Okay guys.
How many vegos do we have in The Community Lounge?
Why are you a vegetarian? [If you are.]
Why are you NOT vegetarian? [If you're not.]

This is intended to be a discussion topic, so please don't come in and say "I'm vegetarian", "I'm vegan" or "I'm not vegetarian"

Let's give this thread substance, guys.

I will start. I have been a vegetarian for a while now, and I doubt I could go back to eating meat, ever. I am waiting to move out [Hopefully at the end of 2007] before I think about going Vegan, but it is definitely something I will be looking into and aspiring to do someday. :)
My reasons are a mixture between health, ethics and the general taste of meat. I can't fathom how I could ever stand to eat something that was alive just like you and I are at the moment. :|
Also, why do we think of animal life as so disposable? To me it makes no sense.
We have delusions of grandure when it comes to the food chain, we're not even on it at all anymore. I mean, since when have guns and slaughter houses been a part of NATURE? So yeah, the whole "food chain" argument doesn't sit well with me at all.
Just my opinions, and for the record, although I think that meat is murder. I don't go around abusing people for eating it. It's their/you call. All I ask is that no one forces meat upon me. :)

Anyway, let's get this discussion rolling.
I'll kick off with a few articles. :ph43r:

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High IQ Children Become Vegetarian Adults


A new British study has found that having a high IQ as a child is significantly linked to being a vegatarian as an adult.

The study was led by Dr Catharine Gale, of the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Resource Centre, University of Southampton, UK, and is published in the British Medical Journal.

The scientists contacted over 8,000 men and women aged 30 who were born in April 1970 and had had their IQ tested at age 10 because they were part of the 1970 British Cohort Study. They found a strong link between high IQ at age 10 and having a vegetarian diet at age 30.

366 of the participants described themselves as vegetarian, of which 123 said they also ate fish or chicken. Most of the vegetarians were women of higher social class and well educated although their income levels varied widely. However, when the results were adjusted for sex, social class (in childhood and present day), education and qualifications, high childhood IQ and having a vegetarian diet as an adult were still strongly correlated. Also, leaving out the ones who also ate chicken and fish made no difference to the strength of the link between childhood IQ and being vegetarian as an adult.

The research was conducted because of the growing body of scientific evidence showing that a vegetarian diet is linked with lower levels of cholesterol, blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity. Scientists want to know what influences people to become vegetarian.

The researchers define vegetarianism as "the practice of living wholly on vegetable food, with or without dairy products, honey and eggs".

Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the United States of America and leader of the Enlightenment, once said that being vegetarian gave him a clearer head and quicker comprehension.

Other well known vegetarians include Leonardo da Vinci, Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Catherine Booth (founder of the Salvation Army), George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler.

According to the Vegetarian Society (UK), in 1945 there were 100,000 vegetarians in the UK. The latest figure is estimated to be 4 million. However, statistics are hard to determine because of the growing number of what has been termed "flexitarians", vegetarians who occasionally eat meat and carnivores who eat the occasional vegetarian meal.

A growing awareness of the impact of diet on health, the influence of Eastern philosophies and religions such as Buddhism, concern for animal welfare and the effect of intensive animal farming, range among the reasons that people gravitate toward vegetarianism.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=59220

:lol: Thought I'd take a moment to brag. :P

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Vegans ban sex with meat-eaters

A group of New Zealand vegans - people who do not eat any animal products - are shunning sex with meat eaters, claiming their bodies are made up of animal carcasses, a researcher said in a newspaper today.

"When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," vegan Nichola Kriek told the Christchurch daily The Press.

Another said: "I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance."

Annie Potts, co-director of the New Zealand Centre for Human and Animal Studies at Canterbury University, identified the people she called "vegansexuals" in her research study, Cruelty-Free Consumption in New Zealand: A National Report on the Perspectives and Experiences of Vegetarians and other Ethical Consumers.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/...5647871417.html

I'll just say. I disagree. It's the other person's choice. We pride ourselves with being respectful and open minded, so why not show it.
I'd be more than content if I wind up with a meat eater as long as she doesn't preach her views upon me and is okay with the fact that I LOVE cooking and hope to be the household chef, but won't cook meat.

