veganism cntstnd I struggled with this philosophy for a while. I found a lot of conflicting opinion but no facts so I read a book called Origins. It was about human evolution and what we've discovered. It said that eating meat was actually a major factor in our becoming a social animal. It said that herbivores needn't cooperate while those that are going to hunt some sort of large animal need to work together to make it work. It also described hunter gatherer societies and said that a vegan hunter gatherer society has never been documented. So the question seems to lie completely on a moral basis. I am of the school of thought that my morality shouldnt defy nature. So the issue is now settled for me. I still respect veganism but as a biology student it seems very clear. Humans eat meat and vegetables and fruits and every other goddamn thing we can. Also the nutritionist here at the college told me if I was vegan i'd have to eat b12 supplements. Upon further investigation b12 is only found in animal products. Ok. So I need this vitamin thats only found in animals to be healthy. Yeah I think i'll just have a burger now and then. 040917 ... vegitarian lover big deal, take a vitamin. 040917 ... Strideo actually its a very well reasoned point of view and much more pollite than the way I would have put it. Which would be something like this: vegans are crazy. I can deal with vegetarianism but vegans? what a bunch of pansies. I liked the scene in Pieces of April where the vegen lady was going to let April borrow her oven then reneged on her offer knowing that the smell of a cooking turkey would make her sick. ... 040917 ... uow b12 is primarily found in animals, but not solely 040917 ... cntstnd Thanks for the feedback. 2 more facts I forgot to mention that influenced my decision.Both of these are from my biology proffessor. 1)The human stomach contains Hydrochloric acid. This is the acid found in the stomach of carnivores such as wolves and omnivores such as bears. Herbivores do not have HCl in their stomach. 2) The human digestive tract contains an enzyme called elastin. This enzyme specifically and solely breaks down animal protien and is a product of human evolution. 040917 ... i think... wolves like to eat the stomachs of their prey... if a wolf finds a dead animal in winter, it'll try going for the stomach 'cause it might be warm still, and the food inside is already partially digested. 041208 ... . that was a tangent) 041208 ... monee wolves also eat some berries and greens my wolfdog nidO likes to nibble on blackberries or raspberries sometimes 041208 ... monee the tangenter no way he would become vegan though unless i forced him to, and i can't/wouldn't do that. lifelong vegetarian turned vegan) 041208 ... monee "...a vegan hunter gatherer society has never been documented..." that made me laugh. what would a vegan hunter hunt? personally, i feel like i'm hunting when i'm picking and digging veggies in my garden. 041208 ... monee i do agree that people hunting and eating animals played a major role in human evolution,...though there is much debate about the details... .. "...When our human ancestors started eating meat, evolution served up a healthy bonus -- the development of genes that offset high cholesterol and chronic diseases associated with a meat-rich diet, according to a new USC study. Those ancestors also started living longer than ever before -- an unexpected evolutionary twist. The research by USC professors Caleb Finch and Craig Stanford appeared in the Quarterly Review of Biology. "At some point -- probably about 2 1/2 million years ago -- meat eating became important to humans," said Stanford, chair of the anthropology department in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, "and when that happened, everything changed." "Meat contains cholesterol and fat, not to mention potential parasites and diseases like Mad Cow," he said. "We believe humans evolved to resist these kinds of things. Mad Cow disease -- which probably goes back millions of years -- would have wiped out the species if we hadn't developed meat-tolerant genes." Stanford also claims females began trading sex for meat, perhaps initiating the world's second oldest profession after hunting. Finch, the paper's lead author, and Stanford found unexpected treasure troves in research ranging from chronic disease in great apes to the evolution of the human diet. They also focused on several genes, including apolipoprotein E (apoE), which decreases the risk of Alzheimer's and vascular disease in aging human adults. Chimpanzees -- which eat more meat than any other great ape, but are still largely vegetarian -- served as an ideal comparison because they carry a different variation of the apoE gene, yet lack human ancestors' resistance to diseases associated with a meat-rich diet. While chimpanzees have a shorter life span compared to humans, they demonstrate accelerated physical and cerebral development, remain fertile into old age and experience few brain-aging changes relative to the devastation of Alzheimer's seen in humans today. Finch and Stanford argued that the new human apoE variants protected the chimpanzees. In a series of "evolutionary tradeoffs," the researchers said, humans lost some advantages over those primates, but gained a higher tolerance to meat, slower aging and longer lifespan. Still, if humans developed genes to compensate for a meat-rich diet, why do so many now suffer from high cholesterol and vascular disease? The answer is a lack of exercise and moderation, according to the researchers. "This shift to a diet rich in meat and fat occurred at a time when the population