Vegetarianism - silly idea or moral obligation?

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I find that this issue has been criminally neglected on the boards recently over other classics. Time to change that.

It didn't come to me out of the blue, rather I read a book review of Tristram Stuarts 'The Bloodless Revolution'. Read, and rant away.

 

I would not call it a silly idea, unless you want to shove it to everyone in which I case I did think of it as a silly idea, but on personal level it's a person's own choice and if he feels better by not eating meat then fine. I also do not find it any way a moral obligation, perhaps in the future when there really is not enough food to feed everyone it might be, but reaching that point will take quite a while.

And yes, there is hunger in the world but stopping eating meat won't help. It's all about unequal distribution. Europe has mountains of surplus food just left to rot in order to keep the price of food down while in certain parts of Africa they have not enough to feed everyone. If an European stops eating meat it won't do anything for the starving children in Africa.

 

I definitely wouldn't call it a moral obligation. Not that I wouldn't think that the world would be better off by humans eating less meat...You don't have to eat less meat. I don't believe in moral obligations. You don't have to do anything. Consuming far less meat than is consumed now is a responsible thing to do but don't feel obliged unless you want to.

This doesn't make vegetarianism a silly idea however. Unequal distribution of goods is the cause why there's a lot of poverty and famine in the world, but there hasn't been much thought for the ways how we should start to distribute the goods more evenly. I think that the invisible hand distributing goods and affluence in a global economy is a silly idea, by itself. If Muhammad Yunus' work is on a sustainable basis, it shows that without the will to give opportunities by sharing wealth more evenly the invisible hand is an empty concept. A nice rhetorical tool and not much anything else.

Systematically refraining from excessive meat-eating by the western world would have far-reaching economical consequences. The price of meat would plummet. The price of grain-feed would drop as well. This might mean that instead of producing excess food for the western world, the third world countries would have a lot of surplus food with perhaps a price so low that the countries own population would afford to have it in abundance. It would also mean that instead of huge mono-culture cultivations you would have to vary more what you cultivate to get your money's worth from your fields. But if I'd be "perfectly" realistic, saying this is a bit of a silly idea since I'm not an expert on economics.

Then again, the one consequence of eating less meat would be that multinational food industry, and especially burger industry would get into trouble. That might be reason enough to start eating more vegetables and less meat

From an individual's point of view, I'd consider eating meat a silly idea, since it's mainly for the taste and not much else. You get more proteins and good fatty acids from nuts and seafood. B12 and iron are more difficult to get, but it's not impossible to get those even when you don't eat any meat.

[ January 22, 2007, 13:47: Message edited by: Iku-Turso ]

 

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they so delicious?

 

Another point that I brought up in the thread about violence towards animals was that for pure national security abstaining from eating meat might be very dangerous. In Finland you can't get all the proteins you need by just eating domestic products if you abstain from meat, this probably goes for all of Europe, we need to import protein rich products from distant lands, what would happen if the import of these products for one reason or the other would become increasingly difficult?

So I do think that a national policy against meat, restricting it or outright banning its consumption is not just silly but also reckless and dangerous.

 

True, but how self-sustaining we really are in any case? As self-sustainability is a good thing, is it even possible with the current amount of people and consumption we have in the western world? Even by supporting food cultivation I'd imagine the farming industry's slowly deteriorating in Europe since we simply cannot compete with the third world countries food prices.

If the level of consumption should be brought down, then cutting meat-eating might be one of the easiest ways of doing that.

I consider reducing the amount of meat-eating similar to recycling. You don't have to do it, the world still keeps on turning even if the recources would be increasingly harder to harvest and with more consequences to the environment and direct consequences to human health, but you might consider that as recources are limited and even if the creative minds will make up new ways of getting the old resources and we will start to harvest completely new resources, it still might be a smart thing to do to make the old resources more sustainable with the current ways that we have and start saving up for the rainy day more efficiently.

 

Everyone would be better off if we all were vegetarians but we dont live in a perfect world and I dnot think we ever will.

 

the human body is not built for a diet of vegestables only. in our western society we can live good as vegetariens only because we can import a large part of foodstuff that we cant grow ourself, if this wasn't the case we would lack proteins and vital vitamins only gained from meat.

if we where ment to eat only plant material our stomich, teeth and so on would look completely different, for instance we cant diggest a large part of plant fiber, neither can our teeth sustain the amount of fruit acid a diet of pure plants require. the fact remains that vegetarism is only possible as a healthy form of living, do to our current society.

