A big problem (little pun)

[Swordsman3003]

"Captain Kirk, this is Spock. Your obesity is preventing us from reaching warp three."

[Error of Logic]

I always thought it was more like, especially in the later eps:

Kirk: "Beam me up, Scotty."
Scot: "I canae do it captain, you're too fat."
Kirk: "More power from the engines."
Scot: "Engines be damned, you're pulling the ship down... at least drop the ham."

Oh, that one is good. I like it. ^^

[Nithos]

I think if someone's bulk is such that they take up two seats, they should pay for two seats, if only so some poor chump doesn't get stuck with the seat next to them on a full flight wondering how they're going to get the fuck out of Kentucky if someone else's ass is already in their seat, and the one beside it. Anything under physically occupying two seats, though, and there's no point in differentiating between a heavy and light passenger. If they sell X seats and are able to fill X seats, great. If they sell X seats but the physical makeup of the passengers is such that they require X+1 seats to get everyone on the plane, there's a problem.

I am 5 foot 1 and was frequently underweight because my idiot mother was - and still is - a born-again vegetarian who inflicted her diet on two barely out of the womb children.

Wow, and I thought the crazy roommate my sister had that tried to make their cat a vegan was bad...

I spend way too much time talking about my health on this site; I'm going to have to draw some tentacle porn to compensate somehow.

Well if that's the deal then... So how's that hernia been? Any thyroid problems? And hey, heard much about the bird flu? And isn't mad cow a funny topic?

[Jackalope]

Part of the problem is that almost no one fits in airline seats in coach class. There was one flight we took on one of the canadian lines that's apparently a commuter jet--I've never seen the model used elsewhere. The plane was short as well as narrow. Some of the guys with us who were over 6 foot tall were having to bend down so they wouldn't bang their heads on the roof of the aisle. The loo was an instant experience in claustrophobia--I've been in MRI/CT scanners with more wiggle room. Since I'm a gimp, I got a bulkhead row seat, and got one of the very few seats where your knees weren't scrunched up under your chin. I don't think I could sit in a regular seat in that plane, as my legs don't bend that way.

We're not sure who that plane was built to accomodate, but our guess is pixies. Or chibi. Not all the crowding problems on airplanes have to do with fat-ass customers. The airlines just plain don't care how uncomfortable you are. Gotta shove more people in there! So what if the aisle is too narrow to be safely traversed and the ceiling is so low that even short people like me were afraid of scraping our heads...

[Aeridus]

It could be worse... we could all be strapped to a strange contraption in the roof of the plane with little to no space left over and then injected with a special drug that would keep us unconscious and constipated for the entire flight...

[Kingofthemorlocks]

Kirk: "Beam me up, Scotty."
Scot: "I canae do it captain, you're too fat."
Kirk: "More power from the engines."
Scot: "Engines be damned, you're pulling the ship down... at least drop the ham."

[Wilmo]

I'd like to be the first to say... LOL


w00t shatner!

[Chiropteran]

There is definately a moral panic out there, and it is doing much more harm than good. Every message is tinged with hints of "being fat is a moral offense", which leads to righteous indignation, and some people don't do those things that might lead to better health simply because they think that would be agreeing with the merchants of moral panic.

Holy shit! I agree completely. This has gotta be a sign of the apocalypse, and not just any apocalypse either, this is a sign of the Ghastly apocalypse and the four horsemen are packing some serious tentacle

Lock up your schoolgirls!
-----------
Our culture has a very confused attitude towards body image.

On the one hand, we have this totally unrealistic idea about what people should look like, especially what women should look like. And this is where the "freaks that starve themselves" come in. Look at the prognosis for obesity, and then look at the prognosis for anorexia. Anorexia is incredibly lethal, and almost always affects teenaged girls.

And then there's cosmetic surgery. Liposuction is pretty damned dangerous and its primary customers are women who are not dangerously overweight, some women who aren't even overweight at all, but just feel that their normal lumpy female forms are ugly because they are compared to the airbrushed anorexics in the Victoria's Secret catalogue.

And those who are naturally big have a really hard time, since anything outside of this unattainable ideal is stigmatized as laziness. It really is given this moral quality, perhaps because we react against the implications of our convenience-driven culture. And it's not just those with obesity over which they may or may not have control, it's any woman bigger than a size 6. Just about every woman in our culture is saddled with horrendous body image issues. I just heard a friend of mine who is a (natural) size 0 talk about how her thighs are her "problem area." They're probably smaller than my biceps!

----------------

That is a small sample of the destruction wrought by our ideal of body type.

But our actual body compositions are causing an awful lot of trouble too. Our fatty convenience-food diet and sedentary lifestyle are incredibly unhealthy.

