So? I don’t have to give them my money.
This is a lame point. It’s not comparable to the futility of vegetarianism because veggies are paying people to kill animals either way. I’m just refraining from paying people to torture them.
Well, the literature is full of studies of people who were unable to achieve their goal blood pressures, blood sugars, weights, lipid levels, etc. on omnivorous diets, but did so for prolonged periods on vegetarian diets.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/89/5/1588S
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/89/5/1549S
To list barely a handful of what’s out there.
To claim that there is no evidence that vegetarian diets are better options medically for a large number of individuals is to ignore the science.
Is there any evidence that they couldn’t have done it while still eating animal products?
How about a site promoting KOSHER cheeseburgers? 
Okay, I’m being off-topic.
There’s a question of intent here, though…I’m not paying someone to go out and kill animals for me. I’m paying someone to grow and harvest wheat, apples, corn, broccoli. If I bought a hamburger, I’d be paying someone to kill an animal.
It may seem minor, but I see the difference like this. If I’m driving in busy traffic and a dog runs out into the road that I can’t safely avoid hitting, then while I will feel bad, I won’t feel like I did something unethical. If I see a dog minding it’s own business and go out of my way to hit it, then I would feel that was something unethical.
In both cases, the dog is dead and I killed it, but there is a big difference in intent. I need to eat something, obviously, so I just try to eat in a way that minimizes animal suffering, torture and death.
Yes. Some of these studies demonstrate these folks weren’t doing it on diets which included animal products, but were when switched to vegetarian.
Some of these studies showed better results for folks on vegetarian diets than those on diets with animal products in them. That includes diets with animal products that were considered ‘heart healthy’ or ‘diabetic diets’ too.
Bottom line: Lots of credible evidence that, for some people, vegetarian diets were better than non.
QtM, MD and non-vegetarian
Which can only be done by killing animals. Lots of them.
I’m not going to get in a medical argument with a physician, but even granting your point, that’s only some people. Most vegetarians don’t HAVE to be.
So is it OK if we just want to be? Do we really warrant lectures from you about how we’re weird, unnatural, and fraudulent? Several folks have pointed out valid, scientifically backed reasons for eating vegetarian, and others have explained their personal ethical rationales. If no one is aggressing you or giving you a hard time, is there any justification for your intolerant attitude? I know, I know, others have transgressed you grievously in the past. No one in this thread started up with you or attacked you first, so it’s safe to say that you could easily have walked on by without commenting. Why not consider a live and let live attitude from now on?
I thought we’d agreed that there was nothing ethically superior about it, and (for most people) nutrionionally either.
I haven’t attacked anybody in this thread. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I said that the food sucks (which is personal opinion), and that it’s ethically futile, nutritionally no better than equal, and that I don’t like being lectured about it by evangelical veggies. I haven’t called anybody names or insulted them, even though they’ve done it to me.
No, we have not “agreed” on that. It’s ethically superior FOR ME. It makes ME feel better about my consumerist behavior. I am not recommending it for others. And for ME, who has high cholesterol and has watched my father struggle with it, I feel it’s better for my health. I really don’t care what you do.
It’s not ethically futile, sorry, that’s just empirically false, which has been pointed out repeatedly to you by several patient people. No one lectured you, but you called my lifestyle fraudulent, weird, and unnatural, all of which are offensive and and unjustified. How can you persist in saying that none of this is attacking? The thread was chugging along without hostility until you made your appearance and cast your aspersions. I don’t expect you to admit it, but it would be nice if you reviewed the thread to see how your comments set the hostile tone that the thread subsequently took.
This has not been agreed upon.
This is a gutless dodge, and it makes no sense. Eating animals is either ethical for everybody or nobody. It’s also ethically futile because crop farming kills just as many animals (if not more) than farming animals.
I have nothing to apologize for. My comments were based on my own direct experiences.
Didn’t a bunch of them deny that they thought it was ethically superior, or did I imagine that?
More insults. Great. You don’t think that people place different value on the lives on animals? There are people who work in slaughterhouses for a living. Could you do that? I couldn’t. I couldn’t raise an animal for a year or more, then kill it myself and eat it. But one of my students and his father do just that. So is it a gutless dodge of me to say that they have a set of ethics that allows them to kill animals, but I do not? Do you really think everyone has the same set of ethics? Really? I know you don’t believe that, because it’s patently false and ridiculous.
Crop farming is not factory farming of animals. I do not participate in the factory farming of animals, so I am minimizing the amount that my personal choices harm animals. That is not futile, end of story. It’s not an all or nothing proposition, no matter how many times you try to depict it as so to get yourself off the hook. Your choices hurt more animals than mine. If you’re OK with that, cool. I’m not.
Do you not know then how to speak only for yourself? It was a fraudulent lifestyle FOR YOU. It felt weird and unnatural FOR YOU. That does not mean it’s so for me, nor do your life experiences give you the latitude to condemn or judge anyone else’s.
Some said they did it for non-ethical reasons (health, etc), but that does not cover all cases.
Also, many have responded to statements such as “It’s also ethically futile because crop farming kills just as many animals (if not more) than farming animals” by saying that not as many animals die from crop farming (I guess we need cites as to the actual numbers, to see which side is right)
Finally, one could make the point that killing cows and pigs, which are higher up the animal kingdom than the small animals possibly being killed by crop framing, is ethically worse because they are “more sentient” (or whatever the proper term is) than the small varmint.
True, but still far fewer than if I also ate meat.
You have to farm crops to feed to livestock. Crops that you could have fed to humans. So, raising animals for slaughter results in more animal deaths than not raising animals for slaughter.
Obviously different people have different ethical values. That’s a completely irrelevant point. What I’m saying doesn’t make sense is the inconsistency in your OWN ethical values. If YOU think a particular act is unethical, then it doesn’t matter who commits the act, and it doesn’t matter whether THEY think it’s unethical. Do you think rape is unethical? Do you think it’s not unethical unless the person committing the rape ALSO thinks it’s unethical?
Neither is organic farming of animals. Neither is hunting or fishing.
What ARE my choices that you know so much about?
I’m not comdemning or judging people. I’m criticizing a diet, and yes, having participated in the diet qualifies me to have an opinion on it. Get over yourself.
If you’re trying to say that dogfighting isn’t necessary because we don’t need it to survive, I would of course agree. However, the vast majority of us don’t need to eat meat to survive either.