m a x wrote:

going vegan is the best environmentalist action one can take.

And that author of that statement was prolly a vegan.

Eating vegan is not going to help the environment that much, even if the whole society turned vegan. We'd still be using land to plant food. Which means pesticides, unless you go to all organic. And even that isn't a guarantee. The same water source flows through farmer Jones (who uses pesticides) as his neighbor farmer Smith (who doesn't use pesticide). Both crops will be contaminated with pesticides.

In order to get that food into the ground, we'd need machines to till the ground and harvest.

And in order to get that food to the consumer, it would need to be shipped somehow. And packaged. So, we'd still need to burn fossil fuels, which I understand are one of the major problems.

As for the fuel substitutes they are experimenting with, the ones made from corn, guess what? Now there's becoming a shortage of corn. But, if the government allowed all the farmers to grow corn that they are currently paying NOT to grow corn, perhaps there'd be enough.

Extremism in any form is not good, in my book. I knew a vegan who wouldn't eat honey because he said it exploited bees. Silly, silly. *shakes head over silly people*

A well-balanced, healthy diet is the best. And lots of exercise. *nods*

Veganism is just taking a good idea to extremist ends.  If that's what works for the individual, that's fine and dandy, but there is absolutely no scientific evidence that it is the sounder ecological/physiological choice for the world at large. In fact, there's anecdotal evidence that some people suffer severe health problems if they do not put at least a small amount of animal protein in their diet.

Personally, I think a hunter-gatherer society is the way to go in terms of a long-term sustainable society.  You have a much smaller population, the population groups are much more spread out (limiting the spread of diseases), a higher protein to carbohydrate consumption and much greater physical expenditure (minimal instances of obesity), things of that sort.  It's not a perfect structure by any means, but it's a lot more viable than our current agricultural society.

heh, damn, I wanted to go to bed! This is keeping me awake!

I only recently read (again) that settling down and developping agriculture was really quite unhealthy.
When we were younger, my best friend and I were dreaming of running away and becoming hunters and gatherers. *grins* if only we hadn't been such cowards...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmen … etarianism

I would like to go veggie at some point, and I'm a total carnivore. It's not that I think that  it would be some grand gesture that would end all the problems associated with eating meat, but I'd still rather do something with a minuscule effect than do nothing.

For myself, I dont see anything morally wrong with eating meat, we're omnivores by nature, and I doubt anyone thinks that it's wrong when a cat eats a mouse, so I dont believe people should be viewed any differently. However the large amount of livestock being raised commercially contributes a huge amount of methane into our atmosphere, rainforests are clear cut so that livestock can be grown, water resources are being exploited to further furnish the growth of livestock, and you can feed more people on land that grows plants than raises an animal.

I think that the focus quite often with these sorts of things is a bit off, wouldnt it be better (and more realistic?) for everyone to do some small bit than for all/some people to do everything? What if 20% of americans went meatless, and 20% tonly bought organic and local produce, and 20% only used public transport or walked, and 20% replaced all of their appliances with energy efficient models, and 20% got all the taps in their residences fixed so that there was no leaking and took short showers? 100% of Americans would be contributing something and no one would be caused undue hardship because all of these things are easy. It's really the all or nothing that thinking that does us in ultimately, this weird belief that since you cant fix something 100% right now then it's impossible and you should just do nothing.

ETA: I also meant to mention that the way that commecial livestock is raised is quite often abominably cruel. If someone kills a pig and eats it that's one thing, but the method of industrial production we utilize to get our meat is pretty gross imo. You can really take the "eating meat is natural" argument out of it when you get into the slaughterhouse, because there's nothing natural about those places whatsoever as far as I'm concerned, and the fact that we were endowed by nature with brains that allow us to create such places does not excuse the fact that we're also endowed with something most animals dont have, which is a choice in the matter.

[ April 30, 2007: Message edited by: bandit ]

Magpie -- "bee barf"?

Vegetarianism, as well as being a way of eating, can also be a way of life, where a lot of your choices come down to sustainable resources.

Whatever side of the fence you take (and I sit squarely on the fence 'cause there's cow pies on one side and yucky vegetables on the other), you can find bona fide, scientific evidence to back up your position.

So, eat what you like, drink what you like, but do not try to make ME eat the nasty food.

[ April 30, 2007: Message edited by: Em ]

I had a eye-opening experience. I lived in Berkeley in the '70s. Along with vegan diet, the vegan lifestyle embraced there is very natural and looks a whole lot more comfortable. *grins*

Earth shoes compared to 5-inch heels. Cotton, loose-fitting clothing, instead of shoving ourselves into spandex.

If you are going to embrace vegetablarism because of the harm to animals, then you should go all the way and get rid of the leather shoes, plastic materials, etc., in your clothing as well.

Wool is good, because the animals are not slaughtered.

