Vegetarianism/veganism.

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Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026	August 3rd, 2007 at 11:55pm As cheesy as this sounds, everyone's different as far as cravings go. I know people who've been able to become completely vegan overnight and just give up meat, dairy etc. Personally it took me a month to cut out all meat products and then a year later eight months to take out the rest of the animal products in my diet, and I got cravings for a while but they went away. You do have to watch protein, iron, vitamin b12, etc. at first, but once you get accquainted with the diet and lifestyle, it becomes routine. You can take vitamins to be safe, just be sure the sources of nutrients are all animal-free and that there's no gelatin or anything in the tablets.
Stripey-Stripes. Motor Baby Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 804	August 4th, 2007 at 12:05am Ok! Thanks, this is something that I've been wanting to do, I just don't know how to get started...
conor oberst. Bleeding on the Floor Age: 30 Gender: Male Posts: 1797	August 4th, 2007 at 01:24am I admire vegetarians (vegans, not so much coz' it's a little weird.) I tried going vegetarian it only lasted about a month coz I missed bacon
The Nightbeast. Salute You in Your Grave Age: 31 Gender: Female Posts: 2696	August 4th, 2007 at 01:30am potatoesatemybabies: I admire vegetarians (vegans, not so much coz' it's a little weird.) I tried going vegetarian it only lasted about a month coz I missed bacon How are vegans weird?
pipa Jazz Hands Age: 41 Gender: Female Posts: 326	August 4th, 2007 at 04:14am LoversHeartDisease: 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. I agree with the last part. Just because you're vegan that doesn't automatically make you a healthier person. But please don't state it as a fact, that a meat diet is as healthy as vegan diet. There are many scientific researches that say that vegan or vegetarian diet is much healthier. And I'm sure there are as many studies that say the opposite. Some are more reliable than others. You have to be very critical when reading different researches. At the end of the day it's up to all of us to make up our own minds. And respect other people's opinions. I've been vegetarian for twelve years and vegan now for over a year. Most of my friends eat meat. I don't mind. That's up to them. We talk about it like we talk about everything else. For me it's more of an ethical decision not to consume animal products than an health issue, so what I'm trying to tell my friends is to find out where their food is coming from and try to avoid companies that exploit animals. So educate yourself, but be careful when reading different information. Not everything you read is true. You have to just take everything in and then make your own choices. There's no excuse to be ignorant. Sorry if this seems to be a rant to LoversHeartDisease. Didn't meant it to be. I really don't think that people who eat meat are ignorant, but there are a lot of bad things happening in this world and many ways to make a difference.
DIE! DIE! DIE! Bleeding on the Floor Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 1067	August 4th, 2007 at 05:23am xburymeinblackxmcr: 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. Ok I agree Now lets force every animal that eats meat to STOP, because its cruel and terrible ANY animal can survive on a vegan diet (some people force dogs on a vegan diet for example), so lets all be "compassionate", animals included. No, meat consumption is just another fact if life. It's in no way cruel. Im against animals abuse, I love animals, but It's wrong to pose a moral argument against eating meat. Theres a difference between "Its makes me uncomfortable" and "IT'S PLAIN WRONG". What you mean is that it makes you uncomfortable, because it's definately not wrong. Not when our own body is designed for it. Pipa, there have been masstive books written about how meat diets are just as healthy as vegan diets back when it was a popular one to follow. Lots of positive preaching about the vegan diet came out of the Animal Rights Movement, so I wouldn't be talking. (same here about ranting BTW, everything I say just comes out badly). Many MANY of the vegans I know are low energy and sickly. It's not perfect. Like the meat diet..like any diet, it's all about how you follow it. I agree though, it's really up to us to decide the right diet for us, I just despise when people say "vegan diets are better for you", because they are not. no diet really is. That's the problem with diets and being selective..you need to work at all of them to make them work or they totally backfire on you. That's why im glad I have a high metabolism. I just eat for now.
Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026	August 4th, 2007 at 06:24am No, not any animal can subsist on a plants-only diet--only omnivores and herbivores. Dogs are omnivores, so they can survive healthily as vegetarians. Cats, for instance, are carnivores, and cannot. Just for clarification, omnivores can eat at any level of the food chain or any combination thereof, and humans are omnivores. As for what our bodies are designed for--I seriously doubt that all of your morals are dictated by evolution, nor should they be.
DIE! DIE! DIE! Bleeding on the Floor Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 1067	August 4th, 2007 at 06:55am Given that meat is what really progressed our evolution, giving us morals, I would say it means a whole lot. Foley & Lee (1991), and Gibons (199 have argued that the change in cranial capacity during the course of hominid evolution required dietary and developmental strategies that would sustain the cost of a large brain. Milton (1993) discusses the behavioural and physiological adaptations concerned with plant-eating, fruit-eating and meat-eating diets. The latter two diets require the development of mental skills such as memory for food locations and increased social co-operation for hunting and food sharing. The Australopithecine?s (judging by the size of their dentition) were herbivores and small brained. As the early hominids moved from plant eating to fruit and meat eating their teeth became smaller and the brains increased in size. Comparative brain size is closely related to diet with leaf-eaters (folivores) having smaller brains with proportionally less neocortex in relation to body size than frugivores (fruit eaters). The guts of chimpanzees and gorillas are optimised for fruit eating and leaf eating respectively, the human gut is optimised for high energy diets (principally derived from eating meat). "Hibbeln (199 pointed out that Palaeolithic nutrition was probably low in saturated fats and high in polyunsaturated fats (the reverse is true today). Therefore, our ancestors consumed more omega-3 fatty acids (arachidonic acid, docosahexaenoic acid) and these are the major determinants of synaptic membrane fluidity. Hibbeln proposed that the move from being vegetarian and scavenging for meat to eating fish (rich in these fatty acids) promoted the sudden burst in intellectual/technological/cultural achievement about 35,000 years ago. Prior to that our ancestors (who had larger brains) had achieved relatively little." Ripped from a website discussing evolution and the factors pertaining. You can find many more websites with the same information (and I don't know about you, but I was taught that in school as well)
Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026	August 4th, 2007 at 07:21am Actually I know all of that, it was discussed in a book I read by Daniel Quinn. Doesn't really make a difference at this point. If your reasoning for eating meat is that it's what caused us to progress as humans, then you should agree that we should also obtain all of our food as our ancestors did, which we don't. Some people do hunt, but aside from a few civilizations, very few are still hunter-gatherers. In this day and age, eating meat doesn't have anything more to do with "memory for food locations and increased social co-operation for hunting and food sharing" than eating plants does. What was relevant to our development as a species thousands of years ago isn't relevant anymore.
DIE! DIE! DIE! Bleeding on the Floor Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 1067	August 4th, 2007 at 07:28am My reason for eating meat is it is amazingly yummy. but when arguing against people who are so dead set on the fact that "meat is murder", and other such ideas, I like to say "No, it's natural. it's normal. It created us". vegan diets are fixed diets that need to be kept as such to make a healthy human being. If a vegan just chowed down on fruits and veggies mindlessly, they would probably become very sickly or die. I have seen it (it's hilarious) Most americans mindlessly chow down on meat & etc, and they are fine/or retard over eating ones can be obease. Clearly we were meant to eat what we eat. We evolved to do so. Yadda yadda yadda Point is, it's not the evolution that makes me eat meat. it's just my defense against people with their noses in the air saying that the track we have been down for thousands of years is somehow totally immoral. Like I said in a previous post, theres a difference between "makes you feel bad", and "immoral and evil".
Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026	August 4th, 2007 at 07:33am Regardless of your personal reasoning, your argument is flawed because "natural" and "moral" are not synonomous.
