Substance Poll 1 of Many: Alcohol vs. Meat

got 2 b meat

meat http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

p sure there's no way alcohol is gonna beat meat

oh wait, which is WORSE?

alcohol. Meat is the coolest http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

oh oops hahaha

i have both every day ; )

WORSE?

In moderation, neither is bad.

btw, very ilx-savvy trolling, although it does not require a very sophisticated troll to find this button.

worse would be alcohol i guess. btw, kinda disappointed that i'll never live to see the results ilx's fine minds come to over the years.

Oh crap I voted for meAt as best :( please remove my vote

LOL me too. Just to be contrarian.

voted meat and read the poll correctly. woah yeah vegetarian.

Worst James Brown sample ever...

i gave up alcohol and meat for january and i didn't miss meat at all but i really missed alcohol a lot

Don't eat meat but still voted alcohol cause I don't think meat would turn me into an idiot the way booze does or destroy lives etc.

Fill me up on Johnsonville brats and the last thing I'm gonna do is confess my true love to a platonic female friend.

oh yeah i mean alcohol is obviously 'worse' in life terms but the prospect of never drinking it again is much more unappealing than the idea of being fully vegetarian

Poll Closing Date: Tuesday, December 31, 2554 7:00 PM (in 542 years)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eah23WvLYsQ

on the personal level i would say alcohol is worse than meat, as far as effects on the world around us by the industries which produce said products, it is definitely the other way around

he's not really gonna eat all that chili is he

x-post - Yeah, true.

I wonder which kills more people, all things considered? prob...meat? if you incorporate all the people its going to kill in the future w/ its contribution to global warming etc. etc. it's prob harder to defend "in the big picture"...but alcohol does kill lotsa younger people here and now. I guess it makes people too tho. I consume both of these things but think they're both overrated. it'd be easier to give up alcohol lifestyle-wise but at the same time I'd prob miss it more.

Would not have taken you for a meat eater, iatee.

well I was a vegetarian in hs then my hair started falling out

in the long-term I'd like to go back for environmental reasons but sorta have to get my diet/life in the place where I can do that

i don't go in for all this "let's try to extend our lives on this horrible shitball as long as possible" hoo-hah, but i'll grudgingly vote meat because i assume i could live on booze and cheez-its if i had to.

meat is totally not bad for u, tho it is bad for the environment

Your hair started falling out?! You must have really been doing it wrong. Damn.

"Not without my gin"

meat is totally not bad for u, tho it is bad for the environment

this is my take for the most part

(does fabio head turn w/ long luxurious head of hair)

meat qua meat not neccesarily bad for you, but let's assume that a good chunk of the meat consumption in american is either fried or served with cheese and hfc.

Has anyone else seen that documentary Forks Over Knives? Apparently it thinks meat is horrible for you even when you eat it in moderation and combined with a vegetable-rich diet?

yah theres all sorts horrible processed meat products and meat n cheese n sugar n bread type foods, but the meat itself is not the problem

lots of people think meat is horrible for you but they are wrong

its sugar really thats horrible for you

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn explained that eating meat, dairy, and oils injures the lining of our blood vessels, causing heart disease, heart attack, or stroke.

In The China Study, Dr. Colin Campbell revealed how cancer and other diseases skyrocket when eating meat and dairy is the norm—and plummet when a traditional plant-based diet persists. And more and more experts are adding their voices to the cause: There is nothing else you can do for your health that can match the benefits of a plant-based diet.

They're both bad.

I haven't seen it but now I want to.

Forks Over Knives is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Lee Fulkerson, an American independent filmmaker. The film examines the "profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods," principally by tracing the careers and research of American physician Caldwell Esselstyn and professor of nutritional biochemistry T. Colin Campbell.[1]

That doesn't really sound all that controversial to me tbh. A lot of ppl have been saying similar things for a while now.

eh I've never seen conclusive evidence

people been eating meat forever, grains, dairy and particularly processed sugar those are the johnny come latelys to our diets

I know, and you know my personal food pyramid is based on meat & alcohol with the occasional intrusion of kale. I'm just saying people seem to find that movie convincing.

"profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods,"

i mean come on fucking srsly people

and its just like yr throwing all these things in a pot: meat, processed foods, dairy like theyre all the same, and no mention of sugar even, plzzz

Yeah well that statement is a little extreme but I don't think it's really controversial to say that a largely plant-based diet is probably a pretty wise choice. I used to work for this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Willett and so am probably largely influenced by his ideas on the topic.

This is a really good book btw: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Drink-Be-Healthy-Harvard/dp/0743266420

some plants r good, some plants r not that good, lean meats are good

And a hanger steak is delicious.

Gonna be really fucked off if I'm not around in 542 years to see the results.

just eat plants and u will live 4 ever

lol

x-posts Agreed. I don't think all meat is bad for you but I do think that a lot of it is and it just seems weird to me that that is still considered controversial.

it not controversial, its just not true, meat is not bad for you

well the controversialness is due to the evidence, which never seems to be conclusive

spam is bad for you, mcdonalds is bad for you, eating nothing but rib eyes is bad for you

pie is bad for you, bread is bad for you, potatoes are bad for you

it sux cause I like bread and pie so much more than I like alcohol or meat

Everything is bad for you pretty much. Moderation is ket etc. etc.

my favorite useless factoid is that you can kill yourself by eating oranges

KEY

I would be fine w/ an all pastry diet

when I lived in france I kinda came close

x-post! How?? That's p fascinating.

http://i.imgur.com/UV1JR.jpg > http://i.imgur.com/OAr1s.jpg

I lived on Nutty Bars in high school

I am now short ;_;

x-post! How?? That's p fascinating.

lol I just looked it up and apparently it's a useless and unproven factoid

potatoes are bad for you

lies

based on what I read, I think you'd have to eat enough oranges that the amount of vitamin C in your body would cause you to shit yourself to death? that's what I'm going with anyway

guys ~life is a terminal illness~

i was about to say. claims about foods that are bad for you always make me all, "we're all going to die, guys."

i should eat less meat, though

guys ~life is a terminal illness~

lol I think I said something similar to that to my parents this Christmas

yeah but if you take that logic too far we should all be eating nothing but cheesecake and doing heroin or something

... and?

sometimes i feel like when people talk about unhealthy foods they are imagining most americans doing nothing but eating cheesecake and doing heroin.

and I don't want people to start doing that til my new diet book comes out xp

were all gonna die but theres no need for us to spend half our lives diabetic taking 50 diff prescriptions

i admit i am probably reactionary about this but eh

i admit i am probably reactionary about this but eh

this is the most beautiful sentence

americans eat amazingly poorly horseshoe! like there's nothing patronizing about this. I mean some people are prob enjoying being patronizing about it but it's still objectively true.

americans eat amazingly poorly horseshoe!

zenlike koans I have seen emblazoned on t-shirts worn by hong kong people

i don't go in for all this "let's try to extend our lives on this horrible shitball as long as possible" hoo-hah, but i'll grudgingly vote meat because i assume i could live on booze and cheez-its if i had to.

basically otm, but i would miss having the occasional double-double from in-n-out

i feel like things should be done about this like: fresh produce should be available more widely, soda companies should not have advertising/machines/presence in schools, etc but when the conversation becomes about foods to avoid it gets my back up.

haha how is that not saying soda is to be avoided

i think if god forced me to go vegetarian i could deal with it, but if all the booze in the world disappeared i'd be pissed.

wait I think I argued from your pov in another thread two days ago but it's still true that people should be better informed about how many years off their life they'll lose from eating xyz

xp

i think if god forced me to go vegetarian i could deal with it, but if all the booze in the world disappeared i'd be pissed.

i'm the same way but with carbs. just leave me a hunk of good bread.

food is where i have secret libertarian tendencies i have noticed

xp i mean soda is a nutritionally void substance. i guess i don't have a problem with saying that. but i feel like the ardor with which people attack it seems disproportionate to me? also they never seem to be attacking the corporations that sell it, but rather the total idiots who like to drink it for some incomprehensible reason.

