Any point in being a vegetarian????
 

Don't know whether this is the place for this but...

Is there any point in being a vegetarian?

I Watched Ready To Fall video by Rise Against and a video from http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video....=wm&speed=_med
Which is about how animals are killed. Also these lyrics from ready to fall touched me which is what would be going on in the mind of an animal about to be killed:

"Wings wont take me
Eyes closed face me
So take a step
But don't look down take a step"

I tried being a vegetarian for about a month and i grew extremely weak and tired.
i thought to my self... whats the point? if everyone was a vegetarian then there would be loads of animals and eventually too many to be able to handle so they would be killed anyway. So i began eating healthy meat like fish again.... did i do the right thing???

What do you all think???

people are in it for all sorts of reasons. some think the current treatment of animals that are going to be eaten is inappropriate and won't eat the meat if it wasn't treated ethically. others hate the taste, others think eating meat is wrong or disgusting.

and i do believe the majority of vegans are so because they don't much like the exploitation of animals for their products either.

or something like that.. heh...

i don't really agree with you on the part of what would happen if we didn't eat animals. that's just dumb in the opinion of me *heee*. if we didn't eat *people*, would the human population rise to a point where it's just intolerable and we'd end up eating them anyway?

yummm.... meeeaaat...

True your right. I was wrong but i don't see how people can be vegetarians because it made me very weak and tired.

I need real reasons to become one and what to eat so i stay and feel healthy.

Marko - I am a vegetarian, and cannot recognize any of the things you described above. If you get weak and feel you're loosing energy, you're doing something wrong. If you ever want to try the experiment again, I advice you to learn about nutrition. You should probably also join a veggie forum (for instance wwww.veggieboards.com) to learn more about how to handle it. Let me tell you, I haven't eaten meat the last two years, perhaps more. My health is excellent, and much better than most peoples', according to my doctor. And I know I'm not an exception.

Well i ate lots of nuts, brocoli, potatoes, cucumber, lettuce, and drank plenty of water and walked 5 miles a day (maybe its the walking thats the weakness) its 5 miles because its 2 and a half there and the same back. i'll take your advice and see what i can do differently.

Thanks for the help =D

Yep I'm a vegetarian myself. It's a healthly and guiltfree(in my case) life style. I saw those videos on PETA 1 year ago prior to seeing the KFC video I quit eatting meat. So far it's gone very well. People around me are such critics about it though I understand everyone has a right to an opinion but I get picked at alot for it especially by one of my uncles who's butt I still need to kick. One thing that happened was my close started to get big on me the last time I checked I found that I went from a size 14 to a 8 I swear I wasn't even trying to lose weight it suprised me. All I did was not eat meat.

I'm afraid that's the most idiotic reasoning I have ever come across. Ever heard of a farm? You know... Those places where animals are bred and raised to be killed and eaten? Yeah? You heard of 'em? Well if everyone were vegetarian, those places wouldn't exist. So if we continue that little thread of logic, oh look! Hey! All the animals born on those farms wouldn't exist either! How about that, eh?

Having steak for dinner is not population control, it is the product of an industry, just like your kitchen appliances and cutlery.

Now I'm not vegetarian, I love the taste of chicken far too much for that, but I know plenty of reasons to be vegetarian. Cruelty to animals is one of them.

However I don't eat anything harvested from the sea, and I'll tell you why: We're fishing the oceans to death with the amount we're eating, and it isn't natural. You may think your innocent little bowl of garlic shrimp is a perfectly environmentally friendly meal, but for every pound of those delicious little crustaceans caught, fifteen pounds of other wildlife is killed and thrown back into the ocean to rot. The same goes, if not to quite the same horrendous extent, to many other species of marine animals.

Ahem... right. I think I'm done now.

i kinda got the point it was a crap reason earlier on in the thread =D

No worries. It was just an excuse for me to rant on the exploitation of marine life, really. My points are still valid though, so I hope you brain still managed to lap it up :D

"you" brain?

