Going vegan?

Shafty said:

Also, regarding the rice and beans thing: they are both relatively poor in their protein content, so you'd have to eat ridiculous amounts of them to get the amount you'd get from much smaller portions of meat.

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I just thought this quote looked like it needed to be outlined again. :D

"Cheese, peanuts, and lentils, for instance, contain more protein per ounce than hamburger, pork, or porterhouse steak."

Most of the beans I eat are a form of lentil, I also eat plenty of cheese and peanuts. I think protien is the least of all of our concerns... we all naturally get so much of it without even trying. Also about protien powder for body builders, I saw they make some made up of all 22 amino acids completely from vegetable sources, with no soy protien used.

Althletes and even body builders have been known to switch to vegetarian diets to help them make progress in their field. A few are: Chris Campbell (1981 world wrestling champion), Aaron Pryor (welterweight world boxing champion), Edward Moses (world record holder for 400 meter hurdles), Robert DiCostella (Olympic marathon champion), Anton Innaver (Olympic ski champion), Killer Kowalski (wrestler), and the entire Seibu Lions (Japanese) baseball team (who won the Pacific League championship two years in a row after switching to a vegetarian diet). Of course there are many more, but I just wanted to throw that in there.

It's been a long time since I've had some sleep and I should've just went to bed already... (on night shift currently), it was nice exchanging this friendly debate with you though. Time for bed...

Hmm, I don't think any diet is a perfect diet. Take my ex-gf for example... she's allergic to nuts, most fruit and many other things. She would have hard time being a vegetarian!

There are plenty of things she could have besides those, so it could still work.

With allergies factored in... you'd just have to tailor the diet to your body personally, cutting out the things you can't have and taking other things in it's place. If she can survive without those things and with meat, then she can without those things and without meat.

Shafty said:

And jGman, if you go down that road, where do elephants or hippos get their great strength? Because they are built differently.
And, for the record, gorillas have testosterone levels that are ridiculously high compared to humans. Besides, the average modern man is a weak fleshbag when compared to our cavemen ancestors. It is through evolution into our seated lifestyle that we have shed off our muscles and great strength.

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They are built different? What does that mean? Built how, besides the obvious outward appearance? What are their digestive systems like? What about the oral cavity's make up? But no matter how they're built, both of those animals manage to glean a great amount of strength and size from a vegetarian diet.

A lion is built completely different from a human; yet you feel we should be eating the same foods? A gorilla, on the other hand, is a very close animal to a human being. They're 'built' extremely similar to a human, if you want to go that route. And by 'built', I don't mean, once again, only the obvious outside appearance; but from their oral cavity, through their digestive system, all the way out their asses. Find yourself a picture of the skull of a lion, gorilla and human, and try and see what we more resemble. And then do some reading on the digestive systems of each of those animals. That dictates what an animal should be eating; it's not simply based on an opposable thumb.

Our bodies, in no way, shape or form, resembles any type of carnivore on this planet.

As far as our ancestors, it's been discovered in recent years that they probably ate a lot less meat than previously thought. Studies done on teeth have found that they subsisted more on nuts and berries than what was first believed.

And, yes, this has been a good debate. Haven't had one of these in a while. I have to get all my vegan ducks in a row for this one.

The point about Milk is very important. Milk provides an EXCELLENT protein source, and passing that up for the fully plant-life diet is foolish IMHO. Milk protein contains 80% caseinate and 20% whey, meaning it has fast and slow digesting protein (mostly the slower caseinates) -- most importantly the fast digesting whey which has an complete amino acid profile (hence it's importance to body builders).

Another often over-looked plant protein source is hemp. It tastes pretty funky but it's great stuff health-wise and has one of the best Omega 3:6:9 fat ratios you will find anywhere.