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Could lentils save your life? Meet the man who became vegan for a month

Fake bacon that tastes like shoes insoles. Meat-free haggis and turkey made from tofu. When a devoted carnivore agreed to live as a vegan for a month, he was deeply apprehensive. But the effect on his health was simply astonishing.

One day I was bemoaning to a female friend that I felt a bit run down and in need of a change of eating habits, while unhelpfully refusing to be drawn into any discussions on faddy diets that she proposed.

Maybe out of desperation, maybe revenge, she suggested I become vegan. I laughed, thought about it, and laughed again.

"Gwyneth Paltrow is a vegan," she said. Maybe I could think of it as an ethical stand rather than a diet, I thought.

"I couldn't," I said. "No, maybe you aren't as strong willed as Gwyneth," she replied. But I am.

My decision to go vegan elicited a variety of responses, but not one was enthusiastic.

Meat eaters thought it ludicrous, even vegetarians weren't convinced it was possible, and one person told me he'd rather eat his arm.

With ill-disguised glee they ran through lists of things I wouldn't be able to eat.

It was a depressing list - basically vegetarianism without the eggs, milk, cheese, butter or cream. And for a man whose culinary art could be summed up by 'pierce film and microwave for three minutes, stirring once', how would I deal with ingredients that actually required cooking?

But first, to find out what all this was going to do to my body, I went for a health check at the BUPA Wellness centre in London's King's Cross.

After a thorough, hitherto assiduously avoided blood analysis, body mass indexing, cholesterol and weigh-in, I was informed by the doctor that I was overweight and had a cholesterol level of 6.5 - the recommended upper limit is 5.

The doctor was deeply sceptical that four weeks as a vegan would be enough to see a difference and said he wouldn't recommend veganism as the body needed meat to function.

However, he wished me well and I left, vegan for a month.

I started looking for something to eat. None of the fast food eateries cater for vegans, nor the chain shops unless you count a pot of hummus with a couple of sticks of broccoli as food, which I do not.

Sandwiches which could have been vegan had been sabotaged with butter or lashings of mayonnaise.

Finally I saw a hand-painted store in a sidestreet with a board announcing 'organic cafe' and so it was that my first vegan meal came from Pete's Hemp Store.

The shelves heaved with all the things I would normally eschew - lentils, grains and beans - and had that dreary pall which is endemic to health shops.

"I'm a vegan," I said pathetically as if announcing botulism, but they kindly sold me a small bolus of cooked grains and pulses that was incredibly dense and dry, like reconstituted sawdust, and a vegetable samosa, which was delicious.

Opposite was a bookshop which had a vegan section but, incredibly, had 'just had a rush on vegan cookbooks'.

I bought a couple of the remaining books and noted that they shared shelf space with literature on nudist beaches.

So far, most prejudices seemed to be running unchallenged. One surprising thing I discovered on this first day was that Starbucks would make any coffee with a soymilk alternative, so the arms of the corporate chains had not completely cast me adrift.

My soy latte was not so bad, a little dryer than usual but with enough of a hint of fatty creaminess for it to become a welcome staple in the month to come.

Confidence returning, I bought a packet of mixed, dried pulses from another health shop and, that evening, soaked them and made myself some bean burgers with a side salad.

The taste was very pleasant - admittedly by now I could have eaten a horse - but it gradually became apparent that I hadn't quite followed the instructions carefully enough, as the beans were undersoaked; by bedtime I was bloating badly and spent a very sleepless night swearing that if God had meant for burgers to be made of bean he would not have invented the cow.

My first week of being vegan was depressing. I would open the fridge to find nothing worth picking at, nothing to give you that little lift.

