Are you vegitarian

[hooked 0]

No red meat for me. It's been years since I ate any red meat. I do eat chicken, fish, shellfish. Every once in a while I will eat pork, but not often. When I'm missing having a burger, I'll have a turkey burger or chicken burger. When a recipe calls for ground beef I will substitute ground chicken or turkey or even some of the veggie meat substitute.

Jan

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Sometimes we're just being Humans.....But we're always Human Beings.

[Canuck278 0]

The cows eat the salad.....i eat the cows.....

Steve
Therapy is expensive, popping bubble wrap is cheap.

[FrenchyDiver 0]

I love veggies, as far as they come along with a big fat juicy steak

Hispas Brothers President
HISPA #2,

[PhillyKev 0]

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our bodies are designed to eat meat, we need the complete amino acid chains from red meat for our bodies to funciton properly, we need the protein from meat to function properly.

I hear this from many people. I read it in Atkins's book. Do you have any links from valid sources (Atkins is not valid) saying that we need meat? From my understanding, the best protein to get was fish or non-animal protein. I am just curious as to where I can read more about that (people needing to eat meat.)

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or with that tastless pasty shit that vegitarians use as a meat "substitute",

I actually like Boca burgers better than regular burgers! They don't give me that "cement in my stomach" feeling!

Well, there's pretty good archaelogical and historical evidence that for about 3 million years, humans were primarily hunter gathererers and our diet was approximately 65% meat. We didn't begin cultivating grain and farming until 10,000 years ago. 10k years is not even close to being enough time to evolutionarily change our digestive systems from what they had been accustomed to for 3 million years.

Also, if you look at how grains etc. are digested, it's through a long process involving the entire length of the digestive tract. If you compare the ratio of the length of the human digestive tract to overall size, it is closest to that of canines. In other words, short. Cows and other plant eating animals have much longer digestive tracts in relation to their bodies.

Then there's our teeth and the way our jaw moves. We are designed to tear and swallow, not grind which is what all other plant eaters do.

Lots of other evidence along those lines, but those are a couple of the biggies.

[AggieDave 6]

I couldn't tell you where I've read it, I'd have to go back and search for the articles and such. Being that I'm about to leave for class, that'll have to wait for another day...*shrug* So basically, I'm not leaving you with any proof to believe me with...next time I'll see if I can remember the names of the journals and stuff for yall.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[SkydiveNFlorida 0]

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mostly meat, fish, cheese etc... very few vegetables. Except Pasta... are spaghetti vegetables ???

yeah, what he said. My temporary roommate eats that tofu crap, and fake chicken nuggets, too. ech!

Angela.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Well, there's pretty good archaelogical and historical evidence that for about 3 million years, humans were primarily hunter gathererers and our diet was approximately 65% meat. We didn't begin cultivating grain and farming until 10,000 years ago. 10k years is not even close to being enough time to evolutionarily change our digestive systems from what they had been accustomed to for 3 million years.

Also, if you look at how grains etc. are digested, it's through a long process involving the entire length of the digestive tract. If you compare the ratio of the length of the human digestive tract to overall size, it is closest to that of canines. In other words, short. Cows and other plant eating animals have much longer digestive tracts in relation to their bodies.

Then there's our teeth and the way our jaw moves. We are designed to tear and swallow, not grind which is what all other plant eaters do.

Lots of other evidence along those lines, but those are a couple of the biggies

That may be true, however there are some major differences. The meat we currently eat is laced with supplements and hormones. One of the main reasons kids go through puberty at an ever younger age is the hormones in meat and meat products.

You can't really compare the meat eaten by the hunter gatherers of years past with the meat we currently consume.

[freeflir29 0]

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My gf is vegetarian, so if she cooks, I often eat vegetarian .

I'm sure she enjoys that..... but I thought "cooking a nice meal" came AFTER the sex.



Yeah....I know Pork is still technically red meat. The real reason I don't cook red meat at home. I don't have a BBQ. Red meat must be cooked over flames. Pork and chicken go just fine in a skillet with some Olive Oil.

[PhillyKev 0]

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You can't really compare the meat eaten by the hunter gatherers of years past with the meat we currently consume.

I can...do all my grocery shopping at Whole Foods and only buy free range, grass fed, non-hormonealy treated meat.

[freeflybella 0]

That's why I don't eat red meat and keep white meat to a minimum.

Not only the hormones and chemicals but what about adrenaline? Animals locked in closed pens their entire life span live in abject fear most of their lives - doesn't that affect the meat and how could that possibly be good to put into your body?

Also, spiritually I find it horrifying.

Free-range, uncontaminated naturally fed red meat would be OK by me but how can you trust where to find it? Even if it's labeled as such, how can you tell?

Action expresses priority. - Mahatma Ghandi

[Shotgun 1]

I am not a vegetarian, but I do enjoy a lot of veggie dishes (my husband is a vegetarian, so we try to find things to cook that we both like)... My diet consists mostly of breads/grains and vegetables/fruits, but I do regularly eat dairy products and meat as well....

