Petition for the right not to eat animals in French schools

A recent decree by the French government has imposed animal products at each meal in French cafeterias. This means that in schools, universities, enterprises, everywhere meals are prepared for a community, there is no option left for those who do not wish to eat animals.
The French Vegetarians Association, in cooperation with other organizations, is trying to obtain the withdraw of this decree, which is a very hard task because of the huge power of the agribusiness lobbies - first industry in France, above the automobile!

There is a petition online to support the reaction against this decree. I hope many of you will sign it (the text is in English). This is not about making vegetarians those who wish to stay omnivore: it is simply against a discrimination of which we are the victims in the interest of the agribusiness. A large number of signatures from abroad will hopefully be a strong support to our action against this French shame.

The address is of the petition is: http://petition.icdv.info/en/

Thanks in advance for your help!

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

Also, if you have mucus coming out of your kidneys, I'd get yourself to a hospital.

It just means you aren't abstaining hard enough.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

If anyone's interested here's a quick breakdown of the nutritional differences cow's milk and soy milk.

I know this, cows have horns & soys don't. That's how you can tell them apart.

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

Bubble and squeak gets its name from the sound it makes as it is cooking. It is a popular breakfast or supper dish in England

http://www.whats4eats.com/breakfast/bubble-and-squeak-recipe
Don't ask me, I just post here.

Yeah, like I'll believe an American website.

I am English & I personally have never known anyone eat bubble & squeak for breakfast. I've never known anyone intentionally buy warm beer in a pub either. You shouldn't believe everything you read on US websites probably designed by people who couldn't find the UK on a map. I used to live in Wales & regularly ate bara lafwr for breakfast. I'm betting you'll have to google that!

This is what a traditional English breakfast looks like.

OK, I will admit a lot of people probably just eat cornflakes.

That explains more than several books could.

You ate bara lafwr for breakfast. Hmmmmm. I wouldn't take a chance of breaking Google with that one. There ain't hardly nothing people won't eat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbF07SHt1rI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

That explains more than several books could.

All it needs is some Black Pudding.

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

You ate bara lafwr for breakfast. Hmmmmm. I wouldn't take a chance of breaking Google with that one. There ain't hardly nothing people won't eat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbF07SHt1rI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Yeah well, it beats eating seaweed.

I seaweed wrapped around rice.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

People who stop eating chocolate and ice cream become healthier? Who would have thought it?

Yeah, there are other brilliant arguments as well.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/phlegm/AN01455

Question

Cold symptoms: Does drinking milk increase phlegm?
I've heard that you shouldn't drink milk when you have a cold because it increases phlegm. Is this true?

Answer
from James M. Steckelberg, M.D.

Phlegm is the thick, sticky mucus that drips down the back of your throat when you have a cold. Although drinking milk may make phlegm thicker and more irritating to your throat than it would normally be, milk doesn't cause your body to make more phlegm. In fact, frozen dairy products can soothe a sore throat and provide calories when you otherwise may not eat.

Wow. Bloody amazing that icecream "provides" calories.

This study says milk does not significantly increase mucus. But maybe this where the Mayo Client redeems itself in that it makes mucus thicker, but not necessarily more of it.

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

I seaweed wrapped around rice.

Yeah, it's just not the same as laver bread though is it?

Originally posted by banduser:

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

If anyone's interested here's a quick breakdown of the nutritional differences cow's milk and soy milk.

I know this, cows have horns & soys don't. That's how you can tell them apart.

Don't be ridiculous, of course soys don't have horns, they have antlers.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

It would certainly make sense. Cooking meat makes it usable for much longer periods of time, ergo those who'd be able to process cooked meat better would have a competitive advantage, much like how our more recent ancestors thrived thanks to milk.

That's not really the argument. There is an anatomic argument that cooked meat needs less chewing, and less constraining muscles, allowing our skulls to balloon out. An alternative argument claim cooking as more energy efficient, requiring less intestines (yep, johnnysaucepn, another argument by intestines, sorry about that), thus allowing us to spend less energy on digesting food and to spend more energy on worries.

