It was your equating the eating of meat with the murdering of humans that had me pondering your need for medication.
But since you didn’t answer my question (i.e. why does eating an animal require someone to be “crazy”), I’ll just have to let this one go. You’re new to this board (and possibly English isn’t your first language), and will learn sooner or later that being coherent is kind of a plus.
dalmuti,
It’s obvious to me that you are spoiling for a fight.
I like my omnivorous diet.
That bit you posted about the flavor being good “getting old” is wrong. Humans of all ages have enjoyed what they eat. I like the flavor just like millions of people before me have.
What I dislike is a disingenuous declaration like yours. You’ve got an axe to grind, and it would be refreshing if you were honest about it.
Living things eat other living things in order to sustain themselves. That is how it is, and how it will always be.
As has been mentioned, humans are well adapted to an omnivorous diet.
Note to other veggie dopers:
Like Guin, I will not associate you with this individual.
I think you need to get off your soapbox dalmuti. Apparently your dietary practices make you certain of your moral superiority. I think you’re full of (vegitarian) baloney!
In some countries humans have NOT ate meat for several million years and still do not!
Peolple have murdered humans for several millions years also! Does this mean it is acceptable?
To me murder is murder animal or human, I’m not here to say if it is wright or wrong! Just as you feel there is nothing wrong with eating meat, the murder does not feel there is anything wrong with killing someone. It is in the view point of the doer! Your allowed to live your life according to your morals but the murderer is not? Is that not being hypocritical? I did not equate eating meat to murdering of humans. I equated you are allowed to do what you want so why isn’t the murderer of humans allowed to do what he wants?
Most countries haven’t been around for several million years…
It doesn’t, it requires me to be crazy to eat meat. Wheather someone else has to be crazy to eat meat is not for me to judge they could or could not be!
In some countries humans have NOT ate meat for several million years and still do not!
Peolple have murdered humans for several millions years also! Does this mean it is acceptable?
To me murder is murder animal or human, I’m not here to say if it is wright or wrong! Just as you feel there is nothing wrong with eating meat, the murder does not feel there is anything wrong with killing someone. It is in the view point of the doer! Your allowed to live your life according to your morals but the murderer is not? Is that not being hypocritical? I did not equate eating meat to murdering of humans. I equated you are allowed to do what you want so why isn’t the murderer of humans? Who are you to judge If I need medication?
Well, where to start?
I agree, I wish there was more data out there for me to cite. Unfortunately, not much exists. The issue is such a large issue, it’s difficult to pin it down to small, concrete, specific points. Sure, many will point out that what I just said is a cop-out. But, I’m attempting to make a big conclusion, based on a number of smaller, or less profound ideas.
Here’s a cite that touches on the “big picture” I’m talking about. It’s a study, and the data you’ll see supports the fact that we are using up the planet’s resources too fast for the planet to handle. The rate of over-consumption of natural resources is only going to get worse, as our population increases.
I know I and others have thrown around Fast Food Nation quite a bit, but it is the best and most in-depth of the few books that have been written on the subject. It is also one of the, if not the least slanted books on the subjects. The author is neither a vegetarian, nor an animal rights activist. He was merely a conscientious consumer, who was curious as to what he was supporting by handing his hard-won dollars over to Mayor McCheese, or Dave Thompson, or Colonel Sanders. Have you read the book? Please don’t doubt the author’s credentials, the thoroughness of the documentation, or the subjectivity of the book, unless you’ve read it. We can’t debate the validity of the research if you haven’t read it. Unfortuantley, people in these parts are much more partial to relying on web cites for references, rather than books. Unfortunately, there aren’t many level-headed webmasters out there tackling these kinds of issues. Most undoutedly have an agenda. Which is great, it just doesn’t help me out in this particular situation.
And yes, it’s true that life needs to feed on other life. But that doesn’t necessarily imply death. One can eat a diet of nuts, legumes, fruit, and berries, and have their diet be decidedly void of death. There are health repercussions to that decision, though, which is why I decided to also include vegetables in my diet. Yes, I purposefully kill vegetables to satisfy my own biological nutritional requirements. But, unlike a diet that includes meat, there is no pain, no suffering in a vegan diet. That’s where the difference lies, I believe.