-------------------

This brings us to the other hand, on which we have a culture of convenience, a sedentary culture, a TV culture, a Drive-through culture. A culture of excess that is almost infantile at times. Other cultures don't use cars so much, or elevators. Not a lot of other cultures spend so much time inside the house either, especially in front of the TV. Which is worse for you: A French meal at a sidewalk cafe with friends, or a TV dinner containing the same amount of fat in front of the plasma screen alone? And our TV dinners are much bigger a lot of the time. This is America, we want bigger, more, all you can eat.

And we are defiant about it. There's a mindset on the left that says "Anorexia is destructive; the current ideal of feminine beauty is bullshit. Why should we deprive ourselves just so some man will find us attractive? Let's be fat happy goddesses"

And there's a mindset on the right that says "everyone is picking on us for being ugly Americans and for our resource consumption. Damn them! We have every right to our huge SUV's and our McDonalds, how dare they look down on us?! We saved your butts in WWII, you know!"

....

Now, as for the first argument, it's true that the current ideal of feminine beauty is fucked, and it's true that men are, (though to a _much_ lesser degree in most things; because in our culture a man's physical appearance just isn't as much a part of how he's perceived as a woman's physical appearance is of how she's perceived, due to the much more pronounced sexual commodification of women in our culture), held to some unreasonable standards as well.

However, that does not mean it's a good idea to be overweight and stop caring about your body. You don't have to be thin; be strong! Go and pump some iron; women need to do weight-bearing exercise; it prevents osteoporosis and nobody is going to take away your feminist card for working out. If they try, you can kick their ass. Do some cardio; there's no reason you should sacrifice your health to spite the patriarchy either. That's just cutting off your nose to spite your face.
....

As for the other argument, yes American culture has value; no culture is to be dismissed out of hand, yes WWII happened and we helped France, but that doesn't mean that we have nothing to learn from other cultures, or that we don't have problems. One of them, a growing one, is our weight.


Oh, and go ahead and cut things off of your body. It'll really piss me off, honest. Here; have a steak knife.
---------------------

There is a problem with the way being overweight is stigmatized, and the way overweight is defined. Our standards are unreasonable.

However, we do have a weight problem as a country and we need to address that too. It doesn't make sense to expect everyone to be Twiggy, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to go the absolute opposite direction either.

----------------------
As for heredity vs. environment, it's a combination of the two.

Our culture is a very sedentary one. We drive through, we take the elevator, we sit in front of the TV probably more than anyone else in the world.

Our national "cuisine" (in quotes pursuant to Sidney Mintz's appraisal of it, and with what I'm talking about, appropriate) is horrendously unhealthy. Yes, there are healthy hamburgers, but Americans don't eat them often. Becase fat is pleasurable and fast food is designed to give very visceral (that is to say, lots of fat and sugar) pleasure and be easy to make, not to be healthy. Fresh vegetables take time to process. The poor quality of th meat you use is less evident if you slather it in grease and sauce.

Making healthier food requires skill and time. It requires individual artistry, a thousand tiny decisions made by a human and something made that way isn't consistent. We want consistency, we want, convenience, and we want cheap food (which is achieved by de-skilling the jobs; making stuff that's easy and mindless), so we eat a lot of fast food.


However, I eat pretty damned well. I love salad and try to eat it at least one or two meals a day. I am a vegetarian, which doesn't automatically make me thin, but does mean that I know an awful lot about nutrition (Oh, I should specify; I'm a vegetarian without a protein deficiency; you gotta do your research to do that) I exercise a _lot_. I take the stairs, I walk instead of driving whenever possible; I park 15 minutes away from school and walk 30 minutes at least each day. My idea of a good time is to walk around somewhere interesting all day.

And I am proud of myself for getting back to a size 12. The only time I was a size small since adolescence was after being starving-poor for several months.

I do have a certain amount of control; last semester I got pretty out of shape because I was taking a very demanding class and had no time to do anything but that class. I did nothing but read and write. I ate convenience food (which costs like 3 times as much when you're a vegetarian) I knew I was choosing to let the physical fall by the wayside for a time so that I could get an A in a class that _nobody_ gets an A in. I was up to a 14-16 and I felt awful all the time.

But left to myself, my lifestyle is pretty damned good and right now I'm on a very aggressive program of diet and exercise and I'm down to a 12; that's it for me, that's what my body will do. I might make 10 by the end of the semester but it's been a damn long time since I've been a 10, so I'm not holding my breath.

I have some control, but there are limits to what my body will do, and to what will even look good on me; I'm a solid gal, usually a muscular solid gal, which is not bad; if I were a guy with a body composition at this point on the probability distribution, I'd be considered quite hot. However, I could _never_, without severe gastrointestinal, or lethal, illness, be as thin as the current ideal of feminine beauty. Nor would that be the least bit attractive on me.

