Talk:Vegetarianism

Several of the quotes in the "Non religious motivations" section have no source at all (e.g., "The amount of veg protein fed to the US beef herd would feed almost the entire populations of India and China - two billion people."), and the vast majority of the quotes are only attributed to a general group (e.g., WHO, Cornell University, Reading University), with no specific publication that the quote came from or what individual from the groups made the original statement. There are lots of people from Cornell and Reading who are probably very intelligent, but them being from the university doesn't make them experts on vegetarianism. We need to know more about the source of the quote to determine it's merit.

The other problem I have with this article is that it includes nothing about potential problems associated with vegetarianism. The main thing that comes to mind now is the possibility of a Vitamin B12 deficiency...but I'm sure that there are others. I saw that the B12 issue came up in an earlier discussion, but it doesn't look like it was definitively resolved. There is also no section about problems that can arise when babies/infants/children are on this diet. There should be a section on the possible hazards associated with a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle.

I'm certainly no expert on this field, but I'm going to do more research and see what I can find...if anyone has any info on these specific items, please include what you know in the article. In the meantime, I think a non-neutral point of view notification should be put on the article.Pkeck 21:37, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I removed some material (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vegetarianism&diff=14137889&oldid=14120323) that I thought was biased. There is a separate article on vegetarian nutrition. —Joe Jarvis 17:15, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

correct definition?

"Vegetarianism is a dietary practice excluding all body parts of any animal and products derived from them (e.g. lard, tallow, gelatin, cochineal) from one's diet."

this is the definition of veganism not vegetarianism, iam right? - --Cyprus2k1 15:31, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Nah; veganism means excluding not only products derived from (i.e., made out of) animal body parts, but also other animal products like milk and even honey...

--DanielCristofani 13:01, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

But the phrasing leaves it ambiguous whether 'them' has as its antecedent 'any animal' or 'all body parts', i.e., are we talking about products derived from animals or merely their body parts. Shimmin 17:14, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Does the 'fish and pain' subject deserve space at Vegetarianism or should we just create a seperate article? Usedbook 20:36 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

...The Royal Society published research by Lynne Sneddon establishing for the first time, she said, the existence of nervous system receptors in the head of fish that respond to "damaging stimuli."
By injecting bee venom and acetic acid into the lips of captive rainbow trout, the Royal Society said, Sneddon and other scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh discovered that the fish displayed "profound behavioral and physiological changes" over a period of time, "comparable to those observed in higher mammals."
After the injections, Sneddon said, "fish demonstrated a 'rocking' motion strikingly similar to the kind of motion seen in stressed higher vertebrates like mammals, and the trout injected with acetic acid were also observed to rub their lips onto the gravel in the tank and onto the tank walls."
The Royal Society said in a statement, "This indicates, the researchers believe, that fish can perceive pain." The research contradicts the riverbank lore of anglers drawing on earlier research by Professor James Rose of the University of Wyoming that fish do not feel pain because their brain is incapable of that response.
Sneddon said the research did not make her anti-angling. "I wouldn't say it was cruel as long as the angler is getting the fish out quickly, killing and eating it," she said. "That outweighs the short period of discomfort for the fish." Alan Cowell, New York Times, May 6, 2003

Let's keep this sort of material off the vegetarianism page, please. Animal rights would be a much more apropriate place, or a new article. Mkweise 23:24 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

Using Animal rights instead was of my opinion aswell. Thanks for the input and be well. Usedbook 19:33 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

There should probably be a small mention, probably under reasons for, but yes, an animal rights link should help.

Re less pompous definition: I'm all for having the most concise definition that is correct as well as complete and unambiguous, but you oversimplified. Not eating fish or meat falls way short of defining vegetarianism, especially since many understand meat to refer to the flesh of mammals only. So you'd have to add at least poultry and seafood to the enumeration, and that still leaves exotic "delicacies" like snails, frogs' legs and sheep's eayballs in a gray area.

Vegetariansim is a subject of much confusion among non-vegetarians; you'd be surprized how often people have said things to me like:

"Oh you don't eat meat? Well, how about some chicken then?"

"Oh you're a vegetarian? Do you eat sausage?"

