'So, why are you a vegetarian?'

**Portia** · 26-11-2009 8:40pm #1

Sometimes, I just do not want to talk about how I am a vegetarian but do not know how to brush this question off. I just feel that whenever I do explain my reasons(animal welfare,health,environmental reasons), that the person who has asked the question ends up either feeling like I'm juding him/her, ore else thinks I'm a bit weird and/or an attention seeker, especially when it comes to older ppl. How do I avoid having to answer this question????! I'm not obsessively asking ppl why they eat meat!

26-11-2009 9:43pm

I just say I don't like meat. And shut up.
That tends to take the wind out of their sails.

Slaphead07 · 26-11-2009 10:35pm

"I'm plagued with a conscience"

Whispered · 27-11-2009 1:25am

I was at a wedding last year and sitting at a table with another vegetarian, an older gentleman. When a person at the table asked why he didn't eat meat, he simply said that he didn't want to talk about it right before they tucked into their meal as he didn't want to ruin it on them.

Slaphead07 · 27-11-2009 4:36pm

helena.ryan wrote: »

I was at a wedding last year and sitting at a table with another vegetarian, an older gentleman. When a person at the table asked why he didn't eat meat, he simply said that he didn't want to talk about it right before they tucked into their meal as he didn't want to ruin it on them.

I've said the same myself at meals. Really, people fall into two catagories of inquirer here, those who actually are interested and would be genuinely put off their dinner by my revelations and those who don't give a flyin' f@<k anyway.

Tar.Aldarion · 27-11-2009 5:44pm

I hate plants.

entropi · 27-11-2009 6:15pm

Well i never liked the taste and texture of meat for the 25 years i ate it...rarely at that. Decided that vegetarianism was best for me, and it still is:D

Clare Bear · 28-11-2009 4:01pm

I just tell them eating animals isn't for me. I never make a big deal out of it. I usually find that vegetarians rarely make an issue of them being a vegetarian or their beliefs, it's always non vegetarians that feel like we owe them an explanation. Can be quite annoying at times but most people are nice about it.

-lala- · 28-11-2009 10:41pm

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

I hate plants.

Love it. From now on that'll be my excuse.

Tar.Aldarion · 29-11-2009 12:08am

I sayt it a lot, people generally laugh so it's all good then.

Sapsorrow · 12-12-2009 1:19am

I love all (nearly have an eel phobia for some reason) animals and don't think that just because they happen to be damn tasty that I have the right to eat them cos I feel like it. Simple as.
I think if we all grew up with pet pigs or cows, playing football out on the lawn with em, taking em for walks givin them cuddles we might all find the idea of killing and then eating them a little repulsive. Don't know many people who'd be willing to slap Rover up on the barbe on a summer afternoon.
Unfluffy things have feelings too.
Lentils don't as far as I'm aware.

fillefatale · 12-12-2009 1:07pm

When I'm asked its usually with an underlying smirk... I usually end up explaining but this thread has given me short snappy answers I can use in future, great

it's always non vegetarians that feel like we owe them an explanation. Can be quite annoying at times but most people are nice about it.

thats exactly it! it really peeves me!

OneArt · 12-12-2009 1:20pm

khrystyna100 wrote: »

I love all (nearly have an eel phobia for some reason) animals and don't think that just because they happen to be damn tasty that I have the right to eat them cos I feel like it. Simple as.
I think if we all grew up with pet pigs or cows, playing football out on the lawn with em, taking em for walks givin them cuddles we might all find the idea of killing and then eating them a little repulsive. Don't know many people who'd be willing to slap Rover up on the barbe on a summer afternoon.
Unfluffy things have feelings too.
Lentils don't as far as I'm aware.

Well you don't necessarily have a "right" to eat animals its just natural instinct since humans are omnivores. So there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

Also, I grew up with pet chickens (both died of natural causes, might I add!) and still eat chicken. Mmm.

I'm not dissing veggies (I know a lot of them, my partner is one!) I just thought I might add my 2c.

Mentalmiss · 12-12-2009 2:45pm

I usually say
"To be honest I think that I was born vegan but it took me 18 years to realise that that it was allowed but that was the happiest day of my life".
Only the people who have a genuine interest will ask further and I am happy to discuss it with anyone who has a genuine interest.

Sapsorrow · 12-12-2009 2:51pm

OneArt wrote: »

there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

That ones definately open for debate

Just because something occurs in nature doesn't make it any less painful or unpleasant for the animal involved or any more necessary, we're very far removed from our omnivore ancestors it's a whole different ball game these days.

