Vegetarianism - Where do you Draw the Line?

[Felasco]

I've been a vegetarian for 40 years. By examining the compelling documented evidence in the photo linked below, you can clearly see that there are no adverse health effects at all.

http://florida.nature-talk.com/images/IMG_0044.jpg

[duszek]

I am a nearly vegetarian and I feel all right.

One needs to find out what foods one can process well.
A vata-type needs something hot and filling the stomach.
I have started a chili-experiment. I warms up and makes one awake. The warm-up has the effect that your body is not yelling for food = sugar input now.

A nice alternative to coffee and you need only tiny amounts of it.

You can add it to any dish (porridge or soup or whatever) and to tea and to hot water. It is like magic.

[Skip]

the doc: Animals eat raw vegetables, people eat cooked meat and vegetables, that is what makes us human.

I've never wondered what makes us human (fire, apparently) but have often wondered what makes some of us keep asking what makes us human, as if they were insecure in their taxonomy. So then, what are these people?http://rawfoodlife.com/#axzz2js9I8G52

None of this is about the OP.

[thedoc]

the doc: Animals eat raw vegetables, people eat cooked meat and vegetables, that is what makes us human.

I've never wondered what makes us human (fire, apparently) but have often wondered what makes some of us keep asking what makes us human, as if they were insecure in their taxonomy. So then, what are these people?http://rawfoodlife.com/#axzz2js9I8G52

None of this is about the OP.

A part of the transcript of a PBS Nova program "Can I Eat That?"


"DAVID POGUE: Now that I know a thing or two about how to cook, it makes me wonder why do we even cook at all?

Throughout history, man has sat around a fire, cooking and eating, but we humans are the only animals that eat cooked food. Surely there is a good reason for it.

RICHARD WRANGHAM: Cooked food gives you enormously more energy, and so for a certain amount of food, you get many more calories.

DAVID POGUE: Richard Wrangham is a primatologist in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. He thinks that cooking was essential to human evolution. He says cooked food is easier to digest, and so, humans evolved to use their food more efficiently. This is the skeleton of an ape, and he is comparing our anatomy with our ape cousins.

RICHARD WRANGHAM: The typical ape has got this very broad rib cage going right out there and flaring out, foreshadowing the fact that it's carrying a big gut down here.

DAVID POGUE: You're not talking about a potbelly, you're talking about…?

RICHARD WRANGHAM: We're talking about the small intestine, the large intestine, all of the stuff that is actually responsible for the digestion.

DAVID POGUE: So the simple invention of cooking produced these enormous changes in our skeletons.

RICHARD WRANGHAM: Yeah. It paid us, once we ate cooked food, to get rid of all of this gut, because that's expensive. So it's efficient to get rid of that.

DAVID POGUE: How can cooking change who we are? Understanding that and how we get energy out of our food is what Stephen Secor studies.

STEPHEN SECOR: They have the potential for killing you, simply from constriction around the neck.

DAVID POGUE: Secor, a biologist at the University of Alabama, works with a creepy, crawly, dangerous array of animals.

STEPHEN SECOR: You need to back up.

DAVID POGUE: He is trying to understand how all animals get the energy they need from what they eat.

Check out how a python chows down.

Here I am. Here snakey, snakey, snakey.

In the case of these guys, the food is very raw. These rats come frozen as snake food.

STEPHEN SECOR: Okay, there we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. There we go.

DAVID POGUE: One of Secor's favorite animals to study is the Burmese python.

It's suppertime.

STEPHEN SECOR: It is.

DAVID POGUE: Down the hatch in one big bite!

Pythons can eat more than a quarter of their body weight at one sitting.

How is the digestive system different from ours?

STEPHEN SECOR: Most of their digestion is identical to ours. It's just all very long and slender.

DAVID POGUE: A python is basically one long gut, so to see inside, we take one to a nearby veterinarian's office for an x-ray.

Hey, look, snakes welcome!

TECHNICIAN: Ready?

STEPHEN SECOR: Yep, yep.

DAVID POGUE: Wow, you see the rat in there!

STEPHEN SECOR: Ah, it's perfect.

DAVID POGUE: Sure enough, there it is: the python's dinner.

STEPHEN SECOR: The head of the rat is in the pit of the python's stomach, and the stomach extends back, and from this point on, that's esophagus.

DAVID POGUE: Inside the stomach, acids break down the rat, bones, blood and all.

Secor x-rayed the python over two weeks. Bit by bit, the rat disappears, and all but the hair is absorbed by the python.

Understanding where the disappearing rat goes can help us understand how our food nourishes us, minus the bones and fur, of course.

To make this point, Secor says, it's useful to compare the rat with a cupcake. After all, to a python, a rat is basically a triple-layer German chocolate cake.

