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Is vegetarianism foolish?

epepke said:
Hairballs are an animal product. Can't have that.

But I've wondered about this, too. If I were a vegetarian, and I felt a hankering for junk food, I'd go eat some falafel. There's just no point in little synthetic wieners.
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The "point" is that people like them. That's the point for just about everything we eat; particularly when it comes to the various spices we use, since they contribute nothing, nutritionally. Falafel does not taste anything like corn dogs, so why would I eat that instead? Your prejudices are showing.
 
luchog said:
The "point" is that people like them. That's the point for just about everything we eat; particularly when it comes to the various spices we use, since they contribute nothing, nutritionally. Falafel does not taste anything like corn dogs, so why would I eat that instead? Your prejudices are showing.
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Prejudices? Why is it that if you like synthetic corn dogs, it's because "people like them," but if I like falafel, it's a prejudice?
 
swstephe said:
i find it facinating that western society likes to condemn people who are different. try going around and saying you don't eat meat and you are considered "wierd". try to go to a party and not drink alcohol! i suppose there must have been a time when you would have been an outsider if you didn't smoke some form of tobacco.

i was a vegetarian for a year. yes, meat is murder, but its not like we are the only animals on the planet who find nutritional value by killing some other species. at the time, i was more into a global-social thing ... raising animals for food take enourmous resources and energy, and those resources could be put to better use doing other things ... you should check out the chapter from michael moore's "stupid white men" about the lake of pig feces!
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Western society doesn't typically condemn people who are different, just people who are different and try to press their differences on others...like by saying eating meat is equated to murder.

I despise Michael Moore, but that's a whole other thread.

We need to address the resource and energy claim...

How much grain must a person eat to gain the same benefits as from eating meat? Compare the energy/calories from one cow to how many acres of grain that must be grown to equal it.

How much grain must a cow eat? How many humans can be fed by one cow?

Compare all variables to fish and poultry as well.

I've seen the one sided horror stories on the vegan/vegetarian sites. It is one sided.

If everyone stopped eating meat you'd need significantly more land to farm the grains needed to support everyone all of a sudden. There won't be enough just from stopping feeding animals. And who will feed all those animals until they die of old age? As well, who will supplement farmer incomes to buy more land to grow more grain on and support their animals until they die of old age?

A far more serious threat to humanity is the monoculture of grains and legumes, which tends to deplete the soil and requires the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. The educated consumer and the enlightened farmer together can bring about the return of the mixed farm, where cultivation of fruits and vegetables is combined with the raising of livestock and fowl in a manner that is efficient, economical and environmentally friendly. Cattle providing rich manure are the absolute basis for healthy, sustainable farming. On marginal land, wise grass feeding practices can actually improve soil quality and restore pasture land. It is not animal cultivation that leads to hunger and famine but unwise agricultural practices and monopolistic distribution systems....

And on the health myth:
The second study was published by Burr and Sweetnam in 1982.26. Once again, although the authors claim that their study showed that vegetarians lived longer, Smith found quite the opposite when he looked carefully at the hard data. He found that the all-cause death rates were slightly greater for vegetarian men compared to nonvegetarian men; and significantly greater for vegetarian women compared to nonvegetarian women.
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http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtbeef.html

More points to ponder:

The truth is, though, very little (if any) land that is used for raising livestock animals is actually suitable for cultivating any kind of edible crops for mass consumption by humans, and also very little (if any) grain and other substances fed to livestock animals is actually suitable for mass consumption by humans, anyway. Also, the numbers that many veg*n/AR extremists throw out there supposedly calculating excessive water usage for livestock animals have been proven extremely inaccurate.
Words of advice: please do your own research on the issues instead of just automatically believing everything that you hear from ARAs! They throw all these numbers and 'statistics' out there to shock people (such as 'x' amount of water must be used to produce 'x' amount of beef, etc.) because they know that most people will just take their word for it instead of doing their own research on the issues to find out the truth out for themselves! So, the myth that so many veg*n/ARAs hold, that raising livestock animals for food is 'wasting' resources that could otherwise be used for growing more edible crops as well as 'wasting' grain that could otherwise go to feed hungry people is just that...a myth...if not an outright lie!
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http://wave.prohosting.com/antiar/wrong.html

Imagine trying to digest grass? Ruminants have much different digestive systems from humans.
 
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I think I've decided to become a vegetarian. I've been playing The Bard's Tale, and in it, there's a point where you are attacked by a lot of undead cows and chickens. It's scary. I'm sorry, but I like my food dead, with no chance of fightiing back. If they come back from the dead, I'm not too sure I can feel safe eating hamburgers anymore....


