I'm thinking lots will be going vegetarian to escape contamination of meat, not on ethical grounds

[Blackhatjack]

The Bush Administration took a food inspection problem and made it worse by cutting the number of inspectors and their budgets. The natural result has been more outbreaks directly related to contamination of the meat placed in the marketplace for human consumption.

You don't have to experience honest to goodness 'food poisoning' but once to decide you never want to go through that again --and you will take significant measures to avoid a repeat.

There is something very wrong with allowing the profit incentive to trump the need for safe food.

[Warpy]

1. Some people feel better on a vegetarian diet, and some people

feel worse on one. My guess is that will be some initial converts but that it won't last for most of them.

The comforting thing about meat is that it always tastes like meat, no matter how indifferently it was raised, slaughtered, packaged, and cooked. That will keep people who don't feel dramatically better off it coming back.

[dkf]

19. I can't do vegetarian. I'm either hungry or bloated.

[Warpy]

21. Cutting down might be better than cutting out for you

Using meat the way the Asians do, as a flavoring instead of the main event, might be the best way to get to that half a pound a week that's closer to the ideal for human omnivores. Our guts are designed to work with mostly plant foods.

There's nothing that says you can't also experiment with veggie meals, find out the ones that don't leave you hungry or bloated. They're out there. They're also a hell of a lot cheaper, which was the original attraction for me.

[Edweird]

25. It took me a long time and a lot of experimentation to realize that I am hypoglycemic.

What works for me is essentially Atkins induction - pretty much the exact opposite of vegetarian. I've tried all manner of dietary regimen (strict - no cheating) and this is it for me.

[Imajika]

2. People generally switch back...

I've known a lot of folks that tried being vegetarians, but they all pretty much switched back to being meat eaters.

I had one friend who went several years, but it didn't even fully take with her and she is back to being an omnivore. Also one coworker that was really determined and stayed a vegetarian for a long time, but he seemed to feel worse and worse on his vegetarian diet and eventually one of his doctors suggested he just go back to eating meat. He did, and now he feels much better.

I really don't think there is going to be a surge in vegetarians. I really just don't think it is for most people.

[Kali]

3. try a different source

http://www.eatwild.com/

and you can get "food poisoning" from non-meat sources so look into local farmers markets, CSA's and growing your own

MOST cases result from poor handling in the home - cross contaminating and improper cooking temps being the primary problems

NEVER buy bulk hamburger in those chubs or premade patties and you really are pretty safe

[Name removed]

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[madrchsod]

4. vegetables have just as many problems with contamination

properly prepared fresh meat and vegetables rarely cause food poisoning.

[marybourg]

5. If you check the FDA website, you'll find that in the past week

raw nuts and sprouts have both been recalled. Surely you remember spinach, pepper, peanut butter, cantaloupes, and tomatoes being recalled within the last year. Going vegetarian will not protect you from food-borne illness. Sorry.

[MajorChode]

13. Some people just like to live with irrational fear

Or they like to use hyperbole to justify their decisions. If someone wants to be a vegan, more power to them. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but trying to suggest that "contamination of meat" is a good reason is just a bit ridiculous. The most dangerous food borne pathogens are Listeria, Salmonella, some E-coli strains, and Toxoplasma and all of those pathogens routinely infect both meat and vegetables.

[Confusious]

6. What about that spinach a while back that had e coli

I believe it was. Did it create a lot of carnivores?

[phasma ex machina]

7. Meat stinks. That's what made me vegan decades ago.

Brown meat painted red. Bubbles in supposed turkey slices. Creeps chortling about soaking returned ham in creosote to resell it.

:puke:

[Rebubula]

15. Meat does indeed stink...

...of HEAVEN!!!

Nothing is more beautiful than a Ribeye cooked medium rare and a side of mashed potato and asparagus.

[dionysus]

16. ding ding ding

[MineralMan]

17. That's why we cook it. It smells much better afterwards.

These days, the smell of meat cooked on a grill permeates my Saint Paul neighborhood each evening. Excellent!

