My Vegetarian Thread

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I will sometimes crave meat still - I just don't eat it.
I never had cravings bad enough that I considered eating meat again, the images that went through my head did a good job of preventing me from ever falling off the wagon, but I do sometimes get cravings.
Tuna sandwiches have been the worst cravings for me for some strange reason. More than bacon, steaks and chicken wings which I still sometimes crave too. I have even searched for vegetarian fake tuna sandwich recipes with no luck.
Still I won't give into them.
 
Things like hamburgers, steaks, ribs, bacon etc won't be an issue.

But turkey subs at subway, chicken burgers and chicken wings are going to take some time.


I think chicken/turkey is the only meat i really like anyway..
 
My weakness is fish including canned tuna and my favorite dish contains fish. But in the end it was the environmental reasons that really forced me to stop eating fish. Things like depleting fish stocks and birds, turtles & dolphins being killed by the nets and drift lines.

My next challenge is dairy and so far so good. I've whittled it down to some milk in tea and when I go out for a meal I may eat a dish containing dairy, it really depends on what meals are available.
 
Congrats to you for starting to go veg....

I miss beef, I do...far more than the other meats for some reason. But for me there are many, many reasons to be a vegetarian. From the personal health benefits to not contributing to the cruelty that is the commercial meat industry and overall karma. The ONLY thing in the pro-meat column is "but it tastes good."

It just isn't worth it, to me.

Plus, it has been so long since I have had beef.....very bad things happen to one's digestive system when you cheat. I had that lesson almost ten years ago and it is quite fresh in my memory...and stops me from thinking about cheating for more than a second.

Catherine

PS Vanessa, there is a vegetarian tuna called "Tono". Don't go there.
 
I also read somewhere that red meat can cause heart disease. And it can actually be reversed if you go vegetarian.
Kinda makes you rethink this whole: we were meant to eat meat.
 
I think if you eat a LOT of any one thing and dont have a varied diet then anything can will make you sick. And i think red meat is one that the body craves.. if that makes sense.

Ive seen programs on the telly where they take athletes who stick to strict diet and exercise regimes and then they make them stop exercising and they just live on junk food for a few weeks (mostly burgers and sausages, etc). By the end of it, the athletes are really lethargic and they crave red meat like someone would crave cigarettes or caffeine. They constantly get checked out by a doctor and the muscle mass they waste and the fat they start piling on in a few weeks is scary. But its always the craving that they find the hardest to get over.


ugghhh fast food and greasy horrid junk food makes me cringe
 
I could easily give up red meat... if my family would go along with it. Chicken, I'd have a hard time with.
I started watching dr. Oz show, he really pushes tofu.
 
sausage4ever said:
I'm trying to give up dairy and it not for animal/environmental reasons, I just think it wholly unnatural and I'd like to stop.
Click to expand...

The definition of unnatural is only a matter of how recently a mutation occurred in your genetic stock. The ability for our bodies to process lactose IS a recent change, in the grand scheme of things, but it IS still something our bodies can do without forcing it. What is natural, if not our body's ability to process food unaided?


And as for people who are bashing on meat... Meat can be dangerous, just the same as anything can be dangerous in excess. The problem is that in American society, the tendency to overeat meat is a major cause of these problems.

I've noticed a tendency for vegetarians to tote how much better lives vegetarians lead as compared to meat eaters, but one major thing they overlook is the fact that vegetarians are generally more health-obsessed, as a general rule, and "meat eaters" lump in every McDonalds' and WoW addict who have let themselves go. Compare a vegetarian and a meat eater who actually takes care of themselves, and I don't expect you'll find many differences.
 
I can digest lactose just fine (not really ice cream but milk/cheese/yogurt). Considering it has been said that only 25% of Caribbeans can are lactose tolerant it's pretty unnatural, if you think about it nothing else on the planet drinks milk into adulthood. People drive car unaided and fly in aurplanes but that's not natural. I've already given up cheese after finding out it was a BIG FAT LIE (apparently cheddar isn't orange and Organic cheddar doesn't taste good, so now I don't eat cheese)

However I agree with your second point about most veggies being health conscience. And if most people (meat eater or not) practiced eating in moderation we'd be a healthier society in general.
 
sausage4ever said:
Considering it has been said that only 25% of Caribbeans can are lactose tolerant it's pretty unnatural, if you think about it nothing else on the planet drinks milk into adulthood. People drive car unaided and fly in aurplanes but that's not natural.
Click to expand...

Well, in North America at least, our rates of lactose tolerance are much higher. There's much about Humans that have set us apart from animals as a product of our own evolutionary path. It's kinda like condemning someone writing poetry because nothing else does it.

And you've missed what I mean by "unaided"; our bodies produce the lactate enzyme naturally, without having to take pills or something like that, which is what I was getting at. Driving or flying is unnatural in that sense because we're not doing it under our own power. We can't naturally fly, so we use an invention to overcome that. We CAN process lactose, so we don't need to use an invention to overcome that. That's what I was trying to say.
 
This is more what I was getting at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/20 ... ance_N.htm

I wasn't pulling my figures out of thin air. The truth of the matter is MOST people can't digest milk. You and I CAN but we aren't the whole world.
And you may not have noticed but humans haven't "evolved" much since being on this earth, as far as homo sapiens are involved we've only managed to get rid of the use of our wisdom teeth to the point where kids are being born without.

Also being a poet is technically not unnatural as none of us know if other animals make poems we just assume they don't.

