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132 comments

  • I'm not going to weigh in on pets particularly because I don't know enough, I'm also not vegan. I do however want to remark that you can sense the meat eating guilt and reactionary emotional defensiveness in a lot of this stuff. People feel very attacked and very defensive.

    There is an underlying feeling deep down that it is wrong but because they personally enjoy it and get happy hormones when eating the topic triggers a massive emotional response.

    Speculation: Eating food is probably one of the only times some people truly genuinely feel happy and is responsible for the massive defensive reaction when anyone suggests food habits should be changed. I suspect that the non-vegans that do not react poorly to the topic have much stronger sources of happiness that aren't food.

  • I believe this study. It’s true that vegans say their vegan cats are healthier than other cats.

    • Vegan cats being the thing that tears .world apart is really funny because I've seen it irl and wouldn't be surprised if ya'll already had that struggle session here.

      Not trying to start that debate here if not, but among most vegan groups I've been part of, many people had cats for years before adopting a vegan lifestyle in every other way, so it becomes a "don't ask, don't tell" situation. Otherwise, you get into endless arguments about how the cat havers aren't really vegan. But the non-cat havers offer no real individual solutions and just tip toe around the idea that the cat haver should kill them to balance out the moral calculus, or give them to someone else to wash their hands of the issue while not materially affecting anything.

      If you ever want to destroy a vegan community, ask if you should feed your cat a vegan diet or more generally about taking care of meat-eating animals at all.

      Doubly funny, in an absurd way, is that .world will so fiercely advocate for their kitties, but ignore the deaths of humans that their favorite politicians are causing.

    • plus it was done by a pro vegan group

      It was done by a uni. Fuck off, shit.just.works poster.

      Guy (not OP, I mean the one from .world), fucking read the lit review. The unhealthiness of vegan cat food is based on vibes, not published evidence. There's also a lot of back research that vegan cat food is fine, it's not just this one study. Again, READ THE FUCKING STUDUY.

    • https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132

      To study health outcomes in cats fed vegan diets compared to those fed meat, we surveyed 1,418 cat guardians, asking about one cat living with them, for at least one year. Among 1,380 respondents involved in cat diet decision-making, health and nutrition was the factor considered most important. 1,369 respondents provided information relating to a single cat fed a meat-based (1,242–91%) or vegan (127–9%) diet for at least a year. We examined seven general indicators of illness. After controlling for age, sex, neutering status and primary location via regression models, the following risk reductions were associated with a vegan diet for average cats: increased veterinary visits– 7.3% reduction, medication use– 14.9% reduction, progression onto therapeutic diet– 54.7% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of being unwell– 3.6% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of more severe illness– 7.6% reduction, guardian opinion of more severe illness– 22.8% reduction. Additionally, the number of health disorders per unwell cat decreased by 15.5%. No reductions were statistically significant. We also examined the prevalence of 22 specific health disorders, using reported veterinary assessments. Forty two percent of cats fed meat, and 37% of those fed vegan diets suffered from at least one disorder. Of these 22 disorders, 15 were most common in cats fed meat, and seven in cats fed vegan diets. Only one difference was statistically significant. Considering these results overall, cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than cats fed meat-based diets. This trend was clear and consistent.

      Not to be a stick in the mud here, but... what? How on earth does "cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than cats fed meat-based diets" follow after "considering these results overall"? You mean the results that weren't statistically significant? Those results? And that one statistically significant disease difference? It was for kidney problems, and the vegan cats had more problems than the non-vegan ones (table 6).

      If there's a case for feeding cats a vegan diet, this ain't it.

      • I'm actually genuinely surprised that cats do that well on a vegan diet. It doesn't have to be healthier than meat to be an upgrade—if it's on par with meat and no animal dies to make it, it's a clear winner.

        I didn't think we were there yet with cat food, but the study seems to suggest we are, even if they try to draw a stronger conclusion from their data than they can actually justify.

      • READ THE STUDY!

        Evidence concerning ingredient bioavailability and interactivity can indeed be lacking, but to our knowledge there is no published evidence that such concerns are any greater for non-animal-based ingredients, than for animal-based ingredients.

        This is why feeding trials are considered the gold standard to ensure nutritional soundness of new formulations [15, 16]. The health status of cats maintained on different diets has been the subject of limited studies to date. In 2021 Dodd et al. [17] published a Canadian-based survey of 1,325 cat guardians, of whom 1,026 described their cat(s) diet. These included 187 (18%) vegan cats. More guardians of vegan cats reported their cat to be in very good health, and fewer were reported to have gastrointestinal and hepatic disorders. These cats were more often reported as having ideal body condition scores, than those fed a meat-based diet.

        FFS don't skim the study. 3% of non vegan cats had kidney problems, 4% of vegan cats did.

        So you're saying that vegan cats had roughly the same health as non vegan cats and we're not destroying our planet in industrial livestock murder. Sounds great!

  • The biggest issue with Reddit and Facebook was that they let stuff like this stick around it and eventually consume it.

    It’s a good policy imho, and I’m happy to see it

    Science should prevail

    • Because the priority for them is engagement, regardless of how harmful the content could be to people. Engagement doesn’t mean shit here because nobody’s profiting off of it.

      Am I really hearing this shit from a .world user?

132 comments