vegetarianism, the end of civilization as we know it. (that would be a bad thing?)

Discussion in 'Food & Travel' started by guignol, Mar 29, 2012.

  1. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    i should start by saying that neither in practice nor in principle am i a vegetarian myself. but i am very close.

    in practice, i haven't been a big meat eater for many years. for this there are several reasons, but in the beginning the main one was simply economic: meat is expensive, and i have never been a man of tremendous means. as luck would have it though, i grew up in a town for which green vegetables were the economic life blood and learned to appreciate them early. that is probably why, when i came into contact with vegetarians in my salad days, even if i didn't adhere to their ideas entirely i didn't dismiss them out of hand as most do. and also why i never felt any great hardship in not eating meat daily.

    in the past ten years, for a variety of reasons not only ecological or ethical, those three or four times a week became two, then one, then on occasions rarer and rarer. when i stopped eating kebabs before football matches, about all that was left was a couple of barbecues each summer and christmas dinner.

    in principal, i can understand the strict vegan or hindu ethos, i do not share it. i don't equate animal life to human. but i don't have to to be convinced that the way we in the west produce and consume meat is very wrong in many ways. meat is not always murder. but usually, in our society at least, it is much worse.

    one of my favorite quotes from lévi-strauss is: "a well-ordered humanism puts the world before life, life before man, and respect of others before love of self". here i'll do things backwards, following the methods rousseau uses in his emile and talk about rights before obligations, so the obvious first question to answer about vegetarianism is: what's in it for me?

    we like to say "when you've got your health"... but we know we don't really mean it, so let's start with money. people in france (everywhere i supposed) are always on about their buying power, about the difficulty of making ends meet; our family doesn't have the same problem as friends and relatives in like circumstances, and we have the same mortgages, clothes, amenities and entertainments. we only do two things differently: 1) we almost never use the car and 2) we eat almost no meat. look into your own budgets for proof of what i'm saying.

    health is a negligable aspect compared to wealth, but let's consider it anyway. just as for tobacco or global warming, there have been all kinds of studies about nutrition over the years. of course there are many factors to consider: the type of meat, the condition of its raising, cooking methods, our own heredity, etc., that make it impossible to generalize but my personal conclusion is that grosso modo, meat is just as bad for you as alcohol, cigarettes or heroin.

    after love of self comes respect for others. one of the basic respects we can show to them is to let them have enough to eat. here again i can rely on no one definitive study to back me up, and the figures i've seen vary wildly, but it is impossible to deny in good faith that producing meat wastes sizeable amounts of vegetable foodstuffs and water in a world where these are not in unlimited supply. one doesn't need to know the exact percentage of the world's grains and soybeans that go to putting meat on our american and european plates to argue that it is excessive; a whole range of words including selfish, inequitable, unjust... can apply. those most callous can stop at inappropriate, the most radical may see fit to use genocidal.

    behind the amounts are the methods; like many other commodities that end up one way or another on our tables, cattle feed has been forced onto the southern hemisphere as a cash crop to the detriment of their old methods of farming; an evolution that many argue is a prime reason for their growing poverty and hunger.

    there's another aspect i would like to squeeze into respect for others: pythagoras is quoted as saying "as long as men kill animals, they will kill each other". albert einstein's reasoning for espousing vegetarianism was not the effect it had on our physical health but upon our temperament. i'm skeptical about the hypothesis that the consumption of meat can have any great hormonal effect on our behavior, but it's seems likely to me that violence towards animals inures us to violence towards men.

    i will not claim the life of a cow chicken or pig is worth a human life, or even one hundredth or one thousandth of one. but if it is worth something, the cruelty with which we raise and slaughter animals, which isaac bashevis singer called an eternal treblinka is indefensible, and unworthy of any people who think themselves civilized. in this i join many of us who have thought themost clearly, from da vinci to franklin to thoreau to darwin to lincoln to schweitzer to edison to einstein but the citaion that sticks in my mind is gandhi: the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by its treatment of animals. of course not all great minds agree on this issue: on the other side there's andy rooney.

    the code of rural law in france and in europe says animals are not objects but sentient beings. inthis they follow the father of utilitarianism jeremy bentham who was thinking not only of animals but of beings many in his day considered subhuman, indians and negro slaves, when he said: "the question is not can they reason, or can they talk, but can they suffer". now it might be casuistry to say that what we are willing to do to animals one day we will do to jews or people with red hair the next. but the limits of our humanity being flexible, i think it is safer to keep its circle pressing outwards to avoid it collapsing inwards.

    finally (relieved? no more than i!) the world. factory farming is apparently as responsible for as great a quantity of greenhouse gasses as transportation. and as anyone who has been to rural brittany knows, hyperintensive leads to very dangerous pollution of land and groundwater. not to mention the smell. imagine being at the beach, right next to a sardine cannery, without a farm within miles, and all you can smell is pig excrement.

    whew! now i remember why i didn't want to start this thread!
     
