the great vegetarian debate

[David N. Snyder]

Moderator-Admin note: Topic unlocked, but keep personal comments and attacks out of your posts. Keep posts to the issue at hand. Thanks for your cooperation.

[PorkChop]

Wish I could be vegetarian full time.
I definitely see the ethics of it but habits & social conventions are hard to break.
2006 was the longest I ever lasted as a vegetarian - roughly about a month.
This year I lasted about 12 days before getting stuck at a restaurant on my wife's birthday with no vegetarian options.
I'm shooting for making Sundays my no meat days.
In the mean time I try to make sure the meat that I do eat is as ethical as possible.
I get pre-cooked meals from a place that's all organic and free-range whenever possible.
They have an agreement with a chicken farm outside of town that's all free range and ethical.
They get their veggies from local farmers markets.
I atone in the ways I can.
If I ever make boddhisattva, my first priority will be to ease the suffering of every being I've eaten.

[mindyourmind]

Wish I could be vegetarian full time.
I definitely see the ethics of it but habits & social conventions are hard to break.
2006 was the longest I ever lasted as a vegetarian - roughly about a month.
This year I lasted about 12 days before getting stuck at a restaurant on my wife's birthday with no vegetarian options.
I'm shooting for making Sundays my no meat days.
In the mean time I try to make sure the meat that I do eat is as ethical as possible.
I get pre-cooked meals from a place that's all organic and free-range whenever possible.
They have an agreement with a chicken farm outside of town that's all free range and ethical.
They get their veggies from local farmers markets.
I atone in the ways I can.
If I ever make boddhisattva, my first priority will be to ease the suffering of every being I've eaten.

How about two days a week ......


That way you double the good work you are doing.

[PorkChop]

How about two days a week ......
That way you double the good work you are doing.

Let me get the one day down pat first and then I'll work towards two.
I'm still establishing my routine and am coming off a pretty poor weekend.
I'll get there eventually.

[mindyourmind]

How about two days a week ......
That way you double the good work you are doing.

Let me get the one day down pat first and then I'll work towards two.
I'm still establishing my routine and am coming off a pretty poor weekend.
I'll get there eventually.

I'm just kidding with you. One day a week is an awesome beginning. Keep it up.

[PorkChop]

I'm just kidding with you. One day a week is an awesome beginning. Keep it up.

Thanks for the encouragement, I'm going to work that much harder.

[Indrajala]

Bhante Dhammika has some arguments for vegetarianism from the Pali perspective:

http://sdhammika.blogspot.tw/2012/10/bu ... anism.html

[Johnny Dangerous]

I have been one on and off, not doing it right now. Two kids and a busy life makes it very hard to prepare meals that everyone will still eat....I certainly see the reasons for it though.

However, if one really wants to get into "ethical eating" vegetarianism is the tip of a big, confusing iceberg. When it comes to choosing a diet with the least harmful effects on living beings, there is alot more to that equation than just whether you choose to eat meat or not. So I also feel that sometimes vegetarians can get a bit too simplistic on the subject, if you are trying to focus on how what you eat effects the world, simply not eating meat will not absolve you of indirectly participating in harm.

For me at this point, just keeping the precepts and trying to behave in a way that follows is enough, I know it's not ambitious but I am getting older!

[Thrasymachus]

I saw "Tofurky Roast & Gravy" available at the local supermarket and decided to buy one to try it since it is past Thanksgiving and they probably won't be restocked. I cooked it with potatoes, celery and carrots, and spices. It was tasty, and soy-substantially equivalent to real Turkey, but no animals had to die! I don't think non vegans know how far faux meat has come. As it is all the major fast food restaurants use natural and artificial flavorings, most of which are produced in my state according to Eric Schlosser. Companies can and do use them for vegan products.

Photos:



Also it is just simply healthier as people are not physiologically adapted to eat meat and it leads to diseases and conditions like obesity, arthritis, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, ischemia, heart disease, cancer, etc. Just yesterday I learned my great uncle died after they first discovered he had rampant cancer and then heart failure. He could have probably avoided that if could have kept up the diet and physical activity of his childhood:

Olive Oil & The Mediterranean Diet are a HOAX!
..

The information that has been translated into the "Mediterranean Diet" came from a study that found low rates of heart disease amongst those living on the Isle of Crete in the late 1950's. While [these] people did consume olives, avocados, olive oil and other monunsaturated fats, their diets were predominately fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes with small amounts of animal protein.

