This is not the best idea I heard so far. In the first place if you check out a little bit you will see that meat is the best aliment that exists and it also contain proteins we cannot live without. Check what`s written on the beer of the month club

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It's nice to see the comments and see many people, are learning that veg diest are are good for you and the planet. Were all solar powered from the food we eat. The more processing the farther we are away from natural.

Imagine all the food and water that goes into an animal that later in life may become dinner. Thaat's 10 times the enrgy and 100 times the water for what you could have eaten instead of that creature. The add up all the water that came out of the animal.

Whew , if people could only all live on a farm for a year and see the full picture. I used to volunteer to help on farms of family and friends in the area each summer. I felt sorry for the little calf's with the big eyes and would take them for walks on a rope. The farmers had a fit, they wanted them fat and lazy with no muscle. Oh well.

City kids just don't see it and know where food comes from. What's involved. The more we go high tech the more they loose sense of all the parts of life.

This is so true and I wish the whole world knew it! I am a huge fan of VegNews and you are doing a great job at helping others make the switch. When you combine how good going veg is for the planet with how amazing it is for your health, it truly is a no-brainer. We need to find more ways to help people consider it as an option, even by starting out by reducing the number of times they eat animal products a week. Even that can make a big difference.

I am also trying to work hard to encourage others to go veg... by creating a website with tips and comments as well as letting people share their challenges and successes. It is at http://www.vegan123.com and it is still under development so please excuse its incompleteness - but hopefully together we can help save lives (animals and humans!!).

Ok, so I was small then and just learning to count.

Athena,

I too grew up on a farm, with no indoor plumbing except a pitcher pump in the kitchen. Taking care of the morning constitutional in the middle of a Wisconsin winter was a sitting on your hands or freeze your behind off exercise. With that said, you had a cow that gave you 12 gallons of milk a day? That sir, was a milker!

Any way, I concur with your post. It might also be said that the North American diet is full of chemical crap and the bodies who ingest said diet suffer for it. We eat whole foods everyday, myself  my wife or my kids rarely get sick. Which I attribute to our diet which includes meat almost every day. We would eat more fruit, but seeing that it is being shipped in from a million miles away we more or less boycott the section of our local grocer.

Thanks to all of you who have posted, it is nice to hear view points from either side of the aisle and personal expressions and beliefs. I enjoy this venue and shall continue to do so in the future. PEACE, Jeff.

Both Paul and his wife Linda are - were vegetarian.  She's dead and he has just had an angioplast.    Einstein was vegetarian and so was Hitler.   Does that make anything right?

When I  arrived in Canada 45 odd years ago I lived with my family on 2 acres of land 10 miles from anywhere.  We had purchased a three bedroom house with no  plumbing or heating system. 

Before the first winter my dad had changed one of the bedrooms into a bathroom ( first in the area), I had dug a well (I was the  only small enough body to fit down the tile) and we had a Quebec heater (coal stove) in the basement and a load of coal.

First winter was pretty uneventful  except for having a pet dog hit by a snowplow and bleed all over the place until he died.  We buried him in the sand floor of the basement.

In the spring we were awakened one morning by barking from the basement.   Well that's what it sounded like.  Turned out to be a duck that had entered through a window and was swimming around in the spring flood.

But back to the story.  Then we bought a cow which produced about 12 gallons of milk a day and 200 chicks which were reared in the end of my bedroom until they were moved to the garage.

We ate eggs and milk and chicken until the potatoes and tomatoes had grown.

I can not imagine what my mother would have said if I had come home one day and told her that I had decided to become a vegetarian.  The point of the story is   -   that most people in the world would love to have the choice of food that we have.  They don't, so don't bother selling them something they can not afford.

As for saving energy and water,  that's crazy.  Sheep will graze on land that will not even grow tobacco and will actually improve the soil with the fertilizer they leave all over the place.  Wool and  leather, are renewable resources and much more environmentally friendly than any man made products.

