Originally posted by Neruo
Eating meat does fuck up the world. If we didn't stuff so much cows full of grain, but gave it away, Africa would have more then enough food.
The earth has more than enough food at the moment to fill every human being on earth to bursting. The problem is not of supply (which we have) but of economics and delivery: too many people are too ridiculously poor to afford the price for food, even if it's being sold at cost.

Personally, I say reproducing fucks up the world. The #1 problem on my list of Earth's Big Fuckups is overpopulation. This is going to sound wicked, but... if a virulent plague swept across the globe and killed off 5 of every 6 people on this planet earth, it would be awful, painful, unjust beyond measure - but it would also really help us out on our long-term prospects for comfortable survival. Until we ballooned back up to 6-7 billion within a few generations (because our gonads never learn their lessons).

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dodobird, I&#39;ve never heard these claims, even by hardcore vegans. Even vegsource has issued a heartfelt plea to vegans to take their B12 supps. Variability of absorption considered, though, you must admit that a diet high in B12 is guaranteed to be more likely to meet your nutritional needs than a diet without any at all. If B12 absorption is so unreliable, what does this say about how we evolved to eat? - that, perhaps, our bodies let that issue slide because on average we were getting more than enough from seafoods, meats, and organs (and bugs, actually)?

I know comparing bananas to beef liver was a skewed comparison, but I was just refuting petersonad&#39;s claim that any fruit/veggie will always be more nutritionally dense than any animal product, period. Consider too that nutritionally dense animal products may have nutrient profiles unique unto themselves when compared to plant foods in general, so that quality becomes an issue beside quantity. There are plenty of plant foods that are more nutrient-complete than beef liver - parsley, like you mentioned, spinach (if you ignore the oxalates), cocoa... I&#39;ve never suggested that meat should be the be-all and end-all of your dietary intake; it just tends to look that way in paleolithic arguments because that is the part of the diet that sticks out like a sore thumb from all the others.

Liver concentrates nutrients, liver concentrates toxins. But this isn&#39;t a complaint about meat, it&#39;s a complaint about how meat is raised. Telling me liver is bad for me on that point is like me telling you that apples are inherently bad because they&#39;ve soaked up pesticides and fungicides and vegetable wax. These are complaints to be leveled against mainstream agriculture, not the foods it produces. And if you get to avoid those pitfalls of poisoned produce by going organic or homegrown, why can&#39;t I avoid mine by going local and grass-fed? In such a case these toxins, a result of human meddling and cupidity, are greatly reduced or eliminated entirely.

Originally posted by Moonbeam+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Moonbeam)</div>
dodobird has a good point that the cavemen weren&#39;t in it for the real long term. That is the arguement of the CRONies. I can easily get influenced to that direction; I think Loren Cordain&#39;s plan is a little heavy on the meat. It&#39;s hard to cook meat without causing bad by-products (AGES), altho the evidence that agriculture shortened humans&#39; life-span, caused cancer and diabetes and osteoporosis and malnutritiion, etc. with back-breaking labor and periodic famine as pleasant associations, is a convincing argument against grains. So a caveman diet, leaning towards one who wasn&#39;t a reallly good hunter and who had a slow-cooker, maybe? I&#39;m starting to think that may be best.[/b]
Ironically, what makes a CRONie a CRONie is the emulation of a caveman&#39;s feeding patterns - not what he ate, but when and how much. Or at least a bastardized take on it, again, I think IF is the real deal and that CRON is a very uncomfortable emulation.

It&#39;s unfair to talk about cooked meat killing you: cooked anything will kill you - with acrylamides, nitrosamines, AGEs, and god knows what else we haven&#39;t found yet. If it has calories and you heat it up, it is going to screw with your body.

You&#39;ve read about the exacerbation of the insulin response and FMD when carbs are paired with fats (esp. saturated fats), right? And the amelioration of saturated fat&#39;s artery-constricting effects when paired with protein? I think a lot of the bad rep that fat and Sat fat gets is really because it&#39;s always studied under conditions that vary from how we used to eat - in meat, with protein, in a proper balance of Sat/Mono/Poly, sans carbohydrates.

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I&#39;m vegetarian. I don&#39;t much like meat, and don&#39;t trust the companies that supply it anyhow.

Humans are frugivores, about 3% of the diet should be meat, not 300% like the FDA would have you believe. Eating meat is good for some people, and not so for others. Organic however is a must.
Why do you think the meat industry is any more villainous than any other industry? They&#39;re all going to pull the strings to try and make you buy as much of their product as they can, whether it&#39;s prime rib or strawberries or wheaties. Of course you multiply the ethical dilemma into the equation and I can see where you&#39;re coming from - but then it&#39;s not an objection based on a company&#39;s duplicity, but their production methods and standards. No worthwhile person would condone for half an instant the practices of factory farming.

Humans are frugivores? This is news to me. Why are fruitarians so stupendously unsuccessful on their diets? Why do we have canines, an omnivore&#39;s intestinal tract, a difficulty in absorbing many plant-sourced nutrients (nonheme iron, carotenes, etc.), a bitterness threshold closer to cats than to rabbits?

I&#39;m happy that you&#39;ve awakened to the reality of the mass-marketed filth that clogs our supermarket aisles, though - I just don&#39;t think meat automatically qualifies as filth just because is is animal flesh. If price is an issue - do you have any farmer&#39;s markets around, or local co-ops? You can get produce for a ridiculous pittance at those places, and it&#39;s infinitely better than anything at Whole Foods.