the great vegetarian debate

[Viscid]

but.. but... but.. it tastes good

[m0rl0ck]

but.. but... but.. it tastes good

Yeah but, just speaking for myself, when you cut out meat and dairy other foods start tasting better. I think a lot of high fat food dulls the taste somehow. If you want to try it, there is no reason to deprive yourself, i had a great red and green lentil curry for dinner last night (pataks curry and vindaloo pastes make it really easy) , really spicy and tasty. For breakfast today i had some garlic hummus and for dessert a delicious ripe kiwi and a bannana. Shopping and cooking might take a little more planning, just at first tho.

[daverupa]

Now that you mention the buddhist angle, i wonder what kind of karma being in possession of the above information and continuing to eat meat anyway might create.

Kamma isn't generated that way. Kamma is intention, so "continuing to eat meat anyway" would need to be understood in terms of the particular intention, and guessing at it simply won't do. It's enough to recommend paying attention to these issues, and recommending mindfulness when making food choices.

Judgmental attitudes have vipaka as well...

[David N. Snyder]

Now that you mention the buddhist angle, i wonder what kind of karma being in possession of the above information and continuing to eat meat anyway might create.

Kamma isn't generated that way. Kamma is intention, so "continuing to eat meat anyway" would need to be understood in terms of the particular intention, and guessing at it simply won't do. It's enough to recommend paying attention to these issues, and recommending mindfulness when making food choices.

Judgmental attitudes have vipaka as well...

So you are saying that performing an action that you know will harm others has no negative karmic consequences? If you knowingly choose to follow a meat based diet, knowing that it will take food from the mouths of other hungry humans, isnt that intention?

Im not judging meat eaters per se, merely drawing a conclusion from the facts, that eating meat takes food out of the mouths of other hungry humans. Its important to seperate the act from the actor.

[David2]

Animals are sentient beings, too.

[Birgit]

Poor sheep! Poor animal! When we eat some meat or drink some milk, we don´t even think of their suffering! And our governments subsidize the intensive mass animal farming, althoug meat consumption is damaging the climate and causing hunger in the world. With corn you can feed ten times as many people as you can feed, if you give the same amount of corn animals,that people eat, as food.

[manas]

I have not clicked on the youtube, as I get too upset about such things. I will just say yes, it's very sad how we treat our fellow animals.

[chownah]

Birgit,
It is too bad that the people who raise animals often treat them badly. I help my wife raise cows and we treat them very well. If more people who had compassion for animals did the raising of animals then the animals in the world would over all be better treated....unfortunately for animals many of the people who have compassion for animals become vegetarians and then do not want to raise animals....sad but true.....
chownah

manasikara,
My wife and I take care of two dogs who live with us. I am pretty sure that they do not think of us as "ogres"......in fact quite the opposite.....I think that they think of my wife as that wonderful person who gives them food a couple of times a day EVERY DAY!!!!.....and they seem to like me too since they come to me for recognition and attention....but I don't know why they come to me since I don't feed them.....I guess that Ajahn Mun never met the dogs who live with us...but I must be wrong about this because who am I to disagree with Ajahn Mun?.....
chownah

[manas]

manasikara,
My wife and I take care of two dogs who live with us. I am pretty sure that they do not think of us as "ogres"......in fact quite the opposite.....I think that they think of my wife as that wonderful person who gives them food a couple of times a day EVERY DAY!!!!.....and they seem to like me too since they come to me for recognition and attention....but I don't know why they come to me since I don't feed them.....I guess that Ajahn Mun never met the dogs who live with us...but I must be wrong about this because who am I to disagree with Ajahn Mun?.....
chownah

I should have clarified that, Ajahn Mun was referring to the wild animals he met (and presumably heard 'talking' via his clairaudience) who were living in the forest and whose experience with most humans was bad (eg, hunters etc), hence their negative evaluation of humans. Obviously such a negative evaluation would not be held by dometicated pets being treated well by their owners. Anyway, I got this little snippet from his bio, but I'm beginning to think that quoting little bits out of books is hazardous, since if taken out of context, they can be misunderstood.

