Vegetarianism; why bother?

Based on arguements similar to the above, it seems like many vegetarians like the ones with a similar position are actually only against meat as an industry and as livestock farming as it destroys/consumes resourses, and not actually against the eating of meat that isn't raised or propogated as an industry (non-wild animals). Is this correct?

I mean, if one has a natural taste, craving or hunger for meat doesn't it seem like a natural, primitive, instinctual behavior? So how can you say it is wrong? I understand the point about inefficient use of resources for farming, but were the native americans, aboriginese, etc. wrong for eating wild meat such as buffalo etc.?

 

Food neurosis is caused by any of a number of factors.

 

world hunger could be ended today with the same number of people eating meat and even significantly more people eating meat, the only problems are

1. money

2. greed

because if there were enough food it'd no longer be a commodity, farmers wouldn't be able to sell food for a decent price, (money) but if governments were willing to 100% subsidize farming (they nearly do now but they pay them to farm less instead of more) enough food could be grown.

not only that but the best farming practices aren't shared because people want to gorw more food so they can make more money...

food shouldn't be a commodity....

 

surely if people arent into murdering things they shouldnt eat root vegetables etc.if you take a carrot out of the ground and eat it ,its dead.only fruit and nuts and the likes are non violent methods of consuming energy.fruit trees actually WANT their fruit to be eaten,in exchange for crapping out the seeds as far away from the mother plant as possible, in a convenient pile of fertilizer.potatoes and onions are hiding under the ground,obviously not wanting to be found.

 

Lately I've been considering becoming a vegetarian, not because I think that by doing so less animals will be killed, but basically I've grown up eating meat without any second thought as to what I'm actually doing. Lately I've been seeing it as something which once was a happy (at least I'd like to think so..) animal living freely, running around a field all day without a care in the world, now it's all cut up and cooked on my plate..It's really disturbing me. The only thing is I love the taste..

 

Good point! (coming from an omnivore)

 

well i tried being a vegetarian, but i didnt know what to eat and the soy products, like yogurt and the milk, i just didnt like the taste i couldnt eat it, the tofu cheese stuff, ok that does not taste like cheese, and i tried making a grilled cheese snadwich w/ it and it didnt melt.... so haha it was a lil distubing. I fulllllllyy support vegetarians, i mean i hate the thought of eating something that once lived, but i cant find anything else to eat!! haha I think people should be vegetarians or the slaughter houses find a better way to actually put the animal to sleep. HUMANLY not letting the animal die slowly like they do. or beat it to death that is not right.

 

oh one more thing, sometimes i dont think vegetarians are always healthier. If they dont know what to eat (like i was) you can get sick or not grow as much, maybe be malnurited.

 

If you're smart vegetarian, you can eat a lot healthier than meat eaters. I don't buy meat (for several reasons, all of which have already been mentioned) so I don't eat it too much, but when someone makes a dinner for me and it includes meat, I will eat it because it was already bought and paid for and there's no need to waste it. But one of my main gripes about meat eating is that most societies today are no longer dependent on meat so it's unnecessary to slaughter animals on such a large scale.

 

1. health
2. environment

i'll just mention a few environmental issues because the health effects are more obvious:

we're putting way too much strain on the earth to NOT be vegetarian. cows destroy land. the cow fields destroy natural habitat and oxygen sources such as the rain forest. each cow takes thousands of gallons of water to raise to maturity. the amount of energy they provide to a human is a propertional 10% of what we could get from plants alone:

introducing the rule of ten: assume the sun is 100% energy. plants absorb that energy directly and burn up 90% thus leaving 10% of the sun's energy for whoever eats the plant. if a cow eats the plant, they use 90% of the plant's given energy, which was only 10% of the sun's energy. if we eat the cow, we get 10% of its energy, which is only 1% of the sun's energy. the more paths the worse it gets.

the fact is that the cultivation of meat is EXTREMELY inefficient. it takes far too much to cultivate these animals and the payoff--the nutritional/energetic reward--is only a small fraction of what we could get from other sources such as plants.

the world would not be hungry right now if we weren't cutting steaks on our dinner plates every night. i'm sure there is a figure out there, but i venture to guess that a single steak, if converted into an equivalent amount of plant energy, would probably feed an entire family for a week.

i'm not an advocate of being vegan (it's not for me), as i think animals can provide us with many benefits such as eggs and dairy products, but it is expensive to maintain these animals on farms and it is even more expensive to kill them and feed them to humans.

i suppose i'm vegetarian for the health benefits.

