eating meat

I've eaten bear and mountain lion.
No, I didn't hunt and kill them myself, the meat was given to me by a hunter friend.

Bear makes delicious ham btw

Maybe for you, but I prefer it not :ack2:... and my cat agreed. lol

Yes, I fed my cat some lion meat...:devil:

 

stop starting shit...im getting tired of it

 

I love free speech forums where people say dont respond to me. There is the private message option if that is your preference.......
So many things said that i am late for but i will contribute this. I have high blood pressure so i cut back on salt. The guy sitting next to me at work right now has high cholesteral so he eats foods that are good for cholesteral. Different people have different dietary needs. Which like mentioned is the great thing about being in a first world country. We can fill those needs. Of course to much of anything is no good.

Someone commented that people should feel ashamed and embarresed by eating meat..my government dosnt shame me for it. My religion dosnt...my family dosnt, and i dont feel that way. Am i supposed to feel ashamed because some random anonymous hippy on an interner thread says i should....not gonna happen.

 

I think blood tests speak for themselves. Get vegetarians, vegans, raw eaters and meat eaters taking blood tests and see the results. In some places in order to have a home birth you have to get a blood test done. I have quite a few midwife friends and I've had the test done myself, being midwives they often get clients with different types of diets and none of them thought twice about a vegan, vegetarian or raw vegan diet being inappropriate or lacking in terms of nutritional health. I've seen the blood tests of quite a few vegans and vegetarians and raw vegans with great results...as in not lacking in anything...anything.

The problem with changing your diet is that it's hard and many go about it the wrong way. One vegan diet can be vastly different from another. I've had many different vegan diets over the years. It is clear that my first 2-3 eating styles were vastly less healthy than the one I've been on now for the past 4 or so years.

One thing I can say is that the protein myth is just that...a myth. It is no more difficult to get enough protein as a raw vegan than it is as a meat eater. Protein is a complete non-issue. And yes, I have seen some vegans who are underweight and appear to be unhealthy, but I've also seen plenty of overweight vegans and lots of vegan athletes who don't take protein powders or eat any processed foods whatsoever. The word vegan, doesn't define what exactly a person is eating.

I was also quite underweight on a normal American diet (junk food and healthy meat-eating diets) and didn't build up to a truly stable, healthy diet, plenty of muscle, plenty of energy until I was on a healthy, high raw vegan diet...Yes, I gained most of my weight, muscle and kept it on, eating majority raw fruits and vegetables, low on fat and protein (so virtually zero nuts/seeds, but lots of protein-rich greens).

I have also always been aware of cultures that express a time where no animals were eaten by people for tons of generations. I don't believe that anyone can go back in time to know what all cultures ate and for how long. There is plenty of information that will likely always be lost, but creation stories do exist and even when the colonials arrived, there were Native tribes that were largely plant eaters and the same is true of Africa.

There's a bunch of great racist travel logs you can find where the writers write about what was being eaten by the Natives during those times.

I would eat meat in the event that I needed it for survival. But by and large I see no reason why I need it at all. My health has severely changed for the better since taking animal products out and each time that I tried to put animal products back in or mistakenly ate animal products I had flare-ups that I prefer to never have again.

I understand how convenient it can be to eat meat and other animal products, so I'm not sitting around scoffing at everyone for not being vegan, but I do think that a lot of people might find themselves amazed at the difference if they went about lowering animal intake and increasing fruit/veg, especially in their raw state. Unfortunately it's just as easy to be a junk-food vegan as it is to be a junk-food meat eater and people will have negative health issues when the majority of their food is processed, if they jump into a junk-food vegan eating style.

To me, junk-food is all processed foods, including processed protein powders (which I bought and took for awhile myself). It takes some adjusting and you have to be smart and go at a pace that will be comfortable for you, but I really think everyone should experience what it's like to eat a healthy meat-free diet. In many countries meat is a very rare part of the diet and of course there are many cultures and religions that are totally against meat-eating, so it's not difficult to see that it's not just us privileged Westerners who can do well without meat and animal products because we can afford special products.

I ate a vegan diet heavy on "super foods" for a couple years and my health is far better now that all I buy are normal fruits and veggies. I spend a lot less money too.

 

A thought that crossed my mind is "can the planet sustain the protein needs of over 7billion people without animals becoming part of the equation?" And if there wasnt factory farms i am sure this topic would be about geneticly modified plants.

 

Without cows and pigs, there would be far more food available, because animals are such inefficient converters of plant protein. Read Diet For a Small Planet.

 

^
There is an option of getting rid of the bigger animals and replace them with certain insects. In some asian countries it seems to be very common to get your protein partly out of fried insects :biggrin:
Personally I am convinced we should make a change in the bigger picture of the industry. If the majority of meat eaters would eat just enough beef and pork instead of eating it everyday and just as important give off a signal to the industry by buying less or no factory meat and get it free range/organic from a trustworthy source eventually factory meat would not be as profitable (after all the prices are mainly so much lower because it is a mass industry and everybody's buying) and the organic/free range industry would get more customers and better options.
The problem is unfortunately that even though a lot of people would like to go with this flow if it was stimulated the industry and economy is set in its ways and it doesn't make this shift as easy as we can write it down... Also, just as unfortunately a lot of people simply care more about their budget than how the life of their meat was.