As for milk I have moved from the two regions of lowest lactose intolerance (a digestive issue btw, not an allergy), Scandinavia and Central Europe, to the one with the highest, East Asia. The hypothesis goes that the early North and Central Europeans were particularly enthusiastic milk drinkers, which is true until today, but milk is very much in fashion in today's China, intolerance be damned.

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

it beats eating seaweed

Seaweed is cool, I eat a lot of it these days. The only problem is that I have yet to find a that goes well with seaweed.

Originally posted by jax:

That's not really the argument. There is an anatomic argument that cooked meat needs less chewing, and less constraining muscles, allowing our skulls to balloon out. An alternative argument claim cooking as more energy efficient, requiring less intestines (yep, johnnysaucepn, another argument by intestines, sorry about that), thus allowing us to spend less energy on digesting food and to spend more energy on worries.

Well sure, but it'd still need to be a sufficient advantage to spread across the population.

Originally posted by jax:

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

it beats eating seaweed

Seaweed is cool, I eat a lot of it these days. The only problem is that I have yet to find a that goes well with seaweed.

Seaweed or bara lafwr? I find green tea goes nicely with it.

Green tea goes nicely with...nothing. My mother used to drink it, poor soul.

Oh, I could never drink green tea, I'm a Rangers supporter. A-ha, now we know how you developed as you did, Michiganian??

I like green tea, I prefer Lapsang or Earl Grey. Green tea is a connoisseur's tea.

I don't know if this theory that the migrants from the east conquered Europe thanks to milk really pans out. Here's article from Der Spiegel that makes that claim. But it also has to point out the new comers were more advanced in general, having agriculture, etc. The only semi-solid argument is that milk could have reduced childhood mortality, but it seems that the original European population would have replaced regardless.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

I don't know if this theory that the migrants from the east conquered Europe thanks to milk really pans out.

Yeah, it sounds pretty curdled to me too.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

But it also has to point out the new comers were more advanced in general, having agriculture, etc. The only semi-solid argument is that milk could have reduced childhood mortality, but it seems that the original European population would have replaced regardless.

Either way, early Modern Humans in Europe, according to DNA research anyway, seems to indicate that dairy products would have been quite hard to digest. One theory is that drinking milk was a last resort.

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

One theory is that drinking milk was a last resort.

Clearly a last resort that worked very well for the genes of the lactose tolerant. In any case, Jax already said that.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

One theory is that drinking milk was a last resort.

Clearly a last resort that worked very well for the genes of the lactose tolerant. In any case, Jax already said that.

What I really meant, & was just way too lazy to explain, was that there is a lot of genetic evidence that milk drinking was very difficult for many early humans. I mean difficult to the point that it may actually have been fatal. One postulation was that the choice to slaughter an animal in a famine scenario may have been too short term a solution. Once you've eaten your cow ... well you know what I mean ... you can't have your cow & eat it.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Clearly a last resort that worked very well for the genes of the lactose tolerant.

Which is the cause and which is the effect? Perhaps resorting to drinking milk caused the lactose tolerance trait to evolve in the first place. Lactose intolerance is unpleasant, but rarely fatal.

The milk of human kindness?

Originally posted by jax:

Originally posted by Frenzie:

It would certainly make sense. Cooking meat makes it usable for much longer periods of time, ergo those who'd be able to process cooked meat better would have a competitive advantage, much like how our more recent ancestors thrived thanks to milk.

That's not really the argument. There is an anatomic argument that cooked meat needs less chewing, and less constraining muscles, allowing our skulls to balloon out. An alternative argument claim cooking as more energy efficient, requiring less intestines (yep, johnnysaucepn, another argument by intestines, sorry about that), thus allowing us to spend less energy on digesting food and to spend more energy on worries.

Hmmm... I always thought it was to kill parasites in the meat. But now that y'all mention it, those both sound like contributing factors as well.

Originally posted by pincopallino:

And for those who say man is omnivore - although this is not at all the topic of the post - think of your bowel: 12 times as long as your body, like herbivores, instead of 3 times, like carnivores. And look at your teeth: small canines, large molars, again like herbivores. So please keep on your diet but avoid judging others especially when you have no specific nutritional knowledge.

