Most British Beer contains Fish!

[Batman]

The German Purity Law is still in effect after nearly 500 years, I recommend you drink German.

What’s this purity law thing?

Thanks to the Purity Law (originally enacted in 1516 and, as Hipper says, still in effect)there's exactly 4 legal ingredients for beer, namely water, hops, barley, and yeast.

I know Becks is on the safe list what other German makes are there?

Thousands, actually, but I have no clue which of those are actually easily available internationally. Sorry...

[Superman]

Anyone remember that Simpsons episode with the protestors who didn't want some tree cut down. He said something like, "I'm a level five vegan. I don't eat anything that casts a shadow."

[MKSheppard]

Moron

Do you have any idea how much you're dooming your future children
by not consuming a balanced diet?

[Plekhanov]

To Batman and Frank Hipper thanks for the info at least bar staff might know where the stuff they sell is supposed to come from. Only trouble is so many beers come from northern European countries that a crappy linguist such as myself can’t tell the country of origin from the name alone, I don’t suppose you know if Holland, Belgium, Denmark… have similar laws?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Moron

Do you have any idea how much you're dooming your future children
by not consuming a balanced diet?

Sorry to be the advocate of the Devil, so to speak, but he likely is getting a balanced diet from his veggie ways. Humans worked quite well on such diets millions of years ago as meat was scarce and a treat if you could acquire it. If meat truly was necessary back then for us, we'd be fucked as a species given without our technology, most other animals could fuck us over easily.

On the other hand, meat led to smaller mandible size which is used to crush nuts and pulses etc. which helped increase brain mass and give us the wheel, fire and the B-36.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Living organisms survive at the cost of other living organisms- even if it means they die a horrible painful death as a result. Welcome to fucking reality.

[Plekhanov]

Do you have any idea how much you're dooming your future children
by not consuming a balanced diet?

I’m afraid I’m totally unaware of what I’m doing to my heirs would you care to enlighten me?
Anyway how can you be so sure my diet isn’t balanced, what essential nutrients can’t I get as a veggie?

[Superman]

I remember studying chimps in my primatology class. Every so often, the males would form a line and go marching off to hunt for Colobus monkeys. Since the monkeys are more agile, the chimps had a hunting plan ready to use. They would find a row of monkey populated trees. Some chimps would go to end of the trees, while the others would climb up and scare the monkeys. The monkeys would panic and swing all the way to the end of the trees where the other chimps were waiting. The monkeys were so panicked that they would literally swing right off and fall into the waiting chimps. They would eat them alive. You guys realize that we share 98.6% of our genome with chimps, right?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Do you have any idea how much you're dooming your future children
by not consuming a balanced diet?

I’m afraid I’m totally unaware of what I’m doing to my heirs would you care to enlighten me?
Anyway how can you be so sure my diet isn’t balanced, what essential nutrients can’t I get as a veggie?

You have to be careful there. Certain essential amino acids aren't as common to the vegetarian and need to be sought after in a better balanced diet than those that eat meat and veg etc.

While a vegetarian can supplement these lost amino acids and nutrients, a vegan is fucked over and thankfully these people are usually too stupid to have kids.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I remember studying chimps in my primatology class. Every so often, the males would form a line and go marching off to hunt for Colobus monkeys. Since the monkeys are more agile, the chimps had a hunting plan ready to use. They would find a row of monkey populated trees. Some chimps would go to end of the trees, while the others would climb up and scare the monkeys. The monkeys would panic and swing all the way to the end of the trees where the other chimps were waiting. The monkeys were so panicked that they would literally swing right off and fall into the waiting chimps. They would eat them alive. You guys realize that we share 98.6% of our genome with chimps, right?

We also share near that same amount with Arabidopsis thaliana which is a common weed. I wouldn't use the whole sharing of genes thing in this argument as it has no real relevance on the final organism as it's not that cut & dry. There are worms out there with more DNA than us for instance.

[Plekhanov]

Living organisms survive at the cost of other living organisms- even if it means they die a horrible painful death as a result. Welcome to fucking reality.