Mkweise 10:57 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

The section on Judaism seems unduly prominent, going much more into the background of the belief than the others. It seems like many of the details are better left on referenced pages such as the provided link. Furthermore:

Not eating meat simply because kosher meat is hard to come by is not exactly what you'd call being a vegetarian. It may be related, but it should probably be made clear that that's not really vegetarianism.
If you are vegetarian in order to keep kosher, not for pragmatic reasons but for ethical reasons, what does that mean? Doesn't it just mean that you're an ethical vegetarian who also happens to be Jewish? Isn't that subsumed by the section on ethical vegetarianism?
Why "red kosher meat"? Is kosher chicken or fish easier to come by?
I personally haven't experienced very many non-Orthodox Jews being vegetarian for the sole reason of keeping kosher, though of course that doesn't mean it's not true. More likely you might not order meat out at a restaurant (which would be keeping kosher enough for many people). (Orthodox Jews generally live in communities where kosher meat is available so it's usually not an issue.) Axlrosen 17:36, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"Moreover, the meat of pen-raised animals (...) have much higher levels of fat and less nutritional value than the meat of their corresponding free-range or wild bretheren."

Couldn't find bretheren in my e-dictionaries. But it did remind me of brethren:

Wordnet: brethren


    n : the members of a male religious order

GCIDE:
Brethren \Breth"ren\, n.;

  pl. of Brother.
  [1913 Webster]

  Note: This form of the plural is used, for the most part, in
        solemn address, and in speaking of religious sects or
        fraternities, or their members.
        [1913 Webster]

So I guess this needs some rewriting... :) Guaka 15:26, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't see what the quoted passage has to do with vegetarianism in the first place. Mkweise 15:39, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Jainism and microorganisms

For references, just google for one-sensed beings (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&edition=us&q=one-sensed+beings&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web). Mkweise 01:59, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

We need to avoid creating a historical anachronism. Jainists could not have had rules that directly addressed microorganisms many centuries (or millennia) ago; they didn't even know that microorganisms existed. Rather, once they discovered the existence of these microscopic organisms, they then applied their sacred texts to this new discovery, and came up with rules for dealing with this case. Many of them may even have interpreted their texts as having been revealed to deal with this possibility all along, but that is a religious belief, as opposed to a historical certainty. And this is all fine. The precise same thing is true in regards to halakha (Jewish law). There were no rabbinic Jewish laws specifically made in regards to microorganisms; at that time Jews didn't know that microorganisms existed. Rather, once they discovered their existence, they then applied Jewish laws and principles to this new discovery, and came up with rules for dealing with this case. So we should phrase this section of the article very carefully. RK 02:08, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

They did know thousands of years ago about the existence of what today are called microorganisms. Read some of the ancient souce texts on Jain cosmology, it'll do you good :-) Mkweise 03:31, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You are making an extraordinary claim, one that requires extraordinary proof. How these people, thousands of years ago, learn about microscoping one-celled organism? How did they detect them? Why did no one else in surrounding areas ever learn about them? Why didn't knowledge of this groundbreaking discovery spread? Do any mainstream historians of science credit this claim at all? RK 18:04, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'd add that most, if not all, microorganisms have more then one sense... Nikola 05:54, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Given that Jain recognise existence for soul for everything including living and non living thing including plant or rocks and as consequence try to avoid harming them whether they knew the existence of microorganism is irrelevant. FWBOarticle 06:18, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Many religious texts, including Jain, Hindu and Jewish scriptures, have thousands of vague sentences that in retrospect, can be re-interpreted as referring to some newly discovered facets of the world, such as one-celled organisms, or the Big Bang. But to the best of my knowledge, no mainstream historians of science credit Jewish Kabbalah with describing the Big Bang theory of the universe. Many Orthodox Jews do make this claim, and they claim that the text is clear. But to non-Orthodox Jews, this is not such a clear claim, and it looks to the rest of the world like they are reading this new interpretation back into older texts. I am saying that the same thing is true here. Perhaps Jains claim that their scripture is talking about protista and bacteria. But to non-Jains, this is not such a clear claim, and it looks to the rest of the world like some Jains are reading this interpretation back into older texts. RK 18:04, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'd suggest this debate (which I admit my edit started) is not so critical to the Vegetarianism page at this point. For my taste at least, the parenthetical comment "(called one-sensed beings in Jain scripture, which was written prior to the scientific discovery of microorganisms)" is good enough, though I'd say it might be interesting to get into more detail for the Jain article. Since I'm curious to know the history, though, I've asked a question on Mkweise's talk page, which is maybe a better place for the discussion. Zashaw 21:21, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I agree with RK, it's difficult to believe that Jains knew about microorganisms thousands of years ago. And thus I think that parenthetical comment is not very accurate. Unless it is widely accepted that early Jains did know about microorganisms, we have to say something weaker - that some people believe that they knew about them. If we get rid of that comment, then it covers all bases - it covers those that think that the Jain scriptures were specificially talking about microorganisms, and those that think that the interpretation of these passages to microorganisms were made after the fact (i.e. after microorganisms were discovered.) And, as Zashaw pointed out, this debate has little to do with vegetarianism. Axlrosen 18:09, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's not just "widely accepted", but evidenced by ancient scripture: Jains have believed for thousands of years that the air, water, and especially soil are full of "subtle lifeforms". These are described as the lowest form of life on earth (below plants) and as so small that we can't see them. BTW Jains are (and have always been) forbidden from drinking unboiled water; such a commandment wouldn't make much sense without knowledge of microorganisms. Mkweise 08:33, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The fact that Jains believed this to be true is different than saying that they knew it to be true. As an analogy, some ancient Greeks believed that matter was made up of indivisible atoms. They were right, but they didn't know, they were just guessing and happened to be right (or somewhat right - many of their specific beliefs about atoms were wrong). But the fact that they happened to get it right doesn't make them any more knowledgable than the other Greeks who believed lots of other wacky things that turned out to be wrong. The Greeks didn't see atoms, they just guessed.