My SO on the other hand, is in his late 30s, eats horribly (though lightly), gets no exercise, and is 6'4" tall and weighs 155-160 pounds. He is just naturally thin. It doesn't mean healthy; he gets awful back pain because he sits at a desk all day, and he has asthma, but he's absolutely stunning. His abs are gorgeous. I still have a belly It's not fair.

There are such things as body types; I'll always be short and stocky, he'll always be tall and thin. Does that mean our lifestyles have nothing to do with our physiques? No, but heredity is a factor.

There are also people who do have glandular disorders and it's also extremely difficult for people who are in advanced states of hypokinetic obesity to work their way back.

--------------------

So it's neither okay to expect everyone, especially women, to look like Kiki, nor is it wise to completely neglect your body to prove a point and obesity is neither an inescapable preordained condition nor a pure product of indolence and gluttony.

-----------------

Funny thing is, the Indian McDonald's had already switched to a pure vegetable oil when that shit went down.

What happened was McDonalds had switched to _frying_ in vegetable oil, but they were still putting beef boullion on the fries, which they declined to mention while they were crowing about the vegetable oil. That’s why they got in so much trouble.

Maybe if you eat a certain kind of food often enough your body builds up an immunity? And then when it loses that immunity it can't handle it as well?

I’ll agree with that. I’m a vegetarian (have been for 17 years); used to be strict, recently started eating fish from time to time. BK actually does try to cater to vegetarians; if I have to get a fast food breakfast, I’ll go with a Croissanwich because they’ll make it without meat. Anyway, they make a veggieburger and I thought, “well, I’ll encourage them; I’ll try it.” Got the meal with the veggie whopper with cheese, fries, and a soda. Sick as a dog. I’m not used to eating that much grease.

-------------------------------------------

Yeah, I’m a vegetarian, I’m not stupid, I know an awful lot about what foods have the right proteins and amino acids and entire religious sects in Asia do just fine being vegetarian, even some of them vegan. It is stupid to unbalance your diet, but vegetarianism, if done right, does not, in fact, unbalance your diet. If you know what you’re doing, you do just fine. I’ve started eating seafood again but I wasn’t suffering from any major protein deficiency before that.

Is it child abuse for a Brahmin, Jain, or Buddhist to feed his/her children a vegetarian diet? Even though those people have been vegetarian for a very long time?

-----------------------------

However, being a vegetarian does not automagically make you thinner either. In fact, it's hard to be a veg and not eat lots of pasta, which is often the only (and totally inadequate with regard to protein) veggie option in a lot of places, plus a lot of veggies resort to peanut butter and the like for protein.

Vegetarians do live on average 7 years longer, but I think it's not causal, at least not directly; I think some of those benefits are likely to accrue to people who have religious or even allergy-related dietary restrictions; if you pay attention to what you're putting into your body you're both more likely to be someone who cares about your healty and almost certain to be put off of junk food most of the time (by reading the ingredients). I think that part of it is that health nuts are more likely to be vegetarian and part of it is that reading ingredients has inherent value because you're paying attention to what you're putting into your body.

-----------------------------------------

Antidepressant overprescription, at least in the US, I attribute in large part to managed care. It’s cheaper when someone is unhappy to give them a happy pill than to send them to costly psychotherapy.

----------------------------------

(these are the kinds of thoughts that brought my mother to say "you're not a Human... obviously, you're a little Vulcan child.")

Little did she know. Vulcans always eat their vegetables. (actually, they do; any Trekkie worth hir salt will tell you that Vulcans are vegetarian)

[Honor]

Wow... Like 2200 words. You remind me of me.

And then there's cosmetic surgery. Liposuction is pretty damned dangerous and its primary customers are women who are not dangerously overweight, some women who aren't even overweight at all, but just feel that their normal lumpy female forms are ugly because they are compared to the airbrushed anorexics in the Victoria's Secret catalogue.

"Pretty damned dangerous"? After I recovered from the initial shock of your coming out with an exaggerated position against cosmetic surgery, I felt this deserved some attention.

Being a soldier in an inner city gang is "pretty damned dangerous". Being a crab fisherman in the North Pacific is "pretty damned dangerous". Liposuction fatalities, in the last figures I saw, total about 3 per hundred thousand... About 1/5th the level for auto accident fatalities.

The fact that there are absolutely people with dangerously unhealthy body images is no excuse to condemn cosmetic surgery... people should have every right to modify their bodies in any way that pleases them.

