posted September 07, 2009 04:06 AM         

interesting point about the kids. my daughter's only 3 and i couldn't stand to do that to her. she gets VERY emotional and upset when we talk about people eating meat and that the animals are hurt to become food. i have been factual (but have spoken minimally) about it and at her age would not feel right about showing her anything graphic. i don't think i'd need to anyhow. just knowing it happens disturbs her very much.

posted September 07, 2009 04:07 AM         

I will be forced to defend myself.

It's legal to kill a person in self defense when you feel that your life is threatened.

Raymond

------------------
“It is absolutely the perfect name,” Dr. Brown said, given the continuing discord among astronomers and the public over whether Pluto should have retained its planetary status.

In mythology, Eris ignited discord that led to the Trojan War.

“She causes strife by causing arguments among men, by making them think their opinions are right and everyone else’s is wrong,” Dr. Brown said. “It really is just perfect.”

posted September 07, 2009 04:12 AM         

LOL, slow down Bruce Lee.

You know I'm kidding, right?

Trying to make a point.

woah city,

Oh yeah, I'm in the stellium.

I'd say that 7 or 8
is probably a good age.

'night.

posted September 07, 2009 05:14 AM         

Pets are different to livestock. You can argue about the rightness or wrongness of that but I think the question is an odd one, it's turned into a debate about vegetarianism again, but the original question posed was, I thought, more a question of the philosophical difference between pets and livestock.

I have eaten dog though. It's what was around when I was in Korea, and no different to eating a cow, which I also did a lot of when I was there. I'm not apologising for it and I'm not judging the Koreans for what particular animal they choose to eat. Part of experiencing other places is not imposing your own cultural beliefs on to the host country.

Valus, I hear what you're saying but if behavioural change is what you're seeking then you're going about it the wrong way. I work in an environment where we are trying to persuade people to change their behaviour (travel behaviour), and it gets us nowhere leaping on people who drive cars and saying that they're idiots. Sledgehammer approaches don't work and it makes the person appear extraordinarily arrogant. You can present people with delicious vegan recipes and say "Look how cheap it is! If you don't buy that expensive meat you can afford a cinema ticket" or whatever argument against eating meat you care to think of (there are many).

I think you're trying to impose your own cultural beliefs on to the "host country" (us), and judging us.

I do happen to agree with you about the veganism thing, but that's just a coincidence and it doesn't actually matter. It's the way you are trying to communicate the message that makes people turn off.

I don't eat meat much at all, can't remember the last time, however I'm not a vegetarian and I refuse to label myself as such. Labels are dangerous. I was a pain in the ass vegetarian for 13 years and used to play "Meat is Murder" at loud volumes during Sunday roasts with my family. As you can imagine they picked holes in my argument mercilessly and they were quite right to. Because I was not perfect.

So be careful during your veganism that you don't become a pain in the ass. Because to go along with the thinking that if you do "slip up" and have a glass of milk or whatever that you have let yourself down spiritually and philosophically because this is dangerous territory, for you and everybody else. Try not to be so rigid and inflexible. I have found my "vegetarianism" of late much more "successful" because I am more mutable in my approach.

Yes I do think that we should try, if we have choices, to limit our consumption of meat - on many levels, it's "fairer" to eat veg because:
It's less consumptive of resources
It's cheaper
Veg is more "local"

But to get on someone's back because they're eating more steak than me and are less spiritually evolved? Never again. Anyone here can easily pick a huge hole in my lifestyle if they so choose, in many ways.

Go easy on people and change the way you communicate your message.

posted September 07, 2009 08:35 AM         

I dig what you're saying...I also completely agree.

What I don't like sometimes is the amount of snobbery which wafts from so-called 'civilized' cultures...how 'savage' it is to exist in such and such a way.
Of course it's 'wrong' by 'western' standards to go and eat your pet... but it's like the argument goes farther and puts me in the mind of certain celebrities who go and visit certain indigenous tribes living off the land and with all good intention introduce them to the wonders of cable TV ...thereby completely destroying the foundation of their culture and existence (but it's all ok because they 'mean well' and give to charity, right? Riiiight.)

posted September 07, 2009 08:57 AM         

I think I'm just cautioning against being too rigid just in case Valus does "slip up". Veganism is awfully hard, you can put yourself under a lot of pressure this way. I was absolutely devastated when I started eating meat again (I was craving it, sneaking bits out of the fridge at my mum's and feeling like the worst kind of criminal, I hated myself).

