(Authors note: A special thanks goes out to Dr. John Berardi at www.johnberardi.com and Cecil Adams at www.straightdope.com for inspiring some of the information in this post.)
Hey Shank,
There is this guy at my gym, he is supposed to be some kind of smart guy professor, who is trying to push Vegetarianism on me. Every time I see him he talks about the evils of meat. It’s almost like a religion, like he is some kind of Born Again Cucumber or something.
His latest claim is that human beings are not built to eat meat. He says that anybody who has ever even bothered to take the time to study human anatomy will know this to be fact.
I really want to shut this guy up. He is so annoying that I feel I am going to have to beat him to death with a dumbbell. My friend the Hamburgler feels that might be too overstated. Do you have any suggestions?
Signed,
Ronnie McDonald
Dear Ronnie,
This is a real honor. It is not everyday that I get to correspond with somebody who has made Billions of Dollars off the poor health habits of people around the world.
So here is my first suggestion. Unless you really know how to dispose of a body I would recommend you seek less violent routes of getting your point across. I mean nobody wants to see this happen to you again:
(This photo is of course from the infamous Turf War of 1990 when Wendy’s tried to move in on Ronnie’s territory. Ronnie was arrested for allegedly tying up Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, God rest his soul, and pistol whipping him into unconsciousness with a stale Filet O Fish. Strangely enough charges were never filed. Some believe it had to do with three straight Prosecutors mysteriously dying within a six month period of complications from heart disease and diabetes. Very strange and suspicious indeed.)
But in all seriousness your Proselytizing friend does have a point when it comes to the POSSIBLE benefits of following a vegetarian diet. I say possible because every time I go to Whole Foods I feel like I am the only guy in the whole building who can do a pushup and Whole Foods is like Mecca to Vegetarians.
(Hey! Don’t look at him that way! It’s pure Pancake Syrup! That’s Vegan and Vegetarian all rolled into one so it must be healthy!)
Tests of Physical Strength not withstanding (There are some really Jacked Vegetarians out there that are not actual Gorilla’s) some of the possible benefits of a vegetarian diet are as follows:
1. If the Vegetarian diet is plant based (unlike the syrup sucker above) that typically means less sugar and unhealthy fats which means less unhealthy calories and less junk. Half the reason why Broccoli is good for you is because it is not doughnuts and therefore displaces a lot of the bad things that typically go along with consuming large amounts of fried dough.
2. Due to the need to include more variety into the diet because of all the things you need to cut out, vegetarian diets typically compel people to eat not only more fruits and vegetables but also a wider variety of them too. This is important because for most people eating green means lime jello. That is definitely not good.
3. There are significant environmental benefits to eating more plant based food not limited to less animal waste, water conservation and possible green house gas emission issues.
4. Some people feel that vegetarian diets allow them to maintain certain religious or ethical beliefs. This is based on many reasons not limited to the fact you do not consume the flesh of other living creatures.
On a personal note while I can respect numbers one through three it is the later half of number four that never really worked for me. Not for some high minded moral or ethical reasoning mind you, I just really hate cows, fish and chickens. Chickens are straight out stupid (how can you respect an animal that can continue to do it’s business several minutes after it’s head is cut off). As far as fish are concerned, any living creature that swims where it poops deserves to be battered, fried and served up with coleslaw. And when it comes to cows I find them to be smug:
(As if I didn’t dislike cow’s enough they had to go and use one to try and convince overweight people they could eat ice cream every night and lose weight. I can hear the whining right now…but it’s dairy! No, its called there is no such thing as a free lunch. That was a metaphor and by the way that cow is really creepy.)
Now granted you can achieve most of the above (with the exception of #4) by eating a diet with less meat (and not totally eliminating it) but the point is that in a nation where millions are suffering from diseases related to lifestyle and diet, eating plans that have a strong vegetarian base can be very beneficial.
So that annoying guy does have a point, most smart people usually do. The problem is he seems to also have an agenda and agendas often turn smart people into stupid people awfully quick.
The whole idea that studying human anatomy proves people are not designed to eat meat is laughable. I am all about the health benefits of “plant based” lifestyles but to recreate the structure and function of the human body to advance a belief system only serves to discredit the belief system itself.
Every time I have heard this biology/vegetarian argument it centers around the digestive system. The story goes that humans are not designed to eat meat because our digestive tracts are too long and therefore meat spends too much time inside us so it putrefies and becomes toxic. Often it is pointed out that largely carniverous creatures like dogs and cats have much shorter digestive tracts in order to combat this from happening.
(They were built to eat meat and choose to remind me of that every day. In fact the only time they stop reminding me is when they are sleeping and even then they are dreaming of eating meat.)
One big problem with this whole well sounding theory is that our digestive tracts are really not that long say when compared to more purely vegetarian creatures like horses and cows. Those animals need (as well as other purely vegetarian creatures) longer digestive systems along with specialized digestive enzymes, multiple stomaches and even extra/enlarged organs in order to receive enough nutrition from an exclusively plant based diet. People don’t have any of that. By our nature we are structured to be omnivores and have the ability to eat (with our large variety of teeth) and digest (due to our middle of the road digestive system) a large variety of foods as was necessary to survive a wide variety of constantly changing environments over millions of years.
Bottom line is this blog post has already gone on too long. My mental digestive tract, as usual, has been stricken with a bad case of verbal diarrhea so let me finish up with this last point:
The vegetarian at your gym has some valid points but he also has an agenda and that quickly turns him into a giant douche. He has no business trying to convince you to go vegetarian any more than you have any business literally shoving a cheeseburger down his throat.
I understand the whole digestive tract thing is a little intense so if that doesn’t work just tell him to leave you the hell alone. Either that or invite him to eat at one of your restaurants as I am sure if he swills down enough of that crap he won’t last very long.
Till next time,
Yours in chocolate chip cookies,
Mike Cruickshank
(If all else fails and my advice doesn’t work then I implore you to follow the words of another wise philosopher, Patrick Swayze: ”Be nice until it is time to not be nice”. It’s either that or find a new gym.)
(This is why I love having my own blog. Where else can a man throw out random Road House references like “RIGHT BOOT”! )
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