But I eat meat anyway. Animals are living creatures with thoughts, feelings, and souls. Most of them are pretty dumb, but so are babies, disabled people, people in comas, etc. but we don't think it's all right to eat them.

But y'know what... I'm just trying to live my life. If it were up to me, I'd make society more vegetarian. But it's not up to me, and so being vegetarian is hard work. If it were up to me, all meat would be organic, free-range, and not pumped full of antibiotics and hormones, but it's not up to me, and so if I want some clean chicken I have to drive across the state to Whole Foods and pay 9 bucks a pound.

I have better things to do than possibly give myself some kind of vitamin deficiency. I'll eat whatever they put in front of me, I don't care enough to raise a fuss. American's have enough nutrient deficiencies (iron, zinc, copper, iodine, vitamin d, folic acid, fiber) without cutting out food groups completely Being vegetarian correctly is healthier, but having a little meat doesn't hurt either (hence the veggie burger with a little bit of bacon).

Hey vegetarians, if you want to encourage others to be vegetarian, you have to make it easier. Set up more (affordable) vegetarian restaurants, invent more tasty food. Invent some gourmet soy cheeses, the world is sorely lacking in them. Give me a recipe that makes tofu taste not-awful. Set straight the sickly ones of your ranks that live off of french fries and jelly-wonderbread sandwiches.

But I don't fully agree with the moralizing. If I were stuck on a deserted island with nothing to eat but my dead traveling companion, I'd eat them. I'd do it with full appreciation that that used to be a person. That's how I eat all meat, and vegetables too, with appreciation of how it came to my plate. It's part of what is called "conscious eating"... a Buddhist/Hermetic/mystic/New-Agey type practice.

But right there I'm getting into religious territory, and those ideas cannot be demonstrated with words, only with experience. So I'll just say I believe that although death and killing is not something to take lightly, it's not the end of the world. I think killing and eating animals is not such a sin if a person does it with good intentions, without callousness. I think last night's KFC is either up in chicken heaven or maybe it'll get reincarnated and end up eating me in another life for karma's sake.

And if the unsustainability of raising meat causes the downfall of civilization, good! It'll be a good opportunity to start from scratch and create a new, better civilization.

"...as they sweetened their tea with sugar produced at brutal slave plantations on islands far, far away."

How, exactly, is this situation materially different from the way Americans live today? We prop up brutal dictatorships in the Middle East so that we can get cheap oil to fuel our SUVs. Our malls are filled with garbage manufactured in Chinese prison camps. The money we pay for the African diamonds in our wedding rings goes to support wars where millions of children get their limbs hacked off with machetes. The soy beans that feed our priggish vegetarians are grown with petroleum-based fertilizer, often on land that used to be Amazon rainforest. And let's not even mention our hugely disproportionate contribution to global warming.

But do we care? Hell, no. We go about our lives in our comfortable little bubbles, unconcerned about the externalities of our behavior. We're no better than the English matrons who stirred their tea with slave sugar 250 years ago. In fact, we're probably worse, because we think we're actually "morally evolved". Granted, there are no longer slave markets in Charleston. But otherwise we're like children who "clean" their rooms by stuffing everything under their bedspreads.

"Hell, for that matter if you're truly poor, flour rice and beans cost almost nothing."

That's all well and good, but 2 of those 3 items are loaded with starch, which ain't particularly good for diabetics. Beans are better, but many veggies (like squash, potatoes, and yes, bean) have starches in them too.

Sadly, meats have the lowest carb count per gram than any other food group...so naturally, a diabetic like me is going to consider that when planning my meals...actually, I'll get bits of all of the above here, but the point I'm making is that it's not very easy to go 100% veggan for many folks...frankly, our bodies were not created to be that way in the first place.

I'll concede that humans (particularly in the West) consume way too much meat, but I'm not about to cut out meats altogether...that just goes against our biology. For example, and I've seen it in these posts as well...somebody goes veggan for a long time, then tries meat after a spell and gets sick...then they (mistakenly) use their deductive powers to conclude that the veggan diet is superior, because they got sick all of the sudden, and they just "feel better" when they are strictly veggan...well of course you didn't feel good, you changed your dietary habits so radically that you were bound to feel awful after not eating meat for several years. Somebody eating NOTHING but meats is going to feel pretty bloated and gasey when they suddenly eat a bowl of bran cereal...same cause-and-affect, and somebody that's an exclusive meat-lover will make the same (wrong) conclusion, that their diet of nothing but meat is good for them...

As for the moral arguements against eating meat...well, those have been already dispatched by other posts. Trying to ascribe morality to what we eat is a fine waste of time...why not use all that moral angst by working in a (vegitarian) soup kitchen instead? Do something useful rather than tell other people how to eat. Real moral of the story: all things in moderation... including meats and veggies...more veggies maybe, but not exclusively.