I would love to be a vegitarian except for the fact that I love eating meat and I hate most veggies. I blame my environment, when you grow up in an area where there are more cows than people and at least 5 of your friends raise some kind of animal for food it kind of becomes part of life

i have been a vegetarin for like 3 years now and i tried to eat meat again because i love the taste but looking at the dead animal that was on my plate disgusted me.... gross! i could eat meat but there's a some reasons i do not
1. the way the animals are killed. animals do not need to be food, they do not need to be killed for me
2. it is disgusting to me to be eating a dead animal. especially if you can see the veins and muscles and bones... excuse me while i throw up
3. theres many diseases which people can get from meat being undercooked or from a disease the animal had before it was killed

there's probably many more which i will post later but i just got my wisdom teeth taken out and i am in pain

Well without vegitarians chickens and cows and other commonly eaten animals would be extremely endangered.

"it is disgusting to me to be eating a dead animal. especially if you can see the veins and muscles and bones... excuse me while i throw up"
yea I know, that stuff is disgusting.

you can get salmonilla from thawing chicken in warm water I think.

My main choice of meat is chicken,but when the bird flu gets over here (most likely will) I'll most likely become a vegetarian.

I am an omnivorous creature. I eat vegetables and meat, like most other human beings. I happen to really enjoy the carnivorous part of that, and I do start to feel tired and worm out more when I haven't had real meat in a while. There are few things to beat a properly cooked chunk of cow. I prefer medium rare myself.

That being said, I think the way animals are raised for meat today is deplorable. another thing to take into consideration is that an animal raised in a little box being meted out ( no pun intended) a certain portion of pre-manufactured "food" is not going to have the same nutritional value as something raised free range. It was for exactly that reason my father used to raise our own beef cattle, we had chickens in the back yard, there was a small dairy across the street, and we had a 1/4 acre vegetable garden next to the house. I only wish I could still eat like that.

The food we have today is crap, whether we are talking about meat or vegetables. If you have ever had home grown tomatoes, or eggs that weren't from the grocery store, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Even a lot of what you find in health food stores isn't what it could be. You can't hardly even find a decent lake to fish in any more. If you are in a city it is hard to find proper food. If you live in a rural area, it is worth it to find the lady who sells a few dozen eggs every week, or the butcher shop that hasn't been put out of business yet. Put in a vegetable garden if you can, or at least a potted tomato plant.

I think a lot of our modern day health problems stem not from eating too much red meat, or too little, but from the fact our sustenance is almost completely derived from processed food. all the good stuff has been worked out of it, and too much unidentifiable crap has been added. I don't like to eat something that has ingredients I have a hard time pronouncing. Not to mention that our taste buds are now programmed to appreciate nothing else.

In a way I want to be a vegetarian. I mean I don't like the idea of eating an animal. But I love the taste of meat. I don't eat much of it as it is, but still. I don't know it's something I would like to try. I'm going to look at the forum that Minyaliel suggested.

Are you kidding? That's the yummy part.:D
The thing I can't stand is the cartilage. It feels terrible when you eat it.
I just love meat. I know about the cruelty to farm animals, but there's a small thing that makes me feel better: In nature, predators also kill their victims with no mercy.

You dosent nesseseraly need to becom a vegetarian to protest against the horrible slaughter of animals. I fight the industry by not eating at anny junk food resturants like for eksample Macdonalds and Burger King. Did you know that Macdonalds chutes down huge areas of the rain forest just so their chows can get more food?

Shit! What is wrong with your grammar?
Why do you do it? It's impossible that you're just a terrible speller.
"Chows"?? The "h" is nowhere near "c" or "o"!!

I am realy sorry about that. I am noth fishing for synpati or anything i just want to eksplain wye i am so bad at spelling: i Have Dyslexia, or whrigting disabiletyes. plis foregive me if i wright things wrong.

Oh, then I am the one who must apologise, you don't have to be sorry for anything.

