Vegetarian

[BatesMotel]

How many of you are vegetarian's? And if you are, did you switch your diet to that because of martial arts?

Kathy

[Mr. Bao]

Being a vegetarian is good for monks or spiritual minded people who aren't interested in mudane things. I am not kind of spiritualist nor believe it's moral wrong to eat meat like a tiger doesn't question his feeding habits.

We human beings have teeth designed by nature or god to eat meats and vegs. I eat both with much great pleasure and thank god or nature for those simple things.

[David]

Mr Bao, I take issue with you logic! What we were given primariily by God was adaptability. Adaptability in having a learning and discerning mind and adaptability in having a non-specific physiology.

There is NOTHING in our makeup which makes it clear that we should eat meat - only that we can. Meat-processing teeth and enzymes are just tools for us to use when we need them.

BateMotel, I turned vegan partly as a result of training ie it came about partly because of the way training makes me think about myself and the world at large. Later I found that the UK's senior instructor in my style had been vegan for many years which, obviously, I found reassuring.

What brought the question up?

-David

[Repulsive Monkey]

I moved from vegetarianism to meat eating when I found that it elavated my level of health through blood deficiency, and I have never felt better. If the abstaining from meat is for religious or spiritual purposes thaen so be it, but even from a Chinese Medicine point of view, for one's health it reallycan be a good idea to include some kind of meat in your diet especially as a martial artist.
This is my own view and opinion, and also that of TCM so please feel free to ignore it if it doesn't apply to you.

[Mr. Bao]

David:

Greetings. I hope you didn't get me wrong. I am not telling people what I think God meant for humanity to eat? Because I don't know god personally and never met the old man. My point was that we have teeth which can process both meats and vegs. I personally eat both meats and vegs.

But you say: "There is NOTHING in our makeup which makes it clear that we should eat meat - only that we can. Meat-processing teeth and enzymes are just tools for us to use when we need them."

Can we argue the same for vegs. too accordingly? What does our make ups tell us then? If you want to purly eat Vegs only, that is your own choice.

[Laughing Cow]

I would say go with what your Body demands.

Some people will need certain foods more than others.
I also think that your lifestyle will have an influence on your diet.

A person that is day-in & day-out physically more active than your average Desk pusher will need a different diet.

Personally, I think we have both so that we can survive hard times.
During the ice-age Fruits and Vegetables were at a minimum and humans needed to rely more on meat for sustance.

Cut either out completely and you might deprive your Body of nutrients it might need to reach optimum health.

Just my thoughts naturally.

[prana]

my 2 cents:

I think human beings can and are made to consume meat. On the other hand, I also think that human beings are consuming too much more than their fair share of meat. I am not 100% sure of this, but I think in the old days, when people hunted and came home, they would share the catch between family. However, most of their food consisted mainly of grains, vegetables and fruits.

Today, we are consuming too much meat. More so that we ever. Our omnivorous colon is not as "straight" as those of a carnivore and will require much more fibre to help flow.

From the perspective of spirituality, again humans are eating too much meat. Taking into perspective, if humans killed their own catch by hand and slaughtered it for food, I think many would become vegetarian and those that wont, will reduce the consumption of meat. There will be a few of course, who will find slaughtering does not hurt them, hence will have more meat.

I think eating meat can be a spiritual act, but one that requires a great deal of samadhi (single pointed concentration). As taking of meat, one bears also some of the karmic debts of the deceased, and carries it with him/her. Especially the ones that did the slaughtering. However, if one is a good person, and kills only to provide as food, and not prone to overeating of meat (or any food for the matter) this could also be considered neutral.

Since the level of samadhi is extremely high for those dedicated onthe spiritual path, it might be worthy of abstaining from eating of meat, in fact, the Lankavatrata sutta was added with this as a precept (if I remember correctly). THe historical Buddha DID say that we should respect and follow the precepts layed out by his disciples as precepts to be followed. Hence those who follow the lankavatara sutta, those of the Hinayana and Mahayana paths, should abstain from eating meat as the rules layed out.

For the layperson, who hasnt got much regard for meditative spirituality, it might be worth just eating "enough" and not worry about it too much. I think that would be better for the benefit for all beings.

Of course these are my opinions and it is based strongly on Buddhism, and are only my 2 cents worth. But this be a can of worms so I leave it at that
:eek:

[StarBoy]

I'm kind of a vegetarian...not really by choice. I'm a poor-ass grad student and can't afford meat. :p

Seriously though, I eat meat. I don't often red meat often (a burger once in a long while, or venison whenever I can get my hands on some), I get plenty of iron elsewhere (and I think that's pretty much the only boon of specifically red meat, right?), but I eat a decent amount of white meat and fish.

The whole "our jaw was designed for this or that" is kinda iffy. It's really personal choice/belief on that one. As for the colon/intestine/appendix deal, I agree only as it applies to red meat, but not so much with lean meats like chicken or fish. It takes quite a while to push all the waste from red meats through. Not to say you shouldn't eat red meat (I'll never stop), but a small amount now and again isn't such a bad thing.

However, the most compelling debate is the taste of venison or burgers from Shady Glen (greatest burger joint under the sun). 'Nuff said. :D

Man, I'm getting hungry...

[SevenStar]

There's speculation that meat consumption is what was responsible for the change in the size of our brains.

[TkdWarrior]

well i m vegetarion due to 2 reason.
culture
habbitat...
in India mostly ppl r vegs because of these two reasons...
Meat in our terms r considered Hot food item which is not good for Warm places like india they normally gel with our climate
the consumption of Meat is more in Winter time due to very same reason, but those ppl who eat doesn't care much(much like my aunt's family they eat it daily)

kathy i m just intrested what brought this question??
-TkdWarrior-

[Cheese Dog]

Well Kathy, I tried vegatarianism in the past, for a couple of months. It didn't work for me at all, I was tired, weak, lost muscle, lacked energy, and couldn't lose fat. However, I know a few people who are healthy and happy on a veg diet. So I beleive it is a matter of individual metabolism.

If you are interested, you should read "Eat Right for your Type" by Dr. Peter D'Adamo. It explains how different bloodtypes are differant body chemistries and need different diets. IMO, he makes a lot of sense.

[David]

Mr Bao, good come-back! I answered you incompletely. There is medical evidence that eating meat as a staple is terminal. Most cancers only happen to meat-eaters.

Sevenstar, you're probably right: vegetarian neanderthals probably did have larger brains than us omnivorous cro-magnon 'fighting monkeys' ;)

Cheesedog, I had exactly the same experience as you when I first tried vegetarianism (not veganism). After 2 months I was so depressed and weak that I gave up and perked up. Because now I'm fine as a vegan, I think the metabolism is irrelevant - the problem I had was that I didn't then know how to be vegetarian. The only eating ideas I had were what I couldn't eat. Now, it's different. I know how to shop, cook and eat vegan and I know what I need and everything's cool.

I heard the blood-types diet has been discredited. I looked into it and then left it alone for that reason.

As various people have mentioned, in our natural state dietary selection is dependant on environmental conditions. That does not signify that eating in accordance with our environment is healthy it's just expedient, a manifestation of our adaptability. There are health/availability circumstances under which I would eat meat rather than be sick.

I've said it before, veganism is the Diet of the Future. Our level of understanding of nutrition and dietary health has more or less proven that veganism is the only way to go. Every other option has health drawbacks.

Just going vegetarian is one big step for man and one small step for mankind.

Where's BatesMotel?

-David

[Ish]

what health drawbacks would there be for eating as a vegan but also having chicken a few times a week?

[TkdWarrior]

The only eating ideas I had were what I couldn't eat. Now, it's different. I know how to shop, cook and eat vegan and I know what I need and everything's cool.
ok anyone having problems with eating ideas in vegeterians
then i should say "Look for Indian food"
need ideas? just give me a Ring


what health drawbacks would there be for eating as a vegan but also having chicken a few times a week?
well hav a go once a while but eating few times would be almost being like Non Veggies :)
i eat Non Veg just for change of taste.
-TkdWarrior-

[Laughing Cow]

I ocassionally used to eat at a purely vegetarian restaurant.

They even served steaks and Burgers that tastes like the real thing.

Yummy.

[StarBoy]

Most cancers only happen to meat-eaters.

I can tell you for a fact, this isn't true. The only cancer this applies to is colon or intenstinal cancer (mainly to red meat eaters who don't get enough fiber). And that's only because the waste hangs out there so long it can possiblly turn cancerous.

However, people who eat meat can have a host of other problems though. There are possible heart problems for red meat eaters. For all you people who like chicken, science still isn't sure of the long term effects of the hormones the chickens get pumped with. Open water fish are subject to pollution. Farmed fish are subject to whatever chemicals are put into their food. All in all though, fish are probably the lesser of the "evils". Then again, some of the alternatives aren't that healthy either. Many types of vegetarian diets include the use of beans as a source of protein. Unless you want spend an hour or so soaking dry beans prior to cooking, most people would buy canned beans (I'm loyal to Goya myself :) ). In that case, you have to worry about whatever preservatives are used to maintain color and consistency. I'd have to check this, but for all I know, dry beans have preservatives too...


I've said it before, veganism is the Diet of the Future.

This is a little over the top. :rolleyes:

[Mr. Bao]

David,

There is pros and cons in all one side diets. I would say that it is true that there is equally amount of medical and scientific evidence the cons of eatting a meat based diet and a mainly veg diet. Yes, even eatting vegs alone has its medical problems, David. But I am not telling you how to eat or to change your ways. I personally believe in freedom and choices and all I asked is people be responsible for the way they live.

There are benefits in eatting meats and vegs which can't be deny. Soley meat eaters cant really deny the benefits of fruits and veg and veggie lovers cant deny the benefits of meats. If your reasons are based on faith and the spirit, then you can't force your faith on others. If your reason is based on money, then you should consider your morals? Something has to die for me to live whether it be plant life or animal life. How much faith you place on the value of life on plants and animal is rather subjective. As long we dont abuse them or posion them, I eat them. I eat both meats and vegs and fruits. I am on the "warrior diet" and I am a responsible health conscious person because I only eat organic products and do my best to eat a healthy balance of fruits, vegs, and meats. That is all I have say about that.

Last note, no one food source is ever a good idea for a diet be it meat or veg or fruits in my opinion. Your vision of the future for a purely veg diet is over the top. It is a facist or nazi vision against us who eat mainly or some meats in our diets. I hope never to live in those times, because I might be like chicken, fish, or pig boot legger or dealer. Yes, I am some dark alley somewhere in new york city selling meat products on the down low; maybe I am in Harlem, or the Lower East Side. I hear sirens and I drop a couple of pork chops because the vegan FiveOs are here and so I run and run until I get hit with a banana boomarang on my head and neck by a five o vegan pig. I get bagged for selling illegal organic meat products and the judge sentenced me to prison for 5 to 10 for having 50 lbs of meat products. But I may get parole within 2 years with good behavior and eatting only vegs. In the future prisions, all prisoners are farmers. LoL My vision of the future if David's vision became true.

Best Cheers.

[Repulsive Monkey]

If Vegansim is the diet for the future than I adhere to the Tao and remain in the present. I think Vegan diets are not suited to a lot of modern lifestyles and that a blanket conscription to a vegan diet would bring about a whole plethora of ailments and complaints. For those who have sedentary or contemplative lives with strong spiritual influences I know that this kind of diet is preferable and also required. But I know for a fact that my life would have to undergoe some serious sacrafices to instill a vegan diet, and to be honest I have great health reservations to this kind of diet anyway. Coming from a TCM poit of view I would stick to my Chang-Ming diet as opposed to a vegan.

[David]

Pages to read there! No time just now except for this.

Star Boy mentioned my incorrectitude about meat/cancer. I will restate it: 12 of the 16 top killer cancers only occur in meat/dairy consumers. I'll go get references later.

-David

[fa_jing]

FYI : dry beans - cook them in a pressure cooker. Some people put a silver fork in there as a "boiling stick" makes it go faster.

I absolutely love beans, when they are prepared correctly. For the record, I am an omnivore.

[fa_jing]

Oh, P.S. I have killed a rooster by breaking its neck, unfortunately my technique was bad - you have to pull apart as well as twist - so the poor bird suffered longer then it should have. But for me, it was a very good experience and I totally agree that you should be willing to kill, as well as gut or watch someone gut any animal that you are willing to eat.

[Mr. Bao]

I would be willing to kill an animal so I can eat it, but i am no expert and probably do more harm than good. That is why i go to the Supermarket and get my food. I am city boy, i am not farmer nor a butcher or hunter. We city folks do what we can... Personally, I have watched an animal being killed by expert and it did not disturbed me. I have also observed a dead body being examined as I ate my roast beef sandwich with no problem as well in college.

What got me sick. What is most disturbing to me is watching how wealthy people buy things for their cute little million dollars blue blooded over priced pets that could have paid my way to college or save human lives. That is f%$#ing disturbing to me. There are people who have ton of money to waste on petty things but the sad fact is there are less fortunate people out there like some sincere ghetto youth intellect who is unable to get a proper higher education or the old senior who cant get proper medical treatment. I do not hate the rich, but this shows where our values are at this present moment.

My 3 Cents.

[StarBoy]

Star Boy mentioned my incorrectitude about meat/cancer. I will restate it: 12 of the 16 top killer cancers only occur in meat/dairy consumers. I'll go get references later.

I'm very wary of this study. There are a lot of meat/dairy consumers out there. There are also a lot of other causes of the cancer, and tying it to this huge population (which consists of most of America) seems like a reach. Many meat consumers also eat at McDonald's (though not me personally), don't exercise regularly, and have a generally unhealthy diet (too many twinkies and such). People who are vegan/vegetarian tend to be more health conscious in general and would therefore have less of a cancer risk. But this isn't to say that someone who is vegan is necessarily healthier than someone who eats meat.


FYI : dry beans - cook them in a pressure cooker. Some people put a silver fork in there as a "boiling stick" makes it go faster.

I don't have a pressure cooker. I have a rice cooker, I don't suppose that would work?

[fa_jing]

I don't know about a rice cooker. A crock-pot will work, but it takes longer. You can also do the soak-overnight thing.

I have heard that certain cancers are almost unknown in vegetarian countries like India, although I do think we should be mindful of the fact that alot of the population doesn't even make it to an age where some of these cancers will afflict them.

US is the cancer capital of the world, from what I understand. Maybe it's all the industry and power lines, coupled with relatively long life spans??

Oh and burnt red meat is said to be carcinogenic.


Eat more fish, folks. But watch out for mecury and other pollutants.

[StarBoy]

I don't know about a rice cooker. A crock-pot will work, but it takes longer. You can also do the soak-overnight thing.

I might try the soak overnight. As much as I love Goya in a can, I can't help but wonder if my sodium intake is a little much.


US is the cancer capital of the world, from what I understand.

That is true. If Americans really knew all of the carcinogens that they are exposed to every day, they would deport. Believe it or not, almost all soaps, shampoos, and toothpastes have carcinogens in it (SLS). Also, plastic wrap releases carcinogens into your food if you microwave it (I only nuke ceramics). If you live anywhere near a factory, I'd be really careful about your drinking water. I always use a Brita filter, but that might not be enough.

And that's just the start of a very long list.



Eat more fish, folks. But watch out for mecury and other pollutants.


No kidding there. The worst part about fish is that a lot of times you can't tell if it's safe until too late.

It's hard to see how the US has the fattest people in the world when you really can't eat most of the food here. ;)

[Mr. Bao]

I personally like the aggressive energy. **** it, that is what makes us new yorkers tough! LoL. I think you are right, the Buddhists believe eating veg will make you natural less violents, but I am guessing if you chemical imbalance, no matter diet, you are bound to be a natural born killer.

From my observation, most veg lovers have soft looking bodies. This isn't bad, but not for me. I mostly see this in buddhist monks who have soft bodies. What do they care how they look, like they will get some tails anyways.

[Cheese Dog]

David, I researched vegatarianism before I tried it and gave it an honest try. It just didn't suit me; to many carbs and not enough protein. As far as the blood-type diet being discredited I doubt it, I believe it makes a lot of sense. But remember that most doctors and the AMA don't want us doing anything that doesn't involve expensive drugs. As Dave Barry said, "Most doctors tell us that vitamen supplements are a waste of money because they can't charge us for them. If the only way we could take vitamins was to have a $100,000 trap door installed in our heads doctors would say everyone needed them!"

[StarBoy]

But remember that most doctors and the AMA don't want us doing anything that doesn't involve expensive drugs

I can't emphasize how true this is. I work in the pharmaceutical industry and the greed is just blatant. At the retail pharmacy where I work, we have this rack of "pharmacist recommended" products. One of the things on the rack is a diet pill. I have never seen an honest pharmacist recommend a diet pill to anyone. In fact, most pharamacists recommend against it. There was also one of those creams that guys can use so they last longer with the ladies (or other guys, depending on which way you go :D ). But a pharmacist would never really recommend something like that either. Everything else on the rack was a gimick too. We're healthcare professionals and the company actually thinks we're going to let people buy this garbage? Anytime someone tries to buy, or even look at that rack, I tell them that nothing there is really pharmacist recommended, and some of the products could do permanent damage. I think that some pharmacist for the company was offered a hefty bonus if they could compile this list of "recommended" products. Oi...

[Repulsive Monkey]

I don't think the reasoning for Buddhists to not eat is for the fact that it will break one of their promises of refuge in harming or having a hand in the suffering of other creatures. So it's a spiritual reason NOT a dietary reason.

[Mr. Bao]

The budhha ate bad pork and was food poisoned before he died. You are right that they do not kill, but eating plant life is killing as well in my book. Something has to die inorder for us to live. I say before the value of animals and plant life is rather subjective. If you feel so much compassion for the animals and not plants, then why don't you feel compassion for plant life because it can't speak and communicate its pain and misery? Where is the moral holiday there? This is rather a moral judgement which I do care to think about nor do I care about. It just as fine for me that I know my own moral and intellectual reasonings why I eat what I eat. Lastly, one of their moral reasonings from what I learned at Chan temple is based on their observation that animals who eat plant life are less violent then animals who eat meat. I am telling you this wrong or right just communicating what I learned.

[shaolin kungfu]

If you eat nothing but fruit and grain, you may be missing some protein from your diet. Protein is very good for building muscle. I've also noticed that people that don't eat some kind of meat seem to be more sickly and weak(no offense to any vegetarians). You need fiber in your diet to help keep things moving. Fruits and veggies give you many essential nutrients. I wouldn't reccomend cutting out meat entirely, but you shouldn't eat too much meat. Unless you do it for religious reasons.

[prana]

Mr Bao,

Very true indeed. Although in the teachings, Lama has never said anything about plant life feeling pain and suffering, when asked, he simply explains that they are not considered sentient beings. It is however explained, a holy man in the past, who have vegetarian all his life, knew he could only be killed by eating grass, such is his karma. That story aside...

Even vegetarians share their fair share of killing, from the clearing of land, to the use of insecticide, worms, roaches, grasshoppers, ants, rats, rabbits, etc... are all affected by this.... without going too far into this....

1. The holding of the 5 precepts, one which is "not to kill" is difficult/impossible to achieve in samsara, but one needs to uphold this as much as possible, and with this, the path to escape samsara is realised

2. Dont over-eat, just eat enough to make you healthy and strong. Yes it is a spiritual thing

About weedy weak vegetarians, I have a story to share. I was in Thailand 4 years ago now, and went to this place called Tiger Cave. There is this high mountain and a steep stairway up, about 10 times the length of "Batu Caves" and each step is about 3 times higher. When we got up there, we could not walk down properly, our legs were all shivering. After a short stroll, a monk walks up, without so much as a puff. He is smilling and went about his own business. Being a Hinayana monk, he of course, is mostly if not entirely vegetarian.

Some food for thought :)

[StarBoy]

I think Reel Big Fish said it best:

she's not eatin' bacon, not
eatin' sausage,
and she won't eat eggs,
not eatin' chicken
not eatin' turkey, she
won't have a steak,
but i just can't help feelin'
sorry
for this poor little lettuce head
you know, i can't stop cryin' cause i
know this broccoli's dead

vegetarian? i'm not a vegetarian,
vegetarian...she's a

poor little cow, little sheep,
little fish
how can I sleep? when carrots
are bleedin'
plants are screamin' and tomatoes cry,
you say "it's not so bad, they're only
vegetables", that's what you said
maybe i'm a murderer, but i'm hungry
and they're better off dead.

save a plant, eat a cow,
i want beef, i want it now!
i'm gonna eat it cause it's red!
i'm gonna eat it cause it's dead!
maybe i should eat it raw let the
blood run down my jaw
i'd eat people if it was legal,
i'd eat people if it was legal!


:D :D

[fa_jing]

Anybody remember the lyrics to

Mary Mo - she's a vegetarian

da da da

she don't eat meat but she sure like the bone


da da da


:D

Sorry if you find this offensive, it was a popular radio song a few years back.

[TkdWarrior]

If you eat nothing but fruit and grain, you may be missing some protein from your diet. Protein is very good for building muscle. I've also noticed that people that don't eat some kind of meat seem to be more sickly and weak(no offense to any vegetarians).
so wrong dude so wrong...
u just need soyabean(as Cereal) to come up with protein
meat/chicken gives u about 23% but soyabean gives around 41%
(they r rounded figures from my doc watever i come to know that it gives more than meat or chicken)
if u notice the ppl r sickly n weak then plz come down to india n see those Pure Veggetarians Indian wrestlers who don't eat Meat due to religious reasons(because they worship lord hanuman n thus abstain from smoke/liquor/gamble/non veg/ sex till they get 25 yr old).
hell millions of ppl here don't eat meat for same reason, dunno how sick they r? cuz they arn't...
i m almost veggeterain(chicken once in about 4-5 months) n from last 7-8 yrs i never even had a flu, i m not sick, i m not weak...
i used to do bench press with 70-75 kgs(that time i used to weight around 82) now i weigh around 89 kgs

anyways as u said u noticed this, then it CAN happen in West because eating habbits r not same as East(indians). so i can belive that part but u shouldn't be generlizing(sp)

-TkdWarrior-

[harry_the_monk]

I have been vegetarian ever since I have been a Buddhist.

Not all buddhists are vegetarian, but I think it is fine and have had no problems with it.
I have increased my lean weight and am now 10kilos heavier and not fatter. My bodyfat is stable at around 12% and I train for about 5 hours a day in total.

[Repulsive Monkey]

Some interesting points here for both sides of the argument. Again TCM and Taoism Chang Ming diets certainly do include meat due to blood deficiencies. Of course from a spiritual perspective animals are seen as sentient beings, and therefore no suffering should be imposed on them. Just an interesting note on how His Holiness the Dalai Lama decided to eat meat for a period, admittedly due to dietary problems which gave him blood deficiecny problems but a comforting thought to the struggle of us lower realm mortals too.

[morbicid]

Earlier in this thread (like on page one) I saw that there was a bit of a debate about "what God wanted us to eat". Had me thinking a bit, and reading, and I noticed that there are many biblical references about vegetarianism / meat eaters .

In the book of Genesis, I recall that God did not respect Cain's offering of "fruit of the ground", and preferred Abel's offering of an animal sacrifice. Also, after Cain slew Abel, when God punished Kane He said, "When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength:"
Genesis chapter 4

Now, given that a lot of you are of different religions, so this may not apply to you anyways, I simply wanted to share my interperetation of the religious side of the debate. There are very likely contradictions to this in the bible, as biblical contradictions are common due to the fact that meaning often varies greatly depending on one's own interperetation of the passages. If any of you know any biblical references suggesting we should be vegetarian/ vegan, please cite them. (i'm not being sarcastic there)

[CD Lee]

C'mon...God was not wanting a sacrifice to EAT. He wanted the hearts of his followers. Real sacrifice. He wanted Cain's best effort, not his second best. His punishment in addition to banishment, was that the ground would not bear it's strength to Cain.

[CD Lee]

Our society is so...I dunno, American? I am American and proud of it, but I am always amazed that considering becoming a vegetarian or vegan is akin in our society to changing religions.

I have noticed that it is the vegans among the ranks of the PETA faction that seem to fuel this backlash in most of America. They are so confrontational and angry at us non-vegans, that they make everybody so defensive.

My boss at work is a vegetarian. When I asked him about it, he delcared very quickly, "Oh, I'm not a vegan!" Actually he is. But he is scared to even admit it due to all the militant wacko's of which he is not affiliated.

Somebody mentioned that red meat only provided iron? It also provides protien, and most important it provides branch chain amino acids BCAA's, which are an awesome way to build and repair muscle tissue. They reduce the protein breakdown within your muscles; and they increase testosterone and growth hormone, your bodies most important fat-fighting and muscle-building hormones. It only takes 10g of of BCAA's to have a positive effect on our bodies. Just FYI...

The Vegan diet is not the diet of the future. Adkins is not the diet of the future. I think a balanced diet between the two is closer to the future. Besides, and I have to be honest here, just listining to an aggressive vegan, makes me want to chase down an animal and eat it. I mean, backlash is a real factor. And unless the vegans get rid of these wacko's their diet will never make it to the forefront in America.

[Aslan]

Oh, the horror! the horror! all those poor defenseless plants dying needlessly! We should be eating synthetic foodstuffs that don't invovle any living matter! (ok, feeble attempt at some humor. :D :D )

I am an omnivore by choice. I like to eat meat, and I like to eat vegitables and fruits as well. All have their place, nothing should be to excess.

When it comes to meats, I prefer game animals to store bought staples. Domestic critters tend to be artifically bulked up using steriods and the like.

I hunt & kill my own game. I actually think this has benefitted my martial arts.

You have no idea of how precious life is until you have taken it. You don't know how fragile it really is. You may know from a philosophical stand point, but until you have experienced it, you really don't know.

I also, really, really, like the taste of venison - especially Elk, as well as rabbit and others.

Man is a preditor. Binocular vision, canine teeth, enzymes, etc.

[StarBoy]

I also, really, really, like the taste of venison

That's enough of an argument to convince me.

mmmmmm...venison.



How about Genesis 1:12. "I give you all the seed bearing plants and herbs to use as food."


If you're going to get all christian here, what about all the sacrificing of animals in the old testament? Believe you me, ancient Mesopotamia is no place to be if you're a lamb. So basically, it's ok to kill an animal if a burning tree tells you to, but if you're hungry then it's bad?

I think the problem stems from Genesis 2:20, "So the man named all the birds and all the animals; but not one of them was a suitable companion to help him." See, if Adam named all the animals either Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner right from the go, we wouldn't be having this debate. :D

hehehe

[rubthebuddha]

anyone else hear the oscar mayer theme song in the background? :confused:

[Ming Yue]

That tune is stuck in my head now. :)


As a supermarket hunter, I can appreciate Aslan's comment that hunting your own animal food engenders a respect that most of us have no concept of. Aside from fishing, I have not ever stalked and killed and skinned an animal for my sustenance. I know I wouldn't choose to sport hunt, but I could certainly kill to survive. I wonder though, how my diet would change if hunting was my only option for meat, and is that consideration reason enough to consider changing it now?

