Poll: Whos a vegetarian?

[qualia]

but, i think so may people get fixated on what they perceive to be problems with "the bible", whereas the problem doesn't lie necessarily with the text or even the intention of the text but with the people who use and abuse it to their own means.

[Pedro Williams]

Justification is the minds way of making anything ok

[chilli]

In the bible does it not say something to the effect of '"I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food'?? for the feed of animals and man? to take the bible in its literal wording it just says 'thou shlt not kill', I have spoken to alot of people some say yes take it literally have faith in its words and others no you cant take it literally, but the two seem to go together god is saying not to kill anything and sustain your body on plant matter for which he has provided.?

 

Yes but then after the flood YHWH also gives the animals for food (Gen 9) and under the Mosaic law requires that all sorts of animals be sacrificed to him. Also, he gets some animal skins to cover up Adam and Eve so presumably he killed animals himself before all this.

To take it in its literal wording, the actual hebrew word means "murder" and it also must be read in context, which was one where killing of animals and other human beings was permitted.. eg Moses gives commands for sacrifice, warfare against other nations and capital punishment within the Hebrew tribes.

So YHWH in the Bible approves of the killing of humans for idolatry or sexual crimes for example, and other animals for both food and sacrifice. The NT changes this somewhat, ie. love your enemies (not just your Israelite neighbors) and it's okay for non-jews to eat "unclean" animals but there is no vegetarianism.. Jesus himself ate lamb and fish.

_____________________

Yeah but child sacrifice was endorsed in exodus so it all depends on which part of the bible you read, even Abraham was up for wacking his son to appease the almighty.

The Hebrew bible even had a place called Tophet where they whacked their own kids which roughly translates to "Roasting place" so maybe they were up for a good barbie

 

Even if it were true that the Bible endorsed child sacrifice, I'm not sure how that is relevant to what I was saying? I agree that different parts of the Bible say wildly different things, that's why I was pointing out the parts that allow for and command killing of humans and other animals.

________________

I once found the bible somewhat interesting. I no longer hold that opinion. I was reading some stuffs the other day about the origins of the gospels. All evidence says that not one person who knew JC has a single piece of writing in the bible as we know it.

 

This is correct, although I do still find studying the Bible and the religions it spawned interesting, but strictly from a critical perspective.

Edited February 12, 2012 by chilli

[fairy]

Can't believe we got from "who's a veggo" to talking about god and the bible

[Pedro Williams]

So have we decided ... Is 'god' a vegen?

[Auxin]

Well I'm not a vegan, I'm a strict vegetarian, but lacking an option for that I poked vegan because I dont eat anything that was squirted out of or cut away from an animal (Vegans are strict vegetarians who cant shut up about animal rights, I personally dont give a crap if other people choose to drink milk- particularly if they know the health implications and do it anyway)

What confuses me even more than the fact that ovo-lactos somehow got vegetarian stuck on their name (despite consuming 2/3 as much animal protein as everyone else) is that westerners dropped the ovo-lacto and now just call them vegetarians. I thought about growing a egg bush this year but I couldnt find egg seeds in the catalog!

But anyway, calling myself strict vegetarian or even vegan doesnt get across my diet to people so I just avoid eating other peoples food completely. In this age of dirt cheap sugar, dirt cheap fat, and overprocessed everything, going veggie alone doesnt ensure that great of a health benefit. A dude could be vegan eating nothing but potato chips and drinking nothing but beer and infact some vegan cooking gurus are about 50 kilos overweight!

I cook all my food from scratch. As in dry grains, dry beans, fresh vegetables, whole wheat flour, and the like... 100% plant and fungus based. I started doing this in 2010 and have had no problems.

I'm not big on store bought organic, much of that stuff (in the US at least) is bland nutrient deficient factory farmed stuff, typically grown by hydro in sand in some desert. I did finally get into growing loads of my own vegetables extensive style with the absolute minimum of water, to get them containing the most nutrients. Last year my veggie garden alone was 750 sq ft and the beets all grew to the size of grapefruit despite not being watered at all during summer This year I expanded the veggie patch to 1500 sq ft. All farmed with nothing more than a shovel, a hoe, some buckets, and a watering can.