BTW according to this site http://www.jainworld.com/education/juniors/junles08.htm, the Jain belief is that earth, air, fire, and water ARE one-sense beings, not that they contain them. Sounds like there's some room for interpretation going on. E.g. perhaps the early Jains believed that these things were living beings, but now that we know about microorganisms we re-interpret that to mean that these things CONTAINED tiny living beings. (Plus, there are no micro-organisms in fire.) Axlrosen 19:06, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the article doesn't say that the Jain's knew that microorganisms exist, just that they have some moral issues with eating them. I could believe it's wrong to interfere with the little green men on Mars, and that would explain my opposition to NASA missions to Mars, even though there aren't green men on Mars. Of course, it may still be, as you suggest, that the Jain's didn't actually believe in anything we'd call microorganisms, i.e. tiny organisms you can't see, as opposed to earth, air, fire or water. That's something I don't know about. Zashaw 00:21, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Arguments against vegetarianism

Anonymous user 207.196.166.183 made this major edit (http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Vegetarianism&diff=1360416&oldid=1359060), presenting a number of interesting and detailed arguments against vegetarianism. Unfortunately this person got carried away and also introduced a whole load of unsupported POV remarks as part of the same edit. It would be a highly wearisome a task to cut all the prejudice and rhetorical "fat" from the "meat" of this edit (so to speak), so it has been reverted. However, I think 207.196.166.183 makes some interesting points that deserve a mentioning in the article. If you read this, anonymous user 207.196.166.183, please have another go, but try to follow the principle of NPOV. GrahamN 02:38, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Agred. We should look at some of these arguments, and present them here in an NPOV fashion. BTW, I have now read in a number of sources that vegetarian diets kill far more animals than meat-eating diets. In our world of six billion people, we cannot support our population except through large-scale machine-assisted farming. Vegetarians (and the rest of us) depend on this farming to stay alive, but this farming kills millions of rats, mice, voles, crickets, insects and other animals during various steps of farming. Reducing meat consumption increases farming for plants. Is it really better to kill a thousand mice than one cow? (For the cow, yes!) I happen not to be a vegetarian, but I'd kind of like to be; I have already reduced my meat consumption. But points such as this make me question whether being a vegetarian is feasible or desirable. RK 02:47, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Reducing meat consumption does not increase plant farming, since animals also eat lots of plants (besides processed meat leftovers and lots of fish). In fact, lowering meat consumption would greatly decrease the demand. I read that in order to produce 1 kg of meat one needs 6 kg of plants, but I don't know if I remember correctly. Come to think of it, this 1:6 ratios seems a bit optimistic... Guaka 12:43, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

perhaps so, but meat brings to the body a concentrated amount of protein in a very low amount of food, that plants cannot easily provide. One must not confuse basic biomass provided to sustain people, with the necessary amount of each of the components necessary. I don't buy that 1:6 ratio

Indeed, the ratio is much more like 1:10 -- of the biomass 'going in' to a cow, only about 10% is converted into growth (read: 'meat'), which is a rather low efficiency-level. Of course, some of this input biomass would be deemed unsuitable for humans (thistles, grass, leaves), but the same amount of chemical energy to feed n people beef would feed 10n people wheat. (This figure is from my memory of GCSE biology, some 5 years ago, but I doubt it's changed since then ;-).)

