Please stop posting recipes with meat in them. (Disgusting.)

Paul Krugman wins a Genius Award.

Please post more recipes with meat in them. (Delicious.)

Erica, Please post more food featuring meat. LOTS of meat. Meat is YUMMY GOODIE STUFF!!!!

Can someone, ANYONE ask McCain if privatizing Social Security is still a great idea? PLEASE!!! I want to watch him squirm as he tries to answer that!!!

Delicious?

Try unhealthy and bad for the environment.

Do you realize how many more times our fair share of resources Americans consume?

Reducing your meat intake is one instant way to stop being such a taker and a pig.

Yes, but increasing one's meat intake is one instant way to make me very happy and content. If everybody ate more meat, there'd be less violence in the world.

Hitler was a vegetarian! Stop the violence, less beets, more beefs!

@5 Oh get over yourself. Driving a car, watching hours of television, or using a computer are far worse on the environment than eating meat. And we know that most Americans do all three.

Besides you could simply replace boneless pork shoulder with fried tofu in this recipe and it would work just fine. Can we all stop being so self righteous please?

Erica posts vegetarian recipes as well, and they’re good ones too. She posts recipes to suite just about everyone’s disposition. Nice having you back in the morning, Erica!

Ugh, we all know that eating meat is bad for the environment. No need to be so self-righteous and preachy about it. Jesus.

blah blah blah. If you don't want meat don't put it in. I'm sure this would be great with tempeh instead. Not all meat production is bad for the environment, and you can reduce your meat intake and still enjoy meat on occasion. This is why even people mock vegetarians.

@7: Except we need computers in work to protect the enviornment.

Why is Beverly Hills Chihuahua winning another weekend dooming the world?

I WENT AND SAW IT AGAIN. With four others. Oh, chihuahua!

Carolin, can i eat you? Two birds with one stone I say.

Hitler's "vegetarianism" was a propoganda campaign led by the third reich to make him look better. It's been thoroughly debunked.

Animal agriculture is the number one cause of climate change. Animals being raised for human consumption are the number one consumers of grain and water in the world. The practice of raising and eating animals is an archaic and flawed system whose "necessity" to the human race is indefensible.

I don't know if picking a fight over a boring recipe on a pseudo-liberal blog is the best way to combat the problem, but anyone who still believes that eating meat is "natural" is a fucking moron.

@7... Fuck you.

I don't drive a car or watch television, and my computer is powered by wind.

I'm sorry, but it's indisputable that it's in the world's best interest for everyone reading this to become vegetarian.

If you have a health reason that requires you to eat meat, then fine, but otherwise "delicious" is not an excuse.

Please post more recipes with chihuahua meat in them. (Delicious.)

@14 ... Well-said, AW, right down to the almost-buried "pseudo-lib" dig.

On Slog, it's as if being sex-positive and prObama is all that's necessary...

NEWSFLASH: There's more to being progressive than that.

Waiting with bated breath for a comment that disproves the theory that militant vegetarianism and humourlessness are intrinsically linked.

@15 Very mature. Delicious is an excuse, hell anything is an excuse. I think you mean a defensible reason and not an excuse.

I don't drive a car or watch television[...]

Please post more recipes with cookie dough in them.

COOOOOOOOOKIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Delicious is most certainly an excuse. And a good one to boot. There is NO OTHER reason to eat bacon. Mmmmm.

Ummm... I get anywhere I need to go on a bike just fine. You should try it sometime.

RE: TV ... It's kind of for retards.

I really can't believe there is more than one person on here thumbing their glasses up and trying to school everyone on the harmful effects of eating meat. Do any of you guys want to hear a story about a guy named Jesus Christ, who died for your sins? Because I got loads of those, and I would just love to belabor a point to people who don't care.

Hitler was a vegetarian! Stop the violence, less beets, more beefs!

SLOG comments keep spiraling into bickering. Look not at the mote in thy brothers eye and all that.

Its what THEY want!

THEY are also going to make a Beverly Hill Chihuahua 2 ... DOOOOM

@ 15 again get over yourself. I think i will make this with some of the Deer shoulder i shot last week with a bow. and once you bring back the keystone predators (ie mountain lions and wolves) to control their populations. i will continue to serve the environment with hunting.

