Actually, you are wrong. Dogs are NOT omnivores. They are carnivores.

Their digestive system cannot efficiently break down plant matter unless it is cooked and/or pureed. Feed a dog a handful of raw whole carrots, green beans, etc. and you'll see it in their poop the next day.

The reason dogs eat anything to fill their stomachs is because of how digestive enzymes in the stomach are triggered, which is by food coming into contact with the stomach walls. Wolves in the wild eat by gorging and fasting.

Your individual morals do not make things right on wrong. Some people think premaritial intercourse is immoral, some do not.

I do not find eating animals to be immoral. It's the food chain. For one to live, another must die.
1. herbivore or omnivore eats grass
2. omnivore or carnivore eats animal in step 1
3. grass (plants/soil) eats the animals in step 1 and 2 when they die (essentially soil is omnivorous)

Are you opposed to a lion eating an antelope? If humans and non-human animals are "equal", why do you expect humans to deprive themselves of their natural diet?

Read the book "The Vegetarian Myth", she has an entire section on this topic.

Not if they are eating pastured livestock.

Again, not if they are pastured livestock.
And you cannot say that grain used for animal feed could be used to feed humans, eating solely corn would kill people of malnutrition. Calories != nutrition.

You sure make a lot of assumptions. You have no idea what type of food I eat.
For your information: I try to follow the Paleo diet for the most part. I eat very little bread and virtually zero fast-food. And the meat I do eat is pastured domestic livestock or wild game meat.

I never said people should eat at today's levels of consumption. The Standard American Diet is pathetic; I'm just saying that everyone going veg*n isn't the answer.

That last sentence was a little unclear. I was referring to grains & legumes in your diet, those are grown as large monocrops.

Humans cannot live on grain alone. And the entire planet cannot be planted to grain; crops need rotated and summer-fallowed. And land used for pasture is not ideal for crops. All the claims I've seen about land use only talk about acreage, not quality of land. And many of your smaller farmers have both crops and livestock, when they harvest the crop, they move the cattle onto the land for a while to eat the stubble. Also, hay for cattle is often grown on "waste land", such as ditches and waterways, it's not using up crop land.

Kids raised vegetarian don't like meat because their parents have told them it's bad. I don't like peas because my mom hates them, I heard my entire childhood that peas were gross. Just like Americans don't eat bugs because that's our culture and we see them as "creepy crawlies", while many other cultures see bugs as food.

You are comparing eating something our bodies have evolved to eat over millions of years to slavery and women's rights?!
Our physiological makeup determines our diet; we are omnivores so we can survive on a vegetarian diet, but not a vegan diet (without supplementation). No traditional culture in history has ever been vegan, they would have died out long ago if they were. The traditional vegetarian groups highly prize eggs and dairy for their nutrition.

Also, I've noticed that most veg*ns I've encountered on the internet have never even been to a farm! (You say you grew up on a farm, I'm going to guess your parents probably did NOT abuse their livestock. And don't you remember what the pasture looked like versus the crop land? Crop land = relatively flat ground; pature land = hills, rocks)

Eating grains is what allowed our population to explode. The continuation of eating grains is just a "band aid", it isn't a solution, it will just be more of the same problem. The solution is sustainable farming.

So in other words: you eat monocrops.

I'm not a man, I'm a woman.

I'm glad you are healthy. But not all vegetarians/vegans are healthy on their chosen diet; going veg*n is not "one-size-fits-all". Lierre Keith is one such individual; her health was destroyed by being vegan for 20 years.
Here's the experiences of a couple other women:
http://crunchychewymama.blogspot.com/2010/01/why-im-not-vegetarian-anymore.html
http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/

I'm not against vegetarian diets, I eat a good number of vegetarian meals myself, I just cook meals that (a) taste good, and (b) are healthy. I believe people can be healthy on a vegetarian or omnivorous diet. However, I don't find the vegan diet to be "healthy".

By reading your posts, it seems you think perhaps you are the only one on slashdot that grew up on a farm. And I grew up on a farm too. My background is very rooted in agrculture. My family grew crops (primarily wheat and milo), raised livestock (primarily cattle and sheep), and ran a grain elavator. My family also hunts. I know very well where my food comes from.

I like meat. It's natural to eat meat. It's not natural to eat grains; and the eating of grains has allowed the human population to explode.

Most pasture land is unfit for crops. Too sandy, rocky, hilly, etc. It would be impossible to get a tractor or combine around this land. A diet that includes some meat is actually a more efficient use of land. http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/534100

As far as feeding the world's hungry, Western societies sending grain to them actually worsens the problem. It ends up hurting the local economy of an already ailing country even more, and makes the farmers there unneeded so there's even more people in need.

