Vegetarian/Vegan. Ethics and other discussion.

[Atilla]

Plants, too, use hormones and receptors to interpret what's going on around them, in much the same way that nerves work. Vegetables didn't ever get good at looking like they're in pain, so they get eaten a lot quicker. I suppose, in a modern world, evolving a cute face is a survival tactic.

I'm expecting Bellossoms to turn up any day now.

[Geti]

X3 best pokemon reference in a while.

mmn, id say plants are far more passive though, and the fact that they drop limbs quite often (especially eucalypt varieties) would imply that if anything were "felt" by the tree it would be at most very vague. most fruits are designed by evolution to be eaten, and tubers and simmilar vegetables are in the same stage of life as a pre-fetal embryo.

plant sentience would be an interesting debate actually.. shall we?

[blue_tetris]

most fruits are designed by evolution to be eaten, and tubers and simmilar vegetables are in the same stage of life as a pre-fetal embryo.

I would argue many animals evolved to be eaten, too. Some animals evolved defenses to survive being eaten while other animals simply procreated more so that, despite being eaten, their species would survive. Can you imagine what the world would be like if no one at rabbits? We'd be lousy with the darn things. Rabbits evolved the ability to find mates quickly, have large litters, and endure shorter gestation periods because their species was gonna get eaten up.

Now, if everything stopped eating rabbits, they'd probably wreck up our ecosystem pretty bad.

[Atilla]

Now, if everything stopped eating rabbits, they'd probably wreck up our ecosystem pretty bad.

See also introduction of rabbits to Australia.

[Geti]

See also introduction of rabbits to Australia.

most of them weren't eaten, just killed. however, ill accept the point that a lot of animals evolved so that their species can cope with being eaten and/or killed frequently, but not many animals (bar some parasites like, say, tapeworms) evolved to be eaten.

[Atilla]

What? No, that's not at all what I was saying. I meant that the introduction of rabbits to Australia screwed up the ecosystem because there weren't enough predators over here to keep their numbers down. Which resulted in the introduction of foxes, which was just as problematic, if not worse.

[blue_tetris]

The only thing that could have saved Australia was non-vegetarians.

Look at their nation now...

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Atilla: I think he attempted to hit the Quote button for Dave's post.

[Atilla]

Atilla: I think he attempted to hit the Quote button for Dave's post.

If he'd done that, though, his post would have included the part of Dave's post which I quoted. He would have had to attempt to hit the quote button for Dave's post, then decide to delete everything which was attributed to blue_tetris.

[scythe]

Ahh, so eating excess meat can cause impotence. I imagine eating an excess of certain vegetables can't possibly cause impotence?

Hahahahahaha, this was all too beautiful to pass up. First, fun facts about soy. I'm quoting Vandana Shiva, an ardent supporter of fair trade, here.

However, even though the promotion of soybean-based foods is justified on grounds of health and nutrition, studies show that this sudden shift to soybean based diets can be harmfulto health. Soybean foods, in both raw nd processed form, contain a number of toxic substances at concentration levels that pose significant health risks to humans and animals.
Soybeans have trypsin inhibitors that inhibit pancreatic processes, cause an increase in pancreatic size and weight, and caneven lead to cancer. In the United States, pancreatic cancer is the fifth most common fatal cancer, and its incidence is rising. The highest concentrations of trypsin inhibitors are found in soybean flour, which is a soy based produc that is not consumed in traditional soybean eating cultures, which specialize in the consumption of fermented soybean products.
Soybeans also have lectins that interfere with the immune system and the microbiel ecology of the gut. When injected into rats, lectins isolated from soybeans were found to be lethal. When administered orally, these lectins inhibited rat growth. Soybeans also contain phytic acid, which interferes in the absorption of essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper, and iron. given that deficiencies in calcium and iron are major symptoms of malnutrition in women and children in countries such as India, compromising the body's absorption of these essential minerals can have serious consequences.

