Chi Meson said:
and the perjorative use of the word "hippies" by the OP was intentionally baiting. Unfortunately, your scholar Tsarion dips into the same language style that you (correctly, I think) criticise. And the 2500 gallons of water per pound of meat is about as correct as Eskimos "200 words for snow"; everytime someone quotes this fact, the number seems to multiply.
Yet it does not follow that since some vegans are healthy and live long lives, therefore eating meat is bad. Brendan Brazier is a fine triathlete; so is Mark Allen, who switched from vegitarianism to omnivorism and then became the greatest triathlete ever.
That Tsarion quote is somewhat esoteric and needs to be taken in context. I extracted it from his blog, which he unfortunately has since discontinued and replaced with a forum, so I am unable to link to what he wrote in its entirety. I disagree that it is on a par with the thread title.
Michael Tsarion is a researcher of history, politics, our origins, and religions. He has a wealth of free material on his website, including many videos and radio interviews with him.
Website of Michael Tsarion:
http://www.michaeltsarion.com/
The figure of 2,500 gallons used to produce a pound of meat originally came from the New York Times (14 November, 1974), as referenced at the bottom of this link:
http://home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/health/Earth/Earth.htm
I guess the amount of water used depends on the location (more used in California than in Scotland, for example) and the species of animal being farmed. So it is not surprising that the figures vary.
According to the National Agriculture Land Study 1980/US Department of Agriculture Misc.
Publications no 1065 Nov. 1979, half of all drinking water in the USA is used in animal agriculture.
The fact that some vegan people lived long, had active lives, and./or were champion athletes, does not alone indicate that it is the optimum diet. What it does do, however, is provide empiric proof that such things, longevity, athletic success, is feasible on the vegan diet. People are often different, in how they respond to diet and other things. Some people can live to be 115-years old smoking cigars and drinking whisky everyday, not to mention the lousy diet they ate, while others end up in the hospital or dead following exactly the same lifestyle but after less than a third of the time! Perhaps that 115-year old would have made it to 150 with a healthier lifestyle, or had greater health and vitality in his later years? Maybe he would have died quickly rather than slowly with much pain and discomfort?
What is clear is that the majority of people are vulnerable to the ill effects of carcinogens, saturated animal fats, cholesterol, and other miscellaneous chemicals (including the concentrated pesticides and herbicides that the animals ate, and the very many medications the farmer gave them just to keep them alive on the factory farm), all of which are found in animal derived ‘foods’. The vast majority of nutritionists and dieticians agree that animal products are bad for health and the optimum diet is to be found through eating only plant based foods.
The science and evidence certainly, and very strongly, maintains that the healthiest diet for humans to adopt is the 100% plant based diet. Not only plant based, but
raw plant based (majority of foods raw, at least).
