First thing I would like to point out: Most animals don't care too much about boredom. At least, that's my opinion. Probably wrong, but I don't care, so I'm just going to put that "issue" to the side. |
|
A little over a month ago I finished reading 'Animal Liberation' by Peter Singer, and it's given me a lot to think about. Enough to reconsider my lifestyle as a carnivore and switch to as close a vegan lifestyle as I can. |
|
Last edited by Sisyphus50; 01-02-2011 at 04:51 PM.
First thing I would like to point out: Most animals don't care too much about boredom. At least, that's my opinion. Probably wrong, but I don't care, so I'm just going to put that "issue" to the side. |
|
I used to be a vegetarian, not because I loved animals, but because I hated plants! |
|
Animals do very much care about boredome, proof: they get sick. My grandpa had somehow gotten a bunch of chickens from a factory.. they couldn't even run.. they had to hop to move themself.. like bunnies. If you chased after them too long, they dropped dead out of exhaustion. |
|
"Reject common sense to make the impossible possible." -Kamina
Try going for a week without any food and then let us know what your body does when it sees a cow standing in a field or a bunny crossing the road. |
|
Cool story bro. |
|
Last edited by Marvo; 01-02-2011 at 07:47 PM.
---------
Lost count of how many lucid dreams I've had
---------
Eating unprepared meat making us sick is proof that eating animals is not natural, or we would not need to prepare it. Fire wasn't always there in the time of cavemen, so your argument is pretty much proof that we are naturally herbivores. Thanks for pointing this out marvo! |
|
Last edited by ChaybaChayba; 01-02-2011 at 08:30 PM.
"Reject common sense to make the impossible possible." -Kamina
Contradiction? What contradiction? He said that if we eat meat unprepared we get sick. The other part said that if we don't eat it, we will get really sick. That is assuming, of course, that you aren't making a conscious effort to get the nutrients you need from plants. I agree with both of you. There is not much of a logical reason for eating meat since we can get the nutrients it has from plants, but I also think it is easier to get those nutrients from animals. It's just a matter of intelligence evolving. Cavemen didn't even know about nutrients, never mind knowing other possible sources for them. So, guess what? They did something easier - they ate animals. It stuck for generations, and here we are. Eventually we will eliminate the need for meat some day, and I don't think that is too far off. But in the meantime, we eat meat. End of story. |
|
You seem to be arguing that eating meat made good sense for prehistoric proto-humans. That's an interesting point, and probably true, but given that it is now the year 2011 I don't see how your point really addresses the present argument about whether you or I should choose to eat meat in today's society. |
|
Last edited by DuB; 01-02-2011 at 09:12 PM.
What about athletes? Does it makes sense for athletes to eat meat? Or what if my career is more physically demanding than that of an athlete? I don't think a vegetarian diet could sustain me in that case. |
|
"Someday, I think you and I are going to have a serious disagreement." -- Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) Last of the Mohicans
It is not true that consuming meat is a necessity to optimally meet the protein requirements of athletes--albeit probably with the exception of so-called body-builders. The CDC recommends 56 grams of protein a day for a healthy adult male. So let's assume, generously, that a professional athlete needs 150% of that: 84 grams per day. It is trivially easy to consume 84 grams of protein in a day without eating any meat, especially if following a diet which allows for dairy (i.e., vegetarian rather than vegan). Consider, for example, that a small 6-oz container of greek yogurt contains 22 grams of protein, according to the containers in my refrigerator. For the vegan, a single cup of cooked beans contains up to 30 grams of protein depending on the variety. That's more than a third of the daily protein for an athlete and it's not even a complete meal. The fact is that most people following a meat-eating diet, athletes included, consume way more protein than they really need. |
|
Last edited by DuB; 01-02-2011 at 09:46 PM.
Alex, have you not had prime rib? That would probably sway you over to the meat side. Just saying. Great shit. |
|
I stomp on your ideas.
The canines in my mouth say otherwise. Besides, you don't always get sick from eating raw meat. You do realize that eating certain plants makes you sick too, right? Is that proof that we aren't supposed to be eating plants, that it's unnatural to do so? The truth is, it is natural to eat both meat and plants. If you eat the two in a healthy balance, then you will be a healthy person. What is there left to discuss? |
|
In twenty years we'll have in vitro meat and this'll all be academic. |
|
The longest I lasted as an 'instant-vegetarian' from watching how those poor animals died: |
|
I stomp on your ideas.
I don't think time you ordinarily spend between meals without eating counts. |
|
You're correct. rephrase: |
|
Last edited by malac; 01-02-2011 at 11:53 PM.
I stomp on your ideas.
