I need to come to terms with this as well.

Your point is valid though. A life has indeed died, but if you follow that to it's conclusion then even walking or breathing results in the loss of life of some self replicating organism...

The way I mentally maneuver around this is to say that anything with a nervous system is what I consider to be sentient.
For me the more advanced and organisms consciousness the more wrong it feels to subject them to farming like a plant....

When I do eat fish I try to only buy wild caught fish because at least that is more in the natural order of things.

It is what it is. I wish I could sit atop some moral high ground, but alas I'm just trying to find my own way through this life like everyone else. Along my path I do what I can to try and minimize the damage I do along the way.

Peace

I think maybe you are the one being deluded that just because you eat meat, you are necessarily healthier or more intelligent. As said before, it depends on many other factors, so you cannot generalize like you did.

You fail to take in account that health is a complex balance that does not involve simply a very specific type of ability that Raven test can measure, which is what the sole paper you provided is based on (even IF that paper did prove anything, which it doesnt, very poor sample)

You use fallacious flawed arguments such as that just because we dont really know the complex mechanism of the body, we should do like old times (I wont even expand here because im sure if you think this through, you can see how flawed it is)

Your study has 45 subjects from one single university (lol at making statistical generalizations from this kind of sample!!!!), while the link provided by joedirt has 8170. Your study uses Raven test as the main measure, which is not the same as IQ measurement (and even IQ measurement is something arguable, but I wont go there now), and measures but a tiny fragment of what human cognition is. The study also has a statistical mistake because it uses ANOVA test to compare placebo vs creatine taking group, and ANOVA should only be used when both groups fulfill parametric criteria, which first of all theres no mention of making variance or normalization tests (necessary to fulfill the criteria), and secondly, it already fails in fulfilling parametric criteria because dividing the horribly small sample of 45 in two makes each group have 22-23 people, and its a minimum of 30 for this kind of statistical analysis. They would have to use something like Kruskal Wallis or Wilcoxon tests, and this would further lower the credibility of this publication.

Also, read joedirt's posts for some further good arguments and publications. And please settle down on the attitude, thats not the kind of way to post in this forum.

B.S. Biology.
Ph.D Medicinal Chemistry.

Been paid to do this for living for 12 years now.

But let's drop the internet credentials BS. They are meaningless here.
Actually it's just a faulty apeal to authority anyway.

Instead of inflating our egos why not just argue with facts like I did?

I provided links to sources you provide nothing but your opinion.
I guess we can leave it like this.

Facts vs Opinions.

Decide for yourselves.

Peace.

The fallacy here is almost so self evident that its not worth mentioning. We were not 'designed' by evolution to eat meat, we evolved the ABILITY to eat meat because it was beneficial at the time (before we had supermarkets). Just because it was the best available option during our ancestors evolution doesnt necessarilly make it the best option now. I eat meat and am neither arguing for nor against it... But your arguments are invalid imho

ok won't happen again

I eat meat everyday, Ive got two voices the first one: its natural man, dont worry about it. Besides you cant even eat a sallad how is that gonna work out.

And the second: You should really stop what you are doing and, it immoral and innocent animals have died because I have a problem eating sallad/veggies. ive become so lost that I dont even know that it is an animal I am eating.

One day I hope I can evolve and leave this nasty habit


A replicator would solve out dielemma

I can see this thread going bad really quickly if we continue in such maner.

joedirt, what do you think of the China study critiques ?

Don't have a name for my diet, but my values are local food, natural food, vegetarian and mostly raw. All four values I will bend on (the local thing and the raw thing I break all the time) I did a couple weeks last month of raw veganism. That ones a challenge, but it was cool. My problem with that is so much of the food is non local. So yeah, I try to balance all the above mentioned values, without stressing it too much nor being overly dogmatic.

Since I was born in Argentina, I have been brought up eating meat... almost raw at times. I am not saying I will eat red meat for the rest of my life, because it would be nice to see what the benefits are from a vegan diet, but for the moment I don't think I could shake the meat eater in me.

I'm familiar with the study, but I have not read the book.

I do know this. Diet and health are extremely complicated issues.

