Vegetarian/vegan tarantulas

[Shrike]

Ok, no. Just no. It has been proven in Forks over Knives and other articles that meat activates cancer cells and is unnecessary.



True, but corn is completely out of control. The whole food industry is. All of you need to watch King Corn, Fast Food Nation, etc. And read The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm not going to explain, just watch some stuff on Netflix or/and read some articles and books.

I've read and enjoyed some of the material that you referenced, in particular, Fast Food Nation and the Omnivore's Dilemma. However, I wouldn't reference these sources as the gospel truth. These aren't scholarly or scientific articles, they are popular media. They may be well researched, entertaining, and raise interesting questions, but you can't simply say to somebody 'your position is wrong! Michael Pollan says so!' I have a feeling that we would probably agree on many issues regarding the food industry. My problem isn't so much the position you're taking, but the fact that you lean heavily on these sources without considering their agenda or the opposing side of the issue.

 

[Tarac]

Well this thread has taken an unexpected detour...

You didn't see this coming by the title of the thread? lol

---------- Post added 02-23-2012 at 09:57 AM ----------

I've read and enjoyed some of the material that you referenced, in particular, Fast Food Nation and the Omnivore's Dilemma. However, I wouldn't reference these sources as the gospel truth. These aren't scholarly or scientific articles, they are popular media. They may be well researched, entertaining, and raise interesting questions, but you can't simply say to somebody 'your position is wrong! Michael Pollan says so!' I have a feeling that we would probably agree on many issues regarding the food industry. My problem isn't so much the position you're taking, but the fact that you lean heavily on these sources without considering their agenda or the opposing side of the issue.

Exactly. They never weigh the benefits against the cost from the other side. Can you imagine what would happen to the earth if we all reverted to local farming, agrarian-style societies? Can you say "water crisis?" There wouldn't be a spit of forested land left anywhere, as evidenced by places like Haiti, India, much of Latin America and Africa, China, etc, etc. There are positives to having highly efficient, smaller foot-print food production installations. Not saying it's done perfectly, but the pop media garbage doesn't help the issue by playing on people's emotional response to a slaughter house without showing pictures of the devastating deforestation and so on happening in places that can't factory farm. There's more to consider in those stories. I agree we need to work on things significantly (starting with getting rid of Mansanto), but not by swinging the pendulum as hard as we can in the complete opposite direction.

---------- Post added 02-23-2012 at 10:12 AM ----------

Ok, no. Just no. It has been proven in Forks over Knives and other articles that meat activates cancer cells and is unnecessary

A perfect example of manipulating a few scientific findings to imply something more than you really can support. Did you know that Silica is also a carcinogen? Many alkaloids in plants that we consume regularly also are carcinogens. There is a higher rate of colon cancer in many vegetarian populations, it is not known why yet. Meat is not the only thing that can cause cancer and there isn't any direct evidence that eating meat or not eating meat has any relationship to whether or not you get cancer, these are people trying to further their agenda not presenting a sound scientific finding. Anything foreign to your body could cause cancer. I think this is where the old adage "don't believe everything you see on TV" comes from. Neither has any benefit in terms of avoiding cancers, longer life expectancy, and so on. It's really nothing more than a personal decision based on how you feel but there are no medically significant benefits to going to either extreme (which assumes that you have taken the proper precautions to supplement those things you are missing by making your diet counter to what your physiology has adapted to utilize over the past 100K years, if not there are clear medically significant costs).

 

[Robotponys]

All true points. I just get a bit excited about these things and type without much thought. I agree, GMO seeds are very useful, but some points, such as basically forcing everyone to use it and the bad effects on nature. Plus we have such excess it ends up being not so good.

 

[Bill S]

You can't separate the two unless you go to an alternative source for obtaining the nutrients. If you eat meat, then yes, the meat is what you need. Protein and nutrients come included.

I think the point being made is that muscle tissue is just the package in which the nutrients are delivered. There's nothing that requires you to accept the nutrients in that particular package, as long as there are other "packages" in which the nutrient can be delivered.

