|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 16:06:05 GMT -5
Mostly just posting this here so I can link it to my facebook as it's too long for a status update. Anyway...
The point of being vegetarian: Someone recently told me that vegetarianism seemed pointless, and this was my reply. Hope you find it informative.
I'll explain some of the points of being vegetarian then, so it won't seem pointless.
Starting with the health / athletic benefits. Meat is very dense and our digestive systems are not adapted to properly digest it. It builds up in out intestines and causes diverticulitis (stretched out pockets of intestine where feces gets stuck and just sits there rotting) and colon cancer. It's also full of the unhealthy type of fat and contributes to clogging of the arteries and poor heart health. It's full of hormones that cause all kinds of weird things in your body from mood disorders (I used to get crazy rage over stupid s***) to swollen nipples. Finally it's full of huge amounts of toxins and bacteria that your liver and kidney have to filter out and contribute to poor general health and just feeling like crap and getting sick more than you should. The older you get the more you feel most of this.
Vegetarian diets are much lighter and easy to digest. You can eat a meal and exercise after without feeling like you want to puke. I cant even count the number of people at ANW that were talking about how they felt like puking or did actually puke after their runs in the semi-finals and finals! That didn't happen to me or Travis because we don't eat meat. look at Travis's face as he sets down the last brick at ANW, totally un-phased, he felt fine after!
Vegetarians in general have better health, live longer, are less fat, have better looking skin, have much less cancer.
Meat has a lot of protein this is true, but there are a ton of vegetarian protein sources such as nuts (peanuts and almonds are great), beans and lentils (beans and rice together for a complete protein), organic free range eggs are good, and protein shakes (these are just a few, there is protein in so many foods). Also the average American consumes far more protein than they require.
The only vitamin that you might miss out of by not eating meat is B12 but this is available in every multivitamin there is, as well as many other sources such as avocados and yeast. In general vegetarian diets have far more vitamins and minerals than non-veg.
Then there are the other reasons such as environmental effects of the meat industry on the planet. When you calculate methane from cow farts and decomposing cow feces, fuels burned in transportation of animals, energy used by slaughter houses, all the energy and resources that go into growing and transporting feed for the animals, the meat industry creates more greenhouse gasses than EVERY CAR IN THE WORLD! If everyone went vegetarian we could reverse global warming. .....well maybe we could.
The rain forests are being wiped out to create cattle grazing land, and chicken farms pollute the groundwater with huge amounts of chicken s***.
And finally we have the moral and humane aspect. Animals feel and think, are living things just like humans, they don't like being chopped up and eaten. Would you put your dog or cat in the oven? I hope your answer is no, and if so then what's the difference? Why is it ok to kill a cow, pig or chicken, but not a dog or cat? Pigs are just as smart as dogs you know.
Killing them isn't even the worst part, most animals in the meat industry spend their entire lives in a cage covered in their own excrement where they can't even turn around and have no mental stimulation, can you imagine that? And it's not like we're stranded in the wilderness and it's a life or death situation, the only real reason we have to eat meat is that they taste good and we're addicted, everything else is just justification.
|
|
|
Post by Oti on Dec 29, 2009 16:17:40 GMT -5
I have a longer reply on the G4 forums, but I'll keep it short and sweet: Bruce Lee used to drink raw beef that had been run through a blender. Nuff said. I had to respond to this, though: Didn't you hear about global warming?
|
|
Lennon
Levi Meeuwenberg
Posts: 793
|
Post by Lennon on Dec 29, 2009 16:54:49 GMT -5
The point of being vegetarian: Someone recently told me that vegetarianism seemed pointless, and this was my reply. Hope you find it informative. I'll explain some of the points of being vegetarian then, so it won't seem pointless. Starting with the health / athletic benefits. Meat is very dense and our digestive systems are not adapted to properly digest it. It builds up in out intestines and causes diverticulitis (stretched out pockets of intestine where feces gets stuck and just sits there rotting) and colon cancer. It's also full of the unhealthy type of fat and contributes to clogging of the arteries and poor heart health. It's full of hormones that cause all kinds of weird things in your body from mood disorders (I used to get crazy rage over stupid s***) to swollen nipples. Finally it's full of huge amounts of toxins and bacteria that your liver and kidney have to filter out and contribute to poor general health and just feeling like crap and getting sick more than you should. The older you get the more you feel most of this. I know your post is the point of being a vegetarian, but I want to just say why people are going vegetarian. And it focuses on your first two paragraphs. I don't think it's the fact that meat is bad for you and causes 'bad' things to happen, I think it has to do with how they raise them. People think pigs are worse than cows because pigs get fed all the slop, but cows and just about any animal are fed disgusting left overs that they are not suppose to eat anyway. The reason they do this is to fatten up the cows faster. This raises the amount of money they can attain from the animals and feed more people because of it. If they were just fed grass around the meadow like they were grown naturally, then I think we wouldn't have this problem with colon cancer and the sort. And I agree that we do eat too much meat, and we actually don't need that much. I'm not really a vegetarian, but I don't eat beef or pig and my meals are mostly vegetarian. Sorry, just wanted to put my 2 cents in.
