By contrast, too much protein is the major cause of osteoporosis and contributes to kidney failure and other diseases of affluence.
I think I’m going to have something really meaty. Maybe veal.
[quote]Garrett W. wrote:
By contrast, too much protein is the major cause of osteoporosis and contributes to kidney failure and other diseases of affluence.
I think I’m going to have something really meaty. Maybe veal.[/quote]
I’ll be more than happy to butcher the baby cow for you.
Just reading that PETA web page made me angry – and hungry for something cute and killable.
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/bryanbaskin/clubbing.html
I have only one question for you:
Worchestershire or peppers and onions?
What I don’t understand is where they draw the line. Why don’t they care the same for ALL living creatures? Where is the concern for the safety of cockroaches and spiders? It seems the level of care depends on the cuteness of the living creature. The fact that we have sharp canines and flatter molars at all makes us omnivores. I don’t see how they can honestly state that flat back teeth mean we should only eat plants. While I am not for the blatant mistreatment of animals, I am getting tired of hearing about PETA. Do they really have any influence worth worrying about? I had an ex-girlfriend who was a vegetarian. I got tired of hearing her throw fits at the amount of beef, milk, eggs and chicken I was eating. Is it some form of vegan disease that forces them to find validation by forcing others to think about their food choices on a regular basis? Most of the pure vegans I have ever met look rather sickly. While I have seen a few vegan bodybuilders, the ones with true potential seem to be few and far between.
Drew Carey:
How about that dolphin-safe tuna? Here’s my question . . . what about the f**king TUNA?
-Does a good tuna-flopping-around impression because he’s fat-
“What about me you sonofabitch?!”
[quote]Professor X wrote:
What I don’t understand is where they draw the line. Why don’t they care the same for ALL living creatures? Where is the concern for the safety of cockroaches and spiders? It seems the level of care depends on the cuteness of the living creature. [/quote]
The whole ‘protein leeches calcium from the bones’ thing has been dismissed a long time ago. Somewhere here at T-Nation they explain it in detail. Basically, the amount of calcium lost can be replaced by as little as a spoonful of milk. So it does not cause osteoporosis by any means. PETA is infamous for putting out false nutrition info.
[quote]Dave2 wrote:
The whole ‘protein leeches calcium from the bones’ thing has been dismissed a long time ago. Somewhere here at T-Nation they explain it in detail. Basically, the amount of calcium lost can be replaced by as little as a spoonful of milk. So it does not cause osteoporosis by any means. PETA is infamous for putting out false nutrition info.
[/quote]
well, just like everything else, it does and it doesn’t depending on the situation.
the key term here is excess and “excess” will be different for everyone.
excess protein can contribute to osteoperosis by contributing to excess acidity in the blood - the body will seek to balance that acid with calcium from the bones. but it’s not only protein, lots of stuff can contibute to excess acidity. the key is to balance the acids and bases in your diet.
berardi had an article up a few days ago on that very subject. it was called “covering your nutritional acids and bases” . check it out !
[quote]Professor X wrote:
What I don’t understand is where they draw the line. Why don’t they care the same for ALL living creatures? Where is the concern for the safety of cockroaches and spiders? It seems the level of care depends on the cuteness of the living creature. The fact that we have sharp canines and flatter molars at all makes us omnivores. I don’t see how they can honestly state that flat back teeth mean we should only eat plants. While I am not for the blatant mistreatment of animals, I am getting tired of hearing about PETA. Do they really have any influence worth worrying about? I had an ex-girlfriend who was a vegetarian. I got tired of hearing her throw fits at the amount of beef, milk, eggs and chicken I was eating. Is it some form of vegan disease that forces them to find validation by forcing others to think about their food choices on a regular basis? Most of the pure vegans I have ever met look rather sickly. While I have seen a few vegan bodybuilders, the ones with true potential seem to be few and far between.[/quote]
Good point, our teeth are evolved for a diet of fruit, veggies, meat, roots, and seeds/nuts. Why anyone would want to change that is beyond me…
I need to second the Prof. on this one. Where do these PETA assholes draw the line? Why is it okay to kill an acre of wheat while it’s taboo to kill a steer? Who are they to arbitrarily decide what organisms are okay to slaughter?
The only moral vegetarians I respect are the ones who only eat things that fall naturally from plants. I don’t remember what it’s called, but they only eat shit like nuts, berries, fruit and the like.
I’m not saying I agree with every modern agricultural practice out there, I agree that many of them are harsh and inefficient, but to condem the entire industry, no; the entire CONCEPT is rediculous.
Also, the assertion that our digestive tracts are meant for herbivorous living is false. Our waistes are much trimmer than other vegetarian primates. (Such as gorillas, although even a gorilla is an opportunistic carnivore.)
