Vegansexuals

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Drew:

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the 'design' carnard.

In my view, all of the evidence points to the fact that humans have evolved into generalists, much like rats, wild boars, and bears (all of which are omnivores).

[ August 05, 2007, 09:12: Message edited by: The Mountain Hare ]

 

Err... actually, if the "cats are humans" argument is going to hold, then it immediately follows the "plants are cats too" argument WILL hold as well. It has absolutely nothing to do with being an intellectual argument, it's purely how you biologically define "living" things. And to be fair it's exactly as "dishonest" and "utterly ridiculous" as the "cats are humans" argument. Plants are not animals, and animals are not humans. Animals eat plants, and animals eat other animals. Humans eat plants, and some of them eat animals as well. Now, if you want a distinction about what you eat, that's really none of my business - you can eat (and not eat) whatever you want, and no one should be allowed to interfere with that. However, I generally dislike the way SOME (note the specific) vegans try to guilt-trip others into giving up animal products.

 

Actually, i find those lame attempts rather amusing, even the part where they start calling me a criminal, or even a murderer.

 

And, as I pointed out, I've never actually heard a vegan argue that cats are people. They will argue that cats are capable of suffering and we don't need to eat them, a distinction that plants do not share. Argue (wrongly) that plants can suffer on a level equal to that of a creature with a complex nervous system if you wish, but we need to eat plants. We don't need to eat animals. Further, since the animals we eat also eat plants, we end up causing a lot more plants to "suffer" by eating animals than we do by eating plants. So, even if that argument was right (which it isn't), it still doesn't work. Vegetarianism isn't about never killing or inflicting suffering on anything. That isn't possible. Vegetarianism is about inflicting as little harm as possible.

"Design" implies reasoned purpose and intent......meaning that we we specifically designed by something to be omnivores. We don't know if humanity was specifically designed to be omnivorous or if necessity caused us to evolve in that direction. That's all I was really trying to say.

[ August 05, 2007, 19:52: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Im a lacto-vegetarian, but for most of my life I ate eggs, however in my whole life Ive only ever eaten meat once, and it was a couple of bites from a McDonalds Cheeseburger...very disgusting I found. I find the smell of meat is pretty disgusting, like it just smells wrong, plain wrong. Id compare it with probably the smell of halitosis from a diseased mouth combined with the smell of faeces (or feces for you Americans who cant spell), along with the distinct smell that each animals meat has. Cooking meat, or rather, charring meat, smells pretty awful too, and I have to stay indoors when the Samoans next door are having a massive bbq. Reason for being a life-long vegetarian was at first that my parents raised me as one from birth for religious reasons, though they themselves were not vegetarians before I was born. Occassionally my dad will eat some meat, and my mum too, but thats very rare. However, now that I am an adult with a choice of my own I have decided, consciously, to remain vegetarian, and I chose for myself to abstain from eggs. This is two-fold, firstly an egg is the flesh of an animal, no matter if its mamalian, avarian, reptilian or what, and secondly, chicken eggs smell like farts.

This being said, I can definitely smell the difference in breath and body odor between a vegan/vegetarian and a non-vegetarian, and I consciously choose to only date and kiss vegetarian women and men, I would not even consider a non-vegetarian man or woman as a partner unless either they were really hot and great in bed, or there was no other options. Nearly always there are, for me, luckily, and I tend to have friends who are mostly vegetarian and vegan always. I wont live with a non-vegetarian, I always live with vegetarians or vegans, and specifically advertise for those people.

Its not that I dont like non-vegetarians as people, or that I think that eating meat is necessarily wrong or unethical, it is simply out of convenience for myself and this life-style that was imposed on me since birth and that I have now later embraced. Eating out is frustrating sometimes, but my taste in food is pretty much just Indian Indian and Indian, with a dash of Indian on top too. This makes for some smelly farts, but they dont even compare to the stench of rotting flesh that comes out from non-vegetarians, no offense...but its really bad. Plus it keeps me incredibly 'regular' too.

Not all vegans or vegetarians are hippies who are incapable of operating the faucett in the shower or who are puzzled by the purpose of a bath and deoderant, and not all of them are animal rights activists who use shock tactics to intimidate people into giving them donations to supposedly save some bald monkeys from forcibly having lipsticks and cosmetics smothered on them to see if it causes allergic reactions. Some of us are relatively normal...relatively.

