Are Avocados and Almonds Vegan?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/10/health/avocado-almond-vegan-partner/index.html

by curtis • 7 years ago

14 96 7 years ago

jasonvorhe• 7 years ago

Yes, they are. EOD.

I agree, it's just mind boggling to think otherwise. It may or may not be ecologically responsible, but consuming the indirect fruits of bee pollination labor, is distinct from consuming their direct resource of honey, which could be viewed as a "body part" of the larger organism.

By this quiz rationale, your average vegetable wouldn't be vegan because it may rely on animal fertilizer...

kermitismyhero3• 7 years ago

By this quiz rationale, your average vegetable wouldn't be vegan because it may rely on animal fertilizer...

Heck, this could be extended to the use of oxygen to breathe. It's another byproduct of a plant process that has animal waste (CO2) as an input.

techntoke• 7 years ago

Is ice cold?

lucb1e• 7 years ago

This comment was flagged to death but honestly, while posed silly, it's a similar argument as most. Many others here are saying vegan is a "fluid" term or something along those lines, and one might say that "cold" is similarly relative. There are some worse comments in this thread.

ruffrey• 7 years ago

vegetables like avocados

Avocados are a fruit...

ravenstine3• 7 years ago

"Vegetable" isn't a botanical word, but it's culinary. The term "fruit" is both botanical and culinary. A fruit can be considered a vegetable or a culinary "fruit".

timdiggerm• 7 years ago

Yes, but that's not relevant here. Culinarily, they are not a fruit either.

495312• 7 years ago

If we're being pedantic here, it's botanically a fruit, but botanical fruits that we interact with in common parlance as vegetables are often considered vegetables legally.

At least in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden

taejo2• 7 years ago

Vegetable in a botanical sense just means "plant", so even if you for some reason insist on using technical terms in non-technical discussions, avocados are still vegetables.

taejo2• 7 years ago

Correct. Also, avocados are vegetables:

2. A plant raised for some edible part of it, such as the leaves, roots, fruit or flowers, but excluding any plant considered to be a fruit, grain, or spice in the culinary sense.
3. The edible part of such a plant.

The culinary sense of fruit referred to above is:

a sweet, edible part of a plant that resembles seed-bearing fruit, even if it does not develop from a floral ovary

Note that avocados are not sweet, so they are not fruit in the culinary sense, and therefore are vegetables in the culinary sense.

inscionent• 7 years ago

I love the argument about labels in the comments of an article that is arguing about labels.

TillE• 7 years ago

Non-vegans are always trying to do this smug "checkmate vegans" bullshit. It's incredibly tiresome.

There's this bizarre, illogical trope that doing some good is pointless if you can't be absolutely, impeccably perfect in every way. Again, it's just obvious bullshit from people who don't even really believe what they're saying, they're just playing a stupid gotcha game.

shlant11• 7 years ago

unfortunately, it doesn't just come from non-vegans. There is so much infighting within the community because so many demand "perfection" or else you are a "fake vegan".

X6S1x6Okd1st3• 7 years ago

This seems to crop up all the time when it comes to idealistic movements. It certainly has happened to different forms of communism, arguably sunni vs shia, vegans being fed up with vegetarians etc

I'd love to know if there is a handy word/term for this phenomenon where an odd amount of energy is spent opposing those people/views which are more similar than less similar.

sonnyblarney3• 7 years ago

Vegans own smug and 'ethical checkmate' inanity - the 'eco' ethos of food goes hand in hand with this, they are the same thing; don't blame outsiders.

I have never in real life heard of anyone contemplating nuts and avocados as 'vegan' or not, but I hear all the time from my vegan-leaning friends about GMO's, palm oil, and everything else.

Most of us just want a croissant made with butter and would like for it to work out in some reasonable way for everyone including the cow.

vinay427• 7 years ago

Most of us just want a croissant made with butter and would like for it to work out in some reasonable way for everyone including the cow.

Vegans (I don't know what vegan-leaning means, but I'm referring to most actual vegans here) want this as well. The difference is that they recognize that this is largely untenable.

