49 replies to this topic

[Tulac]

I think animal products are better and healthier but I'll have to read about it more....

[DakaSha]

i wouldnt say healthier.. it just depends on how you use which products.
animal based products sure taste better though

[Potatoe]

Animal based toilet paper.

[Icewolf]

Why not frying small slices of beef in a pan with onions. On the other hot plate there's the asian (NOT arabian) rice cooking.
When the beef is almost done give bean sprouts (soy buds?) in the pan. Plus soy sauce and cut spring onions.
Now (I'm no chef, I looked this word up) fold in the ready-cooked rice. It'll swallow most of the agressive salt taste of the soy sauce.

Well. Now we have both soy and animal based stuff and a sure delicious and healthy meal.      


EDIT: You may add garlic or garlic powder.

[DeathDude]

Well I prefer animal based products, but granted I haven't really had much soy products so that's probably an unfair comparison.

Although have been hearing good things about soymilk from a certain user so tempted of trying it to see if it really is great.

[PrejudiceSucks]

Animal based products are better in my opinion.

And DD - soy milk is a fairly large change from dairy milk - just so that you know in advance

[Stroggy]

My dad loves soy and thus I've got an entire fridge stuffed with the damn soy-based products. I prefer animal based, simply because they taste better.

[Blood-Pigggy]

Soy tastes nasty. I like meat, and foofoo.

[taikara]

@Tulac:

From what I understand, you base your opinion regarding animal products being healthier than soy products based on witnessing a friend of yours get sick after switching to soy products.

If there's another reason I am not aware of, well, then I can't really address that, can I?

First of all, I find that reasoning highly illogical. If your friend replaced all previously consumed animal products with soy product equivalents, of course she's going to become sick, for various reasons.

First of all, common sense applies. Humans gain essential vitamins and nutrients by consuming a variety of foods - both plant and animal based. You cannot maximize your nutritional intake by consuming only one type of food. Our bodies are more able to handle reasonable excess, but less able to handle deprivation. By switching to solely plant-based food consumption, your friend would likely have been depriving herself of nutrients that are more commonly found in animal-based products.

Secondly (and also common sense), just because you get sick when you stop consuming something doesn't mean that what you were consuming is healthy for you. People who have stopped doing drugs, drinking alcohol, smoking, or consuming caffeine would tell you that for the first few days/weeks/months after quitting, life sucks. They shake, get nauseous, irritable, get really sick, smokers who quit will cough like hell for a month or so after quitting - does this mean that any of these things are actually GOOD for your body?

Not at all, I would think.

From a more analytical standpoint, soy products, gram for gram, are better for you than the equivalent animal products. That doesn't mean that you should eat nothing but soy products (because that isn't anymore healthy than eating nothing but animal products), and it can make you feel real crappy if your body isn't used to it.

What it means is that if you want to eat healthier, you should consume a higher volume of things like soy products or other plant-based products in ratio to the animal products that you consume. This could mean eating slightly less meat in favor of a big salad, or it could mean replacing your tri-weekly hamburger with soyburger. How you choose to eat healthily is up to you, but you can't logically say that soy products are less healthy than equivalent animal products (and you also can't logically cross-compare and say that deep fried tofu is less healthy than grilled chicken - if you compare deep fried tofu to deep fried chicken, it still has much healthier nutritional content gram for gram, so please don't waste my time again with that argument ).

[Tulac]

Well the problem with her was just that, soy didn't have enough of nutritous substance (proteins, calories or something) so doctor told her that she must eat animal products (at least some prescribed measure) so her health wouldn't get affected meaning that her body just couldn't get used to all that soy...
I guess we agree that eating soy only(along with other veggies of course) is very hard (you have to deprive yourself of coolinary pleasures) and impossible in some cases (like my friend)...
I also think it's impossible that one product can exchange so many different products from different sources, I don't really understand how it can be a substition for both milk and meat since those are such different products where does per say lactosis come from? Is it chemically added?
I'm thinking (purely speculation) that soya is modified both genetically(I've read somewhere it's the food which genes have been altered the most) and chemicaly so that it would look like the products it's imitating so I'm thinking it can't be that good or healthy...

