The mistakes vegans make?

Posts: 8246

Some observations I've made:

omnivores

Don't take this as an attack on veganism: Take it as a wake up call.

I understand a lot of vegans are vegan simply because of the nature of the meat industry. Is raising your own goats, lambs, etc bad? (they make for good lawn mowers too).

I'm genuinely curious about why people are vegan and so vocal about it.

I personally eat very little meat (mostly fish).

Last edited by madthumbs on Mon Jan 01, 2007 1:35 pm; edited 1 time in total

Posts: 91

Just for the record , i'm not too strict in my diet,
I don't eat meat at all anymore [chicken beef pork wild gain none of that]
but i do eat fish at times.I Don't drink milk ..never liked it anyway
I eat cheese and eggs , but i buy the pricier varieties,
in general i don't use a lot of dairy products.
I believe diversity and quality will do a lot to keep one
healthy, good food is not expensive by definition, but it requires
some extra time money and effort as to loading up at the supermarket.
I eat out about 3 times a week cook 3 and forget the last,
there's a lot of excellent organic cooking take-aways around my way.

You make a good point Madthumbs,
the few proud vegan folks i knew where usually pretty vocal and confrontational,
not nescessarilly a bad habit in any way. Laughing

it can help to get people thinking.
I feel strongly that we all make concessions, and the idea of not killing is a noble one
but when threatened in survival,
that idea instantly flees the mind of a hungry man presented a fat chicken and a knife.
I'd eat the chicken, probably even if there where also bananas and berries,
if you are very strict in not touching anything with any part
of any animal in it,..you are going to have to change
a lot of patterns in your consumption, that you don't know at first.
Thinking about the manner in which animals are bred for consumption
and "modified" and sexual intercourse with for other purposes by the industrial maccination makes me ill,
thouroughly sick and incredibly sad when dwelled on to long.
People who hunt for sports, i don't have much appreciation for their choice of entertainment.
People who wear fur coasts , must still have the empathy level of cavemen/women IMHO.
I don't like those things mostly because i think they are absolutely unnescessary,
and it exhumes an air of phoney status at the expense of authentically joyfull fellow creatures,
who themselves don't murder for fun or parade around in human flaeshjeans.
Yet my belt and shoes are made of leather and i've crushed an ant now and then,
we are all "hypocrits" somewhere when we pretend to do all good and not give in here or there..
i guess my point is :deal with it contiously on many levels and you will find
what is "right" for you...the intent and reason for resisting
[part of] everything they feed to you is more import than a
dogmatic inforcement of your "rules".
make the rules a good set of guidelines, and stay focussed..

Peace
Standvast.

Last edited by Standvast on Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:34 pm; edited 2 times in total

Posts: 108

Wearing fur as a fashion statement is lame I think, but you cannot begrudge the Inuit and Laplanders for wearing fur Razz

Most people who hunt, don't do it just for sport. They do it as a practice of survivalism, and actually eat the creatures they kill. Trophy hunters are usually wealthy yuppie types who hire guides to take them hunting. They are soft little urban pussies trying to act tough. They are the minority. Wink

I don't eat much meat, and I definately aviod beef, chicken and pork, although its mostly out of common sense more than anything. I don't think eating meat in its self is cruel, but supporting cruel farming practices, by buying meat from such places is cruel. Fish at least have a chance. Wink

Posts: 91

	Quote:
	but you cannot begrudge the Inuit and Laplanders for wearing fur

hehe point taken, and i don't , because it fits in their natural
habitat and their manner of totally using everything of the animal,
makes it a lot more natural.
I was talking about the dead-fox-wearing-promenade-parading
i'd-love-a-pink-chinchilla-coat-to match-my-mink-pimp-hat-with-a-feather type people. Wink

Most people will hardly consider where the clothes they buy
come from [slave-labor-wage-workers of China,India,Indonesia] when dealing
with brands like Nike,Fila H&M for example. Most Big brand label names,
have their products produced by the neediest people for the littlest of cash.
This would be another thing to IMO consider,
whenever you think of purchasing something:
The low quality of most large scale manufactured products,
makes there durabillity / estimated life-span short,...after which they will
require to be replaced again.,..the companies that sell you for
instance audio/video equipment KNOW this very well.
for example.
So consider paying 2 or 3 times as much for an amplifier
that lasts 30/40 years and can be repaired with replacable parts if it breaks,
opposed to buying 3-4 middle-price range japanese ones, that all
give up the ghost within 8-10 years
[i've murdered about 14 sony walkmans and even more headphones and
i'm only 27 Neutral

, shouldn't one slightly more costly walkman
and headset be able too last me 12-15 years at least?
[I've had those too [pricey ones] and they break just as easy,..with the little in -ear
headphones [i must have had at least 14, with 12 or so the
left side speaker was dead within a year; it's manafactured as disposable.

