[dohboi]

"fertiliser manufacturers"

That would be...humans!!!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne of the most remarkable agricultural practices adopted by any civilized people is the centuries−long and well nigh universal conservation and utilization of all human waste in China, Korea and Japan, turning it to marvelous account in the maintenance of soil fertility and in the production of food.

[Shaved Monkey]

It works if the soil is fertile to begin with and its a closed loop and theres a limited number of people.
You grow you eat you poop.

Not much naturally fertile land around to sustain too many people.
All the suburbs were built on the market gardens
Not much time to start the Fukuoka method before too many die of starvation.
Rare breeds only survive because people grow them to eat.
Vegans/Vegos ensure the wiping out of these animals forever.
and the monoculture required to feed the vegos destroy the environment.
Todays Vegan food system doesnt work like that or could ever be scaled up to work like that.
Local shop has $6 a packet of organic sweet potato chips imported from the USA for the discerning Vegan.
Or coconut water from the third world
Lots of pretty packaging and lots of astronomical food miles and prices.

Mollison states that 'omnivorous diets makes the best use of complex natural systems.'


http://permaculturenews.org/2009/10/11/ ... inability/

[dohboi]

"Vegans/Vegos ensure the wiping out of these animals forever."

Riiiight.

If 100% of the population immediately became vegan.

What do you think is the likelihood of that.

The main point is that we can't sustain the vast increase in meat eating that is going on now.

Everyone should support any movement that counters this un-sustainable trend.

(Or, you can gasp, clutch your pearls, and fret that 'The vegans are coming!' 'The vegans are coming!' They're going to take away all our pate! Oh my!' Really, these arguments are getting so ridiculously absurd, they hardly merit rebuttal.)

[Shaved Monkey]

http://www.tradraremeat.co.uk/Files/conservation.htm

If you can create a sustainable vegan system that works for you go for it.
Re; people eating less meat ,I agree and no factory meat either but more monoculture soy beans and cheap oil is the only way it can be replaced.

The sea around me is full of oysters,fish,prawns and crabs the land around me is full of wild pigs, hare, deer and kangaroos and wallabies.
The skies are full of birds.
Small local farms are full of pigs chickens sheep and ducks.(their dams are full of fish and yabbies)
The surrounding farms are massive dry land farms(thousands of acres) that grow lots of free range grass fed Brahman cross cattle.
You would be hard pressed to replace all that protein with a legume
Not enough water, soil is not very fertile(leaching tropical rains), full of rocks and trees you couldnt get a plough through it and there is no infrastructure.
Most of the beef gets exported so it feeds Asians and Americans protein too

[dohboi]

Please do eat all the 'wild' pig and hare that you want--introduced species that are running amok. Meat eaters DO have their place in my ecosystem. We just don't need that many of them.

But please mostly leave the birds and fish alone--the oceans are under enough stress, as are many bird species.

Again, local situations vary.

But in most places in the worlds where there are the most people most need to be mostly vegetarian/vegan if we want to have an even marginally sustainable future.

Bring populations down to sustainable levels, and we can renegotiate!

[Timo]

I say herbivore. You say carnivore.

Let's call the whole thing off.

[Shaved Monkey]

I say low gi omnivore

[Gorm]

2 years back I made major changes in my diet. I made huge reductions in sugars of all kinds, wheat & rice meat of all kinds. Increased legymes and beans and lentils and such.

I feelt much bettre, way healthier.

I never buy meat anymore and dont miss it. More and more it kind of creeps me out. I do eat it when at friends if they serve it, or if I split a pizza with someone.

thats my 2 öre (swedish cents )

[Gorm]

I also lost 18 kilos in 5 months. from 88 kilo to 70. that was a powerful experience!

[dohboi]

"free-range herbivores and fish use no oil."

Riiight. They were all cared for, fished and retrieved using carts drawn by grass-fed horses and in rowboats. Okaaaay. (And of course you don't need oil to grow grains and legumes. They were grown for thousands of years before ffs were developed as a major source of fuel, fertilizer and pesticide/herbicide.)

