# Are Vegetarians Evil? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 20, 2007, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695 "2007-01-20T09:15:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![alice\_in\_wonderland](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alice_in_wonderland/32/176_2.png) [@alice\_in\_wonderland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alice_in_wonderland)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2007, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/21 "2007-01-20T23:54:48Z")
I’m a fake vegetarian. I wonder if that makes me fake evil? MWUHUHUHUHUHUHU!!! Nope - I’m the real deal - all evil. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/22 "2007-01-21T02:08:23Z")
[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster] Hitler was a man. Are men evil? [/QUOTE] No, but men are Devo. Or so I’m told. Speculation: if there is some sort of tendency to militancy amongst vegetarians or vegans, and I have no clear idea if there is, ISTM that it may have to do with a general sense among such people that current societal norms in general are something to be resisted. There certainly seem to be reasonable and logical links among the wishes to minimize human impacts on the environment, not harm animals and to not eat their flesh. For persons like Pol Pot and Charles Manson, their vegetarianism may have been a general symptom of a feeling by them that the society surrounding them was “unclean”, but who knows, really? The “lack of protein” argument sounds fairly unlikely regardless. Seems like the question, if any, is less about whether vegetarians are more militant and more about whether persons militant about preserving the environment or making other wholesale alterations to society would be more likely to be vegetarian. In this case, however, vegetarianism is just a trait that they happen to share with others who are not militant, and not the cause of the militancy. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/23 "2007-01-21T02:12:03Z")
And nobody who eats meat has ever harmed or wronged another person. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/24 "2007-01-21T02:37:04Z")
[QUOTE=Shoshana] And nobody who eats meat has ever harmed or wronged another person. [/QUOTE] I’m glad you said that. Makes this burger I’m eating much tastier. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/25 "2007-01-21T13:11:41Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] Hitler wore a moustache. Stalin wore a moustache. Saddam Hussein wore a moustache. Lip hair is the hair of EVIL. EVIL, I tell you! [/QUOTE] Ah yes but Adolf was the only one with one gonad. Testicles are evil…except mine of course ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/26 "2007-01-21T13:47:03Z")
[QUOTE=Derleth] Perhaps not a debate, but a question about nutrition: [ul] [li]Are vegans (to take the most extreme form of vegetarianism in widespread currency) typically deficient of any nutrients?[/li][li]If they are, are those nutrients linked to behavioral shifts?[/li][li]Is there a consistent correlation between those extreme violent vegetarians and the people with the key deficiencies in their diets?[/li][/ul]I’m guessing the answer to all three questions is no, but they are well-formed and logical questions which can be answered in an intelligent way. [/QUOTE] The basic assumption still needs to be supported before you can start asking questions about its possible causes, so in my view those questions arent ‘logical’ as they’re jumping the gun a tad. Said assumption being that theres any real differences in the rate and typology of violent vegetarians and the rate of violent meat eaters, and if there are that they cant be explained by other causes. Ideologies have after all been more than sufficient reason for people to be violent without needing to drag nutrients into the equation, so Id want to see that difference supported before vegetarians start having to prove they’re only one mung bean away from going troppo. Otara ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/27 "2007-01-21T18:18:39Z")
[QUOTE=Barbecue] I have gone to this website: \*\*[VegetariansAreEvil.com](http://www.vegetariansareevil.com) \*\* [quote] And I won’t go to that website, just as I wouldn’t go to [JewsAreEvil.com](http://JewsAreEvil.com) or [BlacksAreEvil.com](http://BlacksAreEvil.com). Promoting hate speech is morally wrong and you should be ashamed to do it. > [@](#): > > They not only mention how Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and other were/are vegetarians, but why vegetarians and vegans are often involved in militancy and militant causes (Animal Rights activists come to mind…). > > [from a later post] > Actually, he wasn’t a vegetarian in his earlier years, but after his live-in girlfriend killed herself, he became one saying that to eat meat reminded him of Geli’s corpse. It’s documented. Guess again. Geli died in 1924, if I recall correctly, and there’s [well-documented firsthand evidence of Hitler eating meat to the end of his life in 1945](http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/hitler.html). > [@](#): > > but why vegetarians and vegans are often involved in militancy and militant causes (Animal Rights activists come