crudus said:
latenightapplepie said:
Then why am I, and the vast population of vegetarians and vegans on the planet not dead? Is the American Dietetic Association [http://www.eatright.org/Media/content.aspx?id=1233&terms=vegetarian] wrong?
You don't do anything that requires meat. Mezmer is right in saying we need both meat and veggies to survive to a point. If we were running around the savanna or being a hunter/gatherer we would need meat and other various things, but we aren't. Vegetarians typically have a lower BMI(not getting into why BMIs are horrible) because they don't have fat in their diet and because they don't strenuously work out. If a vegetarian tried to say be a body builder she couldn't. Also, food in this era is horrendously supplemented. You could live off of Twinkies if they were supplemented correctly. Hell, you could live off of an IV in your arm that pumped calories and nutrients into your body.
Yes, one could say we'd need meat to survive in a certain environment, but it's an irrelevant argument now because of the diversity of foods available.
I must clear up some of the unfounded claims in this post.
1. Having a lower BMI is a good thing, so long as it's not dangerously low. Vegan and vegetarian diets can provide sufficient calories (or more, if you eat a lot) to sustain a healthy BMI.
2. Vegan sources of fat come from coconut cream, oils, nuts, avocados, and seeds. Vegetarian sources of fat can come from dairy or eggs as well as the aforementioned plant sources.
3. Take a look at this guy, a vegan bodybuilder. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvEH7W_w1NA and these. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vegan+athlete&aq=f
That's not even including the vegetarians, a simple google search will tell you you're wrong.
4. Supplements aren't needed in a vegetarian diet. I hear you need the occasional B12 supplement in a vegan diet, however, but some believe it's better to take a supplement than kill an animal.
I am a vegetarian because endorsing and paying for the killing of animals is completely unnecessary and I don't want to be a part of it.
The animals are already dead, yes. But every dollar that goes into that industry sustains the abhorrent practices and allows for growth of the industry. That will mean even
more animals will be mistreated and/or killed. I am not "disrespecting" the animals and "making them die in vain" by not eating them.
I don't care if it is "natural" to eat meat, nor if hunting made us intelligent, nor for religious arguments. I don't care if meat was needed to get us to where we are; it doesn't matter because it's not needed to sustain our intelligence and wellbeing now. Besides, being "natural" doesn't automatically make something right.
There are economic reasons to consider too, if you care about how the consumer decisions of people like you are affecting the state of the world outside your comfortable little lives:
http://rs.resalliance.org/2007/12/09/food-prices-rising-due-increases-in-meat-consumption-and-biofuels/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger
For the record, I'm not the evangelistic type of vegetarian who tries to shove it on everyone else. However, if someone makes inaccurate claims about my beliefs or questions me, I will stand up for myself.
Although, I must admit I did get a little annoyed at my mum when she went and bought some ham from the cheapest supermarket whose suppliers are likely to have used factory farming
right after I pointed out a poster I'd just noticed on a wall of a health food shop featuring a story about factory farming and animal cruelty, complete with pictures of the conditions the pigs were in. She just made a joke about "crying pigs" and simply did not care.