Greenpeace has lost its moral compass

Well when people talk about "vegetables" Faye they normally mean leafy veg, root veg and maybe some that are botanically speaking fruits (tomatoes etc)
None of these contain much protein. They also lack fat soluble vitamins.
A vegan diet that only contained "vegetables" might keep an adult alive but would not support healthy growth of a child - they need fats and proteins that could,( if you were careful and had the luxury of choice), be obtained from nuts, grain, pulses etc.

I love fried locusts with a little soy sauce!

I added beetroot because it is the only plant source of B12 which is often lacking in a vegetarian/vegan diet.

A child eating a vegetarian diet wouldn't be malnourished Jess. I am not sure what you mean when you say "if you just fed a child on vegetables ie leafy stuff and roots.

nightowl absolutely agree that about the omnivorous diet before we learned to hunt. red meat not a big component - but let us not forget that chimps sometimes hunt and eat raw monkey.
We have neither carnivore dentition nor herbivore dentition. Our molars would wear down very quickly if we were eating grass. And grass would ot sustain us because we do not have the digestive equipment to deal with it.
Herbivores have much more complex guts and rely on their particular kinds of symbiotic gut bacteria to break down vegetable matter into molecules that they can absorb. If we ate just leafy food all day, we would still struggle to get enough nutrients because we do not have the guts or the bacteria.
The other point is that we would have to eat nearly all day - like gorillas do (on their vegan, leafy diet).
faye apart from some seeds, grains and nuts plant food contain low levels of protein. If you just fed a child on "vegetables" ie. leafy stuff and roots they would be severely malnourished. I think beetroot as a wonder food has little scientific foundation.
I can appreciate the argument that excessive meat consumption is a bad thing - for health and for the planet. But the case for "vegetarianism" is weakened by some of the assertions made.

Here, here, Faye and Jen!

Vegetables are complete proteins.

Beetroot has B12, plus loads of other vitamins.

There are no valid arguments for eating meat but there are many against, including the increased risk of cancer, hormones and the amount of antibiotics injected into the animals.

Surely the point is that, as humans, we can choose whether or not to kill and eat other animals. We have done enough study to know that we can live without meat. We can get a full range of amino acids from vegetable sources and therefore do not need to kill, unlike carnivores.
Other animal groups are restricted by the need to eat from their environment. We do not. We have found out how to store food for a long time, and therefore the urgency to eat the food in our immediate surroundings is no longer there.
Hunting animals for meat came very late in human evolution.
We are supposed to be thinking and compassionate. That's what separates us from other animals.

Re: dentition. I believe (was taught) that human dentition is very similar to that of pigs. Pigs of course are also omnivores. In the wild they eat vegetables, roots, fruit and invertebrates such as worms. Like humans they are not well equipped to chase prey and bring it down with their bare trotters. Humans were able to eat meat because they learnt to use tools to hunt and then they discovered the art of cooking to make the meat more easily digestible.

What humans do not have is well developed canines for tearing flesh or carnassial teeth which are used to shred raw meat. Our large flat molars are equipped for grinding food. Obviously humans can eat meat and have done so virtually forever. However, I think perhaps a more natural diet would consist of insects, worms, very small prey, and not the large amounts of meat that are consumed in the western diet today.

As for protein, I wonder how large animals like elephants, giraffes, horses, etc manage to grow so large and muscular on a vegetable diet. Amazing.

JessM, if you need to ask where vegans, rich or poor, get their protein from, then you're not as intelligent as I thought you were.

Mmmmmm! Have you tried them with ginger and orange JessM ?

Baggy

Looking forward to tea time bags we are having the second batch of scallops (white meat) discarded from DH recent research cruise. Sauted in butter.

You blue in the face saying that yet, jess ?

Humans are omnivores. You can tell from the dentition. Young humans need lots of protein and fats to grow healthily.

