Vegetarian

[Orbitalhound]

I am a vegetarian for preferential/health reasons and not for ethical convictions. Just curious to know who else on this forum is...

Most people say they "Can't live without meat."
Do you think this is true?

[Loopz]

I am too but not for the same reasons as yourself I dont like the taste of meat.

[hippy dave]

i'm not a vegetarian. my ethics aren't quite loud enough to be heard over the voice telling me to eat meat 'cos i like it. also i have food sensitivities so mostly avoid dairy and gluten, which is far too much hard work already so cutting out meat as well would be a huge nightmare.

[Funky Dung]

I'm veggie. Chose not to eat animals when I was 8, and I still don't. Would if I had to though, it's just that I've got the choice, so I don't. I'd happily eat a bacon sandwich or a dog or a human if it became necessary.

[legspin]

I am the almost complete opposite. I don't eat vegetables as most of them make me ill. Indeed for members of the brassica family (cabbage and so forth) the smell of them cooking drives me from the kitchen I find them that revolting.
In mitigation I do eat a lot of fruit for minerals and vitamins.

As my wife is a vegetarian herself and loves cabbage, this has got to be more that just a little inconvenient.

As to whether we could live without meat, there are several examples on both sides of the divide. We all know of the eastern philosophies that are strictly vegetarian, but the Inuit and Mongol diets compose almost entirely of meat. The need for meat has supposedly lead to the development of our brain size, and there is still no easier way of the body to get certain essential fatty acids, and as it is comprised almost completely of protein it is by far the best source of the eight essential amino acids we don't manufacture ourselves.

That said, an acre of potatos will keep a family fed for 6 months, an acre of grass will keep a cow fed for 6 months. If slaughtered that cow will keep the family fed for about 6 weeks. If the land currently occupied by cattle was planted there would be enough food for the earths population to increase 4 fold and still have enough for the still hungry to go back for seconds. Malthus was a little out.

The one taste that is shared by every one is - sugar. Monkeys are primarily fruit eaters and this has been passed onto us. The brain uses more glucose than all the other internal organs put together bar the liver. Indeed the brain would never care if it ever saw fat.
All the food types are necessary for health but sugar is the fuel of all of your functions.
So the one thing you would die without is sugar

[usernick]

I am also a vegetarian - have been all my life, as my Dad is(apparently due to health reasons, at an early age).

Not ethical in any way (don't mind people eating meat at all - after all, what else is a cow on this earth for?)

[Willsy]

When i was growing up i was pretty much a vegetarian as basically we ate what my Mum ate and she didnt eat meat...

however my uni days and discovering bacon butties put paid to that!!!

Having said that these days as a 29 year old male i still dont really eat red meat and prefer fish and chicken and if served a vegetarien meal i thoroughly enjoy it!

[tcb2000]

My wife and I are vegetarians (for about 6 months now). Mostly for the health reasons - and to lose some weight. When we'd stopped eating meat a mate asked 'Why have you gone vegetarian?'. I said 'How many fat vegetarians do you know?' and he said 'Well...you'. Cheeky get.

Anyway, we grow a load of veggies in the garden and there's nothing better than pulling something out of the ground then eating it 30 minutes later. We also eat fish, for the protein and supposedly good-for-you Omega oils. A seared and still pink tuna steak is better than a fillet steak!

Rich

[Dog]

If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?

Rich, I can imagine who said that to you, does his name begin with 'D' and end with 'el'?

[tcb2000]

Dog, yes indeed, it was Del. Currently winging his way towards Thailand for a year....

[legspin]

If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?

Interesting question

What gives us away is our physiogomy. We don't have the massive canines of true meat eaters, nor do we have big flat molars of the truly vegetarian. Internally our small intestine is actually too long for the proper digestion of meat, (most carnivores have a very short digestive tract), but we also don't have a working appendix, which is vital for herbivores. Being omnivores we are supposed to eat everything so we are set-up for nothing.

You would also be surprised how much genetics has to play on diet. It has been show that certain races are more suited to some foods than others, but the link is reversed. Rather than our bodies searching for particular foods, if racially we eat alot of something the body will switch on or off certain genes that allow us to eat these foods, for example, our ability to produce rennet.
We as a species are one of the few mammals that regularly secretes rennet into the digestive tract as adults. This aids the digestion of milk products. This is particularly handy if you are Irish, or Bedouin for instance. We are both originally agrarian societies that have large herds of milk producing animals, so we got alot of our nutrition from milk and related foods. If we were not able to secrete rennet we could not digest these foods. But as adult mammals we are not supposed to drink milk as this is food for infants. So in a large section of the worlds population we stop secreting rennet in our early teens, so if we drink milk in our adult years it is actually supposed to make us sick.
In certain races though the gene for producing rennet does not switch off. This is a retroactive switch though. Our systems have told us that we are still getting milk so keep producing rennet, not keep producing rennet in the hope of still getting milk. It is actually quite noticeable in certain societies that are moving away from the land and therefore from agriculture that this gene is beginning to kick back in and the ability to digest milk is being slowly lost.


The majority of what we eat though is decided by social status, class, the society in which we live and the education we have received.
The attitude of the the society we live in toward animals also has a lot to do with it.

Next question please

[hippy dave]

Next question please

meaning of life?

interesting stuff, cheers.

[Orbitalhound]

I am too but not for the same reasons as yourself I dont like the taste of meat.

Yes that's what I meant when I said "preferential" meaning I just dislike meat. I also think there is a health issue as well because a diet high in protein is not healthy, as was the virtue of John Harvey Kellog, inventor of the cereals we all love. He was also an expert intestinal surgeon and had to perform many miraculous operations to heal people who consumed too much m eat.

[custard99]

my boyfriend's 'fake' chicken patties got me converted ... but then again that was also when da only meat that was enough was my boyfriend haha....

joke aside, i tried once when mcD's had the veggie burger then upon leaving uk... all they had here got meat in them...

so back to my bacon n eggs

[Karnorjax]

Life long Veggie I can whole heartidly blame it on hippy parents... we had a veg plot just like int he Good Life and my dad was president of the Bath and avon vegitarian society for many years.

Have never had any problems with others eating meat.

All veggies should own a copy of the CRANKS COOK BOOK !! wonderful stuff ! !