Are You a Vegetarian? | Poll & Discussion

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AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on the varying perspectives on vegetarianism and meat consumption among forum members. Participants share personal experiences and beliefs about the necessity of meat in their diets, with some identifying as vegetarians while others embrace omnivorism for health reasons. Emotional connections to meat consumption and the impact of upbringing are significant themes, with many reflecting on their childhood experiences related to animal slaughter. The conversation also touches on nutritional debates, with some arguing that a vegetarian diet can meet all dietary needs, while others insist on the importance of meat for health. Overall, the thread highlights a complex interplay of cultural, emotional, and nutritional factors influencing dietary choices.

What are you?

  • Total voters
    136
  • #101


ArcanaNoir said:
That's very interesting. What about that law prohibiting eating your experiments? That's silly. Food experiments are the best! :biggrin:
I worked with a guy that once was a research assistant at the University of Maine. They were involved with programs studying the feasibility of flash-freezing and shipping Maine lobsters. Guess what happened to the lobsters and lobster-parts that were not required? I would love to have been in Gerry's research group. (who buys the butter?)
 
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  • #102


Wow, the thread has grown a lot since I last posted!

I haven't read all the posts on this thread, just giving my take on vegetarism. I have been a vegetarian all my life and I have never tasted any kind of meat or eggs. This really isn't uncommon in India, since there are a lot of people who are vegetarian by religion. It is more of a choice for me.

Even then, I have often been asked about the supposed lack of proteins in a vegetarian diet. But most vegetarians in India always have some form of protein in their daily diet in the form of pulses. Soybean is consumed as a pulse and used for production of vegetable oil. While soy-based food products are popular among vegetarians in western nations, tofu is virtually unknown in most parts of India.

I personally haven't experienced any health problems or fatique due to my diet (I swim regularly and do sports, btw). I have an aversion to the smell of eggs, so never tried them. Some people have spoken about the health benefits of eating fish. I cannot speak for other countries, but I would be wary of eating any seafood in India due to the high mercury levels in the seas here. Expectant mothers in particular should avoid eating fish in India.

There are hardly any organised retails selling packaged meat here. In India, one has to buy meat directly from the slaughter-houses or abattoirs as they are called here. These places are far from humane, which is also one of the many reasons why I could never bring myself to eat meat or even use leather goods.
 
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  • #103


Reshma said:
I cannot speak for other countries, but I would be wary of eating any seafood in India due to the high mercury levels in the seas here. Expectant mothers in particular should avoid eating fish in India.
The same in the Netherlands, pregnant women are advised to avoid eating predatory fish and fish caught from rivers due to negative health effects (e.g. high mercury and PCBs).
 
  • #104


Not a vegetarian. Love meat. Eat it at least three times a day usually. Grew up eating roast beef, pork and chicken, lots of potatoes and bread, and an occasional fruit and vegetable. Today my diet is mostly roast beef or beef stews with potatoes, carrots and onions. I also like broccoli which I keep and eat a lot of. Once a week I make falafel (with garbanzos, fresh herbs, garlic, onions, flour and seasoning; and tzatziki sause (with Greek yogurt, cucumber, onion, garlic, lemon and seasoning). And there's the tuna or chicken salad (it's fun to get creative with herbs and seasonings with these) sandwiches with tomato, and the eggs-grits-sausages-biscuits-bacon-potatoes-jams-yogurt breakfasts (and lots of butter).

I'm 64, only slightly overweight, with a usually normal blood pressure, and feel good, so apparently proportionately lots of fruits and vegetables isn't necessary. Of course it's possible that I would feel even better if I did eat lots of fruits and vegetables and less meat, but, as a believer in the "if it isn't broken don't mess with it" credo, I don't want to tinker with a 'diet' that allows me to eat anything I feel like eating.

Did I mention pizza -- smothered in several different meats, peppers, onions, gobs of cheese? Or "coney islands" -- beef hot dogs smothered in Greek chili, mustard, relish, onions and shredded cheddar cheese?

Whoops, I just realized this isn't the Food thread. If you'll excuse me ... I'm hungry again for more meat ... just finished second breakfast (thank you Hobbits) about 30 minutes ago.

As an aside, considering the moral conundrum that some people associate with eating meat, I wonder if the carrot beings on The Thing's planet might be having similar discussions in "Are you a carnivore??" threads.
 
  • #105


Vegetarian. Lacto-ovo. But have been off the ovo for a few months.
 
  • #106


I don't see the point of going against nature.
I am not a vegetarian.
 