I dont drink anything sweet except in midsummer when its 42°C and I'm working outside if someone offers juice with no added sweeteners I'll dilute it to 1/5th with water and chug it down just to rehydrate. Instead I drink 2 cuppa coffee per day and beyond that its just herb tea grown here.. usually a mix of lemon balm (tho sometimes strawberry leaf or black currant leaf) and a flavory bit like sage or thyme or oregano, etc. shit-ton of antioxidants.

I avoid anything processed in a way that adds salt, industrial chemicals, or encourages what I consider to be an unreasonable excess of harm by oxidation or glycation. So while I will eat rolled oats anything more processed than that is out, including all soy products and fake meats.

Because of that I have to cook my own bread, and because yeast free from chemical agents (which I expect will be found to be toxic to the kidneys, brain, and heart) is expensive and rare I cook unleavened 100% whole wheat bread with no oil or salt but usually cinnamon or curry spice.

My diet gets 7-10% its calories from fat, as opposed to the 40% of an american diet and the 30% of an american "low-fat" diet. The 10% is winter. Since I live far from the equator I recompound D3 into extra virgin olive oil to the extent of 270 IU/ml and put ~3 ml in my food each day of winter, in winter I also eat a small amount of unsalted dry roasted nuts each week to keep an extra half kilo of fat on. It gets cold here. 7 Calorie % fat is the rest of the year.

Anemias never been an issue so far so I ignore the 'iron issue'. I expect that issue mostly just hits junk food vegans.

B12 is an issue so I recompound cyanocobalamin into shiitake powder to the extent of 50 µg/g and toss a gram into my cooking. I use shiitake powder because it doesnt clump up when it hits boiling water like whole wheat flour would.

Except in midsummer I eat almost no salt (like a gram or two per week and only from the shaker) and since most people get their iodine from the contamination of milk by industrial cleaning agents (all that salt in processed food is almost never iodized) I need some iodine source, so I made a stock solution of sodium iodide and use that to drug my home made hot sauce Essentially free since I already owned a lifetime supply of pure sodium iodide left from a past experiment and not that difficult since its just adding 2 ml of stuff to each bottle of sauce. I tracked it and over a week I usually average an intake of 200 µg of iodine per day from my sauces. (Iodines serum halflife is 4-5 days so a weekly agerage being the right daily value is just fine).

Some say my current ways are extremist and they expect it'd be fantastically difficult. It would only be difficult if I attempted half measures, fixated on desires for greasy junk food, or taunted myself by consuming fake meats. Diet is one of those things where doing something 100% is far easier and more sustainable than doing it 90% the way.

Eggs also have all the essential amino acids that make a full protein fairy. But you probably knew that. Eggs are also high in B12, btw.

Eggs also are linked to heart disease. Plus you'd have to eat 11 every day to get your B12 or 84 eggs to get the B12 in one bowl of my veggie and grains stew. As for protein, after quitting all animal protein and starting daily exercise I built quite a bit of muscle and stamina- that was built out of protein almost exclusively sourced from wheat, barley, rice, oats, peas, and lentils. 'Protein starvation' is an antiquated term left over from the beginning of nutritional science, used when they were trying to lable what is better described as food deficiency. In the absence of large amounts of sugar and fat its nearly impossible to get too little protein unless your starving.

Calcium deficiency, too, is an essentially fictional illness. All the epidemics of osteoperosis and bone deterioration we are told is caused by a milk deficiency typically happen in the populations getting the most calcium.

[Sallubrious]

Yeah the protein requirements can't be agreed upon by anyone it's all smoke and mirrors, your body recycles proteins so it doesn't need much at all.

A lot of the osteoporosis comes form a lack of silica which is typically refined out of most peoples diets, the silica is most abundant in the husk of the grain and most people get fuck all for their whole lifetime.

If I was going Vego I'd be growing a few Moringas and I'd also look into some source of essential fatty acids.

Some Chinese people live to well over 100 and have never tasted meat, many of them fry their greens in hemp oil and they all eat a lot of carbs.

[CβL]

I eat meat (mostly Tuna), and vegetables. The main reason I eat meat is because I feel good after eating meat. I like the taste and the texture, and most importantly I can feel my body rebuilding within minutes. Secondly (and most importantly), it's because I do not view myself as being separate from nature. I am nature, and by eating nature, I'm just "moving through myself", keeping the dynamic equilibrium in flux. Ecology is complex, but despite this fact it's well-known that predators are necessary to ensure the health of their prey. This fact seems to escape every idealist vegxn I've ever met, although at least a few are tactful about denying it.

