Do you think it is right to be a vegatarian or is it bad for your health(skinny)?
i have lots of friend like this but i personally think they could get too skinny! i love meats!!
Answer:
If you can maintain a healthy weight for your body, I think it's fine to be a vegetarian. I used to be one myself, not because I thought it was wrong to eat meat, but because I felt sick thinking of where my burger came from. I also know some very overweight vegetarians. It's different for every person's body and food choice.
About the difference between dog teeth and human teeth.... humans have canines. We are true omnivores. One trait that mammals carry is varied dentiation which is an adaptation to diet. You think you can say we shouldn't eat meat because our dental structure is not comparable to a dog's? Well I have news for you, our teeth do not look like a horse's or deer's either!
Okay I'm ranting and raving far too much!
they aren't eatting enough protein and veges and wheat carbs and whole grains meat is great
shredded pork
meat loaf
fried chicken
hot wings
ribs
bbq chicken
sloppy joes
cheese steaks
meat ball subs
parm sandwiches
italian sausages
hamburgers or cheese
sheperds pie
ham
sausage patties
bacon
shrimp
salmon
tuna
chicken nuggets
chicken tenders
boneless pork spare ribs from chinese restaurant
I think you should always have some meat in your diet. We were made to eat meat!!
although i agree that we were made to eat meat (beef is the only food with all essential amino acids), you can be a healthy vegitarian. you just need to make sure to balance your diet well, and eat enough protein.
It is entirely possible to remain healthy eating a vegetarian (or even a vegan) diet, but it is a lot of hard work, and begs the question, "why?"...The human mouth has canines, teeth that have evolved to rip and shred the muscle-tissue of other animals.
Those who oppose meat-eating on health grounds are nuts.
Those who oppose it on ethical grounds (and there are many who actually have a sound argument) might do better to eat meat, but insist on meat that is 'treated fairly'. Killing a free-range chicken and eating it is still killing a chicken, but it beats 'factory-farmed chicken' hands-down in the ethics department.
We should all demand well-raised animal crops with our buying patterns and our wallets. Then it would happen.
We should also eat less beef, and more horse: Unlike a cow, a horse can live a rich full life as a friend, a pet, or a worker, and then be slaughtered at an advanced age and still taste good at table.
I have been veggie for 7 years when I first turned I actually gained weight
I wonder if you truly have your friends' welfare at heart or if you're just trying to get responses that make you feel better about killing animals so that you can eat "tasty meat".
It's dead flesh and it was put on your plate through extreme suffering. I wouldn't mind so much if you killed it yourself, but letting others do it for you is sick.
Why do you care if your friends are skinny? You don't care that the rest of your friends have 5 pounds of rotting flesh in their colons, are fat, and will probably die of mad cow disease.
If you truly care about your friends you wouldn't foster hatred and misunderstanding of them and the struggle they go through for health and ethics. It's hard enough to be vegetarian in a society that eats solely for pleasure instead of nutrition.
Sorry for the rant....I am just really tired of all the facetious posts.
All of you silly people saying we were "made to eat meat" feel your teeth.
Then go feel the teeth of your cat or your dog.
Where are your sharp pointy canine teeth for tearing flesh?
You don't have them.
Because you're an herbivore.
An herbivore who has learned to eat meat.
You have wide flat teeth for eating grains and greens. Like a horse. Like a goat. Like a cow.
You're an herbivore.
Our colon is the colon of an herbivore. NOT an omnivore or a carnivore. That's why obesity and colon cancer are so prevalent in our culture. You see all those people with distended tummies because we aren't designed to digest meat.
Go ahead. Have your colon cancer, your diabetes and your osteoperosis.
Enjoy!
I'll be over here having my tofu burger and a huge bowl of greens. And I'll outlive you by at least two decades. I'll be healthier. I'll need less medication. Probably NO medication. AND I'll still be the same weight I was in high school.
You don't have to be skinny if you're a vegan Go eat lots of ice cream and chocolates.
bad? its great!! eating meat is bad! seriously..its already decomposed whe you eat it anyway, and you do not need meat to survive! you can find the same proteins and whatever in millions of other things that dont include the slaughter of an innocent animal!
