What's more annoying, creationists or vegans?

Get these loons out of the classroom. Telling school kids not to drink milk? Reminds me of the PETA "Got Beer" ad campaign that bombed so badly a while back.

Hopeless naivete combined with an evangelical fervor... equals nuts any way you slice it.

Hah. Born-again is certainly the right word. Much like evangelicals, vegans are apparently compelled to "witness" for their spiritual purification and moral superiority.

While I agree that it's ridiculous to have a teacher proselytise like that, and I am a big fan of dairy myself, I'm not convinced about the whole "give milk to children" idea. The link you provided "includes soymilk". Rather than recommend that all children drink milk, it would make more sense to recommend that people figure out if their can digest lactose first...rather than have them figure it out when they are adults. American society tends to assume that lactose intolerance is an oddity, when in fact it's the norm, globally. It isn't justifiable to work from the assumption that all Americans are of Anglo-Germanic origin. It's just bad science.

One time, there was TV report came out about a group of people doing demonstrations and telling people to stop drinking milk because milk is bad for you. My response? "What and encourage rickets?"

Please don't give in to the "Vegans"! Call them what they are - PLANT KILLERS!

If we alllow them to frame their lifestyle choice as "Vegan", the terrorists have won.

PLANT KILLERS!

Having said all that, Creo's IMO are WAY more annoying by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I'm vegetarian and a huge milk-lover. Cow's milk isn't appropriate for some children and certainly not young children (less than a year old). Also, many non-Europeans in the world are lactose intolerant, unlike mutants like me.

Of course, the reason milk prevents rickets is due to Vitamin D suppliments. If the government mandated vitamin supplements in soy milk, that particular issue wouldn't be relevant.

I have mixed feelings about teachers speaking about issues outside of their field of study. On one hand, the students go to art class to get lectured on health. On the other hand, teachers in our public school system are forced to be boring and safe.

Personally, I couldn't handle teaching high school biology. It was stressful, poorly paid, and unrewarding. It's a shame, though, as I love biology and probably could have been a great teacher (albeit with a lousy personal life).

You're comparing apples and oranges when you compare creationism to veganism. I know plenty of healthy vegans, all of whom love to cook and love to eat. It's not an unhealthy lifestyle at all. In fact, it's likely to be more healthy than a diet that includes meat and potentially more healthy than a diet that involves dairy or eggs. Vegans certainly eat plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables, legumes and whole grains.

Creationism will rot your brain.

The two are nothing alike, and exposing kids to a range of dieting options in school isn't a bad thing. The only thing this guy did wrong was to gripe about the milk posters. He should have just put up some posters of his own.

MikeQ,
I wasn't comparing the philosophy of veganism to creationism, just the annoying need to proselytize. And it was his claim that the school system is engaging in criminal child endangerment that I was mocking.

The reference to milk as a "poison" comes from some studies that claim that unhydrolyzed proteins cow's milk increases the chance of getting Type I diabetes and possibly other autoimmune disorders.

See this for instance.

I feel almost ashamed for this. A bunch of weird cases in Wisconsin now. This vegan guy; many creationists and intelligent design advocates spreading about; those two guys who wanted to break in and have sex with a corpse because they saw her photo in the obituaries.

Wisconsin is normal people! These are just really fucked up people!

Thanks for the clarification, Mark - the title sounded like you were comparing vegans per se with creationists per se.

The difference, as MikeQ basically pointed out, is that creationism is necessarily problematic, but veganism is only occasionally and contingently problematic.

Though it certainly is that at times, speaking as a former (and possibly future) vegan and animal rights activist. The amount of mischaracterization of science that goes on in the movement is astounding sometimes (e.g. not just making moral arguments against animal testing, but claiming it's all "junk science" on scientific grounds).

An art teacher has been "removed from the classroom" ...

Nooooooo! We need all the art teachers we can get....

Of course if the scienceblogger commentariat were teaching kids art, I'm thinking it would lead to ugly fiskings of art styles with many children sent crying. (You call THAT Social Realism? Where's the working masses? Where's the bulldozer? F for you!)

I feel almost ashamed for this. A bunch of weird cases in Wisconsin now. This vegan guy; many creationists and intelligent design advocates spreading about; those two guys who wanted to break in and have sex with a corpse because they saw her photo in the obituaries.