GThomason makes a good point. Just because we CAN do something, doesn't always mean we SHOULD.

If religion or ethics or any knowledge leads you to adjust your diet so you are living in line with your core beliefs, then I think that can make you a better human. It's good to walk the talk, especially when it's yours.

[Spark]

Originally posted by Aslan


Man is a preditor. Binocular vision, canine teeth, enzymes, etc.

:confused:
Man is a preditor?? Take away our guns and weapons, and I don't think we'd have ANY luck catching any game! Binocular vision? What does that have to do with anything? Canine teeth??? We have dog teeth?? Enzymes ... well you got that one right!

[abobo]

Originally posted by fa_jing
Anybody remember the lyrics to

Mary Mo - she's a vegetarian

da da da

she don't eat meat but she sure like the bone


da da da


:D

Sorry if you find this offensive, it was a popular radio song a few years back.

That would be New Age Girl from the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack.

Also, I find it strange that most people look at vegetarianism in terms of morality. They've already got a good argument in terms of effiency of resources and lowered risk of heart disease.

[IronFist]

Originally posted by Spark

Binocular vision? What does that have to do with anything?

Two eyes in the front of the head = preditory. It allows you to look for food, and the depth perception that results from two eyes looking the same way helps you catch your prey.

Eyes on either side of the head = non-preditory (I'm sure there's a better word). Having one eye on each side of the head lets you see all around you better. It allows you to keep an eye out for things that are trying to chase you.

IronFist

[StarBoy]

non-preditory (I'm sure there's a better word)

How about prey? :)

[IronFist]

Originally posted by StarBoy


How about prey? :)

Yes, I suppose that works. :)

IronFist

[ricksitterly]

eyes on either side of the head?
i'm pretty sure it's called wall-eyed.

[Aslan]

Originally posted by Spark


:confused:
Man is a preditor?? Take away our guns and weapons, and I don't think we'd have ANY luck catching any game! Binocular vision? What does that have to do with anything? Canine teeth??? We have dog teeth?? Enzymes ... well you got that one right!

Basic Biology class - one characteristic of all preditors is binoccular vision.

A characteristic of herbiovores is eyes set wide and to the side - let's them look for preditors.

We, as a species, did pretty well for thousands of years before the advent of firearms.

Clubs, spears, bows and arrows were hunting tools before they were weapons of war (actually probably came into both uses at the same time.)

The earliest cave paintings show man as a hunter.

[Ming Yue]

Canine teeth??? We have dog teeth??


yep, we have cutting teeth in the front (incisors) and the pointy ones to the sides (think vampires) are indeed called canines.

Your canines are pretty much for puncturing and ripping. Or, in the case of vampires, puncturing and sipping.

C

[David]

Starboy - Sorry for not getting back with the references yet. Not finding the time at home to sit at my computer. It's not just one study and it covers many thousands of subjects mostly in the USA but also round the world. can't remember if lifestyle was factored in. I'll get it over this weekend for sure.

Cheeses Dog - your 'lack of protein' complaint is a prime example of not knowing how to eat veggie ;-). I had that back along. I see Mr Shaolin Kungfu exhibits the same thing...

Mr Bao - I always thought plants were as alive enough to qualify as organisms/beings deserving of respect.

If you want more sickly veggies, look at a whale, an elephant or this guy -> http://www.kalarippayatt.co.uk/book3d.gif

Morbicid - When I mentioned 'God made us to eat...' I was accidentally misquoting and had no personal desire to steer the conversation that way. Though my spiritual view incorporates Christian ideas, I haven't been there for dietary advice!

CD Lee - what's a BCAA? So far, I think a balanced diet between the two (carnivore/herbivore) is the diet of a mediocre future. Regarding the vegan/PETA/whacko backlash... each to his own mob. I was under the impression that being a vegan was about as unthreatening a position as I could take. You've made my day!

Binocular vision = predator is a bit simplistic. As humans, we use binocular vision for just about everything that makes us human - reading, driving, using tools, making stuff...

Back soon - I have a CIA convoy in my drive. Not sure what they want me for but luckily I have a big vat of lentil soup ready anyway.

-David

[CD Lee]

David said:


CD Lee - what's a BCAA? So far
BCAA - Branch Chain Amino Acids


I think a balanced diet between the two (carnivore/herbivore) is the diet of a mediocre future.
Ok. ;)




Regarding the vegan/PETA/whacko backlash... each to his own mob. I was under the impression that being a vegan was about as unthreatening a position as I could take. You've made my day!



Glad to please. hehe. Not all vegans are wacko's or outspoken. Just the ones that are make everybody else look bad. I saw an irrate vegan on another forum telling a member that if they were going to drink milk, they might as well suck on an open sore on a cow's leg, and...to enjoy their glass of puss-filled milk!

[Spark]

Originally posted by IronFist


Eyes on either side of the head = non-preditory (I'm sure there's a better word). Having one eye on each side of the head lets you see all around you better. It allows you to keep an eye out for things that are trying to chase you.

IronFist



So Sharks are Non-Predatory???:confused:

[Spark]

Originally posted by Ming Yue


yep, we have cutting teeth in the front (incisors) and the pointy ones to the sides (think vampires) are indeed called canines.

Your canines are pretty much for puncturing and ripping. Or, in the case of vampires, puncturing and sipping.

C

And you're going to argue that humans 'puncture and rip' in order to consume their food?? When was the last time you saw a human run down it's "prey" and use it's incisors and canines to rip the meat off the dead carcass?

If this is the purpose of our teeth, then why do we have molars, which are primarily found in vegetarian species?

[Spark]

Originally posted by Aslan

We, as a species, did pretty well for thousands of years before the advent of firearms.

Clubs, spears, bows and arrows were hunting tools before they were weapons of war (actually probably came into both uses at the same time.)

The earliest cave paintings show man as a hunter.

The advancement of the human race, and our survival, surely had nothing to do with the consumption of meat. I would argue the weapons you listed would have primarily been used as weapons of self defence before they would have ever been used to 'hunt' animals. Could you ever imagine trying to hunt a deer with a club!?!?! :confused:
As well these weapons, and hunting for that matter, would have taken a large group of people who would have had to go on missions for weeks at a time in order to return with any type of worthwhile amounts.
Basic History and Anthropology shows us that humans were primarily vegetarian for most of our existence and it wasn't until the introduction of farming, and then factory farming, that meat became a 'staple' of the human diet.

[morbicid]

"When was the last time you saw a human run down it's "prey" and use it's incisors and canines to rip the meat off the dead carcass?"

i did that last sunday

[Spark]

Originally posted by morbicid
"When was the last time you saw a human run down it's "prey" and use it's incisors and canines to rip the meat off the dead carcass?"

i did that last sunday

:eek:

[CD Lee]

Basic History and Anthropology shows us that humans were primarily vegetarian for most of our existence and it wasn't until the introduction of farming, and then factory farming, that meat became a 'staple' of the human diet.


Now, seriously. Is that true? What do you mean by basic history? Is this something you read from a history book. I am being serious.

See, because Bill Phillips, who does not quote his historical references either, says just the opposite. He says we were primarily meat eaters until FARMING came along, at which point we becaume carb eaters and starting dying from cancers.

Ok, so, what historical references are you talking about that show us , as you said above, versus you telling us, that humans were primarily vegetarian for most of our existence?

Did Native Americans eat meat or just farm? Did they trap animals, hunt animals, eat buffalo, live on dried meats and fish? Is that like what you mean by 'basic history'?

Does 'basic history' mean just those things I can recall from history that I can think up right now, that lead us to a common sense and obvious conclusion?

[CD Lee]

And you're going to argue that humans 'puncture and rip' in order to consume their food??


Ok, so, when you eat an apple...

Do you like cram it into the back part of your mouth where the molars are, or do you puncture into and wedge/slice into the apple with your front cutting teeth to get a chunk, whereupon, you then positoin the piece onto your molars for further chewing?

You don't have to chase prey, or eat it while living to eat with your teeth as designed. They are designed to pierce, cut, tear, and chew, incisors, canines, and molars. Pretty cool.

And when a human eats a big piece of steak, especially if a little overdone and tough, yes, they puncture into the meat with thier front teeth, and tear off a piece if they have not cut it with a knife (what, we didn't always have steak knives and daggers???), and reposition it to the molars where...well you get it.

[CD Lee]

The advancement of the human race, and our survival, surely had nothing to do with the consumption of meat.

Hey, I am just following the logic here. What do you mean by 'surely'? Like in, based on some preponderance of historical evidence that you are going to share, surely what you are saying is true?



I would argue the weapons you listed would have primarily been used as weapons of self defence before they would have ever been used to 'hunt' animals.

You would argue this based on basic history, or just common sense or what?

Self defence from what? Other humans? Do you think humans at that stage in time, where defending themselves primarily from themselves (consider the population at that time) or from dangerous animals? Since we did not have the social infrastructures back then that we have today, how do you suppose humans defended themselves from wild animals? They were forced to kill them with weapons, not their bare hands.

And in a time when any food was neccessary for survival being scare in nature, what do you think they did with the animals that were killed?

One more, you have me thinking now. Suppose I placed you in the wilderness or you and a hundred people in the wilderness, say five thousand years ago. How long to do you think you guys would live without weapons? What would be your greatest dangers? Each other?

Also, why would the advent of 'farming' cause mass meat consumption, as now grains and high carb diets/vegtables would be the main reaping of the harvest?

[Spark]

Originally posted by CD Lee


Now, seriously. Is that true? What do you mean by basic history? Is this something you read from a history book. I am being serious.

See, because Bill Phillips, who does not quote his historical references either, says just the opposite. He says we were primarily meat eaters until FARMING came along, at which point we becaume carb eaters and starting dying from cancers.

Ok, so, what historical references are you talking about that show us , as you said above, versus you telling us, that humans were primarily vegetarian for most of our existence?

Did Native Americans eat meat or just farm? Did they trap animals, hunt animals, eat buffalo, live on dried meats and fish? Is that like what you mean by 'basic history'?

Does 'basic history' mean just those things I can recall from history that I can think up right now, that lead us to a common sense and obvious conclusion?

Sorry, the reason I said "basic" history was so I could be as ambiguous as the person who said "basic" biology.

I wrote out a giant response and chose not to post it because this will just get more ridiculous. I have degree in history and minored in Anthropology and over those years I had gathered enough knowledge (well i think so anyhow! :p ) from research, papers, etc ... to know that humankind did not depend on meat for much of history and it especially did not make any sense for them to do so. If you would like me to go into this at length, i certainly can but I thought I would ask you first before I do so.
I don't know who Bill Phillips is, but that statement you made about farming contradicts anything I've ever learned about the paths that humankind has made with respect to their diets.
The history of Native Americans is hard to chart, as I have spent time researching this area as well, it is hard to come up with difinitive conclusions about their history because very little is recorded. I should probably make my stance clear here, which is that I feel that many people think that meat has been a staple of the human diet since the beginning, that we are inherently meat eaters, and it is this which i am arguing against.
Ill answer your other posts when I get a chance
LATER!

[Serpent]

Man originated in Africa and was primarily vegetarian. After a time, man migrated north and slowly spread across the globe, populating it's furthest corners. The single most important thing in that migration was when man began eating meat. That meant that wherever he went there would be prey to hunt down and kill and therefore he wouldn't starve. Before this "inovation" man had been tied to his environment due to the fact that only within a certain distance could the plants and roots that he ate be found, due primarily to climactic conditions. It got us through ice ages and migrations through northern continents. We evolved into meat eaters and continued to consume what vegetables, roots, fruit, etc. that we could and thereby became classically omniverous.

Nowadays we certainly eat way more meat, especially red meat, than is actually good for us, especially in developed western countries. But meat has been an important part of our diets for millennia.

Just some food for thought. ;)

[Spark]

Originally posted by CD Lee


Ok, so, when you eat an apple...

Do you like cram it into the back part of your mouth where the molars are, or do you puncture into and wedge/slice into the apple with your front cutting teeth to get a chunk, whereupon, you then positoin the piece onto your molars for further chewing?

You don't have to chase prey, or eat it while living to eat with your teeth as designed. They are designed to pierce, cut, tear, and chew, incisors, canines, and molars. Pretty cool.

And when a human eats a big piece of steak, especially if a little overdone and tough, yes, they puncture into the meat with thier front teeth, and tear off a piece if they have not cut it with a knife (what, we didn't always have steak knives and daggers???), and reposition it to the molars where...well you get it.

Well ... with your apple analogy, I noticed you didn't say "tear" or "rip" into it ... which is what I thought some people here are arguing the purpose of these teeth are for. I guess I can in turn ask you what do you do when you eat an orange? Do you tear at it with your teeth, or do you peel it, break off a piece and place it in your mouth for chewing? I'm not sure where you're going with the steak analogy - if you're saying we didn't always have knives and daggers to cut the pieces of meat ... well then how did you get this nice cut of steak then!??!?!

[Serpent]

Originally our canines and incisors were used for ripping and tearing at meat. When we first started to bring down prey we didn't have knives and ovens. We'd bring it down, rip off a chunk with our front teeth and masticate it with the molars.

However, that does raise the question of when these teeth developed, as we were not originally a predator but a gatherer. We subsequently became hunter gatherers.

Anyone?

[Spark]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by CD Lee
[B]

Hey, I am just following the logic here. What do you mean by 'surely'? Like in, based on some preponderance of historical evidence that you are going to share, surely what you are saying is true?

*** Ehhhh granted I think I lost my train of thought on that one

You would argue this based on basic history, or just common sense or what?

***Common Sense from what knowledge i've gained from studying the fields of History and Anthropology.

Self defence from what? Other humans? Do you think humans at that stage in time, where defending themselves primarily from themselves (consider the population at that time) or from dangerous animals? Since we did not have the social infrastructures back then that we have today, how do you suppose humans defended themselves from wild animals? They were forced to kill them with weapons, not their bare hands.

*** I'm saying S.D from wild animals. Again, my point was vs. someone saying we used clubs to hunt animals, to which I said was ridiculous and that clubs would have been used for S.D. from animals (if at all) and not for hunting them. My example was imagine hunting a deer with a club, I think you'll agree it is nearly impossible.

One more, you have me thinking now. Suppose I placed you in the wilderness or you and a hundred people in the wilderness, say five thousand years ago. How long to do you think you guys would live without weapons? What would be your greatest dangers? Each other?

*** Uhh i'm not sure where this is supposed to be going ... bc i don't want to stray too far off the topic at hand ...

Also, why would the advent of 'farming' cause mass meat consumption, as now grains and high carb diets/vegtables would be the main reaping of the harvest?

*** Farming has to do with the domestication of animals, and i say Farming and Factory Farming specifically because Farming raised the consumption/availability of meat and factory farming is what lead to mass consumption.

[Spark]

Originally posted by Serpent
Originally our canines and incisors were used for ripping and tearing at meat. When we first started to bring down prey we didn't have knives and ovens. We'd bring it down, rip off a chunk with our front teeth and masticate it with the molars.

Anyone?

If we didn't have knives (i'm guessing you're also meaning spears or other weapons too) to 'bring down prey' ... then how did we do it? Are you suggesting the mighty human RAN down a deer, gazelle, Buffalo, wild pig, etc ... caught a fish with it's bare hands etc ... ?? And ate it raw right there on the spot??

[Serpent]

Originally posted by Spark


If we didn't have knives (i'm guessing you're also meaning spears or other weapons too) to 'bring down prey' ... then how did we do it? Are you suggesting the mighty human RAN down a deer, gazelle, Buffalo, wild pig, etc ... caught a fish with it's bare hands etc ... ?? And ate it raw right there on the spot??

Not necessarily. Perhaps good hunting originated with the spear or something similar, but it would have been before we learned the skills of carving a nice steak with a sharp knife. ;)

[CD Lee]

Spark - You are so nice. Great responses to my 'attitude' laced questions. I am shocked that you did not blowtorch me with a big flame. :D :D :D



I don't know who Bill Phillips is, but that statement you made about farming contradicts
anything I've ever learned about the paths that humankind has made with respect to their
diets.


He is the Body for Life guy. What he says makes some sense, but his grab at history to support his position was irritating. Obviously, he provided no details on his statement: that because of farming, we all became carb. eaters and cancer bearing creatures.

Oh, my whole point on the apple bit was to say that we still puncture, split, and even tear at foods with our front teeth, before sending them to the molars for crushing. What does that mean? Nothing other than our teeth are designed to do such. Do we have to eat meat because of this. NO. I take the simple position that there is nothing evil or wrong with eating meat within reasonable limits. And hey, I picked an apple becuase I cannot break it and pick at it. I have to get a good chuck out of it with my front teeth first. Oranges are a piece of cake. hehe.

Actually on your offer of history, I would like some more detail. This is of pure interest on my part. I am not looking to destroy your postion for the sake of argument. But I am a history buff myself having studied many years in Christian patristic studies. I know all too well how people take history and interpret what they need to. However, I am reasonably objective, so that information would be pretty nice I would think. Do you mind?

Hunting? Definately evolved later and not with clubs. Spears I would imagine would be first and only useful choice for quite some time. What Serpent said made a lot of sense. Of coure poeple did not chase down animals and rip them apart like hyenas. We are very slow...

Farming and mass meat production has come along so close to our time, I agree that this caused meat production to be unusually higher than nature allows. That IS common sense. All I am saying is that farms originally in the development of agriculture were not meat producers, but more vegetable oriented in nature. Modern farms I agree, can be 'anything' due to our modern infrastructure.

[Ming Yue]

We evolved from primates: The australopithecines evolved in Africa about 5 million years ago and they shared a common ancestor with modern chimpanzees, who have (and had) a significant amount of meat in thier diet. They hunt, usually in groups, sometimes with simple tools.

So we were physiologically and biochemically prepared to eat meat even at the time of earliest fossil record, but for a time, we were certainly limited in terms of tools (and big and slow, as someone pointed out...) Which brings the idea that we may have been meat eaters of opportunity, possibly scavengers to some extent?

It's interesting too that neither primates nor humans know instinctively what to eat. We learn from watching others.

-Cynth

[rubthebuddha]

Originally posted by Ming Yue
It's interesting too that neither primates nor humans know instinctively what to eat. We learn from watching others.
aye. if they fall over dead, don't eat what they ate.

it also may why many people have a natural aversion to bitter foods, as many plants and such poisonous to humans are quite bitter. people who don't like bitter foods spat out what to them tasted like ass. people who like bitter foods were more likely to eat them and, thus, keel over a few minutes later.

[Aslan]

Originally posted by Spark


The advancement of the human race, and our survival, surely had nothing to do with the consumption of meat. I would argue the weapons you listed would have primarily been used as weapons of self defence before they would have ever been used to 'hunt' animals. Could you ever imagine trying to hunt a deer with a club!?!?! :confused:
As well these weapons, and hunting for that matter, would have taken a large group of people who would have had to go on missions for weeks at a time in order to return with any type of worthwhile amounts.
Basic History and Anthropology shows us that humans were primarily vegetarian for most of our existence and it wasn't until the introduction of farming, and then factory farming, that meat became a 'staple' of the human diet.

Actually, I have been able to get within feet, and sometimes even inches of deer that were not aware I was there.

Once I had a doe realize something was not right - she sniffed at my face and then snorted big time, I didn't appreciate getting slimed , so I stood up. She suddenly was confronted with a predator she wasn't expecting, and we both kinda stared at each other for half a second and then she bolted.

I've done the same with fox, coyotes, turkeys, elk, and even bobcat. It's easier with animals like elk, deer, and turkeys, because they tend to process movement. Don't move & that can't really process what's going on.

Predators like fox, coyotes, and bobcat can also process more than just movement and are much, much harder to stalk / get close to.

Anyways, I suspect that just because URBANIZED people cannot get close to an animal, primitive cultures and motivated people, can do a much better job than you may want to beleive.

Also, I suspect you'd find that the dietary habiots of early man was more in line with say, those of a bear, than other animals. Bears, though largely vegitarians, also eat carrion, and will kill an animal for food given the chance.

Oh, and I am very impressed at the tone of this thread as I did choose my wording in an half-hearted attempt at sparking controversy.


:D :D

[Spark]

Originally posted by CD Lee
Spark - You are so nice. Great responses to my 'attitude' laced questions. I am shocked that you did not blowtorch me with a big flame. :D :D :D

.

CD Lee
No problem, I learned a long time ago that there's no point in getting your panties all in a knot over stuff on this board. I'm at work now, so I can't go into your response yet, but I will later today/tonight.
Later!
spark

[Ming Yue]

Oh, and I am very impressed at the tone of this thread as I did choose my wording in an half-hearted attempt at sparking controversy.


No fair hollering troll now, this is getting interesting.
;)

[Ming Yue]

Indeed, my thought is that primitive people (unarmed people in general, actually) probably wouldn't want to get close to the animal they were hunting.

Why get close when it means being trampled by a buffalo, kicked by a buck, gored by a wild pig.... Much smarter and less hazardous to poke with a long stick, or chase off a cliff. Bone marrow in action.

[morbicid]

i wonder if bear meat tastes any good...

anyways i think u guys are missing the key factor that made humans a superior predator to most other creatures - our brains. humans ARE natural predators. our ability to outsmart other animals placed us above them in the food chain in that we could easily outsmart animals, even more so as we evolved, and kill them (by means of traps, long range weapons, ambush, stampede, and the million or so other ways one can kill an animal). it doesnt matter whether or not we actually RAN DOWN our prey or hunted them with spears, the fact is that even primitive humans were so much smarter than most animals. amazingly, we even developed the ability (fairly early on) to train OTHER animals (like dogs) to do our hunting for us.
the methods of hunting do not matter. the human body certainly is not a killing machine - we have small nails. our teeth are not that sharp and our jaws are not structured for attacking and grabbing on to an animal to take it down. also we generally dont run that fast compared to many animals. the point is that we applied our intelligence to hunt and eat animals. the only organisms we have trouble conquering are parasitic viruses and germs and other disease causing microbes. i suppose those are the TOP of the food chain (lol i dont know that part came from, just go with the randomness).

[Aslan]

Bear meat CAN be very very good, or it can be very very bad...

Comes down to how it was cared for and how it was prepared.

[Aslan]

Originally posted by Ming Yue


No fair hollering troll now, this is getting interesting.
;)

I never intended to troll, just wanted to make sure the debate raged on - albeit peacefully, but am glad this thread has not only stayed civil (hurrah!), it is also interesting (double hurrah!), AND it has been somewhat educational too (quadruple hurrah with all the trimmings!)
:D

[Spark]

Originally posted by CD Lee

** Ok CD Lee, here we go!!!

Obviously, he provided no details on his statement: that because of farming, we all became carb. eaters and cancer bearing creatures.

*** hmmm I'm not sure about the legitimacy of that claim. I seem to remember seeing shows on TLC and A&E about finding remains of Neandrothals with Brain Tumours. If we look at many of the reasons cancer develops ... I can't see how farming has anything to do with it? Industrialization, yes ..

Oh, my whole point on the apple bit was to say that we still puncture, split, and even tear at foods with our front teeth, before sending them to the molars for crushing. What does that mean? Nothing other than our teeth are designed to do such. Do we have to eat meat because of this. NO. I take the simple position that there is nothing evil or wrong with eating meat within reasonable limits. And hey, I picked an apple becuase I cannot break it and pick at it. I have to get a good chuck out of it with my front teeth first. Oranges are a piece of cake. hehe.

*** My point was how I though it was kinda ridiculous how someone thought because he have incisors and binocular vision, then we are therefore predators. I gave the example of a shark, which does not have binocular vision, to thus show you do not need that to be a predator, as well, all meat eating animals ONLY have incisors and canine teeth, with no molars, and all animals with molars in the animal kingdom are herbivores. As well the animals that have both (incisors and molars) are also herbivores.

Actually on your offer of history, I would like some more detail. This is of pure interest on my part. I am not looking to destroy your postion for the sake of argument. But I am a history buff myself having studied many years in Christian patristic studies. I know all too well how people take history and interpret what they need to. However, I am reasonably objective, so that information would be pretty nice I would think. Do you mind?

*** Ok, but I will once again reiterate my point and why I came into this discussion. From what I read I got the impression that some/many people think that humankind throughout all of time has been meat eaters, that from day one we have hunted wild game, and that meat has been a staple of our diets (and rightly so) for all of eternity, as well that perhaps there is also an attached misconception that one cannot survive without meat. From what I know of the history of humankind, certainly yes we did hunt meat, but these were in certain circumstances. My point about, well, caveman? for lack of a better word is this - i think that people take for granted what it is to hunt game (I will provide a relevant point shortly) now i will propose this. If you lived in a small group and your suvival depended on this, what would make more sense to you - being able to simply grow and gather your food where there is a more than reasonalbly good chance of return, or having to go out and hunt an animal with crude weapons with absolutely no guarantee you'll come back with anything at the end of the day. Even with a spear ... heck, a gunshot can't bring down a Buffalo, so how would you expect a spear to? And what are you going to do, carry ten of them? My point here is simply, given two choices, and your survival at stake, if food was sitting in a tree or on a bush, or roaming a plane with the ability to outrun you, what are you seriously going to spend you time on?? WHich one sounds easier to you??? Civilizations such as the Aztecs, Egyptians, and Greeks, with the exception of the wealthy and elite depended primarily on a vegetarian diet. There was fish included in these diets (at least for certain with Greece and Egypt). But again my point is that these societies were not dependant on meat in their diets, and these are arguably some of the greatest civilizations in history. I might have gone off track so read this and maybe help me out if/where i can maybe be clearer on what i'm trying to say :)

Hunting? Definately evolved later and not with clubs. Spears I would imagine would be first and only useful choice for quite some time. What Serpent said made a lot of sense. Of coure poeple did not chase down animals and rip them apart like hyenas. We are very slow...

*** Like I said above ... I'm not conviced by the spear ... I'll give you an example. I recently read a book by Kevin McGoogan called "Fatal Passage" In summary it is a biography about an explorer and wilderness expert John Rae. Now this is in the 1850s. He hunted in N. Canada. This guy was said to be one of the best hunters in all of Canada. On his missions, he would go out for weeks at a time and be able to haul in enough game to last for five people for three months. Now the rest of these outdoorsmen paled in comparison ... now my point is ... they're using rifles!!! And can hunt their game at long range, and everyone else hardly could bring in enough food for themselves, let alone the rest of the crew. I won't argue that a spear was never used to take down animals, I'm just saying that we can't just be all, "well they had spears, so that's good enough to hunt and feed everyone",

Farming and mass meat production has come along so close to our time, I agree that this caused meat production to be unusually higher than nature allows. That IS common sense.