That said - I still prefer meat in my diet. Taste and texture are part of my appreciation of my world. Veggie burgers have not yet attained that level.

 

[Bjamin]

I have to disagree with this geneticly modified foods are in my opinion no good at all and I do every thing I can to aviod them as well as meats pumped full of hormones. Watch the world acording to monsanto and do some reaserch on the results of comsuming gmo's. Look at the conection to all the cancers and other disorders that are so much more prevelent in the past 30 years.

Great post jaykong. Informative and accurate.

Ultum - genetic engineering of food crops has been wildly successful, a far cry from your statement that it "never ends in good results".

 

[Robotponys]

Yup. IMO it actually isn't necessary for most foods. Corn is in such excess we are feeding it to all our meat, which cows don't appreciate. I eat organic as much as possible.

Oh, and we really should slow our meat intake a bit. Just maybe eat meat 3 times a week instead of daily. The animals suffer A LOT and so does the planet. Not forgo you to be a vegetarian, just reducing will help, or eating organic mainly.

This thread is so off topic... Let's end this, there is no real conclusion, it's your choice (just DO NOT EAT FASTFOOD, not even veggies. Everybody knows fastfood tastes bad compared to normal food and it is incredibly unhealthy. Oh, there is an interesting TED talk about obesity and kids. It's disgusting.

 

[jbm150]

meat activates cancer cells and is unnecessary

Meat, even red meat and even in large quantities, is not harmful to humans in and of itself. Our bodies are built to handle it just fine. It's when you have excess meat paired with a garbage high carbohydrate, poor fat (mono/polyunsat & sat) ratio, high salt diet with little exercise (among other things) that problems like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc become a problem, especially on a population scale

Corn sucks for a lot of reasons; there are way better grains out there.

 

[Tarac]

I have to disagree with this geneticly modified foods are in my opinion no good at all and I do every thing I can to aviod them as well as meats pumped full of hormones. Watch the world acording to monsanto and do some reaserch on the results of comsuming gmo's. Look at the conection to all the cancers and other disorders that are so much more prevelent in the past 30 years.

So you don't eat anything with corn, wheat, beef products, pig products (you are new world, we don't have boars here, only feral swine which is GMO through selective breeding)? I think you misunderstand what GMO foods are. Look up Zea mexicana to see what corn looked like before we GMO'd it. You could never eat that, saying you avoid GMO is saying you avoid most agricultural products period, meat and plant-based alike. We don't eat wild apples, our raspberries and blueberries are bred to be tastier and bigger, etc. etc. Whenever you are eating anything with a cultivar name, like "Icerberg" or "Romaine" you are eating GMO food. So if you want to try to avoid eating whenever you can because you consider it "bad," I wonder first what you are eating at all and second why think "watching" anything really constitutes research. Really, you should do some research. There is very little connection that can be made between cancer and any diet, that's the one thing all credible researchers will tell you. Physiology is far too complicated. The prevalence of cancer in the modern era can't be concluded to have anything to do with diet specifically because LOTS of other things have changed too, inlcuding but not limited to pesticides, life style changes, new materials in all our homes, extremely long life expectancy, etc. etc. The GMO we call the banana changed humanity forever. I think you are trying to say that certain kinds of GMO are bad, which is true. Terminal wheat is extremely dangerous and exploitative. But to say that GMOS are no good at all, well that's just plain old uninformed about your own diet and life-style unless you are living in the woods somewhere eating squirrels (and in BC, btw all your squirrels are GMO too sent to you by our national zoo a long time ago since the original wild native inhabitant went extinct lol) and acorns and living in a cabin you made from trees you chopped out of a virgin forest (see why we need efficient farms? if we all cut down virgin forest for our house to avoid GMO trees used for lumber... that's right, trees that are GMO to grow larger faster through selective cultivation). There is no animal called Bos taurus anymore, only Bos domesticus. Even your eggs come from a bird that isn't the Indian Jungle Fowl, probably a Barred Rock or Rhode Island Red and that includes 100% free roaming, hormone-free, completely organic eggs.

