Guy debunks vegetarianism

[Andrew Gubb]

The Naive Vegetarian - Second Opinions, UK

I'm a vega and I want to stay that way. But if you want to see how people delude themselves, this article is a case study.

He might be in the payroll of a certain industry also.

[Adrienne]

Interesting.
I think it is more proof that people can say anything and find evidence to support almost any conclusion.

[brandongilbert]

Originally Posted by Adrienne

Interesting.
I think it is more proof that people can say anything and find evidence to support almost any conclusion.

I agree with you there.

What the thinker things, the prover proves.

[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by brandongilbert

What the thinker things, the prover proves.

Funny, I flipped through "Prometheus Rising" only a few days ago

In other words, "people don't like to be wrong".

Edit: I saw how he showed that our organs were almost entirely carnivorous, just as Steve showed that we are almost entirely vegetarian. Amazing. Both sources sound so authoritive.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

He might be in the payroll of a certain industry also.

Barry Groves? I doubt it. Although he writes in an annoyingly "in-your-face" style, I think he's earnest and does his best to research things thoroughly: he cured himself of cancer using alternative treatments.

[Subscreet]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

The Naive Vegetarian - Second Opinions, UK

I'm a vega and I want to stay that way. But if you want to see how people delude themselves, this article is a case study.

To be fair the exact same could be said of these forums.

[funchy]

Ooo! Where do I begin?

"Animal farming is an efficient use of land"

It's a good use for the limited fresh water on the planet, too? They calculated it for the average steer raised in the US, and an estimate is that it takes 1,000 gallons of fresh water to produce a single pound of beef. Yes, that is very efficient.

And how do you explain the good benefits of having manure run-off in our wells and ponds? Is there some hidden health benefit of E Coli I don't know about?

Is it also healthy to have antibiotics and other contaminants in the run-off surrounding livestock farms? Maybe if I get enough antibiotic residue in my well-water and hamburgers, I'll be so healthy I'll never need to see a doctor?

" The killing of animals for food is not morally wrong... A question frequently posed by vegetarians is: how can you justify killing an innocent animal for food? This question may seem difficult to answer at first but really it is not. Would it be reasonable to ask a lion to justify his killing of an innocent gazelle? Of course not: it is natural for the lion to kill the gazelle and that is justification enough. "

By this logic we should also practice cannibalism, infanticide, and incest because animals do it so therefore we should too!?



Lions do not have morals or a conscience. People do.

"As you and I know, most vegetarians are motivated, at least in part, by their view of the immorality of exploiting animals. Most of them, of course, are city dwellers who have never had the opportunity to till, plant and harvest a field with a vegetable crop."

Nothing like sweeping generalizations based on no real knowlege. LOL

I live on 15 acres and grow my own vegetables, seasons permitting. I shovel horse manure and stack hay bales. I collect free-range eggs from a family member's pet chickens. My neighbors have cows and pigs as well as cultivate commercial row-crops. However, I do not eat meat AND I am not a city-dweller.

If anything, the disconnect allows people today to consume meat and in such large quantities. If everyone had to kill & butcher their own personal meat, I suspect we'd have a few more vegetarians.

"Crop agriculture, even if inveterbrates are excluded, is devastating to small amphibians, reptiles, nesting birds and mammals...."

When you cultivate land for animal feed, you waste about 7x the land. Not many areas/farmers/economies can support grass-fed-only livestock. Every pound of animal feed has to come from somewhere. If I can get many times the amount of people-food by eating it directly instead of feeding animals for slaughter, isn't that far less devastating?

And if you're worried about protecting wildlife, you mean to tell me your sheep farmers don't kill any wild dog on sight? And don't eradicate most other wildlife that might either eat the sheep's grass or bother the sheep in any way? Are you aware that wild horses (and in the US bison, deer, and other wild herbivores) are being eradicated as meat farmers encroach on more prairie? Over here some deer are gut-shot by farmers that see deer as pests; gut-shot means they die slowly but will wander far from the person's farm to finally die, sparing the farmer the chore of carcass disposal.

