Vegetarianism; why bother?

Its huge sweeping statements 'meat being bad for you'. If I ever handed that as a conclusion to a report (granted im unlikely to as my subject is physics) I could guaranteee id fail. Perhaps if you carried this study out in the states of the UK you may be able to garner that conclusion. But still I think it would be a fairly bold assertion to make that. Make it in sourthern Europe and I imagne you'd have to try very hard to that draw conclusion, do teh same study in Africa where disaeses of affluence are more or less non-existant and I suspect that meat would be found to be very good infact. Of course these different conclusions are easy to explain, people in the UK and the US eat low quality processed meat often from fast food outlets where the meat is often suitable for vegetarians anyway as its usually fat and breadcrumbs. In south Europe the diet is often the definition of healthy, however as the slothly western lifestyle invades sothern europe they too will begin to see the same problems. In Africa a good supply of meat is a social indicator of someone from a socially higher caste clearly here meat would indicate good health although for reasons that have little to do with meat itself.

Protein, heres a good one. Do you get protein from plants, of course you do. Like all living things plants are made from proteins which are themselves polymers of the 20 known aminos acids in various combos. So of course you can get protein from plants (the other piece of evidence being that you dont see vegtarians shrinking and disppearing, although I rekon I could pick one out of line up 7/8 times out of 10). Ido however question whether humans can do so as efficiently. Bovine species have 4 stomachs for breaking down plant matter and rabbits have an appendix for breaking down lignin. As for me im pretty sure I have only the 1 stomach and my appendix has for some years been a pile of ash in the incinerator at my local hospital. The primary human mechanism for genertaing proteins and aminos is via the enzyme protease, which I seem to remember is ineffectual (or at less far less effective) on plant matter. That is one part of our internal chemistry that is more carnivore in nature.

I've tried to address two points there and I still feel ive skipped over some fairly important details and caveats. So there is no way that you are ever going to convince me that some of the one line wonders floating around in this thread are correct statements, both for and against. Though im not saying all of the statements here are toally wrong (if anyone had said that humans were herbivores then id start) but certainly oversimplification of some quite detailed chemistry and social issues.

 

*coughs*
Please stick to your own advice then: Don't bring false "facts" into the debate and stop generalising too please.
Organically farmed animals as well as wild animals do not get injected or fed with hormones.
There is indeed different qualities of meat as there is in vegetables too btw.
And you can't generally say that it isn't "safe" to eat meat these days either.

 

maybe its different around where you live, but where I live when you go to a grocery store ...it doesnt tell you where the meat came from.

in that case my parents or whatever very well could be eating organically farmed meat, or they may not.

and when you go to restaurants how do you know?

in factory farms what i mentioned, is mainly where this ocurrs of course, but when you go out to eat and such its not like you know how the animals were treated. and injections of hormones DO happen in factory farms, so please dont generalize with me either. thank you.

 

Sorry, but I haven't been generalizing.
I was talking about different kinds of quality of meat.
When you go to a grocery store and buy meat, it is most likely to be from animals that come from factory farms and I agree with you, that this meat is of poor quality and usually full of hormones and antibiotics too.
Organic meat and other organic products are labeled as such and it is up to you as a customer to look out for that.
Most of the time you will have to go to a specialised organic shop, but more and more supermarkets are having organic products in their assortment too.
To get meat of wild animals you usually have to have contact to the local hunters, since it often doesn't make it's way into the stores.
Most restaurants use ingredients that come from non-organic farms and the quality is low.
Again it is up to the customer to find places that use organic ingredients.
These places are very rare though and if you want to eat good quality non polluted food, your best option is to cook for yourself.

 

Does it amttter if my food has hormones and antibiotics in? I have hormones and antibiotics in. Id happily buy anything that said 'contains antibiotics' maybe they could force feed them asprin as well that would be a huge money saver. or am I being sarcastic, to be honest im not sure myself anymore.

 

Over use of antibiotics forces the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, which has been a growing problem. Right now hospitals have isolated strains of staphylococci which are resistant to all known antibiotics. Long-term exposure to antibiotics and hormones can have side effects and, more in the case of hormones, can lead to cancer developement in some cases. Hormones are basically the regulatory messengers in our bodies, controlling growth, developement and all sorts of other functions including reproduction cycles. The introduction of exogenous hormones can basically screw things up!

 

why is it I make a sensible post about the definition of evidence being used in this post and there are no comments. However the minute I make a facecious comment about hormones I get an ear bashing. Never mind i never did understand vegetarians.

 

Not sure if that is directed towards me or not but, I am NOT a vegetarian. I am a microbiologist who would like to shed some light on some of the questions/comments here based on my knowledge and experiences. Just facts and some thoughts from me, no real opinions other than 1) I don't feel that humans as a whole are "supposed" to be strictly vegetarians (just a matter of choice in my opinion). and 2) I agree that with the proper diets vegetarians CAN sustain a high level of health and nourishment.

 

well i appreciate it was an informed answer, which is a refereshing change. But still the only posts I seem to get responses to in this thread are the ridiculous ones, as opposed to balanced reasoned ones.