JulietLima · 13-12-2009 2:39pm

Used to be coz i felt sorry for the animals even though i did like the taste, and now its for medical reasons, high cholesterol, all cholesterol comes from animal products because all animals have a liver so the cholesterol ends up in their muscle and milk, so take out animal products from your diet and you have no cholesterol intake.

mind you your liver still creates its own and can even substitute for more when there is no intake from other sources, but judging by my results so far id say its nowhere near as bad.

Mentalmiss · 13-12-2009 9:40pm

JulietLima wrote: »

Used to be coz i felt sorry for the animals even though i did like the taste, and now its for medical reasons, high cholesterol, all cholesterol comes from animal products because all animals have a liver so the cholesterol ends up in their muscle and milk, so take out animal products from your diet and you have no cholesterol intake.

mind you your liver still creates its own and can even substitute for more when there is no intake from other sources, but judging by my results so far id say its nowhere near as bad.

I have been vegetarian for about 36 years and the last reading I got for Cholesterol was 7.5 so it does not keep it low.

Tar.Aldarion · 13-12-2009 9:45pm

Not by default no, but it's much easier, very little is synthesised in plants afaik. I think it's important to avoid saturated fats isn't it? Not just animal products.

Sapsorrow · 13-12-2009 9:52pm

JulietLima wrote: »

Used to be coz i felt sorry for the animals even though i did like the taste, and now its for medical reasons, high cholesterol, all cholesterol comes from animal products because all animals have a liver so the cholesterol ends up in their muscle and milk, so take out animal products from your diet and you have no cholesterol intake.

mind you your liver still creates its own and can even substitute for more when there is no intake from other sources, but judging by my results so far id say its nowhere near as bad.

Anyone interested in this topic should read the diet delusion by Gary Taubbes, incredible book that highlights the complete lack of scientific evidence to back to cholesterol, sat-fat heart disease myth, explains how our public health policy became so misguided in the first place back in the forties (politics of course), why nothing has been done to rectify the problem and re-educate the public and illustrates the much more plausable mechanisms for the role of insulin as the primary player in athersclerosis etc..

Being veegtarian or vegan definately doesn't mean your cholesterol is automatically going to come down, it's a lot more complicated than cholesterol eaten equaling circulating cholesterol in my body. Anyway cholesterol isn't as big a baddie as people think tbh, read the aforementioned book to see what I mean.

Tar.Aldarion · 13-12-2009 10:02pm

Is it high triacylglycerol that is bad for you in these cholesterol measurements?

Mentalmiss · 14-12-2009 12:29am

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Is it high triacylglycerol that is bad for you in these cholesterol measurements?

I think that my reading on that is high as well but it does not bother me. Half of the country are on stattins and they are doing them far more damage that high cholesterol would.
The annoying thing is that if I was a younger person and needed to borrow money I may be forced to go on them as well just to get insurance. I think that this is criminal. I am a perfectly (abnormally) healthy person and just because the accepted wisdom says that a reading is too high I would be forced to take drugs that are exceedingly bad for me.
I have read that 75% of people who have heart attacks have "normal" cholesterol but I would not take any notice of that because they have probably got to "normal" by taking abnormal drugs.

Michellenman · 14-12-2009 4:02am

If anyone asks I just say that if I can live easily without meat then why would I eat it just for the sake of it?

JulietLima · 14-12-2009 4:18am

I know a little bit about cholesterol conspiracies but I can tell you first hand for the likes of me and a lot of my relatives who have it heriditarily, if that's a word, through familial hyper cholesterolemia (FH for short) that statins are a life saver. I know because my dad and all his brothers died extremely young because of it and we are living longer because we are using proper statins. you can go on about the pharmys making a load of money which i don't disagree with but the stuff does work and if used constantly it stops plaque building, ok maybe not stops but slows it.

Do you mind if I ask to that guy/girl "Mentalmis" who said he/she is 7.5 total cholesterol what age you are? and are you vegan or do you use dairy? do you eat much junk food or relatively healthy? Sedentary or Active? Smoking or Non? It all counts but that's a very interesting reading for such a long time being veggy. Mind you, I would really need the other readings from a full lipid profile to tell you if your reading is actually bad or not i.e if you have a lot of HDL's and your ratio is better then 5:1 then you have zero to worry about. I have been known to be up around the 12's at one stage, then, when i was just vegy before (not vegan then) for 4 years i had it down to 4, then with statins and meat i had it down to 3!! at the moment I'm averaging about 5.5 but its getting lower since I've gone vegan about 3 weeks ago, it really is, i dont know about Mentalmis but it is quite definitively yielding results for me, could be that everyone's different but i would hasten to ask my fellow vegetarian to experiment eating meat to see if it would change much the other way as a sort of mirror experiment, i know where i would be told to shove it...lol but to be fair there is no basis there to say it makes no difference when you don't know what the difference is. Perhaps like me you actually have a cholesterol problem (it does get worse with age) and it may well have been worse had u been a meat eater for those 35 years of good wholesome veggie scoff. Personally I would recommend statins or at least the natural foods equivalent of. (Myself, I have home tests just to keep track of the changes, before i go for the main ones twice a year, home ones are about 90% accurate). If I didn't do anything though it would be severely high and i probably wouldn't be here typing this right now.

