Vegetarianism.

[Lorenzo]

Mayhap it is.

What's mayhap? A vegetarian's meat substitute for mayhem?

[Walden]

What's mayhap? A vegetarian's meat substitute for mayhem?

Yes.

[fiddleronvermouth]

We should all be ripping wild animals apart with our bare hands, gnawing on their still-beating hearts, from early childhood.

Well. There's certainly nothing like the zeal of the recently converted.

That was kind of tongue in cheek. (Juicy, tender, marinated calf tongue... mmmmmmmmmm).

You are right, I was a bad vegetarian. I hate cooking, and I get panic attacks in the grocery store. All I see is garbage and preservatives, row on row. The fresh produce is always sticky and desperate-looking. The flourescent light gives me a headache.

I burn boiled potatos. I can never quite get all the dirt off the spinach, and my cookies are always black on the outside, raw on the inside.

I stuck mostly with canned soup and pasta, which are ALMOST impossible to screw up.

To be totally honest, though, now that my meat-eating brilliant cook of a houseguest has gone back to Dublin, I will probably revert back to my standard meatless diet, but without the LABEL of "vegetarian", and with a bit of effort to get a handle on the kitchen.

Now that I am better able to understand what my body REALLY wants to eat (thanks to tai chi, imo), I will pay attention when I go out to the botanical gardens, see beautiful golden fish swimming around in the Japanese pond, and I start to fantasize about sinking my teeth into them.

Lorenzo, bonobos eat "mainly fruit, but they will also eat insects, small mammals and fish."

I'll pass on the bugs!

Mostly, though, I think it's important that we get enough beer.

Hear hear!

[dfernandez77]

Tigers don't worry about minimizing the suffering of their food.

Point taken and agreed. All creatures have a purpose - and humans are physiologically omnivorous. So a little quiet thanks in my head to the plants and creatures that have provided me with good sustenance, and I'm ok feeling I properly balanced respect and pragmatism in this issue.

I'm lucky to have a Chinese Supermarket nearby with quality ocean caught fresh fish and quality pork, and a Persian Supermarket nearby with great quality beef and lamb.

I like good food nearly as much as good music.

[chas]

Mostly, though, I think it's important that we get enough beer.

Hear hear!

I was gonna say that. If you drink real (i. e., unfiltered beer) you can even get vitamin B12 from the yeast.

[Claus von Weiss]

If you drink real (i. e., unfiltered beer) you can even get vitamin B12 from the yeast.

Alright, here's some sense at last.

And what good things do I get from drinking some nice single malt, I wonder (besides the pleasure)?

Claus

[SteveShaw]

If you drink real (i. e., unfiltered beer) you can even get vitamin B12 from the yeast.

Alright, here's some sense at last.

And what good things do I get from drinking some nice single malt, I wonder (besides the pleasure)?

Claus

You will get an overwhelming feeling of well-being. I received a bottle of Talisker and a bottle of Highland Park for my birthday on Thursday and I'm just about to imbibe of them. Just the thing to follow my beautiful rare ribeye of an hour ago.

[Wanderer]

Because particles of undigested, rotten meat can hang around in the large intestinal walls of humans for 30 years or more,

I do not believe this is true.

I have had colonoscopies more than once.. They have never given me an admonishment for meat, but for "green leafy vegetables"..They had a special cut off time for that, not meat. Because it's fibre that hangs out in the intestine, not meat.

http://health.uchc.edu/clinicalservices ... /formc.htm

It is important that you stop eating high fiber foods (like bran, whole grain and seeded breads, and fiber cereals), stop taking fiber supplements (like Metamucil and Citrucel), and stop using iron supplements, one week prior to the procedure.

I wonder why they don't mention meat?

BTW, I was awake for my colonoscopy becuase I'm pretty resistant to most anasthesias..they gave me two doses of the stuff that's supposed to make you go into a "relaxed sleep" and I still didn't go out, so they shot me with some demerol and did me awake. I got to watch, and was embarrassed to see some lettuce hanging around up in there, because I'd had a burger a couple days before and forgotten that "lettuce" on a Bic Mac was "green and leafy"..heh I was a bit high from the demerol and got apologetic about the big mac lettuce and the nurse said "Don't worry about it..we see that in everyone"

But you know what I didn't see? Rotting meat particles.

[dfernandez77]

But you know what I didn't see? Rotting meat particles.

You'd see those rotting meat particles in the colonoscopies of some world leaders - considering where they keep their heads most of the time.

[Ann]

Its eternally fascinating how diverse the human body is and how needs change from person to person. I used to eat the standard American diet and had the opposite experience of Fiddler. I had frequent stomach upsets, was always hungry, underweight, out of energy due to hunger, hated food for how it made me feel, etc. The year I turned 30, I experimented with vegetarianism, put on 20 much needed pounds stopped being painfully hungry and felt so much better. I guess I'm just not very good at digesting meat. I eat what I enjoy and makes me feel best, and while I don't call myself vegetarian, I have little to no desire to eat meat. The most difficult part is how much food is politicized. I have no vested interest in what other people eat. No moral problems with people exerting their food chain rights, as death is very much a part of life. There are times when I make myself eat meat because I'm too embarrassed to let people know I'd rather not. I'm glad I don't live in Texas.

