The definition of a vegetarian

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While a lot of your comments are funny, and unfortunately I have nothing funny to contribute (at least intentionally - some may chuckle at me if that's their preference), I've been vegetarian since 1980. As in I don't eat meat. Period. Ever. Don't know where they found the idiots responding variously to the meat nibbling poll but they obviously didn't ask me, nor any of a number of vegetarians I've known for years. I used to have a friend who was strictly vegan for about 30 years, then he went back to eating meats for about 10 years... then he died of pancreatic cancer, not that I'm implying any connection to either diet. For my part I lost interest in eating meat for various environmental and ethical reasons as a teenager and just stopped eating it, phasing out fish lastly when I was 19. Haven't been interested since. I do still like some cheeses, and use milk in my coffee. Tried the vegan thing for a few years but it was a bit too hard to maintain. So I draw the line at using some dairy animals for their milk but won't kill for food.

I don't, however, have any problem with culling grey squirrels. Don't eat them. The mangy, flea-bitten tree rats go straight into the trash once dispatched. My local songbird population seems grateful as over the three years I've been hunting them from the bedroom and kitchen windows the bird population has grown steadily. Now we have hummingbirds, several sorts of finch, lots and lots of robins and chickadees, flickers, stellar jays, a few types of small woodpecker... it's a regular bird sanctuary on my end of the block. This may or may not be because there are no invasive Eastern Grey squirrels eating their eggs and trashing their nests, hard to guess, but in my 54 years I've never seen so many songbirds in the city as I do now. Who knows, maybe we'll even get a Douglas squirrel in the neighbourhood eventually. That'd be neat. Haven't seen one in the city in decades though... the greys have drummed them out.
 
A vegan, a crossfitter and an atheist walk into a bar. I only know because they told everybody there within the first 5 minutes.
 
Ifishsum said:
A vegan, a crossfitter and an atheist walk into a bar. I only know because they told everybody there within the first 5 minutes.
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Hahahaha!
 
In all fairness, we all poke fun at each other for various reasons. I choose to do so for the humor aspect...though some may not take it that way. Such is life.


Vegetarians are people too. And the reasons they're vegetarian aren't all the same. Some choose to be vegetarian because they don't believe in harming animals in order to eat. Some choose to be vegetarian because they don't believe eating meat is healthy. Some choose to be vegetarian because they don't believe our species was meant to eat meat. Some choose for religious reasons. Some choose for specific diet/health issues they wish to deal with.

Whatever...their choice and I respect that.


Yes, some things confuse me and make me look askance at some vegetarians...like those who say they're "vegetarian", yet their personal dietary restriction is plenty OK with them eating chicken or fish. Neither seem to be very "vegetarian" to me...but whatever floats their boat.


The only issue I have is when people try to force their own beliefs upon me. Personally, I'll eat anything put in front of me. If I come over to someone's house and the meal is all vegetarian, I'll sit down at the table and happily eat whatever is presented. That's just good manners.

On the flip side, if people have any personal dietary restrictions for any reason, including being vegetarian, I wish to know when they visit so that I can prepare suitable foods for them. That is just good hospitality.


I have a daughter who, at the age of 15, decided she wanted to go vegetarian. And so she did. She's 16 now and doing quite well. Her main reason is that she's very empathic towards how animals are treated and she does not wish to harm them through her own actions. My concern is that she understand and learn that there's more to being vegetarian than just eating salads and such. Her continued good health depends on her eating a balanced diet to get all that she needs.

How, pray tell, can anyone honestly argue against a person who simply wishes such good will? Seems counter productive to me.


The honest truth is that both sides of the fence have some very good reasons for their personal dietary habits...and both sides have some very poor reasons. But so long as each is getting all they need to be healthy, does it really matter?


My posts, such as the poster with the leather jacket, are meant to get a chuckle. EXCEPT when someone else decides beforehand that they wish to impose their own dietary beliefs upon me in a most rude fashion. Then the kids gloves are off and they can bugger off as far as I'm concerned. Respect is a two way street.
 
I robbed a vegetarian of their vegetarianisms in an afternoon with a simple charcoal grill, and meats from a few common animals. Pig, cow and chicken did the job.
 
I just figure that as long as people don't go to moralizing about the superiority of their preferred diet, it's not my problem. :)

Homo sap's an omnivore, so arguments put me into a "Mine eyes glazeth over" (MEGO) condition.

Hard to beat the taste of a slice of backstrap that's been rolled in cornmeal batter with a smidgen of mustard and then deep-fried.
 