STEPHEN SECOR: Here we have the cupcake and the rat. Both of these have energy stored in them.

DAVID POGUE: Now, even though we don't find these two treats equally appetizing, from the point of view of digestion, what they have in common is that they both are full of potential energy, or calories.

To understand what kind of difference cooking can make to your food, you need to first understand a calorie.

STEPHEN SECOR: Calories represent the amount of fuel that's present with either one of these food items.

DAVID POGUE: Calories are a way of measuring the energy in food, energy your body or a python needs to function.

Think of this cupcake as fuel, like a log on a fire. If we burn it, that fuel will increase the heat of the fire. A calorie is way to represent that increase.

Let's burn the cupcake.

STEPHEN SECOR: Okay.

DAVID POGUE: So it is actually burning…

STEPHEN SECOR: Yes.

DAVID POGUE: …like a charcoal briquette or something.

STEPHEN SECOR: Yes, like a, like a log.

DAVID POGUE: Burning the cupcake like this, in the open air, it's impossible to measure the heat it gives off, so Secor shows me the right way to do it, using a machine called a bomb calorimeter.

Items put in the bomb calorimeter must first be dehydrated, since water doesn't burn. Luckily, Secor is prepared for that.

STEPHEN SECOR: This is a dried rat that has been ground up…all the water out of it…kind of mix it all up and then formed a pellet.

DAVID POGUE: All right, well, bring on the bomb calorimeter.

A portion of the dried rat goes into the bomb calorimeter, where it's burned in a special tank, sensitive enough to measure the heat, or calories, in the rat.

We do the same thing with our pink cupcake: dehydrate it, grind it up, make a pellet and, as the grad students like to say, "bomb it."

Okay, professor. A nation of eaters awaits the results.

The bomb calorimeter says that seven ounces of cupcake has twice as many calories as seven ounces of rat: impressive and disgusting.

Now, let's take it one step further. Those calories come from the basic elements of eating: proteins, carbohydrates, which are simple sugars, and fats. Secor has calculated the percentage of each in our cupcake and rat.

No matter what we eat, whether it be a cupcake or a rat, those are the things your body is going to extract?

STEPHEN SECOR: That's right, and how they differ and how all meals differ is the relative proportion of each of these elements.

DAVID POGUE: What's amazing is the quantity of sugar in this thing. It's almost the entire cupcake by volume. And you know the fat is quite a, quite a dollop, too. And over here we have so much protein and far less sugar and fat. The rat looks like it would be healthier lunch than the cupcake.

STEPHEN SECOR: Right.

DAVID POGUE: Fat, sugar and protein give me the energy to fuel my activity, and Secor can see how much I need by measuring my oxygen use.

It turns out that the act of digesting a meal takes energy, too, like that big plate of barbequed ribs. Even as I lie here, my body is working to break down that dinner.

And that energy I burn digesting takes away from all the fuel in the food. Some of the calories are always lost in the process, and that is where cooking comes in. Cooking made digesting easier.

RICHARD WRANGHAM: When food is cooked, our body doesn't have to work as hard to digest it.

DAVID POGUE: Wrangham says that cooked food gave humans extra energy, compared to their primate relatives.

RICHARD WRANGHAM: And where are we putting it? Here is one big place. This brain is about three to four times the size of this brain.

DAVID POGUE: The human brain requires approximately half a cup of sugars a day to function. That's a lot of calories.

So it was our brain, the largest, proportionally, of any primate, that Wrangham believes benefited most from a nice cooked meal.

It seems we humans have always figured out clever ways to fill up with less effort!"

It seems that not everyone believes raw is the way to go.

[Skip]

So... um... the people who like raw vegetables are really not human, but... gorillas? snakes? That's cold!
But at least they're not 60lb overweight and diabetic.

[duszek]

Sometimes raw is better and sometimes cooked is better.

Depending on your digestive fire (agni in ayurveda) for example.

When you feel like eating something raw then this is probably what your body needs at this particular time.
Enzymes, vitamines and other elements.
Some apples, especially now, are so juicy and ripe that eating them is not an act of adhering to an ideology. It is following a healthy instinct of self-preservation.

On other occasions you may feel like eating cooked veggies with a hot spice.
And after that you sink contentedly on the mat and feel at peace.

It has been a week now since I started an amazing experiment with chili (Cayenne and Bird´s Eye).
I observe positive changes for the better.

[HexHammer]

I'll make this short.

Hitler was vegetarian.

[duszek]

I'll make this short.

Hitler was vegetarian.

But what is this statement supposed to mean ?
What´s the underlying argument ?

That vegetarianism turns people into monsters and psychopaths ?

