Why do so many people think meat is essential? (NOT DEBATE)

Of course there are examples of muscular vegetarians/vegans. An individual may even know "many" such examples in their circles... But I can just as easily throw back at you guys that I don't know even one vegetarian/vegan person at two university gyms I train at who has reached even a novice level of strength, but we'd be going in circles :P

A bit of a leap from 'looking sickly and dying'. Oh, and you really cannot know any vegetarians who actually strength train seriously or even semi seriously.

Pretty much this. Sara and Corvus are two examples of veggies just in this thread who are doing just fine in the strength department. They are both well beyond 'novice' as well.

meat is not essential in the Homo sapiens diet, and a carefully planned vegetarian diet can be really healthy.

I agree with people who said that the bad rap that vegetarian diets get comes from people who just cut out meat (or even all animal products) and don't realise they have to replace it with other foods that will provide adequate protein and other nutrients that come from meat/animal products. That fact does not make vegetarian diets unhealthy. What's unhealthy is cutting foods out of the diet without focusing on other ways to get the same nutrients.

what annoys me is when people try to claim that humans don't naturally eat meat, or that we didn't evolve for it.... we did. And notice in my first sentence I wrote "homo sapiens" not "human" - because homo sapiens is the only species of human to have been able to survive on a vegetarian diet, and that's only possible with the invention of agriculture (something no other species managed to do) - i.e. mass production of plants high in protein. While pre-agricultural humans (Homo sapiens and others) would have eaten those plants (including wild wheat where it grew naturally, btw!!), they would not have been available all year round, or in anything approaching the quantities that agriculture can produce, so they could not get adequate protein from plants.

Indians living off a 100% vegetarian diet, well that's only been possible since the start of agriculture (which in India dates back many thousands of years as the Indus valley was one of the first known areas to start practicing agriculture, so they could have been vegetarians comparatively early on, but probably weren't as you have to be very affluent before you start refusing to eat certain foods....). the human ecological niche is adaptability, and Homo sapiens have taken that further than any other species of human, and the fact is we can if desired survive on a plant only diet. But IMO it's a matter of personal preference, I don't believe there is anything wrong with eating meat, provided the animal's suffering is kept to a minimum, i.e. killed quickly, and farmed animals being treated humanely and fed their natural diet.

And I just want to make the point again about affluence... cutting foods out of your diet that you're not allergic/intolerant to is a luxury that affluent people have. Most people from most periods in history and prehistory simply ate what foods were available to them at the time. Many post-agricultural people in history that ate a vegetarian diet did so out of necessity, because it was easier to grow plant proteins than to acquire animals to eat. People in pre-agricultural societes could not possibly gather enough plant protein to not need hunted meat (or to catch fish) as well. Modern people (on the whole) really don't think about how much of their food is imported, and even what it would be like if they could *only* obtain locally grown food, like it was even just 100 years ago. You'd go for most of the year with many kinds of foods unavailable. When my grandparents were small, many fruits we take for granted nowadays were exotic treats barely seen in the UK.

Even with agriculture, without transporting food, you have the harvest season, and you can't store the food all year round. in most parts of the world, without the ability to transport food, being vegetarian is not a choice. And while this does not apply nowadays in affluent countries when you have enough money and access to supermarkets that have all kinds of food all year round, when it comes to making ethical choices, being vegetarian has to be offset against the environmental cost of "food miles".

And you have to be affluent before you even have the luxury of making choices like that to begin with, because most people for most of the time people have existed, have simply eaten whatever was available. Pre-industrial vegetarians where not vegetarian by choice, but by necessity. All pre-agricultural people ate meat and/or fish out of necessity. Choice is the result of affluence.

Yes, I know. LoL. I didn't realize exactly where he was going with his previous post before I responded. I just skimmed over it, which I should know better than to do by now. /facedesk

We're good

meat is not essential in the Homo sapiens diet, and a carefully planned vegetarian diet can be really healthy.

I agree with people who said that the bad rap that vegetarian diets get comes from people who just cut out meat (or even all animal products) and don't realise they have to replace it with other foods that will provide adequate protein and other nutrients that come from meat/animal products. That fact does not make vegetarian diets unhealthy. What's unhealthy is cutting foods out of the diet without focusing on other ways to get the same nutrients.

what annoys me is when people try to claim that humans don't naturally eat meat, or that we didn't evolve for it.... we did. And notice in my first sentence I wrote "homo sapiens" not "human" - because homo sapiens is the only species of human to have been able to survive on a vegetarian diet, and that's only possible with the invention of agriculture (something no other species managed to do) - i.e. mass production of plants high in protein. While pre-agricultural humans (Homo sapiens and others) would have eaten those plants (including wild wheat where it grew naturally, btw!!), they would not have been available all year round, or in anything approaching the quantities that agriculture can produce, so they could not get adequate protein from plants.

