Is it bad to eat meat?!
Is it bad to eat meat?
What about eggs and dairy products? (is veganism going too far?)
Answers:
I personally think meat is wrong. I wrong how much abuse the animals are put though and chickens and cows are abused for their milk and eggs also, so veganism is not that crazy. A lot of arguments I see on this question are misleading. For instance, our teeth are not carnivorous. Try tearing through a dead deer's skin with them, then, try digesting that raw meat. This is what wolves, tigers, and other carnivores do. Our bodies can't handle it because we are not meant to eat meat. Also, meat is not the only place where protein is found. Beans are an excellent source, and, contrary to popular belief, humans don't need a lot of protein. Only about 40 grams a day. Meat should only serve as a side if anything, not as a main dish as is commonly seen today.
No humans are meant to eat meat our teeth prove this ! yet anything in excess of course can be bad for you ! To the person that says our teeth are not designed for meat eating is just uneducated,, please follow link ,, things evolve,, including teeth ,, so no we don't rip into a deers skin ,, and man discovered fire ,, and a process called cooking ,,, hum go read a book ,, eat your beans,, hug some trees ,, that is to the uneducated answer--Are you going to hate the next tiger that takes out Bambi?
It's SIMPLY a matter of CHOICE, Honey...
It's not bad to eat meat, eggs and dairy as long as you use moderation. With all the hormones the packers use, it's not a bad idea to cut down or at least buy organic.
If eating meat is bad then call me a baddass
yes red meat it affect ur heart
NO it is not bad to eat meat even though it is sad how animals die but meat has protein and that's what we need
its not bad to eat meat eggs dairy products or whatever common food we serve on our table! you know , excessive intake of meat is the real bad on your health! as nutritionist says always, just keep a balance diet everyday!
every living creature including us humans, is food for another creature one way or another. there is no way around that. meat-bearing animals will become food for predators. that is just natural. we are omnivors. meaning we can eat almost anything. eating meat is no more wrong than breathing oxygen. when your body dies, something will eat it. without meateaters, meat-bearing animals would die of starvation due to overpopulation.
bad how? morally/ethically? nutritionally?
you need to work out your own moral code. nutritionally, here's the thing: americans eat far too much meat. as a side issue to that industry stretches things to provide consummers with the products they demand. that means the meat industry suks. most meat has been subjected to hormones they feed the livestock. cow eats (X), then we eat cow. so, we eat (X).
Depends on what you mean by "bad" (and even then there's probably no black-and-white answer).
Some people don't eat meat for health reasons. There are lots of studies that show that too much saturated animal fat is bad for us. That doesn't mean you can't eat ANY meat.
Some people don't eat meat for ethical reasons. I personally don't think it's morally wrong. Our teeth evolved to tear meat and chew it. We are animals, too, and we're part of the food chain. Humans eating meat is not that much different from lions or dogs or sharks eating meat. Look, there's just no way to get around it: sustaining life involves destoying life. Even vegetarians destroy life. They kill plants.
That said, I do think there are some unethical practices in the meat industry today. A lot of companies treat the animals terribly while they're alive, crowding them in dirty pens or cages and never letting them get fresh air or exercise. That's wrong. So if you can afford it, I think it's a good idea to buy organic meats or at least meats that come from animals that were humanely raised and slaughtered. It's not wrong to eat animals, but we should give them a dignified life and swift death.
And yes, I think veganism goes too far. You'll have a hard time getting all the nutrients and protein you need. Plus, who wants to give up ice cream??
dont go toooooo far its your decision alot of people have their own opinion buhh' with out protein you will have less enerygy.eat regurly and make good choices its not bad to eat meat it is good for you but this is my opinion others think differently go with what you think feels right. [:
NO, ITS NATURAL WE HAVE BEEN DOING IT SINCE THE BEGINING OF TIME AND PLUS ITS PROTEIN
I THINK VEGANS TAKE IT TOO FAR BUT THATS JUST MY OPINION..............I CAN SEE WHERE THEY ARE COMING FROM BUT I KNWO I COULDNT HANDLE IT IM A MEAT LOVER
I like meat. Especially beef.MMMMOOOOOO
Sorta of yes if U want to be truly healthy. Humans are not ment to eat meat. Only meat pushers will think otherwise. Veganism isn't going too far but I'm not a vegan.. but close to
it.. I occasionally eat eggs. I don't always put eggs in my cake.. I use cornstarch and extra baking powder instead of egg.. comes out just as well! Remember if U eat something dead aren't U eating death? Isn't meat dead? What about the bible Chapter 1 verse 29 " I have given ye,, every herb and fruit bearing seed let
be thy meat!"