I didn't want to get into this, but Chris in Tampa is forcing me...

There is a world of difference between pushy Christians and pushy vegetarians. They're both a little unpleasant, but the veg folks happen to be RIGHT. And not just right, but provably so.

Please don't confuse the two.

And STFU with the Hitler was a this or a that. Please.

Gandhi was a veg.

P.S. Go veg.

For fuck's sake.

A militant vegetarian who crows about not watching TV to boost her progressive cred, then uses the word, "retarded" -- yeah, I'm convinced.

Pass the bacon, please.

@25 ... Responsible hunting is different.

I'm pretty sure all the mouth-breathers salivating over the meat on this blog ARE NOT thinning populations with a bow and arrow, but encouraging industrial agriculture with a plastic-wrapped styrofoam package, or a shitburger from a fast-food restauarant.

Prove me wrong?

LPD ... STFU.

You haven't addressed any of Carolin's actual arguments. Is she wrong?

If so, tell us why, instead of attacking her as a person.

AGAIN: Tell. Us. Why. She's. Wrong.

Shit.

Delicious is a great reason to eat meat. You'd know that if you hadn't given it up over ethical reasons.

So out of every one of those headlines the one that everyone is concerned with is the recipe? Jeez

Straw man much, Carolin?

Gandhi was a big fan of Hitler's, by the way.

well, i'm not sure the best way to combat the problem is that say that eating meat is not "natural" either...

It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong. I'm right about almost everything all of the time, and you don't see me constantly shoving it in people's faces. I'm not going to change people's minds just because I'm right. Who the fuck would care?

Is the idea that we don't know the harmful effects of eating meat, or that we're hypocrites for knowing and not caring? Either one is ridiculous. It's not a convincing argument whether it's right or not.

Hitler was a vegetarian! Stop the violence, less beets, more beefs!

She's right for sure.

But more than that, she's annoying.

I was wondering how Morning News got up to 30+ comments before 9AM

MEAT FIIIIGHT!

Point of fact: The last five recipes Erica has posted have all been vegetarian. I tried one of them myself. It was not nearly as good as a Hamburger would have been.

Look veganistas, it's okay for you to cut meat out of your diet. There is no reason that you can't lead a fulfilled, happy, healthy life without it. It's your choice.
If you enjoy life more meat-free, more power to you and good luck.

But fuck you for claiming that it's unnatural for your fellow human beings to crave and devour meat.

Human beings are omnivores and that's a fact. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable drives and among those is the drive to kill animals, burn their flesh, and devour burnt animal flesh with relish.

There's nothing you can do to stop that. No matter how bitch and moan, most of us are going to continue to eat meat. Stop trying to make us feel guilty about it.

Instead, let's see you invest that energy into making meat as cruelty-free as possible.

Would I enjoy a steak more if I knew that the dead animal it came from led a happy, fulfilled life before gently being ushered onto Temple Grandin's "Stairway to Heaven"? You bet. Support humane slaughter.

Would I enjoy a steak more if I knew that a higher mammal intelligent enough to learn a name given it by a human didn't have to die for it? Sure. Vat-grown meat, real meat that doesn't come from a slaughtered animal, is only a few years away if we work to develop a few critical technologies and the infrastructure to support them.

What is a disco?

"I don't drive a car or watch television, and my computer is powered by wind."

ahahahha! quote of the day. taking holier than thou to a whole new level. thankyew.

And remember:
Toilet Paper = Trees!

DON'T WIPE!!!!

@34 ... Yes, it's that you know the right thing to do, and you do not care.

Sad.

ALL of these self-justifying posts, grasping to legitimize bad behavoir, but not bothering to engage with Carolin on the merits of her argument are just ... sad.

Bunch of fake-lib posers.

@41 ... You can find 100% recycled TP.

Also, I think washing with a wet cloth is just fine, if you want to avoid the trees altogether.

For serious.

I think OFFS is from SW; the author of "Ask a Seattlite."

is using a computer really as bad as eating meat? i'd never heard that before.

"Hitler's "vegetarianism" was a propoganda campaign led by the third reich to make him look better. It's been thoroughly debunked. " Links please!!