to mind…). Do you have any evidence to support the assertion that vegetarians are “often involved in militancy and militant causes”? You’ve mentioned PETA; I’d agree that they’re militant according to the first definition (“very active and aggressive in support of a cause”), though not according to the second definition (“engaged in warfare”). However, PETA represents only a tiny fraction of the world’s vegetarian population. Your assertion that vegetarian and vegans are “often involved in militancy” is sinking without any support, until you provide some evidence to back it up. Further, you seem to be saying that militancy is evil. The Massachuesetts Minutemen were militant. Ghandi was militant (and vegetarian). Martin Luther King was militant. Militancy is good in many cases. > [@](#): > > One of the arguments went that they are starved of the animal protein Starved means either “dead or in the process of dieing from lack of nourishment” or “suffering from extreme need”. Most vegetarians are neither; therefore they are not starved of animal protein. (As a side note, there are many proteins derived only from animals. This website’s assertion that there’s only one is further proof of the author’s ignorance, and of the ignorance of anyone who would take it seriously.) > [@](#): > > and as we know, a hungry person is an angry person You appear to be among those who don’t understand the first person plural pronoun. _You_ may know that a hungry person is an angry person; if so, you “know” something that is not true. All other people do not know this fact; rather, they know the opposite, which is that a hungry person can be perfectly polite and pleasant. You would know this too, if you observed the world around you. > [@](#): > > and that this puts their bodies into “hunting mode” There’s no rational reason to believe that the human body has a “hunting mode”; I’ve never in my life been in the condition of having my body perfectly prepared for the task of hunting. > [@](#): > > with elevated levels of anxiety and prepared to kill prey or whatever gets in their way. A person with high levels of anxiety would not be prepared to kill prey or whatever gets in their way; rather, they’d be prepared to do the exact opposite: to run away from prey or whatever gets in their way. According to this argument, there are about forty million people in the United States who are prepared to murder any person they meet at any time, and billions more in other countries. Therefore, if this argument were correct , the United States would suffer several hundred million murders each day. Instead it suffers about fifty murders each day, and you have no evidence that any of them are committed by vegetarians. Hence this argument is incorrect. (That was six separate examples of glaringly obvious ignorance in one sentence. Someone should record this for posterity.) > [@](#): > > Humans evolved to be omnivorous Incorrect. Human evolution produced people who can survive on either an omnirous diet or on an entirely plant-based diet (but not on an entirely meat-based diet). > [@](#): > > and a vegan diet is unhealthy (not just with regard to Vitamin B12) and unnatural. Incorrect. According to the Americna Dietetic Society’s 1996 Statement on Vegetraian Diets, a vegan diet reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, hypertension, diabetese, and osteoporosis. > [@](#): > > and unnatural Actually it’s quite natural. A primitive person wandering through the forest would naturally prefer gathering plant food to animal food. Plant food is easier to find, safer to gather, more reliable than animal food (you don’t have to track a carrot across fifteen miles of rough terrain), and easier to prepare. Meat is inherently a luxury that people could only have once they had excess time and effort to expend on it. > [@](#): > > Knowing some vegans (militants too), this makes sense to me. Knowing many vegans , it makes no sense to me. If you know some vegans and this argument is correct, then those vegans must have murdered you. Since you’re still here, obviously this argument is incorrect. Therefore it can’t make sense to you unless you’ve completely abandoned rational thinking. In summary, I believe that the website you’ve linked to will be a boon to vegetarians, just as the website founded by the author’s ideological twin Fred Phelps has been of great assistance to the gay rights movement. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/28 "2007-01-21T19:40:14Z")
