I thought I should probably elaborate on something I mentioned in my first post, vegetarianism.
When I was 17, I reached the conclusion that I didn't want to eat meat any more. Its something that comes to many of us who purport to love animals, or at least believe that animals have a right to a decent quality of life before they are slaughtered for human consumption. It was the late 80s, there was very little care for animals being shown and the quality of factory farmed animal products was dropping rapidly, animals were being pumped full of steroids, being fed animal proteins and being transported and slaughtered in terrible conditions with very little regard for their well being.
So as I was saying, I had not long turned 17, I may even have been 16 at the time, but that makes no difference. I had made my mind up, I was going to stop eating meat, all meat, but not fish. It was in my mind that fish were a wild caught animal, the fishing practices were the same as they'd always been and fish was actually good for human development as opposed to meat which humans really don't need (how naive I was about fish, I'll get back to that later).
I didn't need to do any research for the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle, but I still did. The Internet was still young and hard to get onto, so I resorted to the wikipedia of the last generation, books, in particular encyclopedias. Many millions of people throughout the world live a life-long vegetarian lifestyle, the best example are the Jains originally of India, who never take the life of another creature. Some Buddhists also follow a strict vegetarian diet for the same reason as the Jains, but not all.
The facts are pretty simple, a well balanced vegetarian diet is better for you. It can reduce the number of free radicals that are wandering around your body by virtue of the fact that fruit and vegetables are high in anti-oxidants (that's why they want everyone to eat 5 portions of fruit or veg per day), this also helps reduce the incidence of some cancers (especially those caused by sunlight and direct inhalation of smoke). The diet is higher in fibre (helps to reduce incidence of colorectal cancer), generally lower in saturated fats (unless you eat a lot of milk by-products) and higher in poly-unsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats, which are particularly good at lowering LDL cholesterol levels and raising HDL cholesterol levels.
Oh that's enough about the diet being good, because realistically anyone eating a healthy balanced diet will reduce all of those factors, if you only eat meat once a week and you don't char it or smother it in creamy sauces, chances are you're going to be fine and live as long a life as an average vegetarian, so don't think I'm going to preach the lifestyle based on health alone. Actually I won't "preach" the lifestyle at all, but I will give my reasoning later why its a better choice.
So back to my vegetarian experience. When I started in the late 80s it wasn't all roses for vegetarians in west central Scotland, we weren't a new thing, but there were only a small number of us around and most of us were of the younger generation just making our way in the world. I met many vegetarians in University where you tend to meet people of "alternative lifestyles". Its also where I met my first lesbians and homosexuals, at least the kind that were out about it.
In the 80s the practice in Europe of feeding animals with animal derived protein supplements was endemic, mostly due to the difficulty of cultivating soy in the cooler European climate. This animal protein turned out to be a problem in cattle production as it apparently lead to the arrival of B.S.E. into the bovine population. Now B.S.E. is a brain disease not dissimilar to Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease which causes the brain to form spongy lesions that destroy brain function, mobility and invariably leads to death. This all came to a head in the late 80s when the British (mostly English) cattle farmers were having to deal with a rash of cows that were suffering from severe neurological problems.
It took a while, but by 1989 after the world had banned British beef imports, the British government changed its cattle rearing regulations, their feed was not allowed to contain animal by-products and other draconian restrictions on the processing of meat were introduced. B.S.E. it was found could, if the meat was contaminated with brain matter from infected cattle, cause humans to develop (new) variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
It appears my decision to stop eating meat towards the end of the 80s and the fact that most Scottish meat was produced without the high protein feed, meant that I had reduced my chances of infection.
When people back then asked why I was a vegetarian, B.S.E. was a good reason to give them, but since then as people's memories faded, I fell back to giving them my original reason, conscience and health.
My mother for many years though it was a phase. Its not that I forced her to cook special meals for me or anything like that, I had been taking care of my own food since I decided to turn veggie, but she, being a Jewish mother, was very concerned that I wasn't eating properly and would suffer from malnutrition (something I most certainly have not). She was so concerned she spoke to her doctor about it... Suffice to say even her guilt trips didn't make me change my mind.
After a year or 2 the smell of meat cooking started to repulse me, its worse now than then, the worst tend to be chicken because its a fatty meat and the fat make the smell linger more. Bacon has never made me want to eat meat, its smell also reviles me.
