Talk:Veganism/Archive 15

Proper noun
I have to disagree with this edit I reverted. Even if it is a proper noun in some contexts(which I am not convinced of) it is surely not a proper noun throughout the article. You even changed quoted text. Please explain why you think this should be the case? HighInBC 13:59, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

In fact, a Vegan is often a proper noun for two reasons. 1. When "Veganism" is a special descriptive proper noun describing a group of sincerely held beliefs, practiced daily (a religion by definition and recognized now as such in some jurisdictions in the world). Veganism is also a lifestyle and a movement. Although Veganism is not an old religion, it still follows the English tradition of capitalizing religions. Examples: Christians follow Christianity, Jains follow Jainism, Buddhist follow Buddhism, Vegans follow Veganism. 2. When saying "Vegan" there are more reasons to be a proper noun and thus capitalized because the word "Vegan" is not only special descriptive proper noun of a person it is also and adherent of a group of sincerely held beliefs, practiced daily. Also Wikipedia is a encyclopedia that needs to be held to a higher standard of grammar and follow grammar rules even if you think capitalization rules are excessive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun http://grammarist.com/capitalization/ Please present your reasoning to why it is not a proper noun. When you wrote simply "I have to disagree" that is not informative and does not add anything to encyclopedia fact. If you do not present any substantial facts, my minor edit of grammar (not context) will be reinstated. 02:19, 5 May 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwesar (talk • contribs)


 * Sorry, where did you get the idea that it is a proper noun? The OED shows it in lowercase whereas a real proper noun like Canadian is shown in uppercase.


 * Even if it is a proper noun in some contexts it is certainly not a proper noun in every context. You altered quotes and titles. Can you show a source that this is a proper noun? HighInBC 02:44, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree with the undo of this edit and the comments by HighInBC. I'll ask the editor to also please provide reliable sources showing that veganism is a recognized religion. Meters (talk) 02:50, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * United States courts and European Union have begun stating that Veganism is a bona fide sincerely held belief and has same protections as a religion. OED doesn't follow their own website format not grammar (OED Examples: no periods at end of definitions, in some places VEGAN in all capital letters). the OED is a dictionary for definitions not grammar and is not an encyclopedia. It is a widely common mistake for Vegan and Veganism not being capitalized (as special descriptive proper nouns of a person and religion should be). I can live with mistaking Veganism as a simple noun; it is a minor edit after all and doesn't effect context. http://www.law360.com/articles/478582/hospital-settles-religious-bias-suit-over-veganism https://verdict.justia.com/2013/03/06/is-veganism-a-religion-under-anti-discrimination-law Qwesar (talk) 03:57, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Even on the Veganism Wikipedia, it states the religious grounds of Veganism. Qwesar (talk) 04:02, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The cited article states "a vegan may, depending on the evidence, have a legal ground for claiming that her veganism qualifies for the same protection as a sincerely held religious belief." That certainly does not support your contention that veganism is a religion (and hence should be capitalized). Amusingly, your cited source doesn't capitalize it either. Meters (talk) 04:07, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I think you should check out our policies on original research. It seems you are taking facts from sources and synthesizing them into conclusions they don't directly support. HighInBC 04:10, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Is Veganism a proper noun or a common noun? The differences? Grounds for proper noun: Veganism is a unique religion or organization and not a generalization. Grounds for common noun: general group of people in a general sense. Example: gods for multiple deities or God for a de facto deity. For Veganism there is only the de facto and no multiple generalizations of Veganism; the word Veganisms does not exist. There is only one Veganism so it can never be a generalization. Qwesar (talk) 04:34, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Qwesar did you read the policy on original research I linked to? You seem to again be explaining why you think it should be so rather than demonstrating the reliable sources think it is so. HighInBC 18:25, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Sorry,Wikipedia's rules are clear here:
 * MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia. So if you want to argue for capitalization, what you need to show is that most reliable sources capitalize it. And anyway
 * MOS:DOCTCAPS: Philosophies, theories, movements, doctrines, and systems of thought do not begin with a capital letter, unless the name derives from a proper name (like "Platonism"). FourViolas (talk) 13:29, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Intro section and definition
Hi Flyer22 Reborn,

Interesting point you in reverting the previous edit. The edit I have now made has been in a direct response to your observation:-

a) I have split the paragraph that contained a combination of info on definition and history b) The info in that paragraph on definition I have moved nearer the top. It seems more logical to have the definition further up c) I have added to the end of that paragraph the current definition by the Vegan Society d) I have also included that definition in the article main body