 

1.Health. Ok give me your scientific references.If you want to live a more healthy lifestyle, avoid margarine and all other hydronated food products like the plague.
2. The the often quoted figure of 100,000 litres of water required to produce 1kg of beef is based on irrigation land. As most beef is raised on land that is not arable the aforementioned figure is therefore misleading. In Australia the amount of arable land is only about 7%.Mainland USA it is something like 18%.
Anyway why begrudge cattle an existance?

http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50510

http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46975

 

bilby,

cattle don't need the existance that they have. they exist in mass quantities only because people like you eat them. they destroy millions of acres of land and consume a ridiculous amount resources. water is becoming more expensive every day. i want that water to go to the people, not to the creation of steaks.

the meat industry is simply an inefficient (and inhumane) way to feed the 7 billion people on this planet. it doesn't matter what the exact figures are--how much water it takes. the fact is that it takes a shitload to create a kg of beef. i was just pointing this fact out, as it is one of the benefits of being vegetarian--not supporting this industry.

health? are you serious? you have never read any scientific references about the negative effects of eating too much red meat? PLEASE tell me you're joking! lol. oh my god. there's nothing wrong with eating a little meat, but too much is very bad for you (i'm refering to RED meat, by the way. fish, for example, is a very very healthy meat). personally, i don't eat butter or margarine--they're also bad for you if you eat too much of them.

peace.

 

The fact of the matter is that water is never really lost from the planet.Water that evaporates, eventually condensates and turns into rain somewhere else.Perhaps I did not make myself clear.Cattle and sheep are mostly raised on what is classified as dry land.Such land is completly unsuitable for growing vegetables on. To grow vegetables, firstly you need flat land. If you start ploughing up hilly land,you get soil erosion.Secondly the land has to be good soil.But most importantly of all, you must have a dependable source of irrigation water even in areas of reasonable rainfall.To suggest that 100,000 litres of water would have been available for every 1kg of beef from cattle raised on dry land is being misleading in the extreme.As for irrigation uses, have you got any idea how much water is required to grow rice or maize? I live in an irrigation area of Australia.Some of the irrigation land is used to raise cattle and sheep and could be used to grow vegetables but it is matter of market conditions.Farmers are not going to produce a commodity if they cannot make a living from doing so.Australia could produce and sell much more food to some third world countries but they simply don't have the money to pay for it.You might like to consider a car sticker I once saw.

A farmer who lost money and went hungry to produce food so others could eat.

No I am not joking. All I have read is that certain men with a genetic condition should limit the amount of haem iron in their diet.Red meat is very high in haem iron.Otherwise I have not read any scientific references on the negetive of eating red meat per se.If you can give me links to such scientific studies, I would be glad to read them.

All margarine is bad for you. Some are worse that others. If you can give me any scientific scources on why butter is bad for you, I would be glad to read them.I have read ad nausium about limiting saturated fat in your diet. The only thing is when you come to ask the curly question of the scientific references, they can never give you any actual scientific research.

 

oh bilby,

i don't give a shit if you eat red meat or butter--that's why i'm not going to waste my time searching for articles! if you care enough about heart disease then you can find your own damn articles... and if you don't know about clogged arteries, that's fine too. i don't care and obviously you don't either--no problem. i'm not here to convert you or change your mind about eating whatever it is you eat. this really shouldn't develop into an argument, by the way. you eat your cows and your butter and i'll eat my tofu, kayle, and olive oil. who cares... 'nuff said.

most cattle is not grown on "dry land" that is unsuitable for growing vegetables. if this were true, i wouldn't be seeing cow fields next to my house and next to fields of corn--all over the country. and there is no way you can call the millions of acres of rainforest "dry land" either.

on another note, you're absolutely right that vegetables take a ton of water to grow, just like cows do. the point is, however, that it is still far more efficient when considering the raw amount of ENERGY you obtain from a crop of corn as opposed to a crop of cow. it's simple biology--the rule of ten, which i explained briefly. and this need not be an argument either because it's a simple ecological rule so don't argue with me about it--i didn't make it up. anyway, it only exists to show the world that there is value in harvesting energy at the HIGHEST link/source (ideally, we should eat the sun, which is unfortunately impossible. but the second most efficient way to live is to consume the plants/animals that feed off the sun--the most energy is harvested this way).

