Vegetarianism - Page 7 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14040349
I try to buy high quality local foods. But I'm an omnivore. Why? Because that's what a billion years of evolution has rendered my body to process.

I have a friend who, after being obese, became a vegetarian and started working out a lot and whatnot. He did well for himself. He started to go on and on about vegetarianism.

I stopped him and said, "Why do people become vegetarians and then talk about it constantly?"

He thought for a moment and said, "Because it fucking sucks. Once I'm in control again, I can't wait to eat meat. Not being able to is fucking horrible, and the only thing we have is to talk ourselves into thinking that it's great while you get to eat good food."

I laughed. I still think about it now whenever a fight like this breaks out.

The fact is, agriculture kills way more animals and insects than anything else.

ABC News wrote:One of the reasons most commonly cited by vegetarians for giving up meat is the conviction that other animals have a right to life as well as humans. But when Davis began setting up a course on animal ethics for the animal science department at Oregon State University four years ago, he reached a rather surprising conclusion.

Nobody's hands are free from the blood of other animals, not even vegetarians, he concluded. Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet."

Smaller Victims

The animals in this case are mice and moles and rabbits and other creatures that are run over by tractors, or lose their habitat to make way for farming, so they are not as "visible" as cattle, he says.

And that, Davis says, gives rise to a fundamental question: "What is it that makes it OK to kill animals of the field so that we can eat [vegetables or fruits] but not pigs or chickens or cows?"

Any disruption of the land, whether it be to farm or to build subdivisions, reduces the amount of land left for other animals, resulting in the deaths of many. And Davis, a professor of animal science at Oregon State who grew up on a farm, says as a child he saw animals killed by the routine operation of farm machinery, so there's no way to have a bloodless farm.

"If they say they don't want to kill an animal so they can eat, I think their conclusion is misguided because they are killing animals so that they can eat that vegetarian diet," Davis says. "Those animals happen to be a little bit invisible. They are not as obvious to the man on the street as killing a steer in the slaughterhouse. But nonetheless, it's still going on."


So even eating vegetarian means killing animals.

So your options are all poison.

Do you see that this is a terrible biological problem, or are you just going along to get along?
User avatar
By Repeat to Fade
#14040672
While farming kills animals it kills less animals. What's actually probably important is looking at protein per acre which defines. Meat doesn't score very highly on that chart. Of course only meat has a complete protein profile but that is rather easy to sort stick some beans with your grains and you are sorted. Soy is complete anyway and has a very high protein to acre ratio. So if you focus purely on protein it's probably the most efficient method to get their protein from soy. You would use less land, or gain more protein from the same amount of land and still retain all you EAAs.

I don't really give a shit about animal welfare but what I am concerned about is just how inefficient meat is as a source of food. With global food prices rising and local wallets tightening a vegetarian diet at least makes economic, environmental and ecological sense.
User avatar
By QatzelOk
#14040756
TIG wrote:The fact is, agriculture kills way more animals and insects than anything else.

A huge chunk of agricultural production is geared towards animal feed.

http://sos.noaa.gov/Datasets/dataset.php?id=326

It takes up to 20 pounds of agricultural proteins to get one pound of beef protein. Not to mention all the contaminated water.

If you insist on feeding other people's food to farm animals so you can enjoy a Big Mac with your friends, you might as well light your cigar with a 50-dollar bill afterwards, and then drop a penny into a homeless person's hat.

If they're homeless and starving, it's not your problem. If they want food, they'll have to kill you for it. Right?
#14040950
The Immortal Goon wrote:I try to buy high quality local foods. But I'm an omnivore. Why? Because that's what a billion years of evolution has rendered my body to process.

I have a friend who, after being obese, became a vegetarian and started working out a lot and whatnot. He did well for himself. He started to go on and on about vegetarianism.

I stopped him and said, "Why do people become vegetarians and then talk about it constantly?"

He thought for a moment and said, "Because it fucking sucks. Once I'm in control again, I can't wait to eat meat. Not being able to is fucking horrible, and the only thing we have is to talk ourselves into thinking that it's great while you get to eat good food."

I laughed. I still think about it now whenever a fight like this breaks out.

The fact is, agriculture kills way more animals and insects than anything else.



Vegetarians tend to have healthier BMIs than omnivores in the usa. Whether this is correlation or causation is up for debate, but I suspect many are like myself & simply find it easiest to maintain a good BMI while sticking to a diet which has hard & fast rules, whether it be keto or vegetarianism.

