What are the arguments AGAINST vegetarianism?
Answers:
1. Our bodies are designed as omnivores. Take a look at our dental records and our nutrient requirements.
2. Meat is yummy! :)
There're aren't many actually - if any at all.
We can surive just as well with or without meat. In fact, arguably - we'd do better without.
So saying, I like my meat - so let me at it.
Bacon sandwiches
Not much. Some dietary things, but you can avoid any problems if you eat the right things. Other than that just that cows are evil.
Ecoli. Contaminated veggies. And crop failure.
These are valid arguments.
steak taste good, tofu taste like crap.
meat is good!! :)
The veggie-hamburgers suck.
i believe that a balanced diet is the healthiest so that means meat should be a part of it. man have been eating meat for years. why stop?.
Our bodies need amino acids that can only be found naturally in meats. Just take a look at people who are vegetarians. They're usually pale and skinny and weak. Who wants to emulate their behavior?
The main concern for most people is that we don't get enough protein.
Not many. We are omnivores but I don't think eating a necessity. Also our digestive system has to be trained to eat red meat. If you give it up for a few years, it is difficult to eat it again as it disagrees with your system
The argument I always give to the vegetarians who try to convert me: I LIKE THE TASTE OF MEAT! Without it my diet is uninteresting and boring.
Your body needs protein from meat, being a vegitarian is no doubt healthy. unless your the vegitarian that won't eat meat, but pop tarts and twinkies are good to go!
There is a possibilty of iron deficiency and osteoporosis.
Besides you can't go to McDonalds or Burger King anymore.
The biggest problem is trying to get enough of the protein and nutrients that you need in your diet. This is very hard to do as a vegetarian- (hey- most meat-eaters don't do it) . I'd suggest doing some serious research and talking to your doctor/dietician about it. The only other one I can think of is that, well- meat tastes good, and do you really want this enough to be able to be the only one NOT eating a steak, etc.? And don't feel bad if you change your mind later on- a lot of people decide to be vegetarians and then realize later on that it's not for them.
well, you can take dietary supplements to get your B12, but, basically we are omnivorous. Our bodies are adapted to eat and process flesh.
My biggest argument against a soley veggie diet, is that meat tastes good.
God, if you believe in him, provided us with teeth made for chewing meat, not chewing the cud.
Read this, it's concise and will help you.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~yount/text/m.
http://www.vanguardonline.f9.co.uk/00509.
I have NOTHING against lacto and ovo-lacto-vegetarianism. However, I do not suggest pure vegatarianism. Although you can be fit, healthy and lean as a purist. . . it is extremely difficult. Only a fraction of 1% of Americans can pull it off. You must be very dedicated!
By the way, I eat meat. Lots of it.
err..meat is so ..erm..foul that being a vegetarian draws undue attention to meat
what a loads of bollocks, not enough amino acids or proteins, take a look at my 360 page follow the link i have been veggy for over 20 years, madonna, carl lewis, david carradine, woody harrelson amongst many others dont like being called weak and skinny
But to follow the question the only arguments against I can think of are Taste nothing to do with dietary requirements if you know what to eat you can be healthly enough, after 20 years I am not pale or skinny even when I have been climbing or kayaking or stuck in the jungle for a few weeks
Well, it is honourable to care about animal rights, health and the environment, but there is the issue of getting the right nutrients. Contrary to what people say, iron shouldn't be an issue. Iron is present in cereals, nuts, bread, grains, beans, tofu, apricots, spinach and broccoli. I have never had a problem with iron.
Nevertheless, I just like a little flesh sometimes. We do not eat any red meat or poultry, just fish and seafood. We also eat low-fat dairy with a little cheese and butter. Let me tell you, I feel so much better, have more mental alertness and energy. Fish is good for your health, and good for your eyes, skin and hair. It is good, digestible protein. As far as vegetable protein goes, tofu is the best, but I don't want to eat it everyday.
There are some great tofu-based products and I love a bowl of Japanese miso soup and almond-flavour tofu pudding from the store. Still, I just crave fish and the flavour and like a little flesh to eat sometimes, probably my perception of dinner, but then again, I worked in restaurants for so long, I can't imagine a dinner without a main course and sweet potatoes and beans just don't cut it.
It allows flexibility with ordering food. If we want pizza, we get a seafood, cheese and mushroom version, no hot wings, but maybe a shrimp salad and a 2 litre of diet Pepsi. Sometimes we get Cinnabons, too. Couldn't get them if we didn't eat eggs and dairy. I only like eggs dry-cooked, as in an omelet, scrambled dry with no milk or else, well-done easy over.
