Most commercially and home grown produced figs are self-pollinating, only a few wild fig species require wasps to pollinate them. So most people will only ever see wasp-free figs.
Oh thank god.
I know commercial farming is usually terrible, but this bit just seems like a win
Mostly it’s commercial animal farming that is heinously immoral. The big problems with commercial crop farming is the change to landscape (and therefore ecosystem) and reduction of native species and diversity due to farming of one specific species. These can be mitigated (if humans cared), obviously the animal farming problems too, but the animal cruelty is way more evil, and harder to fix institutionally.
I’m pretty sure about these things, but I am not an expert on these specific matters. Never trust some rando as a source. Always do your own research. And even then be careful…… we live in some weird ass times
How can people not believe in basic evolution when we have created self-pollinating figs
This is why fig newtons taste like delicious hate
I use them when I need to channel the ghosts of 1000 angry wasps.
hey I think you might be allergic to fig newtons
No wonder God hates figs
Would this render figs off limits for vegans and vegetarians? 🤔
Vegetarian is fine, there is no flesh. Vegetarianism is typically a dietary restriction, rather than a philosophical one.
Vegan: it depends. Cultivating figs may be seen as expotation, like bee’s honey is; regardless of the insect’s actual life or wellbeing. Each individual person decides what counts as vegan.
I don’t see the point in this level of specificity, because by eating anything at all you consume fungal spores, tiny mites, microbes etc. Plants are also alive. So there is clearly a line where life is permittably consumed.
If ‘experiencing suffering’ is that line, insects do not seem capable of it, only responding to basic stimuli. I once watched a one trying to eat its own partially severed head, turning it in its front legs while its mouth parts rapidly twitched. It evidently had no comprehension.
No because it’s entirely voluntary on the wasps part
But could the wasp ever really choose not to enter the fig?
It was made for me! This is my fig!
Maybe “voluntary” isn’t the best word in the “free will” sense, but it clearly requires no coercion
Can vegans eat figs?
Most vegans do. The general idea is to avoid exploiting animals, but the wasps are living out their natural life cycle. There are a small number of people who do worry about preventing wild insect suffering but they’re not concerned particularly with figs.
Vegans eat other foods that use fertilizer. Fertilizers could contain meat or meat byproducts… So…
Fertilizers could contain meat
Can you provide an example? Sounds strange. Too expensive.
cow is made of meat.
cow eats grass.
cow has a shit.
said shit is collected to form manure.
this manure is an animal byproduct which the animal did not consent to you taking.
Same as bees and honey.
Im not vegan but thats what a vegan explained to me
also: bone and blood meal
My go-to at KFC.
Consent is needed to pick up animal shit now??
Do we have any theories as to what the cows were going to do with it?
Ok, evil humans extort shit from the cows without their consent. I never thought that vegans are that crazy.
Hi vegan here, stop talking shit about something you know nothing about. Veganism is not living just on air and water.
If there is a cow shitting there is no problem taking that shit and putting it on a field. The problem is when a industry - that is based on exploiting animals - profits of shit flooding our groundwater with nitrate. We want to reduce that huge industry in different ways:
Basic for every vegan: food based on plants not on animals.
how and why people choose to be vegan is as diverse as “being a meateater” is. Some people eat a cheeseburger a day some eat one piece of deer a year.
What I was doing most of my life is environmental veganism: Never bought anything animal related. If e.g. meat was actually thrown away otherwise I’d eat it as well.
Then there are health reasons. (Never digged to deep into that - I am damn healthy and happy with my diet)
And what you are talking about is ethical veganism: Ethical Vegans say there is no reason why humans are allowed to treat animals in that way and think animals are somewhat equal to humans. They would strongly oppose the use of shit of animals on fields if it is possible with less support of the harm the industry does.
Depending on the reason why people do it they often live it in a different way (and sometimes hate each other for their approach)
stop talking shit about something you know nothing about.
Isn’t this kind of how society works and why we are where we are?
You want me to provide examples of fertilizer? Sorry I’m not into shitposting.
Get off the internet and get back to work, Dad.
2nd paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer
However, starting in the 19th century…
Hasn’t XIX century started in your region yet? :)
Vegans in your country don’t like organic food? Blood/bone meal is still a very popular fertlilizer.
I think I heard recently that one of the mushrooms that is popular as a vegan meat substitute lives off of some sort of living creature like insects or something.
