Input on Eating Meat "Sparingly"

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, smac97 said:

One of my daughters, in her teens, has for a while now been a wishy-washy "vegetarian."  She was okay with fish and animal products (eggs, dairy, etc.), but avoided the Big Three (chicken, pork, beef).  We have accommodated her for quite a while.  I encouraged her to keep up her protein intake via alternative sources like tofu (I served my mission in Taiwan, so I became a fan), rice and beans (long known to form a complete protein), etc.  However, this year she is both on the high school dance team and the swim team.  And she's 15 years old.  So she's growing, and has recently returned to eating meat.  Not only that, whereas she was previously telling us that she found the consumption of mean "gross" (particularly beef), recently she has been craving it and finding it delicious (I took her to In N Out last week for her first burger in about 2 years, and she really enjoyed it).  Her falling off the wagon (which she was never really fully on in the first place) was not surprising, as the vast majority of those who try a vegan or vegetarian diet revert back to consuming meat.

So meat is like alcohol and meth.

[Stargazer]

4 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Don’t have a lot to say, but in one hundred years I think our descendants are going to look on us with horror for our treatment of animals in mass farms. 

Assuming we aren't interrupted by the Millennium, in a hundred years we may be getting our meat from artificial production of one sort or another. 

And perhaps that will be how we get meat in the Millennium.

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In 1932, Winston Churchill, Former British Prime Minister predicted that “Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken, in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium”

Almost after eighty years, science may finally be getting close to producing In-vitro meat muscle tissue grown in the laboratory without using any animal (Bhat et al. 2015).

Artificial meat is the idea of manufacturing meat and meat products through tissue engineering technology without using an actual animal.

 

[mrmarklin]

4 hours ago, rongo said:

We try to "eat meat sparingly," with a focus on more "in times of winter." It is hard to do. We find as a family that meatless meals are unsatisfying. We are on the better end of the healthy spectrum (including BMI, exercise, etc.), but are conscious that our culture leads to us planning the meals around the meat rather than the other way around. 

We must remember context.  When the WoW was given, there was no refrigeration as we know it today.  Crops did not grow in winter and people were limited to what they could grow locally anyway.  Storage was always a problems in the transition between seasons.  Eating meat in times of winter in the Northern hemisphere was more likely a necessity, not a luxury.  Therefore it was not condemned.  I look at this part of 89 as a commonsense approach to life as people found it back in the 1800s.  In other words, use what God has given wisely.....................

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Don’t have a lot to say, but in one hundred years I think our descendants are going to look on us with horror for our treatment of animals in mass farms. 

I don’t know for sure what is coming up in the future but if history has taught me one thing it is that virtually all of us are going to hate it.

[Stargazer]

For what it's worth, a long-time acquaintance of mine, who for years was obese despite all attempts to lose weight (I remember visiting him in the hospital after his heart attack), is now 50 pounds lighter. What did he do? He reduced his carbohydrate intake to near zero. Once a week he has some fruit. The rest of the time he eats meat. 

A researcher I have read material from says that this kind of diet isn't magical -- it's just that protein is more quickly satisfying, or filling, and thus causes us to reduce our overall caloric intake.

My wife has had one of those stomach-reduction surgeries, and she finds that if she eats meat first, she quickly runs out of interest in eating anything else.

 

[The Nehor]

4 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Assuming we aren't interrupted by the Millennium, in a hundred years we may be getting our meat from artificial production of one sort or another. 

And perhaps that will be how we get meat in the Millennium.

 

I am still waiting for the day we all eat nothing but jellies and are all telepaths.

And Canada? What went wrong?

[Stargazer]

2 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I am still waiting for the day we all eat nothing but jellies and are all telepaths.

And Canada? What went wrong?

Ah, what would we do without xkcd?

By jellies was he talking about jellyfish, or gelatin?

I don't know about you, but I AM a telepath. Just not a very good one. And you, sir, are completely inscrutable.

As for Canada, well, the simple explanation is they elected a Trudeau twice. But I will admit that I'm not sure if that is the cause, or just a symptom.

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

What did he do? He reduced his carbohydrate intake to near zero. Once a week he has some fruit. The rest of the time he eats meat. 