If a vegan diet is very carefully planned, and that requires either fortified foods or supplements, it can be AS healthy as a good meat eating diet. I think there are a couple of benefits, but they come from eating a wide range of fruit and veg and being health conscious as vegans have to be, not omitting meat, and thus those benefits can be go without actually going veggie. Needless to say a uncarefully planned vegetarian, or especially vegan, diet can lack many essential nutrients and be very bad for your health.
There are many benefits to a diet containing meat. Many vegetarians claim that meat is unhealthy. This is a blatant fallacy.
It is well established that eating meat improves the quality of nutrition, strengthens the immune system, promotes normal growth and development, is beneficial for day-to-day health, energy and well-being, and helps ensure optimal learning and academic performance.
A long term study found that children who eat more meat are less likely to have deficiencies than those who eat little or no meat. Kids who don’t eat meat — and especially if they restrict other foods, as many girls are doing — are more likely to feel tired, apathetic, unable to concentrate, are sick more often, more frequently depressed, and are the most likely to be malnourished and have stunted growth. Meat and other animal-source foods are the building blocks of healthy growth that have made America’s and Europe's youngsters among the tallest, strongest and healthiest in the world.
Meat is an important source of quality nutrients, heme iron, protein, zinc and B-complex vitamins. It provides high-quality protein important for kids’ healthy growth and development.
The iron in meat (heme iron) is of high quality and well absorbed by the body, unlike nonheme iron from plants which is not well absorbed. More than 90 percent of iron consumed may be wasted when taken without some heme iron from animal sources. Substances found to inhibit nonheme iron absorption include phytates in cereals, nuts and legumes, and polyphenolics in vegetables. Symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, headache, irritability and decreased work performance. For young children, it can lead to impairment in general intelligence, language, motor performance and school readiness. Girls especially need iron after puberty due to blood losses, or if pregnant. Yet studies show 75 percent of teenage girls get less iron than recommended.
Meat, poultry and eggs are also good sources of absorbable zinc, a trace mineral vital for strengthening the immune system and normal growth. Deficiencies link to decreased attention, poorer problem solving and short-term memory, weakened immune system, and the inability to fight infection. While nuts and legumes contain zinc, plant fibre contains phytates that bind it into a nonabsorbable compound.
Found almost exclusively in animal products, Vitamin B12 is necessary for forming new cells. A deficiency can cause anaemia and permanent nerve damage and paralysis. The Vitimin B12 in plants isn't even bioavailable, meaning our body can't use it.
Why not buy food supplements to replace missing vitamins and minerals? Some people believe they can fill those gaps with pills, but they may be fooling themselves. Research consistently shows that real foods in a balanced diet are far superior to trying to make up deficiencies with supplements.
Some people claim that meat is unhealthy because it contains saturated fat. So does margarine and olive oil, and they're vegan suitable (in fact the hydrogenated fats in Marge can be very bad, but that's another story). Besides, any excess calories in your diet, any excess sugar, starch or carbohydrates are stored in your body for later use. This is done by turning them into saturated fats.
Cholesterol too. Your body on average creates four to five times more cholesterol than the average person consumes, and compensates by creating more when less is consumed. Cholesterol isn't evil, it is essential; it makes up the waterproof linings of all our cells and without it we would die. Too much can be bad, but as with saturated fats there are more healthy ways of disposing of it, like regular exercise. Anyway, it isn't so much how much cholesterol you eat, but how well yur body handles it. A person who eats loads of dietary cholesterol and leads an unhealthy lifestyle can still have low cholesterol, and vice versa. Most people's bodies are able to take a large amount of cholesterol without getting atherosclerosis. For this reason that eating meat gives you heart disease is very misleading, and for the most part untrue. Of course, if you do have a problem eating loads isn't a good idea, but for most people there is nothing at all to worry about.
The fact is Humans are omnivores, with the ability to eat nearly everything. By preference, prehistoric people ate a high-protein, high-mineral diet based on meat and animal sources, whenever available. Their foods came mainly from three of the five food groups: meat, vegetables and fruits. As a result, big game mammoth hunters were tall and strong with massive bones. They grew six inches taller than their farming descendants in Europe, who ate mostly plant foods, and only in recent times regained most of this height upon again eating more meat, eggs and dairy foods. We are adapted to eat meat, and it is just as natural as eating plants.
Some also claim that the digestion of meat releases harmful byproducts into our system. This is true, however such are our adaptations to eating meat that our bodies are quite able to dispose of said products without any adverse effects.
