i just decided to become a vegan
- Thread starter Sage
- Start date
can vegans chew their own nails? hmmm....
wear wool?epicstruggle said:
Sage said:digitalwanderer said:Slightly OT, but I heard you can catch madcow's disease thru carrots and potatoes now.
(Either or, they don't have to be mixed)
are you serious, man? got any references? i really dont see how that would be possible...
If true I speculate that would only apply to genetically modified vegetables that contain things like animal genes.
Being a vegetarian my whole life (21.5 years) I can tell you it can be somewhat challenging to be a vegetarian sometimes (particularly when you go to restaurants and they have little to no vegetarian meals), and unless your brought up on being a vegetarian or vegan or whatever, I think it would be somewhat silly and possibly dangerous to go completely cold turkey on any meat products straight away. If you definitely want to go vegan perhaps slowly cut down on your meat and dairy products intake over a period of time, while taking whole food vitamin and mineral supplements. That is more or less how my parents cut meat out of their diet and became vegetarian.
The problem with going vegan/vegetarian is that people automatically think it's healthy without actually examining what they eat.
A friend of ours decided to go vegetarian to loose weight. She ended up constantly eating pasta and rice and gained 10 or 20 pounds. Had she really wanted to lose weight, she would have been much better off eating lean fish, green veggies, and perhaps low fat cheese.
It's certainly possible to go vegetarian and eat healthy, but it really means eating a lot of vegetables and taking suppliments for what you miss from meats (you can get most of what you need from veggies but it's pretty tough). A lot of people don't do this though. People get the impression that meat is automatically bad for your body and that cutting it out will make you healthier or trimmer. This isn't the case.
Nite_Hawk
A friend of ours decided to go vegetarian to loose weight. She ended up constantly eating pasta and rice and gained 10 or 20 pounds. Had she really wanted to lose weight, she would have been much better off eating lean fish, green veggies, and perhaps low fat cheese.
It's certainly possible to go vegetarian and eat healthy, but it really means eating a lot of vegetables and taking suppliments for what you miss from meats (you can get most of what you need from veggies but it's pretty tough). A lot of people don't do this though. People get the impression that meat is automatically bad for your body and that cutting it out will make you healthier or trimmer. This isn't the case.
Nite_Hawk
Sage said:
And there it is, the source of the fear - CJD (or "MadCow").
Here's an interesting tidbit, Horses don't suffer "MadCow" or the malformed Prions that cause the disease. In fact, I understand that there is a booming market in Horse Flesh in MCD (not McDonalds, but "Mad Cow Disease", although they may have switched to reduce liability
) high locals.Nite_Hawk said:
This is pretty close to the result of several recent studies. Even supplementation may not be entirely sufficient, without a suplement that renders Vegan moot (animal protein based). Here's why. There are several acid complexes and amino acids that tend to only exist in meats, despite the fact that these ruminants (cows) may have only been eating plants. Non the less the human body does require some of these in low quantities and it's only now after several long term studies that show the long term health affects.
Here's an important point. Vegan's have existed for only a short period of time on the planet, and are primarily of wealthy "countries" or locals. Why?
Because before the implementation of modern transportation, it wasn't possible to have a good selection of vegan foods "year round". We are all now used to year round vegatibles because of importation of foods from other regions that either have the current temps to raise them, or from various "freezer houses" that are also recent inventions (historically speaking in dietary cultural terms). Pioneers, colonists and others all had to store salted meats during the cold winter months to supplement their diet so that stored grain wasn't their only staple. Most cultures that we look at for a source of many of the "vegetarian" dishes, also had meat supplementation in their diets during these times as well.
Thus, it's only been a true "fad" diet since the 60's, 70s and so on. Long term studies that have been for more than just a short period have only been running for a realitively short period as well, and only now are the results that show a permanent Vegan diet may not be the most "healthy" are beinging to be completed. Of course this will continue to be debated for a long period as everyone decides who's study is accurate.
but do not forget that until fairly recently the animals that we have been eating were not raised in factories where they were fed the dead of their own kind (as well as other various animals) nor were they pumped up with horomones for which there have been no long-term studies on their effects on the human body.
face it, the best thing to eat is all organic plants and all free-range meats. (dont forget all of the pesticides that are sprayed onto plants and the genetic engineering that's done, although im not too worried just yet about the genetic engineering)
face it, the best thing to eat is all organic plants and all free-range meats. (dont forget all of the pesticides that are sprayed onto plants and the genetic engineering that's done, although im not too worried just yet about the genetic engineering)
Evil_Cloud
Veteran
What about eating fish? Well, not every type of fish of course, as some fish species are evolving towards extinction. You should pay the Japanese kitchen a visit.