Indians living off a 100% vegetarian diet, well that's only been possible since the start of agriculture (which in India dates back many thousands of years as the Indus valley was one of the first known areas to start practicing agriculture, so they could have been vegetarians comparatively early on, but probably weren't as you have to be very affluent before you start refusing to eat certain foods....). the human ecological niche is adaptability, and Homo sapiens have taken that further than any other species of human, and the fact is we can if desired survive on a plant only diet. But IMO it's a matter of personal preference, I don't believe there is anything wrong with eating meat, provided the animal's suffering is kept to a minimum, i.e. killed quickly, and farmed animals being treated humanely and fed their natural diet.

And I just want to make the point again about affluence... cutting foods out of your diet that you're not allergic/intolerant to is a luxury that affluent people have. Most people from most periods in history and prehistory simply ate what foods were available to them at the time. Many post-agricultural people in history that ate a vegetarian diet did so out of necessity, because it was easier to grow plant proteins than to acquire animals to eat. People in pre-agricultural societes could not possibly gather enough plant protein to not need hunted meat (or to catch fish) as well. Modern people (on the whole) really don't think about how much of their food is imported, and even what it would be like if they could *only* obtain locally grown food, like it was even just 100 years ago. You'd go for most of the year with many kinds of foods unavailable. When my grandparents were small, many fruits we take for granted nowadays were exotic treats barely seen in the UK.

Even with agriculture, without transporting food, you have the harvest season, and you can't store the food all year round. in most parts of the world, without the ability to transport food, being vegetarian is not a choice. And while this does not apply nowadays in affluent countries when you have enough money and access to supermarkets that have all kinds of food all year round, when it comes to making ethical choices, being vegetarian has to be offset against the environmental cost of "food miles".

And you have to be affluent before you even have the luxury of making choices like that to begin with, because most people for most of the time people have existed, have simply eaten whatever was available. Pre-industrial vegetarians where not vegetarian by choice, but by necessity. All pre-agricultural people ate meat and/or fish out of necessity. Choice is the result of affluence.

You left out the part where most of the 'aggie' societies got their *kitten* handed to them by conquering tribes who consumed a relatively large amount of meat.

Well keep in mind that I'm in my early 20's and having studied at two large universities (by Australian standards) I have met a lot of vegetarians and vegans. They have clubs. So when I say that they mostly look like a bag of bones, I am referring to this population. And again, the majority of them don't look like what I'd call healthy. They also attend a lot of protests

Obviously your population needs feeding up. Protesting student types are not exactly the best example to use for a stereotype of the broader vegetarian/vegan population.

Animal products provide vitamin B12 which plant foods don't have unless they are fortify. Vitamin B12 helps to keep the blood cells healthy and it's needed to make DNA. And it also helps prevent anemia. if you a woman and are not eating meat and not taking the vitamin, then it's bad when you are to become pregnant. However, if you are taking vitamins, meat is not essential.

Bread contains B12

You must have missed the part where he said 'unless they are fortified', which most bread is.

Algae isn't. Yeast isn't.

Can you link me a reliable source saying those come naturally with vitamin B12?

I eat meat because I've NEVER found a plant that tastes like BACON.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Now bacon was definitely the hardest thing to give up...my mouth still waters when thinking about it, and smelling it cooking is even worse.

I eat meat because I've NEVER found a plant that tastes like BACON

WHAT>>>>>>>>

i thought it came from trees :noway:

That attitude either comes from ignorance or shear annoyance and a knee jerk reaction to being preached at by veg*ns.

Of course you can be healthy as a vegetarian.

This.

Some people honestly do not know how to get 120+ grams of protein in their diet without a slab of meat at every meal...

And then there are others (I am guilty of this at times) that seriously want to knock the lights out of vegans who whine at me for killing animals and then proceed to tell me that because I eat them I will be fat, diseased, cancerous, and die a horrible death.

We all need protein, but this can be obtained by eating meat like I do, or by eating meatless like so many others do.

It would just really be nice if one group or the other would get educated and stop bashing each other...