 

I agree completely, but as I have pointed out EVERY time this topic comes up, there are over 7 Billion people on the planet, the majority of whom DO NOT have access to such fresh resources.

So how do we feed everyone WITHOUT "factory farming" or an industrialized food manufacturing infrastructure????

Nobody has ever as of yet even attempted to offer an answer to that question.

Logistics are a bitch.

I think one problem is most folks when considering shit like this never think past their own personal supermarket experience.
Humans are so myopic.


p.s. the same problem holds true for any concepts of de-centralized government. no taxes, etc., etc.

 

We don't feed 7 billion people the way things are right now. There's a good many people starving...it has nothing to do with the sustainability of food sources and a lot more to do with the power structure around agriculture and manipulation of food distribution. A bit too many communities(plant communities, animal communities and human communities) are driven out of their space to provide a place for the same crops to be mass produced. And guess where those crops are going? To feed animals(livestock) and to make processed foods.

Also government subsidies. The government subsidizes dairy and meat, which is quite an unsustainable business. When enough food to feed as many people could be grown on 1/4 of an acre.

Many of these people are not allowed to grow their own food. They are forced to grow coffee or quinoa or whatever else in order to make some money for their families because their land has been bought by corporations. They are basically slaves.

So, it's not our responsibility to feed 7 billion people because we can't possibly do that, and factory farming isn't supposed to meet those needs. There is too much control that is completely out of the people's hands. And if you try to grow a food garden in your yard, you just might get fined for doing so...in the Western world.

 

And this is liberal rather than conservative to keep it unsustainable by basic staples for consumption. Treating alfalfa and granola are in the same league a wheat and corn now.

 

I agree, how do we feed 7 billion people? We don't. Also, how many of those 7 billion people eat pork and beef on a regular basis? I'm not sure, but not nearly all 7 billion.

Really??

edit: please no liberal/conservative jibberish here!!

 

I've always wondered about how much feed a cow would eat over its life before being slaughtered, versus how much food that same cow rendered as usable meat.

The goal is not to feed people really, more like maximize profits in any way possible.

 

So from the responses I see, you all agree with me, it is logistically impossible to implement some of the strategies desired on a scale that could replace the infrastructure already in place.

I pick up on an attitude of "as long as I can grow a garden, fuck everyone else"


nice

 

Lots of research has been done on that. But if you regard it in terms of costs it largely depends on what the cow is being fed. There was a time they mainly had to do it with grass and hay Now they can have triple-sized utters and getting corn, soy and grinded bones in their diet.

Well, that's not everybody's goal. If the consumers would make a serious stand they could force the industry to change.

 

If I can grow a garden I think other people can too And why be so offended if some may think it is better to concentrate on our own area before we concentrate on all 7 billion people on earth (of which I am uncertain they all eat beef and pork). Also, that there might be starvation or unfair food distribution in other countries is undoubtly unfortunate but does not have to be in the first place related to our meat industry.

 

Yes, and the thing a godawful lot of you seem to forget is that the industrial infrastructure that has grown around food production did so as A DIRECT RESULT OF GROWING POPULATIONS AND THE LOGISTICS OF FEEDING THEM!!!

In order to replace this now inefficient model, we need to come up with a better one.
Now one that utilizes all sustainable resources, focuses more on veg/fruit, less on dairy/meat, etc., etc., etc., would have been easy as pie 200 hundred or more years ago. The problem we face now is how to replace the infrastructure/business model entrenched and currently in use for a more environmentally friendly and efficient one AND still maintain the production numbers.

That is the 7 Billion dollar question.

you can think up all the utopian like schemes you want, but at some point ya gotta put the rubber to the road and see if it rides.

 

You are being myopic and focusing on specifics and maybe missing my point.

Nobody has, as of yet, come up with a viable alternative and most of the pipe dreams I read here fail to take into consideration the plain, ugly day to day logistics and work involved in implementing such changes.

The transition has been taking place for a few decades now is continuing to gain momentum, but it will probably be another 50 years or so until we see a complete shift.

 

I think we are mostly on the same page here. I do acknowledge that global logistics play a big role in the food industry. Am I concerned about all those other 7 billion people on earth where it comes to the subject of changing our (western) meat consumption? No, I'm still not. Not in the first place at least. I personally also think most problems could be solved if the majority would buy locally grown and raised food, especially if the majority of the people has it's own vegetable garden. But the big change to make lies firstly here with the consumers imo.

 

animals kill and eat animals for survival reasons not out of choice.

 

"I love free speech forums where people say dont respond to me. There is the private message option if that is your preference......."

Was this directed at me, Pensfan? If so, do not put words in my mouth....
If this is a free speech forum, then I get to say wahtever I please, too, right?