The high energy usage in farming is from industrial farming where one person farms 1000 acres and transports the food a thousand miles to the customer.  This type of farm is energy intensive and has to use chemicals, big  tractors and crowded animal pens. 

Believe it or not vegetable farmers use more water than beef farmers, it's just that vegy and grain crops get most of their water from the sky. 

Most of the water used by meat animals is actually just borrowed and, as long as the animals are not forced to leave it all in one place,  what they give back to the soil is a beneficial product.

As for saving animals -  since Bridget Bardoe was put in charge of the seal hunt all the cod got eaten. 

Athena 

DC , salt can be bad for us. Maybe we can just respect everyones choices and help them understand what theie choices are. Many don't know we can live on non meat diets and be super healthy.

Ed Begely Jr is vegan, Carl Lewis the greatest olympic winner over 5 olympics , so are Paul McCartney  and many others that include professional basketball plays and football and even weight lifters !

  It's a choice.

http://www.ivu.org/people/actors/index.html

the veggie solar stacks

Some people clearly have very strong opinions on this subject. FTP is supposed to be "a positive, non-judgmental and apolitical place to learn and share." I hope that everyone will keep an open mind and try to understand and respect the diverse viewpoints and choices of others. :)

I'm sorry, but I do not see the choice of being a Vegan as a noble one, personally. Mainly because I believe it is a false choice.People are free to make their choices, as I have done. They shouldn't ask me to do more than respect their *right* to choose.. I shouldn't be asked to respect the choices themselves. It's like asking me to respect the fact that someone is a Moonie because it is their Religion. ;-) that aside...

Some people can be healthy on a vegan diet.

Some people can NOT be healthy on such a diet.

It is relatively obvious that most people fall in the latter catagory, however struggle to live in the former because of some sort of perceived "cleanliness of living" that goes along with not partaking of "life" to live.

Thing is, we evolved to eat some meat in our diet. This is known.. it is a biochemical and anthropological fact. Vegans can be -relatively- healthy without it, however there are specific issues that occur for all Vegans that need to be corrected with massive doses of theraputic vitamins.. which don't deal with all of them, but ameliorate them to the point of manageability.

So, I eat what I was built to eat. Without guilt. I choose farm raised, pasture fed meats to encourage that sort of farming (which does NOT deplete the water supply nor harm the land.. the opposite in fact, if done correctly) and discourage CAFO that produces most of the nasty that people talk about.

To me, that is balance. I don't like preachy vegans much. I also don't admire Jains. I think they are loony, and I am a Buddhist myself. :) They forgot the basic lesson " follow the middle path " which means neither excess nor surfeit.

Anyhoo, I'll just say again that I disagree with the basic premise of this topic. :) FYI I was a Vegetarian for 6 years until B12 deficiency caused me to wake  up and smell the coffee. Yes I took supplements. No  they didn't solve it. Yes I tried other methods. No they didn't work. No none of the suggestions made by Vegans or Vegetarians (including ayurvedic) worked for me, and as I went forward, I found they didn't work for quite a few people. Hence, my decision to go back to eating meats.

Oh and one last thing.. not to stir up a hornet's nest but I had to comment on this:

"One of the 10 commandments is thou shall not kill. There aren't any lists of exceptions or excuses, it's very clear."

Well, it sounds to me as if you haven't READ your Bible. Why don't you check out Judges sometime? Then you'll see how much gratuitous killing goes on. Please don't quote the bible at me, or those here. It has little to do with a genteel and noble life.

I have been vegetarian mostly vegan since 1990 and my children 8, 12, and 14 years are also.  At this point, they make the decision to not eat meat because of they way they were raised.  I don't have to monitor them.  My husband still eats meat when at our parents' homes or out to eat and I respect his decisions.  At home, he does eat our vegetarian meals and enjoys them. 

I think reaching young people is the key because quitting meat is a matter of changing old habits and beliefs.  As a dietitian, I see that eating meat is a habit that is hard to break.  I am so thankful the food market has come so far in going mainstream just since 1990 to make vegism easier.  I applaude any decrease in meat and dairy consumption that a person accomplishes. 