James F. 02:23, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I have heard comments that Britain could support itself in terms of food if people ate meat (as we have enough land for animals and plants, although would involve removing most remaining forest), but not if people ate only plants, as many regions are unsuitable for food crops, but suitable for cowes/sheep etc. --NeilTarrant 14:01, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Kill far more animals"? Are we talking biomass or just number of critters? --Calieber 19:48, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)

However, it is important for vegetarians and vegans to be conscious of their intake of protein, B12, and other nutrients.

Well, not being a vegetarian, I guess I'll stop watching my nutritional intake... --Calieber 19:48, Oct 30, 2003 (UTC)

I wonder why the first external links point out a movie site. And as I'm French, I'm not sure to well understand this passage :
Meat vegetarianism refers to the consuming of a vegetarian by a meat-eater viz. A human eating a steak. This is because of the second defination of vegetarian, i.e. "Something that eats vegetarians."
Is this a joke, or something like that ? Rege 21:14, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No joke. This is real. Auric The Rad 04:56, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)

The name meat-vegetarian is not something I have come across, but this policy is part of a Jewish and Muslim dietary laws. i.e Carnivores and Omnivores are not Kosher.PRB 11:33, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I didn't realize that the website which point out the meatrix have a link with the vegetarianism because I didn't wait the loading of the flash animation. For the other definition (meat vegetarianism), I am astonished. I'm surprising that a canibalian can be considering as a vegetarian. Rege 20:50, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Anecdotally, not only do some people have an intuitive aesthetic distaste for meat to begin with, but a significant number of vegetarians come to feel that way some months after becoming vegetarian for other reasons. Then this becomes one more reason for remaining vegetarian. I'm not going to add this to the article, because I don't have numbers or any authoritative support for this claim. But if anyone else has a firmer basis for this claim, it might be good to add a brief comment.

i recognise this, but for me the aesthetic block arose mainly when confronting inescapable proof of the animal origin of the food -- bones, blood vessels or blood, skin, eyes, and so forth served to remind me that this food had been an animal. that this motivated my vegetarianism i account to the ethics of meat consumption, rather than to the aesthetics of meat. i'd certainly still like to see it as a category in this article -- but, like you, i'm not prepared to speak so authoritatively. --Hamstar 09:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Paragraph placement

Is there a better place for this paragraph found under the Vegetarian Nutrition heading?

No diet is necessarily unnatural. Human beings have been omnivores since time immemorial; we have the teeth (incisors and molars) and the digestive systems of creatures who eat both meat and plants. The eating of meat enabled energy. Nearly all the other higher primates are omnivores, except the gorilla. In the past, many people ate meat infrequently, because often it wasn't available or affordable. Strict vegetarianism is something comparatively new in human history.

It seems a little out of place. The whole section could use more guidance and structure. --Ryan H. 02:42, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree. It's not very clear, either. Is it implying a diet of rocks is not necessarily unnatural? That just doesn't have any meaning. MShonle 14:44, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I rewrote the nutrition section, addressing these concerns. – Joe Jarvis 19:18, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

What's more, since the section has been removed, this is just an FYI which should interest many about a common myth, but it's related to vegetarianism's 'naturalness' -- just not related enough to put it in the actual wikipedia entry...