[freeflir29 0]

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Even if it's labeled as such, how can you tell?

Sneak up on it...yell BOOOO!!!! And see if it's jumpy.

[hooked 0]

Has anybody here read the book "Fast Food Nation"?

I am about 1/3 of the way through it, it will open your eyes as to what is in some of our foods and how it is processed. I am trying to eat as little processed foods as possible.

J

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Sometimes we're just being Humans.....But we're always Human Beings.

[Rookie120 0]

There is noway I could ever give up my meat. I love everything, beef, pork, elk, moose, deer. Man where's now i'm hungry!!

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[nathaniel 0]

I was a vege for 3 years in college...less for moral or health reasons than due to the fact I was terrified of the allegedly meat-based dorm foods.

I'm hooked on pork these days tho...pork chops, ham, pork sausage, pork chops....

mmmm

nathaniel

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[nathaniel 0]

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Also, if you look at how grains etc. are digested, it's through a long process involving the entire length of the digestive tract. If you compare the ratio of the length of the human digestive tract to overall size, it is closest to that of canines.

hold on a sec pal, dogs are omnivores...they can survive on plants alone too... Cats on the other hand, pure carnivores.

not that I'd force a dog (or a human, for that matter) to go without meat if it didn't want to...

nathaniel

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[Fast 0]

I try to balance my meals, which does include one form of meat or another.

One of the things that I want to point out when people talk about vegitarians feeling more healthy than meat eating people is the fact that most vegitarians watch what they are eating much better, to make sure they are getting all the nutrients they miss from meat, and just in general.

I think that regardless of what your eating if you balance what you need in a day nutritionally and don't over do on one thing, and skip something else you can be generally healthy meat or not. i personally just like the taste.

As for the hormone injected everything, and what not... I guess I chalk it up to a hazzard of living in todays society. Some day down the road a few generations from today people might realize that there are problems with a lot of the things that we do today, but that can be said about anything.

We used asbestos till we knew it could/would cause cancer, then we quit. We use all kinds of stuff to make animals/crops/whatever grow better and stay alive longer, some day we will know what were doing wrong and fix it, or die off as a species. Same thing with the differnt food dyes that are banned because of health risks, etc.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

[kmcguffee 0]

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it will open your eyes as to what is in some of our foods and how it is processed

Processed foods and an overconsumption of simple carbohydrates, fatty meats, and sugar (another simple carb) are the biggest health risks we are exposed to in the modern world. If you cut your meats to the low fat type and only a palm sized portion along with complex carbs and veggies you will feel and be a lot healthier. Add about six hours of exercise a week and you'll be amazed at how you look and feel. There are many low fat cuts of red meat.

If you are exclusively vegetarian you will have a hard time getting enough iron. Most nutritionists recommend vegetarians take an iron supplement.

The most complete protein is whey protein. Some people say soy is but I think that is still up for debate. Whey comes from cheese which some vegetarians refuse to eat. Vegetarian body builders (yes they do exist) take tons of supplements to get the right amount of complete proteins in their body. It is almost impossible to get all of the essential proteins through a strict vegetarian diet w/o supplements.

The big indicator that we are naturally omnivorous is our canine teeth. Not many herbivores have them.

Most peoples problems with meat is they tend to eat too much. But, not eating meat at all, IMO, is going to the extreme. Too much of anything is usually not good.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[BlueEyedMonster 0]

I love to eat meat. Steak is yummy The bigger the better.

[bobsled92 0]

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People
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-Grant

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[MissMae 0]

You don't have fish on occasion in there... Or chicken if you need the protien.

Most of the time I pass up meat, unless I really need the protien and didn't get it from other foods that day.. But wouldnt care if I gave up the chicken and fish portion all that much.

take the time to appreciate the people around you.

[NoShitThereIWas 0]

This one time when I was going to UC Santa Cruz, I lived in hippy hippy ville. I found this cool room in this cool house near the beach with all these cool hippy/biology chicks. The only thing about living there was ... you weren't allowed to cook meat or eat meat in the house.

There were about 30 organisms living in the house not including all the plants; from fish to cats to a dog, to a bearded dragon to iguanas and snakes. I was like give up eating meat??? Hmmmm.

I decided to give it a try and moved into the house. I became a vegetarian and quit eating meat cold turkey for a little over 6 months. (I eventually broke down passing the taqueria cooking up carne asada tacos)

If anyone would like to become a vegetarian I would recommend reading a book called the Karmic Diet (I think that is what it is called, I'll have to double check). This book was given to me by a Hare Krishna (sp?) guy who I met shopping at a New Leaf market (this is a health food/organic store for all you Texans).

