If you are interested in the link between human evolution and food, I highly recommend the documentary 'Cooked', by Michael Pollan: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5347906/
(I follow the plant-based diet)
Not because the pig is dead. I have no bacon if the pig is not dead. But because it's draped over her shoulders like a garland.
Charles Darwin: "There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties . . . The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery."
Leo Tolstoy: "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."
Carl Sagan: "Humans–who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals–have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and “animals” is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them–without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us."
Another relevant quote:
Plutarch: “There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.”
Few other animals have any kind of control over fire.
Steak tartare, raw eggs and sashimi are delicious.
I've read somewhere that humankind started as scavengers. As a lover of dry aged meat, I'd wager to say that we not only can eat raw meat we also can eat pretty old raw meat (I prefer my steaks rare).
I suspect raw would be fine if the meat was actually fresh but there's always days between slaughter and plate, so the meat is effectively decomposing by the time we cook.
Another point is that the more you cook red meat, the higher the chance you'll get cancer.
My personal anecdote also tells me that the rarest the steak, the easier the digestion and the greater the benefits (muscle gain, workout performance and appetite control). I usually eat low-carb and near zero grains and cereals though. As always with personal anecdotes, YMMV.
Why do people think non-meat eaters are always self righteous. Does it offend you so much or cause that much dissonance that it leads to feelings of resentment?
Slaughtering or mutilating the plants you raised yourself doesn't look like revering them too much. Looks like just raising them for your own satisfaction of tasting their flavor.
Adding hollow lip service doesn't really seem like an improvement.
True gratitude is not hollow lip service. It should influence behavior.
Sure, It makes no difference to the animal, but maybe it will cause someone to eat less of it or be more supportive of vegans/vegetarian efforts.
This got me thinking... How do we determine which organisms feel pain? Presence of a central nervous system? What about jellyfish or octopi or lobsters? Kingdom animalia? Why not bacteria or plants? They reproduce and have some sort of consciousness. Plants bend towards sunlight.
I used to consider myself Buddhist so I still don’t kill any living beings as a habit... not even mosquitos. But now that I think about it, I have no problems killing bacteria or viruses. I consume a lot of pea protein powder - mainly for aesthetic reasons - am I being unethical?
I absolutely would never eat our brothers/sisters in the hominids and apes/chimpanzees.
I've been growing increasingly concerned about our relationships with and our eating of our first cousins, the other mammals (pigs, cows, etc).
I'm less concerned about our second/third cousins the avian dinosaurs (chicken, turkey), and fish/crustaceans.
I don't worry about distant cousins in the plants, and fungi families.
Bacteria, viruses, insects are pretty far removed from us on the evolutionary family tree.
It's certainly complicated to think of it as a moral spectrum, with no easy/black-and-white answers, but that certainly seems to be the case. At some point I suppose you just have to make rules of thumb, and live with what makes you most comfortable/happy as best you see fit. Minimizing others' suffering is certainly a lofty goal, just don't mistake the perfect of "eliminate all suffering" with the good of "eliminate what suffering I can as best I am able".