TaylorAlexander• 7 years ago

I understand that you want the butter to be fine, but the dairy industry is pretty seriously abusive to animals. Just because you want that to work out doesn’t mean it’s actually ethically sound.

kermitismyhero3• 7 years ago

Vegans own smug and 'ethical checkmate' inanity

I maintain that the Vegan Police from Scott Pilgrim are one of the finest satirical concepts I've ever seen in fiction.

X6S1x6Okd1st3• 7 years ago

GMO's have nothing to do with veganism.

ergothus• 7 years ago

Vegans own smug and 'ethical checkmate' inanity

...the loud, obnoxious ones you know about, perhaps. Most vegans and vegetarians in my experience (hopefully including myself) don't try to preach, lecture, or abuse...but you likely don't even know their eating habits as a result.

Likewise - are you even hearing from actual vegans/vegetarians? Or are you hearing repeated stories that curdle outrage?

When I was in high school I wrote an essay about how ridiculous it was that I could be insulted for daring to hold a door for a woman when I hold doors for everyone! It was a couple of years before I realized I never HAD been insulted, I had simply been told I could be. This has happened with any number of items in my life: the outrage far exceeds the actual experiences.

I won't deny there are _some_ smug and self-righteous vegans out there - there are annoying people everywhere. But have you actually encountered the "community" (to use the word from above poster)?

village-idiot3• 7 years ago

The problem is that veganism is inherently a no-compromise position, the explicit goal is no harm to animals, which makes issues like this a glaring inconsistency.

Other diets such as vegetarianism are much more clearly harm minimization based, which makes it easier to deal with issues like this.

chongli• 7 years ago

I think that's because non-vegans think vegans draw arbitrary lines to separate themselves from vegetarians. For example, vegans refuse to eat honey (insect labour) but seem to have no issues with eating figs (which contain the remains of wasps), fruit which has been pollinated by bees (insect labour), or cashews (human suffering).

In general, the ethical question of how to assign moral weight to different beings is an open one. Some people would argue that a human being has greater moral worth than an insect. Others argue that all animal lives carry equal weight with human lives (I don't know who these people are, but they worry me).

Moreover, when people (unprompted) claim to be vegans in the presence of non-vegans, they are morally distinguishing themselves. It is the unstated claim "you are in my out-group" that non-vegans find so offensive. But then, a lot of people are offended when anyone they might call a friend goes out of their way to make a moral distinction, and this is not specific to diet preference at all.

fulafel• 7 years ago

IME most non vegans (including me) understand why it is a useful delineation, even if we cannot precisely quantify miral weights.

imgabe7• 7 years ago

Others argue that all animal lives carry equal weight with human lives (I don't know who these people are, but they worry me).

I'd consider myself one of these. All living things are equally fair game to be eaten. Obviously some carry social and legal consequences that make it not worthwhile, but ethically, we're all organic matter. Life consumes other life to keep itself going. That's how it works. I don't know why I should be concerned about a cow but not a stalk of celery. They're equally alive.

xiphias2• 7 years ago

Others argue that all animal lives carry equal weight with human lives (I don't know who these people are, but they worry me).

I thought as well that human lives are more important than animal lives, but the question is that when AI gets smarter than us and concious, do you want AI to have the moral value of human life having lesser importance than AI life?

basetop• 7 years ago

I suspect most of the hate vegans get are from other "more pure" vegans. Purity is how vegan cult members judge each other. Not how normal minded people judge vegans.

As for "some good", you might really want to get off your high horse and objectively look into the catastrophic environmental damage that a vegan diet causes. Not to mention the long term harm it does to the human body.

You literally cannot survive in nature on a vegan diet. You'd starve to death. You literally cannot have a vegan diet without fossil fuel ( good luck growing avocados in alaska or NY ). You literally cannot have a vegan diet without killing nearly infinite number of bugs, worms, vermin, etc. I know truth can be triggering to a cult member, but this is agricultural and economic reality of a vegan diet.

Personally, I'd love to society move to a "hunter gatherer diet" as that's the most natural, healthy and environmentally friendly diet possible. Rather the elites want to put us on a diet akin to the "vegan diet" livestock on industrial farms are fed. It's funny how industrialization is turning humans more and more into livestock. Maybe the UN will recommend troughs filled with vegetables for human beings.

astura2• 7 years ago

Maybe it's changed but I was heavily involved in the vegan and vegetarian community online about 15-20 years ago and there was absolutely no purity wars. Honestly, it was quite supportive and very much "everyone does their best and everyone has different morals" kinda place. I was still a young adult back then trying to learn to navigate life in general and vegetarianism was an entirely a new concept to me, so it was helpful.

