| Author | Message | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Intermediate Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 1614 Registered: 1-2002 |
TEC: She's probably borderline anemic (like I was), and, more than likely, consumes too few calories, too many carbs and not enough protein (which were all of my "problems"). Also, you're 100% right , the new age food stores (whole foods, henry's, et. al. ) really like to make you pay for eating "well." | ||
| TC (Houston) (Tec)
Member Username: Tec Post Number: 296 Registered: 2-2002 |
I'll tell you what "organic" means. It means they can charge you 3-4x the price for the same stuff.  The quality of produce and meat always seems to be a little better from the organic grocery store, but what never ceases to amaze me is that you go to these stores and buy a bell pepper, a couple chicken breasts, and a box of under-salted stone ground wheat crackers, and it's like an $80 tab. My fiance has been vegan for a few years now. She also has been having health issues over (coincidentally?) exactly the same period of time. Nothing serious, she just doesn't feel great a lot of the time. She recently started eating eggs again and has been feeling better. I understand her reasons behind being vegan but it really is a pain sometimes. The big issue we have is what will happen when we start having kids, both pregnancy and after. Fun stuff. | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Intermediate Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 1603 Registered: 1-2002 |
ricky: no, i'm no longer vegan. i took it too far , and went raw vegan for too long, and ended up malnurished. raw vegans eat only raw , unprocessed, uncooked and non-animal foods. essentially, it's the ultiamte tree hugger, berry eater diet. in my youth i carried some very extreme views on animal liberation, vivisection and the consumption of animal products, but i ended up marring my health and got to a poing where my 6'2" frame only held about 120 something lbs. -- i was too thin (if that's possible here in so . cal), but it was a matter of my age , and my development could have been impeded by the restrictions in my diet. i still don't eat red meat, don't eat pork and occasionally consume chicken; hence, not a vegitarian anymore. my personal account should not dissuade anyone from trying to live an "alternate" lifesytle -- i simply took it too far. regards, hubert ps: excuse my lengthy self-indulgent post. not sure you wanted to read all that. | ||
| Dom Vitarella (Dom)
Member Username: Dom Post Number: 517 Registered: 11-2002 |
Botulism toxin is all natural and organic... | ||
| fanatic (Fanatic1)
Member Username: Fanatic1 Post Number: 550 Registered: 2-2003 |
In the end we all die.........anyone find a cure for that.......I guess if your a vegan or anything else, you can die healthy........... .......all things in moderation................ | ||
| Telson (Pitbull_trader)
Junior Member Username: Pitbull_trader Post Number: 198 Registered: 8-2003 |
Hugh: "lastly, i was vegitarian for 12 years, and vegan for 6. veganism prohibits the use , consumption or purchase of any animal product, by product or even foods processed on the same machines as animal products; it's a giant screw you to the animal industry. so, to those that think they're vegitarian, but still eat fish, sorry you're not. you still eat (once) living tissue -- the tennets of vegiterianism proclude that; hence, you're not vegitarians. not trying to be an �������, but wanted to clarify, as i speak from experience." Interesting, although one step at a time is the way I'm doing this. I stopped eating red meat some 3 years ago, and white meat 1 year ago. Still eating fish currently. Awhile back I found this interesting article on the web: TURNING VEGGIE COULD SAVE OUR BACON May 20 2003 Trend will cut global warming and improve health By Ros Wynne-Jones A Vegetarian For 20 Years GOOD news for animals every where. Britain is going bananas for nut cutlets. With 2,000 converts a week - a rate the Church of England can only dream of - the entire British population will be vegetarian by 2047, according to a new survey. And after decades of "I can do you an omelette" it's good news for vegetarians too. In this brave new future we misunderstood veggies will no longer be forced to endure life as a culinary afterthought. The Royle Family summed it up when Grandma Royle worried what Anthony's new vegetarian girlfriend would eat for her tea. "Will she have wafer-thin ham, Barbara?" she asked, wrinkling up her nose. This year is the 20th anniversary of my own conversion to vegetarianism and I remember that my own gran was devastated when she heard the news I had become an 11-year-old vegetarian. I can trace it to my grandad's job at Dewhurst the butchers in Llandudno Junction. Visiting him there, I once used the toilet at the back, pushing my way through the hanging plastic curtain that hid the back-room butchery. Inside was a man in a blood-stained overall, hacking the haunches from a strung-up cow. Until that moment I had never put "roast beef" and "cow" together. Sunday lunch suddenly lost its allure. My dad made me a wooden farm when I was little that was much better than any dolls' house. On my farm, the chickens played with the sheep and the cows lived in the farmhouse. (George Orwell, eat your heart out!) Now, I had to countenance the idea that the animals weren't there just to play but to grow fat for the slaughter. The lovely pigs were just walking bacon rashers and the chickens were actually "Chicken", the thing that came in a basket. I PROUDLY announced my decision over the dinner table one Sunday in 1983 to my bemused parents. They told me to pick the meat out of my dinner and eat the rest. I hadn't thought this far into my personal culinary revolution. 