Did you know I was a vegetarian for almost 10 years? If you know me this may be hard to believe. I am now a solid, even reactionary, carnivore. If there is one thing I have seen over and over, it is that vegetarians, especially vegans, do not succeeded at CrossFit. It seems there is something about animal protein that facilitates high performance. Of course it is possible that a more thoughtfully constructed vegetarian diet could facilitate high performance, perhaps vegetarians just tend to eat too much carbohydrate?
Here is the mother of all articles on why not to be veggie!
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/vegetarian.html
An excerpt:
Dear Dr Groves
I agree with most of your points concerning the poor reasoning of most vegetarians. As a fairly observant zoologist, pathologist and sometimes farmer I can add even more.
As you and I know, most vegetarians are motivated, at least in part, by their view of the immorality of exploiting animals. Most of them, of course, are city dwellers who have never had the opportunity to till, plant and harvest a field with a vegetable crop.
Crop agriculture, even if inveterbrates are excluded, is devastating to small amphibians, reptiles, nesting birds and mammals. Even the occasional larger mammal is injured during the cropping process. Unavoidably, the plow destroys burrows and young. Harvest machines kill some animals directly and expose others to the tender mercies of predators. Many times, I have watched as coyotes and hawks follow my tractor feasting on the victims of the plow and reaper [hey, but it is nice for these predators].
Really, how could it be otherwise? Vegetables and cereals are the foods of many animals. For rodents, crops are a real bonanza in terms of food and shelter. They multiply rapidly which only increases the tally during field preparation and harvest.
To my thinking, there is little question that raising animals for meat, especially if they are not fattened with agricultural products, is far less devastating to animal life than is agriculture. If one acre of land produces one sheep a year for slaughter, one life is taken. If one acre of land is put into cereal production the cost in just mammalian life can be measured in the dozens or more.
Of course, animal death due to cropping is "invisible" and therefore doesn't happen. Lamb chops in the market are visible and vegetarians weep for the victim. I know that these realities have no impact on animal-rights types -– they are not nearly so concerned with animal death and suffering as they are with animal death and suffering due to deliberate human actions. Their emphasis is, in fact, not on animal welfare but on the control of other human beings.
Ron B.
7AM .5 cup 2% milk = .5 blocks
8AM open face breakfast sandwich with egg beaters and Diabetic Lifestyles bread = 2 blocks
3PM Big Lunch at La Mediterranee: 4 Levantine Meat Tart (click to order), hummus, salad, fruit, cheese = 8 blocks +1x fat
9PM 1/2 package Dal, 6 oz beef, 1/2 lb green beans = 4 blocks
Block Target = 17 blocks
Block Total = 15 blocks +.5x fat
Block Total =
Workout:
Row 1000 meters
25 Double-unders
Row 750 meters
50 Double-unders
Row 500 meters
100 Double-unders
Time: 12:55
15x110# OHSQ
10 Ring Muscle-Up For Time:
Time: 11:00
2 comments:
So what are you saying? That people should only eat meat from domesticated animals and stop eating vegetables, grains, beans, etc. so as to prevent the deaths of wild animals? It's a fact that most so-called carnivores, like you, also eat vegetal matter, so what you're doing as an omnivore is being complicit in the killing of both domesticated AND wild animals. Vegans/vegetarians are not. Unfortunately, it's impossible not to be at least indirectly involved in the killing of animals, no matter what you eat, but isn't it better to at least limit the deaths you cause by being vegan/vegetarian? I think it is.
And also, even factory farmed animals are fed at least some agricultural products besides the waste products and non-food items they're cruelly fprce fed to fatten them up for profit, with no regard for their health or well-being, or the health of the consumer, for that matter. And that also makes carnivores complicit in the deaths of wild animals as well as the deaths of the domesticated animals they consume. So your argument is completely specious, in my opinion.
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