The same goes for any technical appliances , and thinking about
their added value/price comparisson often keeps me from buying,
or at least makes me ponder whether it's a worthy investment.

Peace'
Standvast.

Posts: 10

Why am I "Vegan"?

Besides the obvious reasons, health (If you want me to go into that more in detail, I can), astonishing and unrelentless cruelty (I won't get into all of the accounts, unless you want me too), abuse of power (agribuisiness), disrespectfulness (the way it's done), specieism (placing value on life), unecessary environmental (land, water, food) waste etc etc.

Noone should be taking life for anyone else, it is not respectful to the animal and it severely disconnects us from death. Since many of us do not take responsibility in taking a life when we need it, we do not look into its eyes when it is passing, we cannot thank this life for helping us to continue ours. We begin to value our lives over the lives of others because of this disconnection.

We take take take and do not give any of our life energy back to the earth... it is a horrible tragedy if a human is eaten by a crocidile. Why? Because we forget that we are also FOOD... again, we are disconnected from what death actually means.

It breeds hierarchical outlooks, contributes to the abuse and upholding of power, and fosters further dependance on a Culture I do not fully agree with.

Last but not least... I do not need meat to survive at this point in time, and if I did, I would make sure to take it with all due respect.

Unfortunately, I also take the life of plants everyday (many not by my hands), I wish I could pay my respects to all of them, though it is a systemic problem... and until it's solved, I need to eat something Smile

I try my best to understand and practice spherical compassion.

Posts: 8246

On the argument of health...

My young niece was influenced to become vegetarian. She has emotional mental problems, and is small for her age.
The vegans I know in real life also seem a bit mentally and physically unhealthy.

Since I'm not won over on the health side of it, could someone provide some evidence of it being healthier?

I agree that we should be raising our own food! It's one thing they have over us is our dependence on them for necessities like food.

Posts: 10

I agree, there are some "Vegans" who are poor examples of health. It really does take a long time to understand which foods and vitamins you need and how to get them.

Meat, eggs, and dairy (also overcooked and processed foods, coffee, alcohol, flours and sweeter fruits) leave Acid wastes in our bodies, they are very hard for the blood and lymph system to eliminate and they are stored in our tissues and organs as solids, the more we store, the more acidic our tissues and organs become.

When an organism dies, it's body changes to a very acidic environment and is consumed by microbes.

When we have higher levels of acidity in our tissue and organs... microbes begin to attack our bodies (because they think that part of us is ready to be broken down, they think we are dying).

All human diseases are a result if these microbial attacks.
eg: stroke, arthritis, AIDS and Cancer etc etc etc.

Most raw fruits and vegetables are alkaline, their nutrients are easily absorbed by the blood. Healthy food creates healthy blood cells that fight and prevent disease.

I'm a firm believer that most all diseases can be prevented just by eating the right food... I haven't gotten sick since I've learned how to eat well... and I have much more energy.

It's very important for your niece to make sure she gets enough iron. It is the main cause of sickness in meatless diets and is very important especially for women as we need (15mg) per day and men need (12mg).

The type of iron that you would get from meat is digested differently than the iron you would get from brocolli, spinach, tofu, beans or raisins. Vitamin C is needed to help absorb the iron. So make sure you tell your niece to have an orange or grapefruit with her meals.

You can tell if she is iron deficient by rubbing a gold ring across her forehead... the level of deficiency would depend if a dark streak appears in place and how apparent (dark) it is.

Vitamin B12 can only be derived from meat and dirt.... so unless you don't wash your mushrooms Smile

, try using fortified rice milk in cereal. (Vanilla Rice Dream is pretty good)

Hope that helps a bit.

Posts: 37

	madthumbs wrote:
	Some observations I've made: Vegans tend to point out the digestive differences between herbivores and carnivores. Humans, rats and dogs are omnivores. Vegans tend to tout their lifestyle as healthier; so is there a logical reason they're more prone to candida infections and B-12 deficiency? ...I'm genuinely curious about why people are vegan and so vocal about it.

