BookOfMirrors (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bookofmirrors) wrote2008-09-18 11:20 am
bookofmirrors) wrote2008-09-18 11:20 am
Debate!
I know this is the subject of some controversy among my friends, so I'm curious as to people's thoughts on this.
Are Humans Carnivores or Herbivores?
Comparative Anatomy
Many of the comments to the first article linked are very insightful... pay special attention to Erich Schwarz, who gives several links to research in this area (which I'm not going to bother to include here), and the comments of Joel D., farther down.
And these links:
Humans are Omnivores
Contrary Facts vs. Vegan Dogma
Then, of course, there's the better-for-the-environment argument:
Diet for a New America
These look like pretty good resources, as well, although they're a bit long, and I'm putting them here because they're relevant, and it'll be easier for me to find them later. :)
PaleoDiet
The Naive Vegetarian
A few of the articles, when talking about the relative health of eating vs. not eating meat make a reference to wheat and other carbs, but not in much depth (probably because it wasn't the scope of the article). Having finally gotten around to reading Sugar Blues, I can't help but think that this is also a huge factor in the problem with most diets. (If you haven't read it, the book is rather militant, but it makes some interesting points.)
As an obese woman, these things interest me. My original reason for becoming vegetarian was for health reasons. Y'know, fat/cholesterol (and mine is high, at least last I checked, years ago) OMG! I've been extremely intrigued by Raw Foods (and hadn't considered the raw meat option that's mentioned in some of the articles linked above), and was even intrigued when I heard of fruitarian diets. There's a certain sense in these things for me, in a form/function kinda way. Y'know, going back to absolute basics, before humans had the wherewithal to hunt, make fire for cooking, etc.. When eating just the fruit or leafy greens of plants ensured it would be there the next day to forage. Of course, there's that pesky problem with winter, if we hadn't figured out the deal with storage, or even the need for it. If it weren't for these sorts of things, I'm thinking only rainforests could sustain human life without those advances. So moving forward in that area was certainly necessary, and (if one of the articles I referenced is to be believed) actually helped us advance on an evolutionary scale.
So, if you're talking strictly health, and the all-natural thing, there's something to be said for the omnivore diet. There's a lot of conflicting data from (what appear to be biased) different sources as to whether humans need animal protein, the whole B-12 (how much? what kind?) controversy, blahblahblah. And I've been around long enough to know that the medical/nutritional community change their mind a lot. Years ago, eating a low-fat/cholesterol diet, heavy in pasta and rice was THE way to go. Now, not so much. *shrug*
There are certainly some underlying themes that seem to stand the test of time, though. Lots of veggies, lots of whole grains. Fruit is good, sugar is not. Meat, assuming it's recommended at all, in a much lower proportion to these things. Drink lots of water. That's a good place to start.
Then there's the animal thing. Animal cruelty. Animal exploitation. Animals as slaves. This is a HUGE spectrum. There's the militant vegans who won't use animal products of any kind (but, for instance, taking an antibiotic to kill a bacteria is apparently OK), to the slaughterhouses, to the hunters who kill their own. Personally, I think the ability to look your food in the eye and acknowledge its life before you take it for your own is much more admirable than what most of us (including myself) do by going to the grocery store, where we're removed from the process. There's something to be said for some of the deplorable conditions that our food animals are kept in before they're killed and shipped off to Kroger. I also suspect that these are the minority. Not having worked at or personally observed a large-scale farm, I can't say, but I would have to think that, to be able to do something like that on a large scale would cause one to distance one's self from the process, and see the animals as something less-than, and not worthy of regard. This does bother me. I don't think this is as much the case for a smaller scale farm, where there's some connection with the animal before it's (humanely) killed. There's also kosher, which I've read so much conflicting information on, it's hard to tell if this is better for the animal or not. Personally, I'm somewhat more concerned about the quality of the animal's life BEFORE the axe falls (so to speak). In this fast-paced world, with the meat-eating population we have, and the finite resources... is it even possible to have nothing but these types of ma-and-pa farms where the animals live idyllic Farmer-in-the-Dell existences before being thanked for their service and oh-so-gently led into that good night? Probably not. If fast food didn't exist? Maybe.
