So I came into this topic because guess what... I decided upon becoming vegetarian/vegan. My reason isn't because of not wanting to harm animals. But in reality, my body cannot tolerate red meat, dairy products, and wheat. If I have a lot of red meat, I will become very bloated. Same with wheat products. And I'm lactose intolerant, so I don't do dairy. Now I'm not 100% vegetarian/vegan. I do eat eggs, chicken, and fish. But for the most part I eat lots of vegetables. Since then, I am healthier than before.

Not GenSpam, but OKay.

Interestingly enough the most important deciding factor in determining a life-long diet to follow is your blood type. The Japanese blood type dating system has long been known to be false but it stems from a truth; the blood type of a person decides more than just with whom they may exchange blood. I'm only knowledgeable for my blood type but maybe this can help.

First let me stay on topic with my experiments into being raw vegan and fruitarian. First I phased out meat. This would later turn out to be a bad idea but I replaced the nutrition with nuts mostly, along with various vegetarian meals that were cooked. Once I had went vegetarian I phased out animal products, replacing cashew juice for milk, agave nectar for honey and so on. Then I phased out anything that needed to be heated above the point at which enzymes become permanently inert to be safely consumed by humans. Finally I phased out dishes that involved heating (cooking) in the preparation.

My energy as a raw vegan was comparable to my energy as an omnivore. My typical daily intake as an omnivore was 15,000 KCals (regular calories for us Americans) whereas my daily intake as a raw vegan was a mere 8,000-9,000 KCals (depending on which figures you trusted) so I had more energy given the reduced intake. This reduced intake was not intentional, however, as the much lower energy densities of the foods meant I had to eat much more often (this is compared to constantly gorging myself on things most people don't consider snack food; like entire steaks, double meat grilled stuffed burritos, triple whoppers with cheese, entire cakes, and so forth) and have larger meals. This was very expensive and time consuming. Even though I eat all day normally, it doesn't interfere with my day-to-day duties and job performance. That's not the case when you have to prepare most of your food fresh every hour or more.

My muscle mass was completely unaffected, as was my strength. I'm in generally great health as-is so I noticed no other significant benefits that one normally would consider when switching to this diet. Then I began to experience the negatives. I have advanced caffeinism. Beyond addiction or physical dependency, caffeinism is a permanent withdrawal condition that is unaffected by the presence of caffeine. I'm also a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I've been off meds for many years at this point and have learned methods of dealing with things (like having a reminder for myself in the morning of who I am and am not).

Without the details, the raw vegan diet caused problems with all that. So research happened and then I phased out vegetables. At this point I was on an exotic diet of rare fruits I had barely heard of (maybe as flavors of candy) and raw nuts. Then went the nuts.

To maintain my energy levels I was constantly stuffing my face with one fruit or another. This became prohibitively expensive and did nothing for my… issues. So I did what any irrational person would do: I went to McDonald's and grabbed two double quarter pounders with cheese, a large fry, a large shake (plain) and an Oreo McFlurry with a shot of hot fudge and caramel. Then I went to Taco Bell and got a grilled stuffed burrito, steak, extra steak, add chicken, bacon, potatoes, red strips, nacho cheese, sour cream and no pico de gallo (I hate onions) with an extra large Mountain Dew.

On my way back to work I stopped by KFC for a cake and a half gallon more of Mountain Dew. I was fine. I continued learning and eventually found out that for my blood type (A+) I need meat. Like cats, there are things I don't make so well that help me function that I can only get from meat. Without it and having exhausted my reserves I began to quickly deteriorate in the span of a few days. Over a month of success went flying out the window and I spent $50 just getting back to baseline. I also got yelled at for taking an extended lunch of two hours.

The moral of the story is nutrition is complicated and you need to know what you're doing. One day I may revisit the fruitarian diet for a quick (month long) detox but for now I'll stick to helping others learn what's best for them from the point of view of science and nutrition. If you have any specific questions I'm more then willing to share.

Out of curiousity, where did you find that your blood type requires meat? Can you provide some sort of guideline for that sort of thing? (Sources would be appreciated.)

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I'll try and find the computer on which I bookmarked that and get back to you. Unless I'm mistaken it's not as simple as I put it.

I decided to do my part. The cow population is ridiculously high! But I'm only one person... I can only eat so many of them!

If it's eadible and taste good then it's for a human to be consumed. We are omnivores - so it was, so it is and so it shall stay. END.

