Vegetarians more likely to have mental issues...

[Oldiesfreak1854]

It's important to remember that correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.  Still, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a causal relationship.  Meat consumption was partially responsible for the size of our brains.  And meat is high in nutrients that have been shown to be vital to the brain and nervous system. 

In all honesty, this is probably one of the big reasons that kids today have such high rates of ADD/ADHD and similar issues.  Based on the junk science of Ancel Keys that has been propagated by Dean Ornish, Colin Campbell, John McDougall, etc., and the McGovern committee making it the low-fat cult official government policy, our kids' brains are being deprived of the fat they need, and America's rates of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes have gone through the roof.  (The school lunch program, for instance, does not allow whole milk.)  Worse yet, it led us to start consuming more sugar and grains, which has done even more damage to our brains.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

You raise good points so I should clarify.  If you were giving people information on how to eat healthy, you would tell them to eat meat, from a health perspective.  If they wanted to be vegetarian, you wouldn't advise against it, you would just give them some information about how to get a healthy diet without meat.

That's still a different claim than your original statement.  If you're arguing that it's better to tell people to eat meat, because it has better average health outcomes than eating vegetarian, maybe.  I'm not aware of evidence of this claim -- especially considering that obesity is a much bigger epidemiological problem it the U.S. than nutritional deficiency.  But even if it's true, that's still way different than the claim that meat-eating is better "all else being equal," because it's a claim that rests entirely on recognizing that all else is not equal.

If you went to a doctor with an obesity problem, would they tell you to stop eating meat?  Definitely not.  Some doctors would actually recommend something like the Atkins diet which is a high protein diet.

Most doctors seem to ascribe to the anti-fat hysteria that says animal fats cause heart disease and obesity.  Makes sense, since they have very little training in diet and get their education from people who are paid by drug companies that make millions of dollars selling statins.  No matter how popular the notion that saturated fat is bad for us may be, it is not supported by science.  The original studies were poorly done and have been widely discredited, yet somehow we still believe it today.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Another nutrient deficient in the vegan and western diet is vitamin K2.  This vitamin is seeing increased scrutiny by scientists because it may be extremely beneficial in preventing heart disease and cancer... which is pretty huge.

Unfortunately it is almost exclusively available from animal products... they are by far the highest in organ meats.. especially poultry.  But the most complete form comes from beef liver.  (It used to be that a weekly meal of liver and onions was considered good for everyone).

Other good sources:
Hard cheese
Egg yolks
Beef
Chicken
Whole milk
Butter

So the official nutritional guidelines to limit meat and organ consumption and to limit dairy to low fat is actually causing vitamin k2 deficiencies in the western diet.

The only western food commonly consumed based from plants to contain K2 is sauerkraut.  Japanese natto is also a decent source (contains 8 times more than sauerkraut which is a poor source.. but the only western vegan option).

Funny how that works.  For so long they've been claiming that animal products CAUSE heart disease and cancer.  Maybe real science is finally starting to get accepted. Woody Allen may have been right all along.
Iron is also seriously deficient in many vegetarian diets.  Although a number of plants contain iron, iron from animal products is more easily synthesized by our bodies.  That's why so many vegetarians are anemic.
Grains are also high in phytic acid, which is block the synthesis of calcium, which is why vegetarians have much higher rates of osteoporosis than non-vegetarians.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Oldiesfreak --

Every direct study I'm finding indicates that the incidence in anemia and osteoporosis isn't statistically significantly different among vegetarians than omnivores.  The only studies I've seen that indicate otherwise studied primarily vegetarian cultures, but weren't conducted with demographic controls.  In fact, there is a positive correlation between dietary animal protein intake and osteoporosis prevalence between countries.  How the heck did you conclude from that body of evidence that the rates are "much higher"?  That doesn't seem like an honest interpretation of the evidence at all.