I have another perspective on the whole animal thing, what with the animal communication and all. There have been times when I've craved [insert meat item here], and I've simply communicated with the animal/species to see if they were OK with it. I've gotten some really interesting responses. I've connected to cows who were extremely proud, and were eager to see if I liked (the taste of) them. I've connected to animals who were kinda blase' about the whole process, in a what-do-I-care-that's-just-the-way-it-is kinda way. I've connected to animals and gotten a clear no. Chickens, in my experience, are angry about the way they're treated, and I've never gotten an OK from a chicken, even when it's been made clear that the chicken in question was ethically treated and killed. Most animal communicators I know are not vegetarian. My Power Animal is a carnivore, and for weeks after connecting with him, I would often find myself having the sensation of ripping flesh with my teeth, and craving red meat. It's my experience that, to vary degrees and in different situations, animals are pretty OK with being eaten. It certainly happens in the wild, after all. There have been times when I've gotten the clear impression that they were grateful for being acknowledged by me in the asking, and other times when it was clear they couldn't have cared less.
There are certain things I won't eat, period. Foie gras. Veal. When I shop, I go out of my way to buy free range eggs, or at least cage free. I buy meat that's (at least advertised as) been raised in a "happy" environment and killed humanely. I try to be conscious about the animal products I purchase. Even if I don't eat them (the Beastie does), I prefer to let my money talk in this way. Plus, if I do have one of my rare meat-craving moments, I would feel better knowing that what I eat had some honor in its life. That's important to me.
The environment thing isn't as personally compelling for me. I suppose it should be, but I'm still focused more on the issues above than I am on the environmental impact of raising cattle, the grain production it requires that humans could be eating, that sort of thing. There's probably something to be said for examining this. It's just not something I'm particularly interested in examining right NOW.
Here, I think, is the bottom line:
Consciousness.
This starts first and foremost with your own body. Pay attention to how your body feels when you eat - before, during, and after. If something doesn't make you feel good, energized, etc., you probably shouldn't be eating it. If it doesn't satiate you, you might want to reconsider (I'm thinking of white rice here, and other things that aren't made with whole grains) and find something that does. Are there things you eat from habit? Is it a comfort food? WHY are you eating to begin with? As an example, I literally feel fear if my stomach does not feel full. It took me years (and lots of therapy) to come to that realization, and I find it hard to break through that fear to just sit with the feeling of satiety, as opposed to just-shy-of-bursting. Other persons with weight issues like myself may find they have similar issues. Or completely different ones. The point is to feel, think, be aware.
Decide what's important to you. If how animals are treated in factory farming isn't something you really give a fuck about, there's no need to pretend it is. If you think all the arguments about the negative environmental impact of raising cattle are full of shit, then you certainly don't need to worry your pretty little head about it. If you don't care if your produce came from around the corner or around the world, don't worry about it. If you're curious, educate yourself, and then decide where it lies in your personal spectrum of importance, and ACT ACCORDINGLY. At least to the best of your ability. Money is tight for a lot of people, including myself, and choosing outside-the-norm foodstuffs can be expensive. I'm sooooo grateful I found the DeKalb Farmers Market, so I can afford to purchase based on my ethics. I haven't always been able to. Not everyone can. I might not be able to in the future. It's OK to not always be able to live the life you want to live. It's probably not as OK to settle. That applies, obviously, to way more than just one's food choices.
Do have some awareness. (We) Pagans talk about that a lot. I know it's not always a part of my minute-to-minute life. But acknowledging the Gift of our life, and that which sustains it, I don't think can ever be a bad thing. The Gifts of the Earth - in this context, the plants. The Gifts of the Lives we take to feed our own.
Thankfulness.
Are Humans Carnivores or Herbivores?
Comparative Anatomy
Many of the comments to the first article linked are very insightful... pay special attention to Erich Schwarz, who gives several links to research in this area (which I'm not going to bother to include here), and the comments of Joel D., farther down.
And these links:
Humans are Omnivores
Contrary Facts vs. Vegan Dogma
Then, of course, there's the better-for-the-environment argument:
Diet for a New America
These look like pretty good resources, as well, although they're a bit long, and I'm putting them here because they're relevant, and it'll be easier for me to find them later. :)
PaleoDiet
The Naive Vegetarian
A few of the articles, when talking about the relative health of eating vs. not eating meat make a reference to wheat and other carbs, but not in much depth (probably because it wasn't the scope of the article). Having finally gotten around to reading Sugar Blues, I can't help but think that this is also a huge factor in the problem with most diets. (If you haven't read it, the book is rather militant, but it makes some interesting points.)
