posted April 03, 2009 02:14 AM           

I wasnt trying to suggest anything.
Just doing my best to understand you,
and make myself understood by you.

I've already answered the "cruel" question myself.
The first word in this thread is an emphatic "NOOOOOoooo!!!!"

I disapprove of the consumption of meat, yes, but,
I wouldnt say I am especially judgemental of meat-eaters.

Like I said, if you are satisfied that you've done your part,
that is all you can ask of yourself, and more than anyone can ask of you.

posted April 03, 2009 02:18 AM         

I do feel most folks are mindful and understanding and even thankful to the animal(s} whose flesh they consume.
Humans are after all Omnivores and therefore NATURALLY OMNIVOROUS.
Humans are neither pure Carnivores nor pure Herbivores.
That is a scientific physiological evolutionary FACT.

quote:

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om·niv·o·rous (m-nvr-s)
adj.
1. Eating both animal and vegetable foods.

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posted April 03, 2009 02:32 AM         

quote:

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Would a true non-eater of meat, eat a week's supply of beef if stranded in a snowstorm with no other alternative?

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posted April 03, 2009 02:35 AM         

we must give thanks for all food as we know it, because who knows if our food supply cuts off and we must eat what we can get to survive. That is a possibility, and most of us were not born vegetarians, nor are our grandparents.

posted April 03, 2009 03:34 AM         

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Humans are classic examples of omnivores in all relevant anatomical traits. There is no basis in anatomy or physiology for the assumption that humans are pre-adapted to the vegetarian diet. For that reason, the best arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical, and health concerns.

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posted April 03, 2009 03:39 AM         

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....humans are omnivores. Our teeth are designed to eat both meat and plants. Susana Soares and her colleagues designers and engineers of the Material Beliefs program propose to alter human teeth structures into those of herbivores, in order to become a better vegetarian.

Teeth are an essential tool for nutrition and their shape is related to diet. Herbivore animals have developed teeth structures suited to the consumption of plant material. Can our teeth structure be replaced to encourage dietary shifts that reflect social concerns?

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posted April 03, 2009 11:33 AM         

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Youre welcome, Nosis.

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lol!

I'd be lying if I said you had nothing to do with it.

posted April 18, 2009 12:35 AM         

Lavlee said:

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I do eat something raw every day, and I watch it not to eat too much meat. I gotta say...who doesn't salivate slightly at the smell of bacon? Vegetarians lie when they say they don't.

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I haven't had the opportunity to get so close to bacon so I genuinely don't know if I would salivate at the smell of it. Even if I did, that does not mean I was born to eat meat. Besides, bacon is such processed meat, it does not really count. We should experiment with raw meat and boiled meat instead, and then ask us vegetarians if we still salivate at the odors of those. Not all of us vegetarians lie about our physical response to bacon- many of us are deeply disgusted by it.

LEXX said:

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The Dalai Lama, eats meat despite the first precept of Buddhism, not to take the life of any sentient creature.

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According to the International Vegetarian Union, The Dalai Lama has attempted to go vegetarian several times. He is not by far the best example for the counterarguement for vegetarianism. His is an extreme instance.

LEXX said:

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I still feel there are two creation stories in the bible. However I will not get into that here and its implications on the consumption of meat.
Note: LORD loves the smell of burnt flesh.
And hated Cain's vegetarian offering but loved Abel's offering of the fat of slaughtered lambs....

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That's quite self-contradictory for someone who defies the contents and validity of the Bible, and who has commented that the Christian God is a false god. Why would the words from a false god, in fact, by human authors- worth our references? To defy the Bible and yet also turning to the Bible to support flesh eating is just inconsistent. I don't mean to offend Christians or Bible believers, but the Bible is full of lies, distorting the life of Jesus, and not to mention the fictional Genesis, which is an enormous lie.

LEXX said:

quote:

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Humans are after all Omnivores and therefore NATURALLY OMNIVOROUS.
Humans are neither pure Carnivores nor pure Herbivores.
That is a scientific physiological evolutionary FACT.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
om·niv·o·rous (m-nvr-s)
adj.
1. Eating both animal and vegetable foods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even as newborns, humans best food is mammalian milk, from the mammalian mother human.

