Scoffing too much meat and eggs is ‘just as bad as smoking’, claim scientists

[ddraig]

yes
we've evolved

 

[spanglechick]

i know a lot of people don't have a problem with it.
a lot of people do tho.

why don't they call dead pieces of decomposing cow beef and not cow?
same with pig etc etc
why are people called hippies and weirdos and ridiculed just for not eating something the majority of people do?
what is there to gain for the meat eating majority? why don't they just get on with it seeing as they are in the majority and obviously right?

Well, we call chicken "chicken" and lamb "lamb", Turkey/duck/suckling pig etc. so I doubt squeamishness is the whole answer... But the emotive "drama llama" language here does you no favours as someone wanting respectful debate. Yes, meat is decomposing. So are carrots. Lettuce seems to rot if you turn your back on it, while potatoes can go for months. It's the nature of organic matter. Why mention it specifically here and now? And only in relation to meat unless you want to be dismissed as irrational or to provoke people into a polarised argument.

 

[fredfelt]

Am I the only one who finds it irritating that this kind of individualist neo-Puritan pseudoscientific horseshit gets plastered all over the news while the wider reasons for bad diets and ill health are glossed over if not outright ignored?

Nope, it's never the fault of the for-profit food industry for either selling heaps of cheap crap or ripping people off for anything half-way decent. Chaotic lifestyles brought about by increasingly demanding and unrewarding jobs (see: increase in zero-hours shitwork) are never to blame. It's all the fault of us individual sinners with our choccy and burger-scoffing proclivities, with the added bonus for the self-righteous that it can't just be dismissed as a load of spiritual mumbo-jumbo made up by a bunch of miserable old men. A new asceticism for a scientific age!

Apart from that, even if there are some facts underlying the arguments of the media's constant stream of neurotic obsession, the tedious sermonising nature of these paeans to live a long and dull life munching rabbit food puts me off regardless, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Since we're living longer as mod pointed out on the first page, the trade-off seems reasonable enough to me at least.

/rant

I get fed up with the poor reporting. Mainstream media looks for sound bites and tries to get reactions. The boring reality behind any study of a food group is that it's incredibly hard to work out the effects of a single food or food group. Any study has to be done over long periods of time on subjects who have varied diets and lifestyles.

I don't think the point of any scientific papers on nutrition is to allocate blame. If any fault is found it's often in how the paper is reported.

I like you accept that there are often underlying facts in these stories. However I don't take them as tedious sermonising on how one should eat, or to blame 'sinners' for their choices. I don't see food scientists are miserable old men, they are just people searching for cause and effect. The spiritual mumbo-jumbo comes from often well meaning but ill informed people making their living on the back on the understanding which is advanced through science.

Without objective study of nutrition I'm sure the food industry would get away with much more. Without a body of knowledge to fall back on the limited regulation on the food industry would be much weaker.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

I didn't. I merely pointed out that with modern farming, the animal is alive in the first place only because it is going to be killed. I don't move from 'is' to 'ought'. I don't say that we ought to eat meat. There is no moral imperative to eat meat. How do you move from 'is' to 'ought not'?

Don't try to obfuscate please. You were implying that moral objections to killing animals were not valid because those animals were brought into existence by humans in the first place. I want to know why you think your 'modern farming' example is relevant at all.

Why do I think you ought not to kill animals? Because its wrong to kill - and other wise make suffer and/or treat as means - sentiment beings when its not necessary to do so.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

yes
we've evolved

Well if you're talking about our digestive systems, we're omnivores, and meat is an easy way for us to obtain certain nutritious things we need.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Sure you can. I was simply saying what I knew to be true. But being that I'm totally out of touch with reality, I can't possibly see beyond the privileged status I have as some who enters Waitrose.

Yes, you certainly lost prolecred points, admitting you shop in Waitrose, even if only to raid the tramp's buffet!
We're so unprivileged here in Tulse HIll, we don't have a local Waitrose. I think that the nearest is about 4 miles away. That's real prolecred, that is!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well, we call chicken "chicken" and lamb "lamb", Turkey/duck/suckling pig etc. so I doubt squeamishness is the whole answer... But the emotive "drama llama" language here does you no favours as someone wanting respectful debate. Yes, meat is decomposing. So are carrots. Lettuce seems to rot if you turn your back on it, while potatoes can go for months. It's the nature of organic matter. Why mention it specifically here and now? And only in relation to meat unless you want to be dismissed as irrational or to provoke people into a polarised argument.

In Britain at least, it's largely down to the class system. Pig/sheep/cow are anglo-saxon, Pork/mutton/beef are French.

Blame the Norman invasion for that one.

 

[xenon]

You get excited by a bacon and egg sarnie? Oh OK.

