Oct 20, 2010 -- 5:33PM, solfeggio wrote:

The grassroots environmental network, Friends of the Earth, claims that more than 45.000 lives a year could be saved if people would just cut their meat consumption to only two or three times a week.

You could save 30,000 by mandating annual safe driving courses, and even more by lowering speed limits. You could save 50,000 just by everyone getting flu shots. There are many ways to save many lives.

Life: No one gets out of here alive.

Oct 20, 2010 -- 7:40PM, Guessses wrote:

Life: No one gets out of here alive.

True , and lives cannot be saved; death may be delayed but still comes at the end.  It is not death from heart attack or stroke  but that death will be  a long painful journey with a slowly deteriorating body and mind .

When I die, I want any useable parts to go to help people who need them and they can cremate the rest and fertilze some lilac bushes with them. Or they can divide them and every one who ever wanted me to be in different places at the same time can finally get their wishes.I don't want to be hooked up to support machines unless it is because of surgery lie bypasses. My greatest fear has always been to have an alert mind trapped inside a body that barely functions that is difficult to control.

Driver safety courses would be good. Cars with a locking column that will not allow the engine to engage if you can't pass a breathylzer test is good, too. Instead of weaving in and out of traffic and causing near misses because the driver is taking out a bad day on everyone else, they should do what I do. The next street up a block from ours is also 25 miles an hour, but people seem to go 35-40 miles an hour all the time despite the fact it is a major route for children walking to school towards the first crossing guard.

They should do what I do instead--I make sure that I am perectly in my lane and driving the well-posted speed limit. Admittedly this irritates people a lot, but that's not my problem.I guess they are driving under the concept that says any road that has the lights timed for 25 miles an hour will work if you are driving at 50 mph.

The best way to save lives is to consider everyone else's life to be just as important to them and those who love them as our lives and our kids lives are to us. Admittedly that's a strange concept, but it worked with the Chiean miners, didn't it?                                                                                         

C'mon, Ebon,

LOL, the meat producers are pulling everybody's leg when they say that red meat has a 'valuable' role to play in a well-balanced diet.    If that were true, all the vegetarians/vegans/piscatorians and others who don't eat red meat would not be walking around!

And, they're not just walking around, but they are, on balance, healthier than the people who are choffing down the burgers and steaks and ribs.

But the point of the OP was, of course, that the average person in the industrialised West eats far too much meat, and especially processed meat, and that this sort of indulging is likely to do a person in.

We all know by now (or we should know) that the saturated fat in meat settles out in the bloodstream, creates plaque deposits in the arteries, narrowing the vessels and causing high blood pressure.  This can lead to blockages and cardiovascular disease.

It's all pretty straightforward.

But, the fact is, of course, that most people - hell, the vast majority of people on this planet - enjoy the taste of meat so much that they prefer to take their chances and eat it anyway....until they find themselves in hospital with a heart attack.