As for the Christian concept of animals being a gift from their god to be used etc, thats plain wrong. Their god made man and woman as Fruitarians, and it was only after they ate that forbidden fruit and were cast out of their orchard that they were forced to eat vegetables, and it was only after the 'great flood' when all vegetation was destroyed that their god ok'd them to eating meat. This is in their Bible, only they fail to read it I assume. The actual idea of animals being gifts from the gods for man to use originated with Plato I think, I will have to check that though.

From a 'design' perspective, no matter what you believe designed life - natural selection or creation by a god, gods, or God, humans are not well suited for being carnivorous. The early primates in our family tree were fruitarians, and an omnivorous diet was only a latter development, quite possibly from a food shortage. I believe it was Homo Habilis that was the first hominid to eat meat that didnt rely on scavanging, they made stone tools and their big teeth that were originally adapted to chewing vegetable matter, fruits and nuts and leaves etc, were easily adapted to eating flesh. However, our digestive system hasnt quite caught up with this adaptation yet, and is still showing overwhelming signs of an original adaptation to a plant based diet. The reduction of our appendix shows an adaptation, however overall it is still far from complete. This being said, our ancestors did not eat meat in the same quantities as people do now in Western Civilization. It is quite possible though that the great leap forward in our cranial capacity was due to the inland sea in what is now Ethiopia etc and our ancestors eating the shellfish that lined its shores...omega fatty acids etc. Also there are a lot of animal only sourced nutrients we need, signs of an adaptation to eating meat.

From an ethical point of view though, eating animals, to me at least, is not wrong. We ourselves are animals, and some animals eat other animals, some eat plants, some plants eat animals and some plants eat plants. Its a give-give situation, all life is mutually dependent on all life. However with the way that it is mass produced is pretty disgusting and really quite immoral. I see a clear difference between a hunter-gatherer shooting an antelope in the arse with an arrow and the way in which the abitoirs kill animals these days. Ive seen it happening, and its disgusting, and its wasteful. At least in a hunter-gatherer and agrarian society the animals killed are used in their entirety with little to no unused bits left over. Such as the Plains tribes in North America who used all the bison, every single bit of it.

People who take the stance that it is somehow not right for humans to eat meat are simply mistaken. There are ups and downs to our slow adaptation to an omnivorous diet, on the upside we get a lot of essential nutrients that arent available in plants, but on the downside we have risks of bowel cancer and constipation due to our intestines being too long to handle large quantities of meat. This is offset by adding a high fibre source to your diet, but that is something that we in the West, in general, fail to do...

A little off topic in the end, but yeah...

 

I’m not surprised. McDonalds is terrible. That’s like eating a floury, mouldy, one year old apple and then saying that all fruit is disgusting.

 

Yeah I got told something similar to that, but I still find meat smells bad...like 'wrong'...but I assume thats because Im totally unaccutsomed to it. I think that meat eating is accustomization, and since every generation has done it since probably Homo Habilis and probably before then too, its just something we havent really escaped from as a whole, not that its something we need to necessarily escape from. A balanced diet is a balanced diet, no matter where your source of food comes from. Eat meat in moderation by all means if you like it, its doing you good in a lot of respects.

 

Sorry, but you didn't eat meat in that case.

There's a reason the the sneaky corporation takes its supplies from a distribution company named "The 100% Beef company" (or similar) - it's so that they can advertise "Our burgers are made with {the help of} 100% Beef"!

But that said, I'm not gonna push you to try real meat - if you don't want to, you don't have to.

(more meat for ME! )

Really, the term 'omnivore' doesn't fit so well on humanity anymore - there are plenty people that subsist just fine with a herbivorous diet (see some of the posters here for examples), and those that thrive on a carnivorous one (take the traditional Inuit - raw meat & fish), as well as lots who 'snack' from both spheres.

Maybe the term 'polyvorous' would be more apt for homo sapiens sapiens? Omnivorous tends to mean "a species that DOES take its diet from all sources" rather than "a species that can take its diet from any of the available sources."

 

I love meat. There isn't a woman alluring enough to make me give up steak. Not even Ashley Judd.

