Meat Eating? Barbaric?

I think before the agricultural revolution and the development of intellectualism, ethics and religions like Christianity cannibalism was much more common among humans. Some existing cultures which haven’t developed these things still practice it. And there have been instances where “civilized” people on the edge of starvation have practiced it under extreme circumstances. So it is more a matter of religious shame, culture and an excess availability of food that we don’t consider other humans food.

It is not just meat, people on the edge of starvation have been known to turn to “starvation foods”, plants and animals normally seen unfit to eat, during times when the circumstances are tough.

Meat is healthy for people, arguably it was hunting and consuming animal protein which led to things like bipedalism (for pursuing animals in the savannah) which freed up our hands and enlarged our brains. We learned to speak to each other in order to hunt. So we can attribute many of our evolutionary specializations to the need to acquire meat.

In modern developed society we have reached a level of food security where for many, eating meat is not the only way of surviving. However people who still rely on hunting for survival exist. Whether or not it is ethically okay to eat meat depends on one’s culture, religion, personal beliefs and other sensitivities.

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i disagree with your assessment on cannibalism … due to population boom and the out break of wars on a scale never even fathomed before… i would assume more humans have eaten humans in modern times due to extreme circumstance than ever before thought…

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It is something which has occurred for millions of years.

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Well, yes it is barbaric. Which is totally perfect because we are all barbarians.

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and you win… lol settled… good work Wikipedia knows everything…

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holy crap…can you buy communist propaganda posters from ww2… yes I got the idea from the link…oh and thanks for making my brain force me to read all of it… and click several of the source pages…

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This makes me crave a hot dog on a bun right now. Which is a coincidence because no one knows what they put in those things.

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Just like the argument about licking butts, I can make the argument against cannibalism, in the sense that just because people did it in the past doesn’t make it OK now or even sensible. You either take the “good”(cannibalism) with the bad like not knowing how to even build an outhouse, living in a cave, not brushing your teeth(ever) etc. Either you defend that, or you’re cherry picking where it suits you.

So the fact that people would suffer to make your “food made for humans, by humans, from humans”, has no bearing on whether or not you(or anybody/most people) would eat a human. That sounds awful lot like psychopathy to me.

Again, what people do in extreme circumstances has no bearing on what is sensible and right for us who are not in extreme circumstances. I never made the argument that humans haven’t eaten or don’t eat humans ever.

Meat is healthy for people, arguably it was hunting and consuming animal protein which led to things like bipedalism (for pursuing animals in the savannah) which freed up our hands and enlarged our brains. We learned to speak to each other in order to hunt. So we can attribute many of our evolutionary specializations to the need to acquire meat.

Meat, especially the meat made in factory farms(full of antibiotics and way more fat(sometimes 10x the fat of a wild animal)) is not healthy. Our brains are not that big and it’s not the size of the brain that makes one intelligent, otherwise Elephants would be more intelligent than us, there are animals with bigger brains to body mass ratio than us.

And again, even if it is true that eating meat made some adaptations, the question whether we should be allowed to eat meat is irrelevant to that or close to irrelevant. Only relevancy would be that our “suffering” from not eating meat would outweigh thousands of animals being tortured for each human, which I think you have a hard time making an argument for. The biggest study ever made(of any kind), The China Study, found the highest life expectancy for vegans. I can attest that it doesn’t cause me suffering to eat vegan, lots of annoyance caused by other people that I would not call suffering, yes, but the diet in itself is fine.

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according to communist mid ww2 Russia… eating your children is barbaric… if they are right and im gonna have to side with them on this one… I think were all in the clear as far as eating meat… and even people aslong as they are not your own children… stalin has spoken close the thread…

People will always eat meat, no matter how much you vegans hate it. Your views on this matter are irrelevant to say the least.

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oh no has this turned vegan vs meat eaters… i like the vegans… not their food so much… but if more people were vegan it would cut back on the demand for meat… they might not need all the hormones and steroids if the meat eater numbers were cut in half… so don’t hate the vegans in fact us meat eaters should be tricking other meat eaters into turning vegan… would improve quality… think about it…

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What do you think made me vegan? I didn’t come up with the idea myself. The arguments kept bouncing around in my head for years before I took the plunge. I don’t buy this futility argument.

This is a very poor post, the title of the topic is “Meat Eating? Barbaric?” and I’m expressing my views, so they’re not irrelevant. When I called the argument about adaptions irrelevant I didn’t say to the thread rather to the question whether we should eat meat or not.

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don’t get too upset… I don’t think any of us can speak for all of humanity so all opinions are just as valid as they are invalid …validity is in the eye of the beholder?..

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The way they do it is barbaric yes.

But the need for protein and the need for the human body is not.

And you must consider growth rates and the seasons, things like this.

They say “eat it then, but never torture it like you have always done.”

Not to mention the life cycle is rediculous as well, they are 120 years old at the age of 10 basically, better to eat them.

The old ones showed me something funny one night on this, back in the long time ago the animals would happily come to the people. They made a mutually benefical way and they would just come to them on their own. Both the man and animal came out ahead.

I have been almost vegetarian for the past month - so totally in soon I will stay away from meat / and chicken products.

God - i love when someone bothers to put it all into words

I JUST spent the last 15 years back on a meat based diet

I feel awful now

I did eat veggie for 10 years - but that is becoming less significant

I have gone wannabe vegan - i can’t seem to give up honey and leather

apart from honey (which i can also avoid - i use other sweeteners) I’ve been animal free for 2 days

I know - big deal
but it’s been a bit gradual over 2 - 3 weeks

i really want to stick to this - i think if you stop eating animal products - don’t they say that is a big eco step equivalent to not having a car?
That is a big motivator

I had a dream that we had a big taste-up where no one knew what we were eating
the big reveal was that I’d eaten ‘big John’ (a friend) and that it was that much more delicious because of the fat

this i have now used as a trigger to go vegan (wannabe vegan)

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Save a tree eat a hamburger .

Personally I’m holding out for when synthetic meat becomes an economically viable option. Right now it’s too expensive to mass produce…

By synthetic meat I mean when they grow actual real meat from cells in a lab or whatever. No animals are harmed and you still get meat. Science is cool. I just read about a restaurant that’s using chicken strips made that way so we’re getting there.

No, meat eating in itself is not barbaric. The way we handle animals most definitely is. Also the cost to the environment and the poorer countries, where lots of food for people is used to produce a tiny bit of meat for a few rich people, is bad. Because of the huge amount of meat we eat. I have eaten organic/eco meat for a long time, decided to eat no or very little meat some weeks ago and after this thread I feel I should be a vegan. I am scared of somehow unbalancing myself because I miss certain nutritions though and I feel I dont have the disciplin to have a balanced diet. This was the last thing needed for me to become a real vegetarian though, Thanks for posting!

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Barbaric? Well I think to cut an animal open is barbaric. It’s painful to them. It’s my view. I’ve never pushed my beliefs on anyone though. You can eat whatever you want , and I can eat whatever I want. Live and let live. But I’ve been told eating a plant is barbaric then I guess I’d be a hypocrite to pass the judgement I just have. We’re all the same. We’re only human and need to do what we have to for survival

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