There is little of sweetness open to the strict vegan; while maple syrup seems to pass the grade, some vegans believe refined sugar is still filtered through the bone-ash of dead cattle to make it white, and even honey (a by-product of 'farmed' bees) is out.

So, too, are wine and beer. Their production involves finishing and clarifying; to do this they use 'fining' agents, commonly made of fish bladder or egg albumen.

I never realised how much I liked fish in my lager until I was told I couldn't have it.

I tried the various oat, rice and soya milks and they were all disgusting in tea, which was now also depleted of its accompanying butter-crime biscuit and hardly seemed worth it.

The tumbling disappointment of denial lasted a week, accompanied by a searing detox headache as regular levels of meat, chicken, dairy, saturated fats and excess salt stopped being topped up and my stomach got used to feeling hungrier.

Eating out was an unrelentingly disappointing experience as yet another dreary collection of leaves was placed before me.

Drinking out became a different experience, too. While still researching the limitations of wine and beer I drank spirits; as I was used to volume drinking, I ended up drinking three gin and tonics instead of one pint.

There are vegan wines but I didn't manage to track any down; at the end of my month I got the good news that Bacardi Breezers were also vegan. A missed opportunity.

It had become apparent that in saying goodbye to old friends I needed to make new ones, so I went to Planet Organic food emporium in London and scoured the labels for acceptable ingredients.

I bought things I had never tried before - linseed, pumpkin and furikake seeds, Japanese seaweed, samphire, biorashers (a distant and I suspect disowned relative of bacon), some demonically titled 'Seitan' slices, Cheatin' mince and vegan sausages, yacob root, miso, tempeh, Cheezly (fake cheese) and nuts to boost the protein levels, even a vegan haggis.

Vegan food often does itself no favours with naming. I found a Tofurkey in the freezer and a strange yogurt alternative called Soyage, which conjures up several images, none of which verge on palatable.

And then there was tofu: this is a form of soya and a critical staple of veganism. It comes in many formats, most of which are disgustingly sloppy, but the smoked and herbed variety is much sturdier and tastes good.

Soya has been of some concern recently due to its phytoestrogens (aka feminising plant qualities) but frankly I was too hungry to care.

I brought enough bell peppers butternut sqaush, rocket and beetroot, fennel and red peppers and enough sprouting stuff to leave a carnivore begging for mercy.

A more exciting fridge full prompted better cooking and I made hot tofu salad, succulent spiced stir fries and antipasti to be eaten with ciabbata.

I also got into fake bacon (should that be 'fakon'?) sandes which, once you overcome their arity to insoles, and provided they're eaten piping from the grill, are actually very edible.

What they offer and some vegans seem to sniff at is fat, that deeply tasty glutinous substance that is so conspicuously absent from vegetables and grains.

Less successful was the ready-made quinoa and pear pudding - like licking a rather slimy carpet - and the Cheezly, a pale, puck-shaped, vacuumpacked 'un'cheese that sat in the fridge uneaten.

The alternative, Soya Slices - cheddarstyle square rubbery fellows - met with general disapproval except from my baby, who enjoyed waving them.

One sunny day I fell off the wagon: we were in the park and an ice cream hut appeared before me, the Devil disguised in wooden cladding.

Before my conscience could say no, I bought one. The confection coursed through my system like an illicit substance, leaving a happy glow in my head.

But by the second week I was feeling more upbeat about the diet and by the third I felt increasingly good.

I drank great quantities of super food smoothies and started cooking much more than I used to.

I had to become far more imaginative and resourceful to acquire taste, using rosemary, soy sauce, coriander, chillies, garlic, cinnamon, ginger and mustard in an attempt to recreate the elusive feeling of 'bite' you get with meat.

It takes a while to adapt but after a few weeks you get used to the limited parameters, and learn how to find pleasure within them.

I felt lighter, too, as one's bowels move into increased regularity. Despite the fact that I hadn't cut down on the amount of food - and alcohol - I consumed, I could feel I was losing weight.

