Topic: Vegan, we are not grizzly bears

[David "Stubb" Oswald]

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/17/is-veganism-good-for-everyone/we-are-not-grizzly-bears

New York Times had a serious of editorials about veganism and this was one. I really don't want to turn this into a meat vs plant based diet argument topic (which I am sure it will become) but I found this one editorial to be terrible. The author uses grizzly bears as an example of omnivore, then describes how we don't have claws and get sick from raw meat. So we are not grizzly bears and since grizzly bears are omnivores, we are herbivores.

I will start things off. I have ate the raw heart from a pronghorn antelope minutes after it was killed (by me) I did not get sick. I think we can digest raw meat and get the nutrition from it.

[341gerbig]

It is a badly formed argument from an author who is either confused or grasping for straws.

nothing more

[Chew]

eating raw animal flesh usually makes us sick

Little known fact: 18 million Japanese get sick everyday after eating sushi.

[WC]

[lonely moa]

Grizzleys can go for maybe 6 months without eating anything but their own fat.  I've got less than the theoretical 30,000 calories stored, wouldn't work for me.

I think she mentioned gorrillas as well.  Our guts are about a third as long and our mandibles are no longer able to do the chewing they do. Poor comparison.

Dr Wrangham has put this in the best evolutionary terms, IMHO.  One does get more nutrition from cooked meat and it does have other advantages, but it is a tasty treat raw in the proper contest.

[Boßel]

I will start things off. I have ate the raw heart from a pronghorn antelope minutes after it was killed (by me) I did not get sick. I think we can digest raw meat and get the nutrition from it.

We can, and many do. It's not like the meat from a just-skinned chicken will have salmonella.

[Neon Genesis]

Little known fact: 18 million Japanese get sick everyday after eating sushi.

Nitpick: Sushi isn't raw fish; sushi is rice wrapped in a roll with different fillings which can include fish but also can include vegetables and chicken teriyaki.  Raw fish served by itself is sashami.  http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/sushi.asp

[Johnny Slick]

Yeah, the issue here isn't so much that we've evolved to not eat meat, it's that we've evolved to get a lot of nutrition in the form of calories from cooked meat and processed grains. That was fantastic news to whichever of our ancestors figured out cooking, because it meant that we didn't need to literally spend most of our day chewing on something to get enough calories to survive anymore. The bad news is that we no longer live on the Serengeti and the things that we eat today bear little resemblance to what our forefathers had to contend with. If anything, the best argument for being a vegan IMO (aside from the moral one) is that by eschewing meat, you're kind of manually ticking back the clock and intentionally making it so that your ratio of calories per jaw muscle clenching is a lot lower than technology allows.

I like meat too much to go away from it myself, but my point is that this guy is pretty well the opposite of true.

[Shadow Of A Doubt]

Why should I eat what my ancestors ate 20 000 years ago? Don't we have a good idea of what's a healthy diet for 21st-century Western folk based on scientific studies?

[Anders]

On the Internet, no one knows you're a grizzly bear.

[Tatyana]

To be honest, I can't remember the last time I ate meat, it probably wasn't this month.

I also use soya milk and hazelnut milk, but I probably use more full fat milk, sometimes organic.

I have been a vegan, I think I did this for close to three years, and vegetarian for something like 15 years.

I don't think the message that 'you should be vegan' is going to work, I do think the message of 'eat less meat because it is better for your health and the environment' would work.

I also think that one thing that isn't taken into consideration is that the methods and conditions of raising animals isn't the same in every single country, for example, bovine growth hormone hasn't been used in the EU for (I think) close to twenty years, and antibiotics used to prophylaxis in the last five years.

Meat production in the US is different than it is in New Zealand for example.

I wish I could find it again, but there was this great piece on BBC radio  4 about how some meat, for example, sheep, is far more environmentally friendly than trying to grow plant crops  where sheep is being grazed.

[MikeHz]

There are still human societies that live in the wild. They would be very surprised to discover that they are vegans.

[WC]

I'm a veggie, have been since, oh, '92 or so. "Experimented" with veganism during teh stupid years (teens to early 20s). It was sloppy crap like this article that pushed me towards reality based thinking and evidence based positions. I hate to generalize unduly, but this has been my exeperience over and over and over and over, vegans are loons, and if I ever meet a non batshit vegan, I will eat my hat.

[Tatyana]

I'm a veggie, have been since, oh, '92 or so. "Experimented" with veganism during teh stupid years (teens to early 20s). It was sloppy crap like this article that pushed me towards reality based thinking and evidence based positions. I hate to generalize unduly, but this has been my exeperience over and over and over and over, vegans are loons, and if I ever meet a non batshit vegan, I will eat my hat.

Listen to Citizen Radio podcast.

[amysrevenge]

I know one non-batshit vegan.  She's a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Edinburgh.  Her brother is a chef at a steakhouse.  They get along just fine.