Hmm…I don’t recall accusing you of being “condescending”, but, whatever.
And I agree - life’s too short. If you don’t expect me to justify my private diet choice to you, and if you are happy to leave me with my veggies in peace, I have zero problems with you!
But please understand - some of us veggies have come to the end of our tether, because we are pestered way too much. I understand that there are plenty of vegetarians out there that are militant and extremely annoying. (Please - feel free to duke it out with them - they are asking for it!)
But there are plenty more of us that just want to mind our own business. We aren’t judging anyone, and we merely would like to not be expected to constantly justify or explain our diet, since it’s our personal choice and really no one else’s business. And you also have to understand (as I explained in that “gentle rant” I linked to in a previous post) that certain arguments have been done to death. They don’t carry any weight for us (if they had, we’d be eating meat now) so why shouldn’t we get sick of hearing them repeated over and over again? It’s human nature to get weary of it.
And, as a final note I’d like to add, welcome to the boards!
I don’t have any problem with vegetarians unless, like someone said before, they try to convince me to give up my meat. I admit it. I LOVE meat. Ribeye steak…bring it on!! Once every 4 months or so, I go completely vegetarian for about 2 or 3 weeks. Why? Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I do it because I feel so damn good when I am doing it. Afraid I cant bring myself to do it all the time though. I just love eating meat too much.
I do really hate it when a vegetarian tells me that mankind is naturally an herbivore…that we are not supposed to eat meat. I find this statement to be ludicrous. A cow won’t eat meat because they dont even recognize it as food. If we were MEANT to be total herbivores, we wouldnt even think of meat as food. One of the great things about being human is that we can decide for ourselves what we want to eat, and we have so many choices. Variety is, after all, the spice of life.
That’s because y’all are held up as an example by those nanny Nazis who are always pestering me to eat my vegetables. I hate vegetables. Bleah! What sadomasochist out there decided that we should all treat the Brussels sprout as food, when clearly God created the Brussels sprout for marksmanship practice? And carrots! They taste like dirt! Feh! And don’t even get me started on those mutated gross-out leaves they call “lettuce.” Ulch. If I was trapped on a desert island with the only food around being a vegetable garden, I’d set fire to it and use the heat to cook my own foot.
I think tracer would probably agree that we vegephobes are very open-minded about other people’s diet choices. Their reasoning behind those choices are their own business, and they can consume whatever the hell they want. Glass and metal too, if they were so inclined, I wouldn’t care. I have a friend who eats bread and cereal and milk ONLY. Nothing else. Ever.
But the people who start yabbering on to others about what they should be eating, imposing moral or health choices on others, is just as disgustingly rude as any evangelical religious person trying to convince a non-believer to change their beliefs.
Live and let live, say I. Let people eat whatever the heckydoody they want, as long as it isn’t clearly detrimental to their wellbeing (and my food choices are not bad for me, I’m fantastically healthy and happy) then who are you to say we’re doing wrong?
I now return you to your regularly scheduled Great Debate.
I think the OP has been covered. I agree with the position that everybody regulates what they eat somehow. For what it’s worth, my brother and I are both vegetarians who pay very little attention to what we eat or to our health, while our parents are a bit obsessed with their cholesterol counts and all that, but they won’t consider giving up meat. What’s even more ironic is that while my Dad grew up eating meat, my Mom’s family was usually too poor to afford it. Now, however, she can’t live without it.
My grandfather used to tell me that he would have to eat twice as much meat in order to make up for my deficiency. (He was joking of course.) But I have met some rude jackasses, especially in the college cafeteria.
That’s fine with me, just remember to eat your raw beluga whale skins. (That’s what Cecil says.)
Actually, it can do a lot of harm to you, if you’re not a “smart vegetarian” as my nutrition teacher put it. A smart vegetarian is one who has at some point or another worked with a nutritionist to determine what they need to eat, and in what amounts, to stay healthy.
A vegetarian who isn’t smart, and ones he said worried him greatly, decides that if they replace their meat intake with salad and an occasional PBJ they’re all set. All it leads to is low iron levels, lower than desired weight and constant colds because they’ve also lowered their body’s ability to fight off germs.
Basically, he was warning us not to take the commitment to the lifestyle casually, or it would harm us. Being a smart vegetarian probably isn’t an eating disorder, but otherwise…maybe.
Actually, it can do a lot of harm to you, if you’re not a “smart vegetarian” as my nutrition teacher put it. A smart vegetarian is one who has at some point or another worked with a nutritionist to determine what they need to eat, and in what amounts, to stay healthy.
A vegetarian who isn’t smart, and ones he said worried him greatly, decides that if they replace their meat intake with salad and an occasional PBJ they’re all set. All it leads to is low iron levels, lower than desired weight and constant colds because they’ve also lowered their body’s ability to fight off germs.
Basically, he was warning us not to take the commitment to the lifestyle casually, or it would harm us. Being a smart vegetarian probably isn’t an eating disorder, but otherwise…maybe.
Sorry for the double post…I got a “page not found” error the first time, so I refreshed (before trying to post a second time) and it didn’t show up- until now. odd.
So, eating unwisely is now an “eating disorder”? I guess that makes every person who eats a lot of Big Macs and Ho-Hos afflicted with an “eating disorder”, then.
oxymoron? Thats like saying I have a very balanced diet of nothing but bread and water. Meat is a basic food group, as is milk. Without these you cannot say “well-balanced” because the scale is tipped towards a heavy vegetable/fruit/grain diet, with no meat or dairy products. Hence, no balance. Healthy mabey, balanced…hardly.
