Should you feel guilty for eating meat?

[s28]

I was brought up as a vegetarian in India and then in my late twenties when i came to Europe i started to eat meat. Also in Europe it is easier to be a non-vegetarian as the vegetarian choices can be pretty boring. And I must admit that I like the taste of meat and seafood, etc.

But lately I have been questioning if I should feel guilty for eating meat, seafood (anything that has a life). Do you guys ever wonder about things like: balance of the eco system, food chain, humans are at the top of the food chain so its justified, etc? Do humans really need meat to survive or we just eat it for pleasure? I eat it for its taste and I know some meat/seafood are supposed to be really good for our health. Also primitive man/Neanderthals used to hunt for food...but i guess they used to hunt anything for survival. The modern man does not need to kill/hunt for survival as there is abundance of vegetables and fruits available to eat.

Anyway to cut the long story short, I'm very confused if eating meat/seafood is justified and that we shouldn't feel guilty for killing living things for our consumption. What do you guys think?

Your open and honest opinions on this subject are welcomed.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I felt guilty for a moment, and then I realized that I?m a lazy, selfish bastard who simply doesn?t care enough to have any moral objections to eating meat.

 

[teqrevisited]

We're smarter than them and they taste nice. That's all the justification I need.

 

[Jonluw]

Certain foods, you might feel justifiably guilty for eating, considering that the production of these foods is ruining ecosystems and such.
But that's not inherent to meat. That's just us handling it in a crappy manner.

 

[Vivi22]

Meat is a natural and healthy part of the human diet. Has been since long before agriculture existed, let alone progressed to the point where someone could be a vegetarian and not die of starvation. It's necessary if you're going to eat a diet which is ideal for good health and physical performance, so no, you shouldn't feel bad.

The modern man does not need to kill/hunt for survival as there is abundance of vegetables and fruits available to eat.

We may not need to eat meat to simply survive, but I always find it somewhat ironic that the one macronutrient we don't need to eat at all to live (carbohydrates) is the one vegetarians advocate we base our diets on. I survival alone at any cost is your lone end goal and you want to do it while minimizing animal suffering then have at it. But if you'd like to do a bit more than merely get by it's difficult to accomplish without including meat and fats in the diet in the sort of quantities which are readily available in meat.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Humans are omnivores, we're built to eat both meat and veggies, it's why our teeth are designed the way they are. We aren't herbivores and we aren't carnivores. It's in our nature to eat meat and there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with it, provided your not eating endangered species or anything like that.

Instead it's better not to be wasteful of the food you eat, so the animal's sacrifice isn't in vein. Obviously in this day, we don't normally kill our own food, but if you're eating ribs for example and you have bones, give them to the dog. That way the meat and bones both get eaten.

It's possible to live life without eating meat, but it's not recommended, there are just some nutrients we get from meat that are greatly lacking in vegetarian diets.

 

[hazabaza1]

If eating meat is wrong, the I don't want to be right.

 

[Rawne1980]

The day they tell me they are banning the sale of meat based products is the day I turn to cannibalism.

I love meat, it makes up nearly my entire diet .... as well as pasta.

Nobody shall ever make me feel guilty for eating it.

If someone has a good argument why I shouldn't eat it then i'd consider that argument while consuming bacon butties.

 

[Scarim Coral]

No. Depending on where you get the meat, that animals was raised to be eaten (free range or not) unless you bought a meat from a hunter who had hunt it in the wild or something.
Beside what difference if you didn't buy the meat since the only different made is someone else had bought the meat instead of you. You're not any different from someone else when it come to buying meat.
Beside it is still a circle of life since an animal died for us to lived therefore it's still natural in that way.

 

[Heronblade]

Every higher order organism on this planet lives off of the death of other organisms.

Our species in particular evolved as hunters, with a metabolism designed for a diet of both plant and animal products.

You can indeed survive on a plant only diet, particularly since we can now supplement the nutrients you lose otherwise, but there is nothing to be ashamed of if you do not choose that path.

 

[Hoplon]

No, eating anything isn't something you should feel much beyond that "that was good/bad"

The peripheral to eating stuff is possibly something that should give us qualms since the treatment of animals can be down right pointlessly cruel.

 

[Korolev]

I actually wish I didn't eat meat. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some "Animal Liberation" nutjob or PETA member. I support vivisection and animal experimentation - done a bit of that myself in labs, although I usually used yeast cells.

But the fact remains that we don't need meat to survive. I am against animal cruelty in all its forms - I don't support recreational hunting (although I have no problem with hunters who hunt for food), I don't support bullfighting and I generally despise anyone who would hurt an animal for fun.

