Thoughts on Vegetarians/vegans

[Kochari]

Roast potatoes are a good start, for sure, but not exactly taste central.

Oh Wiggie, I used to think you were cool

[Blenky]

I've had foie gras.

Was it nice? The method by which it's produced is grim as fuck and just a tiny bit evil... but i fucking love pate

Didn't know anything about how it was produced when I ate it, dunno whether knowing first would've affected my opinion. It was amazing. Some of the richest, smoothest pate I've ever had.


The backstory as to how I ended up having it is I was on french exchange with a family who thought they were the shit and hated english people, constantly saying all we do is get drunk and don't appreciate good food. They took me out to dinner so I ordered the most expensive thing off the menu, which happened to be foie gras. The father stopped me and explained that it was a very special french dish that my palette might not be able to cope with, so I ate it all really fucking slow.

I hated those stnuc

[gwa]

but as a nation we do pride ourselves on our amazing sessioning capabilities, well, i do anyway.

[Blenky]

but as a nation we do pride ourselves on our amazing sessioning capabilities, well, i do anyway.

There's a subtle difference in implying that as a nation we can hold us drink and implying we are all drunkards though.

[bright maroon]

I just went back to being a vegetarian about 2 months ago..

I just prefer to keep my animals alive...



But I doubt I'll be super hardcore about it -
I'd say...a piece of meat every 2 months or so might keep me from becoming lightheaded and dizzy...


I feel better already.

[bright maroon]

Last time - I went from 7 years as a vegetarian - back to carnivore...

I gained 40lbs in the first 2 months - than another 20 by the end of the year...


I'm ok with being monorailcat...



but I don't like being a butterball...

[Genevieve]

Last time - I went from 7 years as a vegetarian - back to carnivore...

I gained 40lbs in the first 2 months - than another 20 by the end of the year...

So what you're saying is, you ate more calories when you started eating meat again?

Gaining or losing weight is a matter of calories in and calories out.

[bright maroon]

I think that meat slows my metabolism...

Especially red meat...If i eat a steak I'll be bloated for days...

[Genevieve]

Protein speeds up your metabolism. As do fiberous carbs.

[capo ultra]

I know a guy here who is like a militant carnivore. He goes fucking apeshit if he finds a bit of veg in his meal, the same way a militant vegetarian would if they were tricked into eating meat.

Everytime he eats out (which is every meal in Thailand) he specifically asks for no vegetables then if he finds a mushroom or whatever in his soup he sends it back and asks for it to be made with no vegetables.

he also claims to detest fruit, I say 'claims' because I'm pretty sure he's forgotten what the taste of fruit is like. He must have been bummed while eating fruit and veg as a kid and got a psychological aversion or something

Mental

[fractal]

i love all types of food. if humans and our evolutionary ancestors had not eaten meat, we never would have had the calories necessary to develop the brains we have. real interested in how evolution will dumb down vegetarians in the eons to come

[sigbowls]

i think that we will become not meat eaters since you have to cook it and there alot of homeless and not as many animals

[bright maroon]

I don't know - maybe it's more of a digestion thing as opposed to cellular metabolism...

I just know when I eat meat it sits in my gut like a rock - same with fried stuff...certain types of fried stuff jacks me up.



animal fats

[Today]

my formerly vegetarian uncle always used to cheerfully explain "i don't eat my friends!"
then he woke up in the middle of the night one night, lost total control of himself and in a sort of trance proceeded to devour an entire tub of chicken meat
his wife had cooked 2 whole chickens for a big dinner event and took home leftovers
talking at least 1 whole chicken's worth of meat

and from then on, he couldn't stop
"so, you eat your friends now?"

frowning"....yes."

[Genevieve]

I don't know - maybe it's more of a digestion thing as opposed to cellular metabolism...

Or maybe instead of the meat replacing calories, it just added them.

[ruckus49]

i have no problem with non-factory farmed meat, but it's so impractical for most Americans unless you have enough money to buy from to specialty restaurants and grocers. And those who do happily eat factory farmed meat, their response to the torture necessary to bring it to their plate is always, "well, I love the taste and I wouldn't have it any other way!"

I guess you could say the same thing about the suffering African people endure at the hand of the electronics industry in order to obtain rare earth elements. And by buying these products you are perpetuating human suffering. But being a vegetarian and avoiding the factory farm industry is a practical and simple moral choice, compared to the economic and political mess tied into to other exploitative industries.

As far as plants having feelings too-- everyone needs plants to live, we don't need meat. And still, this doesn't change the fact that billions of animals are born to live a life of torture and then be slaughtered.

