Do You Like Chicken?

Vegetarianism and veganism are practically religious cults the amount of preaching they do to the rest of us about their so called moral superiority for not eating meat.

Animals are divided into three main categories, Herbivores, Omnivores and Carnivores.

Humans are Omnivores.

This means we have the ability to get some of our nutrients from meat. In olden days most of a humans nutrition came for plants, grains, green plant material and pulses. A lot of tribes only eat milk and cheese, some drain blood from their cattle but the slaughter of cattle for food is considered extravagant and wasteful as cattle are very expensive to rear and buy for these people.

Meat was viewed as an expensive luxury reserved for the upper classes or, on rare occasions for the 90% of people that made up the peasants class. Fish, crustaceans and in some countries, insects made up another important source of protein but westerners have gone off insects.

Because of our modern lifestyles and the advent of cheap grain and feeds, cheap transport and cheap sheds and housing, animal protein has become relatively inexpensive in modern times. Most culinary techniques are easier to manage when meat is in the diet as a convenient source of protein for the average worker. I have talked to vegans and they have to manage their diet very carefully to ensure they get adequate protein and the proper types of protein to guard against anemia, cognitive development disorders ( esp with vegan children) and the likes. Being vegan is therefore relatively difficult and leaves most people feeling hungry, but this is the normal state of affairs for most humans for most of times past. Being full at all times is only a post WW2 phenomenon for most working class people, esp city dwellers without access to arable land to grow their own food.

In the recent past we have used fossil fuels as feedstock to make artificial fertilisers and pesticides and fungicides to increase crop yields and allow modern humans to produce cheap meat with the surplus crops which are available because of this process. We are figuratively eating oil.

Water is also needed in large quantities to make meat.

As water and fossil fuels become scarce and more plant and grains are needed for our growing human population there will be an increase in the cost of meat and a reduction in its consumption. Veganism and vegetarianism will rise and probably in time become mainstream. The techniques and knowledge needed to successfully keep healthy on a vegan or veg diet will also become widely known and used by most ordinary people.

During WW2 British people used to keep a few hens out the back yards of urban houses etc and grew their own food because rationing of commercially sourced food was very strict. As a child I remember pigs being kept in sheds and outhouses in my native city which were fed scraps of waste food. There was even a tender process with most residential institutions, schools, hospitals etc to take away the waste food (slops ) which was seen as a valuable resource. Nothing was wasted.

Meat has one big drawback in that it wastes a lot of plant food and water in its production. As population increases humans will have to get most of their protein from other sources, beans, pulses, seafood etc. You also have the problem with waste gasses and animal excreta to contend with from an environmental viewpoint. All these external pressures point to a big reduction in meat consumption.