Valus, just do what you do and know that you are doing your best according to your principles, and doing what you feel is right for yourself. I think that's great, absolutely no problem with that at all.

posted September 07, 2009 02:10 PM         

those who eat meat have already justified it to themselves. it's hard to argue against that, no matter how and from which angle.

ETA: to be fair to valus, if he'd just started a 'here's some vegan foods that look yummy' thread.. well i just can't see that being as bringing much attention/consideration. i don't agree with judgementalness but inherent to the debate is the question of personal morality, so it's par for the course, whether delivered with the argument or in the perception of it. what i mean is, it's really effing hard to word things from our pov without seeming judgemental.

i mean, from our end we are talking about MURDER. meat eaters obviously do not see it that way. but therein lies the problem. you wouldn't feel impelled to be all nicey nice about the holocaust. just as we find that 'requirement' (to be taken seriously) to be as condescending as you feel we are being for suggesting meat eaters reconsider their positions. we are fought from all angles, asked to consider a hundred different scenarios in which we would slacken our opinion, and thus render it completely inarguable, on the whole. because if there's an exception to our point of view allowed, then obviously we are wrong in general, and our argument is moot. but of course there is room for exceptions, poverty, cultural differences, etc etc. fundamentally i still don't agree, but it's not the people who are 'excepted' that i am interested in reaching. and obviously being essentially called a murderer is gonna be laughable at best and feel downright cruel to those who disagree.

our point is lost in all of those exceptions and hurt feelings.

there are strong emotions on both sides.

posted September 07, 2009 02:16 PM         

either way

consciousness creates reality.

Not the other way around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD5bCNvAihU&feature=PlayList&p=577D59C0E18D1946&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1

posted September 07, 2009 03:20 PM         

quote:

---

Maybe it was people who taught animals to eat meat,

---

posted September 07, 2009 03:37 PM         

dinosaurs existed millions of years ago. They died out millions of years before the existence of humans.

many dinosaurs were carnivores. Most were herbivores. Very few were omnivores.

most herbivore dinosaurs were mostly accidental carnivores because they accidentally ate insects and small animals.

posted September 07, 2009 04:20 PM         

Very interesting. I looked into that.

Meat-eating was essential for human evolution, says UC Berkeley anthropologist specializing in diet

By Patricia McBroom, Public Affairs

BERKELEY-- Human ancestors who roamed the dry and open savannas of Africa about 2 million years ago routinely began to include meat in their diets to compensate for a serious decline in the quality of plant foods, according to a physical anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

It was this new meat diet, full of densely-packed nutrients, that provided the catalyst for human evolution, particularly the growth of the brain, said Katharine Milton, an authority on primate diet.

Without meat, said Milton, it's unlikely that proto humans could have secured enough energy and nutrition from the plants available in their African environment at that time to evolve into the active, sociable, intelligent creatures they became. Receding forests would have deprived them of the more nutritious leaves and fruits that forest-dwelling primates survive on, said Milton.

Her thesis complements the discovery last month by UC Berkeley professor Tim White and others that early human species were butchering and eating animal meat as long ago as 2.5 million years. Milton's article integrates dietary strategy with the evolution of human physiology to argue that meat eating was routine. It is published this month in the journal "Evolutionary Anthropology" (Vol.8, #1).

Milton said that her theories do not reflect on today's vegetarian diets, which can be completely adequate, given modern knowledge of nutrition.

"We know a lot about nutrition now and can design a very satisfactory vegetarian diet," said Milton, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management.

But she added that the adequacy of a vegetarian diet depends either on modern scientific knowledge or on traditional food habits, developed over many generations, in which people have worked out a complete diet by putting different foods together.

In many parts of the world where people have little access to meat, they have run the risk of malnutrition, said Milton. This happened, for instance, in Southeast Asia where people relied heavily on a single plant food, polished rice, and developed the nutritional disease, beriberi. Closer to home, in the Southern United States, many people dependent largely on corn meal developed the nutritional disease, pellagra.

Milton argues that meat supplied early humans not only with all the essential amino acids, but also with many vitamins, minerals and other nutrients they required, allowing them to exploit marginal, low quality plant foods, like roots - foods that have few nutrients but lots of calories. These calories, or energy, fueled the expansion of the human brain and, in addition, permitted human ancestors to increase in body size while remaining active and social.

