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dont do it...women will think ur a wimp

Do you work for a meatpacking plant or something? I've seen you make silly comments like this in a number of similar threads.

Look, if your life's worth hinges on what the Jessica Simpsons of the world think of you, that's your problem. Most women, however, would prefer a healthy partner to an unhealthy one, a caring partner to an unfeeling one. Who wouldn't prefer, all things being equal, a partner with a lower risk of cancer, heart disease, or stroke?

Veganism says something positive about you. It represents a deep commitment to one's health and/or ideals. It requires a good deal of self-discipline and is often motivated by empathy and compassion. For many, it's also something arrived at through independence, introspection, and critical thought. You have to be strong and self-assured enough to go against convention, to be different and reassess thing most people never question.

Ultimately, though, don't you want someone who loves you for YOU? If someone doesn't appreciate what you're about - so what? Move on and find someone more compatible. Should it really bother you if, in the worst case scenario, the "average" person will consider you less attractive? How many people are looking for someone average as opposed to someone unique? If anything, this can help you filter out people so immature and superficial as to dismiss a health and/or ethical commitment as a sign of weakness. If that's who you're after - keep 'em.

More likely, making that change in lifestyle will help you find someone else who shares your ideals and respect for life.

Im sure you have a lot of insecurities.

dont we all?

Some of us more than others.

ayo

where do vegetarians get their protein from?

Protein isn't an issue. People buy into the protein deficiency myth because it's easier to dismiss veg*anism offhand than to seriously challenge their longstanding behavioral patterns and assumptions. A lot of it just extends from a lack of understanding. There are plenty of great, healthy protein sources perfect for a well-planned vegan diet, including seitan, lentils, tofu, tempeh, quinoa, chick peas, nuts, beans, and spinach: http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm For athletes, vegan hemp seed and pea protein supplements can help supply you with a quick post-workout protein source. It's just different, not difficult.

If you are against animal cruelty then go hunting and kill your own meat.

I've gotta say that doesn't make much sense, but if everyone who wished to eat meat had to kill in order to do so rather than simply turn a blind eye to cruelty and pretend cooked meat was something other than bloody flesh I'm sure we'd have a lot more veg*ans in this world.

Telling ya'll Pesco-lacto-ovo Vegetarian is the easiest form of being vegetarian.

I run and lift more than anybody I know and I'm NEVER tired or weak. On the contrary, I'm a beast when it comes to working out.

Any reduction in animal consumption is welcome, but I've always found that concept a bit odd. I'm waiting to meet someone who calls themselves a bovo-pesco-gallus-vegetarian, which would assume the title of "easiest form of vegetarian" - at least until someone invents a form that allows for the consumption of lamb, too.

Trust that you can engage in intense training and athletics and experience performance gains while on a well-planned vegan diet.

The main reason that I tried vegan was because of animal cruelty, but that can be avoided easily. I've recently switched to 'real' milk, non-homogenized, organic, grass-fed, lightly pasteurized, local milk, and it's much different than traditional milk. Sure, it's expensive, but it insures I'm getting the highest quality product. Goat milk is a great alternative. I used to disagree with dairy, but now I feel like I was somewhat brainwashed by veganism. Only make your own decisions, don't just listen to what other people think is true.

That's become a popular view on dairy: "mend it; don't end it." Really, it'd intended to address human health issues associated with factory farming, genetic modification, and hormone/antibiotics use more so than the associated ethical issues.

Even so, you still have a very fundamental problem with milk: it's for baby cows. Humans, with few exceptions, are not small cows. A baby cow weighs about 80 pounds. After six months, calves stop drinking milk and weigh about 500 pounds. Human mothers have long been discouraged from giving cows' milk to their infant children, as the proteins in cows' milk can be very difficult to digest - to the point where it can even cause intestinal bleeding. Cows' milk often causes constipation in children as well. It's estimated that 65% of the world's human population does not drink cows' milk and much of the world's population is lactose intolerant. Those who do drink cows' milk represent the only creatures that 1) drink milk beyond infancy and 2) drink milk from another species. Medical authorities including Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Charles Attwood, and Dr. Neal Barnard have publicly advised against the consumption of dairy products. Speaking of saturated fat, cows' milk contains over nine times the quantity of saturated fat included in soy milk, while soy milk offers more than 10 times more essential fatty acids. Soy milk also lowers, rather than raises, LDL cholestorol levels and are, of course, cholestorol free. As for the purported benefits of milk: broccoli and collard greens contain far more calcium. While the dairy industry constantly promotes the claim that milk strengthens bones, have you ever noticed that this statement NEVER appears on actual milk containers? That's because the ads are regulated by the FTC while the cartons are regulated by the FDA - and the FDA actually requires that product claims be factually supported.

