Perhaps if they touted “vegetarian foods” or something. And they certainly were fried in 100% vegetable oil. And I really don’t recall reading…
Ahh, yes, I think they did have the ambiguous “flavoring” on the ingredients list, now that I think about it. Never mentioned beef flavoring, though.
No, Cecil said you have to eat a lot of vegetables to get as much protein as you’d get by eating meat. That’s not the same thing at all. Apart from the very poor and the anorexic, there are very few cases of protein deficiency in the first world. Meat eaters are probably more at risk of getting too much protein than vegetarians are of getting too little.
He said
Looks to me like he said you have to eat a lot of vegetables to get enough protein. Looks to me like you don’t understand what he said.
Because the first-world diet is meat-centered!
Which is why I said that an ideal diet is only one-quarter meat, most of it white.
WOW!!!
I saw the topic on GD and thought it would be interesting to see what was being said. I was mostly looking for the reason people became vegatarians or vegans.
While we can all agree that there are different degrees of vegatarians (for there own personal reasons). I seem to have a problem with people who do not like the way the animals are treated.
Have you ever read about the migrant farmworkers? Human beings are being treaty as if they were animals. I am not an expert on the subject but unless you grow your own food you are contributing to the deprivation of human life (low wages, horrible working conditions, no sick or vacation time etc…) Sounds like these vegartarians have a double standard to me.
Are you willing to pay $20 for an apple? If not, get off your high horse and eat a bacon double cheeseburger.
And do not try to agrue that “they can better themselves” or “Immigration is the problem”. Leave them for another GD.
Let’s face it folks, no matter what you do in life someone or thing will be adversely affected by it. But that is another topic.
BTW, I have no problem with most vegartaians only ones that try to tell me what I am doing is wrong. Health reasons, taste issues etc. Fine with me. Enjoy.
**
Looks to me like you don’t, either. Cecil said you have to eat a lot of stems and leaves to get enough protein. Let’s see his quote again:
It would take a lot of stems and leaves to keep a person going, but vegetarians do not survive entirely on stems and leaves. Even a vegetarian “in the wild” could gather nuts or dig for roots, something people have been doing for millions of years. Certainly for many people in many parts of the world the easiest and best way to get protein is by eating meat. But at least here in the first world, where you can easily buy any food product you like, it is not hard at all to maintain a healthy vegetarian diet.
Your selective quoting is starting to get on my nerves. The sentence which preceded that was:
In other words, animals that live on the above have to scrounge for snacks. He is not referring to modern human beings on a vegetarian diet.
Because the first-world diet is meat-centered! **
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes: When I said that there are very few cases apart from the very poor and anorexic, I didn’t mean that there are very few cases apart from the very poor, anorexic, and vegetarian.
And this helping the migrant worker … how?
I never said this was going to help the migrant worker.
I don’t want to get into an economy/america looks the other way debate…but what I meant was this:
If vegatarians (the ones who claim to be so because of the treatment of animals), aren’t willing to fight for better living standards for these migrant workers than they should become carnivours again (because their reasoning is hypocritical). My $20 apple is based on the higher cost of produce when you factor in the higher wages, health benefits, vacation/sick time etc. Don’t expect the farmer to bite the bullet and eat the losses(pun intended). Of course $20 may be a little exaggerated.
We all try not to think of who picks the fruits and veggies, sews our clothes, or cleans our dishes in restaurants. The fact is that we need these people but we do not want to pay them fairly because that will result in higher costs to us. Which in turn will raise the cost of living and result in the lower wage earners to need to make even more money. Because their raise will have been canceled out by the cost of living increase. Its a vicious cycle. But I am not an economist so my theory is probably flawed.
So you are qualified to dictate what vegetarians should do to aleviate their “hypocrisy”? And eating a cheeseburger will do this? 
And a vegetarian giving up vegetarianism will change all of these things…how?
Uh huh. And a vegetarian going back to meat-eating changes any of this…how?
And all of this relates to vegetarians…how?
Yosemitebabe, you seem to be taking my points piece by piece and not as a whole. Again, my point was only with vegs who claim their reasoning is for the treatment of animals. All other reasons (unless there are ones I can think of) I don’t have a problem with.
Again, see above.
Please try to follow my train of thought.
I hope you do not labor for many hours under the misimpression that any of us vegetarians give a fuck whether or not you approve of our reasons. If you do, consider yourself disabused of that notion.
The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other, however desperately you wish to tie them together. Did it ever occur to you that some vegetarians actually grow their very own food? Did it also ever occur to you that some people are very conscientious about where they buy there produce?
[QUOTE}I merely stated that they are hypocrits. They are merely trying to be perceived as better than others by not eating meat.[/QUOTE]
This has been covered in other threads with people who can spell and reason a lot better than you can. Unless your last name is Kreskin or Geller, please do not make ham-handed attempts to attribute motives to strangers–motives which are easily falsified.
And you know this how, exactly? Are you one of those “people can only care about one thing to the exclusion of all others” people? You just be, since you’re trying to tie together two totally disparate topics (e.g., “Well if you’re so concerned with date rape, I guess you don’t care about missing children!”)
:rolleyes:
It derailed several miles ago.
RE: McDonald’s french fries
As Muffin already noted, Mickey D’s is now posting more information about their ingredients, such as the fact that a “natural flavoring” comes from a “beef source”. That’s all well and good, truth-in-advertising, full-disclosure, blah blah blah. Really, I agree people should be able to know what’s in the food they’re gonna eat.
