Current mood:	curious
Current music:	Less Than Jake - Bad Scene And A Basement Show
Entry tags:	culture, philosophy

Meat! Is it evil?
I skipped out on most of Toast Talk last night because I had to study but I had a few thoughts about the topic: should we all stop eating meat?

Historically (over the past few millennia), societies that engaged in animal husbandry for consumption (specifically the rearing of cattle, poultry, swine and sheep) enjoyed a distinct competitive advantage against other societies because these livestock provided them with a high-protein diet. In recent decades, however, several things have changed. Globalization has been effectively turning the planet into a single giant interdependent economy in which any society can use the products created by any other society. And the human population explosion has meant that grazing is not as viable an approach to feeding livestock as it once was; instead we now resort to giant commercial farms to produce the enormous quantity of meat we consume.

One of the side-effects of having had meat as a status symbol and competitive advantage is that we tend to crave and enjoy it in much the same fashion as we do sugar (because fructose was once a competitive advantage). However, our bodies are not particularly good at self-restraint, leading to us consuming far more of such things (sugar, fat and meat) than we require; often more than our bodies can deal with in a healthy manner. Furthermore, the burgeoning levels of meat consumption have been taxing our natural environment as we push its resources increasingly further in the quest for meat.

Nevertheless, dropping meat from our diets altogether seems a bit drastic. Although it is possible to obtain all the nutrients, calories and protein we require without needing to consume meat (although we would still need dairy products for vitamin B12), it is clear that most people are not about to give up on meat anytime soon. Furthermore, abandoning meat in one fell swoop would have disastrous consequences on the livestock markets. A more pragmatic approach would be to reduce our meat consumption to a fraction of its current levels over the span of a few years. Many people have already done this.

How might such a plan be encouraged? Promoting quality over quantity would be one solution: we could eat only grain-fed or free-range livestock. These cost more so they impose an automatic dampening effect on meat consumption at both a personal and macro-economic level. In addition, they are a healthier source of meat. Organizations attempting to promote a reduction in meat consumption could help out by educating people about the advantages of grain-fed and free-range livestock, as well as providing information on how to replace meat with other sources of the same nutrients and protein.