Why do vegetarians maintain that meat is unhealthy?!
Our European stone age ancestors were eating a diet that was 70% animal/fish (source of info bone mineral analysis, look up 'Trent woman') and were making it into their sixties with no medical care. How is that unhealthy?
Answers: I get not eating meat on ethical grounds, but pretending that eating fish/meat is unhealthy or unnatural?
Our European stone age ancestors were eating a diet that was 70% animal/fish (source of info bone mineral analysis, look up 'Trent woman') and were making it into their sixties with no medical care. How is that unhealthy?
The unfortunate thing is, too many people get into such lifestyles with a fervor that matches that of religious cultists. They take a simple truth - that it's a good idea to eat of animal products sparingly - and go overboard with it. Some of them get into the "crusader" mode, saying anything they can think of, accurate or not, to suppress opposing ideas.
Eating fish, fowl and meat is not unhealthy. Eating them in excess is unwise, and removing a good bit of the fat prior to cooking makes these foodstuffs better for you. That means removing much of the visible fat from cuts of beef and pork, and the skin from fowl. Fish have very little harmful fat, and in fact, fish oil is one of the prescriptions given to help lower bad cholesterol. Attempting to remove ALL fat, especially from beef, is futile - and foolish, as it's the fat that gives beef desirable flavor and texture. The best cut of beef is "prime" beef, and that system of grading simply refers to the presence and distribution of fat in the meat.
Again, it is not that the flesh of animals is bad for you, it's overindulgence that's unwise. A steak so huge it hangs off the edges of a ten-inch dinner plate is almost irresistibly attractive, but the wise diner chooses a much smaller cut instead - seven or eight ounces at the most - and supplements that with at least two vegetables plus a serving of starch such as potato or rice.
It is entirely possible to find delicious and filling meals that are entirely vegetarian - but you don't have to feel guilty about including meat in your diet if you do it sensibly.
Because it's human nature to want to feel superior to others.
This is a very tricky thing. There are always going to be myths and legends and stories that back up one opinion and some that back up another.
Cavemen have always been thought to be hunters and gathers eating mainly meat but some plants. There are speculations that there were a group of pre-historic humans that didnt kill for food but ate only plants and fruits (vegtarians) so this is where the argument that its not natural comes from.
I myself have been a veggie before for a good couple of years, i was very strict on what i ate i didnt eat honey, fish meat ect but i found it very unhealthy and since i have started eating meat again i have become healthier so i think it is healthier eating meat but maybe that was just for me
xxxx
I've only heard the moral reasons that it's murer. I never knew someone was daft enough to believe it was unhealthy. Unless they mean unhealthy for the animal.
we're omnivores by evolution. i.e. eat pretty much anything. let veggies be veggies - more meat for us!!
Its just something more for thm to argue about. It annoys me when veggies eat fish, thats just totally contridicting themseleves
#1 Meat before the 1900's was VERY different than the meat today. The animals were allowed to graze/eat food that was natural to them. Cows were not fed ground up cows, causing Mad COw disease. They were not pumped full of hormones.. The water was not polluted, so fish was not contaminated with all kinds of heavy metals, etc.. Anyone who thinks that these common practices today DON'T affect the animal's health and that disease is not passed on to the person who consumes the meat is laughably deceiving themself.
#2. I don't know about the stone age, but in past recorded centuries people ate much less meat than they do today. Even if their diet was mostly meat.. they simply didn't eat as much quanitiy.. period.. But unless you were wealthy.. your diet was mostly vegetation in most all ancient civilizations or past centuries.
#3 It is a well known fact that doctors today are practically BEGGING people to cut down on red meat. It has been scientifically proven to increase the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer, and many other illnesses.. How is that healthy? Everyone EDUCATED knows this..
A PROPERLY DONE vegetarian diet has been scientifically proven to prolong life. The longest-living people in the world are vegetarian or almost vegetarian.
It's all about how meat is produced today. If I lived a couple hundred years ago, where cattle were healthy and happily spending their days grazing, and humanely slaughtered (Relatively humanely) I too would eat some meat on occasion.
NO ONE with any education or brains today would claim that the typical western high-meat diet is healthy. NO one...
EDIT: Yes, it is more the fault of commercial meat-producing methods and pollution. I never said that meat in theory was unhealthy.. But TODAY it is practically impossible to find meat that is "safe" Because of all the things done to the cows and the hormones, disease, etc.. I see it as unsafe. I never said it WASN'T only a modern problem. I said if I lived 200 years ago I probably wouln't have a problem with eating meat.
