Hooray for meat!

It’s a Dog-eat-Cat World out There.

ed’s note: Jack is a great guy, and in good shape, and a nice guy. He’s one of our interns from the University of Vermont. I’m a pretentious idealist vegetarian. He’s not. So I asked him to explain himself, and why he loves meat so damned much. He was generous in agreeing to do so. Let’s return the flavor and be respectful in our comments, y’all! ~ ed.

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I am so sick of hearing how bad meat is, both morally and in terms of one’s health. It seems like everywhere I look, people are nitpicking problems with it.

Nonetheless, I love to eat meat—and do so just about every meal of the day. My reasoning, other than its incredible taste, is quite simply the food chain.

A rabbit, essentially the bottom of the food chain, can eat lettuce or a carrot but could never eat meat due to the restrictions of its body.  I on the other hand, at the top of the food chain, can eat whatever I want. There’s no argument that meat, in all its forms, is far more delicious than any vegetable.  Humans have literally evolved to eat meat, from our teeth, to our bipedal movement, even our mental ability to make tools—everything has evolved in order to eat, catch, carry, and kill our prey, which we have done very successfully for thousands of years—it’s called survival of the fittest.

I know that vegetables are healthy for you, but that’s not to say meat isn’t, too. I am 21 years old and have barely eaten vegetables my entire life (other than the few my mom forced down my throat at a young age) and consider myself to be quite healthy; I’m around six foot three, weigh 175 pounds, and have had very few health problems in my young life.

If anything, I think it is healthier and more natural to eat meat, providing tons of essential nutrients that many vegetarians then have to take in pill form or some other weird supplement.  Along that same line, many of the vegetarians I know speak of all the unnatural hormones pumped into the animals and their cruel treatment. While I don’t support the nasty nature of the meat industry these days, vegetables are just as unnaturally filled with pesticides and other chemicals to make them big, colorful, and ready for supermarkets.  All I’m saying is that you can still be just as healthy, if not more, than any vegetarian by eating meat.

So why deprive yourself?

On to the moral subject, I too am an animal lover.  My dog McKinley is just about my best buddy on the planet, and seeing the beauty and elegance of a deer or elk in their natural environment evokes the same awe-inspiring feeling as it does for most people.

However, a cow, a pig, or a chicken is in its natural environment on a ranch. They are so f-ing stupid they have no idea what is going on. Mentally it’s basically equivalent to a living plant; as long as it has food and water they’re content. Let’s be honest: these farm animals were raised, and are kept alive, for one purpose—me to eat. Don’t tell me any of those animals could survive in the wild by themselves.  If they didn’t get eaten, killed if you will, by some other large predator before winter, they would surely not make it though the cold months of the year when food is sparse. They are completely dependent on us now after hundreds upon hundreds years of being domesticated. I remember in elementary school my teachers—and I would guess many vegetarians today—would never rag on the Native Americans for hunting buffalo, and would remind us that the Indians used every part of the buffalo, wasting nothing.  Well guess what, we use every part of the damn cow as well.

We are just smart enough to domesticate them, providing a constant food source.

If you are a vegetarian, that’s great, just please don’t preach, or be one of those pretentious vegetarians (like Waylon ~ed.).  I am an extremely idealistic person, but at some point you must be practical and realize that eating meat is, and has always been a vital part of human life.

John Spina currently attends the University of Vermont in Burlington where he will graduate with a double major in history and political science in 2011.  He writes sports for the school paper, the Vermont Cynic, as well as publishes weekly articles in the Mountain Ear, a local Nederland paper, and works as an Intern for the Elephant Journal. He loves spending time outdoors with his dog, McKinley, and being home in Colorado working for the summer. PS, sorry I forgot to put my bio in posting