Hi All,
Well, this thread seems to have mutated into something quite different from where it started out. I'm fairly new to BlueLight, and I'm still finding the forums that interest me the most. I've posted in a few, and I'm looking to find more, and was attracted to the original intent of this thread. I skimmed parts of it to try and find the direction, but it seems to have evolved into a "Life, the Universe, and Everything" kind of thread. But a couple of pages back, the focus went vegetarian, and without having read all of it by any means, thought I would offer my two cents worth (buckle your seatbelts, folks).
I was vegetarian for 7 years - most of the 1990's. I became one because my new girlfriend at the time (now my ex-wife - funny old world) was one, and I wanted to impress her, I guess. I grew up in South Africa - a very meat and potatoes kind of place, and I was very big on meat - every day - sometimes several times a day. I became, after a time, a very vocal ethical vegetarian, wrote songs about it, helped make anti-meat videos, the kind of stuff that many of us do - maybe in part just to help us 'stay on the wagon'. The short version of this ends with the birth of my first son - his mother started eating fish during her pregnancy - and then meat after the birth, and I somewhat guiltily returned to being an omnivore. However, the experience was wonderful in many ways - I expanded my palette, became a better cook, and understood a lot more than I would have, had I never done it.
Since then, I have thought a lot and listened to others a lot - many of those thoughts were echoed in the messages that I read a few pages back. But a few years ago, I finally realized where I stood on the issue, both in practicing the ethics of my philosophy, but also accepting my omnivorous nature. I think the key to the balance, as I see it, is summed up in those two words that appeared in many of the recent vegetarianesque posts - these words being "Factory Farming".
North America is a totally meat oriented culture. You're not a 'real man' if you don't shovel large bits of cow into your mouth regularly - obesity is par for the course - and the small-minded still believe that being vegetarian means weighing 98 pounds and living on salad. Hand in hand with our gluttonous nature, we have the fear-mongers bewailing the end of mankind owing to the, chemicals, MSG, and sodium (OK - please excuse me while I vehemently rant for a minute - just to be clear we're on the same page).
There is *no such thing* as "low sodium" food! It's *not* sodium, dammit, it's salt! Not potassium chloride (the first barbarism), not Potassium Iodide (the most recent) i.e. table salt - the stuff that you get everywhere, but is not in fact salt - in fact it does not even have either of the two molecules that make up salt. Salt is SODIUM CHLORIDE - not this other crap. But most importantly it is *not* Sodium. My God - are these people crazy??? Sodium - like *real* sodium, - the kind that comes on periodic tables - is a soft volatile metal, that bursts into flame when it comes into contact with water. If there was *any* sodium in *any* food, we'd all be snacking on 3rd degree burns for dessert at every meal. So are we clear? Any questions?? No? Good!
The point I was making before careening off into one of *the* most annoying things about my adoptive continent - is that the fear-mongers cry wolf, and everyone gets *obsessed* with it. Suddenly putting salt - *any* amount of salt on your food is going to give you a heart attack. We can't eat Chinese anymore, because the MSG will kill us. It's rampant paranoia - and everyone just buys straight into it, like a good little television.
So the same scenario plays out with meat. The gluttons and ignorami, insist that we need to eat an entire cow every day, and the naysayers tell us it'll kill us (and that's not including the growth-hormone-brigade).
So here's the dilemma:
On the one hand we have our digestive and gustatory systems telling us that we want meat for dinner - we have the vegetarians and more so the vegans telling us we're murderers, the advertizing machine rooting for our tummies, and our consciences ruining the dinner. Fear-mongers on the right, and animal rights activists right behind them, but for a completely different reason. So we start talking Free Range, to get away from the Factory farming so that our tummies, our doctors, and the media-machine are all singing the same song. But there is not enough free range meat for all - it's too expensive - and for the most part, people don’t really give a shit, other than how they appear in the eyes of the Jones's – assuming the Jones’s aren’t vegetarians, vegans, or cows. Typical North American panic - for all the wrong reasons - with a (temporary) solution being touted by the same people who will come back next year and tell us they were wrong.
The *solution* - is, as it is with pretty much everything in life - especially drugs (See, I managed to get something on-topic in here after all) - *m o d e r a t i o n*.
If we stop being such unbridled pigs, east red meat no more than once a week (which *still* allows us fish a couple of times a week, and chicken once a week, making the majority of the week *still* comprised of dead somethings-that-weren't-grown-in-the-ground), then the need for free-range meat will disappear, along with the factory farms, the absence of growth hormones, the media-monster, panic attacks, heart attacks, and the disconcerted clucking of so many overworked doctors.
We won't have the powers that be forcing us to eat low-sodium substitutes.
(Potassium Chloride).
They can then tell us the truth about a soft combustible metal that is found on the periodic table, but not in the grocery store.
(There *is* no Sodium).
There will be a whole bunch of normal sized, hormone-free, ethically accommodated cows, some of which might live long enough to become grandparents.
There will be an end to world hunger, and those no longer starving, do not need to feel guilty about factory farming.
And I can finally afford to put real salt (Sodium Chloride) on my food - and leave this thread for the subject matter for which it was originally created, happily fulfilled in the comforting knowledge that I will never have to write anything like this again...
I used to work out a lot, and was at one point, 'slightly-over-muscled', but my reasons for working out were generally healthy body/healthy mind. I still exercise, mainly strength training now, and I have decreased in muscle mass. But I would rarely judge a person simply because they have large bodies. Physical strength IS intimidating to some people, mainly because a lot of people abuse physical strength; that said, a lot of people don't; if I see a dude with big arms, I'm usually curious about how they work out.
