VEGANGELICA

pourmeanother, I'd be happy to try to help! :-) First though, just to clarify, by "meat" do you mean all animal flesh or are you still able to eat fish during this time period?

Assuming you are cutting out all flesh, then your main protein sources left are: beans, nuts (like your almonds...a good substitute!), grains, and dairy products.

The easist route to take, if the time period isn't long, would be to use soy-based meat substitutes in place of meat in recipes. The Boca company makes many good meat substitutes (like veggie burgers and fake chicken burgers). However, the Harvard School of Public Health recommends only 4 servings of soy per week, so I wouldn't advise eating a lot of soy longterm.

If you are talking months of not eating meat, then starting to open up cans of beans and using them in place of meat in recipes is probably the way to go. Garbanzo beans have a good, meaty texture. Black beans are also popular...so you could start eating more bean and rice burritos. You could also try hummus...many people like that. When you eat beans as a main protein source, make sure your diet also includes breads and rice (preferably whole-grain breads and brown rice). A lot of Indian (as in India Indian) recipes are vegetarian, so if you like Indian food (and you like to cook, which I don't), I recommend trying some Indian recipes.

When you need a quick, good source of protein, you can eat a peanut-butter sandwich or an almond-butter sandwich. This will give you complete protein quickly.

I recommend you also start including more broccoli (cooked) in your diet, and raisins, to increase your iron intake...eating them along with oranges or citrus to improve iron absorption.

Since I assume you eat dairy products, you should be getting enough vitamin B-12, but older people have reduced absorption of vitamin B-12 and so all people over 50 years of age should consider a vitamin B-12 supplement. One tiny pill has around 4000 times your daily value of vitamin B-12, so you don't need much!

I hope this helps!

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jackhammer

I think that dollar signs are more of a factor in meat production than any feelings of superiority of another species these days.

Bringing religion into the food chain is a weak catch all unless it's done on a small inclusive scale which is a natural progression of human beings to 'reap what they sow'.

Your intentions are commendable but many have slaughtered animals before any idea of a diety entered the equation.

Human progression is just not possible without the slaughter of animals that gave man strength, cunning and an intelligence that even now means that you can type on the net or form more complex actions and speech patterns.

The farming and treatment of animals in the modern age is deplorable I agree but it's a common and well known fact that farming animals has brought man to it's current philisophical, physical and mental state today even though we could argue that it's not the ideal progression of nature.

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pourmeanother

That was awesome, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do that... Thank you! The time period is undetermined- but it's looking long term (years). Without saying too much, somebody close to me has had a... change in health, and one recommendation for him was to go raw, vegan, or vegetarian. If/until things turn around, and so long as he is skipping meat (and I believe fish too), I'll be joining him in the lifestyle change for moral support! I do like cooking, so I'll have to explore some recipes in the areas you mentioned

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VEGANGELICA

Jackhammer, I agree with most of what you said. The livestock industry is a billion dollar industry and currently many people's livelihoods depend on it. I do think people look "down" on animals, though, and that this is part of how they justify treating them/using them as they do.

You are right that killing animals doesn't require religious justification...however, the sacrifice and use of animals has for thousands of years been intertwined with religious beliefs, and hunter-gatherers (following the only human lifestyle that existed before agriculture) had religious beliefs also.

My impression of a relationship today between religion and livestock producers is based on observations of Lutheran livestock farmers and packaging plant workers whom I know in the Midwest. They are very religious and pray to Jesus the lamb for mercy and kindness and compassion as they dig into a lamb or turkey or pig right on their table...an irony I've written about elsewhere. They also terrify animals as part of their human play (rodeo).

