Why are you not vegan?

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Many vegans are good athletes,

It is a matter of learning to follow the diet properly.

At first I did not eat 100% properly but I have learnt a lot over however many months it has been. Maybe 6, 7 or 8 months.

Buy large bags of mung beans, kidney beans, of brown rice (organic if you can). Try grow a few things if you are able to. Lettuce and cucumber are a couple examples. Buy large amounts of seeds and nuts. (a 20 quid electric seed grinder is one of the best investments ive ever made)

Buying large quantities IS expensive but if you can make the initial investments it is easier in the long run.

I also recommend spinach for any vegan. a 220gram bag from the Cooperative (somerfield) super market usually costs about £1.50. I usually have it along side beans, ground seeds and other vegetables.

Drinking lots more water makes you feel fuller too, meaning you may need less food.

One problem I can foresee is that people have have loose guts. I sometimes do, because I cannot afford everything I would like to, but ground seeds has reduced this significantly.

I'm not a vegan, because I can't stomach anything greener than a burger. Otherwise, I likely would be.

My diet consists primarily of vegetarians.

But really, when it comes down to it, we all eat sunlight, albeit indirectly.

To those that say the human body is more adapted to vegetarian diet I say BS. Our digestive tract is not long enough or strong enough. I've never eaten a steak and seen it come out the other end as anything recognizable as a steak. I can't say the same for corn. Corn is good for feeding cattle with much longer digestive tracts and multiple stomachs to properly process it, and bring it into a form I can use more efficiently.

Carbohydrates spike the blood suger, get the body producing insulin which causes us to store triglycerides - fat. The only skinny vegetarians are the ones that are malnourished. A proper vegetarian will be fat.

I've also got this cool organ in my skull that as far as organs go is rather expensive in maintenance costs compared to other human and animal organs. My big brain requires a lot of energy. And I don't mind getting that energy from a predator diet.

That is half true and half not.

Regarding diets: the smart vegetarians will buy vegetables that don't have a lot of carbs, they'll buy ones with proteins and carbs will naturally come into their life (because it would be improbable for a vegetarian to avoid carbs, and impossible for a vegan).
But to have a balanced diet, you have to have carbs, proteins, and fats......of all shapes and sizes.

This doesn't take into account the metabolisms and health histories of the people previously (and in their family), their exercise and activity level, their body frame, and their stress level.

However, I can see your point as to that carbs (converted into fats) will be their primary source of energy, and how this would make for trouble staying skinny. That is the problem I have right now, that is why I run. But think about this, most people when they make that commitment to be a vegetarian, research it out a little bit so they can find plant-based protein sources.....making them skinny.

This is what I do. I buy lots of spinach, broccoli, cabbage , cucumber , Italian salad ett. Mung beans when eating with some sort of carb (I just add it amongst lots of other vegetables to make up the total carb requirements) will give you all the amino acids. It is a great and better yet it can be sprouted into what is known as bean sprouts which roughly quadruples the nutritional value. Shall have some sprouts now actually.

That depends on how annoying the dog is... there might not need to be a potato

Sorry... Lace-Bane read that and remembered how much he hates his mother's annoying bratty rat dog chihuahuas

Lace-Bane wouldn't really stab them, but avoids them like the plague

Odd rationale, I am puzzled, I live in a country with a major investment in dairy production and the environmental impact of cattle farming [dairy or meat] is way worse than say goat or sheep farming.
Surely if the environment is your concern then veganism has more positive impact than just being vegetarian, lets also add abstaining from soy, peanut and wheat products as the large scale industrialised farming of these products is also incredibly damaging to the environment.

peace j

Sorry bud but this argument dosen't fly, the use of animals for food is a 10% eficiency compared to directly eating the plants yourself, this means that we could reforest 50% of the land we have cleared for farming animals, make 40% avaliable for some sort of game reserves for hunters to supply the die hard omnivores with healthy and somewhat more ethically sourced meat and continue using modern distribution systems.
The problem with the environment is the double whammy of fossil fuels and deforestation!

peace j

The abundant use of pesticides is a problem for killing bees and eroding soil to. This obviously happens whilst growing crops, but it is over farming and diverting the majority of crops to animals in developed countries which leads to extreme amounts of soil erosion and kills the bees we rely on.

If I am right the BBC is going to be releasing a BS propaganda documentary soon about so called Colony Collapse Disorder. In other words they are trying to look for a disease that is not there when it is in reality poisoning from the pesticides and herbicides.

Very upsetting and both the number of bees and the soil quality is ruining crop yields compared to organic farming (not all organic farming is great but it is typically better than the non organic equivalent ). I can provide lots of citation for this if necessary.

Colony colapse of domesticated bees is a serious problem in areas with extensive monoculture, working with an extremely well informed group of beekeepers a couple of years ago it seemed that there were in all probability a series of cumulative factors leading to the phenomenom
.
Bees generally forage widely and from an incredibly diverse range of plants over an extremely long flowering season [generally spring through to autumn]. This means that they also feed on an incredibly complex combination of natural vitamins and minerals and natural chemicals. If you remove them from a wild environment such as this and insert them into extensive monoculture you reduce the variety in their diet - the outcome for their general wellbeing will be no different to if you reduce any living things variety of diet - ill health, reduced imunity and vitality!

Add to this equation an onslaught from agrichemicals and possibly the removal of honey from the hives and it's replacement with refined sugars [for human use] then you have communities unable to deal with disease and winter.

Colony colapse is suspected to be a simple case of a living organism [or group of organisms in this case] deciding to abandon an environment they see no future in, the bees are behaving just as human refugees do, or people fleeing a plague.