haha how is that not saying soda is to be avoided

Welllllll...maybe we should avoid putting it at the disposal of small, growing people with too much energy already, and no impulse control part of their brains yet?

laurel wants to live in a nanny state! </ronpaul>

wait I think I argued from your pov in another thread two days ago but it's still true that people should be better informed about how many years off their life they'll lose from eating xyz

― iatee, Monday, February 6, 2012 12:01 PM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does anyone not know soda is not so good for you? that is a genuine question. i find it hard to believe. i feel like the reasons why people choose to continue to eat foods that are unhealthy are more complicated than not knowing they're unhealthy.

I'm sure most people know soda is bad for you at this point but they prob can't accurately compare how soda is bad for you to how a steak is bad for you or a piece of bread is bad for you

and that matters if we're expecting them to make rational decisions w/ how they eat and live

I still am secret-libertarian w/ you on this issue a little bit cause I think people should have the right to eat bad food, I enjoy eating bad food sometimes, I drink a coke once in a while and enjoy it. but everything needs to be put in context and I'm not gonna pretend my brain doesn't respond to the coke logo in ways that I can't even understand.

because of all the conflicting accounts of whether steak or bread are bad for you over the past however many years of the study of nutrition, in part, i'm sure.

xp yeah i am with you on the i like to eat junk sometimes part of this, too.

we should start a secret-libertarian-junkfood-shame club

my dickhead theory is that if things were really libertariany about food, no subsidies for anything, then everybody's diet would be a lot better. but more people would be hungry probably :/

I wd like schools to have a chance in hell of teaching things to pre-teens and teenagers who really shouldn't be sitting still in classrooms for 7 hours, is the thing. So having them not eat total crap and not be on a roller-coaster of hyperactivity and lassitude all day would be a good start.

secret-libertarian-junkfood-shame

new board description

the egyptians used overweening state power to build the pyramids, we have a 99c chicken sandwich within arms reach of very single place in north america

99c "chicken" sandwich, padded out with corn, soy, extruded hog anuses mashed into a paste

i guess i am nanny-state-y about mandatory supermarkets with good produce in poor areas and school lunches and coca-cola out of high schools but libertarian about everything else. i.e. let me eat what the fuck i want the health risks are my own damn business.

i am nanny-state-y about mandatory supermarkets with good produce in poor areas and school lunches

yes x1000

yes to the other part too because damn the barrel of cheeseballs I had a hand in devouring last night was so good.

I think the prob is that it's hard to even imagine what the food world would be like w/o gov't playing a role somewhere.

the health risks are my own damn business.

b-b-but obamacare is gonna give everyone $900/mo premiums and $50,000/yr deductibles for YOUR type 2 diabeetus. just yours.

people been eating meat forever, grains, dairy and particularly processed sugar those are the johnny come latelys to our diets

― lag∞n, Monday, February 6, 2012 11:34 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

yah but ppl have only been living past the age of 50 en masse recently

I probably professed to this on the quiddities thread but

I think healthy eating should be the cultural norm and if you want to deviate that & be a food libertarian, go ahead

it's the way that junk food eating has been so normalized that's troubling, there is sugar in your bread people

also i am really skeptical of if you eat bread you will get diabetes other pull-this-food-out-of-your-ass-will-lead-to-diabetes arguments. even my mother, a physician who is very prone to such statements and whom i think of as a nutritional nazi admits that there is so much not fully understood about what causes diabetes that those arguments are v v hard to substantiate.

b-b-but obamacare is gonna give everyone $900/mo premiums and $50,000/yr deductibles for YOUR type 2 diabeetus. just yours.