It took me close to 8 years to decide that I didn't want to eat fish (I'm finally back to fish) and it was a 2 part reason; 1. Fishing practices were far from sustainable, in fact they were catching so much fish that the usual prized fish like Cod and Haddock were in short supply, the catch was smaller and the individual fish were smaller too. To make up for the shortfall the more unpopular fish were and still are being caught, things like Pollock, Hake, Coley and others (all of the same family as the Cod but not the same mild flavour). Even more exotic fish are being caught from deeper in the oceans, fish that take many decades to reach maturity. The sea is being pillaged and especially in the temperate, sub arctic and Arctic waters, the fish stocks are crashing, if it continues, there will be no fish left, or at least so few as to require centuries for their numbers to bounce back. Oh and 2. the smell of cooking fish, especially my family's favourite the salmon (farmed naturally, its way cheaper) was making me sick (my mother's absolute favourite fish is the Mackerel and its one of the smelliest fish when cooked).
OK I think the reasons I stopped eating meats have been covered. So time for the conclusion and my "preachy" bit.
I'm not an evangelist for vegetarianism. I believe in people's rights to choose what they want to do with their lives. But if we're going to feed the world, we can't continue the level of meat production that's going on in the world right now, even worse, we can't allow the increase in meat production that's forecast as the Asian population becomes more wealthy and craves the meat their meager monies couldn't buy before.
Meat production is the most wasteful and the most polluting per tonne, even soy beans, which are amongst the most demanding crops need less than a quarter the amount of water per tonne for production than beef cattle do. Its not just the water, the cattle need fodder. In most of the world grasses can only be relied upon seasonally, outwith that the animals need to be fed, mostly with grain, grain that needs transporting to the animals, grain that could be feeding humans. Its ridiculously wasteful.
The way I look at things now is I'm an environmental vegetarian, by not eating meat I'm reducing my environmental footprint. Its one of my little actions which add up to, over the course of my life, a considerable amount. The more of us humans in the 1st world and latterly the rapidly improving 2nd world (Asia in particular) who turn to vegetarianism, the better it will be for all of us, the more people around the world who can be fed, the lower the burden on health providers.
There is one issue I'd like to touch on as a final aside, the idea of in vitro meat production. I think its a good idea. The meat that would be produced would be free of animal suffering, use massively less resources to produce and despite it not being in any way "good" to eat, in the way a steak is "good" to eat, it will still be highly usable in processed foods like burgers, sausages and other meat products. Its a long way off, it may never be accepted, but it may be the only way to provide the meat that people seem to want.
We'll see I guess...
When I was 17, I reached the conclusion that I didn't want to eat meat any more. Its something that comes to many of us who purport to love animals, or at least believe that animals have a right to a decent quality of life before they are slaughtered for human consumption. It was the late 80s, there was very little care for animals being shown and the quality of factory farmed animal products was dropping rapidly, animals were being pumped full of steroids, being fed animal proteins and being transported and slaughtered in terrible conditions with very little regard for their well being.
So as I was saying, I had not long turned 17, I may even have been 16 at the time, but that makes no difference. I had made my mind up, I was going to stop eating meat, all meat, but not fish. It was in my mind that fish were a wild caught animal, the fishing practices were the same as they'd always been and fish was actually good for human development as opposed to meat which humans really don't need (how naive I was about fish, I'll get back to that later).
I didn't need to do any research for the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle, but I still did. The Internet was still young and hard to get onto, so I resorted to the wikipedia of the last generation, books, in particular encyclopedias. Many millions of people throughout the world live a life-long vegetarian lifestyle, the best example are the Jains originally of India, who never take the life of another creature. Some Buddhists also follow a strict vegetarian diet for the same reason as the Jains, but not all.
The facts are pretty simple, a well balanced vegetarian diet is better for you. It can reduce the number of free radicals that are wandering around your body by virtue of the fact that fruit and vegetables are high in anti-oxidants (that's why they want everyone to eat 5 portions of fruit or veg per day), this also helps reduce the incidence of some cancers (especially those caused by sunlight and direct inhalation of smoke). The diet is higher in fibre (helps to reduce incidence of colorectal cancer), generally lower in saturated fats (unless you eat a lot of milk by-products) and higher in poly-unsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats, which are particularly good at lowering LDL cholesterol levels and raising HDL cholesterol levels.
Oh that's enough about the diet being good, because realistically anyone eating a healthy balanced diet will reduce all of those factors, if you only eat meat once a week and you don't char it or smother it in creamy sauces, chances are you're going to be fine and live as long a life as an average vegetarian, so don't think I'm going to preach the lifestyle based on health alone. Actually I won't "preach" the lifestyle at all, but I will give my reasoning later why its a better choice.