And in the "Exaggeration Noted" department, my room-mate and I get Vic's Secret catalogs all the time (their bras rawk) and I don't recall anyone who would justify the label "airbrushed anorexics" (presuming looks is what you meant, and not that you had access to the psych records of the models involved... Since Anorexia Nervosa is a psychological conditon, and not one that is necesarily physically evident.)

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Oh, and go ahead and cut things off of your body. It'll really piss me off, honest. Here; have a steak knife.

I... uh... Looked, cursorily, at least, but I couldn't find what this might be in response to...

Our national "cuisine" (in quotes pursuant to Sidney Mintz's appraisal of it...

"Pursuant"? I wasn't aware the opinions of the esteemed Professor Mintz carried with them the weight of law. Particularly in the field of nutritional studies as they relate to medical health.

Yeah, I’m a vegetarian, I’m not stupid, I know an awful lot about what foods have the right proteins and amino acids and entire religious sects in Asia do just fine being vegetarian, even some of them vegan. It is stupid to unbalance your diet, but vegetarianism, if done right, does not, in fact, unbalance your diet. If you know what you’re doing, you do just fine.

First, I didn't say all vegetarians were stupid... I mentioned another rather large category. There are also, of course, other categories I left out... Like "delusional", "crazy", "brain-washed", "indoctrinated", "me-too", "wanna-be", and "trendy little tool" among lots of others (many of them considerably less derisive). But I'm sure many of them are very intelligent people who, for whatever reason, have decided to take the calculated risk of an unnatural lifestyle.

Second, as you underscore several times in the above paragraph, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it takes a lot of fairly advanced knowledge and/or skills to do something as unnatural as a full-time vegetarian diet completely safely.

If you consider a general level of physical development that is far below cultures with a normal diet "just fine", if you consider some of the most hideous malnutrition statistics and starvation incidents and periods in recorded human history doing "just fine", then I guess you're right about those religious sects in Asia.

As to the "child abuse" question. Well... First, I think it was patently obvious that we weren't talking about someone who was well versed in vegetarianism raising their children in accordance with their local mythology. We were talking about, and I quote, and "idiot" "born-again vegetarian"... Hardly the same thing.

But let's answer the other question anyway... Does it amount to child abuse when it's cultural and culture wide? That's obviously difficult to say. Is it abusive when jewish familes circumcize their sons, or when strict islamic familes cut the clitoris from a daughter? Is it abusive when some families don't let the girls learn to read?

Whatever reasons someone might have for raising their children as vegetarians, unless they have the skills of professional dieticians, they are limiting their growth and development, without question... And there's no proof even a professional dietician could save that child from some level of ill-effects.

Will the kid be ok...? Well, sure... they'll live. They can grow up, go to college, and have a full life. But they'll be a little less tall, or a little less strong, or a little less smart... a little less healthy in some way than they might have been. How much, we just can't say.... Leastwise not until they let us do some pretty cold-blooded experiments on a few generations of cloned humans.

(these are the kinds of thoughts that brought my mother to say "you're not a Human... obviously, you're a little Vulcan child.")

Little did she know. Vulcans always eat their vegetables. (actually, they do; any Trekkie worth hir salt will tell you that Vulcans are vegetarian)

*heh*... Well, I'm pretty sure she wasn't being that technical, but in her defense:

A) it seems they weren't vegetarians when she said that. According to "memory alpha": Although it has not always been so, most Vulcans are vegetarians...

B) I always eat my vegetables. Even nasty-ass carrots. At least once they're cooked.

And to paraphrase Yoda, "being a trekki not make one worth salt." It's other qualities they may have that give them their salt-worthiness.

[Gealachtine]

My lord this is a verbose topic. I'm not going to even try to quote anyone.

I will say my two pence on the subject. (well, make that 200 )

Weight is a fad, a trend as old as civilization. There were vomitoriums in Rome, the reubenesque periods, the waffishly thin periods (the beginning of Queen Elizabeth I's reign for instance.)

It fluctuates as we learn about health and the body, as the main social views rise and fall in popularity.

I gained weight initially from depression during pregnancy and post-natal. I was supermodel thin in my teens (5'9" and 120lbs.) When my daughter was born I weighed 225. Then a few years later, when I was put on Depakote and Olanzapine for bipolar, I rocketed up to 300lbs.

Even at my heaviest, the only problems my doctor could find were:
allergy triggered asthma and problems in my knees, hips and spine from the weight. Now I was warned at a very early age that I had a propensity towards back problems if I ever got too heavy. This prediction ended up being true.

I got tired of being young and walking with a cane, (I hit 300 just before my 30th.) I got tired of the way the meds made me feel, I got tired of the looks, the prejudice, the jeers, the out and out rudeness - simply because I was on the two worst medications for decrease in rate of metabolism and increase of appetite. I stopped the drugs, I worked on it for two years and I lost 100lbs or so.

