Vegan?

[franglais]

Our chickens cost nothing to keep and they provide meat when they stop laying, three lambs bought in spring and killed in November keep us in good quality meat and save me work on grass cutting and hedge trimming. Try living on a diet that is natural to the northern hemisphere, no potatoes, tomatoes, oranges etc. Our long distant ancestors started eating meat and their brain size increased, this also gave them time to develop culturally, if we had continued to spend every waking minute searching for nuts and berries, we would still be in the trees.

I don't know what you were eating but most vegetarians stuggle not to eat too many carbs, oils and sugars. Winter's easy, grains, pulses and nuts all last and don't need feeding like animals do.

Poor hunter uhuh....not convinced. The majority of food procured by hunter gatherers isn't meat. A man with no wife goes hungry because she and her children forage most of the grub.


cheers,
Toddy

 

[santaman2000]

Our chickens cost nothing to keep and they provide meat when they stop laying, three lambs bought in spring and killed in November keep us in good quality meat and save me work on grass cutting and hedge trimming. Try living on a diet that is natural to the northern hemisphere, no potatoes, tomatoes, oranges etc......

-Wild potatoes occur throughout the Americas; both NORTH and South America. They werefirst CULTIVATED in Peru but they occur naturally on both continents.
-Tomatoes originated in Mexico; last time I looked at a map, Mexico was still part of NORTH America
-Oranges originated in Southeast Asia

Both continents (North America and Asia) are still in the Northern hemishere. But you're right in that they're not native to Europe.

 

[Toddy]

The meat eating brain size relationship is debateable. The archaeological record is biased in favour of bone preservation rather than plant preservation.

It's the cooking of food that makes the enormous difference to the availability of humanity to digest and benefit from most foods. Combined with the ability to store nuts (hazelnuts are found in prodigious quantities in European archaeological sites, for instance, as are water chestnuts), etc., is every bit as important.

The hunters you speak of Santaman are a tiny percentage of humanity. Until we learned to farm we were vulnerable to so many potential hungers that most children did not survive. Even a tiny increase from farming made an enormous difference to population numbers and concommitant labour availabilty for more food gathering.

Her children? No wife, no children. No wife and no children and men go hungry.
Talk all you like about hunting, etc., but it's unreliable. It brings in feasting foods, though after the advent of goat, pig and cattle raising even that wasn't necessary.
But the field that will feed one cow, will produce crops enough to feed ten people.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

Her children? No wife, no children. No wife and no children and men go hungry.

Pretty sure that "no man, no children" applies just as much - unless biology has changed?

 

[santaman2000]

.....Her children? No wife, no children. No wife and no children and men go hungry.....

-No man, no children and women go hungry.
-No women, no children and men take slaves and still eat.

 

[santaman2000]

....The hunters you speak of Santaman are a tiny percentage of humanity. Until we learned to farm we were vulnerable to so many potential hungers that most children did not survive. Even a tiny increase from farming made an enormous difference to population numbers and concommitant labour availabilty for more food gathering.....

No arguements regarding the increase from farming. But I'm not sure I'd call two entire continents (possibly three as I don't know enough about Australia) "a small percentage of humanity." That's either one third or one half of the inhabited continents.

 

[Goatboy]

-No women, no children and men take slaves and still eat.

No Woman, No Crime.

 

[Toddy]

No arguements regarding the increase from farming. But I'm not sure I'd call two entire continents (possibly three as I don't know enough about Australia) "a small percentage of humanity." That's either one third or one half of the inhabited continents.

You spoke of the hunters of the arctic whose subsistance is simply that. After disease vectors were equalised only carb rich and always available food increased their numbers.
Hunter gatherer numbers are low, they always have been. Only the advent of farming raised them significantly and that growth is still running. Compared to the population of the rest of the world, hunter gatherer numbers are really small.

For Hunter/gatherers, no wife and the man goes hungry. Children once out of toddlerhood actually bring in food too.
Among the arctic hunters, no wife means the man isn't properly dressed either and his hunting suffers even more.
Anthropology has huge numbers of texts and research that amply demonstrates this; from the people of the Andaman islands to the Inuit, from the deserts of Africa to the continental mass of Australia.

The berdache do make very good 'wives', and they are stronger than women (see the Native American texts for this) but they produce no children, and children are not only the future, they are very much the present.

To return to the OP and the vegan issue. It is not only possible to live healthily as a vegan or vegetarian, but it might well come to be the only way that humanity can feed everyone.
It's all very well saying that a red deer will yield 522,670 calories, but to create those calories they combust the whole beast and measure the temperature and time. I can render most of a beast down into edibility, but frankly I think I'd struggle to make something appealing to the appetite of even the most die hard carnivore with some of it. Cultural issues too come into play. Pigs trotters used to be a sought after meal, very few people eat boiled pigs feet nowadays though.

