As a ~7 year vegan, I eat a fair number of substitutes. As others have said, I don't do it for my health or because I don't like the taste of meat.
That said, in line with the article, when I was in college, I had the Maddox "For every animal you don't eat, I'm going to eat three" image blown up as a poster on my dorm door. I had a "PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals" t-shirt that I wore around. My aim was to upset the vegetarians, and I made fun of them whenever I saw a window. I can't speak for others' motivations, but the fact that there was a group of people living a lifestyle that I thought was borderline impossible cast inherent doubt and judgment on my own choices. Having to confront the fact that they might be right led to a lot of unresolved cognitive dissonance and anger.
If you'd have told me that ~20 years later I'd be vegan, married to another vegan, and raising a child on an entirely plant-based diet, I'd have laughed in your face.
Isn't it so often the case that those so staunchly "anti-gay" are, in fact, in the closet themselves? And those so in favour of censorship are likely the most debauched?
People who don't care don't care. You cared. So I think going veggie/vegan was inevitable, unless, perhaps, you were just a genuine asshole like Bourdain. Most people aren't assholes, though.
How's the kid doing? (Asking as a vegan of about 16 years, and my SO is vegetarian about as long. We don't have kids though.)
My understanding (possibly a decade or more out of date... been a while since I last did any real research on the topic) was that vegetarianism was well-tested and easily made healthy, but veganism is still kinda experimental in terms of its long-term effects, especially for newborns and young children. I think the uncertainties were especially focused on bone and teeth development & maintenance.
Have you noticed anything positive or negative? Do their check-ups come back OK?
Hey, thanks for asking! Kid is almost 4 now and doing great. She eats a pretty varied diet, fortunately-- if she were picky, I expect we'd have had to have made some changes early. We made the call after consulting with her pediatrician and a dietician, both of whom were on board. All check ups have gone well, and she's been ahead on all of her milestones. She's never had any clinical or lab evidence of any deficiencies. I'm a physician myself, and I take care to watch out for anything concerning. There's a reasonable body of literature out there now supporting the safety of a well-implemented plant-based diet in kids. We actively supplement B12 and DHA/EPA.
I call her diet plant-based rather than vegan, as she's not old enough to make the ethical calls herself, but it's been interesting watching as she notices the difference between our diet and others and begins to ask questions and comment on it. As she gets older and spends more time at friends' houses, we'll probably ask that parents/school/etc. not serve her meat, but we're not going to be militant about eggs or dairy. As she gets older and can make more of her own choices, she'll make her own calls on all fronts outside the house. As of yet, she's asked about other people's omni food, but she's always turned it down when offered. We've been careful to specify that these are our own personal choices and have encouraged her to start thinking about where she stands on them herself. We're curious to see how things go from here.
I left tech ~6 years ago to pursue medical school. I'll be graduating and starting residency soon. A significant number of my classmates express regret for choosing medicine, and a lot of them fantasize about pursuing a career in tech, instead. I feel pretty well inoculated against this, having had a varied life and a collection of very different work experiences before med school.
I'm happy with my choice. My work still involves the computer, but I certainly don't spend most of my time on it. I get to interact with a wide variety of people, and sometimes I can make their days and lives a little better. My work is challenging and involves a lot of thinking and dealing with imperfect information. If I want to fold in skills gained from tech work in the future, there is no shortage of opportunities. Leaving tech for medicine was about the worst financial decision I could have made, but I would absolutely do it again. It's been a long road, but it was the right decision, I think.
I've been wrestling with this decision for a couple years now. I've slowly knocked off remaining pre-reqs, but haven't fully dived in - which would be leaving my job and becoming an MA or ED tech and doing dedicated MCAT studying.
I work for a tech company that you and your fellow classmates have no doubt used during medical school.
The massive financial hit is one of the big reasons I haven't made the jump. It doesn't feel fair to my wife to uproot our life. I always say if I won the lottery, I'd go to medical school.
Congrats on graduating and matching! I hope residency treats you well.
Great hearing from you! I think you're taking a wise approach. I inverted things from the way that you did them-- I spent a year studying for the MCAT alongside work (had taken all the prereqs 10+ years earlier as a part of my degree). I used MCAT prep as a litmus test for my seriousness about the whole thing, and after it went well I quit my job to stack up post-bac courses and tick the various remaining application boxes.
It's funny that you say that about the lottery-- my wife and I were unsatisfied in our careers and were very focused on financial independence/early retirement and had set a pretty aggressive retirement date. As we were each thinking through what we would do on the other side of retiring, I realized I'd probably make the run at med school that I'd been considering for a long time. At that point, it stopped making sense to wait.
There's no question that it's a pretty significant upheaval. Fortunately, my wife has been very supportive throughout and even encouraged me at several points to make the jump. We had to move across the country, and we've had a kid in the process. Timing with COVID ended up working out well, as we don't really have the feeling of lost time and opportunity that others seem to.
Good luck in making your decisions from here-- it sounds like you've been thoughtful and intentional about the moves that you've made, and I hope you figure out what's best for you and your wife.
I have been considering this, when I think about what I would do if I had freedom to do anything. The commitment is obviously daunting, but I am considering dipping my toes in some pre-reqs and MCAT to see how serious I would be about it.
