[eydimork]

Originally Posted by Ryan Bailey

On a side note I am not naive to the fact that the theory of a vegetarian diet holds weight in the argument in terms of health and prevention of disease.

I think a problem here is the assumption that 'vegetarianism' a diet. It is not. It is a descriptive attribute of a great number of diets, much like GI is not a diet but a method for measuring the effect of carbohydrates on blood glucose levels.

Originally Posted by Ryan Bailey

Yes they may not agree with the way we treat and raise many of the animals in the U.S and or other countries, but this also does not mean that it is all or nothing. There are plenty of farmers who raise animals humanely and provide the animal with a diet that they are designed to eat by Mother Nature.

Another false assumption here. Vegetarianism isn't necessarily a political choice. I eat 'vegan' (no animal proteins of any kind) 9 days out of 10, but I also wear leather pants and own a fur coat.

Originally Posted by Ryan Bailey

When we look at the statistics of heart disease and cancer we never bother to look at the details of the study. We need to wake up. So many people are being brain washed into thinking the meat is what is killing us. Yes it is, but not all of it. The fast food meat we feed our kids is killing them and us. So is almost every piece of meat we get our hands on. But not the free-range, grass-fed beef from the local farmer that our bodies are designed to eat and thrive off of!

Your body is not designed to eat and thrive off beef, mutton and the like. Sheep and pigs have been domesticated for 11,000 years (the genus homo is 2.4 million years old, Homo Sapiens Sapiens is 250,000 years old), and unless your ancestors are Near Eastern, you're still a few thousand years behind. Cattle was domesticated 9,000 years ago, and again, unless you're Near Eastern in ancestry, your ancestors are a few thousand years behind.

I'm not saying eating domesticated meat will necessarily harm you, but there is no way humans were designed to eat these things.

Originally Posted by Ryan Bailey

So here is the deal if we look at a simple fact of what we had to eat 10,000 years ago.

10,000 years ago is an evolutionary blink of an eye. If that.

Originally Posted by Ryan Bailey

It would not be a vegan diet with soy milk and grains. There were no soy, wheat, corn or any grain crops. We did not even domesticate animals at this point. So therefore we were not even drinking milk or any other processed dairy crap foods you can think of.

Actually, many animals were domesticated at that point. Milk may have been introduced. The earliest evidence for dairy products in Europe stretches back 7,000 years, but the Near East will no doubt have an earlier date. It doesn't matter much, though, because it's not important on an evolutionary scale.

Originally Posted by ChaosKiwi

I agree with Ryan Bailey, I think many vegetarians think eating that way is a magical way to being healthier. People on vegetarian diets can be just as unhealthy as the rest of us. That being said they can be supreme models of health as well.

Indeed. Unfortunately, lack of information runs rampant in all groups. It's just as easy to eat crap in a vegetarian mode as it is in an omnivorous mode. Good intentions don't get you very far when it comes to diets.

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

Here's the thing. We compare ourselves to apes and how they only eat vegetables, but there have been reports of them hunting small animals as a group. I think we do need some amount of healthy animal products in our diet.

Our closest relatives amongst the apes (chimpanzees and bonobos) are opportunistic omnivores. They eat termites and the like, but they also hunt the occasional squirrel or seize upon a helpless baby antelope. They do not hunt big game or go on organised group hunts. 98% of the time, they eat plant matter.

I'm not saying it is right to compare ourselves entirely to our closest relatives, because we are still very different from them, but I wanted to clear that up so that no one misinterprets your (quite correct) information.





Disclaimer: eydimork is an 'opportunistic omnivore'. If you buy her a steak, she'll eat it (bloody, please!). She eats 'vegan' (not tofu or processed meat substitutes) 9 days out of 10, which includes whole grains and all meals cooked from scratch. She doesn't buy anything refined or with added sugars. On the 10th day she likes to eat seafood or cheese. These are the biases with which this response have been thought up.