But "har har, vegans are all crazy toxic assholes, amiright?" is a popular trope, no matter the factuality.

aoeusnth14• 7 years ago

Seriously, you view veganism as some kind of elite-pushed new world order way of cheapening human experience into livestock? I would think that if the establishment were interested in veganism, it would be more popular.

How many billions of people can earth supported wih a hunter gatherer diet? Veganism is one of the least CO2-intensive diets possible in a modern society (https://i1.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads...), and if you knew any vegans personally I think they'd agree with measures to reduce the CO2 intensiveness of agriculture. I'm not exactly sure who or what you're arguing against.

With regards to insects, plenty of people are interested in insect and wildlife suffering, including vegans - https://reducing-suffering.org/why-vegans-should-care-about-.... Under some assumptions, by reducing land & water use, veganism does reduce insect suffering somewhat. Clearly, it also reduces livestock suffering.

amriksohata• 7 years ago

the checkmate game is played against vegetarians too, and often there is no check, or check mate, its just claptrap as they are ill informed.

sridca4• 7 years ago

It takes two to tango. If vegans stopped pestering non-vegans, then the non-vegans probably wouldn't care to prove the vegan's stance to be silly.

amelius• 7 years ago

Not sure about the vegan part but I've just discovered that avocados require lots of water during production and as such are not very natural-resource-friendly.

https://old.danwatch.dk/en/undersogelseskapitel/how-much-wat...

seiferteric• 7 years ago

I think to be fair you would have to look a calorie content of each (and maybe nutrients). There are far more calories in an avocado than a tomato, maybe 10x more. If you compare it in that way, I think they are pretty close in water usage.

cryptonector• 7 years ago

They probably also use a lot of CO2, so it's all good.

sdenton43• 7 years ago

For comparison: https://foodtank.com/news/2013/12/why-meat-eats-resources/

Beef is ~1800 gal/lb ~= 15,021 liters / kg, vs 283 liters / kg for avocados, as per your link...

There was a pile of scaremongering press about this a couple years ago, which somehow always left out meat production comparisons... You get most of the benefit by eating low on the food chain. Additionally cutting out important sources of vegetable fat + protein seems a bit dangerous to me.

village-idiot3• 7 years ago

I think it’s very misleading to actually make this comparison, because it ignores the different types of water: green (rain) and blue (treated and irrigated).

Beef in particular consumes a lot of water, but a lot of it is green, which is much more environmentally friendly than blue water.

Wheaties466• 7 years ago

Look up how much water it takes to produce meat.

shlant11• 7 years ago

Even the most ridiculous of militant vegans (and they get pretty ridiculous) would consider things like almonds, avocados or figs vegan. Stop with the perfectionism and the nitpicking. It's bad for the movement and bad for the animals/environment.

"Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."[1]

1. https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism

imgabe7• 7 years ago

Commercial farming of those vegetables, at least in some parts of the world, often involves migratory beekeeping.
Vegans avoid animal products. For strict vegans this means avoiding honey because of the exploitation of bees. That seems to imply that vegans should also avoid vegetables like avocados that involve exploiting bees in their production.

It seems like there are some vegans who consider it. If exploiting bees for honey is non-vegan, why would exploiting bees for other purposes be acceptable?

shlant11• 7 years ago

because if you look far enough down the rabbit hole, nothing is vegan. Hence "as far as is possible and practicable".

If you are vegan except honey, good for you. If you decide that doesn't fit your worldview/morals, then good for you. If all you care about is meeting some other persons very specific standard of veganism, then you are probably doing it for the wrong reasons to begin with.

Djvacto• 7 years ago

Because everyone has a different line and a different length to which they are willing to go, and because the definition can be interpreted differently.

There's even a qualifier in your quote, "strict" vegans.

