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Other than that, Jamie is trying to look at how to get these people learning how to cook. And for what it's worth, having a chicken farm down the road, whichever way you look at it chickens don't leave an amazing life even free range ones. As much as I hate to link to a vegan website, this is exactly what a free range farm looks like:
http://www.veganoutreach.org/freerange/
But it's not just food, it's the entire way of human life. We practically rape our environment and exploit everything from chickens up to human beings. The only people who can change things are the people in power but they don't see that bothered because it's expensive. I mean, how can you get the brazillian rainforest to stop the destruction when it is one of their most lucrative industries? How DO you stop conflict over oil when it is a commodity needed in everything?
When it comes to food purchasing decisions, I don't think it's right to hold the people who buy it to account because a lot of the time they are not informed consumers, a lot of the time they can't afford a choice, and ultimately a lot of the time the food is on the shelf because someone in government said ok to it being on the shelf. Even food crops often destroy the habitat of animals and lead to more problems. How is it possible to be an ethical consumer?
No, those in power dont care because we dont care.
We are perfectly happy to let people in the developing world starve and die of disease.
We are happy for our food to be made intensively with massive amounts of chemicals added to the ground.
We are happy for our clothes and electricals to be made by people earning next to nothing in shocking conditions.
Hell we dont even care about the poor in our own country let alone anywhere else.
Again, I disagree.
Our biology is geared towards having meat in our diet, or not having meat in our diet. You do not get ill if you don't eat meat (obviously, provided you have a balanced diet)... it is not a necessity for good health.
'Instinct' is not the right word to describe us eating meat. It is a dog's instinct to piss up walls, a bird's instinct to build a nest, but consuming meat is a choice. Our only instinct is to seek food, to be providers. At one point for everyone that had to be done by hunting... Then people developed agriculture ect.
I think that playing sport is more of a display of prowess to attract a potential mate than anything... Especially competitive sport.
That is my view.
I don't think we can reduce hunting to be 'instinct'... It is a method of survival, not something innate.
I also think that justifying something because it has been done for a long time is risky... The human race has raped, tortured and pillaged its way through history. Are they human instinct too?
(Sorry... the above statement would be too much on a tangent)
:yes:
Yes that the quote below is bad logic. Just because something isn't black doesn't mean it HAS to be white.
No, our biology IS geared towards having meat in our diet, and geared for hunting. It's why we have ability to digest it, why we have the teeth we do and it's why we have eyes relatively close together.
But as you you say we're also geared to eating other matter, and we can live on that healthily as long as a large selvetion of different matter is available to us.
And hunting is an instinct in other meat eating animals. It why cats kill despite having plenty of food available in the bowl. Why wouldn't it exist in us.
There is a strong biological, social, and historical argument for why eating meat is ordinary human behavior.
The only argument in favour of abstaining is the moral argument, but it's an important one. I just think him more realistic and less extreme. I like to know that the meat I'm eating has come from animals with a good quality of life, but I also recognise that species eating other species is part of life.
I think most people care about their own quality of life before that of the enviroments, or that of animals. That doesn't mean they don't care, just that they don't care enough.
If people wern't so well removed from some of these issues they might care more, but it's hard for a lot of people to care about something they can so eailly ignore.
Don't they label those as barn eggs in the shops though? Which means "not caged and no sunglight" pretty much.
I don't think eating meat is in human design, but doing so is a choice; not a necessity. Debate between vegs and carnivores is akin to debating the existence of god. No amount of conclusive evidence can be presented either way.
Live and let live. I'm veg but don't object to others eating meat, likewise I hate veggies who preach - at the end of the day its personal choice. Doesn't matter how 'natural' it is.
There's arguments for and against this. We definitely have hunting instincts, no-one can argue against this - the evidence is too strong.
However, the arguement that we are able to digest meat is slightly flawed as our bodies find it difficult to process raw meat. Does this mean humans could only eat meat when they became developed enough to create fire, or that our bodies have changed over time so raw meat is no longer safe for us?
Either way I'd say that it is definitely natural for humans to eat meat, we are animals at the end of the day. I don't think the way we are as consumers is natural though.
This is true, we insulate ourselves from the suffering of others because it is easier.
The guy down the road does his chicken for meat so I dunno exactly.
As for what biologically we are able to eat well one person put it as fruitarian which is pretty true. We excel at scavenging fruit and berries. But at the same time we ate meat to supplement our diets. If you look at apes, people believe the stage where we evolved from them was a stage where we excelled at fishing and fish formed a cornerstone of our diet. They got this info because we are relatively 'streamlined' and anyway its very interesting but I won't repeat it all here .