I'm 29 now, just curious how that matches up to your timeline? Were there a good number of older students in your classes as well? Cheers and congrats on almost finishing!
Thank you! It's definitely worth dipping your toes, I'd say. I made the call to try it at 29 and matriculated at 32. There's one person in my class who is a decade older than me, another my age, and several who were in their late 20s when we started. The average age of med students is slowly climbing, and there are plenty of nontraditional students out there. I wish you success regardless of what you decide!
Not here to proselytize about your lifestyle choices, and I've certainly enjoyed my fair share of smoking and drinking myself over the years. That said, as someone who works daily with patients whose health has been destroyed by excessive drinking or pretty much any level of smoking, it's always been striking to me how surprised people tend to be by the results.
A lot of people performing the calculus of "eh, what's five to ten years off the end of my life as long as I'm enjoying it now" seem to think it works neatly like that-- they'll die earlier from cancer or a heart attack, and that's it. I'm struck by how often they are surprised and upset by the fact that instead of that, they're living the last 30 years of their lives with irreversible heart, lung, liver, and vascular issues that leave them unable to do the things they've enjoyed outside of smoking and drinking. Just a thought.
The problem with the people you are talking about is that they didn't cut back as soon as they started to have minor medical problems. Having 4 drinks a day for a couple years in your 30s doesn't cause permanent liver damage that will kill you. But continuing to have 4 drinks a day AFTER being told that you are overweight and have elevated blood test results due to drinking can kill you.
This becomes even more important as you age. Someone who starts smoking heavily in their 60s is far more likely to get a blood clot than someone in their 20s
I fully understand what you're saying, but it's somewhat skew to the point I'm trying to make. The people I'm talking about are the ones who have already baked health effects of their habits into their calculus and claim to acknowledge them. For someone who has already bought into the idea that their smoking or drinking will shorten their lives, an elevated BP reading, finding themselves having trouble taking more than one flight of stairs, or even having some chest or leg pain when they're walking around are unlikely to be major wake-up calls. My point is that people may know the end result, but they generally don't have a sense of what the path to that result looks like and underestimate its effects.
I think that's assuming a lot about people to be able to quit cold turkey and being able to adequately identity the first sign of health issues. They've been dealing with health issues from their choices this whole time - if you're smoking you have a cough and your hands and teeth are yellowing, if you drink you wake up feeling like crap, so drawing the line at "as soon as they started to have minor medical problems" isn't really clear-cut. When is it a few extra pounds and when is it a beer gut?
This person is right that hospitals, or health care systems in general should be working on this. It's more complicated than simply not helping people who won't help themselves. The difficulty is that no one knows the best, most effective systems or approaches for doing this, and emergency medicine resources are stretched very thin here in the United States. Emergency departments were designed for the stabilization of life threats, but in our modern collapsing medical system, limiting their scope to this falls short of community needs. There are many people whose only contact with the medical system will be the ED, and finding ways to treat and integrate them into more sustainable programs should be a goal. There are promising advancements being made, however, in initiating standard of care treatments in emergency department settings. On the opioid front, we can start suboxone in the ED, which has proven a pretty effective method of stabilizing people and increasing their participation in treatment down the road. (1)
As someone who is working on this, I don't think it's unfair for people who aren't experts in the field to recognize and call out the fact that something should be done differently. The experts agree, and many of us are trying to figure out a better path forward.
Yep, pain at the infusion site is an incredibly common complaint with potassium IV. The person you replied to is talking confidently outside of their expertise.
It's fascinating to me that everywhere that I've traveled and lived in South America (including Colombia), people seem to have this narrative about the locals that they'll "just shoot you and go through your pockets after." I've not seen any evidence that it's based in anything except media-cultivated fear of their own culture. I'm not used to hearing it said about the US, but with the constant pushes here to keep us afraid and willing to give up civil liberties, it makes sense that I'd run into it one day.
I've not really encountered the idea that it's unnatural exploitation, to be honest, and I completely agree with your point there. The core ethical argument that I generally see presented for veganism is that once you've advanced past the point of requiring animal products to live a healthy life, consuming them becomes entirely a matter of convenience, taste, and preference. The argument follows, then, that it may not be ethical to subject animals to the realities of modern husbandry simply on account of these reasons.
The question of whether abuse is inherent is largely academic at this point. The fact of the matter is that almost all of the animal products we consume are the result of optimized industrial processes that result in shortened, low-quality lives for those put through them. Whether an animal could, under the right circumstances, be humanely raised for resource extraction or slaughter doesn't really apply in modern consumption.
Whoa, I'm an ethical vegan and pretty steeped in theory, and I've never encountered this wing before. I doubt I'll agree with them, but I'd be curious to read if you have anything you can link or cite.
That said, in line with the article, when I was in college, I had the Maddox "For every animal you don't eat, I'm going to eat three" image blown up as a poster on my dorm door. I had a "PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals" t-shirt that I wore around. My aim was to upset the vegetarians, and I made fun of them whenever I saw a window. I can't speak for others' motivations, but the fact that there was a group of people living a lifestyle that I thought was borderline impossible cast inherent doubt and judgment on my own choices. Having to confront the fact that they might be right led to a lot of unresolved cognitive dissonance and anger.
If you'd have told me that ~20 years later I'd be vegan, married to another vegan, and raising a child on an entirely plant-based diet, I'd have laughed in your face.