[Birgit]

Birgit,
It is too bad that the people who raise animals often treat them badly. I help my wife raise cows and we treat them very well. If more people who had compassion for animals did the raising of animals then the animals in the world would over all be better treated....unfortunately for animals many of the people who have compassion for animals become vegetarians and then do not want to raise animals....sad but true.....
chownah

manasikara,
My wife and I take care of two dogs who live with us. I am pretty sure that they do not think of us as "ogres"......in fact quite the opposite.....I think that they think of my wife as that wonderful person who gives them food a couple of times a day EVERY DAY!!!!.....and they seem to like me too since they come to me for recognition and attention....but I don't know why they come to me since I don't feed them.....I guess that Ajahn Mun never met the dogs who live with us...but I must be wrong about this because who am I to disagree with Ajahn Mun?.....
chownah

chownah
I think its good to raise animals, while treating them well, because they give you their love. But you may not kill these innocent creatures just for eating them and you may not separate a calf from his mother cow that you can drink her milk, while mother and child are desperately missing each other.
In the intensive mass animal farming and in the slaughterhouses the poor creatures are terribly tortured.
I cannot eat tortured animals and I also cannot eat animals who are raised with compassion. And I cannot drink milk of a cow who misses her calf after having had a severe birth.
So there is no alternative to becoming a vegan for me. The time I ate animals and drank milk had been much too long. I only can apologize for having not thought about. They are really our fellows.
Its a duty for us to prevent the governments from paying subsidies to the intensive mass animal farming.
I have a dog and like cows. Be kind to all of them
Birgit

[Birgit]

chownah
I thought of you and your wife raising your cows on a nice, little farm, on which they can graze on a wide greenland. I think you love your animals and do all the best for them as long as they live. And then, when the time comes, you have to give them to the butchery, you are very sad. But you have to do so, because its your job. You have to live from that job!
This job exists, because people still want to eat meat and to drink milk, although they needn´t.
You do a good job for the animals, because you give them the possibility to have a good life, before they have to die much to early. You prevent them from being tortured in the industrial mass animal farming, in which no human being is worrying about their fate and in which some human beings take delight in torturing them very cruelly.
I urgently wish that some day people don´t want to eat meat and to drink milk anymore. They will be more healthy then and the living animals will die of old age. There will not live many animals like cows, pigs or geese then, but there will be much less animal suffering.
Till then, in an unfortunately far future, do your good job and give them a happy (very short) life. They will be very grateful to you for your love.
Birgit

[Ron-The-Elder]

1) Not all cardiac disease is due to plaque. A proportion is caused by non-preventable factors. Many of them hereditary.
2) Cardiac arrest is not a bad way to go compared to some other possibilities.
3) Whatever the diet, mortality rates are currently running at 100%.

The greatest danger, the one that usually results in a blockage, is cholesterol being ingested by phagocytes in the lumen of veins and arteries. This results in a bulge "into" the interior of the artery or vein. When inflammation occurs, the bulge is subject to both obstruction as "sticky" factors build on the bulge, and as the resultant cap is eaten away by other phagocytes, and bacteria, which cause an unpredictable rupture, like a pustule releasing its contents when pinched by you on your face. This release blocks the artery, and depending on where it is causes damage down-stream. If the rupture is upstream from the heart, an infarct might result. If upstream from the brain, a stroke might result. Ether way a critical part of the body is going to die due to a lack of blood supply.

The fact that we are all going to die, re. your 100% guarantee of death, is not the question. Longevity and health is the question. Aside from getting hit by a bus, vegans lifestyle results in both a longer and healthier life by in large at least till age eighty:

Unexpected Findings

Vegetarians suffer fewer heart attacks than meat eaters.24-37 Interestingly, this benefit dissipates as vegetarians age. For instance, one study showed that vegetarians under the age of 65 were 45% less like to suffer a heart attack than were meat eaters. Once vegetarians reached the age of 80, however, their heart attack risk was only 8% lower than that of meat eaters.38

Longevity studies of vegetarians produce conflicting data. Some studies do not show that vegetarians live significantly longer.25,29 Two studies of people who consumed very little meat showed an average life-span increase of 3.6 years.39 A huge study of Seventh Day Adventists who ate little or no meat showed longevity increases of 7.28 years in men and 4.42 years in women.40 These data are confounded by the fact that Seventh Day Adventists follow healthy lifestyles free of tobacco and alcohol.

