Veganism

[JimR-OCDS]

First off, the creation story in Genesis is allegorical, not to be take as literal.

God didn't intend for humans to refrain from meat any more than he would
require lions and tigers to refrain from eating meat.

The fallen state we live in requires us to live in a world where eating meat is
part of living.

Being vegetarian or vegan has it's short term benefits, but there is also evidence
of higher rates of cancer among vegetarians. Why ? They don't know.

I was on the Atkins diet years back, and I lost 35 lbs and felt great. However, it was
boring. Eating meat and just certain vegetables got boring and as soon as I added
fruit, I started to gain some weight back. Fruit is natures candy, as it has sugar in
the form of fructose.

If you decide do be a vegetarian, do it as a discipline, not as a requirement from God.

Veganism is dangerous and my own cousin got really sick from B-12 deficiency. She
was a letter carrier and required protein and B-12 in her diet.

Anyway, spiritual growth doesn't depend on our diet, but the desire of the heart to be in
union with Christ. But it also requires us to live in the present, which is where God is, and
to become the person God had in mind when He created you.

 

[bmjackson]

Actually, God created us to be fruitarians, living off the produce that takes no labour. You just pick off the fruits when they are ready. But being expelled from that environment, to wherever Adam and his wife were banished to, would make a fruit diet much more difficult, away from the equator.

So he told Adam that it would now be from the sweat of his brow that he would eat, growing vegetables, but he also gave permission to eat animals as farming would have to depend on the growth season and weather.

But our bodies are much more like other fruitarians like apes. In fact eating fruit alone if one can get hold of proper ripened fruit, is the ideal and ones health improves immeasurably eating like this. I ate like that for one week during a bout of ocular shingles and my chronic sinusitis and joint aches and pains disappeared.

The studies on red meat were no doubt conducted on factory farmed animals and not organic pasture fed and finished beasts. It depends on our biochemistry what can lead us to have good health so no one should be laying down rules for anyone.

 

[Eftsoon]

Genesis 1:29 tells us God originally gave humans every seed bearing plant for food. Doesn’t this mean his original plan was for us to be vegan? I recently came to Christ. So far I’ve been convicted to give up cigarettes, weed, and sexual immorality. I’ve just finished reading the New Testament for the first time and the only confusing thing for me about Jesus is his endorsement of fish and other animals as food. Cats and dogs are tortured and eaten in China much like pigs, cows, and other animals are here in North America. Do you think God would support factory farming as it is done today when so many plant-based alternatives exist and have been proven nutritionally adequate, not to mention the detriment it is doing to our environment and human health?

I'm a vegan because I believe that we should be aiming at compassion in all our relations with living beings. Veganism used to be nutritionally impossible. God sanctioned it because there was no other way. Today it is possible to thrive on a vegan diet. There's no biological imperative.
We were never commanded to eat meat. We were allowed to do so. The necessity has passed. Let compassion rule. If you CAN follow a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle I think that it is ethical to do so. I think we should all, at least, reduce our meat consumption as much as possible.

 

[Eftsoon]

Veganism is dangerous and my own cousin got really sick from B-12 deficiency. She
was a letter carrier and required protein and B-12 in her diet.

You do need to supplement with Vitamin B12. It's possible to thrive if you pay attention to your nutritional intake.

 

[Eftsoon]

I think that the debate comes down to a very simple point. If you believe that animals are sentient and experience pain, you are gratuitiously inflicting it on them by killing and eating them. If you don't believe they are sentient and experience pain, you are not inflicting it on them.

It isn't about asceticism, or about clean and unclean. The point is that we don't want to cause needless suffering. For some people, veganism just isn't practical. That's fine. However, for most of us, it is... but we like the taste of meat.

Honest and genuine question - not aggressive in any way... How do you justify subjecting sentient beings to untold agonies for a taste experience? To me it's unfathomable, and the ethical choice is plain.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

I'm a vegan because I believe that we should be aiming at compassion in all our relations with living beings. Veganism used to be nutritionally impossible. God sanctioned it because there was no other way. Today it is possible to thrive on a vegan diet. There's no biological imperative.
We were never commanded to eat meat. We were allowed to do so. The necessity has passed. Let compassion rule. If you CAN follow a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle I think that it is ethical to do so. I think we should all, at least, reduce our meat consumption as much as possible.

Try living in a northern area on a vegan diet where supermarkets aren't readily available. It's impossible.

We were never commanded to eat meat, but we weren't commanded not to eat it, except pork.
Most of the dietary regulations in the Old Testament had to do with the lack of refrigeration hygiene, so God told the Israelites to refrain from pork, shell fish and other dietary issues which had nothing to do with eating meat.

