Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff

[Matthew]

people should live their lives balanced in yin and yang. many people dont eat vegetables and have yang unbalance. you have yin unbalance.

Want to know how I can tell you're Chinese...?

you want to become feminine prey, like a sheep or a rabbit. but in real life not many human beings can afford to be prey. you have the protection of modern upperclass society to act as you please.

I'm told I'm a dragon actually. Just because you like others' meat in your mouth, doesn't mean I have to

No but we can wrassle you if you come to where I live in your helicopter, but no animal eating and sacrifice is allowed for your rituals. See if you still can have your magic evil powers then

personally I eat lots of vegetables and soy. but I eat meat too.

Big Boy!

[bawang]

[Lucas]

How can we be natural if we deny our own nature?

[GeneChing]

How can we be natural if we deny our own nature?

Yea let's all run nekkid in the forest. Just make sure bawang isn't behind you.

[Lucas]

I don't drive at all

running naked in the forest is ok but i think running partially clothed at least is better. It's in our current nature that we dont (most of us) supply ourselves with any sort of elemental protection, so clothing ourselves in the skins of our animal brothers, or manmade clothing is part of the natural state of man.

most of the planet is in hospitable to us in a naked state.

[GeneChing]

...so do you practice what you preach? Or do you just comment on the forum about how you think things should be like the rest of the members here?

Note: this is one example where photos and video need not be submitted as proof.

[Lucas]

wait what do you mean? i believe in eating a balanced omnivorous diet. because thats the animal i was born as. i don't really believe in living either extreme as far as diet goes, i wouldnt eat only meat or only plants. perhaps if i was born a carnivore or herbavore...

[Matthew]

[There are plenty of plant sources of saturated fat ]Other than coconut and palm?

Absolutely, in fact here are some I eat on a daily (or at least consistent) basis:
Almonds, pecans, pumpkin seed, sunflower seeds, hemp seed, pistachio ex. virgin olive oil, organic peanut butter.

There are other plant sources as well (mostly seeds/nuts)

Lacking fat soluble vitamins, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, improper balance of omega 3 to omega 6 all have such correlation to bad health too. Heck, if you include offal, there's no comparison on a nutritional scale.

All found in plant sources:
Fat soluble vitamins are plentiful:
--Vitamin A
--Vitamin D is tougher - unless genetic makeup (or latitude) interferes, adequate sun exposure should do. Most cereals, non-dairy milks, and various other plant-based productsare fortified with D2
Mushrooms have D2 as well, although less.
--Vitamin E is in many nuts/seeds and other plants
--Vitamin K found in lots of plants
--Good Omega 3 & 6 balance is easily kept with hemp, chia, and flax seed in various proportions.
I keep a big premixed container in my fridge that I add into most meals. Not only easy to do, but is a good quick source of complete amino acids, fiber, and micronutrients.

This is best website I know for planning/tracking nutrient content & intake to see what our diet is missing: http://nutritiondata.self.com/

It has nutrient search functions, food searched functions, and can pick out different nutrient profiles depending on how you cooked the food:
Example: Spinach, boiled, drained, unsalted

Although there are foods doesn't include (like Hemp seed).

Is this an indictment on a specific diet or simply consuming a Standard American Diet? I don't see how a lack of phytochemicals is an indictment against consumption of animal products.

Shouldn't this fit a national level? I don't see evidence that meat eating at current levels is a sustainable long term population alternative (given the current 'SAD'). Maybe if average family dramatically reduced their emphasis/%intake of it.. and I'm sure more ethical local/free-range sourcing would help on all fronts..

This argument may not apply for 2nd/3rd world countries that don’t have infrastructure we have, access to food variety we do, or otherwise, etc.

Soy has been studied more extensively (although it is an industry favorite), and that shows that it's not healthy to consume unfermented. Again, to my knowledge, this is regardless of quality.

Probably because the biggest soy producers are the meat producers – who push for bigger margins no matter what they sell.

I eat very little soy. When I do, it is usually from various soy beans directly rather than processed soy products. If you are getting enough calories on an adequately varied diet, you should be getting more than enough protein without it(the reason people eat soy that I hear).

