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Post by keyodie on Nov 9, 2008 11:20:46 GMT -5
So, what are your thoughts on vegetarianism? I myself am a vegetarian, but don't be afraid to offend me or anything. Just to get that out there. "Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind." ~Albert Einstein*Sources will be at the research section. Click here to go there directly. Vegetarianism has health benefits, helps to fight world hunger, and is good for the environment. And of course there is the obvious factor of animal cruelty in many factories. Going vegetarian can help with weight loss, prevents cancer, lowers blood pressure, decreases the severity of asthma, and much much more. As time goes on, we're starting to see a lot more benefits to a vegetarian diet. There are some concerns about certain vitamins, but that isn't much of a problem. Just do some research on the type of foods you will need to eat and take vitamins or supplements where needed. However, a common misconception is that vegetarians need protein. Not true. If you get enough calories, you are getting enough protein. Protein deficit is very uncommon, and both meat-eaters and vegetarians get more protein than they need on average. Oh, and those hormones they feed animals can't be too good for us either. There is also the speculation that humans were meant to be herbivores. We have no claws, we perspire through skin pores, we have no sharp front teeth but flat rear molars for grinding, we have stomach acid that is significantly weaker than that of a meat-eater, we have well-developed salivary glands (necessary to pre-digest) and more. If people in rich countries stopped consuming such large amounts of meat, there would be enough food for the whole world. First of all, food is required to feed our food. That in itself makes meat production inefficient. Not only that, we have meat factories built in poor countries to feed the rich nations. If in the place of these factories we built farms, there would be a lot more food available for those who need it. Eating meat also affects the environment. We cut down trees and destroy ecosystems in order to build a factory that will pollute the environment even more. And imagine, we don't even need this meat to survive. Even if rich countries would decrease their meat consumption by just 10%, enough grain would be saved to feed 60 million people. Not to mention animal cruelty. These animals hardly ever see the outdoors. Chickens are hung upside-down as one by one their throats are slashed by robots, and when some of them survive that they still rip off their wings and feathers. When cows give birth, they take away the calf immediately and give the mother sedatives so that she won't go insane from the trauma. I could tell you a whole lot more, but I'm sure you get the idea. Animals are treated horribly. I'm not even against killing animals for food. Heck, wild animals do it to each other. But the way we stick them together in wired cages with barely no room to move, feed them hormones to make them grow bigger, never give them any fresh air... That's what I am against. I am not a vegan. However, I drink soymilk most of the time and try to get organic cheese/eggs as much as possible. Just because milking cows doesn't kill them, chemicals are fed to them in order to produce more. It's the same with chickens and their eggs.
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Post by Caunion on Nov 9, 2008 15:16:38 GMT -5
There is also the speculation that humans were meant to be herbivores. We have no claws, we perspire through skin pores, we have no sharp front teeth but flat rear molars for grinding, we have stomach acid that is significantly weaker than that of a meat-eater, we have well-developed salivary glands (necessary to pre-digest) and more. Well, I can definitely see where you come from that but we also possess canines which are used to tear meat apart. But I agree that a vegetarian diet is healthy....if I could only go through it. It's rather hard. It's like giving up heroin.
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Post by ladytera on Nov 9, 2008 19:57:25 GMT -5
Having had 5 kids, I've looked at dietary stuff an awful lot in my life, both from the perspective of my own and from the perspective of feeding my kids nutritiously. During the course of that research I found a lot of information, but the main overall theme that keeps cropping up is that no dietary program works for everyone. Each of us has different activity levels and different metabolic needs that require different types of food. For myself, I found the Atkins diet, which is almost entirely protein based, actually works best for weight loss, weight maintenance, as well as energy levels and overall well-being. For others who've tried it, that diet doesn't work as well. High carbohydrate, mostly vegetable based diets work well for some people too, it's just harder to be sure you are getting all the nutrients you need. From everything I've read, strictly vegan diets can be dangerous, but mostly for young people who are still growing and require high levels of a lot of the proteins, vitamins and minerals that are found in meats, cheeses, and milk. For young people, and probably anyone, a diet that includes fish instead of the more traditional meats generally will satisfy the bodies requirements for the things left out of a strictly vegan diet. Vegetarianism is not a bad diet per se, but I object to the movement itself, because the argument tends to be based more on moral judgments made by its proponents than on the health benefits of the diet itself. And the movement tries to guilt people into changing to a diet that might not be particularly healthy for them. I think the key, when you are looking at any diet, is to look at what your body requires, and then work out a diet that will be good for you but not deprive you of all the things you like. Most recently, I've found an interesting dietary system that incorporates very old eating habits, and is actually probably the best nutritional system I've seen. The problem with it is that it requires a lot of time. I'll post more on that later if you interested. Now I have to get back to work, or I'll be in deep dark trouble in the morning.