Ive read a couple of books written by non nazis and they provide plenty of documented proof of this. One of the books, written by a public health specialist, won plenty of awards and none of the books have been written by Nazis.

Youre right that he wasnt a vegeterian, he was in fact vegan.

Read, the Nazi's war on Cancer.

"Nazi health officials introduced strict occupational health and safety standards, and promoted such foods as whole-grain bread and soybeans. These policies went hand in hand with health propaganda that, for example, idealized the Führer's body and his nonsmoking, vegetarian lifestyle"

The Nazis were in fact a murderous regime that experimented, tortured, killed millions of human beings but were kind as hell to animals.

And Erica has posted plenty of non meat recipes and there is nothing wrong with posting a good Asado recipe.

I suppose fake libs is supposed to hurt our pride or something?

It's funny that by virtue of being The Stranger's blog, completely new and dumb people believe we are all progressive/liberal, vegetarian, homosexuals.

And we acknowledge that the industrial meat complex is hugely awful but that really isn't very compelling for many of us in eating what we eat. There is no connection between the rape of north texas or coalinga and the grade C meat served at various burger joints because our taste supersedes any other consideration.

Trying to henpeck and badger us into doing something ethically responsible is ineffective and counterproductive. The replies to Carolin show that. Provide alternatives that are delicious and are possible stepping stone away from meat, because until you do, you aren't going to bridge the gap with all those "mouth-breathers".

I agree that demonizing meat eaters into oblivion is not the way to make change.

However, I will say that the history that human beings have as "omnivores" has been drastically exaggerated throughout history. The theory that we have been slaying huge game since the dawn of time is just wrong.

For almost 100% of our ancestry, our meat eating habits have been confined to very small game (like squirrels and frogs, not deer and elk) on very rare occasions. We didn't begin our current rate of consumption until about 200 years ago.

It's foolish to cling to the self-aggrandized notion that we are somehow kings of all living beings who have laid some higher claim to the rigths of other animals just by virtue of our brain size and our "history" as omnivores.

Furthermore, claiming that hunting is some kind of altruistic method of population control is also a myth that requires a very small amount of real research to apprehend.

Whether you want to eat meat or not, you cannot continue to rely on facts that have been handed to you through the lens of the animal agriculture industry.

@47 ... You say: "Provide alternatives that are delicious"

Shriek! There are PLENTY of alternatives. Go to any bookstore and purchase a cookbook.

Also, this IS THE POINT OF MY VERY FIRST POST. i.e. I would appreciate it Erica post more responsible recipes, giving people like you an "alternative."

(I do not consider it an alternative but an imperative.)

@ SeMe
..."Dione Lucas, who worked at a Hamburg hotel that Hitler frequented, writes, "I do not mean to spoil your appetite for stuffed squab, but you might be interested to know that it was a great favorite with Hitler. ... Let us not hold that against a fine recipe though."

Mainstream historians don't refute Berry's assertion that Hitler didn't meet contemporary vegetarian standards"

http://www.slate.com/id/2096259/

Who cares if Hitler ate meat or not? It's not relevant.

@47 ... Not sure why you say that there are no alternatives to meat-eating. You sound like my 85-year-old grandmother. This is 2008. You can find veg options in any restaurant. We're long past sitting down to a pot roast and potatoes as the only way to eat. Hello, Indian food? Ethiopian food? Thai food? Much of it deliciously veg.

Thx AW, but plenty of scholar work remains that the Nazis promoted a vegeterian lifestyle.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6573.html

Go find the last meat recipe Erica posted, Carolin. If you have trouble finding it, it's because it was posted over two months ago.

I've eaten quite a few vegetarian and vegan dishes. None of them were half as good as a mediocre hamburger. Sorry, you have bad tastes.

@49
Another way to approach anti-meat could be expense, if you please. Meat prices have been relatively low compared to other increases that have happened to commodities over the last year due to culling of herds because of grain prices going up, in part because of the popularity of biofuel production in the US. This coming year we should see significant price increases in beef especially. So perhaps you can use the cost argument as well, in lieu of insulting people? (mouthbreathers, really?)

AW- the writer you cite is a "vegetarian activist" who writes in a small vegeterian press. i dont know if that is the kind of argument you want to place against well researched scholar works such as The Nazi's war on cancer.

