@BarryFromMars
The war on raw milk is something exclusive to the US thanks to Monsanto’s hand up the government’s posterior. It’s quite mad. But it’s true you need to boil it, just like you wash your vegetables, or you’re gonna catch death.
Might be good for me to do in my life, going to a dietician. I was mostly vegetarian until my eleventh birthday, there was a time when I ate what I think was beef jerky as a kid (I didn’t like it then) but other than that I don’t recall eating animal meat on any other occasion. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think I was unhealthy for a kid then either, the unhealthiest I’ve ever been was as a teenager for multiple reasons:
I rarely drank water (Now I drink three or four cups before I eat anything in a day);
I overate;
I let food sit for hours before eating it while playing Xbox;
I also stayed up late at night playing videogames (I still stay up late but not playing video games)
Dunno what to say there, except food that’s been in a freezer for ages tastes like the freezer. That might be OK for a near starving man but I don’t like that flavor as a non-starving man.
That’s what I’ve heard too. While we’re on the subject I’ve purchased raw milk before, which didn’t give me any problems and is an incredibly versatile thing. I don’t know why exactly but I’ve been hearing raw milk isn’t as dangerous as a lot of people think it is, especially now that we’ve had refrigeration for over a hundred years. If the cow’s sick, don’t milk it.
No idea but this is what I’m wondering about raw milk these days, I read people who are lactose intolerant can drink it because it has something in it which pasteurized homogenized milk doesn’t have.
@Keith Mowz
Didn’t look into it myself. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
The point is, if you want to be as healthy as you can be, you’ll have to eat balanced meals with specific ingredients from specific food groups at correct intervals, not just spruce up your diet with occasional chicken and cucumber.
Or, if your genetics are kind to you, just stuff your face like a pig.
@BarryFromMars
Freshness does have some effect over just what’s in your food. Some nutrients and vitamins will break down over time. However, this can sometimes be a good thing as well. As I mentioned before, there are some compounds found in plants that are inedible until they are broken down into simpler compounds. Sometimes they can even be poisonous to humans. Almonds are a good example. Cooking is one of the ways we can break down the normally poisonous compounds in some plants and almonds are highly poisonous until they are cooked. In fact, it’s usually illegal to sell raw almonds to the public for this reason.
As for vegetables being ‘fresher’ than meat, that’s a common misconception a lot of vegans have. It’s like the difference between buying a log and buying a chair. The log is ‘fresher’ in that it’s not been processed into something more useful, but if you want to something to sit on you’d be better off buying the chair.
@Align
Boiling, pasteurization, drying, cooking, freezing and thawing tend to kill of a large chunk of vitamins and other useful compounds. Advanced age is typically only an excuse for your food to become infested with bacteria, though certain chemicals will also break down over time.
Fun fact: you can technically very likely survive on a diet of nothing but potatoes and butter. Historically speaking, a lot of poor peasants have.
@BarryFromMars
I would wager that a carnivore diet is more densely packed with nutrients compared to plant matter, as the animal parts have already winnowed out the useful bits.
Freshness isn’t an issue when it comes to proteins and vitamins etc; molecules don’t have a best-before date.
@BarryFromMars
My advice: go to a dietician, or at least read about the food pyramid. The properly healthy way to eat is quite complicated, and practiced by almost no one in the modern society. Pain in the ass, too. Though not impossible.
It’s a common fallacy to assume meat is part of an essential diet. So it is, but then fish (omega fats) and going out in the sun (vitamin D) are just as important. If you want your body not to fall apart, meat alone ain’t gonna do it.
I still have no idea if a healthy vegetarian diet is possible. It’d be nice if it was.
… and elaborating, I thought that meat generally = not as fresh as vegetation because the nutrients went through the animal/bird/etc which means there’s not as much in it.
Then again my paternal Grandma lived to be 93 and didn’t go on any big big health food splurges or something, as far as I know - and she frequently ate chicken in her life. She wasn’t anywhere near even chubby let alone fat, though - I’ve not known of fat people living past 90 but what do I know?
Thanks. i’m not sure what else to say, the general gist and idea I thought was the fresher the food the more nutrients and the more the body can process them but it’s not true is it? Though I’ve heard reports that the longest-living people on the planet are mostly vegetarian, then comes along a tale of some who literally smoked cigars frequently and lived to be 90 or something. What do I know of it if anything?
@BarryFromMars
I hear being vegan is not easy. Especially if you have food allergies and intolerance.
Also, social economics, geography, culture, availability, other body health related issues factor in.
@BarryFromMars
The full explanation is pretty complex, but basically, through digestion an animal breaks down the compounds found in the vegetation it eats, and metabolizes them into other compounds it needs to live. This could mean breaking apart a complex inedible compound found in plants into simpler compounds the body can use, or even combining them into new compounds that don’t normally occur in plants. The reason some animals (herbivores) can survive purely off plants while others (carnivores) couldn’t, is because the of the digestive systems needed for these processes. Carnivores can devote more energy to other things (such as larger brains) because less caloric intake is used for digestion. Omnivores, such as humans, either have some of the digestive processes needed to process plant mater, but lack others. Other omnivores may be transitional forms between carnivores and herbivores. For example, there was once in prehistory a carnivorous kangaroo, believe it or not.
Though I’ve thought about going vegan, my Dad kept buying chicken and whatever else. A person can get proteins in seeds and nuts and grains, I’m not sure about all types of proteins and other various vitamins but if it wasn’t in the vegetation the animal ate in the first place where did it come from?
@Align
One of the reasons I stay away from this argument is because of how absolutely positively evil some arguments get. Honestly this comment section is a breath of fresh air when it comes to the topic. Good job, guys.
@Draco_2k
Actually yeah, thinking about it more I’ve seen people disagree on there even being a moral question, so it’s definitely not just the health question causing arguments…
@Align
Not in my experience, though maybe that’s because I don’t really argue the subject. The nutcases are often the most visible.
I know when I had to increase my weight, I was specifically prescribed a plant protein mix - similar to what you’d buy in bodybuilding shops, except not shit - because it’s superior to any meat diet in every regard. So I know there’s at least some truth to that argument.
To add my two cents, I think the choice between “eat meat” and “dont eat meat” is a false choice.
From moral perspective, it’d be right to avoid stuffing poor cattle into meat grinders. From survival perspective, it’d be right to make sure you get all your proteins to stay healthy. Combine the two, and the easy compromise is to simply eat as much meat as a healthy diet would require, and not go overboard on production. This will both maximize human happiness and reduce the number of livestock having to be speared through the forehead.
Not that hard.
But between one side deciding it’s evil to eat eggs and drink milk and another thinking eating twenty chicken wings is the road to perfect health, the voice of reason isn’t given the light of day.
@SeraphimDawn
True. The problem most people would have over the long term is the ratio of meat to plant matter they’d need. These days we’re used to the idea that meat should only make up a small portion of our diet, with the rest being vegetables and grains. However the majority of the vegetables and grains we eat today have been ‘enriched’ in some way, and not always for the best. Not to mention we often have to expend less calories in getting such food. A purely ‘wild’ diet would be much different, requiring a larger amount of meats to make up the required caloric intake with a lot less effort than it would take on a purely vegetarian diet. Some estimates of the diet of neolithic people place meat as making up 50% to sometimes even 70% peoples’ diets, especially in regions that experience long and harsh winter conditions when edible vegetation is scarce.