Marko- first off, it's cool that you at least tried a vegetarian lifestyle. Most people are so caught up in the idea that meat is a healthy thing to eat that vegetarianism becomes a ridiculous idea. When you research it, however, you find out that it is a very healthy, responsible way to life. The lifestock industry is bad for humans and bad for the environment.
My mother is a vegetarian and a member of PETA because she, like most people, thing that eating meat is a cruelty to animals. I, however, don't eat meat for the same reason that I don't eat packing peanuts. It's garbage for your body.
It's production is very harmful to the envirnoment and it perpetuates starvation in poor countries. The United States is one of the largest, if not the largest, producer of grains in the world, but most of it goes to feed livestock, not people. It's a really inefficient use of produce.
Futhermore, the US has ignored the studies done in the UK that prove that sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in animals is harmful to humans and continues to give lifestock unnecesssary antibiotics. Not only is American meat filled with antibiotics, it's filled with hormone. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't need anymore estrogen!
It's not just meat, either. Eggs are filled with hormones. Milk is filled with antibiotics and hormones, too.
I'm not someone that cries over the poor little animals being killed. I'm more upset about the millions of people starving that could be fed with the grain we feed our cattle. To quote Worldwatch's Brian Halweil "livestock consume 35 percent of the world's grain, over 90 percent of the soybeans." In case anyone has been living in a cave, soybeans are a great source of protein, ie. an excellent substitute for meat...but we feed it TO the meat. Clever, really.
Marko, you might not have been getting enough protein. There are lots of great soy products that are loaded with it, so you might want to give it another try. And like Minyaliel said, it would be a good idea to get some some nutritional information about a vegetarian diet. It's not difficult to be vegetarian AND be healthy. Quite the opposite.

And I'm done ranting for now!

I have been a vegetarian for quite a while, but I gradually phased out the meat from my diet. 6 years ago, I quit eating beef and pork. Then after my body had adjusted to that, I stopped eating chicken/ poultry. Up until very recently (about 2 months) I have continued to eat seafood but due to the overfishing problem, as well as my desire to be a true vegetarian for various reasons, I am cutting seafood out of my diet as well.
I did not lose weight when beginning a vegetarian diet, and do not feel weak. I feel very healthy and clean most of the time, and rarely get sick. I have not had the flu at all since I quit eating red meat 6 years ago. I have only had a cold 2 or 3 times in the past 5 years. I did get very sick once (pleurisy) but that was probably due to my work environment which was a very smoky poorly ventilated bar. Compared to most (non-vegetarian) people I know, who constantly have problems with allergies, colds, digestive problems, insomnia, etc., I am generally much healthier than them and I attribute this to my vegetarian, low-calorie diet.
I have known people to be omnivorous, but only eat meat that has been hunted in the wild as this is the more natural way for humans to eat meat. Unfortunatley there is very little wild game left in most areas of the world, and the populations of these animals are often diseased and even less healthy to eat than farm raised game animals.

I have been vegetarian for around 2 years now. I never had those problems of the weakness and such, granted I never was a big meat eater in the first place. Another reason why I'm vegetarian is because everytime I would try to eat it I would imagine the muscle of the animals and start thinking that I wouldn't want to have my muscles and organs and such eaten and would end up losing my appitite.

I'm omnivorous, but picky about my meat. The fact I'll only eat meat that's of a good quality, not oozing fats or chemicals (free-range beef is much better than barn-raised), and is properly prepared tends to irritate my mother, who put me on a foul pseudo-veggie diet of Quorn for a week in a rather spiteful attempt to put me off a)being picky over meat and b) vegetarianism, by telling me that quorn is most of what vegetarians eat. Foul stuff. Handy I knew some real ones and know the food's rather better than that, eh?
I have disagreements with the way some meat is raised, so I just don't eat in the establishments that encourage low standards (Burger King, McDonalds, KFC). I'll happily eat locally reared meat with a traceable source. I'm the same with veg- I prefer to eat locally grown foods. There really is a difference in taste when they haven't been exported hundreds of miles.
I'm not too bothered about the eating of another living thing conundrum- if I was dead, it wouldn't bother me too much if I was used for food.

*points at above post* My mother was also like that. Worse, she was a nurse and now a teacher, and was taught a few decades ago that meat was probably the healthiest you can eat. Hm. Imagine what she bought when I told her I'd not eat meat? Yup, Quorn. Eeeew. Probably the worst thing I've ever tasted, including meat. I think we still have some of that stuff in the freezer left over from the time when I plain refused to eat it. Now she lets me cook my own food and provides fresh vegetables. She's even buying me soy milk. But it was a hard struggle... :/