First, it's important to keep in mind that correlation does not always mean causation--that also goes for the study that was mentioned at the beginning of this thread.  Vegetarian advocates frequently contend that eating meat leeches calcium out of your bones and causes osteoporosis, but the evidence indicates otherwise.  And second, here are examples of evidence of osteoporosis in vegetarians:

http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/news/20050328/more-osteoporosis-seen-with-raw-foods-diet (from a site that toes the low-fat line)
http://authoritynutrition.com/8-ridiculous-myths-about-meat-and-health/
http://authoritynutrition.com/is-too-much-protein-bad-for-you/
http://nutritionmyths.com/do-acid-forming-foods-cause-osteoporosis/
http://www.businessinsider.com/myths-eating-red-meat-2014-8
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/04/02/vegetarian-myths.aspx#!

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I almost forgot: Vitamin A is only found in animal products.  Plants contain beta-carotene, which your digestive system converts to Vitamin A.

And as for the arguments about animal cruelty: there is absolutely NO moral advantage to a vegetarian diet.  The harvesting of plants for food very frequently kills them as well.  And even when it doesn't, consider this: many animals kill and eat other animals, and there's a reason for it.  If it's not cruel or "barbaric" for them to do it, then why is it for humans to do that?

[Oldiesfreak1854]

I don't think I would ever choose to be a vegetarian.  To me, there is a huge moral difference between a human and an animal.  I don't think our obligations towards animals is to respect their rights.  Animals don't have rights because they're not part of society. 

Can you expand on that a little?  I assume you also think humans should have rights, even if they are incapable of understanding and fully participating in society.  Why do you grant rights that way, and if you do, do you think animal cruelty is morally acceptable?  It doesn't necessarily make sense to oppose animal cruelty as "morally disordered" if animals aren't rights-bearing, after all.

The relevant principle is suffering, and I think you agree.  It's wrong to make an animal suffer in a sadistic way that goes beyond the natural order of things.  Animals get eaten in nature, and they nasty, short, brutal lives.  We don't have a responsibility to raise them up beyond that and take care of them.  But, if we're going to farm them and eat them, we should do it in a conscientious way that doesn't cause more suffering than necessary.

It's not like the alternative here is that they're going to be frolicking in the forest.  We specifically breed these animals to slaughter.  The question in determining the morally superior outcome is whether mass-breeding them for consumption is a morally superior outcome than not doing so.  Even with "conscientious" mass-farming techniques (which, despite how often people pay lip service, almost no one does) I doubt that's the case; I expect they always cause more suffering than "necessary."

Essentially, we have to make uncomfortable trade-offs between human gain and animal suffering.  There's no easy principle there.  The more human-like, the more we care.  For example, I think it would unconscionable to farm apes for food.

I think it's dangerous to start delineating moral rights based on a subjective standard of how much entities resemble us, versus how much they possess the substantive properties that we think justify rights.  For instance, I don't think we should justify ignoring the cognitive advancement of pigs with subjective dissimilarity -- their lack of superficial visual similarity seems a lot more important.  I mean, would you support the "subjective similarity" standard when granting rights to people instead of analyzing substantive properties?  I think the "subjective similarity" standard is directly responsible for a lot of the moral atrocities of history.

And, it's the level of suffering versus the gain for people.  The worst factory farming practices are too cruel to impose on a pig or a cow, I'm sure.  The exact dividing line between ethical farming practice, I don't really know.

Do you really think there's a remotely credible argument that it's anywhere near what we're doing now?  It seems like the whole "the line is hard to draw" response almost always ends up being used as a convenient rationalization to not draw a line at all, and put zero or near-zero effort into being conscientious. 

And, you're right I should do my research and be more conscientious about my diet.

Fair enough.

Animals should have some rights, but the needs of humans must come first.  I don't like to kill animals, but if I have to in order to protect myself and my family, or to provide for them, then I will.
Now your argument about factory farming is relevant to me, and I certainly think the cruelty of those conditions needs to be addressed.  Free range, grass feeding, etc. is much uses far fewer natural resources than grain feeding animals on factory farms, and it produces meat with much higher nutritional value.  Grass-fed beef, for instance, is one of the most nutrient-rich foods you can eat.
If you want to go vegetarian, then by all means do.  (And don't judge other people because they choose not to.)  It just means more meat for the rest of us.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Free range, grass feeding, etc. is much uses far fewer natural resources than grain feeding animals on factory farms, and it produces meat with much higher nutritional value.

