vegetarian pizza place?

[foosidiarian.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know if there's a pizza place in the area that uses rennet-free mozzerella?

Comments

How about "healthy"?

[turil.livejournal.com]

I've been working on a political philosophy that starts from a concept of "existential rights", in which the two platforms are something like:

1. If something exists it has a right to exist (by universal law!), and has a right to try to do whatever it needs to do to stay existing.

2. As an individual, take only what is necessary for you to continue to exist in the most good, true, and beautiful way, whenever possible.

This political approach would allow for carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores of all species to be most ecological, sustainable, healthy, and compassionate to themselves and their environment.

I don't, however, have a name for a person who practices this philosophy. "Existentialist" isn't quite right, I'm afraid... :-)

Re: How about "healthy"?

[m00n.livejournal.com]

1. If something exists it has a right to exist (by universal law!), and has a right to try to do whatever it needs to do to stay existing.

I agree so long as you acknowledge that farm animals exist *because* we farm them, and that if all of humanity were to become vegetarians tomorrow, then farm animals would cease to exist.

2. As an individual, take only what is necessary for you to continue to exist in the most good, true, and beautiful way, whenever possible.

I would add "sustainable" way, as well.

My general feeling is that attitudes of "eat no plants" or "eat only plants" are both too simplistic. A truly ecological and sustainable diet is going to have to adapt to season, locality and overall ecology, and it's short sighted to believe that this can mean never eating any animal products, ever, imho.

Re: How about "healthy"?

[turil.livejournal.com]

Well "farm animals" is more of a political term than a scientific term. There are indeed many animals that would have a difficult time reintegrating into the wild if completely abandoned by human society (humans being at the top of that list!), but that's ok. No one is suggesting anything so black or white as instant irradication of all factory farms. It will be a slow process, allowing the species to either die out naturally, or to adapt into a new niche in the planet's ecosystem. Some might stay on as friends of humans, just like dogs and cats, perhaps.

Sustainable is a great word, and I would say that this whole process results in a "sustainable" way of living. As for my "good, true, and beautiful" selections of terms, they are based in ancient wisdom of the three main (so far) elements of human nature, the good is the best of the physical stuff, the true is the best of the intellectual stuff, and the beautiful is the best of the emotional stuff, Those three elements physical, emotional, and intellectual cover pretty much any motivation we humans have in normal life. (One can make an argument for something like "spiritual" or "universal" or something that relates to the idea of us being a part of something really, massively big and vast and mindblowing, but I tend to keep that element out of polite conversation, lest people get too overwhelmed, but you seem to be the kind of chap who can probably handle it :-)

Oh, and body types...

[turil.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention that clearly different bodies are designed for different diets for maximum health. I seemed to have been born a vegetarian (plant eater), as even when I was a little kid I refused to eat meat, and had health issues when I ate other animal products. So I'm pretty sure that the most good, true, and beautiful food for me is plants.

And while it seems a bit unusual for a single species to have more than one body design when it comes to food, it appears that humans do vary in their basic food requirements, so that some humans might actually need some animal products, while others don't. But it's hard to tell as we don't really have a way to do controlled studies on this sort of thing. However, if there is any sign of disease, removing animal products from the diet has been shown in many cases to be the fastest way to cure the disease. So it's possible that all humans really are designed to eat plants as the ideal diet. But we may never really know, because we're likely to create some kind of Star Trek technology where we simply replicate food from raw energy and simple matter really soon...

Re: Oh, and body types...

[m00n.livejournal.com]

By contrast though I might point out that there are some cultures (the Inuit in particular) that survive entirely on raw red meat and seem to do quite well on it.

Re: Oh, and body types...

[turil.livejournal.com]

Yes, especially with groups that have been in a very extreme environment for a long time, it's quite possible that they have evolved genes that make eating mostly meat an ok diet. However, I wonder if they really are doing "quite well". Do you have any studies about how long they live and how often they get things like heart disease, diabetes, etc., compared to groups that live in a similarly extreme environment but that eat a mostly plant based diet (maybe somewhere in the rainforest, or northern inland China)?