Just did it!
Whale voyeurism. That is an exotic fetish. Just sayin'

We're morally superior to them because we do it in an abattoir and have a modern drainage system. God we're so civilised.

If only right wingers gave half as much of a shit about innocent kids getting bombed/killed/raped in Aleppo and elsewhere as they do about animal sacrifice when it's done by a Muslim.

I look forward to seeing the same commitment to comments about seal cubs being beaten to death by blood thirsty Americans, Canadians, Swedes, Fins, Russians, Norweigans. Or when whales and dolphins are slaughtered in open water in Japan. Bulls tortured in Spain.

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Well I'm glad she added that Pokemon Go has a fairly reasonable model, I feel like that was the strong hand of Nintendo.

If you take away location differences, which there is a glaring issue with at the moment. Two players in the same reasonably supported area, the major difference in needing to spend money is how much you want to walk and that's the core of the game.

So if you want to play the game as designed (with no false limitations), you can generally play for free.

She's also not wrong that because of all that, I actually was inclined to make a purchase, it was small and I spent it on the non-expendable upgrades but I've been pretty anti-freeium in the past, so it was a big step for me to give such a game money.

I think Pokemon Go has certainly obliterated that 1-2% pay money statistic. I'm positive reports will eventually show it had a much higher stat.

It's not a saint, you can still gain a sizeable advantage by spending a lot of cash and these elements are still very much targeting the addiction of whales (expendable, short durations, element of luck with egg hatching). But it is a refreshing change for how they treat the "other" group of players.

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The truth is one of the reasons I'm vegan is because I'm very worried about our own species. We only have one planet to live on, and and worrying about what we eat, and the methods to produce it have far reaching consequences, one of which is the death of a large amount of humans via global warming and the various environmental issues it sets off.

On a more personal scale I'm worried about peoples health. It's no secret that meat causes and encourages cancer, and all animal products cause a range of health issues which lead to death. There are around a million completely preventable deaths each year in the US alone. Not to mention quality of life issues. All of which could have been prevented, treated and even reversed on a proper plant based diet.

That's the beautiful thing that I have found with veganism, is that everybody wins. The people are thinner and healthier, the environment thrives, and no animals are harmed unnecessarily.

Here is a question for you. How will you explain to your son's children that there are no more fish in the ocean, why we have no jungles left? Because "you really like bacon" doesn't seem like a good answer all of a sudden

When you see what horrible things people did in the past, such as whaling, or seal beating, don't you think to yourself, why were they so blind, so greedy and selfish? They could have done things a lot differently. Perhaps they didn't know better, but we don't have that excuse anymore, because we are aware of what impact our choices have for everyone and everything on this planet.

Ok I'll try to divide up my wall text a bit better this time

I totally acknowledge that people in the past, and even in present day, some people have to live a certain way in order to survive, but for the vast majority of people that doesn't apply.


Taste:
Like most of the senses in the human body, the sense of taste is in a constant state re-calibration. It's highly subjective and easily influenced over mere seconds but also long periods of time. They say it takes 3 weeks to acclimatize from things you crave, from salt to heroin. That's why most healthy eating books tell you go to cold tofurkey (see what I did there ) for 3 weeks. It's all about the brain chemistry. After 3 straight weeks you aren't craving it. (The habit might still be there but, the chemically driven cravings are gone).
Try it yourself by eating an apple before and after some soft drink. First the apple will taste sweet, and after it will taste sour. Or try decreasing salt over a 3 week period, it'll taste bland at first, but if you go back after 3 weeks it'll be way too salty.



Food science:
One of the major things stopping me from not being vegan, was the health concerns, so I read a number of books about plant-based eating.
There is a new book "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger. If you want scientific proof of a plant based diet this the one stop shop. 500 pages explaining tens of thousands of studies, some going for decades and involving hundreds of thousands of people. I was blown away at the simple fact that so many studies get done. Most of them are interventional studies also, meaning they are able to show cause and effect (unlike observational or corrolational studies, as he explains in the book). 150 pages of this book alone are lists of references to studies. It's pure unbiased science. (It's not a vegan book either in case you are worried about him being biased).

At the risk of spoiling the book - whole foods like apples and broccoli doesn't give you cancer, in fact they go a long way to preventing it, some bean based foods are as effective as chemotherapy, and without the side effects. I thought it sounded it ridiculous, but the science is valid.
Of course you can visit his website he explains all new research almost daily at nutritionfacts.org in 1 or 2 minute videos.
He also has a checklist phone app called Dr.Greger's Daily Dozen.

