Going Vegetarian

[Gamdwelf]

There isn't enough testing for me to trust it.

I'm not saying it should be banned, if it can feed third world countries I'm all for it.

And I never said all pesticides were bad, but I sure as hell don't want to ingest synthetic chemicals.

However, GMO foods are killing our honey bees. Without bees to pollinate flowers the eco system is in trouble.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25950

Any Fruit/veggie with any type of cover on them that you don't eat i.e. bananas doesn't matter what you spray on them you don't eat that part anyway, and even some of the other stuff, you can wash off before you eat it.

I'd rather ingest a few harmless chemicals instead of a bug living in my food.

[Deleted]

you can get every single vitamin and mineral from a pescatarian diet. if you go veggie, you will be able to get all but one (vitamin B12 or something). if you don't like the veggie diet but want to work on energy etc the best thing to do is just eat fresh food. I stopped shopping at supermarkets when possible and get my meat and veg fresh from a local butcher and greengrocers, it's cheaper and I feel 10 times better.

[BLCalliente]

So you think that all pesticides are bad and all genetically modified food is bad?

You do realize that genetically modified food has literally saved, this is fact, 1 billion lives?

Yes, it is bad when compared to no pesticides and non-modified food, which is the comparison he was making.

No, it is not bad when compared to starving to death, which is the comparison you're making.

[Frozenbeef]

quorn is lovely...and tases like meat (kinda) but i'm not sure it's good for you :S but better than eating Babe >.<

[Deleted]

There isn't enough testing for me to trust it.

I'm not saying it should be banned, if it can feed third world countries I'm all for it.

And I never said all pesticides were bad, but I sure as hell don't want to ingest synthetic chemicals.

However, GMO foods are killing our honey bees. Without bees to pollinate flowers the eco system is in trouble.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25950

It takes a decade to get a GMO out the door.

A decade of research isn't enough for you? Flu vaccines take less time than some GMOs.

---------- Post added 2012-05-03 at 08:07 PM ----------

Yes, it is bad when compared to no pesticides and non-modified food, which is the comparison he was making.

No, it is not bad when compared to starving to death, which is the comparison you're making.

No it's not. No scientific evidence has ever claimed as such.

[Gamdwelf]

Read the link I posted. GMO is relatively new. I think it's rather ignorant to get up in arms saying its fine.

There just isn't enough testing, its too new. We may not see immediate health effects but there are adverse effects. (read my link on honey bees a few posts up)

You do know what honey bees dying are no part a result of GMO's but from a pesticide that was nicotine based right?

[NineSpine]

There aren't any. Go find a single study indicating that a currently farmed GMO is a hazard.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There was also no evidence for decades that eating radioactive pills would harm you. Nobody knew x-rays were dangerous until everyone who gave them started getting cancer after a few decades. Lots of drugs, including cocaine and heroin, used to be sold as mood stabilizers. Things are not quite so simple. Sometimes the dangers of these types of things don't pop up for a very, very long time. In the case of GMOs, there have been studies that showed that genetic modification often causes unintended alterations of the biochemical makeup of a product. Given how complex allergies work and how many foods contain poisonous compounds in trace amounts, these are serious concerns going forward. Furthermore, we have no idea how designer crops are going to respond to cross-pollination, contamination, and mutation, especially over decades.

[Deleted]

Read the link I posted. GMO is relatively new. I think it's rather ignorant to get up in arms saying its fine.

There just isn't enough testing, its too new. We may not see immediate health effects but there are adverse effects. (read my link on honey bees a few posts up)

GMOs are the basics of agriculture. You modify the genes of a species when you deliberately breed it in a specific manner, e.g. the banana. So GMO have been around a long ass time.

And how is asking someone claiming the opposite of what science has thus discovered on the topic to provide evidence ignorant?

