Are any of you not vegetarians?

incorrect, beef does not have alot of iron. It has similair amounts as other foods per serving.

4oz serving of beef contains 10 % of your daily value.

Half cup of brocoli contains .6mg of iron. We need roughly 18 mg of iron per day. quick calculations show that just half cup of broccoli has 3% of our daily value of iron. Not to mention, loads of anti-oxidents, fiber and the types of vitamins that it takes to absorb iron, such as folic acid and vitamin c.

 

OK Einstein, remember the iron content in food isn't as important as how well it's absorbed. I can eat a bolt and that's loaded with iron, but it won't do me much good, now, will it?

Women need more iron than guys do, particularly during menstruation.

Something I found:

Funny, I don't see broccoli on the list. Furthermore, by your calculations I'd have to eat over a cup and a half of broccoli to get as much iron as a 4 oz steak, assuming the body assimilates the iron equally, which it doesn't.

I think I'll take the steak when I need the iron, which I don't. But when I do, I'm sure my appetite will beckon, at which point I'll answer with a steak from a locally grown, grass fed, field dwelling, humanely treated cow.

And you're right, you're not a savior...

...then again, no one is...

 

Yes. One that required 35 gallons of water per pound of meat to produce, not 1500 gallons.

 

Yah I gotta agree. I don't see anything wrong with beef. We just need to eat less of it for our health. A high-vegetarian community could butcher a 2 grass fed cows a month and have a cookout for everyone. Steaks, burgers, chili, roasts, jerky.

It's not about "right and wrong, good or evil". It's about balance. If people are afraid of missing out on meat nutrients then lets find a way to compromise.

 

My girlfriend stopped eating meat this summer. She was very pale and bordered anemic. Only until she stopped eating meat, period, with occasional rare fish and loads of veggies/fruits/nuts/legumes(sprouted) mostly raw, has she been able to never feel dizzy when she stopped eating. I have to completely disagree, its just not useful on so many levels to eat meat. The iron from nuts, not to mention sprouted legumes and some vegg is more than enough, indeed, it is healing.

Your cute, but you should know that researching takes more time than drawing up some list from one potential site. Brocoli is the best food an anemic can eat, because it is loaded with iron(people usually eat 2 - 4 servings of broc in one sitting, one serving is like 1.5 cups) and more importantly, the necessary nutrients required to absorb iron - vitamin c/Folic Acid. De facto, the number one food for anemics is without doubt, sprouted black beans. These legumes are especially loaded with iron and when they sprout their levels of iron double and triple. Also, they are packed with the required vitamin c/ folic acid to absorb the minerals effectively and restore iron levels. If your girl needs more iron, tell her to eat this.

Yes, meat is a decent alternative, however, its health effects are detrimental and out-right destructive, ESPECIALLY when you know now, that you can achieve sufficient iron levels with the aid of a nutrient rich diet, such as a raw food diet, with low fish consumption, high nut, fruit, legume and veg intake.

I must disagree, tsurugi, meat clogges and slows your digestive system up, manifold slowing your absorption of nutrients. Moreover, there is no need for it when the community can get milk products and have the cow around, in the case of crop failures.


Dont listen to me, listen to this guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUvjXQHt6QQ

Seriously, nuff' said. Fuck off already.

 

Sure, I think that you can live a pretty wholesome lifestyle being vegan. And I wouldn't say that meat is "destructive", it's just not optimal. Certain cultures must rely on animal products to live. So I wouldn't automatically demonize them for eating meat.

On the other hand if people in "our" culture think that they MUST eat meat to get some missing nutrients, then so be it. IF they're on a full-time vegetarian diet and notice that their performance decreases after eating meat then they'll KNOW that meat isn't the way to go.

 

I eat meat cuz it TASTE SO DAMN GOOD!!!!! a nice red bloody rare steak mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm damn that is heaven!!!

 

I was raised eating meat, and my dad is a deer hunter. Just recently I have decided to reduce more than half my meat intake. To begin with, I'm getting rid of pork, and beef completely. Hopefully I'll see some results soon!