But realistically, it’s all the circle of life. Animal life is part of the circle. Probably all plants have consumed nutrients that came from an animal in some way.
Ethical vegans want to avoid suffering. If figs cause or experience suffering is a philosophical question.
I had a friend that didn’t eat figs for this reason.
Yeah I have a coworker who avoids certain varieties (many varieties don’t include wasps in the normal lifecycle)
ffs they won’t eat honey, and that’s only because you’re stealing the fruits of the bees’ labor. I would assume the International Vegan Council outright bans figs with extreme prejudice.
they won’t eat honey, and that’s only because you’re stealing the fruits of the bees’ labor
Not the only reason. For example, an infamous and common practice in the honey industry is to cut off the queen’s wings, ensuring the hive has no choice but to stay there and produce honey.
I’ve never met a vegan who won’t eat figs; figs’ relationship with fig wasps is symbiotic, and yes, excluding fruit on the basis that “eating the fruit of a pollinated plant is exploiting the pollinator” probably far oversteps the “practicable” part of veganism:
Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which 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; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
Would you eat honey from a natural hive without these practices?
Good question. I wouldn’t (we’re assuming casual foraging for fun and not a survival situation); it’s still not vegan, but it’d be arguably less unethical on a spectrum.
A con compared to the apiary is that these wild bees aren’t being artificially supplemented by e.g. sugar water; it’s live-or-die for them, and that’s their food. It’s not in me to take that away from them when I don’t have to.
If someone took like a teaspoon of honey (still the lifetime output of about a dozen bees) while giving the bees something greater in return, then I don’t think most vegans would think it’s inherently wrong*, but like any ethical framework, whenever you try to find contrived boundaries, it’s kind of like “okay, but why?” It’s sometimes engaging on the armchair but rarely in practice.
A huge pro compared to the apiary is avoiding, in addition to the physical mistreatment of the bees themselves, the perpetuation of the exploitation. If you one-and-done plunder a hive, that’s not vegan, but you’re not giving money to someone as a way of telling them “thanks, and keep doing this”.
* I’m making a hand-wavey assumption here that you can just do that without pissing off and killing a bunch of bees or smoking them out just so we can have perfectly ideal ethical conditions.
This is more in the “dead worms in the compost make their way into the vegetables we eat” wheelhouse than in the “lets steal these animals labor for their young, risking death and injury to the workers while doing so” wheelhouse
not if they have trypophobia
yeah
TIL figs aren’t vegan
I’m a vegan, although not super strict. But I knew some terror vegans who do not consider vigs vegan.
The definition of “vegan” differs. Like, I don’t like products that had a nervous system. So technically I could eat oysters. But some vegans consider oranges not to be vegan because there might be an animal product in the pesticides used on oranges. Some claim they only use plant based products, but they get mad when I ask them about fungi, as their cell structure looks more like an animal cell than a plant cell (I love to make terror vegans mad).
Being vegan means you buy products which fit your idea of being vegan.
And sadly for some it means you need to be a fucking asshole to anyone you meet.
Regarding your last paragraph: that’s unrelated. There are also lots of insufferably vocal meat eaters who feel personally attacked when someone else doesn’t religiously stuff themselves with meat every meal.
meat eaters who feel personally attacked when someone else doesn’t religiously stuff themselves with meat every meal.
Oh, do tell.
I live in Bavaria. There are multiple politicians who don’t get tired to performatively eat sausages and try to make laws that mandate calling oat milk “oat drink” and vegan burgers/schnitzel/… anything else. As if anyone would ever get confused by that. There’s a common joke that they should rename “scouring milk” to “scouring drink” otherwise people get confused!!!
But do they realize all atoms eventually cycle through the ecosystem?
I’m sure all carbon atoms were part of animal at some point. I guess your fake vegans are just molecular vegans and not atomic vegans.
Hahaha next time I meet one who is starting a discussion to fish (pun intended) for something to trigger on, I now have the perfect comeback 😎
“you’re just a molecular vegan, not an atomic vegan, you’re just a poser”
Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. It’s not just about diet but also leather jackets/zoo visits etc. It’s not like being part of an animal that imbues the individual molecules with some mystic energy that renders them off limits, it’s that 99.99% of the time that obtaining these molecules in sufficient quantities requires overstepping boundaries of consent if not outright murder/slavery.