"Once animal matter entered the human diet as a dependable staple, the overall nutrient content of plant foods could drop drastically, if need be, so long as the plants supplied plenty of calories for energy," said Milton.

The brain is a relentless consumer of calories, said Milton. It needs glucose 24 hours a day. Animal protein probably did not provide many of those calories, which were more likely to come from carbohydrates, she said.

Buffered against nutritional deficiency by meat, human ancestors also could intensify their use of plant foods with toxic compounds such as cyanogenic glycosides, foods other primates would have avoided, said Milton. These compounds can produce deadly cyanide in the body, but are neutralized by methionine and cystine, sulfur-containing amino acids present in meat. Sufficient methionine is difficult

to find in plants. Most domesticated grains - wheat, rice, maize, barley, rye and millet - contain this cyanogenic compound as do many beans and widely-eaten root crops such as taro and manioc.

Since plant foods available in the dry and deforested early human environment had become less nutritious, meat was critical for weaned infants, said Milton. She explained that small infants could not have processed enough bulky plant material to get both nutrients for growth and energy for brain development.

"I disagree with those who say meat may have been only a marginal food for early humans," said Milton. "I have come to believe that the incorporation of animal matter into the diet played an absolutely essential role in human evolution."

Milton's paper also demonstrates that the human digestive system is fundamentally that of a plant-eating primate, except that humans have developed a more elongated small intestine rather than retaining the huge colon of apes - a change in the human lineage which indicates a diet of more concentrated nutrients.
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html

The role of meat-eating in evolution

Australopithecus, an ape-like creature and ancestor of humans, was originally a herbivore. Between 2.5 and 2 million B.C., forced by drought it started eating some meat to supplement its diet, probably by picking up small crawling animals and scavenging (so not necessarily by hunting initially), and it is thought the extra nutritional value of (and/or certain substances in) the meat allowed Australopithecus' brain (and therefore intelligence) to grow over generations, resulting in the first human, Homo erectus, around 1.8 million B.C.

More precisely, in this period of drought Australopithecus split up into two variants: One is called "robust", and followed the strategy of eating thick dry leaves to survive in dry conditions. The other is called "gracile", and it is this second variant that ate meat, and as a result underwent an unprecedented growth of its brain, allowing more intelligent forms of behaviour, including the making of stone tools, at which point they became of the genus Homo. These first tool-makers are called Homo habilis, and the successor thereof Homo ergaster. Then followed Homo erectus, with a cranial capacity in the bottom range of current humans.

Important is that brain cells require very much energy compared to other body cells, and therefore a large brain as typical for the genus Homo could never have evolved or been sustained on a herbivorous diet, if only because vegetable food did not contain enough energy (Note there was no bread, pasta, cornflakes and the like in those days to provide energy).

This implies eating meat is what caused human intelligence, and therefore humans, to come into existence, and that even the earliest real humans (Homo erectus) ate meat.

Relevant too in this respect are archaeological findings showing that caries (tooth decay) occurred much in groups of humans whose diet contained grains, and very little in those who mainly ate meat. This confirms that human teeth were originally adapted to eating meat, and therefore that humans are meat-eaters of origin.

Vegetarians say humans were originally herbivores, based on a number of physical features we share with other herbivorous animals. They are only right in the sense that our ape ancestors - the genus Australopithecus - were herbivores. Actual humans - the genus Homo - never were. Meat eating and having a big brain with human intelligence go together (and in that causal direction), and have done so from the start on.

This does not mean it is wrong to stop eating meat in individual cases. As an adult, that is; For children and pregnant women it is dangerous to not eat meat. Being vegetarian or vegan does not seem to have too many bad effects, and nowadays with agricultural and industrial technology we can make non-meat foods that contain any nutrients we need (except that we have no idea which nutrients we need). Although one could wonder about the warped beliefs, violence and terrorism of some animal rights activists, who of course do not eat meat. It is probably not caused by their diet, but we cannot exclude that possibility entirely yet.
A few current issues regarding meat-eating

In recent years the following arguments have been proposed in favour of vegetarianism, or at least in favour of eating less meat and more vegetable food:

1. It takes much vegetable food to produce meat (for raising cattle), so if humans ate less meat and more vegetable food, many more humans could be fed and there would be less famine, and this is especially important since it is expected the world population will grow to nine billion or more;
2. The methane exhausted by animals now raised for their meat contributes to "global warming" as a greenhouse gas, so by eating less meat and raising fewer animals this warming effect could be reduced.

