The data is quite clear that dietary cholesterol has no adverse effects and there is a fair bit of evidence that dietary cholesterol is beneficial. I try to eat in the 2-3 g per day range.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter! I'm Jewish but not very semitic-looking, hope that's OK.

I don't know about you guys but I sure do love me a good egg salad with beats, olives, eggs, tomatoes, carrot strips, and balsamic..damn that is bomb.

Diet was purely vegetarian with lots of raw juices as well as nuts and grains. To be fair the vegetarian diet was not the sole contributing factor but it was definitely a part of it. The colonoscopy results showed a lot of roughage in my system. The doctor proscribed a gluten free diet with no tinned or processed foods together with fresh meat and fish as well as an awful tasting supplement. I had had major symptoms for about 8 months and they were gone within about 5 weeks after starting the diet. My doctor himself was a vegetarian but he told me that some people's systems can't handle the absence of animal proteins.

You serious?

put a little pulled pork on there, baby you got a salad goin'

I'm not a vegetrian but can't believe people not being able to understand "ethical" reasons. It is not really about ethics it is about compassion, it takes a lot off suffering to kill a cow. If 99 had to kill cows in order to make the delicious stakes he posts in the steaks thread he would have to deal with a lot of screaming and ugliness that a lot of people preffer not to produce in animals, comparing it to killing a carrot is just pointless for obvious reasons-
OTOH life is a lot about killing in order to live, so it is 100% understandable to do it.

LOL. Donkab0mber gonna donk.

When are those damn Inuit and Eskimos gonna get it right? Oh, I guess after enough whole grains and frozen vegetables get shipped up north.

Anywhere/time in history that man can get his hands on meat – he eats it. Why? Cause he was built to eat it.

Maybe the reason the vegetarian arguments against meat are so stupid is, well, because their brains haven't had enough meat for a while:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2...ins-brain-size

Article excerpt:

Sorry, vegans: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains
Vegetarian, vegan and raw diets can be healthful, probably far more healthful than the typical American diet. But to call these diets “natural” for humans is a bit of a stretch in terms of evolution, according to two recent studies.

Eating meat and cooking food made us human, the studies suggest, enabling the brains of our prehuman ancestors to grow dramatically over a few million years.

Although this isn’t the first such assertion from archaeologists and evolutionary biologists, the new studies demonstrate that it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw, vegan diet and that meat-eating was a crucial element of human evolution at least a million years before the dawn of humankind.

and...

the finding implies that meat must have been an integral, and not sporadic, element of the prehuman diet more than 1 million years ago, said the study’s lead author, Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo, an archaeologist at Complutense University in Madrid.

This supports the theory that meat fueled human brain evolution because meat — from arachnids to zebras — was plentiful on the African savanna, where humans evolved, and is the best package of calories, proteins, fats and Vitamin B12 needed for brain growth and maintenance.

“Carnivore animals, whether terrestrial or aquatic, are bigger-brained than herbivores,” Dominguez-Rodrigo told LiveScience. He added that “there is no [traditional] society that live as vegans,” essentially because it wouldn’t be possible to get Vitamin B12, which is only available in animal products.



EDIT: Just wanted to emphasize this line:

He added that “there is no [traditional] society that live as vegans,”

No "traditional" ones. Just nut-bar ones*.

* yeah, pun obv. intended

Seems to be a lot of data both ways, I'll error on the vegetarian side though. Enjoy your meats good luck.




These are so good, I was a fan of the Boca brand until I had these.

I agree anyone coming up with killing a carrot as an argument should check out the movie Fast Food Nation http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460792/ .

This is just a bunch of hoo-hah regarding "ethical" and "compassion". The only sad part of this is that we have become so removed from how meat is "made", i.e. animals are killed – that people feel that they can take some sort of moral high road that doesn't exist, except in their meat-deprived brains. Man is an animal. Plain and simple. Just like other animals, he kills animals to eat. What is so hard to comprehend about that? It is the core principal of the so-called "circle of life".

The veg-heads need to get off of their non-existant moral, ethical high-horses cause the only ones they are fooling are themselves. Talk about a load of self-indulgent, delusional, sanctimonious crap.

Having said that, I really don't care if they eat meat or not. The only thing that bothers me about vegetarians are those that pull out all the bull**** to justify their personal decision. At least it should be a "personal" decision that they shouldn't have to feel the need to look down their noses on others using moral, ethical posturing as justification.

Give it up already.

Even better, start eating meat again. It will make you less stupid.

I think it's ridiculous if anyone thinks people living on permafrost should try to subsist on a vegetarian diet. Same with living in a smaller island nation. Of course you're going to eat fish if you live in Micronesia.

