Quote:
Originally Posted by aberkok
Well despite my fiery rhetoric, I am down with anyone who is trying to reduce - it's not quite an all or nothing proposal from my point of view, but this word "natural" you keep using...
As humans, we have the power to decide what is natural. It's a construct. How is it natural to love our pets and in the same day opt into a diet which kills other animals we don't know personally? How is it natural to decide we want to grow edible plants in order to feed something else that we then eat?
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As individuals yes. There's a difference between the will of the individual and the will of the entire global population. I don't see individuals being vegan as proof that the entire global population could be vegan.
---------- Post added at 02:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:46 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by snowy
Yes, let's eat less meat. Veganism is not something I could do. I'm not a fan of extremes. However, I do try to eat less meat for both health and environmental reasons (as well as practical ones).
I figure all of the people who keep harping on their need for meat will (eventually) do me (and the planet) the favor of removing themselves from the planet at some point, given that cardiovascular disease kills someone in the United States every 38 seconds (from data taken in 2006, according to the American Heart Association).
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That will happen to some extent, but it'll be balanced out by the less intelligent vegans who don't realize the importance of watching their nutritional intake. Which fits well with my entire point: The greatest success will be found in the middle ground. Eat meat, but much less of it.
Actually, this is no different than any other discussion of diets. Diets don't generally work in the long term when they're based on restricting food. Diets based on moderation, however, are much more successful. Eat (almost) all the same things you enjoy now, but change the frequency and portion. We need to take the same approach with meat, not proclamations that the world should be vegan.
Oh, and finally, since natural selection was brought up, the things that we think are most beneficial are not necessarily what nature will see as beneficial. It could be argued, for example, that higher intelligence is slowly being rejected by nature as less intelligent people procreate far more. The fact that
so many people have a hostile attitude toward vegetarianism (I don't, but I don't think restrictive extremes are the way to go) demonstrates that we do have a certain innate interest in eating meat, even if we don't need to eat
nearly as much as we currently do.