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A vegetarian is NOT a herbivore as the above statement says. Note the definitions of vegetarian and of herbivore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore

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Herbivore

A herbivore is an animal that is adapted to eat plants and not meat. Herbivores form an important link in the food chain as they consume plants in order to receive the carbohydrates produced by a plant from photosynthesis.

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Vegetarians and vegans are NOT herbivores. Herbivores mainly consume grass and other plants which humans are unlikely to eat; whereas vegetarians and vegans not only eat vegetables, but also fruit, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, dried fruits, plant oils and a lot more, which are not the typical diet for herbivores.

Yes, the best food for human infants is mammalian human mother breast milk, but that alone does not make us absolutely omnivores; mammals consists of both herbivores and carnivores, just because herbivores drink their mothers' milk before weaning, it doesn't make them flesh eaters. They are still herbivores. The same applies to human beings. We are mammals who drink our mothers' milk before weaning, but it doesn't make us pure omnivores. Diet is a personal choice for humans. Just because we are capable of eating flesh, it doesn't mean we don't have the choice to become vegetarians or vegans for various reasons, and for a better way of life.

Some people at LL have remarked that because we humans have canine teeth, hence we are natural born omnivores who are meant to eat flesh. However, please check John Robbins' "Diet for a New America", in which the human GI tract is compared to that of carnivores. Our human canine teeth are a great deal less sharp than those of carnivores- moreover, the GI tract of carnivorous animals are much shorter than the human GI tract, which enables carnivores to digest meat within a very short time, while it takes 4 to 5 hours for a human being to digest meat, and it takes only 1 to 2 hours for human beings to digest plant-based foods. Plant-based foods are evidently more suitable for human consumption than flesh.

LEXX said:

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Perhaps we are still meat eaters because it is not yet time to evolve into Herbivores.

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Again, vegetarians and vegans are NOT herbivores.

LEXX said:

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If all meat eaters on this planet became in time, Herbivores, it could spell serious disaster.
Even now, food crops take up alot of planetary acreage...and can it in reality handle a planet of all vegetarians?
And what of the animals raised now for food, leather and other products....and so forth?
Do we let them keep breeding and run free to destroy our crops and contaminate our water supplies? Do we let them go extinct?
What purpose would they serve?
And without natural predators to cull their over population?
Why would we want such animals or need them?
Yes...
a world without eating animals sounds quite pastoral.
But would it actually be so in reality?

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LEXX said:

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Such animals become pests and road hazards and infection/disease carriers if their numbers are not culled by hunters. They have few to no natural predators to cull their numbers.
They also contaminate and destroy our food crops.
So deer eats corn crop...
eat the deer.
Rabbit destroys cabbage and green vegetable garden...
eat rabbit.
Same goes for geese, wild turkey, ducks.....

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Once again, vegatarians are NOT herbivores. Overbreeding is entirely human-inflicted, and had the modern factory farms, zoos and circuses never been established, there never would have been such tremendous amount of farm animals. Nature has her way of balancing, she does not need human interference. Without human manipulation, animal overpopulation will never be a problem. The fact is exactly the contrary- had we all become vegetarians or vegans, along with adjusted governmental policies, we as humans can grow far more crops and other plant foods to feed ourselves, plus alleviating global hunger. Global hunger is exactly triggered by mass market demands for meat, the culprit for the destruction of the Amazon rain forest and other lands, not used to grow foods for us humans, but instead growing grains for feeding the factory-farmed animals, for whom are not their natural diet. Human starvation is the result of everybody wanting to eat flesh, and vegetarianism is not the potential cause of it, but the solution.

Many people ask "if we all stopped eating flesh, what could we do with all these animals?" It takes efforts, determination and creativity. Replace factory farms, zoos, circuses, other forms of animal entertainment (including race horses, race dogs, bull-fighting, male chicken-fighting and so forth) with animal sanctuaries. There are already some animal sanctuaries out there.

LEXX said:

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The two times I seriously attempted to be a vegetarian, it literally almost killed me.
Ill is an understatement for what I experienced.
Some of us must eat red meat whether we want to or not.
Not going into medical reasons why, it is no one's business and complicated to boot.