If we were ment to eat meat why is our intestines so long! Those that think we are ment to eat meat I think are totally wrong!
Ask the Food People at Health Food Stores!
I know I'm alot healthier not eating meat than when I was a meat eater!
I believe it is the ethical high road not to eat meat when it does not necessitate either by environment or physical constitution. I do not think it is a grave sin to do eat meat but at the same time know that it is causing unnecessary suffering.
I believe people should only be willing to eat meat if they are willing to at some point in this life or another to be meat from some other creature. I have asked myself this very question and am not willing to do such. I have had dreams of being eaten by giant spiders and realized just how terrifying it must be to be killed for food. There is a better way if we only care to find it.
I fully realize there are some people like Eskimos that are required to eat meat to survive and do not judge them. But the majority of the world has access to a variety of vegetarian products and can not only reduce suffering in this world but also the impact to the environment.
I guess the only question left is do we care enough to make such sacrifice. I personally do not think it is so great a sacrifice as I believe most people would be vastly healthier for doing so, not just physically, but spiritually as well.
of course its not bad, according to mediterranean diet, the one that most of doctors suggest to patients, if you eat red meat about 2 times/month it wont harm your cholesterol levels or anything else. red meat has many proteins necessary to humans and if you dont eat it, you must definitely take vitamins. now, if you really want to follow a vegetarians's diet, you arent suppose to eat eggs and dairy products. i dont know if its going too far since i never thought about it. i am only answering the meat part!lol
if your blood type O u can eat meat more than the blood type B or A or AB
An animals will to live is just as great as ours. Logical thought has no bearing on how much something wants to live.
It could be considered selfish to, through supply and demand, kill something that feels pain and wants to live rather than simply eat something that doesn't feel pain, experience emotions, or have a brain.
eating meat supports the industry which is terrible. so i say yes. it was different when people killed their own meat, but very few kill their meat themselves. and by buying dairy and eggs, you are supporting those industries which - after the chickens/cows cant give milk/eggs- supplies the meat industry with more animals. so they are all connected. plus male calfs born to milk cows just get turned in to veal, and the male chicks are automatically killed. so no, i dont think veganism is going to far. i think it is necessary.
Back in the old days no, it wasn't. Today yeah, meat houses or slaughter houses are meant to do just what the name implies my mother and father worked in a meat house/ slaughter house for about 10 years. It's fast paced, and the people don't wash their hands in between cuts of meat they don't pay attention to if the cow has an injury or tumor, they just cut that out, so many errors are allowed on a cut or piece of meat, example like 10 hairs for every 1 pound of meat. Plus the workers sneeze and cough on the meat. It's very cold in the meat packing plants. Also if a mother gives birth on the way to a slaughter house they slaughter the calf most often times. So is it bad to eat meat no but after hearing this you might want to consider otherwise. Plus the hormones are growth hormones and they don't go away when the cow dies. You don't know what that cow was fed, you don't know what you're injesting.
Make your own choice. Its not a very good idea to go on a vegetarian/vegan board and ask this question.
However, please consider this when people bring up the entire hormone thing:
1) Our stomachs kill 95%+ of the hormones we eat. Think about it, the acid in our stomach is there to do just that: break stuff down.
2) There is a regulation that states no more than 1% of an average humans hormone production can be injected into an animal. That basically means...whatever they put in is negligable anyways. Add in the above point.
3) Soybeans contain about 20-30% of the estrogen a pregnant woman produces in a day. I forgot the ounce portioning, but it was under a pound.
4) Most cattle are still raised in open pastures. Confinement operations are usually for chickens and pigs, and usually confined chickens are used for KFC and such.
5) Do some research of your own. Look at the website you are looking at. You may also want to consider that birth control pills contain a ridiculous amount of hormones in them. If you are freaked out by the injection of testosterone in beef...
No, it isn't bad at all. It has a lot of nutrients. But don't over do it. The kind of meat you get at fast food restaurants is bad. Lean meat and fish are generally pretty good for you. You just have to know what's good and bad for your body's health and stay away from the fats and greases.
It depends on the amount of meat, way cooked, lean or fatty, white or red meat. You don't want to eat to much meat. You should have 2 servings a day. As in servings check on the package it should say. If it doesn't a serving of meat is about the size of your fist. Don't eat a lot of fried meat. Stay with lean meats. Limit intake of red meat instead eat white meat more often than red.
There are many benefits to a diet containing meat. Many vegetarians claim that meat is unhealthy. This is a blatant fallacy.
