Veganism/Vegetarianism

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I had a phase where I was vegan for a while, but I stopped the diet after several months as I grew pale and had a cyst grow on my neck. So I stopped the diet and and started drinking milk and eating eggs, and eventually chicken again. Some, less fortunate than me, have carried on the diet for years and developed degeneration of joints and heart tissues as I've come to find out. Soy is also toxic when not fermented. It has phyto-toxins in it that actually destroy essential enzymes within the body. This isn't good news for someone with a diet that's already lean on certain nutrients that aren't readily available from plant sources. I do believe veganism may be useful as a fasting method for people who want to drop weight, but it shouldn't be practiced as a long term diet. Just as you wanna start eating fat again after lint is over, you should start eating, at least eggs, after a couple of months. I even made sure to get all the right nutrients.

I think there's almost something Gnostic about the vegan diet. They see something inherently wrong in the order of the food chain and the cosmos. So, in protest of it, they completely contradict it, just as Gnostics intentionally didn't procreate to keep spirit from being imprisoned within the injust and cruel disposition of the human condition.

I'd also call it a very neuro-centric worldview, because the notion is that the only beings that suffer and feel pain from death are life forms that possess a brain. It could just as well be that a pine tree or a lettuce plant suffers in some way from being cut down and devoured. Suffering may be a state that all beings, plant or animal, go through on their way to the grave. Everything we eat should be treated with reverence and blessing and the way we attain it, because one day when we die, our bodies will begin a process in which they will eventually become nourishment for fungi, worms, bacteria, plants, animals, people, etc, etc. Our whole being will be re-absorbed into the womb of our cosmic mother to be reborn and transmuted into other forms.

I'm an ex-vegan, and a wannabe vegan.

I've known a few people who were healthier on the vegan diet, but very few. Everybody's system is a little different.

I'm actually missing several enzymes needed to digest plants, so I'm biologically a carnivore. At the opposite end of the spectrum, one of my friend's friends is actually allergic to animal proteins, so he has to be a vegan.

Most people are somewhere in between.

There is nothing positive about veganism, nutritionally or morally. Not eating meat causes more harm to animals than eating meat.

I can understand todays aversion to eating meats, and not wanting to hard animals. Most of us today live far away from farms and livestock. But recall this article written by a former vegan. Her health was badly effected by the diet - plus what was interesting to me was how she came to realize that even though she thought she was not harming animals eating the way she was, when looking at the whole view of how her food was created, came to realize animals were being displaced and killed.

"The Vegetarian Myth"

http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/ ... rian-myth/

excerpt from the article:

"...She then explains why living without killing is impossible, beginning with a fascinating, detailed description of the cycle of life … and “cycle” is the crucial concept. There is no food chain, with humans sitting at the top. We are members of a food cycle, with all of us eating each other. As Keith explains, even the soil is alive, with literally millions of organisms in each tablespoon. Take the animals out of the equation — along with the urine, feces, blood and bone that the soil “eats” — and the soil will die.

Keith discovered this for herself when she decided to grow her own food. She soon learned that her soil required nitrogen, and discovered to her horror that she had two choices: natural nitrogen — mostly blood meal and bone meal — or synthetic nitrogen made from fossil fuels … another form of dead animals. As she reluctantly concluded, “My garden wanted to eat animals, even if I didn’t.”

Her garden gave her further fits when she realized she had to stop the bugs from eating the plants she planned to eat herself. Chemical pesticides were obviously out, so she looked into “natural” pesticides — which she learned rip the guts out of the bugs. She finally elected to keep some chickens that would eat the bugs instead. Yes, she knew was simply outsourcing the killing to the chickens, and yes, she struggled with the double-standard. Her personal odyssey, sprinkled throughout the pages, is at times equally funny and sad.

Much of the Moral Vegetarians section describes the killing fields of mono-crop agriculture. Never mind the countless critters shredded by farm machinery. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real damage occurs earlier in the process. To create those sprawling acres of wheat, corn, and soybeans, prairies and forests that were home to millions of animals are destroyed, taking the animals down with them. Rivers are dammed, killing all the animals who depended on them. That soy burger Mr. Granola chews so smugly requires at least as many deaths as my steak, if not more...."

The problem with veganism/vegetarianism is it doesn't involve steak

Redacted

You eat whatever you want, I'll return the favor by eating whatever I want.

Meat is a vital part of the human diet. You can get protein in soy but it can't replace meat.
We are part of the food chain which involves eating meat. If you refuse to eat meat then somebody else will.

I was vegetarian for a couple of years because I realised you could be perfectly healthy without eating meat and I couldn't really afford meat at the time, anyway. It was also due to some vague concerns about animal rights and CO2 emissions for livestock farming.

If you have a half-decent knowledge of nutrition, vegetarianism is a healthy, inexpensive diet. I would still be a vegetarian if I didn't really, really, really like the taste of meat (I used to miss it all the time when I was veggie).

I think veganism is unhealthy as a long-term diet. I know a couple of people who've done it for a number of years, but one of them accidentally eats dairy all the time (they keep eating take-away curries cooked in ghee). The other one, I suspect, is some kind of superhuman.

I myself went from Vegetarian to Pescatarian.
I felt sorry for the cute little LAND animals, fish are ugly and slimy so they can die.