Carolin, tall the alternatives aren't actually alternatives though. They are completely different and require a different way of looking at food. They require people to rethink and reimagine what taste is and really, why go to the effort just to appease pushy people like you?

In fact, alternatives isn't the right word here. Substitutes. There are no good vegetarian substitutes for steak or bacon, roasts or crab, pan roasted turkey or kefta. There are simply a lot of foods that would disappear, a lot of culture and food that would be raped of its identity without meat.

@ SeMe

Of course they promoted vegetarianism. Just like Sarah Palin is promoting 'tolerance' toward homosexuals.
Just like every politician in history is obligated to put a positive face on their atrocities.

I agree that the only relevance Hitler's diet has today is in mainstream blog threads about whether Hitler was fucking vegetarian or not. Do you have any real argument here?

Ghandi was vegan but he abused his wife. Who fucking cares what other people are doing?

Will you only model your life after what famous dead people supported or condemned?

No wonder you're still a meat eater.

Chris in Tampa... You just don't get it.

Your taste buds are not as fucking important as the future of our planet. Sorry. Jesus.

I seriously... Jesus Christ... need to leave this blog immediately or my head is going to explode.

I can't believe so many people are arguing IN FAVOR OF MEAT.

Bellevue Ave., you just don't get it! It's SO NOT IMPORTANT whether meat-accustomed people get to "substitute" for a roast! They should eat something different entirely!

AW -settle down man. Eat some meat, it will relax you. =)

that about sums up your argument, SeMe.

@59

You do realize that most people, even in Seattle, are meat eaters, right? Why is it a surprise to you that you're encountering pro-meat arguments? Meat isn't the exclusive domain of conservative Republicans form the suburbs.

@Meh

Hello, Italian Food, French food, American Traditional, BBQ, Mexican Food, Greek Food.

Sorry that not all meat eaters are willing to jump on the asian/ethiopian bandwagon or that you consider that a substitute. The mere idea that any meat eater in the United States could be satisfied while losing so many more food genres is hilarious.

i like how it's okay to bash suburban SUV commuters because they are wrong, but not okay to say the same about meat-eaters! i guess you can evaluate the harms associated with each and choose your battles. still, it makes me laugh.

at least you know how they feel now. and christians... they DO think they are right! you partly justify their behavior when you proselytize for a vegetarian lifestyle! so make sure you do it in a way that you'd want it done to you... golden rule!

My taste buds are way more important than the future of the planet. Jesus, have you ever even had sushi? I can't believe I'm having this conversation.

@59, They should but they don't. Why are you so thick that you don't understand that humans respond to incentive, not directive, especially directive from a bunch of unsympathetic asshats.

Simply saying people should engage in a behavior (for reasons they obviously don't care about) without a set of tangible benefit won't work. You need to provide a reason that translates to people who meat for them to abandon meat. Otherwise you're coming off as someone who can't relate what-so-ever.

i don't eat meat and i think it's disgusting, but i've decided to take baby steps and just harass people about eating BEEF.

beef is by far the worst meat for the environment (and public health). just cut beef out of your diet and you won't really lose out on any delicious meals (including this recipe). eat chicken or (gasp) a new delicious veggie burger instead.

eating beef is worse for the environment than driving a hummer. it's impossible to be a progressive and still eat meat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7600005.stm

beef is worse for the environment and global warming than all cars and airplanes and boats COMBINED.

It's not even like any of you, or perhaps just the one of you under different names, is proposing a rational objective here. There's nothing wrong about suggesting that people cut down on the amount of meat they eat. It's a good idea, and I support it. But no, that's not good enough. We have to get everyone to stop eating meat this instant, as if the agricultural industry would have no problem immediately accommodating 295 million people radically changing their diet. Bad for the environment indeed.

None of this is my fault. I wanted to talk about Paul Krugman.

Chris, what if tomorrow we started feeding all the grain we currently feed to animals, directly to the starving people who need it?

70% of the grain produced in this country is fed right into animals so they can convert it from a high quality protein to a low quality one. Just so overweight westerners can continue to be overweight.

What if we fed it to the people who are currently dying from starvation?

