For whatever reason I decided to respond to your remarks, yet I have no reason to “refute” anything you said as if I hold this position absolute. It’s simply something I posted out of interest and to inform, not to debate over, but since it seems that some people are rather offended and are already on the offensive of this issue I’ll give some time on what I’ve looked up.
A human’s small intestine is approximately 6.5 times the length of the body. A wolf’s or dog’s small intestine is approximately 6 times the length of its body. Is this a magical 0.5, or are wolves also supposed to be vegans?
The small intestine of a human is about 19 feet (and I’ve read up to 22). This site says the small intestine of a dog is about two and a half times of the dogs total body length, which for a 24 inch dog is 60 inches of small intestine. The original source that seems to be of debate said…
…the length of intestine in humans and other herbivores falls somewhere between 7 and 13 times the length of the trunk/torso section of the body. In contrast, the length of intestine in carnivores and omnivores is only 3 to 6 times the length of the trunk/torso.
If my torso is 17 inches, and my small intestine is 228 inches, that’s approx. 13 times the size of my torso, now what I cited said that of a dogs total body length, and said 2.5 times. Also, don’t ask dumbass questions if wolves suppose to be vegans when I’m talking about what humans can digest.
If humans are supposed to be herbivores, then why don’t we have an enlarged caecum to help us dissolve cellulose, which you would need to digest the vast majority of high-fibre plants that haven’t (for the most part) been especially farmed and bred to be easy on an omnivore’s digestive tract? We have an appendix instead. A useless remnant of natural selection liable to pop on you eventually, and saturate your gut in lethal toxins.
We have a rather small caecum , and from the caecum an appendix that can range from 2 to 20 centimeters that seems to have lost it’s original purpose, but according to Wiki, we read…
It may be a vestigial organ, evolutionary baggage, of ancient humans that has degraded down to nearly nothing over the course of evolution. The very long cecum of some herbivorous animals, such as found in the koala, supports this theory. The koala’s cecum enables it to host bacteria that specifically help to breakdown cellulose. Human ancestors may have also relied upon this system when they lived on a diet rich in foliage. As people began to eat more easily digested foods, they became less reliant on cellulose-rich plants for energy. As the cecum became less necessary for digestion, mutations that were previously deleterious (and would have hindered evolutionary progress) were no longer important, so the mutations have survived. These alleles became more frequent and the cecum continued to shrink. After thousands of years, the once-necessary cecum has degraded to be the appendix of today.
It seems we, as humans, did once have a large diet in cellulose-rich plants, thus your statement neither confirms nor denies the statement at hand, except that we did have a stage as humans that was more aligned with a herbivore diet.
“Clogged arteries” is caused by hyperlipidemia - too much fat in the blood. Primary cause? Genetics. Secondary (acquired) cause? Acquired diabetes, and to a lesser extent the abuse of certain drugs like alcohol or eostrogen. What causes acquired diabetes, i.e. the insulin regulation system breakdown? Is insulin shock instigated by spikes in blood sugar, or blood lipid levels? Does eating too much glucose, rather than meat, perhaps have something to do with the acquisition of secondary hyperlipidemia?
Do you ever think it has more to do with diet than genetics, and that maybe meat, and what’s pumped into the meat, has something to do with this?
Also, if it means anything, I have a friend who has diabetes, and the doctors said he should have died when he was 10, but he’s in his early 30’s and has a vegan diet.
Our bodies were not created. They were naturally selected. Does veganism necessitate a certain kind of religious belief? That would explain a lot.
You don’t think our bodies were selected for a herbivore diet and not that of a carnivore or omnivore? If we look at natural selection it seems there was a point in our existence where we had a diet in cellulose-rich plants.
So omnivores can’t eat plants?
Fuck if I know. How about you look it up.
Anyone have trouble chewing their steak? Did you know that in about a quarter of female horses today, the canine teeth do not even emerge, and in the rest of all horses they are tiny and vestigial? For them - now herbivores - canines are an evolutionary remnant, like the appendix/caecum is for us.
This is just cherry-picking. What about binocular vision? Maybe it was naturally selected for leaping through the trees, I don’t know, but it works damned well for what predators our size use it for too. The fact is that we can’t leap through the trees any more, unless you’re an exceptionally lithe acrobat in his prime, but we can still prey on other animals. Which was naturally selected in the end?
Can anyone eat their steak raw directly from the animal, or any meat for that matter, that has not been cooked or prepared in any way?
When was the last time you’ve ever preyed on another animal?
Again… So omnivores can’t eat plants?
We are perfectly capable of chewing certain very soft and plump vegetables, just like we are perfectly capable of chewing the meat that we eat. Our incisors and cananines and molars are nicely balanced to allow for the omnivorous diet we enjoy today.
Is this more of natural selection over time, or it’s just the way our teeth are designed? Yet, has anyone ever tried to chew raw meat?