Thirdly, I hold plants in such high esteem that I simply cannot treat them with the disregard that vegxns do. If you spend 15 minutes writing two lists; one for what plants provide (oxygen, food, temperature control, shelter among other things), and one for what humans provide (...) - you'll see that our list is empty, and that we are not needed for life to continue (in the immediate future anyway), while we need plants for our life to continue (in the immediate future anyway).

I'm pretty sure you'll simply find that most vegxns don't like to eat things that scream loudly.

[Auxin]

I love eating things that scream loudly, unless we're in a park, she could get us arrested by being so loud

I agree that predators are important in maintaining a system to which they are a part. If they suddenly vanished disruption would ensue, often leading to overpopulation, starvation, and disease epidemics amoung the former prey... and then the system would equilibrate and all would be well. If every human stopped eating beef tomorrow I doubt we would pay for every cow on earth to live in luxury until they died, childless, at a ripe old age. It'd suck to be a cow for a decade or so. Ecosystems indeed are delicate things, but in the end they are endlessly impressive in their capacity to adapt to new and lasting changes.

...as for essential fatty acids, my personal opinion is that if there really is any problem there at all its due to people simply eating way too fucking much of 'junk' fats. Thats part of the reason I eat so little fat. Many heavily qualified nutritional researchers have said eating stuff like kale can supply all the omega-3's and omega-6's people need.

I love kale

Mmmm, kale

...If I was going Vego I'd be growing a few Moringas...

I think this kind of open mindedness and adventurism is what we need more of. People often ignore potential food crops or even throw away the most nutritious portion of food crops they do grow. Examples of crops where the most nutritious bit is almost always thrown away: squash, zucchini, beans, peas, cabbages, kiwis, bananas... the list goes on. Theres also stuff like carrots and celery where the tossed away bit is a useful spice.

Last year I got great enjoyment from foods I cooked with squash greens and I probably got more nutriment from the leaves and stalks than the fruit in the end! This year I'm growing lots of cowpeas and sugar peas specifically in the hope that the nutrient dense foliage will be edible to me. I'm also growing a ton of rutabagas and I hope the greens taste far more like cabbage than they taste like turnip greens, lol.

[Sallubrious]

My neighbour saw me eating the leaves straight off one of my moringa trees a few days ago , I'm sure he thinks I've lost the plot. I also grow wheat grass and scoff it and then spit the pulp out after all the juice is gone, the teenagers next door think I eat grass.

I often think when I'm cutting up moringa for a meal that my chopping board must be better nourished than most of my nieghbours.

I eat meat but I normally use it to enhance the flavour of dish more than an ingredient that forms the basis of a meal.

Eating junk fats is a real cause of EFA imbalances, most of the vegetable oils are high omega 6 which goes agains the balance nature provides with leafy greens.

Pure saturated animal fat is much better for you than refined (rancid) vegetable oils. The trans fat from saturated animal fat is not harmful like the trans fat from vegetable oils. Most of the information about fats and oils and cholesterol in the public domain is based on psuedo science and a lot of it is outright bullshit and oil industry propaganda. A lot the mis-information is perpetuated by public sources such as the AMA and the heart foundation.

If anyone is interested in real scientific work based on fact a book titled - Know your fats by Dr Mary Enig is an excellent reference source.

After reading that I started playing "humiliate the heart foundation bozo" at the shopping centre each time they bail me up and try to bullshit me.

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Know-Your-Fats.html

Edited February 12, 2012 by SallyD

[Amazonian]

EDIT: apparently this info is not 100% factual. I havnt deleted or edited it as it would ruin the flow of the following posts. (it sounded good to me though .)

Meat-eaters: have claws

Herbivores: no claws

Humans: no claws

Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue

Herbivores: perspire through skin pores

Humans: perspire through skin pores

Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding

Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly

Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat

Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.

Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits

Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits

Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

http://www.celestial...hysicalveg3.htm

And @ dworx.... Congrats on 1000 posts

Edited February 13, 2012 by Amazonian

[incognito]

Explain canine teeth. I'm off the opinion humans are designed to be omnivorous. I fully respect vegetarians, even more so vegans. The evangelical ones not at all.