How do you figure?  The more space you require for animal agriculture, the less space you have for competing natural habitats.  The leading cause of tropical deforestation is making way for feedlots and the growing of grains to be fed to livestock.  If we moved away entirely from industrial beef production to free-range, grass-fed production without reducing the demand, there would be no space.  This idea that you can simply remove all of the remaining forests (natural carbon sinks) and replace them with endless methane-emitting grazing cows is one of the greatest fantasies ever told.

Grass-fed beef, for instance, is one of the most nutrient-rich foods you can eat.

It's actually a colossal waste of resources for the amount of nutrition produced.  If you're interested, you should check into how much water is required to produce beef and dairy.

If you feed animals on their natural diet instead of feeding them grains, you free up more of those grains to feed to people.  Of course, research is showing that grains probably aren't all that good for you, but if we're trying to feed starving people in the developing world, it's better than nothing.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Oldiesfreak: Don't you ever wonder if, when you're constantly abandoning arguments and shifting to new ones, you might be rationalizing something you actually can't defend particularly well?

No; I'm just stating the facts as I understand them.  I may not be the best-informed, but I will tell you what I do know.

Animals should have some rights, but the needs of humans must come first.

No one is arguing that animals should have equal or greater rights to humans.

This much, I will concede to you.  Although there are probably some extreme vegetarians who believe animals should have the same or greater rights, they're a pretty small subset of the population.  Even my vegetarian, animal-loving aunt (whom I am very close with) rejects that position.

I don't like to kill animals, but if I have to in order to protect myself and my family, or to provide for them, then I will.

You don't.

There have been some instances where I have.  If hornets were nesting on the roof of my house, would I not have to kill the nest to protect myself and my family?  If mice and/or rats were infesting my house, would it not be right to protect them (and me) from the diseases they could potentially spread?  Or, how about this: if a bear attacked you in the woods (also most likely in self-defense), would you not try to kill the bear in some way to protect yourself?

Granted, these are hypothetical, but there have been many cases where I have had to remove nests of stinging/biting insects from my house and yard, and plenty of times where we have had to work to keep mice out of the house.

Now your argument about factory farming is relevant to me, and I certainly think the cruelty of those conditions needs to be addressed.

You don't seem to show much interest in addressing these issues.  You seem to outright refuse to restrict your diet at all, and besides vague references to maybe preferring organic food (which barely does anything to address the concerns here), you seem unwilling to make any changes that have more than the slightest cost to you.  Am I wrong?

I would love to switch to organic, free range, grass fed, etc. if it were possible, but in many cases it is cost-prohibitive for me, not to mention many other people who would be inclined to purchase those foods.  I actually think we should quit subsidizing factory farms and agribusiness, and instead provide incentives for more sustainable farming methods.

Free range, grass feeding, etc. is much uses far fewer natural resources than grain feeding animals on factory farms, and it produces meat with much higher nutritional value.  Grass-fed beef, for instance, is one of the most nutrient-rich foods you can eat.

As Ebowed points out, you're not going to be able to square this circle -- it takes more energy and resources to provide nutrition for the cultivation of lifestock than it is to consume the energy put into livestock cultivation more directly.  Trophic levels, dude.  It's a massively inefficient use of resources.

It's kind of amazing: you just used inefficiency as an argument against vegetarianism, and when someone points out that the inefficiency argument works against meat-eating, suddenly you're like "well, there are things we can do to limit the inefficiency!"  How can you not realize you're rationalizing here?

I'm familiar with trophic levels and the efficiency argument.  But there are many plants that use resources inefficiently as well, such as strawberries.  Humans have been eating meat for thousands, maybe millions, of years.  Certainly, we have been eating it longer than grains, and longer than we've been farming.  In those days, an entire group of people could survive for several days on the meat of a single animal.  If it wasn't inefficient to eat meat in the days before factory farming and big agribusiness, then doesn't that imply that those things are the problem rather than meat itself?

