[timesnap]

Originally Posted by Odysseus

No every poster here avoids eating meat, I did not wish to offend those who though that the way I preped the food on those occassions find it a sensitive a topic. Nothing to do with the fact that I eat meat.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a meal. The case I spoke of the person who cooked it put a lot of work into it, it was a special meal with a special thought associated with it.

Lots of veggies I know would not be offended, I tried it myself for about 4 years a long time ago, not because I thought eating meal was wrong.

Fair enough,as i said i eat meat but there seems to be much more evidence that it is either, learned behaviour, or at one time was a necessity,
i love a good feed too but i know i can get my protein from soya or lentils if i wish.
just not as pleasing on the eye as a big juicy steak etc.

[timesnap]

Originally Posted by Cavehill Red

Food poisoning is unpleasant but very rarely fatal, just the same way as it is for carnivorous predators in the animal kingdom. A dose of the ****s or a day vomiting is debilitating, but doesn't qualify as seriously ill, I'm afraid.

Why not try eating raw animals for even a week like cats and dogs do and come back and tell us how it worked out for you?

[Cavehill Red]

Originally Posted by timesnap

Why not try eating raw animals for even a week like cats and dogs do and come back and tell us how it worked out for you?

I've eaten raw meat many, many times. Venison carpaccio, steak tartare, sushi, etc. Never had a problem yet. If you know where your food is coming from, then you can eat safely.

It's this all-or-nothing ideology of some vegetarians I object to - that, and their disingenuous bad science. It's clear that we have developed to eat some meat in our diet. It's a valuable source of protein and minerals. We didn't develop to eat burgers three times a day. I think vegetarianism is akin to a religion or a belief system. That's fine by me whatever you choose to believe, but I'll be guided by the science, and eating meat moderately two or three times a week is perfectly in keeping with an optimal diet. I think vegetarians might get closer to their aims of lowering meat consumption if that's what they suggested to those of us who do eat meat - to eat less of it, in keeping with our actual digestive systems.

[blatantrereg]

Originally Posted by Cavehill Red

Bone marrow remains a delicacy in many cuisines. And in Cro-Magnon times, it was top of the desired food list for both our ancestors and the neanderthals. Every prehistoric settlement is littered with cracked bones. Not, I hasten to add, cracked by a dogs jaw, but carefully cracked straight along the long side to maximise the amount of marrow accessible.



More herbivoral than what? Than extracting energy from the air via osmosis? We eat to gain energy. Most of what we could access to eat was vegetal, a small valuable proportion was meat. Hence we are omnivorous. We have a short, simple digestive system designed for digesting meat. Herbivores like cows require multiple stomachs. Our intestines run to about 8 times the length of our torsos (mouth to anus). That compares to 3.5 times or so for pure meat eaters like the big cats, and 12-20 times as long for herbivores like horses and cows. Conclusion? We're in the middle. We're omnivores.


Yes, this is terrible science on a number of levels. Plenty of chimp colonies are meat eaters, and they are our closest relatives. Furthermore, that 99.99% needs to be seen in the context that we share 99% of our genes with mice.



We cook to eradicate the danger of infection from food poisoning, because we're smart and sentient and we learn stuff. If lions were sentient, they'd cook too. As for seriously ill? I don't think so. Food poisoning is unpleasant but very rarely fatal, just the same way as it is for carnivorous predators in the animal kingdom. A dose of the ****s or a day vomiting is debilitating, but doesn't qualify as seriously ill, I'm afraid.

You've been drinking the veggie kool-aid. It's selective reasoning and bad science. The reality is that we are omnivores, like our closest relatives, and have been for many thousands of years. That doesn't mean you personally have to eat meat. But it doesn't mean I shouldn't either.

A lot of what you say here is contradcited by the article I've already linked. As already pointed out - you obviously are replying without reading.

