Food & Animals

[sinewav]

I'll start off by saying that I've very passionate about the topic at hand, but I'm not here to attempt to shove it down your throat.

Yes, please stop spreading misinformation about meat. Most of the people I've seen post in this thread have a history of advocacy for ethical treatment of animals. Making umbrella statement like "humans don't need meat" is both scientifically wrong and shows a gross ignorance of modern biology. The human biome is extremely complex and the role of flesh in our diet is equally confusing, and it gets even crazier when you consider human dietary changes over the last 100 million years in different parts of the world. It's Ok that you are passionate about animal ethics, just don't try and mix it with over-generalized statements with weak scientific support. Most of us are smarter than that.

[Light]

Could you provide some sources that show we need meat? What do we need from animals that we cannot get elsewhere?

[sinewav]

Oh boy, here we go...

Look, I can cite papers all day and you'll just come of with something from the vegan cult factory that allegedly "refutes" whatever I post. I'm not going to change the mind of someone who describes themselves as "passionate."

Here are a bunch of facts I can cite with peer-reviewed studies, but won't because you they will have no effect on you: Meat was essential for the development of human brains over the last 100 million years. The human body needs certain animal-derived nutrients such as B12, Omega-3, and a long list of others, especially early in life. Yes, you can take supplements. No, these are not as effective as getting nutrients from whole foods (and sometimes taking supplements is detrimental). Yes, some, but not all, animal nutrients can be extracted from vegetables (definitely not B12 though). No, not everyone has access to such a wide variety of specialized vegetables (or supplements for that matter)... which brings me to my last point: Veganism is a first-world luxury only a small portion of people can enjoy. It's a purely social movement that glides along an incomplete understanding of biology (incomplete because we don't know all the details of our biome yet). Vegan living is also hella expensive. I've tried it.

Here is an article with a ton of citations linking to the National Institute of Heath that you will dismiss out-of-hand.

Yes, we should all eat less meat and be more humane to animals. However, Veganism is not a global solution until we can sufficiently understand human biology and create a worldwide technological infrastructure to deliver custom-designed nutrition for a wide variety of human biomes.

Also, that picture of the cat is ridiculous and proves no point. Humans have omnivorous teeth. Cats don't exclusively eat meat, apes don't exclusively eat vegetables. Jesus, my friend's cat loves celery. Celery!

[Word]

Heh, I can see why you didn't link to the Maddox pamphlet.

Here are a bunch of facts...

A conversation I had with a doctor went like this:

Doctor (after the blood test): "Your iron/B12 levels are dangerously low again, and you have too few blood cells."
Me: "Is there something I can do with my nutrition to prevent that in the future? More spinach?"
Doctor: "Meat, lots of. 'Muscle meat' contains the most iron and is resorbed the fastest, but you can also try fish. Are you vegetarian?"
Me: "No."
Doctor: "Oh, good, then you aren't one of the crazy ones!"
Me: "Yes, I read that iron from plants is resorbed less fast."
Doctor: "Yes, and it's even worse for female vegetarians who have additional blood loss thanks to their menstruation - they become anemic very fast and you can see how their veins shrink. I don't really know where to aim with my needle..."

Meat was essential for the development...

I had a lecture about that. We were shown a cycle diagram saying that the brain grew as humans were able to cook meat, and thanks to the growing brain/body mass, hunting evolved into domestic farming sooner or later, which again helped the brain/body mass grow.

[Light]

You can scream that I have a misunderstanding all day, but you don't seem to exactly know your stuff when you talk about the ones who don't eat meat. And to call it a first world luxury to not have meat is ridiculous. Meat is expensive most places, and the only reason it's not so expensive here is because of our first world animal farming. Try going to China or some other country and buying meats. You'll quickly see the price jump. The poor ones usually eat vegetarian or vegan diets because it's cheaper, and it feeds more people. Even when it comes to organizations that help feed the needy, they tend to use vegetarian foods because you can feed more people with that same amount of money, and they've straight out said it.

Your first link doesn't exactly prove your point. It seems to say first off that it's likely to be more healthy, then goes on to the argument of what's "natural" for us, which is a completely different argument. It has no real input on what is necessary. We are not living in the past. We're not cavemen anymore.

