How many Prius owners are Vegetarians?

Discussion already ensued, to the tune of 259 posts. Been there, done that.

 

I avoid red meat & fowl as well as leather goods & fur

I really enjoy breast feeding though

 

Food

Love all kinds of food, but is moderation. Sometimes, I indulge on something sweet and over feed myself. I do go to the gym at least 4 times a week to burn out the extra calories.

 

Interesting concept that has been discussed one or two times before.

I understand your desire to see poll numbers, but I would suggest you try to develop a non-biased poll in order to get a more representative sample of PC readers.

 

A UN FAO report issued in Nov 2006 (http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm) said that livestock greenhouse gas emissions were greater than all forms of transportation combined. Becoming a vegetarian may do more to help climate change than driving a Prius. If you do both, you're on the road to becoming an eco star.

It takes ten times as much grain and water to feed a meat eater as a vegetarian (ie: it takes a lot of grain and water to produce a pound of meat). Global hunger would disappear if many people became vegetarians (assuming we were able to distribute food well).

The large majority of studies looking at meat eating and cancer find high correlations. Countries that eat more meat get more cancer. Of course many factors play into this. But meat often contains antibiotics (animals often are raised in such close quarters that they'd get sick if they didn't live on antibiotics; thus eating meat can increase resistance to antibiotics), hormones and pesticides (since meat is high on the food chain). All these contribute to cancer. All things being equal, eating less meat equals lower cancer risk.

The human body is more like a vegetarian. Carnivores have all sharp teeth. We don't have any. Carnivores have short, high acid digestive tracks. We have long, relatively low acid digestive tracks like herbivores (sticky meat gets trapped in the many twists and turns of the digestive track and causes illness). Carnivores are instinctively drawn to meat (ie: a puppy will chase down and chew on a kitten. Human babies don't). Our closest relative in nature (gorilla/chimps) are vegetarians.

Beyond climate change, meat production causes huge amounts of environmental damage -- tropical forest clearing for grazing, manure run off (sometimes containing e-coli) into water bodies and agricultural areas, damage from factory farming (ie: pesticides, soil erosion/salination, etc since much of the grain is grown for animals), etc.

Animal abuse laws don't apply to animals grown for food production. Many people flip out about Michael Vick's dog abuse. But most cows, pigs and chickens are grown in concentration camp like conditions. Their whole lives are pain and suffering. It's like we have a holocaust occurring every day in the US. The most humane way to eat meat is to hunt it yourself. Buying meat in the supermarket creates the demand that drives huge pain and suffering among our fellow creatures.

In summary, by becoming a vegetarian you help to fight climate change (perhaps more than driving a Prius), are part of the solution to global hunger, protect the environment, reduce concentration camp-like animal suffering, feel better and live longer (assuming you have a balanced diet, vegetarians can have bad diets too).

 

Food

Anything cooked will do.

 

I heard growing crops is 16 times more efficient than growing livestock

and I am just SO happy that Vick Monster got 2 years in Club Fed. I just hope VA gives him an extra decade in Club Va to consider what he did

The fact that he is bankrupt is just icing on the cake

 

Thanks! I was surprised when I recently learned that being a vegetarian probably did more to help the environment than driving a Prius.

I advise large companies on sustainability (www.GlobalSystemChange.com). So I feel I should be walking the talk.

 

Am i the lone vegan?

 

Yes I think so.

Well I live in Australia where most of our beef and lamb is fed on grasses and hay not grain so do I still create as much green house gas emissions as if I ate grain fed beef or lamb? A lot of livestock here is raised on saltbush! When sheep are raised on saltbush they produce very good meat. I also love roo meat but not every day. Roo isn't grain fed either. I know there are still transport cost but it costs to transport tofu too.

I eat a tiny amount of pork and chicken which may be grain fed.

 

The gas emissions are in most part because of the animals farting in the fields, so unless the grass acts as a beano for the cows, you're probably contributing to the same issues grain fed or corn fed cows are, not to mention its devastating to the cows livelihood

 

New Member

I just joined the board yesterday, but this is my first post because this thread really piqued my interest.

I got a 2008 Prius (Spectra Blue) last week, and I also happen to be a vegetarian. A Whole Foods just recently opened down the street from where I live, so I may be ever closer to my goal of Vegan in the next few months

 

Good luck! I'd like to be a vegan too. But I haven't been able to muster up the necessary discipline. Quitting meat and fish makes it hard to find something to eat at restaurants. Cutting out eggs and dairy would make it even harder.

But I think the hassle would be worth it -- no hormones or antibiotics, vastly fewer pesticides, no consuming the meat, milk or eggs of tortured animals (which I think affects us on some difficult to quantify level), huge environmental benefit, and probably longer, healthier, happier life (assuming it was a balance vegan diet that provided all the amino acids needed to make human protein).

 

I'm not big on red meat, although I eat some on occasion.

If you want to be healthy, ban all trans fats from your diet (partially hydrogenated oils). This is the bane of the American food supply. Trans fats raises your bad cholesterol and lowers your good cholesterol. It also is implicated in weight gain and diabetes. The stuff should be banned (and has been in New York City restaurants).

Now we are being exposed to high-fructose corn syrup, which is not good for your health, either.

Avoid sugary soft drinks, which cause acid-reflux problems, and have now been linked to Alzheimers. Face it, how healthy is carbonated sugar water? Drink fruit juice, tea, or water.

take care,

Harry

 

No, you are not. I am a vegan, and there is at least a couple of other vegans that frequent this discussion board, from time to time.

 

That should be obvious, but ok.

All polls on forums are biased by factors that cannot be assessed, making the polls useless as data. They're fine perhaps to get a discussion going, but not to learn anything from the numbers.

One reason these polls are biased is that you can't make everyone on the forum respond. The first selection factor is who even looks at the thread ("ooh, it says vegetarian and I'm a vegetarian", or "hah, vegetarians, what are those god-forsaken hippies saying now about my eating habits?"), and the second is who decides to respond to the poll once they see it ("I want to be counted!" or "jeez, another dumb poll"). Those factors will bias the data collected in the polling process in unknown directions, making the data useless.

Furthermore, if the poll is trying to determine something about Prius owners (as opposed to members and frequent visitors to the Priuschat forums), there is another selection factor: Which Prius owners discover, sign up for, and peruse Priuschat in a way to likely expose them to the thread? For the question posed here: "How many Prius owners are Vegetarians?", the poll has that bias built into the results as well.

Polls that produce useful data without biases are extremely difficult to do. Polls on forums are pretty much the exact opposite of that.