SUZHOU (CHINA) - When Han Jiali's beloved cat Dabai was taken from her Shanghai home last year, she embarked on a hunt for her pet that took her deep into the bowels of China's underground feline meat trade.
    • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      Lemmy is so toxic. Why down vote this?

      Bobcats and house cats are obligate carnivores. Even if people doubt that you actually ate bobcat, I pretty much guarantee that it would be gross.

      Outside of fish, where there are additional trophic levels, there are two reasons that we don’t eat carnivores.

      First, there are fewer carnivores. The common figure is that in nature if you want 1 pound of animal, you need 10 pounds of animal food (I’m simplifying). So 100 pounds of herbivore food makes 10 pounds of herbivore which makes 1 pound of carnivore. And if you want to farm an animal it can’t be competing with you for food. It needs to, in general, eat stuff you don’t want to eat. Like grass or table scraps or bugs. We can eat herbivore meat. We love it so much that whenever we showed up, we ate everything to extinction.

      Cats are separate. They kinda domesticated themselves because when we started storing grain lots of rodents showed up. They just ate them, doing both of us a favor.

      Second, they taste nasty. We’ve got poultry. They eat “bugs” those are more like the plankton type trophic level. When they can catch things like snakes or mice, they go absolutely nuts, but they do so more rarely than obligate carnivores.

      Then, there’s pigs. They have a similar enough diet as poultry, but we do feed them meat scraps. I can guess about why this is, but I can’t be as confident as I am about my other statements.

      Finally, humans are alleged to taste like pig. Maybe that’s it.

    • NovaPrime@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      Just because something is natural does not make it the optimal or best choice. It’s natural for us to shit in the woods but I don’t see many people arguing we should do away with toilets. As for B12, there are plenty of vegan sources and supplements readily available

      • GormadtEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Supplements aren’t much of an answer for getting vitamins unless you can’t get them normally, for example due to one’s body not processing it very well from diet alone

        Here’s a great link to foods high in B-12.

        Edit: Link fixed, now goes to the top of the article rather than the middle.

        • nachtigall@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Unless I misinterpret your comment, doesn’t the link just show fortified food that contains the same “artificial” vitamins as the supplements do?

          • GormadtEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Not sure why the link jumps to the middle of the article but scrolling up shows foods that are naturally high in B-12

            Supplements can be important and needed for some people but relying on supplements and telling others to, “just take supplements,” isn’t a solution to nutritional deficiencies caused by diet

            Basically eating a well rounded diet should get you the nutrients you need, a doctor will be able to tell you if you’re lacking in some areas and if you should take supplements to fill in some gaps

            Edit: Fixed the link in my previous comment.

            • nachtigall@feddit.deEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              I guess the problem was that I only considered vegan options. A vegetarian diet ss certainly possible without any supplements. However, there are simply no vegan natural B12 sources. Thank you for clarifying though! :)

        • NovaPrime@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, I hate both of those arguments because they’re always presented as a logical “gotcha” when in reality they’re nothing but appeals to “common sense,” which of course is a cultural construct and not at all “common.” The B12 argument in particular I’ve heard from people who know someone who knows someone who heard from someone that you get “sluggish” and have “brain fog” if you go vegetarian/vegan. Aside from the hearsay nature of it, often these are people who jumped feet first into the lifestyle without doing even the most cursory and basic of research and treated it as a “diet” rather than a lifestyle shift. Of course not supplementing B12 and living off pasta and processed frozen foods and junk food will leave you feeling like shit. I’ve been on the path for 4 years now and have never had a single deficiency or problem. But it takes planning and understanding your body’s nutritional needs, and for a lot of people that’s an ask too far. Theyre happy to ignore the suffering of animals and the horrors of the insudustrial meat/dairy production system if it means not having to make the smallest of changes.

    • uphillbothways@kbin.social
      4·
      1 year ago

      Plain Cheerios each morning and marmite on toast (with peanut butter or in a sandwich with other things) make sure I get enough B12 without having to resort to supplements. (I’m not full vegan anymore either, just very heavily lean that direction.)

      (Gross fact: gorillas and many other non-ruminant herbivores get their B12 via coprophagia.)

        • uphillbothways@kbin.social
          5·
          1 year ago

          lol. I mean, I guess it’s an option. But if anything, by comparison, plain Cheerios and a little marmite here and there should sound like a pretty good alternative.

            • uphillbothways@kbin.social
              5·
              1 year ago

              It’s an acquired taste. Just a little to start mixed in something else. Like a strong soy sauce flavor. You end up craving it because of how good it is for you. Some hot tea alongside makes it even better. (The marmite, btw. No idea about crap, but who knows…)

      • NovaPrime@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It’s such a farcical argument. Along with being able to get it through a variety of foods, as you’ve mentioned, the supplements themselves are extremely affordable and quite easily obtainable. I supplement with the Live Conscious B12 drops once a week and at my last 6month blood test (get them regularly to ensure no vitamin deficiencies and other issues) the doc actually recommended I stop the drops since my levels were in the too high category 😆. And that’s from once a week supplementation, along with just eating a diverse and nutrient rich diet as you mentioned.