It is hard to get protein from a vegetable source that is as good quality as fish and dairy. Tofu is the closest but is still incomplete. Vitamin D and B12 are in milk and most animal products. You absolutely do not have to eat red meat and poultry to be healthy. They are full of chemicals, fat and bacteria. I do not want to eat hormones.
If we were supposed to eat nothing that once had a heart beat we would have evolved from the dinosaurs and would probably have long necks and eat bark by now!
Michael's answer is by far the best. There are NO scientifically proven reasons against vegetarianism. And about half a million for it.
Do a search for some of my other answers. I've answered this about 2 dozen times in the past week.
vitamin B12 . . . I was vegan for eight months, I ate carefully, but at the end I was so weak and confused, my doctor ordered me to eat animal protein, within days I felt a palpable difference
1) we have a natural desire to eat meat - we've been doing it since the dawn of man
2) our bodies are designed to to eat and digest meat
3) meat tastes fu.cking nice
4) meat is a good source of protein and other nutrients
5) i see no moral reason to stop eating meat. animals kill other animals. we're an animal; don't delude yourself. it's called the food chain.
6) the slaughter of animals keeps them from over-populating..
7) which in turn can do damage to the enviroment i.e. high methane levels
8) if everyone was vegetarian farmers and shops would lose money, go out of business, plus everybody would be unhappy on such tasteless diets :(
9) just to reiterate, it tastes damn good. i'd rather live to 80 and eat a lot of tasty meaty meals than live to 85 and eat rabbit food
People for the ethical treatment of animals.
that your argument against going veg. going veg kills or natural air filters aka plants
you need protein and other nutrients that come from meat, we have canines for eating meat, other animals do it, we are the dominant species.
OK, well, here is arguments against vegetarianism, and rebutles to veggie arguments, which is really just as important. Contrary to what an earlier answerer said there are many arguments against vegism and a lot of the ones for are crap, as I will try to show.
If a vegetarian diet is very carefully planned, and that may require either fortified foods or supplements, it can be AS healthy as a good meat eating diet. I think there are a couple of benefits, but they come from eating a wide range of fruit and veg and being health conscious as vegans have to be, not omitting meat, and thus those benefits can be go without actually going veggie. Needless to say a uncarefully planned vegetarian, or especially vegan, diet can lack many essential nutrients and be very bad for your health.
There are many benefits to a diet containing meat. Many vegetarians claim that meat is unhealthy. This is a blatant fallacy.
It is well established that eating meat improves the quality of nutrition, strengthens the immune system, promotes normal growth and development, is beneficial for day-to-day health, energy and well-being, and helps ensure optimal learning and academic performance.
A long term study found that children who eat more meat are less likely to have deficiencies than those who eat little or no meat. Kids who don’t eat meat — and especially if they restrict other foods, as many girls are doing — are more likely to feel tired, apathetic, unable to concentrate, are sick more often, more frequently depressed, and are the most likely to be malnourished and have stunted growth. Meat and other animal-source foods are the building blocks of healthy growth that have made America’s and Europe's youngsters among the tallest, strongest and healthiest in the world.
Meat is an important source of quality nutrients, heme iron, protein, zinc and B-complex vitamins. It provides high-quality protein important for kids’ healthy growth and development.
The iron in meat (heme iron) is of high quality and well absorbed by the body, unlike nonheme iron from plants which is not well absorbed. More than 90 percent of iron consumed may be wasted when taken without some heme iron from animal sources. Substances found to inhibit nonheme iron absorption include phytates in cereals, nuts and legumes, and polyphenolics in vegetables. Symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, headache, irritability and decreased work performance. For young children, it can lead to impairment in general intelligence, language, motor performance and school readiness. Girls especially need iron after puberty due to blood losses, or if pregnant. Yet studies show 75 percent of teenage girls get less iron than recommended.
Meat, poultry and eggs are also good sources of absorbable zinc, a trace mineral vital for strengthening the immune system and normal growth. Deficiencies link to decreased attention, poorer problem solving and short-term memory, weakened immune system, and the inability to fight infection. While nuts and legumes contain zinc, plant fibre contains phytates that bind it into a nonabsorbable compound.
Found almost exclusively in animal products, Vitamin B12 is necessary for forming new cells. A deficiency can cause anaemia and permanent nerve damage and paralysis. The Vitimin B12 in plants isn't even bioavailable, meaning our body can't use it.
Why not buy food supplements to replace missing vitamins and minerals? Some people believe they can fill those gaps with pills, but they may be fooling themselves. Research consistently shows that real foods in a balanced diet are far superior to trying to make up deficiencies with supplements.