Domestication of animals in Eurasia (horse, cow, pig, goat, sheep) was one reason rising civilizations there gained great power, taking over many regions of the world and leading to patterns of human wealth and deprivation we see today, according to Jared Diamond, author of an excellent book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. I feel his hypothesis is likely to be true. His book was made into a documentary available online that I recommend highly, if you are interested in history and social science..and it sounds that you and I share this interest:

Guns, Germs, and Steel - by Jared Diamond, Part I of 18:



Human evolution definitely involved killing animals, which was a shaping force in natural selection, though an interesting hypothesis I like about how our ancestors developed smaller dentition and pair-bonding is that after early people figured out how to make fires, they were able to gather and cook previously-inedible poisonous tubers, which encouraged females and males to pair-bond to protect their store of collected foods and their hearth! So, actually vegetable cooking may have had a big role in natural selection of qualities we see as very human today!

The question for the future, I feel, is how people decide to live when they no longer have to use livestock for survival.

Will the earth end up covered everywhere with factory farms, with nearly all natural ecosystems (such as the few remaining rainforests) converted to grazing land and/or agricultural land, simply because this makes money (mostly for the wealthy) and satisfies a taste for flesh?

Or will people start to value non-livestock sources of food more, so that people can gain wealth by more efficiently using the earth's resources to supply plant-based foods for people, and no longer perpetuate giant livestock populations?

I'm afraid I know the answer to this, Jackhammer...I've studied this issue and current trends for some time...but it doesn't stop me from trying to encourage the latter rather than the former scenario.

I'm glad it was helpful, pourmeanother. One recommendation I forgot to mention is that you and your loved-one include along with your almonds some walnuts in your diet, as well as canola oil if you use any oils in your diet, since both are a good source of alpha-linolenic acid, an essential fatty acid. I recommend this for people regardless of whether they eat meat or not.

Generally if people have high cholesterol, heart disease, or cancer, they are (or should be) encouraged to eat a nearly vegan diet since it is low in cholesterol and (if well-planned) in saturated fats, plus is high in nutrients that help protect against cancer. For example, anyone prescribed Lipitor should first be told to control cholesterol levels with diet, as the medication states openly, but I don't think this happens very often (based on my conversations with people prescribed Lipitor). Dean Ornish, M.D., writes books about his clinical work on reversing heart disease with a vegetarian diet, exercise, and group therapy...so I recommend his work if your friend is dealing with circulatory blockage issues.

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Guybrush

Interesting hypothesis regarding the adaptiveness of vegetable cooking as a strategy, Vegangelica Although I haven't read anything about it, I assume that heat preparing meat, aside from making the food more easily digestible, it must also have been a super strategy as it kills parasites which is potentially a huge problem when you're on a meat diet.

edit :

I posted some time back that in the future, I believe meat will be grown in factories in rough equivalents to petri dishes. How would you feel about eating a lab grown beef?

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Something Completely Different

VEGANGELICA

Our human ancestors lived for millions of years without cooking meat, since fire is a fairly recent tool, so I don't really know how huge a problem a raw meat diet was for our ancestors or is for current mainly meat-eaters (Eskimos), Tore. Also, people still eat meat partially raw (such as rare steaks and sushi). *I* wouldn't do it, of course, for a variety of reasons, including pathogens.

As an aside: many pregnant women usually develop a strong aversion to meat during crucial times in the embryo's development, and such pregnancy sickness is hypothesized to be an evolutionary advantage because meats can cause illnesses, like you say, due to pathogens.

When I was pregnant, my whole sense of smell changed: spicy foods and fireplace smoke were VILE VILE VILE! For around 1 month (second month of pregnancy) the only thing I wanted to eat was peaches. I didn't have to confront meat, so I couldn't test out how my response would be...but I know the smell of spicy food was horrendous. (Spices like turmeric are also sometimes teratogens, so avoidance during pregnancy is understandable.) And any kind of smoke was horrible...so I suspect the smoke from burning meat would have made me run away.

I still wouldn't eat lab grown beef because I can eat vegan foods just fine, but I feel lab grown meats are preferable to slaughtering animals. However, Tore, this method sounds very expensive and slow and so I doubt will ever be financially viable large-scale. Wealthy people will be able to afford lab-grown beef, but I doubt poor people will.