Tarah, somehow your Veg. Thread turned into an all out nutritional discussion. Still very fun to comment in.
 
sausage4ever said:
This is more what I was getting at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/20 ... ance_N.htm

I wasn't pulling my figures out of thin air. The truth of the matter is MOST people can't digest milk. You and I CAN but we aren't the whole world.
And you may not have noticed but humans haven't "evolved" much since being on this earth, as far as homo sapiens are involved we've only managed to get rid of the use of our wisdom teeth to the point where kids are being born without.

Also being a poet is technically not unnatural as none of us know if other animals make poems we just assume they don't.

Tarah, somehow your Veg. Thread turned into an all out nutritional discussion. Still very fun to comment in.
Click to expand...

Didn't read much of the article, but the "The numbers are often given as close to 0% of Native Americans, 5% of Asians, 25% of African and Caribbean peoples, 50% of Mediterranean peoples and 90% of northern Europeans." are a direct product of cultures that concentrate on farming. While the mutation should and probably is occurring in those societies... because dairy isn't as prevalent as in ours, the weight of it for selection's sake isn't too high.

As for defining how much we've evolved, it's a matter of what you really consider the start of our species proper. Lactose tolerance, a mutation that allows a person to produce the lactase enzyme, IS an evolutionary change. The fact that it hasn't occurred in everyone yet doesn't mean it isn't an evolutionary step; actually, the fact that we can see this evolutionary selection occurring within our lifetimes in such a tangible way is pretty exciting.

A simple Google search is an easy route to look at the causes and science behind the changes.




This IS off-topic, but hey, conversation is always fun.
 
Just curious, but would people be willing to pay twice as much for meat and other animal products if you knew the animals were raised well, not stressed out by being transported anywhere and were killed quickly (without hearing or seeing the other animals die nor seeing blood and the likes)? So basically during the whole process the animals were treated with respect even if they were going to get killed in the end. In the case of retired egg laying chickens, breeding animals & dairy cows, as well the male offspring of diary cows & chickens. Well, for these animals to be retired to a nice paddock or re-homed to compassionate people or, if the other two choices aren't possible, then quickly PTS by a good vet (the way companion animals are). No animals would be slaughtered at a slaughterhouse. The buthcer would go the the animals and "do the deed" quickly and efficiently and there be restrictions to the number of animals that can be killed during a period of time. Say no more than 4 animals killed per hour - this excludes cutting the body up.

I bet there would be a significant number of people who would be willing to pay extra for these assurances. Why hasn't anyone created this industry? I know my family would be in for it. I'd be willing to pay up to triple, heck even quadruple, what the going cost of milk is, so long as I have these guarantees.
 
Dewi said:
Just curious, but would people be willing to pay twice as much for meat and other animal products if you knew the animals were raised well, not stressed out by being transported anywhere and were killed quickly (without hearing or seeing the other animals die nor seeing blood and the likes)? So basically during the whole process the animals were treated with respect even if they were going to get killed in the end. In the case of retired egg laying chickens, breeding animals & dairy cows, as well the male offspring of diary cows & chickens. Well, for these animals to be retired to a nice paddock or re-homed to compassionate people or, if the other two choices aren't possible, then quickly PTS by a good vet (the way companion animals are). No animals would be slaughtered at a slaughterhouse. The buthcer would go the the animals and "do the deed" quickly and efficiently and there be restrictions to the number of animals that can be killed during a period of time. Say no more than 4 animals killed per hour - this excludes cutting the body up.

I bet there would be a significant number of people who would be willing to pay extra for these assurances. Why hasn't anyone created this industry? I know my family would be in for it. I'd be willing to pay up to triple, heck even quadruple, what the going cost of milk is, so long as I have these guarantees.
Click to expand...

The demand is way too high for this ever to be a reality, especially in North America. If each meat eater is responsible for eating 100 animals per year, and you mulitply that by 400 million people in the US and Canada alone, that is four billion animals.
It is an assembly line and cows go from being in the shute to being cut into pieces in less than half an hour. Often they are still conscious because the process can't be stopped or even slowed down to ensure that they are dead. Our demand for such high volume slaughter makes any sort of genuine 'humane' method impossible.
The only thing that will make it possible is if the demand drops from each person eating 100 animals per year, down to 10-20 animals per year. And nobody is going to do that because they are too busy pointing fingers at other people and asking why they aren't coming up with better options. Or maybe more accurately - options that rid them of their guilt without them having to make any adjustments to their lifestyles. You must have picked up by your other thread that it is always someone elses responsibility, and we know how quickly change takes place when everybody just goes around passing the buck.
In the video I posted, it showed you how quickly those cows go in to slaughter. It showed the cow before, then a few minutes later the cow that we were watching goes in. It is unbelievable, just one huge death machine and the welfare of those creatures isn't even taken into consideration.
If people want things to change, it is up to each individual to act in a matter that will illicit change - even if that means that they have to make compromises and sacrifices in their lives. It is really very simple, but I don't have a lot of faith in the masses.
It is the same situation when people insist upon change taking place in petstores, and the end of feeder animals being sold, and then go out and buy them up on a regular basis. Not very rational behaviour if you want change to take place.
 
I kinda agree with Vanessa and at the same time I feel it can be done, Dewi.

I want to be the future of slaughter in Ontario (or even Canada) I want to have a nice pig farm with the happiest pigs who live a life before slaughter (ie. 3-5years old) and it's looking like I'll have to build a slaughterhouse on site in order to sell my pigs to the public (it's the rules). I have the next few years to plan for this and hopefully by the time some hires me a as a farmhand I'll have most of the kinks worked out (in my head). I truly think my farm will make me happy and I wish to feel proud of myself. Believe me if my plans ever become a reality I'll invite everyone to my farm. I would never run a farm I was ashamed to show to anyone.
 

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