I'm now a vegetarian!!!

[Kungfuzed]

What about eggs and milk? No harm in eating that right? What about creatures that can't feel pain like insects or worms or seafood?

 

[Hema]

What about creatures that can't feel pain like insects or worms or seafood?

Hi Kungfuzed. They do feel pain. We might not hear them scream but they still feel pain.

 

[Kungfuzed]

I know when I eat a salad, even if it's a huge bowl of it, an hour later I feel like I'm starving. If I were a vegetarian I'd probably have to eat a full meal every two hours. I've actually been considering giving it a try, only because I need to loose weight and my pet iguana is so slim and muscular from eating nothing but greens.

 

[Hema]

I know when I eat a salad, even if it's a huge bowl of it, an hour later I feel like I'm starving. If I were a vegetarian I'd probably have to eat a full meal every two hours. I've actually been considering giving it a try, only because I need to loose weight and my pet iguana is so slim and muscular from eating nothing but greens.

Hyuk hyuk. Cute story about the iguana. I also starve when I eat a salad. That's because it's easily digested (which is good though). There are other more filling things like whole wheat bread, rice and beans, stir-fried veggies/steamed veggies, mashed potatoes etc. If you still get hungry during the day you can eat fruit. Apparently, we're supposed to be eating about 5 serving of fruits per day. (which I don't do and my dad is always talking about it )

 

[Pagaal~Mexican18]

The videos simply don't make an impression on me. Have you ever seen the way a lion rips its prey apart? Or a bear? Or a bunch of Hyenas? Killing is savage. Getting food is savage. Vegetarians prefer killing plants because plants don't have "feelings". Its a well-intended choice I suppose, I just don't appreciate the difference.

You dont have to though, vegetarians make the choice themselves. except for me of course, i have to eat meat, the iron tablets dont supply my blood with enough iron, its a personal choice wheather to eat meat or not to eat meat.

 

[Fluffy]

Heya darkpenguin,
I am happy to hear of your decision to become veggie . I'm not very interested in food so the change was pretty easy for me but I found one of the easiest things to fall into was having a very narrow diet. Even if you can't manage a proper daily diet (I know I can't) make sure you vary what you eat over the course of a week so that you don't miss anything important.

Also you have to be careful since some non-veggie items can be unexpected. Cheese Doritos and those extra strong mints that melt in your mouth (can't remember the name lol) are off limits if you want to be extra strict.

To others,
Not all vegetarians are vegetarians because of cruelty to animals. It is certainly unusual to find a vegetarian advocate who focuses entirely on this aspect and so it is unfair to characterise vegetarianism, in the vast majority of cases, as a reaction to animal cruelty.

Arguments for vegetarianism can be:
Religious & Cultural
Health related
Environmental
Economical
Psychological
and last but not least, Ethical (which may or may not involve animal cruelty)

 

[Radio Frequency X]

Hyuk hyuk. Cute story about the iguana. I also starve when I eat a salad. That's because it's easily digested (which is good though). There are other more filling things like whole wheat bread, rice and beans, stir-fried veggies/steamed veggies, mashed potatoes etc. If you still get hungry during the day you can eat fruit. Apparently, we're supposed to be eating about 5 serving of fruits per day. (which I don't do and my dad is always talking about it )

I drink at least that much fruit. Bolthouse products. They are expensive, but they're great for you. I especially love the blueberry puree which has nearly every B vitamin, plus 8 grams of fiber per 8ounce glass. Its all natural and unlike a lot of healthy drinks, it really tastes great. But, for $3.99 a bottle, it better!

 

[Quoth The Raven]

Exactly!!! Our bodies are even designed differently. See my previous post.



In addition, predators such as lions naturally salivate when they see their prey walking by. We don't salivate when we say a live lamb walking by. Most of us will say, "Oh how cute!" If you give a little child an apple and a rabbit, the child will eat the apple and play with the rabbit. A lion has claws designed to rip an animal's flesh and fangs designed to tear apart the meat apart. Of course all the animals who feast on other animals eat the meat raw. Human's are the only species who kill the animals with weapons and must cook the meat before it is eaten. So what about prehistoric people? They could not have eaten meat before fire was discoverd. Unless they ate it raw. I don't think that there are many people who will salivate at the sight of raw bloody flesh. Unless you're a vampire of course.

