Below are the basic rules:
This is a very specific contest. Don’t tell us why you like meat, why organic trumps local or why your food is yours to choose. Just tell us why it’s ethical to eat meat.
Below is what I plan to submit:
If anybody sees any glaring errors before April 7th, (tomorrow I know not much time - I'm planning on submitting this April 8th - the last day for submissions) please let me know.
The Omnivore's Banquet
Only in a country that is dominated by the food industry, would this question be asked. This would never have been an issue in my grandmother’s day. Our current culture has created a moral climate in which killing animals for food can be considered intrinsically unethical. There are many other cultures who do not hold this to be true. A recent story on NPR about a man in China who, starting as a young child, has killed dogs his whole life for food. He sees nothing wrong with this practice. My logical mind understands this; my emotional mind feels that this is completely unethical. I mean, just look at their sweet little doggy faces how could anybody eat them? The story was prompted because other Chinese people are trying to rescue these dogs. We can see that this culture is in the process of shifting its ethical beliefs toward using dogs for food.Applying ethics to a source of food which was selected by the evolutionary process causes a moral dilemma that is dichotomous to known facts about what nutrients our bodies require for optimum health. Nature is supremely unconcerned with ethics and morals. Studies are currently emerging which show conclusively our bodies require certain nutrients that can only be obtained naturally and easily from animal sources. The science of metabolism shows there are many essential amino & fatty acids which our bodies require for health that just cannot be consumed through plant matter alone. Given the amount and types of these amino acids which are found at "super food" levels in fish, animal meat and offal, it stands to reason that trying to obtain these same nutrients through vegetation combining and dietary supplements is, for most, an effort in futility.
“Our Paleolithic ancestors consumed more meat and fat than modern people. They also ate a much wider range of food” (The Protein Power Lifeplan page 133). For our first 2 - 3 million years of evolution the primary food our bodies utilized were from animal sources. Coupled with what we have found through archeology, it can be reasonably ascertained that our bodies require fat and proteins from animal sources for optimal health. We can show that, not only did the advent of agriculture enable the human race to over populate this planet, our overall health and skeletal structure has been declining. Before agriculture our numbers were kept in check by the availability natural food sources and our health was not compromised by foods our species were never designed to eat.
If one accepts that the "perfect human diet", for optimum health, is one which closely resembles the diet on which we evolved, the ethical question then becomes: Is it "ethical" to lead people to believe that eating food made from vegetable matter alone is a “healthy diet”? While, in fact, it is quite common for a person who has decided to stop eating meat to suffer from deficiencies in zinc, calcium, Vitamin D, Iron, Vitamin B-12, and protein.
Eating animals is part of our genetic history such that we need to maintain this practice for good health. The true ethical problem is the practice of convincing people that by not eating meat they can be just as healthy or even better nourished. Generally, I'm not willing to engage in a conversation which is driven by subjective ideology rather than scientific inquiry; with regard to human health, it is clear the “right conduct” is to consume the types of foods that are dictated by nature; foods our bodies require to preserve and maintain optimal health.