B12 I'll quickly admit is one of the downfalls, which I don't consider to be that bad. It takes a pill a week to stay ahead of everything. If you don't get it every week, nothing is going to happen. You have to be without it for a long period of time before you start getting any effects. Also, thanks to the fiber intake of vegetarians, we produce more B12 than meat eaters. Yes, we can produce B12 without consuming it from meat, sort of. It is produced by bacteria in our intestines, but close enough ... I should also note that you can get it from things such as nutritional yeast, and even some cereals. I don't eat as much of that stuff as I should, which is why I take a supplement for it, but I wouldn't have to if I would cook with it more. Nutritional yeast even comes out tasting a little bit like cheese in mac & cheese.

When it comes to omega 3's, you're just off the ball. You can easily get what you need from seeds, leafy greens, beans, squash, etc.

We don't need "specialized vegetables" and we don't need a lot of money. It's cheaper than a meat-filled diet unless you're buying a ton of processed foods, in which case is probably about the same or maybe a tad more expensive, but the processed meat meals ain't cheap either.

When you say you've tried it, what did you try? If you get things such as almond milk, or whatever type of milk you like, there's plenty to choose from. With that, you can make pretty much any recipe vegan. If it requires meat, you can make things like tofu, use vegetables, or get some things like pepperonis, meat crumbles, etc. They're not too expensive because they're not a prepared meal for you. I've just grown a little spoiled by having the rest of my food be so cheap. When I see my parents buy their foods, it's amazing how much they spend for such a little time.

And I didn't mean to get you up in arms here. I am not trying to fight you or convert you, but I have done my research to some extent. I should know more than I do, but that goes for most people. If you are getting upset, I'd gladly stop the conversation, as my only real intent here was to see how the poll went. I realize veganism isn't something we know everything about yet, but we're learning more and more and we have enough knowledge to do it without bad side effects. Vegetarianism is linked to longer life as well. If nothing else, you can help your wallet and your body by simply not eating a lot of meat. Being raised to eat meat a lot, it was hard to figure out what else there is, but looking at other countries really helps. Places like India got this vegan cooking thing down to a science. lol Well, they're usually just vegetarian, but a lot of their recipes are vegan.

This is probably where I'm out of this thread because I'm going to be enjoying xmas with my family out of state. Hope you have a good christmas. (:

[Cody]

Being a vegan for the sake of a belief that animals are not for eating is just dumb.

Its a natural food cycle, some animals must eat meat for their survival and guess what we're apart of the that group. Go ahead and spout out about ethics cause that's all you really are doing.

Also I got a chuckle that you posted the cat teeth picture to say that we don't have the teeth to eat meat, yet you're forgetting that there is an animal that does not use teeth to consume meat and those are snakes. Snakes are a great example of a species reliant on only meat diets. At the end of the day you're making a life choice on ethics and falsely stating that we humans can live without meat in our diets is just dumb.

I'll enjoy my Christmas I'm killing a pig later today for the yummy Christmas dinner ill be prepping for.

I'll post some pics

[ConVicT]

I'm not really interested in any of this but I want to add that there are people who are just carnivores. Why isn't that in the poll?
Carnivores in the sense that they hate fruit and vegetables so much that eating any would make them physically sick.

[Light]

Cody, we are not obligate carnivores, no matter how much you wish it were true to justify your part. And the picture was just in response to the comment that our teeth were made for eating meat, but they're really not. They're very similar to the other herbivores, like giraffes, zebra, etc. Our jaw is good for grinding, again .. like herbivore's jaws. The jaws of obligate carnivores don't shift back and forth to grind, but open up to clamp down and through flesh. We can in fact live a perfectly healthy life without meat in our diets. On top of that, if you do eat meat, it's only going to help you for a little bit, not the over consumption that most of the country is a part of. Real carnivores such as tigers, cats, etc. don't have issues with things like cholesterol because they really are built to consume it. They don't have the issues of obesity and everything else that tends to go along with the over consumption of meats.

You could make the case that we evolved to have the ability to eat meat, but it's not supposed to be our main food group. It's only supposed to be a small part of what you eat. Since we continue to keep learning about the body and alternatives for sources of required nutrients are found everywhere .. you're really stuck in the dark ages to think the way you do.