BUT that aside the fact remains that today's average westerner eats way too much meat. More than they need. Too much protien in the diet causes health problems, and most westerners eat way too much. So part of the "unhealtiness" of the western diet IS the over-consumption of meat, especially red meat. Not just fats (though I'm not denying those are a problem)..
I read something somewhere about ancient Egypt. THe main population ate not very much meat, but the pharoahs and wealthy had a rich diet with alot of meat and alot more food PERIOD than the commoner ate. The interesting thing is they're finding that the pharoahs (by studying mummies) suffered and died from many of the same problems as today (heart disease, etc).. things that are otherwise rarely found in ancient cultures... wish I had the source on that...
Mad cow disease, heart disease, colon cancer, etc...
Research proves that vegetarians are less at risk for these.
First of all, this stance has to be put in context. Meat can form part of a healthy diet, but it can also form part of a very unhealthy diet!
If you look at the obesity figures and the diets of people who are overweight, obese and morbidly obese, the vast majority of them eat meat. Obese people who are vegetarian are very few and far between.
Meat doesn't have to be unhealthy - it just has to be eaten in proportion to other foods (carbs, fruit and veg etc), and also people need to understand which meats are better for you than others.
I am veggie, and have been since i was a toddler - but I do live in a meat/fish eating family. Even i know that steak should be eaten occasionally, whereas chicken and fish are pretty good for you, for making up your protein and omega quotas - red/fatty meats will simply raise your cholesterol, but it's OK to eat them now and again. Eating fast food made from cheap ingredients every day isn't good for you.
i respect other people's decision to eat meat, as much as i would like them to respect my decision to not eat it. it's all personal choice and I am grateful that i live in a country where it's possible to lead a healthy vegetarian lifestyle and for this to be socially acceptable.
They use that line of reasoning to hide their guilt at eating an un-natural diet.
Also, saying 'I'm a vegetarian because its healthier' is nicer than saying 'I'm a vegetarian because I'm a self righteous pompous knob head'
Increased risk of breast cancer for women who eat meat daily compared to less than once a week: 3.8 times
Increased risk of fatal prostate cancer for men who consume meat, cheese, eggs and milk daily vs. sparingly or not at all: 3.6 times.
Average U.S. man's risk of death from heart attack: 50 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat: 15 percent
Risk of average U.S. man who eats no meat, dairy or eggs: 4 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption of meat, dairy and eggs by 10 percent: 9 percent
Amount you reduce risk of heart attack if you reduce consumption by 50 percent: 45 percent
Amount you reduce risk if you eliminate meat, dairy and eggs from your diet: 90 percent
Average cholesterol level of people eating meat-centered-diet: 210 mg/dl
Chance of dying from heart disease if you are male and your blood cholesterol level is 210 mg/dl: greater than 50 percent
I don't think our European ancestors ate meat reared in factory farms being fed anitbiotics and artificial growth hormones. There lifestyles were completely different so to attribute thier lack of medical need and life span to eating meat is overly simplistic.
Not all vegetarians claim eating meat is unhealthy, it is dis-respectful to generalise like that. Can i generalise about meat-eaters and claim you all look like obese McDonalds munchers ?? No, see ? thats not right is it.
Any diet can be unhealthy, as you proved when you tried to be vegetarian.
You have already said in this forum you are anti-vegetarian because of health grounds, but reading you additional comments to http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;... your health is by no means typical and so its unfair to dismiss a whole diet choice ( of 100+ million people ) just because it didn't suit you.
what sort of answers do you want from us ?
People have to be the boss over other people.
The veggies think there way is the only way.
There is saturated fat and cholesterol in meat, in large quantities this is unhealthy. Some may argue that any all together is unhealthy. This is why people with clogged arteries or certain heart diseases are advised to limit their intake of meat. For me personally I can not take an animal kill it and then eat it, I can't touch raw meat without feeling sick, that seems unnatural to me, obviously this is just me, but yes it can be unnatural for some people to eat meat mentally at least you can't argue with that.
jeezzz... i cant be bothered to look at all the answers on this!!
your question is stereotyping that all vegetarians maintain that meat is unhealthy, so i think you should think of rewording your question!!
im vegetarian and i dont think that meat is unhealthy, i think it is.
ppl should eat whatever they want to eat... as the saying goes...
'eat well, stay healthy DIE ANYWAY' hehe
ive always liked that saying
Eating meat is immoral.
This is not even a question, it's a soap box disguised as a "pretend" question. The medical community says it's not all that healthy...and I got news for you...they are not vegetarians.
because they r pumped full of hormones and chemicals and its just immoral
100% agree with Shelly!
