dickie,
the soyabean meal used to feed animals has first been processed to remove the oil. The meal is essentially a by product. You wouldn't advocate wasting that solar powered energy source, would you?

Animals fattened by being fed grain have spent most of their lives eating grass and converting that energy. The grain is a top up. From the animals perspective the move to feed rations must be more like eating at a quality retaurant, being waited on, eating as much as they desire, liquid refreshment on tap.

The price they pay is reasonably steep, but what did they have planned for the future anyway.

"The last meal of Grauballe man, one of the well-preserved iron age bodies, found in a Denmark peat bog, consisted of a gruel compost of 66 species of plant seed, five of which were cultivated

Sheesh, no wonder he died, poor nutrition :)"

Not to mention a miserable existence....seed gruel...uggh. I'm assuming dickie doesn't eat meat from his revulsive reactions to us omnivores, which doesn't explain his 5'2 stature and ogreish appearance. Eat meat and be beautiful!

"The anthropology literature mentioned San women swopping
meat for sex. "
Any ladies want some rib-eye?

"Common perception of ecology is something to do with pandas and eating museli."
Ooooh i love Pandas and muesli.

"On the other hand, humans intestinal tracts are 10 - 12 times their body lengths. Should one elaborate further!"
Please do...

For those who seek truth, in order to maintain good health, please google "The China Study Colin Campbell" to read excerpts from the manual The China Study.

This 20 year project on nutrition and disease, between the Cornell University US, the Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine reveals that the "science is clear. The results unmistakeable."

"People who ate the most animal based food got the most chronic diseases. People who ate plant based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. The results could not be ignored," said Dr Campbell, author of The China Study, who obtained his Masters and Ph.D in biochemistry and nutrition from the Cornell University.

"Any ladies want some rib-eye?"

Lol Alzo, they'll marry you, then send you out to work
to "bring home the bacon". To feed the offspring of course,
so its similar here. If they don't have a headache and
you have behaved, you might then get a bit, if lucky :)

Perhaps that San deal is a little fairer.

Dickie, given food production and pollution levels in China,
anyone who eats anything from China is quite brave. If you
knew how they keep and feed pigs, their main meat, anything
could happen.

Trying to compare those conditions with people in Autralia,
who largely eat pasture reared beef and lamb, all very differnt!
Around here, alot of the oldies who are in old peoples homes,
in their 90s plus, lived a large part of their lives eating
little but mutton and rabbits. My old neighbour even passed
the 100 mark. The other old fella down the road, was still
sitting in bed with a can of beer and a cigar, when he was
85.

I recently made a list of people I know who died prematurely
in these parts, in their 50s etc, from cancer or similar.
Many of them in fact led quite puritanical lives, some
deeply religious. The one thing they had in common when I
thought about it, they were just about all of them what
I call worrying, serious types. People who had trouble
bursting out laughing, people who took themselves and the
world terribly seriously. People with serious and stressed
looks on their faces for most of the time. Or of course a
few with serious genetic predispositions to some things.

The moral of the story is that you should hope you have
good genes and that you should sit back and relax and enjoy
a little more, or all that worrying might kill you :(

Meantime, I have to say, this lambroast is bloody delicious :)

Dr Campbell's China Study was prefaced by 27 years of research on fellow Americans. This research was funded by the National Institute for Health, American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research.

His works were reviewed twice for publication in the most prestigious scientific journals.

Campbell discovered that half of all Americans are on drugs for health problems and 100 million have high cholesterol. His findings were conclusive with his meat hypothesis. Evidence also showed up in tests done on rats fed a 20% diet of protein. All developed cancer. Those on a 5% meat diet did not.

His conclusions also found that consuming dairy foods increases the risk of prostate cancer in males.

Reducing the numbers of livestock and educating people on the ramifications of gorging on meat will not only lead to a reduction in greenhouse gases but also a mitigation of human diseases now rampant in most countries, a result of the West's addiction to meat as their staple diet and the developing countries following in their footsteps!

Unfortunately, we will always have amongst us, those who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence where their only interest is in themselves and their own comforts!

Dickie, perhaps your doctor should have visited Europe, where
people have eaten healthy balanced diets, with meat one
component. Clearly his data does not impress most other
doctors, for nearly all of them continue to eat meat!

America is well known for supersizing everything and
covering it in lard. Processed food again is loaded with
lard. No wonder they have health problems! As good
nutritionists will tell you, its all about a balanced
diet, eating as much unprocessed food as possible, not
American factory food.

But of course your agenda has been stated enough times.
Its all about animal liberation, you might as well just
admit it. Trying to latch on to the health story to
justify the animal lib agenda, just isn't working!