Plain old baking soda will keep your hair nice and tidy, and is apparently healthier for your hair than harsh detergents.


It also substitutes for toothpaste. I stopped doing that though...I'd rather it taste good.

Shaving your face with a straight razor and natural soap.





Excellent point.

Vegetarianism is fine. Where do them vegetables come from? I'm trying to encourage people into gardening Even buying organic vegetables--the large organic farms (the ones that hcan afford to jump through the hoops to get the organic lable) often practice mono-culture, essentially practicing business as usual, just with "eco-safe" pesticides. If sustainablity is your concern you want to buy local and support small farms. Then again, the hip vegan already knows all that, one hopes.

Honestly I eat a lot of meat. Not that I have no respect for those you don't. It is a very noble pursuit. But I think eating meat is only natural, of course you want to balance your diet so you don't have to much of a calorie intake. I do try though to make it an everyday thing to eat meat. God gave us teeth, he gave us meat, and he gave us the means to eat it. So I say eat it.

(in response to Jamie's post)

I am by no means an anthropologist, or qualified at all, I am merely stating my own theories based on my knowledge of primates and our evolutionary past -- there was a very interesting BBC documentary called 'The Incredible Human Journey' which was both very interesting and helped me join the dots when approaching discussions such as this, you can watch it here if you are interested:

http://topdocumentaryfil...ncredible-human-journey/

It is interesting that you mention insects as these are still eaten in great quantities in Asia, but then they will eat pretty much anything that isn't poisonous - in China they will even deep fry live fish and eat them while still moving. Now as much as I try to be open minded and respect the culture of others, this to me is plain animal cruelty and I do wish that these sorts of practices were a thing of the distant past.

Then again there are many Hindu communities in India that are strictly vegetarian as a matter of faith. It is perfectly possible that humans evolved to be both vegetarian / fruitarian AND omnivorous in different localities, and as each emerging culture bloomed, traveled and spread their philosophies and ways of life that there could have been a cultural bleed through that instigated those societies to move away from what was once an entirely plant based diet.

I DO think that our diets in the west have become too meat oriented, for sure. And I do think that our farming methods have become unsustainable and detrimental to the environment, and I am becoming increasingly interested in sustainable living and lessening my load on this beautiful planet.

Chickens are very easy to raise, if you have the space. They require about as much care as a cat. I have considered raising more of them, and culling one every now and again for meat.

I have a question for vegetarians/vegans out there: Do you have pets? If so, what food do they eat?

This is just plain ignorant and even offensive to be honest. How about you take a step back and speak for yourself when talking about "pretending" to have "medical" reasoning or "need" for a diet. I myself have got a few well known "medical" issues known as "irritable bowel syndrome" and "lactose intolerance". These two very "REAL" "medical" conditions result in myself having to avoid certain foods like meat and dairy. I still eat said certain foods because I think they are delicious.. I Loves me a big juicy campfire steak. But the "fact" is they affect my "non-pretend" "real life" "medical" conditions..

No pets because yeah that's a problem. I may get an Iguana eventually. They are vegans and beautiful creatures!

My cats eat raw meat.


What else would a feline eat?


I use a manual grinder, grind up bones and all, livers, hearts, all that good stuff that cats need.

Oh and they chew up weeds and grass in my yard sometimes. Er, fine, yesterday my cat stole a raw cashew from me. Little bugger. I'm pretty sure he ate it. But yeah, raw meat, like they're supposed to.

Oh I might just consider the chickens pets too....grains like corn and rice, weeds and flowers, and bugs. A salamander or two. They gets mad excied over salamaders. Currently I'm still buying them "feed" which is basically kibble. I started raising them less than a year ago and wanted to play it safe for starters. It sais "natural" on the bag...yeah, I'd rather they eat real food, like the humans and cats who live here do.

Where does the raw meat come from, if I may ask?

My gf has a cat that she's had since before we were together. As most house pets around the world, he always ate industrial catfood, which contains different kinds of meat from unknown (probably very bad ?) origin. Now, we're trying to find how to gradually substitute the food to something more sustainable and healthy, but are unsure how...

What I am doing is going to a fish shop around the corner and asking for them to give me some fish left over which wouldnt be sold anyways, and we're giving this to supplement his food and giving a bit less of the catfood.. But I dont think it would be healthy to only survive on this.. Im also not sure how to balance a cat's food in a sustainable way without spending too much money (because I simply dont have, not because im a cheap bastard) or risking his health, and yet I dont want to keep supporting these catfood companies. Any ideas?

