How's that?

Population control is a decent idea but telling the poor they can't have children... a lot of people are going to have issues with that to say the least.

Actually, all I said was that we don't know. It might be humans. It might not be.

There is a lot of conflicting information. Unfortunately, people like Megaman feel they know the cause of it all because they watched one high-profile - and very biased - documentary.

That's the gist of it I guess. Sounds bad, but seems potentially true (even likely) to me.

Saving food and feeding everyone only postpones the hunger problem to a point when population will be bigger, meaning more people will starve.

If I go to the supermarket, buy a steak and throw it in the garbage, I may be saving lives. Population control must be done sooner rather than later.

Let me sum up:

Saving food = potentially bad

Population control = good

Population control AND saving food = even better.

Your point?

Eating meat is not the real (or at least the only) problem ...

There has been a movement towards "Organic" foods which (generally) have a far smaller yeild per acre, a large portion of useable land is being used for crops which do not traslate into food (like Coffee, tobacco, cotton, hemp and ethanol), several countries around the world (zimbabwe) have the capacity to feed themself (and their neighbours) and have mismanaged their resources, and we haven't reached a time where greenhouses (and other methods to increase growing seasons) have become cost effective.

It's not an issue because it isn't directly affecting Americans. Politicians aren't going to rely on that as a position piece the same as how AIDS isn't on the agenda, and that is directly affecting us more than starvation is. These are problems that may come back to bite us in the ass, but i've never known politicians to be on the offensive but always the defensive, barring a cherry picking here or there.

@Rubang-Make me a fake steak that tastes as good as a real one and I will convert in a second. This doesn't discount any other argument brought forward regarding going vegan, but my main problem is basically that most of this organic, vegan or whatever else lifestyles requie me to eat food that tastes blah compared to the real thing. That especially includes the milk argument. No milk alternative tastes ANYTHING like real milk.

Well the other fact is that the government is still paying 14 billion a year to have farmers not producing any form of food. They have the land and the resources, they are just encouraged not to use it. Every time a politician brings up hunger, I always try to bring up subsidies. The system was meant for a quick fix, not a permanent feature of government policy.

NJ5 is spot on, the amount of product needed to feed and support the Western world is impossible to provide. Developing nations, another 2 or 3 billion people who want steaks too, its a tragedy of epic proportions.

They can have kids, but they should be educated (through public programs) and given access to contraceptional methods so that they can avoid having them if they can't feed them.

You ever see the South Park where they go to kill the heart of the Wal-Mart to stop all Wal-Marts, and when they get there it's just a big mirror and we all find out we've all been the heart of Wal-Mart all along?

It's like that.  We're killing everybody.

@Kasz, I suck at cooking and am just barely learning.  I'm loving vanilla almond and rice milks more than regular milk or soy milk.  I couldn't make a good fake steak, but I'm fine without steak because my vegan chef of a wife can make amazing vegan pizzas and Ethiopian food and cake and all kinds of stuff.  I almost only get meat when I buy a burrito at school nowadays, because we eat at home so much.

And fake hot dogs rule.  They totally mastered that one immediately, most likely because real hot dogs were made out of tires and intestines and shoelaces or something, so any alternative was an improvement.  I've had some amazing vegan chili dogs.

Nice to see a lot of people here will make the switch when the food's tasty enough.  It'll get there.  I went from 0% vegan to about 50% vegan overnight after having a smoothie with maca powder in it.  There are magic foods out there that can convert you.  When they get to the magic steak, I guess we'll all be saved.