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Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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I have a different take than most people on the role of veggies vs meat in human nutrition.
It's claimed that veggies are the best source of nutrients and are "cleasing of toxins", while meat is toxic and directly causes many health problems.
The situation is exactly opposite of that. Veggies have numerous mild toxins and anti-digestive substances that need to be processed in liver and kidneys before becoming safe - that's what fiber is. Vegetables are mostly waste that can't be used by our bodies without considerable effort - Meat, on the other hand, has already been processed and detoxified in the animal's body - it has to be so or the organism wouldn't survive.
We are made of meat. Animals are made of meat. The two kinds of meat are almost identical in composition, the nutrients are the same, it remains for our bodies only to aborb the vitamins and minerals, and break down and re-assemble the proteins and fats, with little waste.
So why is a diet high in meat so dangerous to the health? Answer: it's only dangerous if too much is eaten, which is VERY easy to do given how waste free the processing in our bodies is. We only need a small amount of meat or fish to get on smashingly, since our ancestors mostly lived on small amounts of lean meats and fish, and filled up on fruits, nuts, and grains when meat wasn't enough to fill their stomachs. During the hunter/gatherer and early agriculture days of our species (by FAR the longest period of time in an evolutionary sense), it's known that meat eating populations were taller, stronger, healthier, and had better teeth than ones that lived on grains or wild roots and leaves (or at least I know it from having talked to anthropologists).
But that's because they were usually limited in their consumption - they didn't have endless supplies of fatty steaks and deep-fried chicken. The vegetarians were even more limited, there are only so many calories you can absorb by eating handfuls of blackberries and stuffing dandelion leaves down your throat.
That's the situation today - vegans are literally half-starved because so few calories are absorbed, and raw foodies even more so. Strangely enough, half-starved is better for general health than overfed, because the metabolism slows down and becomes more efficient, and the immune system becomes sharper.
Now if you want to talk about mysticism and spiritual evolution, things are very different. We inflict less pain on the spirit environment if we eat organisms that don't have a central nervous system to feel the slaughter. Less pain = greater harmony and better integration into Universal Consciousness.
There are so many philosophies on what we should and shouldn't be eating (and a lot of it today is pushed by one industry or another).
My personal take, if you like it (whatever "it" is), eat it. If you don't like it, don't eat it.
We can even eat things that aren't ideal for us in small doses and be fine. i.e. During the times in world history when people were poisoning one another, one could build up a tolerance to poison by consuming it in small doses.
There are no guarantees in life. You can do everything right, including your diet, and still have a disease take you out tomorrow.
So live life, be happy, and carry on doing what you think is best for you.
Since I love them, I will personally be eating vegetables, dessert, and the occasional cheese (since cheese doesn't love me) until the day I die. And if someone wants to try to take any of those away from me (even my old trainer, who was so large he was nicknamed "King Kong" and can easily be intimidating, was smart enough to allow me a couple ginger snaps a day lol), I dare them to try. lol
I really appreciate your post woof.
It's very sane and coherent.
And i think you're right dclamb.
Also, every body is different.
So knowing what your body likes is very important and it's nice when your mouth likes it too.
Thank you to so many who are contributing such interesting thoughts and anecdotes -- and facts to this thread ... one of the most enjoyable in my CD experience to date to read through.
jaijai, those were outstanding quotes the other day (one from MLK, Jr. and another) ... TrueTimbers, many great thoughts as well ... Woof, outstanding contributions ... dclamb3 you bring an almost forcefully cheerful energy -- very demanding of you ... and more.
Maybe I will go back and make some specific responses later ... but for this morning, stuck in a storm at the docks, I am inspired to contribute an observation analogy to the topic of healthy eating (if anyone cares to bear with me )
In my youth, I was trained as a classical musician ... in spite of severe hearing loss in military service, I went on to gain my first college undergrad degree in music (performance). I have always had a strong preference for pre-modernistic compositions -- with some notable exceptions. I have pondered and pondered over many years my aversion to most modern works. I love modern fine-art genres -- but not modern 'classical' music.