There are other authors too, most of these ones have recipes too, such as Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Cadwell Esselstyn, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr Joel Furhman.
Health-wise it's the best thing you can do for yourself. And if like me you thought eating healthy meant salads, you'd be as wrong as I was I haven't had a salad for years. My blood results and vitamin levels are exactly what the books said they would be.

Try it for 3 weeks, but make sure you do it the right way as explained in the books, and you'll be shouting from roof tops about what a change it's made to your life. The other thing is, you get to eat more, and the more you eat it's healthier. What a weird concept in a world where we are constantly being told to calorie count (it doesn't work btw).

Environmental:
I've read a lot about ethics, reason and evidence based thinking, as well as nutrition and health (as a result of my own skepticism). So I could and I enjoy talking about these all day long. On the environmental side of things, I'm not as aware, but there some documentaries such as Earthlings and Cowspiracy which paint a pretty clear picture.
Anyone can do the maths even at a rough level - there are 56 billion animals bred and slaughtered each year. Feeding 56 billion animals (many of which are bigger than people) takes a lot more food than a mere 7 billion. Therefore it must take more crops and land to feed them, not to mention the land the animals occupy themselves, as well as the land they destroy by dump their waste products (feces are toxic in those concentrations, where as plant waste, is just compost)
The other thing is that many of these crops are grown in countries where people are starving, using up the fertile land to feed our livestock instead of the people. How f'd up is that?
It's reasons like that why countries like the Netherlands are asking their people to not eat meat more than 3 meals a week.

Productivity and economics:
Countries like Finland have government assistance to switch farmers from dairy to berry. Because they got sick of being sick:
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/dietary-guidelines-from-dairies-to-berries/

The world won't go vegan overnight, and realistically it will never be 100% vegan (people still smoke after all). There will be more than enough time to transition. And surely you aren't suggesting that we should eat meat and dairy to keep someone employed? I don't want anyone to lose their job, but to do something pointlessly cruel just to keep a person working seems wrong.

Animal industries are also heavily subsidized in many countries, so if they were to stop being subsidized that's money freed up for other projects, such as the ones in Finland.

The last bit:
If you eat a plant based diet, just like the cow you'll never have constipation, thanks to all of the fibre
When it comes to enzymes, humans are lactose intolerant because after the age of 2 the enzyme lactase stops being made by the body (unless you keep drinking it). Humans also don't have another enzyme called uricase (true omnivores, and carnivores do), which is the enzyme used to break down the protein called uric acid. As you might know gout is caused by too much uric acid, forming crystals in your joints.
However humans have a multitude of enzymes for digesting carbohydrate rich foods (plants). And no carbs don't make fat despite what the fitness industry would have you believe (as the books above explain).
Appealing to history as well, when they found fossilized human feces, it contained so much fibre it was obvious that humans ate primarily a plant based diet. (Animal foods don't contain fibre).

The reasons why you wouldn't want a whale to eat krill for you is:
1. Food is a packaged deal - there is nothing harmful in something like a potato. But feed a lot of potatoes to a pig, and eat the pig, you're getting some of the nutrients of a potato, but also heaps of stuff you're body doesn't need from the pig, like cholesterol, saturated fat, sulfur and methionine containing amino acids etc And no fibre. (low fibre means constipation and higher rates of colon cancer).
2. Your body's health is also dependent on the bacteria living inside you. (fun fact, most the weight of your poop is bacteria!) The bacteria inside you needs certain types of food to live. If you eat meat, you're starving your micro-organisms, and the less good bacteria you have, the less they produce certain chemicals and nutrients , and you get a knock on effect. The fewer the good bacteria also makes room for bad bacteria which make chemicals you don't want.
Coincidentally, if you eat 3 potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you have all the protein you need - it worked for Matt Damon on Mars right?

@transmorpher

It's a little difficult to 'debate' your comment, because the points that you address to me are numbered but don't reference to specific parts of my post. That's probably my fault as i was releasing frustration haphazardly and sarcastically, and that sarcasm wasn't aimed at you. All i can do is try and sum up whether i think we agree or disagree overall.