Besides, the way we grow crops in this day and age is hardly a good use of natural resources.  Most farmers today grow their crops in huge monocultures that attract pests (thus requiring more pesticide use) and use countless amounts of water, fertilizer, etc.  Palm oil, for instance, has led to the destruction of rainforests at a similar rate as cattle ranching.  Companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and ConAgra get millions of dollars in corporate welfare subsidies from the government to continue these practices.  At a time when our national debt and deficit are at all-time highs, that seems like an easy place to start cutting back.  I don't care how much they may wail and whine--their business practices are unethical, unhealthy, and unsustainable.  That's not exclusive to meat production; that goes for farming practices in general.  If you feed a cow grass instead of grain, the meat will have more nutritional value because the animal is being fed on its natural diet.  Humans don't eat grass in the first place, so the grains that would have been fed to the cow can now be fed to us.  If you go the grass-fed route, the entire issue of trophic levels disappears.

If you want to go vegetarian, then by all means do.  (And don't judge other people because they choose not to.)

I think you're doing something unethical and can't defend it well intellectually.  Even when you recognize ethical problems, you seem unwilling to bend much to mitigate them.  Now you seem to be complaining that other people might think that reflects poorly on you...

It just means more meat for the rest of us.

That's obnoxious.  You do realize that you're basically saying "well, if you don't do this thing I think is unethical, I'll just do it more"?  Try that with something else: well, if you're not willing to partake, more orphans for me to punch!.

It's especially annoying considering I've spent a lot of time replying to your various arguments in this thread, including one which required trawling through a bunch of academic articles, and you've abandoned each of them without even recognizing that you don't have a defense.  Now you're being patronizing, as if I were the one who can't substantiate my position here.

The simple fact is this: people are going to eat meat, whether you like it or not.  If you choose not to, then more of the meat that is produced can be consumed by people like me.  It's a simple equation of resource allocation.  If you use less of the available resources, then I can use more.

As for the issue of trying to rationalize my behavior, maybe there is an element of that.  I come from a long line of hunters in my extended family, and their carnivorous appetites may have rubbed off a bit on me.  But how is it unethical to eat meat when you kill plants for your food?  Given, you may not always kill plants when you eat, but some plants do die when you pick them.  Life is life, whether it's a plant, an animal, a microorganism, etc.  Based on your logic, you could argue that it is unethical to use paper, lumber, or other wood products because it kills trees, or to use soap and hand sanitizer because it kills bacteria.  If you were merely killing an animal, plant, etc. for fun, with no intention of using it, then that would raise ethical issues.  But if you're killing the animal to feed yourself and your family, then how is that immoral?

[Oldiesfreak1854]

OK, but what's your point?  None of these cases have anything to do with the topic at hand, and the idea of self-defense is hardly novel even with other humans.  There are some distinctions between the two instances (we prohibit vigilante self-defense in cases where a risk is non-imminent), but I don't see why those distinctions make this example any more relevant to the topic at hand.  Dairy cows are not doing anything to you or your family.

True, but if I have to kill and eat a cow to provide food for my family, then I will.

This seems completely shallow to me.  Vegetarianism is not really especially difficult for most people -- I've been doing it for years -- so why should I consider this anything but hand-wringing?

To each his own.  What I was saying is that buying free range and organic foods is often too expensive for most people to afford.  But I'm not going to give up meat simply because it's not grass-fed or free range, although that would be my preference.

I'm familiar with trophic levels and the efficiency argument.  But there are many plants that use resources inefficiently as well, such as strawberries.

So what?  This started because you argued that a meat-consuming diet is more efficient than a vegetarian one.  The fact that strawberries aren't particularly resource-efficient doesn't negate that.  (Strawberries are obviously a trivial part of anyone's diet, since they have virtually no calories.)  If your argument is that it's unreasonable to demand that a diet absolutely maximize resource-efficacy, OK, sure.  But you were the one who led with resource-efficacy as an objection to vegetarianism!  As far as I can tell, you're criticizing your own argument now that it realizes it runs against your conclusion.  This is ridiculous.

YOU ARE RATIONALIZING.

I never said that a meat diet was more efficient than a vegetarian one.  I said that there is really no difference.  But eating grass-fed meat is much more efficient that grain-feeding, because humans don't eat grass, but they do eat grains.  If you quit feeding grain to animals, then humans will be able to eat the grain.  If you grass feed, the trophic levels argument is irrelevant because you can't eat grass, even if it provides more energy than a steak.