*** Maybe i'm using the wrong word and someone can help me out. When I say factory farming, i mean that it's one of those big ass wharehouses that's only purpose is to grow animals for the slaughter and consumption. So i'm saying farming ... a normal farm with chickens and pigs and all that, and then (in the 20th C) we saw the advent of factory farming and meat up to our eyeballs.

I'm not sure if this response covered everythign but it sure was long!!
:) :D :D :D

[Ming Yue]

_______________
If you lived in a small group and your suvival depended on this, what would make more sense to you - being able to simply grow and gather your food where there is a more than reasonalbly good chance of return, or having to go out and hunt an animal with crude weapons with absolutely no guarantee you'll come back with anything at the end of the day. Even with a spear ... heck, a gunshot can't bring down a Buffalo, so how would you expect a spear to?
______________________

Very early hominids moved around. Not entirely nomadic in every case, but cultivation of plants for food wasn't feasible very early on from practical and evolutionary standpoints. Again, we were eaters of opportunity.

For a small settled soceity, there is more investment and risk, time and labor wise, with crops than there is with hunting. With agriculture, especially on a small scale, you must always expect low yield. You get seeds that don't germinate, floods, poor soil, no rain, insects, plant disease. This after weeks of work. And generally, the available food "hanging" from trees in any given area is rather specific and doesn't make for a balanced diet. Look at Native American cultures. They went where the food was. They gathered available plant resources and hunted for meat. So you go a couple days before you bag a buffalo or a wild pig. (The native americans by the way, killed buffalo with arrows and spears, essentially letting the animal bleed and exhaust itself to collapse then moving in for the kill).

Consider too that at these later points in our development, we had devised small traps and such that helped guarantee success in hunting.

I personally would hunt or fish first, if lost in the wild, before I began gathering food from plants (unless of course, I was lost in a giant vegetable garden). This for me is due in part to the fact that my knowledge of edible plants is limited, and I wouldn't eat what I wasn't sure of. Seems I'd be much more likely to get sick from a strange plant than from fresh rabbits I spent a couple of days snaring.

To ensure survival, we had to hedge our bets. Hunting and gathering, and later cultivation of both meat and plants for food.

[morbicid]

"Also, you can't just take a Buffalo down with a spear. But you can poke it enough... "



i'm not gonna touch that comment

[Spark]

Originally posted by Ming Yue
Very early hominids moved around. Not entirely nomadic in every case, but cultivation of plants for food wasn't feasible very early on from practical and evolutionary standpoints. Again, we were eaters of opportunity.

*** That is correct, that is why they were known as hunters and "gatherers". Again my point I'm trying to make is that that term may be taken too literally. I do not believe that humankind at this point in history sat down to a steak dinner every night. I agree we were eaters of opportunity, and that we would hunt/eat meat should the opportunity arise, but did we depend on it? I do not believe so, I beleive we depended mostly on what the land gave us, for the reasons I stated before.

For a small settled soceity, there is more investment and risk, time and labor wise, with crops than there is with hunting. With agriculture, especially on a small scale, you must always expect low yield. You get seeds that don't germinate, floods, poor soil, no rain, insects, plant disease. This after weeks of work. And generally, the available food "hanging" from trees in any given area is rather specific and doesn't make for a balanced diet. Look at Native American cultures. They went where the food was. They gathered available plant resources and hunted for meat. So you go a couple days before you bag a buffalo or a wild pig. (The native americans by the way, killed buffalo with arrows and spears, essentially letting the animal bleed and exhaust itself to collapse then moving in for the kill).

*** Part of my point as well is that you will also expend far more energy hunting than you would gathering. In terms of a balanced diet, the Aztecs diet was primarily Beans and Tortillas (corn) which you may or may not know is a complete protein. This sounds fairly complete to me. In N. America, before Euros arrived, there were 26 varieties of wild squash that could be found, as well there are endless varieties of fruits that grow wild. The notion that not having a cut of meat in your diet makes it incomplete is absurd, and I demonstrated that some of the greatest civilizations in history did not depend on it in their diets. You can't really generalize Native American culture because there was such a vast array of societies, all existing at the same time, that to say "they did this, that, etc ..." is not accurate. In terms of bagging a buffalo, bear in mind that these weren't just a couple guys hunting buffalo, these were hunting "parties" of dozens of people that would go for days and weeks at a time, in order not to produce a nice cut of steak, but clothes, shelter, medicine etc ...

Consider too that at these later points in our development, we had devised small traps and such that helped guarantee success in hunting.

*** that statement is kinda vague ... what point in our development and what kind of traps are you talking about?

I personally would hunt or fish first, if lost in the wild, before I began gathering food from plants (unless of course, I was lost in a giant vegetable garden).

*** You know what? I probably would too. Hunt, no, but fish and forrage, probably, and again it would have to do with expending energy.

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason


First of all, which choice provides the most calories for you and your NOMADIC people.

*** well which exercise is giong to BURN the most calories for me and my nomadic peope :p
So if i'm not going to waste all my energy hunting an animal, then I would gather I don't need 2000 calories a day.

[Ming Yue]

Oh I didn't mean at all to imply that meat is a requirement for a balanced diet. It's not.

And my comment about trapping was something of an afterthought, and I was referring to soceities of the past 1000 years or so.

:)
Cynthia

[CD Lee]

Spark - On the historical information, I guess I was expecting some time periods, exampls of peoples, conditions, not just how you feel. Your a history man, 'cmon and give me some examples if you have them.



From what I read I got the impression that some/many people
think that humankind throughout all of time has been meat eaters, that
from day one we have hunted wild game, and that meat has been a staple
of our diets (and rightly so) for all of eternity, as well that perhaps there is
also an attached misconception that one cannot survive without meat.


We know two things. Humans have physical design attributes that are geared towards eating meat and that humans were hunter/gatherers. Eaters of opportunity. We all agree there I think. I am sorry you feel that poeple interpert these facts in the extreeme. Some do.



My point about, well, caveman? for lack of
a better word is this - i think that people take for granted
what it is to hunt game

I am sorry people do that. I think others points and historical accuracy points out that early mankind ate meat, and benefited from it. How much or how little is somewhat logistical. They did eat meat.



heck, a gunshot can't bring down a Buffalo,
so how would you expect a spear to? And what are you
going to do, carry ten of them?

Now you know that American Indians used spears and arrows to kill buffalo. And they processed everything. Need we argue this point? Yes it is possible. Life was hard back then. I am sorry they had to use spears, and carry heavy items. Hisory shows that indigenous peoples used spears to hunt game. Komoto dragons hunt with bacertia, and have to wait up to a week to realize they prey the hunt and track. History does not tell us that hunting back then was easy or fast. It tells us that men hunted game.



Civilizations such as the Aztecs, Egyptians, and Greeks,
with the exception of the wealthy and elite depended
primarily on a vegetarian diet. There was fish included in
these diets (at least for certain with Greece and Egypt).
But again my point is that these societies were not
dependant on meat in their diets, and these are arguably
some of the greatest civilizations in history.

Ok. Nice details although vague. But details, peoples, times, and places. We could delve into that stuff. We seem to be talking about both very primitive mankind, and evolved, socially advanced ordered societies. Be careful mixing these together in one argument or point. Social infrastructures allow men FAR more freedom, safety, and choice that is only attainable in such a society.

I'll post another post to break up this huge post.

[Ming Yue]

Civilizations such as the Aztecs, Egyptians, and Greeks,
with the exception of the wealthy and elite depended
primarily on a vegetarian diet.


Just an interesting note - The Azteks didn't keep domestic animals, and while they did mostly eat beans & corn, other vegetables and algae and reptiles, it is conjectured that thier diet probably contained a certain amount of human flesh, although this may have been limited to holy men and higher-ups. They sacrificed a lot of people to thier war god, whose name starts with H and I can't remember it now, but there is evidence that suggests that they ate at least some of that flesh....

You want fries with that?
;)

[CD Lee]

I recently read a book by Kevin
McGoogan called "Fatal Passage" In summary it is a
biography about an explorer and wilderness expert John
Rae. Now this is in the 1850s. He hunted in N. Canada. This
guy was said to be one of the best hunters in all of
Canada. On his missions, he would go out for weeks at a
time and be able to haul in enough game to last for five
people for three months.



Showing of course that it is possible to become a very good hunter and tracker. Especially if your life depended on it. Who needs guns? Early men did not use them kill animals. I'll bet Indian hunting parties could have done just as well.



I won't
argue that a spear was never used to take down animals,
I'm just saying that we can't just be all, "well they had
spears, so that's good enough to hunt and feed
everyone",


Hey, nobody said these guys were on the Adkin's diet, except maybe Dr. Adkins :D Yeah, yeah, they could not eat 100% meat. Of course not.



Part of my point as well is that you will also expend far
more energy hunting than you would gathering.

Yes, but that still did not stop hunters and hunting parties from doing it. Even in the rain forests TODAY, tribes still hunt and successfully kill pigs with bamboo spears with no steel, and have a good portion. Saw that one on TLC, and they basically snuck up on him and skewered him with multiple spears. (Not bad considering they had a camera guy following them and still got the pig. :D)



You can't really generalize Native American culture
because there was such a vast array of societies, all
existing at the same time, that to say "they did this, that,
etc ..." is not accurate.

Acutally, it is accurate, just not to all tribes, as you pointed out. But they did do certain things to exist. Eaters of opportunity. Using Native Americans is a GREAT example. They did not have guns or horses for a while, some were nomadic, some were not, and we know what they did in an undeveloped land to survive. You are just saying that we cannot attribute all aspects of one tribe to all other tribes.

So in summary, I think a lot of your 'beef' is not the historical record of man eating meat, but rather, that some people draw general or extreeme conclusions from them. Such as, "well, if they had a spear and killed with it, they only ate meat from the spear or must have ate 90% meat". I can understand that people will do that from time to time. And the converse is also possible. "Well if they had access to vegetables, they would not spend valuable time and calories to hunt meat." People tend to do what they desire. Bears don't mind 50 bee stings on the nose, if they can get some yummy honey. Not the easy road, but it sure tastes good.

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason

Let's see....
4 men go out and kill a Buffalo that can feed 20 people for a month.
or

*** First off, one buffalo cannot sustain 20 people for a month, let alone one person. Again I would make reference to the book i alluded to, where John Rae would catch 75 Caribou, hundreds of fish, and vemicen(i dont' even know what that is) and that would feed 7 people for an entire winter!!!

everyone works their as s off every day tending crops, hoping bugs and animals don't eat all the good stuff before it's ripe. Then, when it's time to move because a bear has moved into the woods, we start all over somewhere else plowing and planting and waiting 3 months for something to grow.

*** Hmm that's why I added a point on gathering as well and the availability of wild food, not just farming. I guess we're both here imagining the worst case scenerios for each of our stances bc you have listed every possible contingency ... but a bear moving into the woods ... why would I plant my crops in the woods???

By the time the Aztecs are doing this, people are fairly modern in their evolution. 5,000 years is not far enough to go back for a discussion of how people became meat eaters. In the long long ago, when people lived in small tribes of 20 or less, there was not enough manpower to tend large crops efficiently.

*** I'm not arguing that we had crops that far back and I agree you wouldn't be able to with societies of 20 or less, that's where I would apply my point on gathering.

[Spark]

Originally posted by CD Lee
Spark - On the historical information, I guess I was expecting some time periods, exampls of peoples, conditions, not just how you feel. Your a history man, 'cmon and give me some examples if you have them.

*** Oh brother!!! Well if you want references and citations I will oblige!! :D
The funny thing is I'm writing this at work when I should be at home where all my books are HAHA
So I apologize, I am going off the top of my head, and in the future will try to be much more specific.

We know two things. Humans have physical design attributes that are geared towards eating meat and that humans were hunter/gatherers. Eaters of opportunity. We all agree there I think. I am sorry you feel that poeple interpert these facts in the extreeme. Some do.

*** This is where it could get sticky, because I don't believe we have the attributes geared towards eating meat. Look back a few posts where I responded to you apple analogy and what I said about our teeth (a common argument about how we are geared towards eating meat). Our stomachs are completely different (in terms of breaking down consumption) than those of meat eaters as well. Are we eaters of opportunity? Yes I agree with that. Hell, people have eaten people when the opportunity arose, so it isn't a stretch we'd also eat animals. The key word though it opportunity.

I am sorry people do that. I think others points and historical accuracy points out that early mankind ate meat, and benefited from it. How much or how little is somewhat logistical. They did eat meat.

*** Agreed, but again, I have stated my point on this and what i'm arguing about and I don't think I need to repeat it.

Now you know that American Indians used spears and arrows to kill buffalo. And they processed everything. Need we argue this point? Yes it is possible. Life was hard back then. I am sorry they had to use spears, and carry heavy items. Hisory shows that indigenous peoples used spears to hunt game. Komoto dragons hunt with bacertia, and have to wait up to a week to realize they prey the hunt and track. History does not tell us that hunting back then was easy or fast. It tells us that men hunted game.

*** Ok, here is my problem with using Native Americans as an example (and maybe i have done this too, so i'm gonna quit it). We cannot generalize about Natives because until Euros arrived there is very little historical records with regards to their past and how they lived. This is because their history is mainly passed on orally and there is very little in terms of writing. The main evidence in terms of writing is almost exclusively found on wampums (the sorta peace belts or whatever), which is very limited. So to say, Natives did this and that, you are only saying what their habits were within the last 400 years, which doesn't really tell us any more in terms of human evolution and eating meat.

Ok. Nice details although vague. But details, peoples, times, and places. We could delve into that stuff. We seem to be talking about both very primitive mankind, and evolved, socially advanced ordered societies. Be careful mixing these together in one argument or point. Social infrastructures allow men FAR more freedom, safety, and choice that is only attainable in such a society.

*** Agreed, I am totally at fault at jumping back and forth and have not seperated the two points well. I'm trying!!!
If you want, again, I will go through my books and such and find solid examples, but unfortunately i'm leaving town until sunday, so it'll have to wait!! :(

I'll post another post to break up this huge post.

[Spark]

Originally posted by CD Lee

Showing of course that it is possible to become a very good hunter and tracker. Especially if your life depended on it. Who needs guns? Early men did not use them kill animals. I'll bet Indian hunting parties could have done just as well.

*** RRRRRRRRRRRR no, showing how hard it is to catch enough game to sustain only 5-10 people!!!:D
To add a point about Native hunting parties, as I mentioned, these parties weren't organized so they could get some good meat to eat! Not only was it for that (there i'll give you one point) but for shelter, clothing, medicine, religion/rituals.

Yes, but that still did not stop hunters and hunting parties from doing it. Even in the rain forests TODAY, tribes still hunt and successfully kill pigs with bamboo spears with no steel, and have a good portion. Saw that one on TLC, and they basically snuck up on him and skewered him with multiple spears. (Not bad considering they had a camera guy following them and still got the pig. :D)

*** I got nothign on that one :p

Acutally, it is accurate, just not to all tribes, as you pointed out. But they did do certain things to exist. Eaters of opportunity. Using Native Americans is a GREAT example. They did not have guns or horses for a while, some were nomadic, some were not, and we know what they did in an undeveloped land to survive. You are just saying that we cannot attribute all aspects of one tribe to all other tribes.

*** Well i posted what i think about those examples and i'll wait and see what your response is before i go into this one.

So in summary, I think a lot of your 'beef' is not the historical record of man eating meat, but rather, that some people draw general or extreeme conclusions from them. Such as, "well, if they had a spear and killed with it, they only ate meat from the spear or must have ate 90% meat". I can understand that people will do that from time to time. And the converse is also possible. "Well if they had access to vegetables, they would not spend valuable time and calories to hunt meat." People tend to do what they desire. Bears don't mind 50 bee stings on the nose, if they can get some yummy honey. Not the easy road, but it sure tastes good.

*** You're partly right. Again, I'm not arguing that we didn't eat meat or anything, i'm arguing it's importance/significance in our diet and it's role in our survival. The reason I got into this thread was because people were all, "Bah, we were designed to eat meat from day one!!! We are meat eaters blalbalbal" And i'm simply stating, well if meat was so crucial, then why was it not an important staple in this civilization, or that one? Maybe meat isn't an important part of our diet, especially if the civs mentioned didnt' need it.



I"m off to Montreal!!! I'll be looking forward to Sunday !!

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason



It's called an apendix. Used to digest uncooked meat.

So when we get our apendix taken out what then?

[Ming Yue]

Props to GThomason. Hominids have always been biochemically and physiologically able to consume and obtain nutritive value from meat, cooked or uncooked.

even without an appendix, we have sufficient enzymatic action to get nutrition from raw meat.

[CD Lee]

Spark,

My reply about Native Americans is in regard to your or others logical reasoning that hunting meat as part of a diet staple, is unreasonable when working in undeveloped pure wilderness.

So my argument is not that they ate meat and that proves we should be meat eaters. I am showing the practicality of small groups or tribes, hunting meat as part of their diet. Yes it took calories, and energy, but the bounty of a small hunting party was reaped by many many others that did not do the hunting. They dried what they could not consume immediately. American Indians were absolute expert hunters and trackers. They were these things because of the environmental conditions and the skills passed from generation to generation. There are volumes written on American Indidan habits and lifestyles. Just because there was a lot of oral tradition does not mean their claims are invalid, or cannot be substantiated by evidence. There is a multitude of evidence on these things.

Also, you seem to base your conclusions on what you deem reasonable. I try to look at the historical records more than just reason. Don't forget, indigenous peoples native to a land, are much more efficient in their ability to utilize small amounts of food, and have incredible endurance. Metabolism changes based on eating habits, allowing us to survive in very slim times. There is one indian tribe in particular that I watched on TV, that had very sever obesity problems due to this response. Their ancestors lived off of almost nothing for so long, when they started eating normally, their children exploded in weight gains.

I am frankly amazed that anybody was able to live without grocery stores and farms.

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason
And how many cave-paintings have you ever seen of people picking apples from trees?

I would bet NONE.

Because early people painted images that were important to them and their survival--antelope, buffalo, rabbits, deer....

I'm not saying people didn't eat any veggies, but clearly our early ancestors (again, not modern Indians or Romans) knew the value of eating meat, and recognized the risk of hunting was far outweighed by the gains of the kill.

Actually, one of the caves with the earliest cave drawings (Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc) has more paintings of predators than any animal which would help survival and there are none which indicate any activities of hunting.

GHThompson, I think it's only fair that if you're going to say things like "clearly our early ancestors knew the value of eating meat", then you would have to give some sort of proof to this claim, and how you in fact know that they thought this.

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason
If you don't eat uncooked meat, then you have nothing to worry about.

So if my apendix is taken out, I can't eat sushi???
:confused:

[CD Lee]

Some interesting research written by a PHD student named Mary G. Enig and Sally Fallon. This is available on the web.

"The early explorers consistently described the native Americans as tall and well
formed. Of the Indians of Texas, the explorer Cabeza de Vaca7 wrote, “The men
could run after a deer for an entire day without resting and without apparent
fatigue. . . one man near seven feet in stature. . . runs down a buffalo on foot
and slays it with his knife or lance, as he runs by its side.” The Indians were
difficult to kill. De Vaca reports on an Indian “traversed by an arrow. . . he does
not die but recovers from his wound.” The Karakawas, a tribe that lived near the
Gulf Coast, were tall, well-built and muscular. “The men went stark naked, the
lower lip and nipple pierced, covered in alligator grease [to ward off mosquitos],
happy and generous, with amazing physical prowess. . . they go naked in the
most burning sun, in winter they go out in early dawn to take a bath, breaking
the ice with their body.”

GREASY AND GOOD

What kind of foods produced such fine physical specimens? The diets of the
American Indians varied with the locality and climate but all were based on
animal foods of every type and description, not only large game like deer,
buffalo, wild sheep and goat, antelope, moose, elk, caribou, bear and peccary,
but also small animals such as beaver, rabbit, squirrel, skunk, muskrat and
raccoon; reptiles including snakes, lizards, turtles, and alligators; fish and
shellfish; wild birds including ducks and geese; sea mammals (for Indians living in
coastal areas); insects including locust, spiders and lice; and dogs. (Wolves and
coyotes were avoided because of religious taboos.)"


The explorer Cabeza de Vaca is quoted in WW Newcomb, The Indians of
Texas, 1961, University of Texas.




Sources of Fat for the American Indian10
Saturated
Monounsaurated
Polyunsaturated
Antelope, kidney fat
Bison, kidney fat
Caribou, bone marrow
Deer, Kidney fat
Dog, meat, muscle
Dog, kidney
Elk, kidney
Goat, kidney
Moose, kidney
Peccary, fatty tissues
Reindeer, caribou, fatty tissues
Seal (Harbor), blubber
Seal (Harbor), depot fat
Seal (harp), blubber
Seal (harp), meat
Sheep (mountain), kidney fat
Sheep (white faced), kidney fat
Sheep, intestine, roasted
Snake, meat
Squirrel (brown), adipose
Squirrel (white), adipose

Game fat, says Eaton

USDA data, prepared by John L. Weihrauch with technical assistance of
Julianne Borton and Theresa Sampagna

Politically correct paleodieters also ignore the fact that the Indians hunted
animals selectively. The explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who spend many years
with the Indians, noted that they preferred “the flesh of older animals to that of
calves, yearlings and two-year olds. . . It is approximately so with those
northern forest Indians with whom I have hunted, and probably with all
caribou-eaters.” The Indians preferred the older animals because they had built
up a thick slab of fat along the back. In an animal of 1000 pounds, this slab
could weigh 40 to 50 pounds. Another 20-30 pounds of highly saturated fat
could be removed from the cavity. This fat was saved, sometimes by rendering,
stored in the bladder or large intestine, and consumed with dried or smoked lean
meat. Used in this way, fat contributed almost 80 percent of total calories in
the diets of the northern Indians.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Fat of the Land, MacMillan Company, 1956



This is a tiny example of the kind of historical facts that can be found on the lifestyles of American Indians.

See the full text at:
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/native_americans.html

[Spark]

Originally posted by CD Lee
Spark,

My reply about Native Americans is in regard to your or others logical reasoning that hunting meat as part of a diet staple, is unreasonable when working in undeveloped pure wilderness.

So my argument is not that they ate meat and that proves we should be meat eaters. I am showing the practicality of small groups or tribes, hunting meat as part of their diet. Yes it took calories, and energy, but the bounty of a small hunting party was reaped by many many others that did not do the hunting. They dried what they could not consume immediately. American Indians were absolute expert hunters and trackers. They were these things because of the environmental conditions and the skills passed from generation to generation. There are volumes written on American Indidan habits and lifestyles. Just because there was a lot of oral tradition does not mean their claims are invalid, or cannot be substantiated by evidence. There is a multitude of evidence on these things.

Also, you seem to base your conclusions on what you deem reasonable. I try to look at the historical records more than just reason. Don't forget, indigenous peoples native to a land, are much more efficient in their ability to utilize small amounts of food, and have incredible endurance. Metabolism changes based on eating habits, allowing us to survive in very slim times. There is one indian tribe in particular that I watched on TV, that had very sever obesity problems due to this response. Their ancestors lived off of almost nothing for so long, when they started eating normally, their children exploded in weight gains.

I am frankly amazed that anybody was able to live without grocery stores and farms.

CD Lee,

Ok, this was a very clear post! I wish I could do the same :p
I guess we'll have to simply disagree with the practicality of hunting b/c as i mentioned with my buddy John Rae, he gathered what seemed immense amounts of game, which was of course dried and salted for later consumption, and could only sustain a handful of people (who were also directly involved in the hunting) for a few months. And I should mention that he is truly an exception when it came to this, and was out hunting his native translators.

Hmm I would say that I draw my conclusions from the knowledge I have gained and experiences I have had studying certain fields. Besides, doesn't one gather information, process it and thus draw a conclusion from it? Again, not all of history is recorded, and written out in black and white. The Historical Records don't always tell us the answers we are looking for. We have to fill in the gaps from what is available and thus draw a 'reasonable' conclusion to the questions we are posing. I guess this is why in History there are so many articles debunking so and so HAHA I think you'll agree this is what History is all about - two people seeing/interpreting actions differently bc the 100% proof doesnt' exist. I feel that I have tried to give examples of my reasoning (and I know I'll have to do better to convince you :p ) that are not wild, sweeping statements, but are fairly conservative and objective, and I think I have gone into far greater detail than some.

[Ming Yue]

Hmmm... cave paintings also don't show people building shelters, making clothing, having babies... seems to me like they painted the most exciting parts of thier existence, which would be hunting.
I can't recall ever seeing a cave painting with a mundane daily activity portrayed, but I haven't seen that many, either.

Saying that neolithic man NEVER ate fruits or vegetables as a basic food source is too broad a statement.

Of course it depends on thier location, but it would seem that the stone age diet included available fruits, greens and nuts, although not a major portion. They were hunter/gatherers, after all. No grains, though.

To prove it, I'd have to procure a chunk of Neolithic human poop and a big ol microscope, so I'll just see if you'll accept my logical conclusion for now.

[rubthebuddha]

i don't think it's come up in the thread yet, but what about the fact that our bodies are designed to be able to digest meats? some may take longer than others, but the fact remains that we can.

this only addresses the question of whether or not it's part of our existence. the question of whether or not we should choose to is exclusive to this, and like most choices, this may come down just to personal preference.

[Spark]

Ok guys,
You've asked for some info and I have found it. This is from a book written by Peter Cox where in this sections addresses the myths of meat eating throughout history. I will source his references at the end.

... many people still mistakenly blieve that hyumans are somehow 'genetically programmed' to eat flesh foods, and cannot thrive without them; that we are, in essence, carnivores. All right then, let's look at the evidence.

Scientific evidence suggests that our ancestors probably originated in the East African Rift Valley, which is a dry and desolate place today, but would have been very different 2-4 million years ago. The habitat was very lush then. There were large, shallow freshwater lakes, with rich, open grasslands on teh flood plains and dense woodlan beside the rivers. Fossil evidence shows that foodstuffs such as Leguminose (peas and beans) and Anacardiaceae (cashew nuts) were readily available, as were Palmae (sago, dates and coconuts). Evidence gained from teh analysis of tooth markings indicates taht our ancestors' diet was much teh same as teh Guinea Baboon's is today - hard seeds, stems, some roots, plant fibre - a typically tough diet requiring stripping, chopping and chewing actions.
Our ancestors had very large molars, with small incisors, unsuited to meat consumption but ideal for consuming large quantities of vegetable matter. By 2.5 million years BC, however, evidence shows that the land began to dry out, forcing Australopithecus (the name of one of our very early ancestors) to desert this idyllic Garden of Eden and to try and survive on teh savannahs, where they were poorly prepared for the evolutionary struggle that was to come.
Before this crucial point, there is little doubt that our ancestors had largely followed a vegetarian diet, typical of primates. Recent studies of minute scratches on the dental enamel of Australopithecus suggests that their diet consisted of largely hard, chewy seeds and berries, although few eggs and small animals may have been consumed too. Most scientists consider it unlikely that Australopithecus was a systematic hunter, or killer ape, as this species has sometimes been depicted.