It is well established that eating meat improves the quality of nutrition, strengthens the immune system, promotes normal growth and development, is beneficial for day-to-day health, energy and well-being, and helps ensure optimal learning and academic performance.
A long term study found that children who eat more meat are less likely to have deficiencies than those who eat little or no meat. Kids who don’t eat meat ― and especially if they restrict other foods, as many girls are doing ― are more likely to feel tired, apathetic, unable to concentrate, are sick more often, more frequently depressed, and are the most likely to be malnourished and have stunted growth. Meat and other animal-source foods are the building blocks of healthy growth that have made America’s and Europe's youngsters the tallest, strongest and healthiest in the world.
Meat is an important source of quality nutrients, heme iron, protein, zinc and B-complex vitamins. It provides high-quality protein important for kids’ healthy growth and development.
The iron in meat (heme iron) is of high quality and well absorbed by the body, unlike nonheme iron from plants which is not well absorbed. More than 90 percent of iron consumed may be wasted when taken without some heme iron from animal sources. Substances found to inhibit nonheme iron absorption include phytates in cereals, nuts and legumes, and polyphenolics in vegetables. Symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, headache, irritability and decreased work performance. For young children, it can lead to impairment in general intelligence, language, motor performance and school readiness. Girls especially need iron after puberty due to blood losses, or if pregnant. Yet studies show 75 percent of teenage girls get less iron than recommended.
Meat, poultry and eggs are also good sources of absorbable zinc, a trace mineral vital for strengthening the immune system and normal growth. Deficiencies link to decreased attention, poorer problem solving and short-term memory, weakened immune system, and the inability to fight infection. While nuts and legumes contain zinc, plant fibre contains phytates that bind it into a nonabsorbable compound.
Found almost exclusively in animal products, Vitamin B12 is necessary for forming new cells. A deficiency can cause anaemia and permanent nerve damage and paralysis. The Vitimin B12 in plants isn't even bioavailable, meaning our body can't use it.
Why not buy food supplements to replace missing vitamins and minerals? Some people believe they can fill those gaps with pills, but they may be fooling themselves. Research consistently shows that real foods in a balanced diet are far superior to trying to make up deficiencies with supplements.
Lets not forget either that protein, while it is found in plants, is better quality in animal products.
Some people claim that meat is unhealthy because it contains saturated fat. So does margarine and olive oil, and they're vegan suitable (in fact the hydrogenated fats in Marge can be very bad, but that's another story). Besides, any excess calories in your diet, any excess sugar, starch or carbohydrates are stored in your body for later use. This is done by turning them into saturated fats.
Cholesterol too. Your body on average creates four to five times more cholesterol than the average person consumes, and compensates by creating more when less is consumed. Cholesterol isn't evil, it is essential; it makes up the waterproof linings of all our cells and without it we would die. Too much can be bad, but as with saturated fats there are more healthy ways of disposing of it, like regular exercise. Anyway, it isn't so much how much cholesterol you eat, but how well yur body handles it. A person who eats loads of dietary cholesterol and leads an unhealthy lifestyle can still have low cholesterol, and vice versa. Most people's bodies are able to take a large amount of cholesterol without getting atherosclerosis. For this reason that eating meat gives you heart disease is very misleading, and for the most part untrue. Of course, if you do have a problem eating loads isn't a good idea, but for most people there is nothing at all to worry about.
Yes, there are things in meat that there is some evidence can cause cancer in some people, but there are as many in plants too. Soy especially has some very potent carcinogens. Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines.
Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women. Also they are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.
Soy is bad for numerous other reasons, but that isn't the point, I'm just using it as a quick example relating to cancer not being exclusive to some animal products. The evidence that claims meat does cause cancer is patchy anyway.
Some people also claim that we aren't designed by evolution, to eat meat. They claim that our digestive system is quite long and that we produce amylase, a starch splitting catabolic enzyme, akin to herbivores and unlike carnivores. Apparently this clearly shows that we were designed to eat plants. Such people should go and look up 'omnivore' in a dictionary. They have also been known to cite other reasons we are like herbivores and unlike carnivores: that we suck water instead of lapping it, and that we perspire through our skin, such things have nothing at all to do with whether or not we were designed to eat meat, and nothing to do with how our body handles food. I might as well say that because we, like most carnivores and unlike most herbivores, have eyes that face forwards, we must be carnivorous. Of course, that's not true for precisely the same reason.