[taikara]

One thing you have to understand about genetics is that altering genetics of a plant/animal does not necessarily make the end product unhealthy to consume.

Humans have been utilizing genetic manipulation since they first learned to cultivate food, really, without necessarily realizing it. If you see that one plant has bigger, tastier fruit than other plants of the same kind, you want to cultivate the bigger, tastier fruit. How to accomplish this? Cross-breeding to achieve the desired result consistently, aka genetic "alteration" of the species.

Nowadays, we have a plethora of more advanced tricks to achieve the same basic results, sometimes even "inserting" our own genetic code for a species (though I think this type of alteration is very costly, and mostly experimental, and not used to a great extent in food production), but the end results are basically the same, only on a more dramatic level.

Chemical processing is much more unhealthy than genetic alteration, but truth be told, the majority of processed food you find in a grocery store are chemically treated in some way or another - preservatives, insecticides, growth hormones (mostly in the instance of animal products), coloring, artificial flavoring, the list goes on.

The only way to be somewhat sure that the food (whether a soy product, a beef product, or whatever) you are consuming is not chemically processed is to buy "organic" varieties of the type of food you want. However, organic foods are much more expensive, which is why it's not so prevalent.

Edit: and I forgot to mention that soymilk doesn't have lactose (which is a sugar found in animal milk) - making it a nice substitute for lactose intolerant people.

[Blood-Pigggy]

I just think that if you stop eating meat at all then you're doing something wrong.

[Juni Ori]

Hmm... Soy products being some kind of wonder products is a big lie. Truth is that we need both meat and vegetables, but not necessarily milk after breast-feeding. Actually milk is somewhat good add-on, but not necessity. It is good energy source and that's the reason people began drinking it, when other sources were far from flawless. I for example don't drink milk.

[taikara]

Well, I'm not going to argue whether soy is a wonder product in general, but it's worked wonders for me to add a couple glasses of soymilk to my diet.

I first discovered soymilk after finals week for the fall semester of my junior year. My friend Aditya wanted to visit a friend of his family who had stayed with them in India, and she happened to live in FL, so he asked me to drive him on my way home. Only, he begged me to leave directly after my last final, and though I wanted to sleep first, I was too nice (and a bit too stupid then) to say no.

I had slept about 8 hours the entire week, was totally exhausted, and it was a miserable drive. He brought these mixed CDs that were a combination of Indian music (some of it was interesting, I have to admit, like Chaiya Chaiya), and easy listening (unbearable), and talked mostly about Indian politics and economics (wasn't so interested in politics or economics at the time).

I was so tired I missed a turn and ended up adding about 4 hours to the trip without realizing I had missed the turn

By the time I got to Florida, I was actually seeing weird things in oncoming headlights, swerving off the road, and scaring poor Aditya to death. But we finally made it to his friends house, and she turned out to be sort of an academic hippie (anthropologist, to be exact), and she insisted I sit down for a while and chat. While chatting, she offered me a glass of soymilk (I had never had it before), and after drinking it, I felt like I was totally rested and rejuvenated - and when I left, I made the rest of the drive home without any more weirdness (about 3 hours more driving time).

Personally, I thought it was fairly miraculous, because I had honestly tried just about everything else - soda, coffee, food, regular milk, candy, whatever I could think of.

I didn't start drinking soymilk daily until a few months or so ago, though (to help offset the physical discomfort of trying to quit drinking sodas), usually just as an every now and then pick-me-up. But since I have, I've noticed that I feel better, look better, my skin has gotten softer and healthier, nails stronger, etc. And I haven't quite quit drinking sodas yet (I'm a total addict ), I've just cut down, so it's not the lack of those.

[Juni Ori]

Well, in my honest opinion, there must have been something very bad in your diet in the first place, if such miracles have occured. But, I'm not trying to convert people into my habits, especially as I very well know that I could reduce use of alcohol and cigarettes and get moore sleep...