The Straight Dope, always the first port of call for knowledge when Wikipedia is blacked out, has this to say today:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/674/are-humans-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-by-nature

Like the hard-core carnivores, we have fairly simple digestive systems well suited to the consumption of animal protein, which breaks down quickly. Contrary to what your magazine article says, the human small intestine, at 23 feet, is a little under eight times body length (assuming a mouth-to-anus "body length" of three feet). This is about midway between cats (three times body length), dogs (3-1/2 times), and other well-known meat eaters on the one hand and plant eaters such as cattle (20 to 1) and horses (12 to 1) on the other. This tends to support the idea that we are omnivores.

Herbivores also have a variety of specialized digestive organs capable of breaking down cellulose, the main component of plant tissue. Humans find cellulose totally indigestible, and even plant eaters have to take their time with it. If you were a ruminant (cud eater), for instance, you might have a stomach with four compartments, enabling you to cough up last night's alfalfa and chew on it all over again.

Or you might have an enlarged cecum, a sac attached to the intestines, where rabbits and such store food until their intestinal bacteria have time to do their stuff. Digestion in such cases takes place by a process of fermentation — bacteria actually "eat" the cellulose and the host animal consumes what results, namely bacteria dung.

The story is roughly the same with teeth. We're equipped with an all-purpose set of ivories equally suited to liver and onions.

Good thing, too. I won't claim meat is the ideal source of protein, but on the whole it's better than plants. Sure, soybeans and other products of modern agriculture are pretty nutritious. But in the wild, much of the plant menu consists of leaves and stems, which are low in food value. True herbivores have to spend much of the day scrounging for snacks just to keep their strength up.

So make no mistake: we were born to eat meat. That's not to say you have to. There's no question that strictly from a health standpoint we'd all be a lot better off eating less meat (red meat especially) and more fruits and vegetables. But vegetarians aren't going to advance their cause by making ridiculous claims.

Also:

'In reading through your column "Vegetarians Go Ape," I noticed an unusual fact that you seemed to expose with great confidence. You stated that "Jane Goodall established more than twenty years ago that wild chimpanzees kill other animals once in a while and eat the meat with relish." I question the accuracy of this. Where would wild chimpanzees obtain relish?'

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

Herbivores also have a variety of specialized digestive organs capable of breaking down cellulose, the main component of plant tissue. Humans find cellulose totally indigestible, and even plant eaters have to take their time with it.

That's not a very good argument. Humans, in fact, need indigestible fiber to maintain digestive health and to stay "regular." So do other animals to extent; that's why you sometimes see dogs and cats (purer carnivores than humans) sometimes eating grass and other planets. I read a pro-meating site that made a big deal about humans not being able to digest some planet material and my reaction was "No shit. Maybe you need to go back about 4th grade health class.. "

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

The story is roughly the same with teeth. We're equipped with an all-purpose set of ivories equally suited to liver and onions.

Not entirely true either. That's why humans need to chew their food more than true carnivores.

This site goes into more detail and doesn't "go ape."

Humans are most often described as "omnivores." This classification is based on the "observation" that humans generally eat a wide variety of plant and animal foods. However, culture, custom and training are confounding variables when looking at human dietary practices. Thus, "observation" is not the best technique to use when trying to identify the most "natural" diet for humans. While most humans are clearly "behavioral" omnivores, the question still remains as to whether humans are anatomically suited for a diet that includes animal as well as plant foods.

....

In conclusion, we see that human beings have the gastrointestinal tract structure of a "committed" herbivore. Humankind does not show the mixed structural features one expects and finds in anatomical omnivores such as bears and raccoons. Thus, from comparing the gastrointestinal tract of humans to that of carnivores, herbivores and omnivores we must conclude that humankind's GI tract is designed for a purely plant-food diet.

That's right, not even an omnivore's. Meat eating is a learned behavior, and human anatomy has not evolved to match the practice.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

"Jane Goodall established more than twenty years ago that wild chimpanzees kill other animals once in a while and eat the meat with relish."

Yes, but notice chimps are better designed for eating meat than humans are. Faster, stronger, and with fangs that would give Dracula pause.