As an obese woman, these things interest me. My original reason for becoming vegetarian was for health reasons. Y'know, fat/cholesterol (and mine is high, at least last I checked, years ago) OMG! I've been extremely intrigued by Raw Foods (and hadn't considered the raw meat option that's mentioned in some of the articles linked above), and was even intrigued when I heard of fruitarian diets. There's a certain sense in these things for me, in a form/function kinda way. Y'know, going back to absolute basics, before humans had the wherewithal to hunt, make fire for cooking, etc.. When eating just the fruit or leafy greens of plants ensured it would be there the next day to forage. Of course, there's that pesky problem with winter, if we hadn't figured out the deal with storage, or even the need for it. If it weren't for these sorts of things, I'm thinking only rainforests could sustain human life without those advances. So moving forward in that area was certainly necessary, and (if one of the articles I referenced is to be believed) actually helped us advance on an evolutionary scale.
So, if you're talking strictly health, and the all-natural thing, there's something to be said for the omnivore diet. There's a lot of conflicting data from (what appear to be biased) different sources as to whether humans need animal protein, the whole B-12 (how much? what kind?) controversy, blahblahblah. And I've been around long enough to know that the medical/nutritional community change their mind a lot. Years ago, eating a low-fat/cholesterol diet, heavy in pasta and rice was THE way to go. Now, not so much. *shrug*
There are certainly some underlying themes that seem to stand the test of time, though. Lots of veggies, lots of whole grains. Fruit is good, sugar is not. Meat, assuming it's recommended at all, in a much lower proportion to these things. Drink lots of water. That's a good place to start.
Then there's the animal thing. Animal cruelty. Animal exploitation. Animals as slaves. This is a HUGE spectrum. There's the militant vegans who won't use animal products of any kind (but, for instance, taking an antibiotic to kill a bacteria is apparently OK), to the slaughterhouses, to the hunters who kill their own. Personally, I think the ability to look your food in the eye and acknowledge its life before you take it for your own is much more admirable than what most of us (including myself) do by going to the grocery store, where we're removed from the process. There's something to be said for some of the deplorable conditions that our food animals are kept in before they're killed and shipped off to Kroger. I also suspect that these are the minority. Not having worked at or personally observed a large-scale farm, I can't say, but I would have to think that, to be able to do something like that on a large scale would cause one to distance one's self from the process, and see the animals as something less-than, and not worthy of regard. This does bother me. I don't think this is as much the case for a smaller scale farm, where there's some connection with the animal before it's (humanely) killed. There's also kosher, which I've read so much conflicting information on, it's hard to tell if this is better for the animal or not. Personally, I'm somewhat more concerned about the quality of the animal's life BEFORE the axe falls (so to speak). In this fast-paced world, with the meat-eating population we have, and the finite resources... is it even possible to have nothing but these types of ma-and-pa farms where the animals live idyllic Farmer-in-the-Dell existences before being thanked for their service and oh-so-gently led into that good night? Probably not. If fast food didn't exist? Maybe.
I have another perspective on the whole animal thing, what with the animal communication and all. There have been times when I've craved [insert meat item here], and I've simply communicated with the animal/species to see if they were OK with it. I've gotten some really interesting responses. I've connected to cows who were extremely proud, and were eager to see if I liked (the taste of) them. I've connected to animals who were kinda blase' about the whole process, in a what-do-I-care-that's-just-the-way-it-is kinda way. I've connected to animals and gotten a clear no. Chickens, in my experience, are angry about the way they're treated, and I've never gotten an OK from a chicken, even when it's been made clear that the chicken in question was ethically treated and killed. Most animal communicators I know are not vegetarian. My Power Animal is a carnivore, and for weeks after connecting with him, I would often find myself having the sensation of ripping flesh with my teeth, and craving red meat. It's my experience that, to vary degrees and in different situations, animals are pretty OK with being eaten. It certainly happens in the wild, after all. There have been times when I've gotten the clear impression that they were grateful for being acknowledged by me in the asking, and other times when it was clear they couldn't have cared less.
There are certain things I won't eat, period. Foie gras. Veal. When I shop, I go out of my way to buy free range eggs, or at least cage free. I buy meat that's (at least advertised as) been raised in a "happy" environment and killed humanely. I try to be conscious about the animal products I purchase. Even if I don't eat them (the Beastie does), I prefer to let my money talk in this way. Plus, if I do have one of my rare meat-craving moments, I would feel better knowing that what I eat had some honor in its life. That's important to me.
The environment thing isn't as personally compelling for me. I suppose it should be, but I'm still focused more on the issues above than I am on the environmental impact of raising cattle, the grain production it requires that humans could be eating, that sort of thing. There's probably something to be said for examining this. It's just not something I'm particularly interested in examining right NOW.
Here, I think, is the bottom line:
Consciousness.
