c'mon, do some fucking research instead of just speculating. Our small intestine is something like 20 times out body length and is 'ribbed'. Carnivores' small intestine is like 9 times their body length and smooth. why? Because as meat digests and sits there in your intestines waiting to be expelled, it rots inside you emitting toxins. Dogs expell this digested waste very quickly because of their short, smooth intestine....... because of our ribbed intestines, we develop little pockets where rotting meat sits for long periods of time..... this is why colon cancer is caused by eating meat 90+% of the time.

Yeah, we have canine teeth, other herbovours have them too. But NO Carnivour has molars.

Eating meat is bad for you, the global economy, the environment, and, of course, the animals.

Don't give me any fly-by-night internet story of the day that says you need 20 ounces of raw steak a day to stay healthy and chocolate might cure hepes, numerous studies published in the New Englend Medical Journal, The Yale Journal Of Medicine, Harvard, etc - every reputable medical institution have reports supporting a pure vegetarian diet. If you actually do your homework it's all incredibly black and white.

When was the last time you got sick? Me? It's been way over 5 years, and since I cut out Cheese? Nothin' I feel great all the time. I haven't called in sick to a job the 5 years I've lived in Chicago.

-n

-n

not crap, for many reasons. it's a good idea all around.

congratulations to all vegetarians! and vegans! who have been such for longer than the two-year 'trial period!'

i love meat! i did my two years of undergraduate vegetarianism! now i eat it, and i love to do so!

it was pork that did it! i love pork! is that what is in a jim's polish? because that's what did it! nothing tastes like pork but pork!

Intern_8033 wrote:As far as passing vegetarianism onto another type of living thing, you seem to be implying that the differences between a human and other species are negligible. My response to that argument is: When you make such inane arguments, you reduce the chances of any argument you make being taken seriously.

intern_8033, i like you very much, and think you have one of the best senses of humor on this forum. but it makes me sad how easily you dismiss the notion of all life being equally valid as "inane". if there's one thing i hate, it's species-ism. i find that to be mankind's single most deplorable trait: the fact that due to our collective ability to create a codified language and produce advanced machinery, we believe we are "the best".

i find it so interesting how humans almost ALWAYS without fail believe we are "the best", when not one of us could develop our language or produce a machine (such as a gun, one of the keys to our dominance over all) on our own, without the help of the billions of people who came before us. how if you put 100 young (insert animal here) and 100 young humans (lets say three years old) on a remote island, essentially a separate system from humanity, the likelihood of the humans even surviving, much less dominating, is virtually nil.

and i love how it's our collective history that ultimately makes humans special. the same history that includes developing bigger and bigger weapons, overpopulating the planet, exterminating species after species after species... i don't think humans and animals and plants are at all identical. except in the sense that i think the life of your pet cat is no less valid, no less relevant than the life of your kid sister. or me. or anyone. other than an ingrained biological imperative, i've found no compelling arguments that say human life is worth more than dolphin life, or cow life, or a flower.

call that inane all you want. you call my position inane, i'll call your position banal, everybody can go home and watch some teevee and then everything will be awesome.

why is it that the most super-special, top-notch species, the one with the most moral obligation to be all top-notch and enlightened, is the one that fails the most miserably in that task, the one that destroys everything for ourselves and practically every other living thing? hook me up.

n.c. wrote:When was the last time you got sick? Me? It's been way over 5 years, and since I cut out Cheese? Nothin' I feel great all the time. I haven't called in sick to a job the 5 years I've lived in Chicago

"called in sick"? is that a fair measure of health? i managed to make it through 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grades without missing a single day of school. 12th grade i said "fuck it" and decided to take days off because i felt like it. i DID get mono the last week of my senior year... so during the last five years of my K-12 school, i managed to only get sick once.

my diet has consisted primarily of pizza, meat, potatoes, and that's pretty much it, i mean we're talking frozen food in a microwave, for a long, long, long time. since the invention of the microwave, really. i have always hated fruit and vegetables. i have always loved cheesy poofs. i realize all this will haunt me when i get older, hopefully not while i'm in my 40's or 50's, but 60's is fine. i don't expect to live to 80 or 90.

meat is awesome. a meat lover's high-five to tmidgett if he's up for that... bbq ribs. bbq pork roast. bacon. pork rules. a good brat, a good burger. pepperoni on pizza... sorry animals. you were going to either a) die of old age, which is arguably a waste of your nutritional potential, b) get eaten by somebody else, like a tiger, or c) get in my belly!

we are omnivores, it doesn't mean we have to eat everything, it means we Can eat anything.

i know people who really like meat but don't eat it because they grew up on farms and have learned how wasteful factory farms are in regards to grain. we could feed every person on earth with the amount of grain we feed livestock.

i also know straightedge hardcore vegans who are vegan purely as an adopted ethos from bands they like, who seem to have no problem with crushing a cricket if they see one.

if i have a point it is that your diet is about the least important thing to me that i can think of and i imagine you feel the same. so let me eat meat and apples in peace, which most of you do, and i'll let you eat imitation milk and burgers with nary a smartaleck comment.

I'm a vegetarian, but I still eat dairy and fish. So, I guess that makes me a pesca-ovo-vegetarian. Or, a plant-eating pussy.

I switched almost 3 years ago because of a number of reasons:

1. My wife (then girlfriend) was aready a vegetarian when we moved in together, and there really wasn't any point in us having two separate diets and cooking separate meals.