My father is a WWII vet, 94 years old. He stopped drinking at age 50 and stopped smoking around the same time. He had to stop driving last year because he fell and broke his back so he lives in a retirement home where he gets to complain about the food. He WILL NOT have a meal that doesn't include meat. Breakfast cereal? Not a chance.
My wife passed away at age 40. No risk factors at all but one day she didn't wake up. When it is your time it doesn't matter what you had for breakfast.
My 25 year old son eats anything he wants to eat. Hot wings are probably his favorite. He lifts and runs every day and I challenge any vegan to take a pic and compare it to his physique.

It's not so much what we eat as it is how much we eat and then what we do after we eat. 20 oz ribeye, baked potato, mac and cheese, sweet tea and then sit on the couch all weekend watching TV? Probably not good. Tofu, broccoli and then sit on the couch and watch TV? Probably the same.

I have spent the past 30+ years involved in agriculture. Cattle, farm raised fish, farm raised bison, farm raised elk, etc. For the past 20+ years I have also been involved in the growing, processing, and distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables. I know a bit about what happens in the agriculture business. If there is anything that I am an "expert" in it is agriculture and I don't know half what I wish I knew. I retired before age 50 because of my success in agri-business and I currently am involved in several cattle businesses around the country. I still do consulting with some of the major vegetable growers in the USA by helping them market their products as well as occasionally developing new items.

Please tell all of your vegan/vegetarian/fruitarian friends and relatives that they are NOT saving animal lives by not eating meat! Maybe they aren't eating doe eyed cows and pretty baby pigs and that is certainly their right. I really don't care what they eat but there is no agricultural practice in the US that does not kill animals! None. All agriculture uses some sort of pest control even if it's manual removal. Do you think they pick up the worms and deposit them in a bucket for removal to a different location? Ever been to a fresh fruit or vegetable packing shed or processing facility? Every one of them has rodent stations around the perimeter. Every one has to keep an extensive pest control log. Grocery stores and farmers markets all have extensive pest control requirements.

Now, if you don't consider mice and insects to be animals then maybe you aren't killing any animals. If you want to be vegan then fine. I hope it works out for you and you live to be 100. Just don't pretend that "I don't want to hurt any animals" is a valid reason to go vegetarian.
I just put a chuck roast in the crock pot. It came off a cow we raised in our backyard but I don't recall this ones name. My daughter will tell me tonight right before we start eating because she knows what cow is in what freezer.

I only kill animals because they eat vegetables and I don't want the vegetarians to lose their food supply.
 
I read a post on FB today where they were claiming the only way to never get sick was to eat organic and vegetarian.

Never get sick? Really?
 
jim in Anchorage said:
Well it sure didn't help.
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Indeed. Or maybe it did? There have been studies that link red meat consumption with increased cancer risk. Maybe she prolonged her life through her diet choices.

We don't know. What we don't have is something that definitively links her diet to her death.

Such studies aren't easy...establishing cancer links of any kind is a statistical nightmare because many times they necessarily involve HUGE samples of the population just to detect a statistically significant and accurate change in any given cancer rate. And then, with that huge statistical sample you have to factor out all the tons of other influences which may or may not cause fluctuations in cancer rates. These involve occupational hazards, environmental influences, genetic factors, drug use, age, medical history, etc.


All we really know is she was a vegetarian and she died of breast cancer at the age of 56. That's it...there is no valid correlation between the two just on that basis alone.
 
All we really know is she was a vegetarian and she died of breast cancer at the age of 56. That's it...there is no valid correlation between the two just on that basis alone.
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Never said there was. But she [and many others] make it clear the claims vegetarianism is a key to good health are wrong.
 
My initial motive for moving away from meat was pragmatic in terms of resource usage. I read a few things during grade 12 and over the next couple of years which made it plain that meat farming was almost mind-mindbogglingly wasteful of resources. About a 9:1 inefficiency compared to vegetable sources of protein such as legumes. I did whatever research was available to me and made the decision to stop eating meats. As I said earlier, fish was last, as going fishing was fun and didn't seem all that wasteful. But then I found material showing heavy metal and PCB and other toxicity in mid- to high-end of the ocean food chain fish such as salmon or tuna was at all time high levels and that this presented a significant risk of various cancers. As a healthy young guy I decided that I wanted to live a long, cancer-free life if possible, and that the sacrifice of stopping consumption of seafoods wasn't that big a deal. So I quit after one last fishing trip with my dad. Haven't felt any need to go back to consuming any sort of meat since, and my health is excellent. At 54 I haven't visited a doctor in over 20 years, my blood pressure is modest, fitness excellent, and I have no trouble putting in a physically challenging work day and still enjoying active pursuits in the evenings and weekends.

