When one chooses to follow a vegetarian, vegan or raw lifestyle it invariably leads to frequent conversation on the subject of diet & health. I find that it often creates a nutritional apartheid. Carnivore’s v/s Herbivore, high protein v/s low fat, carbs v/s calories, agave v/s sugar. Crunchy v/s just plain crackers.
I will begin and end on the same note: "There is no 'right' (or 'wrong') answer for the masses." It is a system, a chain, and you can not have a circle of life without both the hunter and the hunted.
With all of these debates raging about what is 'right', or even the comparable debates on what is 'popular' or worse yet 'trendy' (when was nutrition & health every supposed to be 'trendy'?!) it is nearly impossible to keep sight of what is "Natural".
So we're going to review...
Many vegetarians & vegans say that eating meat is not natural. That argument fails as soon as you turn on the animal planet channel, visit a zoo, take a walk in a park, have pets that breed, or own an indoor/outdoor cat!
There are well over 1,000,000,000 species of animals that are carnivorous.
Not natural? = Not serious. The largest mammal on earth (blue whale) is carnivorous. Even some types of coral can be cannibalistic when comes to its carnivorous little diet!
Omnivores. They say they are opportunistic, I say they are smart! They eat what is available, when it is available and keep right on surviving.
Ever looked closely at the animal kingdom's food chain?
Setting, It rains a little more the trees grow bigger and provide more food. The giraffe eat more plants and grow in size & population, thinning out the trees. Because there are more giraffes the lions have more to eat & they set about thinning out the giraffes who ran out of food when they ate the excess of the trees. This gives the trees a chance to catch up and recover from the herbaceous feeding frenzy. Pretty soon the lions run out of spare giraffes, they go hungry and down goes their population. Now there are fewer predators, plenty of new trees and poof, suddenly we're flush on giraffe again!
Omnivore Win! Salad, giraffe, lion - who cares. So long as there is food & someone to eat it, an omnivore will never go hungry.
Who is going to turn their nose up at day old lion? ...
That would be your basic herbivore. So if there are so many other options why limit yourself?
Because there is only ONE source of energy through nutrition.
Sun + Air + Water = Energy. Plants are convenient containers for this process.
Every life form uses the same energetic equation to live. Everything that is alive gets their energy from plants! (No Lie!)
In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another. When a herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy (that it gets from the plant food) becomes new body mass; the rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up by the herbivore to carry out its life processes (e.g., movement, digestion, reproduction). Therefore, when the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small amount of total energy (that it has received) to the carnivore. Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be "wasted" or "used up" by the carnivore. The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get enough energy to grow.
Because of the large amount of energy that is lost, the amount of energy that is transferred substantially decreases with each link in the chain.
The largest land mammal? Herbivore!
(elephant, by the way)
Why am I prattling on about this? Yeah, yeah, yeah we all know herbivores eat plants and carnivores eat meat. What is the big deal right?
Here is the big deal.
Sunlight + Air + Water = Energy.
Energy + Person = Life.
Life = Good.
The Blue Whale eats 1 pound of krill for every 4 pounds of body weight, per day.
The Elephant eats 1 pound of vegetation for every 10 pounds of body weight, per day.
Krill is only 1 step up the food chain and the whale has to devour 2.5 times the volume of food! The more links in the chain the less you gain (nutritionally)..
There is just no way around it. Plants are Vital for health!
If you like meat, be an omnivore! But it might be a good idea to finish your side salad before you have that steak. And you may want to skip that burger if you're hungry and have some vegetables when your tummy is growling. Plants will fill you up and provide more nutrients to your body than something a step or ten down the food chain.
I will begin and end on the same note: "There is no 'right' (or 'wrong') answer for the masses." It is a system, a chain, and you can not have a circle of life without both the hunter and the hunted.
With all of these debates raging about what is 'right', or even the comparable debates on what is 'popular' or worse yet 'trendy' (when was nutrition & health every supposed to be 'trendy'?!) it is nearly impossible to keep sight of what is "Natural".
So we're going to review...
Many vegetarians & vegans say that eating meat is not natural. That argument fails as soon as you turn on the animal planet channel, visit a zoo, take a walk in a park, have pets that breed, or own an indoor/outdoor cat!
There are well over 1,000,000,000 species of animals that are carnivorous.
Not natural? = Not serious. The largest mammal on earth (blue whale) is carnivorous. Even some types of coral can be cannibalistic when comes to its carnivorous little diet!
Omnivores. They say they are opportunistic, I say they are smart! They eat what is available, when it is available and keep right on surviving.
Ever looked closely at the animal kingdom's food chain?
Setting, It rains a little more the trees grow bigger and provide more food. The giraffe eat more plants and grow in size & population, thinning out the trees. Because there are more giraffes the lions have more to eat & they set about thinning out the giraffes who ran out of food when they ate the excess of the trees. This gives the trees a chance to catch up and recover from the herbaceous feeding frenzy. Pretty soon the lions run out of spare giraffes, they go hungry and down goes their population. Now there are fewer predators, plenty of new trees and poof, suddenly we're flush on giraffe again!
Omnivore Win! Salad, giraffe, lion - who cares. So long as there is food & someone to eat it, an omnivore will never go hungry.
Who is going to turn their nose up at day old lion? ...
That would be your basic herbivore. So if there are so many other options why limit yourself?
Because there is only ONE source of energy through nutrition.
Sun + Air + Water = Energy. Plants are convenient containers for this process.
Every life form uses the same energetic equation to live. Everything that is alive gets their energy from plants! (No Lie!)
In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another. When a herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy (that it gets from the plant food) becomes new body mass; the rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up by the herbivore to carry out its life processes (e.g., movement, digestion, reproduction). Therefore, when the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small amount of total energy (that it has received) to the carnivore. Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be "wasted" or "used up" by the carnivore. The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get enough energy to grow.
Because of the large amount of energy that is lost, the amount of energy that is transferred substantially decreases with each link in the chain.
The largest land mammal? Herbivore!
(elephant, by the way)
Why am I prattling on about this? Yeah, yeah, yeah we all know herbivores eat plants and carnivores eat meat. What is the big deal right?
Here is the big deal.
Sunlight + Air + Water = Energy.
Energy + Person = Life.
Life = Good.
The Blue Whale eats 1 pound of krill for every 4 pounds of body weight, per day.
The Elephant eats 1 pound of vegetation for every 10 pounds of body weight, per day.
Krill is only 1 step up the food chain and the whale has to devour 2.5 times the volume of food! The more links in the chain the less you gain (nutritionally)..
There is just no way around it. Plants are Vital for health!
If you like meat, be an omnivore! But it might be a good idea to finish your side salad before you have that steak. And you may want to skip that burger if you're hungry and have some vegetables when your tummy is growling. Plants will fill you up and provide more nutrients to your body than something a step or ten down the food chain.