Marc
 
Dr. Imago said:
Actually, to be fair, I think DrMatt is actually 32-ish...

-Dr. Imago
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44. Covered-in-wrinklesness seems to be strongly corollated with smoking and sunbathing, and not corrolated with meat or the lack of it, as far as I know.
 
Dr. Imago said:
Probably because whatever food you have been eating has been supplemented for you. You can't get it from a purely vegetarian diet. Sorry.

OTOH, if you truly have not had any B12 in 25 years, then indeed that may help to explain your general weirdness and perhaps, if you're unlucky enough, even a yet-undiagnosed megaloblastic anemia, as well.

-Dr. Imago
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More likely it's that I get plenty of it from yoghurt. No supplements. I've always been weird. :D
 
Marc L said:
I think I've decided to become a vegetarian. I've been playing The Bard's Tale, and in it, there's a point where you are attacked by a lot of undead cows and chickens. It's scary. I'm sorry, but I like my food dead, with no chance of fightiing back. If they come back from the dead, I'm not too sure I can feel safe eating hamburgers anymore....


Marc
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I looked on the web for the classic picture of the guy opening an can of green beans and the beans flying out of the can and attacking him, but I couldn't find it. Back in college, a few folks had it printed on t-shirts.
 
See, I personally took the if-I-can't-kill-it-myself-I-shouldn't-eat-it argument to heart, and got me a shotgun and started hunting :) Which may not have quite been the intended outcome of those making the argument. Strange thing is, most of my vegetarian friends are quite happy to tuck into slow-braised duck and goose, knowing that I myself killed the poor thing at 15 yards...

And I have heard stories of folks out there who shot a goose only to have it land on them. Geese are heavy.
 
Sounds like strange-ass "vegetarians" to me, but hey, can you focus on animals that are grossly overpopulated and making nuisances of themselves? Might be able to kill two deer with one bullet...
 
EGarrett said:
People are free to form their own eating habits, but don't a lot of reasons for vegetarianism seem foolish?

Like for example, not eating "filthy animals" like a pig. The portions of the pig that you eat never actually come into contact with mud. As far as I know they're muscle, which spends its time on the inside of the body.

And the idea that raising cattle for slaughter is cruel? Is it really? They've been bred for it, and every one of them dies whether you slaughter them or not. I can understand disagreeing with the method, but I don't hear people coming up with better ways of doing it either...

Plus, a lot of these same animals go hungry and scared for most of their lives in the wild, then get torn apart by predators. It could be said that the world is supposed to work that way. (But then again, maybe that doesn't mean we have to introduce intentional suffering) Livestock are raised and given free food and shelter for their entire lives. For animals that's a pretty good deal.

And people are omnivores. We're adapted to eating meat. It's good for us. And on the off-chance that it makes you sick, modern medicine does a good job of covering for you.

What do you think?
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I think it's unethical to raise animals purely so we can eat them yes.

I also think that the fact they get torn apart by predators is awful too. Personally I find all these TV programmes showing animals being torn apart is extremely upsetting. I think it's wrong we don't intervene. And ideally we should certainly try to limit the amount of meat we eat.
 
Interesting Ian said:
I think it's unethical to raise animals purely so we can eat them yes.

I also think that the fact they get torn apart by predators is awful too. Personally I find all these TV programmes showing animals being torn apart is extremely upsetting. I think it's wrong we don't intervene. And ideally we should certainly try to limit the amount of meat we eat.
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Reality Bites, don't it. We just deep fried a turky today. I feel so redneck :D :D

I can't imagine intervening with a lion taking down its supper. What do you propose? Feeding all the predators out there by hand? You first.
 
My dog and my cat both get meat-based diets. Apparently, vegetarian diets exist for dogs, but I don't feel like playing roulette with my dog. Due to the need for large amounts of taurine, vegetarian diets do not exist for cats.

As for junk food, you can't get much junkier than frenchfries. I rather prefer a baked potato with chives and a mixture of hot sauces on it--I find it's the garlic and pepper and other spices that catch my interest, not the grease, though when I was younger I liked grease more.

Almost all the meat-eaters I've met have some kind of meat they've avoided eating even when offered, or didn't like. Was it squid? Earthworms (reputed to be very much like escargot)? Grasshoppers and locusts (I'm told they're a bit like crawfish)? There's only a very few kinds of meat that are truly inedible (polar-bear liver comes to mind), but a wide variety of personal aesthetics.
 
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DrMatt said:
As for junk food, you can't get much junkier than frenchfries. I rather prefer a baked potato with chives and a mixture of hot sauces on it--I find it's the garlic and pepper and other spices that catch my interest, not the grease, though when I was younger I liked grease more.
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I often cook "fries" in the oven prepared in olive oil. What I call "chips" is probably much thicker cut as well compared to American fries. So they are not remotely junk food if prepared in such a way.
 
