The Vegetarian Myth

[Approaching Infinity]

Yeah, doing a quick search on Lierre Keith reveals that she is extremely hated by the vegan community. Apparently she was even pied in the face at a conference, a year ago, which is on youtube. It's been a year and they're still going rabid over her book!
Here's the interview concerning the event:
wwwyoutubecom/watch?v=woFD8pp3rRU

Yep, I either read or saw a video where she talks about the threats she's had against her. And now that you've said that, I'm starting to wonder if there isn't some cointelpro aspect involved. If not, then those vegetables are really doing their job! I mean, the way people come out of the woodwork without fail is really amazing.

Or maybe eating veg is the diet o' choice of a certain type of human... Once the body gets its fix, download complete!

 

[Ben]

I've been thinking about the Vegetarian Myth a lot recently, especially after spending time with two of my vegetarian friends. They are a couple, and one of them has for years been so revolted with the idea of eating meat that she cannot bring herself to do it. There does not seem to be any ethical reason for her choice, she never mentions the suffering of animals when talking about this issue, only the taste and texture of meat. Unfortunately she has a number of health problems which seemed to be linked to inflammation, something her GP has classed as 'generalised oedema'. Other than suggesting that she try an elimination diet, and certainly cut out gluten and dairy products, I'm not sure what her best course of action is. Obviously protein is harder to come by if you can't eat meat, dairy, nuts and legumes (on an elimination diet) and consequently you will have a high carbohydrate intake. I've already mentioned to her that fat intake is crucially important but as with most people I know the programming runs deep.

I have considered that there may be more to this issue with meat because I can't fully understand how a person cannot enjoy the taste of something fundamentally part of their evolutionary diet. I can tell she is serious though, after she recounted to me an incident where she was accidentally given a beefburger instead of a veggie burger!!

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

I have considered that there may be more to this issue with meat because I can't fully understand how a person cannot enjoy the taste of something fundamentally part of their evolutionary diet. I can tell she is serious though, after she recounted to me an incident where she was accidentally given a beefburger instead of a veggie burger!!

It's funny because I had the opposite experience - a few years back I thought I was getting a chicken parm sandwich, but got eggplant parm sandwich instead (back when I was still eating dairy/gluten). As I bit into it, I can only recall a sense of horror as I tried to figure out how chicken could be so spoiled as to be green, soft, and virtually unrecognizable. I never had eggplant (on purpose) before, and was barely aware of its existence, so it took me a few (horrific) minutes to realize that it wasn't chicken at all. I never liked the texture of cooked vegetables, so I always tend to avoid them.

I've been eating nothing but meat for about 2 months now, with bacon and avocado added to practically every single meal, and I gotta admit that this is my favorite diet by far! Admittedly I never liked avocado's texture or taste, but it isn't bad when combined with other foods, so I'm getting used to it. I have become keenly aware that in most restaurants/cafeterias a "serving" of bacon is only 2 pieces! When I order 5-7 servings as a side for every meal, it's starting to make the workers of my job's cafeteria nervous and "concerned" about my health. In their view I could use more potatoes, bread, pasta, and cheese, lots of veggies, and lean low-fat cuts of meat. I attempted to mention some studies/research on the subject, including the fact that humans ate a high fat diet for millions of years before agriculture/grains/bread came along, but the low-fat brainwashing is so strong they just laugh and think I'm insane, that fat will surely clog up my arteries and give me a heart attack in no time. When I mention that I actually lost weight since starting this diet, it's like talking to a wall at that point, so I just give up and go along with it and pretend that eating fat is just a "vice" and since I'm young, I figure I'll get away with it for a while. People are much more accepting of it then..

 

[anart]

When I order 5-7 servings as a side for every meal, it's starting to make the workers of my job's cafeteria nervous and "concerned" about my health.

LOL! I have a woman in my work building who keeps telling me that I have GOT to stop eating so much bacon!!! It's hilarious! She's just horrified.

 

[Chu]

When I order 5-7 servings as a side for every meal, it's starting to make the workers of my job's cafeteria nervous and "concerned" about my health.

LOL! I have a woman in my work building who keeps telling me that I have GOT to stop eating so much bacon!!! It's hilarious! She's just horrified.

LOL! I had a similar experience recently. I ordered the fattiest type of meat available at a restaurant, no veggies, and I ate outside to be able to smoke. I'll never forget people's faces. They were looking at me like I had serious self-destructive issues. Mad world!!

