Vegetarianism. How do you look at it ?

[Altfish]

View attachment 44428

It is a similar to the anti-abortion arguments... find the most appalling picture you can and suggest it is widespread. IT IS NOT

 

[Valjean]

Agreed, usually but sometimes a blockage can cause a build up.

I fear the implication was to put me off eating meat. She had as much chance of getting me to give up breathing

Excepting a short bout of constipation, a blockage causing a backup is a serious medical issue than will often require surgery.

Q: Why would you be so reluctant to adopt a vegetarian diet?

I ignore long answers (no kid...) they actually hurt so i give them a wide birth

But bumper-sticker replies can rarely give an adequate consideration to most serious issues.

 

[ChristineM]

Excepting a short bout of constipation, a blockage causing a backup is a serious medical issue than will often require surgery.

Q: Why would you be so reluctant to adopt a vegetarian diet?

Yes it is serious but it happens

Why should i adopt a vegetarian diet, i want to enjoy this life including the food i eat.

 

[Valjean]

Why not eat the best of both worlds? Meat AND vegetables?

Because there are other factors to consider -- ethical, environmental, &c?

9 Reasons Why Eating Meat Is Good For Health[/QUOTE]
This is a superficial and misleading article. It has numerous issues. I could go into some of them if you really don't see it.

 

[Valjean]

Why should i adopt a vegetarian diet,

I'm sure you've heard some of the ethical, economic and environmental issues.

i want to enjoy this life including the food i eat.

Vegetarians can't enjoy their food?

 

[Kenny]

Because there are other factors to consider -- ethical, environmental, &c?

9 Reasons Why Eating Meat Is Good For Health

This is a superficial and misleading article. It has numerous issues. I could go into some of them if you really don't see it.[/QUOTE]

I would have more of an ethical problem with aborting babies than eating ground beef.

As far as eating meat... you have people on both sides of the fence. Much of that site was supported by footnotes of where the information can be found.

 

[Secret Chief]

It is a similar to the anti-abortion arguments... find the most appalling picture you can and suggest it is widespread. IT IS NOT

I disagree. That is clearly just some standard restraining apparatus, as above.

"Appalling" would be an entirely different photo.

 

[Secret Chief]

I went vegetarian as a child, against my parent's wishes. I actually was punished... They eventually caved, and my mom declared she would no longer cook for me. Best thing she ever did. I learned to cook early, and I *loved* it.

I didn't do it for my health; I baked a lot of cakes. Ate a lot of noodles. Just couldn't live with myself when I was eating meat...

I have made my peace with my parents on most things, but I sometimes still ask them why they forced me to eat it for so long. I was obviously distraught, and would sit at the table and cry... why would you do that to a kid? It went on for so long, it wasn't a phase... Meh.



Want to pull my finger?

When I told my mother I think she thought I'd be dead in a week.

 

[ChristineM]

I'm sure you've heard some of the ethical, economic and environmental issues. Vegetarians can't enjoy their food?

Yes i have heard, my daughter bombards us all with them. However, besides taste there are many other factors. Various health benefits that vegetarians tend to poopoo.

My eldest daughter is vegi, i cook both meat and meat free. However a couple of times a week we all eat meat free. Sure vegetarians can enjoy their food, but i do not enjoy it as much a a meal with meat.

 

[Secret Chief]

Very few actually need to. Those supplements are taken either from choice or because people choose to eat bad diets, not because the diet available to them is intrinsically deficient - which a lot of vegan diets are.

I recently read people in northern climates (eg UK) have a tendency to be deficient in D through the winter months, irrespective of diet.

eg -
Vitamin D deficiency during winter

 

[Valjean]

There is evidence that points to true carnivores having very short digestive tracts in order to minimize the time that the meat substances they consume stay within their bodies. Vegetarian/vegan animals, on the other hand, have much longer digestive tracts, because it matters very little how long the substances stay in your body, and there is real benefit to being able to leech nutrients off of those substances (and even the bacteria doing the work on them) for a longer period of time. I believe it was mice that have a second pathway that sends some of the fecal matter back through a type of secondary processing, so that vitamin B12 can be absorbed from the materials that the bacteria in their gut have already begun breaking down.

Carnivores have short digestive tracts because they don't need anything longer. With no cell walls to break down or cellulose to process, digestion of meat is pretty quick and easy.

 

[Secret Chief]

Only in America.

Not so, according to my partner (and her female friends).

 

[Secret Chief]

Yes i have heard, my daughter bombards us all with them. However, besides taste there are many other factors. Various health benefits that vegetarians tend to poopoo.