Also, Vitamin B12. It's not present in any vegetables save Spirulina (an algae).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B1 ... prevalence

B12 deficiency is common among vegetarians and vegans who do not take B12 supplements. In vegans the risk is very high because none of their natural food sources contain B12. One American study found blood levels below normal in 92 % of vegans, 64 % of lactovegetarians, 47 % of lacto-ovovegetarians who did not supplement their diet with B12. [22]. The study applied the old normal values, so in reality a considerably greater proportion may have been deficient.

And what, you ask, does this deficiency lead to? Brain damage! No, not a song by Pink Floyd.
http://digg.com/food_drink/A_Vegetarian ... _the_Brain

[blue_tetris]

Where were your links earlier?!

We needed you!

[Qix]

Atilla: I think he attempted to hit the Quote button for Dave's post.

If he'd done that, though, his post would have included the part of Dave's post which I quoted. He would have had to attempt to hit the quote button for Dave's post, then decide to delete everything which was attributed to blue_tetris.

On the old forums the quote button was above the post, now it is below. If you're not paying careful attention you can make this mistake fairly easily.

[Zora_S_Kenneth]

Which is why I dropped the old forums.

*By the way, didn't you say on the IRC you'd shut down the old forums last Sunday, Dave?*

[Geti]

at the [oversized] discussion on whos post i was quoting, it was Attila's. about australia. why would i address dave about rabbits, when attila brought them up?

The only thing that could have saved Australia was non-vegetarians.
Look at their nation now...

What? No, that's not at all what I was saying. I meant that the introduction of rabbits to Australia screwed up the ecosystem because there weren't enough predators over here to keep their numbers down. Which resulted in the introduction of foxes, which was just as problematic, if not worse.

myxomatosis?
@b_t: the land has been dead for ages. it just got extra ruined by idiot british coming and trying to live like it was britain. this coming from a white australian, with mostly english blood (a bit of dutch) the colonisation of everything was done rather poorly, you cant logically disagree. they based terra nullus on weather there were fences and/or sheep. SHEEP! OUTSIDE BRITAIN! WTH! [/rant]

@scythe: a lot of nonvegetarians take supplements anyway:

The Council for Responsible Nutrition reported a 19-percent increase in retail sales of supplements between 1987 and 1992 and estimated that about 40 to 50 percent of the U.S. population uses vitamin and mineral supplements (18). According to the American Dietetic Association 1997 Nutrition Trends Survey, 35 percent of Americans believe vitamin supplements are necessary to ensure proper health, an increase from prior surveys (28

so why would it be an issue to take a B12 supplement every now and then?

also a sentence i find questionable:

studies show that this sudden shift to soybean based diets can be harmful to health.

dont shift suddenly then. may i have a link to the article which this was sourced from?

[blue_tetris]

@scythe: a lot of nonvegetarians take supplements anyway:

And people who eat meat can't take garlic tablets and pills to reduce cholesterol?

[Atilla]

Or, y'know, just eat a balanced diet which isn't full of cholesterol. It's perfectly possible to eat meat and still have very low levels of cholesterol.

[scythe]

@scythe: a lot of nonvegetarians take supplements anyway:

The Council for Responsible Nutrition reported a 19-percent increase in retail sales of supplements between 1987 and 1992 and estimated that about 40 to 50 percent of the U.S. population uses vitamin and mineral supplements (18). According to the American Dietetic Association 1997 Nutrition Trends Survey, 35 percent of Americans believe vitamin supplements are necessary to ensure proper health, an increase from prior surveys (28

so why would it be an issue to take a B12 supplement every now and then?

also a sentence i find questionable:

studies show that this sudden shift to soybean based diets can be harmful to health.

dont shift suddenly then. may i have a link to the article which this was sourced from?