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I have heard about your multiple medical conditions, though I'm not familiar with those. The best resource I can provide to individuals like you is to contact Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), formed by medical and health care professionals who are not corrupted by the mainstream medicine or nutrition, who are controlled by American/National whatever Meat/Beef/Dairy Associations. Whether you are interested or you intend to maintain your present diet, I think by contacting PCRM, it will be very informative, with up-to-the-minute advice, and breaks a wide spectrum of myths regarding vegetarianism/veganism and a diet with flesh.
http://www.pcrm.org/

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

5100 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Ste. 400, Washington, DC 20016

Phone: 202-686-2210
E-mail: pcrm@pcrm.org

D

posted April 18, 2009 12:56 PM         

quote:

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I still feel there are two creation stories in the bible. However I will not get into that here and its implications on the consumption of meat.
Note: LORD loves the smell of burnt flesh.
And hated Cain's vegetarian offering but loved Abel's offering of the fat of slaughtered lambs....

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quote:

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That's quite self-contradictory for someone who defies the contents and validity of the Bible,

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quote:

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and who has commented that the Christian God is a false god. Why would the words from a false god, in fact, by human authors- worth our references?

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quote:

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To defy the Bible and yet also turning to the Bible to support flesh eating is just inconsistent.

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quote:

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I don't mean to offend Christians or Bible believers, but the Bible is full of lies, distorting the life of Jesus, and not to mention the fictional Genesis, which is an enormous lie.

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quote:

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001:029 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing
seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree,
in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it
shall be for meat.

001:030 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air,
and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there
is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was
so.

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posted April 18, 2009 10:27 PM         

I was going to add that mammals consists of carnivores, herbivores, as well as omnivores and human beings.

Also, vegetarians and vegans eat the foods mentioned in my last post, as well as seaweed, yeast extract and more.

LEXX said:

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Folks also do not realize that when just walking on one's lawn, thousands of bugs are killed.
I know this is true as I have counted the bugs, and used a magnifying glass too, to count the average number of bugs, beetles, grubs, worms, mites, nematodes, larva, and so forth in the first 1 1/2 to 2 inches of soil. Add in the grass above and the count goes higher.
Agricultural spraying kills more than weeds and harmful insects.
There are many ugly things about the growing of plant crops that most folks are totally unaware of. It is rarely a pastoral fantasy of harmless gardening.

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Vegetarianism is not about harming none. It is about reducing suffering. We as human beings cannot avoid killing absolutely no life forms in our daily lives, but that does not mean we don't have to do our utmost to reduce suffering.

Amowls said:

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If one is a vegetarian for animal rights, they should just be vegan in general otherwise it's a bit hypocritical.

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Vegetarians stay the way we are and do not become vegans for various reasons- not necessarily because "we just love our dairy and our eggs" etc. The definition of vegan is a person who avoids any product of animal origins, be it for food consumption or clothing, toiletry, skin care and everything else- that's what a vegan really is. If one is on a completely plant-based, i.e. vegan diet, but for personal reasons still cannot avoid using animal products, she or he is technically not a vegan, but instead, a strict vegetarian or a pure vegetarian.

Those who are vegetarians for reasons including animal rights should not be immediately labelled as "hypocrites". Bear in mind that by being vegetarians, we reduce a lot of animal suffering, too.

AG said:

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If you're looking for "everyone else" try starting with the people who do actually study meat nutrition. They will be the first to tell you that there is nutrition in beef.

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True, there is indeed nutrition in beef, along with saturated fat, trans fat, animal protein and no fiber. Plus with the modern day beef, you are very likely to find other things in it, such as traces of growth hormones, antibiotics, toxins from the deceased animals' mostly unnatural feed. There are nutrients in beef because those nutrients come from the plant foods and the bacteria in the soil eaten by the cattle. So why don't we consume the nutrients directly from the plant based foods, instead of taking them through the flesh of slaughtered animals?

I recommend the following books which have been recommended by others over and over again:

"Diet for a New America" by John Robbins;

"The Food Revolution" by John Robbins;

"Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser

You can google for pseudo-facts, or for true facts.

D

posted April 25, 2009 11:19 PM         

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First off...I theorize that God in Genesis one and LORD God in Genesis two...were two different entities.
I do theorize that despite bad story/history telling...that they existed.