Biologically speaking I believe as Namaste said we have evolved to survive and the best 'recipe' for survival is adaptibility, we can eat pretty much anything.
Your being naive in thinking you'd still be able to be a healthy vegetarian without the choive farming technology and transport technology bring.
It's only because of this technology you can choose from such a massive range of products even when they're out of season in the country you live.
There's still a hell of a lot of poeple in this world that don't have that choice.
Well human biology says otherwise I'm afraid. It's pretty conclusive evidence.
But your right we do have a choice, in this country anyway. It's a moral argument, and it depends on whether or not you think killing an animal for food is wrong. I don't.
Pretty meaningless tbh and not justification for the vast quantity of meat now consumed (which is in absolutely no way comparable to our ancestors... unless you're counting Henry VIII - who of course had the very modern obesity problem).
Venison - being meat from any animal killed by hunting, was always a very rare luxury for most of the population. Humans eating venison a handful of times a year does not justify the very modern and completely unnatural practice of industrial factory farm meat production.
That very much depends on the specific communities you're talking about. Nomads in Mongolia today for example, eat a diet of almost exclusively goat meat, and vegetables are something of a luxury. What is certain is that we didn't start eating meat until fairly recently in evolutionary terms. That's why we haven't yet evolved a taste for it, and have to do things to disguise the taste, such as cook it and flavour it. Fruit and veg, on the other hand (despite being subject to selective breeding nowadays) always tastes great straight off the plant.
Eating a large quanitity of meat isn't neccessarily unhealthy either. If this is to be believed then the main source of calories in that example would come from meat and nuts. Also, the human digestive system can easily digest raw meat. Its a modern preference to eat cooked meat and there are plenty of examples of raw meat in diets across the world and even britain where some like raw steaks and use raw eggs in their recipes.
It isnt unatural to eat huge amounts of meat it isn't immoral and it doesnt have to be unhealthy either. If British consumption is compared with continental consumption the average French, Spanish or Austrian eats a hell of a lot more meat than a British person at 101.1kg, 118.6kg and 94.1kg per year compared to 79kg a person in the UK (Sauce) but they tend to live a bit longer.
Hence I believe in human choice, rather than instinct which is innate and we have far less control over. I think human beings are animals
I am not denying that we are designed to be able to hunt. We have evolved to be able to hunt, climb and our brain is evolved enough to find other forms of food.
But hunting is a necessity for some people... I don't think it is 'instinct'. I think you are grossly over simplifying human nature.
To be able to hunt is learned behaviour. We are not cats. We are designed to adapt.
To somebody in a country such as our own, eating meat is moral. if it were instinct to hunt, we would not have people deciding to abstain from meat, nor would we have such complex debates such as this.
Absolutely - this is where I stand. But how many people are bothered about where their meat comes from? And you're right - it is over consumption, at a cost.
There's no problem with eating meat, there is a problem with the industry churning out cheaper and cheaper meat and people viewing their right to eat meat as more important as basic welfare standards
As far as battery chickens are concerned the EU wants to illigalise battery farms by 2012. This is already meeting resistance as farms claim it's not enough time for them to switch. There will be no penalty for those who have not managed the switch by the deadline, meaning no incentive to change. There's also going to be no ban on importing battery chickens and eggs from non EU countries. Quelle point?
After some chains (M&S for example) have introduced a no battery chicken policy, Tesco defended their battery eggs by saying that their customer should have the right to make an informed choice between value and free-range eggs. Yeah right are they informed. It's all about money money money. Ethics went out of the window a long time ago
What's more, Einstein was a smoker!
I get the feeling that preachers are usually hypocrites, veggie or not! I will change my opinion if I come across any evidence to the contrary.
This is fine. Topics for discussion can relate to one another so there is no need to stick with the original question.
No. Flawled logic.
It's perfectly natural for humans to eat meat, but at the same time not eating meat is perfectly natural too.
It's not difficult to understand.
You recognise that human beings are animals yet you don't believe that we have instincts as other animals do?
You don't think we have inborn behaviors that effect us in everyday life? We do.
No we have evloved to find food period, and that includes meat.
A species doesn't go through hundreds of thousands of years killing animals and eating them, without developing an instinct to hunt.
And we havn't suddenly evolved the ability to contemplate morality. We've had that for thousands of years too.
We are predetors, same as cats.
I can't believe you're denying that something that that has featured so heavilly in human evolution is simply learned behaviour.
Animals develop inborn behaviours through natural selection, we are no different.
It's instinct to fuck. Not everybody does it. Some people abstain. There are many complex debates about sex and morality, doesn't mean it's not an instinct.