When my daughter was graduating from elementary school and my son was on a mission, I decided I didn’t need to be mom 24/7 anymore and could stop living in call, lost 25 lbs in 6 weeks on low carb. Then my daughter with the needle phobia was diagnosed with diabetes and I was back with anxiety eating. Still waiting for peaceful days almost 20 years later when no one needs me every day as mommy. 

[Stargazer]

Just now, Calm said:

When my daughter was graduating from elementary school and my son was on a mission, I decided I didn’t need to be mom 24/7 anymore and could stop living in call, lost 25 lbs in 6 weeks on low carb. Then my daughter with the needle phobia was diagnosed with diabetes and I was back with anxiety eating. Still waiting for peaceful days almost 20 years later when no one needs me every day as mommy. 

You may have a long wait.

[JAHS]

21 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I am still waiting for the day we all eat nothing but jellies and are all telepaths.

And Canada? What went wrong?

How about a replicator?

[The Nehor]

26 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

For what it's worth, a long-time acquaintance of mine, who for years was obese despite all attempts to lose weight (I remember visiting him in the hospital after his heart attack), is now 50 pounds lighter. What did he do? He reduced his carbohydrate intake to near zero. Once a week he has some fruit. The rest of the time he eats meat. 

A researcher I have read material from says that this kind of diet isn't magical -- it's just that protein is more quickly satisfying, or filling, and thus causes us to reduce our overall caloric intake.

My wife has had one of those stomach-reduction surgeries, and she finds that if she eats meat first, she quickly runs out of interest in eating anything else.

 

I had to crash diet a few months back for health reasons. For some reason my blood pressure had increased for no reason I could find beyond age. It was high enough that it risked losing my medication that helps me function. So went down to about 500 calories a day with a few days a week at around 1500 and lots of vitamins. It wasn’t that hard. Just had to tell my brain it could eat later and use other coping mechanisms when my ADHD got bad instead of the binge eating one. I wasn’t heavy before but lost 20 pounds in two months and blood pressure dropped to normal.

I am convinced that it is less that people have more problems with food and it is more with the food itself that is messing with us. Having people designing foods specifically to be calorie dense (i.e. taste good) and to not satiate (to sell more) was probably not a good step in human nutritional development.

[Stargazer]

28 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I had to crash diet a few months back for health reasons. For some reason my blood pressure had increased for no reason I could find beyond age. It was high enough that it risked losing my medication that helps me function. So went down to about 500 calories a day with a few days a week at around 1500 and lots of vitamins. It wasn’t that hard. Just had to tell my brain it could eat later and use other coping mechanisms when my ADHD got bad instead of the binge eating one. I wasn’t heavy before but lost 20 pounds in two months and blood pressure dropped to normal.

I am convinced that it is less that people have more problems with food and it is more with the food itself that is messing with us. Having people designing foods specifically to be calorie dense (i.e. taste good) and to not satiate (to sell more) was probably not a good step in human nutritional development.

I'm pretty sure I'm self-medicating with food when dealing with my ADD (I'm not hyperactive, but I am definitely highly distractable). I once got a prescription for a med to help me deal with the ADD and it worked, but the side effects were not pleasant. I quit in short order, but having once experienced what it was like to be not in attention deficit it gave me some ability to model my way out of the distractions with some effort.

However, having retired and no longer having as much structure in my life, the ADD seems to have taken over more. I may be seeking a medical solution again soon.

I wonder what 500 cals per day would be like. Might be interesting.

[Hamba Tuhan]

5 hours ago, smac97 said:

1. What, in your view, does "sparingly" mean in the context of eating meat?

I like the dictionary definition: 'in small amounts, or without wasting any'.

What this means to me personally has certainly evolved. I grew up on a farm, so our diet was heavily vegetables, but meat was also a big part of it. As a poor missionary in a very expensive corner of America, the only meat I bought in two years was tinned tuna, frankfurts, and some of the cheap deli meats. After a while, one starts to wonder what the point is.

