EPTVegitarianism pledge - Page 5
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Ingenol
United States1328 Posts
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meeple
Canada10211 Posts
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Sarpedon
4 Posts
1) Being a vegetarian will make you skinny. Not true You will get skinnier if you burn more calories or if you take in less calories. Meat is heavy on protein and low on carbs compared with things like rice or potatoes. If you start eating a vegetarian diet you will probably input more calories. It might make you gain some weight. But at the same time you should be eating less fat and more vegetables. 2) It is hard to prepare vegetarian meals. Not true I bet any professional cook will tell you it is easier to mess up preparing a good steak than it is to prepare some vegetables. Depending on your meal it may also be many times quicker to prepare than the time it takes for meat to be properly cooked. What can go wrong? I guess you can cook the rice to pulp or something. But that's about it. And that happens not because you made a mistake. It happens because you don't pay attention. Hmm, well maybe you can cut yourself while cutting vegetables. 3) One needs to take food supplements as a vegetarian. Not true People talk about iron, calcium and people talk about protein. Fact is that some non-meat products have more iron or calcium than meat has and fact is that western people eat way too much protein because meat is eaten every day. Not getting all that meat protein is actually the solution, not the problem. There used to be a myth about vegetables having 'bad protein'. It is true that there is no vegetable that contains enough of all the essential amino acids required to produce all the protein the body needs. But of course you will be eating more than 1 type of vegetable. If you eat two types of vegetables within a 12 hour time frame then protein can be formed using amino acids of both vegetables. The only weak spot for a vegetarian is B12. But if you diet contains diary or foods fortified with B12 then this is also no problem. Just be aware of the symptoms. One might have a genetic flaw that makes it difficult for B12 to be absorbed. 4) It is hard to go eating out. Sometimes true This really depends on how adjusted the society where you go out eating in to people with a vegetarian diet. But for me this was really no problem. In western countries any decent restaurant will serve several specific vegetarian meals. Often you won't have many things to pick, that is true. Only when your friends insist to go to this just really 'bad' restaurant you may run into problems. But there are also many normal restaurant who are naturally able to serve vegetarians well. So it can be really easy or really annoying. Maybe ask Artosis, haha. 5) I love meat and I hate vegetables. Being a vegetarian is going to be hard. True You are going to have to depend on vegetables for nice dishes. If you won't eat them or you won't be able to enjoy them then you will have a hard time. But hating vegetables is a problem for you regardless of if you are a vegetarian or not. 6) I will need to cook myself and I will need a bit of creativity and imagination. Partially true. It is not very convenient to be a vegetarian while being unwilling to cook anything. It's probably bad to do regardless if you are a vegetarian. But yes, if you become a vegetarian you will need to develop a new repertoire of dishes. What you know right now probably isn't enough. But things like google make this quite easy. Again, it isn't hard to cook vegetarian meals. 7) Vegetarian meals have less taste. Not true Where does meat and fish get its taste from? You got it right! You can throw so much herbs and spices into your vegetarian dish as you want. And it's not like vegetables have a weak taste. Many of them have strong taste. That is one of the reasons why children, who are more sensitive to stronger taste, often dislike vegetables. Brussel sprouts anyone? It won't taste like meat. But it sure has taste. 8) It won't make a difference if I become a vegetarian. False If everyone became a vegetarian it would make an enormous difference. Yes, you are but one person. But that is the point. You don't ask yourself what difference 1 person would make. You ask yourself what is the right thing to do. If you apply this to voting or to morality then anyone will immediately see this is a fallacy. One person never makes a big difference. But still you try to figure out what is the moral thing to do and who is the right person to vote for. | ||
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L
Canada4732 Posts
There are too many people. Yeah, give up meat, then when we hit 12 billion people go "oh shit, we're still having the same problems". Feel free to rely on all countries reaching first world standards of living without first world environmental impacts per person, somehow, in order to reduce the birthrate globally. Seems like a fantastic plan. | ||
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Excelsior
United States46 Posts
