Why do vegans say meat is unhealthy...what about fish and other meats low in fat?

Question

and if you said fish is bad because of enviromental polutants what about fish from farms?
some people might say fish farming is bad for the enviroment but did you think about all the chemicals and insecticides that they spray on plants? even plants are sprayed with hormones,
there is organic fish farms just like there is organic produce and free range chickens and what have you, people keep an open mind, i dont want to hear a bunch of hypcritical crap just stay with the post and answer the question

I UNDERSTAND ANIMAL ACTIVIST AND DOCTORS ORDERS THAT IS NOT MY DEBATE HERE

caring for the enviroment lol you must not have read my post, next please

most farms use chemicals sprays and fertilizers
chemicals= bad for the enviroment

Answer 1

why are you constantly insulting vegetarian and vegans. You eat your meat and I will give you respect if you give me respect for not eating meat. it is very childish to keep auguring with what someone believe in. You must respect others belief because no one should have to justify something they believe strongly in. I don't know what country you are from but in the US every one is entitle to their own opinion.

Answer 2

It is not the fat content or meat or fish that is the issue. It is factory farming that we object to most it is the conditions in which these poor animals are reared in that we are concerned about they are really mistreat and live in appaling unsanitary conditions. The Cow/Sheep/pig/chicken you eat for dinner will have lead a miserable life before being 'humanely' slaughtered for your dinner. I know a vegetarian organic farmer who is a regular on here and he reckons that organic farms are not much better and it is all done for sake of the £/$/Euro etc.

The animal carcases are then hacked up in an environment with pools blood/faeces/entrails on the floor. Some meat factories have put slightly rotten meat in disinfectant to lengthen its supermarket shelf life and tumours are cut from the chickens (the ones fed hormones to make them grow more quickly due to consumer demand).

Fish is a meat too and if you are to produce it organically it will most likely be raised in arificial tanks to keep it away from non organic fish. It will still be dead animal flesh and there is no way since the invention of the contraceptive pill that you can keep hormones out of the water supply. They cannot filter it out and I'm betting that fish preparation is not done in a shiny white room more like a smelly, bloodied room full of fish guts, scales and swim bladders (which some muppets use to clear wines!!!)

At the end of the day it is a choice thing. If you like meat fish who am I to put you off?

Answer 3

Personally, I dont eat meat. It was not a personal choice at first, but a medical condition that prevents me from digesting animal protein. In educating myself about that issues, I learned so much more about how meat is processed and treated, and that was enough to sway me. Animals are kept in deplorable conditions, and the meats are laced with growth hormones, steroids, antibiotics, etc. and are injected with chemical antimicrobials after processing to kill off the bacteria from poor handling and care. I do still enjoy fish, on occaision. As for the toxic stuff sprayed on plants, I buy organic and grow as much of my own stuff as I can, such as potatoes, peas, beans, peppers, cucumbers and other produce. Its a sad state this nation is in, and especially the ignorance of MOST consumers. I was blissfully ignorant to it all until I was forced to change the way I eat and live. I think fish farming is as legitimate as any other type of farming, and more eco friendly. I do eat fish from farms-I just wish they would quit adding artificial color to the fish food just to enhance the color of the flesh-I, for one, do not care if my fish is bright red, as long as it is fresh and has a pleasing flavor. The runnoff and waste from cattle farming is staggering! Thank the good Lord I dont live anywhere near one....I think the stance of vegans is more to do with animal rights than healthy eating, but since I am not vegan, I cannot say what motivations they have. I have come to the conclusion though, that the human body is muscle, and meat is muscle, and I don't think we are designed to digest ourselves. If we were MEANT to eat, wouldnt we have the claws, deep teeth, and the ability to hunt down, catch, kill and consume our prey, just like a lion? Instead, we purchase it at a grocery store, and have to cook it just to be able to eat it. I think the fact that we have imposable thumbs, designed for gathering fruit and veg, it is more likely that that is what we are MEANT to do. Just my humble opinion

Answer 4

There are no organic fish farms my friend. Most farmed fish comes from Chile where US rules do not apply. They are fed their own dead. If you want to eat that. Go right ahead. Parasites are at an all time high in farmed fish. Yummy for your tummy. Worms anyone?

Please know that each year there are as many as 350 fatal cases of food poisoning attributed to sea food. Almost three times that of food poisoning related to veggies.

It's not just vegans who say meat is unhealthy. It is a medical fact. Please do some reading at the website called Physicials Committee for Responsible Medicine.

We are not carnivores. We are not even omnivores. Biologically speaking we are herbivores who have learned to eat meat. Hence colon cancer is one of our biggest killers. Right up there with heart disease. Meat being the biggest contributor to heart disease as well.

But if you want a little impotence, a little prostate cancer, a little colon cancer, you go right ahead and indulge in your meat.

