Maria's Day by John Zakour and Scott Roberts for September 10, 2012

I dated a vegan just after high school, I’m an adamant meat eater myself, dinners were some what acquard, my inability to want to adopt the vegan life style eventually doomed the relationship. I could never adapt to giving up eating all of those tasty critters.

oh, it’s a good healthy and worthwhile lifestyle. one gets used it – and then is happier he or she is eating much better and helping the planet as well. soy chocolate ice cream is out there and many brands taste wonderful. the statistics point to better health in all ways: less illness, loss of weight, and better outlook. of course, one can be a vegan and just eat fritos!! that’s not recommended though. lol.

I physically need so much meat protein each day just to function.[]I spent a rather large percentage of my time playing “walking tank”, and so I don’t always have time to stop and tend my injuries as they accrue, let alone sleep (yes, I’ve been awake for 24+ hours at a time). []So to compensate for not being able to rest, I get a hearty sandwich or the equivalent for the protein boost. []For me, going vegan just isn’t an option.

Vegans and vegetarians are what happens when evolution works in reverse.

It’s fine as a personal choice. It gets out of hand when a few start preaching to the world and painting others as only slightly less than evil if they don’t follow. It’s certainly convenient enough for people in temperate climates with plenty of diet choices. Some people of the world can’t make that choice. There’s not a lot of soy in Lapland. Meat is pretty much it.

I will never be a vegan or a vegetarian because I don’t take pills of any kind. And I have never met any vegan or vegetarian that didn’t take some kind of vitamin or supplement to give them what they are not getting by eating meat.

Humans are omnivores, eating a combination of animal and plant materials. The human body is not designed to function on just one of thse; human anatomy proves that people are omnivores.

We obviously are not strict carnivores, but we are equally obviously not strict vegetarians, if you carefully examine the anatomical, physiological and fossil evidence.

According to a 1999 article in the journal The Ecologist, several of our physiological features “clearly indicate a design” for eating meat, including "our stomach’s production of hydrochloric acid, something not found in herbivores. Furthermore, the human pancreas manufactures a full range of digestive enzymes to handle a wide variety of foods, both animal and vegetable.

“While humans may have longer intestines than animal carnivores, they are not as long as herbivores’; nor do we possess multiple stomachs like many herbivores, nor do we chew cud,” the magazine adds. “Our physiology definitely indicates a mixed feeder.”

If people were designed to be strict vegetarians, we would have a specialized colon, specialized teeth and a stomach that doesn’t have a generalized pH-all the better to handle roughage. The fact that people have a low synthesis rate of the fatty acid DHA and of taurine, suggesting our early ancestors relied on animal foods to get these nutrients. Vitamin B-12, also, isn’t reliably found in plants. That left animal foods as the reliable source during evolution.

History argues in favor of the omnivore argument, considering that humans have eaten meat for 2.5 million years or more, according to fossil evidence. Indeed, when researchers examined the chemical makeup of the teeth of an early African hominid that lived in woodlands three million years ago, they expected to learn that our ancestor lived on fruits and leaves. “But the isotopic clues show that it ate a varied diet, including grassland plants and animals that themselves fed on grasses," reported the journal Science in 1999.

Maybe she people assume we should be vegetarians because we don’t have sharp teeth.

Over population stems from ancient habits that haven’t passed. Once upon a time, there were fewer people to begin with, life was shorter, and causes of premature death greater. So ‘be fruitful and multiply’ meant survival. In the modern world, with increased longevity and improved health care, the need to have multiple children in one family becomes more like “be fruitless and multiply.”

Compared to our collie- probably not quite as sharp. But that just makes my point. Ours aren’t just herbivore teeth. They’re still quite capable of tearing meat. Not as efficiently as an animal that’s all carnivore, perhaps, but that would suggest that we have double-duty teeth.

They don’t have faces. That’s one of the classic kinds of vegetarians- those who simply won’t eat anything with a face.

You can pry my cheeseburger from my cold dead hands.

I’m such a meat-eater that I didn’t think I would last a day as a vegan. Then my mom found this recipe vegans can eat that has pan-seared tofu and asian greens cooked in soy sauce. Very good and it’s become a family favorite.