Another benefit of eating a vegan diet, is that it exponantially easier on the environment. I’m not going to get into that, now, as I’ve already posted plenty of info on that, in my old posts. The main points are: not as much water is used, not was much waste is produced, not as many unnecceary things are left over, and it’s not such a waste of valuable fiber and protien. Instead of feeding our food to cows, and then eating them, we just eat the food first. Granted, we can’t eat grass, so eating cows once had it’s place, when we actually needed these lovely ruminants to convert unattainable (to humans) nutrients into attainable (beef) sustenance. But, today’s cows are hardly fed grass. They are fed soy, wheat, and other things. All of this soy and wheat is undoubtedly able to be eaten by humans. (Not all, considering that a good percentage of it is genetically engineered, but that’s a whole different issue . . .) So, in essence, all of that nutrition is essentially being wasted by those who have money to spend, and create a demand for the flesh of animals to be sold.
So, if you think about that factor, if humans adapted a vegetarian, or near-vegetarian diet, there would be a hell of a lot more food to go around. You can’t deny that. Sure, the poor would still be poor, and the lack of domesitcated animals wouldn’t allow soybeans and wheat to be grown in a desert, but the abundance of food would more than likely cause prices to fall, and therefore the precious food would be more available to people who need it.
Health concerns: I can’t convince you. I can throw data, facts, studies, professional opinions, and everything else at you, but with your “well shit bud everything kills ya” attitude, I’m not going to be able to give you a satisfactory answer, so don’t hold that fact against me.
The evidence out there is overwhelming. I’ve read so many books on the subject, each of which site study after study after study which, hands down, point to the fact that vegetarian and began diets promote healthier hearts, lower rates of cancer, stronger immune systems, and all in all longer lives. Just because it doesn’t say so on the internet doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Here is whay the FDA has to say about it. Here’s something from CNN, which is sourced from the FDA.
Here is a link to theChina-Cornell-Oxford Project, which is the largest scientific study ever conducted on the relationship between diet and health. Check out the “Results” and “Implications,” which won’t take a long time to read. No, it doesn’t promote a vegetarian lifestyle, but it does promote an extremely low-fat diet, which is essentially only possible by eating a vegan (and therefore inherently cholesterol-free) diet.
Here are some highlights:
*"The ‘dietary and lifestyle’ factors chiefly associated with the ‘degenerative disease’ counties included metabolic and dietary factors which characterize diets richer in animal products and higher in total fat.
These findings suggested that only small additions of animal based foods to an otherwise all plant based diet could elevate blood cholesterol (both total and LDL), thence to elevate the risk for the chronic degenerative diseases."
“These diets [of rural Chinese] are much different from the average American diets, containing only about 0-20% animal based foods, while the average American diet is comprised of about 60-80% animal based foods.”
Notice that many of the major “killers” (heart failure, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and osteoporosis,) are much more common in America, and linked to fatty, low-fiber, animal-based diets.*
So, yes, we’re all going to perish, one day. If you, or anyone else, wants to do this while being terribly overweight, with clogged ateries, and on eight different medications, by all means, keep spending your money at McDonalds. I’m just trying my best to get you to think about the choices you make, how they effect your body, and our world. I’m doing my best to fight ignorance.
So, zen101, you get your jollies by eating veal, swearing in front of clergy, and trashy sci-fi novels. I get mine by trying to show people a simple, easy way to live a healthier, longer life, by adopting a diet choice that is much less difficult for the earth to sustain, and causes a little less death, pain, and suffering in the world.
“Put a one-year old in a crib with a carrot and a rabbit. I’ll buy you a new car if that baby plays with the carrot and eats the rabbit.”
I’m not a doctor, but you should probably be taking something. A deep calming breath might be a good start.
Okay I’m a dumbass! I will admit that.
Most humans have not ate meat for several million years also!
Several million years?! Uh…I assume by ‘people’ you’re referring to the very earliest proto-humans? And you can track their each and every descendant for ‘several million years’ and know for a fact that none of them ate meat? My guess is that they did eat meat, and several of them ate other people. <snort>
I don’t understand why you think I need something. Perhaps you are taking something you don’t need!
How do you know they ate meat? How do you know what they ate?
Besides my point is I am not judging people who eat meat. Like I’ve stated I don’t care that they do. But why do people (meat eaters and veggies)judge what other people do wheather it is murder another human or anything? Meat eaters don’t like to be judged for what they do so why do they judjge others for what they do perhaps a murderer or anyone else?
Forbin, what do you want me to be honest about? I don’t understand what you meant by You’ve got an axe to grind, and it would be refreshing if you were honest about it. If you happened to have read the reasy of the thread, it would be perfectly clear that yes, I do have an opinon on this matter. This is the “debates” board. Opinions are usually necessary for debating something.
You said “As has been mentioned, humans are well adapted to an omnivorous diet.”
Let’s take a look at that. Here’s a good cite to see just how well we’ve adopted to our high fat, obnoxiously high cholesterol diets. Here’s another. Let’s look at some of the fun:
*At least 58.8 million people in this country suffer from some form of heart disease.