I don't need to eat pork to live a healthy life. Contrary to what the meat industry says, you don't need meat to live. We do need protein, but we don't need nearly as much as we eat and there are sources of protein other than meat. I'm a medical student, and I have more than one science degree - I've done my nutrition, I know how to read journal papers, I know how to do proper research and the evidence is clear: We don't need to eat meat. In fact, we should eat a hell of a lot less meat. A little bit of meat every now and then isn't harmful for us, but the amount of red meat we consume in the West is VERY unhealthy. If you are going to eat meat, the evidence is clear - less is better, and white meat or fish is preferable.

Given that we don't need to eat meat, can we justify killing animals? I can justify killing them for research purposes - human lives are more important than animal lives. We are the scientists. We are the mathematicians. We are the musicians and the engineers and the architects and the philosophers. Show me a dog that can write a symphony. Show me a crab that can comprehend trigonometry. Show me a bear that can understand the process of nuclear fusion that occurs in a star. You can't. No animal, other than humans, can do or comprehend these things. We create order and beauty and form ideals. Animals cannot do that, or at least, cannot do it to nearly the same complexity. This debate we're having right now about guilt - no animal other than humans is even remotely capable of it. A bear doesn't even know the concept of "rights", a frog doesn't understand ethics or "values". Only humans do. Thus, we're more important.

But that doesn't mean animals should have NO rights. Although they are far less intelligent than us, they still have some intelligence. Dogs can learn words. Birds can memorize feeding locations. Dolphins can play. They're less intelligent than humans but that doesn't mean they have no intelligence. So while I might be able to justify killing them in pursuit of knowledge and medical applications, can I justify turning them into food?

They can also feel pain. Stick a fork into almost any live animal, and it will react to that fork.

Killing an animal for meat is not the same thing as killing a human being. Eating meat shouldn't be a moral crime on par with murder. And I eat meat. I just finished a dish consisting primarily of fish. Do I feel guilty? Well.... a little bit? I do realize that the fish I ate was as dumb as a sack of bricks. Have you see a fish? They are mindbogglingly stupid. Their brains are tiny and primitive.... but if I didn't need to kill it... should I have? If I didn't need to eat it, should I have just let it live? I am gravitating towards vegetarianism... simply because from my medical studies I know that I don't HAVE to eat meat and I don't like seeing animals die.

 

[DoPo]

Take my spuds, take my corn
Take me where I cannot farm
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the steak from me

Take me out to the grill
Tell 'em I will have my fill
Burn the leaks and boil the peas
You can't take the steak from me

There's no place I can be
Since I found that bovine meat
But you can't take the steak from me

*sniff* So beautiful.

OT: I don't feel I can relate. Animals die. We die. Everything dies. Even plants were alive at one point. I see no reason to feel guilty that my steak probably mooed at some point in the past. By the same token, my salad also fed, grew, and evolved. What is the substancial difference that makes one "not OK" to eat due to morals?

 

[SeeIn2D]

Does a lion feel bad for eating a gazelle? No. I mean I know it's not the same thing since we don't hunt for our own meals (generally) but still. We're healthier when we eat meat and it's also delicious! So no I don't feel bad when I eat it, and I don't believe anyone should.

 

[Phasmal]

Sometimes I feel sad that food has to come from death.
But then I remember how good meat tastes.

I also used to work in a health food shop and I know that it can be tough being a vegitarian/vegan. I don't know if the ones I met were `doing it wrong`, but many of them had to take quite a few suppliments. I couldn't do it.

I try not to eat anything too cute though.
I won't eat rabbit (Ok, I did have rabbit pie as a kid but I didn't know what it was so that doesn't count) and I won't eat deer.
But thats just cause I'm a wussy bleeding heart type of girl.

 

[IndomitableSam]

I love eating meat. Best part of every meal. I do wish we could be kinder to the animals we eat and not treat them so horribly and not be fishing things to extinction or genetically modifying chickens so they grow breasts so big they can never stand up or walk. I would sincerely be happy if I could grow, humanely slaughter, and eat my own animals - that way I would know they were treated well, and what I was eating was safe.

I could never give up meat, though.

 

[Zhukov]

I try not to eat anything too cute though.
I won't eat rabbit (Ok, I did have rabbit pie as a kid but I didn't know what it was so that doesn't count) and I won't eat deer.
But thats just cause I'm a wussy bleeding heart type of girl.

If cute things are off the table (aargh, the pun, it burns), what kind of meat do you eat?

Or have you just never seen a calf, lamb or hatchling?

 

[Phasmal]

I try not to eat anything too cute though.
I won't eat rabbit (Ok, I did have rabbit pie as a kid but I didn't know what it was so that doesn't count) and I won't eat deer.
But thats just cause I'm a wussy bleeding heart type of girl.

If cute things are off the table (aargh, the pun, it burns), what kind of meat do you eat?

Or have you just never seen a calf, lamb or hatchling?

Lambs, calves and hatchlings are cute.
Sheep, cows and chickens are fugly.
I don't mind so much if they grow up to be ugly.

I eat all the regular meat, but I feel bad about it sometimes.
Then I remember the taste of chicken and I stop feeling bad about it.