For The Children

OK, this is for just one of my children... Megan McArdle talks up veganism.

Comments

[bgates]

Ice cream sandwiches and white bread for breakfast? Still less stomach-turning than the first seven words of her post.

[kim]

The B12 in grain is adequate. It's naturally there, not grown in the plant, but as a byproduct of the activities of a useful fellow member of the ecosystem. We deify cats, because they prey on mice.
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[syn]

I'm of nordic ancestry and suffer severe anemia if I don't have red meat; note to condescending holier-than-everybody vegans, spinach and legumes don't offer enough iron to cure my low red blood cell blues.

Further I beleive that the consumption of artifical 'vitamins' (pills) encourages disease in the human body however I don't believe it's my place to tell people what to consume.

[boris]

My diet includes more fruit and veggies than some vegetarians I know who subsist primariy on junky carbs and supplement pills.

Doesn't that make me the "true" vegetarian?

Apparently not. It's more defined by what they don't eat i.e. no-meat (some even no dairy & eggs).

Some define their conservatism or liberalism the same way. Understandable maybe but open to reasonable dispute.

[DSA]

Hilzoy has an article on autism spreading no vaccines.

[Porchlight]

I used to like Megan McArdle until I read the first sentence of that post. Okay, I still like her, but that was ridiculous.

Have you ever seen her? She's like eight feet tall and pencil thin. Not a great advert for veganism in my view.

[Nick Kasoff - The Thug Report]

I sometimes go as long as 12 hours without eating any meat. By the end of such a long stretch, I'm grouchy and weak. As to Miss McArdle, she confesses in her own bio that she drinks "extra dry skim milk cappuccino." Can you trust anyone like that?

Nick Kasoff
The Thug Report

[Soylent Red]

I don't remember where I heard it first, but I subscribe to the notion that I didn't achieve the top of the food chain only to abdicate.

And yes Porch, Meg McArdle is on tall drink of Silk.

[bgates]

Soylent - I have a friend who contends vegetarians are crueler than carnivores. Cows, he says, have feet, and could get away if they really wanted to. The poor vegetables are stuck there until the reaper comes for them.

[kim]

Plants have complementary appetites and excretions with animals; bg's right, the immobile are the victims.
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[glasater]

Actually--cattle can really move out if they take a notion to do so.

The thing about iron is that when women stop menstruating--the risk of heart disease increases along with other illnesses.

Syn--you may be healthier than you know.

[cathyf]

I'm also amused by the archaeological record vs the typical granola-crunchy view of human pre-history. The gauzy version is that humans ate nuts and berries and lived in peace and harmony with nature. The archaeological record tells us that "hunter gatherers" ate a diet of like 90% meat and 10% vegetable matter (they can tell by looking at the bones whether the minerals came from plant or animal sources). The archaeologists were also somewhat surprised to discover that the hunter/gatherer ancestors had equality in diet. Everybody -- men, women, children, old people -- all ate lots of meat. Hunter/gatherer bands were small, and had roughly equal numbers of men and women. From injuries observed on skeletons, it appears that women did almost as much of a group's hunting as men did.

Then, about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors invented beer. This was a huge advancement, because it made water much safer to drink. But beer required cultivation of grain. Cultivation of grain required property rights to land. Land ownership required enforcement mechanisms (fighting) where men had great advantages over women. The invention of beer was followed quickly by the invention of bread. Which was fortuitous, since the warrior-kings needed a cheap source of food for feeding their armies of concubines and (male and female) field slaves so that meat could be reserved for fighting men.

So, anyway, the amusing part: 90% meat in diet equals small bands of hunter/gatherers who live in peace and harmony and gender equality, while the rise of grain consumption equals war and slavery and oppression of women.

Then there is the whole "natural" thing. There are few things more processed than soy protein, especially when made into the array of fake meat, fake cheese, etc. The notion that a boca-burger is more "natural" than a hunk of meat on the bbq is pretty laughable on its face. And while we are on the subject of soy... An ovolacto vegetarian diet with lots of dairy & egg products is relatively easy to eat healthy and well-balanced. But with a vegan diet it is virtually impossible to get enough protein without consuming a LOT of soy. And soy contains estrogen. That's great if you are a menopausal woman; not so great otherwise. Babies on soy formula get a weight-adjusted dose of estrogen that is larger than taking birth-control pills. Vegetarian mothers give birth to boys with deformed genitals at twice the rate of non-vegetarian women.

I had a coworker who tells an amusing story... When she briefly flirted with vegetarianism in high school, her father told her the following parable: In prehistoric times, man ate nuts and berries. He was continually on the move with the sheer effort of gathering enough to eat, and so man was always tired. Then, one day, man discovered meat. He ate, and was full, and then, he sat down. For the first time in his life, he was not tired.

[Jane]

Okay, enough about carrots. Has anyone seen any 1:00 numbers?

[Soylent Red]

bgates:

Just so you know, the mental image of a field of soybeans screaming in terror as they are about to be harvested amuses me greatly.

What makes coffee shoot out of my nose is the thought of the one remaining plant crying out,

"You've got to tell people! Tofu is sooooooy!"

[cathyf]

Ah, but the plants are not without their protective mechanisms... It appears that soy contains estrogen precisely because of its toxic effect on birds.

[Thomas Collins]

Good for Megan McArdle! I'm glad she has found gustatory harmonic convergence in a white bread/ice cream sandwich vegan diet. I am going to celebrate Megan's success by going to Outback and having a big thick juicy sirloin!

[kim]

Well, SR, the solar/atmosphere physicists on Steve's climateaudit.org say it's traditional to leave one survivor.
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[Cecil Turner]

I'm with Soylent. What, now I'm supposed to feel guilty about being at the top of the food chain? Not hardly.

Then, about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors invented beer.

Now there's a milestone for ya!

[daddy]

The RhuBarbarians are at the Gate!

[boris]

women did almost as much of a group's hunting as men did

IIRC we used them as bait.

[boris]

It wasn't until beer was invented that we figured out how wrong that was.

[Gmax]

McArdle is an Obamacan if you are trying to connect up the dots. I still dont think she was ever a Republican, maybe better title would have been Libertarian with a very high concern for anything having compassion in the description.

[M. Simon]

Gmax,

I'd call her a libertarian leaning lefty. There seems to have been quite a surge of those lately. They are ruining the brand.

It is not a matter of pragmatism i.e. we have to give ground on this to win our major points. They actually believe in lefty solutions.

Simon

[Porchlight]

I dunno, Simon - her previous nom de blog was Jane Galt. I think she's moved further to the left in recent years, but I don't count her in with the moron hordes at all, even though she seems to be attending their parties.

Then again if she's supporting Obama I take it all back.

[M. Simon]

Porch,

When she was Jane Galt I liked her a lot more.

The war in Iraq seems to have driven a lot of these idiots around the bend despite the fact that it has been American policy for 60 years to pacify a region and then station troops there to prevent a reoccurrence of the troubles. A very successful policy I might add.