Longevity, vegans, meat, booze, and smoking

IkNOwSTuff
reply to post by LittleByLittle

 

The glib indifference Ive seen on this thread has depressed me

That's par for the course. Tormenting vegans with meaningless rhetoric and arrogant misinformation happens in every conversation about the subject, even here on ATS, sadly. People seems to be immensely proud of their hypocrisy and ignorance to the point where it's absolutely a waste of time trying to engage in debate. I can pretty much guarantee that most people who consume meat wouldn't have the stomach to watch it being slaughtered, let alone do it themselves. That's a fact. But they'll eat it if someone else does the dirty work...as long as they don't see the suffering, it's miraculously ok. It's not even a debate about health or ethics...it's entitlement all the way.

I am a vegan who drinks and smokes

Reason I am vegan is the cruelty the animals have to suffer on their conveyor belt of life.

reply to post by beezzer


All those stats are total BS. The oldest people in the world come from a russian villiage far off the grid. Most live to be like 100. They all eat tons of meat, yougart, butter, fat, as there main stay as they raise live stock. It's not all about diet. Genes plays a big part for 1. Also just plain luck. Diet is way down the line.

spartacus699
reply to post by beezzer

 

All those stats are total BS. The oldest people in the world come from a russian villiage far off the grid. Most live to be like 100. They all eat tons of meat, yougart, butter, fat, as there main stay as they raise live stock. It's not all about diet. Genes plays a big part for 1. Also just plain luck. Diet is way down the line.

##

I believe Ikaria a Greek island has more people 100 and over than anywhere else. Watched a doco about it, they grow all their own food, no chemicals, drink, smoke, etc. They also have a tight community lonliness is unknown people help each other.
Found this link.
www.theguardian.com...

As for anyone who thinks having an extra 8 years on this planet is no big deal, why do people with life threatening illness such as cancer take drugs to prolong their lives for a few years?

reply to post by beezzer


I find this post quite incredibly closed minded. I have been a vegan for some 20 years now and I enjoy life, I enjoy my food and I enjoy being healthy. To make out that people are not enjoying life because they do not eat meat is a very naive attitude.

reply to post by beezzer


firstly, that report showed vegetarians not vegans lived longer. This is an important point as I've seen meta studies that show as a group, vegans tie with heavy red meat eaters for shortest life span.

Secondly... vegetarians eat way more fruit and veg and nuts, none of the toxic preseravtives and carcinogens in preserved red meat, way less alcohol and tobacco, exercise more, have a slightly higher IQ and higher socio economic status. All these things add to life span. A lot of the shorter life span of red meat eaters is due to the crap in stuff like bacon and ham. Eat fresh meat, it's harmless. Fish actually appears to be anti carcinogenic and protects against all kinds of degenerative illnesses.

Really you need to head for meta studies (combined multiple studies) for a balanced overview. The common conclusion isn't that veggies live longer from not consuming meat, it's from a generally healthier lifestyle and better standard of living and a higher level of f&v.

I',m not making this up. If anyone's up for it, ask me and I'll PM you the studies. The last one I saw concluded that after factoring in other lifestyle choices veggies had the same lifespan as moderate red meat eaters and shorter than fish eaters. less likely to die from heart attacks but more likely to go from suicide, strokes etc. Something to do with not enough omega three oils.

Not what you hear from vegetarian promoting sites, i'll bet. Humans evolved eating a meat heavy diet. Hunter gatherers typically get 2/3 of their calories from fresh flesh, the rest of their diet is veg and some fruit. It's just silly to think the diet we evolve on is damaging to our health.

My friend is a vegan who smokes, so does that count as a normal length life or not for her?

reply to post by Biigs


Personally, I think it matters not a bit.

Lifestyle choices should be that; choices.

If you adopt a dietary choice simply to live longer, you may be in for a disappointment.

If you adopt a dietary choice for reasons personal, then you should be free to do that.