Who knows... perhaps I'll develop 'vegetarian cancer' at 56 and die badly. Nothing I can do about the air I breathe after all, and I did grow up with smoking parents. Smoking outdoors didn't occur to them until my exposure was more than enough to put me at risk for life. If I go for a hard bike ride it's during non-rush hours to keep airborne particulate counts low. I don't burn candles or sit too close to campfires. My lungs have had enough smoke pumped through them, and my mother died of lung cancer, my dad's still around but with only most of one lung left, so I'm cautious about the air I breathe but that can only go so far in the city.

Do I preach to meat eaters that they should stop? My marriage wouldn't have lasted as long as it has if I did. My wife loves all sorts of meats, though she can easily go a week or two without any meat at all. She was strictly vegan for some years, long before I knew her, but decided she enjoyed meat too much to stay away from it. So she consumes in moderation, never cheap and dirty crap like fast food meat, and she's as healthy as I am. I was, as is joked about often, a bit preachy during my transition to vegetarianism, but that's just because I was reading so much on food issues generally, making it topical for me. I realised before I was 20 that people kind of got bored quickly so I stopped bringing it up. If someone wants to know something about diet and asks me, I'll offer a bit of information, limiting it to what's been asked. I know I'd be wide open for pro-meat propaganda if I went beyond that and I'm not interested in hearing that either. Fair's fair. Preachers of any sort bug the crap out of me and I don't want to be perceived as one.
 
The traditional life expectancy of us all was not so great 75 years ago, 2000 years ago, or in the stone age. It's modern medicine that has greatly lengthened our life expectancy, not diet. Social Security is in a bind not just because of the baby boomers born after the war, but also because our life expectancy is at least 10 years greater now, maybe 15, not sure, than it was when the law was written.


Hard to beat the taste of a slice of backstrap that's been rolled in cornmeal batter with a smidgen of mustard and then deep-fried.
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I had some backstrap thawing for supper, so I tried this. I did like the slight honey mustard taste, but I must say, I prefer flour to corn meal for breading. Good, though. Hard to mess up backstrap except maybe by over cooking it.
 
I had fun with a guy online a few years back who claimed to be strictly a carnivore...never ate veggies at all.

He had all kinds of arguments about how we're designed by nature to be strictly carnivorous, how the Inuit lived healthy lives doing just that, blah, blah, blah.

So, after explaining (against all his claims) that he couldn't be getting all the nutrients he needed on such a diet, that the Inuit were NOT strictly carnivorous, and so forth, and unless he was eating ALL of the animals he used for food and not just the muscle tissue (with little, if any, cooking) then he was running quite a mineral and vitamin deficiency on such a diet, I FINALLY got him to detail his typical balanced carnivore diet he was on.

Spam.

No kidding, he claimed that was his magic carnivore diet. That was so wrong on so many levels...
 
RetiredUSNChief said:
I had fun with a guy online a few years back who claimed to be strictly a carnivore...never ate veggies at all.

He had all kinds of arguments about how we're designed by nature to be strictly carnivorous, how the Inuit lived healthy lives doing just that, blah, blah, blah.

So, after explaining (against all his claims) that he couldn't be getting all the nutrients he needed on such a diet, that the Inuit were NOT strictly carnivorous, and so forth, and unless he was eating ALL of the animals he used for food and not just the muscle tissue (with little, if any, cooking) then he was running quite a mineral and vitamin deficiency on such a diet, I FINALLY got him to detail his typical balanced carnivore diet he was on.

Spam.

No kidding, he claimed that was his magic carnivore diet. That was so wrong on so many levels...
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You might want to mention to him how sailors years ago with no access to fruits or vegetables routinely died of scurvy.
 
Sorry but I have to chime in with a joke I heard just a couple of days ago.


A vegetarian, a vegan and a pescatarian walk into a bar...

No, seriously! They all announced it when they walked in!
 
jim in Anchorage said:
You might want to mention to him how sailors years ago with no access to fruits or vegetables routinely died of scurvy.
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I just checked back on that website to see when this happened and what that person is doing now. The discussions on this occurred in 2010, so they're pretty old now. And he hasn't been very active on that site for quite a while...his last login was in August of this year and he didn't post anything then. His last posting was earlier this year, with sporadic activity in the last two.

Though his last posting on diets still indicate he holds the same beliefs.

He cited this as a primary source of his beliefs ""Adventures in Diet", written 75 years ago (1935) by Vilhjalmur Stefansson for Harper's Monthy Magazine."

