Words @ War- Masticating Meltdown

There’s nothing I enjoy more in this world than a thick, medium rare hamburger topped with oodles of bacon and cheddar cheese.

The fact is, meat gets a bad rap from health “professionals” who tell us in all sorts of varying degrees that meat is bad. No, it is not. Your perception of meat is what is to blame.

Back before humans kept track of such things, we didn’t have to think about what was good or bad for us. All food was good because we had to go out every day and pick it up off the ground or hit it with a rock to procure it. Beggars can’t be choosers. Humans are purebred predators. We’re also great scavengers. Our genetic and skeletal makeups tell us such things.

Hominid teeth, for example, have both incisors and molars. Let’s take a gander at some common animals that have only one or the other: Cows have only molars, cats and dogs only incisors. The fact that we, as humans, have both means we are made to be both predator and forager. We’re genetically inclined to have a taste for animal flesh. Our teeth are specifically designed to tear animal flesh and also to chew plants with no mercy.

Vegetarians will hype that you can easily live a healthy lifestyle without meat. This is not entirely true. Many vegetarians end up taking copious amounts of iron pills, protein pills and the like due to anemia and protein deficiencies. The human body needs protein to function. Many vegetables and fruits are high in protein, but they do not contain the same amino acids that help combat immune deficiencies, hemoglobin deficiencies and protein deficiencies. That’s a lot of deficiencies.

Many will try to impart their belief that if the whole world were vegetarian, it would solve all of our environmental problems. This is also a fallacy. If the whole world were full of vegetarians, farm space would quickly become a premium.

We eat meat because the protein satisfies us. By cutting out our major source of protein, we will only supplement it with more vegetarian options. This will require more growing space, and will eventually lead us down the same path we lead today.

Then there’s the adage that meat makes you fat. Think about this logically: cows, chickens and all other livestock we consume (except fish) tend to be vegetarians, and they’re fat; yes, even the organic ones. The vegetables they’re eating make humans fat too. Corn, potatoes, sugar and wheat products go into feed for livestock to help fatten them up. Not all fattening is caused by giving animals hormones; it takes those previously mentioned foods to activate the hormones to make the animals fatter. Guess what? Those vegetarian options do the same thing to us humans. If we were all vegetarians, we’d still eat junk food like potato chips and Twinkies, which would still make us fat, which would still lead to type 2 diabetes and heart disease. It’s not the meat; it’s the lack of it that’s killing us.

Fun fact about farming: did you know that in Michigan a farmer can shoot any animal he thinks may be threatening his crop yield, such as deer? So, that means that if you get something grown in Michigan, you’ve probably killed at least one deer just by buying it. What makes you think lettuce isn’t suffering just the same as that deer that was shot in the farmer’s field eating the crops? That head of lettuce was every bit as alive before a worker maliciously hacked it from its roots, threw it into a heap with a bunch of other heads, and then sent it to your grocer. You see the point?

Don’t blame my love of meat for the problems caused by a vegetarian diet. Blame society for feeding the general populace lies in hopes that it will boost the bottom line on corn prices come harvest.