I went home from my mission with a strong desire to more fully live a number of gospel principles, including what the Word of Wisdom teaches about meat. My simple approach was only to eat meat at dinnertime when I was cooking for myself, and then to only use meat as an ingredient for the most part. That was a pattern I mostly followed for many years.

I arrived in my current location as a PhD student. Food is very expensive here, with meat the most expensive of all, so I found my meat consumption decreasing even further out of economic necessity.

About three years ago, I had a recurring and very strong impression that it was time for me to revisit this matter from a spiritual perspective. The very personal outcome has been that, since then, I have capped my meat consumption at either 100g/week or two meals/week (which is often the same thing).

Again, this is when I'm cooking for myself. If I go to someone's house for tea, I happily just eat whatever's on my plate. Likewise, if my mates and I hit our favourite buffet for someone's birthday, though I could just eat salad, grilled asparagus, and spring rolls (all of which I love!), I choose to enjoy some chargrilled lamb chops, roast beef with mushroom gravy, garlic prawns, and char siu pork as well. After all, for much of human civilisation, eating meat, though not a daily event, was an integral element of feasting.

But these are my personal guidelines, subject to further evolution. They are also subject to other kinds of micro-adjustments. I try, for example, to really listen to my body. If I have a persistent craving for citrus, I eat citrus (and assume that I was lacking in vitamin C). Sometimes my body tells me that I need more meat than I'm getting. So I might create a ministering experience with a less-active mate at a local hotel on the bistro's steak night and wolf down a 300g slab of medium-rare beef (and assume that I was lacking some of the nutrients found in beef). That doesn't happen very often, but I'd be dumb not to listen to my body.

Meanwhile, I've discovered that my 'taste' for meat has really declined. I like it, but I need it to taste really good. Like that bloody 300g steak at the bistro. I no longer have any interest in tinned tuna, frankfurts, or cheap deli meats. As a result, I'll often realise that I haven't eaten any meat whatsoever for a couple of weeks without even thinking about it. Most of the flavour in food comes from plants, to be honest (including herbs and spices).

I had one of my non-member mates around to meet with the missionaries two weeks ago, and he'd requested chimichangas. Before, I would make my chimis with home-cooked black beans (with chilli, cumin, garlic, and oregano), seasoned turkey mince, and cheese, all topped with lettuce and homemade pico de gallo and guacamole. In this case, the meat doesn't provide any flavour to the meal; it's just a vehicle for the Mexican seasonings. So I started making chimis with seasoned Quorn instead (this is a British meat replacement, made from fungus, which looks and feels exactly like beef mince). Literally no one could tell the difference. This time, however, I was running low on Quorn (which I only buy when it's on sale for half price), so instead I minced three potatoes, fried them till crispy with some cooking spray, and then seasoned them the same way I would have seasoned the turkey mince. Everyone raved about how good they were because the caramelised potato added so much extra flavour.

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2. Has the instruction regarding eating meat "only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine" been lessened by, as the above quote from the church manual notes, "{m}odern methods of refrigeration" and other considerations (other preservation methods such as canning/jarring, freeze drying, etc.)?

One of the reasons why, in many societies, meat has been associated with feasting was because, once an animal was slaughtered, it had to be entirely consumed. So yeah. At the same time, when all the fresh veg starts appearing in the markets in the summertime at affordable prices, I find my attraction naturally heads that way. I would definitely eat far less meat in the summer than in the winter, but it's not necessarily a conscious choice.

Our temple has a pretty fantastic all-one-can-eat Korean chargrill restaurant nearby, where one cooks meat (including seafood) and veg over pots of charcoal set into the middle of the table. We haven't been there in two years owing to Covid closing both borders and businesses, but whilst it's such a comforting experience in the winter, it's actually quite unpleasant when the weather is warm.

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3. Can/ought we consider reducing or moderating meat consumption so as to mitigate A) the environmental costs of large-scale livestock farming / animal husbandry, and B) the number of animals killed for our consumption?

This has never been my primary concern, but I have to admit that it has increasingly been something I sense. Are people who eat meat everyday genuinely comfortable with the fact that one or more animals must be killed every single day to allow that to happen? I used to not really think about it, but I do somewhat now.