  • #107


I definitely eat meat. It makes up the vast majority of my diet.

Most of the beef I eat these days is already packaged up, but I've participated in the butchering of a few pigs and cattle. I've killed and eaten many other game species. We always have some venison (whitetail deer or axis) in the freezer. I used to be an avid duck and goose hunter, but that tapered off when I started working as much as possible in preparation for going back to school.

I also live on the gulf coast, so fishing is easy and accessible. Up until I got married and bought a house, we always had fresh fish around. We haven't caught and boiled any blue crab in quite a while, but we still buy live crawfish to boil a few times a year.

I also eat lots of vegetables and fresh fruit, but they make up a smaller portion of my diet.
 
  • #108


Evo said:
Emotionally, I could not eat any animal if I had to kill it.

But that's when it tastes the best! :eek:
 
  • #109


Drakkith said:
But that's when it tastes the best! :eek:
:eek:
 
  • #110
Evo said:
:eek:

I understand Evo. I'd have a hard time killing my cats if it came down to that.
 
  • #111


Drakkith said:
But that's when it tastes the best! :eek:

I must concur, freshly caught trout or mackerel are some of the nicest things you'll ever taste. No need to go over board or use any spices, just salt pepper and flour, whack them in a hot pan with butter and serve with crusty bread.
 
  • #112


rollcast said:
I must concur, freshly caught trout or mackerel are some of the nicest things you'll ever taste. No need to go over board or use any spices, just salt pepper and flour, whack them in a hot pan with butter and serve with crusty bread.

I concur, but never did it myself. I only experience this traveling:

1) Row boat comes into tiny Carribean island, blows conch shell announcing fish, get chunk of red snapper caught within the hour.

2) At a small middle eastern village, our group of friends is invited to join a feast. We see live poultry being carried to a shed. They are killed and plucked while we chat and drink turkish coffee. Cooked over a fire. Never had better chicken in my life.
 
  • #113


turbo said:
I worked with a guy that once was a research assistant at the University of Maine. They were involved with programs studying the feasibility of flash-freezing and shipping Maine lobsters. Guess what happened to the lobsters and lobster-parts that were not required? I would love to have been in Gerry's research group. (who buys the butter?)

That's about as good as the person I met from Louisiana who did research with crayfish. The project involved only females, but they couldn't buy just females, so their lab had very well-fed grad students with lots of crawfish boils of the males.
 
  • #114


Moonbear said:
That's about as good as the person I met from Louisiana who did research with crayfish. The project involved only females, but they couldn't buy just females, so their lab had very well-fed grad students with lots of crawfish boils of the males.
Not only did Gerry and his pals get all of the unused parts of the lobsters, but they made their own "vodka" out of research-grade ethanol with a little citric acid to add a bit of sourness.
 
  • #115


turbo said:
Not only did Gerry and his pals get all of the unused parts of the lobsters, but they made their own "vodka" out of research-grade ethanol with a little citric acid to add a bit of sourness.

You have to be careful with that. A lot of research grade alcohol is "denatured" alcohol, which means it has a small percentage of methanol or isopropanol added to keep it from being drunk. The pure stuff is basically the same as Everclear, which is dreadful!
 
  • #116


The stuff that we had in the pulp mill lab was denatured with methanol, ethyl acetate, and even aviation gasoline. The university had real ethanol. Gerry was a little "out there" but he wasn't suicidal.
 
  • #117


Hi
I used Pure Vegan B12 spray.There is also a cheaper version that does not advertise vegan but says so on the label called Pure Advantage B12. The ingredients are identical.
 
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  • #118


richart2012 said:
Hi
I used Pure Vegan B12 spray.There is also a cheaper version that does not advertise vegan but says so on the label called Pure Advantage B12. The ingredients are identical.

That's not B12, it's a methylated form of it. Lots of "health food" shops sell these scammy products as supplements for vegans, but they aren't bioavailable forms. There is no bioavailable form in plants. Some supplements of cobalamin are produced from bacterial sources, and can be used, but there are far more scams out there than legitimate products.

Humans evolved to require a diet that includes some animal products. It doesn't need to be daily, and it doesn't need to be meat, but it does need to be an animal product of some sort...raiding the chicken house for a few sterile eggs now and then is fine. There's no sane reason to deny a person all animal products. But, instead of eatingna few animal products, they'd rather support an industry that manufactures synthetic vitamins, packages them up in plastic bottles, and ships them over long distances, and may not even be a usable form of the vitamin.
 