Studies suggest that the longevity benefits conferred by a vegetarian diet dissipate as humans enter their ninth decade.39 This implies that while vegetarian diets reduce disease risk, restricting one’s diet to only plant foods does not completely protect against the effects of aging.

resource: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2006/jan2006_awsi_01.htm

[chownah]

Aside from getting hit by a bus, vegans lifestyle results in both a longer and healthier life by in large at least till age eighty:

Unexpected Findings

Vegetarians suffer fewer heart attacks than meat eaters.24-37 Interestingly, this benefit dissipates as vegetarians age. For instance, one study showed that vegetarians under the age of 65 were 45% less like to suffer a heart attack than were meat eaters. Once vegetarians reached the age of 80, however, their heart attack risk was only 8% lower than that of meat eaters.38

Longevity studies of vegetarians produce conflicting data. Some studies do not show that vegetarians live significantly longer.25,29 Two studies of people who consumed very little meat showed an average life-span increase of 3.6 years.39 A huge study of Seventh Day Adventists who ate little or no meat showed longevity increases of 7.28 years in men and 4.42 years in women.40 These data are confounded by the fact that Seventh Day Adventists follow healthy lifestyles free of tobacco and alcohol.

Studies suggest that the longevity benefits conferred by a vegetarian diet dissipate as humans enter their ninth decade.39 This implies that while vegetarian diets reduce disease risk, restricting one’s diet to only plant foods does not completely protect against the effects of aging.

resource: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2006/jan2006_awsi_01.htm

It seems that you make a claim about the results of a VEGAN diet and then give information about the benefits of a VEGETARIAN diet. I know that a vegan diet is also a vegetarian diet but that does not mean that a study of a vegetarian diet can be applied to a vegan diet. To illustrate this let me point out that an all sugar diet would be a vegetarian diet but it is doubtful that it shares the benefits of the vegetarian diet which points to health benefits. Can you find a study specifically of a vegan diet showing similiar benefits?
chownah

[Ron-The-Elder]

Hi, Chownah.

My experience with a vegan/vegetarian diet comes from Dr. Dean Ornish's program for atherosclerosis reversal diet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Ornish

http://www.nutrition-health-articles.or ... erosis.php

label it what you want. It has been since 1998 that I went from having both main cardiac arteries blocked > 95% to surviving a disease that has a life expectancy of three years.

Ornish pushes vegan, but does allow use of fish periodically, which makes him a vegetarian.

Whatever he is, I recommend his change in lifestyle approach to those who wish to extend their lives and to live out the rest of their years in good health.

[chownah]

Ron-The-Elder,
I looked at the link for Dean Ornish and the word vegan is never used in the article. I do see that Ornish was way down on the list of co-authors for an article or book about the adequacy of a vegan diet but vegan is not mentioned in the article.
The article about reversing atherosclerosis does not contain the word "vegan" at all.
It doesn't seem like these articles do much to support the notion of long term health benefits for a vegan diet.
Also please note that usually the term "vegetarian" does not include the eating of fish....and that I would say that it is rare that you would find a person who calls themself a vegetarian and who also eats fish.
chownah

[Fede]

I've met plenty of people who tell me "I'm vegetarian but I eat fish". Plenty. As if, because the creature is not a land mammal, has no legs and no discernible identifiable qualities, it exempts it from any carnal category....

I even had a girl tell me she is a strict vegetarian - but she eats chicken....
What the heck was all that about?

I actually stopped eating meat at the beginning of Lent, this year, on Medical grounds, but have rapidly adopted more of a personally-moral stance, during the intervening time....