I personally would eat (local/trusted) honey even if I were 100% vegan, because to me that makes more sense then not consuming it at all when we very much need bees to stick around, and supporting a local farm cultivating colonies is something possible for me to do, as opposed to taking up beekeeping myself.

koala_man• 7 years ago

why would exploiting bees for other purposes be acceptable?

I'm sure farmers and vegans alike would prefer if the world was bee friendly enough to not have to import bees, but meanwhile, are they really being exploited if you drive them around to new feeding grounds and otherwise leave them to themselves?

astura2• 7 years ago

I can see the difference here.

Bees make honey for themselves, not humans. Humans disrupt their hive to take the honey bees worked to create and store. Merely moving them around to different feeding grounds doesn't take anything from them.

(to be honest though, they probably(?) harvest the honey that the migrant bees make...so...?)

Everyone has their own morals and comforts and taken to the extreme almost nothing would be vegan.

For example, I'm lacto-ovo vegetarian, if I was served meat in a restaurant on accident I'd send it back. Some vegetarians consider eating it instead to be the ethical thing in this situation, because the animal is already dead, its already prepared, and sending it back would be wasteful. I personally couldn't stomach that, but I can tolerate some very minor cross contamination, especially if I don't personally see it happening! Otherwise I'd never eat food I didn't personally prepare and that would reduce my quality of life. I also don't think I'd be able to stomach lab grown meat either even though there isn't an ethical or environmental concern with it.

(and honestly, even being lacto-ovo in the first place isn't a perfect position.)

Another example, I know some people who are otherwise vegan but will eat eggs from backyard chickens because they know the owners and know the chickens are well cared for and live a good life. So they consider it ethical.

Many vegans have pets.

Disclaimer: I do NOT personally see honey as "exploiting bees."

etrautmann• 7 years ago

Why would providing bees access to pollen be considered exploitative?

racuna• 7 years ago

My first impression was "D'uh", but then, from the article:

Vegans avoid animal products. For strict vegans this means avoiding honey because of the exploitation of bees. That seems to imply that vegans should also avoid vegetables like avocados that involve exploiting bees in their production.

I'm not vegan, so I don't know how deep they are involved in "not animal exploitation" even is not obvius nor direct

PerfectElement• 7 years ago

Here's the definition of veganism by the Vegan Society: "Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."

peterwwillis• 7 years ago

There should be a word for "overly concerned and judgmental about what other people do in their private life"

kermitismyhero3• 7 years ago

There should be a word for "overly concerned and judgmental about what other people do in their private life"

How about "vegan"?

shlant11• 7 years ago

haven't heard that joke before...

shlant11• 7 years ago

busybody?

mywittyname• 7 years ago

I hate these stupid arguments. The entire point is to muddy the definition of a word so much as to render it worthless for political reasons. It's like how assault rifle was a well understood term in the 70s and 80s, but today groups quibble over technical minutiae in an effort to invalidate the term.

As with most labels, the word vegan has a fluid, rough definition which varies slightly over time and person-to-person. If someone tells me they are a vegan, I know they are trying to tell me that they avoid foods that use animal parts or their byproducts. It's not some fucking contract they entered into prohibiting them from eating whatever foods society decides to impose the vegan label on via mental gymnastics. If they are cool with eating the butter made from Betsy, my happy cow, then whatever, let them eat the butter.

FWIW, I'm a carnivore and object to the consumption of almonds because of their harmful impact to the environment. That might make me a hypocrite to someone because I'm totally okay with eating a banana or something. But I don't care, I'm free to decide my own arbitrary moral compass for whatever reason I choose.

I guess I'm aggravated by society's needless pedantry over language. Not every word needs a rigid legal or technical definition that should be adhered to. And the people guilty of this are largely doing so because they don't agree with you and are attempting to make you look stupid to justify their position.

goodroot• 7 years ago

The absurd logical conclusion is to stop eating and die.

We all want it to be better. Vegans are trying. People are trying. What good does this discourse serve?

alistairSH• 7 years ago

The absurd logical conclusion is to stop eating and die.

That's a thing.[0] Not literally starvation, but the "earth would be better without us" part.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...

newscracker7• 7 years ago

I rage against this many a times. It’s one of the most absurd and illogical things that some people have come up with.