But I would consider scavenged meat for instance vegan, I still wouldn’t because meat gives me the ick now, but I don’t see how it is contrary to animal liberation (provided it doesn’t disrupt other animals mourning rituals or something similar). Or rescued sheep still require shearing. It’s not as brutal as farmers shearing and obviously not done with the wool in mind but rather the sheep. So the sheep are typically shorn(?) sooner than enslaved sheep and not as close to the skin, making “vegan wool” quite a bit harder to work with, but I would consider socks made out of that wool vegan.
That is one definition of vegan, and you seem to be happy living by it. But others might have other definitions. A good chunk does not even share your motivation for being vegan, there are plenty of religious practices, dietary reasons, ecological concerns… That doesn’t diminish your definition of it, but that is something to keep in mind when talking about other people.
No this is what veganism is. Veganism goes back to the Vegan Society and it’s fight for the rights of non-human animals. Many people claim to be vegan without actually being vegan and I will not be diluting the definition. Veganism is at it’s core about animal rights. There are plenty of reasons to go with a plant-based diet. A plant-based diet is part of veganism, but they are very much not the same thing. If someone claims to be vegan but still goes to the zoo or buys pets they did not understand what veganism is.
Edit: here is the vegan societies definition
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which 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; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”
I’m just saying this specific fruit has a literal animal inside of it
All fruits have that, if you enhance your view enough. Put any fruit under a microscope and it’s crawling with creatures.
Where do we draw the line? Seems like it’s impossible not to eat an animal
Also depends on whether you consider fungi an animal of a plant. As their cell structure resembles more of animal cells than plant cells. And fungi are everywhere. Humans, animals and plants would all die if fungi would seize to exist. They are in our body, create our food and medicine, they are the cycle of life as they break down dead tissue, they feed plants and trees. The oldest living organism is a fungus. They are what keep us all alive, they are basically mother earth. And we eat that. Seeing The Last Of Us suddenly makes a lot of sense. Revenge of the fungi.
Idk isn’t that like saying all animal pollinated plants are not vegan?
Well, this one’s got a literal animal inside of it… Is all I’m saying
I guess it depends on if people think roadkill is vegan; the dead wasp is part of the life cycle of the wasp/fig symbiosis so its going to die well before humans intervene.
Imo the argument could be made that by clearing land for vegetables there’s a large reduction in habitable natural environments. This results in things dying that normally wouldn’t. Especially true when you consider pesticides.
So is the problem the dead bug in the fig or the dead bug outside, say, an apple?
I’ve only been vegan for eight years. I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never really researched it. I just don’t need animal products. But it seems like eating anything that was an animal or has an animal in it isn’t vegan
Fuck goose down
And I mean, where do we draw the line? There’s microscopic organisms that we kill all the time
Imo, don’t think about it too hard. I think it makes more sense to eat creatures based on a mix of survivorship curve and whether they are intelligent enough to need to be confined.
If you’re building infrastructure more to contain animals rather than keep other ones out, imo that’s the pivot point.
Idealized survivorship curves:
Type 1 and 2 are easy no’s. Type 3 is generally fine as long as its not like an adult turtle or octopus. Type 3 organisms are probably going to get eaten a lot and early in nature while its rare for the adults to get eaten.
This one doesn’t either, it’s just a ghost.
Eating ghosts is vegan
I’m a level five vegan. I don’t eat anything that Casts a shadow
They are most fruit require insect pollination, as long there is no forced labor or murder it’s still vegan
Depends on the vegan you’re talking to.
Wild figs may be but as soon as you’re cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture. Much like honey or milk, the fact you don’t eat the animal’s flesh might still defy the spirit of ‘no animal exploitation’. Most pollinators do not explicitly perish as part of pollination; figs are one of the foods vegans may disagree on.
The good news is that there are a small number of fig varieties that can be fertilised without the wasp (either by hand, or self-pollinating clones). In a lot of countries this is the variety that may be grown because importing wasps could be ecologically dangerous.
Wild figs may be but as soon as you’re cultivating fig varieties that require the fig wasp, you are artificially increasing the wasp population specifically to perish, in order to sustain human horticulture.
That’s still different to animal exploitation. Veganism are the consumption practices of people advocating for animal liberation. This is not contrary to that, “milk” and “honey” are produced by the animals for a specific reason, namely their young. Even if it were possible to obtain them without harming the animal (and there isn’t, both require animal death if they are to be produced in consumer quantities) there still is the problem of consent. It is clear that bees and cows under normal circumstances do not want to give away their milk/honey. The wasp however is already dead, it is not harmed by eating the fig and it’s consent is no longer part of the equation.