Do you drool at the sight of market gardens? No? Thought not.
OK, let's rehash this particular thing AGAIN. People are biologically omnivores. We're not carnivores, nor are we herbivores. We're opportunistic feeders and will eat a little bit of everything. Including meat if we can get it.
Our intelligence and problem solving skills ensure we can get a lot of it. We don't need claws, we have tools. Just because modern man likes his meat medium rare with a mushroom sauce doesn't mean that no-one ever in the prehistory of the humanity and their near ancestors ate raw meat.
Have a look at what chimps eat. They'll even occasionally hunt and eat small animals, but other than that, insects constitute meat too. The modern diet is too heavily weighted in the direction of meat for the most part, but this whole business of how we're not biologically designed to eat meat is probably the most tedious part of the anti meat debate. It's tedious because it's tripe.
Don't eat meat for reasons of compassion or a moral choice, or any and all of the reasons Fluffy just listed...I'm all for that, I appluad it even, but don't try and back it with haphazard and misleading biology. It's unecessary and frankly irksome.

 

[MaddLlama]

If we weren't meant to eat meat at all, then we wouldn't need protein for our bodies to function properly. Sure, some plant sources have protein, but think thousands of years ago when our bodies still needed a good amount of protein, and there were no "guides for vegetarian living". Animal products and beans are the only real sources for protein.

 

[Pagaal~Mexican18]

who doesnt like beans, i love beans!

 

[Hema]

Do you drool at the sight of market gardens? No? Thought not.
OK, let's rehash this particular thing AGAIN. People are biologically omnivores. We're not carnivores, nor are we herbivores. We're opportunistic feeders and will eat a little bit of everything. Including meat if we can get it.
Our intelligence and problem solving skills ensure we can get a lot of it. We don't need claws, we have tools. Just because modern man likes his meat medium rare with a mushroom sauce doesn't mean that no-one ever in the prehistory of the humanity and their near ancestors ate raw meat.
Have a look at what chimps eat. They'll even occasionally hunt and eat small animals, but other than that, insects constitute meat too. The modern diet is too heavily weighted in the direction of meat for the most part, but this whole business of how we're not biologically designed to eat meat is probably the most tedious part of the anti meat debate. It's tedious because it's tripe.
Don't eat meat for reasons of compassion or a moral choice...I'm all for that, I appluad it even, but don't try and back it with haphazard and misleading biology.

I drool at the sight of raw veggies. I love to see a fresh salad. I have drooled at the sight of tomatoes in my dad's kitchen garden once. Thank you for respecting our moral choice but don't tell me that I can't back it up with biology. If it doesn't make sense to you it makes sense to me. I'm not a chimp. I'm a human being and no, I don't think we evolved from chimps. Human beings do however, have more in common with herbivores. Apart from my previous points, it should also be noted that the enzymes in our saliva that start breaking down food in our mouths and the early part of the digestive tract are of a low acidity level and in alignment with a plant based diet. Humans are the only species on earth who have no idea what their ideal diet is, so we all have free choice. No one is forcing you to stop eating meat. These are just my reasons why vegetarianism makes more sense to me.

 

[Fluffy]

Heya Maddllama,
The ability to eat meat is not indicative of a reliance on protein. Protein is required to produce DNA and so all living organisms are reliant on protein. Herbivores get their protein from the cell walls of plants which carnivores are unable to break down. Humans similarly lack the digestive systems necessary to access this source of protein and so, as you say, we are reliant on meat for protein. That does not make the conclusion "If we weren't meant to eat meat at all, then we wouldn't need protein for our bodies to function properly." valid.

 

[Jaymes]

I don't think it's quite as simple as that. After all, if no one ate meat then none of those animals killed would have ever existed in the first place, and I'm guessing that for at least some aspects of their lives most weren't experiencing undue suffering or anguish.

I have been into factory farms. I can tell you that if I was one of these animals shoved into overcrowded cages and pens I would not want to ever have been alive.

So it's a little more complex then meat eating = bad.

Of course. I can live with people eating meat if animals are humanely slaughtered. I don't particularly like it, but I'm not going to argue with someone trying to practice a bit of compassion.

Indeed, under certain circumstances one could theoretically hold and maintain the argument that eating meat is in fact the more compassionate option, should the positive experiences outweigh the negative over the entirety of the average animal's life. (As, after all, the average animal in question would have experienced nothing had it not been destined to be killed for human consumption)

I think you'd have a different view if you'd ever seen chickens in cages so small they can't turn around. Chickens that become so agitated they peck at their neighbors given half a chance. Chickens with absolutely no protection from feces falling down from the cages above them. Chickens that stand on wire at an angle for so long that their feet become disfigured and warped.

And this isn't something I'm pulling off a PETA site. This is something I have seen from going in factory farms and seeing chickens in trucks (and falling off them, only to get run over) every day.