What’s with all this welcome to reality stuff? I’ve read a little on evolution, I’ve seen nature documentaries, I used to live on a fucking farm I’m well aware that life is often a desperate struggle and those who fail die. It’s just that my life isn’t a struggle for survival in fact it’s ridiculously easy and I’ve chosen not to inflict “a horrible painful death” upon other animals without good reason.

[Superman]

I am demonstrating that our closest genetic cousins are, in fact, part time meat eaters. We even share inactive strands of DNA called psuedo genes.

I am not quite sure what you mean when you say "There are worms out there with more DNA than us for instance." I am talking about the recipe for life. Do you have some documentation showing that Homo sapiens and Arabidopsis thaliana share 98% the same genetic makeup? I would love to see that, since we're not even in the same Kingdom.

[Superman]

I think you mean that there are organisms with more genes, yes? That does not contradict my statement in any way.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I am demonstrating that our closest genetic cousins are, in fact, part time meat eaters. We even share inactive strands of DNA called psuedo genes.

I am not quite sure what you mean when you say "There are worms out there with more DNA than us for instance." I am talking about the recipe for life. Do you have some documentation showing that Homo sapiens and Arabidopsis thaliana share 98% the same genetic makeup? I would love to see that, since we're not even in the same Kingdom.

I don't have my notes infront of me and I never said 98%, I meant a good chunk. But since bananas share around 50% of the same DNA with us, it's not something I'd see my notes as being wrong on. Source was Francis Collins (National Human Genome Research Institute).

There's also the amount of exons etc. that makes certain comparisons useless. But I digress, we can't really compare ourselves to chimps. They may have descended from the same ancestor we did, but they took a far different path.

Heck, I'm sure I had a point here but I forgot the discussion we were on, heh.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think you mean that there are organisms with more genes, yes? That does not contradict my statement in any way.

Both statements would be correct. There are organisms with more genes and DNA in total. It's got no real correlation much like the number of hours one sleeps.

[HemlockGrey]

So...why exactly are we all jumping down Plekhanov's throat, again? He's not telling us to be vegans, he's not pushing it in our faces and he's not really doing anything but it seems a bunch of semi-psychotic aggressive types have jumped him for no real reason.

I mean, it's his fucking choice not to kill animals because he doesn't want them to die. That's fine. I like steak and I don't particularly value the lives of animals above my own culinary pleasure, but that doesn't mean I have to go around telling everyone who does that they're wrong.

[Admiral Valdemar]

So...why exactly are we all jumping down Plekhanov's throat, again? He's not telling us to be vegans, he's not pushing it in our faces and he's not really doing anything but it seems a bunch of semi-psychotic aggressive types have jumped him for no real reason.

I mean, it's his fucking choice not to kill animals because he doesn't want them to die. That's fine. I like steak and I don't particularly value the lives of animals above my own culinary pleasure, but that doesn't mean I have to go around telling everyone who does that they're wrong.

No one is, at least I'm not. I was stating a fact with the animals killed by farming thing, but Plekhanov isn't someone with a soapbox and moral superiority complex unlike some vegetarians. I was just stating after Shep came in that a balanced diet need not require meat.

[Plekhanov]

You have to be careful there. Certain essential amino acids aren't as common to the vegetarian and need to be sought after in a better balanced diet than those that eat meat and veg etc.

While a vegetarian can supplement these lost amino acids and nutrients, a vegan is fucked over and thankfully these people are usually too stupid to have kids.

I’m far too lazy to go vegan even if I had the inclination, I reckon my diet is pretty good I’ve read up a little on the subject and take care to mix my grains and so forth. I’m also a keen cook and have a varied diet with practically no convenience foods, especially when you consider my low fat intake I expect my diet is significantly healthier than most meat eaters.

I am demonstrating that our closest genetic cousins are, in fact, part time meat eaters. We even share inactive strands of DNA called psuedo genes.