Lets not forget either that protein, while it is found in plants, is better quality in animal products.
Some people claim that meat is unhealthy because it contains saturated fat. So does margarine and olive oil, and they're vegan suitable (in fact the hydrogenated fats in Marge can be very bad, but that's another story). Besides, any excess calories in your diet, any excess sugar, starch or carbohydrates are stored in your body for later use. This is done by turning them into saturated fats.
Cholesterol also, your body on average creates four to five times more cholesterol than the average person consumes, and compensates by creating more when less is consumed. Cholesterol isn't evil, it is essential; it makes up the waterproof linings of all our cells and without it we would die. Too much can be bad, but as with saturated fats there are more healthy ways of disposing of it, like regular exercise. Anyway, it isn't so much how much cholesterol you eat, but how well yur body handles it. A person who eats loads of dietary cholesterol and leads an unhealthy lifestyle can still have low cholesterol, and vice versa. Most people's bodies are able to take a large amount of cholesterol without getting atherosclerosis. For this reason that eating meat gives you heart disease is very misleading, and for the most part untrue. Of course, if you do have a problem eating loads isn't a good idea, but for most people there is nothing at all to worry about.
Some claim meat can cause cancer. Even if this were true, which is questionable, so do many plants. Soy especially has some very potent carcinogens. Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines.
Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women. Also they are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.
Soy is bad for numerous other reasons, but that isn't the point, I'm just using it as a quick example relating to cancer not being exclusive to some animal products. The evidence that claims meat does cause cancer is patchy anyway.
Some people also claim that we aren't designed by evolution, to eat meat. They claim that our digestive system is quite long and that we produce amylase, a starch splitting catabolic enzyme, akin to herbivores and unlike carnivores. Apparently this clearly shows that we were designed to eat plants. Such people should go and look up 'omnivore' in a dictionary. They have also been known to cite other reasons we are like herbivores and unlike carnivores: that we suck water instead of lapping it, and that we perspire through our skin, such things have nothing at all to do with whether or not we were designed to eat meat, and nothing to do with how our body handles food. I might as well say that because we, like most carnivores and unlike most herbivores, have eyes that face forwards, we must be carnivorous. Of course, that's not true for precisely the same reason.
The fact is Humans are omnivores, with the ability to eat nearly everything. By preference, prehistoric people ate a high-protein, high-mineral diet based on meat and animal sources, whenever available. Their foods came mainly from three of the five food groups: meat, vegetables and fruits. As a result, big game mammoth hunters were tall and strong with massive bones. They grew six inches taller than their farming descendants in Europe, who ate mostly plant foods, and only in recent times regained most of this height upon again eating more meat, eggs and dairy foods. We are adapted to eat meat, and it is just as natural as eating plants.
Some also claim that the digestion of meat releases harmful byproducts into our system. This is true, however such are our adaptations to eating meat that our bodies are quite able to dispose of said products without any adverse effects.
I don't think a veggie diet benefits anyone in any way better than a better meat eating diet could at all. If you have no ethical qualms, it's quite pointless. PETA will tell you otherwise, but they have very strong ethical opinions, and mould their 'evidence' around it. There is, for example, some evidence that vegans live longer and are at less risk from cancer and heart disease; however those studies show only a very marginal and insignificant difference and none of those studies have yet managed to identify meat as the only variable. Veggies are less likely to smoke, drink or eat junk food, and eat a wider range of fruit and veg, making the test results inaccurate and unreliable.
So, in summary: it isn't healthier to avoid meat. You can be healthy without meat, but likely not as healthy as if you did, assuming you kept things like the wide range of fruit and veg that a veggie diet usually entails. Too much meat can be bad, but normal amounts are no problem at all. Any health benefits that come from a veggie diet come from a wide range of fruit and veg, and being health conscious, as veggies often are; that doesn't require you to not eat meat.
I don't think a veggie diet benefits anyone in any way better than a better meat eating diet could at all. If you have no ethical qualms, it's quite pointless. PETA will tell you otherwise, but they have very strong ethical opinions, and mould their 'evidence' around it. There is, for example, some evidence that vegans live longer and are at less risk from cancer and heart disease; however those studies show only a very marginal and insignificant difference and none of those studies have yet managed to identify meat as the only variable. Veggies are less likely to smoke, drink or eat junk food, and eat a wider range of fruit and veg, making the test results inaccurate and unreliable.
The only arguments against vegetarians are from flesh eaters.I as a vegetarian don't have a problem with my lifestyle.
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