The peach tree doesn’t produce peaches for humans either. By cultivating fruit, you are raping the peach tree. The peach fruit is its fertilised ovum, you know. For shame. We should really be cannibals, because human flesh - prion issues aside - is by far the closest thing to what your body needs in terms of nutrition.
The peach tree produces peaches, just as the cow produces milk, but this is for it’s young, it’s children. The difference in the peach tree and the cow is that one is a plant, while another is an animal. Do we drink each others breast milk? No, so why do we drink another animals breast milk that can only be produced from pregnancy? So, we constantly artificially impregnate a cow so we can get it’s milk that’s literally meant for it’s children. How does drinking another animals milk make sense? How is that natural? The difference is that a plant =/= animal.
Yeah, my heart bleeds for the cow that might just gore me to death without incurring any responsibility, because’s it’s just a dumb animal. Of course that cow and that calf wouldn’t exist if humans didn’t have such a need for them. I suppose you’d rather they were just left to get torn to shreds by wild dogs, because you’re not talking about animals that were naturally selected to exist - they exist because they were bred by humans to serve a purpose. I don’t want to be cruel to animals. I don’t think it’s necessary.
I’ve never seen a cow ever gore someone to death, besides that when’s the last time you were ever near a cow or approached by one with aggression? Yes, those animals were bred for a purpose, would they naturally exist otherwise? Not on this scale. This reminds me of something I once heard along the lines of, “If we don’t eat all the cows they’ll over populate”, while the person is not realizing we are artifically populating them just for our own enjoyment. You don’t think it’s necassary to be cruel to animals? Did you even bother to watch the video that shows them literally being beat and tortured?
I do think that if there’s any argument to be made for veganism, or at least vegetarianism, it is a moral one and not a utilitarian one. I mean, I’m still not convinced, but I do think (some) animals are cute, and it might be possible for a vegan to develop this point… Rather than make up stories about how the human body works which are simply not true.
Oddly, for me, it’s utilitarian, and not moral. I’ve known people who have been vegan their entire lives, from childhood up, and they are perfectly healthy. I know people who are raising their newborn children on a vegetarian/vegan diet, and they are also perfectly healthy.
It is possible to get calcium from sources other than milk, of course. I don’t know why this guy denies that you need it, which is ridiculous and very dangerous. There is no question that calcium deficiency - whether or not someone drinks junk pasteurised low-fat milk - is a prime cause of osteoprorosis. The Harvard study doesn’t prove otherwise - it proves that what passes for milk these days is crap. You can get calcium from non-animal supplements, you know. It’s just a mineral. A very common one, in fact.
I assume you didn’t watch the video, because he doesn’t deny calcium intake (in which you seem to be designing a strawman from the information you didn’t look over, and are now trying to debunk). He mentions plenty of milk substitutes as well. Here’s a list of calcium rich foods.
You also need vitamin D and certain minerals to prevent osteoporosis. Also, the dairy they consume is pasteurised crap with little calcium left in it.
Mushrooms are high in vitamin D.
Guess what. The digestion of plant matter in the caecum by symbiotic bacteria produces the same volatile fatty acids in the gut of herbivores that humans acquire from meat, and are supposedly so bad for us. It is necessary stuff. We do not have the ability to get it from plants, like herbivores with caecums do.
Metabolic acidosis in the blood is heavily associated with hyperlipidemia, which can be acquired by eating too much processed sugar - it results in the inability to properly metabolise lipids. It’s not caused by some sort of fundamental inability in all humans. Once you get it, yes, you should avoid eating too much meat or fatty food in general. You have become sick, and can no longer function like a healthy person does. But you’re far better off not eating glucose in the first place.
Wouldn’t you think refraining from eating meat would halt this in the first place?
The fact is that you will find tribes and societies who live where you can’t grow vegetables (e.g the arctic), all they ever eat is fatty, fatty meat, and they do not suffer from high levels of osteoporosis or hyperlipidemia. They don’t eat any sugar either. Explain.
Explain what? I’m not part of those tribes, I don’t know their diet, I only know mine. If you want to know exactly look up their entire diet and their life span. You can bring up them just as much as I can bring up people who have lived on vegetarian/vegan diets. Yet, I’m not part of a tribe, I don’t hunt for my own food. I’m part of a society that buys meat pumped with chemicals that they raise just for slaughter. Raping cows and any other animal for substance, when it’s not necessary. Yet, I do live in a society where I can buy a variety of vegetables, fruits, and grains at an affordable price. I can live my entire life without meat products, yet people want to challenge this. It’s as if they are offended by my own personal choice, and the moment it’s brought up it’s attacked. They consider it hippy crap when it’s just a diet choice. Does it really bring someone displeasure to know I don’t eat meat? Is their any harm in that? There’s none, yet I could bring up the harm in eating meat. There’s no argument, there’s nothing to debate against someone becoming vegan. Why does it matter to anyone?