Anyway, I made lemon jelly (jam) tonight and it's lovely on fine oatcakes for supper
Bon appetite

cheers,
M

 

[santaman2000]

You spoke of the hunters of the arctic whose subsistance is simply that. After disease vectors were equalised only carb rich and always available food increased their numbers.......
.......The berdache do make very good 'wives', and they are stronger than women (see the Native American texts for this) but they produce no children, and children are not only the future, they are very much the present.......

Actually I mentioned the hunters in the Arctic, and the Apache, and others as examples. Yes I agree that farming incresed population. But I wasn't comparing hunter/gatherer numbers to farmers; rather I was comparing those hunter/gatherers in the new world to those in the older world because I thought you were infering a different culture among them.

I had to look up "berdache." That's not what I meant when I said they'd take slaves. Slaves included children and women. If they could use them, they did. If they couldn't use them, they'd sell (barter) them away for something they could use. If they couldn't do that, they cut their throats ( a band of Cherokee did just that with unwanted slaves when the settlers in a small Texas town didn't want to buy them. After seeing that, they alweays bought the slaves offered thereafter.

 

[santaman2000]

.......I can render most of a beast down into edibility, but frankly I think I'd struggle to make something appealing to the appetite of even the most die hard carnivore with some of it. Cultural issues too come into play. Pigs trotters used to be a sought after meal, very few people eat boiled pigs feet nowadays though.....

You don't live in the South do you? Boiled pigs feet for family reunions. And jars of pickled pigs feet set on the bar in bar-rooms as snacks. Lets not forget about chicken feet and beeks. A delicasy down here.

 

[rik_uk3]

Pigs trotters (when you can get them) are yummy yummy With mushy peas, vinegar and pepper For those who like a good stew try adding a couple of trotters to the mix, they will enrich the gravy wonderfully well. Try a classic French daube de boeuf recipe its slow cooked and stunning. Santaman do you cook Ox Tail? Another wonderful base for a stew.

 

[santaman2000]

Pigs trotters (when you can get them) are yummy yummy With mushy peas, vinegar and pepper For those who like a good stew try adding a couple of trotters to the mix, they will enrich the gravy wonderfully well. Try a classic French daube de boeuf recipe its slow cooked and stunning. Santaman do you cook Ox Tail? Another wonderful base for a stew.

I haven't cooked it Rik. But I do eat it. Oxtail soup's one of my favorites.

 

[rik_uk3]

Your missing out, slow cooked Ox tail stew is just about the finest beef stew you'll eat.

 

[santaman2000]

I'm gonna have to try cooking some then. You've got me hungry now and it's my bedtime. LOL.

 

[franglais]

Two important points, meat does not only come from farmed animals, and many animals are reared on land that is unsuitable for growing vegetables and some crops. Also when land is turned over to growing crops it brings man in to conflict with the animals that also want to eat the crop, fine if you are a meat eater, you kill the animal for food, so you get a trade off, a vegetarian faces two choices kill the animals so they can no longer pose a threat or expand vast amounts of energy scaring away the animals, look at the situation in the developing world in this regard.
Where I live most of the farming is beef and sheep and most people breed chickens, rabbits and goats for food, wildlife is in abundance, deer share the fields with the cattle, woods are maintained for shade, hunting and firewood, pesticides and herbicides are hardly used, if the land was turned over to growing crops animals would be seen as a menace, woods would be seen as a waste of good land (a view held by many industrial food producers and farmers in the developing world) in short our natural environment would suffer. The field behind us is ready to be cut for hay, at the moment it is teeming with butterflies, crickets, bees and has swallows skimming for food, several species of wild flowers flourish, would it be such a rich source of life if wheat or corn was grown there?

 

[woodpoet]

How does that work. There were wild Boar in this country for hundreds of years until we killed them all off. now reintroduced. Also Bears and Wolves. Wild birds as well. Vegans don't cause extinction. It's the people who kill animals for food, sport ? etc.

 

[woodpoet]

Sorry if my comments sounded weird. For some reason I came into the thread at bottom of page four, about Vegans causing extinction of 4 species of animal.

 

[Toddy]

Franglais it takes less land to feed vegans and vegetarians than it does to support animals for milk or meat.

It's a win/win situation

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Humpback]

If we weren't supposed to eat vegans why do they taste so good?

I think I may have got confused there.
Toddy, from my personal experience of one vegan it was more of a " whine/whine situation"


Alan

 

[British Red]

Franglais it takes less land to feed vegans and vegetarians than it does to support animals for milk or meat.

It's a win/win situation

cheers,
Toddy

I don't think Franglais was arguing that point - the points he was making were that animals are often reared on land unsuitable for growing vegetables (hill farming sheep is a good example). The production of meat adds to available food since one could no raise vegetables there.

He also made the point that I have made before that biodiversity and wildlife does better on grazing land than crop land. When I see the monoculture deserts used for farming vegetables around here it is far from a "win"