hum…wild sheep!
Don’t nobody tell the chickens. 
What’s all this sudden stuff??
Slan,
D.
Regarding animals and antibiotics, cattle are fed antibiotics mostly to make them grow faster. It’s done even on small farms where the cattle aren’t in close enough proximity to make disease rampant. Cattle that aren’t constantly medicated tend to be healthier, albeit smaller. Chickens are another story.
The thing that fries my ass about this is that they don’t use some cheap-ass antibiotic like penicillin or erythromycin that’s old as the hills; they use modern antibiotics that are in current and sometimes leading-edge use. Since they’re not for humans and thus don’t carry the same regulations or liability, the pharmaceutical companies sell to farmers cheap. The problem (from our POV; it’s a lagniappe for the pharm companies) is that agricultural use is one of the primary reasons that new antibiotics only survive for a few years before resistant strains of bacteria start showing up.
So true!
For serious? Damn.
re. antibiotics etc. - Sorry, I was thinking more in terms of poultry, not beef or pork. I tend to eat a lot more poultry and fish than I do red meat. Its not that I don’t love red meat, its just a matter of price, convenience and opportunity.
djm
Wait a minute fiddler! Biologically you belong to the same phylum, class, family, and genus as the Bonobo ape…which are vegetarians. They have the flat teeth, flat nails, and like you they have the long convoluting…(I’d better stop there).
So, there goes your sex life I guess!
Of course, bonobos are also the creatures that have sex at the drop of a hat! 
Redwolf
Anyone who thinks that meat-eating in humans is natural may be right, but nature isn’t always our friend. In fact, there are times when nature seems out to kill us.
Digestion in true carnivores - and that’s not us -occurs mainly in their stomachs, not in their small intestines . Meat doesn’t stay in their guts for very long. In humans, the small intestine is something like 5 meters long and takes care of most of what we eat within a few hours - but meat can stay in our small intestine for a couple of days. By then lots of it has putrified. Rotting causes the development of cadaverine, putrescine and other vile poisons (cadaverine…putrescine…bleahhh! The names alone make me want to retch), and these become pathogens and carcinogens.
Because particles of undigested, rotten meat can hang around in the large intestinal walls of humans for 30 years or more, can anyone be shocked that colon cancer is common among humans who eat meat? Oh, yeah, and here’s another thing. The kidneys of meat-eating humans have to work much harder cleansing the blood of toxins than do kidneys of vegetarians. Dialysis, anyone?
I’ve always been a vegetarian (borderline vegan) like the rest of my family. The main reason we don’t consume meat is because we can’t bear of thought of killing our fellow animals to eat them. To us, the health benefits of abstaining are perks, albeit important ones.
I must disclose that I have been a mostly vegan for over thirty years now. Having disclosed that, I must say that I hope you do not find my posts on this subject sanctimonious.
My doctor recently remarked that my full blood count was surprisingly good for a vegetarian and, was, in fact, superior to most people on a non-veg diet. This is a country doctor in a district where a lot of fresh fish and meat is eaten. And yet, in the past, when at times, I was anaemic (due to undiagnosed occult bleeding from cancer of pre-vegetarian aetiology), some doctors said my vegetarianism was causing the anemia! (Minorities just cannot win) 
I don’t believe vegetarianism or omnivorism per se are gaurantees of good dietetics. Its what kind of vegetarian or omnivore you are in terms of
- the quality and variety of food
- the suitability of it to your needs (activity, metabolic and genetic), and
- the conviviality of your eating culture
Well. There’s certainly nothing like the zeal of the recently converted.
(To either side of this, or any other, issue.)
If the wee bit of detail you’ve given in your message is right, it sounds like you may have been a bad vegetarian, rather than that vegetarianism was bad for you. We do have to eat thoughtfully, regardless of the diet we choose, to be at our healthiest.
I’ve been vegetarian since age eighteen, and vegan for something like fifteen years, and I can bench-press about 400 pounds; my ex (with whom I’m still friends) has been vegan for longer, and she runs marathons and stuff – it’s crazy. Hardly sickly beings, we. But we exercise and strive for balance in our diets; it’s just as easy to be an unhealthy vegetarian or vegan as it is to be an unhealthy anything-else.
I don’t think I’ve met anyone over about age thirteen who’s chosen a vegetarian diet for the reasons you (otherwise rightly) knock. So if those were your reasons (Disney, etc.), and you didn’t strive to attain a balanced diet, well, of course you felt crappy. Both your rationale and your diet were inadequate.
Mostly, though, I think it’s important that we get enough beer.
enough beer, and yummy tender juicy meat. 
If you are what you eat, is a person who only eats herbivorous creatures a vegetarian?
How we’d of phrased your arguement in a biology class would not have been meat versus vegetables.
It would be phrased more like carbohydrates versus proteins and lipids and where the enzymes are that start their digestions.
If one doesn’t have the enzymes to digest carbohydrates, proteins, or lipids, things can slow down.
We don’t all generate equal amounts of the same enzymes. Genetics play a big part.
Fiber, fluids, and physical activity are also a large factor in food transit time.
Vegetarians are a complete pain in the arse as well as being misguided. Now 'scuse me as the weather’s nice and I have to thaw some burgers, ribeye steaks and l*mb chops for my barbie tonight (see? I can be sensitive you know!)
That’s what makes carnivores so great. All that carnal knowledge, eh?
djm
I do not have a real opinion one way or the other. But for health reasons I am going vegitarian… or rather, cutting out all red meat.
I do, hawever, have a fond memory of my good friend Davey White screaming at the top of his lungs with “… MY SPECIES DIDN’T RIP, HACK, CLAW AND TEAR IT’S WAY FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN TO THE TOP, JUST TO EAT PLANTS!!!”.
… ya’ gotta know Davey… and there are some of you out there who do.
I suppose if you eat too much buffalo…you’ll get buffaloed. And if you eat long meat…you’re life won’t be shortened. And if you eat mushrooms…you’ll be just swell. And if you live around twisters…you’ll become one.
BTW, many people believe mushrooms are a vegetarian food, but they’re not.
True. They are fungitarian.
I think there’s something to that…the more I think about it.