Regarding your last point; "The Myth of Vegetarianism" is a good read & all but I don't go for the whole deep ecology nonsense. Even without ditching our current methodology of farming, we could do much to alleviate the immediate ecological problems we face by strengthening various CRP, Wetlands conservation, & forestry programs. However, this would mean allocating funding for "farm subsidies", which cityfags somehow see as evil & bad & wasteful, whereas - somehow - dumping money into solar power schemes is good.....
#14041110
I'm not saying meat or not meat is better so far as energy as acre and that needs to be debated. But if you're going to condemn someone for choosing the least harmful of transportation available while at the same time patting yourself on the back for doing the exact same thing in regard for food, I think it's at least worth pointing out.

In regards to the cited work, nobody says that a factory farm is better than an agricultural field. However, the least harmful and envasive way to live is hunting or being a small shepard. It's arguable as to if free range chickens and the like qualify for anything better-probably depends on the size of the flock.

I don't mean this to condemn-few people can hunt, and even then it's usually because the native predator has been removed anyway and things are in flux. However, it's simply worth pointing out that moderation in all things I good. I personally think the source is more important than the ends. Buying some Frankenstein shit full of todo owe west from two thousand miles away and then saying it's somehow better than a chicken raised two doors down eating waste food anyway isn't going to impress me-though I admit it's an extreme case to cite, but just for clarification's sake.
User avatar
By SpecialOlympian
#14042052
Qatz, if you were limited to only three types of meat on your pizza, what would they be?

I would have:

Sausage
Bacon
Pepperoni

Also I would get that hot dog baked into the crust they offer at Dominoes because that is inside the pizza, and therefore not a topping.
User avatar
By Brother of Karl
#14042130
Ignite wrote:Uh, different way to look at it(never heard of a meat eater being called a pussy before!):

[youtube]-f1V7TzKf1Y[/youtube]

Wow, that was....interesting. Unfortunately this guy is just proving Dave more right. This vegan is doing yoga and following eastern religion. There don't seem to be any vegetarian "meatheads" oddly enough.
By Moonchild
#14042346
Bah more and more of my friends are becoming Vegetarians, this is depressing.
And now there's this "Vegetarian Zealot" Gary Yourofsky who's doing a lecture about it in my Uni, so there'll probably be more of those soon.

Last week's "Mangal"(Barbecue for you lot) was superb as we bought great meat, I'd hate to stop having those in the future.
User avatar
By Stormsmith
#14049619
I was a fish-eating vegetarian for years, until two things happened: My doctor told me I should quit because my iron was unusally low, and she promoted balanced diets over 'chemical' supplements, then, a couple of days later, I broke both legs and was in the hospital for 8 days. The surgeon recommended calcium, protien etc. He is also a fan of improved dieting.

So beef it is.

If you're wanting to be well-muscled, try adding magnesium at night before bed; calcium, zinc and selenium in the day time. Those are the precursors to testosterone, which is what you'll need for muscle. Oh, excercise too, of course.

PS keep away from farmed fish.
User avatar
By Ford Prefect
#14049633
I became a vegetarian roughly three years ago (started off as a vegan but it wasn't my thing) and I work out a fair bit.

I have a fairly healthy and diverse diet on top of which I really don't need any additional products to get strong and stay strong. Occasionally, if I train often and hard, I take some hemp protein (which is better than any whey or whatever-protein out there) to help me recover. Makes me feel better, I can't say it would have any other effects.

The one thing you want to do is stay clear of soy-protein. It is not a good source of protein for a male who wishes to get lean.
By Moonchild
#14049868
Ford Prefect wrote:I became a vegetarian roughly three years ago (started off as a vegan but it wasn't my thing) and I work out a fair bit.

I have a fairly healthy and diverse diet on top of which I really don't need any additional products to get strong and stay strong. Occasionally, if I train often and hard, I take some hemp protein (which is better than any whey or whatever-protein out there) to help me recover. Makes me feel better, I can't say it would have any other effects.

The one thing you want to do is stay clear of soy-protein. It is not a good source of protein for a male who wishes to get lean.


Ever heard of Spirulina? It contains ~60% of complete protein, that's without mentioning additional health benefits.

By the way, I don't think hemp protein is better than whey as its not a complete protein, unless there are other benefits I'm unaware of.
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