Humans have been eating meat for thousands, maybe millions, of years.  Certainly, we have been eating it longer than grains, and longer than we've been farming.  In those days, an entire group of people could survive for several days on the meat of a single animal.  If it wasn't inefficient to eat meat in the days before factory farming and big agribusiness, then doesn't that imply that those things are the problem rather than meat itself?

This is like the 25th consecutive half-baked argument you've provided.  Please, dude, think through your arguments before replying.  Obviously, the reason meat-eating was effective back in the day was because we didn't have systematized agriculture.  It would have been more resource-effective if we could get our caloric and nutritional requirements from one source, but we got it from a central source (meat) instead, because we didn't have the resources to grow a diversity of crops.  That's obviously not the case anymore...as exemplified by the availability of the very mass-scale agriculture we're talking about.

It may not be more resource-effective to eat from a single source, but it does not provide all the nutrients your body needs.  You statement is exactly the point I was trying to make.  The unsustainable farming practices we use in the present day apply to both meat and plants, and both are very inefficient at using resources.  I am advocating for more traditional forms of agriculture to increase resource efficiency.

Besides, the way we grow crops in this day and age is hardly a good use of natural resources.  Most farmers today grow their crops in huge monocultures that attract pests (thus requiring more pesticide use) and use countless amounts of water, fertilizer, etc.  Palm oil, for instance, has led to the destruction of rainforests at a similar rate as cattle ranching.  Companies like Monsanto, Cargill, and ConAgra get millions of dollars in corporate welfare subsidies from the government to continue these practices.  At a time when our national debt and deficit are at all-time highs, that seems like an easy place to start cutting back.  I don't care how much they may wail and whine--their business practices are unethical, unhealthy, and unsustainable.  That's not exclusive to meat production; that goes for farming practices in general.  If you feed a cow grass instead of grain, the meat will have more nutritional value because the animal is being fed on its natural diet.  Humans don't eat grass in the first place, so the grains that would have been fed to the cow can now be fed to us.

A lot of this is mostly irrelevant, but OK...

You do realize that the reason these companies feed grain instead of grass is probably because it's cheaper, i.e., less resource-intensive?  I gather you're arguing that, even if that's the case, the resultant meat is so much more nutritionally rich that it not only justifies the greater resources required by a "natural" diet, but it also eliminates the efficiency gap between getting energy through meat and getting it through vegetable matter.

If so, please provide any sort of citation for this claim.

Yes, I realize that grain feeding is cheaper and fattens the animals more and quicker.  What I am advocating is that we provide incentives for meat producers to grain feed and end factory farming practices.

If you go the grass-fed route, the entire issue of trophic levels disappears.

No, it doesn't.  Why would it?  You clearly don't understand what trophic levels are.  You're BSing your way through this exchange, and you probably know you are, yet simultaneously are committed to not changing your mind.

Please see my above comment on trophic levels.

That's not how supply and demand works.  Do you somehow think that, if half the world became vegetarian, you would respond by consuming twice as much meat?

That IS how supply and demand works.  No matter how many vegetarians there are in the world, there will still be people who eat meat.  I was making a joke with that comment (hence the smiley face), and you are taking it seriously.

You're being obtuse.  I never argued that non-sentient, non-conscious, non-thinking life warrants the same protection from suffering or killing.  You've already conceded that you think it's wrong to impose unnecessary cruelty on animals, and here you are, making virtually zero effort to avoid doing it.  We could have a discussion about why we think it's intrinsically wrong to kill a human, even in the absence of suffering, but not other animals, and whether I think it's intrinsically wrong to kill self-aware, non-human animals.  But you're defending eating a meat-based diet, and there are much less philosophically complex issues with what you're doing than a debate over the intrinsic wrongness of killing.

Certainly we need more humane slaughtering methods, but what is the difference between killing an animal for food and killing a tree for wood?  What is the difference between killing an animal for food and killing bacteria to protect your health?  Whether you made that argument or not is irrelevant; what I was saying is that the same logic can be used to make those arguments.