Meat eater reviews. Faux meat.

I can't believe you'd admit to such moral hypocrisy on a public forum

You're not a coeliac though, right? I hope you're not eating any of those gluten free bread or cake products, because that really would be the last straw in your despicable two-faced ways!

 

i'm just responding to some of your points in order to keep the conversation going. like i said, i really don't care that you eat meat. actually, i think it's laudable you hunt--i used to, also.

sure, when one needs calories to survive, it makes sense. but we know that cholesterol and saturated fat are huge problems for our bodies and our society. we are literally killing ourselves.

even hunter/gatherer societies would have been much healthier if they just continued gathering instead of hunting. meat and meat products are unhealthy.

and now, we have lots of science to back this up. knowing what we do, why keep doing the wrong thing when something better is out there?

i'm not quite sure what to make of your comments in this regard. what are you advocating?

i don't get why you think the planet is overpopulated to begin with. what gives you that impression?

i don't think it does. so you need water and energy and time to grow the plants to feed the animals. you then have to transport the plants to the animals to eat. then you need water and energy and time to grow the animals, slaughter them.

if this was a mathematical formula, it would be greatly simplified by removing the animal part of the equation. do you see what i'm getting at here?

again, are you advocating the elimination of human beings? so that we can still eat meat? i don't get this at all.

also, i think you're misreading what evolution is about. 'only the strong survive' is not evolution.

 

here's an interesting thing that i tried some time ago and it rocks.

freeze the tofu, then put it through a grater, then season and form patties. freezing changes the chemical composition of the tofu, making it nicer when forming patties. i'll see if i can find my recipe.

 

Man cannot live on carrots alone.

Let's take something with a relatively high protein content:

Peanuts per oz have 161 calories and 7 g of protein

So in order to simply meet 1g/lb of bodyweight in protein I'd be eating over 4000 calories a day in peanuts. Most other vegan protein sources don't fare much better in terms of calorie to protein or volume to protein. I either end up doing nothing but eating all day or I have to exercise and immense amount just to kill that caloric excess.

And yet there are and have been communities whose primary diet has been animal.

Because I'm an apex predator.

David, I know you're more intelligent than to try to use the "some people say" Fox News level of argument.

Because if you're going to decry something doing your closest approximation of it is rather hypocritical. The fact that their approximations are terrible is besides the point.

Only sometimes.

Actually right now they primarily run on petrol. The ability to produce anything is limited by the availability of energy. It used to be human and animal energy fueled by plants to transport, dig, plow, plant, etc. Now it's mechanized. Modern farming is possible primarily because of fossil fuels but you could easily run it on electricity.

 

Yeah, it actually ends up leading to better environmental protection when you have a good understanding of where your food comes from. Personally I'd be down with requiring people to kill an animal in a slaughterhouse every so often as a requirement for eating meat. I think if you don't have the guts (no pun intended) to kill it, you shouldn't be eating it.

That comes down a lot to our sedentary lifestyle and individual variation. Heck there was one summer where I was training so much I was eating about 10 000 calories a day and a good portion of my diet was meat, cheese, and butter, and yet at the end of four months my cholesterol and blood pressure were perfect. Balance your diet appropriately and that's not really a problem.

Meat provided the additional calories necessary for encephalization. Humanity literally owes its thinking power to meat. They're perfectly healthy if you eat them in the appropriate amounts and make sure you eat the internal organs for their nutrients.

Because I'd have to eat 4000+ calories in peanuts or chug a ton of highly processed protein shakes every day to meet basic protein requirements to say nothing of micronutrients.

Same question at you about human reproduction.

I would advocate people voluntarily engage in population control, but they won't. Call me a cynic but I don't think human beings can rise above the base desire to increase the population which will eventually conflict with limited resources.

That to give the current human population the standard of living of the average American would exceed the resources of the planet. Even if you go vegan people won't stop reproducing, so see my last reply to David.

We have an abundance of energy and the automated machinery to make use of it. Again the problem is that compared to the number of people we have.

See my last reply to David

Evolution is genetic competition. See my last reply to David.

 

I dunno man, if this guy can manage on a vegan diet:



Then I'm not sure that argument stands up.