More and more, recently, I have realized where my preference is rooted: I like the flow, harmonically coherent counterpoint, and harmonic blends of statements with pleasing resolutions.
Much modern composition focuses on individual notes -- as if an arrival at each one is profound in itself. I find individual notes just vibrational tones. If they are not joined in a story that has lively color and animation that speaks of peace, happiness, or love -- while referencing dissonances as vibrations to be resolved, I am completely and utterly non-plused.
Whether Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic -- all these are expressions of resolution to me ... not always happy resolutions ... some depict great sadness, and pathos, grief, etc. But they all speak to a greater shared experience. All the while, I find many modern compositions to be vain attempts to discover individual tones as profound solutions to immortality.
There are great exceptions: Stravinsky is delightfully modern in his musical story-telling -- again, he has found that dissonances and rhythms and contrasts must dance together -- often wildly -- to paint pictures -- but that ultimately it has great resolution. Rodrigo, Bartok, and others write in varying degrees of classic / modern blend and pull it off brilliantly.
So, how does this rambling segue to eating healthy?
There is, imho, no magic food, or diet, based on individual contributions. (except broccoli, of course) How you feel about your life and desires is as important to your digestion as what you eat. And, of course, loving however much life you have is as important as how long one lives. Arriving at a designated diet as if a solution to health, is about as empty as playing random notes in music.
...where I believe we have barely tapped into the capability of our species or have the slightest inkling of how our planet let alone the universe actually works...
I'm not even sure what this would mean. We are barely using our brains? That is clearly false...then what? No idea...
As far as people not seeing a treat from AI, that is just because they aren't paying attention. AI is already having profound effects on the economy, its gutting the economy of mid-skilled careers and pushing the people into lower paying jobs. Ironically, its often the low-skill jobs that are the hardest to deal with technologically as we are further along in getting machines to think then do even routine physical tasks. Thus at the moment its a modest sized group of people that are becoming obsolete and being pushed into lower socioeconomic cohorts, the real fun starts when this group, which is increasing in size, becomes obsolete!
Anyhow, so yeah, the masses religious notions (spiritual or otherwise) provide great cover for matters. Indeed, I think that is largely why nobody even sees what is gong on right now, the idea that machines can now do serious intellectual tasks is beyond what most consider possible.
So to tie this into the thread, I think its also interesting that in today's world skills that would be almost entirely useless "in the wild" are the ones that are the most important, namely mathematics. As a result going "back to basics", sorta the theme of the thread, is a recipe for poverty for younger cohorts. Just as talent in mathematics, or abstract reasoning in general, would have got you no where 10,000 years ago....what you learn on a farm, etc is going to get you no where in tomorrow's world.
Thank you to so many who are contributing such interesting thoughts and anecdotes -- and facts to this thread ... one of the most enjoyable in my CD experience to date to read through.
jaijai, those were outstanding quotes the other day (one from MLK, Jr. and another) ... TrueTimbers, many great thoughts as well ... Woof, outstanding contributions ... dclamb3 you bring an almost forcefully cheerful energy -- very demanding of you ... and more.
Maybe I will go back and make some specific responses later ... but for this morning, stuck in a storm at the docks, I am inspired to contribute an observation analogy to the topic of healthy eating (if anyone cares to bear with me )
In my youth, I was trained as a classical musician ... in spite of severe hearing loss in military service, I went on to gain my first college undergrad degree in music (performance). I have always had a strong preference for pre-modernistic compositions -- with some notable exceptions. I have pondered and pondered over many years my aversion to most modern works. I love modern fine-art genres -- but not modern 'classical' music.
More and more, recently, I have realized where my preference is rooted: I like the flow, harmonically coherent counterpoint, and harmonic blends of statements with pleasing resolutions.
Much modern composition focuses on individual notes -- as if an arrival at each one is profound in itself. I find individual notes just vibrational tones. If they are not joined in a story that has lively color and animation that speaks of peace, happiness, or love -- while referencing dissonances as vibrations to be resolved, I am completely and utterly non-plused.
