yowamushi Wrote:It just strikes me to see so many people thinking along these lines, just as if we were still in the 1950s.... imagine i wrote "spinach is good against anemia cause it contains a lot of iron so you have to eat it without it you'll suffer from anemia" lol would be at the very same (low) level (no, spinach doesn't contain that much iron...I'm aware of that ) Is there really so little information out there?? And if you are not informed about nutrition and only know what your parents or your school teachers have told you about it (be honest to yourself...), please don't write about it and read relevant sources first (Weston A. Price = no reliable source). Thanks.

that's fine and all... it just strikes me to see so many people writing like this, just as if we were still in the 1950s...
maybe you should have listened to your teachers... when they were teaching you how to write... and to your parents... when they were teaching you how to be modest (... = no way to end a sentence). Thanks.

(Note: I didn't write this because of your sloppy writing. I wrote it because of your unhelpful smugness.)

@Zgarbas

If we eliminate meat, less (not more) plant food needs to be produced. This is because the animals that we eat need to be kept alive. They are constantly burning up calories, and those calories come from plants that we grow. It's pretty simple really. keeping 7 billion people + X billion cattle alive requires more food to be produced than just supporting 7 billion people.

"How is meat a luxury product? Vegetables are way more expensive than meat. "

if this is true (it isn't), then it is almost certainly because of subsidies...There is no way this could be true unless you're going out and hunting wild animals that stay alive on their own dime. Even if we hunted animals instead of factory farming, sustaining today's level of meat consumption would lead to the extinction of half these species. Just look at what's happening in the oceans.

[Zgarbas]

...Are you seriously saying that the grass a cow eats is more difficult to grow and maintain than the vegetables humans eat?

please consider the amount of grazing land required to keep a grass fed cow alive.

This is presumedly why most cattle are in fact not grass-fed, but instead fed with calorie dense foods like corn.

I can't believe you guys are goin on about this for 11 pages. There's Japanese elections we could be talking about.

nadiatims Wrote:This is presumedly why most cattle are in fact not grass-fed, but instead fed with calorie dense foods like corn.

Indeed, these days cows don't eat grass. Corn is way more efficient than grass and cattle are fed a mix of corn, grain, soy, hay, etc. The amount of grassland it would take to feed enough cows to satisfy all the beef consumers in the world is absurdly high.

(Actually, most of the corn you see growing around if you go to America is not for people. If you tried to eat it you'd be disgusted by the taste. It's a much less delicious type that's used to feed animals and to make high fructose corn syrup.)

kitakitsune Wrote:I can't believe you guys are goin on about this for 11 pages. There's Japanese elections we could be talking about.

Well, the issue of subsidies is on the table with the current elections. Actually i don't know if subsidies would be effected by the TPP (maybe it would only effect tariffs?) but I imagine with free trade on the negotiation table the trend is probably towards decreasing subsidies.

Noda I believe is for the TPP. Abe, I would have expected would be for it, but iirc is acting like he's not. I can't remember other parties stances. I imagine Hashimoto would be for it, but may be flip flopping about it. Japan needs to stop protecting it's agricultural sector but that's not politically popular stance to take. I think it would be a huge net win for Japan personally.

The other day I bought two medium tomatoes for ￥200. One was covered with mold and the other was on its way. I grumble and am told "that's what you get for buying cheap tomatoes".

I can't help but be for some change.

Tzadeck Wrote:and to make high fructose corn syrup

I'm deeply convinced that this shit is what is making America fat (on top of sedentary lifestyles). There have been numerous studies that show beyond simply being incredibly horrible nutritionally, it also short circuits the bodies satiation system. HFCS causes people to eat more because they don't feel as full. And if you look around, the stuff is in EVERYTHING in the US. If its sweet, it probably has HFCS in it.

nadiatims Wrote:Well, the issue of subsidies is on the table with the current elections. Actually i don't know if subsidies would be effected by the TPP (maybe it would only effect tariffs?) but I imagine with free trade on the negotiation table the trend is probably towards decreasing subsidies.