I can't see how that isn't a positive step.

jrrrl, what is your substitute for carne asada? or for a rare steak sided with aspargus and creamed spinach? what about bolognese? the assertion that beef can readily be swapped out isn't true for many dishes. Are these the same dishes that contribute to the most consumption of meat? Maybe.

Please post more recipes with Paul Krugman in them. (Delicious.)

Well, all of those animals would die. Wouldn't that make you sad?

I blame elenchos.

@71, nothing. there is no substitute. there's no substitute for driving a hummer down I-405, either. just give it up if you want to be a good citizen. i'm not asking you to give up all meat, just the horrible stuff that is killing you and the environment.

if you absolutely have to eat carne asada instead of chicken breast or shredded pork or veggie fajitas or whatever, you have some bizarre medical condition and i'll give you a pass on beef eating until dr. house can figure out the mystery.

@70, why do you assume that I'm eating grain-fed beef? I'm not; I try to stick to grass-fed beef only. And if you tried to feed grass to starving people, they would continue to starve, since people can't digest grass. Cows can. That's why cows (and all ruminants) exist in the first place: to convert inedible foods (grass) into edible ones (meat).

AW, overweight westerners aren't overweight because of a high protein diet (and theres no scientific basis for believing meat consumption increases fat tissue retention). Look at corn as a suspect.

Chris, the modern factory farm animal is a man-made anomaly that bears almost no resemblance to its wild ancestors. I would not be sad if we allowed these animals to go extinct, just as I would not be sad if we allowed bananas and modern corn to go extinct.

the problem with beef isn't grain-feeding vs. grass-feeding. american farm beef is actually slightly better for the environment than grass-fed beef in south america and asia. livestock is just a horribly damaging way to create food and no current technology can change that.

Bell Ave,

Westerners are overfed. Animal products contain more fat, and particularly saturated fat, than any other protein source. Animal products are also the only known source of cholesterol on the planet.

Milk, for example, is designed to turn a 60lb calf into a 1,000lb cow in a matter of months. Why do we think we can feed this substance to children and not see the effects of obesity rapidly develop?

That analogy is terrible though because there are alternatives to driving a hummer, a lot in fact. To be more apt, you'd have to deign the purpose of driving, the factors of the vehicle, and how closely the two mesh. And your hummer analogy also fails because the hand of the market makes it undesirable to drive, not the edict of an internet personality like you.

And if we really want to drive beef consumption down, we need to make people pay the price of it by eliminating subsidies on grain and on beef production. Once the true price of beef is there people will adjust accordingly and seek out alternatives themselves.

Haha, a man-made anomaly. You sure don't need to eat meat, because you survive on daily dose of bullshit from your vegetarian propaganda.

Not that it has anything to do with Paul Krugman, but wheat is grass, Fnarf. And to say cows exist to convert to make grass edible... are you getting that from the Book of Genesis or something? Seems like it behooves one to evolve a little beyond that stuff...

But I'm not having this argument today.

AW, overfeeding is a symptom of cheap food. And really, why do i think we can feed kids milk? Because until recently we were doing it and the net effect didn't have fuck all to do with obesity. If you compare milk consumption you can see that the per capita consumption of milk is not rising at all while obesity is. If there were a causal relationship you'd expect to see increase obesity from increase milk consumption. this is not the case.

ba: well, there are alternatives to hummers like there are alternatives to steak. if you "need" and SUV or just like the taste of a hummer, then there really are no alternatives. maybe a hybrid SUV is similar to fnarf's grass-fed beef.

but there are plenty of other foods to eat and cars to drive.

Cows don't eat wheat, Elenchos. They're designed to eat GRASS grass, the kind made of cellulose, which humans can't eat. And there's no Genesis involved; cows, like horses (and grains, for that matter), are designed by humans, through selective breeding. Cows as we have them did not exist in prehuman nature, but were purposely bred from a long-extinct ancestor called aurochs.

bellevue ave, there are a lot of alternatives to eating beef just like there are a lot of alternatives to driving a hummer. beef doesn't have any unique nutritional benefit. it's just the experience of eating beef that you're defending, just like some would defend the experience of driving a hummer down the freeway.

market forces have made the hummer less popular, but popular opinion has sure made them much less desirable as well. they are a symbol of reckless american consumption, which has stigmatized them much more than, say, the cadillac escalade or other large cars. social forces are often much more powerful than market forces.

the mainstream media is finally picking up that eating beef is the worst thing you can do for the environment, so you can expect beef consumption to decrease dramatically despite no change in market forces.

a year ago, it was almost impossible to find a link to a popular news source showing beef is extremely harmful; now there are dozens or hundreds of them.

chris, every single animal that you see for sale in the supermarket is a result of artificial insemination. Turkeys, pigs, cows, chickens, they would never reproduce frequently enough to make their products profitable, so people artifically impregnate them as often as possible.