Your opinion please (and anyone else's)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.202.102.136 (talk) 02:42, 5 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Per what I argued, I don't like that order (the history content before defining the dietary terms). As for this and this, I still don't like that order. I don't see that "The Vegan Society now defines veganism as a way of living that seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose." is needed in the lead. SlimVirgin, your thoughts? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:36, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

History section
Surely the sub sections headed 'Counter culture food movement' and 'Into the mainstream' should be included under 'History'? Just because they are more recent history doesn't stop them being history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.202.106.15 (talk) 16:39, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Flyer reborn,

Can you help me understand please how the section on counter culture movement from the 1960s onward and into the mainstream from 2010 onwards aren't suitable for the history section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.203.210.5 (talk) 09:12, 8 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I think it has to do with the setup that SlimVirgin crafted. She split the content that way, with "Increasing interest" as the next main header. She seems to have done this from a logical standpoint about the flow. Because she wrote and crafted most of this article, I WP:Pinged her in the section you started above and again now. I don't feel strongly about that setup. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I also have reservations about the ==Increasing interest== heading. As the IP says, recent history is history; interest in veganism has often fluctuated throughout the past two millennia during which versions have been practiced, and it seems like WP:Recentism (and might be taken as WP:Activism) to emphasize the current uptick. To support a fundamental division between pre-1960s and post-1960s history, I'd want to see academic books on "veganism, 1960s-present" and "veganism before the 1960s"; instead, I'm seeing sources (e.g.) treat the '60s as a major event in a continuous history. FourViolas (talk) 21:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Took the matter to her talk page. If she doesn't object, then it seems you are completely free to rearrange the material. WP:Bold and all that. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:19, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Flyer22, thanks for leaving me a note. I arranged the article that way in part for aesthetic reasons to avoid a top-heavy history section, but also because there is clear continuity from the increased interest of the late 1970s (from consumers who didn't trust the food industry and from physicians interested in the health benefits), and the current perception of veganism as a minority concern but no longer a strange fringe thing. We can clearly trace the increased interest of the 2010s back to Diet for a Small Planet (1971), but not so much to the 1940s.

But if you don't like that arrangement, we could certainly make the "Countercultural food movement" section part of history, or rename history "Origins". SarahSV (talk) 03:47, 14 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Like I noted above, I don't really mind either way. The IP and FourViolas have objected to the current setup. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:27, 14 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I personally agree with that historiography, and I think there's some support for it in the sources, but it's nonobvious and somewhat oversimplified. Laura Wright's Vegan Studies Project (2015) opens with a chapter examining what she shows as significant backlash and ground-losing in the 2000s after the relative golden age of the '80s and '90s. (Although semi-primary, this could be a great source to add re: Martin's old concerns that the article ignores counter-vegan perspectives: it names and analyzes these cultural responses.)


 * In light of this up-and-down complication, I think it would be safer to leave out the ==Increasing interest== heading. It might be more WP:V to replace it with "increasing attention". FourViolas (talk) 05:39, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi folks,

Thanks for the assorted responses and also that they each clearly have constructive intent (such intent obviously reflects positively on everyone involved).

Please pardon me in that I am unable to ascertain what has been agreed here (if anything).

Hi FourViolas,

Please pardon me again. This remark from you:-


 * I personally agree with that historiography

What historiography is it exactly that you agree with?

Hi again everyone,

Can I again suggest that the structuring should be something like this:-

History 1.1	Strict vegetarians 1.2	Coining the term vegan (1944) 1.3	Countercultural food movement (1960s and onward) 1.4	Into the mainstream (2010s)

Demographics then goes in a new section below that. I suggest this format since:-

a) It follows wikipedia guidelines b) its simple (simple is so often the best way forward in my humble experience) c) if we don't agree on a structure like that then I bet anyone a coffee / beer / whiskey / smoothie of your choice that this current conversation will be repeated in future.

I of course welcome the benefit of everyone's boundless wisdom on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.202.32.181 (talk) 15:11, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

"Misuse"
Wikipedia edits must follow our core policies. Past discussion on this talk page has clearly found a consensus that the majority of reliable sources agree that "dietary veganism" (following a plant-based diet) is in fact a form of veganism: see Talk:Veganism/Sources for the dietary veganism distinction for evidence. Therefore, the unsourced additions made by you and a lot of anonymous users, claiming that certain people "misuse the term" veganism by using it to mean "plant-based diet" contradict our WP:Neutral point of view policy, which requires us to follow what the best sources say.

