Stephan Guyanet at Whole Health Source has been writing a series of articles on meat and the role it plays in overall health. I’m linking to his latest article only and if you’re interested, you can search back through his previous posts and read all the articles in the series.
Like most people, I love meat. I don’t eat a lot of it because my food expenditure is limited by a budget, but I eat enough, I hope, for it to contribute to my overall health and to enable me to get the nutrients I can’t get from a vegetarian diet alone. I could never voluntarily be a vegetarian.
I’ve seen the nutritional arguments for being vegetarian (moral reasons are another thing entirely) and I’m not convinced that a person can be optimally healthy by avoiding meat. Guyanet seems to conclude that humans have evolved to eat meat, in other words, eating meat may increase our “Darwinian fitness”. I’ll go along with that.
Foodnstuff 
February 18, 2015 at 4:15 am |
There are arguments for and against eating meat (including the ethical reasons) and at the end of the day I really think it is up to the individual to make the decision for themselves as to what they will and won’t eat. I choose not to eat meat but that’s “my” choice. Most arguments against eating meat are because of the mass scale destruction of forests in order to produce the huge amount of meat humanity calls for and the massive amount of cropping land required for grain and soybean production to feed said meat but if someone was living on their own chooks and animals that they reared naturally and organically on their own little patch of land, that, is an entirely different thing. I am against wholescale meat production, but then I am against wholesale vegetable and grain production due to the dubious methods undertaken to produce said “food”. If food production begins at home or on a small, sustainable local scale. I say it is the individuals choice as to what they eat.
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February 18, 2015 at 12:42 pm |
Pretty much agree with all that. All the planetary destruction stuff is one reason why I eat just enough to get the nutrients I need. We are trapped in a system that forces us to destroy the planet. I try to walk away from the system as much as I can, but it’s not easy 😦
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February 19, 2015 at 2:24 am |
We try to share as much of the love around as we can. We have 14 chooks and get more than enough eggs for a few families and so we give people eggs. Stops them from having to buy shop rubbish and makes us keeping hens a worthwhile thing. They eat a LOT of insects as they free range around all day and if the need ever arose, there would be chook that could be eaten but that would have to be a drastic need. At least there are possibilities. That’s why I am attempting to plant as many different perennial, shrub and tree edible species as we can, especially nuts. Producing as much food as you can is a great way to ensure that you aren’t taking part in wholesale exploitation. Here’s to communal gardening and the keeping of healthy, well looked after animals for providing home needs 🙂
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