 

I could never give up fish/fish oil because of its EPA and DHA content. I think that vegetarians are missing out on the fantastic health benefits of fish. They can get ALA from flax, chia, soy and a few others, and I've found plant-based omega 3 fatty acids to have some health benefit, but the real health benefits are from the EPA and DHA that can only be obtained in sufficient quantities from fish/fish oil. That being said I hardly think that fish or even chicken is the problem. I eat a few servings of either once a day and occasionally have some beef or pork. If everyone did like I do I think that would be completely reasonable environmentally.

 

Good, now that we've established red meat as a good source of iron is not "incorrect" I'll stop wasting my time.

After my daughter was born, her mom craved red meat, and does so when she would otherwise be anemic, but every one's different, and meat is difficult to digest, more difficult for some, particularly red meat. Obviously if you can't digest it, you can't get the iron out of it.

Fish oil is excellent, though I worry about mercury.

Venison is about my favorite. You gotta figure these creatures are lean. However, an organic farmer friend of mine brought up the concern that our local deer are being fed that crappy grade genetically modified corn meal by well intentioned people who are upsetting the natural balance, so I think twice about eating a lot of venison in my neck of the woods. I doubt seriously that anything that runs around in the woods could be any worse than what you'd find at your super market, but I could be wrong.

 

I eat meat, but I recognize how unkind the food business is and am in process of getting my own farm started so that I will only eat ethically raised-by-me animals.

Vegetarians... power to you... I couldn't do it (I think that it is blood type related... I'm an O). It is a powerful way to remove aspects of animal cruelty from your field of influence.
Of course, every food item has its political and ethical implications... but I entirely respect the politics of vegetarianism.

 

Just a couple of facts for your benefit to clear things up:

Beef is a good source of iron. However simply having iron doesn't make it a "healthy" choice. This would be the logical fallacy of composition that states that what is true about one part of a thing is true about the whole thing. The iron in beef is healthy but there are numerous unhealthy aspects to it that outweigh the benefits of the iron. Same goes with cow's milk. Cow's milk has calcium, which is in itself healthy, however milk has so many negative effects to it that we can consider the whole thing unhealthy. Iron and calcium can come from many healthy sources. Lentils, for example have tons of iron but are also healthy as a whole, and calcium supplements can easily replace and even out-do the calcium from cow's milk while only costing like $3 a month. You also said that the nutrient content isnt as important as the amount absorbed into the body. This absolutely correct. This is why broccoli and lentils are a much better source of iron than beef. Digestion of lentils and broccoli is much more efficient than for beef and more of the nutrients are absorbed.

 

I definately deer and fish would be the way to go for meat. All meat isn't created equal, and you can't compare wild-forage meat to domesticated.

About the EPA / DHA thing. Just think about it this way. Prehistorically, I bet we didn't eat a lot of fish. So we must have gotten it somehow else, maybe even through some synthesis process that we haven't discovered yet. Who knows.

 

It would depend on the prehistoric culture. If they were close to water they did eat fish and if they weren't they didn't. To answer that question about the ones that didn't, I'm sure you've heard of ALA, alpha linolenic acid. That's the one in soy, flax, chia, spirulina, nuts, basically any plants that are sources of omega 3. The body converts ALA to EPA and DHA and so by getting ALA from plants, humans can make their own EPA and DHA. That being said, the body doesn't convert ALA to EPA and DHA very efficiently but it does convert enough to prevent deficiency problems. So people who didn't eat any fish could have still lived healthy and long lives.

 

Just to clarify where I'm coming from, my intent here is not to discredit the nutritional benefits of a vegetarian diet, though I'm still not won over by College Boy's assertion that meat is nutritionally inferior, particularly as a source of iron, and quite frankly, I'm turned off by his seemingly holier-than-thou, know-it-all attitude, having bared witness to the same bullshit at the food coop in the college community where I live. Being vegetarian doesn't make you any more enlightened than anyone else. Being open-minded to others' points of view does. Mind you, I used to be a college boy and a vegetarian some twenty years ago myself, along with many of my friends, and I probably exhibited the same ideology. Now here we are college educated forty-somethings, and we all eat meat, go figure.