One person in four suffers from some form of cardiovascular disease, including:
high blood pressure - 50 million
coronary heart disease - 12 million
angina pectoris - 6 million
myocardial infarction - 7 million
stroke - 4.4 million
rheumatic heart disease / rheumatic fever - 1.8 million
congenital cardiovascular defects - 1 million
congestive heart failure - 4.6 million
Almost 1 out of every 2.4 deaths are from cardiovascular disease.
Since 1900, cardiovascular disease has been the leading cause of death in every year but one, 1918.
More than 2,600 deaths occur each day from cardiovascular disease – 1 death every 33 seconds.
Cardiovascular disease is the cause of more deaths than the next 7 causes of death combined.
It is a myth that heart disease is a man’s disease. In 1996, the number of male deaths from cardiovascular disease was 453,297 (47.3 percent). In 1996, the number of female deaths was 505,930 (52.7 percent) – more than the next 16 causes of death combined.
While it is true that men generally begin suffering from heart disease at a younger age than women, more than half the women alive today will die from cardiovascular disease. One in 3 men can expect to develop cardiovascular disease before the age of 60. For women of the same age, the odds are 1 in 10.
The cost of cardiovascular disease in 1999 is estimated at $286.5 billion – an increase of about $12 billion from last year.
Stroke killed 159,942 people in 1996 – on average a stroke death occurs every 3.3 minutes.
Stroke is a leading cause of serious, long-term disability that accounts for more than half of all patients hospitalized for neurological disease, and stroke deaths have been increasing in recent years.
About 400,000 new cases of congestive heart failure occur each year. Congestive heart failure deaths continue to increase dramatically.
Heart disease is an equal opportunity killer; affecting both sexes, every race, and all ages.*
The best way to not be one of these statistics? Stop eating meat and dairy products.
Now, I’ll step back onto my soapbox and tell you why many people don’t know that heart disease isn’t just “something that happens to everyone,” and that bypass sugery isn’t just “something we all have to do.” It’s because the meat and dairy industry have so much damn money, they can simply out advertise the American Cancer Association, the American Heart Association, and the FDA’s warnings. The food pyramid is completely fabricated crap that’s left over from the 1950’s. It has no basis in reality, yet schoolchildren are being taught to obey it in school, and on television. Who supplies that information? The same bastards selling the milk and the pork chops.
So, if you think I’m being a haughty, by trying to share my opinions, than so be it. But really think about what you’re arguing against, and see how cool you feel next time you shovel $6 over to Ronald McDonald.
I don’t know. My point is: you don’t know either!
Actually, one can accomplish a vast improvement by greatly reducing the amount of meat one consumes. It’s your insistance on going to extremes which is undermining your argument. Westerners have become accustomed to a diet which (from an evolutionary standpoint) is considerably higher in meat content than our preindustrial (specifically, pre-refrigeration) ancestors. Returning to a lower-meat diet would be an improvement, but I see no evidence that going all the way to vegetarian offers a significant statistical advantage.
Thw whole issue may be moot, anyway. Like any natural resource, beef production suffers from the law of diminishing returns. Well before the end of this century, we’ll probably find we can no longer consume meat at the same rate because there simply isn’t enough pasture land to produce it. Meat prices will subsequently go up, and that will act as a control far more effective than trying to make meat-eating a moral issue.
Sab: you may be trying to explain yourself, but you’re not succeeding. You just keep repeating your initial point and it’s not improving with age.
They had to eat something? My guess would be both!
I am sure it has been said already, but…
Plants are living things as well. Just because they do not get cute puppy-dog eyes does not make them less alive. So part of Dalmuti’s argument hinges on one form of life being more or less killable and eatable then the next?
Many animals are killed bringing vegetables to the table. Shrews, moles, rats, mice, even slow birds, are all negatively effected by harvesting combines and other farm machines. Yes, even organic farmers use machines, so they too are committing mole-icide.
The problem is not that meat is being consumed, the problem is that too much is being eaten, and most of that is prepared in the wrong way. Fried chicken=Bad. (But oh so good!) Roast skinless chicken=good. (Can be, in theory).
I find it hard to believe that in this day and age people ignore the benefits of a dairy-rich diet. Again, stay away from the fatty stuff, but Milk, it does a body good! With actual research to back that up. I notice that the anti-everything tasty crowd never has any actual proof to back most of their claims; Only ‘feelings’ and quack holistic reports.
