jane
Well-Known Member
Crap, this ol' chesnut again. I don't think it's wrong to eat meat. I don't think it's wrong not to, or even to believe it's wrong to eat meat. It's not up to any of us to decide what everyone else should eat.
However, given that the old nature/culture debate comes up here, I can't just not respond. The teeth thing falls apart when you consider fish -- they don't require ripping or tearing, and so, soft fish and sea creatures can be eaten with practically no teeth at all. The first humans were -- allegedly -- scavengers. They ate the crap that beasts of prey left behind, and even continued to do so after they started hunting. Also, plant foods also result in tooth wear, as would the use of teeth as a tool for other purposes (i.e. making non-food items).
The bulk of the human diet would have varied depending on the region of the world the communities inhabited, but it's still not a very strong argument for either side of the debate. People ate what was nutritious and accessible, and, despite our fantasies that early humans were economical and didn't waste food, it wasn't always the case. There's a fair bit of early evidence for food wasting, for overharvesting that exhausted local crops, and also for eating a varied diet that included both animal and plant foods, not just based on economic efficiency. Food does not have only to do with nutrition, but has always had cultural meaning, and cannot only be explained through an understanding of evolutionary biology acquired from the internet and a few books that encourage people to be vegetarian, based on abstractions that do not translate to political and social realities. It doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they over-emphasise the impact of simply being vegetarian.
The thing that separates us from the rest of the animals is a particular form of cognition that has, due to some inexplicable process, resulted in the culture that we have, and in the form of spoken language we use. There is an argument that other animals have 'culture', and I wouldn't discount it, but the same nature/culture debate is often used to support arguments about gender, 'race', and all sorts of other highly problematic subjects -- all cultural constructs, and too complex for biology to explain.
Humans eat what humans eat. Human bodies and animal bodies also don't fully process any food into pure nutrients, which is why we go poo poo and pee pee and sometimes pukey. Even the 'eating meat is part of our culture' argument can't really hold up. It is part of what culture is to change, and we can't pretend that the past justifies the present -- this same argument could be used to say that because slavery is part of our culture, it can't be wrong. The issue is too complex to rely on what people did in the past -- whether they were driven by 'instinct' or by culture -- as justification for doing it in the present.
As for the economic argument, it is somewhat stronger, but, in my view, only as far as you are personally not contributing to the over-use of resources in the production of meat. As Egg pointed out, world hunger is not the result of too few resources, but of political matters, aggravated by economic and climatic ones. A failed harvest in an already poor country will have a much greater effect on the population than in one that has fewer poor people, but not eating meat does not mean more food will be freed up for those who have very little. Theoretically, there is enough food produced annually on the planet for everyone to have something like 2300 calories a day (my memory is sketchy, so I can't remember the exact figure), but not if you consider adequate protein. When you add in protein foods necessary for human nutrition, that figure drops significantly, to a number less than what most of us would eat each day. However, the theoretical figure does not factor in politics. People aren't starving because there isn't enough food, but because of issues of economic access, political horribleness, and -- as I said above -- aggravated by environmental/climate issues. That's not an argument for not doing anything, but for recognising the problem for what it is.
I wouldn't use that argument to pretend that being vegetarian isn't doing anyone any good because that'd be pretty fucking ignorant of me. If people feel that it is against their ethical and moral beliefs, then who am I to say that's wrong? I just don't eat it because I don't like it, and people have all kinds of reasons for doing what they do in relation to the world around them. And anyway, I know lots of meat eaters and vegetarians alike that do a lot of good things, and have a lot of concern for social responsibility, and that, to me, is much more important than whether you like bacon with your breakfast.
PS: I second talkeyshitey's question: can vegans swallow sperm?
However, given that the old nature/culture debate comes up here, I can't just not respond. The teeth thing falls apart when you consider fish -- they don't require ripping or tearing, and so, soft fish and sea creatures can be eaten with practically no teeth at all. The first humans were -- allegedly -- scavengers. They ate the crap that beasts of prey left behind, and even continued to do so after they started hunting. Also, plant foods also result in tooth wear, as would the use of teeth as a tool for other purposes (i.e. making non-food items).
The bulk of the human diet would have varied depending on the region of the world the communities inhabited, but it's still not a very strong argument for either side of the debate. People ate what was nutritious and accessible, and, despite our fantasies that early humans were economical and didn't waste food, it wasn't always the case. There's a fair bit of early evidence for food wasting, for overharvesting that exhausted local crops, and also for eating a varied diet that included both animal and plant foods, not just based on economic efficiency. Food does not have only to do with nutrition, but has always had cultural meaning, and cannot only be explained through an understanding of evolutionary biology acquired from the internet and a few books that encourage people to be vegetarian, based on abstractions that do not translate to political and social realities. It doesn't mean they are wrong, just that they over-emphasise the impact of simply being vegetarian.
The thing that separates us from the rest of the animals is a particular form of cognition that has, due to some inexplicable process, resulted in the culture that we have, and in the form of spoken language we use. There is an argument that other animals have 'culture', and I wouldn't discount it, but the same nature/culture debate is often used to support arguments about gender, 'race', and all sorts of other highly problematic subjects -- all cultural constructs, and too complex for biology to explain.
Humans eat what humans eat. Human bodies and animal bodies also don't fully process any food into pure nutrients, which is why we go poo poo and pee pee and sometimes pukey. Even the 'eating meat is part of our culture' argument can't really hold up. It is part of what culture is to change, and we can't pretend that the past justifies the present -- this same argument could be used to say that because slavery is part of our culture, it can't be wrong. The issue is too complex to rely on what people did in the past -- whether they were driven by 'instinct' or by culture -- as justification for doing it in the present.
As for the economic argument, it is somewhat stronger, but, in my view, only as far as you are personally not contributing to the over-use of resources in the production of meat. As Egg pointed out, world hunger is not the result of too few resources, but of political matters, aggravated by economic and climatic ones. A failed harvest in an already poor country will have a much greater effect on the population than in one that has fewer poor people, but not eating meat does not mean more food will be freed up for those who have very little. Theoretically, there is enough food produced annually on the planet for everyone to have something like 2300 calories a day (my memory is sketchy, so I can't remember the exact figure), but not if you consider adequate protein. When you add in protein foods necessary for human nutrition, that figure drops significantly, to a number less than what most of us would eat each day. However, the theoretical figure does not factor in politics. People aren't starving because there isn't enough food, but because of issues of economic access, political horribleness, and -- as I said above -- aggravated by environmental/climate issues. That's not an argument for not doing anything, but for recognising the problem for what it is.
I wouldn't use that argument to pretend that being vegetarian isn't doing anyone any good because that'd be pretty fucking ignorant of me. If people feel that it is against their ethical and moral beliefs, then who am I to say that's wrong? I just don't eat it because I don't like it, and people have all kinds of reasons for doing what they do in relation to the world around them. And anyway, I know lots of meat eaters and vegetarians alike that do a lot of good things, and have a lot of concern for social responsibility, and that, to me, is much more important than whether you like bacon with your breakfast.
PS: I second talkeyshitey's question: can vegans swallow sperm?