How did I do it? I researched the body. The stomach is about the size of your fist, though it can stretch way beyond that. As Americans we think that a fair sized meal belongs on a platter (think of the portions at Black Eyed Pea or the Buffets). This is wrong, a fair sized meal is the size your body can intake and use all of it correctly without left over crap to deal with or store for later usage. Usually, roughly the size of your fist.

It isn't 3 squares a day that's actually healthy and the majority of nutritionists will agree with me on this. It's about 5 or 6 fist sized meals a day with uber-light, high fiber snacking in between whenever you feel hungry. You can eat Anything you want (as long as you're not allergic or diabetic) just in much, much smaller amounts. If I want a burger - I don't order fries and a big drink to go with it, it's just the burger and a water. It fills me up to the point of satisfaction and I'm good for a few hours until my body says "Hey we need more fuel" then I eat a little something else until it says "that's good, thanks".

Now if you go from 3 or more platter sized meals and entire bags of chips washed down with a 12 pack of soda (diet is just as bad for you - don't believe that crap) - to 5 or 6 fist-sized meals a day right away, you're going to be in a lot of pain. Your body will feel like it's starving and hold onto that weight. This is counter-productive. Slim down your meals slowly, make them a little smaller and add a meal a day with each cut off of them all. So go to 3/4 of a platter size and 4 meals a day for a month. Then half a platter full and 5 meals for a month. Then 6 meals at fist sized and add in those fiberous munchies! It'll help with the hunger pangs and curb the temptations to binge when no one is looking.

The biggest thing I tell anyone trying to lose a lot of weight like myself - <i><b>always give in to cravings</b></i>! Just don't eat as much at one time. If you have a sliver slice of cheesecake instead of half the pie, your craving will diminish without any ill side effects and you won't get as frustrated, bitter, depressed and all those wonderful feeling which people cover up with more eating binges.

I think we need to stop putting obese people down, making assumptions about their eating habits and stop trying to shame them into thinning. We also need to stop glorifying the heroin chic build - all it does is depress many generation of people who will never look like that because they don't have the money for endless plastic surgery and airbrushing ps geniuses to make them look flawless all the time.

How about the natural - when I eat healthy and get in regular exercise, this is the weight my body settles into - look? I think that's the sexiest out there. It's the wearing of the body comfortably and feeling sexy being yourself which is attractive to me - not if you're skinny or fat.

The biggest fallacy about obesity: fat = unhealthy and lazy. It is a big ugly nasty generalized LIE. However, people believe this as much as they believe Jesus is their savior (all hail the mighty GOP) and look down on heavier people from this prejudice, even though it's easy to see you can fall down dead from doing Atkins for too long (like it's creator) as easily as you can from weighing too much.

Oh and Atkins is horse malarkie. We need carbs people! <i>Just not in high doses!</i> Carbs turn into a type of sugar which feeds the brain and it's chemistry. If you have been diagnosed with a mental disorder of any kind - Do NOT go on Atkins! You'll end up in the lock down section of the psyche ward faster than you can say "To Kill a Mockingbird"...no carbs for someone with a chemical imbalance in the brain = very, very bad news.

If we did everything with moderation and reserved the big meals for special occasions only, we'd be much healthier all the way around.

Eat for your metabolism and body type - not according to the body fad of today. You'll be much happier in the end for it.

(end gargantuan rant)

[Chiropteran]

You have a major grudge and you are being very childish about it.
-------------
Yes, I think cosmetic surgery is stupid, yes I think it has to do with women having poor body image, and yes, liposuction is dangerous. Yes, I think there's something wrong with the fact that women in our culture are so beaten down by sexual commodification and absurd body type expectations that they're willing to undergo a dangerous surgical procedure in order to look a certain way. I'm not saying it should be outlawed, just that I don't think it's a good thing.

And yes, anorexia is pretty damned common in fashion models and yes, it does show. I suppose you think that there's no anorexia among ballet dancers either?

------------------

The steak knife comment was towards the right-wing, SUV, McDonalds and proud of it "we saved your butts in dubya duby two" ugly Americans who are destroying my country, not towards you or anyone here. Relax. It was intended to express my frustration with one of the stupider trends in the US.

As for India, I doubt that the rampant starvation in India is concentrated in the Brahmins (that would be the highest caste, and still upper-class today). I do think that someone who doesn't know what they're doing shouldn't put his/her children at risk, but I find it rather ironic that you think vegetarianism is objectively "unnatural" and dangerous, even though many cultures practice it.

The standard for what is sane (in your world) is apparently whatever you do. Okay, axis II diagnoses are generally pretty hard to make, but NPD can sometimes be pretty damned obvious.