'The rest' included a giant handful of evil brussels sprouts. Would I starve? And God, it was hard. Never to eat another bacon sandwich. No more shepherd's pie or Welsh lamb chops! In my anguish, I almost herded the cows out of my toy farmhouse and sent them packing to Dewhursts. But I held firm. These were the days Before Linda, when it was impossible to find murder-free Linda McCartney pies. Back then, you were lucky to get a plate of nut cutlets - foul-looking nuts and grains that sat in your stomach like rocks. What were food manufacturers thinking? I'd become a vegetarian, not had my tastebuds surgically removed. Today, we even have our own Delia vegetarian cookbook, a kind of passport into polite society. There are hundreds of great reasons to become a vegetarian. For one, swallowed meat lies around rotting in your gut for months afterwards. Vegetarians visit hospital on average 22 per cent less often than a meat eater, saving the NHS �220 per year each. For another, the way we treat animals in this country is an outrage that future generations will condemn as barbaric. Any idea how chickens actually die? Imagine being herded onto a conveyor belt with a metal blade buzzing at neck height waiting for you at the other end. Oh, and you're not James Bond, so there are no implausible means of escape. To anyone who says: "Hitler was a vegetarian", well, yes he was. He also had a moustache, and was a Nazi. Which of these factors do you think actually contributed to the Holocaust? Meanwhile, livestock farming is an extremely inefficient use of the world's resources compared to crops. Add this to the fact that "methane-emitting livestock" (cow farts) contribute massively to the Greenhouse Effect and global warming. And millions of hectares of rainforest are destroyed each year to create grazing pasture. In the UK alone, 800 million animals are slaughtered every year for the dinner table. In a lifetime, the average meat-eater will consume the equivalent of 760 chickens, five cows, 20 pigs, 29 sheep and half a ton of fish. That's an entire farm each! OK so, tofu, Quorn and soya in their raw states don't exactly look delicious. But let's think about the lunch you're eating in its raw form. Was it a lovely lamb, gambolling in the fields? Well, now it's dead, cruel murderer! AT least Britain is ahead of most other countries. In America vegetarianism is such a dirty word you're better off being a smoker. France, of course, is a veggie disaster. Anywhere Spanish-speaking is pretty much a no-no. Throughout the Kosovo crisis, the only vegetarian thing on any menu anywhere in the region was Skopska salad. It was a very nice salad but, after six weeks of eating it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I'd had enough. To help, my translator kindly gave me a piece of paper with the Albanian for "I do not eat meat" written on it, but every day I had to give it back to him to add something new. By the end of our stay it read: "I do not eat meat. Or chicken. Or cows. Or ham. Or fish. Or prawns. Or bacon." Finally, he added: "Or birds." So, you may have the upper-hand now, flesh-eaters, but wait till 2047! Then you'll be the ones shunned at the dinner table ("Oh, I can't have Tom for dinner, I've no idea what to cook for carnivores!") and palmed off with a token dish at restaurants. Meat will cost a fortune, with a Third-World and environment tax that will help repay the damage you are causing with every meal. And as factory farming dies, we'll make you slaughter your own meat - humanely, with electrodes attached between your brain and the animal's so you feel its pain. Even better, you'll be the ones having to explain yourselves for your weird eating habits. And Grandma Royle will be there, screwing up her face, asking: "Will she have a wafer-thin piece of tofu, Barbara?" http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm? objectid=12975147&method=full&siteid=50143& headline=TURNING%20VEGGIE%20COULD%20SAVE%20OUR %20BACON | ||
| Drstranglove (Drstranglove)
Member Username: Drstranglove Post Number: 918 Registered: 4-2003 |
BS I like my food as safe as Science can make it!!! DrS | ||
| Rikky Alessi (Ralessi)
Member Username: Ralessi Post Number: 448 Registered: 5-2002 |
Hubert, Are you still a vegitarian/vegan? If not, may I ask, why? | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Intermediate Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 1600 Registered: 1-2002 |
