They are a living creature, so no, eating them is not vegan. It’s not about the capacity of the animal to feel pain, it’s about the capacity of humans to harm animals that most vegans take issue with, at least most that I know. Just because something can’t feel pain, does that mean we should hurt it? I’m not vegan myself, and I don’t think it’s inherently wrong for omnivores to eat meat, but I do think that it doesn’t matter if the animal can supposedly feel pain or not. We don’t need to go looking for excuses to hurt other living creatures needlessly.
Bacterias are living creatures as well, yet I doubt most vegans have an issue with them
edit: I don’t even know why I picked bacterias as an example when I could just have chosen plants, which are by definition alive too
Just because something can’t feel pain, does that mean we should hurt it ?
Maybe we don’t have the same definition of hurting, but I can’t see how “hurting” works with something that can’t feel pain. Like can you hurt a chair ?
I’m not sure what you expect vegans to eat then. They can only reduce the harm they cause so much. Drawing the line at creatures that move around and actively interact with their environment, including avoiding injury and reacting to negative stimulus, is easier than trying to subsist on, like, nothing. As for bacteria, we can’t like, see them, or avoid them. It’s literally impossible to not ingest them. Plus the only time we actually target bacteria is when it’s harming us, and it’s not like vegans don’t believe in enacting self defense against something that attacked you first. But we can pretty easily avoid eating jellyfish. It in fact takes more effort to eat jellyfish than it does to not eat jellyfish. I mean you can try to get pedantic about it, like whether plants avoid negative stimulus or whatever, but again, vegans have to eat something, or they’d, y’know, die. Jellyfish can have an observable avoidant reaction to harm. It’s a relatively simple line to draw when you have to draw one somewhere.
And no, you can’t hurt a chair, because a chair is an inanimate object. There are humans who don’t have the ability to feel pain, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be hurt, as in harmed. It also doesn’t make them the same as a chair.
If you decide you want to be vegan then yes. If you don’t want to be vegan then I guess it’s up to you whether you want to draw a line anywhere or not, or where that line is.
They didn’t say anything about feeling morally superior, they just explained where and why many vegans differentiate between plants, bacteria, and animals. And let’s not pretend that other people, including non vegans, don’t also draw these lines at any other point, and don’t only bring up these supposed areas of debate whenever veganism is brought up. It’s a personal choice based on personal motivations, just because someone holds a different view from you that doesn’t automatically mean they feel superior to you. This comment is giving me the feeling you’re just looking for an excuse to rag on vegans, when they’re not even the ones who started the discussion.
Ok but how are plants not being exploited?
Also it could be said that you can get meat without exploiting animals, such as getting rid of invasive species.
At a certain point it’s not a diet it’s an ideology, and I feel they should have separate names. Because let’s say you’re just against exploitation of living organisms, then you’d be fine with eating invasive species, or meat hunted yourself, but deny eating anything from a farm.
By a strict definition, no. But most vegans don’t really care about scientific classification. Personally I don’t think they’re sentient and think it’s fine.
Vegan is a vanity label. It doesn’t matter. Are you struggling to decide if it’s ethical to eat a jellyfish? Well, don’t bother. There’s no good reason to eat a jellyfish in the first place.
They have no brain but aren’t they like almost entirely nervous system? That’s all you need to feel pain; the brain just makes it more complicated than “ouch, move away from that.”
If having a reaction to physical damage (like moving away) is enough to be qualified as pain, then some plants feel pain too. We studied in biology a plant that when cut/eaten by animals releases chemicals that warn plants around it and triggers them to release another chemical that interferes with animal’s digestive system and make them starve (I don’t remember the name of the plant unfortunately). So should we consider this as pain too ?
If reaction to physicals damage is enough to qualify as pain, a brick wall feels pain. If you damage it, it will start having holes, and eventually fall over completely.
I think at the very least you’d need some kind of learning. Pain is the stuff you learn to avoid and pleasure is the stuff you learn to do more. Without that, it’s impossible to say whether an instinctive response to stimuli is a negative or positive feeling.