If the fig cultivation reaches a level where the wasps have to be kept under circumstances similar to the bees then yes I wouldn’t consider the figs that require these wasps to be vegan.
So vegans could eat unemployed animals that die of natural causes?
scavenging is considered yucky but I don’t see any reason to consider it unethical per se unless it disrupts other animals mourning rituals
Vegan can eat meat produced in labs.
Not completely true. There’s a tick which can make you allergic to animal cell structures, basically making you vegan. So lab grown meat would still be a no no. For me, I want to eat plant (and fungi) based products so I don’t want lab grown meat (although I would like to try it once). I think lab grown meat is amazing, because people who desperately want to eat meat can do so without feeding the fucked up meat industry. Less livestock means less chance on virus mutation, so less chance of pandemics. I think this is the most important reason to reduce global livestock.
Were you to try poisoning me to make me stop eating meat, I would eat fish, and birds
Birds and fish don’t have meat?
They don’t have the same sugars in their blood as mammals, the tick borne allergen that makes people allergic to meat only makes them allergic to mammal meat, and really only for a few years
I agree with you, but this fruit has a literal animal inside of it
See my comment here https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/19570004
Wait until you find out what fossil fuels are made of
Mostly plants and plankton?
Are zooplankton vegan?
BIG FIG WASP
Did your god know, insects grow, in my pome?
This post is informative, horrifying, and indeed very, very spoopy.
Its not 100% accurate. Some wasps get trapped, not all. And there exists a fig species that doesn’t need wasps
Damn, I hadn’t understood it as all figs needing wasps, but figured it was more the reverse of what you’re now saying where maybe some specific varieties had adapted to need them. I already was not a fan of figs, but this is definitely too spoopy for my tastes.
Yeah it changed my love of figs a bit. Fig Newtons…now with 25% less wasps.
They should have worked the wasp angle into their old “A cookie is just a cookie…” commercials. Kids already hated those things, this would have really made the brand stick heh
So that’s why god hates figs
This actually explains the infamous Fig Newton Debacle of ‘92, which my extended family is still divided over.
Haha yes… Die trash.
The only way to get food that doesn’t contain bugs and rat shit is to grow it indoors, in virtually hermetically sealed rooms.
Also, the more processed your food, the more material you don’t want it contains. Which is why I’m surprised that so many vegans are on the fake meat bandwagon. The fact that they eat so much processed food clearly shows the claim that they’re doing it for health is poorly thought out.
Which is why I’m surprised that so many vegans are on the fake meat bandwagon. The fact that they eat so much processed food clearly shows the claim that they’re doing it for health is poorly thought out.
This a fundamental misunderstanding of what veganism is, namely:
a philosophy and way of living which 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; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
A plant-based diet for health is normally a “whole foods plant-based diet”, for which a mountain of well-studied health benefits exist. But vegans who eat plant-based for the animals can have any level of care about their own health that they want just like any omnivore can; that part is a spectrum.
So, figs are not vegan?
Great. My stomach is now haunted by wasp ghosts. Thanks again 2026.
4 out of 5 doctors misdiagnose the cause of diarrhea because they refuse to believe in ghost wasps.
And the bitter pistachio nuts are bitter because you’re eating a dead worm that died inside the nut.
Always, always, always double check the pistachio before you eat it. Learned it the hard way and have spread the word ever since. People’s reactions are always the same shock horror expression when they realize what the bitter pistachios really are.
I didn’t read this.
If the nut looks slightly deformed and/or is dark in the shell and the nut inside is dark, it is not because it was roasted. It’s because there is a worm inside. There’s often a bit of web inside as well. That is not a part of the pistachio. That is the worm’s web.
I know. It is traumatic, but you know now and I’m glad that you do.
The only bad thing about realizing this about pistachios is that I have personally struggled to eat them since, and they used to be one of my favourite snacks. Hopefully, you will be more resilient than me.
I know. It is traumatic, but you know now and I’m glad that you do.
Well I for one, am not.
The only bad thing about realizing this about pistachios is that I have personally struggled to eat them since, and they used to be one of my favourite snacks. Hopefully, you will be more resilient than me.
You really didn’t have to share this and I would have gone on to continue enjoying them. Why? 😭
Gonna go stand in traffic now and hope the concussion deletes this fact.
