Vegetarianism - silly idea or moral obligation?

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As long as they don't try to impede on my eating habits, people can eat whatever the hell they want... except other people, now that's just weird...

 

I actually have no problem with cannalbalisim as long as people aren't being bred for food. Hard to explain but there are situations where I would view it as acceptable, but those are mostly life-death situations.

 

I'm not a vegetarian. I was eating my own skin when I was a child. I guess I had very delicious "meat".

 

I eat meat and consider it an integral part of my diet. I am a hunter and will only kill what I will eat. My friends and I have a funny phrase we say to kid each other but it's not taken seriously:
"Vegetarian: Old Indian word for bad hunter."

I truly believe that if others choose to be vegetarians, good on them. I choose to eat meat because I like it.

 

Damn, you are one weird person, Dengo...

 

That's one of my favorite bumper-stickers

 

I eat meat, too. Vegetarianism may be healthy, at least if done in moderation, but I don't see it as a moral obligation. Everyone eats and is eaten, in time, and I won't begrudge my transient shell to whatever bacteria/insects/etc want to make use of it - provided that it's AFTER I'm done with it, that is.

 

Before I begin I would just like to say that I don't think there's anything wrong with being a vegetarian. I don't think there is anything wrong with eating meat either (I mean I still do since I live at home and get cooked meals, so hey I'm not complaining. ).
However what other people choose to eat is their own decision and I have no intention of influencing their choice, I only wish to express my own opinion.

I personally think that humans are/were not really supposed to eat meat. If you think about it most carnivores eat their prey raw right? The only meat consumed raw by humans (that I can think of right now) is sashimi. Most of the meat we consume is cooked to some degree and most likely flavoured to make it taste better because the original taste of the meat is not appealing. Whereas fruits and vegetables can be eaten raw and do not really require additives in order for us to eat them (though of course there are those who hate the particular taste of some veggies i.e spinach). Plus humans can survive without meat and still gain the vitamins etc. that they need from other sources such as nuts (which I believe someone previously mentioned). However (and I'm not exactly 100% sure here so feel free to correct me) if you live solely on a diet of meat you can get diseases such as scurvy (though of course one could argue that you could just take vitamin supplements).

I think it would be better for people to be vegetarians because it takes more land to grow food for livestock etc. to eat than it does to grow crops for humans to consume. If more people gave up eating meat then much less people would go hungry and we wouldn't need to resort to producing genetically modified animals and crops to increase yield to 'support the growing population'.

However, again, I'm not pressuring anyone to change their diet.

 

I'm supporting the 'aquatic ape' hypothesis. If it's correct, then the main protein sources for humans should be seafood (and nuts).

The only human culture that is almost solely carnivorous get their meat from...dun dun dun...the sea! Although it's not only fish, it makes you wonder doesn't it.

Seafood is an abundant source of fatty acids that human brains require. Seafood is a lot more easier to harvest than go hunting in the savannas with wooden spears.

Every major culture in the history of the mankind has been near riverbanks, near the ocean, and near rivermouths. Not to mention about those archaeological seashell mounds.

This is just saying that if you're going to base eating meat with nature, natural sciences haven't come to a clear-cut conclusion what human nature has been in the course of our early history. So it's a bit iffy to appeal to us being omnivorous and jump to eating dogs or something after that.

 

You're wrong and you've touched upon a significant aspect of the human diet and what's wrong with the modern human diet.

Humans have been around for at least 100,000 years and perhaps as long as 1,000,000 years. Our pre-human ancestors were around for 7,000,000 years.

We started on this path when a monkey climbed down from a tree and started eating furry little critters he saw running around on the plains of Africa. Why'd he do this? Because the climate was changing and the thick jungles of Africa were becoming grassy plains. No trees, no fruit to eat and we had to eat something. A diet higher in meat and fat helped our brains to grow bigger, making us better hunters. It doesn't take much guile to sneak up on an apple. Hunting in packs also helped us develop language, teamwork and community.

Humans figured out how to start fires 30,000-50,000 years ago, though no one's entirely certain.

The point is, humans for the vast majority of our existence at raw meat and drank water out of streams, rivers, lakes and mud puddles. If you tried this today you'd probably get quite sick. So why didn't our ancestors get sick from doing it? If they had we'd probably be extinct by now.

The reason our ancestors could do it is the same reason wild animals today can do it: a healthy diet (i.e. a diet high fat, protein and raw fruits and vegetables) gives you a strong immune system, making you capable of eating raw meat and dirty water. The modern diet, high in refined carbs and lots of other junk, weakens your immune system. So if I dropped you into a jungle and said "survive!" you'd probably get quite sick within days due to your weakened immune system not being able to handle the stuff your ancestors could for the last 300,000 years.

 

Bah humbug, Sir Fink. With all due respect.

Humans in the savannas? Not bloody likely. Great hunters? Nope, maybe good enough, but hunting has never put the food in the table as well as gathering.

There is more evidence supporting the aquatic ape hypothesis than the great hunter of the savannas. But yes, humans are omnivores, it's just that seafood is a better source for the fatty acids that humans need than other types if meat, and nuts are a better source for proteins than meat in general.