and if you think water is limitless then you ought to think again. i agree that it may seem limitless. it does rain and percolate into the earth and join water bodies. yeah, it does evaporate and come back down again. this is all true--good job. but it shouldn't take an in depth study of biology and freshwater ecology to know differently. it is fact that our sources of water are getting increasingly contaminated and more of these places are becoming dry. water is a precious resource and it is already being privatized and sold back to the people. india is in a huge shithole with this problem. you don't live in india so this doesn't concern you, but Coca Cola just so happens to OWN the water in parts of india and they are taking water directly from the ground and selling it back to the indians, at a backbreaking price that most people cannot afford. and the Ganges river is dirty as fuck and people are forced to drink from it which then gets them sick because they can't go out and buy water. the water is being tightly controlled and this is no surprise. even here in the united states, i'm sure that im my lifetime water will become less abundant--at least the prices are going to soar.... privatization is on its way.

we can also thank all those bitches who water their "pretty" lawns every afternoon.

this thread is getting old--my work is done here.

peace.




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this was posted by Shroomism on page 5 of this thread. maybe you didn't read it. maybe you can stop arguing with me--i'm not your problem (you can ask Shroomism for the source because i don't intend to come back to this thread). the facts speak for themselves though:


Pollution

• The animals raised for food in the US alone produce 130 times the excrement of the entire human population on Earth, at a rate of 86,600 pounds per second. Only a sixth of this excrement is used as fertilizer; the rest is just dumped into lakes and rivers, untreated.
• One pig factory farm produces raw waste equivalent to that of a city of 12,000 people -- except unlike a city, it doesn't have a waste treatment facility. Its raw wastes are dumped straight into surrounding rivers and lakes.

Land
• Of all agricultural land in the United States, 80-87% is used to raise animals for food.
• Animals in the US are fed 70% of the nation's corn, wheat, and other grains.
• The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people -- more than the entire human population on Earth. Meanwhile, the UN says that 800 million people are suffering from "nutritional deficiency" (i.e. they're starving).
• "It is depressing to consider that throughout the last big famine in Ethiopia, that country was exporting desperately needed soy to Europe to feed to farmed animals. The same relationship held true throughout the famine in Somalia in the early 1990's. ... And the same relationship holds between Latin America and the United States today. As just one example, two-thirds of the agriculturally productive land in Central America is devoted to raising farmed animals, almost all of whom are exported or eaten by the wealthy few in these countries." (Veganism in a Nutshell)
• A meat based diet requires seven times more land than a plant-based diet -- that is, the amount of land to feed one meat-eater can be used to feed seven vegetarians.


Energy Use

• Raising animals for food requires more than one-third of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the United States. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fossil fuels to drive a small car 20 miles.
• Meat production requires 10-20 times more energy per edible tonne than grain production.

Water

• Nearly half of all water consumed in the US is used to raise animals for food.
• It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat. Why? It's a water intensive industry. You grow the food to feed the animal over its life, which in and of itself is quite a lot, and then need lots of water to hose down its blood at the slaughterhouse. (By comparison, it takes only 60 gallons to produce a pound of wheat)


Deforestation

• About a fifth of the world's land is used for grazing -- twice the area used for growing crops.
• The space equivalent to seven football fields is being destroyed in rainforests every minute; 55 sq. feet of rainforest is needed to produce a quarter-pound burger.
• 50 million acres of tropical forest in Latin America alone have been cut down for livestock production since 1970.
• In Canada, local wilderness is being destroyed for more and more grazing land for livestock.

But let us just pretend for a second that this ecological nightmare does not exist. (easy enough since most people do anyway)

Even the hunter-gatherer societies of ancient times, and the indigenous tribes of today consume meat. But what is the difference between them and us? Well for one, they caught wild animals.. we raise them in confined quarters and often inhumane conditions that results in lots of disease. To counter this, the animals are fed "enhanced" grains loaded with antibiotics, and injected with growth hormones and other madness.

Besides this, the US is the leading consumer of meat. Even in the iExperts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber

Indigenous tribes, and hunter-gatherer societies diets consisted of about 5% meat. The largest part of their diet came from the "gatherers" - nuts, berries, and plants. This equates to less than 3oz of meat per day. If you look at other cultures you will see a trend towards less meat and much more whole fruits and vegetables, especially say the mediterranian, oriental, and indian diets.

All meat (especially fatty red meats) contains uric acid. Uric acid is a waste product of purines found in muscle fiber and body tissue. When you exercise, your muscles release uric acid, which you need to rest for it to break down and metabolize. An excess of uric acid is caused by over-production in the body, or by under-elimination of uric acid by the kidneys.
The ingestion of foods high in purines (and thus uric acid) will raise uric levels in the body and long term excess can (and will) lead to either and/or: Gout, Obesity, Arthritis, Heart Disease, Cancer, Cardiovascular disease, and a whole plethora of human diseases. Consider that heart disease is (by far) the leading cause of death among americans, who also, coincidentally enough.. consume the most meat.