[SteveShaw]

Well, gosh, two things really. First, how do you know how old a meat fragment, found in some distant fold of your bowel, really is? Does the doc judge its age by its smell (anyone volunteering to smell my bowel contents deserves a knighthood!) or do they use some kind of carbon-dating method? And second, and more seriously, vegetarian evangelists (which does not include vegetarians who just don't like meat) should realise that a world-wide vegetarian diet is simply not possible. Millions of acres of marginal land are simply not suitable for arable crops, particularly in mountainous or arid regions (get yer maps out and see just how much of the earth's land surface is taken up by such land), yet are suitable for grazing animals. And, in poorer countries, soil fertility must be provided by animal manure which is (a) free, and therefore does not swell the coffers of multinational agribusiness corporations, (b), unlike chemical fertilizers, improves soil structure and prevents erosion (remember the dustbowl, Merkins?), (c) produces crops that have good nutritional content (not to speak of tastier food), unlike chemical fertilizers and (d) does not pollute the atmosphere and waterways (remember Lake Erie, Merkins?) as does the production (by the Haber process) and use of nitrogenous chemical fertilizers. Where's yer conscience now, veggies?

[emmline]

Its eternally fascinating how diverse the human body is and how needs change from person to person. I used to eat the standard American diet and had the opposite experience of Fiddler. I had frequent stomach upsets, was always hungry, underweight, out of energy due to hunger, hated food for how it made me feel, etc. The year I turned 30, I experimented with vegetarianism, put on 20 much needed pounds stopped being painfully hungry and felt so much better. I guess I'm just not very good at digesting meat.

I appreciate this other side of the story. I stopped meat at about that age. Went from a year of constant colds (didn't help that I had a multitude of small children at home, I'm sure,) to almost never being sick at all. Meat makes me feel heavy in the gut, and I think it just doesn't sit well with my immune system. I occasionally eat fish, but only in small quantities or I experience that icky feeling. I must confess, I still love the smell of bacon, but I don't eat it.

[SteveShaw]

I have had colonoscopies more than once.. They have never given me an admonishment for meat, but for "green leafy vegetables"..They had a special cut off time for that, not meat. Because it's fibre that hangs out in the intestine, not meat.

Heheh. Many moons ago I had a barium enema because the doc suspected that I had irritable bowel syndrome (which doesn't actually exist). That afternoon was easily the most amusing experience of my whole life. Apart from the fact that they forced me to swan around the clinic all afternoon in a gown that was way too short so that my arse was poking out conspicuously (down, girls!), I effortlessly broke the world record for the longest f*rt in history when obeying the nurse's instructions to rid myself of the introduced fluid once it had served its radiological purpose. Anyone care to challenge my achievement of 37 seconds of a sustained low-low F sharp?

[fiddleronvermouth]

But you know what I didn't see? Rotting meat particles.

You'd see those rotting meat particles in the colonoscopies of some world leaders - considering where they keep their heads most of the time.

[Lambchop]

Because particles of undigested, rotten meat can hang around in the large intestinal walls of humans for 30 years or more

This is a popular belief among colon-health advocates. It is completely false.

It cannot be true, because particles of undigested, rotten meat can't hang around anywhere, except maybe a freezer, for 30 days, much less 30 years. Autolysis would take care of it, if nothing else. It liquifies and vanishes into nothing.

This belief originated at the end of the 19th century. It went hand-in-hand with the ideas a famous Dr. Kellogg cooked up at his sanitarium in Battle Creek, along with his ideas about cereal.

Medicine moved on during the 20th century, but this concept became the selling point behind colonic enemas, the practitioners of which need to attract paying clients. It has since been perpetuated in the type of books sold in health food stores and on numerous websites.

It is pseudo-science. That is, it looks convincing, but it isn't based on actual fact. At the end of the 19th century, nobody knew what the inside of a living colon looked like, unless it was extremely diseased. Today, we know, and there is no evidence that meat particles can hang around for 30 years.

A variant of this belief, which you often hear in holistic healing circles, says that the colon develops a layer or coating of toxins, often described as "a sticky plaque," which prevent absorption of food. These toxins are said to hang around 30 years, as well. I've seen lots of colons, and I know lots of people who've seen even more colons, and none of them . . . absolutely NOBODY . . . has ever seen the slightest trace of any such layer of toxins.

This whole concept is almost an urban legend.

If you don't want to eat meat, don't eat it, but don't do it because of fears that it'll hang around for 30 years in your colon. And, if you enjoy colonic enemas, then have them, but don't feel you have to do it to get rid of "toxin layers."

Don't even get me started on the "parasites" nonsense.