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Could veggie burgers increase your lifespan? Many experts insist that switching to a vegetarian lifestyle can greatly increase overall health, leading some to ditch their pork rinds like an old smoking habit. Still others swear by an omnivorous diet, saying that occasional New York steak never hurt anyone. Is a fresh helping of tofu just what the doctor ordered, or only a lot of empty calories?
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Vegetarianism is a psychological symptom of unsustainable civilization
Killing plants is not the same as killing animals
Plants do not have a brain, a nervous system, or pain receptors, so they can't suffer when someone eats them. I don't feel bad if I eat lettuce, but I would never be able to forgive myself if I ate a steak.
- madninjamonkey
December 15, 2008 2:59PM
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Suffering.
But you don't feel bad that people toiled long hard hours bent over, baking in the heat for very little compensation. Something you would never "lower" yourself to.
So you place the suffering of humans below the suffering of an animal.
- SocialistBetty
December 30, 2008 9:36AM
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Of course I don't feel bad for other human beings! I also don't feel bad for the workers in a chicken factory who are mostly Latin Americans with very little pay or education. They have to work in a blood and excrement-filled factory and repeat the same monotonous task so often that they are in risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I care very much!
I do not think that humans deserve to suffer more than animals do. I am simply choosing between whether a human suffers or a human and an animal suffers. What do you think is the best choice?
- madninjamonkey
December 30, 2008 11:27AM
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Whatever you feel is best...
I was picking on you... but it is a valid point.
If you want to eat meat, but don't agree with the methods and means (which is my shituation), there are alternatives. Most 4-H animals are raised with love and care. You can eat kosher meat... in which the manner of death is quick and relatively painless. Anyone who's tried to commit suicide via ye old wrist slice will tell you it hurts only for a moment.
If you don't want to eat meat because of the environmental costs associated with it, it would be best if you only ate what seasonally available or you'd be running into the same problems.
If you don't want to eat meat because there's no valid reason at all to eat meat, you don't have to do anything but ensure you're eating the proper amounts of different veggies, nuts, legumes, and beans... and fruit. Maybe take some vitamins...
But despite this, the fact that human beings suffer greatly doesn't go away. I would suggest you work for a summer in a fields and see exactly how back-breaking it is... that you live in housing that's provided and experience the conditions that migrant farm workers live in. Then you might be able to make a better decision as to just kind of suffering I'm talking about. There is a very real fight going on in this country that most people know nothing about. Child labour, abuse, degradation... people simply buy their vegetables and think nothing of it. You live in Oregon... how many tomatoes are growing right now? It's winter... that's right. Tomatoes don't grow in the winter. Where did they come from, then? Where does your food come from and do you know that there is no suffering of humans? Does it make okay to eat what you're eating because an animal isn't dying? Are you satisfied with your choice of promoting the abuse and suffering of humans to suit your high level of vegetable consumption? If everyone were to stop eating meat, imagine the demands on the farming industry.
Eating vegetables is something everyone should do, but just because the cabbage doesn't suffer doesn't mean there are no problems associated with being complete vegetarian; or that there is no suffering involved. Neither does ignoring the problems make them go away.
That's all I'm saying.
- SocialistBetty
December 30, 2008 3:00PM
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Please believe me - slashing your wrists does NOT hurt for just a second. But let's focus on the animals instead of my messed-up life.
I am vegan because I don't just have a problem with the way that animals are treated in meat, dairy, and egg farms, I have a problem with the fact that animals are being killed for food. I don't really care if the steak on my plate had a happy life once, it is still a piece of flesh off of a corpse and I helped kill a living, pain-feeling being for almost no reason at all. Not eating meat does help the environment and your health, but even if there were absolutely no benefit to the planet or me from going vegan, I still wouldn't eat animal problems because I believe that it is morally wrong. (For more information please go to: http://www.goveg.com/theissues.asp )
I'm not trying to ignore the problem, I'm just trying to fix what I can. I can't do anything about child labor and exploitation; as much as I would like to help, I am thirteen. I don't think that anyone would take me seriously. If you can think of a way that doesn't involve killing something to help stop human suffering, by all means let me know.
- madninjamonkey
December 30, 2008 7:48PM
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And there wasn't a 9 yr old on the floor of the UN?
You're better suited than anyone else then. Those are you peers. There are kids your age out there who are picking the vegetables YOU eat, bent over for hours and hours and yours. You're old enough to do it, go out and do it this summer. Tell you mom you want to know where your food really comes from. I don't think you really have any idea.
And obviously, you didn't do it right if it hurt for more than 5 seconds.
Is it morally wrong for the wolf to eat the caribou? For the bear to eat the salmon? The crow to eat the bug? Or are they eating what is available to them?
The only way that you can truly eat morally is to eat what is available to you at the time and to grow your own food in the summer. But if you want to ignore that, go right ahead. It won't change the fact that you're ignoring the moral implications of eating only vegetables all the time simply because you want to.
I have venison in the crock pot that I killed. It died in 5 seconds. Unlike the veggies in there with it, the suffering of that animal is nothing compared to the suffering inflicted upon the humans who gathered them, nor the gas that burnt to ship them here, nor the cost. But believe what you want to, simply because it suits your ideals to do so. Morals be damned. There's only comparatives anyway.
- SocialistBetty
December 31, 2008 12:13PM
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Moderation
Do we really need to eat a lot of meat? I think you killing your own meat is what's best: instead of having it mass produced and eating large amounts of it without effort and without thinking about the animal. We don't need as much meat as we eat in America, there's no reason besides personal laziness and greed to have this much meat.
- Blue Linchpin
December 31, 2008 1:36PM
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stop discussing other animals
You should not be discussing other animals . They do not have the capacity to make moral decisions. So, in that sense, our actions cannot be categorized as "natural."
Carnivores must kill to live. Humans need not do so.
The answer is not to eat meat , but to improve conditions for workers.
Also remember that gathering vegetables provides employment, which the workers need.
- happiness1535
June 13, 2009 11:06AM
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