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sakaido
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Post by sakaido on Nov 9, 2008 23:37:11 GMT -5
I'm only touching on one thing you said, that it's healthier.
I don't believe there's a healthier side to vegetarianism. [Something said site these... honestly. I watch a lot of food network and discovery channel. Bizarre Foods, No Reservations, and those documentaries about living vegan in this generation.]
Anything you eat, no matter what it is can help you gain, or lose weight depending on the sheer amount of it that you eat. A Well balanced diet will most of the time get you where you want to be. Not all meats are overly fatty. Goat is the main red meat in most of the world, America not included. Which is more lean than fish. And it's been noted that primarily red meat causes a rise in blood pressure.
Naturally though, anyone that goes from eating beef beef beef to straight vegetables and fruit will see a significant drop in weight. Which is unhealthy by any standards. Cheeses hold a significant source of fat if you aren't vegan. You could eat enough of that to not only make you gain weight but could cause just as many health problems as eating meat. Same with breads. Starches in abundance is unhealthy.
Noticing a trend with what I'm saying? That it's not what you eat, but how much of it.
Meat in general is not bad for you. If you eat it for every meal, every day, without the pairing of greens or fruits of course that's unhealthy. No one should eat like that with anything. You would be depriving your body of the other nutrients it needs to properly function.
My mom also reads those diet books, for athletes. And two of the three she reads touch on vegetarianism. That either way is just as healthy in moderation and vegetarianism is purely an ethical and moral thing.
also, cook your meat all the way through. No medium rare. And it should all be fine.
Personally, I live with a meatatarian. He doesn't eat vegetables, or fruit. As hard as I try to get him to. But he's not overweight. He's actually pretty underweight, with no significant health problems.[Other than just mentioned weight problem] Will he eventually? yes, if he keeps this up. But he's been like this for his whole life.
Cool beans. I think I've established that the most healthy diet is a balanced diet. So I'll stop blabbing now.
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Post by ladytera on Nov 10, 2008 0:26:40 GMT -5
sakaido, your meatatarian may not actually develop any other health issues. If ALL of his carbohydrate intake is low, and not just fruits and veggies, his body probably burns fat rather than sugar as its main energy source. That might also be why he's underweight though. If you eat a primarily protein diet, and the protein tends to be lean, and you don't add extra fats elsewhere, your body burns your body fat instead. That's basically the way the Atkins diet and other low carb diets work. As to the no fruit vegetable thing, he does need them for some vitamins, and that may eventually cause some problems for him. Green leafies are the best for the nutrients lacking in that respect. They are full of a good number of the vitamins and minerals a person needs in fairly small portion sizes. Otherwise, I think you hit the nail on the head. Balance in a diet is generally the best means of assuring good health. The problem there is that science seems to redefine it's definition of a balanced diet every few years. Thus the wide variation in diet plans out there. Portioning does not always work for everyone either. My son is overweight for his age. It's fairly genetic. His stepmom tries portioning with them, and in essence he comes home and wants to eat everything in sight because he's felt like he was starving most of the time he was at her house. For him, he needs to find foods that he can literally eat as much as he wants of them so he doesn't feel hungry, and then make sure he eats the junk food stuff in very small amounts or not at all. I worry a little about him because Diabetes runs in his father's family, and it is weight related. Of all of my munchkins, he's the only one I've considered putting on a low carb high protein diet because his metabolism would probably work better if it switched from a sugar to fat basis. But, for the time being, his doctor said not to worry too much about it, and to just try to keep the sugars down.