I’ve known people who chose not to eat mammals, birds, fish, decapods (lobsters, crabs, prawns), or cephalopod mollusks (e.g. octopus, squid); but who were okay with eating bivalve mollusks (clams, mussels, oysters) on the grounds that they did not have enough brain to experience pain.
I think those folks would be okay with eating jellyfish.
Rather than asking, “Is X vegan?” it might be more useful to ask, “What is person P trying to accomplish by ‘being vegan’? Is eating X in conflict with that?”
There are some animal that you can eat that are vegan.
The fig wasp for example is a tiny wasp that climbs into fig flowers to lay their eggs in them, polinating them in the process. Once the flower turns into a fruit, the eggs hatch and climb out of it. The dead mother wasp stays behind.
Since the wasp dying in the fig is required both for the plant and the wasp to reproduce they are considered vegan to eat.
So the next time you eat a fig, take a closer look. Maybe you’ll see the dead wasp (or maybe you’ve already swallowed it)
Do vegans generally accept that figs are okay to eat?
I grew up with a crazy vegan mother who dragged me to the outings of her crazy vegan club and they were all vehemently against eating figs. We don’t even live in a place where figs are common import, but they were so mad about it.
Many parts in Asia, including Japan (mentioning this specifically because it’s probably the easiest to find if you want to try). They are pretty delicious.
This is how they usually look btw. You can usually find them with different kinds of sauces depending on the cuisine it comes from. The texture is like a more chewy cross between scallop and octopus.
The problem is if you do this, you have to come up with a word for people who don’t eat fish, but do eat insects and crustaceans, and people who don’t eat them, but do eat jellyfish, and people who don’t eat them, but eat (or more realistically, use the corpses of) sea sponges. And then there’s people who never eat it, people who eat it but only if otherwise it would get thrown away, people who eat it but only if they’re sure the animal was raised ethically, people who will never eat meat but only eat animal products if it was raised ethically, etc. It’s really not worth having overly specific words like that, and nobody is going to remember them.
Definitions are approximate. Defining “man” as “featherless biped” is good enough for most situations, but a plucked chicken isn’t a man and someone who lost a leg still is.
Sorry. I thought the problem was that definitions are ultimately approximations to help you understand the meaning of the word. Checking it again, the moral was actually that Plato forgot to add “with broad nails”, and once he had that he had the perfect definition of a human that everyone can always use.
Yeah, bro decided to rant against half the English language and pretty much all scientific terminology. I’m just sitting back here with the popcorn watching him dig his own grave.
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They are animals, so no.
They are a living creature, so no, eating them is not vegan. It’s not about the capacity of the animal to feel pain, it’s about the capacity of humans to harm animals that most vegans take issue with, at least most that I know. Just because something can’t feel pain, does that mean we should hurt it? I’m not vegan myself, and I don’t think it’s inherently wrong for omnivores to eat meat, but I do think that it doesn’t matter if the animal can supposedly feel pain or not. We don’t need to go looking for excuses to hurt other living creatures needlessly.
Bacterias are living creatures as well, yet I doubt most vegans have an issue with them
edit: I don’t even know why I picked bacterias as an example when I could just have chosen plants, which are by definition alive too
Maybe we don’t have the same definition of hurting, but I can’t see how “hurting” works with something that can’t feel pain. Like can you hurt a chair ?
I’m not sure what you expect vegans to eat then. They can only reduce the harm they cause so much. Drawing the line at creatures that move around and actively interact with their environment, including avoiding injury and reacting to negative stimulus, is easier than trying to subsist on, like, nothing. As for bacteria, we can’t like, see them, or avoid them. It’s literally impossible to not ingest them. Plus the only time we actually target bacteria is when it’s harming us, and it’s not like vegans don’t believe in enacting self defense against something that attacked you first. But we can pretty easily avoid eating jellyfish. It in fact takes more effort to eat jellyfish than it does to not eat jellyfish. I mean you can try to get pedantic about it, like whether plants avoid negative stimulus or whatever, but again, vegans have to eat something, or they’d, y’know, die. Jellyfish can have an observable avoidant reaction to harm. It’s a relatively simple line to draw when you have to draw one somewhere.
