A Question for Vegetarians

Well, once upon a time, Primitive Man met Primitive Chicken for the Very First Time.



*insert crude line drawing of caveman and hulking, birdlike ProtoChicken here*







They sized each other up, circling slowly, wondering what the outcome would be.


It could have been very different, were it not for the seven secret moves of our hero, Mr Sanders...

I hope someday, we'll have food that's meat and plant at the same time. Then, after a great period of initial confusion, we'll be able to eat it and enjoy.

Thanks for the clarification. I was a vegetarian for three years and found that it didn't agree with me, but it clearly suits some folks.

On a side note, I do get a when people say that they don't eat meat for moral reasons...while standing in some nice leather shoes.

Yeah mostly that would just be not thinking about it and being inconsistent, although I can imagine a moral argument that would have leather shoes OK but eating meat not (or less so):

If the deal is that we should be using less of the world's resources than we generally do in our first-world lifestyles, then vegetarianism is a good choice. It takes up far more land area to feed a meat eater than to feed a vegetarian. Breeding cows for leather I would imagine uses a much smaller land area, because people buy shoes far less frequently than they eat beef. Maybe the resources used in making leather shoes (renewable resource!) are comparable to the resources used in making plastic shoes (non renewable resource!).

We started early in our lives. The earliest human built structures found were made from Mammoth bones, twenty thousand years ago.


EDIT: And for the thread in general...

Morality isn't the only reason for this diet.

Sometimes, it can be helpful medically. Now, I'm not one to say that veganism is the best cure-all answer to everything, but I do know that my cousin contracted a severe degenerative disease while in the coast guard. He was able to walk and hold things in his hands after his doctor told him to become a vegan.

I'm an ovalacto-veggie for spiritual reasons, but I'm peanuts compared to some other people. Some say that Pythagoras' diet slowly dwindled from veganism to nothing but seaweed that died of natural causes.

The evidence in our teeth, liver, and every relevant archaeological nugget shows that humans have a long history of eating pretty much whatever they could get their hands on.

The binocular vision is a bit of a red herring for although hunting animals have front facing eyes so do most primates even our close cousins the herbivorous gorillas. Binocular vision is also a big help if you spend much of your life swinging around trees. Historically speaking, humans are not wildly successful hunters with only a small percentage of calories coming from the hunt.

However, it was the domestication of plants - especially grains - that we've poorly adapted to. Medical paleontologists (yes, there is such a field) find pre-agrarian bones to be boringly healthy. It isn't until the rise of agriculture that pathologies from the "empty" calories of grains show in the paleontological record. Agriculture is nifty because you can build much denser societies but 10,000ish years is pretty short for such a radical dietary change to be well adapted to.

This isn't to say that you cannot plan a healthy vegetarian diet, but one must plan well.

As to the morality, I think it was Michael Nesmith who said: "I'm a vegetarian... not because I love animals... but because I hate plants".

Listen up brothers and sisters, come here my desperate tale
I speak of our friends of nature, trapped in the dirt like a jail
Vegtables live in oppression, served on out tables each night
This killing of veggies is madness, I say we take up the fight
Salads are only for murderers, cole slaw's a fascist regime
Don't think that they don't have feelings, just cause a radish can't scream

I've heard the screams of the vegetables, watching their skins being peeled
Grated and steamed with no mercy.. how do you think that feels?
Carrot juice constitutes murder.. greenhouses prisons for slaves
It's time to stop all this gardening.. let's call a spade a spade.

I saw a man eating celery, so I beat him black and blue
If he ever touches a sprout again, I'll bite him clean in two
I'm a political prisoner, trapped in a windowless cage
'Cause I stopped the slaughter of turnips, by killing five men in a rage
I told the judge when he sentenced me, this is my finest hour..
I'd kill those farmers again, just to save one more cauliflower

I've heard the screams of the vegetables, watching their skins being peeled
Grated and steamed with no mercy.. how do you think that feels?
Carrot juice constitutes murder.. greenhouses prisons for slaves
It's time to stop all this gardening.. let's call a spade a spade.

How low as people do we dare to stoop
Making our broccolis bleed in the soup
Untie your beans, uncage your tomatoes
Let potted plants free, don't mash that potato!

I've heard the screams of the vegetables, watching their skins being peeled
Grated and steamed with no mercy.. how do you think that feels?
Carrot juice constitutes murder.. greenhouses prisons for slaves
It's time to stop all this gardening.. let's call a spade a spade.
Is a spade is a spade is a spade is a... spade

--The Arrogant Worms

I can only agree with Enoch and Introvert...and also add that "dairy" products only arise in our diets when domestication of animals became a fashion, c. 15 yrs ago (though disputed)...

Not long enough to evolve a suitable digestive system for it... the majority of the world's population is either slightly, or very, lactose intolerant...

Domestic animals are an inefficient use of arable land, the land could grow far more plant food for humans compared to the amount of "meat" it can supply...

Plant based diets promote health and long life..Meat based diets only lead to illness eventually...

and besides, Meat is Murder...