Please check my website www.vegetarianimage.com for more info and educational/activism jewelry and accessories.   

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this subject, Jeff. I respect your viewpoint. That's great that you go out of your way to help injured animals and care for nature.

Different religions and systems of ethics lend support to various modes of living. Ahimsa (non-violence) is the principle tenet of Jainism, a faith originating in India. Not only do Jain priests not eat meat, but they brush the ground when they walk to avoid killing insects and will not eat root vegetables that grow underground because they don't wish to harm the microorganisms attached to them. They also won't ride in cars or even touch money. I would not want to live this way, but I admire those who do.

Each person has to come to his or her own understanding on the issue of diet (and everything else). I ate meat for nearly three decades without giving it a second thought, then had a radical change of perspective and have been a strict vegeterian since that time. I wasn't a bad person before I stopped eating meat, and I'm certainly not a saint now. I just see things in a different light than I did previously.

People's lives move in different directions and lead them to embrace different truths. That's fine. I wish you peace wherever your life takes you.

To all you people out there espousing the merits of a vegan diet. It seems to me that it has become almost a religious practice for you.

I am a locavore, have been all my life. I raise vegatables and starch in my garden, harvest wild game quite literally out of my back door and eat fish I catch out of a river one mile away on a regular basis. That is the way I was raised and I see nothing wrong with it.

My partner and co-founder of VEESSA on the other hand is a VEGAN and when I say VEGAN I mean VEGAN. He has never had meat of any kind, never smoked, never had a drop of alcohol and has not tasted soda in his 50 plus years on this bountiful glorious orb we call Earth. That is a vegan and we get along wonderfully. He could care less if I eat meat, drink on occasion or smoke.

I subscibe to no ones ideologies nor do I feel guilty for being what I am. I am well aware of the ten commandments and the mores defined within. Genesis 1:28 reads as thus, God blessed them and said unto them. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. This can be interpreted however one chooses just as the commandment mentioned previously. We are to revere the world as a whole as something sacred and beautiful and act as stewards as the Bible also mentions. To sustain life for the creatures created in Gods image, it is necessary for some like myself to partake in the eating of flesh of other animals.

This ended up addressing theological issues on a GREEN board. I go out of my way to stop and help a turtle off the road, I have rescued and mended many broken appendages of wild birds and animals and I even brake for butterflies. I consider myself a steward of the earth and do my uttmost to protect and safeguard innocent flora and fauna. Yet I persist in the practice of meat eating, why? It is innately part of my human existence and who I am. I waste not and want not as much as my psyche can handle.

With that being, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

A Steward, Jeffery A. Schultz

Let me start by saying I could sit down to a 24oz porterhouse 7 days a week.  Sorry vegans!  BTW my daughter is vegetarian, has been for about a year now.  It's helped some.  But It's hard to break old habits.

When I spent time at the grandparents, it was almost vegetarian.  My grandfather was born on a farm in Italy, that's how he grew up.  Here, they had a garden and the local markets of the 30's, 40's etc...  Dad liked lamb chops best, but I grew up eating a lot of gargen veggies.  Perhaps too many...

My wife grew up on your basic New England diet... a meat, a starch, and canned veggies with melted 'butter'(margarine actually), and desserts.  So we have a pretty divergent background.

I like to saute cauliflower, beans, greens, carrots, onions, garlic, lots of onions, peppers, butternut squash, eggplant, you name it...  I can also eat salad every day.  Two exceptions tomatoes & zucchini, odd for an Italian, but I can do without both.  But somehow she feels that if we have a more than two dinners in a row sans meat, there is something wrong... (Everybody eats mac & cheese casserole once in a while.)

So, even as much as I like to cook the reality on the ground is that the "switch" causes some trauma.  That and I have to admit that there's only so many combinations of herbs & spices you can apply to sauteed vegetables that don't make your mouth want a bite of meat.  (Sorry again folks.)