Maddox actually makes a good case against vegetarianism:
and here too
I work with a vegan and he always gives me shit about eating my chicken, well one day I had been poked enough and I said “You won’t eat anything with a nervous system?”
He repiled “yeah”
I then informed him how plants have an immune system, and went into great lengh about it, his reply? “Well I have to eat something”
I find it completely stupid. Next… On to the “health” argument…
Have you ever looked at vegans or even vegetarians? This couples in with the amount of misinformation they spread. “You can get protein from whole-wheat bread.” Yeah… And I can get air from a tail-pipe of a car… Nevermind its full of things I don’t want or need. As I recall from my meandering reading that only Lima Beans (not exactly sure… but kinda) have a full profile of essential amino acids. And to achieve a reasonably healthy amount of protein would require absurd amounts of beans to be consumed. Sure you could eat a vareity of plant food… But why not trade in that 3+ lbs of rabbit food for 3 eggs or maybe a 8 oz. steak. This is absurd.
Whew… I’m kinda sorry I didn’t ask for double chicken on my taco earlier.
I would like to know where the PETA web site comes up with the figure that most americans consume 7 times the reccomended amount of protein. If the USDA reccomendation is a meager 50 grams, then they would have to take in 350 grams of protein. That’s alot for anyone to eat. I don’t know any non athletes who pack in that much.
I think most of the health claims for vegetarianism are circumstantial or exagerated. I believe much of the purported benefit of a vegan diet comes from the fact that most people eat horse shit, so switching to a plant based “clean” diet is a healthful improvement. The chic 15 year old vegans who chow down on cheeto’s and pop tarts are in for a rude awakening however.
I’m sure someone else will come up with some research and/or more substantive data to back up the unhealthfulness of a vegetarian diet, I’m just not the man for the job…
It would appear that with as much emphasis as they put on “afluent diseases”, they are classist.The problem isn’t with what we eat, the problem is that we are afluent. Maybee if we go back to living in caves and scrounging for food, PETA will finaly shut up and leave the pseudo science to the diet and weightloss industry.
(I eat meat. The following is just a thought experiment.)
I’d bet that if all of the junk food addicted obese people lucky enough to have been born in the first (“affluent”) world donated 1/2 of their junk budget to appropriate research and charities we could end world hunger in those areas of the world where people don’t really have a chance to better themselves.
Seriously, people spend billions of dollars per year to make themselves obese. It’s their choice to make, but what you choose to do speaks volumes.
I am of the understanding that some sources of protein are a lot more “decadent” than others.
For example, beef is very inefficient to produce. It requires dedicated grazing land, something like 60 pounds of feed per pound of meat produced, fertilizers and pesticides, and is usually shipped cross country, and so on. This production is demanding on raw materials as well as having a fairly high ecological impact.
Where as something like fish is apparently far more efficient. Not much feed is required to produce one pound of fish meat, no deforestation needs to take place, etc.
If we were a poorer people we would probably have no choice but to stay away from the beefs of the world and stick with the fishes.
However, we do have the choice and most of us including me choose to indulge in choices such as the beef.
If we, en masse, were to choose something that was more efficiently (and cheaply) produced, in theory we should be able to create a great surplus which could be used to feed the starving, shouldn’t we?
I mean, I don’t like fish at all, and I sure love hamburgers, but I realize that my tastes are decadent and wasteful in the bigger picture.
LOWERY! LOWERY! LOWERY!
Actually, the Lon Man already weighed in on this subject:
[quote]ChrisPowers wrote:
conorh wrote:I’m sure someone else will come up with some research and/or more substantive data to back up the unhealthfulness of a vegetarian diet, I’m just not the man for the job…
LOWERY! LOWERY! LOWERY!
Actually, the Lon Man already weighed in on this subject:
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do;?id=459904[/quote]
I guess this is less about the “unhealthfulness” of a vegetarian diet, and more about the evidence suggesting that meat-eating is a natural behavior for humans. Still a good article to add to this thread though, I think.
[quote]John K wrote:
For example, beef is very inefficient to produce. …
Where as something like fish is apparently far more efficient. …
If we were a poorer people we would probably have no choice but to stay away from the beefs of the world and stick with the fishes.
[/quote]
Its all about quantities. If we all switched to fish, it would have to be farmed, since the natural resource would not sustain us. That brings back all the problems with beef.
For interest sake: I live in Africa myself. The staple foodstuffs in most third world countries are beef and milk.
It is easier to raise cattle than to catch fish. (I am talking about mainland areas of course, since cattle do not take well to tropical islands)
The “primitive people” cannot be vegetarian since seasonal availability limits food production. If PETA is correct and we should only live on veggies then we would all die of hunger in the cold/dry seasons.
I think of beef as a convenient way of storing vegetables for the winter.