As noble as the aim to avoid opioids is, it is pretty difficult to accomplish. Everything from sex to food, to exercise to behavioral idiosyncrasies predisposes one to opioids and their effects. Heroine is the ultimate opioid but many consider it less addictive than tobacco. Chocolate is also in that family... possibly also quite addictive.
opioids.com
As far as quality of life, it is probably more important to be happy, for whatever reason. I think eating happy animals is probably safer than eating frightened animals because I think cortisols are cumulative, and eating an animal who is scared or angry is like being scared or angry yourself. Eating plants provides a lot of health benefits, but quite honestly, I don't think celery likes to die any more than a chicken. With the right equipment, you can measure the response - and it isn't good. Much like when you rip them from the root. Cellular rejection of being eaten is traceable from the first primordial plant that was devoured by the first primordial animal. Even before, probably.
My own periodic and general preference for a vegetarian entree is not spurred on by moral grounds (though that's part of it) but largely from the size of the impact to the environment. Eating lots of meat, whatever the source, is environmentally expensive and vegetarian substitutes represent a much smaller energy and environmental impact. Good luck to you... being vegan is very difficult to do. I've tried (3 years when in my 20's - nothing but beans, rice and mushrooms with vegetables and fruit). I feel that as a male, there are significant problems with soy-isoflavones but maybe they are better than the estrogenic simulants in everything from new car smell to the linings of tin cans. There is some theoretical arguments to be made that soy isoflavones (or others) can block the receptor for these agents. |