CONSUME ALL.

Are you of all people seriously taking.. oh goddess, so many things wrong with this standpoint that I can't possibly cut down to it.. I'll have fluffy handle that I'm sure he knows what I'm on about. but uh.. here guys.


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Thank you, Prof. Headfuck. As always a magnanimous lecture from which we may all benefit. So class, today we will be exploring nutritional anthropology and the ethics of dietary choices. As a starting point let me begin with a strange fact: eating sweet fruits has positive karma while eating coconut has negative karma. (Source: The Sunfood Diet Success System sixth edition, David Wolfe, 2006)

Intrinsically, if you believe in karma, all actions have with them an associated karmic charge. This includes the act of consuming; in this case the karmic charge depends on the food being consumed and the method of preparation. There are fruitarians that only eat fruit that has dropped from a living tree and do not pick the fruit; to do so would harm the tree and create negative karma. So it is that even eating plants indeed can be made unethical.

Humans have a long history of associating the act of ingesting a thing with consuming the acts that brought the thing to be eaten. The typical image you bring to mind might be of a Hindu considering the cow to be a sacred animal and not eating beef. A better image might be the ancient warrior that would eat the heart of a conquered enemy. Stranger still are the histories of medicine and what we now term "eastern medicine" which uses foods as cures for everything from arthritis to lovesickness. Trial and error as well as often criticized deductive reasoning has been used to chart almost anything that can be put in or on a human body and the effects thereof, curative or otherwise.

Before I go on I'd like to address some fallacies you may have about food, diet and health. Everything causes cancer, everybody has cancer and human cells are capable of transmutation. Water, you're largely made of the stuff, has been found to cause cancer. This is a scientific fact which is undisputed. Cancer is a tissue mutation which can become tumorous and later malignant. When we think of fat we think of the images you see of obese Wal*Mart patrons often from the southern portion of the United States of America. The more accurate image to bring to mind is that of our nervous system which is comprised chiefly of fat. Images of super models and bodybuilders are of people that are extremely unhealthy to the point of unsustainability. A bodybuilder is weakest and unhealthiest during a competition. Any supermodel would starve to death far sooner than the average "days without food" figures. The facts are that being unhealthy is now in style and most people buy the hype.

Speaking of hype: people for the ethical treatment of animals is a terrorist organization that is ran by a hypocritical (takes animal insulin to treat her diabetes), unhealthy (her diet has caused diabetes) and human-hating (she promotes agenda 21 and similar things, also having "spayed" herself) feminist. The idea that eating or not eating animals has any effect on health has been so wildly blown out of proportion you'd think cutting animal products out of your diet would make you go Super Saiyan. I'd like to point out the "breatharian" "diet" which is not eating or drinking anything. Try looking up Jericho Sunfire and see how this very healthy personal trainer lives a very active life without eating or drinking anything at all. Maybe the whole "animals are friends not food" thing needs to come under greater scrutiny.

We'll mark our first point here: a diet is literally the food you eat arranged into a repetitive cycle. It is not a way to lose weight, to detoxify your body, fix any ailment or solve any problem. If your diet is irregular, unbalanced or incomplete you will become unhealthy. A diet must be complete, balanced and regular.

We'll get to "complete" later but right now we'll focus on balanced and regular. If you've ever had to deal with the mentally deficient (retarded persons) on a daily basis you may have noticed that their typical mood is happy. They always seem to be happy and have no cares. This isn't a function of not having any large stressors but a function of diet. Keep a food log and write down what and when you eat and how you feel then notice the patterns. Over time you'll see the effects diet has on every aspect of your life. The mentally deficient eat planned, balanced, nutritionally round meals on a regular and consistant schedule. If you don't, that'd be the first place to start.

"Complete" is subjective. As stated earlier, human cells are capable of transmutation. I'd like to reference the U.S.D.O.D. report that states chickens will lay eggs with normal shells and not have any bone loss provided a diet entirely devoid of calcium. The report, sadly, I can not find at the moment but goes on to analyze the atomic level transmutation as science fact. Human cells can do the same thing and will if allowed to do so. There are, however, things that the complex human body needs that some people can not manufacture for one reason or another. A diet must not only provide the energetic requirements and basic nutritional requirements but also take into account the specific set of needs each person has. There are thousands of genetic defects in the human genome and some of them can cause the body to not be able to handle one chemical or another or be unable to make something it needs. Everybody is different.