I realy love animals. perhaps I am a little bit sentimental about them, but I just think we have responsibility towards them to cause them the least suffering possible. A lot of people seem to have a `them or us` attitude, about this issue, but we are all sentient beings and deserve respect. Yeah, animals can be cruel and disgusting, so what? they live mainly by instinct, whereas we are (supposed) to me more evolved. When I was a teenager I was a strict vegetarian, and I never felt better. Nowdays I have to feed a hungry family and I have to buy meat for them. I live mainly on pasta, rice, and whatever they leave. Ideally, all human beings would be vegetarian. it would free a lot of agricultural land for growing grain and other crops which could be shared worldwide. That`s not going to happen is it?
Corruption and political greed would put a stop to it anyway.
I don`t know, sometimes when I`m shopping and I pick up a pack of chicken thighs I get a terrible feeling of guilt to think of ther grim little lives and hidious death. Same with beef. I don`t eat pork though, because I used to work on a farm and I know how intelligent pigs are. There are human beings I know who i would consider less worthy of life than pigs.
In the end it`s up to the individual of course.
Scientifically, the fashionable thing now seems to be to use animals in any way if it`s of benefit to human beings. I don`t agree with that myself- I`ve got a rather nasty degeneratavie disease of the spine which is bound to kill me earlier rather than later, but I wouldn`t want any monkeys, or even rats, to be the subjects of painful experiments for my sake, and I really mean that. I`m not so special. There are millions more people cleverer than I.
I wonder if in the future humanity will look back on our attitude to other species and wonder what the **** we thought we were doing.
We`ve all seen that grainy old film of the elephant being electrocuted to death in the name of `science`
At the time, they thought that was fair enough.
 
rudar said:
See, I personally took the if-I-can't-kill-it-myself-I-shouldn't-eat-it argument to heart, and got me a shotgun and started hunting :) Which may not have quite been the intended outcome of those making the argument. Strange thing is, most of my vegetarian friends are quite happy to tuck into slow-braised duck and goose, knowing that I myself killed the poor thing at 15 yards...

And I have heard stories of folks out there who shot a goose only to have it land on them. Geese are heavy.
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A lot of my "ethical" vegetarian friends think i'm very strange; because I will still cook meat for others, even though I don't eat it myself (and I'm a very good cook).
 
DrMatt said:
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As for junk food, you can't get much junkier than frenchfries. I rather prefer a baked potato with chives and a mixture of hot sauces on it--I find it's the garlic and pepper and other spices that catch my interest, not the grease, though when I was younger I liked grease more.
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Dry baked potato is one of the worst things you can eat. Very swift carbohydrate absorption from that. It's actually better if you have it with a dallop of sour cream, at least, so that the fat will slow the carb absorption. If you must eat white potatoes, fries are better for you than baked and eaten dry. (Eat in moderation)
 
hgc is right, but it's way more true for some people than for others.

The starches/sugars in a plain baked potato are very blood sugar reactive, truly. The glycemic index of foods measures the blood sugar/insulin reaction to 50g of carbs from foods (more info here). On a scale where the body's reaction to 50g of pure glucose is 100, enough plain baked potato to provide 50g of carbs scores 85 or so (they vary). Table sugar is 59 and potato chips are 51.
The glycemic load, which may be a better measure (it takes fiber and serving size more into account), is 26 where glucose is 50. On that scale, potato chips are 30. I'm sure various potato types will score differently.
A medium baked potato with skin offers 31 grams of carbohydrate, 3 grams of which are fiber, according to Fitday.com. So the amount of baked potato used to score the GI test would be a large one. Baked potato does have some good vitamins, like C and B-6.

For people with risk factors for diabetes, which is really a lot of people and includes me, high GI foods like that are a very poor choice. We want to keep our blood sugar stable throughout the day; high GI foods make our blood sugar soar up and then crash down. A half of a baked potato (smaller load of carbs) alongside some fat and protein sources (to help slow down absorption) is more manageable, but it's not something I would eat every day (nor are fries or potato chips).

But some people just don't have a problem with their blood sugar spiking and crashing like that. It's not as extreme in their case, or it doesn't bother them. Still, lower-GI carbs are considered better for your health overall, due to the long chain of reactions the body has to high-carb foods (triglycerides going up, etc.).
 
Ed said:
So, when you say "get a life" you are saying that the person should run around in a Florida field, naked, eating scrub?

Interesting.
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Must have been one hell of a party.
 
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