So, while I was busy pissing off Lackhead by clouding the issues with fact, I dug around for further research on vegetarian diets and actual health benefits thereof. I’ve visited the issue before, but always fell back on anthropology as a guideline, rather than modern studies. I like seeing very long term studies and human evolution is cut and dried on the issue: we are omnivores.
The modern debate, however, is like the global warming debate – want an opinion? What’s it worth to you?
This study says vegetarians live longer. This study says there is no difference. This study says that eating red meat causes cancer. This study of the Maasai tribe (almost exclusive carnivores) shows that they have almost no incidence of cancer, heart disease, or supposed meat-eating ailments. This study shows that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. This study shows they have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
I think I’ll stab myself through the heart with a carrot, just to put a little spin on the “meat kills” argument…
Three things stand out in all of this:
- Vegetarians are the ones making justifications for their diet.
- They have to do this, because they are in a minority, roughly 6%. (Vegans make up a paltry minority of 1-2.8%.)
- Vegetarians are pretty much the only ones, outside of fad weight loss mannequins, who are proselytizing their diet to others.
I’ve been told that the consensus of global warming makes the anthropogenic global warming argument valid over those who disbelieve the consensus. With 94% of the country as active omnivores, I guess that makes the omnivore diet consensus correct as well?
I personally don’t care about the issue until the proselytizing starts. Why I seem to be a target of this, I don’t know. Maybe its my damn charming personality and general goodwill toward man. (Note: that was sarcasm, for those who can’t recognize such things. Ergo, I’m pretty much the opposite.) Aside from Lackhead’s cool and mostly unpretentious broach of the subject, just about every other grazer who’s opened their mouth on the issue to me (and I’ve met quite a few,) has done so in the same kind of self-righteous religious fervor that you get with a Jehovah’s Witness on their first house call.
“How can you eat that? Don’t you know that meat is murder?” “That is so bad for you!” “Do you have any idea how much food is wasted on the cow you’re eating?” “How can you eat a corpse?” “You shouldn’t feed a dog meat, it’s bad for their health.” (That last one was straight from my brother’s mouth, an avid Vegan.)
I’ll answer these probes in kind: Meat isn’t murder, it’s animal tissue. “Bad for you” is still being debated and anthropology doesn’t agree with you. The cow eats grass and hay that I can’t, often on land we can’t grow food crops on. Corpses don’t bother me, I’ll eat you if I have to. Dogs are omnivores, not a cud chewing bovine.
A friend of mine once made the statement that if more people had to prepare their own food, from start to finish, there would be a lot more vegetarians. Coming from an animal loving omnivore, that statement had a lot of weight to it.
Perhaps it is the fact that I’ve helped butcher chickens and pigs on a farm, dressed deer, killed and dressed rabbit, squirrel and various game birds, eaten insects, grubs and mealworms and thought nothing bad of any of it – that my perspective is a little different that the typical grocery store consumer, who’s never even seen a live cow. I never took pleasure in killing, but conversely saw to it that the kill was quick and painless. I hunted for food, not trophies – and went for kill shots, as all good hunters do. From these experiences, I never saw the killing of animals as being an inhumane thing. It was certainly more humane than the typical fate of prey animals, most are eaten alive. Just ask Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who’s death throws of a bear attack caught on audio were cut off, only because the tape ran out after six minutes. Nature is a bitch!
I don’t like modern industrial farming methods on animals. Much of it is just plain wrong, no matter what your diet is. I can’t trust “free range” food to be honest either, as there are no regulations as to what constitutes the labeling. My eventual goal is to have my own farm, raising animals and growing plants for my personal consumption, of which I’ll be certain of everything that went into the production of my food, but that’s a ways off in the future for me, as it stands. Even this farm doesn’t meet my true desire, but that desire can no longer be practical. Call me old fashioned, but give me that hunter-gatherer society any day!
It seems that our food problems are the same as our fuel problems, pollution problems and just about everything else. We have too many people on Earth. We could resolve that problem by simply deciding to replace just one of each couple, until the population becomes manageable. We have a hard time agreeing not to fight over imaginary gods, let alone practical issues, so my hope isn’t high on this one.
More likely, nature will resolve the problem for us. Like I said, she’s a bitch.