I feel crazy sometimes because so many people don't, or refuse to grasp this.

[ch3]

i love all types of food. if humans and our evolutionary ancestors had not eaten meat, we never would have had the calories necessary to develop the brains we have. real interested in how evolution will dumb down vegetarians in the eons to come

Well... not necessarily true.

Starch 'fuel of human evolution'

Man's ability to digest starchy foods like the potato may explain our success on the planet, genetic work suggests.

Compared with primates, humans have many more copies of a gene essential for breaking down calorie-rich starches, Nature Genetics reports.

And these extra calories may have been crucial for feeding the larger brains of humans, speculate the University of California Santa Cruz authors.

Previously, experts had wondered if meat in the diet was the answer.

Brain food

However, Dr Nathaniel Dominy and colleagues argue this is improbable.

"Even when you look at modern human hunter-gatherers, meat is a relatively small fraction of their diet.

"To think that, two to four million years ago, a small-brained, awkwardly bipedal animal could efficiently acquire meat, even by scavenging, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

They discovered humans carry extra copies of a gene, called AMY1, which is essential for making the salivary enzyme amylase that digests starch.

Survival benefit

Next the team studied groups of humans with differing diets and found those with high-starch diets tended to have more copies of AMY1 than individuals from populations with low-starch diets.

For example, the Yakut of the Arctic, whose traditional diet centres around fish, had fewer copies than the related Japanese, whose diet includes starchy foods like rice.

The researchers believe our earliest human ancestors began searching for new food sources other than the ripe fruits that primates eat.

These were starches, stored by plants in the form of underground tubers and bulbs - wild versions of modern-day foods like carrots, potatoes, and onions.

In work earlier this year, the team found that animals eating tubers and bulbs produce body tissues with a chemical signature that matches what has been measured in early fossilised humans.

Dr Dominy said that when early humans mastered fire, cooking starchy vegetables would have made them even easier to eat.

At the same time it would have made extra amylase gene copies an even more valuable trait.

"We roast tubers, and we eat French fries and baked potatoes. When you cook, you can afford to eat less overall, because the food is easier to digest."

And marginal food resources can become part of the staple diet.

"Now you can have population growth and expand into new territories."

Speculation

Professor John Dupré, a professor of philosophy of science at Exeter University in the UK, urged caution when interpreting the findings.

He said it was impossible to conclude that the introduction of starchy foods into the diet lay behind the emergence of larger brains in humans.

"Lots of things differ between ourselves and our closest relatives and apart from the difficulty of establishing the relative places in the evolutionary sequence of any of these, the assumption that there is any one fundamental to such change is dubious.

"The results on amylase genes are quite interesting, and a good indication of something we are beginning to appreciate more widely - the functional plasticity of the genome."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6983330.stm

Only loosly related:
The food that gets made at the vegan place you work(ed?) at is really nice. Im pretty much as far away from vegan as you can get but I can appreciate good food either way.

Really glad to hear you saying this! That food is a bit more extreme than just vegan, as it follows rules of food combining, is gluten free etc. etc. Unfortunately we had to shut the cafe down, a new shopping center will be built in its place... There is still a smaller branch left in Soho (too small for ninja parties though )

[tuckerlinen]

if human beings were considered food by some loathe beasts the conversation might have a different tone
and I don't mean tigers either
i mean people farms

[capo ultra]

if human beings were considered food by some loathe beasts the conversation might have a different tone
and I don't mean tigers either
i mean people farms

what if human beings were considered food by some rather nice beasts? Does the loathesomeness of the beasts that would snack on us affect how much the tone of this conversation would change? Juat interested

But in answer to your question, yes, I am very sure this conversation would take on an entirely new tone. Because, if we were further down the food chain and hunted/farmed ourselves we would not afford ourselves the luxury of deciding to become vegetarian at all, so I'm assuming in this hypothetical situation we would all be meat eaters.

[tuckerlinen]

it would; Stockholm syndrome and all that. (assuming we had a pretty clear understanding of the situation)
however, ultimately, we would resent it and consider it unjust.
eventually anyway, we'd probably think they were our creators and like gods or whatever for a minute.
then some kid would lose his beloved to one of these things and get pissed and start unraveling the blanket.
unless they had a clever system wherein only those of a certain old age were harvested to minimize the risk of youthful energetic rage and rabble rousing.
and it could be really nice like have a nice place for us to live and stuff with like loads of goodies lying about.
there probably would be good food for us to eat... but no smoke!! cuz of the taste
but anyway, no matter how good they made things I would be pissed if I knew.
so I guess that's important: awareness of the situation.