Vegetarianism/veganism.

acid trip.:

Plus, with all the chemicals pumped into the animals these days, it's so incredibly bad for you.

If it was really that bad for you, it wouldn't be passing safety and health standards, and therefore would not be placed on the shelves.
Yes, some meat may have some chemicals etc present, but they have been deemed to have absolutely no effect on humans who consume it, and therefore it's able to be sold.

acid trip.:

But you must open your eyes to the truth. ALL FARMS SLAUGHTER THE ANIMALS.

Well, how else are they meant to get the meat out of them? You can't eat meat from an animal that has died due to illness (otherwise the Mad Cow epidemic wouldn't have been a big deal, we could have all chowed down on all the extra beef that was around due to all these animals up and carking it), and you can't eat meat from an animal that has died from old age (the meat is tough, stringy, and pretty much unfit for human consumption).
I mean, duh all farms slaughter animals. That's how they get them to die in order for us to obtain the meat from them. They're not going to cut little strips off them and stitch them back up, and they're not going to hack up 30-year-old cows who've died of old age and have no meat left on them. It's only logical.

A discussion I like. Let's see. I myself am a vegetarian. I have been for about 3 years now, and I'm proud of it. Yes, I get made fun of, but so what. I don't believe eating meat is wrong and all people should stop, but I prefer not to. It's just me.
And, also, a vegetarian lifestyle may not seem to provide all of the proteins and nutrients that you need to maintain good health, but, in fact, if you are smart
about what you eat as a vegetarian, then it is perfectly healthy. In some ways, it
can be more healthful than eating meat. Yes, chemicals do get injected into animals. Chemicals such as growth hormones and others. And rotting and fecal matter can get into the food. While Cigarettes and Suicide did prove an excellent point, some things slip past at the checking points.
I don't really care if any of you eat meat or not, it's not my desicion. But, I choose not to. That's just the way I am, and nobody can change that and I cannot change any of you. I will step off my soapbox now and let the discussion travel further. Thanks for listening.

I have no problem with people being vegetarian, if that's what they choose to do. What annoys me, is people who choose to become vegetarian for the sake of a moral argument (ie 'The animals don't deserve to be eaten blah blah blah, it's so cruel etc'), without doing any research or actually looking at the facts behind meat production; and people who try to accuse me of being heartless, cruel, uninformed, etc, because I choose to eat meat, and try to force their beliefs upon me... And then they jump down my throat when I share my opinions on the issue and tell them the reasons I choose to eat meat and animal products. I'm like, 'Oh God - how come you're allowed to vilify me for my choices, but get offended when I voice my opinions? What makes you, O Superior One, that much better than me, that you're allowed an opinion and I'm not?'

Essentially, I believe in 'each to his/her own' - if you want to eat meat or not, it's not my business - just don't try and justify your opinions with misguided opinions or the propaganda you've stumbled across/been shown by 'a friend' or whatever. Before making the assumption that I'm a heartless monster by sustaining myself on a diet that has existed since humanity came into existence, check the facts and ensure that the 'facts' you've got aren't simply PETA's or some other animal rights group's way of trying to guilt everybody into setting all the ittle-bittle animals free.

By posting my opinions here, I'm not trying to change anybody's mind. I'm simply trying to broaden people's perspective and share some facts that they may not have come across, or some views that they might have been blinded to by their strong 'moral' stance. Don't get me wrong, if you want to be vegetarian, by all means go right ahead and do so, just don't call me a horrible, unfeeling person who doesn't care about animals because I choose not to do the same as you.

^Agreed.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't really eat that much meat. It has nothing to do with any kind of ethical opinion, I just like vegetables more. And I don't feel guilty when I do eat meat. I'm against animal cruelty, yes, but I'm not going to dedicate my entire life trying to change things (knowing it's a battle I'll lose). I support local farms and I've actually been to a few so I know exactly how things are done there. They care for the animals, but it's a livelihood so you can't really draw too attached to the animals you're about to kill. Cruel, yes, but life sometimes is. Now I know that this'll piss someone off (sorry!), but I have to say I have an enourmous appreciation towards you lot who are trying to save the world. I respect your ideas, but I'm not going to be one to join you. I'm too selfish and lazy for that.

Vegetarianism.
I, myself, am a vegetarian.
But I, unlike most vegetarians, am not an associate with PETA or any other organization nor do I think that it is wrong to eat meat.
I have become a vegetarian for health reasons.

