A provocative take on meat-eating from my always-controversial brother...

Saw a cool video on YouTube recently, can't remember the title, some doctor giving a long lecture on the health benefits of vegetarianism. Jist of it was animal fats are solid at body temp and plant fats are not.

All animals?

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This all seems to be part of the larger philosophical debate.  One person changing their diet is not going to have any effect whatsoever.  Your vote doesn't count.  Sorry.

If you want change, it would be radical and communist.  Will our environment and society degrade to the point where current agricultural practices are banned?  I think it would literally take war.

I hope I'm wrong.  If there were a way to impose the cost of externalities on consumption of beef (and poultry, corn, wheat, and others) that would be a start.  It seems wholly fair to me to do so from a public health standpoint.  Cheap food causes obesity.  External costs aren't just environmental - they are medical.  Environmental costs are rarely actually incurred.  The environment is allowed to degrade without restoration.  Health care costs are costs actually incurred.  Thanks to Obamacare, they will be actually incurred by the public to an even greater extent than they already are. 

That makes what you eat my business.  That means that you should have to pay the actual costs of eating that big mac.  There is basically no way I see that happening.  Such is the world we live in.

But hey, if not eating meat makes you feel better in some way, go for it.  Just don't claim moral superiority.  Remember, your consumption habits doesn't matter, even on a small scale.  Not one bit.

Saw a cool video on YouTube recently, can't remember the title, some doctor giving a long lecture on the health benefits of vegetarianism. Jist of it was animal fats are solid at body temp and plant fats are not.

All animals?

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I'm sure there are exceptions, but I found the video if you would like to watch for yourself, its called "Food That Kills" here is the youtube link Its a 1 hour lecture from some Doctor explaining why animal foods are bad for your health.

I remembered I came across the video after watching something on a subject far more controversial than vegetarianism. The film "House of Numbers" is a full length documentary also available on youtube. Many, many, many people have told me I'm crazy, retarded, stupid etc. for espousing this point of view but no one has ever been able to tell me what is wrong per se with the argument. I have watched this video next to medical professionals and I am still waiting for someone to show me the holes in the logic. Stay judgement free and watch the first 15 minutes of the video, if you can tell me why these people are wrong I would love to hear it.

Here is the link.

This all seems to be part of the larger philosophical debate.  One person changing their diet is not going to have any effect whatsoever.  Your vote doesn't count.  Sorry.

If you want change, it would be radical and communist.  Will our environment and society degrade to the point where current agricultural practices are banned?  I think it would literally take war.

I hope I'm wrong.  If there were a way to impose the cost of externalities on consumption of beef (and poultry, corn, wheat, and others) that would be a start.  It seems wholly fair to me to do so from a public health standpoint.  Cheap food causes obesity.  External costs aren't just environmental - they are medical.  Environmental costs are rarely actually incurred.  The environment is allowed to degrade without restoration.  Health care costs are costs actually incurred.  Thanks to Obamacare, they will be actually incurred by the public to an even greater extent than they already are. 

That makes what you eat my business.  That means that you should have to pay the actual costs of eating that big mac.  There is basically no way I see that happening.  Such is the world we live in.

But hey, if not eating meat makes you feel better in some way, go for it.  Just don't claim moral superiority.  Remember, your consumption habits doesn't matter, even on a small scale.  Not one bit.

Hold on, your vote doesn't matter? One person can't make a difference? What a horrible viewpoint, should we all just terminate ourselves now because our individual lives have no meaning or value, hahaha. I don't claim moral superiority for my pescetarian ways and I don't think we should start outlawing meat, even foie gras (only in CA would they do something so silly). But that doesn't mean my life has no value and there is no point in striving to be a better a person and to lead by example. Yeah sometimes it seems the world is spiraling down to the bottom of a porta-potty but whats that old saying, evil triumphs when good men do nothing. It's true you cant fix every problem in the world but you can always try to make things a little better and why not start with yourself.

There is a performance reason that McDonalds has been in every Olympic Village since the Seoul Games in 1988. 

Meat tastes good.  Still, haters gonna hate.

It's true you cant fix every problem in the world but you can always try to make things a little better.