Vegans are the worst of the group. The adults, well, they pick their own demise. But when they foist their idiocy on children, as recently happened, we see a real-world example of the fallicy of their diet. The poor kid was underweight and developmentaly retarded. (No, not that sort of retarded)
Humans are omnivores. I have proof. Or rather, had proof, since I finished my Big Mac a little while ago.
What do I think? I think, “damn this tastes good.”
WHY do I have to justify sustaining myself? I’m sure a shark doesn’t justify why he eats a human occasionally.
The detachment thing…I don’t know, I’m sure it’s more of a cultural thing for me. If I was raised to think a cow is a pet, then I may have had a problem. Maybe not.
My SO owns a dog. Some ethnic groups here in Hawaii eat dogs. I’d try it, out of curiosity, but not if I had to kill it…maybe if it was already sitting there, BBQed on a plate. I’ve tried deer and frog legs too. We eat opihi here too.
As much as I go fishing, I stay out of the water so I don’t become some tiger shark’s afternoon snack.
I read the book and I enjoyed it thoroughly, at least the parts that did not make me very sad. As I stated before, I come from a catle family. I’m very used to dealing with the realities of the beef industry and do take many concerns regarding humane treatment of animals very seriously (not to mention humane treatment of actual humans). Even that book itself points out some of the false arguments anti-McDonald’s (and hence anti meat) people use and have used. There are also some very sound anti corportate messages (most of that book deals with how corporate handling of large amounts of meat cause many health problems, or advertise to the young. re: mother McDonalds breasts, not with simply stating meat=bad). The whole argument about deforesting the Amazon for one is way overexaggerated in regards to overall environmental impact. Here in the US and in most industrialized nations there is as much or more environmental and habitat damage done by sprawling urban heat islands and destroyed watersheds which for one cause massive flood plains. Now that isn’t to say that deforestation is a good thing, but there are certainly more things than just that to worry about when it comes to the environment, but i see very few activists who are moving into quansit huts or even out of urban areas for that matter.
Low blow bro. I’m a gourmand as much as I can afford and I can honestly say that i have spent less than $20 on fast food in the past six months (which includes a pizza-hut stuffed crust I got last week. I’ll admit that it’s not haute cuisine but I had two tests on Thursday and took the lazy option that allowed me to study, but Julia Childs is reported to have a fondness for Hostess products.), and none of that was at any burger chain. I stopped eating at McDonalds about the same time I quit drinking carbonated and/or sugared beverages (other than juice concentrates because I’m too lazy or cheap to actually buy fruit and juice it) almost two years back. I may eat things you disagree with, but I don’t eat poop.
I have no problem with health, I’m a recent non-smoker and like i mentioned I quit added sugars a while back and have gotten rid of the majority of prepared foods from my life. However I object to the moralizing that many vegans do. A dietary choice is just that, it isn’t a moral manifesto and in many cases it is unnatural or ill-advised healthwise (more on this later). Certainly kindness is a virtue, but as has been mentioned before many food animals simply would not exist if they were not for food. So is it better to not live or to live for food? Is this less or more noble than simply living to procreate or to consume? If you live then something dies so lets drop all moral pretense. This includes the person who equated killing animals with killing humans, I agree they are both the imperative of the individual and only our fabricated rules of society make one legan and the other not. Of course there is the issue of intelligence and survival (the origina of what we call morals), it is simply more intelligent to kill and eat something that does not usually carry a pistol than otherwise. You certainly stand a better chance of survival if you eat things that do not have family members with a well developed memory and an instinct to protect their own genome against percieved predators.
On the ecological ranking. I see two problems with this while agreeing with it completely. One problem is that it is a statistic which alone and viewed by a layperson is subject to interpretation. ie: Does the footprint represent curreny efficiency in harvesting techniques and does it allow for the possibility that methods and efficiency will improve? Does it take into consideration that efficiency and population are in a constant state of flux and there is a correlation between the two that is upset by, among other things, longevity and medecine (longer lives advocated by health enthusiasts certainly impact the environment as food is not the only thing people consume). Secondly while it is completely true that the US uses a disproportionatly large footprint when it comes to land use, we also share the burden of quite a bit of the worlds food processing which shifts some of that supply and provision footprint into a more equitable balance.
