well is it? :confused:

yes, and so is breathing.

Yes, that's why I use photosynthesis.

Nice trick. Can you teach me how to do that? I assume chlorophyll injections are necessary.

Yes, that's why I use photosynthesis.

Yes, bu ur hurting the microbes in the dirt! :mad: what an ethical quandary.

Damn those microbes! :mad:

You don't need to eat! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breatharian) So of course eating is morally wrong. Isn't the first food babies consume from their mothers' breasts? Breasts are related to sex and sex is also morally wrong! Bad humans, shouldn't have eaten that apple in the garden...

Nice trick. Can you teach me how to do that? I assume chlorophyll injections are necessary.
But seriously, I knew a girl that had green patches in her skin, and the doctor told her that they were harmless, some kind of plant.

I did a quick search just now to see if I could find more information, but I couldn't find anything.

Googling "human photosynthesis" turned up a number of sites, some of them talking about a guy called Hira Ratan Manek (http://www.fourwinds10.com/news/12-science-tech/D-new-technology/2004/12D-12-19-04-human-photosynthesis.html) who claims to have gone without food for years.

(He may be right about lack of sunlight depressing people. Isn't that called Seasonal Affective Disorder?)

But I think this story (http://planetmag.com/blog/2004/12/02/going-green-by-rachel-dunstan-muller/) is more realistic ... and funnier :p

This thread seems to be a reaction against the vegetarian threads currently running, in which it is carefully explained why eating meat is unethical.

Merely existing in the world means you have an environmental impact. So, if you want zero impact, your only option is not to exist at all. However, once you accept that your existence is allowable, then the moral course of action is to try to minimise any harmful environmental impact you have.

In other words you should act like every other omnivore. Cultivation of land is a far bigger impact that killing a cow.

James R,

I agree with you almost totally. One should try to live in harmony with nature. But then it's pointless to question the morality of something like eating. We do it to stay alive, not because it is an effective way to inflict pain on animals or microbes.

The intent is to stay alive! You could say that itself is immoral. (And for the record I am almost completely vegetarian.)

well is it? :confused:
Yes, it is, but that's what makes it so fun...:D

Cultivation of land is a far bigger impact that killing a cow.

Cultivating the land to sustain the cow, however, is an even greater impact. If you dont want to hurt the earth, vegetarianism would be the best way to go. You get ten times the food output per unit energy input.

Cultivating the land to sustain the cow, however, is an even greater impact. If you dont want to hurt the earth, vegetarianism would be the best way to go. You get ten times the food output per unit energy input.

Really? I see a cow in a field, I kill it, skin it, process the meat and have several hundred pounds of meat and fat. For grain I have to till, plow, plant, water, tend, harvest, seperate chaff, and I get not nearly as much. Hmmmm.

Is eating morally wrong
Yes. Starve and die. That's more logical...

Yeah, just simply cultivating the wheat (assuming you're talking about wheat when you say "grain") generates a lot less product for the amount of work you have to do. For cows, you just put in a friggin grass pasture, no needing to cultivate special crops, and you get to use ALL of the meat, rather than just a portion of it.
Also, with wheat, to make it edible, you have to grind it, mix it with egg (chicken embryo, oh my!) and form it into dough, then roll it and shape it, yeast it, and bake it to make a loaf of bread. Wow, that's a shitload of work for something that will last you, what, a week or two at most? Whereas a whole cow, which takes a lot less work to cultivate, can last several months, if properly rationed.

Hapsburg and Scott, it's not about the work you have to do, it's about the resources you're wasting. For example, if everyone were to use the same amount of resources as the average person in the USA, we would need 12 earths :|

BS not even close.

Actually what do you think you are using to tend this crop you are growing, Do you think the human body runs on credit. You waste more personal energy growing a acre of mixed crops then you get out of it. Just common sense here. This is why we evolved as omnivores. Becuase we could take advantage of all food sources.

no such thing as right and wrong, so all rights would be morally so and all wrongs immoral.

all down to persepctive.............

er, eh ...what?

I'm still thinking about those fruitists...wow

To live we have to kill, that's just our place on the food chain. Not much sense denying it or getting terribly upset over it. The most we can really do is feel just a little tiny bit guilty and work toward making some sort of non-living protein synthesizers or something if we really want to come up with an alternative.

BS not even close.

Actually what do you think you are using to tend this crop you are growing, Do you think the human body runs on credit. You waste more personal energy growing a acre of mixed crops then you get out of it. Just common sense here. This is why we evolved as omnivores. Becuase we could take advantage of all food sources.- The energy you use to plant a crop is tiny compared to all the energy that crop gives (at least if it's a crop the size that's common in the developed world today) - and you certainly don't use more energy planting a crop than you get from it, that's just a silly idea. Especially in modern agriculture, sitting on you ass in a tractor isn't all that tough (I know farming involves more than that, but really now)

Look, this is simple stuff, it's the food pyramid - didn't they teach you about this in elementary school?