But this really gets me.
From the Wall Street Journal Online The Wall Street Journal - Breaking News, Business, Financial & Economic News, World News and Video
So now some vegetarians are suing McDonald’s over the ingredients they use in their cooking? Shouldn’t Mickey D’s be able to cook fries in whatever they want? Shouldn’t they be able to make “fries” out of 100% ground beef, instead of potatoes, if they want? It’d be gross, but still. 
I think this is the “slippery slope” that Anthracite pointed out in this thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=74968&pagenumber=5
What’s next, an injuction prohibiting McDonald’s from using beef in their hamburgers?
Do any of our “legal beagles” have any thoughts about how this section of the lawsuit is likely to succeed? It’d place it somewhere between slim and none, and slim left town.
More selective quoting. You guys amaze me. Did you completely miss this part?
It should be obvious to anyone with 2% of their brain cells working that the suit isn’t over McDonald’s using animal products, but over them doing so in foods their customers were led to believe were animal product-free.
Yes, but the injuction? McDonald’s may have misrepresented things, which they have now corrected. But the plaintiff’s lawyer said, and I can’t find the quote online, I tried, that they were proceeding with the rest of the lawsuit. Where is the basis in law, anywhere, that dictates french fries have to be cooked to please vegetarians, vegans, or Hindus for that matter?
Injunction? Don’t make me laugh. McD’s has for several months stopped claiming 100% vegetable oil, and instead is listing hydrogenated vegetable oil and beef sourced flavour. As far as the fries go, they are now playing sraight, so there is no reason for an injunction.
The main action will look at things like the difference between innocent misrepresentation and misrepesentation (think back to Dangerosa’s point that when McD’s made the oil change it was a healthy thing, but then think that after learning of Hindus and veggies when opening McD’s in India, and knowing of the somewhat recent push toward labelling in the USA, they still did not come clean in the USA).
It will also look at negligence (is there a duty of care owed to veggies at a meat house, and if there is, did they fail in their duty by claiming 100% vegetable oil?)
It will also look at fluffery in advertising. That’s going to be the interesting part, for the law has let advertisers hype things up quite a bit without holding them to their promises. Remember the Big Mac jingle ("Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun)? It leaves out salt and pepper, whatever the bun was made of, whether or not there is renet in the cheese, and what the secret is to the special sauce. Should we sue because of this jingle? Let’s face it, 100% does not mean much when it comes to food, for just about everything has something else in it (e.g. bug parts – lots and lots of bug parts).
As much as I would like to see the food industry have to make complete ingredient lists available, and not be permitted to make misleading statements (I personally believe that I was misled by McD’s), I really doubt that this case will go very far.
Could you explain how that jibes with this?
Are you distinguishing between pets and other animals?
I think I agree with that. But as someone who worked with migrant peach harvesters as a high schooler (as a summer job), I can’t help but feel sympathy for all the people I depend on to harvest the vegetables and fruits I eat. Does anyone know how much in “human resources” is required to produce/harvest a given caloric quantity of animal versus vegetable product? And how much money individuals in those groups make relative to each other? I have no idea, but I suspect that your average migrant worker in the U.S. makes very little money even in these enlightened times. Back in South Carolina in the seventies we received 25 cents per peck of peaches - not a lot of money on a hot day – and people were trying to raise families on that wage. I suspect that the compensation is pretty much the same today. I think of Juan Valdez down there in Colombia as well, and I realize that both animal and vegetable food production and distribution are globalized systems today and that there’s very little we can do to prevent that from becoming more so in the future. Since my days in the peach fields I’ve always held the attitude that it doesn’t matter much what position I take on the food consumption issue. Sooner or later it all comes down to exploitation of one kind or another. It’s hard to be happy that by some weird chance I did not have to work in that field. In the May 2001 issue of Discover Magazine there’s an interesting article about a guy who advocates consuming only food that is produced within 250 miles of his home. How many of us can say we do that? It takes a lot of effort to be virtuous. Every time I go to the mega-grocery-plex in my neighborhood, I think of myself as a sinner. But we all have to eat something.
That would pretty much limit my meals to wood chips.
I totally understand, Muffin. (And sorry, NYR407, about missing your argument, which I restated in my post.) It’s just that I think that the debate should be more about our inability to control our places as individuals within the social economy of food production, not about any one individual choosing the grounds upon which he/she makes an ethical choice. Anybody can isolate a set of grounds for making a choice, but that doesn’t eliminate the reality of the social economy (whatever it is). Vegetarians who focus on personal health and taste issues (to use NYR407’s terms) aren’t claiming that meat eaters are wrong to eat meat. But if you claim that eating meat is wrong (and, hell, perhaps you’re not), you have to prove that eating vegetables isn’t.
On the other hand, if we could somehow convert to a pure veggie food economy, perhaps that economy would somehow become more just. It’s hard to perceive the inequities of the food economy in general. But I’ve got to say that I do not understand why anyone would seek to control what Ronald McDonald puts in his food except by not buying it and by telling people what’s in it. Under current U.S. law at least, Ronald has a perfect right to sell anything that won’t kill you on the spot. G’night!
I’m distinguishing between animals that I chose to have live in my house and for which I have taken the responsibility to care far; and animals which belong to other people and are intended for eventual human consumption. Things which belong to me and things which don’t. Honestly, I really don’t see the connection between the two quotes–are you insinuating that I should eat my pets?