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  • #119


I eat everything [less breads and high carb foods] but keep the red meat to a minimum. And while I am on a low-carb diet, which by definition means relatively high fat and protein, I have probably eaten more fresh fruits and vegetables over the last year than in the previous ten [no kidding!]. Now, as long as I keep my party platter handy, I tend to eat vegetables like candy.

People here might be interested in learning more about former President Clinton's diet. He is on an extreme vegetarian diet that doesn't even allow processed plant oils. Even fish oil is forbidden. I saw the author of the diet interviewed. He claims that no one who has gone on this diet has ever had a heart attack; that some people have gone on this diet were in dire need of corrective heart surgery, but the disease was reversed through diet. He claims that while genetics plays a role, all heart disease is preventable and 100% attributable to food. A striking claim to say the least! And he claims to have the research to back it up. I've been meaning to learn more about this but hadn't gotten around to it yet.
 
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  • #121


Ivan Seeking said:
He claims that no one who has gone on this diet has ever had a heart attack; that some people have gone on this diet were in dire need of corrective heart surgery, but the disease was reversed through diet.
A damaged heart or valves cannot repair themselves, that's crackpottery.
 
  • #122


Evo said:
A damaged heart or valves cannot repair themselves, that's crackpottery.

He was talking about coronary artery disease. Obviously diet isn't going to repair a damaged valve.

Monique already posted his research.
 
  • #123


In case memory doesn't serve correctly, here is the interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4hbV4RgzI8
 
  • #125


Vegetarian throughout the year but I do eat a bit of meat during the holiday season, so mostly vegetarian aside from two dates on the calendar.
 
  • #126


Ivan Seeking said:
He was talking about coronary artery disease. Obviously diet isn't going to repair a damaged valve.

Monique already posted his research.
That was an unrelated list of papers that had his name listed.
 
  • #127


Evo said:
That was an unrelated list of papers that had his name listed.
What do you mean unrelated, it's a list of his peer-reviewed publications. Among them publications where he makes the claims of lifestyle changes and cardiovascular disease. Those are more on-topic than popular media statements that are known to distort facts.

People are free to look at his publications, the second one is very recent research. Here is an older publication that supports the claim of regression of coronary artery disease based on intensive lifestyle changes http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9863851

I don't have time to dig into it much further, but he also has publications on diet alone.
 
  • #128


If there are any vegetarians in this thread, could you explain the rationale behind eating some meats?
 
  • #129


There are no vegetarians or vegans if single celled animals are counted. Then where is the threshold. :-p
 
  • #130


PAllen said:
There are no vegetarians or vegans if single celled animals are counted. Then where is the threshold. :-p

single-celled are not classified as animals. You really need tissues/organs to be metazoan, technically.

Still, there are plenty of multicellular animals that are small enough to hide in a salad and not give a taste.

edit: to take a guess: probably many draw the line at vertebrae.
 
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  • #131


Pythagorean said:
single-celled are not classified as animals. You really need tissues/organs to be metazoan, technically.

Still, there are plenty of multicellular animals that are small enough to hide in a salad and not give a taste.

edit: to take a guess: probably many draw the line at vertebrae.

Ah, then let them eat escargot! :wink:
 
  • #134


I'm a veggie, and an athlete. I mentioned in another thread, but I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, power lifting, and running.

One thing I'd recommend all vegetarians (especially in academia) supplement with is creatine monohydrate. I'm not positive what the commercial source is, I assume its synthetic but I'm not positive so it may not be strictly vegetarian. However, studies have shown that vegetarians who supplement with creatine (as they no longer have any in their diet) show increases in memory, as well as anaerobic energy.

I've been veggie for 11 years now, so I've had a lot of time to consider where to draw the line. For me, personally, its vertebrates. I guess that makes lobster and crabs okay to me, but not fish. Insects are natures most plentiful food source, maybe, so its not very ecologically impacting if I wanted to go that route. However, I'm not in a hurry to eat either. Go figure. Milk and eggs are just fine if I need fat or protein.
 
  • #135


I eat peanut, jelly, spam, butter, spam, bread, spam, spam, spam, chicken, spam, spam, spam, spam, steak, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam...
 
  • #136


Kholdstare said:
I eat peanut, jelly, spam, butter, spam, bread, spam, spam, spam, chicken, spam, spam, spam, spam, steak, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam...

No spamming on PF!
 
  • #137


PAllen said:
No spamming on PF!

There's always time for spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE
 
  • #138


I am a strict carnivore. The only pleasure that I derive from eating is in knowing that something died violently so that I could eat it. Vegetables are not food; they're what food eats.
 