The fact is Humans are omnivores, with the ability to eat nearly everything. By preference, prehistoric people ate a high-protein, high-mineral diet based on meat and animal sources, whenever available. Their foods came mainly from three of the five food groups: meat, vegetables and fruits. As a result, big game mammoth hunters were tall and strong with massive bones. They grew six inches taller than their farming descendants in Europe, who ate mostly plant foods, and only in recent times regained most of this height upon again eating more meat, eggs and dairy foods. We are adapted to eat meat, and it is just as natural as eating plants.
Some also claim that the digestion of meat releases harmful byproducts into our system. This is true, however such are our adaptations to eating meat that our bodies are quite able to dispose of said products without any adverse effects.
So, in summary: it isn't healthier to avoid meat. You can be healthy without meat, but likely not as healthy as if you did, assuming you kept things like the wide range of fruit and veg that a veggie diet usually entails. Too much meat can be bad, but normal amounts are no problem at all. Any health benefits that come from a veggie diet come from a wide range of fruit and veg, and being health conscious, as veggies often are; that doesn't require you to not eat meat."
I don't think a vegeterian diet benefits anyone in any way better than a better meat eating diet could at all. If you have no ethical qualms, it's quite pointless. PETA will tell you otherwise, but they have very strong ethical opinions, and mould their 'evidence' around it. There is, for example, some evidence that vegans live longer and are at less risk from cancer and heart disease; however those studies show only a very marginal and insignificant difference and none of those studies have yet managed to identify meat as the only variable. Veggies are less likely to smoke, drink or eat junk food, and eat a wider range of fruit and veg, making the test results inaccurate and unreliable.
@ Jenny M
No sensible vegans can contest that we were deigned to eat meat. Even most vegan scientists agree that human's are designed to eat meat, that is not in question.
That we do not have claws, talons, or incisors to hunt proves nothing. When early hominids ate meat they scavenged it, as vultures do, using their fingers to get the sinews and meat other animals couldn't. It was only after that that they began to hunt the meat themselves, and only much later they began to cook it. It is interesting that even now if someone was brought up eating raw meat he would have no problem with it.
The last few million years of human evolution have revolved completely around tools. We used advanced stone tools long before we began to hunt our own meat, and as such there was no need for evolution to bestow us with large claws or teeth to kill prey.
Simple research into human biology reveals how we are meant to eat meat. For one thing, our body produces hydrochloric acid and meat splitting enzymes that herbivores don't produce and are solely used for the digestion of meat. There are adaptations to our teeth (not incisors, rather the size of the jaw), stomach and intestines which have made a human being very adept at meat digestion. There is nothing wrong with the way our body digests meat, and we are so adept at eating it no scientists are of any doubt we've evolved to eat it.
We use our hands to get past a deer's skin. Most animals don't have this luxury. Huge teeth aren't the be-all and end-all of meat eating. A lion's teeth are predominately weapons, they actually get in the way when eating meat because of their size. A human's teeth have no problem with biting and eating meat, as anyone who's ever eaten a steak will tell you, and that we don't have teeth designed to kill is irrelevant.
In contrast, there are many reasons we aren't naturally herbivores. We cannot naturally get all the nutrients we need without animal products naturally. Vitamin B12 cannot be got, even now, without animal products or supplements, and a lack of it can cause anaemia and impending death. 60% of vegans even now have some level of B12 deficiency, as opposed to no meat eaters, which says something about how well adapted we are to a vegan diet.
All other nutriets can be got natually. That owes to that vegtables can now be sold all year round, even out of season, and can be flown into the country from all over the world. In bygone times people could only eat the relatively small range of plants that grew in their ecosytem, and only when they were in season. Thus many more nutrients would have been unavailable and still more unavaillable for most of he year. Until very recently it would have been impossible for a vegan human to live naturally without dying very quickly.
Now, meat makes up for all these lost nutrients very nicely, and it really shows how we aren't naturally vegans, as until very recently it was impossible to live like that.
@ Goody2shoes2
We have a long intestine, like herbivores, because we are omnivores and need to be able to digest plants. Plants are hard to digest and require long intestines. Cow's even have multiple stomachs and chew cud to help digest tough grass; rabbits eat their own turds to get more nutrients, and all mammalian herbivores have a working apendix to digest cellulose, which we do not.
Carnivores have short intestines because meat is easy to digest, and a longer intestine isn't needed.
It isn't bad or anything but why would you want to eat meat?
I think veganism would be going far. Milking a cow doesn't hurt the animal and as long as the process of getting the product doesn't include killing or harming the animal then it would be alright to have dairy products. Now eggs....they are a sorce of protein that is why they are considered a meat. BUT they are a chicken.....before birth........
don't eat eggs....it is like killing a baby human before birth!