Indeed, I wonder about the whole vegetarian and/or vegan movement... On the one hand, they tout health reasons, ...but then that very same person, more often than not (at least from my observations), will take solace in buying non-organic and/or non-local vegetarian/vegan products, so long as it has no meat and/or dairy. This is a great tragedy because all of the toxic chemicals that flourish throughout the environment, including from modern day industrial agricultural monocrops, eventually work their way up the food chain, bioaccumulating in higher prey thousands/millions of times more than in smaller earth inhabitants.

Also, another set of factors to take into account is the fact that many monocrops, especially in many foreign countries, use large amounts of human & animal waste... Slathering on a toxic mixture of animal waste & sewage sludge... Sewage sludge includes anything that is flushed, poured, or dumped into a nation's wastewater system; a vast, toxic mix of wastes collected from countless sources, from homes to chemical industries to hospitals. The sludge being spread on our crop fields is a dangerous stew of heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive material.... As far as controlled comparisons of people's health status between vegetarian/vegan & omnivore diets; ignoring these kinds of issues will greatly eradicate any form of control within scientific comparisons... "candida infections & b12 deficiency," who knows what causes anything anymore, lol... I mean, ...we have plutonium-238 exploding over our heads, getting distributed globally. We have the antibacterial substance, Triclosan, going into the municipal water supply system, getting converted into chloroform everytime it mixes with chlorine. I could go on and on for hours, there are way too many variables nowadays, it'd be hard to do any scientific evaluations between vegetarians & omnivores...

Another side of the issue is the factory farms; ...they tout that the conditions in factory farms are incredibly brutish, debilitating, and hopeless; which is true... but then that very same person might end up buying a banana that was harvested by human slaves. It's easy to make direct comparisons between the business model of factory farms, and the business model of human slavery; they both are inherently despotic manifestations from modern day capitalism, and are both entirely founded upon the monetary value of life that's constantly being dimished every time some business representative tries to cut corners in order to reduce product prices to compete and one-up the competition(s).

Based on this very same exact model that drives many people to become a vegan, should also drive people to not want to buy Chiquita banana! However, ...I have trouble finding people that truly care about their own actual moral foundation... They themselves, ...often apply the same business model, that spawns factory farming & human slaves harvesting our food, to their own moral structure; cutting corners & obfuscating information from the psyche, so as not to be morally disturbed & distraught, conjuring up all sorts of justifications & oversimplifications.

...What we need is another movement... In 1944, when Elsie Shrigley & Donald Watson were frustrated with the term "vegetarianism," they took a step back and looked at the larger picture, and realized there were cracks and fissures in the philosophical basis, ...so they came up with a new name, "vegan," to exclude the eating of dairy products, since factory farmed dairy is often from the same animals that produce factory farmed meat; thus funding the exact same business model; which later led to the UK Vegan Society...

...I believe we're at another one of those crossroads, where actual moral beings need to take a step back & look at the world around them, and closely compare it with their own moral structure... Everyone from the vegans who buy Chiquita bananas, to the anti-abortionists who would risk aborting the entire future civilization of planet earth, just to drive their CO2 producing vehicle to a protest to hold up a sign saying abortionists are baby killers... What part of boiling oceans & melting babies don't you get about global climate change...? lol... There's something particuarly ironic about an activist who drives an oil-powered vehicle to a protest, just to hold up a sign saying "no blood for oil."

Tell me, ...how many vegans today buy sweatshop clothing? ...or let me rephrase that, ...every vegetarian/vegan that doesn't know or understand what fair-trade and/or union-made means, raise your hand. Let's take it one step further; ...every vegetarian/vegan that doesn't place fair-trade and/or union-made and/or similar models, at the same moral level in the core of their being, raise your hand. If you noticed a hesitation, then you should be aware that certain moral values you hold dear, may very well be supressed within yourself... You may even be aware of this, but you may be doing the same thing that modern day capitalism has been doing, ...cutting corners and externalizing everything else, no matter what; ...think about it...

Posts: 10

Some actions we do would be considered to be less than adequate or hard to avoid because our choices are limited and our poor choices reflect a systemic problem.

Most "Vegans" have to eat, drive, work and make money to survive etc. Unfortunately it is how this Culture revolves. Eg: Organic is much more expensive.... sometimes people have to choose to buy inorganic to pay rent, or so they can afford to buy fairtrade coffee etc.

A Vegan way of life is not cheaply supported because it isn't mass produced "yet"... unlike the meat diet.

