The Tasty Vegetarian Arguments...

[EscapePlan9]

[Zuccala]

[MecosKing]

[EscapePlan9]

[MVPSPORTS]

[EscapePlan9]

It's not like I never ate meat before, or vegetarians/vegans never ate meat before. We all have changed our eating habits in response to various environmental factors in the past. (Yes, biology always still plays a part, but for the majority of vegetarians/vegans they ended up no longer eating meat because they gained new information or experienced something new.)

I don't go door to door and tell people to be a vegetarian or they'll burn in hell. You do not need to be a vegetarian to earn brownie points into heaven. You will not die of cancer by continuing to eat meat. Nothing terrible will happen to you and the ones you love by you still eating meat. I sincerely do not believe once a meat-eater, always a meat-eater.

I do not expect everyone who reads the arguments for vegetarianism to instantly become vegetarians or anything of the sort. What I expect is at least a couple people questioning some of their long-held beliefs. A very small amount of those might become vegetarians, and even those who don't should at least have a better understanding of our moral stance.

[BigPhish]

[EscapePlan9]

[Cactus Jack]

[EscapePlan9]

[Juskimo]

Very interesting thread, I wanted to jump in due to the quality of the discussion and my own rather unique views/positions on the matter.

Just as a bit of background, one side of my family comes from (and still lives in) one of the harshest environments on the earth and our diet consists of 95% meat. The difference between this and a lot of peoples diets who eat a lot of meat (in my opinion and experience) is that we actually go out and kill our own meat. When I moved away my dad told my mom "you can bring him back an axe murderer, you can bring him back gay (neither of which happened), just dont bring him back a vegitarian."

I would break the discussion (for me at least) down into 3 seperate points, 2 of which have to do with meat and 1 of which is a point about diet in general.

1. Some people, because of their ethnicity/location will eat (and require) more meat than other people. I come from a place where you have to eat meat to survive. Period. There is no choice. If my family had spent the past 1000 years living in some tropical jungle where there were 2000 different kinds of tasty plants that could be harvested with little effort, we probably would not put the time and effort into hunting that we do. Unfortunately, when the ground is frozen all the time and it is dark for 3 months out of the year not a whole lot grows. I think (and this is just my conjuecture, but probably easily proven) the climate where your ancestors are from influences your dietary choices. Granted this goes out the window if you do not eat a culturally based diet (more on that later). I would guess that people who hail from reigons with more plant growth eat less meat and require less of it to survive.

2. I think that the relative level of processing that your diet goes through is more important than the specifics of your diet. What exactly does this mean? Eating food that has been processed, had the nutrients removed and reinected/overcooked/stripped of all of its naturalness is bad for you. A cup of fresh veggies is better for you than a can of veggies, a steak is better for you than a hot dog. I try to eat food in the least processed form possible. Some such things are obvious (getting produce from the farmers markets, eating steak and other meat in its fresh whole form), while others are less so (avoiding enriched flour products, eating brown rice instead of white rice, eating whole grains in lieu of flour based stuff like bread and pasta, getting meat without hormones injected into it). The less processed your diet is, the healthier you will be. The same thing goes for meat. I have observed how much better health my relatives who only eat traditional Inupiaq food (all hunted, raw or slightly cooked) are than my relatives who only eat store bought (which means includes hormones, bad stuff in the feed, etc meat) meat are. Eating farm factory meat is worse for you than not eating meat, but not necessarily worse than wild/organic meat.

3. People are so disconnected from food that they do not understand/respect what they are eating. The healthiest people I know are a) my family who hunt all their own wild meat and b) friends who run a business building organic gardens (and have some amazing gardens of their own). They are healthy because of the purity of their diet.
I think that if more people grew/hunted their own food, they would realize this. If you had to go hunt your own animals, you would not pick some diseased animal eating the worst food possible, wallowing in feces. You would want to hunt the healthiest animal eating the purist diet possible. Just like you would not farm in the most polluted place, dump tons of chemicals/pesticides on your crops and then process the hell out of them.
I think that if you could not handle whacking the damn animal yourself, you probably should not eat it. And I prefer (would do so if possible and hopefully will starting next year) to only eat meat that I/one of my friends or family had hunted.

I also have no problem wearing fur, for many of the same reasons. However I would say that the difference between me and many of the people who do wear fur is that I have no problem going out and hunting the animal that I get the fur from. The fur that I do wear is hunted by either a family member or acquired from somewhere in the community.

I think actually hunting, with a similar corrilary for farming, brings about much more respect for the prey. For my family, hunting is a spiritual/cultural experience. Everyone involved understands that the hunt is a way of life, a way of remaining in tune with the world around us. We thank every animal that we kill for allowing us to continue our existance, to acknowledge that its existance is important to us and that we do not take its killing lightly/in vain.

In any case, I think that the roots of the diet quandry/the reason for eating what/how you eat are rooted in factors that most people do not consider. To you a steak might be something that comes wrapped in celophane at the store, to me it is a way to remember who I am and stay connected with that (again, getting as much of my meat as possible from my family/friends who hunt it or from local farmers who have raised and slaughtered it themselves).

Hope this was enlightening and offers a new way of thinking about your diet and why you eat what you eat.

-Jus

[EscapePlan9]

[Cactus Jack]

I love a good argument. I used to love them a lot more than I do now.

My favorite uncle is in his 90s. He's had Alzheimer's for many years, weighs a hundred pounds now, and the doctor's have told my aunt he has only a few days left. Someday, that will be my fate. Someday it will be everyone's fate. Perhaps the closer you are to that fate, the less you have an interest in subjects like this.

I've lived for half a century now. I have no illusions that I'll live forever. The longer I live, the less I want to fight for a long life. Live long enough, and you figure out that life isn't what we expected it to be. You accept reality a lot more. If you're not cynical by 50, you haven't been paying attention.

If I have a "healthy lifestyle," that may add years to my life. Yeah, it adds years on to the end of my life when it's not worth a damn. When every day is filled with pain, fear, and loss of function. It adds years of me being a burden on my family and society. It takes enormous amounts of money out of the economy to keep me going, when I have no place left to go.

If everyone who smokes stopped, everyone's taxes would go up. Ex-smokers would now live longer, creating an increasing burden on the health care system, Social Security, and elderly care. Very few things that seem like a good idea actually are, when examined closely.

You guys have a ball with these great ideas of society, which are fun to argue, but ultimately don't mean a damn thing. Don't mind me. I'm the cynical realist who's fought these battles for longer than most of you have been on the overburdened, over-populated, overly poisoned Earth.

Cows contribute methane gas, which is bad for the ozone layer. Pesticides and fertilizers necessary to grown the plants to feed the people are destroying the water, fresh and ocean. You could not feed the entire population with organically grown vegetables. It couldn't be done.

How's that for throwing a wrench into the argumentive monkeyworks?

"Who wants to live forever?" Freddie Mercury

"Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive." Anonymous

"Be happy while you're alive, 'cause you're a long time dead." Cactus Jack

ps--Regardless of how worthless life is at the end, I've seen people fight to their very last breath to hold onto it. No one ever dies easily.

[JJSCOTT2]