[Ratchet]

So, what happens when the hens age and stop laying eggs? It only takes a couple years for most places to get rid of them and get some younger hens in because they don't keep up with their demand. I'm sure you would keep them around longer as a small family thing, but they will stop laying eggs soon enough, then what? Time to die because you no longer lay eggs?

I think that would be by old age .. If you were out picking up animals that were roadkill, or had a pet die naturally, I'd have no moral objection to it. If you want to eat your cat when it passes away at a nice 14 years, go for it ...

If you think about more than your stomach, you then realize that because we're not meant to be eating meat, our intestines are too long causing the meat inside of us to rot. I know how it is when you think about it, that you have rotting flesh from another (was) living being, because society has made it feel like nothing to take the lives of billions of animals. For some reason, we can kill over 3,000 animals a second, yet 1 human is something to get all upset about. Don't' get me wrong, I care about our species as well, but I think we should look at the people who can treat animals that way a bit differently as well. They feel nothing .. or worse proud when they abuse animal. I know it's not all, but the percentage is high enough that it's common, and they have no consequences for doing so.

Speaking of caring about our species as well .. We would be able to stop starvation in a vegan world. It's been estimated that we could feed about twice the world population that way. To put it into more realistic numbers, you can get 250 lbs of beef, or 3 - 5,000 lbs of vegetables from the same area of land. I know we're a far way away from that world being real, but it looks promising for a distant future. It would be good for the people, animals, and planet.

Well, these chickens are ridiculously old and old ass chickens aren't ideal for butchering. If you're raising animals to eat, you fatten them up and give them a luxurious feast to make them plump for the pot. Shouldn't you know these things? They're still laying eggs, so not sure what you're on about there with the "demand" that must be kept up with. They lay eggs until they die. Lots of things kill them, including themselves and hawks.

I have never eaten roadkill nor will I ever. That's ******* gross.

Uh, okay?

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I think the subsequent posts from Monkey, Word, and Sinewav have just about summed up anything further I could contribute to this conversation.

Especially the part where Sine quoted the "I'm not going to shove it down your throat" part. You're like the "feminists" who believe women should rule the world.

[Monkey]

Light, whether you like it or not our teeth and bodies are set up for omnivorous consumption. As to your examples of carnivores, many carnivores need a special set of teeth and jaws because they also use them to kill their prey. We (and some other animals) don't have this need because we use our limbs (in our case with the addition of tools) to kill our prey.

They don't have the issues of obesity and everything else that tends to go along with the over consumption of meats.

Obesity? Ever heard of the Atkins diet, where you can eat as much meat and fat as you like and still lose body fat? Note that I don't think the Atkins diet is healthy but it proves my point here as far as obesity goes.

I get the point you're trying to make but you're confusing eating meat with eating an unbalanced diet. The two cases that you should be comparing are:

1) Eating a (balanced as much as possible) diet that includes meat.
2) Eating a (balanced as much as possible) vegan diet.

Anyway, have a good Christmas!

[sinewav]

I can't believe I'm going to engage in this, but I might as well see it through.

[T]o call it a first world luxury to not have meat is ridiculous... Try going to China or some other country and buying meats. You'll quickly see the price jump. The poor ones usually eat vegetarian or vegan diets because it's cheaper, and it feeds more people.

Those poor people aren't any healthier for not eating meat. This is the reason we developed Golden Rice. It's only in the First World with our advanced infrastructure and robust economies that we can have the wide variety of flora needed to support this dream diet of yours, with all those seeds and leafy greens you are talking about.

Your first link doesn't exactly prove your point...We are not living in the past. We're not cavemen anymore.

That link isn't supposed to hold a rock-solid argument, it's just a primer. And while we aren't living in the past, we also can't turn over a million years of evolution just to jump on a relatively recent social dietary trend. I'm glad you mentioned gut/intestinal bacteria. As I said earlier, the human biome is complex. Not everyone has the same internal ecosystem. This is one of the reasons for food allergies and other sensitivities, and why some people have no trouble digesting certain foods but other people cannot. Vegan living isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

B12 I'll quickly admit is one of the downfalls, which I don't consider to be that bad.

