kenoki - My Mom, Grandmother, Aunt, several cousins, roommate and hot as shit girlfriend would beg to differ.

Unless you refer to people in areas where it is very difficult to get fresh produce? Then, yes, you are correct.

Or if you mean that some people were not raised with a nutritional awareness, then you're right also.

If you're implying that some people's body chemistry requires meat, eggs, and dairy, I think they are not trying hard enough.

If you're implying that I'm not as healthy as I feel, I'm not sure how you would base that..... Also after so long, I'm pretty aware of what's going on in my body.

nc, i was not speaking for one side or another. i am just saying that it is easy to debate and get defensive about choosey diets when there is that luxury. and also that not all people are built the same, if you want to deny this... then wow. this is a transient debate though -- because if it all came down to it, we'd eat worms if that's all there was. so... who cares. you should eat what makes you feel good from the inside out, and if that is a bloody piece of meat way to go. my dog gets hyper and his hair & poop looks better after some raw meat & eggs. mine too. meanwhile my japanese grandma has been veggie her whole life (uh, basically... but sometimes you can't deny kobe) and she is 90 yrs old and kickin' it solid. i am glad your family is so healthy and your girlfriend is so hot as shit. good for them and good for you!

n.c. wrote:Oh christ.

yut - you are a moron.

I will prove you wrong by beating your carnivorous little ass into fucking chutney.

Every last thing you said was dead wrong. I am living proof. 18 years 100% meat free, 2 years meat, eggs, and dairy free, not a suppliment at all.

Gaddamn it I'm really sick of this bullshit. I (and the rest of the vegetarian/vegans on the board) never fucking asked some dumbshit to start this poll. It's pretty hard not to defend yourself when called a fucking hippy for having a belief.

yut, go fucking die. Oh, and just out of curiosity.... and this will probably backfire, but what do you weigh?

Wow... fuck fuck shit fuck shit fuck, you want to kick my ass? Go fucking die? Looks like we have a vitamin b-12 deficiency... Symptoms include irritability.

I can't follow what you're saying. First you say you're 100% meat free, then 2 years meat free. Are you trying to say that through vegetarianism, you have managed to tear holes in the space/time continuum? Most likely, the lack of nutrition has affected your ability to think clearly.

I weigh 162, 16% body fat. I'm 38 years old and eat red meat about 5 times a week.

Let me know when health maintainance organization, the world health organization, etc. start touting vegetarianism. So far, it is hippies like "food not bombs", physicians in the pacific northwest and northern california, etc. -- people I effectively (and rightfully) call hippies. If it smells like patchoulli...

n.c. wrote:If you're implying that some people's body chemistry requires meat, eggs, and dairy, I think they are not trying hard enough.

This is really funny. Now, we have enough oil to transport "fresh" veggies all over the place. We can get tomatoes or whatever any time of year. What happens when the oil peak necessitates communal farming and use of local goods?

Meat has it all over in terms of being nutritionally dense (meaning, it's worth transporting as the price of oil increases). Should we ship watery tomatoes and watermelons all over the place when oil is $90 a barrel? No... Beef jerky is the future.

The irony of vegetarianism is that it can only exist due to petroleum. So all of this hippy (yes hippy) shit of saving the earth through vegetarianism is so bunk, it's not even funny.

Look, if you like animals better than your own body, that's cool. You've learned a lot about self-sacrifice from Christianity, and it's really beautiful...

Let's not get too far into this notion that vegetarianism saves the planet, the human body, or anything of the sort... It's simply not true.

And please don't start with biodiesel and that... It takes more petroleum to grow/process the crops than it's worth. Energy analysts are already aware this is not a viable solution, but hippies think it's cool when their VW farts french fries...