While this is a simplification of the issue it is a fair summary of the concensus at the operation I was employed, which had no problem as it was a primarily a 'traditiona'l honey operation with it's hives spending the bulk of the year foraging native forest or regenerating forest and only a short polination season and only partial sugar suplementation.

peace j

The arguments based on 'evolution' or 'natural or intended diet' are interesting.

Let's start with the 'aquatic ape hypothesis' [it is yet to be an accepted theory]. I read Elaine Morgans book 'The decent of woman' back in the eighties when it was widely embraced by the womens movement and given much considerstion, I read her updated argument 'The aquatic ape' more recently.

Her reasoning is on the surface quite solid and she makes a multitude of highly credible points with regard both our physical and social evolution however as an argument for a piscatarian diet it is flawed.

The point in our evolution during which she places her hypothesis is at best very early in our tool use, such complex concepts and developments as nets, hooks and either bow or 'throwing stick' assisted projectiles were yet to come. Have you ever attempted to catch a fish by hand? It is, outside of 'tickling' Trout or Salmon near impossible, this leaves only shelfish and crabs and the like avaliable as a supplement to diet. With regard the access to those 'essential' Omega oils these are a poorer source than much more easily obtained nuts and seeds, Seaweeds however are excellent food!

Lets not forget the near collapse of our ocean eccosystems from polution and overfishing!

As for what it is 'natural' or we are 'meant' to eat? well obviously the homo sapiens digestive system is omniverous but strangely enough so are most animals systems to varying degrees, feedlot cows and pigs have been being fed the waste from slaughterhouses for decades! thus BSE!

Natural? what is natural? This is an interesting question and it's answer leads to many queastions about the 'naturalness' of strand wire, slaughterhouses, feedlots, battery cages etc...

To my mind 'natural' in this kind of context means something along the lines of 'as nature intended or demonstrates' so let us look back over the approximately six million years since we broke off from our common ancestor to our closest primate relatives [Chimpanzees and Bonobos].

For the bulk of this time we were a vulnerable bipedal primate spending most of our time gathering plant based foods and oportunistically scavenging the leftovers of dedicated predators equiped with claw and fang - both of which we lacked. add to this the occaisional opportunistic kill of some small prey and you have a mainly vegetarian omnivore just like our near relatives today.

How we fitted into the 'hunter and hunted' equation was as the hunted! It was only with the development of language and advanced tool use that we can even fool ourselves that we turned the tables here, this occured at best around one and a half million years ago but in all likelihood could be as recently as only half a million years ago.

What is the 'natural' condition of the planets ecology? Again we need to look at a bigger picture and look at broad periods of time, and, for the longest periods ending most recently at the dawn of the industrial age this planet was either under ice or dominated by vast primal forests! What we have now is vast cleared areas and only two remotely 'vast' areas of forest remain - the Amazon basin and the 'Congo' [now Zaire]. I would suggest that taken as a part of ecological history the current paradigm of vast farmlands divided by miles of strand wire fencing with only occaisional monocultural 'plantation' forests is a modern aberation. All serious ecologists agree we are in a desperate position and that the planet can not indefinately support humans in this mode. One Harvard professor estimated the planets carrying capacity of humans living in the manner of north Americans as only around 200 million!

How intelligent is it for us to persist along this path? How long can we expect this to last?

Some books that have been sources that may be interesting to read,

Fire - by Francis D Burton [in investigation of the role fire has played in our development, easy reading]

Man the hunted - by Donna Hart

Rogue Primate - by John A Livingston

The way; an ecological worldview - Edward Goldsmith

Animal liberation - Peter Singer

peace j

I am a vegan from age of 15 yipee
Though i live in a meat eating family

I guess you would say I'm a moderate. I love all animals, and would not hunt, nor do I ever buy meat from any source where there has been an accusation of cruelty to livestock. However, I also believe that man is carnivorous, and I am a health & fitness fanatic. Hence, I eat a variety of meats including beef, chicken/turkey, and very rarely fish or ham. Much of my protein comes from soy and whey, but I don't think I'd be as healthy and fit, if I were to abandon meats.

Charles

I'm not vegan because:

1) Honey is a healthier alternative to white sugar, and I use it.
2) Most baked goods don't go vegan very well, and baking is my obsession.
3) It will be a long time before I can afford to replace my wool rug or purchase quality athletic shoes that don't contain leather (the only leather in my home).
4) I looked into it - doing vegan CORRECTLY is rather expensive, and I'm poor.
5) I think I'm addicted to cheese.

True story.

I am vegetarian, however, and doing the best I can.

Well if your aspie and "love" animals and your not vegan your a disgusting hypocrite. Specisim is not something l'll never ever understand, I guess all animals are equal though some animals are more equal than others right ?

And why wouldn't you go vegan , made with love and care it's tastier and more healthier than almost any omnivorous foods that are available out their. I made some delicious muffins the other day (6 standard muffins) I now know how to make them correctly now you can try these tricks in your baking.

6 muffins :

50 % "OO" flour (with a pinch of bicarb) "oo " is is softer BTW

50 % SR flour

1 ripe banana it add a nice sweet flavour and keeps the muffins nice and moist.

vanilla extract (to taste)

50 % soy milk

50 EV olive oil (much healthier and tastier than tha "vegie" oil that's out their.)

100 grams of 70 % Lindt dark chocolate cut roughly into "chips"

You want the batter to be quite thick .

Cook in really really hot oven 200 C + only for a couple of minutes turn off and leave in oven till it's cools.


Their, moist and delicious muffins.

Oh and I use those plastic mould muffin tins I don't use the metal ones they scratch , rust and stick.

And why on earth would you want to drink the secretions of another animal eew