hooked on meat

by .|Sublime|. Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:36 pm

NYT article on meat consumption

Once, we had to combine hunting skills and luck to eat meat, which could supply then-rare nutrients in large quantities. This progressed — or at least moved on — to a stage where a family could raise an annual pig and maybe keep a cow and some chickens. Quite suddenly (this development is no more than 50 years old, even in America), we can drive to our nearest burger shop and scarf down a patty — or two! — at will.

Because evolution is a slow process, this revolutionary change has had zero impact on the primal urge that screams, “Listen, dummy, if you can find meat you’d better eat it, because who knows when you’ll eat it again!”
......

We’re crack addicts with a steady supply. Beyond instinct and availability, there’s a third factor: marketing. When you add “It’s what’s for dinner” to the equation, you have a powerful combination: biology, economics and propaganda all pushing us in the same direction.
......

In limited quantities, meat is just fine, especially sustainably raised meat (and wild game), locally and ethically produced dairy and eggs, the remaining wild or decently cultivated fish.

No matter where we live, if we focused on those — none of which are in abundant supply, which is exactly the point — and used them to augment the kind of diet we’re made to eat, one based on plants as a staple, with these other things as treats, we’d all be better off. We can’t afford to wait to evolve.

Any way you cut it, the mantra is moderation, buy local and eat healthy.

by charvaka Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:21 pm

Good read... thanks for posting. It is always fascinating to consider the implications of our rapid technological advances in juxtaposition with millions of years of evolution as reflected in our genes. Within a handful of generations, we have gone from subsistence to abundance, from hard labor (except for a tiny fraction of elites) to sedentary lifestyles, from life expectancy of 30 to 70, and from living mostly in one place to globetrotting. All of these show up the limitations of our bodies that evolved for other circumstances. Earlier we were subject at the species level to the laws of natural selection; now we are being tested by the implications of our own inventiveness.

by confuzzled dude Sat Jun 04, 2011 11:46 pm

.|Sublime|. wrote:NYT article on meat consumption

In limited quantities, meat is just fine, especially sustainably raised meat (and wild game), locally and ethically produced dairy and eggs, the remaining wild or decently cultivated fish.

Any way you cut it, the mantra is moderation, buy local and eat healthy.

I think vegetarian food went through similar metamorphosis, from an average yield of 10 rice bags per acre in the '60s to 40-50 bags with the help of pesticides, and the trending towards genetically modified crops, wonder where this all leads to.

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