The whole not eating meat thing is silly. Owning a DOG creates a bigger "carbon footprint" than driving an SUV. Maybe if you avoid meat for some sort of health reasons it makes sense, but if it's because you don't like killing cute little animals to sustain yourself (which is nature's way), or because you think the planet is going to turn into the Ash World tileset if you do.... you are just ridiculous. Even if global warming WAS real, it would be an inevitable result of too much population, something that ALWAYS naturally corrects itself, and thus humans would just start dying off at a fairly rapid rate until a more appropriate number of people were left here. There is no prospect of extinction because of climate change - all that anyone is doing in their futile self-sacrificial attempts to save the planet is to ensure that less scrupulous people inherit the earth. ^^ | ||
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Sarpedon
4 Posts
Population growth in the third world will become similar to that in the first world the moment they have first world living conditions. And maybe that is when the earth reaches 12 billion people. And if we can sustain 12 billion vegetarians while we can't sustain 12 billion people and all the livestock required to feed them meat then being a vegetarian does solve the problem. If you are going to assume that mankind is doomed because no matter what happens, population will grow, overshoot and civilization will crash, fine. But that doesn't mean you get to be wasteful and immoral. In 100,000 billion years there will be no evidence left of mankind. At that moment your morality or immorality won't matter. But it does matter now. | ||
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Railxp
Hong Kong1313 Posts
Meat as of now costs much less than it should. If the price correctly reflected the actual costs to produce meat, restaurants would order less of it and people would also think twice before ordering a meat dish. You wouldn't have to go vegetarian just to save the world, everyone would naturally eat less meat because taste vs cost it is not worth it. | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10939 Posts
Ok, your obviously not the brightest star on this planet. Calling convenience bad... Ugh... Did you know... Per car at a racing event there are way more than 2 cars/motorsbikes additionally to the car wasting a shitload of energy. Did you know... That high end sport is wasting a shitload of energy, as first priority in sport is always to win. Did you know.. Most of professional athletes give a fuck about the environment, eventhough they highly reliant on it. A good friend of mine is an upcomming professional ski athlete for the swiss team and he wrote a paper on how the swiss ski association gives a fuck on the environment eventhough they really need the fucking snow to do what they do, he earned nothing but laughs. Both things are totally INSIGNIFICANT on the global scale. Where I stop? We could also kill 99% of human beings, but thats bullshit talk to bring up such gay arguments to question everything, just to kill the talk about it. About as bullshit as to stop having big sport events and stuff like that because of the pollution. Things that would work: Better Transport-Ships... The older ones (still in service with no sign of retiring) are probably the single most polluting vehicles on the entire planet. Better Public Transport - As soon as it's faster than a car, people will use it way more, when it's faster as a plane (with all the check-in bullshit), people will use it. It's a no brainer. It's not a question about where to stop, but about what things should really be adressed. For an example take SUV cars. They are a typical example of a bullshit development (aka marketing dudes who have no clue about anything tell the engineers what to do). It is made for normal driving but also for offroading, oh sorry, I forgot, it sucks at both. This is shit that has no right to exist. ARGH, I also forgot, they are "fun", and "cool", and we never cut back on fun, damnit. You never wondered why they are called crossover now and not SUV anymore? Because SUV got that "bad vehicle" touch now and its not fitting into the trendy green image every company is trying to have nowadays. You fail. People actually want SUV's, that’s why they buy them. Are SUV's stupid? Yes. Are they a good development? No. Do (did) people want them? YES. The marketing dude would have been a fucking retard to not jump on that bandwagon. Btw: SUV's don't suck at normal driving, they suck at gas consumption and therefore have gotten a bad image but that’s about it. I never ever heard the term "crossover" for SUV up until your post. Another example are batterys, you know them? Nice little round tubes you can buy everywhere, they will give you nice energy for a short ammount of time. You can put them into so many mobile device, really awesome. But did you know that for a shitload of time there are rechargeable batterys which you can use over and over and over again, still ppl buy the "cheaper" nonrechargeable