Vegetarianism creates a special personality type.
Hitler was a vegetarian.
Therefore vegetarianism creates Hitler-like personality-types ?

[thedoc]

I'll make this short.

Hitler was vegetarian.

Hitler was mad, (both at the world and insane), does that make vegetarians crazy?

[thedoc]

So... um... the people who like raw vegetables are really not human, but... gorillas? snakes? That's cold!
But at least they're not 60lb overweight and diabetic.

The program was relating cooked food, and it's benefits, to early human hunter gatherers, today the activities have changed. for the early humans calories meant survival, now people consume calories and don't use them so they store them as fat.

[HexHammer]

@ thedoc and

I'll make this short.

Hitler was vegetarian.

But what is this statement supposed to mean ?
What´s the underlying argument ?

That vegetarianism turns people into monsters and psychopaths ?

Vegetarianism creates a special personality type.
Hitler was a vegetarian.
Therefore vegetarianism creates Hitler-like personality-types ?

I find it as an weird thing when people turn into vegitarians, just because they pity animals, each day thousands of animals end up as roadkills, beaing eaten alive by other animals, it's an irrelevant factor to change self because of a natural occurance? We have eaten animals for over 150,000 years! Now in modern times we get all hysterical about it!

[QMan]

@ thedoc and

I'll make this short.

Hitler was vegetarian.

But what is this statement supposed to mean ?
What´s the underlying argument ?

That vegetarianism turns people into monsters and psychopaths ?

Vegetarianism creates a special personality type.
Hitler was a vegetarian.
Therefore vegetarianism creates Hitler-like personality-types ?

I find it as an weird thing when people turn into vegitarians, just because they pity animals, each day thousands of animals end up as roadkills, beaing eaten alive by other animals, it's an irrelevant factor to change self because of a natural occurance? We have eaten animals for over 150,000 years! Now in modern times we get all hysterical about it!

That is not the point here. Please review the references I provided in an earlier append. They outline the tremendous health benefits obtained when eating vegetarian/vegan. Just look at former President Clinton, why do you think he turned vegan after his quadruple bypass? Your quality of life would simply improve significantly and you can avoid and even reverse a whole slew of the modern day diseases we get.

[HexHammer]

That is not the point here. Please review the references I provided in an earlier append. They outline the tremendous health benefits obtained when eating vegetarian/vegan. Just look at former President Clinton, why do you think he turned vegan after his quadruple bypass? Your quality of life would simply improve significantly and you can avoid and even reverse a whole slew of the modern day diseases we get.

No, only if you overdo eating meat, then it's a problem for your health, therefore the Clinton example is a poor example, there are lots of meat eaters who live a good and healthy life.

You don't put things into the right context, and blow things out of proportion.

[QMan]

I am not an expert on health or nutrition. I am merely passing along significant information via the references. I also passed along my family's and friend's personal experience after we adopted the strategy outlined in "Forks over Knifes". It was simply amazing and worked like clockwork. Within 3 to 6 months all our health statistics were perfect and our physicians took us off their endangered species list. In the meantime we see other people suffer because they cannot change and we just shake our head in disbelief. You can elect not to go cold turkey (I call myself a cheat'n vegan) but you still derive significant benefits.

[Skip]

I'll make this short.

Hitler was vegetarian.

But what is this statement supposed to mean ?
What´s the underlying argument ?

The usual underlying argument is: "I have nothing useful to contribute, but disapprove of the topic - or, more probably, feel threatened by it. Whatever I disapprove of, and even more, whatever I feel threatens one of my vested interests or unquestioned icons can be equated to something very bad through association."
(The same thing can be, but rarely is, done to make a positive association.)

Hitler wanted to be healthy, and so does Dr. Oz. Trotsky wore round spectacles, and so did Teddy Roosevelt. General Grant and Sigmund Freud both had beards. Ayn Rand and Salvador Dali both smoked. Prince Charles and Genghis Khan rode horses.

Of course, HexHammer might not be making the usual argument. Maybe he has something to say that actually addresses the OP - something about Hitler's ethics, maybe, and where he drew the line.

Or maybe not.

I find it as an weird thing when people turn into vegitarians, just because they pity animals, each day thousands of animals end up as roadkills, beaing eaten alive by other animals, it's an irrelevant factor to change self because of a natural occurance? We have eaten animals for over 150,000 years! Now in modern times we get all hysterical about it!

Aside from the spelling, he has trouble with people thinking about what they eat, how their food is procured, why they make the decisions they make and how those decisions affect them and their environment.
Cavemen didn't think about it, they just ate anything they could outrun... therefore, thinking about food is hysteria.
(Which is very bad news for gourmet cooks and nutritionists.)