You can have normal cholesterol and have a heart attack you can change your total cholesterol within a week or two in fact its constantly oscillating its keeping it constantly low to ward off plaque build up which is the important part so the high density lipids take away the bad stuff back to the liver and the low density are absorbed properly along with the very low densitys (tryglecerides etc.). So a lot of them people that die with normal cholesterol probably went on statins too late. i.e the main damage was already done, they panicked took drs advice and went on drugs thinking it will be a miracle and reverse the damage, doesn't work like that, (at least not yet anyway, roll on A1-Milano and nanotechnology!) although it may have bought them some time. Isnt that what we are all trying to do, for we all know we are gonna kick the bucket, so the more time you can buy the better right? Why start too late?

HDL,LDL, AND Triglycerides are very important and I am intrigued by insulin that would make sense actually because its all about lipids and the liver and antioxidants, its actually incredibly complicated because its at a cellular level. its all about chemistry which is why those trans fats and hydrogenated things are extremely bad as well, if its poly saturated its ok because it has 2 of the chemical bonds. if you like to learn more about the basics google cholesterol cholesterol, great site. I'm extremely ammature with chemistry but that's where all the answers are for cholesterol. (and for a lot of how the body and the world works for that matter, i suppose)

You basically need to put any arguments against that kind of stuff in chemical formula otherwise your really just guessing or taking second hand sound bytes and re hashing them, medical doctors study chemistry, ask a decent medical doctor or chemistry student about it. if you can argue with chemistry then you have a real leg to stand on - if you do get it proofed and get it on Joe Duffy fast id love to hear about it. I do agree the pharmys are milkin it though, no pun intended. the way i see it I'm paying for an extra 20 years or more of living and being vegan cuts out any intake of cholesterol so it all helps to add some years in.

By the by apparently there is three things that can help REVERSE the effects of atherosclerosis, onions, garlic, and pomegranate. There's also lots of natural foods that have natural statins in them too, that's really where the drug came from in the first place, specifically the fungus on red yeast rice - they just concentrated HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors in a lab (yes that one i did copy and paste from wiki) and of course being the multi corps pharmas that they are - they price tagged it along with patenting -mass production-and ww distribution. Of course there is much more to be learned on this subject including finding the specific genes (more than 300 different gene defects that lead for FH alone, some found already). Anyway... EXERCISE is the BEST thing you can do, unfortunately I am very bad at that, although i do try an hour a day i do it very leisurely it should be rather intensive, for the muscles.

Sorry, I know i rambled a bit and it's shifted the OP off topic - but some interested responses there. good to see. Just following up on them as I consider my self a partial expert on the subject at this stage.

Mentalmiss · 14-12-2009 2:34pm

JulietLima wrote: »

I know a little bit

Do you mind if I ask to that guy/girl "Mentalmis" who said he/she is 7.5 total cholesterol what age you are? and are you vegan or do you use dairy? do you eat much junk food or relatively healthy? Sedentary or Active? Smoking or Non?

.

I am 57
Vegan for 9 years
Vegetarian for 35
Have not had a cigarette since June 1967
Do not touch junk food, not even occasionally. My diet is 99% natural raw whole food.
The report for the Bon Secours Health Screening says Cholesterol (7.5) and LDL (5.31)
It said that I need to reduce my dairy. I was a little cross with them because I had made everyone there aware of my diet and they still suggested that I reduce my dairy.
You are just a number in those places and not a person.

I do not doubt that there may be some people who benefit from statins but I object to the vastness of the number of people on it. I have a family member who recently got a job in a pharmacy and was shocked by the number of these that he is handing out.
I know that I am healthy and do not need these.

Sapsorrow · 14-12-2009 6:30pm

Mentalmiss wrote: »

I am 57
Vegan for 9 years
Vegetarian for 35
Have not had a cigarette since June 1967
Do not touch junk food, not even occasionally. My diet is 99% natural raw whole food.
The report for the Bon Secours Health Screening says Cholesterol (7.5) and LDL (5.31)
It said that I need to reduce my dairy. I was a little cross with them because I had made everyone there aware of my diet and they still suggested that I reduce my dairy.
You are just a number in those places and not a person.

I do not doubt that there may be some people who benefit from statins but I object to the vastness of the number of people on it. I have a family member who recently got a job in a pharmacy and was shocked by the number of these that he is handing out.
I know that I am healthy and do not need these.