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

that's why you sometimes see dogs and cats (purer carnivores than humans) sometimes eating grass and other planets

I find this typo quite amusing.

Not a typo...you should see our dog, Robin, eat....

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

In conclusion, we see that human beings have the gastrointestinal tract structure of a "committed" herbivore. Humankind does not show the mixed structural features one expects and finds in anatomical omnivores such as bears and raccoons. Thus, from comparing the gastrointestinal tract of humans to that of carnivores, herbivores and omnivores we must conclude that humankind's GI tract is designed for a purely plant-food diet.

That's not completely true, as you quoted yourself. Our ability to process plants is somewhere between herbivore and carnivore, as is our ability to process meat. There's no point comparing with only omnivores.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

that's why you sometimes see dogs and cats (purer carnivores than humans) sometimes eating grass and other planets

I find this typo quite amusing.

I ate a planet once, but spit it up. Didn't agree with me.

Kind of alien action. You have been spaced out too long?

I thought cats sometimes ate grass to make themselves puke, possibly for if they had a bad stomach & needed to evacuate 'something or other'. However, this was actually a popular theory of my grandmother's. She was half Cantonese, so it may be some Chinese Taoist folk/cat mythology. I'm pretty sure she's right though.

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

I thought cats sometimes ate grass to make themselves puke, possibly for if they had a bad stomach & needed to evacuate 'something or other'. However, this was actually a popular theory of my grandmother's. She was half Cantonese, so it may be some Chinese Taoist folk/cat mythology. I'm pretty sure she's right though.

Probably based in truth - I don't think anyone knows for sure, but I think in most cases cats bring the grass back up, so if it's a craving for roughage or some other nutrient, or it's to get bad stuff out, it doesn't appear to be because it's something they can easily digest.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

I thought cats sometimes ate grass to make themselves puke, possibly for if they had a bad stomach & needed to evacuate 'something or other'. However, this was actually a popular theory of my grandmother's. She was half Cantonese, so it may be some Chinese Taoist folk/cat mythology. I'm pretty sure she's right though.

Probably based in truth - I don't think anyone knows for sure, but I think in most cases cats bring the grass back up, so if it's a craving for roughage or some other nutrient, or it's to get bad stuff out, it doesn't appear to be because it's something they can easily digest.

I wouldn't have thought that they could digest grass at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure we can't digest it. We can digest certain processed products related to grasses (I'm thinking of wheat & the like). I can't speak for cats.

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

I wouldn't have thought that they could digest grass at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure we can't digest it. We can digest certain processed products related to grasses (I'm thinking of wheat & the like). I can't speak for cats.

Afaik raw wheat(berry) takes a little longer to digest (cooking breaks up certain proteins and what not), and perhaps there are certain parts we can't digest, but it certainly doesn't need to be processed. Can we subsist on raw wheat alone? I rather doubt it, but the same applies to processed wheat.

I don't really know about grass; in any case it's not nutritious enough to sustain us. Cows have a symbiotic relationship with specialized bacteria to help break down the cellulose to something they can use, while for us it would merely thicken up our stool iirc. Besides, there are tens of thousands of species of grass. I wouldn't be surprised if the leaves of some were more nutritious than others, or if grass in sunnier climes contained more sugars we could use. Of course sunnier climes also come with much more useful fruits and vegetables, making that point rather moot.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

I wouldn't have thought that they could digest grass at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure we can't digest it. We can digest certain processed products related to grasses (I'm thinking of wheat & the like). I can't speak for cats.

Afaik raw wheat(berry) takes a little longer to digest (cooking breaks up certain proteins and what not), and perhaps there are certain parts we can't digest, but it certainly doesn't need to be processed. Can we subsist on raw wheat alone? I rather doubt it, but the same applies to processed wheat.

When I said 'processed' I actually meant 'cooked'. Sorry for the ambiguity. What I was trying to say was that this processing is the best way we actually can digest certain foods.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

I don't really know about grass;

Words I never thought I would read from a Dutchman LOL.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

in any case it's not nutritious enough to sustain us. Cows have a symbiotic relationship with specialized bacteria to help break down the cellulose to something they can use, while for us it would merely thicken up our stool iirc.