Nothing against the vegetarian type life-style here... but I don't think I could manage without some meat. I really don't eat ALOT of meat on a regular basis, mainly due to cost, but I like it when I do eat it.

jGman said:

They are built different? What does that mean? Built how, besides the obvious outward appearance? What are their digestive systems like? What about the oral cavity's make up? But no matter how they're built, both of those animals manage to glean a great amount of strength and size from a vegetarian diet.

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I believe he is referring to the way their bone structure is arranged.

And to address an earlier point about the diet of the gorilla:

"One misconception about the gorilla diet is that it contains no animal products. On the contrary, all of the great ape groups take in some animal protein, whether overtly or inadvertently, by consuming insects, insect eggs and the larvae that nest on the plants and fruits they eat. In her pioneering work on chimpanzees, Jane Goodall discovered to her amazement, and to the amazement of the rest of the world, that chimpanzees kill and eat monkeys and make a tool to extract termites from their hills (homes), and that they went to considerable effort to obtain these foods. It is also significant that meat is the only food they share with other chimpanzees."

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/gorilla.html

It would be simply impossible for them to have the muscular build they have WITHOUT a fairly decent protein intake. In the absence of amino acids the body breaks down muscle tissue to get them, so obviously the gorialls are intaking plenty of amino acids through protein to maintain their size.

This has gotten very interesting! I agree with the milk thing too. I can't see how a pure vegan diet can be healthy. I wouldn't say it's unhealthy, and definitely no more unhealthy than your average American's diet, but surely a lacto-vegetarian diet is much more healthy, and a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet would be even better. But I'll stick with fish. :D I like fish carcasses too much to give it up.

Wow, we all seem to have a great deal of opinions. I want to point out that there are books and articles on each side of this issue. The facts/opinions are changing quite rapidly in the medical journals so as you try and keep up with the "truth" on the vegitarian aspect you have to read weekly. Shafty, I respectfully disagree with you regarding the protein value of "rice and beans" and other protein sources of a vegitarian diet. It takes a while for the body to adjust to a "no meat" diet but it does it rather quickly and if balanced you are as strong and full of energy and adapt quite well. In fact, I personally find I am more satisfied and have as much strength and more than I did on a diet with meat. I have tried to be very careful not to be judgemental or to even try and sway or convince anyone about any diet. However there are facts and tests that have proven and are proving that colon cancer is very
"reduced" if not eliminated in a vegitarian diet. Thanks for listening. GS

JGman, gorillas have a huge amount of cross sectional muscle for animals their size. Their bone density is much higher than ours, and they have ridiculously high testosterone. These attributes combined give them their great strength and size.
As a side note, gorillas aren't bipedal at all: they prefer to run on all fours, and their bodily construct reflects this. You should never draw a comparison with humans and animals (especially when comparing relative muscle size and strength), since human physiology is from a different world. We need extensive manipulation to grow huge muscles, and from a viewpoint based on survival, too much muscle mass is just dead weight for us. For animals, however, strong muscles are a necessity.

BTW, gorillas have massive canines and a bite force that is rivaled by few animals. You notice the necks they have? This is where they derive their powerful bite from. Then again, you might wonder what a gorilla would possibly need this armament for if it is strictly a vegetarian. The answer is, it ain't. Gorillas don't hunt in the sense as lions or leopards do, but they do consume bugs and lizards on occasion. Their bodies are adapted to handling protein as well as plant matter.

And GS, thanks for your viewpoint. What I was referring to is that there is a huge difference between how much of the protein source you eat will actually be used by your body in different types of proteins. Vegetable proteins simply aren't utilized nearly as effectively as animal based proteins. A lot of what you eat will simply be discarded.

arawndark said:

It would be simply impossible for them to have the muscular build they have WITHOUT a fairly decent protein intake. In the absence of amino acids the body breaks down muscle tissue to get them, so obviously the gorillas are intaking plenty of amino acids through protein to maintain their size.

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arawndark, you are right that "In the absence of amino acids the body breaks down muscle tissue to get them." But, amino acids are not only gotten from meat products, nor from what is believe to be 'protein' sources. The body does not need protein per se, but it's the amino acids that it needs. It will make the needed protein, along with other necessary building blocks for the body, from what it ingests.