I read that book in about 3 days and afterwards I could not eat meat. The thought, sight, smell and knowledge that I gained from reading that book was enough of an aversion therapy to cause me to not crave meat for a very long time.

I learned to cook vegetarian style when I lived with my roommates. All I can say about it is that I lost so much weight without even trying and felt so much more vivacious.

The book I read goes into all of the ethical, factual, statistial, environmental, political, fiscal, medical, moral, and scientific information related to humans eating meat. I was astounded to read the facts.

So I am going off on a total tangent. I support vegetarianism and enjoyed being vegetarian. One day I will go back to being one at least for a while. When I learned to cook vegetarian I was shocked at how good the food can be. There is stuff that they make that looks like cat food called TVP (texturized vegetable protein) and no shit it looks just like cat food when it is dry, kibble.

You can cook this stuff and simmer it in an Indian Masala sauce and let me tell you, when it is done it tastes pretty good over a nice Mahatma rice. I also used to like the fatless meatless sausage patties, meatless tacos, baked tofu in salads, eggplant parmesan and of course a glass of wine a day for the heart

Roy Bacon: "Elvises, light your fires."

Sting: "Be yourself no matter what they say."

[Unstable 9]

I have a firm belief that Salad is not food, but what food eats. Lets face it people, we are the top of the food chain -

=========Shaun ==========

[billvon 3,078]

>We didn't begin cultivating grain and farming until 10,000 years ago.
> 10k years is not even close to being enough time to evolutionarily
> change our digestive systems from what they had been accustomed
> to for 3 million years.

Right, but 3 million years is, and we've been eating what vegetables and fruits we've been able to over that time. We're pretty well adapted omnivores, or poorly adapted carnivores, or decent herbivores, take your pick. If anything, we are gradually getting better at eating meat rather than the other way around. Some evidence:

-Binocular vision with forward facing eyes makes us good hunters

-Relatively flat molars are good at grinding up cellulose-laden plant matter; we lack the serrated molars of pure carnivores

-Flat incisors are better at separating soft food that's not trying to escape.

-Canines help us "grab" meat, but are not very large in most people.

-We have an appendix which helped us when we ate more cellulose (i.e. plants) but is now largely vestigial.

-Our jaw anatomy has a high hinge point. This makes our mouth opening smaller (bad for carnivores) but lets us grind our jaws back and forth (good for herbivores.)

-Simple single chambered stomach is similar to carnivores; meat is easy to digest.

-Long small intestine is similar to herbivores; long transit time aids in breakdown of plant matter and absorption of nutrients from nutrient-sparse plant matter.

-Long large intestine with extensive pouching and bacterial action; herbivore trait.

-Overall our digestive systems are much larger than a carnivore's but not as large as most herbivores (and _much_ smaller than ruminants.)

-Our throats are small, a sign that we tend to chew our food a lot rather than swallow it rapidly like carnivores do. (No suprise that 'choking on meat' is one of the more common choking problems.)

-We secrete enzymes in our saliva to help break down food. Herbivores do this as well; pure carnivores don't.

-We can still synthesize B-12 but very poorly; most people get most of their B-12 from meat (or a supplement.) Vegetarians have to be sure to include enough B-12 in their diets from milk, eggs or supplements.

-We can synthesize taurine; carnivores can't. Again, though, we don't do it well, since it's readily available in meat.

[billvon 3,078]

>I require meat . . .

Can't argue with that!

>our bodies are designed to eat meat, we need the complete amino
>acid chains from red meat for our bodies to funciton properly, we
>need the protein from meat to function properly.

Sort of, no and no. You can get all the amino acids (and vitamins) you need from plants and plant-based foods with the exception of B-12. Milk or eggs will get you that. You can't get vitamin D from plants, but we can synthesize it from sunlight (which is pretty damn cool if you ask me.)

We're better adapted to eating plants than animals (compare a human mouth/jaw to a bear and a horse and see which we're closer to) but we have a lot of adaptations that let us eat meat with no problems. Originally we were designed to eat plants; our distant ancestors were plant eaters, and gradually evolved the ability to eat meat with time. It's an understandable adaptation since meat is a lot more calorie-, fat- and nutrient-dense than plants. If you can only get a certain amount of food, you're almost always better off with meat than with vegetables on a calorie basis.

Of course we sorta have the opposite problem nowadays.

>Yeah, you can substitute those things with stuff man made up . . .

Just like you can substitute man-denatured meat (i.e. cooked meat) for the "real stuff" (raw meat.) One of the reasons we don't have health problems eating meat is that we cut and cook it; we basically do the first few steps of digestion (some chemical breakdown, sterilization and a lot of mechanical breakdown) outside our bodies. That's one reason meat doesn't make us sick even though our stomachs are not as good at killing bacteria as a true carnivore's is. Eating meat as we do today, by ordering a Big Mac at McDonald's, isn't really the same diet as an animal whose diet is all meat. Which is fortunate, or we'd be sick a lot more.