Could you stop eating meat?

[willywhit]

Personality goes a long way......

VINCENT
Want some bacon?
JULES
Naw, man, I don't eat pork.
VINCENT
Are you Jewish?
JULES
I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on swine, that's all.
VINCENT
Why not?
JULES
Pigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.
VINCENT
Yeah, but bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good.
JULES
Hey, a sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie. But I'll never know 'cause I
Wouldn't eat the filthy motherfuckers. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's
A filthy animal. I ain't need nothin' that ain't got sense enough to
Disregard its own feces.
VINCENT
How about a dog? Dog eats its own feces.

[Ski to Be]

Also had a cholesterol scare 13 years ago and went full vegan for 3 years and that was a huge hassle. Gradually worked fish into my diet and I watched that food inc movie which really disturbed me how the animals are treated. Still no meat outside of fish for 13 years. I also buy certified humane when I can to eat eggs or cheese. This one small egg producer includes pics of the hens showing how good their life is. I am also acutely aware that I have leather furniture , down coats, belts etc which leads me to question my values as most of those things are vanity items. I figure that my existence is at the expense of other creatures one way or another so it is a matter of finding a line that I am ok with. BTW I have never had any fake meats that actually taste like meat until they came out with this Impossible burger that really tastes like a real burger. Twice the protein of a standard burger and far less fat. They have them at Fatburger and a few other restaurants.

[bagtagley]

Good friend got Alpha-gal from a tick bite, and can't eat mammalian meats or byproducts.

I generally feel bad for him, and try to cook stuff he can eat when we get together, but it's also fun to refer to him as the alpha gal of the group.

[SumJongGuy]

Some good reasons. Pigs for example are smarter than dogs, which we know have the capacity for fairly complex emotions & thought processes. So one thing I'm working on, albeit haphazardly, is to refrain from buying pork that's not produced in a humane fashion. Same goes for beef aside from the intelligence thing. I'm ok with killing animals en masse, but when they're alive it's important to be ethical in managing the stock. A chicken, for example, can be given less freedom of movement & exercise than our beloved jamon. I've been pretty bad about it historically but definitely agree in principle with pushing back on industry to improve standards to match animal needs.

For all we know that could also be true of plants. They might be sentient but we just don't know how to communicate with them. Heck, it's all protein and energy and all involves killing sentient things. Even if the plants aren't the insect colonies which plants provide food and shelter for are. Just because you can look in to the eyes of a being and interact with empathy doesn't mean that being is superior or their life is more important than the life of other beings we haven't figured out how to do that with yet..

[Meanfruit]

Harvest shows a little more respect to the animal IMO, it's not as flippant. It's food. We harvest it from the landscape and environment. Nothing like going into ski season with a good harvest in the freezer.

Attachment 257455

Jealous as hell.

[doebedoe]

For all we know that could also be true of plants. They might be sentient but we just don't know how to communicate with them. .....

Find me a biologist or zoologist who will agree with this statement.

Yes, there is lots we don't know. That there are different levels of cognition among living things is a pretty well-established scientific fact. That how organisms feel "pain" differs greatly depending on basic neulogical functions and anatomy.

Whether all that matters for an individual or not, who knows. That there are real ecological ramifications for eating meat in the style most American's do is not debateble.

[CarlMega]

Heck, it's all protein and energy and all involves killing sentient things.

Right, I think of all the dead mothers who died nobly giving their children breast milk - a sacrifice of their life! Or the fallen trees who died once someone ate their fruit. May god rest their souls. Oh - don't forget honey. So many dead bees.

[SumJongGuy]

Find me a biologist or zoologist who will agree with this statement.

Didn't take all that long to find one..

But you know what definitely can feel? Plants, at least according to biologist Daniel Chamovitz, dean of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and author of the book What a Plant Knows.



Plants have memories. They store and recall information, but they won't go talk to their psychiatrist about it. The clearest example would be a venus flytrap. The way a venus flytrap closes is that it has these huge hairs—filaments—along its big open lobe. It looks like two leaves, but it's one leaf. And when a bug comes along and catches two of those hairs, it'll close. If it only touches one, it won't. It touches one, keeps crawling, touches the second. If it touches it within 20 seconds, it'll close. If it's within 20 seconds, it's a big bug, and it's worth the energy to close. If it's a longer time, maybe it's two little things, and it's not worth the energy to close. It only wants to eat something that's big.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/x...-feel-pain-302

[SumJongGuy]

Right, I think of all the dead mothers who died nobly giving their children breast milk - a sacrifice of their life! Or the fallen trees who died once someone ate their fruit. May god rest their souls. Oh - don't forget honey. So many dead bees.

So it's OK to farm females to deliver milk to strangers like we do with cows? OK. And, by eating fruit we're essentially aborting the children of the trees that fruit comes from ..

[SumJongGuy]

Speaking of cows, there are some 16 oz New York strips thawing out in my kitchen right now. Yum!

[cravenmorhead]

Re allergic to meat, as mentioned above, it happens and is often connected to a tick-borne illness: https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-...meat-allergies

[CarlMega]

So it's OK to farm females to deliver milk to strangers like we do with cows? OK. And, by eating fruit we're essentially aborting the children of the trees that fruit comes from ..