The author seemed to be making a point that only omnivores have incisors. Yet, gorillas have incisors -- gorillas which he himself identified as non-omnivores (frugitarians, technically). Incisors have many purposes including self-defense and chewing tough bamboo (not meat, since the gorilla obviously doesn't need those huge fangs to eat little beetles ;-) ), as cited by:

 www.angela-meder.de/publik/eep.pdf 
 www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk/skeletons/gorilla.htm
 www.safari.co.za/africa_GORILLA_2.html
 www.leeds.ac.uk/bms/teaching/ modules/humb1060/anth03.pdf
 www.geocities.com/osarsif/bio.htm

Primates developed incisors as a group, making it dubious that even non-gorillas evolved incisors *because* they chewed meat. (confusing causality with commonality, a Post Hoc mistake) Rather, it appears that only some apes, some monkeys, and some homonids only later used the fangs adapted for self-defense and tough vegetation toward an omnivorous diet. And if I'm not mistaken, we descended directly from herbivorous rodents to monkeys, to apes, to humans, rather than having involvement with order Carnivora. We also primarily have other herbivorous features such as our long G-I tract, appendix (only present in 2 other species, both herbivores), and we suffer from greater disease as we eat excessive meat. Thus, for all of these reasons, whether we evolved to gain incisors specifically because we needed them for eating flesh of large creatures and to become omnivores, as opposed to the opposite chronology (developing incisors for other reasons, then some primates and homonids conveniently using them to eat some animals larger than insects), is dubious. And to use, 'We have incisors,' as a stand-alone argument that we are 'naturally' omnivorous, is a fallacious argument due to many non-omnivores having incisors.

motivations: poverty

How about people who are too poor to afford meat? -- Kaihsu 08:25, 2004 Jul 14 (UTC)

I added this. – Joe Jarvis 13:24, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Are there really examples of people who consider themselves vegetarians for this reason? IMO this is not the same as vegetarianism. I will modify the article to reflect my perspective; see what you think. --User:Chinasaur

"pragmatic considerations"?

I'm a bit confused by the section on "pragmatic considerations." These seem to me to be just more health reasons, and should be moved to that section. A pragmatic consideration would be something like "meat is just too hard to cook, vegetables are quicker,"--a reason may not be accurate but is occasionally floated. Things like hormones to me would seem to fall back under the health column. 141.158.238.201 03:13, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree. There are pragmatic reasons, but the ones in the article under "Pragmatic considerations" don't seem to be any of them. I'd say "pragmatic" would be more like: quicker/easier to cook (is that true?), cheaper to buy, last longer in storage (is that true?), easier to clean up, or you just don't like meat. -- anon

I rewrote the non-religious motivations section, addressing these concerns. Modern agricultural methods like pesticides and growth hormones are irrelevant. One could eat organic meat if that was the concern. – Joe Jarvis 19:18, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Joe Jarvis' last comment is untrue regarding pesticides -- and SOC's in general (Synthetic-Organic Compounds, a class of chemicals to which many of the most dangerous pesticides belong), due to the following... Pesticides from organic meats are still a concern because of the results when we combine the 2 following facts:

- SOC's concentrate approx. 20 times during each step up the food-chain (i.e., if corn has 1 PPM of a certain SOC as residual, better to eat that corn [and thus the residual pesticide] directly, which gives you 20x the concentration it was in the corn, rather than to have a cow eat the corn [and thus the residual pesticide], which gives the cow 20x the corn's concentration, and then for you to eat the cow (20 PPM) which ate the corn (1 PPM), which gives you 20x the cow's concentration, i.e. 400x the corn's concentration), and

- SOC's introduced to the biosphere make their way into organic foods (e.g., a study [sorry, I lost the citation long ago] found that remote Canadian Inuits above the Arctic Circle, where no PCB's had ever been used, had **HIGHER** PCB levels than most people because their diet is heavier-than-average in fish and meat. The simple fact is that PCB's (and all liquid SOC's -- i.e., most of the old, 'bad', persistent pesticides) spread via natural means such as ocean currents and in groundwater.

The 'organic' nature of these Inuits' meats, such as no PCB factories (nor other **DIRECT** PCB sources) being within hundreds of miles of their fisheries and hunting-grounds, was more than offset by the fact that they ate nearly the diametric opposite of a vegan diet. In other words, it was proven that even non-organic NON-vegans who merely **moderated** their meat-intake more than these Inuits, such as the average American, had lower concentrations of PCB's than the Inuits. By extrapolation, a vegan diet is even more effective (than the Inuit's meat-heavy, yet organic, diet) as a means to reduce one's SOC (pesticide) risks. The only way someone 100%-organic, but non-vegan, can get as low of an SOC (pesticide) toxicity as the typical vegan is to reduce his intake of the organic meats so low as to be insignificant and thus, become a near-vegan himself. -- an epidemiologist

Gorillas?

Article says: "Nearly all the other higher primates are omnivores, except the gorilla." ...which are ... what? (It's not even a link!) I had to do some searching, and finally ended up on the Mountain Gorilla page, to find out what gorillas eat. Could we put that in the article there, somehow?

Perhaps you could--PRB 12:25, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I removed the gorillas discussion altogether from the nutrition section. It is not relevant to vegetarian nutrition. – Joe Jarvis 19:18, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Loaded terms

Just for the record, I think many of the terms used in the article are somewhat loaded and POV. The article takes a stance by defining the word "vegetarian," for example. Even while it acknowledges that some people hold different definitions for the term, it labels that definition as "misleading." Now, I don't want to turn this article into a mess of "most vegetarians say this, but others say this" as happens in many POV resolutions. But it's just something the editors here should be aware of. Please resist the urge to use loaded terms, and define contested words in a certain way. "Erosion" has a negative connotation, I don't agree with its inclusion but I'm not going to revert if it's what people want here. Rhobite 16:12, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

I think "erosion" (my edit) is a good descriptive term for what is happening. I agree the connotation is negative, but it is used in the context of explaining some of the drawbacks of the mutating terminology, so I think it's appropriate in that context. I can see why you are concerned about other definition stuff, but essentially the problem with "vegetarian" is a usage one, which is for the dictionary people to decide. IMO our best approach is to pick a definition, cover it well, and acknowledge the alternatives (most of which are substantially covered here or given their own pages). --Chinasaur 22:06, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that's the best approach. I just think this article takes a stance about the one true definition when it doesn't have to. Rhobite 23:38, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

Seems to me there's only the one really objectionable paragraph (mostly my edit): the "erosion" one we have been discussing. But even if you're a pure descriptivist, wouldn't you say it's still worthwhile to identify and highlight usage differences where the ambiguity can lead to significant social angst? I'll look at it now; if you don't see any changes it means I couldn't think of a good way to improve it. --Chinasaur 07:30, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think the recent edits are an improvement. I'll go over the article in more detail soon, and see if I can find more POV. Rhobite 13:58, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Phrases such as "of course," "obviously," and "it should be noted" are usually unnecessary and opinionated. In this case, the word is used to indicate that this article makes a value judgement about the proper definition of vegetarianism. It doesn't belong here. There's a good discussion of this on the Village Pump.

"Obviously" is appropriate because what is being stated is obvious. Writing to readers' expectations is a fundamental of writing to be understood. Therefore if we find it necessary to state something obvious, it might be worthwhile to acknowledge it.

"This is not considered traditional vegetarianism" is too wishy-washy. It isn't traditional vegetarianism, assuming we all understand and agree on the definition of "traditional vegetarianism" (which we do). IMO, the sentence is acceptable as "most people do not consider this vegetarianism", or "this is not traditional vegetarianism". If you choose the latter, I would make the stylistic choice to add "obviously". --Chinasaur 22:31, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Economic vegetarianism

I made a number of comments on economic vegetarianism that are relevant to this article. Rather than repost them here, I thought I would link to the economic vegetarianism talk page. – Joe Jarvis 15:08, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

Hindus and honey

What is the basis of the statement about Hindu vegetarinans not eating honey? As a Hare Krishna, my religion is not included in the list (typical), but I believe this is something we have in common with Hindus. We use honey along with other auspicious substances when worshipping the Lord, and the remnants are later drunk with great satisfaction. --Pandu108 19:36, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Partial vegetarianism

I've come across people who call themselves vegetarians but do eat fish. More recently, I've heard of people who call themselves vegetarians but will eat free range meat. Are there names for these practices? -- Smjg 18:03, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Idiots. The first group are called Pesco-Vegetarians. The second group are called fools. I suppose you could call them Carno-Vegetarians, but then that would apply to all omnivorous humans. PRB 18:07, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Claims that need sourcing

A number of bits of the article are non-obvious and need sources:

"90 per cent of the UK's animal feed protein concentrates come from poor countries - often those where children die from starvation."

jdb ❋ (talk) 07:28, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

“The cost of mass-producing cattle, poultry, pigs and sheep and fish to feed our growing population... include highly inefficient use of freshwater and land, heavy pollution from livestock faeces... and spreading destruction of the forests on which much of our planet's life depends.” - Time magazine 11/8/99

