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[QUOTE=whitebear;1073246]You'll be back. Your health WILL fail.Its only a matter of time.[/QUOTE]
I hate to say it but I side with this. There is no such thing as healthy vegetarianism/veganism. We are omnivores, and there is no good argument to not consuming animal products, only convoluted reasoning and faulty premises. Vegetarianism/veganism is only possible in modern times, and it is a lifestyle of convenience. Only now do we have the disgusting luxury of being able to survive by ignoring nature through science. You can survive doing, but you will never be all you can be, and I am morally opposed to the lifestyle and find it disgraceful as it's a direct insult to our nature. That's my opinion and I doubt it'll change anytime soon.
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Just do whatever makes you happy. You are seeing both sides of the argument. Former vegans sharing their experiences, etc.
You are right. You would have been welcome into my tribe. More meat for me! Lol!
Wishing you the best of luck on your journey.
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[QUOTE=PureFunctionalFitness;1073328]I have a fair few of my family who are vegan, but I think there are some things to consider.
In my opinion, the only way of eating that is not fraught with contradictions is that of the meat eater, and particularly the hunter who kills and eats his/her own food. If a life is sacred, whatever the size of the animal, those who subsist mainly on cereal crops are indirectly responsible for millions of deaths, of insects, or rodents via rodenticides and being chopped to bits during harvest, animals trapped in wire mesh surrounding fields etc etc.
In fact, I may eat the equivalent of 3 large animals per year, who knows, by eating no commodity crops at all, I am relatively free of guilt for the deaths of all those smaller animals.
I was listening to a podcast the other week, can't remember who, maybe Robb Wolf, but they recounted something which had a profound affect on me. They recalled a statement by some scientist or archeologist from a few years back who said....
[I]"Vegans (or vegetarians, can't recall), are the first group of people to deny man's place in nature"[/I]
I found it profound because we are part of nature, we have been for millions of years, and we are part of the food chain, at the top. That is nature, it is undeniable.
We do however, have the ability in the modern world to make choices about that. But denying yourself meat because you think that not eating it will make you free of responsibility for mass carnage in the animal world is denying the reality that millions of small animals, and larger ones too, as well as human beings on slave wages and poisoned by pesticides, die every year to produce wheat, soy beans, etc etc, at the hands of some of the biggest agri-business companies in the world.
I agree that the source of meat, and the life it has lived, should be considered, we should respect the lives that are lost for us to eat. I am on the verge of getting another air gun so I can hunt rabbit and pigeon. Find a local farm that will allow you to kill a few cockerels, or get into a share scheme with some locals for a beast or lamb etc.
Those are just a few random views that erupted as I typed.[/QUOTE]
This is the truth. I grew up in farming and have been working on farms since I was 14 (12 years) when I wasn't in school. You wanna see animal cruelty, walk behind a harvester. I'd be out in the tomato fields after harvests, lots of chopped up snakes and rabbits and mice. Not to mention things killed by pesticides. even on organic farms (most organic farms just use organic pesticides). Even smaller operations that may harvest by hand or guarantee not to use any poisons still till, dig up, reshape, etc the fields, destroying animal homes, killing insects under the ground, etc. Unless you grow everything in your backyard or get everything from someone who does, you have blood on your hands. Hell, there's more blood in a salad than on my grass-fed steak.
All vegans and vegetarians do is transfer the death to where they don't have to see or consume it. Same way those who drive electric cars don't stop pollution, they just keep it out of their neighborhood by further polluting the neighborhoods around the power plants. It's all feel-good BS.
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[QUOTE=ChocoTaco369;1073422]I hate to say it but I side with this. There is no such thing as healthy vegetarianism/veganism. We are omnivores, and there is no good argument to not consuming animal products, only convoluted reasoning and faulty premises. Vegetarianism/veganism is only possible in modern times, and it is a lifestyle of convenience. Only now do we have the disgusting luxury of being able to survive by ignoring nature through science. You can survive doing, but you will never be all you can be, and I am morally opposed to the lifestyle and find it disgraceful as it's a direct insult to our nature. That's my opinion and I doubt it'll change anytime soon.[/QUOTE]
I agree with your general premise, however I don't think just because something is against our nature is disgraceful. If you want to be really natural, you probably don't want monogamy, or even consensual sex (if you're a male). I doubt Grok had a romantic courtship with Ms. Grok before the sex. I don't know how common rape was back in the pre-historic times, but I doubt an alpha Grok in his tribe asked permission before ravaging the female of his choice. Certainly they had sexual urges like us, and considering the males were naturally stronger than the females, there must have been a good deal of forced sex going on.
Is it also disgraceful if we deny this part of our nature?
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All cattle are kept almost perpetually pregnant, by their own choice, it's what they do naturally. They have a 9+ month lactation and its natural for them to breed every year something is wrong if they don't. Actually I am milking two cows right now, both impregnanted when they went through two fences toget to a bull.
