Vegetarians...

My Gran came from a veggie family. She used to buy bacon on the way home from school and eat it.

Raw bacon.
*shrugs* didn't make her ill. Maybe she was just lucky though.

Anyway.. Do remember that humans have been cooking food for an incredibly long time. Enough to drastically affect our species. So it may well be that we are less suited to raw meat than other animals now. In the same way that we have small teeth so can't be grinding tough veg all day.

Saw an episode of Come dine with me earlier and it got me thinking; anyone else notice the majority of "vegetarians" our age (17-23) are usually females just merely trying to be hip/cool/different? With completely retarded reasons for being vegetarian, such as "we don't have a necessary enzyme that digests meat" and "killing animals is wrong", all the while wearing leather and more often that not eating fish "because they're not as smart".

A lot, and do you think I'm proud of that? Because I'm not. The point is I have made much more of an effort than than most have or ever will, no one is perfect and on our own no one can change anything completely.

Can I also ask why you're getting so aggressive about this, why not go and politely persuade someone against cruelty to animals that we see every day, than lambasting someone who does love and care for animals very much already? Because attacking me with such aggression and comparing me to Hitler isn't going to sway anyone to your cause, believe me.

I agree . I think if someone wants to help animals through their actions in their daily lives, perfection is very very hard to achieve as animal products are used in so many ways, some of them very far from obvious. Personally, I don't eat meat but I do eat fish. I'm not proud of eating fish as I believe they probably suffer when caught and are killed but I hope that in a very small way I'm helping those animals which aren't that much different than human beings in intelligence and emotional sensitivity.
If I had to choose between starving to death and eating meat I suppose I'd have to eat the meat to survive, but I don't have to make that choice just yet and probably will never have to .
Also it's much more efficient to feed grain directly to humans rather than feed it to animals to produce meat that will feed a tenth of the people the original grain would have fed.
With growing populations in India and China together with a desire for richer diets, the world is going to be very short of grain - in fact there are shortages right now and prices are rising.
Call me a hypocrite for eating fish if you like, but at least I'm doing part of what I believe in.

Evolution is a slow process.

been a veggie all my life. Never tried meat and never had the desire too. So no, I'm not trying to be cool or different

My Gran came from a veggie family. She used to buy bacon on the way home from school and eat it.

Raw bacon.
*shrugs* didn't make her ill. Maybe she was just lucky though.

Anyway.. Do remember that humans have been cooking food for an incredibly long time. Enough to drastically affect our species. So it may well be that we are less suited to raw meat than other animals now. In the same way that we have small teeth so can't be grinding tough veg all day.

Haha, everytime someone shows me meat or asks if I'd like to try it, I just can't bring myself to try it.

Slightly off topic, but out of curiosity do you eat 'fake meat' (quorn chicken etc ) ? I know a lot of 'new' vegetarians as such who seem to live on it, but I've noticed it seems to be not as common in us life longs....

That's impressive.

I think the raw issue comes down to freshness really.

Why did she do it though? I mean, I can understand that she wants to eat meat, but why raw bacon? That sounds crazy.

"we don't have a necessary enzyme that digests meat"

This was when she was a kid - veggie family and she had to find a way to sneakily eat meat. Couldn't exactly cook it. And this was some time ago, so you couldn't so easily go and buy cooked meat. So she got the next best thing. Raw meat. She probably had no idea that anything from a pig is mightily more dangerous than other meats.

She should have just talked to her parents though.. They eventually found out and immediately switched to being a meat-eating family.

-If people did not eat meat, those animals would not be bred at all, i.e. they would have no life

-Just because you are not eating meat doesn't mean that any difference has been made to the meat industry and therefore your mini-protest is pointless

-Many vegetarians will still wear leather coats and shoes and use products that have been tested on animals? what's the difference?

-Whilst we're on the subject of animal testing, it is absolutely necessary for drugs and also, it's the law, but i suppose you still take your paracetamol or antibiotics when you're ill so in this sense you're being a hypocrite

-Meat provides essential amino acids for your diet, why else do they need to take supplements all the time?

-Many vegetarians are deficient in vitamin K which means they they tend to get ill more often, and then have to take more drugs that have been tested on animals

-You cause a large inconvenience for any host and generally feel the need to preach or make comments about other people eating meat, which is annoying

-The body craves meat, I know a girl who has been brought up vegetarian (she is 4) and begs her grandmother for it

-People have been eating meat for thousands of years, it's bound up in our biology to eat it, you wouldn't stop breathing because you felt bad for the air?

-Also, vegetarians who eat fish bear no logic.

We can eat meat/fish raw to an extent. Ever heard of steak tartar? Sushi? True carnivores have high levels of enzymes/acids which effectively kill off all nasty bacteria which is sometimes found on raw meat, humans learned that they were less likely to fall ill if they cooked their meat first. There are some people who will eat raw meat - inuits will often eat raw flesh/organs of animals they've hunted. I highly suspect that because most people are so used to eating cooked meat, suddenly switching to raw won't do us any good. But yes, we can eat raw meat, but it's hard to know which meat is free from harmful bacteria and which isn't.