[bluebell]

5 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Are people who eat meat everyday genuinely comfortable with the fact that one or more animals must be killed every single day to allow that to happen? I used to not really think about it, but I do somewhat now.

Because of where I was born and grew up, I have a lot of friends who have family ranches.  These people are not wealthy and they work on the ranches themselves, but they are big ranches with a lot of different livestock.  They are God-fearing people (not all Latter-day Saint) who lead really good lives, participating in their communities.  They survive because people eat meat at every meal.  

I'm not saying that we should eat a lot of meat to keep people like that on their family lands and able to support themselves and their kids, but having personal relationships with people who live off of livestock (and take that responsibility very seriously) shows me another side to this industry and it does make me want to support it more by using the products they and people like them provide.

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

35 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I'm not saying that we should eat a lot of meat to keep people like that on their family lands and able to support themselves and their kids, but having personal relationships with people who live off of livestock (and take that responsibility very seriously) shows me another side to this industry and it does make me want to support it more by using the products they and people like them provide.

I get it. I grew up on a farm. We loved our animals and treated them with kindness, gentleness, and respect. Except in the case of chickens (which are basically miniature T-rexes), slaughtering one of our animals was always traumatic. My father pretended it wasn't, but then he would weep openly anyway. I grew up with a personal awareness that meat consumption requires the taking of a life, one that in many cases I had hand-fed, patted, named, romped with, etc. Our prayers were filled with pleas for the wellbeing of our animals and expressions of gratitude for the meat, milk, eggs, and wool that they provided us with.

My father was the only person who regularly wrote to me when I was a missionary. My companions would laugh at his letters, which always included a detailed update on every single animal, often accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations.

I struggle to see any of this replicated in the mass production of meat on an industrial scale or the historically unprecedented consumption that drives the former. I would like to be wrong. I'm just not sure.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan

[champatsch]

We've been told that plant production is good and meat production is bad. But there is an immense loss of life associated with agriculture, and there is environmental degradation as well. And I remember hearing that the water needed to produce a pound of beef was immense. But the vast majority of that is rainwater.

Plants lack these nutrients:

[Hamba Tuhan]

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

Plants lack these nutrients:

I don't think that anyone in this thread is advocating for veganism or even vegetarianism.

'Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving'.

The question therefore is what does it look like to follow the counsel directly after these words: 'nevertheless they are to be used sparingly'.

My very personal answers to that question have varied over my lifetime and continue to evolve.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

He reduced his carbohydrate intake to near zero. Once a week he has some fruit. The rest of the time he eats meat. 

Everyone over 50 should try this diet once in their life for at least 60 days. Transition into a mostly carnivore diet, including some organ meats. Ruminant animal fat and protein is generally the best unless you can get low PUFA pork and poultry, which are monogastric and can't filter out a bad diet the way ruminants can.

Here's what most people report who do this. Improved sense of well being, steady energy, improved mood, fewer aches and pains, better wound healing, elimination of hyperinsulinemia, which is very damaging.

The superfood is liver. Egg yolks are also a superfood. Plants exist along a toxicity spectrum with many built-in defense chemicals. The safest part of the plant to eat is ripe fruit. Avoid high oxalate plants, since oxalates can accumulate over time and cause a lot of joint pain.

[champatsch]

3 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I don't think that anyone in this thread is advocation for veganism or even vegetarianism.

'Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving'.

Didn't say that. Just trying to give an alternative viewpoint to the questionable consensus that agriculture and plant foods are ethically and nutritionally superior.

[Hamba Tuhan]

4 minutes ago, champatsch said:

Just trying to give an alternative viewpoint to the questionable consensus that agriculture and plant foods are ethically and nutritionally superior.

Understood. Half of what gets said across this space is demonstrable nonsense. For me, the Lord's emphasis is paramount.

[LoudmouthMormon]

3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Assuming we aren't interrupted by the Millennium, in a hundred years we may be getting our meat from artificial production of one sort or another. 

Any Dune aficionados in the audience?   That human universe was fed on a kind of meat called "slig", which was a cross between slug and pig.  Ate garbage, turned it into the cheapest nonplant protein source in the galaxy.