You are missing half the equation: it's not just the death but the unnecessary suffering. In order to turn him into a roast, that cute little lamb needs to be torn from mom's side, shipped to a livestock sale, shipped sometimes a far distance in all weather, left to wait in a pen, and finally knocked insensible & butchered.



It's not that split second of death but that lifetime of suffering that really raises some moral objections.

"If one acre of land produces one sheep a year for slaughter, one life is taken. If one acre of land is put into cereal production the cost in just mammalian life can be measured in the dozens or more."

So you mean to tell me fields are never ever mowed, maintained, sprayed for weed control, driven across, fenced, or walked on by animals' hooves? Your sheep production kills NO other mammals? And in the winter you mean to tell me you never once depend on hay once snow covers the ground? Do you understand that to make hay a giant mower has to slice and dice many acres of grass. Ever open a hay bale? Sometimes there are dead animals in it, killed in mowing or caught up in the baler.

"Vegetarianism is unnatural. This is not a modern finding. The Bible gives us evidence of this, and clues that vegetarianism was not regarded with favour. In Genesis , Chapter Four, Eve bears Cain and Abel. 'And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.' That 'but' in the middle of the sentence is the first clue to disapproval. This disapproval is confirmed by verses three to five. Abel and Cain bring offerings to God: Abel of his sheep and Cain, the fruits of the ground. God, we are told, had respect for Abel's carnivorous offering, but He had no respect for Cain's vegetarian one. "

If the conclusion of his argument is based on what he thinks his translation of the Bible means, all hopes at a logical, rational conversation are dead.

My Bible says that before mankind was kicked out of the garden of eden, animals were not killed for food. "The lion lay down with the lamb..." etc etc etc. So shouldn't we be trying to aspire to return to that perfect place? What of those who believe Jesus would be vegetarian? What of the message of compassion that religion is supposed to teach?

My bible also says that slavery is ok, sometimes incest is a great idea, and that women should be stoned to death for looking at another man. Can I sacrifice you on a large stone, if I hear God's voice in my head telling me so?



"We can trace Man's evolution from remains found in Africa and other parts of the world of early hominids dated as long ago as five and a half million years "

And early man also didn't have little things like indoor plumbing or written language. Early man might be lucky to live to age 30. Early man didn't understand agriculture, so he had no choice but to eat anything he could grab just to stay alive. If you're willing to live in an unheated hut, hunt your own food with wooden spears, and survive only wearing deerskin clothes, please do so.



About half our brain and nervous system is composed of complicated, long-chain, fatty acid molecules. The walls of our blood vessels also need them. Without them we cannot develop normally. These fatty acids do not occur in plants. Fatty acids in a simpler form do but they must be converted into the long-chain molecules by animals — which is a slow, time-consuming process. This is where the herbivores come in. Over the year, they convert the simple fatty acids found in grasses and seeds into intermediate, more complicated forms that we can convert into the ones that we need.

I am taking up a collection to send this guy enough money so that he can afford a basic nutrition class.

Our brain is considerably larger than that of any ape. Looking back at the fossil record from early hominids to modern man, we see a quite remarkable increase in brain size. This expansion needed large quantities of the right fatty acids before it could have occurred. It could never have occurred if our ancestors had not eaten meat.

Elephants have large brains; they don't eat meat. Weasels have very tiny brains; they eat only meat. Argument invalid.

Human milk contains the fatty acids needed for large brain development — cow's milk does not.

So you're saying infants raised on cow-milk based formula instead of mother's milk never developed a proper brain? Is there any chance your didn't get enough breast milk as a baby?

The vegetarian will be dismayed to learn that while soya bean is rich in complete protein, and grains and nuts also combine to provide complete proteins, none contains the fats that are essential for proper brain development.

And what fats are those?

Although the eating of fats today is believed by some to be a cause of heart disease (erroneously, see The Cholesterol Myth ), we know that our ancestors ate large amounts of fat. Animal skulls are broken open and the brains scooped out; long bones likewise are broken for their marrow content. Both brain and marrow are very rich in fat.

So to be healthy we should eat lots of brains. Mmmm... brains!




"Unlike meat, which can be easily digested in its raw state, "

That's funny - I have never personally met a single person who eats meat raw. Maybe they exist somewhere, but around here people risk food poisoning from undercooked or raw meats.