On the downside I'd started talking about food far more than is healthy for a normal person. It became my 'unique selling point' -people introduced me with "This is Edward, he's a vegan", followed by a long pause while this was absorbed as if a death had been announced.

So why do otherwise perfectly sane people become tofu-powered vegans when vegetarianism already covers the killing of animals?

The answer is multifold. First, egg and dairy production requires only the female of the species, so the surplus males are killed at birth or when very young.

There is also the view that the treatment of farmed animals is cruel (and this includes bees).

It is an uncomfortable fact that, as a meat eater, I am very happily complicit in being removed from the knowledge of how my meat gets to be on my plate, but vegans do not believe in burying their heads in the sand.

Other arguments are religion or health-driven. Carl Lewis, winner of nine Olympic golds and the International Olympic Committee's 'sportsman of the century', adopted a vegan diet, stating that his best performances were achieved while on this.

I imagine Carl had the ear of some very good nutritionists to guide him and I am not convinced my diet was good enough.

Before, I used to struggle to eat those elusive five fruit and veg a day, but now as a vegan I was recommended to eat seven - a truly challenging task.

In addition, while everything I ate was healthy, it was a learning curve to acquire the necessary protein for energy and growth from the greatly reduced sources now available, and while I got progressively better at eating my beans and lentils, I often felt more tired in the evenings.

I also bought a supplement online called Veg1, which compensated for the vitamins and minerals that are not readily found in a vegan diet; particularly B12, essential to stave off anaemia, depression and nervous system damage, and also B2, B6, folic acid, Vitamin D, Iodine and Selenium.

Although I had eaten a lot of vegan food, I hadn't come across many actual vegans, so I thought it would be interesting to go to the Vegan London monthly shindig and meet a group of them.

I am not sure what you would call a collective of vegans - a beanfeast?

The event was a friendly affair in Bloomsbury with chat and shared food, followed by a lecture on Gandhi and announcements ranging from the opening of a Jain temple to an invitation to a veggie-vegan speed dating event with the added dubious incentive of glamour model Jodie Marsh's presence on her tour for a husband.

Despite general mirth and derision I suspect that, although people were physically noticeably slimmer than average, most of us would probably be a bit too scruffy for her taste anyway.

It must make life a lot simpler if you are both vegan. Although Tash, my wife, was extremely supportive, she gradually found the combination of veganism and my cooking skills a bit too limiting and as the month wore on we ate increasingly separate dishes.

I also became suspicious about the number of times she pointedly luxuriated in yet another creme caramel, while I put paid to further rounds of lentil non-surprise. She didn't know what she was missing.

At the end of the month I went back to BUPA. Despite the huge quantities I'd been eating and my failure to exercise, I'd lost two kilos, which was welcome.

More surprising was a reduction in blood pressure, from good to excellent.

But most unexpected for the doctor was the superb 23 per cent drop in my cholesterol levels to 4.9.

This was much greater than had been anticipated and had I done some exercise, it could have been still lower.

Still, my risk of a heart attack in the next ten years has dropped significantly.

By the end of the month I was also sleeping better than as a carnivore.

It's not so bad, this vegan thing. And I seem to have lost that desperate urge for dairy produce, which surprises me.

It's now two weeks since my month was up and I allow myself more leeway when eating out - an occasional bite of cake or not refusing accidentally poured milk in coffee.

However, I am managing to maintain much of what I have learnt - I've not had a bite of meat, and am still keeping at bay the image of steak and chips that occasionally flicks through my mind. Maybe a fakon sandwich might help.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1774

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The ideological justifications for turning vegetarian can disguise a serious psychiatric condition.

When Greta Kretchmer was admitted to hospital for treatment of anorexia nervosa in her late twenties, the inpatient unit insisted that she eat meat. Her vegetarianism was considered part of her eating disorder.

