Its official, PETA is full of idiots

[lawrocket 3]

The point is that it is natural for humans to eat meat, just like it is natural for humans to eat plant carcasses.

Our systems can handle both. I do not believe that obesity is linked to too much meat. I've seen some pretty fat pigeons in LA, and they aren't exactly getting fat off of carrion. Likewise, bears plump up rather nicely regardless of whether they are eating plant or animal.

Perhaps our obesity problems are not so much related to what we eat, but the fact that food is readily available and we have to do practically nothing to get it.

Furthermore, I wonder if PETA has problems with grains and other foodstuffs that are protected by the wholesale slaughter of rodents. Millions of mice and rats, as well as birds and other insects, die slow and painful deaths from idustrial rodenticides designed to make them slowly dehydrate and bleed to death internally.

On top of that, natures little creatures a systematically maimed, killed and tortured via farm equipment used to feed the voracious appetites of our vegetable-loving society.

Those who eat vegetables contribute to this wholesale genocide, and there is no reason why we should not declare war on those who finance this barbarism.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[peregrinerose 0]

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Well, eating a cooked steak with a knife and fork (and chewing it!) is pretty far from anything a lion does. As a better comparison to a carnivore, take a raw side of beef and try to take a bite out of it - then swallow without chewing.

Apparently you've never seen how I eat my steak. Luke warm, as in body temperature. Nothing truly cooked about it

Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

[SpeedRacer 1]

well actually bill, we are further into the carnivore spectrum than our closest living relatives (chimps and gorillas) and they are omnivores, (although their physiology leans more heavily into the herbivore spectrum).

Our ancestors from 3 million years back were australophithecines. and we seem to have descended from the more carnivorous Australopithecus africanus, rather than the more herbivorous A. robustus which lived at about the same time.

The rapid increase in brain size that followed happened because we were going after a food source that moves. Carnivores often have more highly developed brains than herbivores.
The first pebble choppers, attributed to Homo habilis, were probably used to break open bones to extract the protein&fat-rich bone marrow.

Our obesity problem is from living a sedentary lifestyle, mostly. There have been many populations that lived on meat primarily, and didn't start getting fat until they adopted the modern car-based lifestyle, and the modern diet with all its refined sugar & processed flour, etc.

We are omnivores. Humans are very flexible in terms of what kind of diet they can live on. Otherwise there wouldn't be all this controversy.

Meat is an important part of our diet, and an important part of why we evolved as we did, but - meat is a concentrated food source, so you don't need to (and shouldn't) eat a lot of it in order to gain its benefits. The bulk of your calories should probably come from plant sources.
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Speed Racer
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[AggieDave 6]

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Humans have problems too if they eat too much meat and fat.

And they have health problems if they eat no meat and fat.

It comes down to finding balance. Balance includes meat, the proteins, fats and amino acid chains are essental to healthy living.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[billvon 2,426]

> The point is that it is natural for humans to eat meat, just like
>it is natural for humans to eat plant carcasses.

Well, it's about as natural as it is for us to drink alcohol - which is to say, we can't get it from nature, and it screws us up if we use too much of it, but our bodies can deal with it in small amounts. Same with cooked meat.

>I do not believe that obesity is linked to too much meat.

Meat and animal fat are very high in caloric value, so they're more of a problem than, say, fruit. Also, the sort of fats you get from animals tends to lead to athersclerosis and heart disease.

>I've seen some pretty fat pigeons in LA . . .

Sure, you can get fat from eating a lot of things - and for many animals, getting fat is an evolutionary way to deal with times of scarcity. (It would work for us, too, if there _were_ any times of scarcity.)

>Furthermore, I wonder if PETA has problems with . . . .

You don't need to say any more. Any question that starts with that, the answer is generally yes. They're a bunch of nuts.

[AggieDave 6]

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They're a bunch of nuts.

Fruits and nuts, crazy folks...*insert stereotype california joke here*

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[billvon 2,426]

>And they have health problems if they eat no meat and fat.

That is, of course, possible. But if you are going to go for exclusively one or the other, you're going to live a lot longer on the vegetarian side of things than on the meat side of things.

>It comes down to finding balance.

I agree with you there.

[AggieDave 6]

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>It comes down to finding balance.

I agree with you there.

Exactly. That's why I'm against the low-carb bullshit and I'm against the vegitarian bullshit. You need balance, just like with every thing in your life.

