Is Meat Wrong? I'm Starting To Feel That Maybe It Is

[Flower]

I've been vegetarian for 30+ years now, no meat , no fish but my choice was because I didn't like it. I would think choosing not to eat meat based purely on ethical arguments would require more willpower especially if you do like the stuff. I haven't missed it from my diet and don't loiter around butchers windows licking my lips although I do have pernicious anaemia from not having enough B12 in my diet and from having the D so have B12 injections regularly.

In terms of my diabetes I wouldn't think it has had one jot of influence on my control, I'm sure you can make an equally good or poor job of your control whether you are eating meat or not. Meat and fish in their unadulterated form are low carb foods and there are plenty of vegetarian alternatives equally low in carbs. Go with your gut instinct !🙂

 

[Diabeticliberty]

I've been vegetarian for 30+ years now, no meat , no fish but my choice was because I didn't like it. I would think choosing not to eat meat based purely on ethical arguments would require more willpower especially if you do like the stuff. I haven't missed it from my diet and don't loiter around butchers windows licking my lips although I do have pernicious anaemia from not having enough B12 in my diet and from having the D so have B12 injections regularly.

In terms of my diabetes I wouldn't think it has had one jot of influence on my control, I'm sure you can make an equally good or poor job of your control whether you are eating meat or not. Meat and fish in their unadulterated form are low carb foods and there are plenty of vegetarian alternatives equally low in carbs. Go with your gut instinct !🙂

With respect I personally believe every single item we consume as diabetics of all types has bearing to varying degrees on our control. I have pretty much made up my mind as to what I would prefer to do based on conscience. I have however always faced my own condition alone and have never before been afforded the luxury of a forum such as this one to bounce ideas off my peers and see how various lifestyle choices have affected their own control. This in essence is why I posed the question in the first place. As Caroline suggests this is purely a personal choice but then everything in life is a personal choice. Every personal choice we make however has some impact elsewhere. I am trying to establish before I go blinding into unknown territory how this choice should I make it may affect me. Our condition is complex, probably a lot more complex than the white coats factor in. Maybe this is why some, most of them get it wrong repeatedly. I certainly feel it is more complex than all of us here appreciate. I suspect that is why in spite of feeling that I have covered every possible angle, a big fat hypo comes and blows a raspberry of Old Testament proportions right in my kisser. I know that this happens to most of you too.

 

[Northerner]

I 'went veggie' a few years back, partly due to the BSE scandal, but also various other food scares and revelations that were quite alarming. Not because I was scared of contracting anything, it just struck me as so wrong that things had got so far that a dreadful disease like BSE could pass from animal to man via feeding grotty bits of diseased sheep to cattle. So, I suppose it was ethical. Having said that, I used to regularly attend the annual Pig and Poultry Fair and mix with 'fellow' farmers (I pretended, but a mate I went with was a trained pig farmer and his dad ran award-winning chicken farms), so I know that the bad treatment etc. is the other side of the argument, and not at all how all animals are treated. All that business about scabby Romanian horses ending up in Sainsbury's and Tesco beef products didn't help. 😱

I started eating meat again after my leg snapped for no apparent reason, and I felt that perhaps I was lacking in something in my diet that might have contributed. Nowadays I do eat meat, but very little - usually high quality sausages or home made chilli/chicken curry etc. I haven't eaten a 'ready meal' for years as you really do not know what has gone into making them, with possible 'hidden horrors' somewhere deep within the supply chain.

I eat quite a lot of eggs I suppose, and salmon and sardines, so quite a varied diet in all - I don't feel I am lacking in anything and certainly wouldn't think I needed meat because of my diabetes 🙂

 

[Nicola16]

I start by saying I am not veggie and that its absolutely a personal choice.

What I'd add is from recent experience of doing a very low fat (less than 6g a day) diet due to having pancreatitis and low carb with diabetes is that if I didn't have meat and fish in my diet it would be really hard to do low fat without it. My circumstances are extreme at the moment but after doing lots of research Ive found the alternatives to meat and fish for protein are limited and can be quite high in fat which isn't great for your body overall so I would urge you to ensure you research your food alternatives thoroughly and make sure you are getting a real balance of them to support a healthy diet. I was shocked how much fat some Quorm products and eggs have!!!

 

[mikeyB]

I've got pancreatitis too. I certainly don't keep to a diet of 6g a day of fat, that would be almost impossible, not say unpalatable. That's what Creon is for.

I don't eat a lot of fat, because of the bowel symptoms, but it won't do any harm to my shabby pancreas. I eat eggs, too. Plus Creon, of course.

 

[Martin Canty]

IMHO it's really down to the quality of the food rather than the meat vs veggie question.... I pretty much have made from scratch using organic food (wherever possible due to cost and/or availability)... I think that I now have a very much more varied diet & probably a lot healthier.

Personally I would prefer to consume less meat & will probably start trying out lentils & pulses again once the summer is over (busy work & vacation schedule)

 

[Nicola16]

I've got pancreatitis too. I certainly don't keep to a diet of 6g a day of fat, that would be almost impossible, not say unpalatable. That's what Creon is for.

I don't eat a lot of fat, because of the bowel symptoms, but it won't do any harm to my shabby pancreas. I eat eggs, too. Plus Creon, of course.

It is almost but I have to I'm pregnant and can't have surgery until baby is born so doing everything humanly possible to avoid another attack, I.e. Stop my gall bladder working, and put us at risk.

