Ethical eating

[Skybird]

I have still not decided whether I want to laugh or take this one for serious.

http://theconversation.edu.au/orderi...our-hands-4659

[Takeda Shingen]

I became a vegetarian because the diet is indeed healthier. Once I dropped the meat from my diet, the excess weight came off my body and I had more energy and felt better than I had ever in my life. While I would never go back to the diet I had before, I don't claim moral high ground. It's just a choice.

[Oberon]

I admire vegetarians but I could never become one. However, the article does make a point, which comes under something we discussed before Skybird, humans mucking up the natural balance of the world.

Of course, that is not to say that there is a moral high-ground on the meat eating side either, whilst cattle pastures are a standard part of the Australian landscape now, they weren't always that way, nor where they in the Americas (both north and south) or indeed, anywhere. Certainly the destruction of rainforest land to clear lands for cattle farms in South America has caused a great deal of harm, and the disruption to the native ecosystem that cattle farming brought to central America in the early 1800s is another example, however in the cause of America and Australia, nature has adapted to the new status quo, trying to reverse that would cause more damage for nature and upset the apple cart once again.

It's not so much the choice that is the problem, it's the bulk volume of food, farms take up so much horizontal space that we have to expand out into greenfield land to make more farming space for crops.
I dearly hope that at some point in the near future, people start to give the idea of vertical farming some real consideration, I can't see it being the answer to all our problems, but certainly it will go some way to helping, particularly in terms of crop farming, and furthermore, it will allow for constant environmental monitoring and adjustment within a walled environment, thus making sure that whatever change is made to nature stays within the building, and since it could be built in cities and brownfield sites then there is no need for sprawling horizontal farms, heck you could even build it in the desert.

Naturally though, what it boils down to is the one major thing that both constrains us and advances us....Money.

[Skybird]

It seems the author was arguing that vegetarian food and crop farming for ethical reasons is not that much an alternative to eating meat, because it actually kills even more sentient, self-aware life. That is what made me chuckle.

7 billion people - well I often said before I consider that to be 6 billion too many for a long-term, sustainable balance.

I eat meat rarely these days, when I do, it is beef steak, and - not as rarely as beef - chicken. No sausage, no meat as spread on bread (what is "Aufschnitt" in English? ) No pork, I do not like it. Kangaroo I could be interested in. Steaks I can do very well now, and my Goulasch is legenadary. Chicken I sometimes use in Chinese-style Wok food with vegetables. And that'S it with meat for me. Fish not counted.

Corn I indeed eat a lot, I also bake my bread myself, with self-grinded flour (the bread tastes better than the sad carricature of bread bakeries sell these days, and it costs less than half of what a full-corn-bread ("Biobrot") would cost at the baker. And pizza dough - well, I reported on that, did I. Living is eating, and eating is killing. The poor mice and moles I have never thought much about. I do not plan to change that in the future. Nor will I stop to eat corn. I like corn. If there is one thing I do not plan to do, then it is replacing my eating with grazing.

So it sucks to be a mouse. Well. Karma. If Skybird doesn't catch it, then the owl or the falcon surely will.

[eddie]

Oberon, you're not going to give up fish and chips are you? This is an order you can get at a place in Chicago!

[GoldenRivet]

personally i know three vegetarians... 2 of them are the two most overweight unhealthy individuals i know... one is a hot supermodel of a woman.

i think it depends on the person.

meat is a healthy, much needed part of a human diet.

[BossMark]

Originally Posted by eddie

Oberon, you're not going to give up fish and chips are you? This is an order you can get at a place in Chicago!

I wouldn't give up this anything or anybody, I love fish "n" chips

[Hottentot]

I don't intend to become a vegetarian, nor do I have a problem with them anymore than with people who drink alcohol whereas I don't. That is specifically: those to whom I don't need to explain my choice anymore than they need to explain their choice to me. Frankly, I can imagine a lot more interesting topics to talk or argue about.

It's the people who start a sentence by: "studies show..." and within the same sentence go on the "but you can't eat cute fuzzy animals" tangent, which then carries on for a whole ranting monologue that I have a problem with.

[troopie]

Dunno what it's like in other countries, but for the last few years in Oz there's been this (seemingly) media induced meat biased fad of 'nuevo cuisine' that has pretty much permiated even the remote parts of the country. Really jacks me off. You order a feed and it's about 90% meat; so ya gotta try an' order your vege's on the side, crazy.

To me the meat should be just a small part of the entire meal. I read somewhere (Aus. cancer council perhaps?) that meat should constitute only about 1/3 of a meal, and that works well for me.

What ever hapened to the old standard of meat an' three veg' (was that just an Aussie thing?) ?

[nikimcbee]

Nevermind the meat, you're eating too many carbs

Go on a low carb diet and you can eat all the protein you want. (Not atikins diet though)

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I have still not decided whether I want to laugh or take this one for serious.

http://theconversation.edu.au/orderi...our-hands-4659

To answer your question Sky: Laugh


I'm guessing the person that wrote the article is one of these type of people: