Letters to the Editor
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Seems to be a common delusion.
I have been surprised at the number of people who believe eggs are a dairy product.
For the record, until genetic engineering moves forward a bit more, they're not.
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questionable
It's questionable that full veganism is healthier than vegetarianism with limited dairy. Or, for that matter, that vegetarianism is healthier than omnivorism with limited meat (and I'm a vegetarian).
It would probably be better to just reduce dairy and eggs - too many vegetarians just eats lots of cheese instead.
After all, oxygen is harmful to you - it causes free radicals and the like - but also necessary.
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Idiot
Eggs are not dairy.
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Civility.
Try it sometime, techieguru.
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Going Vegan (aka Becoming a Plant Killer)
I applaud Carol Lay's cartoon, whether in jest or not, as it encourages dialogue. As a vegan, I am asked the strangest questions, and one of them is - "Does it bother you that you kill plants?" Another is, "Do you still eat fish?" For the record, dairy products are excretions from cows, eggs are reproductive bodies from fowl. They are often lumped together as "dairy" however. Fish, fowl, or cow - they are all sentient beings. Sentient beings feel pain. Plants are not sentient. Health benefits aside, becoming a vegan decreases animal suffering in the world.
If you are truly going vegan, Carol, best wishes to you, and enjoy treading more lightly upon the earth.
llsheridan (another plant killer)
P.S. Don't ask me if I care more about animals than people, another stupid question often posed to me.
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great!
loved it
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Huh?
I never understood human herbivores. Most of the teeth in our heads are designed to chew and grind meat.
Give me a prime rib or Philly cheesesteak any day.
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Grinding meat?
No, dear, most of our teeth are NOT designed to "grind" meat. Our incisors are meant to tear meat, but our molars are for grinding the tough grasses our ancestors ate, and that we now call "bread".
We have both kinds of teeth. Some of our distant ancestors (australopithecenes, for instance) were purely vegetarian. Some of our more recent ancestors were able to take advantage of the carcasses they found rotting on the savannah--this might be a reason we prefer our food, and derive more nutrients fromm it, contrary to what the raw foodists believe, when it's been heated a bit.
For myself, I don't want to eat an Africanus' or Robustus' diet, nor do I want to go back to those halcyon days of scavenging what the hyenas left behind. But that's just me...
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To Each His Own
The smugness of vegans/vegetarians is sometimes annoying, but then so is the self-righteous "politically incorrect" overreaction from those who refuse to give up their supersized Whopper combo. Stand sideways in the mirror when you say that, fatso.
My own take on vegetarianism is: Not fricking for me. I enjoy meat, and try not to overdo it, as there are healthier things to put in your body in mass quantities. Also, someone who calls a chicken, a trout, a salmon or a commercially bred turkey a "sentient being" is going way too far, even for a bleeding heart liberal like myself. For horses, cows, sheep and pigs, you have an argument, but a lobster or a crab is just a big bug, about as smart and sentient as the computer I'm typing this on, and turkeys are so dumb they can barely feed themselves.
I am for cutting back on the massive intake of meat in the American diet, not necessarily from an ethical point of view, but from an environmental one. Factory farming is ruining the ground water, contributing hugely to global warming and creates so much waste that we literally can't figure out what to do with it. All of that is apart from the cruelty inflicted on pigs, lambs, calves and dairy cows, who are higher animals and deserve to at least be raised comfortably and slaughtered humanely - which they're decidedly not.
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And you expected...?
Gosh, thanks Lola! Your words have changed my perspective on life, the universe, and everything. From now on, I will try civility! All because of some chick on the internet. Yay, internet!
I hope the jolt of smug superiority you got from posting your admonition was a really good one, since that's why you did post it - no other reason.
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Was it good for you, too?
And I hope the jolt of smug superiority you got from calling all those who are confused about eggs vs. dairy idiots AND giving Lola a good smackdown was a really good one, since that's why you did post them - no other reason.
There are better ways of correcting people than to call them idiots. You don't even have to go out of your way to be nice to them. Simply pointing out the facts will do just fine.
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Veganenvangelists
I have no problem with people being vegetarians/vegans. None whatsoever. And maybe it WOULD be a better world if we all were--though pretty much the only reason for domestic pigs, cows, sheep and so forth to exist is to provide food/clothing for people--if we all foreswore meat, milk, eggs, leather and wool, those species would die out. What's annoying, though, is the pose of superiority immediately assumed by people who make this choice (and who should know better). They're nearly as annoying as the BARF (for dogs) diet evangelists
For the most part, being a vegetarian/vegan and doing it RIGHT (getting all your nutrients) requires money and time, so I would dispute that vegetarians/vegans are necessarily healthier or thinner than meat eaters. I know vegetarians who eat a LOT of highly processed food which can't be particulary good or healthier than eating meat.
A research doctor where I used to work once told me that cancer is %80 genetic and %20 what you do. So it seems almost like magical thinking to try to use your diet to ward off certain diseases.
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beware of the revenge of the .....................
beefsteak tomato, especially when the zucchini vines creep into your house, up your stairs and then into your bed; beware lest the zucchini vines replace Carol Lay with Carol Zucchini; Carol Zucchini will then be content to simply lay around all day in a bed of well tended dirt and recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen and that will be the end of WayLay