2. My father (a full-on meat eater all his life) developed ulcerative colitis. He went through weeks of hell with it and a lot of drug treatments, during which time I researched the disease and found that it is heavily linked to red meat consumption and the only thing shown to send the disease into any kind of remission was pure veganism. I couldn't convince him to give up his steaks, so I started on the path myself because I sure as hell don't want to go through what he is going through.

3. I read up on diets and learned a lot about our digestive systems and the benefits of different diets around the world. The first thing that jumped from every page was the fact that meat is really a shit package. Sure, you get some (incomplete) proteins, but you also get cholesterol, saturated fats and some nasty little chemicals that are shown to be very carcinogenic with high intakes. Plus, three words: mad cow disease.

I still eat fish because of the supposed benefits of salmon, etc. However, the mercury levels in most fish is now getting so bad here that the EPA is recommending that pregnant women don't eat any! So, fish may soon be off the menu soon, but I only eat it now and again anyway. I'm also planning on moving off dairy soon, but not this year.

I missed meat terribly for the first month or so, but now I get turned off by it. I salivate like a lunatic when I see nicely cooked florets of broccoli or sticks of asparagus. Yeah, I sound like a tree-huggin' hippie but I feel great and my cholesterol is totally in the green (pun, of course, intended).

In the end, the best argument for vegetarianism was given by a friend of mine: "I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I fucking hate plants".

When i was a wee boy growing up on the farm I was given a "pet" cow. I named it Frank. I bottle fed frank and watched him (her actually) grow up, i even rode him. Frank went away... i asked "Where's frank?-Boy i miss Frank." and so on.

Then one day at the diner table we were eating cheeseburgers, i was annoying everyone with my "Where's Frank?" routine and then my Grandfather told me well franks with us right now, he began cackling and said"Frank went to the Bank!"

Weep for me now.

Anyways it didn't turn me into a vegan or anything, -call me callous. -I do however realise that if people were to eat less meat (beef especially) the resources left over would be tremendous. I probably eat beef maybe once every two months or so. -Maybe.

-Wilson[/i]

Intern_8033 wrote:By way of humans being the only species capable of moralizing, it is the only species capable of having a moral obligation.

wow. so you contend that you know the thoughts and ethics of all animals? have you heard of the scienticious study a few years back that proved that dolphins are self-aware, and thus have the coveted "consciousness" that you used to be able to say no animal had? have you heard stories of african bull elephants going utterly maniacal and goring and trampling humans to death, but leaving infants and children untouched? the theory being that these highly advanced, highly socialized creatures, who were traditionally passive towards humans, had reached their limit in terms of our abuse of them? how we slaughter them, and take up their land, and cut off the tusks, etc. yet they wouldn't kill the children? i have heard and have faith in such stories.

you can also claim that koko the monkey either didn't have real thoughts, feelings, and sense of right and wrong, or was a fraud all-around. that's fine, too.

Intern_8033 wrote:I can't believe I have to say this, but, animals aren't capable of understanding a concept like vegetarianism. Furthermore, even if they could, it wouldn't be possible them to survive on such a diet. I WISH it wasn't possible for humans to survive without meat, but it is. Therefore, I cannot eat it and maintain my absolute ethical superiority.

for you to make such a statement, where you claim to have any idea what animals are or are not capable of understanding, that says to me either you are joking or you are fine with operating under a species-biased, self-important ignorance. the day we have some kinda universal translator that allows us to speak with animals, you let me know. what is a seeing eye dog? is it a robot? does it have a choice whether or not to dedicate its life to helping a human who needs help? i would argue that if it really felt like it, it could bite the blind person's neck. i've known dogs that are kind, and helpful, and dogs that are mean and ruthless. are they just robots, who have no idea what they do or why? do they make decisions? i live in a crazy world, full of wonder, where the thought processes of animals is something squarely out of our realm of understanding. i won't even start to talk about the social apparatus of bees, which includes a sense of self-sacrifice and loyalty that humans may or may not possess, on average, for fear of actually making your head explode.

have you ever seen a dog make a decision? or do they just execute programs? how about dolphins? how about whales? what do whales think about us?

i dunno if you missed my point or just think it's stupid, but what i was looking for is an answer as to why humans, being (by your estimation) the only creatures capable of understanding right and wrong, are the only ones who commit such massive amounts of wrong? why are we the destroyers? your example here is completely out of line, "Humans are the species with the smallest moral obligation to the world, yet they are more successful in fufilling this obligation than any other species." the only true moral obligation is to live a life in balance, and to respect life. and we fail most miserably at that. we are not more successful than any other species. we are, on average, much much worse. do you not recognize that?

ps - please don't eat dolphins or whales. dogs, okay maybe, but no dolphins or whales.

absolute ethical superiority

superiority to whom? you're superior because you follow your set of rules better than people who eat meat? ok.

where do you draw the line by the way? do you wear a gas mask to prevent a veritable holocaust against microbes? do you try to hamper your immune system so you don't kill bacteria and disease? or for a somewhat less outrageous suggestion, if you hit a raccoon with your car do you stop to see if you can save it's life? do you not purchase goods from any company that is in anyway tied to money made from meat-eating?

i honestly don't care if you do any of those things, most of them are impossible and unreasonable. but do not consider yourself of higher ilk because you leave cows alone.

all this being said, i could still eat nothing but rice for the rest of my life, if you can hook that up please do so.

eesh.