So, I decided to write a blog about my vegetarian diet because I don’t feel like I’ve gotten enough attention and I want to help all the poor unenlightened people to understand the destruction they are bringing upon the world by eating meat like savage beasts. I hope that these thoughts will stay with you and that I can remain in your mind as a visual example of someone who is willing to sacrifice in order to make a difference in this wicked flesh hungry world.
So, I’m kind of a vegetarian and I wanted to talk about it. Cool? We love talking about health don’t we? Every day I hear people talking about their latest health experiment whether it be starting Atkins, South Beach, the Lemon Cleanse, eating smaller portions, eating more meals, drinking more water, or maybe drinking juice made from mystical South American berries. At work or at family functions I always seem to be exchanging ideas about the latest, most effective work-out philosophies. It’s interesting stuff and I love hearing the latest.
So I’m sort of coming out of the closet (at least to some people) that I have seriously cut back on meat for about 6 months now (shameless pat on my own back I know). I think I said that just to refute Dave’s prediction when I started that I wouldn’t be able to stick with it. He knows me pretty well and I like that he has no problem being brutally honest. I said I was “kind of” a vegetarian because I don’t treat it like a religious commandment that others can judge me on for disobeying, nor do I expect anyone else to share my opinions. I hope that it can just be treated like any other diet that people do to improve their personal health. But I have to admit it’s weird that this is the only diet that I have felt an aversion to talk about (considering that I once lived on maple syrup and lemon juice for a week).
Unlike many vegetarians, my reasons are not about morality or ethical treatment of animals so don’t be nervous about me joining the picket line outside of the KFC. When I see a cat for instance, I know very well that if it were bigger it would probably not hesitate to bite my head off and play with it for a while (I actually went through a cat torture phase in my life when I found great joy in adding to my arrogant feline’s anxieties……good times.) So hey, I’m all about dominating the animals yo.
A friend of mine recently said “Imagine how stupid vegetarianism would appear to your starving ancestors. Poor baby, do you have to kill an adorable animal to survive? The fact that you are standing here is proof that your ancestors couldn’t care less about such discrimination when it came to getting through the winter.” That’s a very good point. Vegetarians can seem like pretty ungrateful whiney people I will admit. I worked with a Vegan who loved to tell me everything that was unhealthy about everything I ate; EVEN granola bars which evidently have dangerous amounts of predigested bee vomit (beware). Because my reasons are not religious, I would rather eat meat than have a friend feel awkward or uncomfortable. As a rule I will not turn down a meal that someone has gone out of their way to prepare. These types of occasions are actually quite rare and I feel no guilt about deviating from my diet every now and then.
When I was doing the South Beach thing, I remember the only thing I wanted in the world was CARBS because that was what I was not supposed to eat. My experience with vegetarianism has been quite different. I can honestly say that my desire to eat meat has diminished and has not returned. You know when you are on a diet looking into your fridge, nobody is around and you stare at that forbidden treat knowing that no one else will ever know. I haven’t experienced that temptation at all. I promise I haven’t even tried to get my fix when I’m alone. After a few months of not eating meat I ate a chicken sandwich and expected it to be heaven. I was really disappointed; It wasn’t that great. It was just as I remembered it. I’ve started noticing that meat has been mostly just a texture in my eating experience. Everything that tastes good in a sandwich is not the meat.
I have never felt healthier than when I made this change. I have not lost any energy, quite the opposite. As a personal observation I have also felt more spiritual. This is basically the reason why I am writing this. I am throwing this out there in case any of you are curious and want to experiment as well. I am also writing this to assert my elitist dominance over you impure creatures (I am truthful as well as wise).
We have been raised with a tradition that no meal is complete without a large portion of meat. It almost defines a true meal but I am convinced that physiologically our bodies are still designed to eat a predominantly vegetarian diet even though we are behavioral omnivores. If tomorrow we decided that we wanted to start eating tree bark, our bodies obviously wouldn’t be able to break it down and pull nutrients from it. It’s important to understand what our physiological makeup is designed for in order to be healthy. Both Carnivores and herbivores face different issues when dinner time arrives and have evolved to overcome them. For Herbivores plants are difficult to break down and digest. For Carnivores there food tends to run away. So it follows that herbivores are going to be designed to forage and require long periods of digestion. Carnivores will be designed to be predators that eat large but infrequent meals. (I hope this isn’t boring but I find it fascinating)
Characteristics of carnivores…
-Equipped for short bursts of extreme speed
-limbs are lightened for fast running and are also modified to be weapons
-most vulnerable parts of anatomy are shielded behind a muscular chest
-Incisors are reduced to pointy pegs and canines are like huge, sharp, elongated knives used for ripping flesh
-Their lower jaw does not move from side to side only up and down making their teeth work like a pair of shears.