On the flip side, dark berries, soybeans, fatty acids found in such fish as salmon, flax seed, olive oil, and nuts all possess anti-inflammatory benefits to help sufferers of such disease. These and a diet rich in whole grain, fruits, and vegetables, will help to eliminate uric acid levels in the bloodstream.

Vegetarianism is an automatic cholesterol-cutter. Dietary cholesterol, which causes heart disease, is found only in animal products. No one has ever died of a heart attack with a cholesterol level below 150, and the average vegan has a cholesterol level of 128.

The incidence of high blood pressure is generally greater among meat-eaters than among vegetarians, and cancers of the breast, colon, and prostate are more common among people on a high-meat, high-fat, low-fiber diet.

One 21-year-long study that compared meat-eaters and vegetarians showed that the greater the meat consumption, the greater the death rate from all causes combined.

Up to 90 percent of federally inspected poultry is infected with bacteria like salmonella and campylobacter, which cause sometimes-fatal vomiting and diarrhea.

According to William Castelli, M.D., director of the Framingham Heart Study, the longest running epidemiological study in medical history, "Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rates of coronary disease of any group in the country ... they have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate. On the average, they outlive other people by about six years now."

Let us not forget that meat is a very inefficient food source. The energy return ratio (as food energy per fossil energy expended) of the most energy efficient factory farming of meat is 34.5%, while that of the least energy efficient plant food is 328%. The claim that meat is a better source of protein is a myth.

So besides the deforestation, besides the pollution, besides the lives destroyed by this industry, besides the hundreds of thousands of people who are not being fed, meat is bad for you. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and whole grains, taste better (imho), and are much better for you, without the environmental impact the meat and cattle industry has on our world. If you would like me to explain the benefits of a vegetarian diet, and the wonders of fruits and vegetables, I will.

"Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind."
- Albert Einstein

 

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/oilingamerica.1.html

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/oilingamerica.2.html

http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/lowfatcapitalism.html

 

this is so ironic it makes me laugh.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1316258,00.html
http://www.healthyweightforum.org/eng/diets/atkins_diet/
http://www.atkins-diet.cc/risks2.php

http://www.dotpharmacy.co.uk/upmed.html

http://au.health.yahoo.com/050223/3/p/3h01.html?r=

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthology/story?id=404304

http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/olive-oil.htm
http://www.nutritionnewsfocus.com/archive/NewsControversy.html

http://www.bodybuildingforyou.com/health-supplements/flax-seed-oil.htm

http://vegetables.se-smack.info/index.php?k=benefits-of-eating-fruits-and-vegetables

http://naturalhealthperspective.com/blog/Nov2004.html

but seriously, it is a tremendous waste of my time to be doing this. i'm out. and for real this time.

 

What is kayle? I tried tofu and I don't like it. I have olive oil in my kitchen.I also have coconut oil.

My research shows that it is 18% of agricultural land in USA that is arable.In Australia it is just 7%.You obviously have no idea about growing food. You cannot just grow any crop anywhere you like. Different plants have varying growing requirements.
In the Strathbogie ranges in Victoria the stocking rates are two cattle and three sheep per acre.Up around Bourke in NSW the stocking rates are one sheep to every fifteen acres for non irrigation land.Both areas of land are completely unsuitable for growing crops.

 

I became vegetarian because i almost don't do any hard physical work, as any other civilised human i suppose (as a work i mean a hard 15 hours a day work in farm or mines, etc.). And i found out, that meat makes our brain more difficult to work, because humans body need a lot of energy when decomposing fats, and it use the same energy the brain uses, so meat is not good for intelectually working person (as most of us are). Furthermore, avoiding meat helps to release our soul.
Our ancestors ate meat, because they needed it. We don't need it, meat complicates our lifestyles.
Have you heard, that if you feed a puppy with a raw meat it will become an angry dog. When i give up eating meat i became pacifist, and i don't kill anythig, even a bug that is crawling on my monitor's screen. Meat makes people angry.
In a civilised society, meat eating should be equal to cannibalism. We steal other's life to satisfy ourselves... Every life is important, because it's unique, and nature created it thousands of years... Every living organism have an unique structure, as you and me.
And finally, God himself forbbiden eating meat... It's written in Bibble if you don't believe me.

Meat is the barrier which don't allow us to progress.