I love me some vegetables, but I could never go vegetarian. I just love animal flesh too much.
I love me some vegetables, but I could never go vegetarian. I just love animal flesh too much.
LOL. Humans evolved to capture meat in a social, co-operative way.
Well - I know that isn't the case for me, meat is the only viable source of protein for me.We can live off meat or we can live off plants, either way it keeps us alive and gives us the energy we need to keep going.
You're being too simplistic. Yes, a calorie is a unit of energy. A calorimeter, however, cannot measure how your body partitions the energy and what amount of the food actually is burned for energy vs what is used for other biochemical processes. Calories in =/= calories out.
I'm not arguing with you. But yes, I'm being nit-picky. The difference is miniscule. It's insignificant enough that you can call the two products similar. They just aren't identical. And yes I agree... taste wise they are exactly the same as a regular old hydroponic tomato. Picking them too early, shipping them long distances in refrigerated trucks... all makes for a tasteless tomato (the horror). You really don't taste a difference? Not that this thread/argument is about taste, but you have to admit there is a difference between eating a tomato off the vine and eating one from the grocery store that came all the way from the valley.
Last edited by Taygete; 2012-05-05 at 05:21 AM.
Did you know that there were a few branches of human ancestors a few millions of years ago? One of those branches was a humanoid with very powerful jaws and was eating only plants. He could easily eat any kind of plant - grass, leaves, small twigs.
Too bad the vegeterian ancestor didn't survive the evolution and contemprory humans are meat-eating predators.
I love vegetables, but i love meat more.
Gotta have them steak :P
I once dated a vegetarian but she wasn't militant about it. The thing about being a vegetarian is that you can't be lazy. There are a lot of great meals from all over the world that don't rely on meat. You just have to get cookbooks and actually cook.
I don't eat as much meat as I used to. The average person eats low end meat anyway. People should just eat 1/3 of the meat they do now but spend the same amount of money and get meat that's three times the quality. You can also get much better meat that doesn't come from those horrific slaughter houses.
Calories in always equals calories out. I'm not trying to sound condescending but you're the one being to simplistic. A calorie IS a unit of energy, its finite, defined, and unchanging. What food PROVIDES as far as calories changes based on everything you very wisely mentioned. The number on a label does not represent the calories an organism will gain but whatever the regulating agency obtained from a calorimeter or another device able to measure biological samples. I really think we're on the same page on this. A calorimeter cannot determine what an ORGANISM will do with food only what heat energy is generated from that food. This is why I tried (maybe I failed) to specify that an organism needs to moderate it's intake based on it's caloric needs regardless of almost arbitrary numbers.
That is because people who eat meat are more susceptible to dieing from meat borne illnesses like e. coli and salmonella. However if you cook your food properly that isnt a problem. Another reason is probably if the same people are eating a lot of saturated fat and bad cholesterol from eating fatty meats but if you eat a balanced diet and exercise its also not a problem.
supposed, teeth do not designate food intake. digestive mechanisms do. That is not available in fosil or bone records.
---------- Post added 2012-05-05 at 05:32 AM ----------
On this point sir, you are over-the-top correct. When I pick something out of my backyard and make that into a pasta sauce (obviously with meat) its glorious! Anything not fresh picked regardless of its origin is less than. That shouldn't be surprising though. If I cut my ass off, froze it and sent it to my family it would look, smell, and taste different than if i showed up at their door and told them to kiss it.
Our teeth are designed to eat meat and plants. Thats why we have sharp front teeth, to tear flesh, and large back teeth, for grinding plants. If you look at pure carnivore teeth, they are all sharp and pointed, even the back teeth. Herbivore teeth are all wide and blunt for grinding.
The thing that confuses me the most about both sides of this debate, is why people get so defensive about it. If you're so sure it's what nature "intended", then you've got natural selection on your side and you've got nothing to worry about. That goes to both sides. Why do we even argue about it? I have a vegetarian diet, I feel fine, I'm not yelling at anyone because what you eat is irrelevant to me. And if I'm wrong my genes are less likely to thrive and it all comes out in the wash anyway. (I shouldn't have stated my side actually, just to prove a point, pretend I said "I'm a meat eater, I feel fine, I don't care that you are a vegetarian because..." etc)
I wouldn't call our front teeth sharp. It would really hard to eat an apple if all of our teeth were like our grinders. We only have 4 semi pointed teeth and they aren't even big enough to say they are for meat.
Look a lions teeth for example. Those are sharp pointed teeth.
Yes but our teeth ended up that way through natural selection because of the abundance of meat. As I was saying, if the meat supply dried up, over generations our teeth would become wider and blunter because of all the grinding we were doing.
I'm not even trying to weigh in on the debate, I'm taking issue with the use of the word "designed" (while hopefully avoiding a religious debate!). You can't use teeth shape to argue that nature has an "intention", it's purely reactive to our circumstances. When circumstances change, we will change.
Do you know how much bigger a horses teeth and jaws are than a humans?
---------- Post added 2012-05-05 at 01:47 AM ----------
So what you are saying is because we are capable of using our inventions to over come things that other species in the wild can not that makes us optimized meat eaters? I think that just makes us able to skip the part most people would pass on if they had to choose.