And no, you can’t hurt a chair, because a chair is an inanimate object. There are humans who don’t have the ability to feel pain, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be hurt, as in harmed. It also doesn’t make them the same as a chair.
Do you have to, though?
If you decide you want to be vegan then yes. If you don’t want to be vegan then I guess it’s up to you whether you want to draw a line anywhere or not, or where that line is.
That actually makes a lot of sense, i’ll probably steal some of your points for future debates :)
Are plants creatures, tho?
deleted by creator
Vegan logic
They didn’t say anything about feeling morally superior, they just explained where and why many vegans differentiate between plants, bacteria, and animals. And let’s not pretend that other people, including non vegans, don’t also draw these lines at any other point, and don’t only bring up these supposed areas of debate whenever veganism is brought up. It’s a personal choice based on personal motivations, just because someone holds a different view from you that doesn’t automatically mean they feel superior to you. This comment is giving me the feeling you’re just looking for an excuse to rag on vegans, when they’re not even the ones who started the discussion.
oh it makes more sense with this definition instead of just “living beings”
Ok but how are plants not being exploited? Also it could be said that you can get meat without exploiting animals, such as getting rid of invasive species. At a certain point it’s not a diet it’s an ideology, and I feel they should have separate names. Because let’s say you’re just against exploitation of living organisms, then you’d be fine with eating invasive species, or meat hunted yourself, but deny eating anything from a farm.
deleted by creator
would u even get anything out of eating it tho?
In China, it can be served as a salad, and I believe it is quite good.
Once, at the gwailo table of a wedding, I saw a picky eater mistake jelly fish for noodles, try them and like them.
Their face when they found out was…
More duck tongues for the rest of us.
China is so weird
Lmgtfy;
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/can-you-eat-jellyfish#benefits
By a strict definition, no. But most vegans don’t really care about scientific classification. Personally I don’t think they’re sentient and think it’s fine.
removed by mod
did you eat them?
Apparently removing other people’s comments you don’t like is a thing here. They can eat shit
i thought your comment was silly, but there was nothing that needed a removal. I’m sorry to read that
is one of your mentioned friends a mod here? 😅
Must be. My comment was made lightheartedly but it seems that power tripping crybabies are in charge here already. Sad. I had real hopes for lemmy.
Are you outing yourself as vegan?
I own a crowbar, we can test for pain.
So tough online. Joke’s on you. I like that shit.
Jellyfish are not sentient either. OP may be on to something here
I thought this post was about whether jellyfish had a vegan diet. I had no idea being vegan meant it’s ok to eat non-sentient animals as well.
deleted by creator
Vegan is a vanity label. It doesn’t matter. Are you struggling to decide if it’s ethical to eat a jellyfish? Well, don’t bother. There’s no good reason to eat a jellyfish in the first place.
Given a choice, if they run away from a stimulus all the time, it is very much “painful”.
They are alive, so no, not vegan.
Plants are alive.
So plants are not vegan??
They have no brain but aren’t they like almost entirely nervous system? That’s all you need to feel pain; the brain just makes it more complicated than “ouch, move away from that.”
If having a reaction to physical damage (like moving away) is enough to be qualified as pain, then some plants feel pain too. We studied in biology a plant that when cut/eaten by animals releases chemicals that warn plants around it and triggers them to release another chemical that interferes with animal’s digestive system and make them starve (I don’t remember the name of the plant unfortunately). So should we consider this as pain too ?
there are many other examples here too:wikipedia
man I hate philosophy
Tobacco and tomato plants do something similar. They produce more nicotine to poison the insects eating them and also warn their neighbours.
(Yes, tomatoes also produce nicotine, and it is technically possible to become slightly addicted to tomatoes if you have a very tomato-heavy diet)
moral of the story: if you have an addiction, replace it with tomatoes
nicotine in the tomato too (which the plant produces for the animals to eat and spread its grains) or rather in the leaves, flowers and stem?