---------- Post added 2012-05-03 at 08:09 PM ----------

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There was also no evidence for decades that eating radioactive pills would harm you. Nobody knew x-rays were dangerous until everyone who gave them started getting cancer after a few decades. Lots of drugs, including cocaine and heroin, used to be sold as mood stabilizers. Things are not quite so simple. Sometimes the dangers of these types of things don't pop up for a very, very long time. In the case of GMOs, there have been studies that showed that genetic modification often causes unintended alterations of the biochemical makeup of a product. Given how complex allergies work and how many foods contain poisonous compounds in trace amounts, these are serious concerns going forward. Furthermore, we have no idea how designer crops are going to respond to cross-pollination, contamination, and mutation, especially over decades.

So what, we're meant to argue based on your opinions of science? No thank you. Have a nice day

[BLCalliente]

Any Fruit/veggie with any type of cover on them that you don't eat i.e. bananas doesn't matter what you spray on them you don't eat that part anyway, and even some of the other stuff, you can wash off before you eat it.

I'd rather ingest a few harmless chemicals instead of a bug living in my food.

Oh how far we have come. I hate to single you out but this is pretty funny.

A bug IS food.

"A few harmless(?) chemicals" is not food.

Why would you rather ingest something that isn't food over something that is?

[Orangetai420]

It takes a decade to get a GMO out the door.

A decade of research isn't enough for you? Flu vaccines take less time than some GMOs.

No, its not. It's my personal choice. I won't eat GMO in this lifetime.

I would love to see a world where GMO can feed the entire population without health risks/damage to the eco system.

I have the same mentality with pharmaceutical drugs. 10-15 years isn't close to enough testing. I just won't ingest them in my lifetime.

I respect your decision and freedom to eat whatever you want, but don't try and discredit everything that's said on the subject.

EDIT: I also don't get the flu shot either, seems pointless (I never get sick, probably because I'm not terrified of germs and my immune system gets plenty of practice)

[welcome2life]

What kind of food you eat isn't as important as what is inside the food you eat. Today many companies add substances to food to make portions larger, but these substances are often worthless nutritionally and the toxicity of the fillers are debated heatedly. Vegetables tend to be better for you because they are not processed and can't have fillers. However, the person stating that genetically modified food is bad for you seems to be in error. Many markets today only offer some genetically modified versions of foods (tomatoes is a prime example) although possibly they are using a farmers market. Organic food is mostly a lie... organic is a threshold not a exact definition. Organic food is limited by how much chemical fertilizer and pesticides are used, but crops can be treated with these things just in moderation. Farmers are not stupid they are running a business and if things like this increase their yield they are going to play the line.
Having more energy = Placebo affect in most cases. Someone mentioned fast food... and it's true fast food meat is more likely to have fillers/be poor quality meat and thus isn't as good for your body so an improvement can be seen in this case.
As for the difference between vegetarians, vegans, and balanced diets. As long as your body receives the substances (vitamins, minerals, etc) that is needs you will be fine no matter what diet you choose just try and make choices that involve brands with ingredient integrity and items that contain less potentially harmful substances.
Not all preservatives/additives are bad for you. An example is vitamin C is used to preserve cut apple slices. Lets see someone argue that vitamin C is harmful for for you >_>;

[Deleted]

Oh how far we have come. I hate to single you out but this is pretty funny.

A bug IS food.

"A few harmless(?) chemicals" is not food.

Why would you rather ingest something that isn't food over something that is?

Water is a chemical. Oh no there are chemicals in my food.

---------- Post added 2012-05-03 at 08:12 PM ----------

No, its not. It's my personal choice. I won't eat GMO in this lifetime.

I would love to see a world where GMO can feed the entire population without health risks/damage to the eco system.

I have the same mentality with pharmaceutical drugs. 10-15 years isn't close to enough testing. I just won't ingest them in my lifetime.

I respect your decision and freedom to eat whatever you want, but don't try and discredit everything that's said on the subject.

Oh so you distrust science. Well then there's no point in our arguing.

Good luck to you.

[BLCalliente]

No it's not. No scientific evidence has ever claimed as such.

DDT is a pesticide.