TIME is an American magazine, and would not use the British spelling 'faeces' except in a direct quote, which we should not cite without mentioning its source. Removed pending verification. jdb ❋ (talk) 07:26, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The quote was taken from http://www.choosevegetarian.com/wasting_resources.asp . On that page you see it with the American spelling, it's just I'm Australian and automatically wrote it in British English. I don't believe the page would fabricate such a quote, so I think it should be returned. In fact I have sources it to this article and found it myself on the database: http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=anh&an=2430637 . Given that the PCRM quotes were removed (fair I guess), I'm sure we can find some other statistics on that issue to source, because the relationship between meat and heart disease, diabetes and cancer is well documented. I'll go looking tomorrow. --komencanto 12:47, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh, good. Thanks. Incidentally, there are far too many places on this page that are just laundry lists of sound bites with vague sources (often just acronyms). We probably should clean those up, but that's another issue. jdb ❋ (talk) 15:30, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

World Hunger

"Critics of this view may observe that the root causes of world hunger are often traceable to harmful political structures rather than genuine resource shortages; see Hunger." Well proponents of this view observe the same thing... however, the sentence suggests otherwise. I couldn't come up with the different sentence structure without making it to unreadable to those who actually have no idea what vegetarianism is. User:Beta m/sig

I thought it made sense in context, but if it doesn't, it may be necessary to rearrange that paragraph a bit. jdb ❋ (talk) 18:03, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Water use

This page here contains a lot about this and other issues with references, so if anyone wants to add some information from there: http://www.choosevegetarian.com/wasting_resources.asp . I'm too busy at the moment and I can't be bothered checking the references. --komencanto 09:51, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've pretty much done this now, but some of the quotes and claims in the motivations section definitely need sourcing. Issues such as topsoil and land use haven't been properly covered. Pollution could do with a larger mention. I've copied a lot of things from the www.choosevegetarian.com website, but I think it is reasonable impartial stuff given it is all sourced. --komencanto 07:02, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

History of Vegetarianism

This article could do with a history section, focussing on the growth of vegetarianism over time due to religion. It could also mention the various events in recent history that have promoted vegetarianism, such as the BSE scare, the organics movement, the backlash against factory farming, Peter Singer's [Animal Liberation] and concern over toxins building up in the food chain. Anyone willing to start up something like this? It could even be its own page. --komencanto 23:55, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Vegetarianism and gender

From personal experience, the majority of vegetarians I have met have been female. Not to say that I don't know male vegetarians/vegans, but I know many more who are female. I know how unfounded it is to extrapolate from very unscientific personal experience, so I was wondering if anyone knew figures on this? Also, I know a few years ago some papers ran stories discussing vegetarianism as a fad among middle school girls. I think these are interesting angles to discuss, anyone agree? The lesbian 02:51, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My own subjective experience agrees with this, but we need hard numbers before putting anything into the article. Anyone got some? Tannin 02:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you google "vegetarians are women" (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22vegetarians+are+women%22&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1), you get tons of results indicating that some high proportion of vegetarians (60–80%) are women. But I haven't been able to find a scholarly source. (There are no relevant results for "vegetarians are men", in case you were wondering.) —Caesura ^(t) 04:25, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

This is your personal experience—it depends entirely on the population and situation you are looking at. If you were to go to Gujarat you would find as many vegetarian men as women because that is the norm. Or if you went to certain Buddhist countries in east Asia you might well find more vegetarian men than women because this is often associated with asceticism and there are more monks than nuns. On the other hand if you looked at a middle-American middle-school, you might well find that eating a lot of meat—or even killing animals—is considered macho, and concern for animals considered effeminate, and naturally you would expect to find more vegetarian girls. NTK 16:19, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Another factor, though probably a small one, is probably that vegetarianism and veganism are sometimes adopted to cover up anorexia, which (in the US at least) is more prevalent in young women than in the general population. DanielCristofani 09:28, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Copy veganism article

The article about veganism is better than this one. We could probably make a lot of improvements by looking at that one and adjusting what we've done. We should probably have a separate page about vegetarian societies. --komencanto 06:07, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Opening para

With respect, I think "requiring the death of animals" is superfluous and the paragraph in general is starting to get unwieldy and lose focus. "The exclusion of these foods is called veganism." will IMO need to mention the notion not using animal products like leather and thus is better left out. Toast 19:24, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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