Comments on: Feminism, bunny-hugging, and why PETA still sucks

by: shannon

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:27:00 +0000

can i get a set of instructions that you think should govern the humane slaughtering of animals.
please need them for school!!!!

by: Lex

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:49:41 +0000

Amanda: Eating pork is uncomfortably close to cannibalism. From what I understand, human flesh tastes pretty pig-like. Prosciutto or bacon, to be specific.

by: Kaethe

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:41:37 +0000

That’s not just any bunny, by the way. That’s Max, of Sam and Max, Freelance Police by Steve Purcell. He is not a vegetarian. I am.

by: The Dark Avenger

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:45:45 +0000

Bridgetka, I seriously doubt it, as GH wouldn’t survive the acidic environment of the stomach or the rest of the digestive process, and you’d expect to see the other effects of GH(acromegaly, as you point out being one of them) in the population as well.

Also, GH is species-specific, so even if some bovine or porcine GH did somehow manage to make it into the bloodstream from the digestive tract, it wouldn’t work as well(or perhaps not at all) compared to human GH.

According to one source I googled:

One thing that appears clear is that drinking milk from cattle treated with bovine growth hormone does not pose a risk to human health.

and

Somewhat paradoxically, administration of growth hormone stimulates insulin secretion, leading to hyperinsulinemia.

Link

by: Harpy

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:42:58 +0000

Something to think about: some Native American people are going back to eating more meat, less carbs due to the community’s rise in diabetes and obesity. I am a mixed person and have gone from being a strict vegetarian to eating some meat. I figure that I grew up eating venison and I was not overweight then, nor did I have PCOS, so maybe it’s an intolerance of my vegetarian, carb-heavy diet.

I see nothing wrong with hunting for food, and I feel that the deer has a good life, unlike a factory-farmed cow or pig. I have been putting effort into growing some of my own food, though I am not able to hunt to supply some low-fat, low-carb protein for my diet. I would prefer to avoid getting diabetes when I get old.

I’m very surprised that I’ve come back around to this P.O.V., but I’m also tired of feeling unwell. To me it seems that vegetarian means high-carb, and high-carb is not healthy.

by: Bridgetka

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:27:08 +0000

Another issue with the increasing prevalence of diabetes in the United States: people with acromegaly/gigantism (i.e., excess growth hormone) are virtually guaranteed to develop diabetes. I’m no endocrinologist or anything, but my understanding is that growth hormone and insulin operate along a similar pathway. According to this article “GH is one of the glucose counter-regulatory hormones, rising in response to hypoglycaemia, it has both intrinsic hyperglycaemic actions and causes insulin resistance.” I’m curious if the use of growth hormones in livestock is increasing the rate of diabetes in meat-eating Americans (I think Canada and the EU have banned the use of growth hormones in their livestock), but so far I haven’t seen any studies on it.

by: Alecto

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 20:06:13 +0000

To clarify the whole protein thing: proteins are made up of amino acids, ten of which we can’t synthesize ourselves. These ten are the “essential” amino acids, and we can synthesize the remaining amino acids from them, but we can only get them from dietary sources. If we eat meat or dairy, then we get all ten and in the correct proportions, but not so much with vegetables; most vegetables don’t have all ten (that we can access), so vegetarians have to mix it up a bit and can’t survive on tofu alone. (Interestingly, a lot of cultures have dishes that correct this discrepancy — like corn chips and bean dip, red beans and rice, etc.)

by: NYMOM

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 19:06:52 +0000

“I’ve heard numerous times that frozen vegetables are the way to go because they are frozen shortly after harvest, whereas a lot of produce hangs out for a while so to speak.”

Actually I’ve discovered it’s the same with frozen vegs as far as hanging out for a while. Depending upon the consistency of them, you can see they’ve been frozen and unfrozen a few times…

So I just decided to go with the fresh…

Also I think that’s true (I don’t recall who said it however) about many people in China not being able to afford meat…Also many can’t afford anything but rice to eat…at the doctor’s I went to there were magizines all over the place featuring Chinese adults and children who were diabetic. I was a little surprised as I know they don’t use sugar there, but honey (and up to that point I still believe diabetes was caused by eating too much ’sugar’)

Now I know it’s caused by a diet high in starch. So diabetes is spreading in China due to too much rice consumption. This has major implications for the entire food supply of the world actually…as many people are dependent upon grain and cereal crops (cheap starch) for most of their calories…

If we have to switch to a mostly protein and green vegs diet (which you need more vegs to fill yourself up) it could mean a lot of starvation…those cheap starches are keeping millions alive, but the cost is the insulin resistant form of diabetes type II…

So I don’t know what the answer is…

by: piny

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:21:36 +0000

On the whole, I wish that Singer was better about the human life thing, but I do get the impression that he uses it to shock people out of their complacency about animal life more than anything.

This would be disgusting even if it were true, given the amount of casual violence that has been perpetrated against people with disabilities. It’s like arguing against factory farm conditions by pointing out that we wouldn’t suffer human beings to be confined. Or, I suppose, by arguing against prison labor by saying that we’d never buy clothing that we knew was made by exploited, suffering workers. Most of the people who go “Whoa!” when they read Singer are disability-rights activists, and that’s because these things aren’t modest proposals to them.

But it’s not true. He’s arguing that the life of a disabled person may be held up against the life of a person without disabilities and considered lesser. This rests on the idea that people with disabilities are objectively less happy and the idea that people with disabilities are more socially expensive–both profoundly ableist premises.

by: piny

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:56:11 +0000

I think that in general Hugo has an annoying tendency to claim the moral high ground for things that he’d hypothetically do, such as forgoing abortion or denying treatment to his father, while acting superior to those of us who are dealing with those issues non-hypothetically.

…Which is actually one of the things–perhaps the thing underneath it all?–that pisses me off so much about Singer. His moral dictates are inhumane on more levels than one: they only make sense to him when they don’t involve his life.