The irony of vegetarianism is that it can only exist due to petroleum

I'm going to bed now. Tomorrow morning I'll walk 5 minutes up to the local high street where there's a Saturday farmer's market, the same as last week. I'll buy freshly baked bread, free range eggs, swiss chard, garlic, tomatoes, spinach, miscellaneous squashes, new potatoes, carrots, a range of cheeses, asparagus, vegetarian scotch eggs and anything else that takes my fancy. True enough, some of this will have come on the back of a van but no further than 20 miles away (I'd wager four times less than the average journey for a pig to a slaughterhouse). I have no qualms whatsoever about anyone eating meat but the arguments of your last post read like the ramblings of a drugged horse.

At least for me, this isn't a difficult notion to grasp. A lot of produce is transported using petroleum. As the cost of oil rises, it will no longer be cost-effective to ship a truckload of tomatoes or watermelons across the country (or world). When apples are in the off season, they come from New Zealand. When oil is expensive, we won't have apples all year round. We'll have all of the lush vegetables that grow in Illinois in the winter. Mmmm, I can already taste them. We can store grain though. Good nourishing starches! Maybe I can get Syndrome X and then diabetes! Hooray for diabetes! He got dat sugar diabetes, like BB King...

Or we can preserve meat... Take the water out of it. Living in the city known as the hog butcher to the world, I'll take some salt pork over stale wheat any day.

If your rich vegetarian diet requires a cornocopia of different vegetables to attain your nutritional needs... Someone mentioned that if you can't get your nutrition without eating meat, you're not trying hard enough. Well, you're going to have to try really hard as oil becomes more expensive.

Meat, however, can be dehydrated, processed, and transformed to be transportable at a lower cost. You see, vegetables are very watery, and they're not so good when dehydrated... not even raisins.

All the tea in England is grown there? I can't wait until you're stiff upper lips are sucking on a $5 cup o' tea. You can't grow tea in England. It requires a certain climate, and also very cheap labor to select and hand-pick the leaves.

My point is that I always hear this argument about how destructive and inefficient the meat industry is. Access to a wide variety of vegetables is a modern convenience -- petroleum allows this to happen. Not only in terms of transportation, but large-scale agriculture requires petroleum for fertilizer, running farm machinery, etc.

Maybe everything at your farmer's market comes from local sources. What if that was all you had to eat, and all everyone in your town had to eat. I mean, now it's just you and a bunch of other hippies down there. But after the oil peak, when the tories are down there, there won't be a lot to go around.

I know... blah blah blah... I thought I was pretty clear with the first post, though... Appearantly, I'm a drunken horse (oooh... burned by Brit-wit again!)

Here's the point -- vegetarianism relies on petroleum and industry to be feasible. These conditions will change in the next few years. Vegetarianism is a luxury of the modern world.

Ease up dude!

But I'm not sure I support this doomsday sci-fi scenario you present of a world with Mad Max fuel shortages in thrall to pickled hog. I agree that the mass transportation of vegetables over large distances road or air can seem decadent, ludicrous even (the other day in the supermarket I noticed some French beans from Kenya and asparagus from Peru) - there is a genuine and growing pressure on supermarkets here to source their vegetables locally which of course is offset by the convenience of cheap, year-round produce. Should it cease to be cost-effective to fly tasteless, underripe strawberries from developing nations I can't think that a move to use more locally grown produce is really going to be the dismal nuclear winter you describe, in fact it will be pretty much like my childhood of well-stocked greengrocers selling seasonal vegetables. Viewed purely through a perspective of petroleum usage growing and transporting vegetables need only be about as costly as doing the same for animal feed.

As for vegetarianism being a luxury of the modern world - look to the percentage of meat in the diets of developing countries compared to that of the West.

I'm popping up the road now..let me know if you want anything. x

...

To clarify, yut, since you're having trouble grasping this - I stopped eating meat when I was about 12, I'm 32 now. I never really ate much anyways so it's hard to remember when I made it official, but 12 is the latest that I would have eaten any meat. So I guess it's been at least 20 years. About 2 years ago I cut out all animal products (except honey which I just can't make up my mind about so I guess I'm not completely vegan if you're counting honey).

I have never felt better. Sickness does not exist in my world. As for the petroleum argument..... I'm just too busy for this. I have a bitchin garden.