A vegetarian diet supplies the body with plenty of the needed amino acids to survive. Protein deficiency is a very rare condition, unless, of course, that you starve yourself of ANY intake of foods.

Some quick links on the diets of gorillas:

http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Gorilla/dietgor.html
http://www.ladywildlife.com/animal/gorilla.html
http://mbgnet.mobot.org/sets/rforest/animals/gorilla.htm

There are plenty more out there, but the gorilla is a herbivore. It may at times eat insects and whatnot, but it's not part of its daily intake of food. Compare that with the typical human diet of bacon and eggs in the morning, a ham and cheese sandwich at lunch, a steak and potatoes at dinner. A human probably eats more meat products a day, by weight, than a gorilla does over a month's, if not more, time.

There are other animals, re: hippos, elephants, that are able to gain/maintain, large sizes and muscular builds, through a strictly herbivore diet. So to say that it's impossible is simply inaccurate. One of man's main sources of meat, the cow, seems to do quite a job of building 'steaks' by eating grass.

I agree entirely that amino acids can be had from a plant source. I sourced the gorilla article based on a comment earlier in the thread that gorillas would subsist entirely on oranges if they could, and that was pretty out there. If you look carefully at my final paragraph that you reponded to it really doesn't say meat in there anywhere.

As for cows, alot of grasses are as much as 10-20% protein, so it makes sense that they are able to develop large slabs of muscle tissue.

As a final note... to a certain degree I agree that human protein requirement is overestimated. Human mothers milk contains one of the lowest protein percentages of any type of milk. But using my first hand experience with weight lifting I have actually experience a quicker gain in strength after consuming significantly more protein than when I didn't think about it at all. But, provided you don't lift like a crazy person like I do human beings are pretty safe without all that much protein -- I survived on almost entirely pop-tarts when I was about 15 years old

Arawndark; in your final statement you pretty much summed it up. A person's minimum protein requirement is very much related to how active he/she is physically. A couch potato won't need nearly as much as a bodybuilder or even someone who plays basketball recreationally, jogs, jumps rope or whatever.
One more thing about animals and their muscle size: they have hormonal outputs that put even the biggest pincushion-assed bodybuilders to shame. The bigger the animal, the more test/IGF2/HGH it naturally produces in its system. This should be a no brainer. Not all animals are of equal strength at similar size/weight classes, however. The gorilla, which was used as an example, has massively powerful arms and an insane bite force (the bite force is due to the neck muscles, as I explained)because of its bone structure/muscle alignment. Most other animals of similar size aren't nearly as powerful. If a human could attain a similar size with most of it being muscle (around 400 lbs for big silverback gorillas), he would still be very weak in comparison. This has nothing to do with how much protein the gorilla or the human consumes. It's all about humans having evolved beyond the need for insane strength and musculature, and gorillas still needing theirs to survive.

I Just Recently Heard That You Can Get Wicked Sick From Going Vegan. Every Day Diet Change And All. Plus Not Enough Protein From Meat In Your Body To Help You Grow Stronger.

Whoever told you that you can get sick from going vegan doesn't know what they're talking about. Sure, you can get sick if you eat like shit after switching but you can get sick from eating like shit no matter what. You have to have a balanced diet. And also, I don't recommend going vegan, I recommend going Vegetarian. If you eat a balanced vegetarian diet there is no doubt that you will be more healthy than you were with meat (note the word balanced, which means don't just eat salads... that isn't vegetarian, that's... saladatarian o.O). You don't need protien from meat, I thought we already cleared that up. You need some protien, not much, and it doesn't have to be from meat. Only like 10% or less of your diet is supposed to be protien, and it doesn't matter if it's meat, vegetable, grain, bean, milk, or nut protien. As long as you are getting the neccesary amino acids (only 8 out of the 22), there is nothing to worry about. And a balanced vegetarian diet indeed provides the neccesary amino acids. Not only that but if you have any worry about protien in any diet, it would be that you might be getting too much, more than you need, which can be harmful. Both vegetarians and meat-eaters get more than twice the recommended daily amount of protien. You won't get sick over something like that.