 

[Jaymes]

But do you think that the alternative doesn't involve death and suffering? You have the use of pesticides and fertilizers, the clearing of land for farming, draining of wetlands, loss of natural variance in the environment, meaning reductions of foodstuffs and habitats. Just because consuming only vegetables doesn't directly harm animals doesn't mean that it doesn't cause a great deal of harm indirectly. Of course you could advocate a return to hunter gatherer lifestyle, but then you'd pretty much have to eat meat. There really is no way, short of suicide, to avoid harming animals.

James

At first I was under the delusion when I first stopped eating meat that my actions resulted in no death ever. I know now that that's not the case. However, if given a choice between causing bugs to suffer and causing something with a complex nervous system to suffer, I'm gonna choose the bugs.

Besides, you're deluding yourself if you think the same things don't go into feeding the animals grains and whatnot. Only the end result with it is that you also cause unnecessary suffering with yet another animal.

 

[Jaymes]

I know when I eat a salad, even if it's a huge bowl of it, an hour later I feel like I'm starving. If I were a vegetarian I'd probably have to eat a full meal every two hours. I've actually been considering giving it a try, only because I need to loose weight and my pet iguana is so slim and muscular from eating nothing but greens.

I hear you on the salads. Personally I can't stand them. :cover: I like to have something more substantial with my veggies than lettuce.

 

[MaddLlama]

Heya Maddllama,
The ability to eat meat is not indicative of a reliance on protein. Protein is required to produce DNA and so all living organisms are reliant on protein. Herbivores get their protein from the cell walls of plants which carnivores are unable to break down. Humans similarly lack the digestive systems necessary to access this source of protein and so, as you say, we are reliant on meat for protein. That does not make the conclusion "If we weren't meant to eat meat at all, then we wouldn't need protein for our bodies to function properly." valid.

We are reliant on specific types of protein that our bodies can't produce, and we have to get that protein from food. All beings use protein, yes, but not all protein is created equal. If we were meant to be herbivores, then we would need less of certain types of protein to function. You can live only on legume protien, yes, but I still say that if we weren't meant to eat meat, or digestive composition would be different.

 

[Hema]

We can get adequate protein from legumes and veggies. People think that they need a lot of protein but it's not so. Too much protein causes kidney stones, arthritis etc. Excess protein doesn't digest well and it rots thus forming uric acid (if I remember correctly). Even vegetarians suffer from these conditions because they wrongly assume that they are not getting enough protein and so they eat lots of peas and beans and end up with too much protein.

 

[Kungfuzed]

This kind of reminds me of the gruesome abortion videos they showed us in high school sex ed class, probably to scare us into conservatives. I certainly don't want anything to suffer, but almost every living thing that can feel pain will be suffering when they die. We've also got millions of years of evolution to thank for our omnivorous digestive system. Perhaps today, at least in most countries, meat isn't really needed so much for food. It will be a very long time to weed out that desire though. I don't salivate at the sight of a cow, but I do salivate at the smell of a burger or steak on a grill.

 

[Fluffy]

Heya MaddLlama,
I am unsure about your choice of wording (specifically "meant") but I do not disagree that humans are adapted to get their proteins from meat. I merely disagree that "If we weren't meant to eat meat at all, then we wouldn't need protein for our bodies to function properly." since cows and rabbits, for example, require exactly the same proteins but get it from plant cell walls instead since they are adapted to do so. We could have evolved with four stomachs. We would still require the same protein but we just wouldn't get it from meat.

We are not carnivores but omnivores and so whilst we are able to get protein from meat, we are also able to get it entirely from vegetation as well. We are not as efficient in getting it from vegetation as are rabbits and cows but then we aren't as efficient in getting it from meat as are lions and aligators. Being omnivores, we couldn't be expected to.

Heya Kungfuzed,
I salivate at the sight and smell of cooked meat as well. I think that you will find that most vegetarians enjoy the taste and smell of meat as much as anyone. Afterall, we do have substitutes for some sorts of meat that are near indistinguishable from the real thing (not there yet with burgers and bacon, however). Weeding out the desire for meat is therefore not a requirement for vegetarianism and doesn't seem to be a common motivation either.

 

[MaddLlama]

We can get adequate protein from legumes and veggies. People think that they need a lot of protein but it's not so. Too much protein causes kidney stones, arthritis etc. Excess protein doesn't digest well and it rots thus forming uric acid (if I remember correctly). Even vegetarians suffer from these conditions because they wrongly assume that they are not getting enough protein and so they eat lots of peas and beans and end up with too much protein.

Yes, we can get protein from sources other than meat and animal products, but it doesn't change the fact that humans are not herbivores. One can choose to only eat vegetables and grains, but that doesn't mean that humans are not biologically meant to eat meat.