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Post by ladytera on Nov 10, 2008 6:13:03 GMT -5
Okay, so the most nutritionally sound diet I've found starts with home made bread, made with fresh ground flour. If first heard about this diet at a women retreat I went on with our church. I won't go into the religious aspects of it, because that wasn't the part that caught my attention when it came to the food. The woman who gave the seminars has a degree in nutrition, and the bulk of her talk centered on wheat, and the rise in diseases that have been linked back to the commercial production of flour. What it comes down to is that wheat contains most of the nutrients your body needs in its seed form. If you eat breads made from it, with other foods in moderation, your body gets not only all the nutrients it needs, but fiber that keeps your digestive tract working properly and keeps your immune system from getting overloaded. If you add flax seed, you get additional vitamins and oils that are healthy for your heart. If you substitute honey for sugar in your recipe you boost good bacterial growth in your digestive system, and starve the bad bacteria. If you eat a mix called commonly called Ezekial Bread, you actually can survive quite nicely on just that alone and water (this has a variety of grains as well as a variety of beans, fruit can be added to avoid stoppages). The difference between this, and making bread from store bought flour, or buying store bought bread, is that everything but the powdery inside stuff is removed. Most of the nutrients are in the shell and the germ. But the shell makes the flour more coarse, and the germ is oil, so it makes the flour spoil if it is kept for any length of time, so they are removed from commercial flour. In addition, many of the vitamins in wheat are anti-oxidants, which are very good for your body, but they evaporate when they are exposed to air. So, in essence, as soon as the wheat is ground it starts to lose its anti-oxidant vitamins, and they are generally gone within 24 hours of grinding. This was a fascinating look at grains, and it is backed up by the research I did at the time, as well as the nutritional information I looked up at www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/. It's a really neat site, but a little hard to interpret if you don't already know how to read nutritional information. If you are looking for a mostly vegetarian diet, that focuses on food that aren't mass produced, are healthy, and don't have a lot of preservatives, I encourage you to take a look at www.breadbeckers.com. There is a lot of information there about this type of diet. I will say, for our family, it can be a bit of a challenge. It's actually a good bit less expensive than anything else we've done. But it is a little more time consuming because bread takes a little over 2 hours to make start to finish. For smaller families however, a breadmaker solves the time problem pretty well. It only takes about 5-10 minutes to put everything into the breadmaker, and it does the rest of the work for you.
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sakaido
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Post by sakaido on Nov 10, 2008 10:01:02 GMT -5
That's why I said most of the time. There are always exceptions. [Genetic, thyroid problems....]
Anything I say that refers to people as a whole is always a general statement. To the vast majority. Never every single person.
And my meatarian, though I adore him. Knows the health risk he's at by not eating well. He works at a pizza place. Guess what he eats?
Those cheeses, starches, and fatty meats I mentioned. It makes ME feel like a hypocrite talking about a balanced diet.... =/
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Post by ladytera on Nov 10, 2008 10:43:00 GMT -5
LOL. I know the feeling. My ex was like that. But it wasn't just the starches and fats and being tremendously overweight, it was also smoking like a chimney (which I admit I do myself from time to time) and drinking like a fish. Alcohol combined with that kind of diet with a person prone to diabetes is a really bad combo. Ah well. Just keep reminding yourself your not his mother. It helps, sometimes. PS I figured the general statement for what it was. I'm usually not too anal retentive about that sort of thing.
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Raivynn
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Post by Raivynn on Nov 10, 2008 14:27:11 GMT -5
I was a vegetarian many moons ago. It didn't agree with me and that combined with.....something else I don't really want to go into, I became a wreck. But stubborn me persisted....but one day I gave in to the temptation of a bacon roll and from there on in I returned to omnivorism(is that a real word? lol).
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sakaido
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Post by sakaido on Nov 11, 2008 8:27:32 GMT -5
Drayvinn: Hahahaha, I lasted 5 months without meat. And bacon is what did it to me too. It was torture. It just smells so good. =/
Even still I don't really eat red meats. Just chicken and fish.