― textile in thighville (get bent), Monday, February 6, 2012 12:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god, right? people say that shit. it makes me so damn mad. also if my diet causes me to die earlier it is going to save insurance companies money, you assholes. people living longer is the real drain on the system.

yeah. i don't exactly want to have a heart attack at 35, but "longevity" isn't something i'm that excited about. it sounds scary if anything.

we could jsut do it logan's run style

<3 you dayo but you do seem like a person who thinks as differently on this point from me as possible

aw, less than three too - I just hate american food culture, is the thing! promoting vegetarianism and/or healthy eating is a way for me to get another wedge in

tbh, I think the american notion that bigger = better, or bigger for less, or that the #1 concern of a meal is whether or not it makes you feel 'full', is probably more injurious than stocking supermarkets with processed foods

I've always been more optimistic about science's capability of solving our future health problems than of science's capability of solving the problems that will arise from our consumption itself

does this boil down to 'effect on others'?

Probably there're figures available for ireland but in terms of cost to the state i'm sure alcohol wins hands-down, and obv socially we might need to get uk, france et al over to stage an intervention. In the morning, when we sober up a little.

let me eat what the fuck i want the health risks are my own damn business.

― horseshoe, Monday, February 6, 2012 12:11 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but then the environmental costs to eating a lot of meat are undeniable so i guess somebody should stop me. how would that work?

let the costs of producing the meat reflect environmental cost, i guess

iatee would say, make meat more expensive

you are way better at this than i am

xp you too

counterargument is 'oh so now only rich people get to eat meat, eh?'

anyway, nutritionally, what does meat offer? a complete protein package + saturated animal fats and cholesterol. it doesn't offer anything in the way of 'vitamins', well, I think they recommend that anemic people eat red meat, but I think it's been shown that vegetables are better at providing iron too. plus if you want to take that logic all the way to the end, doctor's would be recommending that anemic people eat congealed cow's blood, yeah? move to enguhland or something.

to which you can argue for a more expansive food stamp system xp

tbh, I think the american notion that bigger = better, or bigger for less, or that the #1 concern of a meal is whether or not it makes you feel 'full', is probably more injurious than stocking supermarkets with processed foods

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Monday, February 6, 2012 12:32 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think you have to acknowledge the other pole of "american food culture" to the extent that it's an identifiable monolith, which is puritanical and self-denying about food. they play off each other. like when i used to diet i would fantasize about double bacon cheeseburgers in huge portions because they were advertised around me and i wasn't "allowed" to eat them. don't really see what's wrong with wanting fullness out of a meal, either.

rich ppl get to do a lot of more fun stuff i think we'd have to leave that battle for another day tbh

yeah, the two poles should def merge!

it's because 'fullness' in american food lingo means 'completely stuffed'

for me 'full' means 'I no longer feel hungry'

right, like nobody thinks that it's a human rights problem that only rich people can afford yachts, it's prob good that we all can't afford yachts xp

'fullness' as a feeling is elastic. it depends on your eating habits. if you regularly eat to the point of burping up food, anything less is going to feel like not enough.

yacht issue leading to global smarming

lol this question

anyway big picture americans are eating less meat http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/americans-are-eating-less-and-less-meat/2012/01/11/gIQANUvmqP_blog.html and chinese meat consumption gonna fuck us

I'm look at u dayo

yeah, the two poles should def merge!

? i feel like they already have merged in that they perpetuate each other? advertising is a big part of this story, obvs.

I used to have that problem in college. being 'full' meant stuffing myself with as many chicken tenders as I could because it was a buffet style dining hall. and going back to my room and lying in a food coma for 2 hours. repeat at dinner time.

I meant that they should merge and find a comfortable middle ground

xp iatee, yeah china's privileging of meat is hugely problematic

'problem'

I was hoping this thread would be "Which one do you prefer?" (Alcohol, easy.)

I don't know how to judge "Which one is worse?" -- for me? for society? health-wise? environmentally?

Life wise

that's kinda all-encompassing tho?

The one i should do without is meat, definitely. I'm only an occasional drinker but my diet's pretty bad.