I'm not sure it is, flick. It is sold in markets. Only free to the hunters presumably. I expect it's relatively cheap though, and there probably isn't much other meat available.

because it is free

I wonder why bush meat is so popular in poor countries where poor people have poor diets?

how do rich vegans get enough protein then jen? Particularly their children?
Assume rich vegetarians eat eggs or dairy produce?

Also I forgot the hens and eggs. The chooks roam around during the day and we give give them our vegetable scraps and seed and use the chook manure on the vegetable gardens.

I will add that the cows are my SIL's and I hate the fact that I know their fate and can see them everyday. This year he kept two, sold the three others, made a huge loss and then grew crops instead. It has been a good year for crops and he has done very well. He isn't a farmer. Last year there wasn't a lot of rain and the cows had eaten all the crops he had grown and he had to buy food for them every week. If we had to rely on feeding ourselves from this twenty acres we would be better off growing crops. There are fruit trees and we grow vegetables grown here too.

Flickety we have cows and I have a ten thousand litre water tank next to my house. I have a rough idea of the amount of water they drink a day, having watered them. The time it takes to raise cows ready for market and the amount of water they drink a day besides the amount of water it takes to grow the crops to feed them is a lot more than 15,000 litres. I looked up your link.

I googled How much water does cattle drink a day.

If you are an impoverished person with very little land , you definitely cannot afford the animal products. Have you looked at the landgrab references I have given above, where families are thrown off their land so multinationals can grow palm oil? It does not just work for palm oil, it's rice growers as well.

www.foe.co.uk/stopthelandgrab

For rich people,i.e., most western vegetarians the idea of complementary proteins went out of fashion soon after it was written. A varied diet is enough. Pulses have always been the best form of protein for vegetarians and vegans. Sheep have only a trace of vitamin A. Have a rogan josh or a biryani and you get some vitamin A. Lancashire hotpot has twice as much vitamin A as a biryani, which shows it's the vegetables that you put with your lamb that provides the vitamin A. Beans on their own have very little vitamin A but have a bean and vegetable casserole and you have half your daily requirement in one meal.

And a vegetarian diet collected from the wild has grown in earth enriched by many years of dying vegetation and decomposing animal matter. Farming without using some kind of improver or fertiliser leads to gradually decreasing ferility unless great care is taken to return all waste to the soil, vegetable, animal or human.

Organic farming uses natural fertilisers, not artificial ones. Is there enough spare land to grow green manure crops to take the place of animal dung and feed an expanding world population?

- just to throw the cat into the vegetarian pigeons. Is it not the case that in order to be healthy on a vegetarian diet you need to have a very particular mixture. Carbohydrates are no problem as rice, wheat etc cheap staples. But to get enough protein you have to have a seed of some kind that complements the amino acids in your staple - otherwise, instant protein deficiency. And without a fair quantity of a good range of vegetables you are likely to be short on vitamins such as A (and D in a cold climate). Animal foods (whether fish, sheep or tarantula) are concentrated forms of complete protein and fat soluble vitamins.
So if you are a wealthy vegetarian who has access to a choice of food, not too much of a problem. If you are an impoverished person with very little land, and/or maybe no money, not so good.

Faye your figures for water consumption per kilo of meat are ridiculous, and that is not a vegetarian versus omnivore issue.

See [http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/Animal-products]. Even then it will vary considerably according to methods of rearing. Dairy uses more water than beef production. Grass reared animals consume less than those kept in cattle lots and fed only farmed feed. It will depend on whether the feed crop needs irrigation or not. Some land - Welsh and other hillsides, areas of flat infertile land are only suitable for animal rearing.

The growing of vegetables and fruit under glass requires enormous quantities of energy. I have yet to hear of vegetarians who will not eat vegetables or fruit grown under glass because of concerns about carbon emissions. Most also eat dairy products - and where do they come from?This is what I mean about ethical issues about any eating choices.

This is why I think this whole argument is so ridiculous. As Michael Pollen says: 'Eat well, not too much, mainly plants'. I do not think you can improve on that.