"fast-food nutritionally-dead soy products"

Who the hell is advocating for these. Nice way to create a strawman and knock him down.

I hope you're proud of yourself for that valiant effort.

"Increased legymes and beans and lentils and such."

Good idea.

[davep]

Going back to the original post:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')r. David Jenkins’s glycemic index revolutionized the diet industry. His isn’t a household name, but the diets his research inspired certainly are: Atkins, The Zone, South Beach, Sugar Busters and the G.I. Diet, to name a few. Along with laying the scientific groundwork for wildly popular lower-carb diets...

[davep]

Another cool property of such diets is the potential anti-cancer effects (Warburg effect etc) http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/8/1/75

[dohboi]

Dave, good points. In fact, I see from the handydandy wiki page that:

"The paper entitled "Weight Reduction" was published by Alfred W. Pennington in 1958"

But I read that intro do mean that the popular, widespread adoption of those diets were due at least partly to the influence of the glycemic index. Atkins didn't reach it's peak of popularity till about 2003.

In any case, I don't think there is really any dispute that the glycemic index was and is hugely influential (which is really the main point of that paragraph), even if it wasn't the direct inspiration for every single low carb diet that has ever been conceived. So there's no real threat to the 'premise' here.

[davep]

I think the GI is a great tool, no doubt about it. And I also agree that we need to move to a more vegetarian diet. But the best agricultural rotation techniques include animal rotation (in, e.g., micro-ley farming). If they help overall productivity of the land I don't see a problem in eating them, personally.

[dohboi]

1) "the best agricultural rotation techniques include animal rotation (in, e.g., micro-ley farming)."
2) "If they help overall productivity of the land I don't see a problem in eating them, personally."

Good points.

For the first point, humans, of course, are animals.

For the second point, see the first point. (No soilent green references, please! )

But back to your point one, could you say a be more about 'micro-ley'? That's not a term I'm very familiar with.

For the record, I for one, am not a (transitional) vegan who thinks every last person in the human race has to be vegan.

So I see lots of room for various animals being used for various things. Just not massive herds of grain-and-soy-finished cattle in CAFOs.

[Shaved Monkey]

Here's a reasoned and scientific comparison between eating vegetarian or an omnivore diet in Australia.
by the University of NSW

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')So, what does a hungry human do?
Our teeth and digestive system are adapted for omnivory.
But we are now challenged to think about philosophical issues.
We worry about the ethics involved in killing grazing animals and wonder if there are other more humane ways of obtaining adequate nutrients.
Relying on grains and pulses brings destruction of native ecosystems, significant threats to native species and at least 25 times more deaths of sentient animals per kilogram of food.
The challenge for the ethical eater is to choose the diet that causes the least deaths and environmental damage.
There would appear to be far more ethical support for an omnivorous diet that includes rangeland-grown red meat and even more support for one that includes sustainably wild-harvested kangaroo.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'E')rr, Jenkins' Glycaemic Index was in 1981. Atkins published his Diet Revolution in 1972. And the granddaddy of them all is the Ketogenic diet that was popular in the 1920's (albeit for eplipsy originally, but the fundamental process to all these diets which is the use of ketone bodies rather than glucose was the basis of the diet). So the whole premise is bunk.

[dohboi]

SM's quoted source below is, of course, complete and utter BS not worthy of further comment (or is it just an Onion headline?? ):

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')elying on grains and pulses brings destruction of native ecosystems, significant threats to native species and at least 25 times more deaths of sentient animals per kilogram of food.

[Shaved Monkey]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', 'S')M's quoted source below is, of course, complete and utter BS not worthy of further comment (or is it just an Onion headline?? ):

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')elying on grains and pulses brings destruction of native ecosystems, significant threats to native species and at least 25 times more deaths of sentient animals per kilogram of food.