Around the middle of the 20th century, meat production changed from smaller family farms to industrial facilities. Animals are crammed into smaller spaces, fed unnatural diets, pumped up with hormones and antibiotics. Girls are entering puberty at younger and younger ages due to the hormones in the milk. Obesity rates in the U.S. are climbing because people eat more meat and eat larger portions of food.
Perhaps long ago, meat was not unhealthy, but in modern times, the way it is produced, it cannot be considered good for you.
And Gary Taubes, who wrote that New York Times piece, is a shill for Fatkins. Who died of a brain hemorrhage after falling on a sidewalk and was grossly obese when he did die.
Generalize much.
Edit: You put far too much weight on studies and a few articles. You do understand the difference between studies and scientific experiments? A study only allows people to collect data and infer that A might have some influence on B. A scientific experiment is designed to determine if A causes B or does not cause B. The reason is because studies have far too many variables to monitor. Do all food and life based studies record the lifestyle (low stress/high stress, etc...), exercise (type and amount), geographic living location (proximity to pollution, radiation,etc...), exact amounts and types of foods consumed (calories, cholesterol content, nutrients, etc...) and distinguish between all their effects? This is not an exacting thing, which is why studies can only infer certain things and are not definitive. Additionally many don't have a large enough data set to necessarily show it applies to other groups of individuals.
More and more people in the US are getting angioplasty to clear up the cholesterol in their systems. The numbers are increasing year after year. This is real physical evidence of too much cholesterol.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_rel...
The American Heart Association recommends only 6 oz of meat (lean and skinless) per day. Why would an association dedicated to improving the heart health of people recommend this if "meet is healthy." In fact, many Americans will eat more than this at breakfast alone, but if you say it is not unhealthy then it should be okay to eat bacon and sausage at breakfast everyday, despite the fact they are the highest in fat.
You reference stone age people, who lived a far different life than people today. People who really had to work physically hard to survive would actually use the food items they ate, whereas people today sit around and the fat and cholesterol is not used due to lack of activity so it collects.
If we didn't live in such a spoiled world where we're lucky enough to get such a variety of foods, people wouldn't find the time and place to complain and whine about "animal rights" and if genetically or not we were meant to eat other animals.
THANK YOU LORD! I know and this is what ive been trying to say, but when i asked the question, i got reported. meat is actually very healthy. if it wasn't, why would it be on the food pyramid?my friend is a dietitian, and she finds it ridiculous that people think meat is unhealthy!
As a general principle, food from the body of an animal is not necessarily unhealthy, but it is hard to obtain in good condition because pollutants tend to accumulate in consumers more than producers. It is possible to eat animal products which are healthy, but wild animals tend to be better than domesticated ones and certain organ meats better than muscle meat. From a practical perspective, leaving aside the ethical angle, it is actually quite difficult to get hold of good meat. The biggest problem for vegetarians is fatty acids, because good sources of those high in fish and organ meat are hard to find, but fish tends to be contaminated by heavy metals. River fish from a long way upstream would seem to be one answer to this.
Eating meat in the sense of anything from the body of an animal is not unhealthy, but in practical terms most people in this culture eat muscle meat from domesticated animals which live in polluted environments. It would probably be feasible to eat well in the Scottish highlands (assuming you're in Britain) and ate a lot of game and fish which was taken from the wild or as roadkill, and i imagine (though i don't know) that insects, snails and worms would be OK too, but the kind of diet one would be eating would be very different than that of most omnivorous people in the West, as would palaeolithic diets in Wurm glaciation Britain.
There's also the issue of living in a part of the world where vegetarianism is less viable than somewhere like the Med.
Here's another study for you: The China Study by T Colin Campbell.
Who else do you like to make generalizations of?
Black people, Jewish people, Gay people?
I'm vegan and sorry, but I've never said that eating some meat is unhealthy.
I think that you have gotten lost at some point. What do low fat diets have to do with vegetarianism? Fats don't just come from meat or other animal products.
I do not eat animals because I don't believe that they are property, not because I'm trying to live to be 120.
no idea. I'm not a veggie.
Because they're trying to convince themselves as well as us that what they do is with good reason. If it wasn't for our ancestry killing and eating animals, we wouldn't be here today. You don't evolve well on leaves!
Because they want us to help them kill the rainforest : )
white meat isnt bad for you but red meat......it has benefits....but it also has negatives.....red meat is fuel for our bodies but if you imagine that your body is a bonfire say, red meat is like chucking a car tyre on the fire.....yes it will fuel the flames and keep the fire going longer but it also burns very dirty.....like the tyre, red meat burns dirty in our bodies creating toxins.....