Whether Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic -- all these are expressions of resolution to me ... not always happy resolutions ... some depict great sadness, and pathos, grief, etc. But they all speak to a greater shared experience. All the while, I find many modern compositions to be vain attempts to discover individual tones as profound solutions to immortality.
There are great exceptions: Stravinsky is delightfully modern in his musical story-telling -- again, he has found that dissonances and rhythms and contrasts must dance together -- often wildly -- to paint pictures -- but that ultimately it has great resolution. Rodrigo, Bartok, and others write in varying degrees of classic / modern blend and pull it off brilliantly.
So, how does this rambling segue to eating healthy?
There is, imho, no magic food, or diet, based on individual contributions. (except broccoli, of course) How you feel about your life and desires is as important to your digestion as what you eat. And, of course, loving however much life you have is as important as how long one lives. Arriving at a designated diet as if a solution to health, is about as empty as playing random notes in music.
Nice post!
"The basic problem is to understand that there are no such things as things; that is to say separate things, separate events. That is only a way of talking. What do you mean by a thing? A thing is a noun. A noun isn't a part of nature it's a part of speech. There are no nouns in the physical world. There are no separate things in the physical world either."—Alan Watts, No Such Thing
That quote from Alan Watts, if i was understanding your expression re; music, is related to what you were saying i think.
But i could be wrong ... i haven't had a sufficient amount of green tea to be very sharp this morning.
So why is a diet high in meat so dangerous to the health? Answer: it's only dangerous if too much is eaten, which is VERY easy to do given how waste free the processing in our bodies is. We only need a small amount of meat or fish to get on smashingly, since our ancestors mostly lived on small amounts of lean meats and fish, and filled up on fruits, nuts, and grains when meat wasn't enough to fill their stomachs.
So the reason why meat is so dangerous to health is because its eaten too much? Err...huh? That is what any advocate for vegetarianism will say and this comes down to what counts as "too much". The body has certain caloric needs, so the question is can the human body get the majority of its calories from meat-based sources and still be healthy? The answer, when you look at the data, is an obvious no.....
Our ancestors ate a large variety of foods, some were almost entirely vegetarian others ate some meat. Our closest relatives, the other great apes, are either vegetarian or eat little meat. Indeed, our digestive systems is almost identical to that of a chimp which shows that little has changed over the last 5 million years as far as a digestive system goes. So despite the fact that our digestive system is decidedly built to consume plant-based foods, you think we should be eating meat because it has a high concentration of digestible calories.....
But hey, try this, open your mouth and look in the mirror. Do those look like the teeth of a meat eater? Try this experiment....go buy a big piece of raw beef and try to eat it without cutting it up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woof
it's known that meat eating populations were taller, stronger, healthier, and had better teeth than ones that lived on grains or wild roots and leaves (or at least I know it from having talked to anthropologists).
It is? Do you have any examples, or are you just citing a tall-tell? The vast majority of human societies have eaten meat on some level, so I'm not even sure how you'd even collect enough data on this to make a meaningful conclusion.
There are some cultures, those close to the poles, that eat a lot of meat and they aren't healthy compared to cultures in the tropics that consume mostly vegetables.
While you are trying to phrase your position in terms of science, but its just pseudo-scientific excuses to eat a lot of meat.
I'm not even sure what this would mean. We are barely using our brains? That is clearly false...then what? No idea...
As far as people not seeing a treat from AI, that is just because they aren't paying attention. AI is already having profound effects on the economy, its gutting the economy of mid-skilled careers and pushing the people into lower paying jobs. Ironically, its often the low-skill jobs that are the hardest to deal with technologically as we are further along in getting machines to think then do even routine physical tasks. Thus at the moment its a modest sized group of people that are becoming obsolete and being pushed into lower socioeconomic cohorts, the real fun starts when this group, which is increasing in size, becomes obsolete!