True, but why enforce conformity that this should bother us? Every day we add about 7400 people to the US population. And only a few of them want to have sex with corpses or get militant over milk served in schools. Or eat people ala Dahmer. The numbers are on our side.

But yet you remain unashamed that Eau Claire is proudly "The Horseradish Capital of the World".

I am reminded of "Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness."
--Sir Robert Hutchinson

Adam -- there are a lot of lovely fats in cows milk which aren't in soy, too, which help a lot of kids in terms of nutrition, and then there is also the calcium. Soy is no panacea, and the reason lactose tolerance spread so quickly in populations which raised cattle is that it is quite beneficial.

Zach, you nailed my problems with the ARA movement, that and a tendency towards moral superiority, but after all it is a moral crusade.

I have a lot more sympathy for vegans than creationists. Creationists exist to spreading lies and ignorance basically for their own sake. Veganism and vegetarianism, on the other hand, are real potential solutions for problems of overpopulation and obesity, and I'll even give some credence to animal cruelty arguments, particularly when they're food-related and not science-related (vegans don't seem to have much sense of scale). The problem, of course, is when numbnuts like this guy would rather make shit up than use the actual legitimate arguments that are that their disposal.

I read a lot of science blogs & have been an admirer of the Denialism Blog for several months now. That said, do you guys have any idea what pricks you sound like in this post & comment thread? There is a snotty tone of fanboy, groupthink moral superiority that obscures the actual the actual point of the item, which is that the vegan teacher was not wrong because he is a vegan, nor because he wanted to convince others his diet was superior (however irritating that might be); no, he was wrong & deserved to be censured because he was apparently not teaching his subject. I'm a university professor; I get paid to teach a set of subjects & I'm given pretty wide latitude in how I do that. High school teachers are (rightly, in my view) given somewhat less latitude. The problem with this guy is not that he's a vegan, or even that he thinks you ought to be a vegan, but that he wasn't doing his job. Of course, it would be possible to address the actual arguments for & against veganism, but that's not what this post does. This post is an instance of the sort of cheap, snide cultural politics practiced by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Anne Neal, David Horowitz & the rest of that noxious crew. Can't you just hear Coulter asking, "Who is more irritating, liberals or Muslims?" Answer: "Neither! It's Al Gore." This kind of question is not intended to elicit an answer, or even to deal with factual matters at all, but to serve as a vehicle for making the tribe feel good about itself. Ick.

Joseph, you seem to be disagreeing while agreeing. Mark says vegans are annoying, and this guy isn't teaching because he was proselytizing about his veganism and not doing his job. Mark didn't say he should be fired just for being a vegan, but the reasons for being a vegan can be rather vapid when held up to the light. It's almost like the post was written in an editorial style, and not like a scientific paper. What a bunch of shenanigans!

Oh, and vegans are way more annoying than creationists. Creationists are more ignorantly dangerous, rather than annoying.

Kent, that's right. I am agreeing while disagreeing. I'm really responding to tone here. And to rhetoric. I'm an English professor, it's what I do. I enjoy & value DB because it insists that people's language reflect reality, but this post is really about tribal vibes than veganism. I invite you to do the the Ann Coulter thought experiment I suggested above.

I'm an aspie, so I would have answered liberals before she shouted Al Gore, because muslims fly plains into buildings, which is more dangerous than annoying. Then I would comment that Al Gore is a liberal, so the joke doesn't make any sense. And I like the ridicule aspect of this post, mainly for situations like this.

But, I would say the word planes, so no one would know I really can't spell.

Callandor--

On the contrary, this story fills me with new hope that rationality will prevail in the state of Wisconsin. The man wasn't lynched for decrying dairy in the Eat Cheese Or Die state! ;-)

I have always said that veganism is a kind of religion. I lived the "vegan house" for a summer in college, and the people I lived with showed a lot of the same thought patterns, the same cognitive dissonance and simplistic, morally-bounded view of the world that creationists do. And much of the same martyr-complex-- the more they are persecuted, the more they are convinced of the inerrancy of their worldview.

I am not arguing against the act of not eating animal products, it is true that refusing animal-based food has environmental benefits, and arguably health benefits as well. But it's really the fact that it is packaged up, intentionally, as a "lifestyle", instead of simply a choice one makes at mealtime, that bothers me.

The kicker for me, with the vegan house, was when the vegans were all censoring each others' speech (and mine as well)-- for example, to call someone a capitalist pig was derogatory to pigs, and I was scolded for it (see, the semester before, I was in the "Marxist House," where that kind of language was acceptable). I used the phrase "kill two birds with one stone" and one might as well have thought I dropped the N-bomb at an NAACP meeting.

When any group starts policing common language in that way, you know something is wrong.

I wouldn't mind vegans so much if that significant minority of them weren't so damned pushy about it. And now a subset of them are framing veganism as a cure for global warming because of the methane output of cows...

I've always wondered what we're supposed to do with all the cows and chickens if the planet goes vegan like they want.

This guy is a perfect example of that subset I can't stand. Promoting your beliefs is one thing, and the Bill of Rights covers it. Calling milk "poison" is asking for your movement to be mocked.

I wouldn't mind vegans so much if that significant minority of them weren't so damned pushy about it.

I'm sure that must be on one of those bingo boards you see around the internet somewhere.

Because the majority, obviously, is insignificant.

I'm a vegetarian who eats a largely vegan diet (I try to limit dairy, and I still eat eggs, but rarely). I've made this choice for a number of reason, all of which are based on a rational understanding of the way in which animal based food is produced, environmental effects and so on. I won't rant about them here. I'm also a scientist and an atheist.

Yet on this thread, I find a bunch of petulant whining and silly ad homs. There's a whole bunch of equating veganism with religion and even creationism, with out a whole lotta substance other than "I once knew this guy...."

The whole point of this thread seem to take one nut (and the guy clearly is a nut) and equate him with every vegan. Yet here's the thing: one moron (or two or three) does not equate to the well funded, well organised movement trying to undermine the teaching and credibility of science. The argument that the two are similar is weaker than American beer and a whole lot harder to keep down.

Seriously kids, get a grip. If some vegan is being pushey, tell them to get f&#ked. If some moron claims that milk is poison, laugh at them and call them a moron. But lets not tar everyone with the same brush.

Mark, I'm usually a fan of your blog, and often find myself in agreement with you. This post is well and truely below your usual (high) standard.

Let's see: we have dogma, junk science, claims of calamity and persecution... yep, Warwak could be a very nice Creationist.

It is also interesting to see how many other vegans come out in force to defend the concept and the man when it comes under criticism.

I will eagerly await your clear explanations of how I am being a fan boy, using logical fallacies, engaging in groupthink, believing dogma, resisting progressive social and scientific change, and, obviously, being religious in my denial of the truth the vegans bring.

Damn! What the hell are you guys eating? My veggies don't make me this cranky...

I should add; there's no reason to disregard vegans because they're on a "moral crusade". They are, but there's really nothing wrong with that, depending on how it's handled. Christians are on a "moral crusade", but it's based on bad logic; arbitrary morals based on unfounded beliefs. Vegan morals, on the other hand, can be reasonably well argued in an academically sound, philosophic way. I only buy the argument in part myself, but if they're being reasonable, and most of them are, then I think they can be engaged in a fair way.

Valhar2000 writes: "I will eagerly await your clear explanations of how I am being a fan boy, using logical fallacies, engaging in groupthink, believing dogma, resisting progressive social and scientific change, and, obviously, being religious in my denial of the truth the vegans bring."

That use of the future tense is just a way of putting words I did not say in my mouth & is evidence of intellectual dishonesty. I didn't actually address veganism as such, but made a case about the tone & rhetoric of the post. If you can't respond to someone's argument, just make up your own version & substitute it for the one they actually made. Hey, isn't that one of them thar denialist tactics?

That last comment was mine & not intended to be anonymous. Just hit Submit too soon.

Can't we just go back to talking about making beer or wine. Then everyone would be happy.

Vegans have one thing on Christians: their ethical stance doesn't just come from a book written thousands of years ago, it comes from actually responding to the world around them. As loopy as their ideas of animal equality may seem to some, believing a big invisible guy in the sky made everything in a week or so is a little bit harder to take in (I had some really good fake chicken the other day... maybe they're onto something after all). Both groups, however, are wasting their time with the bad science, and I suppose that's the source of your desire to ridicule.

