Eat
Meat
I’ve never really thought about why
I eat what I eat. The contents of my plate rested solely on the principle of
“this tastes good and that doesn’t.” My actions just a few moments ago can
attest to this fact. Finding it hard to focus, I went to the refrigerator for a
snack and pulled out a Fuji apple-watermelon Vitamin Water. Not usually my
drink of choice, I decided to try it for something different. I almost gagged
over the first sip; it tasted exactly like my memory of liquid grape cold
medicine. I promptly replaced the cap and returned it to the kitchen, opting
instead for a bowl of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, always a delicious treat. This
is how my food logic works; if something tastes good, eat it, if something
tastes bad, don’t. Simple as that. But what I’ve learned over the past few
months from being immersed in food culture is that nothing is simple – society
doesn’t allow it to be. From reports about nutrition to the craze over organic
food, Americans are exposed to a multitude of advice about their diet. This
deluge of information can be difficult to sort through once dinner rolls
around, so it could be beneficial to consider what data to listen to and how
that will define personal eating habits in advance. When analyzing my relation
to the foods I eat, I decided to start small and pick just one category: meat. How
do/will I orient myself towards meat in my diet? Just for this one type of food,
there are many options to be considered. There is the basic choice to eat meat
or not to eat meat and the larger dilemma about what kind of meat to eat,
organic or non. There is also the question of quantity; if meat should be
eaten, how much should be consumed? Weighing all the possibilities I came up
with a maxim to eat by: Eat meat. Not too much. Don’t discriminate.
There are many reasons that justify
eating meat. Personally, in following my food value of taste, I choose to eat
meat because it tastes good. A juicy steak, my grandfather’s barbeque ribs,
Panda Express’s orange chicken – these are all things that set my mouth
watering. I tend not to fantasize about eating leafy greens, or when I do,
Panera’s strawberry poppy seed and chicken salad comes to mind, and that
includes chicken. One of my all-time favorite foods is a freshly baked pizza,
and what would a slice be without the pepperoni? Even in the dining halls, when
the daily menu fails to entice me, I fall back on a cheeseburger or ham
sandwich to get me through the day. I eat what I like and clearly I like to eat
meat. While this signifies an individual preference, the appearance of meat on
my plate may also be evidence of instincts built into our genetic make-up.
Humans are anthropologically
ordained to eat meat. Millions of years ago, the hominid that decided to become
carnivorous escaped the evolutionary “bush” of species and blazed a trail to become
the Homo sapiens we are today (Zimmer 36). At one point in history, there were
many human-like species roaming around Africa. From anthropological
discoveries, it has been more or less confirmed that two of our possible
ancestors, Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus robustus, lived
around the same time, roughly 2.5 million years ago. By analyzing the skulls of
these species, their diets can be determined. A. robustus had very large teeth
and a large jaw suggesting the need for grinding power. This is further
verified by its pronounced sagittal crest (a ridge of bone projecting along the
top of the head). Huge muscles would have been anchored on the crest and
extended to the jaw, also pointing to the importance of chewing food. It has
been concluded that A. robustus ate plants exclusively and mainly thick roots
that would need strong jaw muscles to consume.
A. africanus on the other hand ate meat; they were one of, if not the
first, hominid species to include animal flesh in their diet. This diet is made
apparent by the smaller jaw and teeth formed in their skull for the purpose of
tearing and not grinding. A. africanus also had no sagittal crest to speak of
(Zimmer 38-39). So what do these two species have to do with our existence?
Well, here’s the kicker – A. africanus flourished while A. robustus with their
vegetable-only diet quickly went extinct.
Roots and greens are not efficient
foods in terms of energy density compared to meat. A. robustus probably had to
spend most of their time gathering food and the rest of their time eating it
just to survive. Oppositely, A. africanus could spend less time eating and more
time on developing traits like the ability to make tools that would put them
ahead in the evolutionary game (Zimmer 38-39). And as an added bonus they
didn’t die out; therefore, it can be speculated that A. africanus was the start
of our particular evolutionary line. Eating meat also facilitated the trait of
team work by introducing hunting, and eventually led to agricultural
communities with the domestication of animals. Everything we are today began
with a steak. Who am I to knock a habit handed down to me by a long
evolutionary history of meat eaters? Eating meat seemed to work pretty well for
them. I intend to put my diet in a historical context and recognize the
importance of eating meat; it is arguably the foundation of the process that
got us here.