And they have loads of stomachs or something.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Besides, there are tens of thousands of species of grass. I wouldn't be surprised if the leaves of some were more nutritious than others, or if grass in sunnier climes contained more sugars we could use. Of course sunnier climes also come with much more useful fruits and vegetables, making that point rather moot.

There may very well be primate-friendly edible grass somewhere.

I don't know the chemistry exactly, but I believe seeds and fruit are much lower in cellulose that grasses and other woody stems are, which means it's much easier for us to digest.

I guess humans should be considered omnivores in the 'omni' sense, whereas 'true' omnivores are tailored to specific mixes of plant and animal products, we're adapted to make the best use of the widest range of what's available? Perhaps that's an advantage to a nomadic species?

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

I don't know the chemistry exactly, but I believe seeds and fruit are much lower in cellulose that grasses and other woody stems are, which means it's much easier for us to digest.

In fact, I believe that seeds from fruit evolved to pass straight through most animals who ate the fruit, & end up in their own fertiliser (if you see what I mean). Which would make the fruit the 'bait' for the tree/vine or otherwise to aid it in reproduction. So I should imagine fruit evolved to be relatively palatable & digestible for the species that would naturally feed on them. Which could include humans I suppose.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

I guess humans should be considered omnivores in the 'omni' sense, whereas 'true' omnivores are tailored to specific mixes of plant and animal products, we're adapted to make the best use of the widest range of what's available? Perhaps that's an advantage to a nomadic species?

That sounds very plausible. I actually think that the situation is considerably more complex than many of us realise. Primarily because, it appears that as a species we discovered how to 'process/cook' food very early on in our evolution, even at the hominid stage.

Yeah, it's easy to want to classify everything into the three camps, but then biology is never that discrete, is it?

Or discreet, come to that.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

Yeah, it's easy to want to classify everything into the three camps, but then biology is never that discrete, is it?

Or discreet, come to that.

Yeah, Mother Nature & her strange ways eh?

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

Yeah, it's easy to want to classify everything into the three camps, but then biology is never that discrete, is it?

Or discreet, come to that.

Yeah, Mother Nature & her strange ways eh?

It's just not natural, what she gets up to.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

It's just not natural, what she gets up to.

Yeah, it often makes you wonder if she's really from this earth LOL.

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

When I said 'processed' I actually meant 'cooked'. Sorry for the ambiguity. What I was trying to say was that this processing is the best way we actually can digest certain foods.

Like I said, cooking wheat makes it easier to digest certain proteins, but it's no necessity. If it were, raw foodies would be dying by the thousands. Grass leaves, on the other hand, have (almost) no nutritional value without some kind of mechanism to convert cellulose.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Like I said, cooking wheat makes it easier to digest certain proteins, but it's no necessity. If it were, raw foodies would be dying by the thousands.

I should imagine raw meat was more difficult to digest than a raw carrot for instance. Surely we can digest raw 'found' root vegetables though as they must surely be a part of our natural evolutionary diet. Eating 'cooked' meat was probably a survival strategy for a large protein intake in a single feeding.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Grass leaves, on the other hand, have (almost) no nutritional value without some kind of mechanism to convert cellulose.

Like multiple stomachs, right?

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

Like multiple stomachs, right?

I don't think the cow-friendly bacteria just swim around in their bloodstreams.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

Like multiple stomachs, right?

I don't think the cow-friendly bacteria just swim around in their bloodstreams.

I am not that familiar with the inner workings of cows to be totally sure. I did grow-up in the country (essentially I still live semi-rurally & about 5 mins from a dairy farm) & my uncle was a farmer, so I've seen enough cows. I've also stepped in enough cow shit. I still step in horse shit with an annoying regularity on the way to my local boozer as I also live near stables. What I do know about cows is that they chew an awful lot, crap an awful lot, are often oddly quite inquisitive & are usually attended by large collections of flies.

To give perspective, I should state that I really want a steak right now.
A great big slice of cow, charred on the outside, and bloody in the middle.

It's a luxury. I admit it. And I want it.