I can't wait to hear what you guys have to say about the ridiculous so-called "ethics code" that's being reported on right now. And what's more important than Vegan self-righteousness? How about EBOLA!

Mommy! Daddy! Stop fighting!

Anyway. What was I trying to accomplish with this post? Well, I was trying to describe how proselytizers in general are annoying. It's still a question, to me, which are more annoying because I encounter more vegans than creationists, and I have yet to meet any that weren't pushy and obnoxious. Eugene X's story is particularly funny - I've had experiences just like that. Out of left field a being criticized for speciesist language.

So, here we have a problem. ChrisC for example feels I'm using an example of a single nut (and he is a nut see his comment on Peta's blog) to attack veganism as a whole. It's hard to see where I did this, other than the title, which I agree is snide. But then again, there is a valid point here. Is veganism as a whole worthy of scorn?

If true belief in veganism requires evangelism, which Warwick's comment suggests, as well as every vegan I've ever met, then I think the comparison is valid between the vegans and the other annoying proselytizers. All the elements of an evangelical religion are there - and read his comment at Peta too. He clearly had a distinct conversion experience, immediately became a zealot, he gets in trouble for his attempts to convert others, he's got the persecution complex, and a certain willingness to bend to truth for his idea of greater good (or at least a very warped view of truth and science).

I'm not convinced the comparison is invalid. And the fact that it's just a few "bad apples" doing this isn't a valid criticism. That's an endless refrain in defense of religion on PZ's blog for example and I think is an example of the Courtier's reply.

If veganism were just a personal choice, and it ended there, it would be one thing. However, the fact is, that like other religious behaviors it encourages proselytizers like Warwick, who immediately convinced of their moral superiority to everyone else set out to convert, and bend the truth to do so (trust me, you don't want me to start scanning the interwebs for examples).

And, in some particularly stupid adherents, has been known to do real harm to kids. It's a diet that needs people to be educated and pay attention to the nutritional deficiencies that may result, especially B12/cobalamin (of particular concern when breastfeeding or pregnant) that we've typically gotten from animal sources.

Now, before someone gives me crap about factory farming, let me just say, eating meat doesn't mean agreeing with factory farming or our idiotic overuse of corn for everything.

I eat meat, and find Vegans annoying or ridiculous, depending on context.

Yet there is something about food in the USA that should really start to enter the consciousness of the average consumer.

First, factory farming, as it exists now, is incredibly cruel. The treatment of animals is beyond horrendous. Cruel practices are not just...well, cruel; they also have side-effects that are bad for the ultimate consumers. Extreme crowding, for instance, leads to high levels of injuries among animals, which then leads to higher antibiotic/hormone use, and transfer of said things to those of us who eat meat.

As European practices shown, there is no need for this. It is possible to raise and slaughter animals for consumption without excessive cruelty in the process.

Second, the farm bill subsidies for corn growers have extremely bad effects on the general food quality in the US. We buy food that is cheap, not realizing that it is cheap because we already paid a large chunk of its cost through our taxes. This cheap food is also very low quality (this is why people on food stamps *cannot* eat well - vegetables are too expensive, anything made using corn is cheap). In the end, similar things have more calories/are unhealthier in the US as compared to many other areas in the world (compare Coke nutritional information).

The use of high-fructose corn sirup instead of sugar is one significant datapoint. Companies use it because it is cheap. It is cheap for companies to use because all taxpayers are shelling out for it.

Third, milk is not the super-drink the dairy industry advertises. It is high in calories, and balanced to increase the mass of a calf to that of a cow in a very short period of time. Dairy industry spends a *lot* of money supressing independant nutritional studies, and funding skewed studies of its own.

Don't get me wrong: one can drink milk, and eat butter, and be fine. But take care about the quantities. The "as much as you want, since it's soo good for you" attitude prevalent among US parents is almost certainly one of the major factors in childhood obesity epidemic.

Oh, the teacher? An idiot, to be sure. But not quite Creationist-level. He took some true information, then twisted it into an extreme (which is no longer anywhere near the truth). Creationists start with a lie, and then twist it further...