You OTOH don't get any excitement from a favourite dish? OK Excitement is a bit strong. You get the point though. Most people eat for pleasure at least some of the time, be they meat eaters or vegetarian.

 

[Greebo]

ddraig tedious, abusive, derailing, patronising, claiming victimhood - shambles like a troll, turns to stone in daylight, lives under a bridge... join up the dots and what do we see? I'm not hunting hypocrisy, there's no need when all of us indulge in actions which don't perfectly tally with what we claim are our values.

Of course eating a lump of flesh involves killing the animal; cutting a chunk off a live animal would be even more cruel.

BTW enough of the handwringing - plants send pain or distress signals too. And whatever vegetable matter we eat has been decomposing ever since it was harvested, if not before. What about the microfauna and microflora which are killed every time you use antiseptics, disinfectants, or antibiotics? Don't they have a right to life just as valid as yours?

BTW while I remember, vegetable protein isn't always healthy either; pulses and mushrooms can trigger or exacerbate gout.

 

[NoXion]

I get fed up with the poor reporting. Mainstream media looks for sound bites and tries to get reactions. The boring reality behind any study of a food group is that it's incredibly hard to work out the effects of a single food or food group. Any study has to be done over long periods of time on subjects who have varied diets and lifestyles.

I don't think the point of any scientific papers on nutrition is to allocate blame. If any fault is found it's often in how the paper is reported.

Hence my mentioning of the media, as opposed to scientists.

I like you accept that there are often underlying facts in these stories. However I don't take them as tedious sermonising on how one should eat, or to blame 'sinners' for their choices. I don't see food scientists are miserable old men, <snip>

Neither do I. It's overwhelmingly the media that like to position themselves as the gurus of this kind of lifestyleist guff.

The spiritual mumbo-jumbo comes from often well meaning but ill informed people making their living on the back on the understanding which is advanced through science.

The "spiritual mumbo-jumbo" to which I was referring was exclusively concerning pre-modern religious prescriptions as to how one should live, although you're right, these days there there does seem to be a section of society for whom rituals and places of worship have been replaced with faddish diets and health food shops.

Without objective study of nutrition I'm sure the food industry would get away with much more. Without a body of knowledge to fall back on the limited regulation on the food industry would be much weaker.

I'm not objecting to research. I'm objecting to the way it's being manipulated by the media.

 

[editor]

You OTOH don't get any excitement from a favourite dish? OK Excitement is a bit strong. You get the point though. Most people eat for pleasure at least some of the time, be they meat eaters or vegetarian.

Oh, I get pleasure from good food all right. But I can't say I get particularly excited by a sandwich.

 

[xenon]

I am fucking ravines BTW. I've not eaten for 24 hours. <looks in fridge>

 

[ViolentPanda]

You've never been chased by the police helicopter whilst eating bacon on toast?
mmmmmmm... bacon on toast!



There's no such thing as ethical veal. What next... ethical genocide?

There's veal that's more ethically-reared than other veal. Ethicality is relative. From a bio-ethics point of view, all "production" of animals for food is non-ethical, but "pink" veal is no better nor worse than spring lamb, kid or pullet, in that the animal follows the natural life-cycle until slaughter. That doesn't happen with "white" veal, where the animal is "crated", and where it is solely fed milk and milk proteins beyond the period when it would start weaning.

 

[Callie]

I am fucking ravines BTW. I've not eaten for 24 hours. <looks in fridge>

is that a bit like sticking it in a bucket?

 

[andysays]

...Why do I think you ought not to kill animals? Because its wrong to kill - and other wise make suffer and/or treat as means - sentiment beings when its not necessary to do so.

Just wanted to point out this hilarious Freudian slip so everyone can appreciate it

 

[xenon]

i know a lot of people don't have a problem with it.
a lot of people do tho.

why don't they call dead pieces of decomposing cow beef and not cow?
same with pig etc etc
why are people called hippies and weirdos and ridiculed just for not eating something the majority of people do?
what is there to gain for the meat eating majority? why don't they just get on with it seeing as they are in the majority and obviously right?

THe beef thing, blame the Normans. There hasn't really been any vegetarian bating on this thread though has there? I mean if anything, it's snearing at meat eaters. The title for a start. Do vegeterians not "scoff" food. And the report itself is highly flawed.

Not that I think eating red meat in particular every day is good.

I've found some peppered mackerel.

 

[xenon]

is that a bit like sticking it in a bucket?

I'm blaming the autocorrect thingy...

 

[cesare]

I bet scoffing too much milk, cream and cheese is just as bad for you and has similar ethical issues.

 

[girasol]

You're assuming here that the people you are talking to are uneasy about this. I'm sure some meat-eaters are uneasy about the killing of animals, but plenty are not. I'm not.

Also, the animal's being alive in the first place is conditional on the expectation of killing it.