What I can tell you is my personal experience with it. I decided to switch 2 years ago for a 1 month New Years resolution.
I eat a very balanced diet during this period and when I finished the one month trial I had lost a good bit of weight,
I was sleeping better, I had more energy during the day, and my mood was improved. I decided to make it a permanent change.

Over the course of the next few months my body completely reregulated. My bowel movements were once again normal,
I was sleeping better, my body fat completely disappeared, my skin cleared up.

Prior to the 1 month trial I used to use comments like "stupid vegetarian hippies are starving themselves for no good reason"..

After the 1 month trial, I was like "hey maybe the hippies are onto something."

Then 6 months in I went to the doctor and had a lot of general health test performed. I had near perfect levels on all the tests except vitamin D...which I was grossly deficient in.. Now even two years later my medical tests are showing near perfect levels. What more is there to say than that? I do take vitamins. I'm not a vegan, but I do try to take into account where my food and other products come from. For me this is just part of a larger drive to live more mindfully.

For me it's a no brainer. I literally felt and looked better after making the switch. When I do cheat and eat meat I can feel it in my digestive tract for at least 2 day's. I feel bloated and heavy. These are not sensations I associated with when I eat a constant diet of meat. It wasn't until I went without meat for a time that I could actually feel what my body was telling me.

At the end of the day I think this is something every individual has to approach on his/her own. I danced around this issue for years in my own mind. I guess I liked to pretend that cows, chickens, and pigs came from the grocery store, and that dogs and cats weren't like other animals...etc, etc, etc.

I wasn't wrong or evil, I just wasn't being honest with myself. As soon as I came to terms with myself and was completely honest about it...I just couldn't continue like I was. My wife essentially came to the same realization. Once she saw that I was really sticking with it she joined me...and now she is actually better at not cheating that I am.

For what it's worth I also used to make plenty of arguments against being vegetarian. Once I really looked into the data and tried it for myself I realized just how hollow those arguments had been. They were really little more than my subconscious mind trying to hold onto what it 'liked'...and to do that it would use any means necessary including deluding and lying to myself.

Peace

I have a question for anyone...

Based on your experience, if you were to switch to a primarily vegetarian diet, would the occasional eating of meat have a negative effect physically, mentally, or spiritually? IOW, make you sick (physical), affect cognitive abilities (mental), or decrease one's feeling of spiritual connection or meditation ability (spiritual)?

I believe in moderation in all things, but I don't want to occasional treat of eating a cheese burger to unbalance my system and undo all the work I put in to controlling my diet.

I used to eat meat. I craved for it when i stopped and just the smell of it made me drool.
Now i think it stinks like shit and if i accidentally eat a tiny bit of it i have to throw up.
You´ll grow to dislike it.

My new diet is a recent one....but I plan on deliberately eating meat at least once every few months of so (last time was thanksgiving). In the even of a societal collapse, my belly should be ready to digest whatever I gives it. I'll likewise remember to practise my archery a bit.

What can I say, I have a lust for flesh in most forms. I can imagine being extremely frustrated without it. I don't exactly like they way the animals are treated, but then I also think growing a plant just to kill and consume it is pretty similar. I'd refuse to eat animals killed in harsh and inhumane ways, as they are in some countries. These animals could't survive in the wild for long now anyway, we have screwed with their breeding for too long. modern pigs are far removed from their old wild stock. But if we stop farming them it would wipe out their species maybe... so what can you do?

It's tasty.........

There are obviously shades of grey here, my comment may have seemed antagonistic, but that is not how I meant it. I just know one or two people who call themselves vegetarian and eat fish / seafood a few times a week which to my mind isn't vegetarianism at all. They are only vegetarian when it suits them, and perhaps they are too lazy to seek out other sources of protein, iron etc. It also grinds my gears because it indirectly asserts that some how fish are not living, sentient beings. I just think in this sense it is an illusory term made to make the person feel better. But then again, there are those who are vegetarian for political / spiritual / ethical reasons, and those who are just because that is what they prefer to eat, so maybe that needs to be taken into account.