Academic American Encyclopedia, 1992

Peter Cox then goes on to address how this move forced our ancestor's to adapt, and yes, had to eat meat to survive, whether it be scavenging or trapping small animals ... thus the term omnivore arose.

... in his book The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris made an interesting observation about this period when he wrote:

"It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets, we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient primate feedign patterns."

... So here we ahve a pciture of a species which was originally vegetarian, whch then due to force of circumstances adapted to become omnivorous. This reality is a long, long way from teh 'meat is an essential part of the diet' myth. It is clear from recent analysis of human remains that even during this period of our development, plant food was still by far the most important source of food. The level of strontium present in bones is an accurate guide to teh amount of plant food consumed, and scientists at teh University of Pisa, Italy, who have analysed teh bones fo early Europens have found that they were eating an 'almost exlusively vegetarian diet' right up to teh time agriculture was developed.

Fornaciari, G and Mallegni, F., "Palaenutritional studies on skeletal remains of ancient populations from the Mediterranean area: an attempt to interpretation' Anthropologischer Anzeiger, Dec 1987, 45 (4) pages 361-370

[morbicid]

wow what a huge thread
can u say... got chi girls

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason
This says nothing about the claims that scavenging marrow probably super-charged our evolution. The fatty acids in bone marrow would have contributed enough calories to allow our brains to develop further.

If we hadn't started eating meat, we'd still be dumb monkeys.

Well that's the first time in this thread anyone has said anything about "marrow super-charging our evolution." So how could I have said anything about it???? :confused: And you also say "probably" ... that isn't very definitive and doesn't really hold up any arguement.

The last part shows me how little you know of the theory of evolution so I'm not even going to touch it.

In terms of the Sushi comment, I was not being obtuse. You stated, "the apendix is used to process uncooked meat." Sushi is uncooked meat. You then ammend your statement to that sushi is not red meat, even though you did not say red meat. So before you make posts you should probably make up your mind first what it is you are saying instead of changing the rules in the middle of the game.

[Spark]

Originally posted by Ming Yue
Hmmm... cave paintings also don't show people building shelters, making clothing, having babies... seems to me like they painted the most exciting parts of thier existence, which would be hunting.
I can't recall ever seeing a cave painting with a mundane daily activity portrayed, but I haven't seen that many, either.

Saying that neolithic man NEVER ate fruits or vegetables as a basic food source is too broad a statement.



Ming Yue
You may have brought inadvertently and interesting point. You point out all these things not found in cave paintings, and of course to conclude that just because there aren't cave paintings of having babies, building shelters, gathering vegetables, etc .. that it didn't happen is ridiculous. These were all boring day to day activities that surely were not exciting.
But huting on the other hand and bringing home a huge kill would surely have been and extraordinary event, some thing (as your logic would state) that is NOT day to day activity, thus worthy of some sort of glorification in the form of paintings.

[Spark]

CD Lee,

I appreciate your post on Natives and am weary I may have to succed that point to you :mad:
But I hope you can appreciate my post and this one as well as backing up my suggestion of where we came from wasn't this carnivorous hunting machine that came back everyday from the wilderness with heaps of wild game in tow. This exerpt from the same book above you might find interesting.

... the plain fact is that the sort of hunting that our ancestors practised was never a good enought way of providing food for everyone. Careful studies of societies who lead similar lifestyles to those of our ancestors - such as the Bush People of the Kalahari - reveal that the probability of obtaining meat on any one hunting day is about one in four. Now, just how long do you think a society can exist, based on a 25 per cent success record? By contrast, the women always return from their gathering expeditions with food - a 100 per cent success rate. And the entire tribe could comfortably feed itself if each member put in a 15-hour week ...

It is quite clear that in original societies such as these, hunting is only possible on the back of an effective, dependable and reliable source of plant food. Once the tribe is certain of food, then those men who want to (about one third of the Kalihari males never hunted) can go off and gamble on a kill-nothing jeopardised if the come home empty handed. And yet, many modern people, living entirely synthetic live in wholly unnatural Western environments, still believe and behave as if meat-eating is the magic thread which keeps us in touch with the primitive, authentic humans we think we ought to be. Modern people who have never been told of the absolutely crucial role of 'woman the gatherer' in human development are, to be blunt, profoundly ignorant. They are ignorant about the history of their own species, which makes them ignorant about their very own, personal identities. And ignorance leaves them open to exploitation.

Zihlman, A. in Dahlberg, F., (ed.) Woman the Gatherer , Yale University Press, 1981.

Truswell and Hanson, 'Medical Research amoungst teh Kung' in Lee, D. (ed.), Kalahari hunter-gatherers, Harvard University Press, 1976.

Coon, C.S. The Hunting Peoples, Jonathan Cape, 1972

[Spark]

CD LEE!!

I read your post and went to that site where that article was posted ...
Did you go through that whole site? That foundation is kinda anti-vegetarian, did you notice that? :(
I have a hard time seeing that stuff as being objective.
Do you have any other info?
That site as all, "You need beef, it doesn't cause Mad Cow, It doesn't cause Cancer, it's all a hoax to trick you blalbalabl" ... kinda paranoid talk if you ask me.
Check it out and tell me what you think!

Later,
Spark

[Ming Yue]

My comments weren't inadvertent. I always bring up interesting stuff on purpose, and sometimes with malice aforethought. :D

I maintain that hunting was indeed a regular activity for neolithic man. As it was most certainly exciting and dangerous, and its successful outcome provided for the entire group, of course it was chronicled in thier artwork as the most important event, not a rare one. It sustained them. Definitely so throughout winter.

The conversation is gravitating to extremes, also. Stone age man was most certainly NOT a fully carnivorous killer ape. Third time, I say we were eaters of opportunity. My educated guess would be that the average stone age diet would contain maybe 20% meat at it's highest level. and thats a huge geographic generalization.

Later, Neanderthals did eat an almost entirely meat diet. I will look around and see what I can learn about the changes in brain development during this period specifically. I find the whole marrow thing really interesting and wonder how it overlaps with a mostly meat-eating period in our development.

-Cynthia

[RAF]

Interesting Readings:

http://www.westonaprice.org/myths_truths/myths_truths_vegetarianism.html (read footnotes and references)

http://www.acsh.org/publications/priorities/0902/vegetarian.html

http://www.vanguardonline.f9.co.uk/00509.htm

[Spark]

Originally posted by Ming Yue

I maintain that hunting was indeed a regular activity for neolithic man. As it was most certainly exciting and dangerous, and its successful outcome provided for the entire group, of course it was chronicled in thier artwork as the most important event, not a rare one. It sustained them. Definitely so throughout winter.

The conversation is gravitating to extremes, also. Stone age man was most certainly NOT a fully carnivorous killer ape. Third time, I say we were eaters of opportunity. My educated guess would be that the average stone age diet would contain maybe 20% meat at it's highest level. and thats a huge geographic generalization.

Later, Neanderthals did eat an almost entirely meat diet. I will look around and see what I can learn about the changes in brain development during this period specifically. I find the whole marrow thing really interesting and wonder how it overlaps with a mostly meat-eating period in our development.

-Cynthia

Cynthia,
That's cool of what your stance is. I have stated my argument and given examples and references to support it. I have seen little concrete evidence given yet to the contrary other than cave paintings, which in my opinion doesn't really prove anything. If you could give references to Neadrethals eating an entirely meat diet, that would help this discussion out :)
Although if you read my posts again, there are points made about this period in history.
I am very suspect about the meat eating changing our brain develpment. If we break down the statement "fatty acids found in bone marrow" ... Fatty acids can be found in a plethora of meats, as well as plants and legumes ... "gave us enough calories ... " the idea that calories is responsible for the evolution of our brains is ridiculous and if this was true then the amount of meat humankind (especially in the US) has consumed in the last 100 years, our brains would have evolved us all into Einsteins.

[inic]

OMG where did this post come from??? manoman have some of you got your facts wrong. vegetarianism has so many things wrong with it. you people really need to do some actual research and studies and experiments before you rant you're so-called "facts". Meat is the cause of cancer you say?? then tell me why native americans, tribal africans and australians are some of the most healthy people and pretty much only eat meat (raw is key!) I'm getting real tired of vegetarians proclaim they are the all-knowing healthiest people when you couldnt be ****her from the truth. go research weston price or aajonus vendalritz (whateverhisname is)
personally i think vegetarian leads to chemical imbalances. ever vegan i know seems to have high rate of emotions (good and bad) and just has that sense of "something wrong here" about them.
I do everything in laymen terms: if you want hard data, i'll give you tons, but nowadays, one study will disprove another to disprove a study that that one disproved and so on and so on... i think 90% of so-called studies done today are biased crap.
man, lol, i am really ranting right nwo and probably not making any sense am i? bah, i give up! go on with ur veganims if u really want, but dont try to preach to the world that is the best thing next to God... keep your ignorance to yourself

[inic]

ugh, i just see now that evolution has made its way into this topic too! arggg i give up!! I spent 4 years studying evolution, to help me understand it so i can better fight it. now i'm going on 2 years studying nutrition. i noticed with both fields, no matter what you know, study,research; when people dont have an open mind and generally want to listen, they arent going to give a care about what you know...

[Spark]

Originally posted by inic
OMG where did this post come from??? manoman have some of you got your facts wrong. vegetarianism has so many things wrong with it. you people really need to do some actual research and studies and experiments before you rant you're so-called "facts". Meat is the cause of cancer you say?? then tell me why native americans, tribal africans and australians are some of the most healthy people and pretty much only eat meat (raw is key!) I'm getting real tired of vegetarians proclaim they are the all-knowing healthiest people when you couldnt be ****her from the truth. go research weston price or aajonus vendalritz (whateverhisname is)
personally i think vegetarian leads to chemical imbalances. ever vegan i know seems to have high rate of emotions (good and bad) and just has that sense of "something wrong here" about them.
I do everything in laymen terms: if you want hard data, i'll give you tons, but nowadays, one study will disprove another to disprove a study that that one disproved and so on and so on... i think 90% of so-called studies done today are biased crap.
man, lol, i am really ranting right nwo and probably not making any sense am i? bah, i give up! go on with ur veganims if u really want, but dont try to preach to the world that is the best thing next to God... keep your ignorance to yourself

Inic,
I don't know if you're addressing me, but I seem to be the only veggie here :p
This thread, and my posts have never been about arguing the 'superiority' of a vegetarian diet, so don't get all mad at me and start ranting about how it sucks. I have never said meat is the cause of cancer, I am not that stupid as to make such a sweeping, unspecific statement.
I gave an example of the Kalahari Bushmen in one of my posts, and it is quite clear if you say they are some of the most healthiest, it has nothing to do with meat.
I've been to WestonPrice and all the sites listed by RMF (sp???) and all I can say is that once a site/article/organization has to stoop to making fun of vegetarians and proclaiming them to be lunitics, that just tells me how desperate they are (why I don't know) to grasp at reasons to debunk a vegetarian diet.

[inic]

yup, i'm totally in the ranting mood right now... honestly i never even read any of your posts, i just read the first 2 pages and the last one. its too much to read this whole post! I really dont think vegans are "lower" than me or anything like that, i just think they are simply misguided and reading misinformation. I've done so many experiments to prove my points. but these were all done with my own body, and every body is different of course. i did go 2 months though on a vegan diet as one experiment. I'm totally into doing experiments with diets because i'm always ready to see if a so-called "fact" is true or not

[Spark]

Yo inic,
That's cool man. I was worried for a sec bc we've debated here before and it's stayed pretty cool, so I was worried you were givin me the business! HAHA :D
And I've read your posts about your diet so I know you wouldn't just blurb out nonesense.
This thread though has stayed pretty tame considering this topic can get people pretty riled up.
Later,
Spark

[TzuChan]

You people should know that being a vegetarian in your teens can cause serious health damages, there were two people in my class that didn't eat meat etc.. right now, they have this disease that people are only expected to have when they turn 90 or something (something with their bones, and blood flow, seriously nasty stuff)... and it's a direct effect of the non-meat eating thing

[rubthebuddha]

how about the idea that we're omnivorous for one specific reason -- to be able to survive and adapt in very diverse environments. the more options we have, the higher our chances of survival. those who could eat a diverse diet survived, those who couldn't died more easily.

think about it this way -- put a koala bear in kansas and see how long it lives (other than some silly redneck shooting at it). put a human in okinawa and he'll eat fish and seaweed, put him in canada and he'll eat carribou and berries, put him in the midwest and he'll eat cattle and wheat.

we can adapt, partly because we're intelligent enough to figure out a new way to eat and partly because our digestive system is well-rounded enough to handle it.*

*note -- this doesn't take into account the fact that anyone that makes such dietary changes typically gets some fantastic cases of the shats. they may be uncomfortable, but at least they'll be alive.

[Outcast]

Ok, I have read this forum with interest, and there are lots of vailid points. I am a vegie and for the reason that my doctor noticed that the meat I enjoyed and used to eat was cr@p. It was all high fat burgers and sausages. He recommended that I should eat better sources of meat (purer I guess, rather then processed cr@p) or take on a more vegetarian diet.

I cut out red meats, then chicken and finally I cut out fish (all out of my own choice rather then having a doctor preach at me, he did mention that I should be more selective of the meats I ate but never pushed me into it). I have dropped 2 stone in about 8 months and I feel fine, my BP is better and I still look forward to a good feed :)

I dont hold anything against folk who want to (or feel the need to eat meat) I know how good it used to taste.

I guess it all comes down to eating well, either as a vegie or an omnivore.

[prana]

actually, mankind (pre ****-****) were originally vegetarians... but their brains were about half the size they are today.

This documentary that I saw had filmed skeletal remains of the purely vegetarian era, and the brain size suddenly greatly increased due to the eating of meat.

Wether the human body is made to eat both meat and veges from the very beginning, I do not know.


About the appendix being for digesting red meat, I am not sure where that came from but....

dogs + cats have no appendix
Horses have no appendix
Rabbits do (???)



The appendix would appear to have a role (although not as the sole organ) in establishing and maintaining the bowel-blood barrier for such bacteria in its area. The special aspects of the mucus produced in this area (the antibacterial paint-like action) along with the appendix figuring in the development of its region have been discussed. It has also been shown that the appendix can in no way be vestigial in an evolutionary sense.

[Ming Yue]

yikes.

I think it's time to drag out the dead horse, although for this thread perhaps we could form one out of TVP and beat on that.

I have read no arguments here that dissuade me from the knowledge that humans are and have always been omnivorous.

Also for the record, Vegetarian and vegan diets can be completely nutritive and healthful, they just require a little more attention to detail.



sociologists often cite that the modern human male's affinity for cookout's and Bar-B-Q'ing is thought to be a hold over from our past, when the person in control of the meat was in control of the group hierarchy.


Sure, big fires bring out the caveman in all men. Now, I like a really big fire more than the average girl, but somehow at barbeques I still find myself clustered with the other women in the kitchen preparing side dishes. The million year old habits are the really hard ones to break. ;)

[CD Lee]

I can smell the dead horse getting closer... :D

Yes, we are close to beating the dead horse, but this thread remained civil enough to get some good points on both sides of the arguent, and to learn some things. At the end of the day, you had better be able to take information, think about it, process it, and take a reasonable course of action with good concience.

Spark - Very nice posts the last 4 or 5. Good info, and good sources. I know we can find studies all day that counter each other, but it is still good material. Thanks.

you said...




I read your post and went to that site where that article was posted ...
Did you go through that whole site? That foundation is kinda anti-vegetarian, did you
notice that?
I have a hard time seeing that stuff as being objective.


Yeah, I did notice. I read very skeptically these days. I could care less really what they think about meat or veggies. All I cared about was their sources and historical records of observation. Hey, I completely dislike the whole Adkin's diet thing. I just wanted to observe the practcality of smaller tribes, of less industrialized peoples, hunting game as part of thier diets in a wilderness containing all the dangers that modern infrastructures and societies mitigate. Thats all. I found the information very interesting. I noticed the bias, and ignored it. I just wanted some info on what Indians did, not if they were healthy, happy, or whatever.

[prana]

I have read no arguments here that dissuade me from the knowledge that humans are and have always been omnivorous.


I guess it depends on your definition of humans. WHat I wrote above was "h0m0-h0m0sapiens" but it got censored :D

But I wonder what the non-vegetarians will draw conclusions from the fact that the vegetarian era had smaller brains :p :D

[Ming Yue]

Oh THATs what you wrote. I couldn't quite pick two cuss words that made sense there.... :) I didn't realize h0m0 would get censored

Oh come on now, I don't really have to define what I meant by "human" now, do I? We've only been covering it for about 9 pages. :)

I'm still not buying a "vegetarian era"..... can you point me to some evidence, perhaps reference an exact timeframe? Did I miss it in an earlier post? I don't buy it.

(she says while dragging the smelly carcass of a long dead and much pummelled horse into the room)

[prana]

I saw in on a documentary from the dudes who did "The Human Body" on TV. Wether it is reliable info, hmmmm me dunno. But not like I have an opinion of wether we should or should not be vegeterians so either way makes no difference to me :D

[abobo]

I was going to post this in one of the beef threads, but it relates to this one too.

Look at this, will you:
http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/

http://www.epa.gov/ncea/dioxinqa.htm#f3

I'm no expert, but when it says something comes from animal fats that are commonly eaten, and that there are no safe levels, I'm thinking that it's a bad thing.

[RAF]

http://www.actionpa.org/

http://www.actionpa.org/directory.html

Part I:
How to Overthrow Corporate Rule in 5 Not-so-easy Steps

Resources and information on fighting corporate power, democratizing our government and freeing people's time.
Many people are spending a lot of their time volunteering to stop specific environmental threats, to address a specific labor issue, or to stop various other corporate abuses to our communities. The number of problems seems endless. Isn't there a faster way to save the world?

This page is devoted to those who are interested in getting to the root of society's problems. How nice would it be if our government wasn't answering to their corporate masters, but to community concerns? How much easier would our efforts be if people weren't so overworked and had more time to volunteer? Wouldn't it be great to have the media reporting critically on serious community issues rather than pandering to the the interests of their wealthy owners and advertizers?

These are the reforms that make other reforms possible. If fighting for institutional change is too difficult for you, jump down to the section on personal things you can do to consume less.


Take away their money:

Stop privatization / Re-socialize systems
Privatized systems mean that corporations get to profit from providing important social services which could be provided by (hopefully democratically-controlled) public bodies. Get involved in efforts to stop privitization of schools, municipal water/sewer systems, trash collection or other social services. Better yet, get involved in efforts to put services like health care or electric power under public control.
White Paper on Privatization
Polaris Institute

Public Services International Research Unit

Boycott / protest big corporations
Withdraw your support from large corporations by consuming less and supporting local, small businesses when possible.
Corporate Dirt Archives (learn what's wrong with specific corporations)
What should I buy?? (personal things you can do to consume less)

Fight corporate "wealthfare"
Get corporations off the public dole and work to stop subsidy abuse by opposing things like public funding for private stadiums, excessive and unneeded highway projects and other tax breaks, subsidies and bailouts which are not in the public interest. Welfare is for people, not corporations!
Corporate Welfare Information Center
Electoral/democracy:

Public financing of elections
Get corporate money out of our elections!
Corporate Control of Government (the basics on public campaign financing)
Public Campaign (a national group working to get private/corporate money out of our elections)
Researching Your Politicians (info on who is funding your politicians plus resources on corporate control of elections)

Ballot access / 3rd parties
Support efforts to help 3rd parties get on the ballot and challenge the two corporate parties!
Green Party
Ballot Access News


Initiative and Referendum
Put more decisions directly in the hands of the voters. If your state doesn't allow initiative and referendum, join others to pass a law to allow for it. If you already have it in your state, get involved with ballot initiatives and use it to press for further democracy measures.
Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
Initiative & Referendum Institute / Ballot Watch

Instant runoff voting
Don't let the government make you pick the "lesser of two evils" when you vote. With instant runoff voting, you can vote your conscience without fear by picking your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices (and so on). Start by putting this electoral process into practice on the local level - in your town, county or state.
Center for Voting and Democracy

Democratize media
The majority of all media in the U.S. is now owned by only six mega-corporations. Join movements to democratize media. Democracy is impossible without being able to hear voices of dissent.
Media Reform Information Center


Democratize your university
Colleges and universities are increasingly being controlled by corporate interests for their own gain. Work with others to pry education out of the corporate grip.
180: The Movement for Democracy and Education

Structural attacks:

Local ordinances which attack corporate rights
Work on the local or state level to exert the rights of people over corporations.
Challenging Corporate Authority (Part of the Alliance for Democracy's Campaign to Transform the Corporation)
Anti-Corporate Success Stories (ReclaimDemocracy.org)
CELDF Corporations & Democracy Program

Getting corporations out of our grade schools
Throughout the U.S., local school boards are the easiest public office to run for and win. Take over your local school board if necessary and work to get corporate influence out of public schools.
Unplug! - The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education

Fighting globalization
Think globally, act locally! Build community awareness of "free trade" agreements and hold your congressperson and senators accountable for their votes. Pass "WTO-free zone" resolutions and other local expressions of opposition to trade agreements which would trump the rights of local and state governments to protect citizens from corporate abuses. If you can, act globally as well by gathering people to go with you to rallies and protests against major corporate globalization conferences.
Global Trade Watch
Global Exchange
Mobilization for Global Justice
Independent Media Centers
Protest.net
Human/worker rights:

30 hour work week
30 hours work for 40 hours pay! Thanks to union organizing in years past, we now have the weekend, 8 hour work-days and 40 hour work weeks. In 1933, the 30 hour work week nearly became law when both the U.S. Senate and House passed it only to have it vetoed by President Roosevelt (who later regretted doing so). Sharing the work reduces unemployment and gives working people more personal time, which can free people up for move civic engagement.
Center for a New American Dream
Downsizing vs. Timesizing
The Free Time / Free People Project
"The End of Work" book by Jeremy Rifkin (Notes from the book; Order here)

Universal health care
Make the 30 hour work week possible by making health care a right (covering all people through one "single-payer" governmental system), not a privilege (where just certain working people are covered through multiple bureaucratic insurance corporations) and removing the incentive for corporations to avoid hiring full time workers.
Physicians for a National Health Program
Everybody In Nobody Out
Universal Health Care Action Network
Just Health Care Campaign (Labor Party)
Health Care Action Group (Alliance for Democracy)

Redesign Corporations:

Take away their personhood; Roll back their rights and definitions; Revoke corporate charters
Work towards the day when our states attorneys general revoke the charters of offending corporations and when state legislatures change their incorporation codes, rolling back the "rights" of corporations to where they used to be.
Fixing Corporations--Part 1: Legacy Of The Founding Parents
Fixing Corporations--Part 2: Corporations For The Seventh Generation
Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD)
Ending Corporate Governance
Reclaim Democracy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[RAF]

How to Overthrow Corporate Rule in 5 Not-so-easy Steps
(continued)


What should I buy??
How do I avoid supporting so many bad things when I buy stuff??
A mini-guide to a more sustainable lifestyle
TradeLocal (www.tradelocal.org) puts out a booklet called "A Citizen's Guide to Buying Locally - Positive Alternatives to Corporate Globalization." Call them at 804-760-8628 to order a copy.

Also, Co-op America (www.coopamerica.org) has useful catalogs and other info on "socially responsible" products.

In general, here's what you can do to avoid consumerism and withdraw support from the worst of corporate behaviors:


don't watch TV
buy only what you NEED; don't buy things on impulse / don't "shop" - just buy what you went for
take your own bag; refuse to take paper or plastic disposable bags (a receipt is all you need)
never buy anything in plastic number 3 or 6 (3 is PVC, a chlorinated plastic; 6 is polystyrene, which is also not safe) visit www.ejnet.org/plastics/ for background.
avoid plastic in general; buy things in glass, paper or metal containers when possible; if you must buy plastic, only buy types #1 and #2, for which recycling options are usually available
avoid overpackaged goods
buy from the most local place possible; avoid stuff from other countries, especially from those with really bad human rights records (basically anyplace but Canada, Japan or Europe).
buy from the smallest companies possible (if you've heard of them in advertising, they're probably too big; look on labels to see if they tell you who they're owned by... sometimes they do)
observe every boycott you can (visit www.corporations.org/corplist.html to get started)
buy recycled/reused goods; buy from dollar stores, flea markets and thrift shops for reused stuff
make use of things people throw away (I've obtained some decent furniture, lamps, desks and such by taking home stuff that suburbanites and college students throw out)
make major lifestyle choices that minimize the need to consume; don't have kids; live communally
look at ingredients in foods and materials in products and avoid anything that you find out is unhealthy or produced in bad ways
avoid toxics in products you consume: examples include anti-bacterial (triclosan) soaps, fluoridated water, mercury thermometers, vinyl toys
go vegan! (it goes a long way towards saving the environment, your health and the lives of many animals!) If you don't know where to start, try www.veganoutreach.org and www.pcrm.org
Try to find ways to institutionalize these things (get vegetarian options in your schools, get your local stores to stop carrying mercury thermometers or to start carrying non-fluoridated toothpastes, etc.)
sign onto some of the anti-corporate email lists out there, so you can learn what's up and stay on top of corporate activities. You can find lots of good lists at the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) website: www.seac.org/seacnet/ and also at the website of the student anti-corporate movement - "180: The Movement for Democracy and Education" - www.corporations.org/democracy/lists.html


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return to the ACTION Center Homepage
Return to the Corporate Accountability Project Homepage
Last modified: 2 December 2002

http://www.corporations.org/solutions/

__________________________________________________ _-

Not exactly the most unbiased source and sites of information:rolleyes:

[CD Lee]

RAF - Whats your point???????

You tryin' to jack our thread?

[Ming Yue]

this thread might NEED a pirate. but only after I ask this.....

Sure, 2.5 million years is a lot of mammothburgers.

I read in a few places recently that said that Australopithecus of as much as 5 million years ago was an occasional meat eater... Apparently I need to read more. Or less. Or just stop listening to you people. ;)

pre-garhi, huh? but WHY? What restricted them? Most potential prey being too big and dangerous for very small groups to hunt? Primates we descended from didn't eat entirely plant diets. what made us be completely vegetarian?

[RAF]

CD Lee:

You tryin Jack me? When did this become "our" thread. Its simply is a thread, no one owns it. Actually I don't owe you any **** explanation of what I choose to post.

The sites regarding dioxin and beef come from a much larger source which pushes a very strong political agenda. Whether dioxin is or is not a problem has to be seen in the context of who is interpreting the reasearch or pushing a political agenda. They also have a very strong vegan agenda. I am no apologist for the coroporate world, but bias and distortion of fact cuts both ways.

I don't jack around with anybody. I deal straight-up.

[Ming Yue]

don't get your hemp boxers all in a knot. I think CD was joking with you.

