Welcome to Gaia! ::

I believe that eating meat is better than not. However, the treatment the animals face before becoming our entres are deplorable! I like to believe Perdue chicken don't suffer and often nag my mom to pay the extra amount to get the better quality chicken. I don't know wht company of red meat supposedly doesn't treat their animals as such.

Problem is, we have a similiar problem with produce. Something about chemically enchanced veges seem wrong to me. My dad grows tomatoes in the summer and fall and I prefer them to the ones my mom buys in the grocery store. Ever heard of a grapple? Its a genetically created fruit that is a mix of an apple and a grape. The inside is basically a grape but it's the size of an apple with the skin of an apple as well.

Ont eh flip size of the scientific produce, scientists are being able to grow food in places they couldn't before and thereby are helpng with food shortages...least i think they are able to do so...

Well we are a very wasteful country. perhaps pruchasing more expensive (and healthier) food would encourage us as a whole to conserve and eat all of our food rather than chcking it down the garbage disposal or garbage bag.

Yes the whole 'what side effects may it have' is one I think about. But after a life time of eating said food...I figure we'd be seeing stuff now. Course we may not for another twenty or thirty years.

I definately agree. What is the problem with just using all natural food anyway?

It wouldn't be the first time science is used in to solve problems where the solutions turn out to be worse than the original problem. For instance, people gain weight or whatever from sugar, artificial sweeteners are made with lower calories, later on science comes to find that a lot of artificial sweeteners cause cancer (like aspritame, not sure how you spell it). My thing is I'd rather be over weight (because at least that can be remedied with a good old-fashioned healthy diet and exercise), than have cancer.

Same thing with cookware. Food sticks to cookware, cookware is made with non-stick surfaces (teflon), after decades of having people cook their foods on this stuff we find out it, too, causes cancer. I would rather have eggs that break apart in the pan from sticking, or muffins that crumble, than cancer. 3nodding

The same is also true with medications that have side-affects worse than the actual illness they treat. One good reason I'm a firm believer in herbal medicine.

I really only said being over weight as an extreme. I think you'll only really become over weight from sugar if you eat TONS of it, but the same can be said of any food. Moderation is something I think a lot of the common American diet lacks. Aren't we supposed to be the fattest country in the world? I think it's no coincidence that we rely so much on technology to everything for us, and spend the bulk of our time eating fattening foods (because home-cooked meals, are practically dead x.x), and entertaining ourselves in ways that don't take energy (like watching tv, etc).

I mean honestly, I see stuff about diet pills, and fitness stuff, and trying to lose weight on tv all the time, and I used to think maybe I needed something like that because I had a few extra pounds I was always struggling with that only came about after my family started eating fast food (from being in the moving process and unable to home cook anything healthy). In less than 2 weeks of strictly fast food, I gained about 20 pounds. But after about a month ago when I started trying to cook things that were healthier (basically following the Glycemic index diet), and eating smaller meals 4 times a day, I have lost 15 pounds with little or no exercise. Plus I have a lot of extra energy during the day and am beginning to require less sleep (I've gone down from formerly needing at least 12-13 hours of sleep to be fully rested, to about 10, so it is improving).

Herbal medicine, I'm starting to see, is sometime more effective than conventional medicine. My mom used to know this older woman who was struggling with tumors, and she started seeing a doctor who specialized in Chinese herbal medicine. He started treating her with herbal remedies (I'm not sure exactly what), and she actually began to get better, and her tumors were shrinking, and she was overall feeling better and more capable of doing things for herself. But her doctor warned her not to go and get a cat scan, or go off of her current treatment (basically, to avoid conventional medicine). She did anyway, and ended up dying a few weeks later. but I have this wonderful book called the Encyclopedia of herbal medicine by Andrew Chevallier, FNIMH, and I learned a lot from this book. It has descriptions of hundreds of different herbs. And for each herb it talks about the herb's origin, habitat, related species, key constituents, actions (or benefits), other areas of research that believe to show other benefits of the herb, traditional and current uses, and ways of using the herbs to remedy common ailments, etc. It also instructs on preparing infusions, balms, tinctures, decoctions, syrups, infused oils, ointments, poluices, creams, and lotions, etc. Each individual herb is also dicussed by it's parts (like seeds, bark, roots, flowers, berries, etc), what the parts are used for treating what ailments, what parts should be avoided, what parts may cause allergic or other reactions. It is just a really informative book. I love it.

Although I find that with my own self-imposed dietary restrictions (leftover from following Judaism, I basically follow the Kosher diet as far as what types of foods I do and do not eat), I don't suffer from a lot of common ailments. It's been years since I've had a cold, or stomach flu, or anything like that.

isnt that running along the lines of the idea that we are evolving faster than our environment? I heard that argument once from a very science and technology oriented friend of mine, and it sounded fairly logical and sounds like it could damage more than just our digestive systems.

I'm vegan.

=]

When you actually realize how messed up the meat industry is, vegetarianism is just... obvious.

Perhaps it's just obvious to you. But I actually think by not eating meat you are depriving your body of many vitamins and minerals that it requires to be healthy.

Plus aren't our teeth to some degree evidence that we're meant to be omnivores? By that I mean that herbivores have flat teeth designed to grind plant material, and carnivores have sharp teeth designed for cutting up meat. We have both flat teeth (in front) and sharp teeth (in back).