I was diagnosed with Polysystic Ovarian Disease and had to be put on medication and had to have many shots (though I am afraid of needles...oh the irony).
The doctor said that I might be able to stop the injections if I could tweak my diet (some foods have stuff in them that caused it to be worse).
I decided to become a vegetarian because it seemed like a healthier alternative to my original diet.
I no longer have to have injections or take medication.
Becoming a vegetarian helped my body get rid of a lot of toxins and helped to regulate it again.

I am the only vegetarian in my family and I do not try to push my choice of diet onto anyone.
I really don't see why anyone would be a vegetarian/vegan if they aren't one for medical reasons.
It is hard because you no longer can use meat as your source of protein.
I've had a hard time being a vegetarian, but I believe I did the right thing in deciding to be one in the end.

okay, so i'm a vegetarian [dur]
i'm not really new to the whole thing, but i've never really tried any of the websites and stuff on stuff you can eat. i've always wanted to check it out, but i don't know where to start. i'm worried now because although i do eat a buttload[ and I mean a BUTTLOAD] of vegitables and fruits and all the healthy food, i'm not that healthy.
i feel great because I've had these killer stomach pains for 2 years now and no one knew why. About two weeks ago the doctors checked out inside my stomach and i have a small ulcer.
i got the pains when i wasn't a vegetarian. A little more than half a year ago i became a vegetarian.my stomach pains came less often [duh i wasn't eating all the grease]. what i'm trying to say is that i didn't really give much thought to the whole protein thing. than i started eating these soy things and i mean they're good, but i'm not so fond[and sometimes disgusted] with the fact that it isn't organic. i mean i'm not a vegan, but besides milk, i like eating organic stuff.
im result my diet is really bad. i mean i could go 2 days with out eating like nothing. i don't mean to not eat, it's just sometimes i'm busy and i keep hydrated.[fyi i've never gone 2 days wihtout completely eating. i'll have like a salad and that's it rea;;y bad i know]
so because i this ulcer i wanna basically start over and be a vegetarian the healthy and RIGHT/NATURAL way. so if people could please pm me links to sites and i'm wondering about this PETA thing so...
if that could be sent to me too=]

ps
i wanna look into veganism [once i get the vegetarianism down]

^ Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't confess to be an expert on the subject, but as far as I know, eating prganic foods has nothing (or very little) to do with the vegan philosophy... 'organic' foods are simply those that aren't sprayed with chemicals like pesticides etc.

I personally don't care - if I eat fruit or vegetables, I wash them thoroughly and am confident in the knowledge that they wouldn't be on the supermarket shelves if the residual traces were harmful, or if the pesticides etc soaked into the flesh of the fruit/vegetable I'm eating.
Organic foods, in my experience, taste absolutely no different to the regular (and much, much cheaper) produce that's available. In addition to that, several studies have proven that organic produce has no nutritional advantage over regular fruit and vegies, so it makes no difference to me... I eat the sprayed stuff because it's much easier on my wallet.

When you started being vegan you were probably takking more care in your diet, now your not. Just a guess, because meat, veggies and other things shouldn't make much of a difference: it's the way you eat them >_>

Oooo!

Plants Found to Send Nerve-Like Messages
PLANTS, unlike animals, have no nerves, so scientists have been jolted by the discovery this month that the tomato plant uses an electric signal to alert its defense system against grazing caterpillars.

A team of researchers from England and New Zealand reported in the Nov. 5 issue of Nature that when a leaf on a tomato seedling is chewed by insects it sends out electrical warning signals, alerting the rest of the plant to the danger. As undamaged leaves receive the signal, they begin producing defensive chemicals that make them difficult to digest.

"It's a very exciting result," said Dr. Keith Roberts, head of the cell biology department at the John Innes Institute in England and author of the commentary published along with the article. "It's really a conceptual breakthrough to think plants use electrical signals in the same way animals use them in nerve cells. It brings plants a little bit closer to animals."

Dr. David Wildon, a plant physiologist at the University of East Anglia, England, and one of the authors of the new study, said: "Everyone can see now that if you find a system in animals and you look for it in plants, it turns up. The more we look, the more similarities there are."

But the newly discovered signals are not entirely identical to nerve impulses in animals. Unlike animals, plants don't require the very fast nerve signals that allow an animal to escape from its predators or to catch its prey.

"They have all the time in the world," said Dr. Roberts. "And these signals are appropriately slow when compared with a nerve response. At about the same rate it would take half an hour to register that I'd stubbed my toe."