[RAF]

Sorry CD Lee, I should have been much more clearer in the initial post.

[CD Lee]

RAF - Hey!, you gettin' rough with me? You are wrinkling my shirt man. :D

Just having a little fun. I did start reading your post, and saw a bunch of political stuff, and had trouble focusing on how it realated. Hey, you cussed at me. Well....****. There.

[Serpent]

Dayum, RAF, you are one seriously agressive vegan! What kind of agenda are you trying to push posting all that stuff in a thread about the history of vegetarianism. For example:



make major lifestyle choices that minimize the need to consume; don't have kids; live communally
look at ingredients in foods and materials in products and avoid anything that you find out is unhealthy or produced in bad ways
avoid toxics in products you consume: examples include anti-bacterial (triclosan) soaps, fluoridated water, mercury thermometers, vinyl toys
go vegan! (it goes a long way towards saving the environment, your health and the lives of many animals!) If you don't know where to start, try www.veganoutreach.org and www.pcrm.org


Man, there's all the answers right there!

Can anyone spell f-a-n-a-t-i-c!

:D :rolleyes:

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason


That's my point, exactly. When humans started eating meat, our brain sizes increased dramatically. Is it a direct relation? Who knows, but it is surely more than coincidence.

We would still be stupid monkeys if we had not learned how to scavenge meat.

ghthomason
THis is what I'm getting confused with, with regards to this theory. I read your links and most of them went on about how the proteins, fatty acids and calories found in marrow are what was responsible for making our brains bigger. However, all three of those things are found in not just red meat, but other meats and a plethora of vegetables. They would then go on to state something to the effect that "we needed these calories/energy to support our bigger brains and activities ..." However, I have given many examples of societies (and I have a couple more), and some of which that are said to be closest to that of the hunter/gatherers of **** Erectus, and they did not depend on meat as their #1 food source, so perhaps you can imagine why this idea doesn't seem to wash with me.
Do you have any specifics on this theory or ideas on this? Because as i have stated before, I have a hard time believing that meat consumption=brain growth.

[Serpent]

Not quite the answer, but just a small point. I don't think meat ever was or ever should be man's #1 food source. People today eat way too much meat.

However, starting to supplement our diet with meat is what gave man the position on the planet he now holds, for better or worse!

[RAF]

Serpent:

I purposely posted without comment so you (plural, not personal) could decided what you see for yourself.

The point of the post is that I went to the orginal source of the post on Beef and Dioxin and found this. For many of those who accuse "flesh eaters" of supporting the Beef industry and claim the high moral ground, its important to see that many of them have a significantly different world view and support a particular political agenda for changing the world. For many, their vegetarianism goes beyond simply abstaining from meat and becomes a moral judgement, bordering on a religious fervor that rivals any extreme religion. Therefore, its useless to argue rationally over this issue because you are really arguing over a quasi-religious belief system.

I did the old and original Diet for a Small Planet, Francis Moore Lappe (her daughter now has a book out), when I started graduate school in the late 70s, mainly because I had no money and this was supposedly a cheap way of eating. I have tried it both ways. I found out that I like GOOD food with or without meat and will "steal" a vegetarian recipe every so often.


I follow the true, original "old ancient Chinese secret":
Eat a variety of foods.

However, I guess I lost my sense of humor here. I must be "out of balance" and eating too much much meat. LOL.

Anything and everything but chou doufu and living creatures (they tickle the throat on the way down.).

Hey CD Lee, I tried to get my sense of humor back.:)

[Ming Yue]

Nicely recovered, RAF. :D




However, all three of those things (protein, fatty acids, calories) are found in not just red meat, but other meats and a plethora of vegetables.

Do you have any specifics on this theory or ideas on this? Because as i have stated before, I have a hard time believing that meat consumption=brain growth.



I'll toss this out - one thing found in bone marrow and not plant material is stem cells, which are essentially very young "unassigned" cells that may become any type of cell required for growth or repair at the time. Anyone have ideas or info on what happens with consumption of stem cell material, or if this has been posed as a cause for the evolutionary brain leap tied in to meat eating?

[Fu Jau]

I saw this show where a Kalahari man did run down an antelope, he chased it for eight hours and at the end it was so tired it just lay down and waited for him to kill it. Just to answer someone a while back who wanted to know how humans hunted before we had spears and weapons.
If I could do that and if I lived in the Kalahari desert, maybe i wouldn't be vegetarian.

[CD Lee]

RAF - Nice post. Actually, I see what you mean. You are right about the agenda and borderline religious fervor thing. I have said before and I will say it again. There are some of these vegans, not all, that think eating meat is not just a bad idea or choice, but that it is morally evil.

You know also, I am starting to have doubts about whether small tribes of 20 people could have actually farmed crops successfully enough to base an entire diet on it. Farming is and always has been very volitile, and requires some regional diversification to mitigate risk factors such as pests, birds, and drought. One bad year, and you wipe everbody out.

[Spark]

I think there needs to be a distinction made here and i'm addressing a part of ghtomason (sp-sorry) and CD Lee's doubts about H0M0 Erectus and it's predecessors being able to farm enough food for a small group. I think it is important to state that nobody (well, I anyhow) am by no means suggesting these societies practiced agriculture, and of course, there is little evidence that they did in fact do so. I am addressing the skills of gathering and horticulture, which are vastly different practices. I have given an example of the women of the Kalahari, who gather for merely 15hrs a week and get enough food for the whole tribe, whereas someone gave an example of it taking 8hrs to hunt down ONE antelope - now seriously, who is expending the most unnecessary energy here?? OR which sounds more energy efficient, with the highest chance of return in terms of food???
I have examples of what I mean by horticulture if this is unclear BTW.

[Spark]

Probably true. However, how many pounds of vegetables does it take to provide the same amount of these protiens as 1 pound of bone marrow? The shear amount of calories provided in small amounts of marrow would free up a lot of time that would otherwise be used for gathering stacks and stacks of vegetables and fruits.

I think this is a common misconception about the amount of protein one needs in order to function properly, as well as how much there is in vegetables. I assure you, you don't need 'pounds' of vegetables and legumes to get the right intake of protein. And as I have demonstrated, it was these 'pounds' of vegetables that in fact free up time in order for societies to practice hunting (Kalahari as usual :p )


Besides, if the emphasis was on gathering, why don't early human tools reflect this? Why didn't they develop tools to knock fruits from trees, or to crack open coconuts or whatnot? Where in the fossil record to you see people even 1 million years ago using technology to gather? Wouldn't they have figured out you could sharpen a rock and use it as a spade if they were digging in the ground for carrots all the time?

Ahhh but early human tools do! You don't think the only purpose of an axe, or sharp rock was to cut meat do you? Just because there wasn't a specific "spade" created, or 'veggie tool', doesn't mean the tools/weapons existing didn't have a multi-purpose! And many of the tools/weapons describes can be used to 'crack open coconuts', knock down fruit, or dig in the ground.

[rubthebuddha]

Originally posted by ghthomason
By the way...did they wear hemp shirts, or animal skins to keep warm? ;)
they wore lots of mink.

question regarding marrow -- since it's such a fantastic source of calories, it seems odd that we could bogart marrow as a source of nourishment. were we fighting with other animals for it, and why didn't the original predator(s) much the marrow before our sorta-upright selves came in for a snack?

i know some animals don't have the teeth for getting marrow out, but many natural predators/scavengers do -- in the back, like we do, with more puncture-handy teeth up front.

[Serpent]

RAF, I'll take that.

It's also worth bearing in mind that vegetarians are responsible for a number of deaths too; all the small animals killed by threshing, all the bugs killed by pesticides, etc.

Just throwing something else into the mix, I know it's a bit off the subject.

Here's another question: Would it benefit us to eat bone marrow as part of our diets today? I don't think I ever get any marrow in anything I eat. Is there a good source of it for nutritional purposes?

[Spark]

Originally posted by ghthomason


The question is how much protein did it take to increase the size of brains...

An amoeba can function properly, but to go from stupid monkey to building space shuttles, we needed to do more than just get by.

Why aren't oragatangs, chimpanzees, and other primates as smart as we are? They eat a little bit of meat, and a lot of veggies like you claim we did. Why can't they build space shuttles?

Because they didn't need to. Obviously, our brains had to evolve to help us survive better. If gathering fruits and veggies is so easy for chimps, why didn't we simply evolve enough intelligence to compete with them and stop there?

Hunting is dangerous, and in order to hunt properly with a weak human frame, you have to be smarter than your prey. Now, if hunting is so important that we had to EVLOVE to do it better, it stands to reason that eating meat was a major facet of early human existence.

By the way...did they wear hemp shirts, or animal skins to keep warm? ;)

Ok, again this is where I have a problem with this concept. So there is only ONE time in our history, when we began to eat meat, and BINGO our brains grew bigger. Why has this never happened again? There are times throughout history where surely our meat consumption was greater than at this point in time (like this century for instance). Wouldn't logic suggest that it would have happened since - and what if humankind quadrupled our protein intake, then again our brain size would grow??
And come on now, you aren't going to argue that if we started feeding Chimps and other primates meat, then their evolution would catch up to ours? Or are you?
Evolution is based on passing down physical characteristics (a longer tail, pointy ears, standing upright) from generation to generation in order to improve chances of survival, not about an activity.
Wearing fur does not support an arguement that a society relied on eating meat. You would only need to kill/scavange an animal once and that would provide 'clothing' for years.

[RAF]

http://www.researchmatters.harvard.edu/story.php?article_id=483&section=mind

In case it wasn't posted, there is the Harvard piece on brain development and protein.

Stir the pot while its hot, let cool, its prime for bull!

[Ming Yue]

and yes, ensmartened is definitely not a word.



So there is only ONE time in our history, when we began to eat meat, and BINGO our brains grew bigger. Why has this never happened again?


There is no "bingo". it's evolution. Eons.

something else to consider (that hasn't come up until recently) is that most early man-type species died out. **** Sapien is the only extant group. Although there is some conjecture that other groups are present in tiny genetic amounts because of interbreeding... but that's another arguement for another thread.

Different groups, at different levels of development and intelligence, co-existed at the same time in any given period. While Neanderthals were crushing bones with rocks, Early **** Sapiens were making and using fishhooks.

So there was an innately better, more capable brain in **** Sapien and possibly some offshoot groups that didn't make it for whatever reason. This plus the effects of concentrated nutrition and protein resulted in a significant evolutionary leap for some existing groups. Not all, and not all at once.

[Oso]

Meats, meat.
Man's got to eat.

marrow is goooood !!! especially if you cracks the shinbones open and eats it while they're still screaming. Of course, you have to breaks their backses first so they don't flops around on you.





ya'll were getting way to intellectual.

ok, I'll take my neanderthal brain and go now.

:p

[Serpent]

I think I asked this earlier but can't be arsed to search the thread for it:

Is there a good source of marrow in today's culinary larder? Is it still good to eat marrow for protein? Brain enhancement? Grossing out your girlfriend?

What's a good source?

[Oso]

younger the better. once they are in the mid twenties the marrow takes on a rather unpleasant flavor.

[Serpent]

Thanks.

[Ming Yue]

filthy pillaging thread pirates. (http://www.curious3d.com/pirate.jpg)


:D




PS. Serpent, I also think kittens are an excellent source of marrow. The fluffier, the more nutrient rich.

[Oso]

I was completely on topic when I answered Serpent's question.

He asked for a good source of bone marrow and I gave him my favorite.

:p

[Serpent]

As did Ming Yue. So, noone over 25 and kittens. What do you know? I've been getting plenty of marrow all along!

;)

(ah-harrr, me maties!)

[CD Lee]

Is there a good source of marrow in today's culinary larder?


Aw, man...you had to actually ask?????

Osso Bucco.

Italian dish, bone marrow rules. Remember where you heard it!

[Serpent]

Osso Bucco of Veal with Gremolata
Yield: 4

Ingredients:

Osso Bucco of Veal with Gremolata


8 veal, hind, shanks, 1 1/2 inches thick
1 onion, cut into small cubes
1 tbsp butter, unsalted
1 tbsp grape seed oil
3 tbsp flour
1/2 cup diced tomato
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig savory
2 garlic, cloves, smashed
1 bay leaf
1 cup Franz Reh Lark Riesling white wine
2 cup veal stock

Directions:


Osso Bucco of Veal with Gremolata
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.


Tie the veal hind shanks so they keep their shape during cooking. Dredge them with flour on each side. In a casserole dish, melt the butter and the oil over a high heat. Sear the shanks on every side until they are dark brown and then remove the shanks from the pan as you sear them. Roast the onion in the same oil and butter (add a little more butter if necessary) over a medium heat.


Put the shanks back in the casserole, increase the heat to high and deglaze with the wine. Scrape the bottom of the pan until the pieces come off. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, the garlic, the herbs and the veal stock. Season to taste and cook for 2 hours in the oven.


Remove the veal shanks from the casserole and reduce the sauce on the cooker top by one third. For the Gremolata, remove the zest from 1 orange, cut it into thin strips and blanch them for 10 seconds to remove the bitterness. Refresh the orange strips in cold water. Line the strips up and cut in brunoise. Add a clove of finely chopped garlic and a handful of chopped parsley. Mix together the orange, garlic and parsley and serve on top of the veal shank. You can also add some orange zests to the osso bucco once it has cooked.




:confused:

[Serpent]

LOL! (http://www.nosordo.com/ossobucco/)

[CD Lee]

Ok...the marrow is in the middle of the veal shanks. And there is also a disgusting little marrow spoon to dip it out.

BTW, if you have never had osso bucco, it is absolutely friggin' incredible. By the time you reduce the sauce, it is so complex and rich, you won't believe you cooked it. The meat is braised, so it will literally fall apart.

I never use Veal, as it is hard to find here in DFW, TX. I just use normal beef, so the marrow part suffers sometimes depending on the cut of meat you start with. Who cares??? After braising the meat so long, and using a reduction style sauce, this stuff is like incredible. Your women friends will think you are a genius, and your guy friends, well tell them your woman friend made it.

[Ming Yue]

Oh sure, and your friends will especially like it when you say:

"Yes, I'm a culinary genius, but really it's the baby cow bone marrow that makes it extra-delicious..... more sauce?"


:D

here's a recipe (http://www.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=105500&action=filtersearch&filter=recipe-filter.hts&collection=Recipes&ResultTemplate=recipe-results.hts&queryType=and&keyword=marrow) that tells you how to poke the marrow out of the bones in one piece, in case you need to know how to do that.

[CD Lee]

:D :D

Can't argue with that reply!

[CD Lee]

Ming - thanks for the new culinary link! Looks like a good resource.

Yeah, yeah, I like cooking. Hey, it is just like painting. You mix colors, textures, and liquids. But you get to smell it and taste it legally! Plus, I have 5 people to cook for, so I have had to pick up a few culinary tips. It might as well be fun if your going to get stuck doing it.

Check out allrecipies.com, recipiesource.com, and foodtv.com. Good stuff.

[Ming Yue]

Cooking = art + chemistry. :)

Epicurious.com is a great site. You can enter ingredients you have in the house into the search bar and get recipe options. Gotta love that.

[Serpent]

What does it suggest for:

Can of SPAM
Carton of milk (half full)
4 sheets of lasagne pasta
Cat food
salt
pepper
chillies (dried)

:confused:

:)

[Ming Yue]

1. Feed the spam to the cat.

2. spread cat food on shards of uncooked pasta.

3. Using the thumb and index finger, see how many shards you can get to stick to the ceiling by flipping them up there.

4. Stuff the chile with vitamins, season to taste and roast for 20 minutes in a 325 degree oven.

5. Swallow the chile whole, wash down with milk.

6. Go to the grocery store.

:cool:

[Serpent]

LOL! You're a genius!

But I have enough cat food for the cat and the pasta flicking, so I'm not going to waste good Spam on that mangy creature! ;)

Mmmmmchiliesstuffedwithspam!

:D

[Oso]

chilies stuffed with spam would be tasty, imo.

but I eat vienna sausages, the epitome of parts is parts.


Fishing Lunch

2 cans Vienna Sausages.
1 Jar Horseradish paste (none of that mayonaissey stuff)
Ritz Crackers
Budweiser

[Oso]

weren't you guys talking about the merits of vegetenarianism?

or was it vampirism?

I get those two confused sometimes.

[Ming Yue]

Yuk. Vienna sausages are desperation food. If i'm down and out enough to eat those, you can be sure I'm washing them down with a nice can of Sterno.

:p

[Oso]

jes shews yer parents didn' raise ye up right.

[CD Lee]

I can see this post finally got interesting!

Vienna sausages, as disgusting as they are, are the number uno food if you are in a boat, fishing. My dad raised my right. I mean, with the heat, the fishing, the rocking of the boat, vienna sausages look like t-bone steak after only a few hours. I could however, do without the goo that comes with them in the can. Gross.

[Oso]

oh, but that stuff makes em slide right down your throat.
plus, it's flammable and can be used as fire starter.
and it makes good suntan lotion.

[Serpent]

Are you lot still speaking English?

Vienna sausages in goo?

Sterno?

[Oso]

Take your pic

[Oso]

or this brand

[Oso]

or my favorite brand


Serpent, maybe these will tide you over till RF posts her pics;)

[Serpent]

MMm. They look meaty-good!

[Ming Yue]

sterno is a kind of semi-gelatinous cooking fuel-in-a-can. Sometimes used for heating Fondue pots and chafing dishes. It contains methanol, which is a nasty low-end way to get real drunk and then maybe die.

[Serpent]

Ah, now if you'd said metho then I'd have been right with you. Why try to dress it up with some fancy name!? ;)

[Ming Yue]

'cause it's the Sterno-brand flavor that really makes it. Piquant, yet not too bold. It has a fruity finish you can taste just for a second right before you pass out.

[Serpent]

Fair enough. Maybe I can set up some sort of import business here, gettin git directly to the streets of Sydney..... Hmmm, maybe I've discovered my path to a fortune!

Wait a minute. Winos don't have any money, ****it! Another great plan scuppered!

[Ming Yue]

oh, just put it in sparkly multi colored capsules and get your legion of loyal winos to sell it at the back doors of swanky dance clubs.

and for that, I claim 20% of all your profits. We never had this conversation.

:p

[Serpent]

You are a genius!

If I manage to stay out of jail, I'll send on your cut after the first quarter.

[Ming Yue]

Evil genius, Sterno connoiseur....I'm a renaissance gal.

:)

Now go hustle some winos.

[BatesMotel]

I am not a Vegan but I've been trying to be a lot healthier with not eating so much meat but still wanting the iron.

[Ming Yue]

ah... that's so kung fu. The thread has come full circle very late in life.

[Former castleva]

I find no rational reason for pure vegetarism.
I find a reason to avoid such.

[Guile]

Like milk choclate :)

[Former castleva]

"Of course, you mean besides the whole "it's immoral to kill another living creature" thing, right?"
Yeah.

[Guile]

Vegans will rule the world with their boca burgers

[BatesMotel]

I will be having Sushi for the first time next week and I would like to get any recommendations on what to eat since I don’t like anything too fishy.

[MasterKiller]

Tuna is good.

[Ming Yue]

also yellowtail, and ama ebi (sweet shrimp)

mmmmm sushi.
:)

[Guile]

the tuna one is definitly good.

[Oso]

vegan means you don't do anything associated with animals:
no eggs, cheese or anything else.

can you imagine life with no cheese? terrible, just terrible.

[Ming Yue]

the difference between vegan and vegetarian is about 40lbs and a funny grayish pallor.

(excuse me for a moment while I slip into my militant vegan retort-repellant suit)

[Starchaser107]

I was vegan for about 5 years, i reverted to carnivore year before last. when I was Vegan I had a balanced diet, taking protien from soy (tofu and textured vegeatable protien).
I felt my body telling me to go back to meat so I did. Noteably I think its better for me and the type of training that i do. If I were doing yoga and tai chi alone then maybe a vegan diet would have been right for me.

[Oso]

exactly, can't develop that killer instinct gnawing on a celery stalk.

[Spark]

Originally posted by Oso
vegan means you don't do anything associated with animals:
no eggs, cheese or anything else.

can you imagine life with no cheese? terrible, just terrible.

Hey i didn't eat cheese even when i was an omnivore!
Life wasn't so bad!

cheese - yuck!!

[MasterKiller]

Yeah, but did you eat honey? A true Vegan doesn't eat any by-products of animal slavery, either.

Good thing those plows are pulled by Farm trucks now.

But what if the tractor has a leather seat????

[Spark]

Originally posted by MasterKiller
Yeah, but did you eat honey? A true Vegan doesn't eat any by-products of animal slavery, either.

Good thing those plows are pulled by Farm trucks now.

But what if the tractor has a leather seat????

I'm not vegan. I just hate cheese. And eggs. And milk. And Honey for that matter.

But I make my dog fetch my paper. Does that constitute animal slavery??

But then again, like I said, I'm not vegan.

[Ming Yue]

Leather seats are ok because it's easier to wipe the blood off after sucking rabbits and prarie dogs into the harvester all day.
:D


I'm curious about yeast -- Isn't yeast an organism? do vegans eat yeast products?



enslaved bees.... they must need the tiniest shackles.

[rubthebuddha]

plants are organisms, too.

i think veganism would basically just draw a line around the animal kingdom and "none of that."

the fun tiimes are when people differentiate humans from animals.

[Spark]

RTB
It is my understanding that some vegans are such for political reasons, that being the senseless killing and torture that animals endure in order to feed us.

Plants, although organisms, do not have a central nervous system, and thus do not feel pain in the same capacity (ooops at all) as humans and animals.

I'm not 100% what's in yeast, but if there's any animal bi-product (milk? eggs?) then it's not vegan.

[Ming Yue]

yeast is a fungus. a sugar-eatin' fungus.

I would venture to say the vegan choice is moral and not political, but that's nitpicking, isn't it.

:)

[shaolin kungfu]

What about the senseless killing of vegetables? Doesn't anybody care about the vegetables? For the love of god, think of the vegetables!!

[Spark]

Originally posted by Ming Yue

I would venture to say the vegan choice is moral and not political, but that's nitpicking, isn't it.

:)

That's why I said SOME ;)

[rubthebuddha]

why do i get the mental picture of someone saying, "****ing republicans!" and running off and eating some sprouts?

i can't think of a real political reason to be vegan. well, one that's sane, at least. skipping cheeseburgers because woodrow wilson may have enjoyed a jumbo jack now and then would technically be political, but sure as hell isn't all that bright.

all the reasons i know of for choosing veganism are either moral or dietary, and the "senseless killing and torturing of animals" idea is moral, not political.

[Ming Yue]

I'm pretty sure the entire McKinley administration was based on captive bee labor.


why do i get the mental picture of someone saying, "****ing republicans!" and running off and eating some sprouts?

Granted, I live in a hippie-dense area, but that happens around here all the time.
:D

[rubthebuddha]

aye. i've seen many a person (namely kids) eat sprouts UNDER protest, but i've never seen anyone do it as a manner of protesting.

[Spark]

RTB

I think you misinterpreted what I meant by politics!
I didn't mean Federal Politics!
You know, like there's politics in kung fu ... inter-office politics ...

Some people arent' vegan because of morals, or health, but because they are lefty's (left wing, don't want you thinking I mean they're left handed:p) , and a vegan lifestyle seems to have similar parallels with that.

[GeneChing]

That name just sounds like a thinly-disguised term for human meat in some sci-fi like Soylent Green.


This vegetarian company wants to disrupt China's pork industry (http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/23/smallbusiness/meatless-pork-china/index.html)
by Sherisse Pham @Sherisse
April 24, 2018: 1:41 AM ET

David Yeung wants to take a bite out of China's massive meat market.

When the founder of Green Common, a vegetarian grocery store and casual dining chain in Hong Kong, started bringing plant-based burgers and other meatless products to Asia, he saw an opportunity.

"One of the most consumed meats in the world is actually overlooked -- that is pork," Yeung told CNNMoney.

Yeung on Monday launched a new product called omnipork which he hopes will change people's diets in mainland China, the world's largest consumer of pork. Omnipork is made from soy, pea, mushroom and rice proteins, but it tries to mimic the taste and feel of real pork.

Yeung's company -- Right Treat -- is currently seeking approval from Chinese regulators and expects to start selling omnipork in mainland China before the end of the year.

In China, pork is a beloved meat: the Chinese character for family is a pig under a roof. Until recently, the country's growing ranks of middle class consumers had fueled a massive rise in pork consumption.

People in China will eat about 56 million tons of pork this year, more than any other country, according to US Department of Agriculture estimates.

But demand may be peaking. Last year, overall pork consumption in China hit a three-year low of 54.8 million tons.

The dip came after the Chinese government issued dietary guidelines in 2016, outlining a plan to cut meat consumption in half. An official campaign included commercials featuring actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggar encouraging Chinese people to eat less meat to help the planet.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/180423181223-meatless-omnipork-hong-kong-start-up-china-780x439.jpg
Omnipork is made from mushroom, pea, soy and rice proteins, but it tries to mimic the taste and feel of real pork.

Yeung hopes to tap into China's changing diets, but it's still a lofty goal to convince people who grew up chowing down on pork dumplings and sweet-and-sour pork to choose meatless alternatives.

He compares his ambitions to what Starbucks has achieved in China.

"China has never been a coffee drinking country. For the last 5,000 years, Chinese people drink tea," he said. "But what Starbucks has done is they create a lifestyle, and it is aspirational, it's about much more than what is inside the cup, it is everything around it."

Yeung is joining other startups that are looking to shake up the global meat industry. They include Beyond Meat, which is bankrolled by actor Leonardo di Caprio, Microsoft (MSFT) founder Bill Gates and agricultural giant Tyson Foods.

Yeung is also an investor in Beyond Meat and brought its meatless burger and other products to Hong Kong. He said his company saw sales of Beyond Meat grow fourfold in one year, and there are plans to take it to mainland China by the end of the year.

Impossible Foods, a startup behind a meatless burger that bleeds, launched in Hong Kong last week, its first international market.

But Yeung says those startups' products generally appeal to Western palates. He made omnipork specifically for Asian dishes, enlisting a Michelin star chef -- Li Yuet Faat at Ming Court -- to tackle a few Chinese staples.

At first, Li said he wasn't sure what to do with omnipork. Eventually, he decided to try using it for xiaolong bao, steamed soup dumplings typically stuffed with pork. It took the chef and his team several tries before they finally made a version with omnipork that they were ready to serve.

This CNNMoney reporter and three colleagues did a blind test of omnipork soup dumplings alongside regular ones -- and everyone could taste the difference. But everyone also agreed that the omnipork soup dumplings were still tasty. Li will also roll out a sweet-and-sour pork dish using omnipork in June.

"You can use this ingredient many ways, steam it, cook it, fry it, pan fry it, stuff it in dumplings, meatballs," Yeung said. "This is something that we want to be really all purpose."