In our present society,
anthropological knowledge doesn’t hold much weight when sitting down to the
breakfast table or running through the drive through. A lot of the discussion
around meat currently is focused on the ethics of consuming it. The typical
argument against eating meat is the questionable nature of the way it is
produced. As discussed in food-writer Michael Pollan’s article, “An Animal’s
Place,” animal rightists describe the mistreatment of animals in the meat
industry as a form of “speciesism.” Akin to racism, the idea is that animals
are discriminated against and treated as inferiors. Pigs and cattle are packed
into small plots of land and made to stand in their own filth; chickens are
shut into pitch black sheds and laying hens are confined in stacks of wires
cages (Pollan). Pollan presents two
options for dealing with this moral predicament: “we either look away or become
vegetarians.” I offer a third option;
that of seeing the process with all its imperfections and eating meat
regardless. Animals are food; they produce meat to be consumed by humans. While
this may sound “speciesist,” it is also a natural response. Animal rightists
impose that animals are intelligent beings and therefore deserve to be treated
fairly, which includes not being eaten (Pollan). We don’t eat our handicapped
population just because they may have a lower level of intellect than the rest
of us, right? Yes, but we are not cannibals, and just like the lion hunts down
the zebra, we should be allowed to feast on other species.
I have decided it is not a crime to
consume meat and America seems to agree; Americans as a whole consume 60
percent more meat than Europeans (Hamershlag). As made apparent by visible arches,
crowns, and bells lining every main street, the fast-food industry is running
strong fed by meat and you would be hard pressed to find a restaurant menu that
didn’t list a burger or at least a steak. Also, possibly the most American meat
product, the hot dog, is consumed over 20 billion times a year (“The History of
Ballpark Food”). We have even made a sport out of eating meat; annual hot dog
eating contests take place around the country. As stated above, I have already
made the decision to eat meat, so the next thing to consider is what kind of
meat am I going to eat?
While the “unethical” conduct of the
meat industry drives some to become vegetarians, others choose to stay
omnivorous and eat organic. These activists dub the production of organic meat “ethical”
because the animals involved are treated humanely. On organic farms, animals
are allowed to live more naturally than in feed lots; in other words, “chickens
live like chickens” (Pollan). These places work under the idea that animals have
rights, the most basic of which is to avoid pain. The principle of equality of
the species invoked by animal rightists includes the equal consideration of
values where human and animal interests converge. One of these joint areas is
the aversion to pain, and so animals should be prevented from feeling any
(Pollan). Following this logic, animals deserve the same pursuit of happiness
allotted to people in the Constitution, and, according to Pollan, this
happiness comes from “the opportunity to express its creaturely character – its
essential pigness or wolfness or chickenness.” Organic farms provide for this
by allowing the animals to roam free in their natural state (Pollan). I believe
this viewpoint is highly hypocritical. If the decision is made to eat meat,
eating organic serves no purpose but to make the consumer feel better. No
matter what package is taken off the supermarket shelf, the animal that
provided it was killed either way. If it can be argued that animals have the
same aversion to pain, then they can definitely be said to have the same
aversion to death. I doubt a short life spent in open fields as opposed to
crammed pens and feed lots really make dying worth it. I’m pretty sure the
animal doesn’t want to end up as dinner, regardless of the journey it took to
get on the plate. While the production of meat may not be Disney enough for
some people, that’s life; it’s messy. Organic farming is a shiny, plastic
façade that distracts the consumer from the only reality: little Wilbur is
still going to die. So if the decision has been made to eat meat, then eat
meat; eating organic or non-organic holds no real difference in the treatment
of animals.
Another argument brought up by
organic advocates is that meat from naturally raised animals is “healthier” for
the consumer. While during the raising of the animal this may be true, after
the meat leaves the farm, the lines between organic and industry produced begin
to blur. The processing of organic animals is speculated to be very similar if
not more unsanitary than the processing of regular meat. The main safety hazard
associated with meat products is microbial contamination such as E. coli and Salmonella. By the very nature of organic farming and its
limitations, “this production system has the potential for greater food safety
risks” (Van Loo et al 206). Free-range
animals that have more contact with wildlife have a greater exposure to harmful
pathogens carried by these creatures. Organically raised animals are not
allowed to be treated with drugs or antibiotics to prevent disease; this
practice could lead to a higher risk of infection and level of pathogens in the
animal (Van Loo et al 207). As with ethics, this is another area where organic
meat can be said to be relatively the same as (if not worse than) industry
produced meat. In light of their similarity, I declare myself non-“meatist”;
when eating meat I intend to not discriminate between the varieties. It doesn’t
seem to matter whether the burger I eat is organic or not, so I simply won’t
care.
