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Are you Vegetarian?

Well, I try to live with some sense of moderation...but ultimately it comes down to what I like...

I do eat meat, but only beef and chicken, and the former not that often...I just do not like the experience of eating the other meats, it is not really a morality or health issue to me...

I despise milk, but only modern pastuerized milk. Growing up in the UK, fresh milk delivered daily was good (and nutritious), but pasteurized milk is not good for you at all (imo). That said, I do have it in my coffee. Use butter, not margerine.

Speaking of Coffee, I love caffeine (although not soda), and love sugar even more. Sugar substitutes are the devil's work.

Mainly though, I eat pasta and breads...always loved them, and they are cheap, offer many options, and are full of carbohydrates (my favorite)...

I despise the Atkins diet...

One note, I feel that it is a major (and common) mistake to eat a complex-carbohydrate (like bread) and a major protein (like meat) at the same time (like a sandwich). It seems that the stomach would have a problem efficiently breaking-down and utilising correctly, these two disparate food-stuffs. After all, there is only the one stomach. I feel it is this, that can lead to weight-gain, and toxicity in the system (from undigested meat)...but it is only an opinion. This would, in part, explain the success of both the Atkins diet, and vegetarianism, as they both deal with this problem in their own ways...

FWIW...
 
MongoTheGeek said:
As for the emotional concerns about killing another living thing consider the Hindu god Shiva. Shiva represents the creative and destructive forces in the universe. He is both sex and death. Almost all life depends on something else dying. You kill plants when you eat them, successful horticulture itself is dependent on the mass murder of certain species. Even organic methods involve killing animals (typically murder by proxy, ladybugs to kill aphids.) Its all about where you draw the line and who you would kill to live. I have no problem with cows and chickens and pigs on a regular basis. Primates would have to be a them or me situation.
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i personaly dont have a problem with killing other animals after all death is part of life
my problem is in how the animals we eat are raised and slaughtered
 
MongoTheGeek said:
Thoughts...
As for the emotional concerns about killing another living thing consider the Hindu god Shiva. Shiva represents the creative and destructive forces in the universe. He is both sex and death. Almost all life depends on something else dying. You kill plants when you eat them, successful horticulture itself is dependent on the mass murder of certain species. Even organic methods involve killing animals (typically murder by proxy, ladybugs to kill aphids.) Its all about where you draw the line and who you would kill to live. I have no problem with cows and chickens and pigs on a regular basis. Primates would have to be a them or me situation.
Click to expand...

Extending your metaphor, Shiva is also the ultimate ascetic, and therefore, very peaceful in meditation. Whereas periodic destruction and renewal are important, I just don't think we need to torture and kill animals in such disgustingly large quantities, the way we do. Ahimsa, nonviolence, something that yogic meditation symbolizes, is important to practice
on a regular basis.

To counter this, "you eat plants and they're alive" business, I'd say that I'm not in the same kingdom as plants. The brotherhood of Animalia, baby! :D

edit: Also, while renewal and destruction might be important, who gave us license over their execution? Indeed, if our cognition grants us the ability to wax moral in a manner more pronounced than any of our fellow species, then one would imagine we would see more worth in their existence and less power in our control.

I'm not trying to indemnify people who eat meat. I'm just giving my perspective, for whatever its worth. I apologize if I sound combative.
 
I've really enjoyed this thread, and I'm impressed with everyone's ability to respect, if not accept, the beliefs of others.

One thing that often comes up in these discussions is something along the lines of 'vegetarians still have to kill plants, and killing is killing.' As much as this is not my primary motivation for eschewing meat, I have a significant philosophical disagreement with the idea that 'killing is killing.'

If we take the starting, a priori assumption that killing another human is ethically unacceptable (if avioidable...circumstances like self defence are a special case), there are two distinct families of ethical paradigms that can be built around this starting point:
1) the deontological ethical systems, which I will oversimplify as saying that 'killing is inherently evil'
2) the consequentialist ethical systems, which I will oversimplify as saying that 'killing is evil because of the undesirable consequences it causes' (e.g., suffering of the victim, suffering of the victims family & friends, loss of potential for happiness and productivity for the victim and any other agents the victim may have interacted with had it lived, and loss of security for society in that the unjust death of a member of society weakens and threatens all other members of society, etc.)

I'm a consequentialist (a Millsian Utilitarian, with some of my own extensions, if you want to be precise). So, ethically, a human life is much more important than a less sentient creature such as a dog, but the dog is more important than a fish, which, in turn, is more important than an insect. (Go on, ask me how I know a fish is less sentient than a dog...I dare ya!).

So as well as the environmental impact issue, I'm ethically compelled to reduce the suffering my eating causes by choosing to eat non-sentient organisms. Not all killing is equal. When I do feel like a non-healthy indulgence, I'll have smoked oysters (on rye with blue cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, with a good Bitter to wash it down :)). Killing some oysters is a lot less ethically dubious than killing whales.

I've actually got work to do, so I'll end my schpiel here. Hope some of you found it interesting/amusing.

Cheers
 
Its a bit foolish to place your dietary needs on everything other than meat since it provides so many things that we need, especially when people don't even process plant products efficiently whatsoever. Humans don't even break down cell walls.

One of my old professors, one of the smartest people around and one of the top scientists in his field (something related to pathology), says that we should just maintain a well rounded diet and stop listening to the bullsh*t that we're being told by different groups. He said that anybody who tells you otherwise (adverts, vegetarians, animal rights activists) has a reason to want to believe that being meat-free is beneficial. People who are mainly carnivorous will try to argue the other point.

He also says that we don't need milk in our diets. We're the (or one of the) only animals to drink milk into adulthood, and are also the only species to drink another species' milk. That says a lot when considering the vast number of animals in existence, and says a lot about our "need" for milk.

PS: Just looked over that www.milksucks.co.uk link, and thats very sad. I always knew it was bad for the cows, but reading the fine details seems to make it stick a bit more. Its the equivalent of slavery --- working the animals beyond their natural limits. I may have to stop drinking milk and switch to soy....
 
I'm not a vegetarian... I love meat.
I believe that everyone has the right to choose his or her own diet, whether for religious, health or etihcal reasons.
 
My sister decided to become vegetarian and then vegan just recently. I was asking her about it and was wondering if it was for animal rights reasons. Her response:
"I'm not vegetarian because I love animals, I'm vegetarian because I hate plants."
She was kidding of course, but I thought that was pretty funny.
 
Stampyhead said:
"I'm not vegetarian because I love animals, I'm vegetarian because I hate plants."
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i love that
jdechko said:
I believe that everyone has the right to choose his or her own diet, whether for religious, health or etihcal reasons.
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and i believe that completely. this was a total free decision. i did research. i had done it in high school for a semester kind of as an experiment and never felt healthier. but when i moved, all i ate was meat because it is everywhere. especially in a college town with nothing surrounding you. everything here is fast food. so this has been a little harder.
 
Nope. I’m a barbarian, heathen, bastard. I want my meat still-mooing-on-the-plate rare.
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