The Republic of Heaven

Lyra&Pan wrote:I tried vegeterianism for two years. Well, it was ok, but I couldn't take it anymore !!!

What didn't work for you? It's pretty hard when you don't know what to eat (it seems like just vegetables!).

bee wrote:In the U.S. (which is surprisingly one of the most efficient producers of meat), it takes 6.9kg of corn & soy and 30,000 kilocalories of fossil fuel to produce 1kg of pork on the table. A lot of work for a little bit of flesh.

To an extent, though, that's a consequence of a food chain. What resources were put into each kilo of corn and soy? And what resources comprise those resources?

Eating meat is not biomass efficient, no. It's a luxury.

I would LIKE to be a strict vegetarian that eats fresh meat (no matter what it is) just so that I can cut all the other crap outta my diet. Meat and vegatables would definitely make me a healthier person than cake and ice cream

Personally, when I can afford it I would prefer to purchase a recurve bow and hunt my meat myself. Tastes better and actually getting it yourself always makes you appreciate it more. Right now I have to settle for the gun I was given. (It makes it too easy though )

Slightly confused as to how you could be a strict vegetarian that eats meat... But eating healthy is definitely a good choice. My mother tells me this all the time when I decide ice cream or cookies constitute a good dinner. But I have my own standards (for example: potato chips come from potatoes so that's a vegetable, onion dip constitutes another vegetable, and orange soda counts as a fruit... Two vegetables and a fruit all in one snack. I think it's pretty good).

And yes, Michael, it is just the result of trophic levels on the food chain. A goal (for some vegetarians) is to be at the lowest possible energy level on the food chain though which gives the least impact on the environment.

Another statistic then (I just had to give a speech on vegetarianism--argh for public speaking--so I'm full of happy tidbits like this): Vegetarians are 40% less likely to develop any kind of cancer than meat eaters. Fun, yes?

bee wrote:What didn't work for you?

I guess because my mother said that I need to eat meat and because I love meat.But I still feel pity for those poor animals

bee wrote:Slightly confused as to how you could be a strict vegetarian that eats meat

Well I meant that I eat only vegetables with the exception of being able to eat i guess what you'd call organic meat as well. I love meat, but if I ate only fruit and vegetables I'd be cutting out all the crap most Americans eat daily...at least around here.

bee wrote:...orange soda counts as a fruit...

I had no idea that you could find orange soda that was actually made from oranges.

1)
I'm a vegetarian. I do not eat any type of meat or fish. I do eat products with egg in them, but I don't eat eggs alone simply because I think they taste horrible. I also don't drink milk because I do not like the taste, but I eat products which contain milk.

I've never have liked meats other than chicken and turkey, so it wasn't extremely hard for me to stop eating meat. I decided I was going to stop one day, and I didn't have any problems were I wanted to eat meat after making that decision.

2)
This is possibly going to come off as somewhat odd, but I don't have any extreme motivation. I've never felt the need to force it upon anyone. As I've seen here with people mentioning how much they like meat, I don't have a problem with that. A couple of times I've gotten people who feel the need to say something similar to "Steak, Steak, Steak" to me and I generally just ignore the people and tell them I don't care what they eat.

While I don't enjoy cooking meat or touching it, I have learned to tolerate handling it because I need to do so daily (my dog eats a raw food diet).

I can't exactly pin down the date when I decided I wasn't going to eat meat anymore, I can say that it was roughly three to four years ago.

I also don't like McDonalds and I can use it as a reason not to go to McDonalds with people.

Another reason I have is because it annoys some people, and I enjoy annoying the easily annoyed.

My mother is also a vegetarian, however she chose to become a vegetarian approximately one year after I did. While I can't speak for my mother the decisions we made were in no way influenced by the other person choosing to do so.


On another note I want to comment about soda. I recently decided I am no longer going to drink any kind of soda (diet or regular), so far I have been successful for three weeks (I didn't drink much soda to begin with).

Speaking about orange soda drinks one brand of soda (Orangina) does contain some orange juice.

personally i would find chicken and turkey among the easier meats to give up, if i were to make some kind of choice along those lines. life without red meat in my diet would be very short, however, since i need all the iron i can get (preferably from food rather than supplements, though i do take those as well).

giving up soda is one of those decisions it's actually hard to go back on. after a few months of refusing all kinds of pop, even half a glass upsets my stomach - this is more true of dark varieties such as coke or pepsi than it is of things like gingerale or sprite, for some reason, but i still prefer alternative beverages like juice or tea.

easy thing about portion size: use a smaller plate. fill it up and go back for seconds if you're still hungry. it's easier than going ALL the way to the dog's dish to scrape what your eyes *cough* i mean stomach didn't have room for