--------------------------
I don't think that the American diet is natural, nor do I think vegetarianism is unnatural, but then I've read an awful lot about the way different peoples in the world get their groceries.

Yes, people in most cultures eat meat from time to time, but it's usually pretty rarely. Nobody far from the polar regions eats as much meat as Americans do, though. You should read Richard Lee's "What Hunters Do for a Living" Most "hunter-gatherers" were really "gatherer-hunters" and got the overwhelming majority of their nutriment, including protein, from gathered plants. Meat, in most foraging societies, has been an occasional treat. Not all primates even eat meat and a vegetarian diet is not, in fact, inherently stunting and damaging to children.

But it deviates from the only standard you respect (viz. what the most perfect person in the universe does) so it must be stupid (and you said that you thought that vegetarians were either stupid or intelligent people doing something stupid. That's nearly verbatim and it's obnoxious, ethnocentric and insensitive.)

------------------

The "pursuant" was intended to humorously indicate that Mintz often has the force of law with me in matters of anthropology (not nutrition). That was a joke b/c his assertion that America has no cuisine was the one thing I quarrelled with in my paper on him. The only reason you chose to pick at it is that you are consumed by typical narcissistic rage at anyone who says you're not perfect.

---------------------
You even bitched about me making a star trek joke.

-----------------

Honestly, if you're going to behave like that, I'm just going to ignore you.

[Toawa]

people believe this as much as they believe Jesus is their savior (all hail the mighty GOP)

Actually, there are a fair number of GOP members who are quite annoyed about what Robertson/Falwell/Dobson/et al. are doing.

Sorry, I just had to mention it. It brought flashbacks of Election Day, November 2002, when the two sides set up their kiosks on the UIUC quad, and one of the shouters on the Democrat side assumed that since I didn't agree completely with them, that I must be one of those born-again types, and she said as much.

(I would later return to be the only person with a "Vote Libertarian or Green" sign, standing exactly in the middle of the two big kiosks.)

The steak knife comment was towards the right-wing, SUV, McDonalds and proud of it "we saved your butts in dubya duby two" ugly Americans who are destroying my country, not towards you or anyone here. Relax. It was intended to express my frustration with one of the stupider trends in the US.

I didn't know you lived in France... (Assumed from context of comments.)

[Chiropteran]

Well, I speak it; that's enough for them (you?), isn't it?

[Toawa]

I take it then that my assumption was incorrect? Ah well, it matters little; it's just that every bit of context helps. (You know what they say about assuming... Well, I assume you do. ) The comment was certainly not meant to be any sort of slight; I just like having as much context as I can.

[Honor]

You have a major grudge and you are being very childish about it.

Pointing out when you (or anyone else) says things that are demonstrably incorrect is neither a grudge, nor childish. Don't flatter yourself to assume it has anything to do with you personally... Just get off your holier-than-thou soap box and have a fucking vallium.

---- ----- ----- ----- -----

What kind of diet a person or people eat as a matter of culture, history, region, or availability has nothing to do with what is the natural (i.e: naturally evolved) diet of this particular animal.

Suppose for the sake of illustration that cows eat grass. If we move them to somewhere where there is no grass, but only clover, then they'll eat clover. If we cage them (or imbue them with some imaginary sense of morals that makes killing grass wrong) and provide them with pellets, they'll eat pellets. But grass is still their natural diet. Clover and pellets are unnatural diets, taken on for various reasons.

This has nothing to do with culture, religion, tolerance, intolerance, or any other soft-science bullshit you want to bring into it. Human beings are omnivores. We've got bigger, hotter brains than the other primates, in part, because we eat more meat. That's our -natural- diet... Vegetebles, fruits, fiber, and such meat as we can get our hands on. A no-meat diet is unnatural for humans. An all meat (or extremely meat-heavy) diet is unnatural for humans. Both carry inherant costs in developmental ideals, however slight.

Not all primates even eat meat and a vegetarian diet is not, in fact, inherently stunting and damaging to children.

We're not talking about all primates, we're talking about H.Sapiens, and the fact is, eating more meat than, say, our nearest relative, Pan troglodytes is considered, scientifically, to be one of the biggest reasons we got the bigger, hotter brains. It would be more correct to say:

...a vegetarian diet is not, in fact, overwhelmingly stunting and damaging to children...

I never said the cost was huge... Only that it is, logically, extant.

---- ----- ----- ----- -----

I asked about the steak knife comment... That's all, just asked, very unaggressively, because it was a non-sequiter to me... What does cutting off body parts have to do with anything in this discussion? You're the one who turned it into some kind of wierd attack. I just asked what it referred to.