So, in summary: it isn't healthier to avoid meat. You can be healthy without meat, but likely not as healthy as if you did, assuming you kept things like the wide range of fruit and veg that a veggie diet usually entails. Too much meat can be bad, but normal amounts are no problem at all. Any health benefits that come from a veggie diet come from a wide range of fruit and veg, and being health conscious, as veggies often are; that doesn't require you to not eat meat.
Gayle R, please stop saying things, you aren't making yourself look very good saying this rubbish. You said:
" You don't care that the rest of your friends have 5 pounds of rotting flesh in their colons, are fat, and will probably die of mad cow disease."
I doubt the rest of her friends are fat; flesh doesn't rot when it is still attached to a person and still alive; and only 157 people have EVER caught mad cow disease, so to say they'll probably die of it is one of the most inaccurate statements you could possibly make.
Max Marie, humans are not herbivores. We are omnivores and I know of no sensible, informed person who thinks otherwise. She said:
"You have wide flat teeth for eating grains and greens. Like a horse. Like a goat. Like a cow."
You have successfully proven that humans have been designed to eat plants. Give yourself a pat on the back and go and look up omnivore in a dictionary.
That we do not have claws, talons, or huge incisors, which are weapons used to hunt prey, proves nothing. When early hominids ate meat they scavenged it, as vultures do, using their nimble fingers to get the sinews and meat other animals couldn't. It was only after that that they began to hunt the meat themselves, and only much later they began to cook it. It is interesting that even now if someone was brought up eating raw meat he would have no problem with it.
The last few million years of human evolution have revolved completely around tools. We used advanced stone tools long before we began to hunt our own meat, and as such there was no need for evolution to bestow us with large claws or teeth to kill prey.
But, still, there is plenty of evidence in our anatomy that shows we were made to eat meat. For a start our body has numerous adaptations which allow us to digest meat very effectively and without any adverse effects. In fact our digestive system is more like a dogs than a sheep.
Secondly there are nutrients that cannot be naturally got without animal products, and vegans have to have supplements or fortified foods with, for instance, vitamin B12 to stop themselves getting anaemia and dying. If we were naturally herbivores we would be able to, naturally, get all the nutrients we need without meat, which we can't.
Our colon isn't that of a herbivore, it is significantly shorter than any known herbivore's in comparison to body size. If is longer than any known carnivore, but similar in size to most omnivores, I don't know where you get your information from.
We are so blatantly designed to eat meat, that we produce meat splitting acids and enzymes proves this. No herbivore has such things as they don't need them, we do.
"I'll be over here having my tofu burger and a huge bowl of greens. And I'll outlive you by at least two decades. I'll be healthier. I'll need less medication. Probably NO medication. AND I'll still be the same weight I was in high school."
Forgive me for assuming your vegan. If you are then you'll need either fortified foods or vitamin tablets every day for the rest of your life. The only medication I've taken for a good few years is paracetamol incase of a headache or other pain, I've never heard any claim that veganism decreases headache rates.
Nonetheless, everyone will need some medication at some point in their life, if you think otherwise you're a fool.
There is some evidence that vegans live longer or are at less risk from cancer and heart disease or are generally healthier and less diseased; however those studies show only reasonably small difference (in the case of heart disease 2 or 3%) and none of those studies have yet managed to identify meat as the only variable. Veggies are less likely to smoke, drink or eat junk food, and eat a wider range of fruit and veg, making the test results inaccurate and unreliable. In fact, the best studies which have best tried to take those variables into account have shown either that meat eaters are at no more risk, or at less risk of various diseases, and shown no increase in life expectancy for veggies.
Still be the same weight you were in high school? Methinks you're deluding yourself, but hey, if you think it's impossible for a vegan to gain weight, who am I to disagree?
Ah, I wish being vegetarian did make me skinny!! But even if I'm definitely not skinny, I have good health and a clear conscience knowing that no animals were slaughtered to put a piece of animal corpse on my plate. In general, vegetarians are much, much healthier and live longer than people who eat meat. I have a vegan daughter and son-in-law who glow with good health and have amazing energy and are almost never sick. They had the advantage of becoming vegetarian at a much younger age than I did. The sooner you stop eating dead animals the better, but there are benefits at any age.
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