Originally posted by aefields:

To give perspective, I should state that I really want a steak right now. A great big slice of cow, charred on the outside, and bloody in the middle.It's a luxury. I admit it. And I want it.

NOM NOM NOM? O.o
sadly the way the world works is bitch enough and we get what we want.

A bowl of stew mixed in with beef savoury rice. Simple and delicious when one runs out of square sausages.

That's okay because the state wants it so it has to be good.

Originally posted by jax:

Originally posted by OperaBloke:

it beats eating seaweed

Seaweed is cool, I eat a lot of it these days. The only problem is that I have yet to find a that goes well with seaweed.

Maybe Seaweed Wine ?
Perhaps that wine goes well with seaweed; back overboard I suspect.

Eat seaweed?- yeuch! I will stick to my fish and chips. That's sea enough for me.

Regarding seaweed: it is often quite yummy. It can be very economical. You just have to prepare it properly.

In fact, it is sometimes wonderfully delicious.

Mmmmmm... sushi

Seaweed are the best sources of minerals, the source of DHA among vegetables, and indeed very yummy!

My mother forced me to eat my carrots, so I understand the dictatorship of The Meat Eating Proletariat.

There's this one humour book called "Elämä lyhyt, Rytkönen pitkä" where bunch of single upper-class French feminist vegetarian survivor hippies go on extreme survival trips around the world once a year. Then they go into Finnish marsh forest in early summer. Unable to forage anything edible from barren & harsh enviroment, they start to starve. Aside occasional mushroom and raw berries which cause diarrhea, they find nothing. Then there are bunch of hunters who are keeping a cottage where they salt, smoke, cook, grill & make sausages out of delicious deer & elk meat and smoke occasional pikes from neaby lake. The feminist survivors were well aware of the hunters - having spied on them - while the hunters never saw the women. Finally one of the feminist vegetarians cracks under starvation and starts stealing meat from hunters. Then she is caught by one of the hunters, ends up having an affair with him and finally as others are starving to death they wonder why this one women is getting better every day. First they scold her for giving up & betraying their holy feminist vegetarian cause where they need no men nor meay, then they all give up and live happily in the hunter's cottage for the rest of the summer and swore they will never act so childish anymore.

Funny but true enough. As for my experiences with strickt vegetarian diet, I felt really sick and my skin started to look like that of heavy smokers within two weeks. I also lost almost all of my libido. Had to call it quits. Unless the cooks get proper training on where to get the remaining 11 amino acids and prepare the food in such way they are not destroyed if meat is ditched, then I'm siding with children on this one. Some poor families may not afford good meat for their kids, or some families may mistreat their children by forcing their own vegetarian diet on kids who are completely dependent on their parents.

beiren.
read The China Study and use whole foods, instead of refined poisons. Then you will realise what nonsense you have written.

Originally posted by pincopallino:

beiren.
read The China Study and use whole foods, instead of refined poisons. Then you will realise what nonsense you have written.

I thought this thread was about vegetarian food. Besides, how was anything I wrote related to China or wholefood? Finally, how was any of it nonsense?

Originally posted by beiren:

Originally posted by pincopallino:

beiren.
read The China Study and use whole foods, instead of refined poisons. Then you will realise what nonsense you have written.

I thought this thread was about vegetarian food. Besides, how was anything I wrote related to China or wholefood? Finally, how was any of it nonsense?

Beiren, this is one time you and I are on the same page. It happens. Pincopallino is one of those "food nazis" who insist their way is the only right way and the rest of us are going to die because we don't subscribe to their holy diet ideas.

Originally posted by beiren:

I thought this thread was about vegetarian food. Besides, how was anything I wrote related to China or wholefood? Finally, how was any of it nonsense?

Veganism != vegetarianism, and it actually kind of is nonsense because you're generalizing from your own experience, which was caused by a lack of proper preparation before jumping into veganism. It may also well be true that your issues were at least partially caused by using processed foods rather than whole foods, seeing how processed food lacks a lot of the very amino acids you mentioned yourself.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by beiren:

I thought this thread was about vegetarian food. Besides, how was anything I wrote related to China or wholefood? Finally, how was any of it nonsense?