[Eating plants is] In exchange for fat soluble vitamins, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, saturated fat and cholesterol.

Yes, but all of that is found in complete nutritional profiles in plants (other than cholesterol). With better disease protecting packaging (fiber, antioxidants, etc).

If I understand right, Plant sterols and stanols are structurally similar to cholesterol, and may simulate higher cholesterol, while actually lowering LDL levels while maintaining total and HDL ratios.

Is there any data that shows that potential carcinogens from isolated nitrates and nitrites and from HCA is still dangerous despite the numerous anti-cancerous compounds in quality food?

Dunno, but aren't you getting nearly All those anti-cancerous compounds from plants? (Phyto in phytochemicals means plants)

Except, humans are omnivores. Humans evolved as omnivores. Even chimps are omnivores... I'm talking about something that was continuous and present in every day life for millions of years and affected our dietary requirements.

Chimps are hardly omnivores with some ~5% of their diet being animal product.. so they don’t help the omnivore comparison much (unless you argue people should reduce their animal intake less than ~5% of caloric intake.. then I’d be happier).

In any case, as we know, obviously this is only a semi-supported appeal to nature and not indicative of what our diet should be.

These [bowel movement studies] are the types of flimsy cohorts I'm talking about and that the article I linked to in my first reply specifically talked about.

Point taken, depends on what people want the data to infer or suggest.. and how selectively data was mined.

When you try to determine "correlation between a specific food product and a Disease X" maybe many co-factors can't be controlled, because they often aren't even in the data set (genetic profile, activity/exercise level specifics, quality of food intake, etc). The more uncontrollable factors, the less reliable we take it as, right?

SAD does not = meat. SAD = every screwy thing you can think of. This in no way is an indictment of meat.

Right, and we both see there are people of all dietary choices eating poor. We both agree believe education needs to improve. I'm only drawing distinctions to stay relevant to this "Shaolin thread".

More relevant to the "SAD" I think it's important our national guidelines reflect how minimal the role of dietary animal is.

That is where the my indictment comes - the American misconception that meat is such a significant part (both in amount and nutrient makeup) of our diet. (I have worked in education centers/youth clubs in my city, where the kids are sometimes fed lunch with only meat, little processed mac and 'cheese' and an apple...that’s like 60% of their caloric intake from meat…)

America also needs vastly more education on what plant-sources to eat, and how to eat a strong-disease protective varied diet (whether or not individuals choose to continue eating animals).

So my position is: if dietary cholesterol is a risk factor, then why doesn't it correlate with heart disease?

Right, which is exactly what Dr. Stephen's blog you posted is exploring.

It’s really interesting.. how many studies do well to account for genetic makeup, activity level specifics, quality of the food actually reported, self-reporting bias, etc.?

So it's not conclusive that it does or doesn't correlate with heart disease in and of itself.. maybe biochemical markers research is more pertinent than analyzing correlation for such common diseases?

Cholesterol is something the body needs, so at a minimum, I think this suggests that a lcato-ovo vegetarian diet would be more prudent than a vegan diet.

Well, being 40 points below average meat eaters isn't convincing that vegan diet should at all concerned. Not saying you’re right or wrong, but our body should ‘naturally’ produce adequate cholesterol without needing dietary increases.

Also, Vegans aren't that much lower and their Total to HDL ratios seem good. Not to dismiss your points, but I'll need to spend a couple years understanding metabolism before I'm really meaningfully able to discuss any of these points.

A no-cholesterol diet begets very low cholesterol, does it not?

Not necessarily. Metabolism is crazy complex, and sometimes consuming or not consuming something can cause changes in bodily production, bodily demand, metabolic precursers, adaptive functions of related things..

I don't fully understand the interactions of Sterols and Stanols (which comes from plants in abundance), but being structurally similar to cholesterol should be relevant. (I'll search more when I get time).