CNNMoney (Hong Kong)
First published April 23, 2018: 9:14 AM ET

THREADS: Bacon!!!!!! (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?48509-Bacon!!!!!!)
Vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)

[Jimbo]

Many years ago, I recall someone writing that people should not eat ANYTHING that animals are, or have had, a part in producing. Well, that would eliminate a TON of plant-based foods, too, as insect pollination is necessary for many of them.

I knew a guy who was obsessively vegetarian (vegan?) and was so by choice, not because of any food allergies or intolerances, but because he thought eating any animal products, even a little, is really bad. He wasn't any healthier than anyone else, and tended to get sick a lot, and always seemed to injure himself doing minor things.

[David Jamieson]

My Father (RIP) was a vegetarian.

He was one of those "I won't eat anything that has a face" kind of vegetarians.
It absolutely was a moral choice for himself. he never bagged on anyone about their habits and we all ate
chicken and fish and beef and stuff around him.

When I think about it, that's a pretty calm and well disciplined approach.
Did I mention he practiced zen daily? I think the inward looking influenced a lot of his decisions
around how to live a morally upright life.

As I grow older, I am abandoning quite a lot of old dietary habits.
vegetarianism is quite alright by me in that sense and I imagine I will eventually and completely transition to it.
Just because it makes me feel better, if that makes any sense.

[GeneChing]

I've tried an impossible burger. It was pretty convincing, especially that raw bloody quality if you like your burgers rare (which I did). But they are too freakin expensive for me to enjoy.


The magic ingredient in Silicon Valley's favorite 'bleeding' veggie burger is under fire (http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-meatless-veggie-burger-ingredients-under-fire-fda-2018-6)
Erin Brodwin
Jun. 8, 2018, 1:16 PM 66,093

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/58d587c5d349f965008b6efb-960-720.png
The Impossible Burger. Impossible Foods

The Impossible Burger is a plant-based patty made by Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods with backing from Bill Gates.
The burger is available across the US, most recently in White Castle burger chains.

Environmentalists and journalists are taking issue with the burger's safety because of a key ingredient called heme, which is made using GMOs.
But the scientific research suggests that the burger is perfectly safe.

Today's veggie burgers can be described with a handful of delicious-sounding adjectives, but "meaty" isn't one of them.

At least it wasn't — until Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods began creating a meat-free burger that tastes disturbingly close to the real thing. The meat-like flavor can largely be attributed to an ingredient called heme — the magic spark that even allows the Impossible Burger to "bleed" like a real burger does.

But that magic spark may be poised to ignite a fire.

After opting to ask the Food and Drug Administration to review the burger's safety (something it was not required to do) in 2015, the company was taken aback by what it received: A long letter saying that the data they'd submitted wasn't sufficient to "establish the safety" of heme for human consumption. In response, Impossible Foods sent the agency more than 1,000 pages of additional research data to back up its claims that the burger was safe, and although the agency said it would respond in April, it recently extended that deadline to this June.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/58d2e82b112f70d8628b4b04-960-720.jpg
Melia Robinson/Business Insider

A handful of environmental activists have also taken issue with the burger.

But their issue with the burger isn't heme — it's the fact that the Impossible Burger is made using genetically engineered ingredients, or GMOs. Those concerns largely take the shape of the old and unsubstantiated claim that GMOs cause everything from autism to cancer, despite the scientific consensus that they are safe.

Still, several journalists at places like Grub Street, Bloomberg, and Food and Wine have glommed on to the recent controversy, saying they aren't sure the burgers are ready for prime-time.

But the science so far is clear on Impossible's product. Both heme and GMOs are safe to eat, according to researchers and several large, peer-reviewed studies.

"Heme has been consumed by humans and other animals for a long time with no issues," Robert Kranz, a professor of biology at Washington State University in St. Louis who's studied heme extensively, told Business Insider.

Heme, the essential nutrient you've never heard of

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5a98b682aae60540008b469f-960-720.jpg
Melia Robinson/Business Insider

Heme is an essential nutrient in many proteins. It's also in just about every living thing on Earth.
In our bodies, heme can be found tucked inside of a molecule in our blood called hemoglobin. Heme helps ferry oxygen throughout the body, carries iron, and colors our blood red. For most of us, the majority of the heme we consume comes from animals.

But soy roots also contain heme — and that's where Impossible Foods gets theirs.

Still, soy roots only produce a tiny amount of heme, which initially presented Impossible Foods with a problem: They'd need to harvest roughly an acre's worth of soy plants just to get a kilogram of heme.

GMOs: The old villain that's hard to forget

Instead of wasting land and resources — something that would be antithetical to the company's mission to make a tasty meat alternative — Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown found a different solution.

But it involved GMOs, that old villain that everyone from environmentalists to conspiracy theorists love to hate, despite the scientific consensus that the ingredients are safe.

By tweaking the DNA of yeast in a process known as genetic engineering, Brown realized the company could turn the ingredient into tiny manufacturing hubs that would churn out heme. Admittedly, this wasn't an entirely novel solution: insulin, the compound that diabetics' life depends on to regulate blood sugar levels, is manufactured in much the same way, using GM yeast. Drugs, beer, and perfume are all frequently made this way, too. (Yes, all of these products are technically GMOs because of it.)

GMOs, heme, and a wave of sudden controversy

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/56f990fc52bcd05c658b91a2-960-720.jpg
A Greenpeace activist displays signs symbolising genetically modified maize crops during a protest in front of the European Union headquarters in Brussels Nov. 24, 2008. Reuters/Thierry Roge

Once several activists began linking the GMOs and the heme in Impossible Foods burger to potential safety issues (none of which have yet been substantiated), the controversy grew.

In an article published in Food and Wine magazine in March, the author wrote that "excessive" heme consumption had been linked to colon and prostate cancer, citing a 2012 blog post in the New York Times.

But again, the science here is clear: no such link between heme and cancer exists.

That problem is that there is a plethora of studies linking red meat and cancer. Red meat also happens to be where most Americans get the majority of the heme they ingest. According to the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Health Organization, there is a strong link between red meat, especially processed meat, and cancer. The type of cancer with the strongest link is colorectal cancer, a variety of the disease that begins in the colon or rectum.

But no such link appears to exist for heme alone and cancer — potentially because the amount of heme you'd have to consume to reach "excessive" levels would be prohibitively high.

"Considering how much heme we are eating in red meat, I do not see any health issues arising" from putting it in a vegetarian burger, Nicolai Lehnert, a professor of chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan, told Business Insider.

Studies that have attempted to isolate heme and study its link to cancer separate from red meat have also come up empty-handed, either finding no link or finding a negative one.

ADVERTISEMENT

In a 2012 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that involved a sample of nearly 90,000 men and women, researchers found no tie between heme iron intake and colorectal cancer.

"Our results ... suggest that zinc and heme iron intakes are not associated with colorectal cancer," the researchers wrote.

Iqbal Hamza, a professor of cell biology and genetics at the University of Maryland who runs a lab dedicated to the study of heme and is working on a heme-based supplement for iron-deficient people in developing countries, similarly concluded that the ingredient was safe for human consumption.

"I would have no qualms about getting heme from the Impossible Foods burger and I would have no qualms about getting heme from a plant based source," Hamza told Business Insider.

A 2011 study published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control also examined a large group of people in an attempt to suss out links between heme and cancer. They found none. In fact, they found a slightly negative relationship between the two things, meaning that people who consumed more heme were actually less likely to develop cancer.

"It's not a lack of evidence [linking heme to cancer]. There's evidence. And the evidence is for safety," David Lipman, Impossible Foods' chief science officer, told Business Insider.

THREADS:
Vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?61187-Shaolin-diet-vegetarianism-and-stuff)

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIARm3780Ik

I realize this is one of those neurotic reaction things like Straight Pride or White Pride, and that it's a parody publicity stunt from Arby's, but if you're going to really make fake vegetables out of meat, they should attempt to taste like the vegetable. Plus it's cheating to use the actual vegetable as part of the ingredients. That's like dipping an impossible burger in meat drippings.
This marrot will just taste like turkey dipped in carrots.

THREADS
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?61187-Shaolin-diet-vegetarianism-and-stuff)
Vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)
Fast Food Nastiness (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65208-Fast-Food-Nastiness)

[GeneChing]

KFC first fast-food restaurant to introduce veggie burger in China (https://shanghai.ist/2019/07/03/kfc-veggie-burger/)
Inside is a palm-sized deepfried mushroom patty filled with melted cheese. Yay or nay?
by Natalie Ma July 4, 2019 in Food

https://i2.wp.com/shanghai.ist/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/KFC-veggie-burger.jpg?w=640&ssl=1

KFC has just introduced its new mushroom burger on Wednesday, making it the first ever fast food chain store in China to provide a vegetarian choice.

The new burger comes with tomato and lettuce and a mushroom patty instead of meat. It does come with cheese though, so if you’re strictly vegan, this might still not be the burger for you.

Response has been divided online. Some said it is overpriced as a veggie bun while others said the cheese alone is worth the price.

Here is what it looks like in real life, according to a Weibo user who gave it a thumbs-down:

https://i1.wp.com/shanghai.ist/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/kfc-veggie-burger-on-weibo-e1562150840229.jpg?w=440&ssl=1

Shanghaiist went to sink our teeth into the burger, and here’s what we found:

The burger itself comes in a decent crusty bun, with a deep-fried mushroom patty that is covered in orange breadcrumbs. The crispy lettuce balances the taste nicely, but the ketchup and mayo sauce prevails. The patty itself doesn’t deliver much taste besides the cheese stuffed in it. The mushroom is kinda rubbery so we were left with more half-eaten mushroom than the bun towards the end. We give it 3 out of 5 burger buns for taste, but be warned: the texture of the unchewable mushroom might lead to a truly messy meal.

THREADS
Vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)
the Kentucky Fried Thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?22096-the-Kentucky-Fried-Thread)

[GeneChing]

Do we cut back on rice (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69705-Rice&p=1315318#post1315318)or meat? Or both?

Do we need an indie Climate Change thread?


The VICE Guide To Right Now
Feeling Sad About the Amazon Fires? Stop Eating Meat (https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/bjwzk4/feeling-sad-about-the-amazon-fires-stop-eating-meat)
The growing demand for meat around the world is directly linked to the Amazon fires.
By Edoardo Liotta
23 August 2019, 3:26am

https://video-images.vice.com/articles/5d5fb773b3c3560008cd8144/lede/1566554084522-fire-amazon.jpeg
A SATELLITE IMAGE SHOWS SMOKE RISING IN THE STATE OF RONDONIA IN THE UPPER AMAZON RIVER BASIN. AUGUST 15, 2019 © MAXAR VIA REUTERS

The struggle with “Climate Despair” is real. That is anxiety and depression caused by news of environmental degradation. Right now, for example, many have shared feelings of helplessness amid the ongoing forest fires in the Amazon. This disaster has been going on for weeks, and the fires have gotten so bad that the state of Amazonas declared a state of emergency earlier this month.

The problem, however, is not totally out of people’s hands. Studies have shown that the fires aren’t caused by natural occurrences, but by humans--our love for meat, to be exact.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1566554222991-20190823_Amazon_Wildfires_VICE.jpeg

The fires are caused by burning fallen trees to make way for cattle ranching, a growing industry in Brazil and the wider region. Data from the Institute of Environmental Research in Amazonia (IPAM) show that the top ten municipalities in Amazonia with the most fire occurrences also had the biggest deforestation rates this year.

The most practical solution people can adopt to help is to reduce--or stop--their meat intake.

Cameron Ellis, Senior Geographer at The Rainforest Foundation told VICE that because cattle require open spaces to feed and grow, ranchers clear vast lands by burning forests. These fires often get out of hand and “escape into surrounding forest, much of which is suffering from drought.” The fires grow and end up consuming areas with trees that have not been cut down.

Although logging (both legal and illegal) and other activities also drive deforestation in the Amazon, animal agriculture is the leading cause by far. The World Bank reported that cattle ranching occupies 80 percent of all converted lands in the Amazon rainforest.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1566554752714-pjimage-10.jpeg
SATELLITE IMAGES BY NASA SHOWING THE DEFORESTATION OF RONDÔNIA IN WESTERN BRAZIL FOR AGRICULTURE AND CATTLE RANCHING. THE LEFT WAS TAKEN IN 2002, THE RIGHT IN 2012.

But it doesn’t end there. The animals on these farms need to eat, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also links the rainforest fires to the production of cattle food through soy farming.

Soy is the most important protein in animal feed, with 80 percent of the world’s soybean crop fed to livestock. So while soy may not destroy as much forest as cattle ranching, it is part of the underlying cause by enabling grazing.

Soy has become so lucrative that it doesn’t even have to deforest land on its own, which makes them harder to monitor. Fires are ignited to clear land for cattle ranching, which are eventually taken over by soy plantations. This handover happens because soy has driven up land prices in the region, allowing cattle ranchers to sell their plots to soy developers for larger earnings. With these, they expand their herds into larger plots into newly deforested land elsewhere, making the problem worse.

All this is done to keep up with the growing demand for meat globally, which is caused by population growth and increased affluence in developing countries. This keeps animal farms and soybean plantations locked in a vicious cycle where they depend on each other to grow.

“The livestock and agriculture sectors do not exist in isolation from each other. Rather, they are linked in two primary ways: they act as mutual enablers to access land within the Amazon, and they support each other through integrated value chains,” the WWF said.

It does not help that the current rhetoric of the Brazilian government favours development over conservation, incentivising ranchers to expand their pastures. Up to 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon is illegal, however.

The Amazon is now one of the biggest cattle ranching regions in the world, and it’s only getting worse. Brazil’s cattle herd grew from 158 million heads in 1996 to 219 million in 2016, becoming the world’s largest beef and poultry exporter.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1566554245038-20190823_Beef_Exporters_VICE.jpeg

Last year, Brazil exported 1.6 million tonnes of beef, the highest in history, Reuters reported. The number is expected to grow 1.8 million tonnes by the end of 2019, with China as the main export destination. Other major importers of Brazilian beef are Hong Kong, Egypt, Russia, and the European Union.

Ellis told VICE that less rain is falling now because there are fewer forests to capture it. If the deforestation cycle is kept alive, we might reach a “tipping point where the entire landscape converts from rainforest to savanna,” he said.

One person not eating beef for a year saves approximately 3,432 trees, so you are doing the earth a favour by skipping that burger.

Find Edoardo on Twitter and Instagram.

[GeneChing]

https://www.outsideonline.com/sites/default/files/styles/img_1400x800/public/2019/07/29/beyond-meat-grass-cow_h.jpg?itok=gmcyQYgN

Rowan Jacobsen
Jul 31, 2019
This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry (https://www.outsideonline.com/2399736/impossible-foods-beyond-meat-alt-meat)

Alt meat isn't going to stay alt for long, and cattle are looking more and more like stranded assets

There’s a famous Gandhi aphorism about how movements progress: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” That was actually written by the Workshop on Nonviolence Institute as a summary of Gandhi’s philosophy, but regardless, it’s remarkable how often it accurately describes the evolution of causes, from legal cannabis to gay marriage. I’ve been thinking about that quote since I wrote my first piece about plant-based meat (or alt meat, as I like to call it) for Outside in 2014. Back then, we were firmly in the “laugh at you” stage. Beyond Meat, the first of the Silicon Valley startups to use advanced technology to produce extremely meat-like burgers, had been ignored for its first few years, but in 2014, it released its Beast Burger, which was treated by the press and public as a slightly off-putting curiosity. What was this stuff? Would anyone actually eat it? Ewwww.

That product wasn’t very good—I compared it to Salisbury steak—and when Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat’s founder, announced his intention to end livestock production, you could almost hear the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association laughing in the background.

But I didn’t laugh. I knew it would keep getting better and beef wouldn’t. And I thought the bar was pretty low. Sure, steak is great, but ground beef makes up 60 percent of beef sales, and most of it is more Salisbury than salutary, a greasy vehicle for the yummy stuff: ketchup, mushrooms, pickles, bacon, sriracha mayo. I knew I wouldn’t object if my central puck came from a plant, as long as it chewed right and tasted right. I suspected others might feel the same.

In the following years, Beyond Meat was joined by Impossible Foods, a more sophisticated startup with even more venture capital. Its Impossible Burger was way better than Salisbury steak. All the cool cats started serving it, from David Chang in New York to Traci Des Jardins in San Francisco. My conviction grew.

Part of the appeal of the new burgers is their smaller environmental footprint. Beef is the most wasteful food on the planet. Cows are not optimized to make meat; they’re optimized to be cows. It takes 36,000 calories of feed to produce 1,000 calories of beef. In the process, it uses more than 430 gallons of water and 1,500 square feet of land, and it generates nearly ten kilograms of greenhouse-gas emissions. In comparison, an Impossible Burger uses 87 percent less water, 96 percent less land, and produces 89 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. Beyond Meat’s footprint is similarly svelte.

Yes, a good argument can be made that small-farm, grass-fed beef production (in places that can grow abundant grass) has a very different ethical and environmental landscape, but unfortunately, that’s just not a significant factor. America gets 97 percent of its beef from feedlots. And feedlots are irredeemable.

By 2018, sales of both the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger were surging, and the companies began to ink deals with restaurant chains. Beyond Meat got Carl’s Jr. and A&W (as well as supermarket chains like Food Lion and Safeway), while Impossible got White Castle.

I tracked down a White Castle shortly after the Impossible Slider arrived in the spring of 2018. I’d never been to a White Castle, so I ordered an Impossible Slider and a regular slider. The Impossible was...fine. About what you’d expect. White Castle steams all its meat, which is hard to get past, but with plenty of cheese, it went down easy.

The regular slider, on the other hand, was horrific. I peeled back the pasty bun and stared at the fetid shingle inside. It was appallingly thin and grimy. It made the Impossible Slider look lush and juicy. The bar for fast-food burgers is even lower than I thought. Nobody will miss these ****ty little brown things when they’re gone.

Perhaps this explains why the chains are latching on to plant-based burgers as if they were life rings. White Castle initially tested its Impossible Slider in just a few locations in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago in April 2018. It was such a hit that the company quickly expanded the program to all 380 outlets. “People are coming back for it again and again,” White Castle’s vice president, Jamie Richardson, said with a touch of astonishment.

They’re coming back at Del Taco, too, which launched a Beyond Meat taco in April. Within two months, it had sold two million, one of the most successful product launches in its history, so it decided to add Beyond Meat burritos as well.

And then there’s Burger King. The second-largest fast-food chain in the world rattled big beef’s cage by testing an Impossible Whopper in St. Louis in April. Resulting foot traffic was so strong that Burger King decided to serve the Impossible Whopper in all 7,200 restaurants, marking the moment when alt meat stopped being alt.

That was enough to get the meat industry to snap to attention. “About a year and a half ago, this wasn’t on my radar whatsoever,” said Mark Dopp, head of regulatory affairs for the North American Meat Association, to The New York Times. “All of a sudden, this is getting closer.”

The strategy, predictably yet pathetically, was to engage in an ontological battle over the term meat itself. Big beef successfully lobbied for a labeling law in Missouri banning any products from identifying themselves as meat unless they are “derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” (But this is wrong; the word simply meant sustenance for the first thousand years of its existence.) Similar labeling laws have passed or are pending in a dozen more states, most of them big ranching ones.

Obviously, none of this has stemmed the rise of alt meat. But it did make me think again of Gandhi (a staunch vegetarian, FYI). They ignored, they laughed, and now they were fighting.

This stuff, I thought, just might win.

This year is shaping up to be the inflection point when this becomes obvious to everybody else. Beyond Meat’s products are in 15,000 grocery stores in the U.S., and its sales have more than doubled each year. On May 2, it held its IPO, offering stock at $25, which turned out to be a wild underestimation of what investors thought the company was worth. It immediately leaped to $46 and closed the day at $65.75. That one-day pop of 163 percent was one of the best in decades, putting to shame such 2019 IPOs as Lyft (21 percent) and Pinterest (25 percent), to say nothing of Uber (negative 3 percent). In the following days, it kept ripping, climbing above $150, where it has stayed. The market currently estimates Beyond Meat’s worth at close to $10 billion.

Not to be outdone, that same month, Impossible Foods raised an additional $300 million dollars from private investors (for a running total of $740 million and a valuation of $2 billion) and announced it would be joining Beyond Meat in America’s grocery stores later this year. These companies are no longer little mammals scurrying around the feet of the big-beef dinosaurs. And they are gearing up for an epic head-to-head battle.

Both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods recently released new, improved versions of their meat. For the past week, I’ve subsisted on little else. It feels great. Both have the same amount of protein as ground beef (about 20 grams per quarter-pound serving) and less fat. Being plant-based, they also provide a healthy shot of fiber. Both get their unctuousness from coconut oil.

But the core of each formula is very different. Beyond uses pea protein, while Impossible uses soy. Beyond gets its bloody color from beet juice; Impossible uses heme—the same molecule that makes our blood red—to achieve its meaty color and flavor. This is its killer app. Beef gets its beefiness from heme. When you cook heme, it produces the distinctive savory, metallic flavor of meat. Since heme is normally found in blood, no veggie concoction has ever used it. Soy plants do make microscopic amounts of it, but not enough to ever use. Impossible Foods’ breakthrough was to genetically engineer yeast to produce soy heme in a tank, like beer. This GMO process is a deal breaker for some people, but it makes all the difference. The Impossible Burger is incredible, the Beyond Burger merely passable.
continued next post

[GeneChing]

The Beyond Burger comes as two premade four-ounce patties (packaged in a plastic tray wrapped in more plastic—strike one). They don’t quite pass as hamburgers. They’re too wet and too pink. They almost resemble finely ground salmon burgers. They cook to a satisfying toothiness on either a grill or a griddle, but there’s an inexplicable cellulose quality to the texture. (This is even more pronounced in the Beyond Sausage.) The flavor is also slightly off. There’s a hint of fake smoke and an earthiness I’m guessing comes from the beet juice. (My wife would argue that it’s more than slightly off; she has to leave the room when the Beyond Burger is cooking. But she also hates beets.) It’s not an unpleasant experience, just don’t expect the burgergasm you get from a quarter pound of USDA prime.

Impossible Foods, on the other hand, has delivered burgergasm after burgergasm. It’s shine-up-the-Nobel-Prize good. Not only does it taste like ground beef, it looks and acts like it, too. It’s truly plug and play.

That wasn’t true for the previous version. When I first wrote about Impossible Foods three years ago, I had to beg the company to send me one patty. It was hesitant. Back then, the burger was fussy. It didn’t work well on a grill, so you had to pan-fry it just right. The company made me do a Skype tutorial first, and when the micropatty arrived in a refrigerated box, with a special bun and special sauce, it was accompanied by pages of printed instructions. The burger was good, certainly the most meat-like plant patty up to that point, but it still tasted like a lite product—a little cleaner, a little less decadent, a little bit like filler.

This time, when I asked the company to send me a burger, a five-pound block of meat—clearly what it normally ships to food-service companies—arrived on my doorstep. No instructions, no hand-holding. It looked identical to ground beef, so that’s how I treated it. And that’s how it performed. I made sliders, kebabs, nachos, chili, Bolognese sauce, even a little tartare (note: the company frowns hard on this).

If I’m being honest, I find that I slightly prefer it to real beef. It’s rich and juicy, more savory, but still somehow cleaner and less cloying. Now when I go back to regular beef, I notice a whiff of the charnel house in it, something musty and gray that I don’t like and don’t need.

In the coming years, expect a lot of other omnivores to have similar epiphanies. Impossible Foods has performed more than 26,000 blind taste tests on its burger, which is on track to surpass ground beef in those tests in the near future. What happens then? Impossible has been laser focused on creating the perfect simulacrum of ground beef. But why? The cow never had a lock on gastronomic perfection. It was just the best we could do given the limitations of the natural material. Firelight was fine until electricity came along. Then things got really interesting.

Look for something similar to happen with alt meat. For now, it’s necessary to make people comfortable with the familiar, the way Steve Jobs loaded the early iPhones with faux felt and wood grain. But once people stop expecting burgers to refer to a hunk of flesh, the brakes on deliciousness will be released.

This will be generational. All change is. Most Baby Boomers are going to stick with their beef, right up to the point where their dentures can’t take it anymore. But Gen Z will find the stuff as embarrassing as Def Leppard and dad jeans.

As this shift accelerates, the beef industry will lose its last advantage—price. Most offerings made with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are about a buck a burger more expensive. But it’s inherently cheaper to make a burger directly out of plants than it is to feed those plants to an animal first. Beef is currently cheaper because of scale. Big food companies can negotiate tremendously reduced prices for feed, and gigantic factories and supply chains are much more efficient to run.

But the playing field is leveling fast. Last week, Dunkin’ announced a new Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich that will be just 14 cents more than the meat version. But more than anything Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods has accomplished, the true death knell for the cattlemen is how the mainstream food industry has embraced alt meat. Whole Foods just announced it will start selling burgers from the UK-based startup the Meatless Farm in all of its stores. Nestle is launching its Awesome Burger this fall. Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat producer, just debuted its own plant-based nuggets, with more products to come. Tyson CEO Noel White said he expects Tyson “to be a market leader in alternative protein, which is experiencing double-digit growth and could someday be a billion-dollar business for our company.”

If that quote isn’t enough to send chills down the spine of any meat producer, try this one from Perdue Farms chairman Jim Perdue: “Our vision is to be the most trusted name in premium protein. It doesn’t say premium meat protein, just premium protein. That’s where consumers are going.”

And that’s where these companies will go. Beef is a headache. It comes with a lot of baggage to worry about: antibiotic resistance, E. coli outbreaks, animal welfare, climate change. It’s the kind of icky biological variable that corporate America would love to leave behind—and as soon as beef becomes less profitable, it will.

Recent projections suggest that 60 percent of the meat eaten in 2040 will be alt, a figure I think may actually be too conservative. An estimated 95 percent of the people buying alt burgers are meat-eaters. This is not about making vegetarians happy. It’s not even about climate change. This is a battle for America’s flame-broiled soul. Meat is about to break free from its animal past. As traditional meat companies embrace alt meat with the fervor of the just converted, making it cheap and ubiquitious, it’s unclear if Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods can survive the feeding frenzy (though Impossible’s patents on its core IP may help), but at least they’ll be able to comfort themselves with a modern take on Gandhi’s wisdom:

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they sue you.
Then they try to buy you.
Then they copy you.
Then they steal your shelf space.
Then they put you out of business.
Then you’ve won.

Lead Photo: Yifan Wu

Beef isn't like coal. People don't really crave coal like they crave beef. So I doubt the industry will ever become obsolete. It does have to rethink how it functions. The math behind cheap burgers - something must be wrong there, something that we can fix.

I'm not quite vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian), but I stopped eating beef years ago. For me, it was a Buddhist devotional sacrifice (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?61187-Shaolin-diet-vegetarianism-and-stuff). It's been really fascinating to me to watch this trend.