When lions and tigers stop eating meat, I will too.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

You do need to supplement with Vitamin B12. It's possible to thrive if you pay attention to your nutritional intake.

To me, any diet where you have to take supplements in order not to get sick, isn't a natural diet.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

I think that the debate comes down to a very simple point. If you believe that animals are sentient and experience pain, you are gratuitiously inflicting it on them by killing and eating them. If you don't believe they are sentient and experience pain, you are not inflicting it on them.

It isn't about asceticism, or about clean and unclean. The point is that we don't want to cause needless suffering. For some people, veganism just isn't practical. That's fine. However, for most of us, it is... but we like the taste of meat.

Honest and genuine question - not aggressive in any way... How do you justify subjecting sentient beings to untold agonies for a taste experience? To me it's unfathomable, and the ethical choice is plain.

Does the zebra suffer when a lion kills and eats it ?

If you look at the natural world, killing and eating is part of the cycle of life.

We humans are part of that cycle.

 

[Eftsoon]

Does the zebra suffer when a lion kills and eats it ?

If you look at the natural world, killing and eating is part of the cycle of life.

We humans are part of that cycle.

You're not confronting the central issue which is the fact that inflicting pain on animals is wrong. We have laws against animal cruelty for good reason. It is quite inconsistent morally. Predators have to eat meat also. We have emerged out of that world. We don't eat our own young, for instance.We are not 'part of it' in the sense you mean.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

You're not confronting the central issue which is the fact that inflicting pain on animals is wrong. We have laws against animal cruelty for good reason. It is quite inconsistent morally. Predators have to eat meat also. We have emerged out of that world. We don't eat our own young, for instance.We are not 'part of it' in the sense you mean.

But we are meant to eat meat. Ask any Inuit if they would prefer to be vegetarians and then help them off the ground as they stop laughing.

 

[seeking.IAM]

In a vegan world cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and turkeys would all but become extinct existing only in zoos to satisfy curious onlookers. It's not like farmers are going to keep them as pampered pets nor will much of the world allow them to freely roam the streets. So what is more cruel: a life leading to the food chain or near extinction of a species?

 

[RDKirk]

I switched to a low salt vegan diet. I lost weight and my health improved. I had to take B-12, zinc and iodine. Since then I added two 3 oz servings of fish per week, more or less. I rarely eat meat in a restaurant. I accidentally ordered a plate that contained meat at an Argentine-American restaurant where I was meeting family. I ate the meat after regretting the mistake.

Red meat is a carcinogen. Eating meat that is high in fat and cholesterol puts a person at risk of cardiovascular disease.

I read that salt deficiency can cause damage. I started eating salted microwave popcorn. It increased my pulse rate. I did the no added salt routine again and lowered my pulse rate. Eating beans may lower a person’s heart rate.

In the Book of Daniel the Jews with Daniel ate pulses (beans, lentils peas) instead of fancy cuisine. They contain protein.

The reason Daniel and his compatriots in the temple ate none of the king's meat was because the king's meat was non-kosher, not because it was meat.

 

[RDKirk]

Actually, God created us to be fruitarians, living off the produce that takes no labour. You just pick off the fruits when they are ready. But being expelled from that environment, to wherever Adam and his wife were banished to, would make a fruit diet much more difficult, away from the equator.

So he told Adam that it would now be from the sweat of his brow that he would eat, growing vegetables, but he also gave permission to eat animals as farming would have to depend on the growth season and weather.

But our bodies are much more like other fruitarians like apes. In fact eating fruit alone if one can get hold of proper ripened fruit, is the ideal and ones health improves immeasurably eating like this. I ate like that for one week during a bout of ocular shingles and my chronic sinusitis and joint aches and pains disappeared.

I used to teach jungle survival in the Air Force, and I'll tell you: Most people will starve to death in the natural jungle. The fruit we eat today is the result of thousands of years of cultivation and hybridization. In the natural world, fruit is actually quite hard to find, and where you find it, it is small, not very sweet, and half the fruit you find will be toxic. There aren't even very many green plants that are edible, and those that are edible require quite a bit of preparation: Cutting, chopping, peeling, cooking, et cetera, to make them digestible. It might not have been that way before the Fall, but it's been that way since.

That is why there are no people groups that were vegan; they all ate at the very least eggs and milk. Some have been almost totally carnivore.

The Jain in South Asia are interesting in that they have a consistent "no kill" philosophy. They will eat milk and eggs as long as the animals were well-cared for. But they will not eat vegetables such as potatoes and carrots because the harvest kills the plant.

Moreover, not even apes are vegans. The larger, more intelligent apes eat quite a bit of animal protein. Chimpanzees will hunt monkeys and other small animals. Baboons are known to hunt elk in cleverly planned hunting parties.