 

[Laura]

When I order 5-7 servings as a side for every meal, it's starting to make the workers of my job's cafeteria nervous and "concerned" about my health.

LOL! I have a woman in my work building who keeps telling me that I have GOT to stop eating so much bacon!!! It's hilarious! She's just horrified.

LOL! I had a similar experience recently. I ordered the fattiest type of meat available at a restaurant, no veggies, and I ate outside to be able to smoke. I'll never forget people's faces. They were looking at me like I had serious self-destructive issues. Mad world!!

I bet that all the people saying/thinking these things are on multiple medications, never feel really good a day in their lives, and some of them will likely drop dead one day thinking they were doing the right thing.

 

[mcb]

I bet that all the people saying/thinking these things are on multiple medications, never feel really good a day in their lives, and some of them will likely drop dead one day thinking they were doing the right thing.

It reflects different ways of looking at "risk" -- objective risk vs. the risk of being perceived as "different." The degree to which people are on medications seems to go largely unnoticed, and the idea that prolonged use of common medications could actually make you seriously ill seems quite foreign to most.

My butcher may be wondering when I ask for my weekly 2 pounds of bacon, but I have already told him that I want fat. I mentioned "paleo" diet once and at least he knew what that was.

 

[Rose]

I was a vegetarian for over 15 years and I have to say that it was probably one of the worst decisions I have ever made. When I was a kid, I never had any serious health problems. I could go through the entire winter without catching a single cold and always had a lot of energy,while my siblings would catch cold after cold. I remember that they were envious of me because of that. Then, when I was a teenager, I decided to become a vegetarian because I didn't want to kill animals. Around the same time I started getting constant headaches and fatigue. When I was in college, I missed a few morning classes because I didn't have enough energy to get out of bed!

My problems got a bit better after I started eating fish again, then about a year and a half ago I started eating chicken, because of what I read on the forum, and gradually reintroduced different kinds of meat into my diet. For the last few weeks, I've increased the amount of meat I eat and reduced the vegetables and I can really see that it's good for my body. I don't feel as tired anymore, I have a lot less cravings (I used to crave carbs a lot when I was eating a lot of grains) and I don't have as many headaches anymore.

But the thing is, even though I feel better and I know that it's good for me to eat that much meat, some part of me still felt guilty about eating dead animals, especially because I avoided it for so many years. I had a hard time letting go of the idea that it was somehow 'wrong', even though I understood that it's part of life, you have to eat to survive and you have to kill something in order to eat. Reading the review of 'The Vegetarian Myth' on SOTT really helped me come to terms with that, especially understanding how deadly agriculture really is to so many living things. It helps to put things into perspective. I'm definitely going to read the whole book as soon as I get the chance.

 

[RyanX]

But the thing is, even though I feel better and I know that it's good for me to eat that much meat, some part of me still felt guilty about eating dead animals, especially because I avoided it for so many years. I had a hard time letting go of the idea that it was somehow 'wrong', even though I understood that it's part of life, you have to eat to survive and you have to kill something in order to eat. Reading the review of 'The Vegetarian Myth' on SOTT really helped me come to terms with that, especially understanding how deadly agriculture really is to so many living things. It helps to put things into perspective. I'm definitely going to read the whole book as soon as I get the chance.

Hi Rose,

I think a good thing to remember is the quote that Truth Seeker made at the beginning of this thread:

I think I understand more fully what's going on with some vegetarians. I think the ones doing it for moral reasons have no real concern for health. That's probably obvious but I just realized this. I suppose I confused the lack of animal protein with health due to my own programming. I wonder if some people have had some deep wounding and attempt to fix the past because they were hurt so badly - they don't want to be responsible for hurting anyone the way they've been hurt?

So their vegetarian stance is a projection of their own wounded self upon animals. The meat eating population a projection of the wounding parent and therefore seen as the enemy. Being vegetarian allows them to uphold the image of the good child who can do no wrong.

The vegetarian/vegan diet (or dairy or whatever) further cements this inability to think (or having thought loops) properly by not supplying proper nutrients that would enable them to think outside the box. The box in this case being their own narcissistic wounding via their inability/unwillingness to accept responsibility.

It could be that the guilt you're feeling is really the feeling of a part of yourself you had to kill long ago. Especially during our teenage years we can be vulnerable to "killing off parts of the self" due to the pressures of peers, school, parents and the greater culture.

