Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I respect the vegetarian movement, and I think it's the responsible thing to due from a resource point of view, however I think trying to go full 100% vegetarian is the wrong move. I think it should be a more gradual change, for instance instead of 100% vegan burger patties, they could be 1/2 or even 1/3 meat and the rest vegan. Just enough meat to give the flavor and texture, but a significant amount less to put a big dent in meat consumption. Meat should be increasingly viewed more as a delicacy/ garnish rather than a daily staple.
Also another thing, we should be moving from eating inefficient meat producers such as cows to more efficient ones such as Birds (chicken, turkey, ostrich etc.), fish, shell fish and yes bugs which are just land versions of shell fish anyway. We don't need to go full vegan, we just need to change our relationship with meat.
You might also say that we should avoid fish since the worlds oceans are getting depleted, however most of the ocean is very unproductive due to a lack of nutrients in the middle of the ocean. If we were to fertilize the ocean with iron we would create huge algae blooms that not only would feed huge populations of fish, but also consume more co2 than what our forests can currently.
Humanity is hopelessly parasitic, it will keep on cutting the ecological branch on which it sits to the end. And even after it's cut and hairless monkeys with bigger brains accelerate toward inevitable demise they will be typing the same wishful autistic nonsense you can find in this thread. Vegetarians and other do gooders should just give up, nothing will work until some ultra fascist authoritarian regime will hook rank & file peasants, currently enjoying CAFO bonanza, on soylent green burgers. But things will have to get really nasty for that.
Animals can and should be humanely killed when they are used for human consumption, but they wouldn't have lived at all if they weren't raised for the food market. Sociologists have been talking about the "need" for humans to become vegetarians for the last 50 years, and the net result is nothing more than a few idealistic youngsters spending a few years on a restricted diet. The vast majority of the population is too concerned with living life & making ends meet, and unless you're stupid enough to go vegetarian while sending the money you save to someone in a starving 3rd World nation, even a large portion of the population turning vegetarian won't change the lot of starving humans halfway across the world.
As for promoting vegetarianism because the world population continues to increase, why in the world would we try to maximize the quantity of human life, rather than the quality of human life?
Hunger is a problem in the poor 3rd World nations that have extremely high reproduction rates, and the best thing we can do for them is to STOP sending them food and medicine. It is both insane and evil to maximizing the human suffering by facilitating more births in nations that couldn't support its existing population. Yet unfortunately America continues to send huge amounts of money to perpetually starving nations like Ethiopia, in effect funding the creation of 4 new starving Ethiopians for every 1 starving Ethiopian in 1960. Send them birth control if you have to send them anything.
Animals can and should be humanely killed when they are used for human consumption, but they wouldn't have lived at all if they weren't raised for the food market. Sociologists have been talking about the "need" for humans to become vegetarians for the last 50 years, and the net result is nothing more than a few idealistic youngsters spending a few years on a restricted diet. The vast majority of the population is too concerned with living life & making ends meet, and unless you're stupid enough to go vegetarian while sending the money you save to someone in a starving 3rd World nation, even a large portion of the population turning vegetarian won't change the lot of starving humans halfway across the world.
As for promoting vegetarianism because the world population continues to increase, why in the world would we try to maximize the quantity of human life, rather than the quality of human life?
Hunger is a problem in the poor 3rd World nations that have extremely high reproduction rates, and the best thing we can do for them is to STOP sending them food and medicine. It is both insane and evil to maximizing the human suffering by facilitating more births in nations that couldn't support its existing population. Yet unfortunately America continues to send huge amounts of money to perpetually starving nations like Ethiopia, in effect funding the creation of 4 new starving Ethiopians for every 1 starving Ethiopian in 1960. Send them birth control if you have to send them anything.
America sends mostly weapons as international aid otherwise it is a super stingy nation compared to others. It feeds no one for free. Plain old hunger is alive and well in USA. Nutritional hunger is wide spread. You really have to be somewhat limited in your culinary experiences to associate CAFO meats America consumes with good life. CAFO meats are ersatz meats for the masses. Limiting birth rates in poor countries to fight sky rocketing per capita consumption of junk in the rich countries makes sense not.
I am not saying you all must become vegetarians...and NO...you are NOT evil if you eat meat....but wouldn't it help so many things if we reduced our meat consumption even if just a little bit....each doing our part? I think we can make a difference...yes!
For humor:
And let me guess, you want to force us all to adapt to your ways right? A good start would be banning guns.
I think we can dovetail vegetarianism in with all the govt administered school breakfast,school lunch, school dinner, school saturday midnite snack, school sunday supper programs. What say you statists?
In 1971 I purchased and read a book titled: Diet For A Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé.
It was groundbreaking for arguing that world hunger is not caused by a lack of food but by ineffective food policy. Over the past 48 years this book is one of, if not the main, reason I cite when asked about being a vegetarian. It had great recipes as well. The menu and nutritional information has evolved and been updated through the years, in subsequent editions, but my dog eared and cooking stained original has a place of honor in my kitchen library.
The author helped start a conversation about the social and environmental impacts of the foods we choose.
And, back then, what she had to say was revolutionary. Her idea that a plant-centered diet could be better for the planet and better for our health, rather than a meat-centered diet, was considered radical.
I believe it may have been the first major book to note the environmental impact of meat production as wasteful and as a contributor to global food scarcity. Ms. Lappé educated readers about environmental vegetarianism: how to practice a vegetarian lifestyle out of concerns over animal-based industries and the production of animal-based products.
Today, as world hunger is dramatically on the rise, the book remains relevant, IMHO.
Last edited by corpgypsy; 08-24-2019 at 09:05 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
