My (Barely, and only when double-spaced) Five Page, Mediocre (In my eyes) Opinion Paper on things. Enjoy for whatever reason. Also, I have the sauce on some of the things I state, just not on this computer.
For Meat, Against Grains; Simple Calls of Nature
The three claims I found as being the major ones for becoming a vegetarian are as follows: For your health, for compassion for animals, and for the environment. All of these are wrong, and I’ll tell you why.
“The truth is also that life isn’t possible without death, that no matter what you eat, someone has to die to feed you.” –The Vegetarian Myth
Life for anything with a brain is simply not possible without death. (Other) Animals of course have no qualms with life as such, those that eat grass, are eaten by those that eat meat, and in turn meat-eaters are eaten by other meat eaters and all living things are devoured by fungi and bacteria after they die.
Life for us was, and is not different from this simple law. Meat and diets rich in juicy fats were very much necessary for the development of our brains and the continuance of our lives at their best. We still need a significant amount of protein to survive at optimal health, and this has never changed, yet in recent years vegetarians have began lobbying against the very thing that is responsible for our level of comfort and thus their ability to even decry it without dying from lack of protein.
Today we know how to survive without meat, but can we THRIVE without it? I say no, meat is the easiest and simplest way to get large amounts of protein without also having to eat about 3 times as much fat or carbohydrates to get it. Then you have protein absorption rates, how much protein that’s in a food that your body will actually absorb and use, which put simply, only helps the argument for meat, as non-animal sources simply pale in comparison to animal sources.
Of course, I’m applying all of this to the needs of an athlete, or at the least a physically active person, which I feel it is almost universally felt that that is what we should be for optimal health. So eating meat (for someone aspiring to the pinnacles of health) is the simplest, most convenient, and very much so the tastiest path to take.
“-the political vegetarians offered a compelling salve. With no understanding of the nature of agriculture, the nature of nature, or ultimately the nature of life I had no way to know that however honorable their impulses, their prescription was a dead end into the same destruction I burned to stop.” –The Vegetarian Myth
Herbivores; the archetypical prey of the animal world, would without predators, overpopulate and cull virtually to extinction their food sources, thus ensuring their own demise in turn. Likewise, carnivores and omnivores need to have prey; else wise they will starve and die. The circle of life is indeed a circle and indeed needs all parts to form the same functioning dynamic that makes life as we know it possible.
Animals are perhaps unaware of death, but they do know fear and panic; the desire to escape from pain or danger is inherent in virtually every animal. But death is the price we pay to live, is necessary to maintain our world, and as such, killing to survive, to live, is not a crime, nor is it brutal and unnecessary. (The tactics widely used in factory-farming today very much are, but I’ll cover that later.)
Lions will kill and eat a gazelle without a qualm, so why should humans be different in morals and reasons? To kill to survive is simply life, and meat helps establish for the best quality of life. Should we apologize for existing, should we be contrite for our natures, should we apologize and try to eliminate a core part of us simply because we feel bad about it? It makes no sense.
“In the space of only 400 generations (an eye-blink on the evolutionary scale) our eating patterns have changed out of all recognition! Yet our bodies are still the same as they were when our ancestors were tropical creatures browsing the savannahs of East Africa” –Deadly Harvest
The domestication of animals and plants at the advent of agriculture, the birth of civilization, and our subsequent domination of the world… This all has happened in but 10,000 years. A blip of time where we’ve gone from living like animals, to living like gods, but our needs are the same as they were way back when. The same applies to the animals we raise for food. Factory-farmed animals are fed on mostly grains when they evolved to eat grass and other forage, and in the case of pigs and chickens, anything else they could find in nature, including insects, mice, and even lizards.
This is detrimental to them in so many ways. Imagine eating a gruel that by itself is nutritionally lack-luster and pathetic, needing to be supplemented heavily in order to be fit for long-term consumption. Also imagine that this gruel was chosen only because of its ability to make you fatter faster than any other thing you could be fed and ONLY ever eating this gruel, and you’ll realize the state of affairs of factory farming.
Not only is grain/corn-feeding a poor catchall, it is detrimental to their health, and one would need to look no further than common sense to realize that by taking them off of their natural diets which they’ve evolved to eat and to thrive off of, and putting them on one that is so unvaried, so poorly planned, and used only to fatten them up would be a dumb move for all involved.
For the evidence of this, look at the amount of Omega 3’s in grass-fed cattle compared to grain-fed cattle. Grass-fed cattle boast massively increased amounts of Omega-3’s, less methane emissions, and better overall health when compared to Grain-fed cattle. When humans have adequate amounts of Omega-3’s their risks for heart disease and general other pains and risk factors plummet.
Let’s make a serious point about the methane emissions though. You’ll remember the reasons I listed as said for becoming a vegetarian; the last was about helping the environment. Well there are two things to point out here.
The first is that all estimates I’ve found on the amount of food that is used to feed slaughter animals that could go to feed humans, citing that almost 5 pounds of grain go to making 1 pound of beef. That sounds like a waste, no? Well, until you realize that they don’t naturally eat grains, that if they ate what they are made to eat, there would be no potential human food supply lost, simply for the fact that what they evolved to eat and what we evolved to eat do not coincide. The animals we eat need not take any of our usable resources by any means, making this point moot for vegetarians, and making it seem particularly bad for factory-farmers. The second is that actual decrease in greenhouse-gas emissions from animals (Cows specifically) when grass fed; a significant 18% decrease. Not a straight fix, but another point towards nature and meat.
In conclusion, the reasons given by vegetarians are fallacious and mistaken, as are the practices put forth by the factory-farmers. Neither side is right, and neither side is completely wrong, but the answer lies far removed from even a middle of both of these extremes. We need to remember how we came to our prominence, and what we need to stay here.
-Spencer B.