Right! The hell with the digestive system, we should just live on supplements!
Why didn't I think of that? Of course, there are plenty of vegans who refuse to take supplements, because "it's unnatural". Hippies. Not to mention the implicit costs incurred in producing these supplements. I mean, we should restrict people from eating healthy food and tie their livelihood to the whim of Corporation X? This gives the government too much power. They can essentially control people via restrictions on the sale of B12 supplements. You disagree with the bailout? I guess you don't value your brain much. Do you want that reality? Funnier when you consider the whole "naturalistic" argument.
Also, the fact that you point out "sudden shift" is laughable. Sudden in evolutionary terms, darling, as in "soy isn't what the digestive tract was meant for". It's from a book, by the way, not a link; the book is called "Stolen Harvest" and it's by Vandana Shiva.
Compare these-justified-with your ridiculous claim that "animal proteins increase cholesterol levels". They do not. Hell, the article doesn't even provide a mechanism by which they could.
These guys seem healthier than you, if you ask me.
Oh, right, one last thing. Don't criticize what you don't know.
No, wait, no, there's more.

[blue_tetris]

Or, y'know, just eat a balanced diet which isn't full of cholesterol. It's perfectly possible to eat meat and still have very low levels of cholesterol.

I agree. My cholesterol levels are pretty normal, and I eat meat occasionally.

[Geti]

scythe, your sarcastic tone is painful to read.

back to addressing points.
the algae you mention (Spirulina) is available pretty widely. i went looking for it the other day, and lo and behold, it comes in a powder you can add to food or tablets for straight ingestion. im not saying its ideal, but eh, better than brain degeneration.

These guys seem healthier than you, if you ask me.

how would you know how healthy i am? really? that just comes off as insulting. what are you basing health on here?

the person who ate chicken after 28 years had been eating seafood the whole time anyway. that really doesnt count as vegetarian, cause marine animals are, you know, still animals.. they said nothing about tofu, seitan, or any of the other crazyazn ( ^________^ ) protein sources. for someone who was so committed, they didnt look outside the box too much.

i must get a hold of that book. be nice to get a feel for the context.

at the last link, id like to ask again how?
if the article is talking about only milk, then there is still the matter of taking away the calves for slaughter each year, the cows being bred to produce 10 times the usual milk load (which causes discomfort for the cow with its stretched udders), and the cows being so fat that they must be artificially inseminated to produce a calf a therefore milk in the first place.
if it means all ruminant animal products, then we have the moral issues of slaughter, animal lives and all those other fun things, as well as a fail against the LHP as all the steers for slaughter would be fed grain, which is grown in fields and harvested in a way that still kills many many mice/field fauna. so no, against the LHP, cattle farming definitely loses out to a vegan diet.

[Zora_S_Kenneth]

scythe, your sarcastic tone is painful to read.

back to addressing points.
the algae you mention (Spirulina) is available pretty widely. i went looking for it the other day, and lo and behold, it comes in a powder you can add to food or tablets for straight ingestion. im not saying its ideal, but eh, better than brain degeneration.

These guys seem healthier than you, if you ask me.

how would you know how healthy i am? really? that just comes off as insulting. what are you basing health on here?

the person who ate chicken after 28 years had been eating seafood the whole time anyway. that really doesnt count as vegetarian, cause marine animals are, you know, still animals.. they said nothing about tofu, seitan, or any of the other crazyazn ( ^________^ ) protein sources. for someone who was so committed, they didnt look outside the box too much.

i must get a hold of that book. be nice to get a feel for the context.

at the last link, id like to ask again how?
if the article is talking about only milk, then there is still the matter of taking away the calves for slaughter each year, the cows being bred to produce 10 times the usual milk load (which causes discomfort for the cow with its stretched udders), and the cows being so fat that they must be artificially inseminated to produce a calf a therefore milk in the first place.
if it means all ruminant animal products, then we have the moral issues of slaughter, animal lives and all those other fun things, as well as a fail against the LHP as all the steers for slaughter would be fed grain, which is grown in fields and harvested in a way that still kills many many mice/field fauna. so no, against the LHP, cattle farming definitely loses out to a vegan diet.

Geti is right. Scythe, maybe a touch less sarcasm will get some people (like me) to listen to what you are saying more. If I were you, I would calm down a bit before pointing out that those supplements would need to be the size of a chair to fit all the calories, and not be too politically overboard about it. Although you were politically overboard in the first place... XD

Geti is right again. If the animal isn't killed, it's only allowed to live to do something else, like produce milk. And since that's its only reason as far as most are concerned, they will do anything to make sure the animal fulfills its forced purpose in the most gratifying way (for humans). Less humane than the slaughterhouse.