 

[Anonymity82]

That said - I still prefer meat in my diet. Taste and texture are part of my appreciation of my world. Veggie burgers have not yet attained that level.

Than you my friend, have not tried Morning Star's spicy black bean burgers.

 

[Bill S]

Than you my friend, have not tried Morning Star's spicy black bean burgers.

True, but I'll bet they do not taste like steak. I'm not saying that vegetarian foods can't taste good - just saying that none that I've tried would really fool anyone into thinking they are real meat. I have enjoyed many vegetarian dishes, but I also appreciate a good steak once in a while and sushi probably twice as often. (Sashimi-type, not just vegetable type) I agree that most people ingest far more red meat than they should, and get far less exercise than they should. I eat smaller quantities of meat than many people I know, and get plenty of excercise - but have not felt inspired to give meat up altogether.

On another point - yes, people evolved as omnivores and meat is a natural part of their diet. But the quantities of meat that our early ancestors ate was much less than modern people do. Vegetables (including starchy root crops) comprised a major portion of the diet, and meat tended to be only a periodic treat. Modern agriculture and commerce radically changed human diets, and modern diets and lifestyles are neither traditional, natural nor healthy.

There seems to be some confusion in the past discussion as to what exactly GMO foods are. Hybrids do not really qualify - the genetic codes were not tampered with. The real GMOs are ones in which specific genetic material has been spliced into the plants, such as incorporating natural insecticides into the genetic code. This is not done through breeding, and the effects are to some degree still unpredictable. At this point, I'm pretty much neutral on the topic of genetic modification. The alarmists out there don't really have all the evidence they need to support some of the accusations being tossed around. But the proponents don't have the proof that there won't be long term effects either. For now we'll just have to wait and watch.

Now - in the feable hope of bringing this back into the realm of tarantulas - When we keep tarantulas in captivity we are feeding them relatively unnatural diets. The issues brought up in the previous messages regarding healthy human feeding could be applied to tarantulas as well. The crickets and roaches so many of us use have been selectively bred in captivity for hundreds of generations and fed on all kinds of artificial foods. Food we may sometimes make available to tarantulas (vertebrate prey comes to mind) might have all the food value and hazards as the junk food and fast food that we inflict upon ourselves. Anyone care to take the conversation further in that direction?

 

[jayefbe]

There seems to be some confusion in the past discussion as to what exactly GMO foods are. Hybrids do not really qualify - the genetic codes were not tampered with. The real GMOs are ones in which specific genetic material has been spliced into the plants, such as incorporating natural insecticides into the genetic code. This is not done through breeding, and the effects are to some degree still unpredictable. At this point, I'm pretty much neutral on the topic of genetic modification. The alarmists out there don't really have all the evidence they need to support some of the accusations being tossed around. But the proponents don't have the proof that there won't be long term effects either. For now we'll just have to wait and watch.

I'm glad you brought this up. GMO are referring to transgenic organisms. Selective breeding and hybridization will effect the genomic structure of an organism, but it is not the same thing as using recombinant DNA techniques to insert a DNA sequence from one organism into another. Also, adding hormones to livestock is not the same thing as creating a GMO.

 

[Bjamin]

There is a big differnce between selective breading and genetic modification done in a lab just because I didn't have the time or inclination to go into more detail in my post does not mean I havent done more research on the subject than simply watching a show. I asures you that I am not the type to believe every thing I see or read. I do not buy my meat from the geocery store I coop with friends on an organic farm we raise hormone free pork chicken and eggs yes from pigs and chickens that have been selectivly breed but I dont concider that on the same playing field as modifying them in a lab. I also hunt and fish and have large vegitable beds. As I said I try to avoid gmos I understand how wide spread a problem they are and how hard it would be to compleatly cut them out of our lifes.