We dont share 99% of genes with mice. We share about 75%. A lot mroe of our genes have analogues, whcih is a completely different thing. [Funny that you would argue this at the same time as suggesting I'm cherry picking facts.] Chimps have up to 99.99% the same genes as humans - with the type reaching that remarkably high figure being pygmy chimps, which mainly eat fruit. Chimps hunting and eating meat is weird behaviour, that is at odds with all other primates except for humans. It was only observed pretty recently, and is not really explained by nutritional needs. It is tied to the development of more aggressive and violent chimp societies also, and might be more to do with status than with food. Something like: "Would you like to share my food? I killed it myself. [evil chimp laugh] I think I should be the boss here dont you?" Maybe the development of meat eating in human society was more akin to that than to do with survival too...
Here is a pretty long article about it if you're interested

http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~stanford/chimphunt.html

The prehistoric people you refer to ate a lot of reindeer, which tend to live in cold climates, and woolly mammoths, which sound pretty well adapted for the same. This would suggest they did so when it was cold - which would support my suggestion that it grew out of a need when normal foodstuffs were scarce.

All your other points are bluntly contradicted by the article I already linked, if you bothered to read it. Lions dont need to cook because they are carnivores for example. Their stomach contains much stronger acid than herbivorous stomachs which kills the dangerous bacteria etc. Saying we dont have the same digestive system as a cow is irritating in the esxtreme, not just because it indicates you arent actually reading what I am saying before you seek to argue. Not all herbivores have multi-chambered stoamchs.

Food poisoning is rarely fatal? It can make you extremely sick to the point where you might wish it was tbh. Hardly an indicator of a healthy food if it makes you extremely sick I'd have thought, but it's grand if you survive the ordeal yeah?

Anyway you've clearly doemnstrated that you arent actually reading what I'm saying so pursuing an argument with you would be aggravating and pointless.

edit:

I've eaten raw meat many, many times. Venison carpaccio, steak tartare, sushi, etc. Never had a problem yet. If you know where your food is coming from, then you can eat safely.

It's this all-or-nothing ideology of some vegetarians I object to - that, and their disingenuous bad science. It's clear that we have developed to eat some meat in our diet.

More selective editing. Beef and so on is safe to eat raw from the PoV of avoiding posioning. The reason the outside is normallty cooked before consumption is not because of properties of the meat itself, but because it is likely to have been splattered with sh!t when the animal ws slaughtered. mmm yummy huh? Other meat such as poultry is guaranteed to make you extremely sick if you consume even a tiny amount of it raw. Pork and lamb is also very dangerous.

Not sure where anybody said we didn't adapt to gave some meat in our diet. I said we're herbivores who adapted to tolerate some meat. It's not ideal as a foodstuff. Vegetarians have amuch much lower incidence of dying young than meat eaters and avoid all sorts of health problems. But it is an option.

You've some cheek saying disingenuous bad science after saying mice share 99% of genes with humans and not even reading most of what you argued against.

edit 2:

Prehistoric humans may have gnawed on each other's bones, researchers now suggest.

[Hector Mildew]

According to this, http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/a...man-habit.html , humans and our ancestors have been eating meat for 2.5 million years.

Saying that, I avoid eating meat from animals which have been treated badly.

[timesnap]

Originally Posted by Hector Mildew

According to this, http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/a...man-habit.html , humans and our ancestors have been eating meat for 2.5 million years.

Saying that, I avoid eating meat from animals which have been treated badly.

With respect Hector Mildrew i do not see how your link contradicts blatantrereg points and links.
we are all just trying to get to the best known facts arn't we?
it is difficult to click on links that lead to lengthy articles and actually read them i know,i am as guilty as anybody else of trying to get the jist of an article but missing some of its more subtle points.

seems to me the links when fully read amount to more or less the same conclusions?

[wetdogsmell]

theres some very interesting posts on this thread, i love when people make up their own facts, (humans are herbivores, ha ha) does the op realy think all the people in the world that eat frog legs care about your opinion? i think i'll start a petition to stop all wars, i think it might work

[Worztron]

Originally Posted by Whispered

In my opinion you wont ever be able to ban any type of meat. I think you'd get much much further petitioning for more humane conditions and deaths. By calling for an all out ban you'd be dismissed, but asking for something more reasonable you might get people to listen to you.

Okay, maybe I should have asked for a mass boycott instead of a worldwide ban in the title.