Beef, what a relief
When will this poisonous product cease?
This is another public service announcement
You can believe it, or you can doubt it
Let us begin now with the cow
The way it gets to your plate and how
The cow doesn't grow fast enough for man
So through his greed he makes a faster plan
He has drugs to make the cow grow quicker
Through the stress the cow gets sicker
Twenty-one different drugs are pumped
Into the cow in one big lump
So just before it dies, it cries
In the slaughterhouse full of germs and flies
Off with the head, they pack it, drain it, and cart it
And there it is, in your local supermarket
Red and bloody, a corpse, neatly packed
And you wonder about heart attacks?
Come on now man let's be for real
You are what you eat is the way I feel
But, the Food and Drug Administration
Will tell you meat is the perfect combination
See cows live under fear and stress
Trying to think what's gonna happen next
Fear and stress can become a part of you
In your cells and blood, this is true
So when the cow is killed, believe it
You preserve those cells, you freeze it
Thaw it out with the blood and season it
Then you sit down and begin eatin it
In your body, it's structure becomes your structure
All the fear and stress of another
Any drug is addictive by any name
Even drugs in meat, they are the same
The FDA has America strung out
On drugs in beef no doubt
So if you think that what I say is a bunch of crock
Tell yourself you're gonna try and stop
Eatin meat and you'll see you can't compete
It's the number one drug on the street
Not crack, cause that was made for just blacks
But ground beef, for all American teeth
Life brings life and death brings death
Keep on eatin the dead and what's left
Absolute disease and negative
Read the book 'How to Eat to Live'
By Elijah Muhammad, it's a brown paperback
For anybody, either white or black
See how many cows must be pumped up fatter
How many rats gotta fall in the batter
How many chickens that eat shit you eat
How much high blood pressure you get from pig feet
See what you consume, the FDA could care less
They'll sell you donkey meat and say it's
FRESH! For nineteen-ninety, you SUCKERS

Boogie Down Productions - "Beef"

I've met an absurd number of people in America who eat meat but refuse to associate it with the killing of living creatures (and when they are faced with the reality, they lose their appetites). I find this completely ludicrous and think that these people should kill (preferably with something less sterile and removed as a gun) and gut a few animals just to appreciate what they are putting in their bodies instead of being removed from the process until the point where's it's presented to them in a wrapper with a clown on it.

Obviously not all people are like this, and I'm not suggesting they are, but the amount of people I've met who regularly eat flesh but haven't killed anything or taken part in debowling an animal is extremely high. Sometimes I wonder if it teaches people, from a moral standpoint that extends beyond animals, that killing and torture in the world is okay as long as someone else is handling the dirty work and providing them with a manufactured and sterile reality.

I love meat!
I love (some) vegetables & fruits.
Wont eat lamb- just makes me gag.

And yes, I HAVE hunted & fished, and eaten what I caught. Wild Game just tastes better. Just like stuff from your own garden. My goal in life is to eat one of every animal on this planet, working up the food chain.

Humans eat mainly herbivores since carnivores are more likely to harbor parasites & other diseases. So why can't we eat vegetarians?

For every person you eat, you save a lil' cute cuddley *insert animal name here*.

Nope, the killing of animals doesn't teach anyone anything about torture or anything regarding the morals of killing. Woohoo "the morals of killing"! I said it. So what.

This must mean that vegetarians are less likely than meat eaters to have parasites & other diesases!

Not exactly .. the dangers are just different. The first example I can think of is a lack of Vitamin B-12, which could cause irreversible nerve damage. Ow.

Surprisingly (to me at least) us first-worlders have an unprecedented lack of parasites which has been connected to the absurd rise in allergic overreactions to mostly harmless things like pollen as the two defense systems are intertwined in some way not yet understood. Or, as one researcher put it: "There is no case of hay fever so bad that a good tapeworm can't cure it".

Go figure.

Also, being herbivorous doesn't keep the parasites away as they are very wily creatures. I like that story as an example of Intelligent - but wickedly perverse - Design

Not necessarily true. You can raise goats on land that won't support human food plants.

I'm in favor of cutting human populations by 99% so I'd argue if you want to do something real for the animals of the world, check the human birthrate so those left have somewhere to live.

....I'd totally break my diet for human flesh. That oughta work.

Ask and ye shall receive.

So we gather up a bunch of males, irradiate them into sterility and release them back into the wild? I think that mostly worked with the California MedFly or sumptin.

There is a character in David Brin's novel "Earth" who shared your sentiment and almost pulled it off. I have this vague fear that if someone possesed the ability to do so, it would likely be you.

mmmmmm meat.

A bunch of my friends and I used to sit around and play the "what would be the 1 thing you would do if you had god like powers" and my answer was always cut human fertility drastically back.

Fewer people, more resources.. more space for other things on the planet. I'm not for having 99/100s of the population drop dead, more like a scaled decline.

Who knows, if children were rare.. maybe they would be treated better.

Funny, I remember similar conversations but they usually involved increased reproductive simulations for us, or failing that, better availability of drugs, or both.

Ahhh, college.

But if we reduce the birth rate, what are the rest of us gonna eat?????

Mmmmmmmm, Babyback Ribs.......