On health and the vegan lifestyle. Certainly a well financed and well informed person can live an incredibly healthy urban live as a vegan, however this is not usually the case. Most people who try going vegan or vegetarian suffer from ignorance or financial woes trying to keep up with the high price of this healthy choice. Hair loss may not be a big deal for many people healthwise, but it is certainly disconcerting and a symptom of other health issues (also a symptom of someone ingesting and developing a dependency on beef testosterone admittedly), but it is very difficult to ingest enough vegetable protein to maintain an athletic build unless you either spend a lot of time snacking or “stoking” as we used to call it (I briefly tried a lacto-ovo vegan diet in conjunction with muscle mass training) or cheat and go with whey proteins which are an animal byproduct. Many people don’t read, but listen to what other people who may or may not be well informed (usually the latter) and decide they are going to go vegan (this seems to strike a lot of incoming college freshman who also take up the wearing of hemp and patchouli and signing any petition that comes in front of them, yet are too stoned to make it to the polls come “Super Tuesday”), what happens is they often lose weight which they think is a sign of new health but may be muscle loss instead. There is also the financial burden of being vegan. Depending on your community you may or may not have access to a lot of good vegan food sources, in some communities the vegan lifestyle is very popular and therefore not too expensive to maintain. However in many places it is down right expensive to be a healthy vegan. ugh, I’m going on too long. mea culpa.
Suffice to say I have no problem with vegans any more than I do with anyone who does not attempt to lord their perversion over me as though on some moral high-horse. Certainly there are health benefits to many things we can do or stop doing (studies also show that job related stress is a major cause of hypertension and heart disease. Is unemployment an answer?) but without an overall picture or context the importance of meat when it comes to health and the environment can certainly be overstated.
Well, we do actually have ways of being at least reasonably certain what extinct animals ate. You can look at the teeth, for example–teeth tend to fossilize pretty well. Carnivores have one kind of teeth. Herbivores have different teeth. Omnivores have a distinctive set of choppers all their own. (And humans have, you guessed it, omnivore teeth.) You can compare the surmised behavior of extinct animals to the observed behavior of apparently similar living animals today–you want to be careful about that; although chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, we aren’t “descended from chimpanzees”. Still, it can be helpful in establishing your baselines. You look at what kind of teeth cows have, and what they eat. You look at what kind of teeth tigers have, and what they eat. Do the teeth of your extinct beastie look more like a tiger’s teeth or a cow’s teeth? (Of course, you can look at the teeth functionally, too, and see what sort of food they would logically work best on.) At any rate, you look at chimps, they have one sort of teeth, and they’ll eat pretty much anything they can find, forage for, dig up, catch, or pluck out of a tree, including meat when they can get it. You look at gorillas, they’re pretty strictly vegetarian. You look at some extinct australopithecine, and ask “Do its teeth look more like chimpanzee teeth or gorilla teeth?”
For living animals, you can (in addition to their observed behavior) also look at other features of their anatomy: their digestive tracts, for example.
I think someone’s already posted a link to this, but here it is again: Are humans meat eaters or vegetarians by nature?
Humans are omnivores, anatomically speaking, and we and our immediate ancestors have been for quite a while.
(Cannibalism is a little trickier. Any carnivore or omnivore is basically equipped to be capable of cannibalism; the question is, do they actually do it? I’m pretty sure chimps have been observed to at least occasionally eat each other, although I don’t think chimpanzees form a regular part of each other’s diet, so I’d be pretty surprised if early hominids didn’t at least sometimes eat each other, in famines or other unusual stresses if nothing else. Talking not about millions of years ago, but thousands or hundreds of years ago, we can be more sure about cannibalism by more technologically advanced hominids; i.e., human beings. Tool-using humans leave distinctive patterns made on the remains [bones] of large animals when they butcher them. There is evidence that the Anasazi of what is now the Southwestern U.S. resorted to cannibalism on a fairly wide scale at one point. They recently found some fossilized human dung, with human molecular traces in it–the wonders of modern science!–which was kind of a clincher.)
Sab-O-Tosh: Now of course saying that people evolved to eat meat (as well as plant foods) does not mean that it’s right for us to do so. What is is not always what ought to be. But your position of “eating animals is the same as eating people, but I’m not judging anybody” isn’t really satisfactory. Most of us rather prefer to live in a society where moral distinctions are made. We don’t want to be killed and eaten, we don’t want our friends and loved ones and favorite movie stars to be killed and eaten; heck, we don’t even want you to be killed and eaten. If eating non-human animals is really the moral equivalent of eating humans, then everybody who has a Big Mac should get the chair (or at least a lengthy prison sentence). We don’t live in some anarchistic moral jungle where there are no consequences to killing each other, and most of us who are reasonably sane don’t want to live like that. So, you need to actually demonstrate that there’s a moral equivalence between eating non-humans and eating humans, not just blithely assert it but then say “But, hey, I’m not judging anyone–if someone wants to kill and eat a few of his neighbors, that’s just his lifestyle!”
I just had this mental image of facing the meat on my plate, yelling “Sit!”, then taking a bite and saying “Hmm, good dog.”
sit, Ubu, sit…