okay, i'll chime in. I'm an organic chemist. when we say "organic" we mean any substance whos major compositional substituents are carbon, hygrogen, oxygen and to a lesser degree nitrogen. organic food simply implies that the food isn't treated with pesticides, hormones , etc. It should rather be termed marcobiotic (refering to those that grow their own fruits, vegtables and essentially only eat what they've grown, without modern agricultural methods). there's a egeregous misconception as far as the saftey of "synthetic" compounds goes; essentially , everything a human encounters today, is by parts "synthetic" from the dyes in your clothes, to the producst you shave with, to the items you consume. it's a byproduct of large scale manufacturing and distribution. weather or not enhanced or natural food. again, everything you encounter is in some part, or wholy, synthetic and you ingest it without any concern. as far as phenylalanine goes (the amino acid said be harmful in art. sweeteners), there are 30 yr. long chronic studies that have shown no increase in the probability of developing tumors/cancer in various mammals, and human studies; however, everything is dose dependant, and at a high enough concentration anything is toxic -- even water. Further phenylalanine is a naturally occuring amino acid, and every individuals metabolism is different, so there will always be individual differences in chronic use b/w two individuals. lastly, i was vegitarian for 12 years, and vegan for 6. veganism prohibits the use , consumption or purchase of any animal product, by product or even foods processed on the same machines as animal products; it's a giant screw you to the animal industry. so, to those that think they're vegitarian, but still eat fish, sorry you're not. you still eat (once) living tissue -- the tennets of vegiterianism proclude that; hence, you're not vegitarians. not trying to be an •••••••, but wanted to clarify, as i speak from experience. | ||
| Bill Steele (Glassman)
Member Username: Glassman Post Number: 421 Registered: 4-2002 |
Try the simple taste test. Buy some frozen chicken breasts that are in the 15%solution of added salt and other juices. Then compare some fresh organically grown chicken breasts. If you like to eat •••• go right ahead! | ||
| Jack (Gilles27)
Intermediate Member Username: Gilles27 Post Number: 1487 Registered: 3-2002 |
In grocery terms, the best benefits are found in organic meats. Since animal fat serves as the body's storehouse, any hormones fed to the animals are saved in the tissue and passed on to us when we consume the meat. This in turn builds up in our own bodies, and there is strong evidence linking these to diseases, possibly cancer. Due to political/financial arrangements, when the Surgeon General makes its nutritional recommendations, it is not allowed to tell people to eat less meat. Rather, it has to word it so as to say it's healthier to eat less-fatty meats, as in leaner. When animals are artificially bulked up with growth hormones, the line dividing natural and synthetic becomes blurred. I'm not a tree hugger or a vegetarian, by any means. I just figure that, if I can just as easily purchase naturally grown food, I will. | ||
| Stephen S. Saia (Sssaia)
Junior Member Username: Sssaia Post Number: 57 Registered: 4-2003 |
'Organic' food is a myth, it's just a sales thing. The word organic pertains to things that are living or that once were living, so pretty much anything carbon based is organic. I mean, come on, think about it, the only things that aren't organic are synthetic materials basically, so unless your food was created from synthetic materials, it's organic. | ||
| MarkPDX (Markpdx)
Intermediate Member Username: Markpdx Post Number: 1117 Registered: 4-2003 |
I have an uncle who is in the chemical/fertilizer business. He claims that most organic produce is not really much different as there are lots of chemicals considered natural. Like so many other things it's mostly marketing. | ||
| ty (360mode)
Junior Member Username: 360mode Post Number: 243 Registered: 9-2002 |
if any of the fears of artificial sweeteners are true, then i'll definitely be proof positive. /s/ diet coke addict and i agree that the chemicals are pretty safe, can't be any worse than the air we breath here in houston. | ||
| Telson (Pitbull_trader)
Junior Member Username: Pitbull_trader Post Number: 163 Registered: 8-2003 |
I'm a vegetarian though I eat fish, milk, & eggs Yup, same here. Apart from that I also eat organic where and when I can. As for sugar or artificial sweeteners - I've also stopped using the latter - here is a great replacement: http://www.stevia.net/ Best, | ||
| Mark (Markg)
Member Username: Markg Post Number: 627 Registered: 2-2001 |
I use 'organic' milk and eggs (omega-3 enriched type eggs); both taste much better than their non-organic counterparts. On occasion I also buy organic frozen veggies, which seem to taste better also. Can't remeber last time I didn't use purified water for drinking and cooking. | ||
| William H (Countachxx)
Advanced Member Username: Countachxx Post Number: 3398 Registered: 2-2001 |
Not so sure, I just stopped drinking Diet Coke after years. I think that nutrasweet was starting to affect the nerves in my leg. As soon as I stopped drinking it the wierd nauseous feeling went away. Lots of Drs were very surprised the FDA allowed that to pass. Then the FDA also allows your food to be irradiated. That doesnt sound terribly safe. I'm a vegetarian though I eat fish, milk, & eggs | ||
| David Perini (Oppie20)
New member Username: Oppie20 Post Number: 12 Registered: 9-2003 |
What are everyones thought on this rather large movement? Is it BS? I shop at the organic grocer because it's cleaner, the food is of better quality and the prepared food has a good selection of very tastey stuff. The staff are more friendly and knowledgeable as well. Other then that I could care less whether my apple was grown in poop or soaked in chemicals for 10 years. My view is that if a chemical wasn't safe the food companies wouldn't use it. Our lawyer friends make sure of that. |