Noda I believe is for the TPP. Abe, I would have expected would be for it, but iirc is acting like he's not. I can't remember other parties stances. I imagine Hashimoto would be for it, but may be flip flopping about it. Japan needs to stop protecting it's agricultural sector but that's not politically popular stance to take. I think it would be a huge net win for Japan personally.

I went and checked out the platform for the LDP and this was stuck at the very bottom of their section dealing with foreign relations (NOT economy), "「聖域なき関税撤廃」をする前提に限り、交渉参加に反対します。” So ya, they are pretty much against anything in the TPP and no one is going to let them at the table. Frankly, after hearing about the BS copyright stuff that was pushed into the pact by US copyright corps, all I have to say is "***** this agreement." It basically forces every signing country to adhere to the same kind of nonsense copyright laws that are in place in the US, and in some cases, adhere to laws that are more strict than even in the US.

Some select comparisons, from wiki


EDIT: IP laws have been causing stagnation for past few decades now, and have outlived their original use. All the do is hold back innovation.

First of all, sorry if I am going to repeat what has already been said, as other comments may have appeared in the meantime.

Zgarbas, you seem to ignore that* animals need to be fed (they are not just all cows browsing, and nowadays even cows are fed with other stuff, too. It's hard to imagine that in your country things are different... by the way, I guess the most popular meat today is poultry, not beef, at least in Western Europe, but I'm not sure). And for this special reason, a lot of plants already need to be cultivated (not grass, but grain, soy, corn etc.). Nadiatims is of course correct in saying that in the end of the day, we would consume much less plants in eliminating meat and other animal products, even if it seems paradoxical. You can impossibly nourrish as many people with meat/animal products as if you could do with plants. Another big problem are the huge amounts of dung (sorry, I don't know the exact English term for that, the dictionary contains too many) produced by livestock, which also leads to soil contamination. Of course, we're talking about large-scale livestock farming, and this has become a recognized problem, because it creates environmental pollution.

But you are right when you say that vegetarism or veganism is no magic cure for all the problems in the world. That's true.

*By the way, I don't want to come across as lecturing or arrogant or something, sorry if I don't always get the right tone. English is not my language, and I need more practice.

Quote:My grandpa is 85 and in perfect health (aside from some back aches caused by a bad fall a few years ago) whilst eating meat 3 times a day. So? Does that mean that just because one example of this exists then a sort of diet is good/bad?

I even know an old lady who is 102 and who eats meat thrice a day.
No no, I didn't want to say that you are not healthy when eating meat. As far as I know, there is no real evidence that nutrition has such a big impact on health at all (as long as you get all the necessary nutrients for which there are many possible sources).

But what I may have read into your comment (and other comments of this thread) is that you develop a nutritional deficiency when cutting out animal products (which is not true, and that has been proven). And for some cases, a vegan diet can actually be beneficial and meat/dairy products should be avoided (but that are special cases, certain diseases).

Quote:(or wait, are all these grandparents who are healthy eating meat just imaginary and nothing compared to the 20-year-old healthy vegetarians?)

Of course not. Health also has to do with pure luck, unfortunately. And it is normal that the body degrades. In my opinion, nutrition as a health factor is overestimated. Please note again that I didn't want to say that people get ill by eating meat or stay perfectly healthy by avoiding it. But know that there are also vegans who have been vegan for 40, 50, or 70 years... I wouldn't say that they are much healthier (or healthier at all) than omnivores, but there are not more fragile or anything. And there are still no long-term surveys that prove anything, no matter in what direction. The whole point is that you obviously don't *need* meat in order to stay healthy (vegetarism is nothing new, most people in India usually never eat meat etc.).
By the way, my father used to eat meat only once a week when he was a kid (50s-60s). It was normal then, because meat was very expensive at the time. Meat and dairy products are ridiculously cheap nowadays.