 

Drew, while I have found some of your arguements here intriguing, I have found others blatently flawed. Would you feel more comfortable if we said humans were made for the activity of omnivorous consumption? Natural forces can make things, and can even do so in a way that unquestionably adjusts said things to specific roles, usually to better fit with said natural forces. Dunes are shaped to offer little wind resistance, shells to protect the creature inside. Whether you assume God or Nature to be the crafting force, humans are omnivores.

Additionally, while I understand your reasoning for vegetarianism, what about milk and eggs? Nothing has to die for them, and if you assume a half-way moral mode of production (which isn't at all uncommon), then I see no ethical reason not to consume them. They are certainly more densly packed with certain nutrients than others are.

 

Geez, I'm an agnostic, and haven't read a Bible in years, but you're reading from a very different Bible than me if that's what you think. (DISCLAIMER: I'm an agnostic, so I'm not even saying I believe any of this, but I was raised a Christian and have read the Bible and this is what my version says.) According to the Bible God gave dominion of all the animals of the earth in Genesis - before Adam and Eve were cast out. And they certainly were eating meat long before the Flood. One of Adam and Eve's sons - Abel - was a shepherd and killed one of his flock as a sacrifice to God. Don't know where you got the idea that it was only after the flood that they got the OK to eat meat.

 

even The LORD GOD preferes meat

 

It's real simple, actually. Just say humans are omnivorous. Don't say we were designed to be that way. Or that nature somehow intended us to be that way. We are omnivorous because of what we eat.

First of all, lots of calves have to die for milk production.....usually slaughtered at birth or used to produce veal. Egg production is no better. Google "Rennet", "Rape Rack", "Battery Cage", "Forced Molting", "De-Beaking" or "Beak Trimming", and check out where we get our veal cows (the dairy industry), and I think you'll know why I'm vegan. If you want, stick exclusively to industry specific materials. It's damning enough on its own. There's actually more cruelty in the dairy industry then there is in the meat industry.

No human thrives on a carnivorous diet. Even Inuits take in some type of plant food year round. If they didn't, they would die. Even so, the Inuits have very short life spans, and their osteoporosis numbers are off the charts. I wouldn't call that thriving.

[ August 07, 2007, 02:50: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Drew, most dairy farmers use a particular milk cow that constantly produces milk and will actually suffer pain if it is not milked regularly, and can die if they are not milked for a long enough period. While this may be due to breeding, it is true nonetheless. Now where viel comes from, or what processes are used to make it, I don't know and don't want to know. I find it disgusting enough as it is.

As for the 'chicken words', some came up to nothing relating to anything, others to practices that are either illegal in the US or on the verge of being so.

Now as for the topic of 'vegansexuals', well, I find it odd, but if you are a moral proponent of veganism, then it's probably a good idea. We have enough bad marriages in the world as it is, we don't need any based on food-disagreements as well.

 

NNG, I really didn't want to go into lots of detail about how the dairy industry does business, but you've forced my hand. Sorry, everyone, for going on a tangent.

To produce milk, a cow must be impregnated each year. Now, since a single cow can produce milk for many years, one of two things happens to the cows that are born. They are either slaughtered immediately and a chemical called rennet (which is used in making cheese) is taken from their stomachs, or they are sold into the veal industry (and I assume I don't have to tell you how veal is produced).

"De-Beaking" or "Beak-Trimming" is the practice of cutting off the end of a chick's beak (without anesthesia, of course) before putting it into it's battery cage, and is normal industry practice because, due to the fact that laying hens are kept in such close proximity (there isn't even enough space for laying hens tostretch one wing) the chicks will peck each other to death. Also, because of their relative inability to move in their cages, laying hens feet will often grow around the wiring upon which they stand, anchoring them in place, so their toes are cut off before they are caged as well (also without anesthesia). "Forced Molting" is a procedure where, after a laying cycle, the hens are starved for five to fourteen days in order to cause another laying cycle. A very large percentage of the hens die of starvation during forced molting. NOG, all of these practices are completely legal.....and are standard operating procedure in the industry. You are free to disagree with the sentiment that such treatment is unethical and barbaric, but this is how it's done. Sure, you can find a dairy or egg producer that does things "humanely", but what you've found is the exception....not the rule.

[ August 08, 2007, 11:32: Message edited by: Drew ]