To 1., the following responses need to be given:

* The fact that much vegetable food goes into the production of a little meat is at least partly compensated by the greater nutritional value of meat compared to vegetable food; You simply need less of it. It contains many important nutrients in much higher concentrations.
* If there is famine and the world population is expected to grow still, the question must not be, "How will we feed all of those humans?", but rather, "How do we prevent that growth?", or rather still, "How do we invert it?". It must be noted that these questions are never raised by the people who on the other hand have no problem proposing great reductions of the meat-producing animal stocks; Clearly they consider animals of lower value than humans, contrary to their stance on animal rights. But reducing the human stocks would solve the nutrition problem much more efficiently that would the abolishment or reduction of the meat production.

To 2., the following response is needed:

* The methane exhaust saved by raising fewer animals for their meat would be at least partly compensated by the extra methane exhaust from the humans eating more vegetable food instead of meat; For humans emit methane too when they eat vegetable food, just as well as cows or pigs or chickens. What you save on the animals, you gain back on the humans; It is a law of conservation of anal exhaust. If human populations eat the same amount of vegetable food now eaten by their cattle, they emit the same amount of methane. (The important question whether or not emitted greenhouse gasses are a causal agent at all in a possible "global warming" falls outside the scope of this article.)
http://www.paulcooijmans.com/evolution/eating_meat.html

Raymond

------------------
“It is absolutely the perfect name,” Dr. Brown said, given the continuing discord among astronomers and the public over whether Pluto should have retained its planetary status.

In mythology, Eris ignited discord that led to the Trojan War.

“She causes strife by causing arguments among men, by making them think their opinions are right and everyone else’s is wrong,” Dr. Brown said. “It really is just perfect.”

posted September 07, 2009 04:29 PM         

I seriously thought about a Vegan society. I thought about the pros and cons of this society.

A definate pro would be the discontinuation of slaughtering animals and maybe just maybe we would be more healtheir if we all switched to organic/vegan diets but I can not prove this because I am not vegan/organic eater and I have not lived around one for long to test this theory.

As for a con on this society..

Ok lets picture that we all live in a Vegan/Organic based society and we did not slaughter animals for meat. Eventually the population of pigs,sheeps,cows, and goats will raise..and what do they eat and survive on..

Plants..

...Just like the Vegan based society will live in, we would also survive on plants and sometimes nuts/grains. Humans already over populate the world today..now imagine these animals beginning to over populate along with us and we all survive on plants..

Something as to give because either we humans die out and stop being so selfish to take the pigs, sheeps, cows, and goats food source..or we let these poor defenseless innocent creatures die out because we were all too selfish to give up our main food source in our Vegan society..

posted September 07, 2009 04:33 PM         

Cardiologist William C. Roberts hails from the famed cattle state of Texas, but he says this without hesitation: Humans aren't physiologically designed to eat meat. "I think the evidence is pretty clear. If you look at various characteristics of carnivores versus herbivores, it doesn't take a genius to see where humans line up," says Roberts, editor in chief of The American Journal of Cardiology and medical director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. © Stephen Kroninger

As further evidence, Roberts cites the carnivore's short intestinal tract, which reaches about three times its body length. An herbivore's intestines are 12 times its body length, and humans are closer to herbivores, he says. Roberts rattles off other similarities between human beings and herbivores. Both get vitamin C from their diets (carnivores make it internally). Both sip water, not lap it up with their tongues. Both cool their bodies by perspiring (carnivores pant).

Human beings and herbivorous animals have little mouths in relation to their head sizes, unlike carnivores, whose big mouths are all the better for "seizing, killing and dismembering prey," argues nutrition specialist Dr. Milton R. Mills, associate director of preventive medicine for the Washington, D.C.-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). People and herbivores extensively chew their food, he says, whereas swallowing food whole is the preferred method of carnivores and omnivores.

Got Milk?

Dr. Neal D. Barnard, PCRM's founder and president, says humans lack the raw abilities to be good hunters. "We are not quick, like cats, hawks or other predators," he says. "It was not until the advent of arrowheads, hatchets and other implements that killing and capturing prey became possible."