As to your posted psychology study, it's a lot of conjecture.
Not only could we instead be looking at reverse-causation for why it saw low-cholesterol associations with depression (and those associations were weak from few small studies).. but there could further be other mechanisms that might explain it.. if such a causative relation did even exist.

She is a psychiatrist, and not an actively researching biochemist in any way. That doesn't discredit her work, but her associations in that article serve as no causative evidence for increasing dietary cholesterol for cognitive health.

[GeneChing]

wait what do you mean?

Are you actually trying to stay on topic? How refreshing.

[bawang]

A no-cholesterol diet begets very low cholesterol, does it not?

to hell with cholesterol. who needs cell membranes anyways? LOLOL

[Kellen Bassette]

IMO, you'd make a greater impact by advocating for agricultural reform and getting people to support local, pasture-based farms.

Absolutely! Real science isn't going to support a vegan diet being better than a non-vegan diet. It is obvious what the real agenda is.

Predator and prey is natural. A house cat doesn't need to kill birds, but it does. Eating meat is in its' nature. People understand this...the hardline religion that disallows any animal death by man will never become mainstream...you must change tactics.

An analogy....

Conservation in the '80's was often represented by militant, fringe preservationists. These people were often thought of as eco terrorists.
They wanted no hunting, fishing or logging, complete preservation and man out of the forests. They staged rallies, protests and chained themselves to trees.

They had a tendency of turning the main stream public against them and only galvanized their opponents. Their tactics were a failure; and IMO did their cause more harm than good.

Contrast with the modern approach and conservation model from the Nature Conservancy. They acquire rights to huge tracts of land on a regular basis. When they do large scale work in an area they include all the local stake holders. They hold meeting with loggers, hunting clubs, snowmobile clubs, recreation interests, developers, ect. and try to find a plan that best accommodates the many different goals.

I have seen attitudes drastically change when locals learned their logging jobs were safe, new hunting/fishing/snowmobiling opportunities would be opened to the public and poor hamlets would have adjoining land available for their needs.
All the while accomplishing their goals of protecting the land from development, and preserving the key areas. They've managed to protect over a hundred million acres so far.

Business and politics aside, I would say their approach was far more successful than their extremist counterparts.

So instead of trying to scare people into thinking they are going to die from eating meat,* wouldn't advocating better farming practices make much more sense? After all their is far more people that agree with this than their are people who believe they are destroying the world, or are some sick, depraved psycho for eating chicken.

*The movement in general, not the OP specifically.

[LFJ]

How can we be natural driving cars?

How can we be natural if we deny our own nature?

Yea let's all run nekkid in the forest. Just make sure bawang isn't behind you.

You think it is not in our nature to invent tools to better perform tasks? Even our ape cousins do it. Building cars is essentially no different from fashioning arrowheads and spears, in different times. It's a tool to more efficiently perform a daily task.

I don't imagine the Plains Natives ever said; "Let's be natural and go jump on the buffalo and strangle it to death with our bare hands", or; "Whaddya say we not cover our butt-holes with cloth? We weren't born with it"...

A car is not naturally occurring in the world, but it is a natural human invention as we continue to evolve. It is in our nature to be inventive.

Speaking of apes, some eat smaller monkeys. Aboriginal tribes hunt and cook them up as well. Watch some NatGeo some time. Strange they'd have the inclination to eat meat if it is not natural for humans to do so, and they are not influenced by current mainstream dietary trends. So that's no excuse...

[GeneChing]

It is in our nature to be inventive.

Oh absolutely. Just look at all the new foods we have invented.

I'm just being devil's advocate here. Truth be told, while I watch my own diet, I don't really care what other people eat, as long as they don't eat my monkey.

[bigopen]

http://www.shaolintemplecheshunt.com/#!food/c7z7

This is Matthew Ahmet who has a thread here's website - he is an advocate of veganism and has a little kitchen going at his training hall.

also note the mistakes underneath the pics -

"SHAOLIN SOUP

The best way to "Wow" your audence - Flexible packages to best suit your needs :-)"

[madhusudan]

The only vegetarian who thinks their food does not involve killing is one far removed from the production process. I assume you are familiar with snails and such?