About this user
"Eclectic" would be the best word to describe me and my tastes... :)
"Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us."
— Carl Sagan
"Eggs and ham. A day's work for a chicken. A lifetime commitment for a pig."
"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery."
- Charles Darwin
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."
- Albert Einstein
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What science has to say about a plant-based diet:
"Fruits and vegetables are rich sources of not only vitamins, such as carotenoids, ascorbic acid, tocopherols, and folic acid, but also fiber, indoles, thiocyanates, cumarins, phenols, flavonoids, terpenes, protease inhibitors, plant sterols, and a host of other yet unknown and unnamed phytochemicals and non-nutrient compounds that may protect humans from many cancers and other diseases. [...]
In conclusion, recent scientific advances seem to have resulted in a paradigm shift: diets largely based on plant foods, such as well-balanced vegetarian diets, are viewed more as improving health than as causing disease, in contrast with meat-based diets."
~ From the article: "The contribution of vegetarian diets to health and disease: a paradigm shift?"
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 78, No. 3, 502S-507S, September 2003
http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/502S.long
"Despite significantly lower reported EPA and DHA intakes, the vegetarians in our survey reported significantly less negative emotion than the omnivores as measured by both mood scales. [...] providing evidence that vegetarian diets are not likely associated with poor mood states or depression as compared to omnivorous diets, despite negligible sources of the long-chain omega-3 fats. [...] While dietary intake of EPA and DHA has an important role in brain function, we found no evidence that the absence of direct intake of these fatty acids in vegetarians adversely affects mood state. Features of the vegetarian diet profile such as higher intake of total polyunsaturated fat and negligible arachidonic acid intake may help explain the favorable mood profile we observed with vegetarian diets."
- From the article: "Vegetarian diets are associated with healthy mood states: a cross-sectional study in Seventh Day Adventist adults" Nutr J. 2010; 9: 26.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20515497
"The matched subjects who ate meat (including poultry and fish) were more than twice as likely to become demented as their vegetarian counterparts (relative risk 2.18, p = 0.065) and the discrepancy was further widened (relative risk 2.99, p = 0.048) when past meat consumption was taken into account. "
- From the article: "The incidence of dementia and intake of animal products: preliminary findings from the Adventist Health Study."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8327020
"Higher scores for IQ in childhood are associated with an increased likelihood of being a vegetarian as an adult."
- From the article: "IQ in childhood and vegetarianism in adulthood: 1970 British cohort study" BMJ. 2007 February 3; 334(7587): 245.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790759/?tool=pubmed
"We found that a nonvegetarian diet exacts a higher cost on the environment relative to a vegetarian diet."
- From "Diet and the environment: does what you eat matter?"
Am J Clin Nutr May 2009 vol. 89 no. 5
http://www.ajcn.org/content/89/5/1699S.full
Country
Australia