That is one of the best lessons I took from my years of martial arts training: balance in all things is needed for happiness.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Unstable 8]

You know, beyond the health concerns, I've often found it almost offensive at the lengths that PETA will go to convice people that ethically, a fish, cow, chicken has the same rights as a human being. Pardon me for sounding cocky, but I think that my life is worth a little more than that of an animal's. Peta will not convince me otherwise.....

This post was edited for spelling...

=========Shaun ==========

[Rebecca 0]

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Well, eating a cooked steak with a knife and fork (and chewing it!) is pretty far from anything a lion does.

You haven't seen the way I eat my steak...

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As a better comparison to a carnivore, take a raw side of beef and try to take a bite out of it - then swallow without chewing.

Oh, wait, maybe you have! My order is always med-rare, heavy on the rare (I like blood on my plate!) And I don't always follow the fork and knife rule, either!

So, what you're saying is that even though we have teeth which - can - tear and grind, and even though red meat provides iron, B vitamins, etc. that are good for me in moderation (not disputing that a red-meat-heavy diet is bad for you), and even though it tastes like heaven to me and a whole bunch of other humans, we're just carnivorous because we can be, not because we're supposed to be?

I understand your intellectual reasoning, but I don't entirely get your point. And just to be clear, my point is NOT that we're strictly carnivores (obviously), just that eating meat is healthier than not eating it.

you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' -- well do you, punk?

[lawrocket 3]

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>I do not believe that obesity is linked to too much meat.

Meat and animal fat are very high in caloric value, so they're more of a problem than, say, fruit. Also, the sort of fats you get from animals tends to lead to athersclerosis and heart disease.

So is breast milk, which is loaded with fat and protein. It turns out, high caloric values are necessary for babies growing up. It also turns out that, during youth, high fat diets are extraordinarily helpful in terms of brain development (the development of nerves and myelin is linked to the amount of fat).

From the outset, our system is set up to deal with high fat and protein.

I'll put it this way - why do people like fatty and high protein foods? Because they taste good. Same with sugar - it tastes good.

It is an evolutionary accident that the foods highest in calories and nutrition are typically the ones that taste best? Or have we adapted our tastes to make us crave that which our bodies tell us provides the best benefit?

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[PhillyKev 0]

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Humans have problems too if they eat too much meat and fat.

Yeah, they lose the ability to keep their balance on icy sidewalks

[billvon 2,426]

>So, what you're saying is that even though we have teeth which -
>can - tear and grind . . .

That's what herbivores do. Carnivores use their teeth to kill and then to pull apart a carcass, not to grind anything. They tend to swallow meat whole and digest it in a very low pH stomach (i.e. their stomach's acid takes the place of mechanical digestion.) We don't have a very low pH stomach so we have to chew a lot.

>and even though it tastes like heaven to me and a whole bunch of other
> humans . ..

What you think tastes good and what you like are not necessarily signs of what works well for you. Lots of people like the taste of Twinkies; many people like cocaine (which, ironically, is a lot more natural than a Twinkie.) But that doesn't mean we are supposed to eat twinkies or do cocaine.

>we're just carnivorous because we can be, not because we're supposed to be?

We're omnivorous because we _can_ digest meat, and we have drives from eons ago that told us "eat a lot to prepare for winter." Nowadays, those drives can kill us - and will kill us a lot faster if we go the eat a lot of meat route than the eat a lot of fruit route. Why? Because we are primarily evolved to eat vegetables, and we have better systems in place to deal with the results of eating them than eating meat. Any good diet is primarily vegetable/fruit for that reason.

I don't know if that means we're "supposed" to eat vegetables (or meat). We are (per evolution) "supposed" to have as many kids as possible and die around age 50; most people don't do that any more either.

>I understand your intellectual reasoning, but I don't entirely get your
> point. And just to be clear, my point is NOT that we're strictly carnivores
>(obviously), just that eating meat is healthier than not eating it.

For most americans, their diets would be greatly improved if they did not eat meat, or drastically cut back on it. For someone careful about their diet. a small amount of meat can be an important part of it.

It's like anything else. Some research has shown that a glass of red wine a day can help prevent heart disease. Someone who binge drinks every day is going to do themselcves far more harm than good, though - even if they think that drinking protects them from heart disease. And if they drink a lot partly because they think they are protecting themselves from something, that drinking is good and healthy and 'natural' - that bit of info did them a lot more harm than good.

I get worried when I hear people say things like "we're designed to eat meat; we're carnivores!" because that sounds like the first step in a progression to "so we should eat like carnivores" because such a diet would kill you pretty quickly. We're basically herbivores with some recent omnivore adaptations that allow us to digest some cooked meats; eating that way is the best way to keep yourself healthy for a long time.