For Kretchmer, meat avoidance was about taste preference and ethics. "I hadn't eaten meat since I was 11 years old because I didn't like the taste or the idea of eating animals," she recalls. "It was so traumatic being forced to go against an ideology that was so important to me."

In retrospect, Kretchmer, now 35, can also see that her decision at 19 years of age to take the next step and go vegan "kicked off" her eating disorder. Her genuine vegetarian ideals had been co-opted by her eating disorder to provide a socially acceptable smokescreen.

"It was such a good way to hide eating disorder behaviours. I could simply say, 'I'm vegan, I can't eat that.' It fitted in so perfectly. Being a vegan reinforced all my restrictions; it gave me permission to be obsessive and check the ingredients of everything and it made social eating difficult. That was fine with me as I didn't want to eat in front of anyone. It really took the pressure off as I no longer needed to set the rules. They were already set - I just had to follow them. I didn't have to fight with myself everyday any more, battling over whether or not to eat something."

Australian research has found an unusually high incidence of vegetarianism among people with eating disorders. Only 3.6 per cent of the adult Australian population are vegetarian, according to the 1995 National Nutrition Survey. However, 54 per cent of patients with anorexia nervosa avoided red meat in a study of 116 patients published in the Medical Journal of Australia. Ninety-four per cent of these became vegetarian only after developing an eating disorder. "Vegetarianism doesn't cause eating disorders," says Stephen Touyz, one of the study's authors, co-director of the Peter Beaumont Centre for Eating Disorders at Wesley Private Hospital and professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Sydney. "But in the context of obsessive dieting and calorie counting, meat comes under fire."

When meat goes missing, how can you tell whether it's ethics or an eating disorder at work?

The distinction can be based largely on timing. Touyz says: "If a person became vegetarian well before the development of their eating disorder, then we accept their vegetarianism as a healthy part of their identity and we don't insist on them eating meat as part of their recovery. That'd be unreasonable. But if vegetarianism is adopted around the time of the onset of their eating disorder, then we consider meat avoidance to be a symptom of the illness and there's no compromise. Meat meals are part of the treatment."

Dietitian Susan Hart has been researching the nutritional treatment of eating disorders provided in inpatient and day-patient units across Australia. "The majority of units I surveyed allowed vegetarian meals," she says. "We used to be a lot more rigid in our approach to permitting vegetarianism but it's a lot more flexible these days."

Kretchmer, who eventually received outpatient treatment that accepted her pre-existing vegetarianism while challenging the extremes of her vegan ways, is glad things are changing. "It's so insulting and incredibly confusing to be accused of lying about your motivation and to be told that your refusal to eat meat is the eating disorder speaking and not 'you'. There are many ways of challenging eating disorder beliefs. Forcing a vegetarian to eat red meat doesn't need to be one of them. Especially when vegetarian meals can provide as many calories and just as much nutrition."

And especially when a vegetarian's aversion to red meat can be so strong. "Disgust", "horror" and "revulsion" are words commonly used by vegetarians to describe their feelings about the idea of eating, handling or even seeing meat, according to research conducted by Dr Michael Hamilton, at Britain's Reading University. His research, published in Ecology of Food and Nutrition in 2006, found that vegetarians who were motivated by ethical concerns seemed to have a stronger aversion than those motivated by health concerns.

It was a desperate desire to restore her energy and strength that finally allowed Kretchmer to try some fish, which she hadn't eaten since she was four. She now eats fish about twice a week but that first swallow wasn't easy.

"I was on a trekking holiday and became physically exhausted," Kretchmer says. "I was sick of feeling so weak and tired. I knew I needed to do something to fix it so I could keep travelling and thought, 'I've just got to do this.' I was with a friend who cooked me some salmon and she really egged me on. I just sat there and stared at the fish for ages and ages. My friend poured me a glass of wine and I proceeded to drink a couple of glasses just to deal with it! When I finally ate some, it tasted quite nice."