Now, let's talk global. Factory farming is destroying this world. There are some very well stated posts above me concerning this. 80% of the grain the US produces goes to factory farming. When Ethiopians were dying of starvation, their government was STILL shipping us grain for our cows. Those cows are meant to eat grass. Not grain. Meat and dairy products from factory farmed cattle is substandard. Lacking in essential nutrients.

If America alone cut it's meat and dairy use in half we could end world hunger with the remaining grain.

Factory farming has become so industrialized it's cheaper to let sick animals die. Usually right there in the middle of all the others. They are often left to rot right there in the middle of all the others. Approximately 10% of cows die before every making it to slaughter. It takes 22 pounds of grain to produce one pound of edible meat. Multiply that by a several thousand pounds of cow left to die. The grain used to feed just that one cow left to die would be able to sustain an entire village.

Yes. Everyone knows about the chemicals used to fertilize plants. Which is why most vegetarians and vegans gravitate towards organic produce. Less chemicals in the world. Studies on organic vs commercial farming is showing that not only is organic farming better for the planet and better for us, it can grow just as much produce as commercial farming. Better for the world.

Answer 5

we all live in this world we have to deal with the resouces we have. people that do judge should feel luck to have that oppurtunity other people in the world (especially in africa and parts of asia) have no choices food is food they have to eat it regardless. People that complain on this subject should swap lives with the people that are in dire need of food at least for a week, so that they will have a renewed respect in what they already have.

Answer 6

we have teeth for meat and for cereals/vegetables, eat wahtever you want.

Answer 7

1.Caring for the enviroment-
America's meat eating habits are bad.Half of the water used in the U.S. is used for animal agriculture.Our topsoil is damaged by raising animals for food,we only have about 6 inches of topsoil left,it takes 500 years for 1 inch of topsoil to be created.Every year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production.
.Animals create a huge amount of waste,a population of 60,000 pigs creates the same amount of waste as a group of 240,000 people,and our poop is flushed and filtered so the water can be used again,animals' waste is put into a manure lagoon or a small amount can be put back into soil,but most of it builds up.Think about what I said before
60,000 pigs=240,000 people
and now think of the 10 billion animals raised for food each year.Imagine the waste created.The number of farm animals on earth has risen fivefold since 1950: humans are now outnumbered three to one. Livestock already consume half the world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially.This is why biotechnology - whose promoters claim that it will feed the world - has been deployed to produce not food but feed: it allows farmers to switch from grains which keep people alive to the production of more lucrative crops for livestock. Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals or it continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both.

The impending crisis will be accelerated by the depletion of both phosphate fertiliser and the water used to grow crops. Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water. Aquifers are beginning the run dry all over the world, largely because of abstraction by farmers.Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one time. They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide. Their combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population. By sheer numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's resources, have made them a primary cause for the destruction of the environment. In the US, feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for every 16 pounds of feed. (Within the 12-year period preceding 1992, the number of chickens worldwide increased 132% to 17.2 billion.)It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat.Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of land per year. Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year. Recent marginal growth in animal protein consumption in increasingly affluent developing countries has led to huge increases in the need for feed grains. In 1995, quite suddenly, China went from being an exporter to an importer of grain. World shortages are predicted as both populations and meat consumption rise together--an unsustainable combination. Early in 1996, the world was down to a 48-day supply of grain. According to Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, the world "may have crossed a threshold where even the best efforts of governments to build stocks may not be enough."The passage of local laws favoring massive corporate pork operations in North Carolina recently propelled the state into the number two spot in national hog production, practically overnight. In terms of manure, the state might as well have grafted the human population of New York City onto its coastal plain, times two! Studies by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500 open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground water. In the summer of 1995, at least five lagoons actually broke open, letting loose tens of millions of gallons of hog waste into rivers and on to neighboring farm lands. No mechanical method of retrieval exists that cleans contaminants from groundwater. Only nature is able to purify things again; and that could take several generations.Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the same time.A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement, calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and technological methods of farming used in the US. Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well as around the world, for meat production. If tomorrow people in the US made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to forest.It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial sources. Livestock in the US produce 20 times the excrement of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day." To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams. Becoming a vegetarian does more to clean up our nation's water than any other single action.Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to the environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the atmosphere.Meat contains no essential nutrients that cannot be obtained directly from plant sources. By cycling grain through livestock, we lose 90% of the protein, 96% of the calories, all of its carbohydrates, and all of its nutritional fiber.Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food energy as the most energy efficient animal food.Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef.The direct and hidden costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US, mostly attributable to cattle and feed crop production, is estimated at $44 billion a year. Each pound of feedlot beef can be equated with 35 pounds of eroded topsoil.A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60%.Compared to a vegan diet, three days of a typical American diet requires as much water as you use for showering all year (assuming you shower every day). acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 165 pounds of beef. In the U.S., 260 million acres of forest have been destroyed for use as agricultural land to support our meat diet (over 1 acre per person). Since 1967, the rate of deforestation has been one acre every five seconds. For every acre cleared for urban development, seven acres are cleared to graze animals or grow feed for them.