DIE! DIE! DIE! Bleeding on the Floor Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 1067	August 4th, 2007 at 07:49am But they can intertwine. Once again, using dogs as an example. Should we accuse them of being immoral and feed them "vegan dog food"? *And dogs are supposobly concidered carnivores If you want, I can use cats too, since you are sure they are carnivores http://www.vegancats.com/ Vegan cat food. Let's do it. Doesn't the notion seem silly to you at all? That's why I can see morality not being much of a factor in what we eat. It's our food. It's what we are meant to consume, even if you don't want to. Im pretty sure you still have no idea of where I am coming from.
Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026	August 4th, 2007 at 08:02am I know exactly where you're coming from, which is why this is frustrating. While we are biologically animals, most humans value themselves as having something other animals do not. Generally this is moral thought, which is one of the vital developments in our evolution that you correctly attribute to learning how to hunt--hunting required communication, communication led to society as it is today. So why do people who would otherwise value themselves as more intelligent and moral than other animals revert to comparing our species to theres as far as diet is concerned? I'm sure you don't look to your dog or cat for your standards of behavior on a regular basis, because that's a rather silly notion indeed. We're not dogs, or cats, or alligators, or polar bears, we're people. The question of whether or not it's okay to eat them regards whether or not they can feel pain as we do, and they can. The question you're raising--of whether we should hold ourselves to their standards of behavior--regards whether or not they can think as we do, and they can't. Furthermore, I'm sure that site would be scoffed at by any meat eater who saw a vegan present it in defense of feeding his or her cat only vegetable matter. Just because someone can make a website doesn't make it reliable. But assuming it is--I don't see it as being much sillier than keeping pets in one's home and feeding them processed kibbles and bits or whatever rather than what they would have eaten in the wild.
DIE! DIE! DIE! Bleeding on the Floor Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 1067	August 4th, 2007 at 08:17am then here is a few(to make it more reliable) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=vegan+cat+food&btnG=Google+Search We are more evolved then animals, but we are still animals arn't we. Did you know that what humans call the emotion anger is the only primal "emotion" that we have, that is linked back to primal agression? Given that we are animals with power conciouses (although when you think about it, dolphins and other animals have been known to save human beings in peril..isn't that morality on their part as well?) does that mean we are supposed to exclude ourselves from the food chain? I think it's perfectly fair to compare our diets to other animals...because thats what we are. Yes, our conciousness is higher then theirs, but we are not totally above other animals on those terms either. slightly off topic. The verdit is , "damn shame roll your eyes, but food isn't a moral subject, its food, and we (or a handful of us) are the only creatures that think they are too good for natural consumption of it. comparing our eating to other animals is me saying "since we are all powerful and eating meat is clearly immoral, we should clearly make sure all animals learn this as well and keep them off meat. Let's keep that morality flowing, because whether its a human or a cat eating a chicken, ITS WRONG".
Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026	August 4th, 2007 at 08:28am We already are excluded from the food chain, we've created our own. Agriculture, farming, gardening--none of that has anything to do with a natural food chain, at all. We excluded ourselves from the food chain ten thousand years ago because we don't compete the same way other animals do. If you do anything but hunt or gather, you're not a part of the food chain because you're controlling the production of food outside of it. Whether veganism is natural or not is completely irrelevant because the things you eat aren't natural either. By raising animals for the slaughter rather than hunting them, by planting food rather than gathering it where it grows naturally, by manufacturing food, you are also saying you're too good for the food chain.