I would have to say that most "Vegans" have a solid understanding of the consequences of their actions and what types of things contribute to oppression of all kinds. They would have too... judging by the empathy that is expressed by most Vegan people. If they don't know it all yet.... I'm sure they would be trying to learn all they can.... it's not like you can just snap you're fingers and know everything. And some people do it to be a part of a click or they just don't like the taste of meat.... not all people are the SAME! You can't validly lump all Vegans into the same category and think that they all feel the same or have the same level of knowlegde or understanding.

It takes a long time to understand all of our consequences.
There's no "Vegan school".

May I ask.... if you knew most of all the worldy health and oppressive issues, and all the negative consequences to the choices you make everyday... why do YOU still contribute to and support them?

Posts: 37

You'd be suprised what you can buy with a minimum wage job and 30 hours a week... Aside from rent & standard-of-living, which varies anyways, it's typically posible to get a CSA (if you can save up enough to get the ball rolling), depending on where you live. If organic and/or free-range CSA's aren't available, bulk organic grains & legumes are relatively inexpensive, and you often get a choice between cheap barley all the way up to more expensive basmati rice. It's generally good to establish an inexpensive base (could be noodles, rice, wheat, barley, etc, or even combination there-of), and then add on top different varieties for anyday of the week. Ask almost any agrarian village, and they'll usually understand what staple foods are all about.

Also, you might be suprised, ...the meat diet isn't very inexpensive. Plus, factory farmed meat today is generally much less nutritious, protein levels plummeted pretty wildly, fat levels have shot through the roof, and not to mention, pretty drenched in toxins that your kitchen basically becomes a biohazard area everytime you bring it out, lol. People may still think it's a major part of their diet, but I doubt you could weigh in favor of the pros, taking into account lowered nutrional value & increased toxicity value...

As far as organic expenses though, ...for the most part it's tax payer's subsidies that help lower the cost of non-organic food, making organic food seem much more expensive, when really it's about equal, ...some say it's more expensive, some say it's less expensive; figuring in transportation, chemicals, human-costs, machine-costs, etc.

	Satoria wrote:
	I would have to say that most "Vegans" have a solid understanding of the consequences of their actions and what types of things contribute to oppression of all kinds. They would have too... judging by the empathy that is expressed by most Vegan people.

Maybe you're right, ...I've never really done any surveys; just observed the vegetarians & vegans I do know, and that's generally been a recurring theme with them when I try and educate them on some other stuff. Some even going so far as saying "don't tell me, ...i don't want to know because I'll be grossed out." But maybe that's a vacuumed synopsis exluded from the majority.

As far as not liking the taste of meat, generally that's sometimes the case with vegetarians, but with vegans it's usually not just disliking the taste of meat, since veganism generally takes into account dairy, leather, fur, etc. But you're probably right in that people don't usually prescribe to the same notion, even though they may call themselves a vegan. They may eat fish, they may buy a leather belt or wallet, they may even just hate the taste of meat & dairy, but still buy leather & fur & still call themselves a vegan.

Personally, I'm not a vegan, because I think there is a very synergistic relationship between animals & gardens. When you take animals out of the cycle, it allowed for the separation of animals to be mass-produced much more so than if the farmers had to take care of the crops & the animals. Plus when you take the animals out of the picture, if the gardens don't get manure, they get chemical fertilizers and/or sewage sludge.

	Satoria wrote:
	May I ask.... if you knew most of all the worldy health and oppressive issues, and all the negative consequences to the choices you make everyday... why do YOU still contribute to and support them?

Up until 2 1/2 years ago, I was in still college eating mac & cheese, buying ramen noodles, paying for slave made apparel, buying chinese slave-made plastic crap, and using triclosan dishwashing soap. Yes... I've had my fair share of despotic contributions to the global market... I have accepted that and moved on to a more sustainable & healthier life, and am continuing to learn new things everyday; continually trying to re-adjust my actions to better fit my beliefs & ideals. If you think there's something I should know, even if it makes me throw up when I'm eating, tell me anyways; I'll thank you later! I ride a bike everywhere, even during the winter time... I don't buy slave-laboured apparel anymore. I'll buy organic clothing made as local as possible, and when I don't have enough for that, I'll go to the 10cent recycle shops (most places I've been to have them)... I don't see the necessity in drinking coffee every morning. Occasionally I'll buy a $10 one pound bag of loose leaf oganic fair trade yerba mate, and lasts me for about 2 months because I'll reuse the same leaves multiple times in a self-contained Bodum tea infuser travel coffee mug that I found on the side of the road one day (Yerba Mate is also an appetite suppressant)... Occasionally I'll hit up a food bank co-op, or even go dumpster diving to offset some costs if I can't buy local food & make rent. People might not want to stoop that low, though, lol... But at the same time, ...that's what's happening in many developing nations. Does that say anything about the United States? lol. I also am on the board of 4 different organizations, 1 of which has been making some pretty exciting breakthroughs nation-wide, as far as attempting to stop slave-made apparel.

gotta run, talk more later Smile

Posts: 92

Here are my opinion on this topic.