was dominated by hunters and gatherers," said Finch, a USC University Professor and holder of the ARCO-William F. Kieschnick Chair in the Neurobiology of Aging. "The level of physical activity among these human ancestors was much higher than most of us have ever known," he said. "Whether humans today, with our sedentary lifestyle, remain highly tolerant to meat eating remains an open question researchers are looking into." Stanford, co-director of the university's Goodall Research Center, said that modern-day humans "tend to gorge ourselves with meat and fat." "For example, our ancestors only ate bird eggs in the spring when they were available," he said. "Now we eat them year-round. They may have hunted one deer a season and eaten it over several months. We can go to the supermarket and buy as much meat as we want." "I think we can learn a lesson from this," Stanford said. "Eating meat is fine, but in moderation and with a lot of exercise..." http://www.sciscoop.com/comments/2004/3/23/5636/98139/0/post .. "...When, why, and how early humans began to eat meat are three of the most fundamental unresolved questions in the study of human origins. Before 2.5 million years ago the presence and importance of meat in the hominid diet is unkown. After stone tools appear in the fossil record it seems clear that meat was eaten in increasing quantities, but whether it was obtained through hunting or scavenging remains a topic of intense debate. This book takes a novel and strongly interdisciplinary aproach to the role of meat in the early hominid diet, inviting well-known researchers who study the human fossil record, modern hunter-gatherers, and nonhuman primates to contribute chapters to a volume that integrates these three perspectives. Stanford's research has been on the ecology of hunting by wild chimpanzees. Bunn is an archaeologist who has worked on both the fossil record and modern foraging people. This will be a reconsideration of the role of hunting, scavening, and the uses of meat in light of recent data and modern evolutionary theory..." http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Anthropology/SocialCultural/?ci=0195131398&view=usa .. "Examining the rationalizations and denials of the fossil record evidence of human diet" http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-3b.shtml .. "...For years, anthropologists have told us that humans dominate the earth because they learned to make tools that could kill big animals that would give them more food so that they could survive. Dr Richard Wrangham of Harvard thinks they are all wrong. He thinks that man dominates earth because he learned how to cook..." http://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/1147.html . 041208 ... monee i think if i was living in the arctic or mongolia or wherever (some place where it is difficult/impossible to survive on veggies) my diet would likely consist mostly (if not entirely) of animal products,...and that would be life, perfectly 'normal'/'natural'. but i do not live in such a place, so i am thankful that i have the choice to be vegan, because that is also life, and 'perfectly' natural. once, as a child of about fivish, i took a bite of a hotdog, thinking it was a veggiedog,...but upon realizing/being informed that it was in fact meat, i spit it out, and kicked the girl who gave it to me. (still feel bad about the kicking part) anyway, other than that, and another time where i had a close encounter with something in my chinese food, i have never eaten meat. well, no, actually there have been a few eggs here and there in various foods (i realized after eating, and felt bad about). i ate/drank dairy until, um, '97?ish, and have had some 'vegan cheese' products that have casein in them. for me it is a 'spiritual' 'thing'. i know that in some theoretical dire circumstance i might be faced with an 'eat meat or die' situation, but i hope nothing like that ever happens. i don't like the smell of meat, and i avoid eating food that has been prepared/cooked in/on the same stove/oven as meat. i do, however, feed my cats and dogs meat. and as far as other people eating meat, that is their own business and i do not concern myself with that. i just hope that people be conscience consumers, aware of the horrid conditions that many animals are kept in to meet the continual demand for meat. i think it is better for those who eat meat to buy organic/free range products (if they can) rather than some factory produced steroid-pumped stuff, and also to eat meats sparingly/seasonaly unless one has some special need for high meat intake. myelf, i will continue to be vegan, and i hope that others will respect my decision(s) just as i respect their own. ahimsa - peace - love 041208 ... ! frig my typos 041208 ... monee babbling some more actually, thinking further upon it, i guess i do still consume some animal product(s). i sometimes buy things that have leather, i spin wool (which i buy from the shepherds) and i'm trying to beecome a beekeeper so i guess i'm not 'a real vegan' in the onehundredpercent sense of veganism. *sigh* i try. but i really like honey. so i guess i'm a semi-vegan. "...Honey was prohibited for use by vegans according to the 1944 manifesto of the British Vegan Society (veganism's founding organization), a position consistent with the requirement for full (vegan) membership in the American Vegan Society since its inception in 1960..." http://www.vegsource.com/jo/qa/qahoney.htm some of my english ancestors belonged to the group that started the british vegetarian society about 200 years ago. their descendants didn't all become vegetarians but some did,...like my aunt who lived to be 100, she grew up eating meat but became vegetarian. i grew up vegetarian but became semi-vegan. 