It depends on your definition of “a lot.” If they binge on them, then yes. And isn’t the definition of eating disorder inclusive of eating unwisely? From anorexia nervosa to compusive over-eating, eating disorders are characterized by making diet choices(those the choice might be subconscious) that have adverse effects on one’s health. http://www.edreferral.com/definitions.htm
And since most of us agree that a sensible vegetarian diet isn’t considered unhealthy, why does this OP exist, anyway? Eating unhealthy is eating unhealthy - whether you be vegetarian or omnivore.
Meat and milk are basic food groups in the constructed food pyramid because they are the norm in meeting protein and calcium requirements. You can also meet these needs with vegetarian sources: beans, pulses, and grains can serve to get the required protein. Eating them together complementarily fulfills the essential amino acid profile that meat easily supplies.
What would you have to eat to get the same amino acid profile that you would normally get eating a “balanced” diet? If you cannot eat fish per se, how would one get the omega-3 acids that are good for the heart? Can every mineral/vitamin necessary for a healthy lifestyle be found in plants? If so I would really be interested in getting a Cite for it. Vegetables are alot cheaper than meats, easier to prepare and make great snacks, If I can find evidence that they provide everything that is necessary for the human body over time to thrive, I would be very interested.
Also, Isn’t there several kinds of protien? I heard Soy beans provide protien, but of a different sort (?) than those provided by meats.
The few vegetarians that I have known personally have not been the epitone of fitness. Sure, they were thin, but unheathly, they did not get excersise, they were weak, and pallid, and sick all the time. This makes me think they were lacking in something.
I have a friend who has been a vegan since she was a teenager. She is now 33. She is very active, walks a lot, and eats heartily. She even feels like she should lose weight (I think she looks fine) so recently she went to a dietician, and had him go over her diet with a fine-toothed comb. She was hoping there was something she could change in her diet so she could lose weight. The dietician said her diet was perfect - just wonderful.
My sister has been vegetarian for over 15 years. She is a diabetic, and before she went veggie, always had a tendency for anemia. Since she became vegetarian, her anemia has vanished. She also consulted her doctor about her diet, and the doctor gave her the “thumbs up”.
I am an overweight vegetarian. However, I find it has been easier to lose weight and keep it off as a vegetarian. I need to improve my eating habits, but this has NOTHING to do with vegetarianism. I’ve always been a hog! I do know that it is easier to diet and not overeat as a vegetarian, and this is good news to me.
Check out the latest issue of “Vegetarian Times” - I think you will find plenty of examples in there of healthy-looking vegetarians. Just because a few of your friends are sickly, it doesn’t mean all veggies are.
:rolleyes: Maybe you need to get around more, then. Does Alicia Silverstone look weak and pallid? Belinda Carlisle? Kim Basinger? Carl Lewis, for heaven’s sake? How about the 1998 Ironlady of Hawaii champion? St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa? Martina Navratilova?
This is such a bizarrely inaccurate characterization of vegetarians that I can’t for a moment figure out how an intelligent person would even attempt to extrapolate it from “the few I personally know” to “all vegetarians.” It boggles the mind.
I am sorry I offended you, I did not mean it. I never claimed that I thought all vegetarians were unhealthy, though I did question those that did not eat fish, and I for the life of me cannot see it in my post. I simply asked a question, stated my viewpoint on it, and have patiently waited for an answer and a correction, if necessary. So far I have been corrected, I still wait for a Cite showing that eating meat is detrimental or that not eating meat is healthy. (fish included) If this offends you I appologize, I am not here to laugh or belittle your lifestyle, just to find out what is best for me.
Wow, I’m glad to see that a good diet can get rid of anemia. Diabeties runs in my family, and I have been trying to construct a diet that is healthy and will prevent diabetes.
I’ll check it out the next time I am at the library. I’m assuming that my “friends” (they are actually friends of my sister) do not eat a balanced diet, and probably actually go for the particular pallid and sickly look (psuedo-goths). Since I have never ran across any other vegetarians to my knowledge, I cannot possibly have known that there are some healthy ones out there. This thread has been enlightening. (if a bit hostile)
Epimetheus, sorry if we seem a bit hostile, and welcome to the boards! But vegetarians seem to get grief wherever we go, just because we dare to have a “different” diet. God Forbid we be “different”, huh? There’s a hot thread going on in the Pit, if you want more insight. (It’s started by yet another meat-eater who is bitching about vegetarians. Like there’s nothing better to do but bitch about what other people eat. :rolleyes: )
Personally, I find Veganism to be the only aspect of diet intake that worries me - I had a vegan friend who had to eat about five times as much food as most other people just so she could keep from collapsing.
But she may not have been a typical vegan, so I cast no judgement.
I hate vegetables. Bleah! What sadomasochist out there decided that we should all treat the Brussels sprout as food, when clearly God created the Brussels sprout for marksmanship practice? And carrots! They taste like dirt! Feh! And don’t even get me started on those mutated gross-out leaves they call “lettuce.” Ulch. If I was trapped on a desert island with the only food around being a vegetable garden, I’d set fire to it and use the heat to cook my own foot.
I do know that it is easier to diet and not overeat as a vegetarian, and this is good news to me.