Animal meat is delicious. Thousands of hours of cooking and food related programs demonstrate this. Yet a recent CBC article says 7.1% of Canadians are identify as vegetarian and 2.3% as vegans with 16% of the countries non-meat eaters live in BC. There’s a lot of arguments against eating meat that are hard to rebuke too. But meat is ingrained in our cultures and a food source many people cannot ignore so how do we stop consuming it?
The answer is we don’t. In an article for the website Grist author Nathaniel Johnson spoke with famed animal welfare expert Temple Grandin who argues that farming meat gives animals a life worth living and that reducing animal suffering should be the goal of farmers. Johnson also argues that a poor little girl in India may have an easier time eating an egg than getting enough form vegetables. The ability to live off plants alone depends on where you live. We can’t defend taking food from poor people living in secluded areas such as the Inuit. Yes technology can bring vegetables to them but at a great cost. Until more tech driven, non-traditional farming methods can produce a proper amount of food in these poor or remote areas, the Inuit must, morally, be allowed to eat seal and caribou meat.
Besides meat made the Inuit, and all humanity into to who we are today. If it not for our consumption of meat over the last 2 million years or so, we wouldn’t be capable of making arguments about the ethics of eating meat much less talk. rational. Recent findings by archaeologists reported in articles on TIME, Nature, and Live Science show eating meat was key in our evolution as homo sapiens. Eating plants is easy but you need to eat a lot of berries and fruits for proper nutrition, and root vegetables require a lot of chewing. While hunting required a
lot of work, the return on investment led to a great source of food energy that required less
chewing and built muscle and grey matter. In fact, our whole reason to use tools revealed around gathering and processing food. The popular vegan argument is that we were evolved from plant eaters but the scientific evidence and continued findings of evolutionary biologists, archaeologists and nutritionists show that is not true.
That hasn’t stop vegetarians and vegans from trying to claim the high ground morally. Ex-vegan Rhys Southan has a long deconstruction of many of these moral arguments and is worth a read
time. But the idea many argue that eating plants is better because plants don’t suffer. However, new evidence shows plants not only feel pain but think and act. “Plants fight for territory, seek out food, evade predators and trap prey. They are as alive as any animal, and – like animals – they exhibit behaviour.” - according to Professor Jack Shultz in an article published by the BBC.
If this is the case, then vegans are eating plants alive!
While the move to get away from factory farming and eat an diet rich in plants is commendable and undoubtedly good for the environment and one’s health, eating meat is ok and here to stay for some time. Even if the advances in meat alternatives becomes very affordable and widely available, the need for food world wide grows and we won’t get enough from plants alone. Also, meat on the bbq is the tastiest thing. Ever.
Gabbatiss, J. (2017, January 10). Earth - Plants can see, hear and smell – and respond. Retrieved March 15, 2018, from http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170109-plants-can-see-hear-and-smell- and-respond
Ghose, T. (2013, May 13). Earliest Evidence of Human Hunting Found. Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://www.livescience.com/31974-earliest-human-hunters-found.html
Johnson, N. (2015, July 22). Is there a moral case for meat? Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://grist.org/food/is-there-a-moral-case-for-meat/
Kluger, J. (2016, March 09). Sorry Vegans: Here's How Meat-Eating Made Us Human. Retrieved March 16, 2018, from http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/
Southan, R. (2011, April 09). How Animals Eating Each Other Royally Screws Veganism. Retrieved March 16, 2018, from http://letthemeatmeat.com/post/4473227395/how-animals- eating-each-other-royally-screws
Thomson, A. (2018, March 14). More than half of Canada's vegetarians and vegans under 35 years of age, survey finds. Retrieved March 19, 2018, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ british-columbia/vegan-vegetarian-survey-1.4576402
Zink, K. D., & Lieberman, D. E. (2016, March 09). Impact of meat and Lower Palaeolithic food processing techniques on chewing in humans. Retrieved March 15, 2018, from https://
This is a great look into the ongoing and ever present issue of to eat meat or not. My ideal diet would be having a mostly vegetarian diet with a mix in of fish or chicken. I have personally tried to go vegetarian before, but as a growing 18 year old male, I had problems actually getting enough food to fill up. I enjoyed your point of how where you live geographically has a huge impact on if you can realistically get away with eating vegetarian or not.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who eats meat only on occasion, your article highlights important points in favor of keeping meat in our diets. I agree that moving to a herbivorous diet for humans does not make sense, and your arguments outline fair and in depth reasons why. For those who are concerned about eating animals, but still enjoy meat, I think that it is important to consume ethically, which leads to the whole 'balanced diet' argument overall. Interesting read!!
ReplyDeleteI love seeing an article that is from this perspective - because there is so much exposure on vegan and vegetarian diets nowadays. I appreciate how you brought in examples that Johnson brought forward, such as the girl in India eating an egg rather than vegetables, and the Inuit topic. I think this is an important debate to make, but I do believe that buying meat from ethical and safe places is super important too. Plants are living, too! Save the plants!
ReplyDeletePatrick, your opinion piece is speaking my love language! Growing up in a Filipino family consisted of eating meat in every meal of the day. I love eating meat and I find that many people in this day and age are turning against it. It is absolutely engrained in our culture. I grew up appreciating food containing meat and bringing my family together.
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