 

Basicaly I agree with Equester. We were ment to eat meat and to do otherwise under other circumstances would be potentialy dangrous. Being a Vegiterian is the moral decision of an indivdual.

 

Pass the BBQ sauce please, love.

I love meat, I eat it every day but I never eat ONLY meat, in fact it's usually the smallest portion of my meal.

I have raised and killed livestock with my bare hands (well, add a knife and a gun into there) then eaten the resulting meat. I understand what goes into the process, the pigs and sheep had a very happy life - obviously right up to the point when it was ended yet it was done swiftly and with as little pain as possible.

 

I don't think either a meat-based diet or a vegetarian diet is automatically healthy or unhealthy. Both can be both. There are plenty of fat, unhealthy vegetarians out there.

As far as the environmental impact of meat production, sure okay, but growing vegetables and grains has a horrendous impact on the environment as well.

I think it boils down to a dark truth: to live is to consume, and to consume is to destroy. There is no way around it.

 

Silly Idea? Not really. Drew can tell us all we want to know about it. Seeing as he claims to be healthy, it must hold some merit. If done right, I believe it can work.

Moral obligation? Not really. Animals were given by God that we may have dominion over them, therefore it's not immoral to ride horses or use an ox to pull a cart as long as they are not abused, nor is it immoral to eat them.

Where the vegitarian movement can benefit society in general is that they can instruct on how to survive with less reliance on meat. While consuming meat is good, too much is not good. I think that with vegitarian input, we can make better choices in our diet.

 

It's a personal choice. I don't mind whether or not people eat meat.

 

I don't see much sense to it, personally. I suppose if livestock was treated in some horrible way it might make sense in a protestish kind of way (like with free range vs caged chickens) - but other than that it seems a little strange.

 

I've been under the impression that humans don't *need* meat to survive, and that vegetarians who know what they're doing don't need to supplement their diet with pills and whatnot either.

I, however, am a meat addict.

The bolded bit interests me somewhat. I can't remember seeing mention of such in the Bible. Could you tell me where to find it?

 

There are three important things in self-sustainability that should be ensured. Water, food and energy. The two first are quite well handled within Europe but the third is a big problem. We have large dependancy on Russian gas and oil. This is not a problem as long as Russia is also very dependant on the revenues they get from the energy market. You can see from recent developments with Belarus and Ukraine however that this is far from a stable deal. Hence the strong European initiative to introduce and develop new biological fuels. If we are this "paranoid" about energy do you think it would be different with food? Also most of Europe is very well suited for farming so Europe is in fact quite competitive on the global food market. Third world countries often lack the technology necessary to produce food as efficently as we do as the rural areas are quite poor and therefore they produce smaller crops than in Europe or North America.

 

I say neither...its good if you can be a vegetarian, and if you can't well, again...why is it bad??

 

mostly true, they dont need pills, but they do need some exotic fruits and vegestables, which they can only get do to our society having the option to import it, if that option is taken away vegetarism gets hard. at least in countries with temperat climates.

Secondly the larger amounts of acid these people get, hurt thier teeth, if it wasn't for toothpaste and brushing.
thirdly plant material is hard to diggest for the stomach, so if you dont know what plants you should eat, getting energy can be hard or on the hand you can get to much fruit sugar and fat. but that amplies to people who eat meat to

so basically, while its not natural for the human to be a vegetarian, thier is nothing that prevents you from being it.

 

As an actual vegetarian, I can say that I am one because I think it is wrong killing God's creatures without any real reason to. As Vegetarian food is cheaper to make and process than meat, it would also be a lot easier to feed the third-world countries, as well as avoiding overpopulation.

That said, if a tiger attacked me and I had an MP5, I would take him down. I'm not stupid, merely thoughtful.

 

My on this topic is that the answer is very much a personal opinion.

My personal choice?
Since I am diabetic there are restrictions on my diet but since I am not by any means overweight it isn't as bad as for some. Fruits and vegetables have sugar in them and I need protein to balance the sugar intake. Beans get rather boring although I do like them. I also eat a lot of peanut butter.

In the USA we do consume more meat than is healthy for us. I will give up fish when there are no more fish.

Personally I could never go on a strictly vegetarian/fruit diet. I love cheese and cheese substitutes just aren't the same.

I agree with Gnarfflinger and perhaps the Bible doesn't explicitly state non-abuse I believe it is implicitly intended.

Simply put: I do not consider Vegetarianism a silly idea nor a moral obligation.