I live in a city now, so there isnt the option to just leave the cat free to get his own food, as it happened when I lived in a nice house in the mountains.... It was great when I had land and had my own vegetable garden, chickens, fruit trees and what not.. Right now I dont have all of that anymore, because of temporary life choices as a part of my path, so I try to do my best, avoid consuming/buying, use bicycle and public transport, eat mostly from organic local farmers and season food and so on, but the cat issue is still something Im not sure what to do....

I don't eat meat anymore and i feel much healthier with a lot more energy. I basically eat mostly fruit but a lot of vegetables to, and some nuts and a bunch of superfoods when i can..its been amazing and synergizes well with psychedelics, ime

The meat industry is disgusting and my reasoning for eating like this aligns with what many here have already mentioned.. but after researching this for years i also think Tony Wrights work strongly indicates that the human brains rapid expansion in size (which occurred faster than the growth of any other organ in any creature in the whole of the archaeological record, according to some) and complexity was fueled by the tens of thousands of phytochemicals, flavonoids, MAOIs, ect, in fruit; which we increasingly are finding to be extremely healthy for humans in miraculous ways. The idea that after millions of years of these chemicals flooding our brains and bodies this wouldn’t have any affect on our evolution makes zero sense.. As anyone whos taken psychedelics knows, our brains are exquisitely sensitive to chemicals.. And these chemicals not only alter neural and endocrine functioning, but literally change how the DNA is read and thus expressed in the fetus -whose blood is flooded with the chemicals its mother eats: leading to huge developmental changes that can be passed down via another mechanism that would work in tandem with natural selection. this is just a crappy description of it and its hard for me to explain fully here, so read the book lol http://www.scribd.com/do...Copy-of-Left-in-the-Dark http://leftinthedark.org.uk/

Its really funny how everybody knows that you need to build complex technology out of the right materials and have the right fuel for it to work correctly or even at all..but no one seems to apply this same thinking to our brains- which literally are lightyears beyond anything else in their complexity and sensitivity to what you are building it from (food). And so many people eat junk that can hardly even be considered food and is completely irrelevant to what our bodies need apart from getting the energy necessary to merely survive

I doubt its any coincidence that the largest and most complex brains we see came from the most biochemically complex ecosystem on the planet. Fruit is the most complex food there is..and there seem to be a correlation between big brains and fruit eating in other mammals to: like fruit bats, other monkeys, parrots, ect. I’ve even heard that spider monkeys- who are about the same size and weight as howler monkeys, and live in the same habitat, but eat twice as much fruit, have brains nearly double the size of howler monkeys.

Our separation from this, due to the drying of the jungles or whatever, would have theoretically led to the ‘fall of mankind’..the ‘myths’ about a past golden age and the subsequent fall of humanity are reflected by literally dozens if not hundreds of traditions/myths/religions of separate peoples all over the planet; many of which who even mention how we lived in a fruit filled paradise (like eden), and that we've been devolving ever since. These ‘myths’ have been documented heavily in the book Memories and visions of paradise. And we do know that the rapid expansion of our brains has stalled, and some evidence suggests it has shrunk somewhat..if you don't think our ancestors we're advanced, look into Graham Hancocks work..which is really only the tip of the iceberg

As of late I've been considering a more vegetarian diet. But to come clean meat is my favorite food group. I love it all; calf liver, scrapple, turkey heart, venison, whatever. And I tend to eat it barely cooked, especially if it's a nicer cut of beef or an organ.

Though I am aware of the disgusting practices in factory farming and slaughter-houses and try to avoid certain brands. It's tough nowadays to find healthy food for an affordable price. I remember reading something lately that stated the FDA recently admitted that factory chickens are fed arsenic.. which is pretty horrible. It almost seems like the American public is purposely poisoned with all these genetically modified plants and hormonally altered animals. Also, I recently learned about a plastic foaming agent Azodicarbonamide being added to nearly all bread products.. and after checking nearly every brand in my local supermarket, they all contained it.

