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The Vegan Thing

ynh

18:19 / 07.08.01

So, I've been a bad vegetarian while finishing uni. Does anyone know the political/environmental statistics on meat:grain ratios and that?

14:08 / 08.08.01

Here's some: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~barman/realities1989.html
(not too current, but still....)

And here: http://www.vegsource.com/articles/pimentel_water.htm
quote:Newsweek once put it another way: "the water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer would float a destroyer."

And here: http://www.vivavegie.org/vv101/101reas2001.htm
quote:8. Conservative industry figures for feed-to-flesh ratios are 7:1 for cattle, 2.6:1 for pigs, and 2:1 for chickens. Many factors, however, can influence feed conversion. By virtually all accounts, eating food derived from animals is wasteful. And when the industry does accomplish more efficiency, improvements usually come at the expense of the animals, via genetic tinkering and growth-enhancing drugs.

9. Of the 36 million pounds of antibiotics used annually for all purposes in the U.S., 70 percent are administered to healthy animals to make them grow faster on less feed. Though perfectly legal, the practice is promoting the selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. More and more, these bacteria are causing human illnesses that physicians are finding difficult and even impossible to treat. The practice is adding to the general worldwide crisis of drug-resistant disease.

10. Every year, Americans suffer 76 million illnesses, over 300,000 hospitalizations, and over 5,000 deaths from something they ate. That something was probably of animal origin. The government's strategy for controlling dangerous bacteria is to inspect meat during processing--something it isn't doing well nowadays (see #24). Except in rare instances, neither the USDA nor the FDA has any regulatory powers on farms where pathogens originate. With the exception of E. coli O157:H7, dangerous bacteria are legally considered "inherent" to raw meat. It's up to consumers to neutralize pathogens with cooking. Two of the legal ones--campylobacter and salmonella--account for 80 percent of illnesses and 75 percent of deaths from meat and poultry. One hamburger can contain the meat of 100 different cows from four different countries. One infected animal can contaminate 16 tons of beef.

That's three of 101 reasons.

ynh

17:13 / 08.08.01

Thanks grant. Have I reminded you that you're a beautiful person this week?

Okay, anyone want to get into slamming food in general? Nightshades, wheat, sugar, dairy? All of that would really help, too. I've got a year to get used to a clean diet again before returning to uni.

Thanks in advance.

Goodness Gracious Meme

08:42 / 09.08.01

Fascinating stuff Grant. You are indeed, the man.

Any more where that came from?

Lotsa links to interesting articles on environmental impact here

17:46 / 09.08.01

I *think* I got the links I posted from the M.I.T. Vegetarian Group site. Just scroll down a little and you're in link heaven -- food sources, science, essays, statistics, whatever.

Here's another site: http://old.veg.org/veg/FAQ/extinction.html
"How to win an argument with a meat eater."
I typically don't get into arguments with meat eaters, but still. The statistics alone are pretty staggering.

quote:The Ethical Argument

Number of animals killed for meat per hour in the U.S.: 660,000
Occupation with highest turnover rate in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker
Occupation with highest rate of on-the-job-injury in U.S.: slaughterhouse worker

The music folks I stayed/recorded with in New Jersey are vegans. I'm not that far along (have a stomach full of fish as we speak), but I will say they've made huge strides in soy cheese over the past few years. It's actually, like, good and stuff.
No substitute for Wensleydale, but still....

My general hunch on the nightshades and wheat thing is just that they're both SO omnipresent in our foods that it can't be that good for you. I actually get cravings for rice dishes, especially this very simple dish I make: rice, frozen peas, soy sauce, sushi vinegar. Hot sauce is optional. No dairy, no wheat, no nightshades. Feel good afterwards.

However, even the sushi vinegar usually contains SUGAR.

I'm putting that in its own topic.

z3r0

18:02 / 09.08.01

I like meat. I like vegetables. And I can consume a large deal of industrialized products without risking my health (which is more than most of the species out there can do)
I am omnivorous and I am proud. Overspecialization leads to extinction.

ynh

18:53 / 09.08.01

5th post in for meat and proud this run.

