Considering becoming a vegetarian

[Blue Mist]

I could have wrote that post word for word.

Written.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

I do think animal husbandry needs to come into the 2020s, there needs to be a big change. But I enjoy meat, poultry, fish, crustaceans and cephalopods too much to not eat them.

I don’t have a problem with anyone who doesn’t want to eat them because of a disagreement with their treatment or even because they don’t think we, as humans, should eat them. Plus if everyone in the world ate them, we would struggle to feed all 7.7bn of us.

However, really, we should be eating them. As omnivores, we should be eating the full range of the diet that omnivores should eat.

There are nutrients that you just don’t get from a purely plant based diet:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-nutrients-you-cant-get-from-plants#1

Some people who eat meat will get these but then they won’t eat enough of all the other varieties of food groups that we should eat as omnivores. They may not eat fish, crustaceans and cephalopods; and also not get enough complex carbohydrates, legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, leaves, roots, fruit, fungi and cheese; and in some cultures they also include insects and flowers too.

A proper human-omnivore diet should include all of these things. I try and eat as much of them as possible. In recent years, I’ve started cooking more of an old-school varied healthy diet with one-pot/slow cooker stews soups and broths with as many varied ingredient bases as possible from dish to dish... but I still never eat flowers or insects.

A problem we have when we don’t eat animals is that many of them would breed so widely that they can damage the environment themselves (one example of hundreds):

Signal crayfish are an invasive species that have taken over our waterways, and the best way to combat this is by eating them en mass.

Another one a lot of us don’t consume enough of, is water (or if you’re like my Father, never drink it... he only drinks orange juice at breakfast and cups of tea the rest of the day).

But if you’re going to turn vegetarian - which, by the way, non-religious ‘Western’ vegetarianism was a movement that started in Manchester!:
http://www.mvvg.co.uk/faq/history-of-mvvg -
you should probably consume some supplements of the vitamins and minerals you don’t get from a purely vegetable based diet.

But meat eaters should also start to think about including more of the things we should eat as humans too.

It’s very easy to get stuck eating the same things all the time. In Korea they have a saying of; “eat the rainbow”, as a way to get a proper variety of vitamins and minerals from foods:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/eustaciahuen/2018/08/30/eatrainbow/amp/
So mix it up as much as you can.

 

[inchy14]

I do think animal husbandry needs to come into the 2020s, there needs to be a big change. But I enjoy meat, poultry, fish, crustaceans and cephalopods too much to not eat them.

I don’t have a problem with anyone who doesn’t want to eat them because of a disagreement with their treatment or even because they don’t think we, as humans, should eat them. Plus if everyone in the world ate them, we would struggle to feed all 7.7bn of us.

However, really, we should be eating them. As omnivores, we should be eating the full range of the diet that omnivores should eat.

There are nutrients that you just don’t get from a purely plant based diet:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-nutrients-you-cant-get-from-plants#1

Some people who eat meat will get these but then they won’t eat enough of all the other varieties of food groups that we should eat as omnivores. They may not eat fish, crustaceans and cephalopods; and also not get enough complex carbohydrates, legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, leaves, roots, fruit, fungi and cheese; and in some cultures they also include insects and flowers too.

A proper human-omnivore diet should include all of these things. I try and eat as much of them as possible. In recent years, I’ve started cooking more of an old-school varied healthy diet with one-pot/slow cooker stews soups and broths with as many varied ingredient bases as possible from dish to dish... but I still never eat flowers or insects.

A problem we have when we don’t eat animals is that many of them would breed so widely that they can damage the environment themselves (one example of hundreds):

Signal crayfish are an invasive species that have taken over our waterways, and the best way to combat this is by eating them en mass.

Another one a lot of us don’t consume enough of, is water (or if you’re like my Father, never drink it... he only drinks orange juice at breakfast and cups of tea the rest of the day).

But if you’re going to turn vegetarian - which, by the way, non-religious ‘Western’ vegetarianism was a movement that started in Manchester!:
http://www.mvvg.co.uk/faq/history-of-mvvg -
you should probably consume some supplements of the vitamins and minerals you don’t get from a purely vegetable based diet.

But meat eaters should also start to think about including more of the things we should eat as humans too.

It’s very easy to get stuck eating the same things all the time. In Korea they have a saying of; “eat the rainbow”, as a way to get a proper variety of vitamins and minerals from foods:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/eustaciahuen/2018/08/30/eatrainbow/amp/
So mix it up as much as you can.

Don’t need any supplements, vitamins or minerals mate, just eating plenty of fresh fruit and veg and have been absolutely fine for 9 months.
Also I drink plenty of water too.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Don’t need any supplements, vitamins or minerals mate, just eating plenty of fresh fruit and veg and have been absolutely fine for 9 months.
Also I drink plenty of water too.

