flynfrog wrote:
It is a supply problem but not like you think it is. The US has massive subsidies for corn production. The price of corn is well below the cost of production. This encourages feed lot and factory farm style of animal raising instead of grazing. With grain so cheap and land so expensive they pack the animals in tiny feed lots and feed them corn. This make Fast food meals so cheap. I would be more than happy to remove the subsides this would encourage more vegetable growth instead of grain. I love veggies. It would also raise the price of meat helping to curb our massive appetite for the stuff. In the end we would pay more for our food but it would be much higher quality.
I certainly didn't know that, thanks for the info. So quite literally the government decides what you should eat and is happy to put its hand in your pocket
jon-mullen wrote:
Me, personally, if you wanted to convince me to go vegetarian, tell me what you usually eat. Where you shop. What's on your grocery list. Does it come up when you go out to eat. A lot of people I know who go veg end up eating from an even more limited menu and a lot of junk food and then try to tell me it's healthier. Not the way they're doing it. Not to mention it's almost always more expensive. Make it sound easy (cheap would help too) and I think you'd be surprised at how many people stop arguing with you over the morality and health of it.
Very true, it's a logistical challenge at the very beginning, all the more so if like me you live in the '3rd world', and quite certainly the people that live closer to me have slowly adopted a few dietary items from yours truly.
Now, several people have mentioned it's more expensive. Over here it is somewhat more expensive, but not too much. In fact depending on how well you plan/prepare your meals, it should be similar or even cheaper sometimes.
But coming to think about Europe, and perhaps the US as well, i know that the bananas we export from here are a lot more expensive over there if they are grown within the 'natural/pesticide free/organic' mumbo jumbo label, so I'm wondering if certain vegan products carry that same price hike. So people end up paying 20% for the banana's real price and the other 80% is to pay for the 'feel good about your green self' bit
Just_a_fan wrote:
You bring up biology: we are omnivores built to eat just about anything and everything. If we were vegans by build, we'd be built like horses, cows, sheep. We're not. Why not? Because we're opportunist feeders; eat meat when available, eat fruit when available, eat vegetables when available.
I agree we're built omnivores, in fact 'oportunistic feeder' describes us best. However the statement above is completely disconnected from your next sentence:
Just_a_fan wrote: That's why a diet including all three is called a 'balanced diet'; given a bit of each we have a diet that gives us everything we need to thrive.
A diet is not balanced from eating fruits, vegetables and meat. Saying so is not too distant from saying a balanced diet should contain red, blue and green things. A diet is balanced from carb, protein, fat, minerals/vitamins, etc. ingestion. Omnivore, vegetarian/vegan balanced diets are possible; but to my knowledge humans cannot have carnivore balanced diets.
And that's the crux of it, we are built to have choice and exercise our lil brains. And that's what's most disheartening in omnivore humans, most of them never made the choice,they just went along with the flow.
Just_a_fan wrote:The brain that allows us to have these discussions needs a lot of energy; development of that brain would not have been possible had we eaten only vegetable material.
Bold statement, proof of this?
I will agree that at some point in human development omnivorism was necessary and helped us get where we are, oportunity and high energy concentration of weaker animals made it so. But again, it's in our past now, we don't need to keep on doing it simply because that's 'how it's always been done'. Again, choice.
Just_a_fan wrote:
Certain important minerals e.g. iron, are much more easily absorbed by our bodies from meat than from plant sources. Why? Because we have elolved to eat both.
I don't claim you'll be healthier by being a vegan, however my wife is living proof that a vegan diet does not imply an iron defficiency. As an omnivore, she always had low red cell count, not sure if this is the correct translation (hemoglobin?). The number coming up in her results was around a 10, which if i understand it correctly is not too far away from blood transfusion, and technically constitutes anemia. It goes without saying they gave her various different omnivore diet changes, supplements, etc. and this never changed. Mind you, she was perfectly healthy.
Then she became a vegetarian at 22, and a few months later she went full vegan. Her levels are now in the 12-13 range, literally higher than ever before. She's still perfectly healthy.
I'm not saying this to imply the diet is 'more balanced' now, I'm just saying it's a statement to the fact that you can have both omnivore and vegan diets that are balanced, and the opposite is true as well. But choosing one does not constitute a deficiency per se, you just have to be smart about your food.
andrew wrote:
But the topic is asking if there are any veggie F1 drivers. The past few pages seem to be a Harry Hill style "which is best" between the merits of being a veggie and non veggie so it that respect it is off topic as the possibility of a veggie F1 driver is not being looked into despite being in off topic chat. Simples.
Just cover your eyes the next time you open up the topic. Even easier, don't open it, crazy as it may sound it'll probably work!
Do I smell denial transitioning into anger?
hehe
Alejandro L.