Walter Willett, Chairman of the Nutrition Department at the Harvard School of Public Health, co-authored a study of more than 75,000 American nurses, which found that women who consumed the most calcium from dairy products suffered from substantially more fractures than women who consumed less milk. This correlation is consistent with broader trends, as the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis (The US, Finland, Sweden, and England) are also the countries with the highest consumption of dairy products. Fracture rates are dramatically lower in parts of the world where dairy products generally aren't consumed, like rural China, where the fracture rate is just 1/5th that of the US. So much for the "milk does a body good" campaign. On the ethical front, even though hormones aren't used in the production of organic milk, in order to stimulate milk production dairy cows are forcibly impregnated. The calves are taken from their mothers within hours, which causes the mother cows to frantically search for them, bellowing in agony. Male calves are sold for veal. In several documented cases, their mothers have managed to escape and travel miles away overnight to locate their babies. Many ovo-lacto vegetarians don't know that, by supporting dairy products, they also support meat products. Not only are dairy cows' male calves fated for slaughter, but so are the dairy cows themselves. Dairy cows, weakened and exhausted from milk production, are killed and ground into hamburger years before they would reach the life expectancy of a free cow.

We're all responsible for our own choices; I'm just explaining mine and it's hardly something I arrived at via "brainwashing."

Well I try to be humble about it but when I tell people I'm vegetarian they assume we're all weak or something.

Honestly, I feel that maintaining a healthy body is a component of activism. For everyone who buys into the myth that veganism is unhealthy, we can be living proof of the contrary. It's an easy way to silence the doubters when you can outperform them, add lean mass, and maintain remarkably low body fat. When you add in the long term benefits and reduced risk of cancer and heart disease, the question "do you miss meat and dairy" answers itself. Ask any athlete not named Derrick Coleman: success tastes sweeter than steak.

Going from eating fast food on the regular to vegan is very extreme and you won't/can't stick to it.

It's difficult - but not impossible. I did it while in grad school and my schedule had me making the occasional stop at popeyes at the time. I did the research and when I felt comfortable from a health standpoint I made the transition from eating animal products at virtually every meal to eliminating them from every meal in less than 3 weeks. My case is atypical and people should go at a pace that promotes safe, healthy, and lasting change - but it's definitely not impossible to go "cold turkey" around Thanksgiving for the right individual.

I'm considering being a vegetarian, I'll start off by just eating more veggies...I definitely need some recipes though..

There are TONS of cookbooks out there - Barnes and Noble has a whole section for them now. You can also find plenty for free online. Here are some starter meal plans to check out:

http://living-vegan.blogspot.com/2007/02/vegan-sample-meal-plans.html

What do vegetarians want to say to the article that came out in Men's Health 2 issues ago about Soy. And how it's supposed to be very bad for the male body. I'm very curious, because they pointed out that soy is supposed to be very damaging to a male's body, even is mediocre doses.

We've already discussed those clains in some recent threads:
http://niketalk.yuku.com/reply/6533922/t/Food-Inc-the-most-important-movie-of-the-year-.html#reply-6533922
http://niketalk.yuku.com/reply/5254144#reply-5254144

It's always the testosterone-addled bodybuilding sources...

I have been a vegetarian since August 4th of this year (for nutrition and trying my best to reduce animal cruelty), and I haven't looked back. Shoutouts to Meth...if anything message him...the guy is really knowledgeable about this process and lifestyle...he helped me during the beggining.