I think Vegans become smug. They feel they are better then others because they are eating healthy and know more then others. This is just like that south park episode about the smug bybrid car users. It becomes an obsession after all you need discipline to follow such a strict diet and it is common fact that whenever people endure strict discipline they tend to feel either some sort of bitterness towards others for not going through the same thing, or they feel better then others for having gone through something others havent.

On the topic of the vegan lifestyle being healthy, i dont know what the medical records have to say about that. I know Dr, Loarrain day says to ask any dentist and they will tell you that out teeths arent made to eat food, wich kind of contradicts something i had heard a while ago about humans having different types of teeths because some are made for grinding, others for making incisions wich obviously is only done with meat, and is the type of teeth present on other carnivours. She also says that humans cant digest meat, it just stays in your body till it becomes rotten. I think the key to a healthy lifestyle is variety. most people do not get a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables, so when they become a vegan, their body is getting the nutritions its been missing so thats why they seem to feel healthier. Though i beleive after a long period of time the body will start to need and crave a carnivorous diets. The best thing i think is to follow a vegan diet but with occasional meat products and poultry and fish to balance out our needs. I heard in a science show once that meat is brain food and they surmised that humans brains started growing after they became hunters and ate meat .

Its obvious that they key to everything in life is balance, so getting to caught up in any philosophy is dangerous, is best to do everything in proportions and youll be safe

P.S= i think killing animals unecessarilly is cruel, Hunting is a bad sport no matter how you look at it. People who hunt to feed themselves, now that a different story, thats the way it should be. But people who hunt for the thrill of it, should be put in a forrest and hunted for game.

Posts: 8246

	Satoria wrote:
	Vitamin B12 can only be derived from meat and dirt.

I'm opposed to taking isolated nutrients myself. I think the movement should be more concerned about raising animals the right way than eliminating them from our diets and possibly making people mentally ill by it. I think that's the primary agenda isn't it. It also seems odd to me to see vegans with cats (carnivores) that like to toy with their pray killing it slowly.

Posts: 37

Majikstranger wrote:

I think Vegans become smug. They feel they are better than others because they are eating healthy and know more than others. This is just like that south park episode about the smug hybrid car users. It becomes an obsession (after all, you need discipline to follow such a strict diet) and it is common fact that whenever people endure strict discipline, they tend to feel either some sort of bitterness towards others for not going through the same thing, or they feel better than others for having gone through something others have'nt.

It's funny you should say that, because I've only seen 3 episodes of South Park, and that just happened to be one of them! lol, I guess that grants me the where-with-all to make a semi-informed comment adressing that concern/insight... I think there is indeed a slight sense of smugness, but I don't think that they all are consciously aware of it. It's most likely a pre-conscious thought that more-often-than-not effects their perception of what may/may-not be important to their moral foundation. However, what you described is by no means exclusive to veganism; it's a human manifestation & reaction within a particular social structure.

Also, as far as smugness & bitterness goes, they aren't bad in-and-of-themselves; It's a sort of reward & punishment system of checks & balances. Indeed, it obviously can be misused, just the way many governments' checks & balances are being misused for frivelous stuff. I myself do feel a sort of bitterness towards many other humans, ...not because I am smug in my own moral standards, but because the lack-of-care and consent/endorsement of ignorance. Sort of looking at one problem alone, and externalizing every other problem from one's moral groundwork, as if it's a foreign entity to be avoided...

So for instance, a person owning a hybrid car may feel a sense of contribution towards a better environment, ...but I think if they took a step back in order to look at the larger picture to recognize & address their core need(s) being met, they might rediscover all sorts of new ways to bring that about. However, in the case of South Park (a rather over-hyped version of smugness), if the hybrid owners get so enwrapped in their own self-worthyness within the current societal structure, that they actually stop everytime they fart just to smell their own morally purified gaseous air that was let loose (a metaphor of course Razz

), ...then it totally distracts them from the oncoming hurricane, potentially fueled by global climate change that even their own hybrid vehicle contributes to - to some degree); comes to wipe out their house and flood their vehicle.