(The previous post was a mistake and may be deleted.) [QUOTE=Barbecue] I have gone to this website:\*\*[VegetariansAreEvil.com](http://www.vegetariansareevil.com) \*\* [/quote] And I won’t go to that website, just as I wouldn’t go to [JewsAreEvil.com](http://JewsAreEvil.com) or [BlacksAreEvil.com](http://BlacksAreEvil.com). Promoting hate speech is morally wrong and you should be ashamed to do it. > [@](#): > > They not only mention how Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and other were/are vegetarians, but why vegetarians and vegans are often involved in militancy and militant causes (Animal Rights activists come to mind…). > [from a later post] > Actually, he wasn’t a vegetarian in his earlier years, but after his live-in girlfriend killed herself, he became one saying that to eat meat reminded him of Geli’s corpse. It’s documented. Guess again. Geli died in 1924, if I recall correctly, and there’s [well-documented firsthand evidence of Hitler eating meat to the end of his life in 1945](http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/hitler.html). > [@](#): > > but why vegetarians and vegans are often involved in militancy and militant causes (Animal Rights activists come to mind…). Do you have any evidence to support the assertion that vegetarians are “often involved in militancy and militant causes”? You’ve mentioned PETA; I’d agree that they’re militant according to the first definition (“very active and aggressive in support of a cause”), though not according to the second definition (“engaged in warfare”). However, PETA represents only a tiny fraction of the world’s vegetarian population. Your assertion that vegetarian and vegans are “often involved in militancy” is sinking without any support, until you provide some evidence to back it up. Further, you seem to be saying that militancy is evil. The Massachuesetts Minutemen were militant. Ghandi was militant (and vegetarian). Martin Luther King was militant. Militancy is good in many cases. > [@](#): > > One of the arguments went that they are starved of the animal protein Starved means either “dead or in the process of dieing from lack of nourishment” or “suffering from extreme need”. Most vegetarians are neither; therefore they are not starved of animal protein. (As a side note, there are many proteins derived only from animals. This website’s assertion that there’s only one is further proof of the author’s ignorance, and of the ignorance of anyone who would take it seriously.) > [@](#): > > and as we know, a hungry person is an angry person You appear to be among those who don’t understand the first person plural pronoun. _You_ may know that a hungry person is an angry person; if so, you “know” something that is not true. All other people do not know this fact; rather, they know the opposite, which is that a hungry person can be perfectly polite and pleasant. You would know this too, if you observed the world around you. > [@](#): > > and that this puts their bodies into “hunting mode” There’s no rational reason to believe that the human body has a “hunting mode”; I’ve never in my life been in the condition of having my body perfectly prepared for the task of hunting. > [@](#): > > with elevated levels of anxiety and prepared to kill prey or whatever gets in their way. A person with high levels of anxiety would not be prepared to kill prey or whatever gets in their way; rather, they’d be prepared to do the exact opposite: to run away from prey or whatever gets in their way. (Please don’t get the impression that I enjoy stating the bleedingly obvious; I only do so when it seems necessary.) According to this argument, there are about forty million people in the United States who are prepared to murder any person they meet at any time, and billions more in other countries. Therefore, if this argument were correct , the United States would suffer several hundred million murders each day. Instead it suffers about fifty murders each day, and you have no evidence that any of them are committed by vegetarians. Hence this argument is incorrect. (That was six separate examples of glaringly obvious ignorance in one sentence. Someone should record this for posterity.) > [@](#): > > Humans evolved to be omnivorous Incorrect. Human evolution produced people who can survive on either an omnirous diet or on an entirely plant-based diet (but not on an entirely meat-based diet). > [@](#): > > and a vegan diet is unhealthy (not just with regard to Vitamin B12) and unnatural. Incorrect. According to the Americna Dietetic Society’s 1996 Statement on Vegetraian Diets, a vegan diet reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, hypertension, diabetese, and osteoporosis. > [@](#): > > and unnatural Actually it’s quite natural. A primitive person wandering through the forest would naturally prefer gathering plant food to animal food. Plant food is easier to find, safer to gather, more reliable than animal food (you don’t have to track a carrot across fifteen miles of rough terrain), and easier to prepare. Meat is inherently a luxury that people could only have once they had excess time and effort to expend on it. > [@](#): > > Knowing some vegans (militants too), this makes sense to me. Knowing many vegans , it makes no sense to me. If you know some vegans and this argument is correct, then those vegans must have murdered you. Since you’re still here, obviously this argument is incorrect. Therefore it can’t make sense to you unless you’ve completely abandoned rational thinking. In summary, I believe that the website you’ve linked to will be a boon to vegetarians, just as the website founded by the author’s ideological twin Fred Phelps has been of great assistance to the gay rights movement. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/29 "2007-01-21T20:14:34Z")
Them vegans have been evil since the days of Cain and Abel! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2007, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/30 "2007-01-21T20:43:11Z")