Does that sound natural to you?

Furthermore, turkeys, pigs, and chickens have been so badly manipulated through genetic engineering that they are in almost no way related to their analogs in the wild.

For example, turkeys are naturally brown, but since brown feathers leave brown marks on the skin, consumers demanded that turkeys be turned white. So they are. Turkeys are unnaturally manipulated to be white, have thinner skin (so it's easy to eat them!) and have heavier breasts.

Pigs are designed to have whiter skin because pork is marketed as part of a "white meat" product campaign. This leaves factory pigs succeptible to sunburn and skin cancer which has never once been documented in a wild pig.

Do you want more examples because I have hundreds. If you're interested in my sources, you can come visit me - I live on a farm animal sanctuary where I care for animals who have been genetically manipulated to the point that they cannot care for themselves as they would in the wild.

Yes, I do want more example. All of them if you don't mind. I'm actually just on the verge of being converted here. Hit me with all you got, man.

@ AW,
hunting as population control a "Myth". ever read aldo leopold? so i supposed the millions of Deer that will be killed this year would have just died without reproducing? read out the forest ecology problems lacking keystone predators. I am not claiming anything "altruistically". which i dont even believe exist.

There are plenty of foods to eat but the idea that people are going to do it out of the prodding of angry chicken little vegetarians is pretty wacky. Make people pay more for beef by eliminating subsidy and let the cards fall where they will. I know that I'd still pay top dollar for a good steak, but i'd likely cut out my monthly dicks hamburger run if it wound up being twice the price.

People didn't buy hummers simply because they liked the taste of hummer, people bought them because gas was relatively inexpensive, it conveyed status, they were part of a loophole in the tax code for trucks, etc etc. people have a preference that can be influenced by many factors. If you can influence the factors that a beef eater considers when purchasing one meat over another, then you'll be more likely to get them to make a decision you find more favorable.

jrrrl, a change in the preference for beef is a market change. markets reflect the preference people have whether it's for risk or whether it's for consuming beef. The various factors of demand vary from person to person which is why societal pressure might change the factor to induce demand. What I'm saying though is that most consistent beef eaters aren't going to be wooed by "this is bad for you and the environment" without there being some of alternative for them to glom on to. And saying that chicken and pork are alternatives just ignores the premise that with shift the demand toward those alternatives, the supply of them would increase and possibly neutralize the gains in reducing beef supply production.

Fnarf, even an economist like Paul Krugman knows that aurochs were perfectly capable of digesting grass before humans came along and started messing with them. The fact that we did mess with them is no justification to keep doing so.

Especially since having messed with grass as well as aurochs, we have wheat, and don't need the cows.

no -- an increase in chicken and pork production would be bad for my vegetarian animal welfare sensibilities, but it would not be bad for the environment if it was paired with a decrease in beef production.

beef is that bad.

Bellevue Ave and others are right here in that you're not going to convince anyone of anything by taking an "OMG you're such an asshole for eating meat" attitude.

I eat virtually no meat, recycle and compost religiously, etc. But you know what? When I want to nudge someone to start recycling or composting, I don't say "How could you not recycle?!! Don't you care about the environment!". I say "hey if you're interested in recycling, here's how you would do it (the procedures in Chicago can be complicated depending on what type of building you live in)". You catch more flies with honey, and all...

People on this thread are responding to your attitude, not to your content.

And if we really want to drive beef consumption down, we need to make people pay the price of it by eliminating subsidies on grain and on beef production. Once the true price of beef is there people will adjust accordingly and seek out alternatives themselves.

So much for incentives, eh, BA?

