Plant based lifestyle. Anyone?

Old lady H wrote:Kabob dude, soy sauce, a bit of olive oil, a ton of garlic (YMMV), and balsamic vinegar are a nice marinade for the veggies. Balsamic helps them char. Yum! OLH

Thanks for the advice Helen. I'm always willing to listen when it comes to recipes. The Montreal seasoning is pretty garlic heavy (pepper & salt too) so when I use it I don't marinade. It'll blow your tongue off if you do. When I do marinade I have three simple go-to recipes I use the most. I'll try yours and add it too.

1. 24hr Spicy Hawaiian. Soy sauce (large bottle) pineapple juice (two small cans) Tbsp. Crushed red pepper. You can adjust pepper amount to taste.

2. Large bottle Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire sauce, Large bottle Seven Seas Italian dressing. This one is best with a minimum 3hr marinade time.

3. Large bottle soy sauce, Two Tbsp. Cumin, One Tbsp. Onion powder, One Tbsp. Garlic powder. If you want it hot add red pepper.

I use these for my meat-based lifestyle but they translate to vegan too.

We are herbivores by design. We don't have canine teeth. Our jaw motions are for grinding vegetation. We don't have highly acidic stomachs. We have long digestive tracks designed for plant digestion.

This is why you can get food borne illness from raw or contaminated meats. This is why meat begins to rot in your intestines and can cause colon cancer. We can eat meat, but are unquestionably not designed by nature for it.

Animal agriculture represents more than just cows. It is also responsible for the destruction of our oceans, over fishing, and species extinction. Did you know the planet is experiencing species extinction at a rate not seen in millions of years?

Habitat loss from grazing. When cows move in others move out. Predators like wolves and bears being hunted and eliminated from their native environments to protect cattle profits.

The meat industry is huge. They have a lot of profits to be concerned about. They have controlled the information the general public gets for a long time. Who came up with the idea that a balanced diet includes meat? They control the law makers. We all subsidize meat production with our taxes.

Altered Ego wrote:It should be pretty easy for meat eaters to come up with some evidence to back up their claims on this thread which so far have basically been that growing cows is environmentally advantageous over growing plants and that eating meat is somehow necessary for good health but they have not.

Neither of those positions are what people are saying.

1. On certain kinds of land, cows are indeed environmentally advantageous over plants, but that's not saying that is true for all locales.

2. Eating meat is not necessary for good health, but it does take a little to a lot more effort to do the same with plant sources, depending on your degree of vegetarianism or if you are truly vegan.

Altered Ego wrote:...eating meat contributes to the leading causes of death.

A highly and overly simplistic view. It's much more complex than that.

Altered Ego wrote:...like the the animals they eat were before being needlessly slaughtered.

If the animals were eaten, they were not needlessly slaughtered.

Altered Ego wrote:We are herbivores by design. We don't have canine teeth. Our jaw motions are for grinding vegetation. We don't have highly acidic stomachs.

Say what? We have canines and incisors.

Ted Pinson wrote: You started off strong, but then went off the deep end as soon as you started introducing your own opinion...kind of like a Netflix documentary (for lolz, check out "Thrive" or "What the Bleep"). First of all, the "hunter-gatherer is best" approach has been widely discredited (by actual science) and doesn't really make sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Hunter/gatherers ate what they could find (through hunting and gathering), but assuming that they managed to find exactly what was biologically ideal is a stretch. This comes from a common misconception about evolution that assumes evolution behaves like intelligent design; in reality, it is much more clumsy, redundant, and inefficient. Why do we have an appendix? Because f$&@ you, that's why. ;)

As I said, that is all somewhat of an opinion since no one really knows, so I don't disagree with you. But I think about it in the opposite way that you laid out - that maybe (I think likely) the human body evolved based on the nutrients that were available in what the hunter-gatherers were able to find. Just as the stomach of a cow evolved to digest grass because grass was available, I think it's reasonable that many of the human body's functions evolved based on utilizing the nutrients that were available in the environment. If humans had no access to, lets say Omega 3 fatty acids, then the human body likely would have evolved an entirely different mechanism to fulfill the role of Omega 3's using an entirely different nutrient that WAS available. In that way, nutrition becomes even MORE complicated when we factor in that the genetics we inherit are such that every single person on the planet likely has different dietary needs, and I think someday we will be sequencing people's genes in order to instruct them on their personal optimal diet. This is all not to mention the major role that our digestive microbiomes play, and we are just in the infancy of understanding that. Hence, some people can do just fine on a vegetarian diet for 10 years, while others might crash after half a year. I would hypothesize that these differences can be due to the diets of our different hunter-gatherer ancestors, which in turn effected our genes through selection, and may have effected the microbiomes that we inherited.