I was watching a cookery programme - on Christmas day, of all times -fronted by a famous 'celeb-chef' called Gordon Ramsay. during this programme, he showed features by other chefs, preparing for their own celebrations.
one particular chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, was preparing a traditional medieval banquet, complete with goose stuffed with other progressively smaller birds. He's a back-to-basics chef - so he actively selected all his ingredients from livestock. As if that wasn't a bad enough thing to contemplate - he and a bunch of pals went squid-fishing.
i had recently seen a programme on squid and octopus, and what extraordinarily intelligent creatures they are; how they communicate, adapt and learn new information quickly, how colour-changes and textures of their skins are used for communication, mating, camouflage.... and here was this bunch of oiks hauling some truly spectacular and beautiful specimens out of the water, to eat them.

I wept, I actually wept.

I'm vegetarian.
And as a friend of mine clarifies, I don't eat anything that has a mother.

[Spiny O'Norman]

I've met plenty of people who tell me "I'm vegetarian but I eat fish". Plenty. As if, because the creature is not a land mammal, has no legs and no discernible identifiable qualities, it exempts it from any carnal category....

I've come across this a lot, and as you say it may just be that fish are more distant biologically than cows and sheep. But I guess it's a step in the right direction?

Spiny the non-edible hedgehog

[Ron-The-Elder]

Ron-The-Elder,
I looked at the link for Dean Ornish and the word vegan is never used in the article. I do see that Ornish was way down on the list of co-authors for an article or book about the adequacy of a vegan diet but vegan is not mentioned in the article.
The article about reversing atherosclerosis does not contain the word "vegan" at all.
It doesn't seem like these articles do much to support the notion of long term health benefits for a vegan diet.
Also please note that usually the term "vegetarian" does not include the eating of fish....and that I would say that it is rare that you would find a person who calls themself a vegetarian and who also eats fish.
chownah

Good friend Chownah, Yes. Eating fish is not vegan, nor is it vegetarian. To be vegan you must eat only vegetables, and abstain from all animal flesh and products. This includes eggs, cheese, and milk. I am not certain about things like bird's nests, because they include bird spit. Dung beetles eat digested animal dung, and I am not sure if eating dung is vegan either if the animal itself is a vegan. What I meant to say was that Ornish allows for eating fish in his otherwise vegan diet for atherosclerosis reversal, because fish oils and protein has been found to be beneficial for reversal of heart disease. Sorry for the confusion.

If your goal is to meet the requirements of The Five Precepts, then you can eat nothing, because you would be causing harm to a living being. Plants are living beings. No doubt. You would also be violating the precept of taking what was not freely given. So, vegans are not free of demerit while eating any more than an omnivore, or a carnivore. So, such piety is unwarranted.

Life must consume life in order to live.

I have heard the argument that eating fruit exclusively causes no harm, and is eating what the plant offers for consumption as a part of its strategy to reproduce, so long as you don't destroy the seed in the process of eating it. This means that you cannot eat nuts, because you would be interfering with the plants reproductive processes. Fruitatarian seems to be the best choice to me, so long as you can find the necessary nutrients to provide yourself with the essential amino acids and B-vitamins if complying with the precepts is your goal. Insects like bees and butterflies seem to have worked out a deal with plants to exchange nectar for transporting plant pollen. Perhaps in your next rebirth you can return as a bee or butterfly if you are truly concerned.

Dearest Cooran: As for not eating anything that has a mother, may I remind you that we all live on Mother Earth, which supports all life.

[cooran]

Dearest Cooran: As for not eating anything that has a mother, may I remind you that we all live on Mother Earth, which supports all life.

Hello Ron,

Could you link me to where I said that please? I'd like to read the context.

with metta
Chris

[Ron-The-Elder]

Dearest Cooran: As for not eating anything that has a mother, may I remind you that we all live on Mother Earth, which supports all life.

Hello Ron,

Could you link me to where I said that please? I'd like to read the context.

with metta
Chris

Yoiks!

Sorry about that. My apologies.

The following quote came from "fede":

I wept, I actually wept.

I'm vegetarian.
And as a friend of mine clarifies, I don't eat anything that has a mother.