[GeneChing]

McDonald's Plant-Based Burger Trial Isn't a Slam Dunk, Analyst Suggests (https://www.foodandwine.com/news/mcdonalds-plt-plant-based-burger-trial-analysis)
The P.L.T. has "not been a blowout success thus far," an analyst says. What does that mean for the future of plant-based burgers at McDonald's?
By Mike Pomranz October 31, 2019

https://cdn-image.foodandwine.com/sites/default/files/styles/4_3_horizontal_-_1200x900/public/mcdonalds-plant-based-burger-ft-blog1119.jpg?itok=mAltVZB_
MCDONALD'S

Plant-based meats are arguably the biggest trend in fast food. And McDonald's is inarguably America's largest burger chain. So needless to say, the big question on many pundits' mind has been when is Ronald going to start selling a plant-based burger? It's a question that intensified this year when Burger King took its Impossible Whopper nationwide.

Last month, McDonald's partnered with Impossible Foods' top rival, Beyond Meat, to begin a test run of a new plant-based burger called the P.L.T. But short of letting any U.S. customers try it, the company instead trialed the burger at 28 locations around Ontario, Canada. Perhaps testing a Beyond Burger in America would have created too much hoopla, and Canada, while not quite as far away as Finland, where McDonald's launched a different fake meat burger, is a bit of a buffer from the U.S. Or, then again, maybe McDonald's has no deadset intention of ever bringing this burger to the U.S. Though, since McDonald's and Beyond Meat are both American companies, that's kind of hard to swallow.

Regardless, whatever McDonald's is planning with plant-based meat, a hiccup has apparently occurred: Yesterday, MarketWatch reported that sales of the P.L.T. aren't as strong as analysts had hoped. "A key question is whether McDonald's will partner with Beyond Meat in the U.S.," a Bernstein analyst was quoted as noting earlier this week. "Based on our channel checks with select McDonald's based in Ontario, Canada that are currently testing the Beyond P.L.T. burger, the initial feedback has been largely positive, although it seems that the trial has not been a blowout success thus far that justifies an immediate nationwide rollout across both Canada and the U.S."

Of course, not "a blowout success thus far" certainly isn't a failure. One could argue that blowout successes like KFC's meatless fried chicken test in one single location only did so well simply because of a confluence of publicity and scarcity, and doesn't correlate to national demand. And we shouldn't rush past the "feedback has been largely positive" part either. Still, part of the appeal of plant-based options is the excitement that surrounds them: Avoiding a lukewarm rollout is likely one of the reasons McDonald's has been slow to jump into the plant-based business to begin with. If that's the case, this talk sounds like a bad omen.

And yet, maybe this is just Canada being Canada. In July, the Canadian chain Tim Hortons added Beyond Meat items to its menus only to axe them by September. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Dunkin' also trialed a Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich in July and has just announced it is taking it nationwide. It could just be that Americans are more interested in plant-based beef than our neighbors to the north.

I reached out to McDonald's for a reaction to MarketWatch's report and received a reply from CEO Steve Easterbrook via an emailed statement cautioning that the trial was still in its early days. Easterbrook also indicated that while the Ontario rollout is indeed a limited run, it's less about timidity to enter the plant-based market and more about literally testing how the P.L.T. would be implemented while getting a read on the "flexitarian customer."

"We want to get the taste right, we want to get the marketing right, we want to get the operations right," he said. "So there's a number of important factors that we are learning quickly, and we think Ontario is a great spot, because it will give us a good read across North America frankly, but also into the developed markets in Europe as well [...] we think the read across will be beneficial and help us speed up our intelligence on this. So, more to come clearly, but it's an area of interest for sure."

Despite being the most successful fast food restaurant on the planet, McDonald's has a history of adding products people don't want. (I'm old enough to remember the Arch Deluxe!) So today's McDonald's may be warier of a big plant-based burger rollout than its competitors. And though the company is a late entry into the fake meat market, its commitment to the test phase means we're probably less likely to see a quick Dunkin'-style turnaround and a more measured rollout. If the Canada trial does turn out to be a bust, McDonald's plant-based burger timeline might get even slower. Either way, it seems the "when will McDonald's add a plant-based burger?" questions won't be going away any time soon.

UPDATE: Oct. 31, 2019: This article has been updated with a response provided by McDonald's.

I tried an Impossible Whopper. I figured I should support this movement. I was all excited because I haven't had a whopper in like a decade plus. But man, they're still nasty. I remember when I used to eat beef that I had to give up on BK because it gave me the runs afterwards. The Impossible Whopper didn't affect me that way, but I felt like I ate too much salt and too much grease for the rest of the day. :(

THREADS
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[GeneChing]

KFC rolls out first plant-based fried 'chicken' with Beyond Meat – but we have no idea yet if it will come to South Africa (https://www.businessinsider.co.za/kfc-plant-based-fried-chicken-beyond-meat-2019-8-2?fbclid=IwAR3LuxhYH5LlEnQ1kqu8WKKX0tddpUocEbbwYOu 4F6nBS6KQgV6yavfGB5Q)
Kate Taylor , Business Insider US
Aug 26, 2019, 08:13 PM

https://cdn.24.co.za/files/Cms/General/d/9273/985de598af2f4d4d9bdfcdaae2494048.jpg
KFC is getting into the alternative-meat game.
KFC

KFC is testing fried "chicken" made with faux meat, the chain announced on Monday.

The chain teamed up with Beyond Meat to make Beyond Fried Chicken.

The plant-based fried "chicken" will be available at a single KFC in the USA starting on Tuesday.

Whether it will ever come to South Africa is not yet clear.

KFC is getting into the alternative-meat game.

On Monday, the chicken chain announced it was testing Beyond Fried Chicken, in partnership with Beyond Meat. The plant-based fried "chicken" will be available at a single KFC location in Atlanta in the USA starting on Tuesday.

KFC said it would consider customer feedback as it decides whether to test the menu item at more locations or launch it nationally in the United States.

KFC in South Africa could not on Monday say if and when the experiment may come to SA.

In May, Kevin Hochman, the president of KFC's US business, told Business Insider he was meeting with the makers of plant-based "meat" because of the rise of interest in meat alternatives.

"If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have said no, to be completely honest with you," Hochman said. "Because we're about fried chicken."

However, if the buzz around companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat translates into long-term customer demand, KFC will need to test a plant-based meat substitute in the US, Hochman said. The chain has already been testing vegetarian fried "chicken" in the UK.

Beyond Meat has recently announced deals with chains including Subway, Dunkin', and Del Taco.

"It's not that interesting to me that really rich people eat super healthy food. It's not moving the needle," Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown told Business Insider of the company's recent work with restaurant chains.

THREADS
the Kentucky Fried Thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?22096-the-Kentucky-Fried-Thread)
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[GeneChing]

Hot Dry Noodles: The Traditionally Vegan & Addictive Dish From Wuhan (https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/hot-dry-noodles-traditionally-vegan-addictive-dish-from-wuhan/)
By Sally Ho Last updated Feb 14, 2020

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wuhan-noodles-sohu.jpeg
4 Mins Read
Whilst China and other countries around the world continue to battle the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, which the World Health Organisation recently declared a global public health emergency, fears about the spread of the coronavirus has been accompanied by a spike in anti-Chinese racism and xenophobia. Wuhan has been hardest hit with racist stereotyping and has been making international headlines, but many of us have forgotten the traditional Wuhan delicacy, which happens to be 100% plant-based.

A few words on racism

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/mask-coronavirus-reuters.jpg
Source: Reuters

There are serious and substantiated concerns regarding the current novel coronavirus and its spread, but it has awakened prejudices, racist vitriol and stereotyping against people of mainland Chinese or Asian descent.

This not only contributes nothing to help quell the disease epidemic, it comes with the threat of overshadowing long-standing cultural traditions that all of us can appreciate. In particular, Wuhan, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus, has come under attack internationally and from other cities and provinces in mainland China.

The internet is awash with criticism and misleading claims about the apparent thirst for consuming wild animals in Wuhan peoples’ diets, stemming from the reports that the disease emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan that also sold a number of live animals.

While the novel coronavirus has thrust the danger and cruelty of the wild animal trade into the limelight, the demand for wild animals isn’t limited to Wuhan, nor is it confined within the borders of China alone. In fact, the supply chain extends throughout the world, stretching from Asia, Africa and elsewhere, including the United States. It is a global problem that the world must tackle if we are to prevent future disease epidemics, not to mention the animal welfare and wildlife conservation issues that stem from the trade.

Hot dry noodles: the addictive vegan dish from Wuhan

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Wuhan-noodles-zhihu.jpg
Source: Zhihu

As a Hong Kong-based journalist hailing from Wuhan reminded us in a heartfelt open letter, it’s time to take stock and reflect on some of the traditions her hometown is known for, including the beloved local dish “Hot Dry Noodles”–which happens to be accidentally vegan and so delicious.

Re gan mian, which translates to hot and dry noodles, is the traditional dish of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China. Also known as the “Wuhan noodle”, this dish has had a long-standing history in Chinese food culture for almost 100 years, and is unique because unlike many Asian noodle dishes, the noodles aren’t served in soup. Instead, the dish is served “dry” with the vegan-friendly alkaline noodles coated in a rich, thick and creamy sesame sauce and topped with fresh spring onions. While the main seasoning is sesame paste, sometimes, the noodles are also topped with pickled spicy radish, which also originates from Hubei province.

And true to Wuhan cuisine, which shares with its nearby Sichuanese counterpart, the dish makes extensive use of chillies. Chillies are deeply embedded within both Wuhan and Sichuan food culture because the regions face a humid climate, which can be balanced out with hot and spicy foods in traditional Chinese medicinal beliefs. While preparing the seasoning and sauce of hot dry noodles, Wuhanese people typically use chilli oil and fresh coriander to bring out both the delicious taste of sesame and give a kick of heat.

This dish is so significant in Wuhan food culture that it is a popular breakfast food in the city, often sold in street carts and restaurants across towns as early as 5am in the morning, all throughout the day until the evening, where the famous dish appears at night markets as a late-night snack.

Make your own hot dry noodles

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Woks-of-life-hot-dry-noodles.jpg
Source: Woks of Life

“Wuhan noodles” calls for alkaline noodles, the most common type of ramen noodle available in most supermarkets across Asia, which are made out of wheat flour and kansui (alkaline water) to give its salty taste and springy quality. If they happen to be unavailable, they can be easily substituted for spaghetti (cooked al dente) for a similar texture and taste, or gluten-free versions to suit individual dietary preferences.

For the seasoning and sauce, hot dry noodles typically contain five spice powder, a blend of cinnamon, cloves, fennel, star anise and Sichuan peppercorns, sesame paste, sesame oil, light and dark soy sauce and salt. Once the sauce is mixed in to coat the cooked noodles, top the dish with a sprinkle of chopped green onions, pickled radish, chilli oil and coriander.

Lead image courtesy of Sohu.



THREADS
Noodles (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69740-Noodles)
Vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)
COVID-19 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)

[GeneChing]

I'll still try this if it comes to my area.


KFC's New Plant-Based 'Vegan' Fried Chicken: Everything You Need To Know (https://www.womenshealthmag.com/food/a30983719/vegan-kfc/)
Apparently it's still finger-lickin' good.
BY KORIN MILLER
FEB 27, 2020

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/promotional-atmosphhere-at-kfc-on-april-4-2018-in-news-photo-1582139408.jpgMOSES ROBINSONGETTY IMAGES

Plant-based meat has officially infiltrated pretty much every fast food restaurant in the game. Burger King has the Impossible Whopper, White Castle has Impossible Sliders, Dunkin’ has the Beyond Sausage Sandwich, and, now, even KFC (a fast food chain that's literally all about chicken) has hopped on the bandwagon.

Recently, KFC started testing out plant-based chicken nuggets and wings—which they call Beyond Fried Chicken (a.k.a. fried chicken made with Beyond meat)—in certain parts of the U.S.



kfc
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Verified
Who knew plants could taste like fried chicken? I did. Introducing KFC’s new @beyondmeat Fried Chicken. It looks like delicious fried chicken and tastes like delicious fried chicken, but it’s made from plants. Get KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken in Charlotte or Nashville before you miss out.

It was a BFD. One Atlanta restaurant sold out of Beyond Fried Chicken in less than five hours. People lined up before the restaurant even opened, and the drive-thru line wrapped around the parking low twice.

Now, KFC has expanded their Beyond Fried Chicken test to more than 70 spots in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, throughout February, according to a press release.

"We've really pushed the limits to develop plant-based chicken that I think will have KFC and plant-based protein fans saying, 'That's finger lickin' good,’” Andrea Zahumensky, chief marketing officer at KFC U.S., said in the release.

How exactly does this whole chicken-less fried chicken thing work, though? Here's everything you need to know about KFC’s new Beyond Fried Chicken.

What’s KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken made of?

KFC shared online that Beyond Fried Chicken primarily gets its protein from soy, wheat, and pea proteins.

Want more specifics? Here’s the full ingredients list:

Water, Enriched wheat flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Soy Protein Isolate, Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Enriched bleached wheat flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Wheat Gluten, Natural Flavor, Yeast Extract, and less than 2 percent of: Breadcrumbs (Wheat Flour, Distilled Vinegar, Sea Salt, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate), Inactive Yeast, Spice Extractives), Chili Pepper, Citric Acid, Garlic Powder, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Modified Wheat Starch, Onion Powder, Pea Extract, Rice Flour, Salt, Spice, Titanium Dioxide (for color).

Yeah, it's long—but, plant-based or not, this is fast food, after all.

Is Beyond Fried Chicken vegan?

Here's the kicker: According to KFC, their Beyond Fried Chicken is 100 percent plant-based, but it's prepped in the same fryers as KFC’s actual chicken. So, it could get contaminated with residue or fat from that real chicken, and therefore isn't technically even vegetarian, let alone vegan.

Is Beyond Fried Chicken gluten-free?

KFC says they bread their Beyond Fried Chicken in a mixture similar to their popcorn nugget breading, meaning that the plant-based option is not gluten-free.

Real Talk: Is Beyond Fried Chicken healthy?

“When we talk about eating more plant-based foods, this isn’t what we mean,” says New York City-based dietitian Samantha Cassetty, RD. “Just like regular fast food, this isn't an everyday food.”

Jessica Cording, RD, nutritionist and author of The Little Book of Game-Changers, agrees: “Fried chicken is still fried chicken. Just because something is plant-based doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s healthy.”

“There’s some difference in nutrients, but it’s still fried protein at the end of the day,” says Cording. “If a regular part of your diet, fried foods—whether plant- or animal-based—can have a negative effect on your health.”

Plant-based faux meats are also often made with heavily processed ingredients and contain excessive amounts of sodium—neither of which are great for you, adds Cassetty.

Still, you’re not going to torpedo your healthy eating goals by treating yourself once in a while. “If you’re curious about plant-based foods and you want to give these a try, they can fit in a healthful diet,” Cassetty says. As long as 75 percent of your eats come from minimally-processed plant foods, such as beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and avocados, you're good.

Does KFC offer other plant-based options?

As of right now, KFC doesn't have any other plant-based meal options on the menu.

However, certain KFC side orders, like green beans, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and sweet kernel corn, fit the bill.

KORIN MILLER
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more.

THREADS
Vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)
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[highlypotion]

I'm vegetarian since birth! I just love the animals hehe

[SteveLau]

First of all to be flank, I am not a vegetarian. Eating only vegetables is not the most healthy way. Nor it is most cost-effective for one to maintain good health, certainly not for athletic goal. I am quite an open-minded fellow, so I do not rule out the intake of the new Beyond Meat (artificial meat) type of food.

P.S. After more than a year of training program, I confirmed that nutrition intake was the problem that caused my failure to increase my muscle mass. So then I changed my program again. In about six months after taking protein supplement and more high protein food like meat, fish, egg, etc., I reached close enough my goal of 59 kg. of body weight.


Regards,

KC
Hong Kong

[GeneChing]

I'll try this when I get the chance.


https://vegnews.com/media/W1siZiIsIjIyNDM4L1ZlZ05ld3MuT21uaVBvcmtTcGxpdDIucG 5nIl0sWyJwIiwidGh1bWIiLCIxNjAweDk0NiMiLHsiZm9ybWF0 IjoianBnIn1dLFsicCIsIm9wdGltaXplIl1d/VegNews.OmniPorkSplit2.png?sha=0fa77c91e424a2d1
Vegan Spam Took Over Asia. Now It’s Coming for American Menus (https://vegnews.com/2021/5/vegan-spam-omnipork)
Now that OmniPork is available in the US, yet another major market of this budget meat has a plant-based Spam contender.
by TANYA FLINK

MAY 18, 2021

1,019 Shares
For a four-letter word with just six ingredients, Spam is a complicated food. American journalists have commented on its peculiar high-low appeal here in the States—Spam doubles as budget food as well as a pseudo-fine-dining trend. But as complex as our relationship is to Spam in the US, it carries even more weight aboard. Spam has become a staple in many Asian countries, but for the older generation, its presence offers an aftertaste of American imperialism thanks to several US deployments and subsequent occupations during wartime. Hong Kong-based OmniFoods is setting out to wipe that slate clean. Its OmniPork Luncheon (aka vegan Spam) erases the cruelty and complicated history of pig-based Spam, and now that it has launched in the US, OmniPork is setting out to satisfy our cravings in a more compassionate way. Here’s what you need to know about Spam and its vegan successor.

https://vegnews.com/media/22396/VegNews.OmniPorkChefReina.jpg
Chef Reina

The rise of OmniPork
The vegan world rose to its feet for a standing ovation when OmniPork launched in Hong Kong in 2018. The plant-based pork product was the first of its kind—a triumph of OmniFoods. This food-tech company falls under the projects of the Green Monday Group—a multinational sustainability organization founded in Hong Kong by entrepreneur David Yeung.

In 2020, the brand debuted its vegan luncheon meat with the intent to combat the popularity of Spam in Asia. While very much entrenched in Asian culture, the food-tech company responsible for creating this product is not Asian—it’s Canadian. OmniPork’s tagline boasts “Western innovation x Asian application.”

Yeung assured us that while the development occurred in Canada, many Asian Canadians were a part of the process. Yeung explained, “We are blessed with a very experienced food scientist R&D team who have an Asian background and understand how Asians apply meat in cooking differently. [Green Monday Group] is based in Asia so our direction on R&D from day one was to develop new innovations that will fit into our ways of cooking and eating.”

The Green Monday Group was explicit in its instructions to its R&D team. Not only did the product need to taste and feel like Spam, it had to smell like it, too. Yeung elaborated, “There is a fragrance that is unique about luncheon meat. It evokes childhood memories for many people. So getting that right, along with, of course, texture and nutrition [was] crucial.”

https://vegnews.com/media/22397/VegNews.OmniPorkManeatingplantnoods.JPG
Maneatingplant

Spam and imperialism
There’s no argument that vegans take issue with animal-based Spam for a number of reasons. There’s the slaughter of animals, the degradation of the environment, social justice issues that come with CAFOs, and the detriment to human health. However, in Spam’s case, another pressing factor is of immediate concern: imperialism.

Created by the Hormel company in 1937, the original pig-based Spam (there’s a turkey option, too) is a blend of processed pork and ham, water, sugar, modified potato starch, and sodium nitrate. American soldiers brought it along during their wartime deployments and proceeding occupations as a convenient, calorie-dense option for sustenance. However, soldiers stationed in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other Pacific island nations didn’t always have a taste for the briny porky product, and it would eventually find its way into the hands of local communities, fed through the handouts American soldiers offered.

https://vegnews.com/media/22400/VegNews.Tane.jpg
Tane

Spam in Asia
And so, native populations began to incorporate Spam into their cuisines. In South Korea, there’s budae jjigae; in Hawaii (not yet a US State during WWII), Spam musubi; and in Guam, Spam fried rice. And once occupying American troops left these regions, Spam didn’t fade away along with them—it exploded, morphing from a food equated with struggle and wartime to a bona fide delicacy. Today, South Korea is the second largest consumer of the canned pork product behind the US, and the tiny nation of Guam wins in Spam consumption per capita with a whopping 16 cans per person per year. Overall, Spam ranks sixth in the canned subgroup of Asia’s annual Top 1,000 Brands list and has become part of many Asian nations’ cuisines and integrated into Asian-American palates as well.

https://vegnews.com/media/22401/VegNews.GOEN.jpg
GOEN

Spam and high-speed slaughter
Fast-forward to today, and like so many other industrialized, processed meat products, Spam is under scrutiny. In 2015, a Hormel slaughterhouse was chosen to participate in a USDA pilot program that would abolish the cap on the kill rate of pigs. Before the program, slaughterhouses were restrained to killing 1,106 pigs per hour. Under the new Modernization of Pork Slaughter guidelines, this cap was lifted, allowing for unregulated slaughter at frightening speeds. Despite an Animal Outlook undercover investigation that documented severe animal abuse and workers scrambling to keep up, the program was finalized in 2019 and extended to all swine slaughterhouses nationwide. Hormel—along with other pork operations—is now killing pigs faster than ever with no consideration to the welfare of the animals or the workers. That’s a bad taste that cannot be chef’d up, no matter how many Michelin stars or James Beard awards the chef has.

https://vegnews.com/media/22398/VegNews.OmniPorkManPlantBalls.JPG
Maneatingplant

Hope for the future
Despite this unregulated slaughter speed, pork production rates have unexpectedly plummeted in recent years, dropping 15 percent from 2019 to 2020. And given plant-based meat sales rose by 45 percent during the same time period, it’s reasonable to assume that vegan meat products are at least partially responsible for the decline in pork production. The pivot to plant-based seems to be due in large part to the increased accessibility of vegan meats like OmniPork.

Currently, OmniPork is available in over 300 restaurants across Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines, Macau, and Hong Kong. Consumers can also find OmniPork in hundreds of retailers across these regions and some areas of mainland China. Like the Beyond and Impossible Burger incorporation into American fast-food culture, the OmniPork option gives customers the opportunity to curtail their meat consumption while still enjoying the foods and eateries they love. Afterall, as long as customers get their pork dumplings, it doesn’t matter if they’re made with plants. As long as the dumplings evoke the same sensory experience, most people probably don’t mind that they’re not made with animals.

If OmniPork can further curb consumers’ taste for meat, let’s keep that vegan luncheon meat coming. The US rollout of OmniPork is controlled to a tight 10 restaurants (see below), but there is a plan for a national retail rollout this summer. Given the juicy OmniPork bao, layered OmniPork-topped sushi, and sweet and sour bola bola OmniPork meatballs these restaurants are cooking up, it won’t be long until Americans become smitten with this vegan spam.

OmniPork launched in these US locations:

Los Angeles:
CHIFA
RiceBox
Little Fatty
MANEATINGPLANT
Ramen Hood
Morning Nights

San Francisco:
Shizen
Chef Reina

Honolulu:
GOEN Dining + Bar
Tane Vegan Izakaya

Tanya Flink is a Digital Editor at VegNews as well as a writer and fitness enthusiast living in Orange County, CA.

[GeneChing]

HUFU: THE VEGAN CANNIBAL’S ALTERNATIVE TO HUMAN FLESH (https://www.cultofweird.com/science/hufu-human-flesh-alternative/?fbclid=IwAR0fAS9kJMn5lTjnDMEnrqyQm1GtRTvzhbIjcE2n jboKYQkkdaBOPE_TVno)
Posted by Charlie Hintz | Cannibal Week

Hufu was a tofu-based product designed to taste like human flesh, providing an alternative meat source for health-conscious cannibals.

https://www.cultofweird.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/eat-hufu-human-flesh-alternative.jpg
Hufu artwork created by Ray Drainville of Ardes

Hufu founder Mark Nuckols was reading the book Good To Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture by anthropologist Marvin Harris, while eating a tofurkey sandwich, when the idea came to him: a healthy, vegan alternative to human meat.

Nuckols launched Hufu in 2005, and the initial stock of 144 boxes of Hufu Classic Strips sold out in just two days.

If I had known about it back then, every one of those boxes would have shipped to me. But Hufu, surprisingly, had a bigger market than one random weirdo with a website and an unhealthy interest in cannibalism.

“Hufu was originally conceived of as a product for students of anthropology hungry for the experience of cannibalism but deterred by the legal and logistical obstacles,” the now defunct Eat Hufu website stated. “However, our preliminary market research revealed the existence of a larger segment of the public that was interested in the availability of a legal and healthy human flesh substitute, as well as vegetarians and vegans. We also found that Hufu is a great product for cannibals who want to quit. Hufu is also a great cannibal convenience food — no more Friday night hunting raids! Stay at home and enjoy the flavorful, convenient human flesh alternative.”


“Cannibalism might seem wrong to your hetero-normative, Judeo-Christian culture, but who are we to judge the Aztecs or the indigenous cultures of Papua New Guinea?”

– Eat Hufu website FAQ, 2005

In an interview on The Daily Show, Nuckols said, “I think that a lot of the pleasure of eating the Hufu product is imagining you’re eating human flesh. For that moment, you can join the fraternity of cannibals… If you really want to come as close as possible to the experience of cannibalism, Hufu is your best option.”

But how did Nuckols, or anyone eating Hufu, for that matter, know what human flesh tastes like?

Polynesian cannibals called human the “long pig,” so we tend to associate people with pork. After studying historical descriptions from cannibal tribes, and a lot of experimenting in the kitchen, Hufu discovered otherwise.

“Hufu is designed to resemble, as humanly possible, the taste and texture of human flesh,” the website stated. “If you’ve never had human flesh before, think of the taste and texture of beef, except a little sweeter in taste and a little softer in texture. Contrary to popular belief, people do not taste like pork or chicken.”

The FAQ adds, “We are supremely confident that our food products would satisfy the tastes of even the most demanding cannibal.”

“I bet you a real Fijian headhunter would enjoy Hufu,” Nuckols told The Stanford Daily.

The name Hufu is a portmanteau of human and tofu. The name was apparently coined by Resident Evil actress Milla Jovovitch when she overheard some of Nuckols’ business associates discussing it on a train from London to Paris, according to the website. They were calling it “Hufu” at the time.

“‘Hofu’ sounds like [the male organ],” Milla chimed in. “You should call it ‘hufu.'”

The website offered articles on famous cannibals and cultural traditions, merchandise and recipes: Hufu Stroganoff, Lechter’s Liver with Fava Beans, and Aztec Human Stew for anyone who wants to “vicariously participate in one of the great Aztec customs, the human sacrifice festival.”

Sadly, Hufu closed up shop in 2006.

“The world has moved on past Hufu,” Nuckols said.

Well I didn’t, Mark. There’s a Hufu-sized hole in my soul that can never be filled. If you ever read this and you still have some Classic Strips, or even just a t-shirt (not to eat), taking up space in a closet somewhere, hit me up. My cannibal fork is on standby.

https://www.cultofweird.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/hufu-easter-island-head-cannibalism.jpg

I can't even...

