Vegetarian, Vegan, or Omnivore?

You misread what I said.

I said, without going to lengths that are improbable in nature.

B12, protein, iron, and calcium are all needed for the healthy function of the human body. This is basic knowledge. These are normaly obtained by consuming meat and other animal products, such as milk and eggs. While they are obtainable in a vegetarian diet, it takes an esoteric, or if you prefer, specific, blend of foods that would not easily be found in nature, nor year round even in areas it could. Or, failing that, vitamins, which most vegetarians I've ever met take religiously - there is no Vitamin Tablet tree in nature.

Combine this with the fact that we do, indeed, have canine teeth, which serve no purpose to an herbivor - they are intended soley for the purpose of tearing flesh. Carnivors and omnivors have this type of teeth, herbivors do not.

Bluntly, this adds up to this: we can be vegetarians because of technology and science. Not because we're supposed to be. The human animal originated as an omnivor. We have been an omnivor for thousands of years. We still are an omnivor. If you want to be a vegetarian, that's great - but don't try to tell me that's how humans are 'supposed' to be, because it's not.

----

As far as people who can't stand to eat the cute little animals - hello! We're on top of the food chain. That's what we do. Do you think a cat is evil for eating a mouse? Oh, wait - there is vegetarian cat food. I answered that question.

I'm a hunter. I respect animals. But I also acknowledge what they are: Food. Herbivors exist to feed carnivors and omnivors.

I eat stuff.

Precisely.

-Ghoti

Do you actually hunt, or do you buy your meat in a grocery store? Do you walk on pavement, which your feet were never meant to do? Are you all natural, or do chemicals and man-made substances help you along in life? I'm assuming you use the internet to communicate with people out of shouting distance...?

What we were 'meant' to do really means a lot more coming from someone living how were were 'meant' to live. Unless you don't believe in evolution.

Both. Grocery store is much more convienient, and hunting season is only a very brief time.



Sure. Like I said, you want to be a vegetarian, that's fine. I have no problem with it. You're absolutely right, we do a ton of stuff that was never "meant" by whatever design nature had for us. Which is fine. But don't try to use "we aren't meant to do XXXX" as a reason when it isn't true.

Exactly my point. Saying "we were meant to do XXXX" is also no real reason to eat meat or to not eat meat. We do a thousand things every day we weren't meant to do, and we completely avoid a thousand things every day we were meant to do.

It's silly to use 'what we were built for' as an arguement for eating meat when none of us hunt or gather, or even walk to work.

My ancestors evolved to drink beer and have sex.

I suspected we were related.

(And we'll just keep on relatin'!)

I didn't say it was a reason for it in any cosmic sense, I said its MY reason for it (That, and meat is tasty). I just get upset when I hear the "We aren't supposed to eat meat" crowd come out.

http://www.ucc.ie/fcis/DHMeatandDiet.htm

This report was written for An Bord Bia by Nutriscan Ltd., a non-profit making food and nutrition consultancy company of Trinity College Dublin, raising funds for nutrition research.

part of this report: There is no nutritional justification for the exclusion of red meat from a balanced low-fat diet. Contrary to popular opinion the level of total fat and saturated fat in the diet of vegetarians is only marginally lower that that if meat-eaters. Vegetarian diets are high in fibre and the iron and zinc present is poorly available. Even with their higher intakes of vitamin C, which aids iron absorption, there is clearly documented higher incidence of low iron status among vegetarian women.

Yeah, they're just as silly as the 'We're supposed to drive SUVs and live in apartment complexes, but eat meat' crowd.

Humans can eat meat, or not eat meat. We can be healthy and survive either way. Taking vitamins and supplements to make up for not eating meat is no different than any other of the million things we do in the modern age to make our lives more enjoyable and/or more convenient.

There really isn't any 'should' or 'shouldn't' about it. It's weather we want to. Personally, I want to, so I do.

Never did I say humans were SUPPOSE to be herbivores. Maybe you should read my posts thoroughly before replying. In fact, my original post and those following it never mentioned that being a herbivore was BETTER or WORSE than being than a carnivore. Saying i want to live a healthier life is my own perception, not something i universalize and apply to everyone else.


Briana Dawson

I never adressed my original post to you to begin with.

No one in this thread has said "We aren't supposed to eat meat", so why are you getting upset?