To your point though, it doesn’t directly relate to the GP’s point. Voluntary Human Extinction Movement requires breeding to reduce and stop and make humans extinct. It doesn’t require those who are living to just kill themselves.

didibus• 7 years ago

It's fun to reduce complex, varied and nuanced ethical stances into as few as possible boxes and give them cool names like sufficientarianism, and that way, we can all pick a clan and then argue about true scotsman all day long.

I'm curious, what ethical box would I fit in if I'm more worried about maximising my sustained access to high quality avocados and honey? So that it is the balance optimum between being healthy and safe to eat, produced sustainably, delicious, varied in flavors, and available for me to buy year round?

Causality1• 7 years ago

This isn't going to bother anyone, since vegans have made peace with killing thousands of insects every time a field is harvested.

nacho_weekend• 7 years ago

As a non-vegan, it really irks me when other non-vegans try to “checkmate” vegans with situations like this. It’s a personal choice to not partake in the factory meat/animal products industry and the measurable harm that comes to life forms from it. True, you can show that vegetables and other byproducts can be derived from human labor cost, but when the rubber meets the road, and you make an individual choice on what products to consume, it’s valid to judge these ethical concerns and decide what best fits into your personal values set. I think it helps that I come from the Hardcore Punk scene where many of my friends are vegan.

newscracker7• 7 years ago

Clickbait title! Nothing on this planet would be vegan if we look closely at harm caused by any behavior or habit or use. It’s about reducing harm and least harm. If people understood that part of veganism and then moved further to understand it better, there wouldn’t be so much hatred or so many clickbait titles.

Pointing out the truth and informing people about the consequences of their choices can be done without silly titles that make many people roll their eyes.

dragonwriter• 7 years ago

If they aren't because of the “exploitation” of bees in migratory beekeeping, then ethical vegans probably need to also consider the use of manure as fertilizer, where or comes from, and what crops it is used on in assessing acceptable vegan food.

newscracker7• 7 years ago

Check out “veganic farming” or “stock free farming”. That addresses the point you’re referring to, though it’s not practical in many places yet.

verdverm• 7 years ago

Is it be exploitation or do the bees get to see, smell, and taste more of the world?

checkyoursudo• 7 years ago

I think you can make a case that there are vegans, and there are Vegans. Much like you can be libertarian without being a Libertarian, or enjoy the search for truth without ever worrying if what you have learned is The Truth.

I strive to be vegan, though sometimes I am unsuccessful. I also strive not to lie, though sometimes my friend wants to know if this whatever looks good on him or her.

I strive to be a person who eats only plant and plant-derived food, for several personal reasons (including some ethical!), though I don't really care about whether a bee was transported from one field to another to pollinate something. If that makes me not a Vegan, then I don't care. But I still try to eat plant-based foods.

But I also don't call myself a vegan or even an aspiring-vegan. I am almost certainly a vegetarian since I don't eat any meat, though I don't call myself a vegetarian.

Personally, I am satisfied letting the person who wants to or is trying to be vegan decide for themselves whether they are comfortable eating avocados or whatever.

People would be happier in life if they weren't so concerned about absolutes, I think. Just try to be who you want to be. If you want to try to be the best capital-V Vegan as defined by someone else's standards (and adopt them as your own or w/e) that you can be, then maybe don't eat avocados.

rasengan0• 7 years ago

I tired of zealots.

What you eat is a personal choice.

If the whole world ate dogs routinely, I would choose carrots.

Some would say "Ah, stupid carrot eater doesn't know the root bacteria he's killing is also sentient!" Dogs, bacteria: all under the living tree.

See, eat anything and shut up you stupid carrot eating zealot.

Then there's the Corgi burger macs for $2.5 and the corporate lunches where I ask for any menu exception and get the carrot soup entree for $25.

Never mind the free range German Shepherd steaks or bulldog sausage, that shit is everywhere.

But taste is not everything my friends,

sometimes it takes real cognitive effort to be aware of factory farming, government subsidies, nutritional health, environmental downstream effects and other considerations before you open your big mouth.

A little impulse control goes a long way.

That said, I still wear my 7 year old dog leather shoes from China and don't subscribe to any CarrotPower YouTuber channels.

What's up, doc?

Are Avocados and Almonds Vegan?

Related Stories