... What the hell is wrong with people?
Hasn't anyone noticed that we live in the modern world?
If you hadn't noticed, we live in a world full of cities, where there is a huge variety of foods you can buy, where those foods (eg. vegetables, seeds, fruits) are plentiful, etc. Get back to reality will ya?
WE ARE NOT CAVEMEN for pete's sake. We don't have to eat meat, it is bad for you if you eat meat, and eating meat doesn't mean you see a cow on the forest, kill it, skin it, and eat it.
WE don't have to either go around picking stawberries not cleaning cow crap. Other people do that. and to feed those cows, you need to grow more plants. Is that really so hard to understand?

This thread seems to be a reaction against the vegetarian threads currently running, in which it is carefully explained why eating meat is unethical.

Merely existing in the world means you have an environmental impact. So, if you want zero impact, your only option is not to exist at all. However, once you accept that your existence is allowable, then the moral course of action is to try to minimise any harmful environmental impact you have.
Like, passing gas ;)

- The energy you use to plant a crop is tiny compared to all the energy that crop gives (at least if it's a crop the size that's common in the developed world today) - and you certainly don't use more energy planting a crop than you get from it, that's just a silly idea. Especially in modern agriculture, sitting on you ass in a tractor isn't all that tough (I know farming involves more than that, but really now)

Look, this is simple stuff, it's the food pyramid - didn't they teach you about this in elementary school?

Actually you'd be surprised how much work is in farming is. Hell, gardening is a lot of work and your dealing with much less space.

Although you are right it is a food pyramid and we are the apex, not the level just up from grass.

TW Scott:

You waste more personal energy growing a acre of mixed crops then you get out of it.

You just make it up as you go along, don't you? It's really getting desperate when you have to resort to lying.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Emphases/Harmony/

No, eating is not morally wrong.

No, eating is not morally wrong.- http://stevescars.digitaloutsider.org/captain_obvious.jpg

Actually you'd be surprised how much work is in farming is. Hell, gardening is a lot of work and your dealing with much less space. - And because you're dealing with much less space, you're also being much less efficient. That's why farming is done in so much larger a scale today than before.

Although you are right it is a food pyramid and we are the apex, not the level just up from grass.- The food pyramid is not a hirearchy of value or rule, scott, it's showing who-eats-who, and the reason it's a pyramid is because you need a lot more of the stuff at the bottom to sustain the stuff at the top eating everything below.

The history of human evolution shows that supplementing our diet with meat allowed the development of substantially larger brains, a process that consumes large amounts of energy and nutrients.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore

Hapsburg and Scott, it's not about the work you have to do
It is to me, 'cause I'm lazy. ;)

The history of human evolution shows that supplementing our diet with meat allowed the development of substantially larger brains, a process that consumes large amounts of energy and nutrients.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore

Maybe people can't read. Here, I'll post it again:
... What the hell is wrong with people?
Hasn't anyone noticed that we live in the modern world?
If you hadn't noticed, we live in a world full of cities, where there is a huge variety of foods you can buy, where those foods (eg. vegetables, seeds, fruits) are plentiful, etc. Get back to reality will ya?
WE ARE NOT CAVEMEN for pete's sake. We don't have to eat meat, it is bad for you if you eat meat, and eating meat doesn't mean you see a cow on the forest, kill it, skin it, and eat it.
WE don't have to either go around picking stawberries not cleaning cow crap. Other people do that. and to feed those cows, you need to grow more plants. Is that really so hard to understand?

We may not live in caves, but humans still have the same instincts and base nature as our ancestors. For all intents and purposes, we are the same. Who is to say that protein-rich meat, which allowed us to evolve to where we are now, cannot help us evolve beyond our baser instincts?

Actually going back to the whole food pyramid thing i think you are forgetting conservation of energy. Neither matter nor Energy is created or destroyed. No matter what you eat the exact same amount of end energy is the same. The cow eats the gras you eat the cow, was the grass simply wasted energy? No. it is there in the cow in a form you can use. End result is the same, however cattle raising is less work than farming. It is more efficent. You don't need to sow seed, till, or harvest. Now I am not saying become carnivores, but there is land that is no good for farming but perfect for all sort of ranching.

TW,

Cows are inefficient machines, fed with the same grain that humans consume. They burn off most of that grain as heat, and use some of the matter for organs, bones.. stuff that people wouldn't eat.

So isn't more efficient if the humans eat the grain instead, cutting out the cow? Do you not understand this?

http://plif.andkon.com/archive/wc118.gif

we should all just live off the goodness of nature. plant our feet in the floor like roots, and live off the sunlight and nutrients of the soil like moral humans.


we will make good tree's


peace.