Quote:"I'm young and healthy enough to not need them and have enough time and money to cook alternatives?".

Just a few remarks on money, time and health: vegan food is actually cheaper. There are, of course, luxury products for vegans, too, but you are not obliged to buy them. And again, you can get all the nutrients you need with a vegan diet. It's not only for the young and healthy, quite on the contrary. And I don't see why more time is needed in order to prepare vegan or even vegetarian dishes.


<ot>
@Tzadeck: What'sd wrong, Anki session over? lol</ot>

yowamushi Wrote:Another big problem are the huge amounts of dung (sorry, I don't know the exact English term for that, the dictionary contains too many) produced by livestock, which also leads to soil contamination.

Animal dung, especially from cows and horses, is not a soil contaminate. Maybe the urea present in animal urine is but animal dung is used quite often as a fertilizer.

vix86 Wrote:

yowamushi Wrote:Another big problem are the huge amounts of dung (sorry, I don't know the exact English term for that, the dictionary contains too many) produced by livestock, which also leads to soil contamination.

Animal dung, especially from cows and horses, is not a soil contaminate. Maybe the urea present in animal urine is but animal dung is used quite often as a fertilizer.

Yes, of course it is used as a fertilizer, but it depends on the amount, and it is just way too much in some regions. That's what (German) wikipedia says, too (okay, that doesn't have to mean anything, but it's the only source I have available now, and I'm also in a hurry). Maybe it's also a problem of terminology.

[Zgarbas]

Actually there are plenty of conditions for which diet is important, many of them extremely common! And lots of those recommend meat (usually poultry, but it varies). I do recall meeting one person who was forbidden to eat most meats, and went vegetarian due to it, but unfortunately I can't recall what condition she had. She was just one person though. I've met far more people with some degree of spasmophilia, deficits which required lots of dairy and meat in your diet, et co. I've also met people who insisted on going vegetarian/vegan for various reasons which had to take supplements, and were pretty anemic. (this one time I stayed at a vegan establishment for a while; food was delicious, but I fainted after a few days; I wasn't the only one). Always funny to hear my mom rant on about how healthy she feels since she went (with minor exceptions) vegan whilst popping supplements like crazy, despite the fact that she's already developed some weird issue due to the supplements(did you know that forcibly taking calcium supplements instead of just normally keeping them in your diet can cause calcium lumps to form on your bones, as ridiculous as that sounds? We didn't either).

I don't know, isn't it a bit silly to assume that most people are healthy and wouldn't suffer from a vegetarian diet? Or assuming that the health disorders are caused by eating meat, instead of it just being kind of a thing that humans are prone to diseases?

And seriously, soy foods are some of the most expensive things I've seen. Unless it's cheap soy, of course. But cheap soy was also responsible for a lot of food poisoning and health diseases back when I was young and meat wasn't that readily available, so yeah. Plastic tomatoes are cheap, sure; but plastic tomatoes don't provide nutrients, they're about as nutritious as eating paper. Good vegetables ARE expensive. People like variety in their food, so if you want that there's a much higher cost than, say, just changing the type of meat in your steak. I find it difficult to see how 130.000.000 people would consume less than 30.000.000 cows. Not to mention the fact that if dairy is still in your diet there still would be a dozen million cows, or more if dairy demands grow due to this new-found meatless diet.

re waste:
i was about to say the same thing as yowamushi...
Depending on the quantities involved and what the animals are fed, I could definitely see animal waste becoming a contaminate. compare the density of wild herding animals on the savannah with a modern factory farm, and also remember that wild animals migrate and move about.

Animal waste from factory farming could easily become a contaminate, not just for soil, but also water if not dealt with properly (which would no doubt add to the cost).

"I don't know, isn't it a bit silly to assume that most people are healthy and wouldn't suffer from a vegetarian diet? Or assuming that the health disorders are caused by eating meat, instead of it just being kind of a thing that humans are prone to diseases?"

why? Chimpanzees, our closest relatives do fine eating 95% vegetarian. Gorillas and elephants grow big strong and healthy eating nothing but plants.

