Tigers don’t worry about minimizing the suffering of their food.
I’ve been eating a bit of meat lately, and I’ve discovered it makes me feel really, really good. Having taken up vegetarianism at 15 or so as a result of reading some of these horror stories about where food comes from, I never made the connection between my avoidance of meat and the constant tiredness I’ve experienced my entire adult life.
I’ve eaten only modest portions of it, but I feel better after having steak twice in a single week (and mussels in between) than I have in years. More awake.
If I had my druthers we wouldn’t be raised in complete ignorance of where meat comes from and simultaneously brainwashed by Disney and Gund that our food is our friend.
We should all be ripping wild animals apart with our bare hands, gnawing on their still-beating hearts, from early childhood. If I could have been raised properly in this way it would have saved me a lot of confusion and 15 years worth of pasta-induced fatigue.
Fiddler are you OK? 'cause judging by some of the comments and threats from millitant anti-meat eaters I have seen post on these forums - you is in it deeeeeeeeep!
(I wonder how long before this gets moved to the “other” place??)
My ex hunts. When my oldest was in 2nd grade, the kids were all sitting around in the “sharing circle” and one of the kids talked about how they had gone to the local park and saw a deer.
Nate says “that’s nothing. We had a deer in our garage this weekend…
…and now it’s in the freezer!”
Luckily, the teacher knew us well and understood AND quickly changed the subject. However, she wasn’t all that pleased when Nate brought a picture of the - ah - processing in the next week (I didn’t know he had the picture with him…).
I used to be anti-meat myself. Only last week, in fact. Not militant, but maybe a bit sanctimonious.
I’ve been discovering many things since I started to learn tai chi. This sudden understanding that my vegetarianism was deluded, unhealthy and reactionary, resulting from a big rift with the natural world caused by Disney and urban groceries.
Now, I’m not saying ALL vegetarians are deluded, or that vegetarianism itself is wrong and bad, or that our meat industry isn’t racked with problems, etc.
I’m just celebrating my liberation from a self-imposed dietary gulag and reunification with my own primal, omnivorous self.
Hopefully the vegetarians among us can still appreciate the countless Donald Ducks and Porky Pigs whose lives have been spared by my 15 years of abstinence and not take it too personally that I’ve finally realized a) I can’t cook, therefore was a crappy vegetarian and b) I was sick, and meat is the remedy.
I try to eat meat from the Amish market. Those animals are treated a lot better than those in industrial farms, plus the Amish farms have less negative environmental impact.
I didn’t realize food was controversial. here I was trying to branch out.
To be honest, I never had a problem with hunters who eat what they kill at any time during my vegetarianism. My meat boycott was based on the commercial meat industry.
I still want to avoid feedlot / fish farm animals - pumped full of hormones and pharmaceuticals, kept immobile, fed concrete and made into cannibals, kept in a constant state of stress… but anything that scurries, flaps, hops or trots through the wilderness had better stay well hidden the next time I go camping.
I would agree with this.
I avoid meat for this reason, and because, in my case, my health seems better without it. (less prone to colds, etc.) I would rather meat eaters consider the source of their food, and choose conscienciously, and I’m aware of others who seem to thrive better on animal protein than without, but I’d just as soon forego it.
When you strip away all the concerns that you listed about the methods of raising meat, there is the basic fact that meat, especially beef, gives a body a lot of concentrated nutrition, protein and minerals. It should make you feel good as you have noticed. And you don’t have to eat a lot of it to feel that way.
I’ve always been omnivorous, but I prefer to buy meat from “all-natural” or “organic” farms. It makes a huge difference in taste and nutritional quality. We are fortunate in that our local grocery store sells beef from [u]Misty Isle Farms[/u] (also local). It’s very good beef.
I have a few concerns about eating non-medicated meat. I understand the concerns about growth hormones and hugh-protein feed containing butchered animals, etc. but there are a lot of diseases that have been controlled through medicating farm animals. I think it would be better to find someone who avoids forced growth methods, but still protects me from things like meningitis, tetanus, etc.
One of the things I always liked about John Robbins (Diet for a New America) is that he understood and sympathized with the fact that some people really don’t do well on a vegetarian diet. Others thrive on it, but human biology differs, and the fact remains that we’re omnivores…and that some seem to have a greater need for flesh-based foods than others.
One of the reasons I no longer participate on the vegetarian boards, even though I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly 18 years, is I got tired of the sanctimonious crap that goes on…not to mention the assumption that vegetarianism is a cure for all the world’s woes, from the war in Iraq to obesity!