If you are telling me there are no adverse health risks to ingesting DDT, you are crazy.

I don't see how you can even make the argument that there is no scientific evidence that pesticides are harmful to people.

[Gerrin]

I've never radically altered my diet quickly and not felt like shit. Radical alternations take time.

It wasn't that radical. My meat intake was rather low since meat is more expensive than other protein options. Lent is 40 days more than enough time to get used to a small change.

[Cracked]

What exactly, according to you, would the health implications of GMO be?
The argument most "activists" throw around is that the genes could affect us, but hey, I eat pork and I don't see myself growing a pig tail or any other sign of me turning into a pig.

One of the most important GMO (and also, unfortunately, one of the few accepted (as in law) is a modified species of corn, the gene it received allows it to create a substance poisonous to a bug that ate so much harvest it led to famines in the past. Another one is the mentioned golden rice, which was modified to create the same product as carrots - betacaroten, which is required in order to synthetise vitamine A inside the human body.

On the topic of pesticides - do you honestly think you are buying pesticide free products? No farmer in their right mind would ever do that, he would be just deliberately killing his own harvest.

[BLCalliente]

Water is a chemical. Oh no there are chemicals in my food.

I seem to remember you being smarter than this, from the General Off-Topic forum.

[Orangetai420]

Oh so you distrust science. Well then there's no point in our arguing.

Good luck to you.

I wasn't aware we were arguing, I thought it was an intellectual debate.

While we're on the topic, no I don't trust science. Science deals with the physical realm, its nothing more than a practical art that has many applications.

Seems we have different outlooks on life and considering most of my responses have been to you I'm going to stop posting/reading this thread.

Peace and Love.

[Necrotan]

Humans are "naturally" omnivores. That doesn't mean you HAVE to eat plants and animals. It means you CAN. Saying that cutting meat out of your diet is automatically unhealthy is like saying that cutting tomatoes out of your diet is automatically unhealthy. Humans are built to be opportunistic feeders, and that means we can fashion a very healthy diet fairly easily on almost whatever is available. It's one of the reasons we cover the planet.

Actually the comparison would be meat and plants.

Yes we are omnivores. Adapted for including meat and plant supplements to our diet. We can make do with one or the other however our bodies work best on the combination. A key piece of evidence towards this is that it is, factually, more difficult for person who excludes meat to be healthy. They have to find other, less usual, sources for things like protein. Which if not done properly can cause other health problems.

I am by no means saying it can not be done, there are plenty of healthy people with meat exclusive diets. But there are many more who are doing it wrong and just do not know it yet. Which is fundamentally not much different from the many people doing meat inclusive diets wrong as well. Though that is more a case of an over indulgence in fast food ect with low activity levels.

You are free to make your own choice obviously, but I go with meat inclusive since it is the natural way to go. Also meat is tasty. I do exclude one kingdom from my food lists, but it is not plants or animals.

Whatever you do just make sure you are doing it right.

[Gamdwelf]

Water is a chemical. Oh no there are chemicals in my food.

Dihydrogen Monoxide is the most dangerous chemical

[Deleted]

DDT is a pesticide.

If you are telling me there are no adverse health risks to ingesting DDT, you are crazy.

I don't see how you can even make the argument that there is no scientific evidence that pesticides are harmful to people.

Oh so you want to use specific examples? Shall I cite specific examples of health issues of "organic" foods? Or can we agree we were both speaking in generalities.

---------- Post added 2012-05-03 at 08:19 PM ----------

I wasn't aware we were arguing, I thought it was an intellectual debate.

While we're on the topic, no I don't trust science. Science deals with the physical realm, its nothing more than a practical art that has many applications.

Seems we have different outlooks on life and considering most of my responses have been to you I'm going to stop posting/reading this thread.

Peace and Love.

Argue:Give reasons or cite evidence in support of an idea, action, or theory, typically with the aim of persuading others to share one's view.

Debate:A formal discussion on a particular topic in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward.

Need I say more?