Bellevue's free market approach is absolutely correct, obvious to anyone who isn't a complete vegetable. This is a supply side issue folks.

Chris, I can't tell if you're being serious, but there are a wealth of resources out there which specifically detail the plight of modern farm animals. The Food Revolution is a solid and comprehensive book on the issue of animal agriculture.

Bellevue, human beings are the *only* species to consume milk past infancy. We are also the *only* species in the history of evolution to go outside our own kind to get it. (this does not include the random, natural occurance of mothers in the wild who 'adopt' abandoned animals who require nursing - coyotes, deer etc. will exhibit this behavior rarely)

In any event, it's entirely incorrect to state that there is no correlation between dairy consumption and weight gain because the proven relationship exists but has been vastly underreported. If you're truly interested in trying to defend your argument, do it against the book "The China Study." It's the most comprehensive study ever done of human nutrition as it relates to food.

It explicitly states that consumption of animal products and especially dairy are directly related to increased weight, cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, reproductive diseases, and bone diseases.

I said people need incentive that they can actually relate to, not directive they can't. What do you mean by that?

McCain considers “middle-class” tax cuts on capital gains and dividends.

To hear a Republican talk, I'd have to believe I'm the only middle class thirtysomething who doesn't (er, did) have ten thousand dollars in stocks.

PS: Capital gains taxes tax stock GAINS, right? Uh huh.

You said you'd give me hundreds of examples, and now you're welshing? What's up with that? You don't think I'm worth it?

I was a vegetarian for 8 years -- I combined complimentary proteins, ate lots of leafy greens, took vitamins, gulped flax seed and did almost everything you could do to be a healthy vegetarian and I was still underweight and got sick for weeks whenever someone sneezed anywhere near me.

I became a massage therapist and lost even more weight from the exertion. I was perpetually exhausted. One night I decided to try a piece of meat while out to dinner with some friends. That was 4 years ago and I haven't looked back.

Some people's metabolisms and bodies will work on a vegetarian diet -- other people's will not.

AW, I have my studies that say that milk consumption is declining

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Amberwaves/June03/DataFeature/

and that obesity is going up.

http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/22/606/FINALfactsandfigures2.pdf

How does the China Study account for that?

I'm not saying that meat is without health problems, but I don't think anyone entertaining this debate is under the illusion that bacon is good for you, or that meat, in general is the healthiest choice you can make. You're trying to take me down on a point I concede but which isn't the main objection people have to giving up meat.

Chris, you have to admit, free market is the dirtiest word around now. No good parts of free market theory will see the light of day in this environment.

The chickens being sold in supermarkets are referred to as "broiler" chickens. They are manipulated to gain weight quickly enough so as to be slaughtered in just 45 days. That is the equivalent of meeting a 200lb 3-year-old.

As soon as these birds are born, they start gaining weight at an astronomical rate. Their hearts, lungs, and skeletons haven't fully developed by that point so many (and by many, i mean millions) of birds will die from what's known as "flip over disease" - heart attacks, before they even reach 2 or 3 weeks of age. It doesn't matter how much food they receive, or how much exercise they get, these animals will grow and grow and grow until they are five to six times their normal weight. if they live beyond their pre-designed "slaughter weight" they usually develop severe leg deformities and suffer from a host of diseases.

Chickens and turkeys are supposed to be able to fly. The chickens and turkeys bred for consumption become too heavy to fly after their first month of life.

Egg laying chickens will naturally excrete about 50 eggs per year (just as a human female will expel about 12 per year). Factory farm egg layers are genetically designed to lay upwards of 250-300 eggs per year. The physical toll on their bodies is so great that they will be too "spent" by the age of two (chickens can live over ten years) at which point their production will decline and they will be sold to slaughter.

These egg layers are housed in "battery cages." A battery cage is about the size of a single filing cabinet drawer. Imagine stuffing anywhere from five to ten chickens into a single drawer for their entire lives.

Chickens have very complex social structures. In groups of up to 80 or 90 birds, chickens will establish a harmonious pecking order where each hen occupies a specific place in the heirarchy. However, in groups of over 90 birds (like these battery warehouses where up to 100,000 birds can be kept at a time), the social order becomes unmanageable and the birds fight with one another. A frusterated chicken who cannot exhibit her natural social behavior is actually capable of cannibalizing another bird. This would not happen in the wild.