Part of the reason for this was the community was very economically depressed as they were recovering from a recent time of war. Additionally, they were very active, walking an average of 9 miles a day.

This dietary and exercise pattern, that was evident on the Isle of Crete in the late 50's, no longer exist there (nor anywhere else in the Mediterranean).

...

[PadmaVonSamba]

I saw "Tofurky Roast & Gravy" available at the local supermarket and decided to buy one to try it since it is past Thanksgiving and they probably won't be restocked. I cooked it with potatoes, celery and carrots, and spices. It was tasty, and soy-substantially equivalent to real Turkey, but no animals had to die!

I am going more vegetarian every day.
However, to grow all of that stuff, millions of beings were killed.
Let's not kid ourselves!!!
To eat turkey meat, well, you only have to kill one creature...the turkey.
Or you could just amputate the legs and just eat them I suppose,
and then the turkey wouldn't have to die.
But then, if it was a free-range turkey its options would be very limited.
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[PorkChop]

I don't think non vegans know how far faux meat has come.

Oh I know... Tofurkey is the nastiest stuff I've ever eaten.
I bought some at a Whole Foods type store last year and one bite was enough to induce vomiting.
They don't make a dressing that can hide that level of gross.

Also it is just simply healthier as people are not physiologically adapted to eat meat

Australopithecus disagrees with you...

Speth JD (1991) "Protein selection and avoidance strategies of contemporary and ancestral foragers: unresolved issues." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, vol. 334, pp. 265-270.

[S]tone tools and fossil bones--the latter commonly displaying distinctive cut-marks produced when a carcass is dismembered and stripped of edible flesh with a sharp-edged stone flake--are found together on many Plio-Pleistocene archaeological sites, convincing proof that by at least 2.0 to 2.5 Ma [million years ago] before present (BP) these early hominids did in fact eat meat (Bunn 1986; Isaac and Crader 1981). In contrast, plant remains are absent or exceedingly rare on these ancient sites and their role in early hominid diet, therefore, can only be guessed on the basis of their known importance in contemporary forager diets, as well as their potential availability in Plio-Pleistocene environments (for example, see Peters et al. (1984); Sept (1984). Thus few today doubt that early hominids ate meat, and most would agree that they probably consumed far more meat than did their primate forebears. Instead, most studies nowadays focus primarily on how that meat was procured; that is, whether early hominids actively hunted animals, particularly large-bodied prey, or scavenged carcasses...
I fully concur with the view that meat was a regular and important component of early hominid diet. For this, the archaeological and taphonomic evidence is compelling.

References & additional reading:
Bunn HT. (1986). Patterns of skeletal representation and hominid subsistence activities at Olduvai gorge, Tanzania and Koobi Fora, Kenya. J. Hum. Evol., 15: 673-690.
Bunn HT, Kroll EM. (1986). Systematic butchery by Plio/Pleistocene hominids at Oldulvai Gorge, Tanzania. Curr. Anthrop., 27: 431-452.
Peters CR, Maguire B (1981) "Wild plant foods of the Makapansgat area: a modern ecosystems analogue for Australopithecus africanus adaptations." Journal of Human Evolution, vol. 10, pp. 565-583.
Stiner MC. (1991). The faunal remains from Grotta Guattari: a taphonomic perspective. Curr. Anthrop., 32: 118-138.
Stringer C, Gamble C. (1993). The archaeology of the ancients. In Search of the Neanderthals. pp 143-178, New York: Thames and Hudson.
http://naturalhygienesociety.org/articles/paleo1.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10702160
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 561328.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9648501
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/ ... 1307a.html


In other news, vegetarian Sundays are going...okay.
My normal diet is strictly regimented and Sunday is not.
Even when I go out of my way to plan meals of fruits, veggies, and tofu, I find myself reaching for grains, baked goods, and other foods that are really not healthy to compensate.
Prior to implementing vegetarian Sundays, my blood panels had come back with huge improvements due to my normal diet.
My weight was the healthiest I've been in a decade.
Over the last few months I've really been slipping, largely due to the chaos of Sundays.
My normal diet is locally sourced, organic, & free ranged; so that's probably the best I'm going to be able to do.
Sundays are proving counter-productive for my dietary goals, possibly counter-productive for my health, and knowing the realities of agriculture I'm dubious as to the ethical superiority.
Not sure that I'm going to keep it up.

