Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

LOL, this is gonna be good.............................

i'm not fussed either way. not a vego but equally not one that would kill for my right to eat red meat

probably only eat red meat one a week for dinner, but dont mind the bacon and eggs for morning tea.

Whenever people ask me why i am vegetarian (which is always at meal times) I tell them it makes for great mealtime conversation

Ah, but Steve... would you slaughter for your celery......

Ph my goodness.
Hamish,,I'm not sure if you wear dentures but my teeth definately are natural and showallthe classic signs of an Omnivore. 3rd tooth left and right of centre are canine shaped for riping and tearing meat, rear molars for grinding grains and vegiie matter.
Part of the human race's success , is it's adaptability in being able to eat near anything and having the brain power to get it.

Those who choose to be vegetarian , have my full support ( it leaves more meat for me) but please don't try and tell others that humans are not Omnivores.

I saw a few documentaries long ago, one of them "Eat less live longer." Don't remember details.


Another one on the Discovery channel called "food something ". It was about a series of food researches. One of them was this:
Protein or carbs for an active day:
One team was fed a protein diet and another a carbohydrate diet and the starch guys were much more active (some hurdle race course - twins from around the world were separated into teams and one half of the twins was in the protein fed team and the other the carb team. The carb team easily won. Involved dragging heavy logs, swimming, mountain biking etc on the course.)

(Note that the muscles for doing work are built from proteins but if you want the muscles to be sizzlingly active more carbs help.)

Another one:
3 square good lunches against grazing:
A fire fighting team were split into two areas of a forest fire (a natural (lightning storm?) regular forest fire I think - so they were actually able to do research in spite of the fire.)
One team had food provided to them only 3 times a day. The other team was snacking throughout the fire fighting. The snacking team had done a lot better.
(My thoughts - The 3-meals-team members had some hunger before the late midday meal, that would reduce their work output. Even after the hearty lunch, they would have been drowsier than the snackers - another reason for low work output.)

I am a vegetarian by choice, (I drink milk - it's non-living you know, like saliva or sweat) though my family is not. (In India, our place, thera are a fair number of whole families that are traditionally (culturally) vegetarian, for a long time, probably from millenia ago who knows..).

This makes for an easy study on whether a vegetarian diet is detrimental. Looks like it isnt much. (I meet a lot of them - in fact you are not expected to take non-vegetarian lunches to Indian schools in order to not offend the vegetarian children. There are seriously a decent number of them.)
They in my opinion think as smart, appear as healthy as the non-vegetarians here, so no problems appear to be present with vege. diets.
Example : Vishwanathan Anand, a great chess player happens to be born in a vegetarian-culture family and has grown up to be a vege.
Sachin Tendulkar, a really good Indian cricket player, also seems to be born in a vegetarian family.

Let me talk about the non-vegetarians here - quite a number of them (including my family) do not consume meat on a regular basis. Only occasionally or on weekends. So they even, are only 'a little' non-vegetarian. Not three meat meals a day, no way (in India). Both the expense and the time taken to prepare meat and the occasional digestion troubles don't suggest all-meat-meals on all days (here).
Of course there are always exceptions but I speak in general.

I think the major factor allowing vegetarians here to be happy is the vast number of healthy tasty (SCRUMPTIOUS!) traditional recipies developed over the years. (look in the internet)

Thank you for being able to bear the long post.
(I am talking about my country and environment simply because you might like trivia and stuff about other countries. Don't think I am obsessed about my surroundings hehe . I also don't know enough about other places for me to talk about (haven't travelled out of my country yet))

Hamish, cheese is a complete protein source, so you're covered.

The eat less deal is really interesting. There are a number of mechanisms that have been studied, but they all come down to the same thing. If you can make your cellular metabolisms less responsive to insulin, you'll live about 50% longer. One of the ways to do this is to eat much less than an average diet. The downside is that you'll be cold and miserable for all that extra time.

Our tradional diet is omnivorious. A species teeth is indicitive of their diet-almost all animals have teeth for biting and we have additional teeth for both for tearing and grinding, whereas lions have teeth for biting and tearing and horses have teeth for biting and grinding.

Our ancient diet was mostly vegetarian due to the fact that red meat was difficult and dangerous to obtain. We were also adept scavangers. I'm sure simplier means of catching meat were exploited more often- stealing eggs from nests, netting fish, etc.

We can live on a healthy vegetarian diet but a balanced diet with more meat does play a role in height, if nothing else. That can be plainly seen with American adopted Vietnamese children that return to their home villages- they tower over their counterparts.

I witnessed such a child - an Indian couple who had a child born as a citizen of the USA. The child was much (really much!) larger, stouter and stronger than an Indian child (at the same ages).
The rest of the family of the couple were in India and all child's the cousins(in India) were smaller in size (at the same ages). So it's not the genes of the family.

All of them were non-vegetarians. But I suggest three reasons from my side:
* More meat consumpion by non-vegetarians in the US than by non-vegetarians in India (who incorporate much plant stuff also)
* US seat sizes, etc are increasing anyway - increasing obesity - Mc. Donalds etc. The food culture of modern US probably has much more energy and stuff than required, almost causing obesity
(no offense intended)
* Maybe child care products are much richer nutritively in the US and the child was pampered with US child-food-products, techniques. (Here its mashed pulses(protein) mashed vegetables, greens, rice,etc for weaning. Good quality commercial weaning products also available in plenty but usually used as a supplement or not at all)

. hehe

Yes I agree we are designed omnivorous. But I personally feel we omnivores (including chimps, monkeys, etc) are far away from the kind of omnivore a bear is. I IMHO, personally, feel we may do better with a mainly vegetarian diet, with meat as optional supplement while a bear would rather do with meat as main course than otherwise... ok don't know

Ah I don't know forget it... (throws up hands).
I'll just watch you people speak now.

Oops forgot to add the main point I wanted to make about he quote - here it is again:I don't think meat is required for a balanced diet... what do you see in meat that fills the gap? Yes I agree the omega3 in fish is a great help (though vegetarian alternatives exist). But otherwise what? The modern studies say all that mass of protein you get with meat is not required unlike thought of before. The small quantities of plant protein will do. (chickpea has 30% protein I think, oatmeal, moringa, pulses are all protein-y enough)

Anyway, I know everybody has the right to excercise his opinions and has freedom of action. I am not against meat eaters, just trying to have a good discussion.

I don't care one way or another about your lifestyle choices in regards to eating habits, as long as it's not cannabilistic- but I do know that a healthy human being requires protein as part of their regular diet- and this can be done with a vegetarian diet, but you do need to incorporate protein in there. The key words in any diet is balance and variety, with balance meaning- meeting all dietary requirements and within calorie requirements. I also know that 'grazing' is more effective than 2 or 3 regular meals a day but in most cases, also impractical for busy and/or lazy lifestyles, hence the reason for fast food and why Americans in general are getting obese. Personally, I like fast food once in a while but I infinitely perfer my own cooking and I love to cook anyway. I have also never dieted a day in my life- it didn't take me to long to figure out from the literature I read, that dieting only kicks in your natural feast/famine genetic makeup and only makes us more energy efficient on less food but then again, I prefer to read biology, chemistry books over fashion and diet books.

Hahaha - im 6 foot 2 inches and 98kg!

but Hamish, how old were you when you started on the road to vegetarianism? I think part of what is being said is that non-vegetarian diets for children makes for taller adults.