My eldest daughter is vegi, i cook both meat and meat free. However a couple of times a week we all eat meat free. Sure vegetarians can enjoy their food, but i do not enjoy it as much a a meal with meat.

Your daughter should give up!

 

[JustGeorge]

When I told my mother I think she thought I'd be dead in a week.

My dad, who was the most upset about it, recently gave it a shot himself! After seeing my health was the best in the family after 26 years of it, he thought he'd give it a whirl. It didn't last for him, as he said it was too hard to cook a separate meal for himself and his wife, but he says he doesn't eat it as frequently now.

Funny how it came around.

 

[ChristineM]

Your daughter should give up!

Give up with the lectures, yes

Give up being veggi, up to her

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I think that plants are living things too, even with distress signals they seem to send out.

Plants are keen on protecting themselves, certainly. Hence the poisons and thorns and sometimes just the height that the most nutrient bits develop - all things geared toward protecting its own. However, there are also those plants who purposefully offer up their wares in order to have the eaten portions run through a nice, nutrient-rich digestional tract before being crapped out far away from the parent plant - that is actually a benefit to those plants that have adapted to function this way. Just Google "What plants use animals to disperse their seeds?" Guava and figs are some examples.

Not only this, but when we humans plant 50,000 members of the plant's species, and then water and fertilize those plants before ultimately harvesting, collecting seed, and then doing the process over again - we've effectively helped 50,000 plants (thousands of times over, of course) live their "best lives" and reproduce. A plant can't move, can't do other things. So if we've provided for all their needs and they are "comfortable" (haha), then we've basically just helped them be exactly what they were striving (sort of) to be considering their place in overall ecology.

I think that abstaining from killing and support of killing industries is overall a good and noble thing, but once the animal has been killed and cooked, I think it might be wrong to waste all that also

This is obviously a non-issue if you don't breed, raise and kill the animal in the first place.

and humans seem to be killing in an ongoing manner, as well as killing one way or another (even if its destroying plant-life, bacteria, whatever else). We are Destroyers apparently, by Nature.

From this perspective though, everything is a "destroyer by nature". Even plants have methods of fighting off bacteria, or killing animals with poisons/toxicity. It is just the nature of things to absorb nutrients gathered by other things. To get beneficial movement of life-sustaining energies to yourself, you basically have to be in the business of taking it from something else. Plants have the only setup that requires less borrowing. They do their borrowing from the sun and minerals in the soil. The sun is going to be outputting that energy anyway, but the soil only contains the breadth of nutrients it does because other plants and animals before it died and were broken up into small, consumable bits by bacteria.

If there was an animal that ate humans, I would be opposed to it, and I believe the animals would not want to be killed or eaten.

I believe it a key understanding to know that if there were an animal more capable than humans, and it could feed on humans, that you would oppose such an animal. And in that understanding should be a corollary thought that, if the animals we make subservient to us, and raise for slaughter were capable of placing blame on us, and understanding our part in their horrible fates, that they would oppose us also, and for extremely good reasons. Reasons that we would be remiss to simply dismiss or play down. In factory farming situations, we take their freedom, we take their enjoyment of life, and then we kill them. If the more free animals out in the farms and fields could also contemplate this horrid fate of their brethren, would they also not be as concerned as we would be if we knew this sort of thing were happening to other humans? Is their lack of capability to think on these abstract terms justification for putting certain individuals of various species into situations of great suffering and anguish?

I don't think there is necessarily any major benefit to abstaining from the eating of food killed and prepared by others, and I hope that eating such does not have a negative impact upon one's future state.

There is evidence to suggest that over-consumption of meat does, indeed, cause negative health consequences. For example, you can be sure that I, a vegetarian, will never develop what they call "gout" - a condition caused by an excess of uric acid in the body. It is pretty funny when you look up the condition, because they like to state things in very "neutral" terms, like "The body makes uric acid when it breaks down purines, which are found in your body and the foods you eat." Just "foods," you see? But when you do a little more digging, you are ultimately presented with lists of what not to eat to stave off, or rid yourself of gout:

• Beer and grain liquors (like vodka and whiskey)
• Red meat, lamb, and pork.
• Organ meats, such as liver, kidneys, and glandular meats like the thymus or pancreas (you may hear them called sweetbreads)
• Seafood, especially shellfish like shrimp, lobster, mussels, anchovies, and sardines.