Now say you ate fish once a month, or only on special holidays for instance, I would probably see that person as 'mostly vegetarian' - but to me there is a big difference due to the frequency of meat eaten and also the attitude towards it. I wouldn't mind if this person called them self vegetarian because 99.726549432% of the time they are.

But yes, I am much more conscious of the amount of meat that I eat these days, as well as the quality, and it seems like you, at times I wrestle with my conscience, how ever I have come to terms with the fact that I am an omnivore, but as time goes by I do see myself becoming much less 'meat-centric' in my outlook to food. My girlfriend for instance makes an outstanding Gujarati vegetable curry which I love, and you can't beat a nice Daal.

Now RE: 'if you follow that to it's conclusion then even walking or breathing results in the loss of life of some self replicating organism' (which I suspect was by way of a little joke ) these are cells we are talking about here, not complex sentient organisms - even plants have cells. These will die regardless of whether you eat meat or vegetables, or raw food, or what ever. If you want to live at all you have to accept that things are going to die.

Now it is also worth thinking about intensive farming of vegetables, grains etc this takes up a lot of land, many species of plants are cleared in order to foster 1 species. Insecticides are employed - killing more animals, then when the farmer comes along with his combine harvester or industrial plough, how many mice, small birds etc are chewed up and spat out, or at very least turfed out of their homes? So even vegetarianism it seems comes at a cost to other sentient beings.

PS I have one more gripe... meat eaters who are squeamish about seeing animals killed / hunting etc. IMO if you aren't prepared to be able to kill an animal yourself, skin it, gut it etc and deal with it properly, you should be a vegetarian. It is all too easy these days to detach yourself from this reality, with your freshly cleaned de-skinned and fancy packaged chicken breasts or packet of sausages etc. It is just ridiculous really IMO

Eating meat is just morally wrong. All higher mammals have a counsciousnes like we do due to a simmilar brainstructure, so they can suffer like us as well. If you think that a neo-cortex that is relatively larger than that of another being would justify killing animals, than you should also be fine with killing and eating people with down-syndrome, babies or people with schizophrenia.

A budhist monk should also be considered a higher being then, than a football hooligan and thus be justified to kill the hooligan for the sake of any of his possible desires, since people who meditate often have a larger prefrontal cortex than average and people who never exercise any form of restraint have smaller prefrontal lobes, meaning that the budhist monk has a higher counsciousness and thus would have the right to subject those with lower forms of counsciousness to his will.

Also a cannibal should have the right not to change his habbit, because he´s gotten accustomed to it and slavery shouldn´t have been seen as a bad thing because it was just part of society, back in the days, and every rich person had slaves. So it was normal.

I understand well all the animal rights, but I dislike proselytism when it comes to food habit.
I too feel soemthing wrong in stuffing pork and meat everyday as it is still a huge part of food in these lands. I feel bad we human can park animals just to fat them.
But I also see many people just think food as a culture and part of the rituals. Even if it could be wrong. It's like drinking alcohol or not.

As a side note, I'm still fascinated by how meat can influence dreams, especially pork in a bad way...
I almost always have nightmares if I indulge in sharing food with it.
But I know veggie realtives who always do nightmares also so the whole dreaming thing is quite a complex process.

I agree I prefer to breed mushrooms and eat their fruits.

I think its more due to species dude, cannibalism can cause all sorts of neurological issues, while eating members of a different species would be safe. I can see where you are coming from, but it is your point of view - morals are a very subjective thing.

The budhist monk would not be justified to kill a football hooligan because it is murder. What sort of world would we live in if holy men went around killing lay folk for food because they are deemed 'less intelligent'???!!! It would soon descend into chaos, particularly if the holy men developed neurological disorders!

Yeah, but that´s the whole argument of meateaters, right?: we are a more intelligent species and therefore we are entitled to kill the other species.
How could we disagree then, if aliens would come to land on this planet and decide to make 'humanburgers'?

This issue has been definitively analyzed in a literary classic:

http://www.myspace.com/video/o/...ne-to-serve-man/37635576

I was vegetarian for 5 years, and I gave in because it was getting harder and harder to spend time with my friends. This thread really has me thinking about starting again.