batterys. Shit like this (batterys) should be forbidden as its an obvious waste just to serve an illogical convenience. Convenience isn't illogical, why do you think so? Convenience isn't good for the environment but it's VERY logical for the single person. I couldn't care less about batteries, I own basically no devices that use them or at least I don't use them. Humans strife for convenience, it's one of the great motors of our culture. Classic batteries are a dying breed anyway, you probably won't have to care for them much longer, at least for most devices.. WHY? Because it's more CONVENIENT to just have reloadable inbuilt batteries in your stuff (like in your mobile phone). We simply need to come back from our "fun society", everything has to be fun and shiny nowadays, it fucking sucks. I love to drive with a car, but I don't own a car because I dont need it. I love electronic devices (I work as electric engineer so I gotta have a passion for it), but I own only a celly and a laptop because I honestly question wether I need such a device or not. I don't crazyly turn up the heat in the winter like so many ppl and companys (i'm actually sitting in a T-Shirt on my computer and feeling hot AT THE END OF OCTOBER!) I rather wear my pullover, what a crazy dude I am huh? wearing winter cloths in the winter, really crazy. You might also suggest that we work way less in winter, only stay at home and feed from the stuff we could hunt and find during the warmer months. Because... It's WINTER your damn pullover isn't supposed to keep you warm enough when its 0-5°C outside. I could now tell you how awesome I am for various reasons when it comes to the environment (like you obviously love to) and what a bitch I am when it comes to other environment for other reasons. Instead I'm now driving home in my 5.7l, 340hp car to my green powered, energy/warmth efficient built home where the electrical devices are actually really put on off. Maybe I'm going to Burger King on the way.... | ||
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PanN
United States2828 Posts
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Sarpedon
4 Posts
As for being condescending. You are the one coming to a vegetarian themed topic telling people how elitist they are and how much they annoy you, apparently. Have you nothing worthwhile to contribute? | ||
KwarK
United States44238 Posts
On October 28 2009 01:41 Excelsior wrote: Even if global warming WAS real, it would be an inevitable result of too much population, something that ALWAYS naturally corrects itself, and thus humans would just start dying off at a fairly rapid rate until a more appropriate number of people were left here. This is your solution? If we fuck it up too much most of the fuckups will die, simple natural law. Nobody advocating that humanity attempt some sort of balance is unaware of that. It's entirely obvious. They'd just rather avoid billions of human lives being lost. Green argument "if we don't look after our environment loads of people will die from the result". To which your counter argument is "yeah, but once billions are dead our impact will be lower". I can't help but feel you somewhat missed the point. | ||
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AngryLlama
United States1227 Posts
On October 28 2009 01:51 PanN wrote: Every vegetarian I've met was a condescending elitist bent on telling me my lifestyle is incorrect. I really really don't want to join that side...... Although i know what kind of people you're talking about, most vegetarians are not like that. Most are just conscious of what they're doing and taking appropriate action and not just blindly following what they were taught as a child. Eating meat, the way we do as a civilization is bad imo. I'm just a lazy prick about it though, even though i strongly believe vegetarianism is by the far better than a diet with lots of meat, i'm still a huge meat-eater.  So i'm basically just a piece of shit. | ||
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GrumpyCloth
Finland7 Posts
On October 28 2009 01:41 Excelsior wrote: but if it's because you don't like killing cute little animals to sustain yourself (which is nature's way), ^^ Its natures way to keep 30 chickens in a cage not fit for 1? | ||
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L
Canada4732 Posts