[practitioner]

I saw "Tofurky Roast & Gravy" available at the local supermarket and decided to buy one to try it since it is past Thanksgiving and they probably won't be restocked. I cooked it with potatoes, celery and carrots, and spices. It was tasty, and soy-substantially equivalent to real Turkey, but no animals had to die!

I am going more vegetarian every day.
However, to grow all of that stuff, millions of beings were killed.
Let's not kid ourselves!!!
To eat turkey meat, well, you only have to kill one creature...the turkey.
Or you could just amputate the legs and just eat them I suppose,
and then the turkey wouldn't have to die.
But then, if it was a free-range turkey its options would be very limited.
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To grow all the stuff to feed the turkey those same beings died. And it takes more grain to feed a turkey to maturity than it does to make one Tofurkey so I would be careful about using that logic.

[PorkChop]

To grow all the stuff to feed the turkey those same beings died. And it takes more grain to feed a turkey to maturity than it does to make one Tofurkey so I would be careful about using that logic.

Oats & sorghum; as examples of a common grain feed, are relatively free of pests.
Wheat seems to have much more problems with pests and isn't as widely used for feed.
Even though maize is widely used as feed & is vulnerable to a lot of bugs, techniques like push-pull seem to be effective without causing loss of life, plus no-till or low-till planting techniques reduce the amount of digging up the land for planting.

In other words: not all plants are affected by insects the same way, not all farming techniques affect the inidigenous wildlife the same way.
A vegetarian's likely going to be hitting a wider variety of plants as food than livestock will.

[PadmaVonSamba]

I saw "Tofurky Roast & Gravy" available at the local supermarket and decided to buy one to try it since it is past Thanksgiving and they probably won't be restocked. I cooked it with potatoes, celery and carrots, and spices. It was tasty, and soy-substantially equivalent to real Turkey, but no animals had to die!

I am going more vegetarian every day.
However, to grow all of that stuff, millions of beings were killed.
Let's not kid ourselves!!!
To eat turkey meat, well, you only have to kill one creature...the turkey.
Or you could just amputate the legs and just eat them I suppose,
and then the turkey wouldn't have to die.
But then, if it was a free-range turkey its options would be very limited.
.
.
.

To grow all the stuff to feed the turkey those same beings died. And it takes more grain to feed a turkey to maturity than it does to make one Tofurkey so I would be careful about using that logic.

I was responding to the statement "...but no animals had to die"
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[Zealot]

I am going more vegetarian every day.
However, to grow all of that stuff, millions of beings were killed.
Let's not kid ourselves!!!
To eat turkey meat, well, you only have to kill one creature...the turkey.
Or you could just amputate the legs and just eat them I suppose,
and then the turkey wouldn't have to die.
But then, if it was a free-range turkey its options would be very limited.
.
.
.

So are you saying that the life of one turkey is less valuable than the lives of a couple hundred or thousand insects? Or more valuable? I'm confused. In the book Im reading right now, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, it talks about how every aspect of our lives causes the suffering and destruction of countless beings, which is the view I've adopted. We can try to minimize it by altering our diet from meat to vegetarian, but even that kills insects and likely other small mammals like those posts farmers often kill when seen near their crops. The boxes they were packaged and shipped are likely made from trees that when chopped down destroyed a habitat for countless creatures. The vehicles they were driven to the stores in ran over countless insects, mice, rabbits, and maybe even hit a deer or two. The stores in which they're housed in paved over natural habitats for who knows how many animals. In the end, every action causes suffering and killing.

Personally, the bred for slaughter lifestyle of most of the meats eaten in American or the civilized world is what makes meat so unappealing for me. Im much more okay with free range and hunted animal meats, but in general, Im mostly vegetarian. If Im eating at a friend's house, I eat what's on my plate. If food is going to be wasted or expire otherwise, it goes in my belly. I try to be practical.

[PadmaVonSamba]

So are you saying that the life of one turkey is less valuable than the lives of a couple hundred or thousand insects? Or more valuable? I'm confused.

I can understand your confusion, as value has nothing to do with what I was saying.
In fact, there is no value in any of what I posted.

But since you brought it up,
I suppose it is a comparison between causing of one being to suffer,
and causing millions of beings to suffer.