The new finding promises to shake up the field of plant cell communication, where the study of electrical signaling has long been shunned.

Dr. Barbara G. Pickard, professor of biology at Washington University and one of the few biologists studying electrical signaling in plants, said: "There's a great abyss in our understanding of these signals. But I believe this is all going to open up now. The electrical stuff is undoubtedly going to break and break big and lots of plants are going to be found to use electrical signaling."

Researchers say that most serious scientists turned away from the study of electrical signaling in plants because they found results could be difficult or impossible to reproduce. And to make matters worse, a spate of popular writing began tearing down the respectability of the field by associating electrical signaling with extrasensory perception and emotions in plants.

According to Dr. Wildon, "The field procured a sort of bad odor, and so it became a backwater."

Things got so bad that even by suggesting that an electrical message could be an important signal in plant cell communication a scientist could open himself to ridicule.

"Plant electrophysiology was squelched," said Dr. Pickard. "It was reduced to the level of spoon bending." According to Dr. Eric Davies, professor of biology at the University of Nebraska, electrical signaling in plants "became to botany what astrology is to astronomy."

Plant researchers became enamored instead with chemical messengers, or hormones. And though many of the hormones assumed to run the lives of plants continued to elude the best efforts of scientists trying to isolate them, researchers continued to ignore the possibility of electrical signaling. Some of these postulated hormones, including florigen, a chemical hypothesized to induce flowering, have been sought in vain for decades.

The tomato's defensive warning signal has proved equally elusive.

Twenty years ago Dr. Clarence Ryan, a molecular biologist at Washington State University and a leader in the study of plant defenses, showed, along with colleagues, that a tomato's defensive molecules, known as proteinase inhibitors, could be turned on by an insect chewing on a distant leaf. Researchers have since shown that when an insect eats these proteinase inhibitors, the defensive chemicals act by gumming up the insect's digestive enzymes, making it difficult or impossible for it to get the nutrition that it needs. Mysterious Warning Signal
While researchers learned a great deal about the many molecules associated with the production of a leaf's proteinase inhibitors, the nature of the initial warning signal that was traveling from leaf to leaf remained mysterious.

In this newest study, researchers showed that in every case that an electrical signal was allowed to pass out from a damaged leaf, leaves in other parts of the plant would begin producing defense molecules. When the electrical signal was blocked, no defense molecules were produced.

When the movement of hormones was blocked, however, the plant's defense mechanisms were unaffected.

Dr. Davies said the new study "is incredibly exciting work, as it opens up whole new possible explanations for many things which people have had no explanation for at all."

"People have been trying to force a hormones explanation on everything," he added, "but other people have begun finding as I have that you simply cannot use hormones to explain everything."

Curiously, carnivorous plants like venus flytraps and touch-sensitive plants have long been known to use electrical signals to quickly close or drop their leaves.

According to Dr. Davies, these dramatic behaviors should have suggested to botanists that plants were likely to be hotbeds of electrical activity.

"You either have to say electrical signal mechanisms arose out of nothing in 10 totally different kinds of plants," said Dr. Davies, "or that these are just obvious outward manifestations of a signaling system that all plants have. It's much more likely all plants have these systems and it's only rarely that they tie them to obviously massive responses like shifting their leaves." The Hydra Example

Researchers still don't know exactly which plant cells are propagating the electrical signal, also known as an action potential, or how the wounding actually turns the electrical messaging on. But they suggest that the signaling in tomatoes is probably most akin to the non-nerve signaling found in lower animals, like jellyfish and hydra.

These animals send electrical signals through non-nerve tissues, propagating the message from cell to cell using channels in their membranes known as gap junctions. Researchers suggest that plant cells may be making use of similar channels known as plasmodesmata, which connect their membranes. While structurally the two kinds of channels are quite different, plasmodesmata are now being found to function similarly to gap junctions, with electrical signaling just the latest in the list of possible shared functions.

According to Dr. David Spray, professor of neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the importance of electrical signaling through non-nerve cells has been ignored in animals, as it has in plants. But because most animal and plant cells are connected to one another via these channels, he suggested that this sort of signaling could turn out to be very important.

Researchers interested in electrical signaling say they hope that the remarkable new finding may encourage other scientists to explore the field that has now been opened.
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terminal condition.:

It's so silly how the whole vegan thing has become a trendy myspace brag. Sorry but, meat is delicious. According to some of the more adamant vegans, I guess I'm a fat terrible slob who'll drop dead at age 45, but oh well. PETA = People Eating Tasty Animals. Jk, jk.