When edible calories are scarce, people eat whatever they can find. I don't know how that is relevant to someone living near a grocery shop.

That's funny

Er... say what?

People who don't agree with farming animals really do exist, you can google it!

You've yet to give any reason as to why it is hypocritical, other than because you say so :dunno:

When the store's shut?

Here's some numbers: http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2013/12/livestock

Sounds like dodgy armchair evolutionary psychology to me... and professional evolutionary psychology is bad enough.

You lost me on the link to Communism

Keeping the planet habitable without resorting to sending your kids off to die in industrialised slaughter seems like a pretty good way to preserve your gene pool. We got to the top of the food chain through cooperation, adaptability and technology. Seems like a good way to stay there too.

Anyway, I asked before if you apply the same logic to climate change (which is rather heavily linked to livestock), what's your answer on that?

 

Guy definitely only gets his protein from whole foods #noshakes #nosupplements

Because the question was on the healthfulness of eating meat and it's plenty healthful.

And some people do or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Because you're saying "don't do this" and then doing as close an approximation of doing that thing as possible. You're imitating as close as you can the thing you're decrying. I've written that out probably at least four times now if not more.

When you can eliminate competition for resources and the drive to have your genes succeed over everyone else's and we can all agree to work together with complete and total equality and put our baser desires aside for that goal, then and only then will I give up meat.

I certainly agree with keeping the planet habitable. I personally have no issue with people killing each other if it doesn't wreck the planet. We cooperate because it benefits us in the competition to survive and reproduce. It's a selfish cooperation, not an altruistic one.

If you have less people, a stable population level, renewable energy sources, biodegradable products, and use automated/highly mechanized agriculture and production → BOOM! Climate change solved. You have few people with a low carbon footprint, and you can have a population level which even at max consumption produces less waste than the planet can reconstitute.

 

Correct!

http://www.veganbodybuilding.com/?page=bio_avi

I've not said that some meat in your diet is unhealthy.

I also don't have any objection to consuming unhealthy things. I love me some salami or chorizo.

Er, yeah... sure.

No, you're saying "I don't want to do this", and then eating plant matter that is processed to vaguely resemble it. I know you've repeated the same sentiment several times, you just haven't explained the logic behind your moral objection. I honestly cannot see what objection you have, and how you feel it is a moral issue. This is honestly one of the most bizarre conversations I've had on MAP, and that's a pretty high bar!

I don't care if you give up meat. I'm just curious why you feel compelled to accuse vegetarians who eat fake meat of moral hypocrisy. I'm not the one admonishing people for their dietary choices

I think that shows a very short-term view of self-interest. I think the data shows pretty conclusively that iniquity and tribalism are the cause of great problems that affect the world, so I feel it is in the interest of any little critters I may spawn to generally keep the place in good shape.

If we get rid of enough people we can keep our coal and oil burning, it would have negligible impact on global warming (far less than keeping billions of pigs and cows around to eat) and we wouldn't run out for millennia. Why not do that? Don't worry about killing the planet, just kill people!

 

Bull. There's nothing unprocessed with enough of a calorie to protein ratio to allow doing that.

Imagine me saying torture is wrong, inhumane, etc. And then showing you the torture simulator I've built which replicates as closely as possible the act of torturing someone. I don't get to have the moral high road. Sure I might not be actually torturing someone. Sure the current technology might limit the quality of the simulacrum, but the point is I'm still trying to imitate the very thing I've told you is so heinous. I'm still sanctifying torture in the same way eating imitation meat sanctifies eating actual meat.

If you want to have the moral high ground you can't say something is wrong and do your best to imitate it. I respect the veg's who don't eat meat and don't pretend to because they're firmly on the side of the moral stance they've taken, unbeholden to less important considerations like the fact that they like the taste of meat or feel social pressure to conform. They think their dietary choice is right and actually commit to it. That's also why I have to problem with people who HAVE to be veg eating simulated meat, because they'd rather eat meat, and they're not making some moral claim to the contrary.

I don't understand how that's confusing to you.

