Beware the plant eaters

By: Vineet Tiruvadi

Posted: 7/21/08

Those crazy vegetarians and their message of healthy eating are dangerous.

Steadily increasing food prices are spawning more of those pesky vegetarian types. Besides threatening the very fabric of society, along with our delectable dinners, they can be a very distracting nuisance. But don't worry. With a few potent defenses you can bring them back to the side of reason and maintain the innocence of society's impressionable children.

Increasing demand for food, as a result of sky-rocketing populations, leads to an increase in food prices. Natural disasters, such as the Midwest floods, don't help either. While the brunt of the "food crisis" hasn't manifested itself in the U.S. yet, the increasing demands of the affluent China and India demonstrate an impending food resource competition, much like oil and jobs.

Some may take this as a warning to streamline our diets and become more efficient and healthy eaters. Naturally, they must be stopped.

Their first attack may target meat's inefficiency in energy transferal. It's a basic biological concept: every transfer of energy from one level to another, such as a plant to a rabbit, results in a substantial loss of energy. That means if we eat a rabbit that has eaten 20 blades of grass we'll get a lot less energy than if we ate just those 20 blades of grass. The vegetarians may tell you that it makes more sense to eat plants/producers because that leads to the greatest energy transfer efficiency, allowing us to feed more people with the available grain we have. Obviously that's wrong. The real solution to getting more energy out of our food would be to eat more rabbits; that's basic math. Watch as the vegetarian is rendered speechless. You won this round.

With growing fear in their eyes, the vegetarians may resort to attacking our prized layers of insulation. Supposedly, a vegetarian diet is "healthier" for the body. With a properly thought out diet you can get all the nutrients you need and be healthier, with greater culinary and monetary efficiency. I don't need to point out the grievous flaws in that statement, but I will. "Thought out diet" is just a euphemism for intellectual-elite smorgasbord. If the vegetarian attempts to propound the "health benefits," just mention the fact that without meat, a human being is 90 percent more likely to contract tenuisfiguratis, a debilitating condition with no known cure. Of course, this disease is made up, but while the vegetarian looks it up you can down at least three more steaks: a hefty moral victory: round two goes to you.

Battered and broken, they may then pull out a picture of a "cute" animal and mention the atrocious conditions the animals are grown in. They may even mention the artificial growth hormones and chemicals given to livestock and their potentially detrimental effects on human health. This may be too much for you to bear but stay strong, this is the defining moment. Look the vegetarian in the eyes, call them a tree hugger and watch your killing blow devastate. Perhaps one of the most tried and true techniques, I have personally seen this move countless times and not once has it failed to bring a tear to my eye. Simple and elegant, it's only a matter of time before the tree hugger falls.

In its death throes, the vegetarian may resort to outlandish and desperate arguments, such as food prices increasing because of the vast amount of produce needed to feed livestock, the higher incidence of E. Coli among non-vegetarians, the human body having the profile of a herbivore, ad nauseum. Through it all, it's important to keep a cool head. Sure, economically, biologically and ethically it may make "sense", especially in these times, to reduce the amount of meat in our diets. Getting more energy for your dollar, being healthier and ethically unambiguous may sound appealing but remember: Nothing is quite as filling to the soul as a four pound burger going into the burger hole. Stay strong friends.