Yeah, as much as it feels hopeless sometimes, it takes courage to continue trying. Giving up is easy. We should ALL vote in this country. It might help. But we won't know unless we TRY.

on the meat topic.......

My consumption most certainly does matter, and it matters to the most important person I know. Me.

 I love meat but don't eat it more than once a week for my own reasons. If it made me feel great I would eat red meat every day....but doing that makes me feel lousy.  As I get up into the thick of middle age I find I feel best on a primarily veggie and fish diet. If I can reduce the demand for meat by a tiny increment as I change my diet for my own reasons, so much the better.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would suggest the diet of a lion is appropriate for humans.  Nor does eating what cows eat make sense, (I didn't watch the video, but the chart showing these as if they are the only two options make me chuckle).

I'm no nutritionalist but it seems to me we were designed to eat a little bit of everything.

As Anthony Bourdain so eloquently points out in one of his books, there are a lot of vegetarians in the world, and not by choice.  None of whom would turn down a ribeye! 

We are lucky to have the choice.  Big problems we have.

I try my best to only eat meat on the days that end in Y.  Diets are for quiters!

Except for the fact that what he posted about lifetime welfare recipients is complete nonsense.

The state cuts families off at 48 mo's, lifetime total...and children born while a family is on aid do not increase grant levels or extend time on aid.  (There are time limits across the country as well but regulations vary by state)

Me thinks his neighbors are fictional so he can prove an invalid point.

Art, dude, what's going on?   You're getting real close to tie-dye here.......my world's in upheaval!

And what about this: 

Yes....ethanol = garbage. 

How can you get loose without the juice?  What's going on???
 

I try my best to only eat meat on the days that end in Y.  Diets are for quiters!

For all the stubborn carnivores that look at this and laugh. Just remember, chances are that while your dying of heart disease, colon cancer, or diabetes, I'll be out kayaking, camping, and otherwise loving life. Don't think I wish those awful things for you guys, I don't, its just likely to happen. Kick the habit, do some good for the world, live long and prosper.

Of course your consumption matters to you.  It won't help the environment on any kind of scale and doesn't help the rest of us is all I was getting at.  I take issue with the moral superiority that flows from these things.

Your vote doesn't matter either.  That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do something.  You read way too much into a simple statement.  But there is no moral highground in the "if you didn't vote you can't complain" or in "I don't eat meat so the environmental degradation isn't my fault" arguments.

For the public health information, check out HBO's documentary Weight of the Nation.  It is on Netflix and Amazon streaming.  Well worth the watch.

Since we are on this topic I thought I would recommend a book I really enjoyed reading.

http://everythingnonfiction.com/review-of-the-omnivores-dilemma/

When you go to the supermarket and purchase a pound of ground beef or a chicken breast, you have no idea how industrialized the process has become. Feeding 250,000,000 Americans daily requires a lot of cows, chickens, pigs, and turkeys. This industrialization of our food has many negative ramifications both for the animals and the environmnent. From the overproduction of corn to the overuse of chemical fertilizers, we are heading down a path that will have long term negative cosequences unless we make changes now.

The pestcides and chemical fertilizers we use find their way into our diets not only from the foods themselves but from those same chemicals getting into the water tables. Obesety in America is partly due to the overuse of corn derived sweetners such as high-fructose corn syrup. That same overproduced corn is fed to animals that weren’t designed to eat it. The process of growing only corn has also eroded the soil to where it’s almost unusable for anything else.

The author also goes into telling a tale of when he went hog hunting. Living the life of hunter gatherer.

I really enjoyed this one.

I try my best to only eat meat on the days that end in Y.  Diets are for quiters!

For all the stubborn carnivores that look at this and laugh. Just remember, chances are that while your dying of heart disease, colon cancer, or diabetes, I'll be out kayaking, camping, and otherwise loving life. Don't think I wish those awful things for you guys, I don't, its just likely to happen. Kick the habit, do some good for the world, live long and prosper.

Seriously, do some good for the world......shortening our life span, thus reducing our lifetime global impact is not enough?   Jeez


 

Hehehe, its not enough at all.