 

Nothing is as bad for you as margarine.See below.

For this to happen there need to be CO2.The oxygen is a by product of photosynthesis.

I am not so sure about that. One small area of Western Australia contains more speices of plants that is found in the whole of Europe.

Mmmm, oranges come form China, so do kiwi, potatoes from Peru, Sweet corn from USA, apples from Russia

Ah but only a certain percentage of land is arable. In Australia it is only 6% of the land that is arable .In mainland USA it is 18%.Therefore statements such as above are misleading.

No one eats a diet compising entirely of grains.The second statement above is therefore irrevelevant.

Beside the reasons I have given the often quoted above figure is based on irrigation land.Most beef and all lamb is raised on non arable land.To suggest that 2,500 gallons of water would be available for other uses for every one pound of meat not produced is again irrelevant and highly misleading.

That is because such land is not arable.

I very much doubt if any prime beef is used for hamburger meat.Selling prime beef is easy.What McDonalds and other fast food hamburger operaters use is old dairy cow.This is essentially a byproduct of the dairy industry.

Traditional aborigines in Australia consumed far more than 3oz of meat a day.
They got their dietry fat from bogong moths a witchetty grubs.

I think if you do your research you might find these conditions are due to eating margarine.Nothing is as unhealthy for the human body as margarine.The only thing that comes close is corn syrup.It has sometimes been referred to as the "margarine of liquid sweetners"

Soy beans are unfit for human consumption.They destroy the thyroid gland.All the other foods are fine.Anything that is healthy about a veg*n diet is available to the omni.

I don't know why you even bother bring this one up.It is not even beleved by many veg*ns these days.The fact of the matter is that people have cardiac arrests irrespective of their cholesterol count.It is completly irrelevant.People have spent 50 years trying to prove what seemed such a neat idea.Why don't they just give up? If you want to avoid heart disease I suggest you avoid trans fats.Do the research.Look up wikpedia.

Maybe that is because there are more people on high meat diets.Anyway what is the scientific source you refer to? I know breast cancer is largely hereditary. I know my sisters are real careful about it.Prostate cancer has been found in men too lazy to have a squirt! Seman contains heavy metals.

Ah but were those meat eaters eating margarine? If so it would show up many ill effects.It would be all to easy to blame the ill effects of eating margarine on eating meat.It is called inductive reasoning to do so.

There is absolutly no statistical evidence to suggest anything of the sort.One study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that although people on low fat diets had a slightly lower rate of heart disease, the overall mortality rate was actually higher.This often quoted six year advantage is essentially a bit of wishfull thinking.

In Australia I can tell you that the distribution of the horticulture business could be greatly improved.To give an example.Grapes grown in Mildura travel about 1000km to reach Hay where I live,but Mildura is 280KM away.Not all meat is produced in factory farms.

Any meat would taste better than margarine.Some plants are quite polluting as well such as cotton, tobacco, coffee, bananas and lettuce.

" I am a vegetarian not because I love animals but because I hate plants".
-E.B.White.


Fin.

 

Incidently, most of our oxygen comes from plants in the ocean.

 

Open letter to vegetarians,
http://www.westonaprice.org/tour/vegtourindex.html

 

Just out of curiosity why can an athiest not believe in a soul. Athiest only means you dont believe in God. Theres plenty of scope for beliving in a soul and not believing in God.

 

I don't eat my friends.

 

or their periods... (eggs)

 

i currently dont eat meat,but only coz i dont have a steady supply of organically fed and reared fodder.i feel there is nothing wrong with meat,i mean ,have you ever seen anything healthier than a lion,lets say?
but the stuff they pump these cows and pigs full of,its little wonder that the whole meat business,from production to consumption,is rotten to the core.if i had the space,id probably rear goats or something,at least if i didnt feel like eating meat,id have plenty of milk and cheese etc.
whats wrong with eating eggs?i know its chickens periods,but isnt that better,at least morally ,than eating potential life?chickens only produce young for a given period of the year,but lay eggs almost year round.i think its a lot fairer to consume eggs than ,lets say chicken.

 

I have been a vegetarian for 6 years, and i started because i honestly don't like the taste of meat. I never have. It isnt about saving all the animals as much as i personal dont like to eat an animal.

 

research tropic levels, when you're eating meat you're eating a significantly greater amount than you think you're eating because that animal had to be fed, there is the history, it's about an average of a 10:1 ratio (ten pounds of grain to one pound of meat) it saves huge amount of arable land and in affect a chunk of the enviroment to be vegetarian


I am not btw a vegatarian..... I just love good sauces and things that go with them to much.....

 

i am a vegatarian for 18-20 years i supose, i had no resason to start except i hated meat, but i soon realized the hundreds of thousands of reasons it was right.
my main reason is i refuse to kill a freind to eat
but this is the environmental reason i came here to post, you just beat me to it
ending the meat industry would end world hunger
most of our food production goes to feed animals that we(you, not me) then eat
stop feeding millions of animals that are just intended to be killed & you make so much more food available for human consumption..theoreticaly so much that there would be no need to continue deforesation to make room for more farmland & the huge cattle ranges could be returned to a more natural state also.