-They do not chew their food but rather slice off chunks of meat and swallow it whole (think of feeding your cat)
-No digestive enzymes in their saliva
-stomachs are extremely acidic and able to accommodate for huge meals (60-70% of total GI tract).
-meat has no fibre and is therefore easily digested and so the length of their intestine is very short (only 3-6 times their body length) and are optimized for protein and fat absorption.
Characteristics of omnivores….
-They are social animals and live in large herds or communities
-Their limbs are modified for standing and walking long distances for gathering food
-Their nails are blunt and used for digging and peeling
-They have muscular lips, a small mouth opening and well developed cheek muscles which “wall in” their food for chewing
-The teeth rest on top of each other and do not slide past each other scissor style but work rather like a nutcracker
-Lower jaw has a pronounced horizontal side-to-side motion for chewing
-Molars are not sharp and blade-shaped, but are square, and flat-topped.
-many vegetarians have more pronounced canines (Like hippos or gorillas for defense), or shortened and reduced ones such as with horses and humans. Canine teeth do not indicate a design for eating meat
-Plant materials contain large amounts of fibrous material. The end result is that plant foods require extensive processing to extract their nutritional content. Because of this, herbivores consume smaller, more frequent meals and have long elaborate digestive tracts -Their intestines are 10-12 times their body length and have an unlimited capacity for carbohydrate consumption.
Sooooooooooo….where would you classify yourself?
Humans are slow runners with low stamina. We have a carbohydrate-digesting enzyme in our saliva called amylase. Our esophagus does not handle poorly chewed food very well (Over 90% of people who choke to death each year choke on meat). We clearly have a long intestine. When meat goes through our tract, it putrefies and fills our bodies with toxins which can cause cancer and dozens of other problems. Only herbivores have an appendix.
One of the most interesting facts to me is that whenever an herbivore eats animal based products, their arteries begin to be lined with a plaque that will eventually block off blood flow and cause death. Studies have been conducted where dogs are fed cubes of butter for days and NOTHING happens to their blood vessels. Rabbits die in no time when fed animal products. Coronary artery disease is directly linked to eating meat along with most of the diseases of affluence that seem to exist in America and not in places like rural agrarian China.
Ask yourself, “When I see a dead carcass on the road side does my mouth begin to water?” We are absolutely disgusted by meat in its natural form. The slaughtering that carnivores must live for we do out of human sight. The meat just appears in our grocery stores pink and clean. The next thing we do is treat it so that it no longer resembles what it is. We cook it, rub spices into it, and tell ourselves that it is not animal flesh. We just saw that beautiful exhibit “Body Worlds” downtown the other day and every time I saw an arm bone with muscle and tendons on it I thought…drum stick!
Now there are of course other factors to consider. Some lineages of people can handle foods better than others. Most people can digest milk because of the fact that our early ancestors have been drinking it for many millennia. It follows that meat would affect some people more negatively than others but the fact remains that we have not made the full evolutionary step toward becoming carnivores and why would we want to? It’s kind of a complicated system that we have going. Our ancestors no doubt supplemented their diets with protein sources such as nuts, larvae, and meat when they could get it, but we are definitely not designed to handle it in the amounts that our culture has demanded.
I was always under the impression that the reason people from the Amazon and Asia were so small was because of protein deficiency which has been found to be untrue. It is because they did not have a variety of nutrients in their diet. Their options were too limited. I was surprised to find out that meat (not including eggs) has little to no nutritional value. It’s all just protein (yeah yeah B12, but that’s it). I was also surprised to find out how much protein legumes, nuts, and whole grains have.
I don’t care if people eat meat. I agree it’s tasty as hell but what I don’t like from our society in general is the philosophy that it is somehow necessary; That a meal is not complete without it. It isn’t nearly as important as we have been lead to believe. I like to look at it like ice cream. It’s not evil but if I want to challenge myself to be healthier, I should really limit it.
A great book that covers the major research that has been done in this field is “The China Study.” It’s totally changed my thinking.
For those of you still reading (and I suspect Dave may be the only one) I would just like to conclude by thanking PITA for helping the cause by planting an association in everyone’s mind that vegetarians are terrorists that will choose to kill people over adorable puppies. Everyone knows that we vegetarians are just lovable run of the mill condescending elitists. Merry Christmas puppy killers.