[billvon 2,426]

>high caloric values are necessary for babies growing up.

No argument there. Children have different dietary requirements than adults, and that includes mother's milk (which _is_ designed by evolution to provide what kids need.) BTW side note - a recent study showed that mother's milk leads to far fewer cases of asthma and allergies than the use of dairy based formula during the first year.

>Or have we adapted our tastes to make us crave that which our bodies
>tell us provides the best benefit?

Our tastes evolved during a time when starvation was a big killer. That's why obesity is such a big problem - there are no scarcities in most places any more. What you eat to bulk up for the winter is not the same as what you should eat to keep you healthy for a long time. (And if you _did_ have a drive to eat all vegetables, you wouldn't gain much weight and would die when winter rolled around - which is why we don't have such tastes.)

[Zenister 0]

there really is only one answer.... its amazing that some people dont seem to get it..

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Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on.....

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[ianmdrennan 2]

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Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on.....

Tool rules.

Performance Designs Factory Team

[kelpdiver 2]

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Thus we end up as partially adapted omnivores, with most of our herbivore equipment still intact. In some ways this is a good thing, since we can eat almost anything, and it's a lot easier for an herbivore to eat meat than the other way around. In some ways this is bad, since our digestive systems are not set up for a diet heavy in meat and fat - that's one reason we have such a problem with obesity and heart disease. It's also a reason it's easy for food to make us sick, since we do not have the incredibly low pH (i.e. acidic) stomachs of carnivores/carrion eaters.

Going back on our evolutionary tendencies- wild game meat then (or now) is much leaner than the feed lot beef we buy today. We're mostly eating franken meat now, though thankfully in many regions like SF you now have a lot of free range meat options available.

[Kennedy 0]

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there really is only one answer.... its amazing that some people dont seem to get it..

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Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on.....

That should be followed by the ultimate warning sticker:

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Life causes death, and sometimes cancer.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[Ripple 0]

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Ripple, you thought you were being pedantic?

Teehee!

Next Mood Swing: 6 minutes

[pajarito 0]

Cooking Crabs

[markd_nscr986 0]

OMG

That's too much

Marc SCR 6046 SCS 3004

[Casurf1978 0]

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OMG

That's too much

OMG

This would be perfect for one of those Carls Jr commercials where they say "If it wasnt for us some guys would starve." The dog is hilarious too.

[dorbie 0]

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>My point was simply that we have canine teeth and molars and I can tear
> through a filet minon like a lioness eating a baby giraffe . . .

Well, eating a cooked steak with a knife and fork (and chewing it!) is pretty far from anything a lion does. As a better comparison to a carnivore, take a raw side of beef and try to take a bite out of it - then swallow without chewing.

You don't cook a fillet mignon. You show it the grill then eat it.
We might even be evolved to eat cooked meat, we've been doing it for so many generations that it's not unlikely some selection has taken place. It helps kills bacteria (although I saw a guy on TV recently who deliberately ate tainted meat and learned to from some tribe in the jungle).

Another engineer I know was a vegetarian for his whole life. He started to think that maybe there was something missing from his diet, he was having problems focusing mentally etc. That's really not the point of my story though. We were out having a meal and we both ordered a stake, I got mine rare and could only convince him to get his medium rare. I got this thing and it was the best stake I'd ever tasted and so I asked him to try it. We ended up swapping plates so the guy went from vegetarian to eating and enjoying raw meat pretty darned quickly.

On the table manners side the most surprising nature video I saw was Chimps hunting and eating a spider monkey. When they caught the little guy they ripped it limb from limb and chewed the meat off the bones. Don't know how we're supposed to eat meat naturally but not so long ago western societies didn't have forks, just knives and we've had cutting and hunting implements for a *long* time.

[dorbie 0]

Yep they're nuts but then I consider the tradition in some places of cutting up then deep frying live fish with a wet towel around the head and serving it fried but alive to the customers just to prove it was fresh. That seems pretty sick to me.

[EBSB52 0]

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Fish probably do feel pain, just may not have as much self awareness as people do. Fish may be smart, pigs are smarter. And I still eat bacon. That won't change any time soon. Their whole arguement is just plain silly. People are omnivores, it is that whole circle of life thing. If they are against eating meat, maybe they should try convincing lions that a vegetarian diet is more ethical too.

Jen

People are omnivores, ...

I thought that until I tried to eat raw hamburger like dogs and cats can. I think it's safe to believe, based upon our digestive systems from our teeth to our intestines that we are primary herbivoires. Maybe eat fish raw, but red meat and pork... naw....we die.