As far as I know it’s in the fruit as well to some snall degree, but I’m no expert
Yes. It’s literally how pain is defined in an anatomical sense.
If reaction to physicals damage is enough to qualify as pain, a brick wall feels pain. If you damage it, it will start having holes, and eventually fall over completely.
I think at the very least you’d need some kind of learning. Pain is the stuff you learn to avoid and pleasure is the stuff you learn to do more. Without that, it’s impossible to say whether an instinctive response to stimuli is a negative or positive feeling.
I suppose jellyfish fishing is bad for the environment. I know nothing about it though.
Not sure, I heard some species of jellyfish are super invasive
but then by fishing you may catch other fishes I think
we need an expert
I’ve known people who chose not to eat mammals, birds, fish, decapods (lobsters, crabs, prawns), or cephalopod mollusks (e.g. octopus, squid); but who were okay with eating bivalve mollusks (clams, mussels, oysters) on the grounds that they did not have enough brain to experience pain.
I think those folks would be okay with eating jellyfish.
Rather than asking, “Is X vegan?” it might be more useful to ask, “What is person P trying to accomplish by ‘being vegan’? Is eating X in conflict with that?”
this 👆
Jellyfish belong to Cnidaria, which is a phylum under kingdom Animalia
TLDR: Jellyfish are biologicly animals
There are some animal that you can eat that are vegan.
The fig wasp for example is a tiny wasp that climbs into fig flowers to lay their eggs in them, polinating them in the process. Once the flower turns into a fruit, the eggs hatch and climb out of it. The dead mother wasp stays behind.
Since the wasp dying in the fig is required both for the plant and the wasp to reproduce they are considered vegan to eat.
So the next time you eat a fig, take a closer look. Maybe you’ll see the dead wasp (or maybe you’ve already swallowed it)
Do vegans generally accept that figs are okay to eat?
I grew up with a crazy vegan mother who dragged me to the outings of her crazy vegan club and they were all vehemently against eating figs. We don’t even live in a place where figs are common import, but they were so mad about it.
No.
Who TF eats jellyfish?!?
Many parts in Asia, including Japan (mentioning this specifically because it’s probably the easiest to find if you want to try). They are pretty delicious.
This is how they usually look btw. You can usually find them with different kinds of sauces depending on the cuisine it comes from. The texture is like a more chewy cross between scallop and octopus.
Looks kinda good.
Turtles
Nope. Animal product. Would be ok for pescatarians, however.
The problem is if you do this, you have to come up with a word for people who don’t eat fish, but do eat insects and crustaceans, and people who don’t eat them, but do eat jellyfish, and people who don’t eat them, but eat (or more realistically, use the corpses of) sea sponges. And then there’s people who never eat it, people who eat it but only if otherwise it would get thrown away, people who eat it but only if they’re sure the animal was raised ethically, people who will never eat meat but only eat animal products if it was raised ethically, etc. It’s really not worth having overly specific words like that, and nobody is going to remember them.
Man, you’re gonna be really pissed when you open up the dictionary…
Definitions are approximate. Defining “man” as “featherless biped” is good enough for most situations, but a plucked chicken isn’t a man and someone who lost a leg still is.
just stop! Go read that lesson again. You misunderstood the moral of that story
Sorry. I thought the problem was that definitions are ultimately approximations to help you understand the meaning of the word. Checking it again, the moral was actually that Plato forgot to add “with broad nails”, and once he had that he had the perfect definition of a human that everyone can always use.
🤦
“Man, you’re gonna be really pissed when you open up the dictionary…” 👆🤣
Yeah, bro decided to rant against half the English language and pretty much all scientific terminology. I’m just sitting back here with the popcorn watching him dig his own grave.
sorry, jerboa is a new app. i posted a laughing smiley under a previous comment and deleted the message while editing it to include the original one.
i left it as it is thinking that it doesn’t matter. If i knew you needed it for your popcorn, i would have tried harder.
this one made me laugh: Man, you’re gonna be really pissed when you open up the dictionary…