 

[KookyCat]

I don't distinguish between fish and meat, I didn't eat either when a confirmed vegetarian. Getting a balanced diet as a vegetarian is fairly easy but it depends on your food preferences. I personally wouldn't touch quorn because it wouldn't really have a place in my diet since I've never liked meat so never wanted meat substitutes (except tivoli vegetarian hotdogs, never ate actual hotdogs so I don't know why 🙄). I ate and still eat a lot of tofu/bean curd, but I love that stuff (yes really), quinoa is high protein and moderate carb but very slow to digest in me so tricky to bolus for, eggs are great for protein, nuts are a big feature in my diet as are sunflower seeds (love those little packets of joy) both of which are high protein, buckwheat flour is a seed flour so also high protein. I've never lacked for protein really. It is very easy to end up eating high carb and high fat with a vegetarian diet though because lots of recipes rely on added fat for flavour. So it's probably worth doing a trial week with a veggie meal plan and seeing how it suits. My ex used to have meat benders every few months because he absolutely loved red meat, then he'd feel great guilt and confess. Goodness know why he felt the need to confess, it's not like I was the meat police!

My goddaughter has just informed me that if you eat fish but not meat you're a pescatarian, who knew 🙂

 

[palmoff]

If god didn't want to us to eat meat then he shouldn't have made animals out of food.

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Ah, but pre-lapsarian (before the fall) people were vegetarian, so they obviously didn't think animals were food until everything went wrong 😉

 

[Jonsi]

I think prehistoric man became carnivorous when he figured out what his teeth were for.

 

[palmoff]

Well i dont adam and eve it 🙂
I think we always thought that they looked tasty just we hadn't entered into original sin and all that, and hell break one rule break them all...
And adam said unto eve "come ere cow I wana chew your rear", "not you, you daft bint, daisy over there looks like she would be tasty with apples".
So now two things were on the menu outside eden cow and apples, and everything was groovy.

 

[Radders]

I did spend a year or so as a vegetarian some years back, but started having dreams about meat, which sort of convinced me that my heart wasn't in it. The other thing about a vegetarian diet is that it is very -how can I put this- flatulogenic.

I think that must depend on how well adapted your digestive system is to it. I have never experienced this issue!

 

[mikeyB]

Let's leave God out of this (and everything else). Dogs are carnivores - you can tell by their teeth. Horses are herbivores - you can tell by their teeth. Humans are omnivores - you can tell by their teeth, the combination of incisors and molars. Every hominid fossil has this dental arrangement, so human beings have never been vegetarian since the distant past when we climbed out of the trees and walked on the plains of Africa.

Nowadays, of course, you can eat anything you want, and Bon appetit, but you don't have to grow it or catch it. What you can't do is justify vegetarianism by saying that's how we used to be, because we never were.

 

[robert@fm]

From what I've heard, humans and dogs are facultative carnivores (they can eat meat, but can thrive just as well on a veggie diet). Cats (of all sizes, not just domestic moggies) are obligate carnivores (they need meat in their diet, or they grow sick and die). Cattle are obligate herbivores (anything other than a veggie diet makes them sick).

Back when I used to frequent the diabetes newsgroups (before I gave up on them because they were major trollheims) there was one idiot/nutcase calling himself Ironjustice (or Moronjustice as I rendered it) because he was there to promote militant vegetarianism, which he did by claiming that the presence of iron in the diet is the cause of all illness, without exception (so he had clearly never heard of anaemia, for a start); his sig included the line "Jesus was a vegetarian", which of course is the logical fallacy and dishonest arguing trick of Proof By Association; "Jesus was a vegetarian, Jesus was good, therefore vegetarianism is good". I doubt that this is one of the 19 valid syllogisms, since even if the major premise is true (and is there any historical evidence for this?), all that is necessary is to remove "Jesus" and substitute "Hitler"; the major premise is then definitely true, but the rest is thus shown to be nonsense.

(Another line of the idiot's sig was "Man is a herbivore", which (ignoring the sexist phrasing) is (as @mikeyB pointed out) contradicted by the dental (and other anatomical) evidence, and by the reality that millions of men (and women) are eating meat with no ill effects.)

 

[Rose_02]

I wouldn't count myself as a veggie anymore (I was for 20 years but started eating meat just before the diabetes coincidentally) but my diet is pretty much that of a veggie and I have not had an issue health-wise. I eat fish a few times a week but can't remember the last time I ate meat and I never cook it for myself.

Protein-wise there are so many lovely alternatives: I adore the veggie mince and quorn ham/scotch eggs etc. Much prefer them to actual mince/ham/scotch eggs so its taste not ethics Plus so many restaurants cater to all types of diets now you should have no problem eating out. In our area we have a veggie & gluten and dairy free cafe!!!

 

[robert@fm]

Personally I'm not veggie (I suffer late-stage CKD, hence iron deficiency anaemia for which I take folic acid and have the occasional iron infusion, so if I cut meat from my diet I would have to find another source of dietary iron, or up the meds which I would prefer not to do), but I have found some veggie options appealing. I used to have falafels once a week, and the veggie "sausage" and "bacon" mixes done by Sosmix were (are?) quite realistic in taste. I once did a veggie "BLT" using the bacon-burger mix, Chinese Leaf (my favourite type of lettuce) and tomato ketchup.

I remember when my family were going to our caravan which we had at Beltinge (a suburb of Herne Bay) at the time; Mum stopped off at a health-food shop in Herne Bay and bought a large sausagemeat pie for our lunch. I think I was the only one of us to realise that the pie was a veggie one! 😉