Not at all. We cooperate for selfish reasons. I want the place well kept for me and mine. I cooperate on that goal because we can all achieve it together. And it's not like environmentalism is altruistic either. It's a selfish pursuit. We're not saving the planet because we think keeping the environment the same way is a good thing. We're doing it to save ourselves.

Like I said reducing the population through voluntary control of the urge to compete via procreation solves a lot of problems. How far you think we should take that give our current level of technological development is another issue entirely.

Now you may say that's not feasible, and that humanity cannot overcome its baser instincts and I say that's exactly why I don't have faith in a brighter tomorrow for humanity. Because if we can't do that then we're no better than animals and will come up against significant problems in the long run. And if we can do that then logistically we can continue to eat them.

 

If it's about environmental concerns, as I pointed out not eating meat is a stopgap in the eventual problem of limited resources and an expanding population. If it's a problem with killing, I have no problem with killing where it doesn't have a .

I didn't say it was that simple, although the agricultural revolution is responsible for our current population explosion so there is definitely a strong link between available resources and the ability of humans to reproduce. I also did say that in many cases they actually reproduce in lieu of resources. But they will continue to reproduce, and we will eventually hit a wall in terms of resources. You can try and stopgap that by not eating meat and bulldozing land for veg food later instead of grazing land now, but the problem will remain the same; too many people. If you can't solve that problem the no-meat is a stopgap. If you can then you don't need to stop eating meat. The only way to invalidate that is on the premise that the end goal is creating greater and greater numbers of humans to which I ask what cosmic measuring stick are you using to determine that?

 

If veggie bacon involved the simulated slaughter of animals, you'd have a point. As it doesn't, you don't.

That was my point. You don't have to be altruistic to be concerned for the future of the planet.

You just gave an argument for not bothering about green house gasses or CFC's.

You sound like an American trying to explain why everyone should have guns. Just admit that you like it and there's nothing more to it

 

great discussion.

you had your cholesterol and blood pressure checked before and after said four months?

that's not what the science i've seen says. cholesterol, saturated fat have deleterious long-term effects on the health of humans.

even if that's true, why do we still have to eat meat with the food available to us now?

i can tell you by direct experience, i get plenty of all the nutrients (including protein) i need with a totally vegan diet and i eat a reasonable amount of food. i work out 5-6 days a week, doing martial arts, and a variety of other things (calisthenics, yoga, running, bicycling). it's not even that hard, as others in this thread have mentioned besides me.

if i was a professional athlete, sure i'd have to adjust the number of calories. but i'm not, i'm a regular guy who works out.

all i really have to supplement is b12, which i easily do with a pill.

a vegan diet "can" be a very healthy diet. i think it's full of lots of pitfalls and can lead to poor health outcomes. a little education goes a long way, and i hope that my experience can help people decide that they can also do it. i'm new to this though, so i'm continuing educating myself, making sure i keep up with my doctor, and keep on the look out for potential health problems long-term.

this site has been a great initial resource for me.

http://veganhealth.org/

 

I have no problem with killing where it doesn't have a significant amount of suffering involved and has utility. So personally, I like hunted meat, and ethically raised meat. I try to take all my kills as quickly as possible. Animals skins and pelts work better than synthetics for a lot of things and are actually more environmentally friendly (try to sort that one while you're at it). I detest factory farming because it's cruel. The whole argument is predicated on the idea that killing, even quickly and for a utilitarian purpose, is bad, but I don't buy that for a minute.

It's the same reason why, if myself and several others were trapped with no food and the threat of starvation, I have absolutely zero qualms about killing and eating someone. If I could find myself a nice fat, grain fed, free range vegan I'd be laughing

 

You don't get Marmite round your way?

 

When you say you "don't buy it", do you mean that you don't believe anyone really believes that, or do you mean that anyone who does is an idiot for not agreeing with your thoughts on the matter?

I actually agree with you about killing for utility, but in no way do I feel that invalidates the feelings and opinions of people who do not. Plus, logic, economics and ecology are all on the side of the vegans, but I'm a lazy and hedonistic sort with weak moral fibre, so I eat meat

 

Haven't tried it yet. But I guess I'm going to have to. I'm a little scared though. Lol