the birds at least helps to mitigate the lost nutrients, but it does not address the pain and stress that laying all of those eggs causes the birds and this is one of the reasons why they should not be bred in the first place.

Instead of exploiting clearly sentient beings, I suggest entomophagy. Insects are very nutritious and you can buy them freeze dried or in powdered form, or farm them yourself in an aquarium in a spare room. The insects most commonly eaten by humans are crickets. Insects are not known to have emotion, so their sentience or ability to feel is undetermined, unlike that of chickens or fish, etc.

It is possible that insects are sentient, and if they are then they have the right to not be exploited. So with bees, most vegans think it is best to not exploit them, and that’s good. But if animal exploitation is going to be taking place anyway, then I think an animal that may be sentient, such as a cricket, should be exploited over one that is definitely sentient, such as a chicken or cow.

Another option is a freegan diet, which consists of getting animal products and other food out of grocery store dumpsters. It is not exploitative of animals but can lead to engaging in animal exploitation if eating retrieved animal products causes someone to begin buying them as well. I used to have something like a freegan diet to the extent that I was vegan unless someone was going to be throwing away animal products, in which case I would eat them, so I was actually a reducetarian. But this led to me buying my own animal products so I stopped doing that and now I just let people throw away leftover animal products, and I believe the net effect of this helps animals more than if I were still eating these animal products that would otherwise go to waste.

I'm vegan. I also believe chickens should eat their own shells. HOWEVER, face to face with someone who is screaming they need to eat meat because they're going to die otherwise, this is my "Sophie's choice" ...Hare Krishnas believe milk is the least harmful animal product, I think it's eggs (and a lot of people agree, which is why "Veggans" exist) because it doesn't involve actually taking a baby away from a mother, forced pregnancy by rape, not to mention the massive environmental damage cattle farming does.

Personally, I find farming insects grotesque. That doesn't mean I'm on friendly terms with bedbugs or ticks, but farming insects still requires killing a living being, no matter how low their sentience level may be. I think insect farming is less horrifying than traditional animal agriculture, but eating an egg from a backyard chicken doesn't actually kill anyone.

It doesn't matter though. I did some research on Crohn's Disease, allergies, various conditions she could have, and this thread is probably from a meat troll. There is no health condition that requires a person to eat meat. In fact many people with Crohn's Disease (the closest thing I could guess to what is described here, though frankly it seems like a litany of hypochondria) have put their illness into remission with veganism. So.
 
Personally, I find farming insects grotesque. That doesn't mean I'm on friendly terms with bedbugs or ticks, but farming insects still requires killing a living being, no matter how low their sentience level may be. I think insect farming is less horrifying than traditional animal agriculture, but eating an egg from a backyard chicken doesn't actually kill anyone.

Backyard chickens are not indigenous species and they eat tons of native insects that would not have died otherwise, as well as worms, slugs and sometimes even rodents. So farming chickens for eggs does require killing living beings, using chickens as our killing machines, if we are referring to insects as ‘beings’, and my point is that we don’t even know if that word is appropriate, or if living ‘things’ is more appropriate, which would be the case if insects are not sentient.

When a group of chick hens is purchased to start this backyard egg endeavor, money is given to an egg breed chicken farmer who has killed all of their brothers upon identifying them as males, either by suffocation in a plastic bag or by grinding them alive, so there are those deaths that are being supported financially. Also, I’m sure there are many people who let their backyard chickens die of old age, but there also those who kill their backyard chickens when their egg production drops, so there are those deaths in many cases as well.

If we are talking about commercially available pastured eggs that you referenced in your previous post, there will definitely be transportation to a slaughterhouse on the back of a truck and a terrifying death once there as soon as the egg production drops off, in addition to the deaths of the male chicks at the outset, and probably debeaking as well.

Also, even taking the eggs can conceivably be seen as slowly torturing the chickens to death by depleting their bodies of protein, calcium and other nutrients. The maximum lifespan of a backyard egg laying hen is about 8 years but a red junglefowl in captivity can live up to 30 years. This could have something to do with them losing all of their valuable minerals and nutrients during egg production, which they don't recover because the eggs are taken for human consumption. And a red junglefowl does not lose these minerals in the first place because she has not undergone the torture breeding (to borrow the phrase from DACH dog breeding legislation) of the egg laying hen. No such breeding is necessary for crickets.
 
Backyard chickens are not indigenous species and they eat tons of native insects that would not have died otherwise, as well as worms, slugs and sometimes even rodents. So farming chickens for eggs does require killing living beings, using chickens as our killing machines, if we are referring to insects as ‘beings’, and my point is that we don’t even know if that word is appropriate, or if living ‘things’ is more appropriate, which would be the case if insects are not sentient.

When a group of chick hens is purchased to start this backyard egg endeavor, money is given to an egg breed chicken farmer who has killed all of their brothers upon identifying them as males, either by suffocation in a plastic bag or by grinding them alive, so there are those deaths that are being supported financially. Also, I’m sure there are many people who let their backyard chickens die of old age, but there also those who kill their backyard chickens when their egg production drops, so there are those deaths in many cases as well.

If we are talking about commercially available pastured eggs that you referenced in your previous post, there will definitely be transportation to a slaughterhouse on the back of a truck and a terrifying death once there as soon as the egg production drops off, in addition to the deaths of the male chicks at the outset, and probably debeaking as well.

Also, even taking the eggs can conceivably be seen as slowly torturing the chickens to death by depleting their bodies of protein, calcium and other nutrients. The maximum lifespan of a backyard egg laying hen is about 8 years but a red junglefowl in captivity can live up to 30 years. This could have something to do with them losing all of their valuable minerals and nutrients during egg production, which they don't recover because the eggs are taken for human consumption. And a red junglefowl does not lose these minerals in the first place because she has not undergone the torture breeding (to borrow the phrase from DACH dog breeding legislation) of the egg laying hen. No such breeding is necessary for crickets.

