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Ethical basis for Veganism or Vegetarianism?

Started by bitter_sweet_symphony, November 17, 2007, 10:26:09 AM

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karadan

Quote from: "Whitney"Coming up with a dinner we both want to eat has been a culinary challenge; with a silver lining of improving and expanding on my cooking skills.

You can never have enough of that!    ;)
QuoteI find it mistifying that in this age of information, some people still deny the scientific history of our existence.

ForTheLoveOfAll

I've been a vegan for a long time now, and as a result, my health both mentally and physically has improved dramatically.

The human body is not fit for the consumption of animals, their eggs, or their fluids, even if it CAN consume them, it's not healthy. By any means. Cancer and heart disease as caused by modern processed foods, additives, and animal products, is the leading cause of death in America. Period.

Also, veggie burgers are amazing if you can find one of good quality, alot of them taste better than real meat. Vegan bacon is amazing.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
- Bill Hicks

Asmodean

Junk food is not likely to be the first bad habit to kill you.

Cigarettes and radiation cause cancer too, you know. As do a few infections. Big city air is not good for health, neither is running or sitting for long periods of time.

That said, HOW is human body unfit to consume animal products?

Oh, and I thought the leading cause of death in the United States was heart disease..? Or are you implying that every heart disease known - or at least a vast majority - is caused by the causes you describe, disregarding entirely viral, bacterial, genetic, many environmental, many toxicological and nearly all traumatic causes?
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Whitney

Quote from: "ForTheLoveOfAll"The human body is not fit for the consumption of animals, their eggs, or their fluids, even if it CAN consume them, it's not healthy. By any means. Cancer and heart disease as caused by modern processed foods, additives, and animal products, is the leading cause of death in America. Period.

That's a very bold statement considering the lack of conclusive evidence and that generations of people have survived and thrived solely off of animal products (like Eskimos).

There is no reason to be concerned about consuming meat in general...the concern should be overall nutrient consumption and making sure one is not taking in too much of one thing.  

The true number one cause of heart disease, cancer etc in the America is much more reasonably viewed as our high obesity rate....simply not being fat drastically reduces the risk of these killer problems.

So...please don't preach the gospel of veganism to us unless you have some hard proof  :D

Tank

Quote from: "ForTheLoveOfAll"I've been a vegan for a long time now, and as a result, my health both mentally and physically has improved dramatically.

The human body is not fit for the consumption of animals, their eggs, or their fluids, even if it CAN consume them, it's not healthy. By any means. Cancer and heart disease as caused by modern processed foods, additives, and animal products, is the leading cause of death in America. Period.

Also, veggie burgers are amazing if you can find one of good quality, alot of them taste better than real meat. Vegan bacon is amazing.
One point does not a trend make. However it is the case that people can survive on a purely carnivorous diet. The Inuit people exist on such a diet and the interesting thing is that Narwal skin lb:lb has as much vitamin C as Oranges. If this were not the case they would suffer from scurvy. Hindus are all vegetarian and some very strict vegans and they can survive quite happily. Some African tribes survive on milk and cows blood for long periods of time. Human dentition is that of an omnivore, neither exclusively the meat cutting and tearing teeth of the the feline/canine nor the grinding teeth of the cow/elephant. Your personal feelings have no bearing on the facts of human omnivorous evolution, sorry.

As Whitney has pointed out it's the nature of the content of the food that we eat in terms of nutritional value that is important. It is widely acknowledged that the UK population was at it's fittest during rationing during WWII. The diet was balanced in terms of nutrient value and calorific content. Obesity and lack of exercise are the key factors in poor health and these are exacerbated by lifestyle and the availability of cheap high energy foods.

And by the way adding the word 'Period' at the end of a sentence as if it added some kind of authority to the preceding statement makes the user look incredibly immature.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Asmodean

Quote from: "Tank"And by the way adding the word 'Period' at the end of a sentence as if it added some kind of authority to the preceding statement makes the user look incredibly immature.
Not only that, it makes Asmodean near-automatically bash the statement  :P
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Tanker

Quote from: "ForTheLoveOfAll"Also, veggie burgers are amazing if you can find one of good quality, alot of them taste better than real meat. Vegan bacon is amazing.

You know what other kinds of burgers are amazing and easy to find in good quality? Beef Burgers. You know what taste even better then Vegan bacon? Bacon bacon.

In general humans, like all animals, don't eat foods that are inhearently bad for us (overdo anything and it will be bad for you). If a cow were to eat nothing but meat it would get sick and die, likewise if a wolf were to eat nothing but plants it would die. When omnivores like bears, pigs, and humans eat a good mix of plants and animals they are healty. Do people in the western world eat to much meat? Absolutly. Is eating meat in moderation bad for us? No.