Even after 15 years of being a vegetarian, it's good to see that somebody is still able to face the reality of the situation and change their life for the better.

 

[Rose]

Thanks for that quote RyanX, I have to say that for me it hits the nail right on the head! Being a vegetarian was a way for me to feel better about myself, like that made me somehow a nicer person than those meat-eaters, although that was pretty much unconscious until I read this thread.

Even after 15 years of being a vegetarian, it's good to see that somebody is still able to face the reality of the situation and change their life for the better.

I have SOTT and this forum to thank for that, I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't found this place :) Life would make a lot less sense, that's for sure!

 

[Ben]

I'm really enjoying eating all the fat I want - which I have always done but with a sense of guilt about it, ridiculous.

 

[Juba]

Looking from this perspective, it's really "funny" how this "bad nutrition" programs work, it's almost like religious belief or scientific belief or political belief, just thinking about something from Laura's Golden age article:

(...)
Once a way was found to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted, the neural punishment areas turned off, and the participant received a blast of activation in the circuits involving rewards - akin to the high an addict receives when getting his fix.

In essence, the participants were not about to let facts get in the way of their hot-button decision making and quick buzz of reward. 'None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,' says Westen. 'Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones'...

Ultimately, Westen and his colleagues believe that 'emotionally biased reasoning leads to the "stamping in" or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the participant's "revisionist" account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data,' Westen says. Westen's remarkable study showed that neural information processing related to what he terms 'motivated reasoning' ... appears to be qualitatively different from reasoning when a person has no strong emotional stake in the conclusions to be reached.

The study is thus the first to describe the neural processes that underlie political judgment and decision making, as well as to describe processes involving emote control, psychological defense, confirmatory bias, and some forms of cognitive dissonance. The significance of these findings ranges beyond the study of politics: 'Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret "the facts,"' according to Westen." (Barbara Oakley, Evil Genes, Prometheus Books, 2008.)
[..]
In short, a human brain that is calcified in a belief system - believing it because their social group, peers, family, also believe it - literally experiences pain if they try to open their mind and think in an unlimited and unbiased way. The same thing must happen to a person trying to understand the different social constraints that are accepted as perfectly normal in a different cultural group. The implications are truly enormous. It can also explain why science is so corrupt! This is, essentially, a look inside the brain of the authoritarian personality.

This can be easily seen on vegetarian militants and other militant groups and fundies, we can give them as many valuable info we have, nothing will help, because this kind of person can learn very little from new data, their brains are calcified in a belief system via "emotionally biased reasoning."

Basically they continue their way no matter what.

Thank you Laura I understand now much better how vegetarian militants are thinking.... same as others.

Edit: Mod edited quote

 

[Börje]

Daniel Vitalis breaks this whole concept down in an excellent 6 part interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQbugkGXph8&feature=related

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

I bet that all the people saying/thinking these things are on multiple medications, never feel really good a day in their lives, and some of them will likely drop dead one day thinking they were doing the right thing.

One of my coworkers is a shining example of this. He has a crippling arthritis
and a genetic bone disease that's literally eating away at him to the point that he is in constant pain, lost over a foot in his height, has super brittle bones and can barely walk. He drinks about
a gallon of soda every day (literally), is on insane amount of meds, and frankly I'm surprised he is still alive with what he puts into his body daily. He thinks his diet cannot possibly be related to what's wrong with him, or be contributing to it, and that it's all bad genes. He is slightly curious about DMSO but for him it would be like a bandaid on a gunshot wound.

I hate seeing so many people with physical issues, and knowing that a few simple diet changes would be miraculously helpful, and seeing them ignore and scoff at any suggestions while continuing their self destruction all while wondering if science will ever find a cure for them. It's like those SETI people desperately searching for evidence that we are not alone in the universe
and then scoff at the overwhelming evidence in front of their noses.

I also noticed that those on all veggie and otherwise toxic diets but seemingly physically healthy exhibit mental deficits. Even within their own area of expertise their ability to critically think and solve problems seems curtailed. What I consider normal, logical thinking to them seems genius. Any kind of abstract, critical, creative approach to problem solving, which any normal human should be able to do, is now considered brilliant. It's depressing that the bar is so low nowadays.

 

[Laura]

I'm about half-way through "The Vegetarian Myth" and it's shattering. I don't think I've ever read anything this harrowing since "Controversy of Zion".