I'm not sure if there are animal rights activists that get outraged at Innu who eat meat and fish or at Micronesians who eat fish, but if there are (and I'm sure there must be some) they are pretty dumb.

99, if you ask me unprompted why I'm vegetarian, am I looking down my nose on you using moral, ethical posturing as justification if I give you a reason other than "it's a personal decision?"

99-

Do you really not get how people find crowded feed lots, veal production, and crowded poultry barns offensive and a morally repugnant way to treat one of God's creatures?

Then they should take the bull by the horns* and take responsibility for killing their own meat.

LOL @ "god's creatures".

*pun intended.

Gregorio, your posts about vegetarianism are easily the most even-minded I've ever read from a vegetarian on the interweb.

Just so you all know, my 17 year old daughter is a vegetarian and has been since the age of 5 when she decided that she didn't want to eat animals. I thought she would grow out of it but she didn't. I do the majority of the cooking in the family and am very capable of preparing vegetarian meals for her and for the entire family at times.

Having said that, as a teen she takes on the responsibility of preparing many of her meals herself now as she will be leaving to go away for university in the Fall – she knows it is something that she needs to know how to do on her own.

There are only two things that bother me about her being a vegetarian:

1. The day in the future when it all comes crashing down when she has the inevitable nutritional deficiency collapse; and

2. When she climbs up on a moral/ethical high-horse about vegetarianism. When she does so, I am very disappointed as I raised her to accept differences in others, be it race, creed, religion, sexuality, and yes – if they eat meat.

99, what would you think if your daughter turned out to be a closet Rush fan?

NOW you have gone too far.

I doo kill for my meat, thanks.

Why are we lolling at god's creatures? That doesn't seem very Christian of you.

.

What do you say to people who argue that the only reason 99% of these animals are even alive in the first place is to produce meat? Looking at it from a utilitarian's perspective, surely it's better for a cow to live a decent life and then get killed for meat than it is for the cow to have never been born at all. Obviously this might not apply if the cow is living in the nut-low conditions.

Another solid argument against vegetarianism is the fact that, on becoming veggie, many people vastly increase their consumption of eggs, cheese and other dairy. Chickens that are kept for eggs do not necessarily live better lives than those kept for meat, and egg rearing chickens are killed once they reach a certain age. All the other negatives associated with keeping animals also apply to cows not reared for their meat. What all this means is that certain vegetarians might as well just carry on eating meat.

This is not an argument against vegetarianism at all. It's an argument against the consumption of eggs, cheese and other dairy. No, it doesn't mean that. It means that vegetarians who don't eat meat because they think it is wrong to kill animals may make some other decisions that are not in the best interest of animals. It doesn't mean they might as well start eating killing animals for food as well. It's not an all-or-nothing world we live in.

You are terrible at arguing your position. You keep using the appeal to nature argument as if it's not completely fallacious, which, of course, it is. Stop doing it.

Girls are all whores because bacon is delicious.

A bacon wrapped whore is nirvana

True, but it is certainly a flaw in the logic of a lot of vegetarians. I actually think it's pretty hard to argue against veganism being the most righteous diet choice.

You're right, it's not an all or nothing world we live in. That's why I think this whole concept of vegetarianism is a bit shallow. I think just banning yourself from eating meat is a little bit strange, why not just cut down your consumption whilst still occasionally eating meat if, for example, you're at someone's house and they've prepared it, or if you find a product you've bought already has meat in it? My suspicion is that many vegetarians are somewhat attracted to the idea of being an all-out vegetarian, I mean, those freaky hippy chicks aren't gonna want to bang you if tell them that you've cut your meat consumption by 80%, but still occasionally enjoy the odd steak, even if the cow is grass-fed, organic, fair-trade, free-range and killed by a cocaine overdose whilst banging fly heffers in a Vegas hotel room. (Lesbian cow.)

What I'm trying to say is there is no other eco-friendly activity that is mainly practised in such a wide scale all-or-nothing way. For example, a few family friends have severely cut down the amount of driving they do, both for personal (lose weight) and more ethical reasons (environ), that doesn't mean they won't occasionally use their cars, or accept lifts from other people. Why can't the whole vegetarianism movement work in a similar way?

The real tragedy of this argument is that it deflects attention away from the real problem in the global food market- the fact that every single malnourished person in the world could quite easily be fed if it wasn't for the massive amounts of food waste.

If my arguments seem confused, it's because I am a little confused... and drunk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63NNuG-6-hQ

Edit- Added vaguely relevant sketch