"Not to mention the fact that if dairy is still in your diet there still would be a dozen million cows, or more if dairy demands grow due to this new-found meatless diet."

Why would people need milk? If people require milk to live then why don't people continue drinking their mother's milk beyond infancy? Why don't chimpanzees go around milking zebras and buffalos? If humans needed the extra protein from cow's milk, why does human breast milk contain less than half the protein?

@vix86:

"Frankly, after hearing about the BS copyright stuff that was pushed into the pact by US copyright corps, all I have to say is "**** this agreement."

despite the copyright stuff, I still think it is a net benefit for Japan. Anyway with the growth of online piracy, I wonder how long bs copyright laws can even continue to function.

nadiatims Wrote:Anyway with the growth of online piracy, I wonder how long bs copyright laws can even continue to function.

Piracy isn't really the issue here with IP. Its the most salient issue to masses at large, but the toxin in IP right now is patents and DMCA-esque laws. The vast majority of patents being filed these days are being filed by large companies and are being used more as weapons to sue people instead of their original use. The growth in software patents and very broad & general patents, are what has caused the most problems. There have been a few reports which have stated that copyright/patent laws are hindering and causing innovation to stagger. Remember, there are not just patents on devices and software, but also patents on drugs and even your own genetic code.

BS Intellectual Property laws will go away the day money stops being important, because large companies use the law to protect their property and lock down having to actually continue to innovate.

The only thing we can really hope for is that the scummy politicians roll back the laws (lawl!). But that won't happen because these industries give millions in donations to their campaigns.

-------
EDIT: Also just thought of something as well. On the issue of animal waste. Much of it can be converted to biofuel. I had mentioned it a page or so ago, but there was a farm in Japan here somewhere that had been able to cover most of its energy needs using animal waste converted into biofuel.

Zgarbas Wrote:

Quote:There are various ways to get those things that don't involve eating meat. Certainly we don't need as much meat in our diets as we have atm.

Not as much !== not at all.
I think sweets and corn cause more damage to the health than meat. But I don't see people campaigning against that one.

The other point was already answered, so i'll just answer this one...

Right, it doesn't mean "not at all". But i said there's no justification for governments to subsidise meat, not that they should ban it entirely. All that would happen would be that meat would become more expensive, meaning that people would eat less, and so farmers farm meat less.

This isn't a permenent solution to the problem, because if people get richer they'd eat more again. It's just about not making the situation worse than it already is by making meat seem less expensive than it really is.

If it were my choice, i would just ration meat to an acceptable level and then allow people to trade their rations. That way is much fairer really.

[Zgarbas]

...And how exactly do you intend on pushing rations inside a consumerist society? If you're rationing meat then what's next?

People in consumer societies are just going to have to come to terms with the fact that we don't have infinite resources, and that the currently developed societies don't have some imperviable right to use far more than their fair share of the resources we do have.

It doesn't have to be meat rations itself though, there are other strategies. Carbon rationing as a whole, for example.

We need worldwide fish rationing even more badly right now though. I guess you could say that it's already being done to some extent with the fishing quotas, but i think if there was a consumer-end rationing + trade system too we might actually stop wasting so much of the fish we catch and start learning to try the other species currently thrown away as bycatch.

IceCream Wrote:People in consumer societies are just going to have to come to terms with the fact that we don't have infinite resources, and that the currently developed societies don't have some imperviable right to use far more than their fair share of the resources we do have.

It doesn't have to be meat rations itself though, there are other strategies. Carbon rationing as a whole, for example.