041209 ... monee factoid some 'vegetarian'vegan' vitamin d supplements are actually derived from lanolin (sheep grease) 041209 ... oops *grandaunt, not aunt 041209 ... monee clarifying "...i avoid eating food that has been prepared/cooked in/on the same stove/oven as meat..." what i meant was: at the same time as meat. if i'm using a stove/oven that someone has cooked meat on/in, i give it a thorough cleaning first. 041209 ... smurfus rex If we didn't eat cows and chickens, they'd overrun the world, and THEN where would we be? Would eating people violate the principles of veganism? If so, would the people have to be vegan to stay within the rules? I once ran across something on the net that mentioned "death names" for food...how cows become "beef", chickens become "poultry", pigs become "pork"...wouldn't that also apply to "fruit" and "vegetables"? And what would be the death name for humans? If you know, please tell me. I'm serious. 041209 ... monee i don't know smurfy, i've wondered that myself, the death name for human 'meat'. heat? humeat? heef? hork? houltry? hish? 041209 ... monee also remembered: have had gelatin, in vitamin capsules and some candies (fuck, yuck, gelatin sucks) 041209 ... monee ha! "Would eating people violate the principles of veganism? If so, would the people have to be vegan to stay within the rules?" i guess i depends on what you define as eating... but basically, i don't think you can be called a vegan if you go around chomping up people, since people (vegans included) are made of flesh and bone. if someone can manage to find a veggie person and that person agreed to be eaten, then i think that would be fine. if the veggie person is non-gmo, pesticide free, etc, then all the better. 041209 ... monee i don't think there are any real veggie people out there though,...at least i've never met one 041209 ... monee wouldn't that also apply to "fruit" and "vegetables"? good questie. hmm fruits and vegetables come from plants, trees,... we call a potato a potato but we call the plant "the potato plant" (or latin or indigineous name), not just potato. the potato plant is more than just the potato tuber, there are the leaves, the flowers, the little nightshade tomato-looking potato berries. i can pick an apple from an apple tree, but not an apple from an apple. i've never called an apple tree an apple, at least i don't think i have... lettuce, however, is pretty much a plant you can eat all of, but most people just eat the leaves, and we call the leaves lettuce,..we cut the leaves from the stock, leaving the roots behind,... i've called a group of the lettuce plants "lettuce", and a group of potato plants "potatoes", but never a single potato plant "potato" or a stand of apple trees "apples". i guess it would be funny to call cows "beefs" or "milks", but i've heard "beef cattle" or "milk cow". um, i don't seem to be going anywhere with this blathe so i'm going to stop now before i lose my train of thought completely! 041209 ... monee corn cob or corn kernel, we typically refer to as corn, just as plant is called corn (or maize) corn meat: ceat? or clesh? english is funny 041209 ... monee (as far as the wool i mentioned goes,... i buy the fleece from shepherds who love their sheep like pets,... they give me pictures of the sheep on cards with their names (and the names of their parents) so i know who i am spinning,... they take really good care of them,...space, shelter, diet. if they didn't shear them,..well they would become too overloaded and hot. i know some massive sheep farms have major problems, and some of the practices involved are terrible.... that's why i buy from localish shepherds who shear the sheep themselves, taking utmost care not to cut/hurt them. i know it's not good to support the wool industry,...but i think it is good to support one's local farmers/shepherds etc., to encourage smaller scale operations as opposed to large.) 041209 ... monee also, i spin silk, but it is tussah (wild silk). the cocoons aren't boiled, the fibre is collected after the moth leaves.) 041209 ... monee also re: eating "...Oral sex is vegan even though it may involve putting flesh in your mouth, as it shouldn't really involve any cruelty or exploitation, and said flesh is taken out again eventually and returned to its rightful owner. If you decide to swallow any bodily liquids, well, once again, no one else has suffered to provide them, so it's up to you..." http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/Health/VEGAN-L%20FAQ.htm#15 041209 ... silly mon i meant re: eating people 041209 ... monee breast milk is also considered vegan. 041209 ... smurfus rex from the Manitoba Animal Rights Coalition: 58. What if I made use of an animal that was already dead? It is not the eating of meat that is wrong but the killing of animals unnecessarily. As meat eating is unnecessary and generally requires the killing of an animal, it usually follows that meat eating is wrong. If, however, you managed to obtain some meat without killing an animal (or by paying someone else to kill it for you) -- for example, by stumbling across an animal that was already dead -- then I can see no moral objection to your eating it. Of course this also applies to human meat. Recent archeological evidence suggests that early humans were much more inclined toward scavenging than hunting. *** You'll notice that, according to the MARC, cannibalism and veganism are not mutually exclusive... 041210 ... dreamer if plants could scream... 050301 what's it to you? who go blather from