There is one side to eating organic
that I can agree with; organic meat production has less impact on the
environment. This is mainly due to the fact that meat produced from organic
farms is marginal compared to the entire industry (Hamershlag). I don’t see
this as a reason to eat organic, but as a reason to consider the effect eating
meat has on our planet. The meat industry is just another in a long line of
entities that have a negative effect on the environment. Facing this dilemma, the
question I now ask myself is not what meat will I eat, but how should I eat it?
The answer I’ve found is to eat meat in moderation. The production of meat on
and off the farm produces greenhouse gases that contribute to pollution. A lot
of the methane released is due to animal manure which totals about 500 million
tons per year (Hamershlag). About 60
pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted in the production of one kilogram of beef.
Pork follows at about 25 pounds per kilogram with salmon and chicken close
behind (Hamershlag). And these statistics don’t even include the emissions due
to transportation of the animals before and after slaughter! The use of
fertilizers further contributes to the environmental impact by polluting rivers
and other water sources (Hamershlag). While this could be pointed to as a
reason to cut out meat entirely, it is a reality that things cost energy. We
know cars burn gas and emit harmful chemicals into the air, but we don’t stop production
because driving is a necessity. The same
can be said for electrical plants and consequently the meat industry. Just
because it uses up energy, doesn’t mean meat production should come to a halt;
we should just be more conscience about ways we can conserve. Eating one less
burger a week equates to taking a car off the road for 320 miles, while a
single car’s emissions for three months can be reduced if a four-person family
forgoes steak once a week (Hamershlag). By cutting back on my daily intake of
meat, I intend to reduce my environmental footprint.
In addition to my concern for the
environment, I will also eat less meat for my health. It has been shown that
consuming large quantities of meat is closely related to an increased risk of
disease. The chance of contracting heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes
goes up when processed or unprocessed red meat is consumed (Ornish 563). The
government has responded to these findings by modifying the USDA’s food
pyramid. While I’m not usually one to buy into government propaganda, I really
connect to the visual MyPlate creates. Eliminating the traditional hierarchy,
MyPlate places each food group on a plate in proportion to one another (U.S.
Department of Agriculture). For the most part, the groups are represented
equally; this portrayal helps me think of meat as more of a side dish. A meal is usually built around a portion of
meat, whether it is a steak or rack of ribs. MyPlate takes away the idea of the
entrée, placing all foods in balance and creating the mind set for reducing
meat intake. The category of meat also
loses its title to be replaced with the label “Protein” (U.S. Department of Agriculture).
This mirrors scientific findings that other sources of protein should be
substituted for red meat in a healthy diet; food such as nuts, legumes, and
even fish are good alternatives (Ornish 563).
Eat meat. Not too much. Don’t
discriminate. From the beginning of time, or at least our existence, humans
have been eating meat. Although this source of protein may no longer be
necessary for our survival, a mushroom Swiss burger still tastes pretty good. While
taste is a significant deciding factor for what goes on my plate, I also like
to keep in mind what is healthy for me and for the environment. Research has
shown that eating meat correlates with an increased risk of disease, so I will
try to adjust the portions on my plate accordingly. In doing so, I’ll also be
doing my part to reduce carbon emissions let off by the meat industry into the
air. While there are numerous negative impacts associated with the production
of meat, these are the natural costs of progress. Meat doesn’t have to be cut out
of a diet entirely; being a conscious consumer is all it takes to be a
responsible one. Humans are called omnivores for a reason; we eat plants and animals – that is our design.
Instead of fighting my nature, I intend to work with it and continue to eat
meat.
Hamershlag,
Kari. "Meat Eater's Guide: Report." Meat Eater's Guide to Climate
Change and
Health.
Environmental Working Group, 2011. Web. 20 May 2012.
"The
History of Ballpark Food." Web log post. History in the Headlines. History.com, 31 Mar.
2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.
Ornish, Dean.
"Holy Cow! What's Good for You Is Good for Our Planet." Archives
of Internal
Medicine 172.1 (2012):
563-64. Print.
Pollan,
Michael. "An Animal's Place." New York Times 10 Nov. 2002. The
New York Times. The
New York Times, 10 Nov. 2002. Web.
20 May 2012.
U.S.
Department of Agriculture. What's On Your Plate? U.S. Department of
Agriculture, 2011.
ChooseMyPlate.gov. USDA, Aug.
2011. Web. 20 May 2012.
Van Loo,
Ellen J., Walid Alali, and Steven C. Ricke. "Food Safety and Organic
Meats." Annual
Review of Food Science and Technology
3 (2012): 203-25. Ebsco Host. Web. 20
May.
2012.
Zimmer, Carl.
"Great Mysteries of Human Evolution." Discover Sept. 2003: 34-42. Print.
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