(Poll) Ethics of eating meat

[Broomstick]

As it is now I'm having already trouble in eating enough meat to provide the necessary haemoglobin-percentage in my blood donations since I don't have any real preference for (red/mammal based) meat I tend to go for diary products, salads, fruits, vegetables and the likes.

I donate blood and have donated marrow with no difficulties whatsoever on a vegetarian diet.

Not everyone has the same ability to either absorb or retain iron. Some people really do require more in their diet, some less. Also, the quantity of iron even in "iron rich" foods can vary considerably.

[General Brock]

A lot depends on how much effort you want to put into avoiding GM foods - you can grow your own legumes if you have some land and are able to put in the effort. You can obtain non-gm grains, and even make your own seitan. If you have the means to garden it's easy to get cheap, organic vegetables without GM influence (go for the heirloom varieties).

If you go with processed food you're more likely to get GM influence, and the more processed the more likely that is.

Yeah, I know. Cooking from scratch happens more often now because near everything has 'hydrolyzed plant protein' or some other codeword for soy in the label ingredients. That 'may contain' caveat is hilarious though. You mean you don't KNOW?! What alternatives are there?

There are ways to container garden in an apartment, though its actually more fun to plan then enact.

[Cairber]

I know this is a personal anecdote but I think of it whenever I see this argument.

I went mostly vegetarian (with eating fish) in the year before I got pregnant with Ruby and then through the first part of that pregnancy. I supplemented with iron, paired iron rich foods with C, and cooked in cast iron, but I still ended up with low iron levels, though I was not low iron according to my preconception testing. I started religiously eating red meat once a week and the problem was taken care of.

I have a hard time viewing that choice as immoral. I probably could have attempted to tinker with my diet and possibly put us both at risk, but I was able to solve the problem quickly with the simple choice to eat a small amount of red meat once a week.

(ops, didn't realize this thread kinda died out on monday...sorry about that.)