Briana Dawson

Then why the debate over canine teeth?

You can't have any pudding, if you don't eat your meat!

Ok, i was not able to find some obscure college in a different country to prove my point, but I will do as you have done and post what I have found at Brown University:

What are the health benefits of a vegetarian diet?
According to the ADA, vegetarians are at lower risk for developing:

* Heart disease
* Colorectal, ovarian, and breast cancers
* Diabetes
* Obesity
* Hypertension (high blood pressure)

This is because a healthy vegetarian diet is typically low in fat and high in fiber. However, even a vegetarian diet can be high in fat if it includes excessive amounts of fatty snack foods, fried foods, whole milk dairy products, and eggs. Therefore, a vegetarian diet, like any healthy diet, must be well planned in order to help prevent and treat certain diseases.
-------------------

It's pretty easy to find a source to support almost any view point or opinion...What does it mean? Nothing.

Briana Dawson

I can.

Jared Diamond's highly regarded, very readable, and essentially uncontested anthropological review The Third Chimpanzee shows a number of things that we're quite certain about:

1. Humans are - evolutionarily speaking - committed omnivores eating just about anything we could get our hands on. This is shown in our multi-purpose dentition (incisors for cutting, canines for tearing, molars for grinding) and our relatively large livers for dealing with all the chemical weapons that plants generate in effort to thwart us.
   
2. For pre-agrarian humans (i.e. all of 'em except for the some in the last 12,000 years) the majority of our calories were derived from plant sources because we are pretty lousy hunters. Even though animal sources of food were proportionally small they were dietarily significant because they do provide nutrients that are sparse or absent in plants.
   
3. Domestication of grains was the closest thing to a nutritive disaster we've yet invented. Medical anthropologists (who among other things look at archaelogical bone malformation) consider pre-agricultural skeletons "boring" with pathologies appearing only concurrent with grain crops. Grains can be viewed as a lighter degree of the "empty calories" arguments against processed sugars, that is, maize, wheat, and kin are calorically dense but nutritively sparse. Unfortunately, grains allow much greater population densities (thus their popularity) but it comes at a cost of balance.

That said, it is indeed possible to make a vegan diet that meets the needs of humans (most of the world population subsists on rice and beans) but for those who face that dietary necessity, they are fond of animal foods when they can get them. Furthermore, the practicing ideological vegans I know do seem more healthy than the modal American which is much more readily explained by their general health conciousness than the specific merits of their diet.

Regarding the "colonic" data cited above, "they" also say that swallowed chewing gum stays in your gut for seven years and that swallowing watermelon seeds will cause watermelon plants to grow within you. Needless to say, "they" are wrong; barring pathological (and painful) blockages, everything that enters your alimentary canal exits within a day or so. Assertions that anything stays around for much longer are made by people who have no idea at all how evolutionarily risky it is to keep bacteria friendly media hanging around the body for any amount of time. It is for this reason that we continually shed our skin, more rapidly the linings of our entire alimentary canal, and periodically our uterine linings.

Jeeze, you don't even remember your own posting.



Post #15 by you, mentioned canine teeth first in this thread. Therefore, I found it necessary to reply since you postulated that we have canine teeth for a reason.

Had you not broached the issue of canine teeth the subject would not be a part of this discourse.

Briana Dawsn

I saw that too, and didn't go there, because it's a little embarassing to admit, but I had a colonoscopy not long ago.

The procedure was performed in such a way so that the monitor was visible to me.

I wasn't allowed to eat for 24 hrs. prior to the procedure.

Believe me, there was NOTHING in there.

By the way, this was one of the worst procedures I have endured in my life, and I have had 3 major surgeries.

I will be waiting until the non-invasive equipment is available in my locale before the next one (we have a lot of digestive problems and colon cancer in our family, so unfortunately, us males on mom's side have a lifetime of shit, if you will pardon the pun, to look forward to.)

There is a side benefit of hanging out with physical anthropologists - they are quite matter-of-fact about bodies and what they do.

Just because this thread seems to need a hijack, this lack of embarrassment makes for umm... interesting cocktail party tricks. Did you know that it is possible to feel your spinal bones through the back of your mouth? I didn't either until a young female student began demonstrating to the assembled that you can. She did use your fingers and her spine for the demonstration but I'm pretty sure she wasn't drunk nor was there any implied innuendo.