EAT YOUR MEAT: NO REGRET

We are born naked, wet and crying… and then things start getting worse. But, no one said that life is fair. On second thoughts, life has a weird sense of humour. It is equally unfair to everybody. Which kind of makes it fair. So, when a lion hunts and kills to stay alive, it is kind of fair if not lovely. What is however unfair is to call a lion aggressive because it ate a scared dear. Lions are aggressive not because of what they eat, but because of evolution. The genes that care for the life of a deer went extinct out of hunger. But the amazing thing is that, they are actually very peaceful, much more than some of the herbivores.

If you think elephants are peaceful, you have never seen a wild elephant in a jungle, or an angry rhino. Can you guess how many Indians were killed by tiger in the last 5 years? Around 200. How many did elephants kill? 1713! Do you know which animal is the most lethal killer? Hippo kills more than lions, leopards and crocodiles every year in Africa. It is a myth that eating meat makes you more aggressive.

One might argue that humans are different from animals. To prove that, different experiments have been done globally. They proved that the likelihood of consuming meat resulting in aggressive behaviour is same as the chance of getting raped because you are wearing a mini-skirt. There are people who think both of them are true…. however, truth is that there is no correlation. What some of the researches did find however is that short temper is associated with deficiencies of omega 3 fatty acids, magnesium, zinc and Vitamin B12. Some of these deficiencies are actually linked to vegan diet.

I have no intention to turn everyone into a meat eater. There is nothing wrong in becoming a vegetarian as long as you take care of your deficiencies. Agricultural revolution is the root cause of our food deficiencies, and the related disease. Archaeological studies have shown that hunters and gatherers died more healthy than the bodies unearthed of the agricultural people. This is because the farmers diet was restricted to the crops they grew. Hunter and gatherers had a balanced diet from the meats, fishes, and the different fruits, nuts and vegetables they gathered. Paleo-diet might be the best diet for our body.

A strong argument in favour of vegetarianism is the brutal killing of animals. The argument has some validity. Animals have feelings and plant don’t is however just excuse. Who are we to say that plants do not deserve a moral standing? Jagadish Chandra Bose showed that plants are sentient beings. They do not like being eaten. They do get scared, they scream and warn their neighbours when a giraffe starts eating them part by part. To defend themselves they become poisonous. They even warn their friends, who turn poisonous too. The fruits are not meant to attract you, but it contains food for their children. That is why some fruits are poisonous. Plants do not have nervous system like we do, nor does it have the neurons to think like we do. That does not mean that they do not think. They think the way they do. Plants have their own ‘nervous system’ that is a complex network of excitable tissues carrying electrical signals. The bioelectrical field might be a primary source of learning and memory. Yes, plants know what you did last summer. They can even see, hear, smell and respond. What do we do to these sentiment beings after harvest? We chop them, cut them into pieces, and burn them. And we do not feel a thing for these poor creatures just because they are different. We have genetically modified them so much that they have become unhealthy, just like the chickens in the farm. We have made them fat, just to have more of them. The domesticated plants cannot even reproduce by themselves naturally. Their inability to run away or scream is not an invitation to have them for dinner. Our morality is misplaced. Morality is just a cultural construct. It varies from culture to culture. Just because two opinions have different concepts of morality, it does not make one of them right.

The only reasonable argument in favour of eating vegetables is environment. The amount of water and farmland used to maintain a livestock leaves behind a large carbon foot print. Cows and pigs are the most environment unfriendly. It will help the environment if we reduce consumption of red meat. It will help the environment if we manage the amount of fishing and maintain balance. It would help if we feed chickens their normal food that contains proteinaceous insects rather than grains. It would be more kind if we stop painful slaughter of animals. But going vegan is not going to save the world, but only delay the calamity. Food habit is not the core problem, it is the growing population. We have bred worse than rabbits. It is that habit which needs change. Going vegan and having a lot of children to increase the future food consumption is not going to help.

If you are a vegetarian it might be difficult to accept that, you might even get pissed off. I know that feeling since i got pissed off when I was lectured on why vegetarian diet is heather and morally better. There are two things most people don’t like: number one is to change, and number two is the way things are. Most of the time we do not like to change the way our own group behave, and we hate the way things are with other groups. American psychologist Joshua Greene calls this behaviour the Tragedy of Common Sense Morality. It is easier to care for people who are similar to us, rather than those who are different. Contrary to the popular belief, experiments have shown that it is our emotions, rather than reasoning, that drives our moral judgment. With respect to most controversies, we have already made up our opinion, and only use reasoning to backup our claim, rather than rejecting it. Such ‘confirmatory’ reasoning makes us fall for propaganda, be it in favour of vegetarianism, or against it. There are studies that show plant based diet can be good for health, like prevent cancer. Then there are studies that show otherwise. We prefer to believe the study that only fits our prejudice. Tragedy of Common Sense Morality results in heated debates in the modern polarised world.  Conservatism vs Liberals argument has spread like a viral from west into India. Lets not spread the virus of food habit debate here too. Be it veggies, be it meat…eat what you want to eat. Be it veggies, be it meat…eat what you want to eat. 

P.S. This article was written after I was lectured on why Vegan diet is good, based on pseudoscience logic. I have nothing against any particular form of diet. Its a  personal choice. 

Written by Subhrashis Adhikari

Author of 5 Questions of the Inquisitive Apes

"Engaging and entertaining, this page-turner is remarkable in its narration and will give you a new perspective on various aspects of life. Wellresearched and heartfelt, the encouraging tone throughout the book tries to motivate towards a happier life." - Times of India