I just think that people should be free to choose whatever lifestyle they want.

beezzer
Linked is a report about apparent longevity in people who are vegans.

They apparently live @ 8 years longer than those of us who do not practice this dietary protocol.

Now personally, if you could increase a lifespan by 100 years just be changing your diet, I'd say, "Pass the sprouts!"

But 8 years? And that's 8 years max. There's no guarantee that you automatically live that much longer.

There have been a few threads recently on vegan diets, and for those that espouse that sort of thing, yay for you. If that's what you want, then you should do it.

We hear all the time of how bad smoking is for you (and it is)
About how bad drinking is for you (and it is)
About how eating meat, salt, fats, trans fats, sugars blahblahblah is bad for you (and it is)

So we can get another 8 years (maybe) of life?

There's no guarantee in life. Genetics, accidents, where you live all play factors as well.

______________________________________________________________________________

We're only on this little rock for such a short time. Shouldn't we just enjoy (in moderation) all that we can?

I don't endorse bingeing on anything. Binge oreo's and milk could probably kill you.

But live it up! Live your life. Enjoy your life. Worrying about salt content might kill you faster than the actual "salt content"!

(Eating pastrami tonight, had a steak for lunch, am now sipping on a scotch and smoking a cigarette)

As you said, there's no guarantees in life. Heck, you might get hit by a bus when going to pick up the broccoli

My dad is 94. He eats everything, and I mean everything. Heck at 94, he has a better appetite than I have. He makes sure he gets his 3 squares a day and snacks in between. LOL

For about the past year now, his mobility has been limited by fractured vertebra due to his age and not any sort of trauma. Up until that time he was still walking about a mile a day and still driving. He would volunteer at the hospital one day a week. At Thanksgiving he told me "the Doc said my heart and lungs are all really strong, but my damn back is killing me." Man I felt so bad for him. If it weren't for that he'd still be active. He has a sharp mind and since he had glaucoma surgery, he has 20/20 vision Ah well, getting old sucks!

The attitude of some of the people on here is really disgusting. Equating 'living the good life' with denying the torture your food suffers before it gets to your plate is obscene.

Maybe if we didn't feel free to have a daily holocaust in the millions of lives of pigs, cows, chickens, etc., we'd be a more peaceful planet.

Maybe we shouldn't be in an economic situation that encourages the many to pay the few to kill our food for us. What kind of lives do you think the cow 'knockers' live? You know, those guys who are paid to dispatch hundreds of cows every working shift, so you can enjoy your steaks?

If you knew what really goes on with your meat, you'd gag on it. If you don't, I sincerely ask you to consider whether or not you're a psychopath or sociopath.

reply to post by signalfire

Maybe if we didn't feel free to have a daily holocaust in the millions of lives of pigs, cows, chickens, etc., we'd be a more peaceful planet

About to be manfully unpopular.

ALL food causes death of living things. The vegetables and grain you eat, by necessity rip through land killing masses of insects and worms. I've lived in a rural area. Those birds follow the plough and gobble up masses of worms and bugs, and I'm not even going into the wee things that get sliced apart in the process. Field mice die in their hundreds fo every field of grain harvested. Insects are poisoned with pesticides to protect the crops, birds and rabbits get shot and trapped to stop them eating the crops. If we didn't do that we'd have our crops stripped bare and we'd starve.

Do they not count if you don't see them on a plate? Or do they not count because they are small?

I wonder what the number of deaths per calorie are for veggies vs meat.

I'd also like to point out there are NO vegetable sources of the type of omega three oils our bodies require. The types of O3 you see being pushed on veggie sites are not the correct one. The only bioactive O3 that humans can metabolise comes from dead creatures.

afterthought: I'd like to know how hunter gatherer tribes in the amazon are supposed to survive if they can't hunt. There wouldn't be eskimos either.