Cotton is good, because the plants are not destroyed to obtain the raw materials. Linen, flax ... what else. Oh, and natural dyes (which can be very colorful).

What do you think?

I come from a country in which cows and sheep are raised very humanely, until it's time for the meatworks, of course.  No winter barns or feeding them ground-up other cows etc - it's grass all the way.  Having stomped around a bit here in defence of meat, I don't actually eat very much - I usually have at least two vegetarian meals a week (it's nacho night tonight), and when I do have it, it's small servings.  But small very yummy servings.

I saw a guy in a pub wearing a tshirt with Meat is Murder on it the other day, which surprised me because guys in pubs aren't that likely to be hardcore vegetarians.  Then I saw the rest of it: "tasty, tasty murder"...

how many of you love your pets?

Binky wrote:

By what measure?  I struggle to think of a way in which radically reducing the human population (in other words, killing lots of people or preventing lots of people from having children) and giving those left over a harder life with less leisure time is better for them.  We might not die of cancer at age 50, but we'd lose half our kids to infant mortality and have our own troubles in old age with worn down teeth and suchlike.  It's easy to think of our millions of years on the savannah as a kind of utopia, until you look at the real hardships remaining hunter-gatherers communities face.

Well... it was not so much about the way of living (you're definitely right with what you said, and I suppose I could have thought of it myself, if it hadn't been so late/early), but about the food - it became much more monotonous when people started farming instead of eating whatever they could find.

 

Em wrote:

Magpie -- "bee barf"?

more or less... it was about honey made from honeydew, which he described as, "thrown-up aphid shit". Got quoted a lot over breakfast the next few days.

As for pets... I surely couldn't eat any cat or dog I know, but then, I don't know whether I could eat a pig (or any other animal) I had raised myself, either. I don't think it's morally wrong to eat cats or dogs. It's just a cultural thing. What matters is not what kind of animal it is, but that it had a good life and a death that wasn't unnecessarily cruel.

[ May 01, 2007: Message edited by: Magpie ]

Sahi wrote:

I'm a firm believer in 'if nature/god had wanted us to be vegetarian we'd have other teeth'.

Well, the god 'argument' aside, nature doesn't "want" anything.  Our meat/plant eating ways are a product of our history and evolution.  Biologically, we can process both meat and plant products, and can survive well enough with an relative abundance of one or the other...if we as a species abandoned meat entirely, I'm sure we'd evolve away from canine teeth eventually.  Luckily, for the short term, we (mostly) have brains, so if we choose not to eat meat for moralistic reasons we can supplement a plant diet in order to get the nutrients we generally rely on meat for.  It is a good amount of work to do that coorectly, however, and many of my friends who are known to try extreme diet changes spend a lot of their time either getting sick or feeling generally weak.  There's a lot of bad nutrition advice out there.

Well, I stopped eating meat for a bunch of reasons.  I generally dislike the ways that a lot of the animals we eat are raised and/or killed.  It's pretty gruesome and I find it hard to justify that behaviour just so I can have a piece of chicken or a steak.  Also I hit a deer while driving, some time around when I was seriously leaning towards becoming vegetarian.  Kinda got me thinking more about things I guess.  Also there's a lot of meat that I just never really enjoyed that much.  Even as a small child I would eat my vegetables first and barely touch my meat at dinner.  All of that led me to think that there really was no reson to keep eating meat when I could get a balanced diet in other ways.  And in my case it has worked fine.  I have since added back in some fish but for a number of years didn't eat any meat at all.

That being said I fully realise it's a personal choice.  And I don't begrudge anyone the choice to eat meat.  I even cook my mom a nice steak for mother's day or her birthday sometimes.  So I guess I'm in the group of "eat what you want" but from the other side. :)

As far as veganism I have mixed feelings.  Mostly because even with vegetarians you have to take the time to think about your diet and make sure you're eating the right foods to replace what you aren't getting from meat.  I think a lot of people take that side too lightly and that's where many people get sick or weak from their diet.  You can have a bad diet no matter what you eat depending on how you prepare it or the variety/combination of food you eat.  (Although I have heard something about different bloodtypes contributing to how well you can manage on vegan or vegetarian diets.  I haven't actually looked into it myself though, it was just a comment from someone)  With veganism I think all these factors are just so greatly multiplied that it would take a very good understanding of nutrition to actually have a properly balanced diet.  I don't think most people (myself included!) are educated enough in that area, and many wouldn't want to bother to take the time to be.

As far as sustainability/ecological reasons I haven't really educated myself enough in that aspect of being vegetarian to really comment.  I guess through the little bits I've read I have a general feeling that it is in some ways better but there's too many factors, many of which have been mentioned here, so I reserve any real judgement until I feel I know more about it all.

m a x wrote:

how many of you love your pets?

Dont fool yourself max. That cat would eat you and everyone you care about if given the chance.