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 18:35:19 GMT -5
Bruce Lee used to drink raw beef that had been run through a blender. Nuff said. Bruce Lee died at 32, but yes I'm sure he was never lacking in protein! Nuff said ;P
|
|
|
Post by bigblind168 on Dec 29, 2009 19:50:03 GMT -5
Bruce Lee used to drink raw beef that had been run through a blender. Nuff said. Bruce Lee died at 32, but yes I'm sure he was never lacking in protein! Nuff said ;P He died due to an allergic reaction to a pain killer.
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 20:36:12 GMT -5
Bruce Lee died at 32, but yes I'm sure he was never lacking in protein! Nuff said ;P He died due to an allergic reaction to a pain killer. Not true. He died of a cereblal edema which at first caused a headache, the pain killer was administered after the edema had allready begun to treat the headache, so he would have died either way. I'm not saying that he died because he ate meat, I'm just saying that if you're using him as an example of a healthy meat eater, he clearly had health problems. And like I said, he only lived to 32. It doesn't take much to be a healthy 32 year old, you can eat like s**t and you can be healthy if you're exercising a lot. Though he could have been more healthy if he ate better? He smoked pot too, probably did coke as everyone did in the 70's. Maybe he'd still be alive today if he took better care with what he put into his body? Great martial artist though. He'd be a master if he was still alive!
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 20:38:43 GMT -5
Also, even if had been an allergic reaction, many if not most allergies are cause by a poor diet.
|
|
|
Post by bigblind168 on Dec 29, 2009 20:47:22 GMT -5
Also, even if had been an allergic reaction, many if not most allergies are cause by a poor diet. either thats not true, or I'm insanely lucky. You've met me, I'm obviously not the healthiest person in the world. However, I have no allergies, im not alergic to anything, and I'm never sick.
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 20:59:25 GMT -5
Also, even if had been an allergic reaction, many if not most allergies are cause by a poor diet. either thats not true, or I'm insanely lucky. You've met me, I'm obviously not the healthiest person in the world. However, I have no allergies, im not alergic to anything, and I'm never sick. Well 3 things, first: your young and many problems like this don't show up untill later, second: your genetics might not be dispositioned for alergies, 3rd you may have mild allergies that you don't even know about. I'm not saying that all allergies are caused by diet, and I'm not saying that everyone who eats crap will have allergies. Proper diet can cure most allergies though.
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 21:00:56 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Oti on Dec 29, 2009 21:17:46 GMT -5
Doctors said he was the healthiest person they'd ever seen. A random brain condition doesn't mean he had health problems.
Bruce was above and beyond "healthy". It was insane.
I doubt skipping out on meat would have made a difference.
He was a master.
bulls**t, plain and simple. Some may be, yes, but a majority are genetic.
Does it matter? He eats terrible, terrible meat. You said above that poor diets, which include meat, apparently, cause allergies. I don't understand, Dr. David.
Also bulls**t. Becoming a vegetarian won't help my girlfriend eat tree nuts or touch latex. Or will it?
-----
Honestly, this is just getting annoying. It seems to me that it's gone from "I'm a vegetarian, here's why" to "I'm a vegetarian, you should be too". Sorry if that isn't your point, but it's really starting to seem like that to me and it's REALLY getting annoying. Can we stop this, please?
|
|
|
Post by bigblind168 on Dec 29, 2009 21:32:28 GMT -5
Proper diet can cure most allergies though. Not true... even remotely. The reason why your allgeric to something is because your body recoginizes it as a pathogen. Now, if you expose yourself to "X" enough, you might not be, but if you start eating Apples instead of potato chips, then your allergie to "X" isnt going away.
|
|
|
Post by Oti on Dec 29, 2009 21:42:57 GMT -5
But if you eat apples instead of meat...
|
|
|
Post by scopedknife on Dec 29, 2009 22:21:48 GMT -5
Unless I'm mistaken, Bruce Lee's pain-killer related death occurred due to the fact that he was too muscular for his own good. He had spent years training his heart as a muscle, and as a result the muscle tissue in that area was far denser and larger than the average human heart. Because of this, his minor allergic reaction had greater adverse effects on his heart, and in essence acted as a muscle relaxant for his heart. He therefore went into shock and died. Nothing to do with meat lol
On topic, I'm thinking of becoming vegetarian, mainly because the fittest person I know in the flesh is a vegetarian. He's my age, I do more training than him, and yet he's stronger and faster than me. He says it's because of his diet, and I think I'm going to go for it for a couple of months, and see how it turns out ^_^
|
|
|
Post by bigblind168 on Dec 29, 2009 22:25:36 GMT -5
But if you eat apples instead of meat... Then Jesus will move next door to you.