Now the executive officer for the Eating Disorders Foundation in Sydney, Kretchmer, a social worker, counsels other eating disorder sufferers. Her personal experience equips her with a streetwise instinct. "I can usually pick an eating disorder a mile off," Kretchmer says. "If, when I'm checking out someone's vegetarian beliefs, I hear lots of rules coming through with a critical voice that's more to do with fear of not being perfect than with health and ethics, then I question that."

Nicole Senior is a dietitian who sees many clients struggling with eating disorders at the MindCare Centre (a mental health clinic) in Sydney. She says vegetarianism often starts during adolescence. "It's very common for young girls in particular to go through a vegetarian phase - kind of like the pony phase," she says. "And it's happening earlier now, amongst tweens as well as teens. They can do [it] for so many reasons, including animal rights. But it can be used as a form of weight control. For many teenagers, vegetarianism is a temporary phase. For the vulnerable few, it can be the beginning of dieting as a way of life."

So if a teenager comes home one day and announces she's going vegetarian, how should parents react? Feel pleased since going vego is good for her body, your budget and the planet? Or go on red alert?

"The less fuss made the better," Senior advises, since food can so easily become a battleground. "Have a conversation about why they don't want to eat meat and respect their emerging identity. It's good to maintain open, frank conversations, since eating disorders operate best in secrecy. Allow them to take it on and encourage them to learn how to do it properly."

Then, if there's resistance to learning how to do it healthily, look out for the other signs of an eating disorder. These include rapid weight loss and/or a big increase in exercise at the same time, cutting out other food groups, restricting the total amount of food and social withdrawal, including avoiding family meals, according to Senior.

One of the most telling signs that an unhealthy obsession lurks behind the veneer of a vegetarian kick is when meat, chicken and fish are cut out altogether without anything to replace them. "If people are really going vegetarian for health reasons, they'll go to the effort of replacing meat with balanced sources of vegetarian protein," Senior says.

The health benefits are real and compelling. When compared with non-vegetarians, those who choose to eat food mainly or completely of plant origin have lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, lower rates of being overweight, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer, according to Dr Emma Lea at the University of Tasmania, who conducted her PhD and postdoctoral research on vegetarianism. Death from ischemic heart disease is also reduced by about a quarter.

Misused, however, vegetarianism can exacerbate the malnutrition associated with disordered eating. "It's quite common to see eating disorder patients with iron deficiency anaemia," Senior says. "Meat is high in iron, zinc and protein and including some in the diet can really improve patients' wellbeing. But the person has to be ready.

"Vegetarianism isn't always a sign of an eating disorder but it's good to keep in mind as it can be for vulnerable individuals."

Senior has moved on to fight the next food phobia. "Since high protein diets have been in fashion, carbohydrates have taken over as the new evil" and she now has clients refusing carbohydrate foods and meat.

Warning signs
:: Rapid weight loss and/or a big increase in exercise at the same time.
:: Restricting the total amount of food and cutting out entire food groups.
:: An empty spot on the plate where meat used to be - without a replacement.
:: Social withdrawal, including avoidance of family meals.

Acknowledgements to Nicole Senior and the Eating Disorders Foundation, www.edf.org.au.

Source: THE Age

You posted the same exact beginning as you did on GSF (either that or its somebody else that you copied it from). This time you just have more stuff for me to read.

...And?
I'm looking for different views on the same topic. So, naturally I was thinking another board would offer such.
Still, you make an obvious yet moot point. Thank you.

Oh noez!!11

Did you not notice that no one has a gun to your head to read this? <_<

Okay, I wasn't being pissy all right? I'm just saying that I was surprise that you were going to make another topic on the same subject. I just thought that maybe you word reword the things you posted. In the other topic I don't recall you ever coming back to defend vegetarianism in the first place. Is it my fault to question what you're doing? For all I know, you could just do the same thing here and post this one topic and leave.

