Sunday, January 04, 2009
Vegetarian Angst
I recently came across this display in one of the National Library branches on why Humans should be vegetarians.
Now, I'm not saying vegeterianism is bad or anything, but I feel that sometimes, they try a little to hard to convince people that humans are natural vegetarians. So hard that sometimes they feel like a cult. By all means encourage people to go for a vegetarian diet, but let's be objective about the persuasion points eh?
I'd understand those who are vegetarian due to religious reasons for being pigheaded about their opinions, but those who claim to be vegetarian for scientific reasons are acting worse! It's a cult I tell you.
Just google the web and you'll find articles upon articles substantiating why humans are natural vegetarians. If you read those articles at face value, you certainly will believe them. If you look closer, they are certainly almost always written by a vegetarian.
If you find an article saying that humans are not natural vegetarians, then that article will likely have a critique written about it, in a not very pleasant manner too.
It's kinda scary you know.
I'm a self professed meatatarian. All my friends know that I am allergic to vegetables. Ok, I'm not really allergic to vegetables but might just as well be. I thought it'd be interesting to compare some of the claims that was being displayed in one of the national library branches and see how it stacks up. I feel that the library has a responsibility to ensure that displays are of undisputed facts, and not of subjective opinion. If the information presented is not indisputable, then they should not be displaying it because it is my opinion that people will naturally accept information displayed at libraries as truth, since libraries are meant to foster learning and instill knowledge.
This is a social responsibility of the library.
Anyway, like I mentioned, I thought it'd be interesting to look up some of their claims to see how they all stack up. Before I do, I must emphasise that I am NOT advocating anyone to NOT be vegetarian and be a meatatarian. I'm just doing this for the heck of it.
Today, I will list just one point I remember from the exhibition I saw:
Humans are vegetarian because our intestines are longer then carnivores and herbivores have longer intestines then carnivores.
I looked up the comparison of intestines online. First I found the following information:
In fact, if you actually google, you will find a lot of comparison of the Human GI system, teeth and other facial characteristics against carnivores and herbivores.
Ok, so many articles says the human intestine is "10 to 11 times body length" and is comparable to herbivores. However, I noticed that all such articles were written on vegetarian websites. So I got to thinking, just how long is that in numbers?
A quick google gave the following answers:
"length of the entire human intestine can range from 7.5 to 8.5 meters (25 to 28 feet)"
"average length of the human intestine can be anywhere from 6 to 8.5 meters in length depending on size and age of the person it occupies."
"The small intestine is about 20 feet long . The large intestine also varies and can is usually about 5 feet long. Yikes!"
So, we have a range of 6 to 8.5 meters. Now what is human body length? From the top of the head to the bottom of the feet? For this I referred to a wikipedia entry (we're not writing a scientific thesis so it should matter if I use wikipedia does it?) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height. Running down that list, it seems that 180 cm seems to be well at the upper end of human height averages.
So I shall use 180 cm. If you take 8.5 M as the length of the intestines and divide it by the height, you will see how many times longer then the body length the intestines are.
850/180= 4.72222222222222 (ok that's enough 2s)
~4.72 times longer.
Hmm. Not 10-11 times longer?
Maybe I used a wrong denominator. How about just the length of the torso? Average torso length is bloody difficult to find online. After much scrounging, I finally found a few figures including 23 inches (58.42 cm) to 26 inches (66.04 cm). Anybody who is able to provide more figures may do so.
Using 66.04 cm, we will then see that 850/66.04 = 12.87 times.
Hmmmm.
So as you can see, all this information can really be manipulated and presented in whatever way one wishes it to be. Whether the information is indisputably the truth, remains to be seen.
I'm still meatatarian. lol.
0 Adorations
I recently came across this display in one of the National Library branches on why Humans should be vegetarians.
Now, I'm not saying vegeterianism is bad or anything, but I feel that sometimes, they try a little to hard to convince people that humans are natural vegetarians. So hard that sometimes they feel like a cult. By all means encourage people to go for a vegetarian diet, but let's be objective about the persuasion points eh?
I'd understand those who are vegetarian due to religious reasons for being pigheaded about their opinions, but those who claim to be vegetarian for scientific reasons are acting worse! It's a cult I tell you.
Just google the web and you'll find articles upon articles substantiating why humans are natural vegetarians. If you read those articles at face value, you certainly will believe them. If you look closer, they are certainly almost always written by a vegetarian.
If you find an article saying that humans are not natural vegetarians, then that article will likely have a critique written about it, in a not very pleasant manner too.
It's kinda scary you know.
I'm a self professed meatatarian. All my friends know that I am allergic to vegetables. Ok, I'm not really allergic to vegetables but might just as well be. I thought it'd be interesting to compare some of the claims that was being displayed in one of the national library branches and see how it stacks up. I feel that the library has a responsibility to ensure that displays are of undisputed facts, and not of subjective opinion. If the information presented is not indisputable, then they should not be displaying it because it is my opinion that people will naturally accept information displayed at libraries as truth, since libraries are meant to foster learning and instill knowledge.
This is a social responsibility of the library.
Anyway, like I mentioned, I thought it'd be interesting to look up some of their claims to see how they all stack up. Before I do, I must emphasise that I am NOT advocating anyone to NOT be vegetarian and be a meatatarian. I'm just doing this for the heck of it.
Today, I will list just one point I remember from the exhibition I saw:
Humans are vegetarian because our intestines are longer then carnivores and herbivores have longer intestines then carnivores.
I looked up the comparison of intestines online. First I found the following information:
| Carnivore | 3 to 6 times body length |
| Omnivore | 4 to 6 times body length |
| Herbivore | 10 to more than 12 times body length |
| Human | 10 to 11 times body length |
In fact, if you actually google, you will find a lot of comparison of the Human GI system, teeth and other facial characteristics against carnivores and herbivores.
Ok, so many articles says the human intestine is "10 to 11 times body length" and is comparable to herbivores. However, I noticed that all such articles were written on vegetarian websites. So I got to thinking, just how long is that in numbers?
A quick google gave the following answers:
"length of the entire human intestine can range from 7.5 to 8.5 meters (25 to 28 feet)"
"average length of the human intestine can be anywhere from 6 to 8.5 meters in length depending on size and age of the person it occupies."
"The small intestine is about 20 feet long . The large intestine also varies and can is usually about 5 feet long. Yikes!"
"The small intestine is about 22 feet (7 meters) long. The large intestine is about 5 feet long.
Source: World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 10, p. 352."
So, we have a range of 6 to 8.5 meters. Now what is human body length? From the top of the head to the bottom of the feet? For this I referred to a wikipedia entry (we're not writing a scientific thesis so it should matter if I use wikipedia does it?) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height. Running down that list, it seems that 180 cm seems to be well at the upper end of human height averages.
So I shall use 180 cm. If you take 8.5 M as the length of the intestines and divide it by the height, you will see how many times longer then the body length the intestines are.
850/180= 4.72222222222222 (ok that's enough 2s)
~4.72 times longer.
Hmm. Not 10-11 times longer?
Maybe I used a wrong denominator. How about just the length of the torso? Average torso length is bloody difficult to find online. After much scrounging, I finally found a few figures including 23 inches (58.42 cm) to 26 inches (66.04 cm). Anybody who is able to provide more figures may do so.
Using 66.04 cm, we will then see that 850/66.04 = 12.87 times.
Hmmmm.
So as you can see, all this information can really be manipulated and presented in whatever way one wishes it to be. Whether the information is indisputably the truth, remains to be seen.
I'm still meatatarian. lol.
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