[hasugopher]

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Why doesn't this kinda joke ever get old to you guys?

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This implies that this situation frequently comes up in my life, which is not correct.

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This certainly doesn't bother me in the slightest. It seems a lot of the meat eaters, when confronted with the ethical/health/environmental impacts of the food decisions they make every day, get defensive and think that 'our' side would prefer they feel guilt and not get pleasure from eating meat and other animal products.

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the ethics of eating meat/animal products don't affect me in the slightest, and an ideal healthy lifestyle would actually include a significant amount of meat and animal products (e.g. chicken breasts, lean steak, not the bbq ribs that I just ate [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]).

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I never guilt my friends or bring this stuff up when I go to dinner with people, unless they ask me about why I'm mostly vegan (I eat fish every once in a while)

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This is a good thing.

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Don't you guys ever think ahead to the future and worry that just maybe the choices and habits you form early in life will catch up with you? Don't you guys worry about heart disease and clogged arteries? Like I tell a lot of my meat eating poker playing friends when they prompt me, you can do yourself a lot of good by just decreasing the amount of animal products you eat and increasing the amount of unprocessed plant food. I have little interest in trying to convert people to become vegan (a choice that takes a long time, a lot of work and committment if you've eaten the typical american diet all your life) but I do care about my friends and family and want them to live long, relatively disease free lives. Obviously same applies to getting excercise and enough sleep to stay healthy.

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I'll readily admit that I'm for from perfect, but in fairness, I am much healthier then most and I am in great shape. Despite what anybody will tell you, as a vegan it is incredibly hard to get everything in your body that you need. It is a lifestyle in itself just to do a sufficient job. And if you're an athlete or care about your physique, the lack of quality protein (and having to obsessively cycle what you're eating to get a full spectrum of poor quality amino acids), you are holding yourself back in a big way.