QUOTE=Tarac;1998787]So you don't eat anything with corn, wheat, beef products, pig products (you are new world, we don't have boars here, only feral swine which is GMO through selective breeding)? I think you misunderstand what GMO foods are. Look up Zea mexicana to see what corn looked like before we GMO'd it. You could never eat that, saying you avoid GMO is saying you avoid most agricultural products period, meat and plant-based alike. We don't eat wild apples, our raspberries and blueberries are bred to be tastier and bigger, etc. etc. Whenever you are eating anything with a cultivar name, like "Icerberg" or "Romaine" you are eating GMO food. So if you want to try to avoid eating whenever you can because you consider it "bad," I wonder first what you are eating at all and second why think "watching" anything really constitutes research. Really, you should do some research. There is very little connection that can be made between cancer and any diet, that's the one thing all credible researchers will tell you. Physiology is far too complicated. The prevalence of cancer in the modern era can't be concluded to have anything to do with diet specifically because LOTS of other things have changed too, inlcuding but not limited to pesticides, life style changes, new materials in all our homes, extremely long life expectancy, etc. etc. The GMO we call the banana changed humanity forever. I think you are trying to say that certain kinds of GMO are bad, which is true. Terminal wheat is extremely dangerous and exploitative. But to say that GMOS are no good at all, well that's just plain old uninformed about your own diet and life-style unless you are living in the woods somewhere eating squirrels (and in BC, btw all your squirrels are GMO too sent to you by our national zoo a long time ago since the original wild native inhabitant went extinct lol) and acorns and living in a cabin you made from trees you chopped out of a virgin forest (see why we need efficient farms? if we all cut down virgin forest for our house to avoid GMO trees used for lumber... that's right, trees that are GMO to grow larger faster through selective cultivation). There is no animal called Bos taurus anymore, only Bos domesticus. Even your eggs come from a bird that isn't the Indian Jungle Fowl, probably a Barred Rock or Rhode Island Red and that includes 100% free roaming, hormone-free, completely organic eggs.[/QUOTE]

 

[crawltech]

what was this thread about again????????......

anyhoo, check out paleo diet, or caveman diet...this is apparently how we are supposed to eat.

 

[Tarac]

I'm glad you brought this up. GMO are referring to transgenic organisms. Selective breeding and hybridization will effect the genomic structure of an organism, but it is not the same thing as using recombinant DNA techniques to insert a DNA sequence from one organism into another. Also, adding hormones to livestock is not the same thing as creating a GMO.

No, that is completely wrong. GMO is genetically modified, through whatever process both laboratory and the old fashioned selective breeding method. GEO, genetically engineered organism, is what you are trying to describe, transgenically altered foods. They are not the same, one is a blanket term and the other is specifically transgenic. But ultimately they usually have the same effect- gene you want is there, other one is suppressed or bred out. That said, being suspicious of GEO is not at all unwarranted but GMOs and even most GEO are generally safe and are much more ubiquitous than I think most people assume.

Don't forget if you know anyone who is diabetic, for example, and uses insulin, they literally owe their life to GEOs. Lots of things fall into this category, just need to pay more attention. There is a big difference between terminal wheat and insulin because of the intent, but the difference in intent causes people to have these highly emotional responses in a black and white fashion without really considering what they are saying. It's just as bad as telling everyone that coops are evil because they put too much demand on local resources. That's true in some environments, but not all. You have to be pretty discerning before you make a blanket statement like "I avoid GMOs, there bad and nothing good ever comes from them."

---------- Post added 02-24-2012 at 01:34 PM ----------

There is a big differnce between selective breading and genetic modification done in a lab just because I didn't have the time or inclination to go into more detail in my post does not mean I havent done more research on the subject than simply watching a show. I asures you that I am not the type to believe every thing I see or read. I do not buy my meat from the geocery store I coop with friends on an organic farm we raise hormone free pork chicken and eggs yes from pigs and chickens that have been selectivly breed but I dont concider that on the same playing field as modifying them in a lab. I also hunt and fish and have large vegitable beds. As I said I try to avoid gmos I understand how wide spread a problem they are and how hard it would be to compleatly cut them out of our lifes.