So what is a family unit to do?  As I said my daughter went vegetarian about a year ago and it was a traumatic process.  We supported her decision, that's to say we accommodated her modified needs.  That was the EASY part!  What we didn't account for was the changes in attitude, mood, attention, thinking, logic, reason, sleep, energy, etc. that accompanied the changes in her digestive system over the first few months.  That was the HARD part!!!

That's the only risk I see in switching.  The effects were visible in the first week, and manifest fully in less than 3.  It took about 4 months for the funk she was in to abate, and another 3 to return to some semblance of normalcy.   She's been back to her chipper self for about 3-4 months now, but it was an effort.  Let me add that her GPA went from 3.95 to about 3.8, and has returned to it's proper level.  She's a bright kid, and that made it far easier to support her decision than to try to challenge or try to override it as the act of an immature or rebelious child.  Quite the contrary it was a well thought out and reasoned decision.

 So, with all that, can anyone recomment some techniques for... (encouraging, convincing, cajoling, influencing, etc. ) others to make the switch?  Myself included...  I'm furthest along, but just not ready to take the plunge...  Then there's the holidays, and the rest of the family that just can't seem to understand...  Remember the movie "My big fat greek wedding"? The guy was vegetarian, the future mother-in-law said: "He don't eat meat?  That's OK, I'll make lamb."  funny stuff...

I respect everyone's view on this subject. My wife and I are vegetarians, and I eat vegan most of the time. Our extended family likes to hunt. Well, what can I say? I love them, and I wish everyone peace. My mother-in-law recently sent us a wooden turkey decoration holding a sign that said "Happy Harvest." With a small modification to the sign (see below), we found a way to incorporate the turkey into our lives (my mother-in-law has a sense of humor -- I wouldn't have done it if I thought it would hurt her feelings):

Happy Thanksgiving, carnivore, herbivore and omnivore green friends!

Many points have been made here, some I can understand but mostly I don't agree with.  For me, I refuse to eat meat or any product that comes from an animal.  Because of these 'factory farms' we are experiencing health issues because of what goes into the meat we eat and global issues because of the emissions produced to keep these slaughter houses going.  The whole world could eat on just what is fed to the poor animals that are 'factory farmed'.  We are in a terrible mess! 

 I suggest, if you are having any doubts about adopting a veg*n lifestyle (and it is a whole lifestyle...ask me and I'll be happy to help you adapt) you should take a few moments to look around the www.peta.org  website; view some videos, meet your meat...want more?  There are plenty of resources online.  Perhaps you don't want the graphic realities, check out www.salemvegan.org of which I am a member. 

Because of Ed Begley Jr, and others who are stepping up to the plate we are finally taking notice.

We are the change, friends.

Please do not take my thoughts as an attack.  I am so passionate about the state of our Mother Earth and you are too; we are all in this together.

 Peace & Love to all living beings,

Donna aka Eco-Vegan

My family is vegan (can you tell by my username?) and we are also testing out a raw food diet. Of course, I wish everyone were vegan, however everyone has their reason for not being vegan - and I am not here to change that. *smile*

What everyone can do is eat a whole foods diet (preferably plant-based). Basically, eat from the produce section of your local grocer or farmers market. Don't buy processed, prepackaged junk. Also, get your organic meat and dairy (if you must!) from your immediate area. I know many people who buy a whole cow from the local farmer and get it processsed at the local processor. They know where & how it was raised and save money that way, too.

Your body & waistline will thank you for it, and so will the planet! It is amazing what little trash you have once you start making things from scratch. You have a little recycling and some composting. Of course there is more and more packaging in the produce section everyday. Why do we need to put bananas in a plastic bag or container?????? I avoid them whenever possible.

Also, maybe you can incorporate Meat-less Mondays or vegan lunches, or something like that into your weekly menu. :) Every little bit helps!

I forgot to mention that the best environmental example we have Ed Begely Jr himself is a vegitarian and so is my wife and myself. I have run in the P F Chang's 1/2 marathon for 5 years. I guess being a veggie eater gives me enough energy.
solar stacks