Meat is a fetish? Um... whatever floats your boat! I guess Lady Gaga did wear that meat outfit...

I'm curious, what do you eat if you don't eat meat and don't eat monocrops? Do you grow all of your own food?

The only reliable sources of B-12 are animal sources. Vegans must get their B-12 from supplements/fortified foods. Some even have to get B-12 shots.

Asian counties traditionally eat (a) fermented soy, and (b) use soy more as a condiment, not a protein replacement. A study of Chinese diets concluded the average person there eats only 9 grams of soy a day. (Diet, Lifestyle and Mortality in China. A study of the characteristics of 65 counties. Monograph, joint publication of Oxford University Press, Cornell University Press, China People's Medical Publishing House)

Soybeans were grown for ground-cover and to fix the nitrogen in the soil. The only time Asians would eat large amounts of soy was when they were starving.

You are confusing what factory farming has done to meat with what meat actually is. There's a difference. If I were to put a carcinogenic into a glass of water, that doesn't mean the water itself is carcinogenic, it means what I've done to alter it is bad.

You know why that is? Corn subsidies. The corn grown and fed to livestock and used for fuel isn't corn you would want to eat off the cob. Corn is cheap, hence why it's in EVERYTHING; not just livestock feed but in most produces in the grocery store.

Humans can't survive on grain alone. Try it, you'll end up weak, blind, probably crazy, and eventually dead.

Farming ideally would be done like the Polyface farm does it. Rotating livestock, they actually build topsoil. And provide not only calories, but NUTRITION; you could live solely off what they grow/raise on their farm and no outside food. You could not live solely off a corn.

Why don't you read Lierre Keith's book before you write her off? She had done her homework, and her book cites all the sources she used. Or are you just threatened she might actually confront you with logic?

An animal eating soy doesn't directly mean I am eating soy (getting the estrogen-like affects from it, the blocking of memory and decision making in the brain, etc).. And I don't eat feedlot beef anyway, I buy grass-fed beef, and other livestock usually fed grass/hay (goat, lamb, etc.). Or I eat wild game meat, which yes, sometimes they get into the soybean fields; but that's only a couple months out of the year and not their sole diet.

MY meat isn't "pharmaceutically enabled simulation". I buy local pastured livestock. And I eat hunted game meat.

And yes, I'll would kill my own food. I actually do so on occasion.

Humans hunted because the food was more nutritionally dense and they could all get together and bring down a large animal, feeding themselves for actually less effort than to get the same amount of nutrition and calories from solely gathering. Not a single species of the homo- genus had been herbivore, all have been omnivores. Eating meat correlates to the growth in our brain size.

Ever think about what agriculture does to the land? Or to habitats of wild animals?

And we've been eating meat far longer than grain. Grain is the food group that is glaringly NOT meant for human digestion. I bet you eat a lot of grain though, don't you?

Or "People Euthanizing Thousands of Animals"
Or "Poorly Educated Teen Activists"

Lierre Keith, formerly a vegan for 20 years, and author of the book, "The Vegetarian Myth", would disagree. She would say that about monocrops, such as corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.

Why is it always brought up "how much grain cows eat"? Buy from local farmers that keep their cows on pasture. Cows are not meant to eat grain!

I just took a few pictures last weekend when I was back visiting my parents: http://abby-eats.blogspot.com/2010/11/northwestern-kansas-pictures-part-i.html
Note that the pasture land would be impossible to farm. And the cattle you find on flat land are just moved onto it to eat crop stubble. And the "wasted land used to feed cattle"? Check out the haybale in the ditch, farmers can sign up for stretches of ditch to bale for animal feed.

As far as soybeans go, they really are not fit for human consumption. The only soy humans should eat is fermented soy (tempeh, miso, etc.). Unfermented soy acts as anti-nutrient. Not to mention the estrogen-like properties it has, and the fact it also contains substances that block the parts of the brain responsible for memory and decision making. A study in Hawaii showed correlation between eating tofu 2+ times a week and increased Alzheimer's risk.
Soy is on my "avoid" list.

Animal WELFARE = treat animals humanely, co-exist with animals, if animals are killed for food it should be as quick and painless as possible.

Animal RIGHTS = extinction of domestic animals, zero human/animal interaction
(yes, I know humans are animals, by animal I mean non-human animal)

Just a side note: It has actually never been proven that saturated fat is bad for you. In fact, newer studies are coming out saying it's an essential fat.