anybody here a vegan?

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Originally Posted by Platinum Pete

why is shrimp bad? I understand that most any farmed seafood is bad news, but wild? Messing with the food chain? Enlighten me, I eat lots o' scrimps.

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Shrimp fishing is incredibly inefficient, tons of other stuff gets caught, killed and thrown overboard. The term for it is "bycatch".

Bycatch is a problem in many fisheries (think tuna and dolphins, for example) but shrimping is the most inefficient fishery in the world when measured by weight of the target species (in this case, shrimp, duh) as a percent of total catch.

In recent years some measures have been put in place to try and cut down on this ("turtle excluders" being the most well-known such measure) but it's hard to do because them shrimps is small and the nets need to be pretty tight to keep 'em in.

As to the rest of it I believe that a balanced diet that steers away from cruelty, steroids and antibiotics is the way to go, but that's me.

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Originally Posted by iceman

Shrimp fishing is incredibly inefficient, tons of other stuff gets caught, killed and thrown overboard. The term for it is "bycatch".

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Shit, if it wasn't for bycatch I wouldn't have haddock, cod, flounder, etc in my freezer for free. :D

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Originally Posted by Free Range Lobster

Shit, if it wasn't for bycatch I wouldn't have haddock, cod, flounder, etc in my freezer for free. :D

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I think it's only bycatch if you throw it overboard. What you have is called "free fish".

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Originally Posted by iceman

I think it's only bycatch if you throw it overboard. What you have is called "free fish".

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Right. My bad, carry on.

Bycatch, bitches

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generalizations are awesome.
I bet you're an emo hipster who wears ugly fucking clothes and whines about how hard your life is and how meat is murder huh?

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Actually I am 49 year old father of 2 teenagers who works in a cube as an engineer (for 2 more weeks until I go independent). No one who knows me would think I am an "emo hipster" (bike-riding telemarking eco-nerd might fit tho). My life is great and I really have nothing to complain about. I don't think "meat is murder" and I don't really care if other people eat it or not.

What you call "generalizations" I call the documented results of scientific studies on human nutrition. Google "plant diet heart disease reduction" and you get 1,070,000 hits. I did not collect this data, I am just reporting it. Heart disease and cancer are the two biggest killers in the US, and increasing plant consumption and reducing meat consumption are very well documented methods for reducing the incidence of both.
How far a person goes along that path is clearly personal, but I know several "junk-food-junkies" that died young of heart disease, plus plenty of diabetics and obese, unhealthy people.
My wife has many French relatives, so I have spent a good bit of time in France. Sure the French eat charcutrie, pate, and all that, but meat is much less emphasized in the traditional French diet than the US. Meat is only one of several courses, never the big slab like in the US. Interestingly, the younger generation in France is starting to eat fast food (including MacDonald's) and not suprizingly is starting to show the same obesity and cardiovascular problems as the US.

Eat whatever makes you happy, but the idea that vegetarians must have a lower quality of life and not share the social pleasures of food is parochial and stupid in the extreme.
Do you think all 400 million vegetarians in India have a low quality of life and do not enjoy sharing food together?

I'm with AG here. Eating a balanced diet that excludes industrial "food" as much as possible is the easiest and best single step you can take towards eating healthy. Beyond that it's semantics and personal needs (e.g. the wheat allergy, personally I love bread and triscuits and consume both nearly daily with no ill effects), moral and environmental issues notwithstanding.

I would also like to point out that we evolved from chimps. Chimps hunt, kill and eat several species of monkeys. Doesn't happen every day but pretty regularly.

edit: IMO, agriculture in this country needs a complete overhaul. The current industrial system is completely unsustainable and increasingly vulnerable to a spectacular and dangerous collapse. One of the best things this country could do would be to convert to 100% organic over the next 10-20 years (real organic, not the watered down standards that the big producers will want, and already have to some extent).

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Originally Posted by tommyvee

Do you think all 400 million vegetarians in India have a low quality of life?

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Sorta depends on definitions I guess.

Do you think all 700 million non-vegetarian Indians have a low quality of life?

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Originally Posted by tommyvee

Google "plant diet heart disease reduction" and you get 1,070,000 hits.

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When i enter "boobs" into google i get 24,000,000 hits.
I win!

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Originally Posted by Free Range Lobster

When i enter "boobs" into google i get 24,000,000 hits.
I win!

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Sorry, you lose.

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Results 1 - 10 of about 32,800,000 for tits

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Originally Posted by Tippster

Sorry, you lose.

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Asshole. :the_finge

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Originally Posted by Free Range Lobster

When i enter "boobs" into google i get 24,000,000 hits.
I win!

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Not so fast there, dude.

I got almost 33 million with "tits".

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

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Originally Posted by iceman

Not so fast there, dude.

I got almost 33 million with "tits".

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Oh right, rub it the fuck in why don't you?
I'm gonna leave bass heads everywhere on stakes at the special place this spring. (not vegan)

LOL! Boy, it doesn't take long till we get back to basics, here...

One serious point, though: If God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat!

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Originally Posted by Tippster

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

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Rats.

Damn board timed out on me, I coulda been a contendah.

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Originally Posted by BigDaddy

LOL! Boy, it doesn't take long till we get back to basics, here...

One serious point, though: If God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat!

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no no, he wouldn't have made them DELICIOUS! :D

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Originally Posted by tommyvee

Do you think all 400 million vegetarians in India have a low quality of life and do not enjoy sharing food together?

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Yes, I would say that 400million vegetarians in India have a significantly lower quality of life than I do...

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Originally Posted by Free Range Lobster

no no, he wouldn't have made them DELICIOUS! :D

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Very true. My wife's a vegetarian and when we went to pick our 6 yr old daughter from her school picnic, she was on hamburger number two. My wife just gazed on in horror as my daughter looked up at her and stated, "Mom, I'm sooooo not a vegetarian! I love hamburgers!"

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Originally Posted by DisArray

Yes, I would say that 400million vegetarians in India have a significantly lower quality of life than I do...

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Because they don't have any McDonalds yet.

http://www.poorbuthappy.com/india/fi...g_3168-135.jpg

Hell, even these people agree that moderate consumption of meat is healthy, and we're talking about people who tell you to start your sautes with stock or water instead of oil.

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Originally Posted by tommyvee

Do you think all 400 million vegetarians in India have a low quality of life and do not enjoy sharing food together?

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Just an interesting fact. B-12 you can only get from meat. But when they looked at the diet of third world people esp vegies they shouldn't be getting enough B-12 but they didn't have a deficientcy. Where's the error? Well they were getting b-12 from all the bugs they injest . So if vegan remember to eat some soil every day.

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Originally Posted by iceman

Not so fast there, dude.

I got almost 33 million with "tits".

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Pfft, rookie, 452 000 000 for "sex"

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Do you think all 700 million non-vegetarian Indians have a low quality of life?

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Of course not. As far as Hindu/vegetarian countries go, I have spent more time in Nepal. Nepali people always amazed me with the positive attitudes and smiles in circumstances that would have Americans whinging and crying. Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) is all about the disconnect between quantity of material possessions and quality of life.
Big houses and big hamburgers don't necessarily make people happy, but if McDonald's makes you happy, then go enjoy! My guess is the happiness does not last too long after your Happy Meal.

If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index you see India rated at 62 and the US rated at 150, but I am very suspicious of the attempt to reduce national happiness to a single number. Plus there are a lot more Indians emigrating to the US than vice versa. If you asked Indians for the sources of unhappiness, I dobut a vegetarian diet would even show on the list.
Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/li...-happiness-net gives the US as 13th happiest and India as 34th.