[depakid]

20. Cooking does nothing to prions

except perhaps to help permeate Mad Cow pathogens throughout your St. Paul neighborhood.

[HopeHoops]

8. I made the switch in '89 for both reasons. Read "Diet for a New America" - John Robbins.

He was the heir to the entire Baskin Robbins empire but gave it up when he went vegan. He grew up with a swimming pool shaped like an ice cream cone. The book is about half health information and half ethics. Good read. That contributed very heavily to our decision.

[Hekate]

9. Doesn't work for everyone.

I can eat as much roughage as I want (except wheat bran, which hurts), but have to watch my carbs because my blood sugar spikes. Two of my sibs are already diabetic, so I have to keep that in mind. I'm currently getting a kind of allergic reaction in my mouth to cheese (not milk -- specifically cheese) so that's completely out. I went to a reception on Sunday and carefully avoided the lovely and expensive cheese tray, but something on a cracker still left me broken-out inside my mouth.

Hubby is in remission from colitis. Ethically he has always favored vegetarianism, and periodically announces that this is it. However, his gut is never happy with a high-fiber diet, and when his gut is not happy that is no joke. He can eat cheese, but is lactose intolerant for a lot of other milk products.

It's to the point that I scarcely know what to buy for animal protein, given our separate dietary needs and the level of contamination in beef, fish, and chicken.

Eggs, at least, are no problem. We were given four hens a year and a half ago, and they keep us in eggs most of the year. Nice, salmonella-free eggs. What may happen is that more suburbanites will discover how easy it is to keep a few hens of their own.

This factory farming is gonna kill us all if we keep it up. It's not just the "profit incentive," it's the fact that Americans are used to having just about the cheapest food on the planet. Those low prices are the product of the economies of scale -- agribusiness, not family farms, mega-chicken ranches, meat-rendering plants that give you parts of up to a thousand cows in each pound of hamburger, making product contamination something that can't be pinpointed by source, thus the fantastic scale of recalls.

Hekate

[stuntcat]

11. chickens! :want:

that's totally true! our food, especially meat is way too cheap on the shelf because of the government's support of the industry, we're paying for it bigtime anyway. It's weird how the biggest costs of it are so easy to ignore.

[stuntcat]

10. there's a big pile of reasons, I did it for the environment.

But even without ethical reasons (even if you're very Evil }( ) it is good to stop putting the product of our meat factories into ourselves. Everything about the industry now is unhealthy and disgusting. Americans eat way more meat than is healthy anyway.

[pink-o]

12. Like everything else wrong with this country, it's not the meat: It's the corporations.

I've been a vegetarian for 33 years out of the 55 I've been on this planet, but I truly believe humans are omnivores. But let's face it, no matter what we eat, it's all unnatural. The factory farms, the agri-businesses only care about food as a means for profit, and will cut corners however they can. It's true in the slaughterhouses, the chicken pens and when you have a vile, loathesome company like Monsanto controlling most of the botannical food supply, vegetarians are just as prone to being poisoned as anyone else.

And these bastard conglomerates pay off the FDA and other govt regulators so they can continue their shoddy practices.

Our food supply will never be safe until we get the coporations out of it.

[stray cat]

14. Spinach, peanut butter - salmonella vegetable outbreaks are really commom

It's not picky!

[jgraz]

18. Buy small, buy organic, buy local

Factory farmed veggies are far worse for you and the environment than a locally-raised, organic, grass-fed ribeye.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. I don't.

It's not like various vegetable products don't also get contaminated and kill people.

[Name removed]

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[handmade34]

26. well... as a vegetarian...

The problems exist everywhere. There are as many problems with contamination of vegetables and fruits as there are with meat, dairy and eggs.

We need to rethink our entire food system and we need to be more mindful of food safety overall. I don't think this current problem with contaminated eggs will drive people to stop eating meat but hopefully it will encourage them to consider the source of their food...