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 23:06:50 GMT -5
Also bulls**t. Becoming a vegetarian won't help my girlfriend eat tree nuts or touch latex. Or will it? ----- Honestly, this is just getting annoying. It seems to me that it's gone from "I'm a vegetarian, here's why" to "I'm a vegetarian, you should be too". Sorry if that isn't your point, but it's really starting to seem like that to me and it's REALLY getting annoying. Can we stop this, please? You're the one who started this, I was asked about my diet and you jumped in and criticized it. If you want to stop this then stop, don't ask me to. I'm not forcing you to contradict me. If everyone in the world was vegetarian the would would be a better place in so many ways even in addition to what I've already mentioned, we could feed the starving masses in Ethiopea with the crops grown for animal feed. so yes I do think you should be vegetarian too since you're asking. Yes your girlfriend can eventually eat tree nuts and touch latex by changing her diet. It's not a vegetarian issue really, more just diet in general. Allergies are a result of a malfunctioning immune system. You basically eat foods that boost your immune system and take specific supplements to further boost the immume system and detoxify the body. Here's a page I pulled up about it in like 30 seconds of google searching: gnowfglins.com/2009/09/11/reverse-allergies-through-nourishing-foods/Do some searching and you'll find a ton of info on the subject. A good resource for information and supplements relating to immune system health is www.theautoimmunesite.com
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 29, 2009 23:22:02 GMT -5
Unless I'm mistaken, Bruce Lee's pain-killer related death occurred due to the fact that he was too muscular for his own good. He had spent years training his heart as a muscle, and as a result the muscle tissue in that area was far denser and larger than the average human heart. Because of this, his minor allergic reaction had greater adverse effects on his heart, and in essence acted as a muscle relaxant for his heart. He therefore went into shock and died. Nothing to do with meat lol Yeah I think you're mistaken. From what I have read he died of swelling in the brain, the herbal pain killer was given to him because of the headache his swelling brain was causing. www.allbrucelee.com/article/mystery_of_bruce_lee.htmOn topic, I'm thinking of becoming vegetarian, mainly because the fittest person I know in the flesh is a vegetarian. He's my age, I do more training than him, and yet he's stronger and faster than me. He says it's because of his diet, and I think I'm going to go for it for a couple of months, and see how it turns out ^_^ Cool, you should try it for at least 6months without cheating to really see if you like it or not. The first couple months you still feel hungry after you eat because you're used to having that heavy feeling in your stomach after meals.
|
|
|
Post by Oti on Dec 30, 2009 1:01:34 GMT -5
Don't post things on a forum if you're not ready for criticism. I apologize if I offended you, but I don't much care for the recruitment you're attempting to do.
About that link - I would take the "evidence" more seriously if it didn't look so much like a blog.
More training doesn't mean anything. Quality, not quantity.
The strongest and fastest people I know aren't vegetarians, so I doubt that has much to do with it. What are your and his training routines? How do they differ? Chances are you'll find something there.
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 30, 2009 1:53:14 GMT -5
Don't post things on a forum if you're not ready for criticism. I apologize if I offended you, but I don't much care for the recruitment you're attempting to do. No you didn't offend me at all, you disagree and that's fine, however. Take your own advice about accepting criticism. You're telling me that you're getting annoyed with the conversation all the while continuing it. I said at the start of this thread that I was posting it here so I could link people from my facebook to it, not really trying to continue the debate here that we already had on the G4 board. And why would you "not care for my recruitment" nobody is forcing you not to eat meat. Why do you care about me sharing nutritional and environmental information? Are you a member of some religion that requires everyone to eat meat or something? I can't force you to not eat meat nor would I try to, I'm just making anyone who decides to read this thread aware of my reasons for not doing so. If you have a problem with that, the problem is all yours, nobody is forcing you to read it. It's odd how threatened people can become when they find out you don't eat meat. I can't even count the times I've just mentioned in passing that I was vegetarian, or turned down some type of food because it had meat in it, and people launch into this debate about getting enough protein to fuel your brain. And I wasn't presenting that page on allergies as evidence (if you wan't evidence you can search for it yourself) I was just presenting something that might be helpful to your girlfriend. If you don't want to try it I don't care, I have no allergies myself. Finally in all fairness I have to agree that being vegetarian probably won't make you any stronger. Though it may make you lighter which would allow you to do more pull ups? Scoped_knife: If your friend is having better results and training less it could be that he's pushing himself harder like Oti said. But going veg definitely isn't going to hurt!
|
|
|
Post by davidcampbell on Dec 30, 2009 2:14:38 GMT -5
One warning if anyone is going to try it out: The biggest caveat of going veg, is that often people when starting out end up eating nothing but bread and cheese (which is almost worse than eating meat). You have to eat lots of vegetables, leafy greens, fruits and nuts. And like I said before, beans and rice form a complete protein. Yay mexican food!
|
|