[GeneChing]

https://www.mcdonalds.com/is/image/content/dam/uk/nfl/hero/desktopnfl/good-to-know-one.jpg?$Publication_One_Column_Desktop$
McDONALD’S UK&I IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THE NEW McPLANT IS OFFICIALLY…EVERYWHERE! (https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/newsroom/article/the_new_mcplant.html)🍔 🌱

Following a successful trial, McDonald’s will be rolling out its first ever plant-based burger to EVERY restaurant across the UK and Ireland from Wednesday 5th January

McPlant, which features a patty co-developed with Beyond Meat®, is McDonald’s first plant-based burger option

To celebrate its release, famous faces including Rosie Ramsey, Simon Gregson and Lawrence Okolie gave McPlant their seal of approval with tastings all across the UK
McDonald’s is proud to announce the national roll-out of its plant-based offering, the McPlant, to all restaurants across the UK and Ireland from Wednesday 5th January 2022, following a successful trial at over 250 restaurants last year.
The impressive McPlant, which took over three years to develop, features a patty co-developed with Beyond Meat® and has already proved hugely successful with McDonald’s customers.

From today, it will be available from Inverness to Liverpool and Penzance to Grimsby, meaning the McPlant is officially everywhere for burgers lovers to get their hands-on. Whether they’re plant-based, taking part in Veganuary or a true meat lover – McDonald’s is confident it’s a burger for everyone.
To celebrate the fact #McPlantIsEverywhere, McDonald’s took celebrities to all corners of the country to sample the latest addition to the menu. From Rosie Ramsey celebrating its arrival in the North East on the remote Northumberland shoreline to Corrie legend Simon Gregson swapping the Bushtucker Trials for a McPlant in Manchester city centre.
Michelle Graham-Clare, Chief Marketing Officer, McDonald’s UK and Ireland said: “We’re so pleased that our McPlant is now officially ‘everywhere’ and available for more of our customers to taste and enjoy. We saw a remarkable response to the trial period back in October and now McPlant is on the high-street, in retail parks and service stations all over the UK and Ireland so all of our customers will be able to try it. We’re proud to once again be offering our customers more great-tasting options from McDonald’s. Its our same iconic taste – but plant-based.”
McDonald’s UK&I spent three years on research and development to bring a delicious plant-based offering to British and Irish customers, and every element of the McPlant was designed with taste and quality top-of-mind. From the plant-based patty co-developed with Beyond Meat, to innovative vegan cheese based on pea protein that tastes just like McDonald’s iconic cheese slices, and a new vegan sandwich sauce.
The impressive McPlant features a Vegan Sesame Bun, Mustard, Ketchup, Vegan Sauce, Fresh Onion, Pickles, Lettuce, Tomato and Vegan Cheese. It is cooked separately from other McDonald’s burgers and sandwiches using dedicated utensils.
For more information please visit McDonalds.co.uk/McPlant

About Beyond Meat
Beyond Meat, Inc. (NASDAQ:BYND), a leader in plant-based meat, offers a portfolio of revolutionary plant-based meats. Founded in 2009, Beyond Meat products are designed to have the same taste and texture as animal-based meat while offering certain environmental benefits. Beyond Meat’s brand commitment, Eat What You Love™, represents a strong belief that there is a better way to feed our future and that the positive choices we all make, no matter how small, can help us move towards the kind of future we want. By shifting from animal-based meat to plant-based meat, we can help address concerns related to resource conservation and animal welfare. As of September 2021, Beyond Meat had products available at approximately 128,000 retail and foodservice outlets in over 85 countries worldwide. Visit www.BeyondMeat.com and follow @BeyondMeatEU on Instagram, @BeyondMeat on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

THREADS
Vegetarian (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)
Fast Food Nastiness (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65208-Fast-Food-Nastiness)

[GeneChing]

This article had me at 'vegan carniceria' and 'regular-ass taqueria'

This Vegan Carnicería Wants to Be the Latinx Answer to Impossible Foods
Luke Tsai
Mar 8
https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/venganza_taco-1020x638.jpg
Taqueria La Venganza's downtown Oakland storefront aims be a "regular-ass" taqueria—and, eventually, to bring its vegan meats to the national stage. (Raul Medina)

In the future that Raul Medina imagines, not only will America have a taco truck on every corner, but all of those trucks will also offer a full slate of vegan meats. Carnitas, carne asada, chicharrón—each taco a delicious miracle crafted out of tofu skins and dehydrated soy chips. And the supplier of these stellar faux meats? Naturally that would be Medina himself, whose vegan carnicería, Taqueria La Venganza, opened in Oakland earlier this year.

“I want to be the Impossible Foods—the Beyond Meat—of the Mexican meat world,” Medina says.

That’s a bold ambition for a chef whose entire operation, at the moment, is based inside a small downtown Oakland bodega. Just a couple of months in, La Venganza has already garnered a reputation for serving the best vegan tacos in town. But Medina has his sights set much higher: He doesn’t want to be known as just a taquero. He wants to be the guy up the supply chain who makes your favorite taquero want to offer a vegan option—who makes meats that are delicious enough, and profitable enough, that every taqueria in the country will want to use them.

In short, Medina wants his vegan carne asada—not Impossible’s or Beyond’s—to be the one that goes national. And in the process, he hopes to strike a blow for smaller, less corporatized and more Latinx-centric businesses. “I don’t want them to do ‘Beyond Asada’ or ‘Impossible Asada,’ and then suddenly we’re eating some other corporate ****.”

https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/venganza_raul-scaled.jpg
After launching his pop-up in Berkeley six years ago, Medina made a name for himself when La Venganza won the title for best taco in all of Los Angeles. (Raul Medina)
Ten or 20 years ago, vegans like Medina could scarcely have imagined a time when “plant-based meat” would be seen as the trendiest, most lucrative sector in food—the subject of dozens of breathless reviews and earnest thinkpieces. These days, you can buy an Impossible Burger at Burger King. You can find the patties in the freezer aisle of your local Walmart or Target.

“For me, veganism was always punk rock,” Raul Medina says of his early days of meat abstention. “You were looked upon as a weirdo. Like, what the **** are you doing?”

Now, he says, companies like Beyond and Impossible have helped take veganism to the masses. But their proliferation has also led to a certain ****geneity in the vegan food scene. The national fast food chains sell the same faux meat patties that customers might shell out $20 for at their favorite boutique pop-up. For the most part, vegan chefs aren’t even bothering to experiment with their own personalized take on an old-school black bean burger anymore. “I don’t care how much you say, ‘Oh, I make it taste different. I season it differently,’” Medina says. “It tastes the same to me everywhere I go.”


"At the end of the day, that’s the vision—to have a vegan carnicería in every major city and have it supply the meats to every taco truck on every corner."
Medina doesn’t deny that the Impossible Burger tastes good, and he acknowledges that any reduction in meat consumption that comes as these companies become more mainstream is a net positive. But for him, veganism was always about more than just protecting animals. It was also about all of the other systemic abuses that were endemic to the industrial meat complex—the way the workers in the slaughterhouses were treated, for instance. In his past career, Medina worked at an immigration law firm, and he says he saw firsthand how the big poultry plants would bus in workers from Mexico and “literally deport them after the season’s done.”

Medina questions whether the big plant-based meat companies are set up so differently, even if they’re applying a “green bandage” to the food system.

“Is that the same situation that’s going to go on with soy and wheat and coconut oil? I’m not blind to consumerism and capitalism,” he says. “I know what happens when something becomes popular. There are ways that they’re going to try to cut down costs. Who are we getting to work the fields? Are we paying them more, or are just paying them what the **** we need to pay them?”

https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/venganza_tacovega-scaled.jpg
A plate from La Venganza's collaboration with L.A.'s Taco Vega. (Raul Medina)
Indeed, part of what motivated Medina to really push the Taqueria La Venganza brand and extend its reach was hearing the news that Beyond Meat was working on a (thus far unsuccessful) vegan carne asada for Taco Bell. La Venganza’s attempts at global expansion have seen more modest success thus far: In addition to his own taqueria, Medina also supplies vegan meats for Oakland’s Taqueria El Cruzero, and he recently ran a collaboration with Taco Vega, a vegan taqueria in Los Angeles, with an eye toward opening his second location down in L.A. Toward that end, he’s actively looking for investors.

In comparison to the food tech giants, Medina says his supply chain is relatively straightforward and analog. For his carne asada, for instance, he imports dehydrated soy chips from Taiwan and seasons them with various spices (including Vietnamese rice powder) to emulate the smoky, slightly burnt effect you get when a nice piece of skirt steak hits the grill.

“Who’s getting rich off of that? Me, a Taiwanese company and whatever Mexican just sold you the taco,” Medina says. “I want Mexican people making money off of my products. At the end of the day, that’s the vision—to have a vegan carnicería in every major city and have it supply the meats to every taco truck on every corner.”


"It opened people’s eyes to be like, ‘This guy is making Mexican food vegan, but it tastes like my mom made it.’ ... You didn’t have to ask for something with a stupid name. What you were used to is what you got."
Of course, none of these plans would have much hope for success if the tacos themselves didn’t taste good. For Medina, basing his first carnicería in the East Bay marks something of a homecoming: La Venganza first burst onto the vegan food scene six years ago as a popular Berkeley pop-up. The chef went on to make a name for himself in Los Angeles, where in short order La Venganza was tapped to sell tacos at Coachella and then—its biggest break—won L.A. Taco’s “Taco Madness” competition for the coveted title of best taco in all of Los Angeles in 2018.

“It’s L.A. It’s Mexicans,” Medina says of the street cred that the victory gave his business. In many ways, it also set off a whole new wave of vegan taquerias in Los Angeles and beyond. What set La Venganza apart from much of the previous generation of vegan tacos was that, apart from whatever textural magic Medina was able to work out of yuba and other soy and wheat gluten products, the chef’s approach was fundamentally nostalgic, meant to capture everything that people loved about getting tacos at an old-school taqueria—just without the meat.

https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/venganza_burrito-scaled.jpg
The burritos at Taqueria La Venganza weigh two pounds. (Raul Medina)
“It opened people’s eyes to be like, ‘This guy is making Mexican food vegan, but it tastes like my mom made it.’ Before that it was, ‘This person is putting kale and roasted potato in my taco, what the **** is this?’” Medina says. “Finally you saw something that was asada. You didn’t have to ask for something with a stupid name. What you were used to is what you got.”

At La Venganza’s downtown Oakland storefront, Medina makes the tortillas by hand. The taqueria offers a streamlined menu of greatest hits: carnitas, chicharrón, carne asada fries and cauliflower al pastor. It sometimes offers, as a special, vegan versions of less mainstream cuts, like beef cheek or lengua, but it also sells giant burritos that weigh two pounds.

And though Medina is dubious of the prospect of companies like Impossible and Beyond bringing vegan food to the masses, that is what he aspires to do, too, at the end of the day—to be, as he puts it, a “regular-ass taqueria,” and to bring his vegan meats to other regular-ass taquerias.

“It’s not like I’m using Calabrian chilies, or adding amaranth or ancestral ingredients,” Medina says. “**** all that ****. I’m putting in what your mom used to put in. There isn’t meat in it, but it tastes just like you remember.”



Taqueria La Venganza is open Thursday through Saturday, 1–7pm at 597 15th St. in Oakland.

[GeneChing]

Smart-Alecky ‘Vegan McDonald’s’ Knock-Off Opens in Union Square, Right Across From Real McDonald’s (https://sfist.com/2023/01/23/smart-alecky-vegan-mcdonalds-knock-off-opens-in-union-square-right-across-from-actual-mcdonalds/?fbclid=IwAR3zRGgOVjKHpeGLD4sIPXExITYQLzXgibXg5Kcb keuAPtxB15aWW7CrdNI)
Saturday saw the San Francisco opening of the up-and-coming plant-based fast-food chain Mr. Charlie’s, whose menu items and promotions clown on Ronald McDonald and the broader McDonald’s franchise.

The chicken sandwich wars have been a focal point for the fast-food industry as well as several respected local restaurateurs since 2019. Yet now a new war (or maybe more just some David-taunting-Goliath antics) is being waged at SF Union Square at the corner of Sutter and Stockton streets. The McDonald's at 441 Sutter Street opened in 2015, and its McChickens have ruled the fast food roost there since. But on Saturday, a plant-based fast-food competitor called Mr. Charlie’s opened across the street at 432 Sutter Street, and, well, you can see whose eye they’re poking a finger into with some of their iconography below.

Mr. Charlie’s is a vegan fast-food place with one location in Los Angeles, and they opened their Union Square location here Saturday. According to their Instagram promotion below, “In honor of our Sf opening we will be offering free mini frowny meals at both locations this Saturday, Jan 21st from 11:11am-1:11pm."

But from the Yelp pictures and Instagram embeds from Saturday, there was clearly plenty more than just “free mini frowny meals” being served up. HEEE-heeee, is that a Michael Jackson impersonator they brought in for the occasion? Not the choice I would have made since the release of a certain 2019 documentary exposé, but people seem excited in the pictures.

https://img.sfist.com/2023/01/mr-charlies-mj.jpeg
Image: Ron C. via Yelp
While this SF Mr. Charlie’s location opened Saturday, their food has been available on delivery apps since December. The Mr. Charlie’s menu is surprisingly simple, and highly derivative of McDonald’s and In-N-Out: items are called Not a Hamburger, Not a Cheeseburger, Not a Double Double, Not Chicken Nuggets, and the combo meals are called Frowny Meals. The french fries are normal french fries, as potatoes are already plant-based, and yes their imitation beef is Impossible Burgers from Impossible Foods.

https://img.sfist.com/2023/01/mt-Charlies-1.jpeg
Image: John P via Yelp
There’s probably an appetite for a new cult-hit California burger chain in the wake of In-N-Out’s anti-vaccine shenanigans. And that it’s vegan, with likely a little less indigestion involved, is probably a plus. The big question facing this franchise is whether McDonald's is going to sue them for aping those names and logos. When asked by the Los Angeles Times about this, co-founder and SF native Charlie Kim merely told the Times, "No idea what you mean. I really want to get people eating plant-based food. That's the goal here."
Next time I'm in Union Square...

[GeneChing]

https://vegnews.com/media/W1siZiIsIjM2MDM2L1ZlZ05ld3MuQmV5b25kTnVnZ2V0cy5NY0 RvbmFsZHNHZXJtYW55LmpwZyJdLFsicCIsImNyb3BfcmVzaXpl ZCIsIjE2NzZ4OTkxKzErNjciLCIxNjAweDk0Nl4iLHsiZm9ybW F0Ijoid2VicCJ9XV0/VegNews.BeyondNuggets.McDonaldsGermany.jpg?sha=f85 aac4527373acd
What’s Next for McDonald’s and Beyond Meat? Plant-Based Chicken McNuggets (https://vegnews.com/2023/2/mcdonalds-beyond-meat-plant-based-chicken-mcnuggets)
McDonald’s and Beyond Meat unveil their second collaboration: plant-based McNuggets. Germany’s 1,400 McDonald’s locations will be the first to try them.

by ANNA STAROSTINETSKAYA
FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Plant-based McNuggets are now hitting the menu at 1,400 locations of McDonald’s across Germany. This launch is the second product to come out of the fast-food giant’s three-year development deal with vegan company Beyond Meat.

The new nuggets are made with pea protein, corn, and wheat, and surrounded by a crispy tempura batter. The nationwide launch in Germany follows a successful test-run at locations in Stuttgart (Germany’s sixth largest city) last August.

The country is the first to offer the plant-based McNuggets, which could expand to other markets should the item garner customer interest and demand like the McPlant, the first plant-based item developed under the three-year partnership.

The McPlant grows roots in Europe

In addition to the McNuggets, McDonald’s Germany will also launch the McPlant burger—which features a specially developed Beyond Meat patty served together with items that vary by location.

https://vegnews.com/media/32450/VegNews.McPlantBurger.McDonalds.jpeg

The McPlant first made its debut in 2021 in several European countries, including Denmark, Austria, and Sweden. Later that year, McDonald’s tested the McPlant in its domestic market, initially at eight US locations.

The Chicago-based fast-food chain expanded the test to 600 locations in February 2022 but has since ended the test without announcing further plans for the plant-based burger—which was served with dairy cheese and egg-based mayonnaise.

Over in the Netherlands, the McPlant gained permanent placement on the McDonald’s menu in October 2022 after a short test run in 2021.

“We are pleased with the permanent place of the McPlant on the menu,” Stijn Mentrop, McDonald’s Netherlands Marketing Director, said in a statement at the time. “During the temporary introduction last year, we received many positive comments from our guests about the taste of the McPlant.”
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, McDonald’s has been serving a vegan McPlant burger—with dairy-free cheese and all—since October 2022.

https://vegnews.com/media/34761/VegNews.DoubleMcPlant2.McDonaldsUK.jpg

For Veganuary this year, McDonald’s upped the ante with a double McPlant which featured two Beyond Meat patties with ketchup, mustard, vegan special sauce, onions, pickles, lettuce, tomato, and dairy-free cheese on a sesame-seed bun.

In the UK, McDonald’s hopes that the plant-based burger will help it to become a category leader in the plant-based. However, Burger King might beat McDonald’s to the plant-based punch.

Burger King’s plant-based options reign supreme

Burger King has been exploring plant-based options since 2019 when it first launched the Impossible Whopper in the US. Burger King has gone on to test many plant-based concepts since, including fully vegan pop-ups around the globe.

As a result, the chain’s locations in the United Kingdom have since seen an explosion of vegan options such as plant-based Whoppers, meatless chicken sandwiches, and more. For Veganuary last year, Burger King became the first fast-food chain in the UK to add vegan chicken nuggets to its menu—which it “dirtied up” for World Vegan Day by offering them topped with smoky barbecue sauce and topped with crispy onions.

All of these options in the UK—where Burger King aims to serve a 50 percent meat-free menu by 2030—are made together with its European plant-based supplier, The Vegetarian Butcher.

https://vegnews.com/media/34867/VegNews.BurgerKing.Vegan.header.jpg
For Veganuary 2023 and beyond, Burger King took its plant-based exploration a step further with new partners. Its new plant-based bacon cheeseburgers feature vegan bacon made by Parisian company La Vie and vegan cheese by Greek brand Violife.

While the plant-based McNuggets are just making their way to McDonald’s Germany, Burger King added a similar item—plant-based chicken nuggets made by The Vegetarian Butcher—to its locations across Germany back in 2020.

“Burger King is the first to offer its guests the chance to try meat-free chicken,” Klaus Schmäing, Director of Marketing for Burger King Germany, said in a statement at the time. “Of course, nobody has to [forgo] the taste experience of the original: ‘Without meat’ in this case means ‘with maximum taste.’”
And Burger King has made much more plant-based progress in its domestic market than McDonald’s. In 2021, Burger King test-launched plant-based Impossible Nuggets at select locations in Iowa, Massachusetts, and Florida.

https://vegnews.com/media/31291/VegNews.ImpossibleChicken.BurgerKing.jpg

Last year, Burger King also tested its first-ever meatless chicken sandwich. The Original Chick’n Sandwich—made together with Impossible Foods—was available for a limited time at Burger King locations in Cincinnati, OH for a limited time.


AnnaStarostinetskaya
Anna Starostinetskaya is the Senior News Editor at VegNews and is always keeping an eye on all things vegan in her home city of San Francisco, CA and everywhere else.

Fast-Food-Nastiness (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65208-Fast-Food-Nastiness)
Vegetarian (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)

[GeneChing]

3D-printed vegan salmon hits the European market (https://www.businessinsider.com/3d-printed-vegan-salmon-hits-european-market-2023-10)
Catherine Boudreau

https://i.insider.com/651f195c9f7ca8b2bbdaebf1?width=1000&format=jpeg&auto=webp
Top image: Revo Foods' 3D printed vegan salmon. Bottom image: A Wild Pacific king salmon fillet. Thomas Barwick/Getty

Revo Foods is the first company to sell 3D-printed vegan salmon fillets, now available in Europe.
Some $400 million has poured into startups making seafood from plants and fish cells.
Entrepreneurs said alternative seafood could reduce overfishing and microplastic pollution.

The market for 3D-printed products includes homes, furniture, and footwear. Now we can add salmon to the list, at least in Europe.

The foodtech startup Revo Foods in September became the first company to sell 3D-printed vegan salmon filets in select grocery stores in Vienna, Austria, and opened an online shop that ships the product to most European countries this month.

"It flakes very nicely into layers just like salmon," Robin Simsa, the CEO of Revo Foods, told Insider. "It also has a similar taste, but like any meat alternative, it's not 100% the same."

This marks a milestone for the nascent alternative-seafood industry, which is testing an array of ingredients and technologies to make products that don't harm ocean ecosystems. Some startups are developing plant-based options, while others are growing fish cells in a lab. For its part, Revo Foods' 3D printer layers "mycoprotein" made from mushroom roots with plant-based fats to mimic the texture of real salmon.

Investors have poured upward of $400 million into the alternative-seafood startups in recent years — including $7 million in Revo Foods. But no company is making massive amounts of it yet. And the biggest question remains largely untested: Will people buy it?

Over the past several weeks, Simsa said Revo Foods' vegan salmon has sold out within hours of hitting store shelves. But many of the comments below a YouTube promotional video were critical of the premium price and the idea of printing food.

Revo Foods sells 130 grams, or about 4 ½ ounces, of its vegan salmon for 7 euros, or about $7.

"​​Why would I eat fake salmon that's more expensive than real salmon?" one commenter asked. Another said they'd rather be in a nuclear apocalypse than eat the vegan filets. The reactions were more positive on Instagram, however.

Simsa said the price will drop as Revo Foods automates more steps in the process outside of 3D printing and produces larger volumes. He acknowledged that people are skeptical of the technology but said it isn't unlike other industrial machinery that already makes chocolate and snacks. Barilla is already selling 3D-printed pasta.

There's also the sustainability angle.

Salmon is considered one of the healthiest things to eat and fish in general have a much lower carbon footprint than beef, a well-known contributor to the climate crisis because of methane emissions from cattle and the vast amount of land required to raise them.

Still, around one-third of global fish stocks are overexploited, according to the United Nations. And fishing nets are a major source of ocean microplastics, which scientists say are increasingly being found in humans.

"Ultimately, people want to be excited about a product. We have to capture their imaginations," Christopher Bryson, the CEO of New School Foods, told Insider. His startup is developing its own plant-based whole salmon filet using a novel freezing technology and has raised $12 million.

"If people made decisions based on health and the planet, we'd all already only be eating tofu," Bryson said.

Vegetarian (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?19996-Vegetarian)
Syn-printed-prosthetic (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65255-Syn-printed-prosthetic)

[bawang]

vegetable proteins are "low quality“ proteins having fewer amino acids, which is sub optimal for muscle. However, tendons (collagen) unlike muscle are "low quality protein", the amino acids required to build tendons are fewer. I wonder if a vegetarian diet can be used to encourage tendon growth, and will give a try.

[YinOrYan]

vegetable proteins are "low quality“ proteins having fewer amino acids, which is sub optimal for muscle. However, tendons (collagen) unlike muscle are "low quality protein", the amino acids required to build tendons are fewer. I wonder if a vegetarian diet can be used to encourage tendon growth, and will give a try.

FYI Soy has all the amino acids for a complete protein...

[bawang]

FYI Soy has all the amino acids for a complete protein...

technically true, but the complex amino acids are in low amounts.

The thing is, muscle has been reported in studies to competitively absorb nutrients and hinder tendon growth, by both being much more vascular than soft tissue, and also hormonal response. So by limiting the essential amino acids for muscle, but being enough for protein, along with tendon specific exercises, hoping perhaps it could selectively encourage tendon growth. so far, google says soy protein in studies promote collagen synthesis.

My current plan is 5-6 days of plant diet and 1-2 days of meat intake. Any advice and pointers by any online kung fu brothers would be appreciated.

[YinOrYan]

Any advice and pointers by any online kung fu brothers would be appreciated.

Uh, I would think (since the Muscle/Tendon Change Classic was said to be left behind by Bodhidharma after his departure from the Shaolin Monastery) that the current Shaolin experts would know what food encourages tendon growth, but raw soy milk works for me...

[mickey]

Greetings,

For Tendon/Ligament: Beef Tendon
For Cartilage/Joint Health/Inflammation: Chicken Feet
For Musculature: Beef Short Rib, Oxtails (Use the vegetables to shore up the amino acids that beef supplies.)

Other: MSM Do research on this to see if there is a benefit for you.


mickey

[bawang]

Greetings,

For Tendon/Ligament: Beef Tendon
For Cartilage/Joint Health/Inflammation: Chicken Feet
For Musculature: Beef Short Rib, Oxtails (Use the vegetables to shore up the amino acids that beef supplies.)

Other: MSM Do research on this to see if there is a benefit for you.


mickey

Thanks. Meat was eaten once a few months to once a year, so these items were not available as common kung fu training diet, but occasional "medicinal" foods for sympathetic magic (eating tendon to absorb the power of the tendon).

However, both collagen and plant protein are low quality proteins that supress muscle hypertrohpy, so I am hoping to get feedback from people who use these diets (collagen or soy protein dominated diet), about their tendon strength and size.

[mickey]

Greetings,

The following link is to a u tube member who is a vegan bodybuilder. She has been doing this for quite a few years. Every so often, she posts up what she eats in a day. What I have noticed is that, over time, she has been including more and more soy protein into her diet and it shows. Her muscularity is different and not in a positive way, suggesting that the tendon benefit is outweighing the muscular. Take a look for yourself. The change, over time, is something. Her body looked better before increasing the amount of soy in her diet.

https://www.youtube.com/@ToniMitchell/videos


mickey

[bawang]

Greetings,

The following link is to a u tube member who is a vegan bodybuilder. She has been doing this for quite a few years. Every so often, she posts up what she eats in a day. What I have noticed is that, over time, she has been including more and more soy protein into her diet and it shows. Her muscularity is different and not in a positive way, suggesting that the tendon benefit is outweighing the muscular. Take a look for yourself. The change, over time, is something. Her body looked better before increasing the amount of soy in her diet.

https://www.youtube.com/@ToniMitchell/videos


mickey

Thank you mickey, this is exactly the result I was looking for, really appreciate it. Been trying to minimize muscular size and muscular appearance. Coincidentally three weeks of soy intake indeed seems to be changing my muscles at a faster pace; a more tube like appearance.

[mickey]

Thank you mickey, this is exactly the result I was looking for, really appreciate it. Been trying to minimize muscular size and muscular appearance. Coincidentally three weeks of soy intake indeed seems to be changing my muscles at a faster pace; a more tube like appearance.

Three weeks???

Be careful that it is the soy and not sodium.

mickey

[bawang]

Three weeks???

Be careful that it is the soy and not sodium.

mickey

Thank you, will watch out for sodium. I am also at a calorie deficit eating mainly salads, seem to be mainly burning up muscle for calories alongside fat.