I'm still surprised that this topic didn't budge a little towards ethics of plant growth. They're living too, why don't we care?
This is all about the way things work (this universe). Unless we were specially made to produce our own food (cooked and/or processed meals DO NOT count), we will always have to rely on something else to make the nutrients for us. So why deny ourselves a better source? It's just as alive as a plant source is, but provides greater amounts of protein and cholesterol.

[Blizzard]

One can argue either way that either meat is necessary or it isn't, but nonetheless, eating it has certainly become a part of who we are as a species. How we go about getting this meat, though, is where the ethical problem comes into play. The reason this argument comes up is that humans care about other humans, and we think in human terms, therefore things that remind us of humans are going to appeal to us. We can easily recognize that the animals being raised for their meat are in pain. If, say, a cockroach was being killed though, we wouldn't really care, as it just seems to sit there and crawl around. A cow, however, is going to struggle and bleed and yell, all things that we recognize as being human traits. Plants may be alive too, but they're basically as far from human as it gets. I usually regard the lives of animals either equal to or lower than our own, but they are living things either way, and they can feel pain just like us. Despite that, I'd much rather see a human murdered than an animal; that's emotionally the kind of person I am.

As much as I do care about animals, I eat meat, because I'm human and that's just how I roll. In this case, I think an alternative would work rather well; the conditions that these animals are raised in, and how they are killed, is terribly inhumane. Instead of removing the meat industry all-together, we should be trying to improve the environments that they create. Raising a cow in a field and shooting it in the head when it's time to butcher it is a lot better than keeping it in a tight cage where it can barely move, and then breaking it's leg, hanging it by said leg, and cutting it's throat and letting it bleed to death, right? I understand that humans probably won't drop meat, if they ever do, for a long, long time, so I believe we might as well improve the situation in whatever ways we currently can.

[Amadeus]

Going vegetarian would be not only ethically better but also economically and environmentally. In our meat crazed, McDonald's world, we have raised millions of cows, and the elimination of this cattle industry would have more of an impact on global warming than taking every single car in the world off the road. Economically, farming gives more food per square acre, which would lower food prices and give relief to world hunger issues. Saying that we shouldn't switch simply because a few thousand people will be layed off isn't a viable argument. Going vegetarian would save money, save the environment, and prevent the inhuman cruelty that slaughterhouses globally are witnessing.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Going vegetarian would be not only ethically better but also economically and environmentally. In our meat crazed, McDonald's world, we have raised millions of cows, and the elimination of this cattle industry would have more of an impact on global warming than taking every single car in the world off the road. Economically, farming gives more food per square acre, which would lower food prices and give relief to world hunger issues. Saying that we shouldn't switch simply because a few thousand people will be layed off isn't a viable argument. Going vegetarian would save money, save the environment, and prevent the inhuman cruelty that slaughterhouses globally are witnessing.

Ohhhhh what have you done? This was settled for, like, half a year, and now you have to go and bring it all back up to the list of active threads. *le sigh*
I mean, I'm not accusing you of thread necromancy or anything, since you did have a well-stated, intelligent post to contribute, but... meh, just lamenting, I guess.

[Amadeus]

Sorry for that. However, I was considering starting a new thread after a heated debate with some friends and decided it would be better to discuss it on an existing thread than a new one.

[capt_weasle]

In our meat crazed, McDonald's world, we have raised millions of cows, and the elimination of this cattle industry would have more of an impact on global warming than taking every single car in the world off the road.

Sources? I can't imagine it would make that large an impact, but I suppose I could be wrong.

Saying that we shouldn't switch simply because a few thousand people will be layed off isn't a viable argument.

I think it's a perfectly valid argument, seeing how hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people are employed by McDonald's alone (they currently run about 31000 restaurants worldwide, so even if each store had a minimum of 10 workers that would amount to over three hundred thousand), it would make a significant impact upon employment and such. Not to mention the countless other workers in the meat and cattle industry.