I'm a vegan and I don't eat eggs. I still hold my ground that I find raising insects in a tank just to eat them is grotesque. I understand this is a practice that may occur, or have to occur, in developing countries...or conceivably in the West in the future for people who refuse to go vegan...but I don't see any need for it in this particular instance.

From what I've read, backyard chickens live 8-12 years, and well-cared for hens live 15-20 years. There ARE people who love their chickens. My sister had a pet rooster when she was a child. In some areas - such as the semi-rural area I live in within Northern California, or in a state like West Virginia - where chickens have wandered freely around for hundreds of years already, so arguing that they aren't native is a moot point. Backyard (and front yard) chickens are also common within the city of Los Angeles, and have been for generations, due to Latino culture.

I said "well-loved" - I didn't say ******* who breeds their backyard chicken in an abusive way for profit. Pastured eggs are still better than free range, I mean my god, if someone is going to eat eggs, wouldn't you rather them do the least possible harm rather than just buying the regular ol production eggs?

Eating insects isn't even vegetarian. Eating eggs is.

But I'm finished with this conversation because it's frankly a moot point. I'm a vegan, I don't eat eggs or insects, and I suspect the OP is someone who dines on flesh several times a week and finds this all hilarious.

I'll edit this just so you know I'm not being nasty or irrational - eating insects isn't kosher in Jewish food law, Jains try to avoid needlessly stepping on insects, and the Yurok tribe of Northern California wouldn't even needlessly cut down a redwood tree, instead preferring to make their kayaks from fallen trees - living in the redwood forest has changed my entire perception of "lower non-sentient" beings. Redwoods live in rings that support one another underground and "nurse logs" sprout new baby trees from the death of an older tree. It's an extremely fascinating look into processes of life we may not yet understand. Scientists have discovered that trees "communicate" danger to one another.

Also, amateur bug farmers often kill their insects needlessly through inexperience, and can even cause unwanted insect infestations in an area otherwise known for balance. You've heard of a plague of locusts? So sure - John the Baptist eating from these "plagues" might make sense (and those grasshoppers still plague the Middle East making it a more natural food source there) but do we really want plagues of locusts everywhere? How will this affect plant farming? Entire ecosystems? Plagues of locusts are common in more barren desert areas and they eat crops. That's terrifying. Some people believed they carried demons on their wings because they cause famine. It's the entire premise behind the film The Exorcist but is rooted in real tribal belief systems.

Many vegans don't even eat honey, or shellac as an ingredient in candy. Your perception of this issue really is contingent upon why you are vegan in the first place. There are vegetarians - people who aren't even vegan - who still won't eat bugs because 1) the bugs are alive and have to be killed and 2) it requires such a large number of crickets to just make one meal.

I've also seen an argument against raising crickets for food that is purely environmental: they require less land than chickens, but eat the same food.

As an environmental science student, I'm also interested in TK - tribal knowledge - it's a form of ancient environmental science that contains truths only being rediscovered by Western science, and therefore it's probable they still know things we don't.
 
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I'm not a doctor so I won't weigh in on whether the allergies are legitimate. I'll take your word for it, unlike others here.

In a word - yes - your health is important enough. In fact, it's far more important than any ideology. If I thought it was necessary to eat bacon and eggs everyday, not just for optimal health, but adequate health, then I would. Don't put your health on the line for dogmatism.
 
I'm not a doctor so I won't weigh in on whether the allergies are legitimate. I'll take your word for it, unlike others here.

In a word - yes - your health is important enough. In fact, it's far more important than any ideology. If I thought it was necessary to eat bacon and eggs everyday, not just for optimal health, but adequate health, then I would. Don't put your health on the line for dogmatism.

So you're not actually a vegan, you're just on a "plant-based diet." Duly noted.

P.S. there's no evidence anywhere that anyone needs bacon (or any other meat) for health reasons
 
2) This is a troll post made by a meat eater to test what vegans will say if a person claims to "need" meat to stay alive. Why? Because nobody has that many allergies. Gluten sensitivity? Fine. Nuts? Ok. Everything on Earth? No. It's a common myth among meatards that veganism makes you sick, ruins your immune system, and is expensive because everything is organic. The glitch in your magical plan is that organic or grass fed or wild caught meat is more expensive than your current diet, and due to something called biomagnification (a real thing that scientists know about, not something pushed by New Agers) the further up you go the ladder to eat, the more toxins you are ingesting. Your premise that organic meats would be less expensive, less toxic or cause less inflammation is so scientifically flawed that it's absurd.

*Smiles in agreement and starts to giggle*


EDIT: I actually did some more reading, and if you had that many allergies you'd probably be dead or wouldn't be able to go out in public. An allergy is something that will literally kill you. It doesn't cause vague "inflammation"...even gluten sensitivity in Celiacs is not considered an allergy, because it makes you sick but doesn't kill you instantly. Furthermore, all the allergies you named take different forms and come from different biological mechanisms. For example, fruit "allergies" are pollen allergies which cause irritation of the mouth, nose and throat. Nuts in the allergic can lead to shock and death, and people with milk, egg and meat allergies projectile vomit. Pretending you have a bunch of allergies you don't by going down a list on Web M.D. and trying to avoid every possible irritant there is not only hypochondria or orthorexia, it's obnoxious and dangerous to people who actually could die from their allergies. One last fun tidbit - meat is one of the top 8 common allergies. You're more likely to have a meat allergy than a "quinoa allergy," Troll-y McTrollston.

*Smile broadens and breaks into laughter right at the end*
 
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