Anyway if I got off topic, yes I eat meat. I hope to be able to afford an entire diet overhaul after I graduate college and am making some decent money. I don't think I'll completely quit meat, but I wouldn't mind cutting down to more humanely slaughtered or personally hunted animals. I would like to replace much of the protein in my diet with wild mushrooms though, as it seems an interesting alternative considering the unique properties of fungi. Though a good reason I've read towards the limiting of animal products is that the acids in eggs, dairy, and meat tend to calcify the contents of the pineal gland, which I personally attribute with some sort of pheremonal/psychic ability.

This has been a point of conversation for quite awhile between me and my wife.

When we switched to the vegetarian diet we had 1 dog and 2 cats.

For the dog we tried to use dog food that had far less meat products. Dogs can actually survive on a vegetarian diet...and be far healthier than with store bought dog food. I didn't know this and raised my dog on store food. She passed away about a year ago from pancreatic cancer.

However, cats seem to require meat in their diet...and this is an issue for me.
I mean I'm trying to reduce my foot print by consuming less meat, but now I'm buying canned meat
for my cats still. So buy buying and owning cats I am increasing the populations of carnivorous animals on the planet and thus increasing my meat foot print. Really no way to mentally side step that issue IMHO.

I guess at the end of the day I have to look at the path I'm on. Prior to the switch I had 1 dog and 2 cats and both my wife and my self eat meat daily. Now we have 2 cats and both my wife and I are largely vegetarian. Our foot print has been reduced from where it was and this is good. However I won't pretend that my conscious is clear! LOL Hell the whole pont of living totally mindfully is in some sense to continuously call into question our consciousness. I feel better than I use to. We try to very mindful of all the products we buy, but for sure we are still intertwined in the society we live in.

I won't go into all the details but about 2-3 years ago I had a big ah ha awaking moment. I sold my extended cab dodge pickup and bought a honda civic hybrid. We started recycling everything. We bought my wife a solid used car. We switched to fluorescent bulbs. You are certainly right..being vegetarian isn't enough to ease our conscious. The only thing I ask of anyone is that they try and move in the right direction. I have a long way to go myself.

Hell we live on a planet were there are kids right now as we speak starving and scavenging garbage dumps for food.
Anyone that say's they live with a clean consciousness isn't aware of the world they live in..at leat not aware of it in the way I want to be!


The question I alway's have for the really hard line vegans is what about your drugs? When you are very sick then what? Damn near every drug on the market has had a huge amount of animal testing done on it.

For me I address this by trying to learn as much about natural products/plants as possible. Understand this is a big switch for someone who is a trained organic chemist. In fact I'll go so far as to say I 100% believe that in most cases natural solutions are better than synthetic ones simply because out biology evolved with the plants biology. Obviously this is not true in in all cases...sometimes individual molecules do seem to be better.

Anyway you bring up very good points endlessness. I can't speak for everyone, but for me it's all about raising my awareness and living more mindfully. I don't feel as though I can up and change it all in one go. I need to walk my path gradually up the hill to be a better all around human. I have plenty of work left to do!

One last point. I also don't like being in your face to meat eaters. I do think we have some moral high ground as vegetarians, but to be in your face about it won't change anyone. I'd rather people have their eye's opened and their consciousness raised to the point that they choice to do it because they want to. At the end of the day it's not about us having some moral high ground..it's about the suffering of other sentient beings. I want to minimize their suffering not elevate my ego.


Peace

i don't crave meat but i wouldn't turn it away when it is in front of me

Excellent post joedirt, I very much resonate with all you've said. I completely agree, it's a path of trying to be mindful, raising awareness, and constantly struggling to be better in all sorts of different levels. I dont think you're the only one that has a lot of work left to do, I think we all do, till the day we die.

Im glad to hear you've had that big insightful change one day (makes me very curious what exactly led you to it, feel free to share here or elsewhere if you ever feel like it, I would love to hear).

And yeah I totally agree that nobody should be in-your-face about one's choices, it doesnt help spreading awareness but rather it incites defensive responses. Much better to be respectful and to show one's way by simply being the example through one's actions and calm mind.

No I dont and this is part of why we dont. minxx wants to get a cat but she doesnt want to support factory farming to feed a cat and neither do I. I am not planning on hunting so I can feed my cat so..and cats cannot be vegans, they will go blind. Cats are strict carnivoires. Dogs, or wolves do eat roots and stuff and you can raise a healthy dog on veggies and meat..but still they need the meat, they are omnivoires by nature.

