7rider

I suggest you read this Jared Diamond article if you think eating meat 2-3 times daily isn't "natural".

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.

Even as "advanced" as we are today, hunter gatherers still have a lot more leisure time than most of us.

Anyone ever see that documentary where some modern hunter-gatherers in Africa tracked and hunted a giraffe for a few days, and then lounged around the next two weeks eating the meat (they dried a lot for long-term use) off their big kill?

kafkaesque

Interesting stuff but not real useful. Modern societies are not going to be reverting back to hunter gatherers now or in any foreseeable future.

7rider

Of course not, with the billions of people flooding this world. I just wanted to show that eating meat 2-3 times a day isn't unnatural.

kafkaesque

Those are pretty chickens. Having grown up on a ranch I have chopped the heads off of many similar.
And I can tell you that I would much rather watch them peck around the dirt for bugs and raise their little chickies than chop their heads off.
All it took was for me to ask myself "do I need to be doing this? if not, why do I do it?"

mleess

You prove my point exactly. Thanks! Vegetarians see themselves as being more highly evolved, i.e., better, than us meat eaters. Vegetarianism is largely a social statement to give yourself an inflated self-image.

lvleph

No that was just him stating that.

Being a vegetarian is a personal choice.

slowandsteady

Like I said before, I am going to eat chicken one way or another. At least the chicken I eat got to peck around in the dirt for bugs, got to graze all day long, got to eat my leftovers, were never hurt or abused, and generally have very happy lives. Every moment of their lives right up to the end was a caring and peaceful one. When I kill my chickens for food it is far more humane than when the occasional hawk or skunk gets them. If I buy chicken in the store, I have no idea how they were treated, and I hightly doubt it is anywhere near as well as my chickens.

Bacciagalupe

FWIW, it seems to me that it is irrelevant whether eating meat round the clock is "natural" or "unnatural." Clothes, vaccines, walls and shoes are "not natural" but are clearly beneficial.

What is important is if it is healthy or unhealthy. There isn't a problem with eating meat all the time, as long as your overall diet is balanced.


If you want leisure time: become a citizen of Belgium or England, and go on the dole. And it is quite possible to live a healthy life on less money and have more free time; the primary block to this is not the distribution of goods, as much as it is social and cultural mores.

Anyway, I think the "hard to prove" quote is quite accurate. Everything after that, well....

- Obviously agriculture is required to sustain a large society that remains in one general geographic area. H/G basically requires nomadism, as otherwise a sufficiently large human group would quickly strip a static area of resources.
- Scarcity and famine can strike any human (or other animal) group, regardless of the method of acquiring food.
- Blaming all of advanced society's evils, while ignoring its benefits, and attributing The Evil predominantly to one cultural shift (H/G to agriculture) is obviously biased, slanted and slightly ridiculous.
- I do not see how a nomadic society would provide high-quality health care, let alone develop the appropriate sciences required to explain the improvements in the standards of living between contemporary industrialized and nomadic societies.
- Nomadic societies could not develop something like the Internet. (I'll leave it to you to decide if that's positive or negative. )
- The bushmen apparently adopted farming, starting in the 50s.

Edit:
- I hardly see how widespread infanticide (as the article indicates is required for nomadism) is such a wonderful thing.
- The evidence that "hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and logest-lasting life style in human history" is, to put it mildly, rather thin on the ground.

Do you really believe everything you read on the Intarweb?


Anyone ever see how I've had a can of black beans sitting in my pantry for 2 years, and it's still perfectly edible?

tlc

How you veggies do it is beyond me. If I go more than a day or two without meat I feel like crap. Not a dig, just how I am. Couldn't really care less about anyone else's diet, I just know that a good steak fills me with a feeling of sublime wellbeing.

People are all engineered a bit differently I suppose. Good luck to you all!

lvleph

Why do you keep posting about your chickens? I support your choice to raise your own chickens, more power to you. Now go ahead and eat your chicken, but why keep bringing it up?

tlc

Maybe he isn't cooking it properly?

kafkaesque

I agree that what you are doing is far more humane than the meat industry and actually better for the animals than if they had lived wild. No argument there, and I respect your methods.

I am just saying that when I was in a very similar situation I asked myself some questions. If I cared about the animals lives being peaceful and cared for why do I want to cut said happy life short if I did not need to do so? I really tried to find the compelling reasons to kill them, it was my family's whole livelihood after all (they raise free-range angus beef cattle), I could come up with nothing worth while.

This may seem like splitting hairs but there is an important difference in the following two questions. I think people should at least ask themselves (not explain to others).
Not, why should I stop eating meat, but rather why should I continue eating meat?

Greko

We don’t see ourselves as more highly evolved, we are more highly evolved. And justifying your behavior, simply because it was done that way by 10,000 years ago, proves my point.

With all the options available in today’s modern society, continuing to use animals for food and clothing, or because of ignorance regarding protein and iron, is about as un-evolved as you can get.

lvleph

He can go here to find a good recipe.

lvleph

Specieism great, not very vegetarian of you.

rhennigan

By "we" you mean humans in general right?

tissuedigester

I don't see myself as more "highly evolved" because I don't eat meat, although I perhaps see myself as more compassionate and more environmentally conscious, because I made a decision to inconvenience myself specifically to be more humane and environmentally conscious. The same way some of you see yourselves as more environmentally conscious because you ride your bikes for recreation instead of going 4-wheeling in your SUVs. (Although I'm not sure SUVs support 4-wheeling without tipping over...do they?)

I don't lord over my meat-eating friends because I don't eat meat. Like I said, unless they really know me, they usually don't know, and I think it's a personal choice. Just like riding your bike to work is a personal choice - and you're allowed to feel good about that, aren't you?

However, it does seem that a lot of meat-eaters do feel the need to harass me for not eating meat (Just eat a hamburger!! Don't you want some of this juicy steak?? You're a liberal hippie!!!!). Maybe it's because they do, as the other poster said, feel somewhat guilty about it? Same way people make fun of you and call you spandex wearing pansies.

rhennigan

Nailed it on the head. To claim that vegetarians do it as a social statement would be much like saying all of you ride bikes as a social statement. See how silly that sounds now?

Hocam

I don't see how that article supports eating meat 2-3 times daily, year round, your entire lifetime, is natural. It talked about how native tribes ate 75 different species of vegetables and the quote about why farm when there are so many nuts around? It said they get protein but many vegetables are more protein dense then steak.

Also, how often did that tribe kill giraffes? What percentage of their diet was it? Two weeks of meat doesn't mean a lifetime.

If you value your life based solely on leisure time, feel free to go join them. The grass is always greener right?

pedalada

Yes, highly evolved, who can ever forget the most famous vegetarian of the 20th century?

Hocam

Bob Barker?

slowandsteady

I responding to a post directed at me. And why not keep bringing it up? Isn't everyone else bringing up the same tired arguments?

slowandsteady

Because it tastes good and I crave meat when I don't eat it for a few days. I couldn't give it up for some lentil burgers. It is fine that others can, but I don't care to.

pedalada

Try to imagine Bob Barker in a brown shirt.

Hocam

That's funny, I crave lentil burgers if I don't eat them for a few days.