Veganism != vegetarianism, and it actually kind of is nonsense because you're generalizing from your own experience, which was caused by a lack of proper preparation before jumping into veganism. It may also well be true that your issues were at least partially caused by using processed foods rather than whole foods, seeing how processed food lacks a lot of the very amino acids you mentioned yourself.

I said the chefs need proper education in order to provide adequate vegtarian food. So much for generalising. Also care to explain the China part?

Now for the fun part: please explain in detail which amino acid(s) become absent in processed food and by which mechanism that happens? Because food is broad subject, let's hear you explain how amino acids disappear from soy beans which are processed into tofu. If not familiar, please explain any other case you know of where amino acids disappear. Go on.

Originally posted by beiren:

I thought this thread was about vegetarian food. Besides, how was anything I wrote related to China or wholefood? Finally, how was any of it nonsense?

The China Study is the "Grand Prix of Nutrition", the result of a systematic analysis of the relation between health and food, published by T. Colin Campbell and his son.

http://www.amazon.com/The-China-Study-Comprehensive-Implications/dp/1932100660/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333353236&sr=1-1

Originally posted by pincopallino:

Originally posted by beiren:

I thought this thread was about vegetarian food. Besides, how was anything I wrote related to China or wholefood? Finally, how was any of it nonsense?

The China Study is the "Grand Prix of Nutrition", the result of a systematic analysis of the relation between health and food, published by T. Colin Campbell and his son.

http://www.amazon.com/The-China-Study-Comprehensive-Implications/dp/1932100660/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333353236&sr=1-1

You still haven't answered Beiren's question after your last post.

Originally posted by beiren:

I said the chefs need proper education in order to provide adequate vegtarian food. So much for generalising. Also care to explain the China part?

You're the one who "felt really sick and my skin started to look like that of heavy smokers within two weeks." Whoever these chefs are, they would seem to be unrelated to my statement.

Originally posted by beiren:

Now for the fun part: please explain in detail which amino acid(s) become absent in processed food and by which mechanism that happens? Because food is broad subject, let's hear you explain how amino acids disappear from soy beans which are processed into tofu. If not familiar, please explain any other case you know of where amino acids disappear. Go on.

1) I would assume you know the difference between whole-grain flour and white flour. It's not only about amino acids, although with e.g. brown rice, whole wheat and a wide variety of other whole grains you can certainly obtain a better variety of amino acids: it's also about proteins and fibers, the latter of which aid digestion of any amino acids entering your body, so it stands to reason that even if the bran didn't contain any extra (variation of) amino acids, which it often does, it'd still be quite important to eat whole grains. The only reason I mentioned amino acids specifically is because you brought them up yourself.

2) What mechanism? Try removing the bran. With legumes the digestibility of certain amino acids slightly decreases due to the high temperatures typically involved in processing them, so no, they certainly don't disappear which was perhaps a bit badly expressed on my part as I was thinking primarily of grains. Besides which, as I already mentioned, if you don't eat whole grains your intestines will quite probably perform less well at processing whatever amino acids enter your body. I have no idea, however, about what's involved in making tofu besides what I saw on Dirty Jobs a few years ago: the stuff is disgusting anyway. Either way there are other benefits to using dried beans over canned beans: e.g., they contain less sodium unless you add it, and they're better for the environment.

Vegetarianism is an inhumane experiment. I'll go to eat meat right now.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Veganism != vegetarianism, and it actually kind of is nonsense because you're generalizing from your own experience, which was caused by a lack of proper preparation before jumping into veganism. It may also well be true that your issues were at least partially caused by using processed foods rather than whole foods, seeing how processed food lacks a lot of the very amino acids you mentioned yourself.

But schools can't be sure that kids are getting the same kind of proper preparation, and adequately research meal plans. They must provide a balanced diet in and of itself, and in an affordable way as possible. Sadly, this would include processed foods, which can be stored for longer.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Originally posted by beiren:

I said the chefs need proper education in order to provide adequate vegtarian food. So much for generalising. Also care to explain the China part?