Mis-characterizing the difference, or not actually, indicates you don't fully understand, that's what I'm getting at. You don't consider it the same because you don't understand the genetics, but ultimately it is almost always the same. Not a single GMO (intended for consumption) has any direct negative affect on human health to date, according to many major groups including the California Academy of Sciences, etc. etc. If you want only gene A and you select for it by breeding, it really isn't in practice different than just inserting gene A directly. You end up with an organism that has gene A, just like you wanted. The only place you ever find people claiming ill effects on human health as a result of consuming a GMO is from organic watchdog groups, which is like asking PETA if it's ok to test a vaccine on a mouse before you start giving it babies.

 

[paassatt]

Look into Norman Borlaug. He saved millions of people who otherwise would've died in Africa with genetically modified wheat.

 

[Tarac]

For anyone interested in a decent, non-propaganda treatment of genetically modified foods in an easily digested format there is a good program with lots interviews with experts, policy makers, etc. etc. produced by PBS. It is title "Harvest of Fear" and here is the link:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/

It's a fair treatment, considers both the ethical and the pragmatic ends of GMOs. It does a better job at finessing the pitfalls and victories of GMOs than the overly evocative and biased programs cited previously. Those other shows are for people who have already made up their minds and aren't interested in considering the possibility that they might not be getting the whole story, this one is not so alarmist and gives counter-arguments from people that aren't already vested in organic/non-GMO food's success. Less feeling, more thinking.

 

[paassatt]

I'll just point out that it's pretty easy to criticize genetically modified food with a full belly and no worries about when and from where your next meal is coming.

 

[jakykong]

I have to disagree with this geneticly modified foods are in my opinion no good at all and I do every thing I can to aviod them as well as meats pumped full of hormones. Watch the world acording to monsanto and do some reaserch on the results of comsuming gmo's. Look at the conection to all the cancers and other disorders that are so much more prevelent in the past 30 years.

The statistical correlation between cancer and GMO food is tenuous at best. The problem is that there are confounding variables - improved diagnostic methods, unhealthful lifestyles (sedentary, obese, etc.), and exposure to other pathogens (smog, for example), among others, render the correlation meaningless.

I have also seen very little or no evidence that GMO foods are genuinely harmful. Clinical studies are few and far between, and either inconclusive or favorable. As noted above, the statistical studies are worthless unless the variables can be quantified. The converse is also true - Clinical studies showing positive effects are also few and far between. Therefore, the best we can say empirically is "We don't know whether GMO has harmful effects." In reality, it almost certainly depends on which genes you're splicing - a few will cause harmful effects, a few will cause beneficial effects, and most will do neither.

But bear in mind that popular media and the food market has a powerful economic incentive to sell "natural" and "organic" foods, because they cost more! I work at a grocery store, and we earn a significantly larger margin on organic sales than normal produce, in addition to increased sales on products labeled "organic". Popular media doesn't have an obligation to present both sides or argue their case with scientific rigidity, therefore, works written for the layman should be read with skepticism, and are often skewed by an agenda.

Nobody so far has presented citations for their facts, myself included, except for popular media. Therefore, although this discussion is quite entertaining, everything here is anecdote, so of course, nobody is going to chance anyone else's mind! So, let's just disagree amicably and enjoy the debate. :coffee:

 

[jayefbe]

No, that is completely wrong. GMO is genetically modified, through whatever process both laboratory and the old fashioned selective breeding method. GEO, genetically engineered organism, is what you are trying to describe, transgenically altered foods. They are not the same, one is a blanket term and the other is specifically transgenic. But ultimately they usually have the same effect- gene you want is there, other one is suppressed or bred out. That said, being suspicious of GEO is not at all unwarranted but GMOs and even most GEO are generally safe and are much more ubiquitous than I think most people assume.

For all intents and purposes, GMO is basically interchangeable with GEO. I understand the point you are trying to make, but GMOs are under regulation. That regulation does NOT include selectively bred crops. Under your definition, they would be.

 

[Bill S]

I'll just point out that it's pretty easy to criticize genetically modified food with a full belly and no worries about when and from where your next meal is coming.

You got that right. In the big picture, almost all foods have some beneficial aspects and some negative ones. And determining the overall effect may vary a lot depending on the situation and context.