Besides the alcohol mention, it's meat, meat, meat. Look up conditions or diseases associated with eating too many vegetables, and you'll likely come across some very obvious suspects - like extreme over-eating of vegetables overloading your system with too much roughage, causing constipation, or relying too heavily on common vegetation alone causing you to miss out on other key nutrients. While the list of things that have been linked to long-term meat consumption are things like cancer, diabetes, heart disease. There's really no comparison.

I don't think the people who kill these animals for food or the food industry and food reaching people to eat are evil people who are accumulating sin. People who kill animals may become more callous or more capable of killing other things and butchering humans possibly (but I don't think for the most part this occurs).

The numbers do show a statistically significant link between having a floor job in the business of factory-farming and being more violent or mentally compromised in your daily life.

I think plants are very much living organisms and creatures, and that killing them is not extremely different from killing or damaging a gnat or other lifeform.

Besides what I mentioned above about leading plants to "live their best lives", there is also the idea that many plants don't need to die in order to harvest their nutrient bounty. There is an apple orchard not too far from where I live that has what look like ancient apple trees that are picked from every single year. Those apples would simply fall to the ground otherwise, so it is no "pain" to the apple tree to take its fruit and cart it off somewhere.

I think that becoming Obsessive Compulsive and Fanatic about restrictions can cause problems for people and their enjoyment and experience of life.

I don't obsess, and rather enjoy a large/wide variety of amazing tasting foods, all without any meat. And if you think about it, most people don't consume meat just straight-up (bacon possibly being one obvious exception) but rather they dress it up, to augment what ends up being a rather bland or unappetizing taste. And what do they normally dress it up with? Herbs, spices and salts - the first two of which are plant-based items.

I think that everything I avoid is actually harmful for me, and that others should also avoid what I avoid and should pay attention to what seems to be harmful, and meat may be unhealthy for certain people while benefit others more.

I also think this way - it just so happens that what I think is harmful actually includes excessive consumption of meat. What is "excessive," you ask? I don't know for sure... all I do know is that far fewer people (if any) are actively citing vegetation as a instigator of things like cancer, diabetes, or heart disease.

 

[Secret Chief]

My dad, who was the most upset about it, recently gave it a shot himself! After seeing my health was the best in the family after 26 years of it, he thought he'd give it a whirl. It didn't last for him, as he said it was too hard to cook a separate meal for himself and his wife, but he says he doesn't eat it as frequently now.

Funny how it came around.

My ex ate meat and that was a pain - two meal preps at meal times. She had to go
Some people discover a health improvement "accidentally." I have a friend who has suffered from IBS all her adult life. She tried all sorts of ways to get rid of it or at least ameliorate the symptoms with no real success. Recently she had no dairy products for about a fortnight (not planned - it was a fridge/moving house issue) and she was so improved that she's swapped over permanently to plant milk and spreads.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I am a being living in the natural world, in which there are many, many food chains, and pretty much no creature (or plant) not prey to some other creature (or plant). But even those at the top (as we think we are) will have our material substance returned to be of use to some other life, someday.

Also, I am evolved to eat a wide variety of things -- the fact that I can digest so many different things, and my dentition, are both evidence to that fact.

Therefore, I eat lots of things -- following a simple rule: eat food, not too much, mostly (but not only) plants.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Not only this, but when we humans plant 50,000 members of the plant's species, and then water and fertilize those plants before ultimately harvesting, collecting seed, and then doing the process over again - we've effectively helped 50,000 plants (thousands of times over, of course) live their "best lives" and reproduce. A plant can't move, can't do other things. So if we've provided for all their needs and they are "comfortable" (haha), then we've basically just helped them be exactly what they were striving (sort of) to be considering their place in overall ecology.

Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, actually paints it as if the cereal grasses (wheat, rice, etc.) actually domesticated us to help them spread their genes around.

It's an idea that I quite like, actually. It amuses me.

 

[Valjean]

Wouldn't similar considerations be in place if he was running from predators, though?

[edit]Perhaps not. Just reflecting on this. It would only be a useful defensive mechanism if a whole familial group was able to endurance run, and that doesn't seem like a human trait...lol[/edit]

Without omnivory we would never have made it through the Pleistocene.
Excepting seeds and, occasionally, storage roots, most vegetation is nutritionally sparse and metabolically expensive to process. Vegetarian gorillas, for example, spend most of their waking hours just eating -- and they live in forests full of food. A small, slow plains ape, with little but grass and scrub, had to eat anything and everything it could find.

That said, our current circumstances are very different. We have many more options today, and many more factors to take into consideration.