What would happen to the vegans of this world if soy were to get a blight and die off? Would your diets be as well rounded as they are now. Why, if we were only evolved to eat plants is there only a single plant on all of Earth that contains all the protiens needed for healty human life? If we were evloved to only eat plants why do wee need these protiens to begin with. Why do we have bacteria in our guts, that could easily kill us, that live symbioticly with us to break down meat instead? Why do we have a near perfect mix of teeth for both and herbivore and a carnivore? Why is our digestive tract also a compramise between a herbivore's and a carnivore's? Haveing a GI tract that compramises isnt as effective for plant digestions as say a ungalates or ruminants GI tract so why would we have one that can and does digest meat if it wasn't supposed to? Did you know other primates eat meat? Did you know our closest cousin in the animal world, the Chimp, actualy hunts for it? Why would a species that has over 99% of our DNA in common waste so much energy on something that was not only bad for it but apearently deadly according to you?

A vegatarian friend of mine was recently given a percription by her doctor. Eat meat. She had been eating soy, and peanutbutter, and nuts, ect but she was sick. So sick she was actually killing herself by not eating meat. She wouldn't admit it was the problem, disagreed with all nay sayers and argued with her doctor, after all she was eating a "proper" vegan diet. So her doctor told her simply eat meat or die. She's still alive wanna guess why?

You're much better off claiming the humanitarian angle then trying to claim meat is bad for you. Medical science disagrees with you (aside from a few nitch researchers). In my personal expierence vegatarians have been weaker and sicker then thier peers with a varied diet so what you say does not add up to me.

Why would meat taste so delicious to so many BILLIONS of people if it was so harmfull? If it was such poisen how is it that people can survive on nothing but meat if they wanted? If I ate nothing but pig I could concievably live a very, very long time. If you ate nothing but carrots you would die fairly quickly.
"I'd rather die the go to heaven" - William Murderface Murderface  Murderface-

I've been in fox holes, I'm still an atheist -Me-

God is a cake, and we all know what the cake is.

(my spelling, grammer, and punctuation suck, I know, but regardless of how much I read they haven't improved much since grade school. It's actually a bit of a family joke.

Davin

Quote from: "Tanker"[...]Why, if we were only evolved to eat plants is there only a single plant on all of Earth that contains all the protiens needed for healty human life? If we were evloved to only eat plants why do wee need these protiens to begin with.[...]
Lentils have a high amount of protein and have been around in their currentish state for about as long as humans have been farming (most likely not long enough for evolution). Nuts are decent backups for protein. So there are several other good sources for protein and pretty much everything else, but I do agree with most everything else.
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Whitney

I've read in more than one place that stuff in soy mimics the estrogen hormone....meaning it could be bad for women to consume it in high quantity.  I'd rather not wait for the research to come in as it's something I can easily avoid on a regular basis; though tofu or something like that from time to time won't hurt me even if lots of soy is bad for women.  I actually prefer some tofu dishes over their meat counterparts....like in asian dinners (though the way real asian chefs prepare tofu is much better than my attempts to far). Moderation is key :)

If I want a veggie burger I prefer the ones made from portabello mushrooms...I've had many types of veggie burgers, none of them are a good meat replacement.  The only thing that comes close as a meat replacement is morning star crumbles which function decently as a meat replacement in a spaghetti meat sauce or in hamburger helper (meaning the have to be drowned in something). They are only 'better' if you are looking for a non-meat flavor.  I compared some frozen boca burgers to some frozen turkey burger patties...nutritionally the turkey burgers won because they weren't loaded with salt.

The Magic Pudding

Quote from: "ForTheLoveOfAll"I've been a vegan for a long time now, and as a result, my health both mentally and physically has improved dramatically.

Well how come you've got blood spattered all over your face?
You're not wasting good meat are you?

Tanker

Quote from: "Davin"
Quote from: "Tanker"[...]Why, if we were only evolved to eat plants is there only a single plant on all of Earth that contains all the protiens needed for healty human life? If we were evloved to only eat plants why do wee need these protiens to begin with.[...]
Lentils have a high amount of protein and have been around in their currentish state for about as long as humans have been farming (most likely not long enough for evolution). Nuts are decent backups for protein. So there are several other good sources for protein and pretty much everything else, but I do agree with most everything else.


Yes there are many plants with SOME of the protiens needed for health, but Soy is the only plant containing all protiens humans need to be healty.
"I'd rather die the go to heaven" - William Murderface Murderface  Murderface-

I've been in fox holes, I'm still an atheist -Me-

God is a cake, and we all know what the cake is.

(my spelling, grammer, and punctuation suck, I know, but regardless of how much I read they haven't improved much since grade school. It's actually a bit of a family joke.