  2. Norsk Troll

    Norsk Troll Member+

    Sep 7, 2000
    Central NJ
    Hi. My name is Norsk Troll. I haven't eaten meat in 13 years.
     
  3. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    I'll have to report Pythagoras to the Grammar Nazi thread for his vague pronoun reference.

    Unless he's implying that animals will stop killing each other when we stop killing them.

    I'll eat fish occasionally, especially if we're visiting my wife's family in Rhode Island. With the exception of two bison burgers, some goat at an Indian Restaurant, and yak at a tibetan restaurant, and my mother-in-law's chicken cacciatore, I haven't had any land mammals in about 18 years. Doesn't stop me from weighing too much (thanks, beer. And I thought you were my friend). Still, my two brothers take medication for blood pressure and cholestorol, and mine is fine. They eat a fairly normal (in terms of the American diet) amount of meat.

    As far as the blood pressure goes, I don't think it's the meat so much as the nitrates that are pumped into it.
     
  4. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    it's a fair cop. but you'll have to blame me, not pythagoras. sorry.

    edit: though i was quoting from memory i wasn't wrong on the pronouns. in context though there is less ambiguity:

    As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.
     
  5. DoctorD

    DoctorD Member+

    Sep 29, 2002
    MidAtlantic
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Since I had to go gluten-free five years ago, my meat consumption has gone up. I don't mind vegetarian foods, but the vast majority of vegetarian recipes, prepared foods, or restaurant entrees contain wheat or barley. It is a real blind spot for that food regimen.
     
  6. Norsk Troll

    Norsk Troll Member+

    Sep 7, 2000
    Central NJ
    I'm pretty sure Pythagoras didn't make the statement in English, so the pronoun matching might have been more clear in the original.
     
  7. YankHibee

    YankHibee Member+

    Mar 28, 2005
    indianapolis
    I have been trying to switch, as much as possible, to local and wild meat. I don't have problems with meat generally, but I wouldn't be troubled if CAFOs ceased to exist. I also wouldn't have a problem with meat getting much more expensive and rare because of that.
     
  8. AfrcnHrbMan

    AfrcnHrbMan Member

    Jun 14, 2004
    Philly
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    I would save alot more money not buying meat if I didn't spend so much on mushrooms and cheese. Mushrooms in particular seem way more expensive than they should be. Then again I don't grow the things, so what do I know.
     
  9. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    i also would feel the world would be a poorer place if there was no husbandry, no fields with cattle and sheep, or farmyards with chickens... many advocates of farm animal rights i know don't seem to realize that if there was NO meat industry at all, there would be no farm animals. the few that are kept at sanctuaries can't guarantee the survival of the breeds.

    but neither is factory farming, au contraire. they breed... no, they genetically engineer strains for the sole purpose of productivity, without regard for diversity, for traditional breeds, or even for quality.

    in france today you can still go from region to region and see the salers around the town of salers, the limousin in the limousin region, the charolais around charolles*... but these small operations won't last forever faced with the mega-operations that provide 90% of our meat, milk, cheese... those who survive the best, like in salers, depend upon the special cheese they produce but that is necessarily a low volume / high price market.

    a sea change towards this more traditional husbandry and away from our eternal treblinkas would mean many more small farms, more ecologically sensitive and less inhumane (for both animals and farmers; not all who run CAFO's are happy with the situation either; the natural pity they feel for their herds and flocks is perhaps as important a cause behind the epidemic of nervous depression in their ranks as financial straits). these could produce more than such operations do now, but still much less than than present total output. how much less i have no idea, but certainly well under half, perhaps only a quarter... and in addition to the resulting market pressures, the additional labor needed would make prices soar phenomenally... if demand remained steady.

    so in the end, vegetarians are right after all. do the math: 50% of the population willing to reduce their meat consumption by 50% is at the same time wildly utopic... and hugely insufficient. especially since there are always at least 10% (i'm making this up as i go along of course, we all know it's more like 25%) of us who will not change their habits one iota no matter what. we need those vegans, if nothing more than to balance out the lardasses, ever present in the scheme of things.

    this was all very poorly thought out and written but i am sure will be food for thought for those of you who can make a real idea out of it!