I don’t really think of it as a short term thing as individuals. Nine months is a very short window...three generations of a family is a very short window.

As a species, thinking about our long term human evolution, we don’t really know what not eating the full omnivore diet will do to us. Where they’ve eaten purely vegetable based diets for generations (like places in South Asia), they aren’t the longest living, most disease free people on Earth. The longest living, most disease free people in the world have the most varied omnivore diets like people who live in mostly rural areas in places like small Japanese islands, Sardinia, some Greek islands, rural areas of Costa Rica...

Over time we would probably be fine as we would evolve to combat the deficiencies, like we did when humans moved up to high latitudes with lower exposure to Vitamin D from the Sun (where we evolved white skin).

Obviously, eating a good range plant based diet is still healthier than some of the, quite frankly, appalling Western diets of fast food and nowhere near enough range in vitamins and minerals. I think life expectancy of the Western world will dramatically reduce with the diet we’ve had in the last 30-50 years.

So vegetarianism is healthy, and much healthier than many Western peoples’ terrible diets, but I don’t think it’s as healthy as eating a proper omnivore diet as omnivores should.

 

[quiet_riot]

I don’t really think of it as a short term thing as individuals. Nine months is a very short window...three generations of a family is a very short window.

As a species, thinking about our long term human evolution, we don’t really know what not eating the full omnivore diet will do to us. Where they’ve eaten purely vegetable based diets for generations (like places in South Asia), they aren’t the longest living, most disease free people on Earth. The longest living, most disease free people in the world have the most varied omnivore diets like people who live in mostly rural areas in places like small Japanese islands, Sardinia, some Greek islands, rural areas of Costa Rica...

We've been over this already in this thread. Plenty of our ancestors didn't have 'balanced' omnivore diets because they weren't hunters, and those that were hunters were so because vegetation was so scarce.

They seem to have fared ok without nipping to Holland and Barrett.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

We've been over this already in this thread. Plenty of our ancestors didn't have 'balanced' omnivore diets because they weren't hunters, and those that were hunters were so because vegetation was so scarce.

They seem to have fared ok without nipping to Holland and Barrett.

I agree. We do adapt and evolve well to various situations, and have throughout our history.

Plus I’m not really talking about supplements, that was just one small point I made. I’m talking about a proper omnivore diet with all of the foodstuffs within that diet which would mean we never need to supplement.

As humans in the 2020s, we aren’t in a situation where we are restricted to small pockets of food groups due to our local habitation/environment. While a vegetable based diet is very healthy, we can eat a proper omnivore diet from our local supermarkets, and that will surely be better for us as a species long term than any restrictions by choice to the pure omnivore diet, as omnivores.

It’s surely not just about being healthy-“enough” or getting by okay or even very well, or even succeeding excellently, without certain foods. It should be about being the absolute optimal humans we can be. And the only diet that can give us that is the pure omnivore diet of meat, poultry, fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, eggs, complex carbohydrates, legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, leaves, roots, fruit, fungi, cheese, insects and flowers.

Also, like I said above, if we stopped eating animals, we would probably have to cull huge amounts of animals due to them overbreeding and the problems that brings to the environment either through certain animals eating/devastating some habitats through their eating habits or through disease if their populations are too densely populated in certain habitats.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Just had a read of this link, after something @somapop said in the Covid thread...

https://www.sps.nhs.uk/articles/inj...-in-primary-care-during-covid-19-vitamin-b12/

Vitamin B12 is exclusively found in animal foods like fish, meat, dairy products and eggs.

This is an example of what I mean about ongoing, long term, through generations (thousands of years worth, even), optimal human diet meaning we get the full range of nutrients for all human functions and protection against disease.

A modern human in the 2020s and going forward through future generations, isn’t about just being healthy. Vegetable based diets are very healthy, but we can now get a proper full omnivore diet which will enable us to be the best humans we can be in all situations.

 

[quiet_riot]

It should be about being the absolute optimal humans we can be..

Surely the optimal human cares about its fellow inhabitants?

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Surely the optimal human cares about its fellow inhabitants?

Indeed. And I do think animal husbandry needs to get into the 2020s. They need to be treated much better and be given much better living conditions while they’re alive than they are, before they’re sent to slaughter with as quick a process of death and as little pain as possible.

 

[inchy14]

Indeed. And I do think animal husbandry needs to get into the 2020s. They need to be treated much better and be given much better living conditions while they’re alive than they are, before they’re sent to slaughter with as quick a process of death and as little pain as possible.

Yes let’s treat them well then fucking butcher them and eat them, oh and while we’re at it, destroy huge swathes of the planet to feed and house them.