Vegetarianism

[fishlore]

That's how I used to be.

Unfortunatly it catches up to you. You can eat some meat and still be healthy but if you don't eat ANY fruits and vegetables, eventually you will probably get sick.

Going on more than 20 years with no fruits or vegetables and refusal to take vitamins. I was nine the last time I was forced to eat a slice of an apple. I'm still waiting for this sickness my mother kept insisting I'd contract. In fact the last time I was sick enough to warrant conversation was in 1996.

 

[Narz]

Going on more than 20 years with no fruits or vegetables and refusal to take vitamins. I was nine the last time I was forced to eat a slice of an apple. I'm still waiting for this sickness my mother kept insisting I'd contract. In fact the last time I was sick enough to warrant conversation was in 1996.

Yep, youth is pretty friggin' resiliant. I used to be able to eat a whole large pizza pie and go out and play two hours of tennis.

It's still better to take action now before your omnipotence starts to fade. A few salads and an occasional cantalope won't kill you.

 

[fishlore]

Yep, youth is pretty friggin' resiliant. I used to be able to eat a whole large pizza pie and go out and play two hours of tennis.

It's still better to take action now before your omnipotence starts to fade. A few salads and an occasional cantalope won't kill you.

No, I'm convinced a bite of cantalope WILL kill me!

 

[Masquerouge]

I for one don't see the point of being a vegetarian.
- If it's for a religious reason, since I'm an atheist I dont have much sympathy for that.
- If it's for health matters, then we are omnivorous for a reason. It's so much simpler and efficient to get your proteins and vitamins where they are. And nobody forces you to eat processed meat.
- If it's for animal cruelty issues, then realize this : a lot, and I mean a lot, of animals are literally slaughtered every harvest season by combined harvesters.

So I really don't see the point. But the truth is, I'm not bothered by veggies. For every animal they save, I'm gonna eat three ( (c) Maddox )

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

Eat fruit it is realy tasty. (atleast for us who weren't allowed to eat anything bad tills we were 10-11) I can't eat fat food and candy it just makes me sick.

 

[Mulholland]

I doubt you "had to" switch back. There are a lot of plant sources of high protein - spirulina, hempseeds, almonds are pretty high. Were you eating a lot of soy? Too much soy made me feel somewhat weak as well. I don't think you can accurately judge the reason for why you felt ill without a blood workup. Also, people seem to think that there is ONE vegetarian diet. That's not the case. If you replace out the meat with all soy and grains you may suffer ill effects. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, juice and superfoods (green protein powders, hempseeds, maca root powder stuff like that) may help tremendously. If you switch from a varied diet to just brown rice and steamed veggies you may not be getting quite everything you need.

Just my thoughts. I don't know your situtaion fully. Sounds like a cool job (the tree planting thing).

Yeah, For the purposes of a short post I didn't give all the details. All your meals are fully prepared by the camp cooks. There is a vegetarian option every meal but the cooks have to shop within a budget at remote northern towns where there are very basic vegiatarian foods.

As for the actual job, I'd reccomend doing it if:
1) you're looking for a good paying summer job.(200+dollars a day)
2)are really massochistic (like hurting youself): Black flies, bees, possible bear maulings, shredded hands,fights with locals from remote northern towns and all forms of muscle and joint pains.
3)like living in a tent for 2.5 months.
4)like partying like a rockstar in remote northern towns on days off.
5)have no aversion to working in rain, sleet snow, freezing rain.
6)are ready to fight bush fires if need be the case.

The list could go on forever so i'll stop there.

 

[Narz]

Hmm, the $200+ a day sounds good.

As for the freezing rain and whatnot.... hmm, perhaps I could look intot something like this further South.

As for the outdoor living and camping, that sounds fun.

 

[BCLG100]

indifferent but im not a veggie

 

[Hotpoint]

Our teeth and digestive system are designed like a frugivores. Our teeth are perfect was masticating fruit and vegetables. Try ripping a piece of flesh off a live (or freshly killed) rabbit and see how easy it is. The length of our digestive track is many times longer than say a cat or even a wolf (and even dogs can be vegetarian though I'm not sure I'd make mine one, supposedly the longest lived dog is one).

Chimps eat some animal food (maybe 3% of calories, much of it insects :yum: ) but our other biological cousin (who some argue we are even more related to the Bonobo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo) which eats almost 100% plant based (fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc.) diet.

As for Neandethals, it is irrelivant what that ate since they were annhilated by their more intelligent cosins - the Cro Magnons (aka : us).

Considering ourselves and Neanderthals are millions of years more closely related than we are to Chimps and Bonobo's their diet is a lot more relevent than your dismissal warrants. For one thing they had basically the same teeth arrangement as we do despite a basically carnivorous diet.

On the subject of teeth ours actually tear and masticate flesh pretty well (I can certainly rip a rare steak asunder without too much difficulty ), our canines and jaw arrangement are nicely suited to this task. What both ourselves and the Neanderthals lack are slicing teeth which carnivores typically have. The reason is pretty simple as evolutionarily we never needed the things, we've had the knife/axe a very long time so there was no pressure to develop such a specialised tooth. By the time our ancestors began shifting to a higher percentage of meat in our diet we could cut off a strip as required.

As regards length of digestive tract as an omnivore we do require a longer one than purer carnivores but ours is still much shorter than your typical herbivore. We're a compromise species.

By the way Rabbit flesh isn't all that tough in my experience so I think I could bite off a chunk from a live one though I'd prefer to skin it first like normal as the fur just doesn't seem appetising

 

[El_Machinae]

I for one don't see the point of being a vegetarian.

Raising livestock is more environmentally damaging, per calorie (or pound of protein), than raising vegetables, fruits and grains. ie, you get more nutrition per acre of arable land if you choose alternates to livestock.

As well, raising livestock uses more non-renewables, in the same way.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

Vegetarianism isn't natural humans are suposed to eat a little bit of everything.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yes, but we could be just as healthy if we vastly reduced the amount of meat in our diet. Especially if we replaced it with oddball concepts as fruits and vegetables.

 

[Irish Caesar]

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

Bottom line eat a healthy well balanced diet that contains everything you need. combine this with exersice

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

Bottom line eat a well balanced diet that contains everything you need.

 

[Sidhe]

Eat meat eat vegetables, it's all good, whatever you think is best for you.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

I eat fruit and meat and some potatoes. I want to start to eat vegetables to.

 

[Sidhe]

Easy does it there, it's hard to give up the carniverous lifestyle, don't go straight for brussle sprouts or lima beans, try some weak vegetables first, maybe carrots or onions(cooked of course first) Or tomatoes if you want to go the fruit way to veg. The innuit used to live solely on meat, they were perfectly healthy, just make sure if your going to eat nothing but meat you mix a bit of grain in there, even if it is from alcohol

Try being one of those psuedo carnivores that eats just meat but also eats peanuts and will acknowledge cucumber, a Ceasar salad is not a dismissal of the lifestyle, you can have it as a first course with a steak to follow. Try it out, you don't have to go the whole some veg thing at first. Hard line carnivores will tell you your not a "real" carnivore but don't listen, it's not a bad thing to take small steps towards vegetables. Just be careful, diet is not just a lifestyle choice.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

thanks for the tips.

 

[jamiethearcher]

I am a meatatarian, so going veggie would be difficult for me. however, I think its just mind over matter, and I COULD do it if I wanted too.