That's why I think a diet that most closely resembles the hunter-gatherer diet is the safest bet. On top of that, there is a good body of evidence from anthropologists that most hunter-gatherers were much more healthy and had lower incidence of many diseases compared to modern humans, and especially compared with early post-agriculture humans. But I would accept the argument that there are too many different factors in play to conclude that the better health of hunter-gatherers must necessarily have been the result of their diet. I think activity, sleep, air quality, water quality, and many other factors weigh heavily. Again, I just think it is the safest bet from everything I've learned. I think going vegetarian and especially vegan is a big gamble since we have no historical precedent. And I would also say that if you plan to have children, being vegan or vegetarian and then forcing your kids to do the same is outright selfish and dangerous (and is a crime in many countries)

You might find it interesting that there is a growing body of evidence that the appendix still serves a function of helping replenishing our gut biome with what we now call "probiotics".

Altered Ego wrote:We can eat meat, but are unquestionably not designed by nature for it.

What about these people? raw-food-health.net/Eskimo-…

jgfox wrote: You list that SA article as a source but miss one of the statistics, which is only 36% of that evil corn goes to cattle. 40% goes to Ethanol production.

Minor, minor point: using corn for ethanol only uses the starch. The bran (source of fiber) and germ (oil and protein) get used largely in - you guessed it - animal feed.

Gunkiemike wrote: Minor, minor point: using corn for ethanol only uses the starch. The bran (source of fiber) and germ (oil and protein) get used largely in - you guessed it - animal feed.

I think the original inference was that all the corn growing everywhere was feeding cattle. It's not, so no the point isn't minor. "Animal feed" is a big blanket, it covers cattle, swine, and chicken. But that's not as important as the fact that if "feed" is 35% of the corn crop the other 65% is not. The argument would then be can we sustain our meat production with 60% less corn? Yes we can. Cattle for the most part eat exactly what I said they eat, they do go to feed lots before slaughter but they don't exist entirely on corn as others would have you think. JB

Altered Ego wrote:We are herbivores by design. We don't have canine teeth. Our jaw motions are for grinding vegetation. We don't have highly acidic stomachs. We have long digestive tracks designed for plant digestion. This is why you can get food borne illness from raw or contaminated meats. This is why meat begins to rot in your intestines and can cause colon cancer.

Not a single one of those sentences is even vaguely correct.

Altered Ego wrote:We are herbivores by design. We don't have canine teeth. Our jaw motions are for grinding vegetation. We don't have highly acidic stomachs. We have long digestive tracks designed for plant digestion. This is why you can get food borne illness from raw or contaminated meats. This is why meat begins to rot in your intestines and can cause colon cancer. We can eat meat, but are unquestionably not designed by nature for it. Animal agriculture represents more than just cows. It is also responsible for the destruction of our oceans, over fishing, and species extinction. Did you know the planet is experiencing species extinction at a rate not seen in millions of years? Habitat loss from grazing. When cows move in others move out. Predators like wolves and bears being hunted and eliminated from their native environments to protect cattle profits. The meat industry is huge. They have a lot of profits to be concerned about. They have controlled the information the general public gets for a long time. Who came up with the idea that a balanced diet includes meat? They control the law makers. We all subsidize meat production with our taxes.

Err gonna have to back away slowly from this post, sorry. We are most definitely omnivores by design, meaning our bodies can process both plants and animals. Also, the whole "meat rots in your intestines" thing is a myth.