I was just acknowledging that I got your lovely joke. |
|
I became religiously vegetarian for about a year, to the point of disregarding my own health when my parents did their best to force me to eat meat by reducing as many vegetables as possible in the house. Needless to say, it became an ego battle rather than a health one that I was fighting. However, during this time, I did numerous research topics on the subject, and even developed a diet that had all the necessary vitamins and minerals as meat does. The one thing I came to understand as the difference between eating meat and vegetables is that eating vegetables has much less mild metabolic neuro-toxins resulting from their intake. As for a moral or righteous standpoint, considering we don't even know how consciousness works in plants, isn't it a bit ignorant to presume that our treatment of them to grow faster, better, and more succulent is some how better than the way we treat animals? It is not eating animals that I object to, it is the way that we treat them. While they may have smaller brains than us, in many cases they have as much, or more emotion to their existence than we do. And what do we do, we break them down, plow into their minds that they are just meat for consumption. Eating animals isn't bad, treating animals badly is bad. It is the mirror of how we treat our fellow humans. You are what you eat, and if you eat an animal that is treated badly by society, then you are an animal that gets treated badly by society. As for the "eating meat isn't logical", thats sort of laughable, because if you analyze the way teeth are constructed, like mine, they are made for eating meat, not plants. And its very logical, if you read about the different types of iron, and how the iron in meat is absorbed a heck of a lot better than the iron in plants. Oh and the vitamin b12 issue. Morality wise, eating meat is fine as long as you thank the animal for its existence to sustain you, and have that conscious forethought in your eating action. Health wise, it is better to eat plants, as long as you can find a good source for B-vitamins, and Iron. But a shitty attitude towards your environment is a shitty attitude towards your environment. Environment meaning our spaceship through the Cosmos- i.e. Earth. If we fuck this up, goodbye human race. Considering we still have no knowledge on the entire energetic spectrum available to us, our thoughts could be having a much greater effect than we realize, and treating anything with such indifference as we do animals would have a particular nasty reaction to the human race as a whole. I would love to just eat vegetables, and fish, problem is, its expensive, mercury in fish because of shitty attitude, and vegetables are expensive. So I do my best to stick to chicken, and whenever I eat red meat, I do a meditation in nature to reconnect. We continually get more and more distant from our environment, and call it evolution, but its mastering your environment harmoniously and then taking the next step which is true evolution. Otherwise, we are escaping that which we fear by doing our best to control it. If we truly separate ourselves from nature, and continue to use it maliciously, then nature will consider us a foreign toxin that needs removal. Who knows what the nervous system of the Earth could do, considering its been here a lot longer than we have. |
|
All of experience is fun for me, whether in a dream, or in reality, because I love existing, learning, and continuously evolving and sustaining. Then again, who knows, I may not enjoy existing so much if I caught a face full of buckshot from an angry farmer. But hey, at least I'd got out with a bang.
Plants don't have brains. |
|
3 reasons: |
|
Reality Check
Spoiler for lucid dream goals:
Ok, so I think the difference between our arguments is the difference between mere survival and really thriving. I wasn't talking about female athletes. If I want to reach my full potential as a football player (who plays a contact-intensive position,) it is recommended that I match my body weight in grams of protein per day (at least!) That would be 190 grams per day, more than double your generous recommendation. A lineman may be eating upwards of 300 grams per day. We have to take into account the variety of athletes out there. A cross country runner obviously doesn't need quite as much protein as a football player or a wrestler who spends day and night in the weight room trying to gain weight and trying to get stronger. I weigh 190 pounds and I would probably weigh 150 if I didn't work out, and I am almost certain I couldn't have reached the point Im at now on a vegetarian diet. I can personally attest to the amount of energy a football player can burn working out, especially during two-a-days. It's like you have to be constantly stuffing your face if you don't want to collapse out on the field, so I don't think matching your body weight in protein is overkill. It's a fact that I can get the protein I need much more efficiently and tastefully through eating meat. Vegetarian athletes have to jump through all sorts of hoops to make sure they get enough protein without too many calories. Sure, an athlete can get by on a vegetarian diet, but I can't help but feel they are preventing themselves from reaching their full potential. It seems like such a hassle and I guess I don't really understand why they would put themselves through it. I don't necessarily agree with the morality standpoint. |
|
Last edited by Caprisun; 01-03-2011 at 02:49 AM.
"Someday, I think you and I are going to have a serious disagreement." -- Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) Last of the Mohicans
I suppose my original post was largely directed towards prehistoric humans, which is more or less a moot point in this day and age. |
|
---------
Lost count of how many lucid dreams I've had
---------
It's basically not true, livestock is much more inefficient than crops, viewed from pretty much any angle. |
|
Bookmarks