Interestingly, Temple Grandin (the autistic woman who designs most of the slaughterhouses in the U.S.), wishes she could be a vegetarian. She’s always identified most strongly with cattle, and really doesn’t like the fact that she eats them. Like you, however, she’s discovered that she’s a person who really doesn’t do at all well on a vegetarian diet. It may seem ironic that she designs slaughter systems, but it actually makes perfect sense…her goal is to make slaughter as humane, and as free from pain and fear as possible for the animals. She’s really quite an interesting lady, though she’s routinely vilified by the vegetarian press.
I think Americans in particluar take their meat for granted. We take advantage of the fact that it is so readily accessible to us. I grew up eating some kind of meat for dinner pretty much every night of the week… and sometimes lunches too. The high demand to keep up with that is what causes the meat (animal) to be raised the way that it is. There aren’t a lot of cultures that have the luxury of meat at every meal. When I moved out of my parents home I ate a lot less of it. I eat meals with meat in them maybe two, at most three nights a week.
I’ve rarely* been able to stomach extremist vegetarians/vegans. I agree with most of their motives and ideals (usually) but I hate being lectured for not making the choices that they think I should.
*I’ve had some friends who were hardcore vegans and would lecture and condemn people walking in and out of McDonalds and Burger King and I’ve had friends that would order a salad and chat with me about whatever as I ate my steak. I am aware of some things that go on in the meat industry and I try to be conscious of that but taking meat completely out of my diet is not for me.
For those of you who choose a life without meat to support a nobel cause, bless you.
I bet if you could go back in time say 7 years and send yourself this message, you’d never believe it came from you
Life’s a learning experience; I’ve had to face up to the fact that my own ideals haven’t always been right-headed myself. Thankfully not about meat, though
I would extend this to all food. Even some of the vegetarians that I have known would not think twice about throwing left-overs. In the past finding nutritional food was difficult and people respected food. Look at how the human body is set up and realize that we have no natural defenses against over eating (to my knowledge). The reason is that historically, that was never a problem. I think that in general, the respect for our food and the land that produces it is something we all can improve.
Talk to some of the people that lived through the depression, some of those people still know what it is like to have no choice of what was for dinner, and their attitude towards food is probably different towards food than any one of my generation.
Place your bets, I predict rubber room by page three.
There are Chiffers who have posted about preferring to be vegetarian but needing to include meat in their diets as their health suffers otherwise.
I used to be a vegetarian because I thought it made me a better person. Maybe it did at some level; but one day I realised there was no getting around the fact that I was as much Shiva as I was Vishnu and Brahma, if you will, no matter what I ate, and what became more important to me was to own my accountability for my choices whatever they were.
I do think avoiding industrially-produced meats is a good thing for a number of reasons if it’s possible.
No dear, the medication isn’t protecting us from pathologies like meningitis, tetanus, etc. (If its a real concern for you, don’t eat the meat raw.)
Quite a bit of the food the industry feeds the animals to create a “better taste” are foods that the animals can’t digest without medication. The grains make them sick as if they have inflammatory bowel disease, hence they medicate.
The industry also discovered that if the animals aren’t using their immune systems to naturally fight off illness they can be fattened up for slaughter faster.
My experience on the subject of vegetarianism and veganism is that few people who eat that way do it for nutritional reasons.
For the most part they do it for ethical reasons.
Its easier to be an ethical vegetarian when one is young. When we’re young we tend to have Yang Qi to spare
or at least have the illusion that we do.
An interesting side story; a couple years back a friend and I attended a conference for Asian bodywork. My friend is a long time vegetarian though trying to keep it a healthy vegetarianism by using macrobiotic cooking practices.
All weekend as we’d attend workshops or even just walking through the hotel the event was happening at, elderly Japanese ladies (practitioners of acupuncture, Asian bodywork and all probably very familiar with macrobiotic diets) approached my friend (out of the blue) and told her she needed to eat some meat.
Not so. The medications that are fed to the animals are to keep them alive long enough for slaughter…they do nothing whatsoever to protect the consumer. Animals that are raised in intensive conditions are not healthy creatures…they tend to suffer from all kinds of infections that spread among the over-crowded animals like wildfire. Kept from natural exercise, fresh air, and good feed (the feed that’s given to an animal to fatten it for slaughter is intended to fatten it…not to promote its health), they would become ill long before they could go to market if they weren’t pumped full of antibiotics.
If you’re going to eat meat, buy from organic, free-range producers. That not only means a better life for the animal, it means that you’re eating meat that came from a healthy animal…not one that was kept alive on medications. That’s a lot better for you.
What a joke! 