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Guybrush

I know very well that our ancestors ate meat for a long time without cooking it and I'm of course not saying that was a huge problem. Just pointing out that parasites can be a huge problem and a strategy which reduces the parasitic load should be adaptive. Even regular pork tapeworms can kill people! I'm not saying it's the primary factor which makes cooking adaptive, just an interesting piece of curiosa.

As for the viability of factory-grown food, why do you think it would be so expensive? We are imagining the use of a technology not yet invented after all I'd imagine if you had a hunk, or maybe a flat sheet of meat to increase surface to volume ratio, growing in or on a medium almost like a lump of cancer, you would not as much have to worry about things like space, sex, health, transportation of animals and you could likely grow it more effectively using less energy per pound meat than what is produced by real cows and pigs!

edit :

I have a sneaky feeling we may have gone through this before in this thread.

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VEGANGELICA

Oh yeah...parasites are nasty. My grandpa had a tapeworm. Eecch. I should think cooking the meat would be adaptive. Our teeth aren't so good at ripping through hair and hide, sinew, and muscle raw; cutting up and cooking meat and then drying/cooking it was probably an integral part of early humans' consumption of meat (around the time our smaller teeth were forming due to natural selection favoring those who were adept at using fire and cooking tubers (?) and flesh).

According to Wikipedia, In vitro meat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, "Cultured meat is currently prohibitively expensive,[1] but it is anticipated that the cost could be reduced to only being twice as expensive as conventionally produced meat.[3][4] Unfortunately if it is more affordable to eat the cow than the meat we creates human nature says this may be a long nasty ride.[5]"

And I remember reading about some some petri meat that took a long time to grow. Our mammalian cells usually divide pretty slowly, don't they? It isn't like bacteria or yeast. I can grow a mess of bacteria or yeast...billions of them...in the lab over just two days! Of course, if we are using hypothetical technology, then anything is possible!

Say, Tore...here's a question...and I don't think *this* has been in the thread yet ...since we're talking petri plate meat, would you eat petri plate human meat? Yes, no, why, why not? I'd actually be more likely to eat petri plate human meat than non-human animal meat, assuming the original donor gave her/his permission for the tissue sample.

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Guybrush

Haha, interesting question. I see myself as a person who places great worth in logic and reason and I like to think I use it to guide my decisions in life and what I believe in and so on. However, logic can only stretch so far and I find cannibalism quite gross. I think even suckling mother's milk is gross .. I mean, come on, baby. That's human fat you're sucking out of that boob! Like someone might be scared of a spider they know is not dangerous, I'm sure I would find eating human petri dish meat revolting.

Even if it was delicious, I wouldn't want to know what people taste like!

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VEGANGELICA

Heh heh! This reminds me of the shock I felt when you wrote in the BS thread that you fried up your rat's tumor and now found yourself salivating whenever you looked at the little buggers! I didn't know the thread was BS when I read that, and I was shocked you'd pocket a tumor, fry it up, and then look at your little beloved pets with hunger!

You aren't kidding about the breastfeeding, Tore? Because human milk tastes *very* good. I tasted mine. It is sweet. Sweeter than cow's milk. Those breastfeeding babies, toddlers, and preschoolers are getting good stuff!

I remember seeing a TV show about people eating human placenta pate. The mother saved it after giving birth, and then they cooked it and turned it into pate for their friends to willingly eat at some afterbirth party (ha ha!). They said the human placenta pate tasted pretty good!

Yes, logic can't always stop emotions. I feel distaste when I see spiders...disturbed by the way they look, the way they walk (although I like all their little eyes). I try to hide or fight my distaste for spiders. I pick them up and take them outside. I sometimes let them walk on me. I have no desire to eat spiders. Some people eat tarantulas. I hope I'm never in a position where I have to eat a tarantula to survive!

So, tarantula or human placenta, Tore? Which would you prefer fried up?

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