Someone said something about alternatives to toothpast tasting bad..I have toothpaste that is vegan and it tastes good. It is fluoride free and contains essential oils like anise and peppermint and then blue green algea I think. Actaully it tasts way better than regular toothpaste.

Something to be mentioned here..traditionally "vegan" means to do no harm to other living things..or to do as little harm as possible. This is not how the term is used today though, becasue technically you can have vegan cheese if you raise your own goat for example, and give it tons of room to roam on yur own plot of land so it feels free and only milk it every year or whatever and leave it enough of its own milk so you arent really taking anything away from the animal. You could then say you made your own vegan cheese or have vegan milk. The same goes for wool. I like organic wool but if you take a look at the industry just becasue wool is a natural fiber is not saying much ethically..look at how sheep are treated. It is NOT necessarily vegan..nor is cotton if it is some GMO grown crap that someone cut down old growth forest just to grow. Just as people complain to me about eating raw bee honey as a "vegan"..bee honey can be vegan. I try to buy ethically harvested bee honey, but it can be hard and in the summer when we start working at farmers markets selling chocolate I hope to find an ethical bee keeper who can show us how they ethically keep the bees and leave them enough honey as well so I can get honey from them.

We source alot of our food that we use for our business stuff to make sure it is ethically harvested, organic and fair trade. We pay alot more for our cacao and maca etc becasue of this but it is worth it and people know that.

All that said, how many of us are REALLY vegan? Are you vegan if you drive a car? Are you vegan if you ever buy things in plastic or use non-biodegradable anything? Are you vegan if you work for a company that does alot of harm to the environment and does not care becasue they make more $$? I would say no, not by the traditional meaning of the word "vegan". IMO I have never met a vegan. When I say I am "vegan" I am referring to the popular definition as it is used-that I dont eat animal products. Even then I still have shoes that I bought 5 years ago that are leather from factory farmed animals..but to throw them out would be waste even though they are not vegan. I have met people who do throw away old leather shoes etc becasue they now are proud(and sometimes arrogant) vegans who just cant wear leather but they are okay with wasting something that could go to some use.


To be perfectly honest, I dont like all the "vegan" moralizing that I hear from alot of these people. I have seen some over the top arrogance from people claiming they dont cause any suffering or kill a lifeform ever, just after they eat a bowl of carrots etc. I dont like it. It does not help these people to open other up to the positive effects a vegan diet has on the environment, it just makes people close up to the whole discussion most of the time. Plants are just as living than anything else, and I definatily take a life every time I eat a root vegetable, and even with fruit you are still killing some microorganisms. You cant get away from it so the idea of not killing any lifeform is rediculous and pointless to persue. Trying to eliminate the ammount of devestation and suffering though is a noble thing to do IMO, and that is certainly something that we can do.

Lets face it. A person who eats a vegan diet is doing less environmental harm. It drastically reduces the carbon footprint even if you are eating non-local produce. It costs alot more for farm animals to be raised, and is harder on the environment. The ammount of food that is needed to feed one cow compared to how many people that cow will feed is rediculous. Veganism can sustain more people. The suffering of the animals is beside the point. I have nothing against people who hunt ethically, but I cant imagine that if everyone who eats meat took off into the woods with their guns we would have much wildlife left. I cant imgaine all those people being able to be hunters anyway, which is a strange side effect of the whole situation..people are so removed from the cycle of life and death and nature itself..so many dont understand or respect that cycle at all and so they dont think twice abotu the steak they are about to eat, yet if it was them holding the gun I dont think too many could mentally handle it. RESPECT is lacking, plain and simple.

We have a long way to go before ANY of us can be even close to a true vegan.

HOw about all the soya farming and all that ?

Yeah rOm, as I mentioned before (I think?), there is a huge problem in South America, specially Brazil, a lot in the Amazon area, due to soya monoculture farming, deforestation caused by it, GM seeds, fertilizing/pesticides ruining the land, etc.. But mind you, most of the soya (specially the big GM crops) is actually not for human consumption but rather for feeding cattle, chickens and pigs, so we go back to meat unsustainability.

Oh yes you're right.
I really think with these food, we need to focus on ecosystem. Otherwise cutting a century old tree wouldn't be as bad as killing a goat.
Though it's whole ecosystem living with and from a century old tree.

Here's a link of intrest to the discussion regarding crops for animal feed.
Yeah it's from a green sustainability type web site, but they do provide their sources at the end.

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/feed/


Peace