Sure, if I'm sitting on my ass all day, vegetables are definitely healthier, and they don't make me feel sluggish, but after a day of hard physical work, I can go for a rib eye. A bowl of broccoli just doesn't cut it, though I'll definitely consider it with some lentils on the side.

 

I know the EPA and DHA arguements. But I have to ask the question "Did the general human population rely on fish?". Did we survive off of mammoth sized fish that were easy to catch? Did we build damns and wade in the water tryin to catch fish?

Maybe we don't need all that much EPA/DHA, but we just have to make sure we don't fuck up our ratios of omega 3/6 by eating too much omega-6 (mass meat production). So maybe we overstate its importance because we're off balanced, but in reality we dont' need that much. I'm not saying it's true, I'm just tossin some ideas out there.

And to Mellow Yellow, I'm not saying that you didn't carry out a proper vegetarian diet, but it's one thing to consider about ur friends. Me personally have recently changed to high-vegetarian, but I'm all about eating meat when deemed necessary. I figure most people don't even realize how certain foods affect em. Going high-vegetarian would get you off the meat, and if after a while you take a bite of carcass and notice beneficial effects I say do it in moderation. I know 2 vegetarian chicks who promote it like a religion, yet they both survive off of pocky sticks, tofu, rice, and soda pop. I know martial artists who can eat literally ANYTHING and still put out work like a v8 engine...

 

Some scientists predict that the proto humans evolved to the humans of today at a ratio of about 1:1 omega 3 and 6, and it was because they were eating a lot of fish. When prehistoric humans moved away from water, the ratio would have changed depending on what they ate.

We don't NEED a lot of EPA and DHA but they're seriously beneficial. Vegetarians aren't getting the kind of EPA and DHA that nutritionists are raving about because they simply don't eat fish, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be unhealthy. A vegetarian diet done right is extremely healthy on its own. ALA from plants serves to balance the ratio and counter the devastating inflammation of an out of whack ratio, it just doesn't provide the benefits that you can only get from fish oil. I take fish oil every day and eat fish 3 times a week but I still use flax and chia to balance the ratio even further. It's crazy the amount of omega 6 in food. Vegetable oil, nuts and seeds, chicken and pork, corn, and tons of other things contain unholy amounts of omega 6 so I couldn't see myself without plant-based ALA as well as fish-based EPA and DHA.

 

It's just so hard to KNOW what to do, even given our evolutionary history or science. There's so much unknown.

How did people catch fish without nets? Or did people even live near the coasts and then move elsewhere? Did people eat small panfish or Leviathan-like creatures? Was fish-eating only a last resort survival mechanism instead of eating mega-flora? Who knows......

I think the high vegetarian diet w/ fish is a really healthy diet. Everyone says "meat is evil", but that's just not fair. And look at the Okinawans and traditional Asianers. They eat fish and they're doin perfectly well.

About 4 months ago I found this AWSOME local phillipino fishmonger. I can get king salmon and wild caught salmon scraps (end cut fillets n steak bits) for $2-3 a /lb!! Same with wild caught halibut!!!! Tuna and salmon jerky $6 a lb, amazingly good. Great seafood-boil blue crab for a $1 a pop. I need a reason to visit him lol.

 

This is true. The common vegan argument that our bodies don't respond well to animals is just plain false. Fish is extremely healthy. Even chicken and turkey aren't that bad. It actually takes as long to digest chicken as it does to digest soybeans or almonds. Beef and pork are clearly poor choices, fine, but fish, eggs and poultry can play an important role in a healthy diet.

 

I really don't care about the original post. Yeah its bad but shit, I like to eat. I REALLY like to eat meat, bloody, lean yummy meat. We can't all rely on veggies to be happy/fed.