In the book Im reading right now, The Words of My Perfect Teacher

That is such a GREAT BOOK!
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[Thrasymachus]

@PadmaVonSamba:

I am going more vegetarian every day.

I am glad you are able to make a joke out of the intense suffering and deaths of billions of beings for no reason other than: taste preference, displaying domination, displaying the most conspicuous consumption from the most wasteful possible food source in terms of inputs put in. However, you keep arguing for and creating apologia for meat eating, so I doubt the sincerity of all your allusions to vegetarianism.

However, to grow all of that stuff, millions of beings were killed.
Let's not kid ourselves!!!
To eat turkey meat, well, you only have to kill one creature...the turkey.
Or you could just amputate the legs and just eat them I suppose,
and then the turkey wouldn't have to die.

Or you could just eat an apple or something, which unlike eating a Turkey leg, benefits the tree if you don't do it like imperialist modern peoples. Before toilets and abstracted civilization if I ate an apple, walked a bit, I will eventually poop. That poop will give the seed of the apple fertilizer and a chance to spread. However human meat eating is nothing like that, human hunters unlike real carnivores use projectiles and chase after the healthiest of the herd or species if possible, not the weakest, smallest and most sickly, like real carnivores do, improving herd health. Let us not kid ourselves with your fictions. Turkeys require plant sources to feed them which also involves the land base this takes up. Farming those plants sources kills even more beings, and prevents more beings from access to a unfettered land base, since humans will destroy all species that interfere with their farming. But that is beside the point, what you are doing is trying to guilt vegans and vegetarians as I pointed out before to you in this thread:

1.) You cannot do the impossible, so don't do the possible.
Basically this argument maintains that since even eating plant foods involves killing insects and micro-organisms, that the meat abstainers are no different or better. But trying to do the impossible always results in failure. Does this mean we should not do what is possible in terms of saving lives? Does that sound a very compassionate or enlightened argument? It sounds like a very bad excuse to bring down the bar of ethics and compassion to satisfy the attachment of those with certain taste preferences.

Which brings us to:

I was responding to the statement "...but no animals had to die"

Do you have trouble understanding what an animal is and isn't? Do you know the difference between doing what is humanely possible in one's capacities like not eating animals, and guilt tripping people for not doing the impossible: harming no beings at all while being alive? Everyone may as well just do nothing just to make everyone else feel good about their extreme disconnection to their consumption choices.

Oh I know... Tofurkey is the nastiest stuff I've ever eaten.

There are actually peoples who have eaten raw meat extensively. The Mongols of the steppes and Turkic tribes used to take raw meat, put it under the saddle and eat it while rampaging to battle on horseback. The Comanche tribe had similar practices. That behavior almost universally disgusts most human cultures throughout history and induces real vomit. On the contrary I have seen many so called carnivores and omnivores disgusted by raw meat, and lament how good soy and wheat disguised as meat can taste.

The article you posted mis-attributed the fact that animal remains -- bones were found and imputed something about plant foods. If you bury animals, their bones can remain a long time and preserve better, but if you bury a sack of potatoes with the same weight it will just return to the earth by decomposition unless it fossilizes somehow. So it is not strange that mostly animal remains can be found. However that is not what the latest research points to:
Scientific American: Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians

Are you even serious about the last paragraph? If you do something for one day out of seven, is that even giving it a shot? How is that even logistically possible? Most people cook more than enough for one or two meals. I don't understand how you can have this nice compartment where you just go vegetarian for one day or how it could be considered even trying. Alot of Americans always fight the battle of the bulge. I got news from you(I should create a thread about it infact), if you get a small minority of calories from animal sources(which have excess calories from fat and protein), that is not an issue. My family were all poor rural Greeks and before they were rich enough to afford meat, no one was overweight. Now Greeks are the fattest population in Europe thanks largely to the rat race of affluence that allowed them to consume many animal products! Alot of fad diets exist like Atkins, Paleo, etc. to try to use unhealthy tricks like carbohydrate starvation to induce ketosis and meld meat consumption with temporary weight loss at the cost of long term health. I have a feeling that is what you are alluding to. But if one simply eats 90% or greater calories from whole plant foods, they are not only healthy but avoiding the need to play such games or use such tricks.

