Any Veggies Out There?

[Philly Q]

So personally, I choose to be "good", all of the time.  It's very stressful and bloody hard work, but I don't want to go blind,

maybe something else you could cut out too :oops:

seriously, though, diabetes is no laughing matter. it's commendable you look after yourself so well.

It is indeed - he looks super healthy too  :D

does your wife need to start worrying, dave? :oops:

 :lol:

Joking apart, Dave, I've been far too preoccupied in the last year or so to give any thought to that..... errrr.............. department.  :|

[nfe]

also I'd say we could feed the entire world currently if things were run a bit better, etc.

Just to pour some misery on things... :lol: I don't think humans will EVER be able to feed the entire race successfully, irrespective of scientific improvements to food production or whatever. Populations grow until resources don't sustain them. More food (or better distributed food) just makes more people.

[dave_mc]

^ well... not so much in the west. we just waste it or throw it out. I wasn't even thinking in that respect, i was more thinking along the lines that the reason poor countries don't have enough food isn't that there isn't enough food, it's that their poor are ruled by corrupt rulers, or western subsidies, etc. etc.

it's like when the teachers at school used to act like you were awful if you didn't eat all your food, as if eating it all somehow made it ok that poor people were starving all over the world.

obviously i'm not saying you should waste food as a matter of principle (LOL), but not wasting it isn't going to solve all the problems either. or even get anywhere near started on solving them.

:lol:

Joking apart, Dave, I've been far too preoccupied in the last year or so to give any thought to that..... errrr.............. department.  :|

thanks for the clarification philly o_O

[Philly Q]

Joking apart, Dave, I've been far too preoccupied in the last year or so to give any thought to that..... errrr.............. department.  :|

thanks for the clarification philly o_O

Well, it was you that... ahem... raised the subject.  :P

[Sifu Ben]

Basic humanist social psychology suggests that if everyone was fed and watered adequately their concerns would move up a tier and their societies would develop. The experience in Europe, North America and East Asia shows that more developed societies lead to a marked decline in fertility rates. In 150 years we may well experience global population contraction.
I agree with Dave, we're more than capable of feeding the world, just as a global society we choose not to.

[nfe]

^ well... not so much in the west. we just waste it or throw it out. I wasn't even thinking in that respect, i was more thinking along the lines that the reason poor countries don't have enough food isn't that there isn't enough food, it's that their poor are ruled by corrupt rulers, or western subsidies, etc. etc.

Oh certainly, not disputing that. The best thing we could do for the poorest nations is leave them to it. No aid at all, but also not using any of their resources. They'd quickly be able to feed themselves adequately - but their populations would erupt at even higher rates.

[dave_mc]

^ i dunno about no aid at all, but i definitely agree that a lot of the time we're screwing them over and then giving them a little in aid to make it look like we're helping them :lol:

^ ^ yep :)

you can't really blame people for having tons of kids if half of them die because of cr@p medical care and they need them to look after them in old age because there are no public services.

Joking apart, Dave, I've been far too preoccupied in the last year or so to give any thought to that..... errrr.............. department.  :|

thanks for the clarification philly o_O

Well, it was you that... ahem... raised the subject.  :P

touché :lol:

[Sailor Charon]

I was vegetarian for about six months. I was trying to impress/get off with somebody. It didn't work, and I found I*really* missed meat. So much so that when I had a burger from the university cafe (not exactly great burgers) it was the best burger I'd ever eaten. Actually it was the best thing I'd *ever* eaten.

[Shag101]

my wife is vegan and im vegetarian....though i only eat what the wife cooks....so i guess im vegan at home..lol
im not strong enuff to be vegan and only lasted a year.  i just want to show some support to her so veggie for me..

any-who

i just wanted to say that eating veggie or vegan does not mean your eating healthier....actually, being vegan seems to have caught on as the cool thing to do so many companies are making vegan meat substitutes  and other foods that are so overly processed it would be healthier to eat at McDonald's...

two books i like are

isbn 978-1-4027-7905-3  (Clean Start)
isbn 978-0-7382-1273-9 (Viva Vegan)

[XxpapertigerxX]

So personally, I choose to be "good", all of the time.  It's very stressful and bloody hard work, but I don't want to go blind,

maybe something else you could cut out too :oops:

seriously, though, diabetes is no laughing matter. it's commendable you look after yourself so well.

It is indeed - he looks super healthy too  :D

does your wife need to start worrying, dave? :oops:

(a) Also becuase a vegetarian diet puts a lot less pressure on resources and is a lot more efficient.  The world could feed twice as many people if everybody was a vegetarian, so I do like the fact that I'm making a move towards sustainability.


(b) You are correct about the dairy use, but most vegetarians would probably at least look into where their milk and eggs came from and are likely to choose better sources.  Sometimes it's better to be doing something than nothing at all, and making the swap from meat to veggie will definitely reduce the pressures on world resources.  (c) From a moral standpoint though, I don't see being vegetarian as any better than just cutting down on meat consumption, nothing annoyes me more than holier than thou vegetarians who preach about it.  As I see it what you eat is your business and what other people eat is their business!


(d) And I've always said I'll eat meat or fish again if I can catch it and kill it myself.  I think (and to bring up a debate from a while ago) there's nothing wrong with hunter gatherers eating meat, that's probably the most sustainable way of doing things.

(a) i was under the impression that the figures used to back up that assertion were...er... made up. Or at least massively over-exaggerated. i think even monbiot admitted as much at one point in one of his columns.

also I'd say we could feed the entire world currently if things were run a bit better, etc.

not to mention all the land used to grow non-food crops. i don't see why i'd feel guilty that my meat eating is causing starvation because (a) it's not and (b) if that vegetarian has tons of clothes or consumer good etc. etc. they might actually be more to blame than me!

"Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation."

“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said. “Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

"The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops."

Just pulled a few quotes from this article right here:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=warning

It's important to be aware of the problems our consumption of meat are causing. Sure, it's just one out of many things we are doing to harm our planet and our health, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do something about it.

[XxpapertigerxX]

"Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=all

[XxpapertigerxX]

OK, last post. But I thought this one should focus on how meat effects your health.

"Large studies in England and Germany showed that vegetarians were about 40 percent less likely to develop cancer compared to meat eaters."

http://www.cancerproject.org/diet_cancer/facts/meat.php

"When deaths were broken down into specific causes, eating any kind of red meat increased the chances of dying from heart disease by 16% and from cancer by 10%. Processed red meat raised the risk of heart disease death by 21% and cancer death by 16%."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/12/red-meat-death-heart-cancer

All that said, if you become a vegetarian but compensate by eating a ton of dairy products, then you're just substituting one poison for another. Eat a healthy, balanced vegetarian diet, exercise, and avoid cigarettes and heavy drinking and your health will improve drastically.

[nfe]

Everyone loves veggie propaganda.

[Dmoney]

[dave_mc]

your odds of dying from cancer might be reduced, but i notice it doesn't mention how your odds of being murdered by people sick of the veggie propaganda massively increase :lol:

seriously, though- i'm under no illusions that it's probably not doing some harm. But as i said- everything you do is.

And cancer is only one disease you can get. a pretty unpleasant one, granted, but still.

"All that said, if you become a vegetarian but compensate by eating a ton of dairy products, then you're just substituting one poison for another."

lolwut? you have a weird definition of a poison.