So back to my vegetarian experience. When I started in the late 80s it wasn't all roses for vegetarians in west central Scotland, we weren't a new thing, but there were only a small number of us around and most of us were of the younger generation just making our way in the world. I met many vegetarians in University where you tend to meet people of "alternative lifestyles". Its also where I met my first lesbians and homosexuals, at least the kind that were out about it.
In the 80s the practice in Europe of feeding animals with animal derived protein supplements was endemic, mostly due to the difficulty of cultivating soy in the cooler European climate. This animal protein turned out to be a problem in cattle production as it apparently lead to the arrival of B.S.E. into the bovine population. Now B.S.E. is a brain disease not dissimilar to Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease which causes the brain to form spongy lesions that destroy brain function, mobility and invariably leads to death. This all came to a head in the late 80s when the British (mostly English) cattle farmers were having to deal with a rash of cows that were suffering from severe neurological problems.
It took a while, but by 1989 after the world had banned British beef imports, the British government changed its cattle rearing regulations, their feed was not allowed to contain animal by-products and other draconian restrictions on the processing of meat were introduced. B.S.E. it was found could, if the meat was contaminated with brain matter from infected cattle, cause humans to develop (new) variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
It appears my decision to stop eating meat towards the end of the 80s and the fact that most Scottish meat was produced without the high protein feed, meant that I had reduced my chances of infection.
When people back then asked why I was a vegetarian, B.S.E. was a good reason to give them, but since then as people's memories faded, I fell back to giving them my original reason, conscience and health.
My mother for many years though it was a phase. Its not that I forced her to cook special meals for me or anything like that, I had been taking care of my own food since I decided to turn veggie, but she, being a Jewish mother, was very concerned that I wasn't eating properly and would suffer from malnutrition (something I most certainly have not). She was so concerned she spoke to her doctor about it... Suffice to say even her guilt trips didn't make me change my mind.
After a year or 2 the smell of meat cooking started to repulse me, its worse now than then, the worst tend to be chicken because its a fatty meat and the fat make the smell linger more. Bacon has never made me want to eat meat, its smell also reviles me.
It took me close to 8 years to decide that I didn't want to eat fish (I'm finally back to fish) and it was a 2 part reason; 1. Fishing practices were far from sustainable, in fact they were catching so much fish that the usual prized fish like Cod and Haddock were in short supply, the catch was smaller and the individual fish were smaller too. To make up for the shortfall the more unpopular fish were and still are being caught, things like Pollock, Hake, Coley and others (all of the same family as the Cod but not the same mild flavour). Even more exotic fish are being caught from deeper in the oceans, fish that take many decades to reach maturity. The sea is being pillaged and especially in the temperate, sub arctic and Arctic waters, the fish stocks are crashing, if it continues, there will be no fish left, or at least so few as to require centuries for their numbers to bounce back. Oh and 2. the smell of cooking fish, especially my family's favourite the salmon (farmed naturally, its way cheaper) was making me sick (my mother's absolute favourite fish is the Mackerel and its one of the smelliest fish when cooked).
OK I think the reasons I stopped eating meats have been covered. So time for the conclusion and my "preachy" bit.
I'm not an evangelist for vegetarianism. I believe in people's rights to choose what they want to do with their lives. But if we're going to feed the world, we can't continue the level of meat production that's going on in the world right now, even worse, we can't allow the increase in meat production that's forecast as the Asian population becomes more wealthy and craves the meat their meager monies couldn't buy before.
Meat production is the most wasteful and the most polluting per tonne, even soy beans, which are amongst the most demanding crops need less than a quarter the amount of water per tonne for production than beef cattle do. Its not just the water, the cattle need fodder. In most of the world grasses can only be relied upon seasonally, outwith that the animals need to be fed, mostly with grain, grain that needs transporting to the animals, grain that could be feeding humans. Its ridiculously wasteful.
The way I look at things now is I'm an environmental vegetarian, by not eating meat I'm reducing my environmental footprint. Its one of my little actions which add up to, over the course of my life, a considerable amount. The more of us humans in the 1st world and latterly the rapidly improving 2nd world (Asia in particular) who turn to vegetarianism, the better it will be for all of us, the more people around the world who can be fed, the lower the burden on health providers.
There is one issue I'd like to touch on as a final aside, the idea of in vitro meat production. I think its a good idea. The meat that would be produced would be free of animal suffering, use massively less resources to produce and despite it not being in any way "good" to eat, in the way a steak is "good" to eat, it will still be highly usable in processed foods like burgers, sausages and other meat products. Its a long way off, it may never be accepted, but it may be the only way to provide the meat that people seem to want.
We'll see I guess...
