I find that people who eat meat tend to be much more hostile to vegitarians than the other way around. I admire vegitarians for living true to their beliefs. I think it's admirable.

Additionally, Joseph Campbell pointed out that while most human beings consistantly ate meat throughout history, primitive cultures payed an awful lot more reverance and appreciation to the animals then we do today. Primitive Cultures viewed animals as equal to themselves who sacrificed their own lives so that we may live. There was always respect for the life taken.

We modern day "civilized" people get all our meat prepackaged under plastic rap, and give very little thought to the life it came from.

Just something to think about.

It really amazes me how we try to reduce humans to this binary division: vegetarians and carnivores. We are neither. We are omnivores. We have choices. Our cultures had seasonal and cultural attachements to what we ate. We have now succumb to corporatism and fanaticism for our food notions. We have abandoned our roots to food. We have demonized it and we have commodified it.

Like alc earlier, my family is Greek. Older Greek people basically had a vegan diet for 80 days in the year, 40 days before Christmas and 40 before easter. Then there were all the other days with no meat for special saints. I walk around and young American kids think they invented veganism. Gooooo on....!!!! They invent imitation food to sustain themselves and have lost the ways that people for generations survived periods of no meat and no dairy. Religion reasons were given for not eating meat or things that came from animals with blood, but it was really scarcity and need. Gee, it resulted in really good health. Now the Greeks have succumbed to the meat based diet because they are prospering and guess what? They have become really unhealthy. The old women that made the wild greens salads, that new all the edible greens are dying off, what a tragedy.

Even the Germans who you all think are carnivores had set days a week that were grain days. How do you feed families in the cold winter days in Germany? You invent all kinds of ways to cook with grains. Another question I have is about all those gluten allergies. Gee folks, if you are European American there is no way your genetic type would have made it this far if you had gluten allergies. I am no geneticist, if you were really gluten allergic you would have died off somewhere in Russia, Poland or Germany, I don't think that gene would have made it this far.

So, please stop demonizing food. Start enjoying it for what it is and what it gives us: life. Make choices but don't judge others for their choices, they cannot help it, they are omnivores. Oh, by the way, can you all go back to being carbophobics? My local bakery in Berkeley keeps running out of my favorite baguette.

Let me first say that I am not a vegetarian,

I live in Chicago and the hot dogs are too good. . .

I'm not sure that it's that important to focus on the eating of as meat being natural or unnatural, or even to talk about the rights of helpless animals, for me the most compelling part of the discussion is sustainability.

Eating meat in the proportions we do is not sustainable for the environment. The raising of animals devastates the land, and the run off from things like hog farms contaminates drinking water. Salmonella found in eggs has skyrocketed as poultry farms become more crowed and unsanitary.

If I'm privileged enough to make choices in what I eat, shouldn't I choose what is best for the earth and other people around me. Shouldn't I try to support organic local farmers instead of corporate land trashes, or something like that?

Now if only I could give up those hot dogs . . .

If in some future time we are able to create honest-to-God meat that is fit for human consumption, without having to kill any animals, I think that would be a great ethical leap forward.

Well, there's always Soylent Green! The brown-rice Nazis can be first in the supply line, too.

FYI, since you're being supercilious about this author's lack of cultural literacy, there are a number of contenders for the title of first novel in English, but Pamela isn't one of them.

Thanks for bringing that up, Paul, if only because it's a pet peeve of mine. However, there are a number of candidates for first novel. Dafoe is one. Aphra Behn's "Oroonoko" is another and preceded "Moll Flanders" by 34 years. I think there are 4 or 5 other candiates, too! English is a funny thing.

Funnier, in fact, than a lot of vegetarians I know, but it's ridiculous to paint the entire group with the crazy militant brush. Have you ever had a conversation with an Atkins convert? Or a new parent who thinks everyone should now have kids because "It's so great!"? Yikes!

I don't care what the lifestyle choice is, people of all makes and models are intent on converting others to their tribe any way they can. What better way to validate yourself?

"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.