Vegetarians, Vegans...

Degsy

sensibleken wrote: »

Degsy, you sound like you need a hug

*hug*

Unhand me hippy..i'm not a tree!

sensibleken

Degsy wrote: »

Unhand me hippy..i'm not a tree!

feels good doesn't it

itsallaboutheL

Degsy wrote: »

Unhand me hippy..i'm not a tree!

Maybe it's man meat he likes not cow meat....

Degsy

itsallaboutheL wrote: »

Maybe it's man meat he likes not cow meat....

Well i can always fix him a meal..a knuckle sandwich for example:D

smegmar

ugh, these anti Veg threads are getting boring. here's the standard meat lover comments and a vegetarian response.

"Vegetarians don't get protein, you're all weak"
not true, a balanced vegetarian diet has over the required amount of daily protein. A standard western omnivores diet has too much, over the carcinogenic limit.

"We have canine teeth for eating meat"
no, we evolved canine teeth as primates for fighting. We have large incisors and flat molar teeth for eating.

"it's natural for humans to eat meat"
not so, we evolved from primates, especially chimpanzees, who have a vegetarian diet. Our digestive tract is 3 times longer in scale then that of a true carnivore like a wolf, so that we can process the high fiber plants and grains.

"There's not enough land to sustain everybody if we were all vegetarian"
A standard omnivore diet requires 16 acres of land for all the food, a vegetarian diet requires only 4 acres.

"humans have eyes on the front of our head because we're hunters"
no we have eyes on the front of our head because we're manipulators, we use our hands in front of us to examine and handle the things we find.

"If the cavemen didn't eat meat they wouldn't have evolved into us"
that's a true statement. At the time meat was the best source of protein and nitration, however now days with modern agricultural techniques we can feed ourselves on a nonmeat diet

"vegetarians aren't as smart as omnivores"
not true, many studies show a positive correlation between higher intelligence and being vegetarian.

there are more. I'll update this post later.

Degsy

Jim wrote: »

I will. It's delicious.

Well when you're a "social Welfare Warrior" it might sound like a treat alright.

Heck,is there a soup kitchen nearby?You might be able to whittle the cost of your meal down even more.

sensibleken

Degsy wrote: »

Well i can always fix him a meal..a knuckle sandwich for example:D

wait...are you challenging me to a fight?

i think you may need to relax a bit

--Kaiser--

I'll just leave this here but since it argues against vegetarianism, it will most likely be ignored by its proponents;

http://www.vanguardonline.f9.co.uk/00509.htm

00112984

jackiebaron wrote: »

Much easier to digest little animals like lamb, rabbit, hare, pork and fowl.

You know a "pork" isn't an animal, yeah?

Degsy

smegmar wrote: »

we evolved from primates, especially chimpanzees, who have a vegetarian diet. .

No they dont..apes eat meat.

And fish

How'd you like those er,apples?

--Kaiser--

smegmar wrote: »

"it's natural for humans to eat meat"
not so, we evolved from primates, especially chimpanzees, who have a vegetarian diet. Our digestive tract is 3 times longer in scale then that of a true carnivore like a wolf, so that we can process the high fiber plants and grains.

we didn't evolve from chimpanzees, we have a common ancestor, regardless,chimpanzees are omnivores, not herbivores.

nervous_twitch

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Again, very indignant, but doesn't answer the question of why one death is better than another.

Interesting that you use the word pious, relating to religion, as I consider vegetarianism and veganism to be similar to religions.

Firstly, you seem to be the one failing to understand what has been clarified time and again; its not feasible or practical for any vegetarian to establish their own agricultural practice in which no organism will be killed.. just like its not practical to avoid walking on insects, or using certain medicines etc. You cant box off morality in that way and say if you do this then you cant do that.. I'm a vegetarian who lies, cheats and steals occasionally - are you going to explode??

Furthermore, I used pious because that is the kind of condescension vegetarians are often faced with - just because I dont eat meat doesnt mean I think I'm in any way morally superior to you. Its a personal choice.

--Kaiser--

nervous_twitch wrote: »

Firstly, you seem to be the one failing to understand what has been clarified time and again; its not feasible or practical for any vegetarian to establish their own agricultural practice in which no organism will be killed.. just like its not practical to avoid walking on insects, or using certain medicines etc. You cant box off morality in that way and say if you do this then you cant do that.. I'm a vegetarian who lies, cheats and steals occasionally - are you going to explode??