If i had the choice to get rid of one on a society-wide basis it'd be alcohol tho

for lunch today i gave up meat and had a diet coke. i was trying to work booze into things but figured my employment situation is tenuous enough.

that said a night on the meat never yet led to me having to flee a town by boat so i dunno

it is nice to see you, strongo!

btw I asked this q because I've been shopping horribly lately, just alcohol and meat, and I grew up a vegetarian so I always kind of shudder inside when I buy meat from grocery stores

as a child when I first started to eat meat, whenever I would bit into it I would imagine what the animal's face looked like, I would think about everything about it, it was very hard, but I guess tasty enough for me to get over that. Now I eat everything, any organs, blood, whatever, but buying it still gives me a slight reaction

i definitely think if i had my shit together i would eat less meat. like i end up eating it because i don't prepare a meal ahead of time and then i'm superhungry and feel like i need to eat something with a lot of protein in it right now or i'll die. on the other hand there's evidence to suggest i will never have my shit together.

#1 problem I've had as a semi-vegetarian is finding a good protein replacement for sure, like making 'beans' is so much work cause you gotta soak and cook them if you don't want to eat the canned stuff, I haven't found a good reliable tofu recipe yet either

so far it seems that the best replacement is cheese :/ which is problematic in itself

My version of "shit together" is to make something on Sunday that will last me until at least Thursday and has some respectable vegetable content (but will have some kind of meat or seafood content as well) and then eat that a lot. There's no way I'm cooking every night.

What's wrong with canned beans? They're a godsend imo, no fucking way am I deciding I want beans far enough in advance to soak them for 28 hours.

aren't they basically canned in a liquid salt lick

You know what I was just thinking about again the oth day? I cannot be the cook and the shopper and the housekeeper and the maid and the wage-earner and the handyman and the bike-mechanic and the tailor for myself ALL THE GODDAMN TIME. Some things have to go.

Oh, I always put them in a strainer and rinse them off, and then add more salt during the cooking process.

Yeah. Rinse them well and canned beans are generally quite presentable.

What's wrong with canned beans? They're a godsend imo, no fucking way am I deciding I want beans far enough in advance to soak them for 28 hours.

― one little aioli (Laurel), Monday, February 6, 2012 1:44 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah - canned beans all the way imo. I've never soaked a bean in my life. I always drain and rinse too but I'm not really concerned about salt. I have really low blood pressure.

salt forms the basis of my food pyramid

when I die, thousands of deer from miles away will come to lick my body

hawtt

i definitely think if i had my shit together i would eat less meat. like i end up eating it because i don't prepare a meal ahead of time and then i'm superhungry and feel like i need to eat something with a lot of protein in it right now or i'll die. on the other hand there's evidence to suggest i will never have my shit together.

― horseshoe, Monday, February 6, 2012 1:39 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha this is my life

i soak beans. but what happens is i'll buy a package of dried beans and they'll sit there in the pantry forever, until i say fuck it, i'm gonna make these beans and i'm gonna eat these beans and i'm gonna love 'em. and then i eat beans for the next four days.

i voted for meat but i thought the poll was for what was best

oh yeah soak the beans. if you soak them overnight they won't give you gas.

Yeah I always eat canned ones, esp chickpeas - fuck soaking a chickpea. Some brands I get dont seem all *that* salty, no idea what american canned stuff is like tho (I buy Italian brands). Lentils dont need soaking so theyre fine for cooking from dried.

Dayo, surely you eat tofu? Thats one of my primary protein sources now. I'm not a vegetarian but I seem to have almost become one by degrees (to the point the housemate actually commented on it the other day), partly from having recently dated a vegan, partly because i looooove veggies and chickpeas, and mainly because meat is fucking expensive. One good, high quality eye fillet steak once a month is a far better pleasure than sausages or mcdonalds every week.

I am learning to make good tofu

MAKE it! is that a complex process at all? or is it kinda like making paneer?

I think he means cook with it. Right?!

Oh right haha dur. Ive had a brain frazzling morning nothing makes sense today.

haha yeah. soybean milk is easy to make though, and delicious

No it's not really clear tbh. It's just that making tofu from scratch sounds so ambitious that I assume he has to mean cooking.

lol x-post

even if you're a vegetarian I don't know how you can argue that meat is actually worse for your body than alcohol

Yeah it isnt like you can have a meat overdose.

Well, maybe not:

http://images.wikia.com/simpsons/images/e/ef/Red.PNG