skystiles. Banned Age: - Gender: - Posts: 13229	August 4th, 2007 at 09:13pm jocee;Spam Queen: 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? Unfortunately, many people do turn it into trend. I know a good number of people who go "vegan" for a few weeks and quickly go tired of it. I'm acquainted with many more people who go vegan because Matthew Lush says it's the right thing to do. And the worst part of it is...they still eat meat and animal products. Or they're like, "yeah, well, I just couldn't take it. It's too hard." I said that not all, not even most vegans are like that. Only a very small minority. But it is an upcoming trend. I've seen too many friends, acquaintances, even strangers go the vegan route because it's the "scene" thing to do. If that's the way they want to go, so be it. But when they try to push it others or make them feel for not choosing to practice that lifestyle, that's where I take issue. Where do eight year old girls suddenly get the idea in their heads that "I'm gonna go vegan!!" I'm not insulting veganism, but it has become the trendy thing to do. That's just how the culture works, it will always take certain practices, mainstream them, and commercialize them. Then, people who aren't really serious about committing to such a cause will latch on to it for a while, and eventually grow tired of it. That's sad. It's a fine lifestyle if you truly want it, but it has become trendy and I don't want it pushed it on me. Eating meat is a natural part of the food chain and keeps the ecosystems in order by reducing pollution. Animals eat animals, that's just the way it is. Humans are animals and we're just fortunate enough to be at the very top of the food chain. Yay. And I dismiss things as trends because they are trends. Some trends I find much more annoying than others, so some trends will recieve more disdain from me than others.
skystiles. Banned Age: - Gender: - Posts: 13229	August 4th, 2007 at 09:30pm Dimestore Saint;;: We already are excluded from the food chain, we've created our own. Agriculture, farming, gardening--none of that has anything to do with a natural food chain, at all. We excluded ourselves from the food chain ten thousand years ago because we don't compete the same way other animals do. If you do anything but hunt or gather, you're not a part of the food chain because you're controlling the production of food outside of it. Whether veganism is natural or not is completely irrelevant because the things you eat aren't natural either. By raising animals for the slaughter rather than hunting them, by planting food rather than gathering it where it grows naturally, by manufacturing food, you are also saying you're too good for the food chain. Yes, we have. But it's contributed to increased pollution and enviornmental damage. When we were using simple, non-mechanized farming methods starting from the Neolithic Revolution down to the Industrial Revolution, our enviornmental impact was minimal. But the increase of technology in the agricultural field and every other aspect of life has exponentially increased our enviornmental impact. In other words, the more unnatural humans become, the more damage we do to the environment.
Stripey-Stripes. Motor Baby Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 804	August 4th, 2007 at 10:50pm ^^ I agree with streaks in the sky. Meat eating does harm the environment, it's not just harmful to the animals that are slaughtered. And I don't think that we can argue the dog-goes-vegan argument. Humans have the ability to say "that's wrong", and then change their lifestyle. Dogs don't. They just do whatever is natural to them. I think it's horrible to force an animal to be a vegan. Especially a dog, it goes against the grain. It's different with humans, we're not just a bundle of nerves and instict, we've evolved into something more.
zommbieee. Killjoy Age: 31 Gender: Female Posts: 6	August 5th, 2007 at 04:09am I haven't really read up alot on this topic, but I thought I'd throw in what I have, because I am a vegetarian and stuff. Alirght, people go vegan or vegitarian for various reasons. Some people do it because of the cruelty that is sometimes involved with killing the animals. I, personally, think that eating something that was once living and breathing like myself, is revolting. I also think that meat tastes terrible, and I don't want to eat something that is going to taste bad, y'know? I just thought I'd let you all know about the vegans and vegetarians that arent crazy hippy activists. Those reasons are probably the most common amongst my friends and all the people I've talked to. And by saying Crazy Hippy Activists, I don't mean to offend anyone. I respect all of the animal rights activist out there. END BABBLE.
conor oberst. Bleeding on the Floor Age: 30 Gender: Male Posts: 1797	August 5th, 2007 at 06:46am Land Shark: potatoesatemybabies: I admire vegetarians (vegans, not so much coz' it's a little weird.) I tried going vegetarian it only lasted about a month coz I missed bacon How are vegans weird? Well not so much weird as (my opinion) incredibly diciplined, I mean OMG no chocolate!!!!!!!!!

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