Question to vegetarians

I know you guys don't eat meat because you dont t want a living being to suffer.

But arent vegatals living beings too?. What's the difference between eating spinach and a chicken? They both eat and live don't they?.

Isn't it true that all living beings need others to die in order to live?. Even plants.

Just being curios I mean no harm.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:11:45 AM by FallenLegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Not a vegetarian, but I can say this, to most people, if they didn't eat plants either, well, there would be nothing left to eat.

Read my stories!

Not a vegeterian, but I think they draw a line between "living things" and "sentient living things".

Edit: Crap, I copied exact words.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:14:13 AM by Dealan

Not a vegetarian myself, but plants have a rudimentary response to stimuli at best, and are functionally incapable of feeling pain, unlike animals.

This is this.

Why is this in Writer's Block? Shouldn't it be in On-Topic or something?

Oh, and like said, a lot of people do it for nutritional reasons.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:15:21 AM by TheEarthSheep

Still Sheepin'

Um... Not all vegetarians abstain from meat because they don't want to think of animals suffering. Some just... Don't like the taste of meat for whatever reason. Vegetarianism (and veganism possibly even more so) is a lot more complicated than people seem to realise.

Also not a vegetarian, but yeah. >.>

edited 21st Jul '11 9:14:58 AM by Moerin

Vegetarianism and veganism are different things? What does one learn...

Oops Wrong forum my bad.Will ask a mod to move it.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:17:21 AM by FallenLegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

The reason why my mom's a vegetarian (pesco-vegetarian technically) is because she's against America's inhumane and unsanitary factory-farm practices.

Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to realize that there's humanely slaughtered meat out there in the form of kosher and halal. (Though you won't be getting pigs that way.)

Vegetarians just don't eat meat, they still drink milk and eat eggs and such.

Vegans avoid all animals products. And trust me, it is not a natural way to live. A vegan who doesn't take supplements will die.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:18:05 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Plants don't have cognition. That's also the reason there are pesco-vegetarians - they figure fish are less likely to have a good grasp of being killed than cows are. (I asked the vocal vegetarian in my class about her stance on eating worms, seeing as they don't have brains. She responded with a succinct "Um, ew?")

Hail Martin Septim!

To put it as simply as possible, vegetarianism is abstainance from eating meat, whereas veganism involves abstaining from all animal-derived products, including meat, dairy and eggs, amongst other things.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:18:22 AM by Moerin

Not a vegetarian, but moved to OTC.

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Weird, the arguments I've heard against kosher and halal are that they're inhumane. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK ANYMORE

The Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about whether or not the raising of an animal can affect it's kosher-ness, but there's that. Hurm.

Ask her about shellfish then. The amount of brain development is comparable, and perhaps inferior; and they are tasty.

I am not a vegetarian, but I have been considering reducing drastically my meat consumption — basically, eating meat when it is offered by a host, but otherwise never, or almost never, buying meat.*

In my case, it would have little to do with animal welfare — mostly, I am interested in the health benefits of a more vegetarian diet, and I want to lose some weight anyway.

While the jury seems to be still out on the benefits of a purely vegetarian diet compared to a semivegetarian/pescetarian one*

, it seems pretty clear by now that us Westerners tend to eat way too much meat for our own good.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:41:32 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

If a person were dedicated, they could possibly eat only those parts of a plant that were intended to be eaten.

I'm not sure how close you could come to a healthy diet with that, but you could try.

Not all vegetarians are motivated by animal welfare.

Plants are not conscious, and thus they cannot suffer. That is the difference.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:46:42 AM by Grain

Anime geemu wo shinasai!

I think that Jains actually try to do something like that — for example, they refuse to eat tubers, because doing so would require uprooting and killing the plant.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:45:53 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Or because the meat industry is a serious source of water pollution and greenhouse gases. Or because animal fats include bad cholesterol.

And the difference between animals in the wild eating meat (or plants, as you're trying to present as equivalent) and to people's industrial farming is quite big. Our bodies are built to eat meat, but not all the time, not on three meals a day. No other animal, short of ants, gathers hundreds of specimen of another species to feed and then slaughter them *

.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:49:35 AM by JethroQWalrustitty

the statement above is false

I might be kinda weird in that I eat cow only a handful of times a year not because I don't think it tastes good, because of health reasons, or because of animal treatment, but because it feels so heavy on the stomach. It's just so dense. I get full too quickly on the meat and can't finish the rest of the meal.

i. hear. a. sound.

Thing is, if the beef industry died down, would that result in less methane and phosphate pollution?

(Actually, it might. My knowledge of natural cow breeding cycles is pretty much nil. But.)

Hail Martin Septim!

But other animals do eat their prey while it is still alive and suffering. From the inside out. When they are not eating their own young, of course.

As far as animals go, we are quite uncommonly concerned with the welfare of beings of different species, or even of beings of our own species others than the members of our closest social group.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:56:02 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

^ I think the natural vs. unnatural point has more to do with scale, though. Most industry animals are born into inhumane conditions and live that way for the rest of their lives, it's not the slaughter part that people (should) get worked up about. Whereas the animal in the wild suffers at the hands of its predator for... An hour? A couple hours?

Edit: Right, I forgot. Most predators don't consume more than they need to, usually. They're restricted to what they can find/catch, which I'm sure doesn't translate to three meals of meat a day.

edited 21st Jul '11 10:03:58 AM by melloncollie

The current population of cows is artificially high. And as a species they would no longer survive in the wild (save for some free range cows). What I propose is not just *snap* meat industry gone overnight, but simply phasing it out, simply breeding less (becuase it's mostly done via artificial insemination these days, anyway).

edited 21st Jul '11 9:59:01 AM by JethroQWalrustitty

the statement above is false

Bah. If they cannot survive in the wild, then they shouldn't survive, period.

Well, there goes at least three quarters of the first world human population.

edited 21st Jul '11 10:23:28 AM by Ramus

The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.