I didn't even realize that I made even a point. Did I defend being an omnivore or even point out anything on vegetarianism/veganism? You make it sound like I'm directly offending you, which I was not.


Anyways, somebody else post about vegetarianism/veganism or being an omnvore.


Oh yeah, I'm an omnivore. Rawr!?

I am not a vegatarian.

People can be vegatarian for all I care, but I'm not going to be. It's not going to help animals, as people kill for sport, and diguise at as hunting for survival.

I love meat.

xBifnepasu, or whatever that means in English, the articles you have posted are a bit bias, don't you think? If you are looking for different views on the same topic, then why not post things that are good things for non-vegans, like more protein in meat and stuff like that. Humans were made to eat meat, and it's natural for us to do so. Would a black bear decide to eat plants, just to save a few animals? Humans actually killing things for meat is good, because it controls the animal population(deer). Most of the points you brought up are kind of pointless, because who cares that you would ban sex with a non-vegan? I'm proud to be a non-vegan, and enjoy meat like a human was made to do. :)

i am Vegetarian, i don't like meat, not i don't like eating it, i just don't like the taste of it

I'm not a vegetarian, but I am concerned about the wealfare of mass farmed animals. I'm against battery farming, so I won't eat chicken if it isn't free range and organic.

I'm not a vegetarian. I like meat. Love hamburgers. I do not see anything wrong with eating meat. I'm all for saving animals from cruelty, but eating them isn't going to save them. If I don't, someone or something else will.

I'm an omnivore and actually bordering more on carnivore. Whenever I can I eat meat. True, the food industry treats animals bad but to be honest if everybody decided to become a vegetarian right now I doubt that the animals who are being brought to the slaughterhouse will have a better live, since (at least in Holland) having a couple of million sheep,cows,pigs run free (because it's not economically viable to keep them anymore) would ruin the nature totally so they'd be either shot or starve to death (in the last case other "big" wildlife like dear would possibly starve too). Look at Australia wild pigs run havoc there on the local wildlife and that would probably happen elsewhere too.
Humanity choose (or where forced) into domesticating animals long ago and it would cause too much trouble to "release" them, the only way to counter this would be to basically neuter (or even better shoot them) so you'd have a controlled release of livestock into the wild, but then again that would be a huge waste of not only a (more or less stable) food source (as growing crops could easily fail, flooding, drought and so on) but also off other "materials" to dispose of the corpses.

Ps. Basically carnivore but relatively high IQ I'd say that test is rigged :P
Pps. Hmm fish is supposed to be good for the brain
Ppps. Nothing against vegetarians or veganists but just thinking on the long term

I've been vegetarian for about 24 years.

I went veggie for a mix of reasons, part health, part moral (both animal welfare and environmental) and partly because I simply never liked eating meat (flavour, texture)

I eat a balanced diet, but don't take any supplements and feel very healthy (I do exercise a little, just walking/cycling).

In more recent years I've become interested in the environment and world poverty - meat production is so wasteful of our finite resources :angry:

i loooove meat! <33

i couldn't live without chicken.

I'm not vegetarian,I sure wouldn't like the site of an animal being slaughtered, cause I love animals, but believe that animals (at least farm animals) are here for the purposes of
1. produce, such as milk and eggs
2. meat

I think they're here to nourish us.

And anyways, meat is awesome lol

I'm a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian, and proud of it. I've been a vegetarian since I was 5, and I am currently 16. Lacto-Ovo means that I mostly eat Dairy products...so sue, I love cheese. ^^ I'm glad to see this kind of thread here...

P.E.T.A


XD


People Eating Tasty Animals!!!!



I don't mind Vegetarians, but I can't stand Vegans! OMG just have an Egg, they're GOOD~!


Meat all the way, but to each their own.

Yeah, people that like meat, I have no problem with. I don't see how they can eat that, but I could care less...I'm always health whilst my littlest brother eats meat all the time and is currently sick.

i have no idea how someone couldn't eat meat.