---- ----- ----- ----- -----

I didn't say the American diet, per se, was natural... I said excluding meat from the diet was unnatural.

---- ----- ----- ----- -----

And as far as your snippy, ad hominem "the standard for what is sane in your world" shot... Nobody but you said anything about sanity. Sanity doesn't enter into it.

However, since you've opened the can and the worms are now escaping, I will point out that you're being high-handed, hasty, and outright wrong. Your willingness to diagnose pathological narcissism does nothing so well as illustrate that you'd rather read your own meanings into my responses than actually read my responses.

I'm not NPD, you twit. I'm an OCD perfectionist. I don't declare the things I do "perfect and correct", but rather I always alter my behaviour toward the course of action that has the best evidence and proof of being most perfect or correct, when weighted against "irrational preference values" (i.e: I enjoy smoking. Smoking is neither the most perfect nor the most correct course of action, but it is a cost I am willing to pay for the pleasure it brings me.) IWO, The things I do aren't perfect because I do them, I do them because they're as near perfect as possible. Being human, I usually fall short of actual perfection in striving for theoretical goals, and being that humans have an incomplete understanding of the universe, what is viewed logically and demonstrably as "most correct" changes a lot... Which means my ideal changes with it.

---- ----- ----- ----- -----

(and you said that you thought that vegetarians were either stupid or intelligent people doing something stupid. That's nearly verbatim and it's obnoxious, ethnocentric and insensitive.)

Exactly... And that is absolutely not ethnocentric. As I said, ethnicity has nothing to do with it. As to it being obnoxious or insensitive, I could pretend to give a shit, but I won't. I don't generally pad the truth much just to be 'politically correct'.

Every smart person I've ever met, and I'm willing to bet every smart person on the planet, myself included, does stupid things. Playing the lottery is stupid. It's just a small stupididty, but it's stupid. Driving without a seat belt, speeding, drinking, smoking, getting a tattoo, having un-protected sex, voting republican, or eating an unnatural diet.. whatever... A person isn't stupid just because they do one of these things, but that doesn't stop doing these things, individually, from being at least a little bit stupid.

The vast majority of people who eat a strict vegetarian diet do so for one of a very few reasons... either poverty or regional scarcity prevents them from eating as they would like, of they are behaving unnaturally because of mythology or affectation. That is, very often, a smart person doing an un-smart thing. Period.

It has fuck all to do with culture or cultural bias... I challenge you to find anyone less culturocentric or ethnocentric than myself. There are things my culture are really really good at, to be sure... But diet and philosophy aren't amoung them.

---- ----- ----- ----- -----

The only reason you chose to pick at it is that you are consumed by typical narcissistic rage at anyone who says you're not perfect.

This is sloppy bullshit such that it's barely worth answering. I picked at it because it was non-sequetorial and wrong... Consumed with narcissistic rage at anyone who says I'm not perfect? Honey, first, nothing in anything I argued against suggests I'm not perfect... what I argued against was that your usage suggested you were holding up a non-authority as an authority. Second, of all the people who "suggest" I'm imperfect, nobody does so as vehemently as I do.

---- ----- ----- ----- -----

You even bitched about me making a star trek joke.

Oh. Bull. Shit. I didn't "bitch", I joked back pointing out that you were, yet again, incorrect... Saying "vulcans are vegetarians" is like saying "Indians are vegetarians". Most "modern" Vulcans are vegetarians, by choice, and that "fact" hadn't been invented yet when my mother said what she said... Like any of it matters. It's a long-dead woman joking with a child by referencing a fictional species.

Maybe that's what makes you so upset...? That when you say I'm incorrect, you underscore it by saying I'm self centered and crazy, but when I say you're incorrect, I underscore it with evidence and proof?

Fact remains... I have no issue with you, personally, except that you seem to be incapable of arguing a factual point without calling me a crazy bitch.

[Squidflakes]

What kind of diet a person or people eat as a matter of culture, history, region, or availability has nothing to do with what is the natural (i.e: naturally evolved) diet of this particular animal.

Gotta call you to the mat on this one dearheart.

This animal (i.e. you, me, and Billy Jean King) is naturally evolved to exist on a mostly plant diet. The enzymes that are present in strict carnivores are sorely lacking in our digestive systems, so we have a tougher time breaking down meat. Yes, we need the ammino acids, protein, and creatine but all of those can be obtained from veggies.

Yes, meat is a better and more efficent source of these things, but not the only source. Hell, we used to be able to digest cellulose, and the occasional genetic throwback is still able to do so. This is not the sign of a meat eater.

Our teeth aren't meat eating teeth. They aren't even really good omnivore teeth. Our digestive tracts are long, and evolved to more efficently digest plant.