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None of them ever existed. They never existed. Since I cannot provide tangible/visible proof online, you might as well call that a "theory", just making things easier.

LEXX said:

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Oh to be sure! It is a pack of lies, but as with many myths, somewhere they are based on truth...

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There is absolutely no truth in Genesis. Again, you may call that "my theory", since I can provide no visible proof on the Internet. I'm beginning to feel that this might belong to a different thread at DD, but who can prove her/his knowledge to be valid, to say the least?

LEXX said:

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On another note, Linda said mankind was cursed because of eating meat, and it brought on the fall due to original sin.
I find that amusing because in that myth, it was a fruit, not meat, which was the symbol of temptation.

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As a matter of fact, Linda came very close. Original sin or no original sin- it was flesh eating that accompanied the downfall of paradise, and the fruit myth is a flagrant lie. Again, you can say it's just me.

LEXX said:

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And as to rainforests being destroyed, it is plant crop farming and timbering that is destroying it...

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I meant exactly because people have wanted to use more land to grow crops for factory farmed animals, hence the destruction of Amazon rainforest and other lands. I thought I had made my point clearly. It was for overbreeding and the mass market demand for meat that many such rainforests and lands have been destroyed- because the majority of people want to eat all kinds of meat everywhere they go.

LEXX said:

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As to creating animal sanctuaries for all the meatamals....that is illogical. Why bother? What purpose would they serve?

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So...does that mean these animals need to have a "purpose" to serve to humans in order to live?

Today, there is such a massive number of them, not because they overprocreate, but because the intensive farmers overbreed them. They are the victims of human greed and human conceit. They want to live decent lives and stay alive as much as we do. Establishing animal sanctuaries is one way to provide these victimized animals a livable place to live in, and to gradually alleviate the overbreeding problems. They deserve to live, not merely for being "useful" for human beings or not.

LEXX said:

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So deer eats corn crop...
eat the deer.
Rabbit destroys cabbage and green vegetable garden...
eat rabbit.
Same goes for geese, wild turkey, ducks.....

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I can envision a person with A LOT of meat on her dinner table- deer meat, rabbit meat, goose meat, wild turkey meat, duck meat, and more...is this really healthy and is this a balanced way of co-existing with other beings and nature herself?

LEXX said:

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Most of my meat eating (along with heavy vegetable consumption) relatives, lived to be betwixt 90 and many well over 100 years old..even though quite a few weighed betwixt 200 and 300 pounds.

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I did notice "along with heavy vegetable consumption". However, each person has her or his biological idiosyncrasies, and with some exceptions, such as stated in the above quote, does that mean flesh eating and obesity should be encouraged?

I don't think everyone can be forced to become pure vegetarians if some of them do encounter difficulties trying to adopt a plant-based diet and way of life. I still think that diet is a personal choice, we may not agree with one another's dietary preferences but we can respect each other. Nonetheless, there are valid points and as well as misleading ones.

Betelgeuse said:

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Although theres a difference between you kindly donating your organs when you die and an animal giving us its life - You do it by choice, the animal has no choice. In most cases we breed animals with the sole intent for slaughter, so they never 'give' us their lives, we 'take' it from them.

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Exactly

D

posted April 25, 2009 11:32 PM         

National Geographic, mouse rides frog in Indian Monsoon:

posted April 25, 2009 11:41 PM         

A body that is used to junk food craves junk food...get the body used to natural food and gradually the body will balance itself to those foods, those will be the ones craved.

The same goes with meat.

I used to love meat as a kid, now I don't. I don't even like eating fish any more.

posted April 26, 2009 06:09 AM         

I havent read this whole tread yet- but wanted to add that I'm a Vegan.

I never really liked meat, and after finding out how "the food" reaches my plate, I felt terrible and sad, for many weeks

I love animals and therefore cannot tolerate into my life the slaughtery of innocents.

I have many friends who are meat eaters as well as family members and I don't judge them. Just let them be. Life is about options.
And I don't like to be judge either- as a fanatic or extreme pro-animals. As many times I've been.

When I have the chance I like to talk with people and see whether they are conscious about what they are eating or not. But I don't try to convince them that I'm in the right path, it's in their hearts and conscience to live as they believe it's the best way to be.