| Gamer147 said: Being a vegetarian has many benefits. But if your a vegetarian for many years there is many negatives as well. You can google all the pros and cons. If you eat meat only a few times a month you can get all the benefits with none of the negatives. Plus being a vegetarian is very painful during holidays when a lot of excellent meals have meat. Also studies have shown that plants suffer when we cut or pull them from ground so arguement that you don’t want to kill anything is not a valid reason to be a vegetarian. |
If one is concerned that "plants feel pain", that's actually the strongest reason to be vegan. A cow might eat 500 times as many calories from plants as you would if you ate plants directly yourself. The plants feel pain argument doesn't have much scientific support, though. There's evidence that plants are reactive to some stimulus (their leaves can follow the sun for example), but no generally accepted evidence that they have brains or central nervous systems.
To your other point, there is lots of evidence that omnivores who only occasionally eat animal products do better than omnivores who eat animal products with each meal.
What health benefits to eating meat occasionally do you speak of? When you look at independent peer reviewed research, the longest-living, healthiest, and most vibrant populations (especially in old age) are the most plant-based. In the Adventist II studies (with hundreds of thousands of participants) they looked at healthy omnivores, vs. healthy vegetarians, vs. healthy vegans. The Adventist studies are particularly interesting because the participants have a religious belief that they should treat their bodies well so most of them are physically active, don't smoke, don't eat junk food, etc. Despite the fact that it is comparing only the healthy omnivores vs. the healthy vegans, the healthy vegans have significantly lower all-cause mortality than the healthy omnivores in the Adventist studies. The vegans especially have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. So, no, the preponderance of the best evidence doesn't appear to support the notion that eating meat even occasionally is healthier than not, or that there's any generally accepted long-term detriment to being fully plant-based. And that makes sense Quite the opposite, from what I can tell, when looking at independent peer-reviewed research (ie., not industry-funded research saying how awesome their particular industry is).
Last edited by scrapking - on 05 December 2017
