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I'm almost vegan, does that give me points?

I agree with all the slaughterhouse jabber, mainly why I'm vegetarian.
I just don't like blood and knowing I'd be eating a once living, breathing creature. Animals just seem too sacred.

I'm afraid not, I really love animals and all but cutting yourself off from meat completely doesn't sound too smart.

I have to say though that the average american consumes way too much meat (just saying, I have nothing against my country), which in turn means more grain is devoted to raising cattle, that rather irks me considering the fact that food we could use to help out the not so fortunate shattered nations is being fed to some cow that'll end up converting all that grain into a smaller amount of beef in the end.

So yeah, I'm not vegetarian, but I don't eat that much meat, at least not as much as the next guy, mostly because too much meat isn't very healthy and for conservation purposes.

I'm sorry, but this is false for elementary biological reasons. The truth of the matter is that energy is lost as you move up trophic levels. Although primary producers (plants) aren't very efficient in converting sunlight into stored energy (food), what stored energy they do produce is predominantly lost as you move up the food chain. Once you get to primary consumers (such as cattle), much of the primary production is lost. When we (secondary consumers) eat the cattle, even more stored energy is lost.

Ecologists have estimated that if everyone on earth survived on beef, the carrying capacity of the planet would be less than 1 billion people. (We currently have 6.6 billion.) If we survived on the most efficient photosynthetic organisms (algae), our carrying capacity would be around 24 billion. NOTE: These numbers assume that we devote every square inch of land to food production.



I agree that hunting and eating wild game is good, as long as the populations have no natural predators. (The idea situation is to re-introduce the natural predators, such as wolves, foxes, etc.) The major problem with hunting in our society (vs. nature) is that when it comes to deer, human hunters typically kill the strongest, healthiest males. Natural selection, on the other hand, would weed out the unhealthy individuals. Also, as long as hunting licenses require the shooting of at least 1 doe per buck, then things aren't too bad. It's when humans only kill the males that their efforts at "controlling the population" fail. (Females control the reproduction rate, not the males.)

Would you like to share your reasons for being vegetarian with us? It's a heated issue, so we like to hear people and reasons on both sides. smile

Yeah I've been thinking about staying with a little meat, preferably free range and organic, while I'm still a kid and getting my necessary nutrients...But maybe when I get older I'll go vegetarian. Not so sure yet...But I highly doubt I'll ever be completely vegan...

Of course not. I am an omnivour the way we are suppose to be. I by my stuff organically and from local farms though.

The whole "supposed to be omnivore" idea is kinda iffy though...I used to say that too, but it's kinda muddly as to whether we are or are not "supposed" to be omnivores. We were actually originally herbivores, if you want to go as far back as we know (Lucy, or Australopithicus afarensis...I hope I spelled that right gonk ). However by the time our species developed into what it is today, Homo sapiens, our intelligence allowed us to make weapons for hunting animals - hence our omnivorism (if that's a word lol). So. Are we really naturally omnivores? It's hard to say even anything human is natural anymore, so yeah...It's not as clear-cut as we'd like to think. sweatdrop