The article started out "In 1906 I went to the Arctic with the food tastes and beliefs of the average American. By 1918, after eleven years as an Eskimo among Eskimos, I had learned things which caused me to shed most of those beliefs."

So it was based on the author's experiences during his time with the Inuit that happened nearly 110 years ago today.

And, looking back on that thread, I did address the issue of Vitamin C as specifically related to this reference:


One of the most oft cited aspects of Vilhjalmur Stefansson's study is the fact that neither he nor any of his subjects developed scurvy, from lack of vitamin C. Well, wonder of wonders, this is very likely because they ate the SAME diet that the Inuit ate, and not like they would have preferred.

In other words, they didn't just eat the meat...they ate fat, raw brain, raw liver, and other varieties of offal.

And liver is a significant source of vitamin C and other valuable nutrients.

And guess what? Vitamin C is one of the most easily destroyed vitamins/nutrients. Exposure to oxygen does it...and heating above 70 degrees, and it leaches out into cooking water. So the BEST source of vitamin C that the Inuit have is raw liver.

Are you eating raw liver? Or other raw meats and animal products, for that matter? Probably NOT.

Any body that wants to live on an all-meat/fish diet had BETTER understand what they're getting into, just like people who want to be vegetarians.

****, EVERYBODY needs to understand what a proper diet is, no matter WHAT they want to eat.


Anybody who wants to subsist on a curtailed diet that excludes major sources of nutrients commonly obtained in an omnivorous diet needs to ensure they get what they need from whatever sources they do eat. And quite frankly, modern western societies have long drifted away from eating the totality of an animal, especially in an uncooked state. So the organs which DO contain much of what we need are either not eaten or are cooked to the point where the vital nutrients have been destroyed.
 
There have been studies that link red meat consumption with increased cancer risk.
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There have been studies that link virtually everything we eat to increased cancer risk.:)

There have been studies that show gun owners are more likely to die from gun violence.

Are there more deaths from under cooked meat in a year or from unwashed vegetables? There was an ecoli recall last week and Chipotle in Washington and Oregon had to close all their stores because of some contamination in vegetables.

No matter what we eat we must understand that it is not possible to always eat food grown in our gardens and that food must be transported because people in Maine like lettuce in January. Trucking contributes to global warming which will cause our coastal cities to flood which will cause those people to move inland which will put more pressure on inland communities to try and provide food...blah, blah.

I like bacon.
 
As far as homo sap's desire for meat in the diet, note that as the Chinese economy has improved dramatically in these recent 30 years, the demand for beef has risen in notable fashion.

Many Africans have diets which are low in proteins from meat. So, villagers welcome the foreign sport hunters for the meat which is given to them.

As I said, folks oughta do whatever diet makes them happy. But shunning meat obviously is an anomalous belief system.

What the heck. I figure that a hamburger and a sixpack of Shiner Bock is a seven-course meal. :D
 
Vegetarianism is anomalous? And it's a 'belief system'? While shunning of animal flesh can be and often is related to religious or ideological perspectives this is hardly the rule. I've been an athiest about 9 years longer than I've been vegetarian, and no religious doctrine contributed in the slightest to my dropping meat from my diet. The primary motivator was a sense of fear for future generations at the wanton waste of agricultural land on something so hyper-consumptive of soil quality as the meat industry. With a population growing ever more quickly, we're going to need every bit of arable land for food production. The limits of calories per hectare produced by agriculture are fast approaching - we've managed to approximately double the average yield of the land in about a century, but this rate of increase is fast diminishing even with GMO crops. Cattle, pigs and chickens have been boosted in size and rate of growth, but with that their consumption of feed has also dramatically increased. Marketers can only inject so much water into the meat before someone's going to start calling them on this practice. Fried any mainstream bacon lately? Notice how much water cooks off it? Bacon didn't used to do that. Neither did steaks. Or pork chops. At least 20% of the sold weight of grocery store meats is now water infused post-mortem, but for some reason consumers don't seem to notice...

But back to the point. India's population are 31% vegetarian according to the latest national survey. That's over 350million vegetarians in one country. Of course in their case religion has a major historical role, as most Indian-based religious have some aspect of vegetarianism involved. Canada is only 4%, the USA less than half even that at 1.9%. Italy sits at 10% with Germany and Austria close at 9%. Taiwan 14%. Sweden 10%. These are all minorities, but hardly insignificant. And the numbers will grow, as access to quality meat and eventually access to meat at all will become more and more problematic, as soil degradation and climate issues force a global re-examination of protein sources. Of course one can always use the old 'I got mine' argument and that's fine for the individual. But it says a lot about a person's concern for their kids and grandkids, doesn't it?
 
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