I actually managed to slash wheat and sugar for about four months. The fat cravings were phenomenal, resulting in some tasty solutions: avocado, garlic, hemp, flax, and olive oils, hot sauce and pepper optional - with a nice sprouted grain bread.

I never managed to cut natural sugars, but that seems a bit excessive.

23:46 / 19.07.03

Not to prod (heh) but are there any plans on what to do with all the livestock when, say, the whole damn thing goes under? as a vegan I mean, in my perfect world it would never have been obviously. Now I don't see it becoming illegal in the sense that maybe someday some green party elects a totalitarian sort of do-gooder and enlists a neo-hippy army to ram it down people's throats, but obviously as a vegan you may tend to see things in terms of a widening social awareness, the possibility that it may go the way of, say, bloodletting as a medical practice. Obsolete. So what then, I mean the subject seems so counterintuitive to the current state of industy that it's almost comical. But still?

16:13 / 20.07.03

Well, for one thing if the human population of this planet stopped eating animals, there'd be more room for everyone (humans and non-humans alike.)

Good point though. Many animals bred for food just wouldn't survive well in the wild. I'm thinking of pigs and chickens especially here: a broiler hen is a broken animal pretty much from conception, as they're bred to put on flesh faster than their bones can cope with, and I've met pigs who'd been rescued from the bacon system that, having been allowed to reach middle age, were just far too huge to move- more like hippos!

I can't remember who said it, but the idea of half the planet for humans and half for the rest sounds fair. Well, not fair, but better than the global rape-and-pillage trip we're on at the mo.

*

17:24 / 20.07.03

You know, if eating meat becomes entirely obsolete I'll die or be on daily B-12 shots for the rest of my life. Just thought I'd mention.

Do you suppose my dependence on red meat would be treated as a regrettable disability in your perfect world? Or would you maybe give me a reservation where I would be allowed to kill and eat the things I need to, provided I did it in a humane way and didn't have too much of a toll on the local environment? I promise to pray for my prey.

Or perhaps I would go to drinking blood, so I didn't have to actually kill anything. But then I'd have to worry about blood-borne pathogens, and you'd have to worry about me getting carried away and wearing all black and ceramic fangs....

/t.i.c.

19:20 / 20.07.03

This is the twenty-first century. Meat is obsolete.

I mean cmon, it's pre-DOS.

19:23 / 20.07.03

Everyone needs B12 in trace amounts; I take it you need more of it than most folks for some reason?

I do eat dairy/eggs on occasion, so I haven't paid attention to my B12 intake, but there are B12-fortified foods that vegans can eat. So I think you can probably avoid the rez.

07:54 / 23.07.03

good lookin out naked
maybe i'm less concerned with the state of the (nonhuman) animals once they're through than the specifics of the environments they're released into... economic allowances, land for grazing and getting along as ideally most animals can... they have ban bred in such a way as to die out, i suppose, human intervention notwithstanding. is a livestock retirement home the sort of thing we can make allowances for, across the board; is this sort of caretaking something we can't manage? thoughts? not that the species are doomed, but is introducing healthy pigs to the hippos cruelty on their offspring? and where the hell is a healthy pig, or any other species best suited to? they've been domesticated since time immemorial. maybe. my history's bad.

09:30 / 23.07.03

daily B-12 shots

isnt marmite the one source you have without meat?

i am pretty sure, although i have none to check in the house. i'll find out in work in a bit.

09:48 / 23.07.03

Plenty of wild pigs still out there in the world, AFAIK. Animal shelters of the kind you mention do exist, but they're on a micro-scale compared to what you'd need to retire the meat industry.

The huge nonhuman populations we've created to feed our collective appetites would become a great deal smaller if they weren't being actively bred for food. It's also worth asking ourselves whether taking action to forcibly stave off the extinction of a breed we have created is not back-asswards- wouldn't we be perpetuating the suffering of animals with this genetic heritage.

Whoops. Can opened, worms everywhere....