These birds will regularly peck each other to death, so to combat the "problem" the industry has resorted to de-beaking. It's a process by which the tip of the chicken's beak is seared off with a hot blade shortly after birth to make the pecking less damaging. Many birds die from the stress of de-beaking alone, or the inability to eat or drink if the de-beaking was very severe.

After living such a strenuous life, most of these birds will leave the battery cage with bruises, scars, and open sores. Not suitable for sale in the supermarket, their meat will go for products where the sores can be disguised - chicken nuggets, canned soup, pet food, the federal school and prison food systems.

Is this still sounding natural to you?
I just covered a fraction of the problems facing one species. These are not isolated incidents.

Over 9 billion birds are slaughtered every year in this country alone, so when I say that millions die just from the effects of being born, you can see how the industry must compensate to remain profitable.

I've always thought Paul Krugman looked kinda like a muppet--an endearing quality, IMHO. What do you think, elenchos?

I love you, AW.

BA: The Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine has information stating the opposite.

http://www.pcrm.org/health/

We can trade sources all day, but you're right - everyone will understand this issue differently and people's aversion to vegetarianism takes different forms. I don't want to demonize you for your choices, but as long as you feel as though you have done the research and made a decision for youself, then that's all anyone can ask of you.

All of you got trolled pretty bad there.

ba: not all decisions should be left to market forces, and certainly not all of them are being left alone right now.

hi all,
right now i'm eating a delicious gardenburger with fresh lettuce, pickles, grilled peppers and onions, sriracha, and lovely thick cut french fries.

where's the beef alternative for that?

it is still funny that people here will talk shit about SUV drivers (who pay for their own gas) or less-progressive leaning people -- but once that criticism is turned... suddenly everyone wants to be left to their own vices.

@AW @ 48: Dude/ette, we have domesticated animals for thousands of years. Have you ever heard of the fertile crecent?

And yes, consumption of meat has gone up but that is because consumption of everything has. There was a time when you could only get oranges when they were in season, now we get them year round. This is definitely a problem, but to lie and say we only ate squirrls and frogs? You are a moron.

Humans have also "domesticated" women and people of other races for thousands of years, but just as those forms of oppression are waning, so will the oppression of other species for personal gain.

And finally, the herding of animals is a fairly recent evolution in human history (Unless you're a mormom, you probably know that humans have been around a long fucking time, and have only recently begun the practice of harvesting animals. Oh, I guess if you're christian, you believe we've been doing it since Our Lord walked the earth. Either way, you're wrong)

Patriarchy and pastoralism appeared on the historical stage at the same time, and you don't see us defending the abuse of women anymore do you?

I defend the abuse of women if they deserve it. And let's face it, if animals didn't deserve to be eaten, they wouldn't be so delicious.

Jesus fucking christ. animal husbandry= slavery. get some fucking perspective. as for your other remarks it depends on your definition of human. Homo sapiens about 125,000yrs and there is evedence of neanderthals eating megafauna. so dont argue rodents and shit.

@Aw @ 114: Did you read what I wrote? Yes, I am aware of the history of humans, being around 7-8 million years (well, our ancestors anyways) But you said, in comment #48 that we have only been eating big animals for 200 years, which is false. I am not defending meat eating, I am simply stating that what you said

"For almost 100% of our ancestry, our meat eating habits have been confined to very small game (like squirrels and frogs, not deer and elk) on very rare occasions. We didn't begin our current rate of consumption until about 200 years ago. "

That is fucking wrong. We have been herding and hunting big game for as long as we have been walking upright. And we have domesticated large animals since the time of the fertile fucking crecesnt.

So listen you troll, what you said was wrong. I dont give a damn about this ridiculous thread other than how bizarre and moronic your comment was @ #48.

there's a place for all of god's creatures.

right next to the mashed potatoes.

This whole thread is just sad.

People know that meat-eating is part of what's ruining our planet, and they do not care.

Does anyone know where to get a decent flour tortilla in this town? (fluffy, fresh, preferably held together with lard...) The thought of eating asado on rubbery Seattle grocery store tortillas makes this homesick Texan sad.