Anyhow, so yeah, the masses religious notions (spiritual or otherwise) provide great cover for matters. Indeed, I think that is largely why nobody even sees what is gong on right now, the idea that machines can now do serious intellectual tasks is beyond what most consider possible.
So to tie this into the thread, I think its also interesting that in today's world skills that would be almost entirely useless "in the wild" are the ones that are the most important, namely mathematics. As a result going "back to basics", sorta the theme of the thread, is a recipe for poverty for younger cohorts. Just as talent in mathematics, or abstract reasoning in general, would have got you no where 10,000 years ago....what you learn on a farm, etc is going to get you no where in tomorrow's world.
Quick response to "barely using our brains -- that is clearly false" ...
Actually, it isn't false in the slightest.
However remarkable are the outputs of the ways we are currently using our brains (which can turn into a fascinating subject / argument of its own), every scientist who studies the brain knows that we don't use much of it at all.
But what you are getting at in your statements above, in large degree, I can agree with. What I don't agree with is that there is anything admirable about it -- particularly given that we, as TrueTimbers has repetitively expressed, haven't begun to scratch the surface of who we are or our capabilities. But we certainly are enamored of ourselves in our shallow understanding and capabilities so far! How can we possibly know the value of all this "New & Improved!" discovery when we know so little about our very basic being? But, rather than look deep inside and finding simple truths -- and simple solutions -- humans aspire to completely f&#* up the universe with spiritless titillations. Knock yourselves out. I'm sticking with simple. Eliminate me. Who cares? The mystery of my spirit won't be eliminated. Nothing is created. Nothing is destroyed -- except in the ways things are temporarily packaged. Packages? Meh.
As for previous remarks about machines being capable of sentience or not -- of course they are not, by very definition of "machine" and "sentience". Can they do complex tasks utilizing logic? Is that what you mean by sentience? Sure, they can do that. So what? So they will eliminate the tasks done by so many human hands? Sure. Then so many will have nothing to do. Right. Is that a good goal? To free humanity from having tasks? Uh, so far, I would say that too much free time on homo sapiens hands has not played well where it happens.
So the reason why meat is so dangerous to health is because its eaten too much? Err...huh? That is what any advocate for vegetarianism will say and this comes down to what counts as "too much". The body has certain caloric needs, so the question is can the human body get the majority of its calories from meat-based sources and still be healthy? The answer, when you look at the data, is an obvious no.....
Our ancestors ate a large variety of foods, some were almost entirely vegetarian others ate some meat. Our closest relatives, the other great apes, are either vegetarian or eat little meat. Indeed, our digestive systems is almost identical to that of a chimp which shows that little has changed over the last 5 million years as far as a digestive system goes. So despite the fact that our digestive system is decidedly built to consume plant-based foods, you think we should be eating meat because it has a high concentration of digestible calories.....
But hey, try this, open your mouth and look in the mirror. Do those look like the teeth of a meat eater? Try this experiment....go buy a big piece of raw beef and try to eat it without cutting it up.
It is? Do you have any examples, or are you just citing a tall-tell? The vast majority of human societies have eaten meat on some level, so I'm not even sure how you'd even collect enough data on this to make a meaningful conclusion.
There are some cultures, those close to the poles, that eat a lot of meat and they aren't healthy compared to cultures in the tropics that consume mostly vegetables.
While you are trying to phrase your position in terms of science, but its just pseudo-scientific excuses to eat a lot of meat.
I'll give you this ... You certainly do have a knack for missing the point ... missing the essence .. of what others are saying!
It's rather mind boggling.
"The basic problem is to understand that there are no such things as things; that is to say separate things, separate events. That is only a way of talking. What do you mean by a thing? A thing is a noun. A noun isn't a part of nature it's a part of speech. There are no nouns in the physical world. There are no separate things in the physical world either."—Alan Watts, No Such Thing
That quote from Alan Watts, if i was understanding your expression re; music, is related to what you were saying i think.
But i could be wrong ... i haven't had a sufficient amount of green tea to be very sharp this morning.
Yes, that is very much what I was getting at ... Me and Alan go waaay back, by the way
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