Furthermore, I used pious because that is the kind of condescension vegetarians are often faced with - just because I dont eat meat doesnt mean I think I'm in any way morally superior to you. Its a personal choice.

That's fine, I ask the question of vegetarians who do regard themselves as morally superior for not eating animals. I'm saying it's largely a fallacy.

RussellTuring

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

The above is one of the stupidest, most wrong things I have ever read and you must be severely lacking in any sort of intelligence to think this is a good argument.

Humans are not herbivores, we don't have herbivore teeth or a herbivore digestive system, without B12 (which can generally only be gotten naturally from animal sources) you die. We could not have evolved such large brains without animal products forming a large part of the diet.

No we have the teeth of animals that survived mainly on a plant-based diet but due to food scarcity were force to incorporate other types of food into our diets. We have neither the teeth nor digestive systems of carnivores but of omnivores which survive mainly on plants.

We evolved to have a diet inclusive of B12 because we only started to wash food relatively recently. The ultimate source of all B12 is bacteria. Now that we have the means of producing it on demand, there is no need to get it from a secondary source like animal products.

itsallaboutheL

What do you people feed your pets?

sensibleken

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

That's fine, I ask the question of vegetarians who do regard themselves as morally superior for not eating animals. I'm saying it's largely a fallacy.

whos that. i didn't see any vegetarians on this thread who think they're morally superior.

Stercus Accidit

Why are animals tasty and vegetables disgusting then?

Our bodies are telling us not to eat things that grew from dirt, fertilised with excrement, its evolution, vegans are evolution deniers!

:pac:

--Kaiser--

sensibleken wrote: »

whos that. i didn't see any vegetarians on this thread who think they're morally superior.

Maybe I used an incorrect choice of words, but really, you're just nit-picking rather than responding to my points.

ScumLord

sensibleken wrote: »

grand. veggies dont kill animals in nature either.

Vegetables in particular maybe don't seem to be killing animals to survive but they all do kill in their own way. Tomatoes kill insects for food, and all plants fight ferociously to compete we just don't notice it happening. Life is not easy for any living thing, everything has to fight and kill to survive.

sensibleken wrote: »

yes thats right. Although Im not sure what exactly your getting at? Are you saying because theres food shortages in the world I should eat meat?

No you stated the food you eat is a personal choice when it's not that simple, your lucky in that you have the opportunity (for now) to choose what you eat. You may find you'll have no problem eating meat if this country descends into the 3rd world backwater the media are threatening will happen.

sensibleken

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Maybe I used an incorrect choice of words, but really, you're just nit-picking rather than responding to my points.

its not nit picking. you seem to want to think vegetarians think theyre better than you. I don't ive already said i don't have a problem with people killing animals for food. some of your posts say that animals have become extinct because of vegetable farming. no i dont think thats good (if its true).

sensibleken

ScumLord wrote: »

Vegetables in particular maybe don't seem to be killing animals to survive but they all do kill in their own way. Tomatoes kill insects for food, and all plants fight ferociously to compete we just don't notice it happening. Life is not easy for any living thing, everything has to fight and kill to survive.

No you stated the food you eat is a personal choice when it's not that simple, your lucky in that you have the opportunity (for now) to choose what you eat. You may find you'll have no problem eating meat if this country descends into the 3rd world backwater the media are threatening will happen.

yes i know. so what. I have a choice not to eat it now and im exercising that. whats the big deal about that.

ScumLord

sensibleken wrote: »

yes i know. so what. I have a choice not to eat it now and im exercising that. whats the big deal about that.

No big deal to me, I never said there's anything wrong with eating just vegetables. I don't for one second think there is anything wrong with it just like there's absolutely nothing wrong with eating meat once it's produced properly. I was just correcting inaccuracies.

sensibleken

ScumLord wrote: »

No big deal to me, I never said there's anything wrong with eating just vegetables. I don't for one second think there is anything wrong with it just like there's absolutely nothing wrong with eating meat once it's produced properly. I was just correcting inaccuracies.

great. were in agreement. each to their own

Coriolanus

sensibleken wrote: »

yes i know. so what. I have a choice not to eat it now and im exercising that. whats the big deal about that.

The problem is you're being reasonable about this God damnit. You're supposed to be using a condescending tone and calling the rest of us savages and what not.
I don't know, AH is crap these days, no one is being stereotypical anymore. :mad:

ScumLord

sensibleken wrote: »

great. were in agreement. each to their own

Up to a point, I'm very much against blind individualism too.

leopardus

Firstly, I would like to preface this by saying that I have no problem with vegetarians/vegans/ raw foodists; what they do and how they choose to live there life are their own business. However, there have been a number of arguements that have been innaccurate and even down right fallicious.