@Zealot:
I used to think like that before going vegetarian, but I realized something:
If you eat meat under any circumstances you are no longer an example of an alternative for others. However if you refuse to eat meat those who care for you and love you will cook and eat more vegan or vegetarian meals themselves. So if you are strict, it radiates outwards. If you make exceptions it creates implosions inwards.

[PorkChop]

@PadmaVonSamba:

Oh I know... Tofurkey is the nastiest stuff I've ever eaten.

There are actually peoples who have eaten raw meat extensively.

Raw meat's fine, Tofurkey's nasty.
Actually the Mongols et al would saddle-cook their meat - putting the meat in a pouch in the saddle, thus applying low heat for long periods of time.
I hear it tastes pretty good.

The article you posted mis-attributed the fact that animal remains -- bones were found and imputed something about plant foods. If you bury animals, their bones can remain a long time and preserve better, but if you bury a sack of potatoes with the same weight it will just return to the earth by decomposition unless it fossilizes somehow. So it is not strange that mostly animal remains can be found. However that is not what the latest research points to:
Scientific American: Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians

Not a big fan of the article (way too much about modern primates), but the study he quotes on Neanderthals is very interesting!
They tested a bunch of 1mm^2 samples of Neanderthal teeth from El Sidron and found only small (almost nonexistent) evidence for meat eaten, but lots of evidence for cooked veggies & starches - even some medicine.
Thing is the bones (not the teeth) of various Neanderthal remains do show signs of a meat diet and in one of the articles I posted they describe that even the animal bones from El Sidron show signs of butchering. The study does admit that while the tooth wear of the teeth at El Sidron was more indicative of a plant diet, the tooth wear of the teeth at Gorham's Cave was more indicative of a carnivorous diet.
Funny enough, the study shows that humans have adapted to eat starchy foods from those times, which flies in the face of a lot of nutrition folks who say "starch is da debbil!".
I'm not sure I agree with the study skipping the findings of Adult 5 and Juvenile 1, maybe the findings didn't fit their hypothesis?
Cool find tho!

Are you even serious about the last paragraph?

Think I made a month in 2006 but felt sick the whole time.
Only lasted 12 days this year and gained over 10 pounds in that time, but at least didn't feel sick, just very, very hungry.
The sundays thing was an attempt to sneak up on it, but it's proving not to be worth it.
Heard a monk tell me that you'll go to a hell at least once if you eat meat.... guess I'll be sayin' "hi" to Ksitigarbha for you folks.

My "normal diet" meals are planned by a dietician and cooked by a local, award-winning chef.
I get between roughly 400 and 600 kcals a meal, 3 meals a day.
I lose weight via calorie & portion restriction, not ketosis.
Some of the dishes may qualify as "paleo" but not quite as meat-heavy as you're probably thinking, it's more because of the absence of grains.
Lots of fresh, organic veggies, with reasonable meat portions.
It works for me, and has worked very well since February - my doctor was quite impressed.
It's when I go off it or am not consistent that I start having issues.
Think I'm just going to stick with what works and take what comes.

[PadmaVonSamba]

@PadmaVonSamba:

I am going more vegetarian every day.

I am glad you are able to make a joke out of the intense suffering and deaths of billions of beings for no reason other than: taste preference, displaying domination, displaying the most conspicuous consumption from the most wasteful possible food source in terms of inputs put in. However, you keep arguing for and creating apologia for meat eating, so I doubt the sincerity of all your allusions to vegetarianism.

I am not arguing that eating meat is better.
All I am saying is that just because a person doesn't eat meat,
they shouldn't assume that they are not killing beings through their food consumption.
Vegetarians are not (to use a butcher's term) "off the hook".

If one assumes that because they are not eating meat
that they are somehow better than a person who eats meat,
what a big ego trip that is!

I was a strict vegetarian for 16 years
Now, I eat what is being served.
If it is a bit of meat, do you really think that the pig or cow or bird it once was
is still dwelling in that?
Where does the "being" of the animal exist?

Two issues are at hand.
Meat eating as a socio-environmental & economic issue
and meat eating as it relates to dharma practice.
Both are important, and one might show that they are related
but they are not the same topic.

It is only when I chew and swallow that I sometimes eat meat.
During the other 99% of my day, I don't eat meat.
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[PadmaVonSamba]

When I cook for myself, I eat tofu.
But I live in a house where I cook for people who eat meat.
When there are leftovers, I eat the meat that would otherwise get thrown out.
Does this meet your high moral standards?
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