This starts first and foremost with your own body. Pay attention to how your body feels when you eat - before, during, and after. If something doesn't make you feel good, energized, etc., you probably shouldn't be eating it. If it doesn't satiate you, you might want to reconsider (I'm thinking of white rice here, and other things that aren't made with whole grains) and find something that does. Are there things you eat from habit? Is it a comfort food? WHY are you eating to begin with? As an example, I literally feel fear if my stomach does not feel full. It took me years (and lots of therapy) to come to that realization, and I find it hard to break through that fear to just sit with the feeling of satiety, as opposed to just-shy-of-bursting. Other persons with weight issues like myself may find they have similar issues. Or completely different ones. The point is to feel, think, be aware.
Decide what's important to you. If how animals are treated in factory farming isn't something you really give a fuck about, there's no need to pretend it is. If you think all the arguments about the negative environmental impact of raising cattle are full of shit, then you certainly don't need to worry your pretty little head about it. If you don't care if your produce came from around the corner or around the world, don't worry about it. If you're curious, educate yourself, and then decide where it lies in your personal spectrum of importance, and ACT ACCORDINGLY. At least to the best of your ability. Money is tight for a lot of people, including myself, and choosing outside-the-norm foodstuffs can be expensive. I'm sooooo grateful I found the DeKalb Farmers Market, so I can afford to purchase based on my ethics. I haven't always been able to. Not everyone can. I might not be able to in the future. It's OK to not always be able to live the life you want to live. It's probably not as OK to settle. That applies, obviously, to way more than just one's food choices.
Do have some awareness. (We) Pagans talk about that a lot. I know it's not always a part of my minute-to-minute life. But acknowledging the Gift of our life, and that which sustains it, I don't think can ever be a bad thing. The Gifts of the Earth - in this context, the plants. The Gifts of the Lives we take to feed our own.
Thankfulness.
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I'm certainly an Omnivore...
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I do have a couple of questions for you. Why won't you eat foie gras? Will you eat lamb? With the exception of my wife who is an unusual case I've never understood eating lamb but not veal unless it's a texture thing. I understand some people just don't like the texture of veal.
Being in or near Atlanta I do believe you have one advantage I wish we had up here in north Alabama. I think yall have a Whole Foods down there. If we had one here I'd probably do all my shopping there.
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Veal, similar, although I've not looked into the practices of veal-raising. It might not be as bad as what I've heard anecdotally. I figured it's just better to err on the side of... I've got no problem with the taste and texture. I've eaten veal before.
I've not heard of any controversy on how lambs are treated. Maybe I haven't looked closely enough, but it doesn't hit my moral compass as hard. Might have to look into it. I lovelovelove the taste of lamb, though.
Very cool about the raising your own thing. I would have thought the cost evened out after a while, but I can see, thinking about it, where it wouldn't. But yeah... for you it's the taste, for me it would be that, but mostly knowing they were honored first. Plus the whole thing about knowing what went into them (chemicals, etc.) before you killed them.
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I've never seen geese or ducks being feed in order to make foie gras. I don't know whether it would stop me from at least trying it or not. Having read the page you posted above about it and some of the linking pages I'm sure it would depend how how it's handled. From what I gather it can be very cruel and traumatic or it can be gentle and non traumatic. I think if I were going to buy it I'd try to find it at a place like Whole Foods where they do pay attention to how the animals are treated.
The reason I asked about lamb is that most people who have a problem with veal can't deal with the idea of eating baby cow. It's amazing how few of them mind eating baby sheep though. Having grown up in a farming area where a lot of cattle are raised for milk and beef both my experience is that most cattle and calves are free range. They do tend to go into stalls at feeding time but that is about the only time. Can't speak for other areas though.
I grew up with raising a few cattle and the quality is just so much higher that I'm willing to pay for it. And as you said the cattle are respected because of it. In fact one of them will not ever go into the freezer because of that. My wife has a thing for cows so one of them will be her pet cow.
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I mean, clearly, even with as much thought as I've put into this, I fall into that category. Otherwise, I'd be thin. :)
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Check out Westin Price:
http://www.westonaprice.org/
And Sally Fallon's cookbook is fabulous:
http://www.newtrendspublishing.com/SallyFallon/index.html
Here's a great resource for fabulous raw dairy:
http://carltonfarm.com/
p.s. My spirit animal is wolf so I can relate to the predator sensations/drives. Other people see bunnies and squirrels and think *cute*. I see them and think *food!*
p.p.s. I think there is a huge difference between lamb and veal. Veal is butchered within a few weeks of birth (sometimes days). Lamb is still lamb until one year of age.
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But I live inland, so I eat what I can. Guilt trips will starve me, so pass the dead animal, whose place in the world is that sacred place right next to the potatoes.