The food chain is a nonsense concept. Logically by not feeding yourself to a higher predator, like a tiger, you too are rejecting your place in the food chain.

That is a completely nonsensical arguement. The food chain is not a 'nonsence concept', however, the OP used the term somewhat inaccurately. I think the everyone understood what he was saying though; that humans have evolved to eat meat?

love fish and when it comes to meat I prefer to eat animals that are actually smaller than humans so I rarely eat beef, venison or horsemeat. Much easier to digest little animals like lamb, rabbit, hare, pork and fowl.

This, as far as I can tell, is complete rubbish. I would be very interested in finding a single reference that supported this, as I have been able to find none.

the fact that humans can thrive in a world of bears, sharks, tigers (and hippo's!)

Are you suggesting that hippos predate on humans? Although one of the most deadly (number of human fatalities) mammals in Africa, hippo are not predators. The parents of James (in James and the Giant Peach) were eaten by an escaped rhino though, is that what you were referring to?

[The food chain] it is not a set in stone biological process like, say evolution, because the very concept of a "chain" is far too simplistic to describe the complexity of these interactions. For example, pretty much all of the animals at the "top" of this chain are capable of eating eachother. And of being eaten by animals further down the chain.

I would more or less agree with this, the term food web is much more useful and intraguild predation is increasingly found to be an important dynamic within food webs, although I know of no reported instances whrere snowshoe hares have eaten lynx. But, (this is where I believe the OP was innacurate in the initial use of the term 'food chain') humans have evolved (mentally, physiologically and anatomically) to find, hunt and eat meat. My undersatnding of the OP question was, in light of this why would you be vegetarian/ vegan?

wrong

http://www.giveittomeraw.com/forum/t...ource=activity

atherosclerosis occurs only in herbivores.

Rats, one of the study animals, are most definitely not herbivorous. They, like us, are omnivores. There is a a huge amount of evidence that humans evolved as large-brained, bipedal cursorial hunters of large game in Africa.


This site is a great source of information , under 'publications' are some really interesting articles. And more reliable than a journalistic piece on a raw-foodist website.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~skeleton/danlhome.html

evolution has nothing to do with it.

It had been argued earlier in the thread that humans were herbivores. It is relevant that humans evolved as hunting omnivores. Does it effect your personal dietary choice? No. It may however elucidate what, for the majority of our evolutionary history, we are designed to eat. This can help to explain and make informed choices on the health and benefits of a diet. Evolution has everything to do with it.

Personally I think this is a valid and interesting question as I know and live with people that are vegetarian and vegan for religous, ethical and health reasons. I also know of vegetarians that have just never really liked meat, others that are repulsed by the idea with no ethical considerations. I personally find the ethical arguements and considerations of someone who is vegetarian and not vegan, on ethical grounds, a bit confusing. I eat meat and I try to do so as ethically as possible. I always buy Irish meat from local butchers and producers. I'm happy with the welfare standards of beef and lamb production in Ireland. I will only eat free range chicken, whole birds or cheaper cuts. I generally don't eat pork and when I do it is usually free range. I also eat dairy and wear leather and feed my dog a meat based diet. The production of milk requires that dairy cows are periodically mated and produce a calf. The dairy cows (fresians) are mated with either a 'meat breed' or pure bred to perpetuate the female dairy herd and keep the cow producing milk. Apart from the female fresian calfs and a very small quantity of the males the remainder are of no use to the dairy industry. The remainder, a by-product of the dairy industry, are used for the production of rennet (for cheese), meal, veal or beef. I haven't yet come across an explaination as to how drinking milk can be considered ethical when eating meat is not?

El_Dangeroso

smegmar wrote: »

ugh, these anti Veg threads are getting boring. here's the standard meat lover comments and a vegetarian response.

"Vegetarians don't get protein, you're all weak"
not true, a balanced vegetarian diet has over the required amount of daily protein. A standard western omnivores diet has too much, over the carcinogenic limit.

First of all I want a t-shirt with 'Meat Lover' on it. Classic. Protein isn't carcinogenic, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that it is. Of course if the only 'science' you ever read is written by vegetarians then I can see how you would get that impression.

smegmar wrote: »

"We have canine teeth for eating meat"
no, we evolved canine teeth as primates for fighting. We have large incisors and flat molar teeth for eating.