Our excratory system can handle a bit of meat, but not too much. The people who went on Atkins found that out. Gout, stomach problems, early onset heart and liver disease, the list is pretty long.

So, all in all, we are a plant leaning omnivore.

As you and I have talked, we both love the meat, but that doesn't mean our bodies are adapted to consume the stuff in great quantity. I think its telling that your favorite method for preparing your steak is essentually letting it rot.

[Honor]

Gotta call you to the mat on this one dearheart.

This animal (i.e. you, me, and Billy Jean King) is naturally evolved to exist on a mostly plant diet.

Yes... Mostly plant, absolutely. I was perhaps a bit unclear... When I said "such meat as we can get our hands on" I didn't mean "as much meat as a modern human can possibly stuff in their face". I was referring to our ancient, proto-human ancestors getting scavenging scraps at first, then a little bit of meat supplement through hunting. I meant to cover the other end of the spectrum when I said an all meat or overly meat heavy diet was also not good... But obviously I should have been much more explicit.

I absolutely never suggested a "strict carnivores" diet, and never would, outside certain humorous comments in conversation. (I love dead animal!) Pure carnivores are, relatively speaking, very different animals than we are.

What I'm saying is that, for the past few million years, we've evolved toward expanding our meat diet... And we've evolved because we've expanded our meat diet... To the extent that it is no longer "natural" for this animal (I'll speak for you and me, but not Billy Jean King) to subsist on a meat-free diet. A few million years of evolution versus a few hundred years of BS enlightenment is a pretty tilted scale.

To repeat... All meat, bad. No meat, bad. Little meat = good.

I think its telling that your favorite method for preparing your steak is essentually letting it rot.

Um... Ok. But telling what? That I like flavor? What, pray, does that have to do with the conversation? The way a prepare steak, when I have it (maybe five or six times a year) has nothing at all to do with digestion and everything to do with flavor.

Are people assuming that, because I'm not willing to bow down and pretend that no-meat is healthy, I must then be some caricature of the opposite ideal, eating three pounds of meat with every meal and wrinkling my nose at veggies? My favorite foods are pasta and rice. I eat salad and/or vegetables with essentially every full meal. I don't eat much meat... I just like it to taste really good when I do.

[Squidflakes]

Hyperbole aside, what I'm saying is that a no meat diet is perfectly acceptable for the human animal. We can digest enough different vegetables to grow and thrive without even the tinest shread of meat.

There is nothing unnatural about it.

As to your comment on evolving towards a greater need for meat, you need to realize that meat hasn't been plentiful for a statistically signifigant portion of the population for long enough to have affected a macroevolutionary change. In a couple thousand years of meat consumption at present or increasing rates, we may evolve such a thing, for now though, Americans are at the peak of a worldwide trend toward higher meat consumption (one average), but this current wave is only about 50 years old. Not nearly enough time.

For the rot comment... the process of cooking and rotting are very similar in the initial stages. Both unbind ammino acid chains, making them easier to digest for a whole host of organisms, us included. There has been some research to suggest that we like the flavor of cooked meat because we adapted the ability to feed on carrion early on in our development.
It was a bit of a non-sequiter, but I was attempting to show how difficult it was for us to eat meat in its natural form.

[Goddessmisca]

In relation to what Squiddy is saying: I have an enzyme difency that makes it damn near impossible for me to digest red meat--- the longer it takes to cook the less likely I'll be able to digest it.

When I was diiagnosed I was told that it isn't that un common---but I can't rember the official name of it.

[Honor]

In the interest of speed and directness, Squiddy and I moved our particular portion of the debate to IM...

The short answer is that I'm conceding a great deal of my position because I don't have time to dig up supporting data, and I fully agree that that data might be out of date...

While there is still some disagreement on a few key points, I'm convinced that much of his data is likely more recent than mine, and may well be more correct... Data specifically impacting on the importance of meat in the diets of early evolutionary stages of "proto-humans".

One thing that I ended up clarifying in that conversation, and thus should probably clarify here, is that when I say "natural" and "unnatural" human diets, culture by definition cannot have any impact on it. I'm talking about dietary changes that began before Lucy lived in the Olduvai Gorge... Long before human ancestors ever dreamed of agriculture and animal husbandry... In fact, as we discussed, by definition, the very introduction of agriculture deviated humans from their "natural" diets, in at least some small degree.

In that sense, I maintian, the "natural" evolved diet for h.sapiens is mostly vegetables, seeds, fruit, plants, and a little meat. Any diet that excludes any of those is, by definition, "unnatural". And yes, Misca, some of us are intolerant of "natural" diets, for medical reasons... I mean, some of us are lactose intolerant... If a mammal can be allergic to milk, they can be allergic to any natural part of their diet.