Here is a world-famous example of how lacking vitamin B is "not that bad." Yes, this is an extreme case, but it does highlight the problem of misinformation in vegan circles. (This is actually an artifact of a much bigger problem I won't go into here.) While lifelong meat consumption is sometimes linked to disease later in life, access to these nutrients early in life is essential. That means pregnant and nursing women should definitely not exclude these things. A society's consumption of animal products is positively correlated to a decrease in infant mortality. My guess is that, ideally, we eat meat products until we reach adulthood then drop off as we age? Our brains don't reach full maturity until sometime in our 20s.

...we don't need a lot of money.

See my first paragraph. I've had a couple friends fail at maintaining a vegan diet because it was just too expensive and time consuming to compensate for the lack of animal products. I'll say it again: Veganism is a First World luxury and even here in the USA it's difficult to do. It's getting easier, but consider yourself lucky you have enough money to do it. There is a reason poor people are generally not Vegans. You've mentioned things like nutritional yeast and almond milk. These things are more expensive than their counterparts, as is true of many vegan staples.

Keep in mind most of the people on this board including myself are all about humane farming and sensible meat consumption. Still, a lot of people think meat tastes delicious! I'm not sure how you could convince those people that veganism is the best practice. I think the best compromise is lab meat!

Chant with me: LAB MEAT! LAB MEAT! LAB MEAT!

[Light]

Since you've sort of taken that "not that bad" thing out of context. It's not that bad for most people because handling it isn't an issue. If you don't want to eat the foods that provide it for us, then there's a simple pill. Yes, this part of being vegan is coming from a comfort of living area, but the others do not. Try comparing prices on things like regular milk vs almond milk or coconut milk. I've always seen almond milk being cheaper. If you go to things like mayo, Just Mayo lacks the eggs, yet is cheaper and healthier than regular mayo. There's quite a bit that has changed over the years as far as pricing goes, assuming that maybe your experience on pricing and whatnot is just outdated.

As far as your last comment, I'd be fine with eating lab grown meat, just as I'd be fine with the roadkill meat. I know someone earlier (not sure if it was you) commented that it's gross, but ti's really not any worse. If you get freshly killed animals, it's going to provide you with perfectly good meat, and there are already plenty of people that do it.

Monkey, while that's one of the worst diets I've ever seen, try comparing the amount of calories in meat vs other foods. I can make a personal pizza for around 500 calories or less, while you can have like .. one burger for the same. Yes, it needs a balanced diet either way, but most people don't seem to understand how little meat is actually supposed to be eaten.

[ConVicT]

A friend of mine saw me reading this and he took an interest.
He asked me if he could post on my account.
I'm telling you this just so you know I won't be refuting anything anyone has to say about it.
He has this to say:

Information:
Body Energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMn319zkZ2s
(This contains evidence; simple facts. Such as fat having twice the energy content of sugar, even those found in fruits.)

Canadian PSA for kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Y3VCGN1ps
(The body's use of energy, regardless what type you put in, is dependent on the body's demand for energy - healthy living merely requires a balance, and does not dictate the source of energy. That being said, you will have to eat twice as much sugar content if you aren't getting your fat; for ATP (example). There's a whack-load of other nutrients and uses for sugars and fats that aren't mentioned, so the specifics of the diet requirements remain allusive)


Answers:
Is vegan a first world luxury? Yes. What the luxury is isn't the lifestyle, but the choice itself. Everything that was said about the lifestyle / diet is true (true enough anyway), but when you give examples like China's population, you have to consider the cost-effectiveness of feeding billions of people. The input vs output of farming things like rice, or farming meat, differ greatly, and it is simply more cost effective to feed a population with a more "vegan diet" (in quotes because it is not by choice - the poor people in Brazil eat rice, and beans for their protein, but the rich can afford a different diet. They eat meat because they can).
So if it's cheaper and you can feed more people, why it is considered a luxury in the first world countries? And why are some people finding it expensive? Because, as mentioned before, the choice to be vegan or not doesn't exist for the poor populations of China or Brazil. They are forced to NOT eat meat because there simply isn't enough to go around to make it cheap enough to eat. However, in a first world country, everything can be marketed, sold, and turned for a profit...including veganism. Similar to the "organic" market, you literally pay for the concept - you're buying the ability to be vegan, or organic, as that is how it is sold to people in first world countries.
Albeit, this doesn't stop anyone from learning how to do the vegan diet the cheap way, but then you get into complications regarding diet and truth be told, even the FDA doesn't have a ******* clue. Look into the history of what it thinks we need for our diet, and it changes drastically over time.
How can that be? If the guidelines are that strict, shouldn't we have died already from not following the newest guidelines like 10 years ago? The really confusing truth is that we only have an idea of the balance needed, but nothing about the specifics - most people don't even eat FDA approved diets, but live "healthy" lives. Doctor's used to say fat was good for you, then they said it was bad, and a lot of marketing was used to convince the public that fat is bad, but now they say again, fat doesn't make you fat, it's good for you...
So all arguments regarding veganism and health go out the window. It can be more or less healthy, and none of us will know until more people research into what exactly we need in our diet. A vegan can get fat (this highly depends on dietary balance - vegans can have a "balanced" diet easier than meat eaters can - in terms of how the body produces fat, not the fat content of what you eat).