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I'm pretty sure I'm self-medicating with food when dealing with my ADD (I'm not hyperactive, but I am definitely highly distractable). I once got a prescription for a med to help me deal with the ADD and it worked, but the side effects were not pleasant. I quit in short order, but having once experienced what it was like to be not in attention deficit it gave me some ability to model my way out of the distractions with some effort.

However, having retired and no longer having as much structure in my life, the ADD seems to have taken over more. I may be seeking a medical solution again soon.

I wonder what 500 cals per day would be like. Might be interesting.

I don’t recommend. I am weird in that I can ignore hunger with relative ease. I once went five days without food. I only drank water. Started Sunday during the day. I was fine until Friday when I realized I was winded after walking up stairs and all my muscles ached from it. Realized I needed to stop. Problem is that I started to eat again and it took about 24 hours for the nutrients to get around to completely stopping the pain.

I find my ADD getting worse with age. I also have the inattentive variant. I also have a risk seeking concept and a dangerous obsession with novel experiences. I also don’t feel pleasure as well as most people. I do feel it but the normal endorphin bit people get for doing things that need to be done is muted in me so I have a hard time with motivation for anything that doesn’t offer a bigger payoff. It is not ideal. I find the idea that my premortal spirit was eager for a body this flawed to be dubious at best.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

We've been told that plant production is good and meat production is bad. But there is an immense loss of life associated with agriculture, and there is environmental degradation as well. And I remember hearing that the water needed to produce a pound of beef was immense. But the vast majority of that is rainwater.

Plants lack these nutrients:

Production of meat requires a lot more land and effort than agriculture. The problem with any transition to more plant-based food production is that currently most agriculture uses a lot of the waste (manure) from our meat sources. There are experiments in trying to use the waste of vegetation (compost/mulch) to achieve the same effect but it may be difficult to generate enough of it.

With climate change we may have to relocate or shift a lot of agriculture as well. It will be a jarring transition.

[Mike Drop]

13 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I don’t think there is anything unethical about eating animals. I think the way we decide to treat animals is pretty horrible. I think this a problem we will solve over the next few decades and when we look back it will be with horror. Not that we ate animals. But that we treated beings that feel so horribly while they were alive. 

What!? You think the way we treat animals is unethical? Really? I was watching a documentary about Africa last month and I saw a lion attack a baby gazelle by jumping on its back, then biting its throat and puncturing its windpipe with its teeth, while another lion comes in and starts eating it’s intestines while it’s still alive.  How bout piranhas? They just start eating away while their victim is still alive. No, I would say we’re fairly ethical compared to other animals harvesting meat to eat. What about tribes in South America that still hunt animals with blowguns? They shoot monkeys with a blow dart, the monkey falls from a branch tumbling through the forest canopy, hitting its head on branches on the way down, then finally hitting the hard ground and probably breaking every bone in its body. Is that cruel, or just life on earth? Is there a time in history we’ve been “less cruel” to the animals we harvest in western society? 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, Mike Drop said:

What!? You think the way we treat animals is unethical? Really? I was watching a documentary about Africa last month and I saw a lion attack a baby gazelle by jumping on its back, then biting its throat and puncturing its windpipe with its teeth, while another lion comes in and starts eating it’s intestines while it’s still alive.  How bout piranhas? They just start eating away while their victim is still alive. No, I would say we’re fairly ethical compared to other animals harvesting meat to eat. What about tribes in South America that still hunt animals with blowguns? They shoot monkeys with a blow dart, the monkey falls from a branch tumbling through the forest canopy, hitting its head on branches on the way down, then finally hitting the hard ground and probably breaking every bone in its body. Is that cruel, or just life on earth?

Two thoughts. First, I’m talking about the lives that factory farmed animals live, not their deaths. Every living thing will die. 
 

Second, I’ve never understood all this what about-ism. I could say something like child rape is bad and you’d be like - well did you know that Lion’s eat the babies of their predecessors. Isn’t that just life on earth?

1 hour ago, Mike Drop said:

Is there a time in history we’ve been “less cruel” to the animals we harvest in western society? 

Yes.