Meat is expensive, whether it's subsidised or not. Considering all the processed rubbish people live on, it's probably one of the most nutrient dense things people still put into their bodies nowadays. How about getting supermarkets to clean up their act? This is obviously kind of dictated by economic/business factors, and I haven't seen any figures, but from my バイト some time ago, the amount of meat, dairy and produce - still edible in a lot of cases - that got thrown away was sickening. Plastics, cardboard etc and organic wastes are crushed together and dumped in massive volumes every day too. This is just at a single store in a single region of a single country. The global scale of this kind of waste is probably enough to feed the starving parts of the world.

nadiatims Wrote:why? Chimpanzees, our closest relatives do fine eating 95% vegetarian. Gorillas and elephants grow big strong and healthy eating nothing but plants.

...

Why would people need milk? If people require milk to live then why don't people continue drinking their mother's milk beyond infancy? Why don't chimpanzees go around milking zebras and buffalos? If humans needed the extra protein from cow's milk, why does human breast milk contain less than half the protein?

You've given the gorilla argument before. Asides from the obvious differences between us, we don't have the same capacity to ferment plant fibre. Gorillas get more than 50% of their calories from saturated fats that bacteria produce in their enormous colons. If you want to absorb nutrients, rather than just masticate, like them, you might need that cow's milk. Human milk is for growing infants, so its make-up tells us little about adult needs. Infant brains alone consume 50% of their calories versus 20% for adults.

High-quality protein would be one reason to drink milk, and it's little more than vegan folklore that legumes and broccoli are going to give you the aminos you need, even assuming you get over the low bioavailability hurdle. I'd actually like to see vegan sarcopenia stats, especially considering the Western vegan's preference for anti-androgenic legumes*. Another reason, asides from the precious fat-soluble vitamins, would be cholesterol. In disparaging red meat, vegan shills rarely mention that the 130mg/dl level they hover at doubles their stroke risk, and is far below the accepted healthy level of over 200mg/dl.

I respect veganism as a moral endeavour, and maybe it could improve resource, pollution etc problems (I honestly haven't looked into it much), but from a purely nutritional perspective, it's not something you should be recommending to people without at least a few caveats. No radical way of eating is something people should jump into, whether it includes steak or not.

* At least you know you can get your boners back within a year of quitting though http://pmid.us/21353476

vix86 Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:and to make high fructose corn syrup

I'm deeply convinced that this shit is what is making America fat (on top of sedentary lifestyles). There have been numerous studies that show beyond simply being incredibly horrible nutritionally, it also short circuits the bodies satiation system. HFCS causes people to eat more because they don't feel as full. And if you look around, the stuff is in EVERYTHING in the US. If its sweet, it probably has HFCS in it.

As far as I'm aware, production is limited in Europe, so good old-fashioned sucrose is still the sweetener of choice, and we're catching up with US obesity rates at a respectable pace. I believe a lot of HFCS usually has a fairly even fructose-glucose ratio like sucrose, although there are kinds with more fructose, which would enhance the anti-satiety effect you mentioned.

I think the low-fat paradigm and lack of protein in most grains and processed foods does a lot to reduce satiety. Sit down with a 100g bar of 70% cocoa chocolate one day, and Hershey's/Cadbury's the next and see how far you get with each of them. Obesity is a complex picture though, and I don't think you can really pin it on anything. The craziest thing is how easily it can all be reversed.

Sorry, I don't have the time to answer all the comments in detail. Let us summarize: Vegan food makes you faint (in turn, and probably due to a severe malnutrition [e.g. b12 deficiency] after a few days...), interferes your "connubial bliss", doesn't give you all the amino acids you need (=the essential ones), makes you lose your muscles, causes strokes...
This is like reading a 19th century brochure about the effects of masturbation. Joking aside, just let me mention that I would be dead for a long time if the statement with the amino acids alone was true. To say nothing of the rest. But I acknowledge that people who never were vegans in their whole entire life know it better than us. And that they are, of course, much better informed about vegan nutrition and lifestyle. It is astounding.

[Zgarbas]

Clearly I should try staying underwater for a while to verify if all those drowning rumors are true, eh?

anime and manga is the solution...

http://kotaku.com/5968090/colin-powells-...at-protein

NOT.