In addition, discussing these two actors at all, when they have had very little influence on vegan practices or ideas, violates the policy on giving undue weight to minor aspects. This material is unfortunately not suitable to be included. Sorry about this early disappointment, I encourage you to stick around to learn how the policies work and how to edit constructively. FourViolas (talk) 03:57, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

On land use
Regarding my edit on land use, which has already generated a couple of reverts and re-reverts, can I kindly ask why it's been removed from the page? There are three scientific studies that clearly support the sentence that I added, two of which were already cited in the page. It seems to me that the three main findings of those studies were correctly represented: (i) the vegan diet has the lowest absolute landuse, (ii) the vegan diet requires high quality croplands, (iii) other diets make a better use of the land overall, once one factors in that not all land available is high quality cropland. Why was point (iii) removed from the page? Let me point out that the title of one of the papers that were already cited in the page is "Diet for small planet may be most efficient if it includes dairy and a little meat". --Japs 88 (talk) 12:33, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Point ii is actually an assumption of the paper, not a result. The issue is explained in the last paragraph of section 2.3. It's also put more succinctly later in the paper: "The existing ratio of cultivated to perennial forage crops was used to set an upper bound on the area of cropland considered suitable for cultivated cropping." It notes in section 3.4 that the carrying capacity estimates are highly sensitive to this assumption, with all but the vegan model diet plateauing, meaning in essence that it's entirely responsible for the widely-reported result that other diets make better use of land - which is not exactly what the paper says, either. Better use of land is subjective - what we are really talking about is more use of land, and this is neither an environmental nor a sustainability issue (hence doesn't belong in this section), as the paper found that the vegan model diet could feed well over twice the US population, while other options made modest improvements by exploiting more low-quality land which the vegan model diet made no use of, by the study's assumptions. --Sammy1339 (talk) 13:20, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, I think there was only one revert? --Sammy1339 (talk) 13:30, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for the quick and precise reply.
 * First, I confused another revert with similar bites changed: you're right, only one revert.
 * Second, I saw you removed the reference about land use in the state of New York. Please notice that the only reference that claims that the vegan diet yields the lowest land use is limited to the state of New York, too (indeed it titles "Testing a complete-diet model for estimating the land resource requirements of food consumption and agricultural carrying capacity: The New York State example").
 * That said, in the study I cited, the assumption the authors make is not that the vegan diet requires high quality land (statement ii above). That statement is just a matter of fact: you can't cultivate crops on rocky/hilly terrain, although this might still be suitable for animals. The assumption they do make is on the fraction of high quality land over total productive land. Indeed, in sec. 2.3, they divide the available productive land into cropland and grazing land. In sec. 2.4.3, to model the available cropland, they add all the land used to feed humans and all the land currently cultivated to forage crops, thus obtaining an upper bound (i.e., an optimistic estimate) of the amount of high quality cropland fit to feed humans. In the USA, for which the authors crunched the numbers, this level, call it Q, is found to be Q=71%. This is the actual assumption.
 * As for the sensitivity of the results on this assumption, figure 5 comes to help. You can see that the vegan diet yields a better carrying capacity (call it C = people fed / land area) only for Q>90% ca. For Q=80% ca., the vegan diet yields a C equal to a diet with 20% calories intake from animal produce. For the conservative assumption that all lands used for forage could be converted to cropland (Q=71%), even a diet with 40% calories from meat yields a higher capacity than the vegan diet. Contrary to what you say, figure 5 shows that the claims are very robust with respect to their assumption: even if their estimate is off by 20%, i.e., if the real Q is actually 85% instead of 71%, the capacity of the vegan diet would still be more or less the same of a diet that sources 20% of its calories from meat. It may be that in the flat Netherlands you can reach the Q>90% required to make the vegan diet yield the highest C. At the same time, in places like Italy, Switzerland or France, where the orography makes large amounts of productive lands unsuitable for crops, the actual value of Q could be significantly lower than 71%, and make larger meat intakes even more favourable in terms of land capacity. Hope this clarifies the point. I'll wait for further comments before restoring my addition.--Japs 88 (talk) 16:24, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * To your second point, see table 1 from this study, showing that the vegan model diet used the least land per person.