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[QUOTE=quikky;1073445]I agree with your general premise, however I don't think just because something is against our nature is disgraceful. If you want to be really natural, you probably don't want monogamy, or even consensual sex (if you're a male). I doubt Grok had a romantic courtship with Ms. Grok before the sex. I don't know how common rape was back in the pre-historic times, but I doubt an alpha Grok in his tribe asked permission before ravaging the female of his choice. Certainly they had sexual urges like us, and considering the males were naturally stronger than the females, there must have been a good deal of forced sex going on.
Is it also disgraceful if we deny this part of our nature?[/QUOTE]
I find moral vegetarianism/veganism to be "disgraceful" because it absolutely sends the message: "If you eat meat, you are not as good as me." To be a moral vegetarian/vegan, you are saying that people that do not ignore human nature are not good. Every single ethical vegetarian/vegan on planet Earth looks down upon people that eat meat. They must - it is a requirement of being a moral vegetarian/vegan. They could be your absolute closest lifelong friend. They still look down upon you for existing as a human should exist and not finding the willpower to resist nature at the expense of your own health and well-being. The lifestyle comes with a built-in self-righteous attitude. You have to have a self-righteous God complex to believe you are above Mother Nature.
Those that do it for health reasons, I can't really blame them. They're just severely misinformed and I feel bad for them. They're worth saving.
Note that this is much different from purchasing quality-sourced meats. CAFOs are horrible places. If you have qualms eating conventional meats, I can completely understand that. However, doing your best to purchase meat from animals raised and slaughtered humanly is a far car from looking down upon human nature as some kind of ethical superior.
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[QUOTE=Primal Moose;1073427]This is the truth. I grew up in farming and have been working on farms since I was 14 (12 years) when I wasn't in school. You wanna see animal cruelty, walk behind a harvester. I'd be out in the tomato fields after harvests, lots of chopped up snakes and rabbits and mice. Not to mention things killed by pesticides. even on organic farms (most organic farms just use organic pesticides). Even smaller operations that may harvest by hand or guarantee not to use any poisons still till, dig up, reshape, etc the fields, destroying animal homes, killing insects under the ground, etc. Unless you grow everything in your backyard or get everything from someone who does, you have blood on your hands. Hell, there's more blood in a salad than on my grass-fed steak.
All vegans and vegetarians do is transfer the death to where they don't have to see or consume it. Same way those who drive electric cars don't stop pollution, they just keep it out of their neighborhood by further polluting the neighborhoods around the power plants. It's all feel-good BS.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, and if you are going to grow your food you'll be faced with the choice: bone and blood meal, fish meal? Or do I use fossil-fuel-based fertilizer with the death that comes from mining, refining, fracking and the like.
[QUOTE=AshleyL;1073458]All cattle are kept almost perpetually pregnant, by their own choice, it's what they do naturally. They have a 9+ month lactation and its natural for them to breed every year something is wrong if they don't. Actually I am milking two cows right now, both impregnanted when they went through two fences toget to a bull.[/QUOTE]
Modern dairy operations will impregnate the dairy cows with artificial insemination and often they will do it while the cow is still lactating, which is supposed to actually be really bad for the hormone profile of the resulting milk.
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[QUOTE=ChocoTaco369;1073488]I Every single ethical vegetarian/vegan on planet Earth looks down upon people that eat meat. They must - it is a requirement of being a moral vegetarian/vegan. [/QUOTE]
That's absolutely not true. You're projecting your own tendencies to look down on people onto a huge percentage of the planet that you have never met.
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[QUOTE=sbhikes;1073491]Yeah, and if you are going to grow your food you'll be faced with the choice: bone and blood meal, fish meal? Or do I use fossil-fuel-based fertilizer with the death that comes from mining, refining, fracking and the like.
[/QUOTE]
Not necessarily. I know of one vegan family that incorporated animals into their garden/urban farming. They don't eat them or any of their products, just use their feces and what not so they can get around fossil fuels and/or meal. It's not easy at all, but doable.
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[QUOTE=Primal Moose;1073427]This is the truth. I grew up in farming and have been working on farms since I was 14 (12 years) when I wasn't in school. You wanna see animal cruelty, walk behind a harvester. I'd be out in the tomato fields after harvests, lots of chopped up snakes and rabbits and mice. Not to mention things killed by pesticides. even on organic farms (most organic farms just use organic pesticides). Even smaller operations that may harvest by hand or guarantee not to use any poisons still till, dig up, reshape, etc the fields, destroying animal homes, killing insects under the ground, etc. Unless you grow everything in your backyard or get everything from someone who does, you have blood on your hands. Hell, there's more blood in a salad than on my grass-fed steak.
All vegans and vegetarians do is transfer the death to where they don't have to see or consume it. Same way those who drive electric cars don't stop pollution, they just keep it out of their neighborhood by further polluting the neighborhoods around the power plants. It's all feel-good BS.[/QUOTE]
this
OP i don't really care if you want to go vegan for health, but the blinders thing you have going on.. i don't know
also, animals are wonderful, but they can also be pretty cruel. murder, rape, torture, infanticide, cannibalism all go with the cuddly faces
i still prefer animals to people for the most part, but it's not all bunnies out there :/
