Quote from IMustBeInsane
Personally, I feel as if man was made to eat meat. That's not to say that when done right, being a vegetarian is unhealthy, just that it's harder to be healthy and a vegetarian. The only time I'm offended by it is when parents force their kids to be vegetarians becasue that will affect the rest of their lives. If they want to grow up and eat a burger, they don't have the necessary proteins to digest meat.
Anyway, even if I wanted to go meat-less, I probably couldn't since vegetarian diets rely so heavily on peanuts.
Wow. What an incredible amount of misinformation in a single post.
It's really NOT harder to be healthy as a vegetarian, just eat a variety of foods and you're fine. (Vegans, who don't eat eggs or dairy, do have to be a little more careful but it's still not a big deal.)
I have never heard ANYthing about "not having the necessary proteins to digest meat" if you've grown up vegetarian. That really doesn't make sense at all. I would imagine that there could be a period of digestive adjustment, just like there is with any significant change in diet.
Vegetarian diets rely so heavily on peanuts?
Really? Ours doesn't & never has. Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches sometimes, yeah, but probably no more than your average non-vegetarian.
Quote from The Guy
@tofyqueen.
Just wondering, at what age did you give your sons the choice on wether or not they want to eat meat? And before this point, did you ever serve them meat.
I ask, because I have a friend who is a vegetarian since birth. At around 8 his parents gave him the same option of choosing to eat meat or not. He decided to try it at least once. Few hours later he was seriously sick. Had to go to the hospital to get his stomach pumped. Doctors said that because he was raised a vegetarian his body was unable to digest any meat. So the choice was made for him and not by him. Just wondering if your kids are in a similar situation, even if at the moment they have no desire to eat meat.
It's an ongoing thing. From the time they could understand, I've told them why I choose not to eat meat and won't spend my money on meat, but if they choose to eat it, it's up to them. As I said before, most of our extended family is not vegetarian, so they know that I'm not going to disown them or anything if they do choose to eat meat. They're now 14 and are still grossed out at the idea of eating animals.
As for your friend, I suspect that if he'd introduced meat very gradually into his diet he wouldn't have had any major problems. Any food that's significantly different than what you've been eating will likely cause you problems if you eat quite a bit at once. Doctors are generally not very informed about nutrition in general and a LOT of them still have a bias against vegetarianism, so I think it's pretty likely they didn't really know what they were talking about.
I know it's a much shorter time period, but my foster son was with us from 7-18 months old, and when he moved in with his extended family he was not vegetarian & had no problems. (I did suggest they introduce meat gradually.)
Quote from uNpreDicTed
Quote from drolemil
Isn't that contradicting? The economy runs by supply and demand. If you want it, they'll continue to make it. If you don't, they'll make less. Every person plays a role, no matter how small it is.
Like you say supply and demand, when I purchase meat that has gotten a good life and was threated well I'm making sure that the market grows. If I chose to not purchase any meat that means neither a pig gets treated better nor treated badly, it just ceases to exist.
You do realize that "ceases to exist" in this case means "is not purposely and specifically produced to later be slaughtered for food", right?
Of course it's better for those who choose to eat meat to support those who treat their animals humanely before slaughtering them, but by reducing the total demand for meat, vegetarians do reduce the number of animals being bred & then killed.
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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992