You're the one who "felt really sick and my skin started to look like that of heavy smokers within two weeks." Whoever these chefs are, they would seem to be unrelated to my statement.

Yes I was, thus I mentioned the need for properly trained chefs in school cafeterias

Originally posted by beiren:

Now for the fun part: please explain in detail which amino acid(s) become absent in processed food and by which mechanism that happens? Because food is broad subject, let's hear you explain how amino acids disappear from soy beans which are processed into tofu. If not familiar, please explain any other case you know of where amino acids disappear. Go on.

1) I would assume you know the difference between whole-grain flour and white flour. It's not only about amino acids, although with e.g. brown rice, whole wheat and a wide variety of other whole grains you can certainly obtain a better variety of amino acids: it's also about proteins and fibers, the latter of which aid digestion of any amino acids entering your body, so it stands to reason that even if the bran didn't contain any extra (variation of) amino acids, which it often does, it'd still be quite important to eat whole grains. The only reason I mentioned amino acids specifically is because you brought them up yourself.

2) What mechanism? Try removing the bran. With legumes the digestibility of certain amino acids slightly decreases due to the high temperatures typically involved in processing them, so no, they certainly don't disappear which was perhaps a bit badly expressed on my part as I was thinking primarily of grains. Besides which, as I already mentioned, if you don't eat whole grains your intestines will quite probably perform less well at processing whatever amino acids enter your body. I have no idea, however, about what's involved in making tofu besides what I saw on Dirty Jobs a few years ago: the stuff is disgusting anyway. Either way there are other benefits to using dried beans over canned beans: e.g., they contain less sodium unless you add it, and they're better for the environment.

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You don't even know what amino acid is, how it is produced in cells, where it is stored in tissues, what breaks them or alters chirality, and what they are used for in target system. Please stop acting smart before you make a total clown out of yourself. I brought amino acids on discussion because humans simply can't synthesize 9 essential amino acids and need help with 2. Guess once what the main source for those are. Doesn't help that you are blabbering about completely unrelated things, either. Whole foods & fibre, you kidding me?! Next I assume you start preaching about organic foods instead of discussing the subject?

beiren,
you have never had a look at a table of food composition, have you? Otherwise, you would know that ALL foods contain ALL the essential amino acids. What changes, is the relative proportion.
The risk of getting insufficient amino acids does not exist, unless one is starving to death. On the other hand, vegetable proteins are far less acidifying than animal proteins, which makes the former a much better choice.

Originally posted by beiren:

Yes I was, thus I mentioned the need for properly trained chefs in school cafeterias

Ah, that's a bit of a platitude.

Originally posted by beiren:

You don't even know what amino acid is, how it is produced in cells, where it is stored in tissues, what breaks them or alters chirality, and what they are used for in target system. Please stop acting smart before you make a total clown out of yourself. I brought amino acids on discussion because humans simply can't synthesize 9 essential amino acids and need help with 2. Guess once what the main source for those are. Doesn't help that you are blabbering about completely unrelated things, either. Whole foods & fibre, you kidding me?!

Unless you studied the subject at a university, I reckon I know about as much about their chemical composition as you do. Not that it's relevant: empirical test results are.

But to spell it out explicitly:
-lack was an hyperbole because in reality it would be lessened — sorry about that
-mea culpa I phrased the category too broadly while thinking mostly about grains; however, in legumes the amount of usable amino acids would still be somewhat lessened by typical processing, so even though you're making it out as an obviously false statement, it actually isn't so black & white.

In any case, the subject is not amino acids, but what makes a healthy diet — any kind of diet. Perhaps your tunnel vision toward amino acids is the core of the problem, although it's puzzling that you deny their more balanced presence in unrefined grains.

Next I assume you start preaching about organic foods instead of discussing the subject?

Organic food regulations are to a large extent rather silly. Sorry to disappoint. However, using less pesticides is quite probably a good thing even if there are some other silly requirements. The thing is, regular (Dutch) tomatoes are also grown without pesticides, plus energy-wise they're better, making organic tomatoes from Spain environmentally a worse product. The problem is you can't tell this in the store and imo we're lacking something in between organic and pesticidal environment-killing veggies.