Nope, we have canines for tearing animal flesh, there is not really any anthropological evidence that we EVER used our teeth for fighting. We are omnivores and have teeth for eating animals and plants.

smegmar wrote: »

"it's natural for humans to eat meat"
not so, we evolved from primates, especially chimpanzees, who have a vegetarian diet. Our digestive tract is 3 times longer in scale then that of a true carnivore like a wolf, so that we can process the high fiber plants and grains.

Check out this picture:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zULJExxrW54/Sa3drpMd0PI/AAAAAAAAAbU/U-ShV2s2svY/s1600-h/535px-Humanevolutionchart.png

Where are chimps on that diagram? They are not, because we've been evolving on meat in our diet from about 2 million years ago. It caused our guts to shrink and our brains to grow large. We were freed from constantly chewing fibrous plant food all day like our herbivore cousins. We never were truly carnivorous, although our nearest relatives, the neanderthals were basically carnivores according to the isotope ratios in their bones. You're creating a straw man argument by saying we don't have the digestive system of a wolf, that's where the 'omni' in omnivore comes in remember?

smegmar wrote: »

"There's not enough land to sustain everybody if we were all vegetarian"
A standard omnivore diet requires 16 acres of land for all the food, a vegetarian diet requires only 4 acres.

Your assuming that all land can be used for growing crops or raising animals equally, which isn't true, you can raise sheep on land that you can't cultivate anything at all. This land would be wasted if everyone was vegetarian.

smegmar wrote: »

"humans have eyes on the front of our head because we're hunters"
no we have eyes on the front of our head because we're manipulators, we use our hands in front of us to examine and handle the things we find.

Fair enough!

smegmar wrote: »

"If the cavemen didn't eat meat they wouldn't have evolved into us"
that's a true statement. At the time meat was the best source of protein and nitration, however now days with modern agricultural techniques we can feed ourselves on a nonmeat diet

Believe it or not, tolerated is not optimal.

smegmar wrote: »

"vegetarians aren't as smart as omnivores"
not true, many studies show a positive correlation between higher intelligence and being vegetarian.

there are more. I'll update this post later.

Ah fair enough, I know veggies come out on average with higher IQ in studies, but in western society vegetarians are more likely to be university educated and middle class.

What I don't get about vegetarianism is that you'll never hear about a vegetarian restricting the amount of furniture they buy, despite the fact that every tree cut down to make furniture involves the death of small animals. Most people have more furniture than they need but for some reason no-one gets up in arms about furniture.

A single cow can produce 568 lbs of meat when you eat nose to tail. 568lb of grain would require killing hundreds of small animals, insects and birds. Tell me why one cow is more important than all those other animals?

If you REALLY want to cause 'less harm'. Eat a steak instead of tempeh.

Pookah

El_Dangeroso wrote: »

A single cow can produce 568 lbs of meat when you eat nose to tail. 568lb of grain would require killing hundreds of small animals, insects and birds. Tell me why one cow is more important than all those other animals?

If you REALLY want to cause 'less harm'. Eat a steak instead of tempeh.

It may have already been touched upon in the thread, none of which I've read, but if you're growing grain to feed cows, to make beef to feed people, you would need 20 times more land, iirc, than if you were growing grain to feed vegetarians.

If you really want to cause less harm, in terms of damage to the environment, atmosphere etc and if you wish to generate more food for the worlds poor, become a veggie.

RussellTuring

El_Dangeroso wrote: »

A single cow can produce 568 lbs of meat when you eat nose to tail. 568lb of grain would require killing hundreds of small animals, insects and birds. Tell me why one cow is more important than all those other animals?

If you REALLY want to cause 'less harm'. Eat a steak instead of tempeh.

In its lifetime, that cow will consume much more than 568 lbs of grain, and a lot more water than it would have taken to grow that amount of grain. We feed animals food that could be eaten by people, only to kill them and waste so much energy, protein, fibre and other nutrients. Also, animals raised for food contribute more to global warming than all forms of transport combined.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

kraggy

Guill wrote: »

Surely becoming a Vegan or vegitarian is a reflection on society and how it has changed so much. People have too much money and can afford to reject meat.

True. And isn't it a sad reflection on society that the life of animals is of such little value.

A whole chicken can be bought for pittance in Tesco.

Life is worth more than that.