You sound wonderfully healthy and good on you. I wouldn't worry about it unless you actually have familial hypercholesterolemia, in which case you may be told you need to go on statins, but then again this is your choice even so.
My partner has it at 32 his cholesterol is 7.5 or so despite being vegan, not smoking, exercising lots etc.. and was recommended going ont hem but he decided not to, I personally wouldn't think you'd need to either way there's more to heart disease than cholesterol and you certainly seem to be ticking all the right boxes judging by this post and one of your others where you outlined your one day food diary.
Statins while necessary for some are a very convenient way to allow the majority of users to continue on living their lives in a way that is making themselves sick without every having to take responsibility for their own health. Sadly this is the way of our health system but mentalmiss is obviously very capable of taking her health into her own hands.
Theres more to heart disease than cholesterol, it's a very complicated area of medicine with many different factors feeding into it that shape the overall syndrome so focusing on one measurement like a cholesterol isn't all that useful in itself.
Also should point out that heart disease is a very natural part of the ageing process and the only reason it has become such a significant burden is because we have figured out ways to defy death with technology whilst at the same time assuming every more damaging health and lifestyle practices.
The more I've looked into it the more disillusioned I've become with the whole cholesterol theory, it's been the buzz word in heart disease (along with sat fats) for far too long and if you look back at the history of it all it's quite disturbing how little scientific basis there is for it even to this day.
I don't think it's good to focus on functional foods like pomegranate etc to much with this sort of thing either, I'm writing a lit review on the role of pomegranate extracts in chronic disease modification at the moment and for a start the research is very young and secondaly it's nowhere near conclusive. It's better to look at overall patterns of health and rather than targetting a single aspect like a cholesterol eading to try and positively grow in every aspect of your being towards health and happiness.
Mentalmiss I hope one day to be as healthy as you I think you're really inspirational.

JulietLima · 14-12-2009 7:36pm

Yeah , I guess if your not FH or have some problem with it you should be healthy enough, your body could be soaking it up very nicley we need the darn stuff to feed our cells so its actually quite healthy, i suppose the real test is a calcium score test. but they are bloomin expensive aswell :rolleyes:

Mentalmis, That's crazy that they insisted you reduce your dairy after you told them your vegan. I guess these guys dont really know the answers either.
You certainly must be a shining beacon of health with your lifestyle, I think you can safely ignore those numbers. I get what you mean about just being a number, the number they like the most are the ones on the cheque. That des get me thinking though, if the numbers dnt matter maybe i should just eat meat hahaha, well i will continue trying to keep the numbers low for now, its got to be healthier generally being vegan.

Mentalmiss · 14-12-2009 9:07pm

JulietLima wrote: »

if the numbers dnt matter maybe i should just eat meat hahaha, well i will continue trying to keep the numbers low for now, its got to be healthier generally being vegan.

I have a dvd called eating and I was hoping that it was available to watch on line but I can not find it. This page will tell you what it is about it.
http://www.ravediet.com/whatsinfilm.htm
It was given to me by a guy that was praising something called "The rave diet". I did not need to see it as it was not even down the road far enough for me but I would like everyone in the world to see it.
Being vegan is helping more than your cholesterol levels.

For me an important aspect of food is the Acid/alkali factor and keeping the acid levels down.
Another important factor is the enzyme contents and if it comes with its own enzymes so that my body does not have to divert them from other jobs.
After that my priorities are Vegan, Wholefood, Organic, Colour, Variety.

paulelectronica · 29-12-2009 7:58pm

i was always strongly into animal rights but wasnt a veggie and then one day my job put me to work behind the butcher counter and that was it for me then . that was over 5 years ago

Vegan Wannabe · 11-01-2010 12:49pm

It's usually the smart arse who asks it.With them it's best not to enter into a debate. I remember being asked by this American guy in college. "Ethical or eco reasons"

I got embarrased because i hadn't had people take an interest before. And I didn't know much about the environmental side of things then.
Turns out he was vegetarian too. And I learnt another plus of this lifestyle.

I love the "older gentleman at the wedding" response. I'm stealing that!!

Abi · 13-01-2010 7:49pm

I'm vegetarian because I think meat is disgusting, and it looks far better on the animal. I love love love vegetables, and I'm at my happiest munching through a bowl of broccoli, peas, and carrots. I get pissed off being asked about being vegetarian too, and the conversation normally goes like;

Ignorant person: So why are you a vegetarian?

Me: So why are you a carnivore?

Ignorant person: Well, because...

Me: Sorry, that was a rhetorical question.

I'm stealing "Because I hate plants" though

'So, why are you a vegetarian?'

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