Or even all that aside, ...if they ignore social influences in society that are attempting a martial-law system of control, their smugness can just as easily be thrown overboard at the snap of a finger, when a wall of riot-gear police take over... Or even if it's just waking up one morning and realizing you've aquired enough pharmaceutical reconstituted waste byproduct from the municipal water supply system, originating from sick humans who excrete it into the sewage system, and all of a sudden you start having psychological breakdowns and may even die from a fatal combination of multiple drugs that were never supposed to be taken together. You know, ...where's your smugness and morally purified body mass now? ...Was that grave-stone & casket produced with environmental sustainability in mind? lol...

So my point to all of that? ...We can't just invest in one solution to only one problem in a larger problematical system, because other problems are bound to rise up and effect the very cause we were originally pushing for. This is not some pie-in-the-sky analysis; there are direct paralells of this in so many other single-action groups that only push for one issue to be resolved, while ignoring so many other issues for fear of breaking out of political neutrality... I think that's so funny, ...because there are so many groups that take a moral standing on a particular issue and think that that particular issue is a moral true-ism (therefore politically neutral) and therefore think that if they infect that particular issue with other issues, it becomes politically impure, and therefore may create resistance in the next fellow you may try to get to jump on board your particular cause, or at least listen to you for a 30-second sound-bite...

...The problem in all of that is that what ends up happening is we get thousands/millions of single-issue political action groups, so many, ...that it's metaphorically like driving down the road in Las Vegas; the spectacle of all these groups and companies bombarding you with a glittering array of advertising and ways of hijacking your will to live... It becomes very easy to retreat, or even get caught up in the same activist prison system, perpetuating the system to an even greater degree.

Indeed, there is too much clutter, and the current media mergers didn't quite help unclutter all the issues, they merely transfered a larger audience to one political action group; ...namely the supposed extreme right-winger groups, like Rupert Murdoch... and then through market competition, many mainstream non-extreme-right-wing media tried to Outfox Fox in order to try and capture the eyeball hours to feed to the psychopathic carnivores funding them with advertising revenue. How many people became blind to a larger problematical system when their eyeballs were snatched? lol... It's fun to play pinball, and you can even get a high score and break through to new records, and even win social prizes! But sometimes it's easy to forget that we are playing with our own perception; our own limited time, and we're being bounced around like a pinball... Stupid metaphore, but you get the picture...

Majikstranger wrote:

On the topic of the vegan lifestyle being healthy, I dont know what the medical records have to say about that. I know Dr. Loarrain Day says to ask any dentist and they will tell you that our teeth aren't made to eat meat, which kind of contradicts something I had heard a while ago about humans having different types of teeth, because some are made for grinding, others for making incisions, wich obviously is only done with meat, and is the type of teeth present on other carnivours.

Yes, we are no tigers, ...but that doesn't mean that we never evolved part of the way to eat other earth inhabitants. If anything, It was the other way around, we were hunters & gatherers that largely consumed anything that was around us at the time... Eventually agriculture flourished and vegetation slowly become a larger part of our diet; aside from forest scaveging... I believe that's why the term omnivore was invented. Further, ...there are tribes that eat mostly meat. If they can survive off of meat alone, then to say our teeth are not designed to eat meat, and therefore our bodies are not designed to process meat, is quite a distraction indeed... If the teeth can chew meat, and it doesn't make us sick or kill us, then I see no reason to say that our bodies are exclusively herbivorous.

	Majikstranger wrote:
	Its obvious that the key to everything in life is balance, so getting too caught up in any philosophy is dangerous; it's best to do everything in proportions and you'll be safe

Well said

Posts: 42

i see that you guys are atheist and a vegetarian like i am, what a GREAT COMBINATION.
Very Happy

Posts: 133

Both sides has its bad sides, and good sides.It all depends on the person; on how much thought you really put into your diet.

Both can be healthy, and both can be unhealthy.

What i don't like is when people ask me if im in lack of vitamins. Do i go and ask everyone i meet if they are in lack of vitamins? Just because i don't eat meat, doesn't make me undernourished. People who eat meat are undernourished too, or maybe even overnourished. Too much of some vitamins, like proteins aren't good for you either.

I always tell them im a vegetarian and not a vegan. I get my proteins and B12, just not from meat.

Like i said, it has nothing with what you are, but with how careful you are with your diet.

Of course it is harder for Vegans to get all the vitamins they need. I do admire Vegans.