John Barritt wrote:I think the original inference was that all the corn growing everywhere was feeding cattle. It's not, so no the point isn't minor. "Animal feed" is a big blanket, it covers cattle, swine, and chicken. But that's not as important as the fact that if "feed" is 35% of the corn crop the other 65% is not. The argument would then be can we sustain our meat production with 60% less corn? Yes we can. Cattle for the most part eat exactly what I said they eat, they do go to feed lots before slaughter but they don't exist entirely on corn as others would have you think. JB

No, that was never the inference, but nice strawman argument.

Altered Ego wrote:We are herbivores by design. We don't have canine teeth. Our jaw motions are for grinding vegetation. We don't have highly acidic stomachs. We have long digestive tracks designed for plant digestion. This is why you can get food borne illness from raw or contaminated meats. This is why meat begins to rot in your intestines and can cause colon cancer. We can eat meat, but are unquestionably not designed by nature for it. Animal agriculture represents more than just cows. It is also responsible for the destruction of our oceans, over fishing, and species extinction. Did you know the planet is experiencing species extinction at a rate not seen in millions of years? Habitat loss from grazing. When cows move in others move out. Predators like wolves and bears being hunted and eliminated from their native environments to protect cattle profits. The meat industry is huge. They have a lot of profits to be concerned about. They have controlled the information the general public gets for a long time. Who came up with the idea that a balanced diet includes meat? They control the law makers. We all subsidize meat production with our taxes.

climbing friend,

are you saying you would be liking to "beat the meat" industry?

applausing to you.

Hahahahah

Ted Pinson wrote:No, that was never the inference, but nice strawman argument.

Not sure what straw has to do with corn but... Mathman sez....100% minus 35% equals 65% BTW Ted, you never answered my question. "What do your family's cows eat down there on the ranch in Texas?"

Ana Tine wrote: Best line of the thread! I always feel bad for spiders since people kill them merely because they're "ugly" to them. I can't use the "they're dangerous" excuse: I know my hypocritic self has killed WAY more spiders than spiders have even gently bit me. I am trying not to kill spiders anymore though, because it haunts me to think of the pain I caused them eg I buried one in dishwashing soap for 15 min before realizing it would sting his 8 eyes, and cause vomiting, and rinsed his limp body off and put him in the trash. Now every time I get shampoo in my eyes, or don't rinse my eating vessels well enough of soap, I think back to that unfortunate spider. You might say, spiders are carnivores. However, they kill much fewer animals than we kill. Sometimes I can polish off a chicken a day, and I eat every day. But spiders only eat one insect every few months. Obviously this thread has too, gone off the rails.

climbing friend,

the laughing it is out loud. you feel bad for myy preciousssssssss spider but support lifestyle of eating 1 bird per day after its life of antibiotic pumped forced feed rooting around in shit disease clawing each other to death torture in "cage free" farm?

directactioneverywhere.com/…

nytimes.com/2016/10/21/busi…;action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0

Altered Ego wrote:We are herbivores by design. We don't have canine teeth. Our jaw motions are for grinding vegetation. We don't have highly acidic stomachs. We have long digestive tracks designed for plant digestion. This is why you can get food borne illness from raw or contaminated meats. This is why meat begins to rot in your intestines and can cause colon cancer. We can eat meat, but are unquestionably not designed by nature for it. Animal agriculture represents more than just cows. It is also responsible for the destruction of our oceans, over fishing, and species extinction. Did you know the planet is experiencing species extinction at a rate not seen in millions of years? Habitat loss from grazing. When cows move in others move out. Predators like wolves and bears being hunted and eliminated from their native environments to protect cattle profits. The meat industry is huge. They have a lot of profits to be concerned about. They have controlled the information the general public gets for a long time. Who came up with the idea that a balanced diet includes meat? They control the law makers. We all subsidize meat production with our taxes.

If you really want to bring up teeth, look at how thin our enamel is compared to real herbivores. They have thick enamel because of abrasion from hard particles, e.g. Rocks dust on the plant. Our teeth aren't thick enough to resist that. It's common practice for archaeologists to look at the teeth of skeletons to see if there is wearing down so they can determine where the diseased originated from considering they milled their grain down using rocks that were available (all BC stuff). So softer rocks would wind up into

Altered Ego wrote:We are herbivores by design. We don't have canine teeth. Our jaw motions are for grinding vegetation. We don't have highly acidic stomachs. We have long digestive tracks designed for plant digestion. This is why you can get food borne illness from raw or contaminated meats. This is why meat begins to rot in your intestines and can cause colon cancer. We can eat meat, but are unquestionably not designed by nature for it.