Whatever you believe on the ethics of eating one thing or another (blood has the highest negative karma while mother's breast milk has the highest positive karma: combine the two with sugar and ice in a blender for a delicious treat) you must always ensure that you construct a balance, regular and complete diet. There is not a one-size-fits-all diet

(I know. You wanted me to berate Resilence for his archaic idioms. The fact is, paraphrased or not, he's got a point. Everything is a valid menu item and in the end it's all about the emotions and psychic energies you put into them. I eat cow, pig, chicken and almost all plants in their natural state. I should take a picture of my food book shelves so you can see how much time, energy and money I've put into this stuff but in the end it all comes down to a specific genetic marker that means I need meat proteins for my brain.)

Ah, but Resilence isn't off the hook. I grant to all the lenience that this is a forum, on the internet, where typing a complete and well-formed thought is the farthest thing from commonplace. If you could elaborate on your previous post I'll be happy to attack your argument head-on. I'm just a little confused as to which part of your post AFH contends and to what your post even meant to make point of.

Such is life.

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With fluffys post above in mind, yes, everything can be a conceivably valid food choice, however, the simplistic nature of resil's comment does not give a boundary to resil's ideas. He has presented an idea that can be put into an equation

Edible+Tastes good=For a human to be consumed.

The problem with this statement is that it states that all of utility is based on human need for consumption.

Rather, many things that valid food choices for humans are also valid food choices for other animals, and, as we know, a balance of consumption in an environment produces a sustainable ecosystem.

It is generally in our best interest not to throw off that ecosystem. Some tasty, edible things can move to a point (because of scarcity) that the utility of not consuming them is higher then the utility of consuming them.

So, it is not a question, in my eyes, of what humans consume, but how much of what. If pigs are in abundance, eat pigs. But if something is scarce and required to sustain an ecosystem, don't.

As to note his second point about all humans being omnivores, the very existence of successful vegans defies that.

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Quite. I'd also like to point out that arsenic is delicious, as are blowfish. Most people hate the flavor of Brussels sprouts and indeed the specific makeup of the plant makes it very bitter. Like coffee, another tremendously bitter plant based food, I love Brussels sprouts. "Delicious" is not about what's good to eat. Hunger is one of the more than thirty human senses that we use to navigate the various decisions it takes to make it safely to death. "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting a fruit on a bacon cheeseburger." We can use knowledge to determine that things will kill us or are actually beneficial.

It's all too easy to make decisions based on simple factors. Onions are horrible. Fresh out of the ground they smell like death. People eat them like they'd die without them. Those that do eat them actually enjoy putting them in their bodies. The human body knows that onions contain beneficial chemicals and so it gives us incentive to overcome the incredibly horrible taste in order to survive. Reducing this complex process to "delicious = good to eat; eat everything delicious" is a gross oversimplification.

Amazingly, most food is poisonous. Many of the things that make foods taste good will kill us in abundance. Some of the foods that are most beneficial to us taste absolutely horrid. Do not go out and eat shit because it tastes like shit and don't go out and drink antifreeze because it tastes sweet. Just know that food, diet, nutrition and eating is a complex and involved field of study that most people will spend their entire live figuring out.

this conversation has been taken overboard.

i don't believe in diets really. it is more of figuring out what one's body needs and doesn't need. i have certain health conditions in which i cannot consume certain foods like i used to. it isn't because it is some fad diet out there that everyone should be on. everyone's body is different and requires particular foods. people who are anemic require red meat often. people with heart conditions would have to decrease intake of foods containing potassium and sodium. good fats and oils are a must for proper production of hormones and protection to bones. and the list can go on depending on the condition.

and just because food taste good doesn't mean one should engorge themselves like no tomorrow. food is to be savoured (not unless it's the end of the world then go for it).

i don't expect anyone to really listen to me. this is just my thoughts and opinions from a nurse's standpoint

How does lactose intolerance work? Exactly how is it triggered?

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Taking the conversation overboard is exactly what I wanted to do(otherwise, why would I request the aid of fluffy), why not? It's a fun topic to dissect every which way and I love intelligent rambles, essentially were outlining the entire nature of food!

Pioneers in reasoning, we are.

Oh and, seems to me the end of the world would be even more of a reason to savor your food.. while engorging on it.

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