LT: I know. I sit back, make him his mac n' cheese and non-vegetable versions of all my dinners. His doctor told him to eat 4,800 calories a day to gain weight. We're trying to keep up with that first, then work on his choices in food. Thank the heavens above he doesn't smoke, and doesn't drink nearly as often as he used to before he assumed I was a perfect angel and wouldn't date him if he drank anymore. [lol, me, angel. he's silly] We're just that much closer to healthy. inch by inch.
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Hravan
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Post by Hravan on Nov 12, 2008 15:03:34 GMT -5
I'm vegetarian. Will be going vegan when I leave home.. or nearly vegan: I may not give up honey. I went vegetarian for religious, health, environmental, moral and ethical reasons. Not necessarily in that order though. Keyodie's first post pretty much sums up most of my reasoning behind it. I do want to go vegan now, mainly because dairy products make me feel quite ill and eggs are just strange, actually dairy is strange too.. really it's weirder than eggs. Would I go lie in a field with my head under a cow and suck at her udders? No. So why do I drink it out of a bottle? No mammal, including humans need to have milk after weaning and as for calcium: I'll get the calcium from the same place the cows get it from. Plants! But because of my mother's wishes I won't go vegan until I leave home (which will be September hopefully). However, I don't agree with trying to convert people. I'll tell people why I'm veggie if they ask but I won't try to get them to change. It's a very personal choice and nobody should be forced or berated into it. Hell, I would prefer more people to be vegetarian but preaching at people doesn't work. In fact it's more likely to turn people away because they just get pissed off about it. PETA kinda needs to realise that......
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Post by Bubba's Dad on Nov 12, 2008 20:09:09 GMT -5
I do not know if people are designed to eat just meat or if we are designed to be vegetarians. I do know that it would not matter to most. After all, we were never designed to drink soda, but we do. We are designed to be heterosexual, but some are gay. We were never intended to fly, but we found a way. Our claws are small and our skin is thin, and we have no horns or fangs, but our brains are big. So we do what we want. We do not need claws for hunting or defense, because a stone point on a stick, steel point on a shaft, or a 30-06 will do both jobs just fine. So we eat anything and everything, first to survive, like a bear before hibernation, and later, just because we want to eat berries and meat. A for which is better, again, people are people. Some need high protein found in meat, others get sick if they digest too much meat, so I do not know.
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Post by keyodie on Nov 14, 2008 18:38:56 GMT -5
Now that I go back and read my first post, I may have come off a little strong. Wasn't my intention.
Yes, you're all right, good diet can mean different things for different people. And I also agree with Bubba's Dad when he says just because we aren't meant to do something doesn't mean we shouldn't. The thing about our bodies being built to be herbivores is just speculation. And hraven, I have the same feelings about PETA. They're just a bit too "extremist" I guess you could call it.
I've been a vegetarian for 9 months now. When I visit Japan, though, I allow myself to eat fish. You can't go to Japan and not eat fish. ;D That's usually just for 3 weeks though.
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Post by ladytera on Nov 14, 2008 20:47:43 GMT -5
Don't worry keyo, nobody thought you were trying to convert us. It's been an interesting conversation so far.
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Post by keyodie on Nov 15, 2008 13:28:09 GMT -5
Haha okee. ;D
Hraven - Do you cook a lot? Because from what I understand, vegans really need to know good recipes and such.
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Hravan
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Post by Hravan on Nov 15, 2008 16:00:18 GMT -5
Hraven - Do you cook a lot? Because from what I understand, vegans really need to know good recipes and such. At present, no. Mainly because my sister's living at home and she's taken over the cooking. It's part of the reason why I'm just vegetarian at the moment as she's anti-vegetarian let alone anti- vegan but she does cook me veggie stuff. I would cook my own meals, and did before she moved back home, but now I can't. It's family politics etc. Even so, I don't really know that many recipes. I normally just throw stuff together and see how it comes out. You just need to learn how to cook nuts, pulses and tofu and you're sorted
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wolf
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Post by wolf on Nov 25, 2008 3:59:33 GMT -5
All diet had to do with moderation only one or the other is unhealthy for you unless your body is strictly made for one and one only, we were made with the parts to eat both, so if you ask me both (within balance) is the only true healthy way to go
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Hravan
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Post by Hravan on Nov 29, 2009 19:36:24 GMT -5
I'm now finally vegan!!! It's awesome!
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