 * As for sensitivity, it says that "Carrying capacity was shown to be highly sensitive to the starting assumptions about the proportion of land available for cultivated cropping." The estimate you call Q was deliberately conservative, as the authors assumed that current perennial cropland cannot be converted. ("Estimating the optimum combination of annual to perennial crops on U.S. cropland to control erosion and maintain adequate soil health lies beyond the scope of this paper. A baseline estimate of the limit on cultivated crops was made based on the current proportion of cropland under cultivation.") This assumption seems to be responsible for most or all of the effect, although I don't have any idea whether Q=92% is realistic. (That's the value at which the vegan diet outperforms the lactovegetarian diet.)
 * A reasonable summary would be that the vegan diet uses the least land of any option, and can feed many more people than necessary, but that there is some evidence that, in the United States, a lacto-vegetarian diet might support marginally more people, by maximally exploiting low quality land. Still, I wonder if that belongs in a section about environmentalism due to WP:WEIGHT. --Sammy1339 (talk) 16:46, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying that it is not true that the vegan diet uses less land overall, as you correctly point out from the table. The table also says that diet OMNI40 uses the same amount of cultivated cropland ("high quality" from above). Sensitivity means that the curves of fig.5 have a steep slope. However, this does not change the conclusion that diets LAC, OVO, OMNI20 and OMNI40 yield a higher capacity where it matters, i.e., for Q=0.71. Based on the paper saying that "the existing ratio of cultivated to perennial forage crops was used to set an upper bound on the area of cropland considered suitable for cultivated cropping", I understand that Q=0.71 is not conservative, as you state, but optimistic. They considered all the land currently used for perennial forage crops as "suitable for cultivated cropping". In any case, as I said above, let us assume that there is a 20% relative error on the value of Q: the result that other diets, including omnivore diets, yield a higher capacity does not change. This is what in science is called robustness. Finally, the increased capacity over the vegan diet is not marginal (almost 10% for LAC, almost 5% for OMNI20). I think writing about the reduced land use without also talking about the type of land needed and about capacity would be like cherry-picking the aspects of the study that "look good" on this page, trying to hide the rest under the carpet.Japs 88 (talk) 20:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I think you have it backwards: they considered all the land currently used for perennial forage crops as unsuitable for cultivated cropping, and in fact, they cite earlier work which estimated the proportion of cropland actually used for perennial forages as low as 20%, but their analysis uses a more conservative figure of about 30%. In any event, it has to be understood that this is largely irrelevant to environmentalism, as the goal of environmentalists, as explicitly noted in section 1.2 of the paper, is not to use the most possible land or to produce the largest possible amounts of excess food. Note that the carrying capacity is well over twice the population; a vegan food system would not hit the limit of cultivated cropland in the foreseeable future. --Sammy1339 (talk) 21:16, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to pretend to have followed all the details of that, but I'm getting a strong sense that this information does not meet the standard of WP:PRIMARY: straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. Especially in light of concerns about "cherry-picking", I believe we should wait to integrate this material until an expert secondary source provides an expert summary properly accounting for the plausibility of different "Q"s, the significance of carrying capacity as a measure of environmental sustainability, the robustness of the studies' methodology, and the paper's appropriate WP:WEIGHT.
 * The recent study all but says as much: section 4.3 notes that essential details on variability are absent or unquantified, writes that "the results are perhaps best treated as a foundation for further hypothesis testing," and is confident only in the extremely minimal hypothesis that "dietary choices are important." That doesn't seem adequate for an assertion of fact in an encyclopedia.
 * This is especially true in light of the WP:WEIGHT of this 2015 systematic review, whose section 3.3 draws a different conclusion. Recall that primary sources should not be used to contradict the conclusions of secondary sources, unless the primary source itself directly makes such a claim, and this paper doesn't mention Hallstrom et al. FourViolas (talk) 21:30, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

New book
I just read a review of the following book, and was impressed with the length and depth of the research that went into it:


 * Vegan Betrayal: Love, Lies, and Hunger in a Plants-Only World

-- Softlavender (talk) 07:17, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Looks very interesting, but I don't think it will pass muster as a source. As a sociological/ethnographic commentary on the vegan community, it would have to pass WP:SCHOLARSHIP; so far it has zero citations in academic literature, so that's out. (Compare    .) Same for its ethical claims (per Amazon, it demonstrates "Why the ethical argument does not hold up under close examination of modern industrial plant agriculture"); to show WP:DUE, we'd need philosophy papers and books by animal ethicists taking the author's argument seriously.


 * The health claims, which seem to take up much of the book, are unusable under WP:MEDRS. This is a pop-sci book with an agenda, not a recent Medline-indexed review. For what it's worth, Harriet A. Hall at Science-Based Medicine gave the book a mixed review, writing that the author's analysis is often "plausible", but at other times "goes off the rails": quoting alarmist and unreliable sources, and making misguided and unsupported claims. FourViolas (talk) 13:45, 25 September 2016 (UTC)