Shafty, humans are animals. Comparisons are done everyday in the scientific world between humans and other members of the animal kingdom. I'm sure the earliest humans looked to animals to see what they eat to determine what is edible. We cannot detach ourselves from the animal kingdom; we are part of it. We gain a wealth of information about ourselves by studying other animals.

The debate here is what is a better diet for the human animal. Personally, I look at it from a natural point of view. Using ONLY the human body itself, what can a human being eat? To me, there's no other way to look at it. Like I said earlier, if we were meant to eat steak, we wouldn't need steak knives. A lion, a natural carnivore, does not need steak knives. His body is designed for the task of eating another animal. We are not.

Of course, if someone ate nothing but carrots, they would probably not be very healthy. On the flip side, if they ate nothing but chicken, the same would be true.

The protein thing has been done ad nauseam, but to reiterate, it is possible to build massive amount of size and strength from a plant-based diet. Hippos, elephants, gorillas, etc., prove that fact. Humans will never be as big or as strong as any of those animals, not matter what we eat.

Once more: the fact that humans can't be as big or strong as certain large herbivores (or omnivores or carnivores) has NOTHING to do with our nutrition. These aforementioned animals have huge skeletal frames that require massive amounts of muscle and strength just to keep them from collapsing under their own weight, so nature has conveniently arranged for them to develop those muscles EVEN though they eat plant matter. Their hormonal outputs make it possible. A human who ate a strictly vegan diet would never grow imposing muscles UNLESS he used massive amounts of roids. Protein is NEEDED for growth (in humans and most other omnivores). Why do you think all omnivores (bears.. HUMANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!.. hogs etc) thrive on a protein rich diet? If you look at bears for example, which are very much omnivorous animals, there is a clear correlation between how much protein and fat their diets contain and how big and strong they grow. Kodiak bears, which are the largest brown bear subspecies in the world, only grow to such massive frames because their diet consists of salmon (which is an excellent source of good fats (omega 3) and protein) year round. Inland grizzlies on the other hand never reach weights that big because they eat more plant matter. And no, they aren't any healthier than their bigger and stronger coastal counterparts.

I do realize that humans are animals in a certain sense. You can NEVER disprove the fact that we have been omnivorous from the dawn of time. We haven't always eaten this much meat (it used to be more about insects and such that didn't require any preperation), but it is a scientific fact that human evolution experienced a rapid acceleration from the point where we started to consume more meat, as I stated before (especially after we invented fire and could thus cook it). Human life expectancy shot up like a rocket, population growth exploded everywhere (we could afford to have more of us around due to this new source of nutritious food), and all levels of our development started to ascend to new heights.

And one more time for the road: we aren't strict carnivores (in fact, we do rely primarily on plant based nutrition), but rather omnivores, much like chimps. They don't have claws or carnivorous jaws either, yet they regularily prey on smaller monkeys and even baboons. The argument that we don't have claws is probably the worst possible one on behalf of us being strictly vegetarian, so everyone just let it go already. I'm getting tired of repeating myself. Besides, earlier human species' used to have pointed canines, the remnants of which can still be seen in our front row of teeth. We have evolved beyond the need for natural weaponry a long time ago, so we no longer have them, or the great strength and musculature of other primates, for that matter.

