Are you eating too much meat?

Love meat. Enjoy it. Don’t eat many carbs.

Pros: most reliable source of protein for industrialized nations

Cons: there is no humane way to kill 100 billion animals a year

Yes. I am eating too much meat, and I don’t feel good about it. Pros = convenience, cons = environmental impact, moral issues.

Nope. No such thing. Meat, good. :)

I also eat plenty of carbs. Carbs, good. Can’t perform at the optimal level without a good balance of fat, carbs, and protein. Not that you must eat meat to get protein, but it sure helps.

I don’t eat meat either, but here’s how I see the pros and cons:

Eating meat is much easier in many ways. Meat meals tend to be faster to prepare. Eating out is simpler, with more menu options. Getting invited to meals with friends is less awkward, as are holiday meals. You don’t have to give as much thought to balancing your diet. Oh, and you get to eat bacon.

On the downside, livestock agriculture on the modern scale is ecologically unsustainable. It requires many times more resources to produce meat than crops. The toll of animal suffering engendered by the meat industry is, for me at least, intolerable. And there’s a spiritual cost to distancing oneself from other sentient beings enough to eat them.

@thorninmud But other sentient animals do eat other sentient animals. Just playing devil’s advocate for a moment. Isn’t the state of the world actually due to the survival of the fittest (and perhaps also the fattest)?

@janbb – And we wouldn’t have any moral issues here if it were necessary for us to eat meat.

No, no i’m not.

@janbb Yes, other animals do eat other sentient beings. But what I called the “spiritual” dimension of this issue arises because of the human capacity for compassion. I can’t fault tigers for their diet; as @hominid points out they have no real options, and besides, compassion isn’t a faculty of tigers, so the suffering of other creatures can’t be expected to enter into their calculus.

But if I lived a life as untempered by compassion as a tiger does, I’d be in prison or dead right now. Humans expect a minimum of compassion from each other. How far one extends one’s compassion is a spiritual concern. Does it just extend to only one’s family or circle of friends? Does it include just other human beings? Does it include some favored animals, but not others? That circle of concern, of compassion, is extensible and can become radically inclusive. That’s spiritual work, and it’s proper to humans. I can’t speak for other animals.

And neither can I speak for other humans. I don’t harbor strong feelings about what other people ought to eat or not eat. I have plenty of stuff I need to work on, and I’ll attend to that.

I’m actually eating much too much chocolate at the moment. I expect PETC to come storming down my door any minute.

Just tell ‘em it’s free range.

Not when I corral it in the fridge!

Here’s another instance of inhumane treatment of sentient beings. Must reading.

@janbb: “I’m actually eating much too much chocolate at the moment. I expect PETC to come storming down my door any minute.”

You monster!

@hominid OMG! They’re here, they’re here!!

My mom and dad loved meat (it didn’t hurt that their best friends ran a huge restaurant-catering meat packing business) so I grew up eating a lot of the stuff, and did so for many decades. But nowadays, for health reasons, I’ve cut way back on meat in general and beef in particular. The most obvious result has been a huge weight loss. Since I’m being so diligent about my controlled diet with regard to meat, sugar and white bread and rice, I do allow myself to splurge a bit with a small steak or other cut of meat.

I don’t eat meat, and if I could express my reasons as well as @thorninmud can, I’d start writing bestsellers and be done with Fluther.

I don’t eat meat, but I overindulged on seafood today. A rare occurrence.

Nope, I don’t eat meat.

No due to vegetarianism. But I tend to overload on carbs a bit and I am paying the price painfully.

People define “meat” differently, are you referring to mammal meat or tissue from any non-plant (within the definition of “animal”) organism?

No, I don’t eat too much meat. I make a great effort to eat sustainably, organic and humanely grown and slaughtered animal tissue. I work hard to balance the elements within my nutrition plan.

I see no moral dilemma, as even the staunchest vegan, unless they literally grow (preferably hydroponically), tend and harvest all their own food by hand, participate in the killing of animals for food consumption.

I love chicken and fish but don’t really eat alot of red meat. Pros. More options for meat eaters. When you’re vegetarian options seem limited, especially in restaurants. I guess alot of protein. Cons. Animals get killed for our benefit, some probably not in such a nice way. Ontop of that, some of them probably endure torture before being killed.

I eat meat, not too much, but I’d like to eat more vegetables and seafood instead of it. I think meat is not quite healthy for the people with a weight problem. So I’m trying to improve my nutrition balance replacing meat with something else.