That's your world view huh? Fruit is abortion. Strong stance but hey if it works for you. btw - you are the one who asserted that all energy and protein requires killing something so maybe you should try to stop saying stupid shit.

[doebedoe]

As always, "can you be vegetarian" threads become "I need to justify to others my eating meat" thread.

[SumJongGuy]

That's your world view huh? Fruit is abortion. Strong stance but hey if it works for you. btw - you are the one who asserted that all energy and protein requires killing something so maybe you should try to stop saying stupid shit.

Like it or not, milk and honey are also full of living organisms. Killing is killing..

[SumJongGuy]

That's your world view huh? Fruit is abortion. Strong stance but hey if it works for you. btw - you are the one who asserted that all energy and protein requires killing something so maybe you should try to stop saying stupid shit.

Like it or not, milk and honey are also full of living organisms. Killing is killing.. It doesn't matter if the life you take for food is something you can cuddle with or something microscopic. It takes life energy to feed other life energy.

[CarlMega]

Like it or not, milk and honey are also full of living organisms. Killing is killing.. It doesn't matter if the life you take for food is something you can cuddle with or something microscopic. It takes life energy to feed other life energy.

You must be fun at a parties. Do people often say the word 'pedantic' when referring to you? I don't think you have the faintest idea of what you are talking about.

[SumJongGuy]

You must be fun at a parties. Do people often say the word 'pedantic' when referring to you? I don't think you have the faintest idea of what you are talking about.

Talking about eating some giant steaks tonight. Hell no I can't stop eating meat, again there is no moral reason not to eat meat.

[JimmyCarter]

https://youtu.be/5edG7Qq9_r0

[CarlMega]

Talking about eating some giant steaks tonight. Hell no I can't stop eating meat, again there is no moral reason not to eat meat.

Strange rando statement. I gather you think that eating meat offends me. It does not. However, your shitty logic and arguments are offensive.

Sounds like you got it figured out - carry on.

[dunfree]

ok. I don't really want to get into semantics - the point is that you not perverting something like corn into corn syrup or otherwise processing food into oblivion. Cook away young soldier.

It's not semantics, it's understanding what food and cooking is, and not having fluffy feel good "rules" that are meaningless bullshit serving to justify lifestyle choices. e.g the problem isn't so much "corn syrup" it's US per capita sugar consumption has increased 8-fold since the mid 19th century.

[SumJongGuy]

Strange rando statement. I gather you think that eating meat offends me. It does not. However, your shitty logic and arguments are offensive.

Sounds like you got it figured out - carry on.

I've got it figured out that eating farmed vegetables and fruit is not morally superior in any way to eating farm raised meat.

[SumJongGuy]

my dad died from a confirmed case of mad cow disease
his brain tissue is now stored at the CDC headquarters
never easy but honestly this is a terrible way to go out

I know someone else that went out like that.. Dementia on steroids! Isn't mad cow caused by cows eating grain with beef?? i.e. cowabilism of some sort??


Also, the doctors told the man's wife not to tell other people about the mad cow confirmation post autopsy..

[grskier]

It's not semantics, it's understanding what food and cooking is, and not having fluffy feel good "rules" that are meaningless bullshit serving to justify lifestyle choices. e.g the problem isn't so much "corn syrup" it's US per capita sugar consumption has increased 8-fold since the mid 19th century.

At least partly on the back of corn syrup and other synthesized sweeteners/sugars.

[CarlMega]

It's not semantics, it's understanding what food and cooking is, and not having fluffy feel good "rules" that are meaningless bullshit serving to justify lifestyle choices. e.g the problem isn't so much "corn syrup" it's US per capita sugar consumption has increased 8-fold since the mid 19th century.

I feeling all feisty today. Tell me your point explicitly. Here's mine: processed food is almost always less healthy than a whole food equivalent. While a loose term, I'll count on your ability to apply basic language and understanding - eg: whole food is more the product of nature vs. the product of industry. Think - if you are eating a banana, it should be recognizable as a banana vs. a fruit roll up filled with all sorts of other junk. IMHO, the best guidelines are loose and account for the fluid nature of what we decide to stick in our mouths: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Corn syrup and how it is utilized in processed food is directly implicated in sugar consumption increase; it's daft to imply otherwise. Cheap. Tasty. Accessible. It plays a massive role in the over processing of food - which is why is practical to avoid processed food and eat real food if you are trying to make a health conscious choice.

When some says "Cooking" any reasonable person is referring to preparing real food in a kitchen like mom does, they don't mean -> wheat thins or fruit roll ups or cheetos. If you want to call it cooking in SJG pedantic terms, fucking have a blast but it's a dumb semantic argument.

Some of the non-sense here is unbelievable -> ingesting a bacteria is same as killing an animal and eating meat. Eating fruit is an abortion (even tho the seeds are meant to pass and still potentially yeild?WTF). Jumping on the definition of processed foods to try to make me wiggle general cooking into that definition. Plants feel in the same way animals do and are sentient.

Some of the gymnastics people go thru trying to draw a moral or health equivalent to justify their choice is amazing. Who the fuck cares? The most respectable takes here are these: "I eat meat or veg or junk food or whatever. I like it and none of this other shit matters to me." It's so refreshing; stop looking for the gotcha.

[SB]