  • #139


You could, if you chose, kill vegetables violently. They're not big screamers though.
 
  • #140


Pythagorean said:
You could, if you chose, kill vegetables violently. They're not big screamers though.

I'm not so sure about that. The ex had the intellect of a vegetable, but she screamed like a wounded wombat.
 
  • #141


I eat two things. Sandwich, pasta, jelly ... THREE things. Sandwitch, pasta, jelly, steak ... FOUR things. Sandwitch, pasta, jelly, steak, burger ... FIVE things ...
 
  • #142


My dog would be a vegetarian in the summer if I gave him free run of the garden. As it is, he picks and eats all the low-lying raspberries and blackberries. He'll gladly dig up and eat carrots and pick his own tomatoes, string beans, and peas. I have to watch him when he gets near the tomatoes because the stems/collars are toxic.
 
  • #143


Anyone know much about mycoprotein sources?
 
  • #144


Pengwuino said:
I like plants, they are pretty and make oxygen for us. Why people find it okay to senselessly kill them, take their fruit, and subsequently feed off of them is beyond me. I eat meat and try to minimize the pain plants must go through in order for me to survive.

Cows, on the other hand, cause global warming and are plant murderers. They made their decision and I am simply seeking justice.

Also, what kind of option is "Vegetarian but I eat some kinds of meat"? THEN YOU'RE NOT VEGETARIAN. That's like saying you're a mathematician but you also do useful things.

Plant murderers? :)

By eating meat however, the animals have eaten the plants before. By eating 1 kilogram of meat, its like eating 16 kilograms of grain and 4000 litres of water. So that is more. But plants can't feel pain. They have no nervous system, and I remember seeing that those experiments confirming plant perception also prove metals feel pain, which is totally nonsensical!
 
  • #145


Moonbear said:
That's not B12, it's a methylated form of it. Lots of "health food" shops sell these scammy products as supplements for vegans, but they aren't bioavailable forms. There is no bioavailable form in plants. Some supplements of cobalamin are produced from bacterial sources, and can be used, but there are far more scams out there than legitimate products.

Humans evolved to require a diet that includes some animal products. It doesn't need to be daily, and it doesn't need to be meat, but it does need to be an animal product of some sort...raiding the chicken house for a few sterile eggs now and then is fine. There's no sane reason to deny a person all animal products. But, instead of eatingna few animal products, they'd rather support an industry that manufactures synthetic vitamins, packages them up in plastic bottles, and ships them over long distances, and may not even be a usable form of the vitamin.

Although I consume dairy, I disagree. I am sure humans were always herbivores. Look at our teeth, intestines, stomach acid, etc. All matches a herbivore.

What about B12?

If only we wouldn't wash our vegetables, we would get loads of B12... But sadly we do, so dairy is the ethical option.
 
  • #146


KingNothing said:
If there are any vegetarians in this thread, could you explain the rationale behind eating some meats?

Pesco-vegetarians, Pollo-vegetarians, Pesco-Pollo-vegetarians, Ovo-Pesco-Vegetarians, Lacto-Pesco-vegetarians, Ovo-Lacto-Pesco-Vegetarians, Lacto-Pollo-vegetarians, Ovo-Pollo-vegetarians, Ovo-Lacto-Pollo-vegetarians, Ovo-Lacto-Pesco-Pollo-vegetarians, Ovo-Pesco-Pollo-vegetarians, Lacto-Pesco-Pollo-Vegetarians and various types of Buddhist or Hindu Non-vegetarians don't eat some kinds of meat either because...

1. They think some meats are healthy (if they do it for health reasons), which is a myth.
2. They think that some meats are ethical, which is totally a myth, because no animal suffers like a chicken or a turkey.
3. They think some meats are environmentally friendly, which is a myth.
4. They think that some meats do not cause famine, which again, is a myth.
5. They do it because they were born like that, for religious reasons.
 
  • #148


rootX said:
Even from past threads, I have generally noticed that PF is more non-vegetarian friendly (i.e. seems to have higher number of non-vegs).

I guess that is because there are more meat-eaters than vegetarians in this world...
 
  • #149


Though I consume dairy, vegans could get B12 if only they didn't wash our vegetables.
 
  • #150


dimension10 said:
Although I consume dairy, I disagree. I am sure humans were always herbivores. Look at our teeth, intestines, stomach acid, etc. All matches a herbivore.

What about our canines? Those weren't developed for eaten shrubs.
 

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