If 'god' made us and he made animals aswell them he meant for them to eat meat, animals eat each other, why shouldn't we?

i'm not a vegitarian, but i'm friends with loads of people who are vegitarians and vegans and i've got nothing against them

Die piggie!!!!! *slash*

I've got nothing against vegans, veggies and what not, as long as they don't eat me!

I've heard that veggie diets can make people Iron difficent becasue of the lackl of meat, but there are ways of countering that with supplement things.

While i do eat meat, i'm a sucker for cheese, mainly cheddar and red cheese ^_^

I consider myself an omnivore. I kind of view vegetarianism as a naive goal, but if it works for them, I don't care. Just as long as they don't bug me about the plight of animals or comparing chicken farms to concentration camps. The latter especially pisses me off to no end, since the Holocaust was racial and idealogical warfare, and chicken farms are for commerce and sustenance. Two entirely different areas.

Demeaning the lives of those who died horrible deaths like that to simple fowl drives me nuts. :grrr

Well if you look at nature, most of herbivore animals spend more than 50% of their time eating, food that's poor on proteins. How ever meat eater animals are much more active since they have to hunt their food and have developed strategies to do so, also their brain activity is much higher than herbivore animals.

Now I don't care what other people eating habits are, but I don't like people nagging me about why do you eat meat. I eat meat because I like it, I could eat it raw, cooked fried or whatever but I like meat and Ill like meat until I die.

Slaughterhouse and such has been made to make much more easier the meat production and such, those doesn'¡t form part of the food chain, we do. We consume others (plant and animals) in order to get the substances we need to keep living, also when we die, other living being will consume our corpses and that cicle will continue for a very long time.

Now that people claim of the animal rights? Why don't you think of the right of plants? they are living beings, they have a primitive nervous system, but they have it and that does mean they feel, most people would say but they would grow back again, but for the annual plants, when you harvest them you kill them or am I wrong?.

All living being have rights in my opinion but they also have a role to play in the food chain. That doesn't justify animal cruelty though.

I could care less if people are carnivores, omnivores, vegitarians, or vegans, just as long as they aren't forcing their lifestyle on someone else who doesn't want it. That said, I'm mostly an omnivore, though I do eat excessive amounts of chicken (it's one of the few things I can cook decently well). I try to balance it out with lots of salads, though, which I happily share with my guinea pigs.

The "higher-IQ-more-vegans" statistic doesn't tell us anything. It's just that people with higher IQs tend to be more educated, and hence more exposed to these practices.

I'm an omnivore-- though I do know some people who become temporary vegetarians (say, for a week) for religious purposes. I don't lose sleep over animals dying for my sustenance, but I do make it a point to not waste it, especially for small-ish animals like clams or prawns.

I'm not religious, but it just seems immoral to throw away whole clams/prawns and the like, because like that they would have died in vain.

I love chicken and shrimp. *drool*

Mmmm. Steak.... I love meat. That will not change.

nobody can stop meat eating its gonna continue . for ever its human nature

besides if lots of people stop eating meat, the animals that were going to be koilled for eating would be killed anyway, the farmers wont keep them with no demand. they would still be out of pocket though having brought and raised them. therefore irt would damage the farming industry

as for meat being unhealthy... did you notice that EVERYTHING is being called unhealthy at the moment .

Meat & Fish!

especially Fish! with Chips!!!!

You can keep ya nasty salads! ^^


Potatos are the best, you can eat them with almost anything.

I HATE the vegetians who try and force their beliefs on you, and say "OMG YOU'RE A MURDERER! YOU EAT ME, YOU'RE BAAAAD."

Its fucking annoying and makes me think of those relgious people who try to convert you to their religion and saying you're evil if you don't.

I eat meat, you don't want to eat meat, thats up to you. Just don't bother me facts and stuff because I'm not interested. My policy is, I've always eaten meat, animals eat meat, it's not unnatural. Never has been.