I appreciate the shout and I'm pleased to hear you've been able to make such progress in reducing your consumption of animal products. I'm glad you considered my input helpful - I think it's vitally important for us to pass this on, just as with any other form of social justice activism. We have to be the change.

How hard was it go from a meat eating diet to none at all? Was it hard staying a vegetarian, or did you have periods where you went back to eating meat? I'd just like some information from Vegetarians themselves, so I'd appreciate any information.

I made the change in 3 weeks and never looked back. I felt like my energy levels were more consistent, it's very easy to maintain once you form new habits, and it's so rewarding physically and mentally that I have absolutely no desire to go back. I don't even dream about eating chicken; it's not even a suppressed desire. It's not an easy change to make, but if you're devoted you'll persevere and I consider it one of the best decisions I've made. I feel it simply allows me to live my ideals and better express, through my lifestyle, the person I've always been. I always felt eating meat was wrong, but never knew any vegetarians, let alone vegans, to make that choice feel real to me.

I tell people to try it for just one month. If they have the determination and self-control to pull it off, they can sustain it for life - and odds are they'll want to.

Makes perfect sense... If you kill the animal your self you are the judge on how "ethically" it was done. Predation is nature's way of balance, and this has been successfully perpetuating life for billions of years therefor cannot be wrong.

"Right" and "wrong" are subjective moral concepts. Simply because something's been happening for billions of years doesn't necessarily make it "right" in any meaningful sense. Creatures have helped assure the perpetuation of their own lineage by attacking and killing members of their own species for billions of years. Most of us consider such behavior immoral and criminal according to our ethical standards. We have concepts like rape, theft, assault, and murder that attempt to prohibit behavior that causes harm to others - yet these acts, which we consider unethical, have been "successfully perpetuating life for billions of years" in that each serves, in its own way, as a survival strategy and, in the strict Darwinist sense, survival is the lone criterion of fitness. Most of us would prefer not to live in a purely individualist society, in which all bets are off and anyone can do anything to you at any time so long as they are stronger, faster, or otherwise equipped to harm you and get away with it. Fundamentally, we have a social system because it helps us survive. For instance: monogamy, uncommon in other species, helps ours survive due to the relative helplessness of our young and their inability to cling. Our values are, in many respects, extensions and rationalizations of explicit survival strategies. The reverence many societies have for other species is a reflection of how our fates are tethered. The development of animal rights, thus, can be viewed as an attempt to balance a global ecosystem that has become wildly unbalanced and, ultimately, unsustainable. Our planet has experienced widespread extinction more than once due to the collapse of food webs. There's nothing inherently "unnatural" about this, as what we consider nature is utterly dispassionate where survival is concerned. Extinction happens and, when it does, we typically chalk it up to the incompatibility of a species with changes to its environment. "Nature" has no interest in saving our species. We do, and therefore in a very real sense compassion is in our own best interest.

Ironically enough, if everyone were to do as you described and hunt to their hearts' content we'd probably drive many species to extinction and, thus, push our own to the brink. In terms of energy efficiency, we can sustain far, far more people with plant-based diets than we can through meat and other animal products.

Predatory species, which comprise a minority, by the way, are far more vulnerable in that "top of the food chain" often connotes "last in line." If you're a predator, you can't survive unless prey species thrive. Herbivores receive roughly 10% of the energy photosynthesized by plants (producers.) Carnivores receive receive 10% of the energy consumed by herbivores. Zooplankton graze on phytoplankton, small fish eat zooplankton, larger fish like tuna eat small fish, and "apex" predators like sharks eat 1st and 2nd order carnivores like seals or large fish. Project it out and you'll realize just how much energy is required to sustain a single shark. That's why infinitely more plankton exist than sharks. It may seem silly, but those unfamiliar with the concept (many of us are long removed from biology/life science classes) should consider playing around with this: http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs/BL_02/BL_02.html while paying special attention to the pyramid of energy and the pyramid of numbers. Think about where humans fit 1) at the top of the food chain and 2) as herbivores. Now consider how fast the human population is growing. Moving down the food chain is the only way we can all even hope to survive together. We've reached the point where, technologically, we can survive without killing or enslaving other living, feeling creatures - and it's more efficient for us to do so.