00:43 / 24.07.03

speaking of opening cans of things...
http://www.gty.org/~phil/marmite.htm#whatis

*

01:16 / 24.07.03

Everyone needs B12 in trace amounts; I take it you need more of it than most folks for some reason?

I have an extremely hard time absorbing it from any source other than red meat for some reason. Oral supplements help some, but those aren't utilized well by my body either, so I'd be stuck with injections, which I hate.

I do eat dairy/eggs on occasion, so I haven't paid attention to my B12 intake, but there are B12-fortified foods that vegans can eat. So I think you can probably avoid the rez.

I found the first time I tried to be a vegetarian that dairy and eggs and a daily multi were not sufficient. Not sufficient to the point where after three weeks I couldn't leave my bed and was suffering an acute attack of pernicious anemia-- not the kind where you lack iron, but the kind where the red blood cells come out all huge and immature and unable to carry oxygen. Had a rare steak and recovered in a few days, but it was scary. And it's pretty much put me off the whole "vegan is healthier" argument. Some people are just constitutionally not suited for it.

I will try the marmite thing, if I can find it here.

06:48 / 24.07.03

B12 for vegans: nutritional yeast flakes. Sure, they sound like sci-fi food, but they're packed full of B vits and they're a very versatile ingredient. Got to second (third?) the Marmite thing, too.

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14:32 / 24.07.03

Does the fact that my body suffers physical harm from a vegan lifestyle unless exposed to artificial concoctions indicate that in some way it's not as "natural" for me as it is for others? Curious as to your thoughts.

Regardless, I have no intention of going vegan any time in the future. The weakness and shortness of breath and visual blackouts were juuuuust a little scary.

19:28 / 24.07.03

I hear ya, entity... I mentioned supplements only because we were talking about your place in the Veggie-Stew World Order.

I've been giving some thought to "natural", mostly because it's popular for meat-eaters to point at their canine teeth as all the justification anyone needs for an animal diet: it's "natural". Also, I've heard the claim that learning to effectively hunt for meat gave ancestors to Homo sapiens sufficient caloric intake to build our brains. (Similarly, the invention of cooking made more types of food digestible, again leading to more caloric intake and giant fuckoff brains.)

Now, if this is true, I see meat-eating and cooking as vital steps along the path of civilization. But, we've evolved a culture which has sufficient nutritional knowledge and agricultural technology to need those things no longer. Dropping meat-eating (or, hell, drastically reducing it...I'm not much of a diet fascist) leads to faaaar more efficient land and water use; if one of my pet hypotheses is accurate, it eliminates a potential source of dreadful diseases ('cause I think factory farms are very nearly bioweapons labs by now); and, in addition, you get the moral bonus of not torturing nonhumans. And lately I've been hearing intriguing things about raw foods being a healthier option; presumably, given the choice between insufficient caloric intake and cooked food, cooked food is better, but us lucky unstarving 1st-Worlders have so much food available we're not saddled with that choice.

I guess I haven't really responded to your point, entitything. I see a meat diet as being both natural, and unnecessary, at different (and sometimes the same) points in time.

19:50 / 24.07.03

As an ex-archaeology/anthropology student I learnt that theory about meat-eating being responsible for our comparatively large brains, no idea how true it is but found it's great for annoying vegetarians at parties. Myself I fall into the meat-eating camp, but believe our present system of mass-produced industrialised meat (and all food in general really) production to be a very very bad thing which is why I try to stick with organic meat as much as possible, when my limited budget can cope with the extra expense. I believe that eating meat is not morally wrong, but that if we do so we have a responsibility to ensure that any animal bred for that purpose should have as comfortable a life as possible, though maybe that's just my way of trying to assuage my guilty conscience

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20:20 / 24.07.03

I think it's probably healthier to ensure that the animals are happy, because bad vibes can contaminate meat nearly as much as pesticides and hormones.

I'm leaving this thread now because it's making me crave emu. I'm going to go take some vitamins...

20:46 / 24.07.03

mmmmmm. Emu.