    *i bought this gorgeous book for my wife many years ago; i think that's what got her (and then me) started.

    [​IMG]
     
  10. Dyvel

    Dyvel Member+

    Jul 24, 1999
    The dog end of a day gone by
    Club:
    Leeds United AFC
    Nat'l Team:
    Ireland Republic
    I would encourage anyone thinking of going vegie to do so. More meat for me.
     
    1 person likes this.
  11. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Giving credit where credit is due, largely because of my wife we've switched to locally produced meat only (and reduced our consumption of it, generally, as we've reduced our eating overall). We also do the community supported agriculture thing. One not so accidental effect of that is that we know a whole lot more about the place we live in and the people around us, which speaks to the benefits guignol describes, below:

    Great thread, by the way.

    As for vegetarians being right, I'd say they are and they aren't. In the food peeves thread, somebody complained about people consuming vegetarian versions of more "normal" foods, like vegan macaroni and cheese (and actual topic discussed at length by the newbie vegans in our circle of friends). While I'm sure the impact is not nearly as deleterious as that you describe (very well) for factory meat production, this kind of stuff does feed into the corn and soy behemoths, which carry their own problems. Scale tends to be a problem wherever it goes, and when even a good thing tracks into the modern human's understandable need for convenience it gets to be a big problem pretty quickly.
     
  12. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    this must be rough; to me would be far harder to live without pasta* than without meat!

    *or pizza, or baguettes, or...
     
  13. DoctorD

    DoctorD Member+

    Sep 29, 2002
    MidAtlantic
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Or...BEER? :(
     
  14. AfrcnHrbMan

    AfrcnHrbMan Member

    Jun 14, 2004
    Philly
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    Aside from specifically wheat beers, don't most beers have just barley in them? I think the major (read:shitty) breweries in the States put rice in their malts, but I'd imagine the microbrews use barley. Or just buy German, they have rules against that kind of stuff.

    But being a vegetarian and unable to eat gluten would be a tragedy. One of my favorite things in the world is seitan, would might actually instantly kill someone allergic to wheat protein. It makes great sandwiches.
     
  15. StiltonFC

    StiltonFC He said to only look up -- Guster

    Mar 18, 2007
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    we rarely eat meat, but it's simply a matter of convenience. we don't eat out much, and we don't cook much. it's mostly salads with beans or cheese, steamed veggies with cheese, soups, both with chicken and w/o.

    but i'm not going to make a practice of not eating meat.

    i like bacon too much.
     
  16. StiltonFC

    StiltonFC He said to only look up -- Guster

    Mar 18, 2007
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    pronounced "say'-tun", right? :)
     
  17. AfrcnHrbMan

    AfrcnHrbMan Member

    Jun 14, 2004
    Philly
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    Hahah, I usually 'say-tan' but I'm not really sure what the proper pronunciation is.
     
  18. red & wite army

    red & wite army I ain't no drama queen!

    Jan 15, 2005
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    I'm gluten-intolerant, and dairy-intolerant, and I decided to go vegan for a year.
    I didn't balance my diet properly (it's not easy!), and I nearly starved myself to death - no joke. I am glad I am past that phase in my life.
     
  19. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    i believe you and without cereal products that you must do without i think it would be difficult perhaps even impossible to meet protein and perhaps even calorie needs with a vegan diet (i think tofu has gluten but since i don't have to worry about that i don't know for sure).
     
  20. AfrcnHrbMan

    AfrcnHrbMan Member

    Jun 14, 2004
    Philly
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    I made a mistake with my beer comment, it's not just wheat, but barely, rye and spelt that has gluten in it. I'd imagine Soybeans are gluten free, not a related grass species.
     
  21. tlq12Bet

    tlq12Bet New Member

    May 3, 2012
    Club:
    AC Milan
    i 'm vegetarian on 1st and 15th of the month, the other days i eat meat
     
  22. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    is that like, half a meatless monday thing or is it for some other reason?
     
  23. YankHibee

    YankHibee Member+

    Mar 28, 2005
    indianapolis
    That's when he gets the gov't checks and gets a pile of greens.
     
  24. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    i thought of that, but considering the cost of meat it would actually be the opposite.
     
  25. YankHibee

    YankHibee Member+

    Mar 28, 2005
    indianapolis
    I guess it depends on whether the plants are indoor or outdoor.
     
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