On October 28 2009 01:43 Sarpedon wrote: L, the earth can support many more people if it didn't support any livestock. That's a fact. Yes, if population continues to grow it will be a problem no matter what. Population would approach infinity. And so would resources required. Population growth in the third world will become similar to that in the first world the moment they have first world living conditions. And maybe that is when the earth reaches 12 billion people. And if we can sustain 12 billion vegetarians while we can't sustain 12 billion people and all the livestock required to feed them meat then being a vegetarian does solve the problem. If you are going to assume that mankind is doomed because no matter what happens, population will grow, overshoot and civilization will crash, fine. But that doesn't mean you get to be wasteful and immoral. In 100,000 billion years there will be no evidence left of mankind. At that moment your morality or immorality won't matter. But it does matter now. The earth can also support many more people if we decide to go back to making our houses out of sod. Your premise in the middle, that we're going to level out around 12 billion is also relatively hilarious: what if we don't and we keep going? Let me tell you the story of Haiti: they kept going. Now there's almost no land for people to subsistence farm, so there's a huge exodus of people. Haiti is exporting people because there just isn't enough of Haiti to go around. This is Malthus in action. What's your solution if your unsupported hope that we level out at 12 billion doesn't happen? What happens if despite all of the eco-friendly changes we adopt, we simply hit our photosynthetic ceiling and just plain don't have the ability to meet our energy needs (hint: we are rapidly approaching that point) without delving into consumable fuels? What then? What happens when Haiti becomes 'the world'? There's no first world nations equivalents in the solar system that we can ship people off to so that they can send back money. Even if there were, we'd require entire new planets to ship ourselves off to, which is something like nine orders of magnitude too expensive to do at a rate which would help us manually adjust our population. So you want to be pro-sustainable development? Time to get aboard the zero population growth, or population reduction train. Edit: Even at 12 billion, bringing the third world to first world consumption standards puts us at well over 10 times the current level of total environmental impact, and we're having significant troubles with our current level of impact. | ||
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PanN
United States2828 Posts
On October 28 2009 01:55 Sarpedon wrote: PanN, how can belonging to what group decide something important as what diet you eat? As for being condescending. You are the one coming to a vegetarian themed topic telling people how elitist they are and how much they annoy you, apparently. Have you nothing worthwhile to contribute? Everyone here is fine, I didn't say the people in the thread annoy me, or are elitist. I simply said everyone I've met in real life is this way. Don't read into it that much. Contribute? I think Vegetarianism is fine. I don't like the vegetarian culture though. Organic foods / saving the planet etc. I'm all for helping the planet, but there are far more dangerous things to the planet than people eating meat. Brb, I'm going to go drink four glasses of milk and down a left over steak from last night, and I hate left overs, but damn do I love steak. | ||
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JFKWT
Singapore1442 Posts
On October 28 2009 01:51 PanN wrote: Every vegetarian I've met was a condescending elitist bent on telling me my lifestyle is incorrect. I really really don't want to join that side...... Sounds like a borderline religious sect you've got who's after your brain | ||
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FabledIntegral
United States9232 Posts
I was a vegetarian for around a full year before I went back to eating meat. I remember the very first two meals I had with meat I threw it up completely due to it being unsettling in my stomach. | ||
520
United States2822 Posts
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FabledIntegral
United States9232 Posts
On October 28 2009 02:13 scintilliaSD wrote: Many modernized countries are suffering from zero or negative population growth these days, I heard. It's developing countries that continue to have high birth and death rates. As death rates decline in a country as it develops, birth rates decline as well. A large reason of population boom is a result of many countries developing in a short period of time, where the birth rates and death rates have not yet equalized. I wouldn't use the word "suffering." I'd say more people that not think it's beneficial PS why is this relevant again? | ||
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KwarK
United States44238 Posts
On October 28 2009 02:13 scintilliaSD wrote: Many modernized countries are suffering from zero or negative population growth these days, I heard. It's developing countries that continue to have high birth and death rates. As death rates decline in a country as it develops, birth rates decline as well. A large reason of population boom is a result of many countries developing in a short period of time, where the birth rates and death rates have not yet equalized. On the contrary, the UK population is increasing at the greatest rate since the 1800s at the moment. Partly fuelled by immigration and the children of immigrants. I agree that the two person family is becoming standard for the first world but with increasing lifespans there are more simultaneous generations alive at the same time. | ||
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