I'm not saying that it's some undenaible urge to go out and chuck'a'spear, but there something definately still there. That's why millions including myself still fish, shoot and play sport for fun. And I'm not saying everybody experiences it at the same level.
As I've been saying all along there is another factor, morality. In the world today many of us now have the option to put more consideration into the morality of it, because we don't need to depend on meat for survival. That doesn't make it any less natural.
The question was, is it natural to kill and eat meat. The answer is yes. If you beleive in natural selection than your going to have a very hard time saying otherwise.
The question you trying to argue is whether it is moral. Again I think it is, but here you disagree. The morality in the simple act of eating meat hasn't all of a sudden changed - it's the same as it has always been.
I do beleive that over consumption and the treatment of many animals is immoral though, and that is where things have changed.
And human beings are animals, that is scientific fact. Who is saying otherwise?
I am arguing the difference between choice and instinct.
Not an instinct. And I am not denying the ability to contemplate morality.
Human beings have been doing a lot of things for thousands of years. Is rape derived from an instinct? Is racism instinct? is infanticide instinct?
It is learned behaviour.
An instinct is basically the reaction to a change in environment. A psychological reflex. When you see a deer, you do not automatically throw something at it. You only see that it is 'food' because you have learnt that you can eat it.
I am not denying the history of hunting, I am simply stating the simple fact that it is not human instinct to hunt, it is something we learn in able to survive.
Is it natural to want to survive? That is a definate yes. But nature to me is innate, not learned.
And no, I am not arguing if it is moral or not to eat meat. Personally I don't give a shit about what other people do and how they try to justify it to themselves. I am arguing psychology. If you don't believe my definition of instinct maybe you should look it up.
Why do you keep telling me this?
So why do you think we as a predatory animal are so different from other predatory animals? They have an instict to kill and eat, why are we the exception?
You said that our brains have evoloved enough to to eat other kinds of food.
You don't see the difference there then? :banghead:
It's about natural selection do I reallu have to explain how animals evolve instincts and inborn behaviors?
Pretty safe to say racism, rape and infanticide wern't massive factors in determining how well social animals like us survived. Infact they would have most probably (definately in the case of infantaside) decreased the chance of survival and reproduction in a social group.
Hunting technique is learned but at the core of it is an inborn behaviourn to want to kill quarry. That's why people enjoy it.
When I go hunting I enjoy bagging quarry not because I enjoy inflicting pain but because it's satisfying. I don't expect you to understand that side of it, but it's there.
It's why we play sports, it's why we fish, and why we still shoot, it feels good.
I fail to see how you can deny the possibility that in all the hundreds of thousands of years of hunting we havn't evolved a trait that predisposes us to kill quarry and eat it. Our body's have evloved to do it, why not our brains.
Is something an instinct if it can be overcome. I believe so. Is reproduction not an instinct?
Everytime I see a woman I don't want to fuck her and have babies.
The fact is so many people still hunt because it makes them feel good, it relsease all those feel good endorphins. Why does killing an animals do it do you think?
Instinct is the inherent disposition of a living organism toward a particular behavior.
That is what I'm arguing.
Instinct or not, it is natural for humans to eat meat. Every other predatory animal does it and it's called natural. What's the difference?
Choice has got fuck all to do with it.
catching fish and cooking meat is a basis rule of survival before money and shops were invented where someone can do it for you, slowly, our right to kill animals for ourselves was taken away and we were slowly adapted to modern society where we buy our meats from shops, a good adaption i think.
Buy yes, its defiantly natural to kill animals for food.
Not necessarily abstinence, there is a concept known as involuntary celibacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_celibacy
Because people have different morals.
Human beings posess the ability for reason and logic. We can potentially choose whether we desire to eat meat or not. Go look up a definition of instinct. Hunting is not an instinct, it is a means to an end.
Go for it.
Do you think?
Somebody could argue say... Racism, or genocide to be about survival of the genes. Kind of like when a new lion enters a pride and kills and eats the young. Infanticide has also been practiced throughout history, to enable the survival of many nomadic tribes who would be held back by too many little'uns/
I think that aside from survival, hunting is more about enjoying power, rather than enjoying hunting. The same as with competitive sports, or fighting... It is a matter of dominance.
I think 'people' would enjoy it if they were socialised to that. How many people watch slaughter houses on TV and feel uncomfortable? Or would refuse to kill and eat their own meat?
Just because we have been doing something for hundreds of thousands of years does not mean that it is an instinct.
No, but you do have sexual feelings for some women don't you?
Exercise and domination.