Essentially everything is a question of 'taste', even for you. There's no escaping our nature, most of us don't drink our own piss, many of us won't swallow our own blood, almost all of us have a flavour that we can't abide because we were fed it as a child. So yes, our decisions are defined by taste. But taste is decided by the food that is available to people, within reasonable distance of their house, at a price they find affordable according to the society around them, from a range of food that is decided by society around them. Your average person does not have the luxury to walk around a high street supermarket selecting the most humane and delicious foods. People get what they can afford, what they understand, what they can prepare and what is available. Our ancestors ate chicken because of necessity of their own kind, their children are exposed to chicken through no fault of their own, fast forward a few generations, and thus chicken becomes an affordable, accessible staple. Can we reach a compromise here? It may not be necessary for chickens to die to feed the human race, but it may be necessary for some people to eat chicken today because of their particular life.

I don't like the use of the phrase 'if i can do it, i know anyone can'. I think it's a mistake to deal in certainties, especially pertaining to lifestyles that you can't possibly know about without having lived them. Are you one of the many homeless people accepting chicken soup from a stranger because it's nourishing, cheap and easy for a stranger to buy, and keeps you warm on the streets? Are you a single mother with coeliac disease, a grumpy teenager and picky toddler who has 20 minutes to get to the supermarket and get something cooking? Or one of the millions using foodbanks in the UK (to our shame) now? I don't think you're willfully turning a blind eye to those people, i'm not tugging heart strings to do you a disservice. Maybe you're just fortunate you not only have the choice, but you have such choice that you can't imagine a life without it. I won't budge an inch on this one, you can't know what people have to do, and we have to accept life is not ideal.

And within that idealism and choice problem we can include illnesses that once again in IDEAL situations could survive without dead animals, nevertheless find it necessary to eat what they can identify and feel safe with.

Yes, those damn gluten hipsters drive me round the bend but only because they make people think that a LITTLE gluten is ok, it makes people take the problem less seriously (see Tumblr feminism... JOKE).

I agree that we must look at what action we can take now - and that is why i keep reminding you that we are not in an ideal world. If the veganism argument is to succeed then you must suggest a reasonable pathway to go from how we are now to whatever situation you would prefer. My "ideal farm" description was just me demonstrating the problem - that you need to show us your blueprint for how we start again without killing animals and feeding everyone we have.

And on that subject, your suggestions need to be backed by real research, otherwise you don't have any real plan. "It's fair to say there is very little risk" is a nice bit of illustrative language but it is not backed by any fact or figure and so i'm compelled to do my Penn and Teller impression and call bullshit. As of right now, the life expectancy of humans is better than it has ever been. It is up to you to prove that changing the diet of 7 billion people will result in neutrality or improvement of health and longevity. That proof must come in the form of large statistical analyses and thorough science. I don't want to sound like i'm being a dick, but any time you state something like that as a fact or with certainty, it needs to be backed up by something. I'm not nit picking and asking for common knowledge to have a citation, but things like this do:

-- 70% of farmland claim
-- 'fair to say very little risk' claim
-- meat gives you cancer claim - i accept it may have a carcinogenic effect but i'll remind you so does breathing, joss-sticks, broccoli, apples and water
-- 'the impact to the planet would be immense' claim - in what way, and what would be the downsides in terms of economy, productivity, health, animal welfare (where are all the animals going to be sent to retire as of day 1?)
-- etc. etc.

Oh, and a cow might get its protein from plants, but it walks around a field all day eating grass, chewing the cud and having sloppy shits with 4 stomachs and enzymes that i don't have................. I'm a bit puzzled by this one... I probably can't survive on what an alligator or a goldfish eats, but i can survive on parts of an alligator or fish. I can't eat enough krill in a day to keep me going, but i can let a whale do it for me...?

part 2
Saliva
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

Stomach Type
CARNIVORE: Simple
OMNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
HUMAN: Simple

Stomach Acidity
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

Stomach Capacity
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

Length of Small Intestine
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length

Colon
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
HUMAN: Long, sacculated

Liver
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

Kidney
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine

Nails
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
HUMAN: Flattened nails

whale.to/a/comp.html

gorilla's & bonobo's to whom humans are very closly related eat almost exclusively plants.

here is a comparrison between shows that humans are anatomically herbivorous:

Facial Muscles
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
HUMAN: Well-developed

Jaw Type
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
HUMAN: Expanded angle

Jaw Joint Location
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars

Jaw Motion
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

Major Jaw Muscles
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids

Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
CARNIVORE: Large
OMNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
HUMAN: Small

Teeth: Incisors
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

Teeth: Canines
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
HUMAN: Short and blunted

Teeth: Molars
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps

Chewing
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary

whale.to/a/comp.html

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