There are many great arguments against animal agriculture on the scale we practice it today. But none of those are good ones. None of those are even remotely true. You have been misinformed. Please do a bit of research into the human species. You will find that there is zero evidence of any group of humans that did not eat meat. There is a massive body of evidence of humans that did. Vegetarianism is VERY new, and can only really exist with the transportation that we have available today which allows us to eat foods outside of their local seasonality by shipping products across the globe.

All the respect in the world to not supporting big agriculture, but you really need to learn to separate factory-farmed meat and meat from animals that lived biologically appropriate lives with biologically appropriate diets in your thinking. They are "two entirely different animals" so to say.

climbing friend,

John Barritt wrote:What about these people? raw-food-health.net/Eskimo-…

Doesn't seem like the Eskimo diet is that conducive to a long healthy lifestyle - from the link above:

"The Eskimo diet has never been known to bring about a particularly long life spans."

"Eskimos eating a traditional diet were very familiar with constipation because they ate very little plant food."

"They found the Eskimo diet didn't seem to decrease heart attack risk at all over western diets, and that the chance of having a stroke was actually noticeably higher among the Inuit than among western populations "

"We have also seen that ancient Eskimos, far removed from the stresses of modern technological society, suffered from coronary artery disease...This anatomic evidence in Alaska not only confirms the antiquity of arteriosclerotic heart disease, but also its occurrence in a preliterate society..."

As for humans being designed for a meat-based diet - I'd like to see any human hunt and capture prey as a lion does a gazelle. Clearly our vicious claws, savagely-sharp teeth (for ripping raw into living flesh), massive leg muscles, and formidably tough hides (to protect counter attacks) were designed for us to chase and capture prey. Or perhaps the DNA code for our anatomically built-in 22-rifles got damaged somewhere along the evolutionary chain.

Sure there is the standard "brain" argument, which says our brains developed for us to hunt and trap animals. I stand by a similar brain argument - where mine has developed enough (even without eating animal proteins!) to recognize the clear evidence of damage that consuming meat does to one's body and therefore I choose not to eat it.

Then again that's data from the extreme vegan propaganda groups called the World Health Organization and American Cancer Institute - hardly objective.

"The World Health Organization has classified processed meats – including ham, salami, sausages and hot dogs – as a Group 1 carcinogen which means that there is strong evidence that processed meats cause cancer. Red meat, such as beef, lamb and pork has been classified as a ‘probable’ cause of cancer." - From the Cancer Council

JayMorse wrote: There are many great arguments against animal agriculture on the scale we practice it today. But none of those are good ones. None of those are even remotely true. You have been misinformed. Please do a bit of research into the human species. You will find that there is zero evidence of any group of humans that did not eat meat. There is a massive body of evidence of humans that did. Vegetarianism is VERY new, and can only really exist with the transportation that we have available today which allows us to eat foods outside of their local seasonality by shipping products across the globe. All the respect in the world to not supporting big agriculture, but you really need to learn to separate factory-farmed meat and meat from animals that lived biologically appropriate lives with biologically appropriate diets in your thinking. They are "two entirely different animals" so to say.

Again, you started off great but then made claims that are easily disproven by a simple google search. Vegetarianism is not new, nor does it require advanced transportation systems...that's just silly. Have you never heard of India or Tibet?

blogs.scientificamerican.co…

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/His…

JayMorse wrote: There are many great arguments against animal agriculture on the scale we practice it today. But none of those are good ones. None of those are even remotely true. You have been misinformed. Please do a bit of research into the human species. You will find that there is zero evidence of any group of humans that did not eat meat. There is a massive body of evidence of humans that did. Vegetarianism is VERY new, and can only really exist with the transportation that we have available today which allows us to eat foods outside of their local seasonality by shipping products across the globe. All the respect in the world to not supporting big agriculture, but you really need to learn to separate factory-farmed meat and meat from animals that lived biologically appropriate lives with biologically appropriate diets in your thinking. They are "two entirely different animals" so to say.

This person isn't reading any of our posts in case you haven't noticed. Veganism is a religion to them.