" vegetables should really never be eaten raw and cereals should be fermented"

So this guy's diet is raw meat, overcooked veggies, and fermented grains? I don't believe it.

"Vegetarianism — a form of child abuse"

First vegetarians are control freaks who care nothing about animals and exist just to control you. But now you want to control what other parents do or don't feed their kids, calling it abuse. Ok, I'm done.

[Dharma]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

Funny, I flipped through "Prometheus Rising" only a few days ago

In other words, "people don't like to be wrong".

Edit: I saw how he showed that our organs were almost entirely carnivorous, just as Steve showed that we are almost entirely vegetarian. Amazing. Both sources sound so authoritive.

They're probably both right too. And that wouldn't let anybody be right. So on goes the battle...

[jokerman]

Do the facts support vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism as clearly superior on multiple levels, or do the facts merely support the better debater?

As an omnivore, I say it doesn't matter. Let's agree to disagree. Can the vegetarian agree to that, or must they chew my ear off as I chew my drumstick?

[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by Subscreet

To be fair the exact same could be said of these forums.

Yeah, afterwards I was thinking that. How do we know that we are right? Only because we are awesome and they, sirs, are not.

Seriously though, I admire the article in many ways; it's intelligent and has served to temper my viewpoint a fair bit. I still don't agree with the conclusion, though. I think the guy could try talking to some vegans / raw foodists / breatharians to see if his scientific prejudices hold up to just plain experience. I think maybe his high-fat diet works for him more because he's avoiding potatoes and cereals than any other reason.

Also, while his point on sheep being a good way of converting non-usable land into human-digestible-calories makes sense and has been true historically, most food animals nowadays are fed farmed crops in possibly the most wasteful excess ever. World hunger is political, and nothing to do with the Earth's capacity for feeding us. (I won't do point-by-point, but I needed to get that one out. Preaching to the choir, I know)

[funchy]

Originally Posted by jokerman

As an omnivore, I say it doesn't matter. Let's agree to disagree. Can the vegetarian agree to that, or must they chew my ear off as I chew my drumstick?

While I agree that we all have a right to our own beliefs, this is a more complex issue because it involves others, not just one's own body & choices.

It affects a 3rd party, the animals. Whether eating meat is better for you or not does not change the ethical issue of causing suffering & death in exchange for a fleeting gustatory delight. We can't ask the cow or pig if he will sacrifice his life to become burgers & sausage, but if you swing a weapon at them do they not try to escape? If you beat them to get them on a trailer, do they not bellow and bleed? If you ship them in 100 degree heat, do they not collapse with exhaustion? The ethics of meat isn't about the hamburger, it's about the cow. It's about whether it's right to unnecessarily do this to another living thing.

Humans like to think that we're better than animals but what animals kills for fun? What animal keeps killing again & again when there is more than enough food all around him? What does it say about humankind when we're born with a conscience but choose to selectively not use it?

Ethics aside, the environmental damage commercial livestock farming does worldwide affects everyone. If meat farming were treating like the chemical industry, there would be emissions controls, environmental reports, and caps on pollution.

"The world's 1.3 billion head of cattle emit about 190 trillion quarts of methane gas annually -- the second-most significant contributor to the greenhouse effect (after carbon dioxide). Livestock raised for food produce 87,000 pounds of excrement per second, polluting U.S. waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the United States are used in animal food production. And making a pound of meat demands 2,500 to 5,000 gallons of water. (By contrast, a pound of wheat or potatoes can be grown with 25 gallons of water.) "

While our nation wrings its hands over starving children, every pound of beef it consumes diverts 16 pounds of grain to cattle feed. This colossal waste of resources is offensive in a world plagued by hunger and malnutrition. Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing U.S. meat production by just 10 percent would free enough grain to feed 60 million people.

Mad Cows in a World Gone Mad

Why do we support and even promote an industry that is so damaging?

Did you know your tax dollars subsidize meat production, at least in the US? We're being taxed to make bigger profits for high-density livestock farmers!? We're also using public lands to give almost-free grazing so cattle ranchers can increase profits. If we all have a right to our own belief, why don't I have a right not to pay this part of the tax?