If I had to kill to eat meat I think I'd be a vegetarian, or at least I'd eat meat even less often than I do now. Most of us are so far removed from the killing it's sort of abstract. I don't think about the killing or even the animal when I'm at the supermarket buying meat! And indeed, most of the meat we eat wouldn't exist if we didn't raise the animal for that purpose. How many meat eaters have actually seen a pig or a cow be killed, in front of them? And the whole butchering process? Two things tend to happen: you either can't bear it or you just get used to it and accept it for what it is.

One thing I insisted on changing in the last few years: we only eat red meat once a week, on Sundays. The rest of the week is "vegetarian", and we also have fish or chicken once a week. It's a real issue: the way red meat is produced is so resource intensive we should all try and eat less of it for that reason alone.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm glad you find it so exciting.

People get passionate about foods they enjoy. it's an ineluctable fact of life. I'm sure that you occasionally rave about a particular vegetarian recipe you've enjoyed, unless you have no tastebuds.

 

[ViolentPanda]

People are murdered, not animals.

Under current law, anyway.
Once the Cowoids of Beta Reticuli invade us and become our new overlords, though, I suspect the law will change...

 

[UnderOpenSky]

i know a lot of people don't have a problem with it.
a lot of people do tho.

why don't they call dead pieces of decomposing cow beef and not cow?
same with pig etc etc
why are people called hippies and weirdos and ridiculed just for not eating something the majority of people do?
what is there to gain for the meat eating majority? why don't they just get on with it seeing as they are in the majority and obviously right?

Theory I heard a while ago goes like this...

Most meat names come from Norman French. You can see the similarities in modern French animal names:

mutton = mouton (sheep)
beef = boeuf (cow)
veal = veau (calf)
pork = porc (pig)

The theory is that the Anglo-Saxons who raised the animals in the fields used the English names, but the people who cooked and served the meat used the Norman French names, since that was the language spoken by the nobles (who were eating the meat).

No idea if it's true or not.

 

[ddraig]

yeah girasol but they have to wash carrots you know, and pack them and freight them!! so ner

and how do you know they don't scream when you chop them up!? eh eh!?
just because you can't hear them

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If I had to kill to eat meat I think I'd be a vegetarian, or at least I'd eat meat even less often than I do now. Most of us are so far removed from the killing it's sort of abstract. I don't think about the killing or even the animal when I'm at the supermarket buying meat! And indeed, most of the meat we eat wouldn't exist if we didn't raise the animal for that purpose. How many meat eaters have actually seen a pig or a cow be killed, in front of them? And the whole butchering process? Two things tend to happen: you either can't bear it or you just get used to it and accept it for what it is.

One thing I insisted on changing in the last few years: we only eat red meat once a week, on Sundays. The rest of the week is "vegetarian", and we also have fish or chicken once a week. It's a real issue: the way red meat is produced is so resource intensive we should all try and eat less of it for that reason alone.

I've killed chickens. I've also witnessed the killing of a pig and a goat. The pig's death was really nasty - it squealed its head off. It was unpleasant to watch, but I enjoyed eating it. Indeed, I felt obliged not to waste it after that.

 

[girasol]

I've killed chickens. I've also witnessed the killing of a pig and a goat. The pig's death was really nasty - it squealed its head off. It was unpleasant to watch, but I enjoyed eating it. Indeed, I felt obliged not to waste it after that.

Yeah, pig's death is horrendous, seen it too, they sense death is coming . Chickens ain't so bad!

 

[ViolentPanda]

awwww, is it a bit too real for you?

I'm surprised to see you jumping on that childish bandwagon.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

There hasn't really been any vegetarian bating on this thread though has there? I mean if anything, it's snearing at meat eaters.

Indeed. Its certainly happened a lot on past threads, but I've not seen much evidence of it here.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yeah, pig's death is horrendous, seen it too, they sense death is coming .

Yep.

I accept that others may not feel like I do, but for me personally as a meat eater, it was important not to shy away from the reality of killing animals.

tbh I found killing chickens far easier than I had anticipated.

 

[ViolentPanda]

all the posts about not having meat being dull...

Anyone who makes such an ignorant claim has never tried a vegetarian diet. Of course, if you stick to formulaic veggie health-food crap like "just add water" nutroasts, you might find things a bit bland, but it's not as if anyone with an ounce of wit can't add flavour, just as an omnivore will do with boring cuts of meat.

and the usual shutting down of anything that points to problems with meat consumption and the various 'jokey' ways people try to shut the thread and ruin it.

sometimes like a group of bullies surrounding someone different and taking glee in pointing it out and how they are in the winning/dominant/red blooded gang
or something less dramatic

TBF, I've known veggies do the same thing. It isn't a one-way street, by any means, although the game is loaded against veggies, what with them being a minority.

 

[ddraig]

yup and i've had enough so am out