Is it ONLY a luxury? No. Far from it. The choice to be vegan or not has tremendous spiritual implications; no one has to care about that though. So arguing about veganism is, more or less, a religious discussion. The entire reasoning one convinces themselves with to go vegan are primarily moral - followed by people with health complications that cannot eat meat for health reasons (or otherwise not by choice).
Some religions are quite specific regarding the meat choices for diet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious ... on_of_pork)
So, you can easily imagine what would happen if you told someone who was Jewish or Islamic that their diet is a "luxury"...It's flat out garbage and nonsense to them; regardless of it being against God itself, it's an insult to their faith, to the actual reasoning they use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant)
So people who think of it as a luxury can be categorized into a group that does not share the moral beliefs. Similarly, to a person that firmly believes that we are made to eat meat will also think just as poorly of another belief system (i.e. vegans being dumb). This is what makes the arguing useless (on top of the lack of evidence for what we actually need in our diet) because it is essentially an attempt to convert morals; without hard evidence to say either way what we should be eating, you cannot compete against one's will to do what they want (even if it's to eat meat).


If evolution is to be taken into account, don't religions now state that evolution is under an intelligent design (God's will)? Regardless of the implications of the change in opinion, even religion accepts meat eating to certain degrees. So where exactly does the will to go vegan come from? It comes from a different understanding of what life is, all forms of life. But here's the interesting part: regardless of what we eat, it will come from a form of life. Plants, animals, seeds, moss, doesn't matter what it is, we consume life for our own. Discriminating which ones are acceptable to consume is something that has to be believed, not proven. But taking evolution into account, predators tend to eat meat (even omnivores). A really easy way to tell what is predator and what is prey is their eyes: Predators tend to have evolved with depth perception, typically both eyes in front (or in the case of sharks, spaced far enough to have depth perception in the front) and prey have evolved to have 360 vision (fish, birds, some rodents, etc.) with eyes on the sides of their head. Humans; clearly predators. Evolution would say that we should be eating at least some meat for our energy intake.
But this doesn't take into account the social and moral evolution of humans. The facts are that we CAN eat meat. And humans tend to do things just because they can. So even if the entire world was vegan, there will be some to resist, some to say there is another way, and firmly believe in their choice.
The religious implications of taking actions simply "because we can" vs "should we" vs "what God says" is really another discussion entirely; you cannot prove or disprove veganism with facts because it is technically just as valid as any other "healthy FDA approved" diet. I suspect the reason for this is because, in truth, we might not need some of the nutrients the FDA thinks we do; example, some monks eat nothing but seeds and nuts and water. Clearly this isn't a complete diet, yet they live "healthy" lives. Some argue that it is their spirituality keeping them alive, but in all seriousness, perhaps our bodies are a little more evolved than we might think; not dependent on specific diets so long as we get a correct combination of the bare essentials (concepts like the requirement of one vitamin, might be dependent on a diet where you need to digest meat - if not, then its not needed; but your body will react to what you put in - you are what you eat after all)

###Too many urls, see next post###

[ConVicT]

More:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2N0Utg7KYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gocrw0k5xhI

Conclusion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTqtPcY59iI

[[Anonymous]]

While you stupid mother fvckers argue about meat an vegetables Im gonna eat Ham an every other meat related meal on Chrismas.