At the moment my diet is realistically 90 to 95% meat. As it is readily available here in town, fruit and veg not at all ( we only have a bUtcher shop, occasionally they sell potatoes a well) and as I work nightshift haven't had time to drive to another town to do my fruit and veg shopping for about a month. I know it's not good for me, I can't live on rissoles Sangers forever. But I don't feel I'll at all, still feel lively etc I want to reduce meat intake signIficantly in the near future, just comes down to time management lol

Edited February 13, 2012 by incognito

[Amazonian]

Maybe human teeth have evolved to be more like teeth from an omnivore? *shrugs. But i imagine teeth like a Tasmanian Devil when i think carnivore teeth. They are scary!

[incognito]

Umm AMz If u look at human history we have been eating meat for quite a time. Think wooly mammoths. If we have evolved to have omnivore teeth wouldn't that make us ...... Omnivorous? I think it all comes down to personal choice about what u wanna eat. I respect what vegans and Vegos do, but as soon as I start getting told eating meat is bad or cruel I get my back up. Particularly if the finger pointers happen to wear leather boots etc

Edited February 13, 2012 by incognito

[Amazonian]

Its like religeon hey, its not something you force onto another person, but you can share your beleifs.

[incognito]

What really shits me are vegetarians that "only eat fish" who will chastise u for eating meat... That's pure insanity

[chnt]

fish are people too

[CβL]

Meat-eaters: have claws

Herbivores: no claws

Humans: no claws

Like snakes? Or sharks? Or chimpanzees?

Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue

Herbivores: perspire through skin pores

Humans: perspire through skin pores

As irrelevant as it is false.

Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding

Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

Humans have both (you have canine teeth), thus can eat both.

Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly

Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat

Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

... So a meat-eater's stomach is 20 times stronger, yet meat rapidly decays? I don't think the list writer has ever seen a hyaena shit, as it's anything but rotten (it's generally calcified and odorless). Secondly, a long digestive tract just allows the owner to easily digest tough food and recover energy over a longer period of time. Humans who have had colectomies (partial or full colon removals) function fine thereafter and can continue to eat meat, vegetables and fruit.

Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.

Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits

Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits

Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Salivary glands are present in all mammals. Some mammals have specialized enzymes to digest certain food groups. Within humans alone, there are huge variations alone in the level of genes for amylase (of which ptyalin is a type of), For example, a Japanese individual had 14 copies of the amylase gene (one allele with 10 copies, and a second allele with four copies). The Japanese diet has traditionally contained large amounts of rice starch. In contrast, a Biaka individual carried six copies (three copies on each allele). The Biaka are rainforest hunter-gatherers who have traditionally consumed a low-starch diet.

I wouldn't be surprised to see if nomadic people's had even less. The point being that evolution allows a human to shape to their food source.

That list is just plain poppycock, and I would hope that you would research these points further to see for yourself why. Using fake science is a zipline to hell, for everyone.

[Seldom]

i only eat grass

Edited February 13, 2012 by bulls on parade

[Amazonian]

@ Bluntmuffin, it all read well to me. If i sat here and researched every single thing before i posted it, i would never leave the computer. One link leads to another and so on..

I wouldnt make a very good lawyer would I

[dionysus]

that list is comprised of unintelligible and unverifiable delusions and i would query the intent of the original author (from celestialhealing . net)

Edited February 13, 2012 by dionysus

[niggles]

that list was really not the sort of thing i would ever expect to see here. so much bullshit that i cant believe people have ever taken it seriously. i struggle to believe someone even wrote it.

 

Maybe youve fried your belief circuits, or youre not using your imagination enough.

Are you shocked a lot? people do all sorts of things.

-edit-

I dont think thats a very nice way of expressing your opinion, perhaps in future you could be kinder to the fellow members of our lovely community. There arent that many of us, it would be nice if we could all be civil with each other.

Edited February 13, 2012 by niggles

[dionysus]

i didnt mean anything to amazonian, sorry if my post seemed that way, i meant the person who made the list to start with. vegetarianism is an emotive subject and people on either side of the argument are often more willing than under normal circumstances to accept claims as factual and the person who compiled the list seems to be exploiting that. infact, even beyond the *list, the* majority of the information they present are lies disquised as rumours disquised as facts.

i will edit my last post to be less objectively mean spirited. i suppose, though, that i did (wrongfully) expect people here to be wary of articles that don't cite sources and use the same literary tricks as tabloid journalists.

edit: *list, the*

Edited February 13, 2012 by dionysus

[niggles]

Awesome Thanks dinoysus I feel better.

[qualia]

can someone explain me why fish isn't meat?