And what does that prove? If the fact that my parents and apart from 2 of my siblings all my other relatives are meat eaters doesn’t influence me I’m not going to let “our closest genetic cousins” sway me. I know humans evolved as omnivores and that some primates hunt and kill, some chimps also exhibit extremely aggressive sexual behaviour and kill weaker members of their groups for “political” reasons should I also follow this behaviour?

I’ve been a veggie for around 8 years now with no ill effects, in Britain at least it’s easy to cut out meat and have a perfectly healthy diet (it was a lot tougher when I worked in France though) I know I evolved with the capacity to eat meat but I don’t need to eat it so I don’t.

[Superman]

Valde, my point is that chimps are our closest genetic cousins. Gorillas share about 96% of their genome with Homo sapiens, which is also no surprise. We are closely related to them. A weed can have more genes than us, but they DON'T have the same genetic makeup that we have.

[Superman]

I know humans evolved as omnivores and that some primates hunt and kill, some chimps also exhibit extremely aggressive sexual behaviour and kill weaker members of their groups for “political” reasons should I also follow this behaviour?

That's what it proves. Sorry, I thought you were the type of vegan who thinks it's somehow unnatural to eat meat.

[Plekhanov]

So...why exactly are we all jumping down Plekhanov's throat, again? He's not telling us to be vegans, he's not pushing it in our faces and he's not really doing anything but it seems a bunch of semi-psychotic aggressive types have jumped him for no real reason.

I mean, it's his fucking choice not to kill animals because he doesn't want them to die. That's fine. I like steak and I don't particularly value the lives of animals above my own culinary pleasure, but that doesn't mean I have to go around telling everyone who does that they're wrong.

Thanks for the support Hemlock it’s ok though apart from Dalton’s, jenat-lai’s, Sheps and BlkbrryTheGreat’s contributions on the whole it’s been a worthwhile exchange of ideas. Even if I don’t seem to have managed to inconvenience/enlighten any fellow veggies by breaking the tragic news about beer and whilst it is a little annoying that people seem to assume the worst about us veggies I hope that if nothing else I’ve shown that at least a some of us aren’t peta fascists, whatever they are.

[Slartibartfast]

Where can I get this fish-flavoured beer?

[Mayabird]

It's possible that Shep had read about vegans not getting vitamin B12 in their diets (since it is only acquired thorugh eating meat) and was thinking of that when he wrote the "unbalanced diet" thing. The Jains only survived because their foot was infested enough with insects that the little bits of bugs that they ate accidentally provided them with enough vitamin B12 for them. Plekhanov, I'm guessing that you do take supplements for the missing B12. Am I right? The human body doesn't need much and can store away it for years, but you need a little bit to live, and if it's not meat it has to come from somewhere else.

[jenat-lai]

ooh, a Pro Peta boy. *points and laughs*

ooh a knee jerk poster who types and submits before engaging his brain *points and laughs*

I'v had contact with only 4 vegitarian/vegans. 3 of the 4 have been complete fucking morons that get on my nerves specificly. One would nag at me specificly saying I was evil. Another was her supporter and was your classic anti-war socialist vegan protester uni goth feminist bitch. The other stole the heart of my crush/obsession making her a vegan after not previously being one (yes I remember the days we went out and had Icecream and Pizza in the winter.) The 4th being her (the one I'v had Icecream and pizza with in winter before) who is now a vegan. of sorts... though she still drinks beer.


So if 3/4 of all vegans I know have offended me directly multiple times, 1/4 of vegans have stolen my girl of choice, I have to admit, I have emotional attatchments.

[InnerBrat]

[alcoholic vegetarian]Lalalalalaa I'mnotlisteninglalalalala![/alky vegetarian]
Actually, I don't drink beer anyway, coz it tastes of piss.

To the peanut gallery in this thread:
Woo-fucking-hoo. Humans are omnivores. Thank you for that enlightenment.
Does that mean that we can't make a decision about what we put into our bodies?
Frankly, I expected something better from you, Supes? Aren't you supposed to have a degree in anthropology? If you want to discuss the evolutionary anthrolopology of vegetarianism with me, I'd be happy to, but you're gonna have to come up with something a little better than "ooh, but chimps eat meat, and we're like chimps!"