The studies on red meat were no doubt conducted on factory farmed animals and not organic pasture fed and finished beasts. It depends on our biochemistry what can lead us to have good health so no one should be laying down rules for anyone.

That is part of the truth. The other part is that the epidemiological surveys were always of people with no food discipline whatsoever: People who ate the standard American diet high in processed and fast "foods." And I intended to place "foods" in quotes. They compared them to vegans and vegetarians, who were obviously people who monitored their diets closely.

An honest comparison would be between people with equally disciplined diets, such as vegan elite athletes compared to omnivore elite athletes.

 

[dqhall]

I used to teach jungle survival in the Air Force, and I'll tell you: Most people will starve to death in the natural jungle. The fruit we eat today is the result of thousands of years of cultivation and hybridization. In the natural world, fruit is actually quite hard to find, and where you find it, it is small, not very sweet, and half the fruit you find will be toxic. There aren't even very many green plants that are edible, and those that are edible require quite a bit of preparation: Cutting, chopping, peeling, cooking, et cetera, to make them digestible. It might not have been that way before the Fall, but it's been that way since.

That is why there are no people groups that were vegan; they all ate at the very least eggs and milk. Some have been almost totally carnivore.

The Jain in South Asia are interesting in that they have a consistent "no kill" philosophy. They will eat milk and eggs as long as the animals were well-cared for. But they will not eat vegetables such as potatoes and carrots because the harvest kills the plant.

Moreover, not even apes are vegans. The larger, more intelligent apes eat quite a bit of animal protein. Chimpanzees will hunt monkeys and other small animals. Baboons are known to hunt elk in cleverly planned hunting parties.



That is part of the truth. The other part is that the epidemiological surveys were always of people with no food discipline whatsoever: People who ate the standard American diet high in processed and fast "foods." And I intended to place "foods" in quotes. They compared them to vegans and vegetarians, who were obviously people who monitored their diets closely.

An honest comparison would be between people with equally disciplined diets, such as vegan elite athletes compared to omnivore elite athletes.

There is a group of Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, CA who have a higher number of centenarians living amongst them. The men on primarily plant based diets live about ten years longer than men elsewhere. They do not smoke, drink alcohol, or caffeine. They emphasize a plant based diet. There are more vegans and vegetarians amongst them than the general population.

Tom Brady is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He ate a diet that is 80% plant based. He also ate organic grass fed beef and what else, I do not know..

 

[RDKirk]

There is a group of Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, CA who have a higher number of centenarians living amongst them. The men on primarily plant based diets live about ten years longer than men elsewhere. They do not smoke, drink alcohol, or caffeine. They emphasize a plant based diet. There are more vegans and vegetarians amongst them than the general population.

Tom Brady is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He ate a diet that is 80% plant based. He also ate organic grass fed beef and what else, I do not know..

As I said: The other part is that the epidemiological surveys were always of people with no food discipline whatsoever: People who ate the standard American diet high in processed and fast "foods." And I intended to place "foods" in quotes. They compared them to vegans and vegetarians, who were obviously people who monitored their diets closely.

 

[bmjackson]

In the natural world, fruit is actually quite hard to find, and where you find it, it is small, not very sweet

That was not my experience, in buying wild mangoes from a supplier who flies in sun ripened tropical fruit (in Germany). The taste was sublime, and they were very sweet and juicy. It spoilt me forever from eating normally found store mangoes.

 

[Eftsoon]

But we are meant to eat meat. Ask any Inuit if they would prefer to be vegetarians and then help them off the ground as they stop laughing.

I'm sorry - that's not an argument at all.

 

[RDKirk]

That was not my experience, in buying wild mangoes from a supplier who flies in sun ripened tropical fruit (in Germany). The taste was sublime, and they were very sweet and juicy. It spoilt me forever from eating normally found store mangoes.

You didn't read what I wrote. If you ate imported fruit, you still ate fruit that was farmed and has been developed for a couple of hundred years for size, texture, and taste. You didn't get fruit that was simply plucked from a random tree in a natural jungle. They weren't "wild."

That you mentioned mangoes is ironic because they are practically the national fruit in the Philippines...which is where I was teaching Air Force jungle survival. We put the pilots out in real, natural jungle...and there were no mangoes growing out there.

 

[bmjackson]

They were. The size showed it. The company are totally reliable and would have said farmed if that was so. It was a very small family company.

 

[RDKirk]

They were. The size showed it. The company are totally reliable and would have said farmed if that was so. It was a very small family company.

Then they were farmed. Nobody is running an international produce export business simply walking out into a natural, wild jungle picking fruit that grows randomly. What's the name of that "very small family company?" I'll bet they own their land.