That was well put forth and true in many ways.
thank you and I'll respond in kind by agreeing that you pose a well reasoned and valid argument, initially I typed out a massive reply but I realised that the majority of it was not countering/commenting on your points but merely serving my own agenda, I don't wish to be tarred as a 'preacher', I'm merely expressing my own opinion so i've rewritten it so as to directly answer pieces of your post.
However, the unpalatable truth, for someone of your viewpoint, is that the very progression of mankind has been fueled by meat - we simply would not have evolved at all without it.
true, we would have struggled during times of hardship to subsist singularly on plant matter, it was a great benefit for us to be able to develop ways of hunting however hunting is terribly inefficient with a body build like ours. We are designed to travel large distances grazing on edible plant matter, not chase down prey, this is why we subsist/ed primarily on the larger, slower animals which would have had no natural predator (save in extreme circumstances) when we needed to eat meat.
Firstly as a hunter gatherer, then as a farmer, nothing fueled human development more than the consumption of meat.
I'd counter that by saying that plants were farmed before animals, if you can grow your food in a single place and thus reduce the time spent foraging for it you have more time to develop the social aspects of our kind that we take for granted today, naturally our ancestors extended this to meat as well as by then this would have become ingrained in our culture (the eating of meat) and as we were far more primitive then we would not have been able to reason that meat is almost entirely unnecessary for us to prosper.
Our very core of existence and evolution was determined by eating meat, and not just the eating but the hunting - the cooking. I'd suggest that eating of meat was as integral in the widespread use of both fire and weaponry - the two things from which all humankind as we know it were derived - as any other factor.
agreed however we'd have been just as likely to develop tools for the splitting of hard shelled nuts, can't argue about the fire though, it makes the digestion of meat in our stomachs less of a danger.
How about man's first clothes? Could man have developed enough to create fabrics without first having used the convenience of animal skins as clothing? How about the bones used for tools? Or the sinew used for bows, which enabled men to become even better hunters?
agreed, this is why I still use some animal by-products such as leather because I can't afford high quality long lasting alternatives (although as mentioned I will always try to source with integrity)
The high calorific content derived from meat alone meant it was absolutely vital in our development, a foodstuff that could be salted and kept for months on end whilst vegetables rotted away.
A foodstuff that could be kept fresh (IE: alive) till needed, and not reliant on seasonal crops, what's more stock that will happily eat and thrive on inedible foodstuffs to humans, such as hay.
a particularly good point but one which is irrelevant and has been for many years, we can store non-meat foods very efficiently and grow it all year round for less effort than feeding, housing and storing animals in their various forms. in fact the high fat present in meat is probably one of the largest significant contributors to most of the western worlds obesity problems, we as a culture have a bad relationship with meat, it's not become something we eat when plants become scarce but something we serve our plants with, a dangerous imbalance which is biting us on the bum now that we have a more sedentary lifestyle.
Whether you like it or not, the act of eating meat is as natural to man as breathing or sleeping and what's more we simply would not exist in the same advanced state as we do without it.
I have no problem with people choosing to eat meat, far from it however whilst it has become part of our culture we still have not evolved in such a way that eating meat is remotely efficient or necessary. our digestive system is not designed to eat meat, we store our food for too long inside us which causes problems as meat takes us longer to digest and begins to rot and putrefy in the stomach causing all sorts of intestinal problems. our jaw is designed so that our teeth crush and chew rather than slice and tear, this is so we can begin the digestion of food in our mouths unlike natural predators.
Without our ancestors eating meat, we wouldn't be typing opinions at a computer - they wouldn't exist. Humans as vegetarians would have likely evolved to be hairy grazers like a tree sloth, but luckily we didn't. We evolved to be more like lions and tigers, majestic in many ways but stone cold killers who eat other animals to live.
it's unknown what would have happened, however meat was much less staple a part of our ancestors diet than it has become, it's was something that was sustainable and useful, it's become a drain on the planets resources, expensive, inefficient and unnecessary contributing to a swath of health problems which plague modern society, the underlying ramifications of our unfounded modern reliance on meat are much further reaching than most would realise.
would the world be a better place if we had remained as hairy sloths? arguably we would say no, we wouldn't be here and that's unthinkable as our scientific advances over the animal kingdom are quite remarkable, however if we weren't here to enjoy them they'd be meaningless wouldn't they?
However, I do agree that the over farming of meat is now causing a lot of problems, and we have in many ways outgrown our natural balance with meat as a foodstuff, so whilst I eat meat and will continue to do so, I can see that less meat eating overall is the only way forward - there's simply too many people and we need to rely on higher yielding foodstuffs which are usually grains and vegetables, but meat will still always be eaten, just likely in smaller quantities and possibly 'lab grown' substitutes will replace meat as we know it altogether.
I hope so, I wouldn't like to think of my great great grandchildren as having to cobble together a meagre existence because of the destruction my generation caused to the planet because of it's greed.