Milk, another animal product, can also be problematic for people. That's why, in response to the popular "Got Milk?" ad campaign, Barnard's organization sponsored billboards this past summer that read, "Got Diarrhea?"

"Dairy foods are definitely not a natural part of our diet," contends vegetarian dietitian and author Virginia Messina, who fields the public's nutritional questions at www.VegRD.com. "We only started consuming them about 10,000 years ago, which is very recent in our evolution. Our physiology suggests that we really did not evolve to consume dairy beyond early childhood."

Three out of 10 adults are lactose intolerant, meaning they can't digest the sugar in milk. So they likely suffer gas or diarrhea when undigested lactose reaches the large intestine, according to an April report in the Nutrition Action Healthletter.

While celebrities sport milk mustaches in ad campaigns, some research raises questions as to whether milk is a better source of calcium than, say, spinach or collard greens. Echoing the conclusions of research elsewhere, a Harvard University study of more than 75,000 nurses found no evidence that nurses who drank the most milk enjoyed fewer broken bones.

Are We Omnivores?

Milk's high protein actually could leach calcium from bones, according to Dr. Walter Willett, of the Harvard School of Public Health, speaking on the PBS program HealthWeek.

"Drinking cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children; it has been named as the cause of cramps and diarrhea in much of the world's population and the cause of multiple forms of allergies as well. The possibility has been raised that it may play a central role in the origins of atherosclerosis and heart attacks," writes Dr. Frank Oski, former director of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Pediatrics, in his book, Don't Drink Your Milk!

As intriguing as these arguments may be, the idea that humans are natural vegetarians has "no scientific basis in fact," argues anatomist and primatologist John McArdle. Alarmed by this growing belief, McArdle, a vegetarian, says the human anatomy proves that people are omnivores.

"We obviously are not carnivores, but we are equally obviously not strict vegetarians, if you carefully examine the anatomical, physiological and fossil evidence," says McArdle, executive director of the Alternatives Research and Development Foundation in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

According to a 1999 article in the journal The Ecologist, several of our physiological features "clearly indicate a design" for eating meat, including "our stomach's production of hydrochloric acid, something not found in herbivores. Furthermore, the human pancreas manufactures a full range of digestive enzymes to handle a wide variety of foods, both animal and vegetable.

"While humans may have longer intestines than animal carnivores, they are not as long as herbivores'; nor do we possess multiple stomachs like many herbivores, nor do we chew cud," the magazine adds. "Our physiology definitely indicates a mixed feeder."

If people were designed to be strict vegetarians, McArdle expects we would have a specialized colon, specialized teeth and a stomach that doesn't have a generalized pH-all the better to handle roughage. Tom Billings, a vegetarian for three decades and site editor of BeyondVeg.com, believes humans are natural omnivores. Helping prove it, he says, is the fact that people have a low synthesis rate of the fatty acid DHA and of taurine, suggesting our early ancestors relied on animal foods to get these nutrients. Vitamin B-12, also, isn't reliably found in plants. That, Billings says, left "animal foods as the reliable source during evolution."

History argues in favor of the omnivore argument, considering that humans have eaten meat for 2.5 million years or more, according to fossil evidence. Indeed, when researchers examined the chemical makeup of the teeth of an early African hominid that lived in woodlands three million years ago, they expected to learn that our ancestor lived on fruits and leaves. "But the isotopic clues show that it ate a varied diet, including either grassland plants or animals that themselves fed on grasses," reported the journal Science in 1999.

So, the question remains: Are humans natural vegetarians? In the end, whether a person lives a vegetarian lifestyle has less to do with esoteric matters of anatomy and more to do with ethics and personal values. The architecture of the human body offers no simple answers.


A Service of E/The Environmental Magazine. Copyright © 2002. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.rense.com/general20/meant.htm

Raymond

------------------
“It is absolutely the perfect name,” Dr. Brown said, given the continuing discord among astronomers and the public over whether Pluto should have retained its planetary status.

In mythology, Eris ignited discord that led to the Trojan War.

“She causes strife by causing arguments among men, by making them think their opinions are right and everyone else’s is wrong,” Dr. Brown said. “It really is just perfect.”

posted September 07, 2009 08:15 PM         

a bit like dicaprio in titanic really!

posted September 07, 2009 10:23 PM         

There is not such thing as Vegans are good and Meat Eaters are bad, each do their own damage to the animal kingdom.