[Worztron]

Still relevant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/677593.stm

[Worztron]

Originally Posted by timesnap

Does not really matter if the OP is a wind up or not.
assuming humankind continues to exist, i feel certain that we will be viewed as arrogant barbarians by future generations for how we treat other creatures, long after we found other sources of protein.

Ignore kippy, this is not a wind up.

There are many quality sources of protein cheaply available - beans being the most obvious.

[al28283]

Originally Posted by Worztron

Okay, maybe I should gave asked for a mass boycott instead of a worldwide ban in the title.

Why? It still won't happen.

[kylith]

All I'm really seeing is a case for the regulation of producing frogs legs. I think that, as I said earlier, there is no reason at all to deprive some of the poorest people in the world of a cheap and accessable form of protein.

From a quick google I can see that it's recommended to give the frogs a sharp knock on the head to kill them. This makes much more logical sense to me; it's rather difficult to cut the legs off of something that's struggling.

Others have said there are other forms of protein than animal available, however many of the people who rely on foods such as frogs and snails have no access to these other forms of protein, and if the rest of us just flat out don't want to use them then that's our business.

Humans are, as evidenced by our truncated guts and our canine teeth, omnivores, like our chimpanzee relatives. Studies have shown that an adult human could not obtain their calorific needs eating a 'natural', raw, herbivorous diet without spending about 18 hours a day doing nothing but eating. Eating meat that has given us our large, calorie hogging, brain.

[Evac101]

Originally Posted by timesnap

No i eat meat,but as i said future generations will view us as barbarians for eating meat once we had found other sources of protein.
we are supposed to be evolving are we not?
we are carnivores? i wish i knew that before i got addicted to let-us.

Just as an observation, why do so many people equate evolving with developing along the moral/social lines which they approve of? Evolution isn't (generally) a guided process, it's organic and, by my limited understanding, necessarily a chaotic process(mutate - succeed/fail, next mutation). If you're speaking about the development of societies morals then, pretty please, refer to is as societies evolution and don't imply that you're referring to our biological evolution On that subject I would guess that there were very few/no accurate predictions of what our society would resemble today from even 100 years ago, I find it fairly unlikely that any of us can even guess what our society will resemble in 200 years or 500 years time and I wonder at the faith someone has in their own vision of the future where they feel they can accurately judge how those humans will feel about us. Perhaps we'll simply develop meat that wants to be eaten?1

Perhaps our evolution will involve us moving to a purely 'critter free' diet, perhaps it will involve us moving to an entirely 'critter based' diet - what our bodies develop to consume and what our societies mores are don't necessarily need to compliment each our, though obviously they can affect each other to a certain extent. Until we start mucking around with the human genome much more then we current are capable/morally allow, our biological evolution will continue to be ungoverned by our view of what we should be.

All of this bearing in mind the caveat that if no animal protein was available that eventually our bodies would adapt to that. This would come under the 'forced evolution' though and would take centuries at the very least to force through. Yes, there are protein sources other then meat, but what will do versus what the body evolved for are two separate things.

Or maybe I'm just full of it *shrug*

1 Credit to Mr Adams where credit is due

[pawrick]

Can't see how asking for a ban in a country which doesn't really eat them is going to affect anything. I have tried them, thought they tasted ok, I'm a meat eater but usually wouldn't eat meat most weeks for no particular reason.

I'd be far more concerned with genetically modified soya and wheat crops compared to a ban on eating frogs. Have GM crops been tested enough to avoid risks to health and wildlife and are the checks in place to avoid cross contamination with non modified crops? There is also the issue surrounding poor regions which become reliant on purchasing seeds from companies associated with such crops resulting in local varieties becoming extinct which may be better suited to the land and the resultant increase in use of artificial fertiliser plus farmers being tied to a company for new seeds.

[Discodog]

Within 50 years real meat will be the price of caviare. Most of us will be eating meat that is artificially grown. Small pieces of meat are already being grown in labs & the first "hamburger" is on it's way - with an enormous price tag

The scientists working on this are convinced that it will be the norm because, with mass production, it will be cheaper than "real meat" & more environmentally friendly. It also involves no animals so existing veggies could eat it. Because of the huge demand from the new rich in China & India meat prices are set to rocket. Traditionally their diets have featured little meat but tastes are changing.