Do trees have rights?

e :eek: s

Hapsburg
Who is to say that protein-rich meat, which allowed us to evolve to where we are now, cannot help us evolve beyond our baser instincts?
Me. We have plenty of protein-rich foods that aren't meat.
TW scott
The cow eats the gras you eat the cow, was the grass simply wasted energy? No. it is there in the cow in a form you can use. End result is the same, however cattle raising is less work than farming. It is more efficent. You don't need to sow seed, till, or harvest.
Sigh. one word: heat.
energy is lost in heat. Eating meat IS wasted energy, and not just 10% either, it's more than that as the cows or whatever have to be fed a lot in order to grow to a good size.
and you do need to sow seed, till, and harvest if you want to farm animals, as animals EAT. Where do you think animals get their food form? eh? they don't photosynthesize if you hadn't noticed.
THINK people, THINK! It really isn't THAT hard!

I'd say there's a big difference between eating cow, pig and other farm animals and eating animals who're more in their natural habitat, like fish, reindeer or sheep, though.

I'd say there's a big difference between eating cow, pig and other farm animals and eating animals who're more in their natural habitat, like fish, reindeer or sheep, though.

In that resorting to the latter would devastate the ecosystem.

We have plenty of protein-rich foods that aren't meat.
They don't have as much protein per gram as meat does, though.


and you do need to sow seed, till, and harvest if you want to farm animals, as animals EAT. Where do you think animals get their food form? eh? they don't photosynthesize if you hadn't noticed.
Like I said, just plop the herd of cows on a patch of grass, and they will be fine. You don't need to grow special crops to feed the cows, all you have to do is raise them where there is an abundance of naturally-growing grass (a.k.a, nearly anywhere).

They don't have as much protein per gram as meat does, though.

Nuts such as almonds have ridiculous amount of protein in them. Plus an abundance of other healthy things like b17.



Like I said, just plop the herd of cows on a patch of grass, and they will be fine. You don't need to grow special crops to feed the cows, all you have to do is raise them where there is an abundance of naturally-growing grass (a.k.a, nearly anywhere).

They grow too slowly on a diet of grass.

Hapsburg
They don't have as much protein per gram as meat does, though.
I see the 3 or however many threads on the subject have been utterly wasted. That's just wrong, some things (like soy products) have even MORE protein per gram than meat does.
Like I said, just plop the herd of cows on a patch of grass, and they will be fine. You don't need to grow special crops to feed the cows, all you have to do is raise them where there is an abundance of naturally-growing grass (a.k.a, nearly anywhere).
can you say narrowminded and out of touch with reality?

Wolf: That may be, but soy products taste like ape piss, and, well, beans give me gas, as do an overabundance of nuts.

Xerx: Use long-grass then. Or, alternatively, herd animals smaller than cattle that can be sustained by a grass praerie.

In that resorting to the latter would devastate the ecosystem.- No :p We've been doing that throughout human history, and it hasn't destroyed the ecosystem so far. We do have to be careful, of course, but I see no reason to stop eating those kinds of meat - except that killing animals is kind of mean, but it's still a lot less mean than keeping them in consentration camps for all their lives and then killing them :eek:

Xerx: Use long-grass then. Or, alternatively, herd animals smaller than cattle that can be sustained by a grass praerie.

That would have been possible before our N. American fescue was overrun with European grasses. Prairie grasses nowadays are not very nutritious.

Somehow this became a "meat is bad" thread.

With the current size of the population, it is true that we could not live on wild game alone and keep a self-sufficient ecosystem. But it was done in the past, with a smaller population. So, if we performed a little population control, eating wild animals now becomes the most energy conserving alternative.

If energy conservation is the measure of morality, as it seems to be in this thread, then population control + eating wild game = highest morality.

Maybe this thread needs a slogan:

"Meat doesn't kill people, I do!"

Max

hapsburg
Wolf: That may be, but soy products taste like ape piss, and, well, beans give me gas, as do an overabundance of nuts.

You just haven't been eating the right kind of soy products. You can eat tofu for example. Fried tofu is probably the best. Or you can make things with soy milk (which I agree tastes like piss alone) such as cookies (I once made completely vegan cookies, and if I hadn't messed up on the amount of baking soda, they would have been really good), etc.
You just have to know how to use things. You've probably never even tried have you? or have you gone to vegetarian restaurants? they have some really good stuff, a lot of which is made out of nuts and beans.
and about gas, you don't have to eat that much to get the protein you need, and you don't have to eat it all at once.

Tofu is the worst-tasting thing in existance. Especially tofurkey, that shit is just disgusting.

And I have been one vegetarian resteraunt, it was vietnamese food- just noodles with peanut sauce and bamboo shoots. Then, again, nooodles are good any day.