Thread: one for the young Greenies.

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Despite what PETA and the vego extremists want us to do, we have to keep being carnivores otherwise where will we get the leather for our Land Rover seats and leather shoes?

I'm not wearing hemp shoes for no one!

Ha ha, I can imagine it now. Run out of winny blue? Well what about rolling and smoking a bit of hemp double plugger, complete with that 'aged foot odour' quality.

hahahah

Originally Posted by isuzurover

A number of studies have conclusively shown that vegetarians have longer life expectancy.

Most farmland is used to grow grain to feed to animals. If the average american ate 8kg/person/year less meat, there would be enough surplus grain to feed the entire 3rd world.

Note that I love meat and am not willing to give it up despite likely health benefits, but I am also not deluding myself...

My mother turns 93 in a couple of months. She is fit and healthy, still lives alone in her townhouse and still drives. She grew up on a sheep farm, so no prizes for guessing what they ate every day. They also kept a couple of cows for milk, straight from the tit to the fridge, with cream on top. When she got married in her early twenties she moved to Melbourne but still continued along the same diet as her father would visit with half a side of lamb. Milk now from the shop, not the cow.

My father was then introduced to this diet(no idea what was his diet previously but would guess similar) and he fell off the perch at 85, fit and healthy up until about 4 weeks prior.

My mother still to this day says she never got sick of lamb and I am the same, could eat it everyday although I don't due to cost. When I was young chicken was a treat, it used to be Sunday lunch.

As for becoming a vegetarian, it will never happen. Having said that I do love animals as the sticker on my Disco says.

Dave.

I read a couple of books years ago written by a Tibetan Monk.They are Vegetarians that live on Gruel mixed with rancid Yak butter.
Anyway he admitted that vegetarianism is all very well if your life consists of sitting around all day praying, or working in a sedentary office job, or you are a politician. But anyone who is physically active and/or does manual labor requires the concentrated protein in their diet that only meat can provide without the need to spend a very large proportion of your day grazing on vegies, nuts, mushrooms etc. He compared Carnivores such as Lions that get enough protein from meat so that they only have to eat one large meal every 4 days on average, with a Buffalo that needs to graze every waking moment to obtain sufficient protein for a healthy life.
Anyway, as it turned out this 'Tibetan Monk' was eventually exposed as a fraud and just a plumber from Surrey UK, but the points he made above do seem quite valid to me. Any Nutritionists on the forum?
Bill.

Originally Posted by Mr Whippy

My mother turns 93 in a couple of months. She is fit and healthy, still lives alone in her townhouse and still drives. She grew up on a sheep farm, so no prizes for guessing what they ate every day. They also kept a couple of cows for milk, straight from the tit to the fridge, with cream on top. When she got married in her early twenties she moved to Melbourne but still continued along the same diet as her father would visit with half a side of lamb. Milk now from the shop, not the cow.

My father was then introduced to this diet(no idea what was his diet previously but would guess similar) and he fell off the perch at 85, fit and healthy up until about 4 weeks prior.

My mother still to this day says she never got sick of lamb and I am the same, could eat it everyday although I don't due to cost. When I was young chicken was a treat, it used to be Sunday lunch.

As for becoming a vegetarian, it will never happen. Having said that I do love animals as the sticker on my Disco says.

Dave.

Don't get me wrong, we eat meat almost every day, and on the days we don't we eat seafood. (however we try to eat free range / grass fed / organic / home produced meat wherever possible).

I am sorry but a sample size of 1 (your mum) proves nothing. As a group vegetarians live longer. The results may be somewhat confounded by groups like SDAs / LDS / Hindus etc etc who also don't drink and smoke, however it is quite clear that eating too much meat is a bad thing. The average australian and american would definitely be in the "too much meat" category.

Originally Posted by Casper

If any of you are worried about what's happening with the environment then look back to the 50's, 60's and 70's to see what they did back then and integrate some of it into your life, walking to shops and shopping locally with our own bag and a retro shopping trolley that my grand mother used for the same thing for decades is something that we do regularly, and we cook most of our own food

Casper

Tend to agree, my mun is 83, still walks to Sandgate, Dad did too, until succumbing to a War related illness. Some of the homilies we children were bought up with were things like " don't go into debt for for luxuries you can live without, if you must have it, save for it" I have never had a credit card, and I'm pleased to say, nor have my children. And, " don't buy a mansion and put yourself in debt for the rest of your life, buy what you need to live a comfortable life in, and free up your money for the important stuff, like raising a family." " Don't be jealous of someone who has more material goods than you, sometimes this means they are making up for an unhappy life. " Anyway, my take on this vegie / meat talkfest is when you are starving, you will eat what it takes to live. Cattle , sheep, and all the rest were not put on Earth to be pets, humans have the capability to grow food, unlike any other species on Earth. A balance between meat @ vegies is the way to go, and airy- fairy pie in the sky stuff about cattle farts @ other rubbish should stay where it began, in the perfumed smoke filled rooms of our Universities. luv youse all [ not sure about vegans] Bob

The facts that some try to highlight in regards to the benefits of cutting down on mass beef production (and other meats), is that on a global scale the current techniques employed, produce negative enviromental conditions and byproducts rendering the production unsustainable in todays, and more so tomorrows world.
The belief that this is true or false is irrelevant when overwhelming science based research shows it as fact.

I don't know if being a vegetarian is better or worse than being an omnivore when it comes to my immediate and individual physical health, but I am not exploring that question when I think about the point above.

Rant over.

Originally Posted by alittlebitconcerned

The facts that some try to highlight in regards to the benefits of cutting down on mass beef production (and other meats), is that on a global scale the current techniques employed, produce negative enviromental conditions and byproducts rendering the production unsustainable in todays, and more so tomorrows world.
The belief that this is true or false is irrelevant when overwhelming science based research shows it as fact.

I don't know if being a vegetarian is better or worse than being an omnivore when it comes to my immediate and individual physical health, but I am not exploring that question when I think about the point above.

Rant over.

Large areas of Australia, for example, cannot be used for vegetable food production without serious environmental degradation. In fact, Australia is currently cutting irrigated grain production and returning land to grazing, as water is diverted from food and fibre production for environmental purposes. There does not seem to me to be any very good reason not to use this land for meat production.

As pointed out above, by several people, meat eating is only unsustainable if we make two assumptions - firstly that everyone on the planet eats the same diet (never happened in the past, unlikely to in the future), and that the insane increase in an already unsustainable population level is inevitable. I fear that if these assumptions are maintained long term, the situation will be self -correcting via war or pestilence or both.
John

Originally Posted by bob10

I suppose the environment humans live in determines to a certain extent their diet, some don't have the luxury of choice [ hence my tongue in cheek reference to the Andes' plane crash cannibals ] Major Gen. Michael Jeffrey [retired] has warned future global conflicts would be based on food @ water..

In the Courier Mail this morning there is a report foreign countries are buying Australian farm land, not for mineral use, but to shore up food supplies as the world's population soars, and agricultural land shrinks.. Overseas interests have spent $ 12 billion during the past 4 years buying rural land @ food supply chains. A UN report on the food security crises , released in Jan. , says the world will need at least 50% more food by 2030. There are already more than 900 million people going hungry, and over the next 40 years, the global population is expected to rise from 7 billion to 9 billion.

All this makes the discussion about vegie or meat eaters seem a little , well," lucy in the sky with diamonds" stuff. I'm going to have 2 bob each way, steak AND vegies ., Bob. [ definitely do not want soylent green, ]

Bob, this is the and simbol &, not this @, @ is the at simbol

Baz