As to the evolution of language, hunting is not an evolutionary requirement for the development of language. But this discussion belongs in another thread alltogether...

And a funny thing in these discussions about human evolution and diet is that hardly anybody says anything about eating insects. Invertebrates in general belong to the steady diet of the people of the third world countries, all sorts of bugs and crawlers are being consumed by the tonnes, yet when talking about human diet in the course of history, this part is left out almost completely. Funny that.

 

I like steaks. And ham and bacon, and chicken, and pork, mutton and lamb and fish They're all good for me

 

I was led to believe that it wasn't the diet that helped grow the apes brain, but their stance. When the trees started to die out, the apes were forced to live on the ground. But since the grass was high, they had to stand on their feet to see on top of it (maily to see if any predators were hiding). Since they're standing, a different part of the brain is submerged in the brain fluid. I was told that was the reason humans became so intelligent. Any body hear that too?

 

You've just made that up, Triactus. Admit it!

Meat is good. If what I put in my mouth tastes good and doesn't hurt me, I don't really give a rats poo poo where it came from. I'll eat anything provided it tastes nice.

 

My thinking is that the increasing of the size of the brains of humans was a self-propagating phenomenon---the smart killed the stupid that nature hadn't already deselected.

*LNT sharpens his spear and looks for believers of magic*

 

Well as long as eating meat doesn't hurt anybody

...but that's just the thing. I believe that consuming meat by humans is harmful to humans in the long run, because it's not a very efficient use of resources. The question what I ask at this point many times is that why should I give a damn about future generations, or the people of the third world countries and I don't really know. Compassion? Which is the answer to most of the animal rights people as to why we shouldn't eat meat at all.

Now what I'd like to know is that if compassion is the reason why we shouldn't eat meat, then is it reason enough? What value does compassion have? One of those things that make us humans? I'd like to believe so, and science seems to point that way. I fancy a notion that empathy and compassion couldn't be possible without mirror neurons without which learning, and thus being human, would be impossible. Is there any reason not to be compassionate towards other living beings whose joy, fear, suffering and all other emotions we can recognize? Isn't it tragical that we are killing sentient beings with which we can communicate? And for what? To satiate our hedonistic needs?

You would probably say "live and let die" or somesuch, "boo-hoo" and I couldn't really argue with you. Should anyone's or anything's suffering be of any great improtance in this world that is threatened by impending doom of weather patterns gone haywire, nuclear threat, and whatever disaster of a biblical scale you can imagine. Who really gives a damn? But I think that if suffering's a non-issue for you then you really shouldn't, and you probably even aren't really concerned about justice, righteousness, or any other human virtue either. Then again, that might be just as well.

 

I eat meat for the taste. Is it selfish? Yes. Is it morally wrong? Depends on your point of view. And is it unhealthy? As part of a balanced diet, just the opposite. I can understand the view of vegetarians, who may be morally against eating meat, see it as unhealthy, or just plain don't like it. However, what about vegans? Is it even possible to call yourself a true vegan without being labelled as a complete hypocrite? For a comedic example of my thoughts, read an annotated Dilbert comic that I came across a while back:

Mike the Vegan: "I'm a vegan. I use no animal products whatsoever."

Dilbert: "The clothes you are wearing were stitched together using sewing machines, which used coal and oil as fuel. And those came from dead dinosaurs."

Mike the Vegan (now naked): "I really need to draw the line somewhere..."

On a related note, how on Earth are eggs and fish deemed "ready to eat," by some vegetarians, who then shun a juicy steak? What separates one animal product from the other, and why are fish not labelled as meat?

 

You do indeed need to draw the line somewhere. Heck, even washing your hands or brushing your teeth kills countless little bacteria. Every time you do so you sense

"...a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced…"

 

It's the cuteness factor that draws the line. Animals to which we can relate at some level are cuter and some people feel the need to do something about their possible suffering. Bacteria? Not so cute.

The cuteness factor is why you haven't heard about rallies or demonstrations for the rights of fishes, but you do hear a lot about dolphins suffering. Not many people give a damn about frogs having hard times these days, but when a cute fuzzywuzzy polar bear is near extinction, there's at least a small twinge many people's hearts.

This however is not being overly emotional, but may even had considerable evolutional advantage. Humans are animals who have more relationships with other animal species than any other single animal, and the reason for this isn't only that we've populated the entire planet. Our ability to relate to other animals and read their emotions has helped probably been pivotal for animal husbandry to arise. Other animals are empathic towards each others as well, but perhaps not as well developed as we humans have it.

It is true that without animal husbandry it wouldn't have been possible for humans to colonize the entire planet. But I'm not so sure about the eating of other land-dwelling warm-blooded animals as a requirement for the supremacy of man, as the current paradigm with human evolution goes. The ability to read each other's and other animals minds from their expressions, to have an idea what they feel and act according to that idea; empathy made us the way we are today. Ironically I think that empathy was also needed to organize a hunt and hunt more efficiently.

 

Think of the complexity of the most simple social exchange. Now compare that to the complexity of a college level physics problem.

Our brains evolved to understand one another, not 'logic'. Hence, we see human faces and emotions where they do not exist.