If you knew what really goes on with your meat, you'd gag on it. If you don't, I sincerely ask you to consider whether or not you're a psychopath or sociopath

Like I said, I'm country. Fished and ate the fish. Killed and plucked geese. People have been rearing and slaughtering their own animals for about 10,000 years. I'm no more a psychopath then a chicken is when it's eating a worm, no more amoral than an osprey eating a fish or a fox eating a chicken. Humans are just animals doing what animals do, and we evolved to eat a meat based diet. Isotope values on the bones of very ancient humans show their main source of calories was flesh, typically between 60% and 70%.

reply to post by Antigod


This thread was more on the longevity of life than the morality of eating meat.

But I have to agree with the points you brought up.

In another thread I stated that the human species was just three hot meals away from living in caves, pooping in dirt and howling at the moon.

I'm either more honest on the advancement of our species or a throw-back to our more primitive beginnings.

reply to post by beezzer

Bob, I can't really argue with you. I eat meat. I respect the kills. Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. I can honestly say that perhaps I'm not as evolved as others. But then again, I choose not to be.

this makes me the most sad of all; the notion that there is truly no reason for causing such unbelievable suffering, yet still continuing with it.

if you would like to continue holding your position, then i challenge you to watch earthlings. i would not say that you are a bad person, but that you do not know the extent of what such eating habits cause.

doing some research into where your food comes from is the LEAST you can do. farm animals are exempt from "anti-cruelty regulations".
www.lcanimal.org...

this link does not contain any overtly graphic images. it quickly summarizes what is done to animals that you eat. the least you can do is know the facts.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


With respect, I'll explore the links.

Regards,

reply to post by Antigod

ALL food causes death of living things.

our farming practices are antiquated. with vertical farming, year round crops could be had using a fraction of the space, energy, and water. pesticides wouldn't be necessary because growing would take place inside large greenhouses.

but to answer your question taking into account current farming practices, most of the grain in the U.S. is taken and fed to livestock. cows have a 54:1 plant protein to animal protein conversion ratio. this means that a very large amount of food is fed to livestock to produce a much smaller amount of food while using about 2300-2500 gallons of water per lb of beef. a pound of wheat takes 25-30 gallons.

so yes, critters in fields die during harvesting (it is avoidable), but that does not excuse the 10 billion other animals who suffer every minute of their lives until they are slaughtered.

reply to post by beezzer

I think the key is the balance and moderation again,but as long as you are happy and feel healthy with whatever diet and life style you choose to follow in your life,it is perfectly ok to do so...I personally enjoy whatever I do or do not do it at all,even if it is bad for me....I am going to make myself a killer lasagna with garlic bread and a nice bowl of salad with a glass of cianti,, and yes I might even roll a cig and listen to some peter gabriel to refresh memories of my youth...I guess it perhaps takes up a couple of days off my life,but wth.

A lot of the "health benefits" of various lifestyles (including vegan) are probably also influenced by the "placebo effect"; so if you believe it, then it works.

reply to post by Skyfloating

there was a brilliant presentation by one dr. greger MD on youtube going over the top 15 leading causes of death and how a vegetarian/vegan diet reduces 14 of them drastically (only accidental deaths cannot be shown to change).

sadly, as of a few days ago the youtube account was suspended. he and the others running nutritionfacts.org are pushing for a review because the content on their channel in no way violated youtube conditions. you can still visit the site and read through articles and the source studies that they are based on.

the placebo effect may be involved, but there are known scientific reasons as to why a plant-based diet is much better for humans. perhaps i shall make a thread and present some of the information if i have time.

Bob Sholtz
perhaps i shall make a thread and present some of the information if i have time.

That sounds like a useful thing to do...

reply to post by beezzer

Bob, I can't really argue with you. I eat meat. I respect the kills. Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. I can honestly say that perhaps I'm not as evolved as others. But then again, I choose not to be.

With respect, I'll explore the links.

You’re coming along nicely, beezer, they may make a convert out of you yet.

Will this thread be the one where you realize your depravity and the poverty of your soul? Will you finally repent of your sins and except Vegetarianism as the way to salvation?