I'm not saying all vegans are like that, of course, but I'm seeing an increase in really stuck up "scene" pricks who try to make you feel bad for eating meat. YAWN.

It's unfair to call Vegan's a myspace "brag." or a "scene" thing.
Actually, I think that the more people who get into it, the better. So what if in the beginning they do it because it's the cool thing to do? It's scientifically proven to be better for you. The more people who drop meat, the healthier our world can be, AND more animals are saved.
I am not one, but I have looked into it seriously. I've seen several articles saying that not only does dropping meat save animals and help your health, it also has a huge impact on the environment.
So why exactly complain?

You know, not everything is a fad or a trend. I've seen several topics where you brush it off as one, and that's REALLY unfair. This is a way of life for some people. How can you make fun of them or diss them for it?

ONCE AGAIN, a meat diet is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN to be just as healthy as a vegan diet.

That being said, the only thing that makes some vegsna healthier is the fact that they are actually FOLLOWING a diet, where as many people who eat meat are NOT calculating their meals and just goarge.

You know what *would* make us a little healthier? Less fried foods and sugar products.

But I myself know many unhealthy vegans, and very healthy meat eaters. It's a all a matter of how you manage your diet.

Veggies don't clog your arteries.
Meat can.
That's all I'm saying.


Sorry for not explaining. My fault.

I would assume that dropping meat, or having ot cooked in a certain way would make a healthier diet.

I do have a question though, and this might have already been answered, if a parent or gaurdian is a vegetarian and has a child, can they raise it on vegetables or do they have to give it meat? I realize that protein can be found in other sources, but with children, I wouldn't want to take the risk?

I'm vegan.I have been for the last 5 years.
I dont have a problem with other people eating meat,and its not like Im going to not talk to you if your not vegan.
I think people should be able to live the way they want.
Im vegan because i find it disgusting how we demand murder on a daily basis.Animal Cruelty is wrong.Animals feel when you hurt them and they do cry,and they way people treat animals is wrong.
I know its not possible for everyone to be a vegan,if they were that would be amazing.
But I find it disgusting what people do to animals.
Its not right.Humans are not better than animals.
Why do we have the right to kill and eat animals?
We dont.
Its disgusting.Your eating flesh,your eating murder.
And if everyone would watch the videos of what they do to animals in slaughter farms,I think more people would go vegan or vegetarian.

Alot of people think its hard being vegan,but its really not.There is fake meat,fake cheese,fake ice cream,fake anything.So vegans can eat anything you eat without feeling guitly.

I'm not trying to be all preachy here.
But animal cruelty is wrong.

jocee;Fuck:

I would assume that dropping meat, or having ot cooked in a certain way would make a healthier diet.

I do have a question though, and this might have already been answered, if a parent or gaurdian is a vegetarian and has a child, can they raise it on vegetables or do they have to give it meat? I realize that protein can be found in other sources, but with children, I wouldn't want to take the risk?

As long as you're making sure your child is getting adequate nutrition, you can raise him or her as a vegetarian or vegan. Obviously there are cases where it goes wrong, but that's not the fault of the vegan philosophy, just stupidity in the parents themselves. I have four cousins who were raised as vegetarians in a household where the father was a vegetarian but the mother was not--none of them have ever eaten meat, and all have perfectly fine bills of health.

Dimestore Saint;;:

jocee;Fuck:

I would assume that dropping meat, or having ot cooked in a certain way would make a healthier diet.

I do have a question though, and this might have already been answered, if a parent or gaurdian is a vegetarian and has a child, can they raise it on vegetables or do they have to give it meat? I realize that protein can be found in other sources, but with children, I wouldn't want to take the risk?

As long as you're making sure your child is getting adequate nutrition, you can raise him or her as a vegetarian or vegan. Obviously there are cases where it goes wrong, but that's not the fault of the vegan philosophy, just stupidity in the parents themselves. I have four cousins who were raised as vegetarians in a household where the father was a vegetarian but the mother was not--none of them have ever eaten meat, and all have perfectly fine bills of health.

Oh, ok.
I vaguely remembering hearing about a case where the kid died from malnutrition. That's why I asked.

Another question...sorry.
Is it hard to switch from meat to vegan? I've always wanted to and now that I finally have the chance, I want to do it and not mess up and go back to meat? Are there cravings and such? Or is that just of you don't get the protein?