Of course this is all leading us to the turf or science vs religion. A lot of christians don't believe in evolution, which would make all my arguments invalid to them. I'm not sure about all the details being correct, either, but I have different reasons to doubt the prevailing theory. Our ascension from the animal kingdom into the human kingdom might have been catalyzed by some outside force, since the 'missing link' is yet to be explained. It could have been alien intervention, or perhaps some completely different phenomena, but there is no way in this world I will subscibe to the belief that the earth (and the universe along with it, I suppose) was created in seven days by God, and that He, in his infinite wisdom, chose to make us herbivores. Wooo, then we turned from the path of light at some point, lured by Beelzebub, and started to kill our brethren (animals) for food. That shit is not gonna fly.
I have a very stong feeling of 'kinship' (or whatever you want to call it) with animals, but I don't see how it is morally corrupt for humans to do what they've been doing since the dawn of humanity: eating meat. I DO think that animals are kept in appalling conditions in slaughterhouses, and as I've said before, I would probably stop eating meat if I ever saw it first hand. However, it is natural for man to hunt (just like chimps, our closest cousins, do) and eat what he catches. Remeber that we, too, were occasionally preyed upon by certain beasts in our 'caveman' days. It was just a natural part of the cycle of life: kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

jGman said:

Like I said earlier, if we were meant to eat steak, we wouldn't need steak knives. A lion, a natural carnivore, does not need steak knives. His body is designed for the task of eating another animal. We are not.

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I could pick up a steak with my hands and eat it, or a turkey leg, or a fish, the list goes on. Steak knives aren't a necessity, they are just convenient.

Bigd5903 said:

I could pick up a steak with my hands and eat it, or a turkey leg, or a fish, the list goes on. Steak knives aren't a necessity, they are just convenient.

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(*puke*) That isn't the point, the point is could you pick up a live cow, turkey, or fish and eat it. Live and uncooked, still writhing in your hands... could you even bite into it? If you managed to would you live? (*puke*)

And Shafty, I don't subscribe to 'current modern science's' belief that man appeared magically, suddenly only 2 million years ago. There are historical accounts in ancient texts that man has been on this planet for longer, and had been Very civilized (none of that 'cave man' stuff, great and wise sages went to caves sometimes to meditate though.) In fact it is said that in those times we even had airships and contact with beings from other planets in those ancient texts, we were far from being uncivilized and 'cavemen' or less intelligent. Actually the opposite is true, we were more advanced so all your arguements of 'when we discovered fire', and 'meat caused population to boom', and 'cavemen' are mute to me because back then population was very high and vegetarianism (not veganism) was popular. Killing for food was known to be a sin, it was still done by some though.

No 'devil' caused us to eat meat, our lower, animal desires within our own ego is what causes us to act in such ways. And yes we do kill our bretheren, the animals. If it was not morally corrupt to kill animals and eat them, then it is not morally corrupt to kill humans and eat them. [By the way, God didn't create the world in 7 days, but He is the source of it. (and obviously it wasn't done just 4000 years ago or whatever) But that's another story.]

See, that's what I mean. Your beliefs are just that- personal beliefs with no presentable evidence to back them up. You can't dismiss my arguments because they don't fit into your world view. I won't dismiss what you've said completely, either, since science is ever evolving, and the facts of today may very well be proven wrong tomorrow. I know everything doesn't add up in Darwin's theory, and one possible reason could be alien intervention, as you said. It would certainly explain a lot of things.
I do however believe that we have always eaten meat. There may have been advanced, sophisticated supercivilizations on earth thousands or hundreds of thousands of years before our current age, but the fact that we share 98% (or was it 99% by current calculations) of our genes with chimps, which are very much omnivores, tells me loud and clear that meat eating is natural to us. Maybe we are some kind of genetically engineered chimp.. who knows, really? But the point is, at this stage in human evolution meat eating is still something that I wouldn't exactly consider unhealthy or unreasonable.
Speaking from a strictly physiological standpoint, that is. The morals are a different issue altogether, and that is something I don't care to debate. Why? Because I don't want to be labled a barbarian or murderer simply because I happen to eat meat on occasion.

Stuff_ said:

(*puke*) That isn't the point, the point is could you pick up a live cow, turkey, or fish and eat it. Live and uncooked, still writhing in your hands... could you even bite into it? If you managed to would you live? (*puke*)

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That's how people used to eat before they discovered fire