Actually, the studies show that the major causes of childhood obesity is sugary drinks and low exercise levels. Children who, when I was a boy would have a glass of milk with supper, are having two or three sodas. I seriously doubt there are any cases anywhere of children drinking too much milk.

Oddly, whole milk seems to be protective against obesity in both adults and children It's an unexpected result. But there is a general inverse relation between milk consumption and obesity, but not so much with skim milk drinking. Pretty bizarre really. It might be that kids drinking skim have parents that are trying to make them lose weight, or some other effect, but the presence of an anti-correlation with milk drinking makes me think that milk is not causing our obesity problems.

Creationists vs. Vegans.

Creationists are much worse and they come from right here.

Vegans are illegal aliens. If they really become too annoying, we can deport them and make them return to their own planet.

Mark, my experience with vegans has been much less negative. But even if it had been more like yours, I still think it's important that creationism (or if you ask me, all religion) is inherently moronic; veganism is only moronic in practice.

And I'll add: I don't really mind proselytizing. Maybe we need more of it, not less. Humanity seems to be building up major global problems at exponentially increasing faster rate; it's not a negative thing to try to convince your fellow humans to change, if you have a good rational reason. There's no right to ignorance. The negative thing is trying to convince them to find Jesus, which is stupid at best, harmful at worst.

Probably some people reading my comments above assumed I'm a vegetarian or vegan. I'm not. I was trying to make a point about cultural politics & by extension the sort of scientism that occasionally creeps into this sort of discussion. Tone is important. And the word "annoying" has a distinctly undergraduate ring to it, as in "That professor is so (i>annoying giving us so much homework [rolls eyes]."

The ideology that sponsors creationism, however, is powerful, dangerous, theocratic, irrational & totalitarian in impulse; veganism by contrast is a minor cultural phenomenon, a blip on the radar. When the vegans start running mainstream presidential candidates, I'll start to be alarmed. In the meantime, I'll live & let live. (With the proviso, noted above, that teachers have to teach their subject.)

The comments above about American industrial farming are right on the money, by the way. For dinner tonight, I had field-raised lamb bought from a local producer. As much as possible, given the American food distribution system with its jones for corn-syrup, my family tries as much as possible to eat food produced locally.

Some guy I don't know wrote:

That use of the future tense is just a way of putting words I did not say in my mouth & is evidence of intellectual dishonesty.

In your mouth? In YOUR mouth? Not anybody else's? Just yours? In the mouth that is your own personal, non-transferable property?

Jeffk wrote:

Mark, my experience with vegans has been much less negative. But even if it had been more like yours, I still think it's important that creationism (or if you ask me, all religion) is inherently moronic; veganism is only moronic in practice.

Same here; I've known two (one of whom was Sihk) and they were not crankery in any way, even though they ddi think the veganism was a good idea.

Veganism isn't really a long-term solution to environmental problems. In line with all other approaches to reducing resource consumption it overlooks the elephant in the corner: Population. It doesn't matter if everyone is living off of minimal resources and recycling as much waste as possible, because even that tiny amount of damage becomes a lot when multiplied by six billion people and rising rapidly. Population, unfortunatly, is a taboo subject in politics.

On diet, can there be a comparison? There are healthy and unhealthy vegan diets, just as there are healthy and unhealthy ordinary diets. Someone who fills themself with masses of high-sugar food may be a vegan, but they will still end up overweight.

Suricou Raven,

Agreed. The only good reason to go vegan is the environmental benefits, which are temporary. Ultimately 12-15 billion vegans are going to do similar damage as 4-6 billion steak eaters.

Though I tend to think that population size control should be done passively. If you educate people and give them economic opportunities, they stop having babies. It's worked in every country so far...

Its a nice approach to population control, but it faces a lot of resistance. High-birth-rate cultures are very attached to their status quo and, while they are quite eager to develop economicly, will still fight to resist anything that might result in a fundamential social shift. Things such as further education for women or availability of contraception are, in some countries, not only illegal but considered to be a great moral crime against the natural order.

IanR: very few children of any ethnic group have trouble digesting lactose. "Lactose intolerance" should really be called "lactase non-persistance" because it's not present at birth; it's just that most people of non-European ancestry gradually stop producing lactase when they reach adulthood. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't have been drinking milk as kids; they could digest it perfectly when back when they were producing lactase.

Here is a update on the art teacher.