In regards to eating meat

[Monica]

I found something from Q'UO that might be of the interest here. It talks about vegetable, nuts, grains, secondary animal products like milk and cheese being virtuous. They seem to suggest eating meat but with caution and in minimum quantities. And no chemical additives recommended.

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and so forth, the preserved animal
muscle itself, to be utilized upon one’s own
discretion

I disagree that this quote backs up the eating of meat at all. Neither does it back up being vegetarian.

1. We need to remember that this is a transcription. A human listened to the recording and interpreted it, and made a decision about punctuation. If you were to replace the comma after and so forth with a period, the meaning of the passage is changed considerably. Even ignoring punctuation, just look at the choice of words. Why was meat not included in the list, along with the vegetarian foods? Why were the words and so forth, which usually indicate the end of a list, inserted at the end of the vegetarian foods, rather than at the very end of the list itself? With the words and so forth preceding the words preserved animal muscle itself indicates to me that the and so forth closes the list of acceptable foods, and meat is listed after the list of acceptable foods, with a CAUTION, to be used WITH ONE'S OWN DISCRETION.

2. Why were the vegetarian foods listed without any cautions, but the meat listed with a caution? It wasn't because of the chemicals in meat, because chemicals are found in produce as well. It's clear that chemicals are to be avoided. But why didn't Q'uo include meat in the list of acceptable foods? Why was meat separated? On the other hand, why didn't Q'uo just state unequivocally that meat shouldn't be eaten at all? Because that's not Q'uo's style. Q'uo typically doesn't give us concrete rules to follow. Q'uo typically encourages us to use our own discretion.

Therefore I don't think this quote can be used to back up either side of the debate. The only thing that's clear from this quote is that there is something about the eating of meat that requires discretion. Why would that be?