integral domain

Thanks... are/were you a math major in college?

You should try being a vegetarian. If you ask me, the most powerful arguements are the environmental ones... the ethical reasons are shady and mostly opinionated.

You'd be suprised how easy it is to be a vegetarian. There are a lot of soy based fake meat products out there that are really good. Vegetarian doesn't mean someone who eats a lot of vegetables... it just means someone who doesn't eat animal flesh... you can still eat milk and eggs and honestly call yourself a vegetarian. It's the vegans that don't eat any animals products at all (and if you ask me... they're a little crazy )

When I first thought about being a vegetarian I thought "there's no way I can do this for more than a few weeks" but after awhile... it gets really easy.

godlessmath

I am a math major squared now, I am in grad school.

Ah yes, I forgot about the fake meat. Do you take multi-vitamins? Do you get enough protein? I sort of like to lift weights, and although I know that most bodybuilders are in fact vegetarians in a weak sense, I know they take supplements, which I am too cheap to buy.

It would take some planning for me to turn veg. I have a very picky palate, my diet is quite limited. I like to have a routine, where I eat the same thing day in and day out. When I was an undergrad I had the same thing for lunch for three years (hey, $2 lunch!!!).

However, you said that one can be vegetarian and still eat eggs/milk. It also seems that you are a vegetarian for mostly environmental reasons. Speaking with other vegetarians, it seems that most of their contempt/frustrations was with the egg industry. Nevertheless, I suppose there are those free range eggs, with which veg's seem to be okay. In light of this, do you think there is a way to sanitize the meat industry and make it environmentally sound?

integral domain

You don't really need suppliments. I mean, it's not a bad idea to take a centrum every other day... but I do fine without them.

So... this is what I do. I eat fortified cereals and protein bars. Also, a lot of fake meat has as much or more protein as real meat. There's this one brand of fake chicken I eat that has more protein per gram than real chicken... 24g of protein for only 140 calories... it's unreal.

I also eat eggs which have ~6g of protein each. And then there's Powerbars and those things... and tofu... there's lots of stuff you can eat instead of meat.

About eggs... yeah, that sucks what they do to them (cut off their beaks and keep them in impossibly small cages such that their feet grow into the wire)... which is why I buy "cage free" eggs. The name says it all. They're like $2 a dozen... but at least it's guilt free. However, I'm not so irritated with the egg thing b/c like you've pointed out... the environmental issue is what's most important to me... and the meat industry is by far the worst for the environment. People who are more intense about milk and eggs are usually more animal rights people... which I try to stay away from b/c a lot of them scare me. Not that I think it's ok to torture animals... but a lot of these people are a bit over the edge.

JGL53

I vote for meat, preferably sirloin, medium rare. I like mine with Bernaise sauce. Vegetables make good side dishes. My favorite is asparagus - or maybe some mixed baby greens.

BTW, I am a reactive hypoglycemic and must get most of my calories from protein and fat. How could I be a vegetarian? I like eggs and cheese, but not enough to make them my only sources of balanced protein.

And, to eat enough soy, beans, and rice to provide me with the 3,000 calories I need per day, I'd be spending all my time either eating or farting. So, in a nutshell, I'm pretty sure vegetarianism isn't for everyone.

alek0

I am a vegeterian, for the same reasons. There have been a cuple of threads on vegeterianism in the past on this board which have quickly turned nasty.

integral domain

Geez... I can tell already that a lot of these people are veggie-pokers (people who for some sick reason enjoy antagonising vegetarians... particularly by talking about how much they love meat and how they like it). WHY!? I mean... why are people like this? It seems like there is no safe place for moderate vegetarians.

philechat

Not one myself, but sympathetic to it. If they think it is more moral to be one, I think they might be right, in a way.

As for Christian vegetarians, I think they existed in a greater number in 1st to 2nd centuries. There were probably many divergent sub-groups of Christians adhering to some form of vegeterianism in Roman times. The Seven-day Adventists, a modern (almost fundamentalist) Christian sect, also seem to promote some forms of vegetarianism.

vixstile

Well, it is hard to sympathize with someone when they believe you are engaging in immoral activity on a regular basis.

If you're a health nut; fine

If you like trees and flowers and fresh air, and you think not eating meat will bring about more of those things; fine

But if you think eating meat is "immoral" or somehow "wrong", then I am going to have to object to that, as a defense of my meat eating behavior.

integral domain

Yeah... but that's no reason to get ugly. I mean, I had sex with a pagan out side of marraige... and a lot of people think that's immoral... but that doesn't give me the right to be nasty to them!! I'm not nasty to people who eat meat... I only expect the same civility.

I am vegetarian for moral reasons as well as environmental reasons as well as health reasons.

It's not so much that I think eating meat is immoral as I think not eating meat is super-moral. It's like, there are things that are good, things that are bad, and things that are neither. I think being a vegetarian is good, eating people is bad, and eating animals is possibly niether (outside of the environmental issue).


The morality of eating animals really does boil down to a strict opinion... and so if you are consistant in your opinion that it's ok to kill animals for non-essential purposes, then I respect that.

But for the love of God... don't enjoy your steak but then cry like a baby when you accidently hit a deer with your car.

Strawberry

I'm a veggie! Ovo-lacto.