If this baseless assertion were true, wouldn’t India be the most dangerous place on Earth? And I don’t remember Gandhi committing any act of violence, even against the meat-eaters who machine-gunned a defenceless crowd: ‘The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, also known as the Amritsar Massacre, was named after the Jallianwala Bagh (Garden) in Amritsar, where, on April 13, 1919, British Indian Army soldiers under the command of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire on an unarmed gathering of men, women and children. The firing lasted about 10 minutes and 1600 rounds were fired. Official sources place the casualties at 379. According to private sources, the number was over 1000, with more than 2000 wounded,[1] and Civil Surgeon Dr Smith indicated that they were over 1800.[2]’ > **[Jallianwala Bagh massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amritsar_Massacre)** > > The Jallianwala (also spelled Jallianwalla) Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919. A large, peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, British India, during annual Baishakhi fair, to protest against the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of pro-independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlu and Satyapal. In response to the public gathering, the temporary brigadier general R. E. H. Dyer, surrounded the people with his Gurkha, Baloch and... ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/31 "2007-01-22T17:59:10Z")
[QUOTE=glee] IThe firing lasted about 10 minutes and **1600 rounds were fired**. Official sources place the casualties at 379. According to private sources, the number was **over 1000, with more than 2000 wounded** … [/QUOTE] (bolding mine) Those guys were amazing. On the average, almost every round hit two people! Sorry. I know your post was serious and was making a serious point, but silly math like that always bothers me. A total of over 3,000 killed or wounded with 1,600 rounds? Give me a break. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2007, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/32 "2007-01-22T18:13:45Z")
Well, actually, if the crowd was huddled together, trying to get through a few narrow exit doors, a single bullet could easily pass through two or more people, plus injuries resulting from trampling and whatnot including, the Wiki page claims, 120 people who dove and died in a well to avoid the gunfire. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/33 "2007-01-23T05:17:08Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] Well, actually, if the crowd was huddled together, trying to get through a few narrow exit doors, a single bullet could easily pass through two or more people, plus injuries resulting from trampling and whatnot including, the Wiki page claims, 120 people who dove and died in a well to avoid the gunfire. [/QUOTE] Yes. The statistics are hard to believe, that is exactly what points up the extraordinary horror of the massacre, the conditions that could have produced such casualties. My mind tries to grasp how those soldiers could have done what they did, and fails. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/34 "2007-01-23T10:10:53Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] Yes. The statistics are hard to believe, that is exactly what points up the extraordinary horror of the massacre, the conditions that could have produced such casualties. My mind tries to grasp how those soldiers could have done what they did, and fails. [/QUOTE] Soldiers are trained to follow orders. To a soldier, a huge crowd, armed or unarmed, is a very real threat, and crowds tend to become armed very quickly when they start tearing up roads and walls. Ever seen a film of soldiers being pulled from cars and literally torn apart ? It sounds like 50 soldiers fired 1600 rounds, which is 32 rounds per soldier (the other 40 Ghurkas only had kukris). Over 10 minutes we have about 3 shots a minute - or one every 20 seconds. While it improbable that the rate of fire was uniform - it does not sound as if they were blasting away. I reckon that the first few volleys would have been over the crowd’s heads, if the crowd then surged forward, the soldiers would have little choice. Note also that the soldiers were Sikhs and Ghurkas, neither are likely to relish being chased off by a howling mob, and neither are going to allow themselves to be torn limb from limb. I suspect that the majority of the casualties were simply from being crushed under foot, and the ‘official’ 379 would be accounted for, by examining the bodies for bullet wounds. Put like that, each soldier would have shot to kill about 8 times, possibly fewer if the multiple casualties from one bullet thesis is assumed. Reading the Wicki article, it is pretty clear that the mob had a track record of killing people > [@](#): > > Later in the day, several banks and other buildings, either housing government property or otherwise emblematic of British rule, were set on fire. The Town Hall, two banks, the telegraph office and a railway goods shed were set alight. The railway station was saved by the arrival of a small force of Gurkhas on a troop train. A European railway guard was beaten to death at the goods shed,three European bank officials burnt to death and another European murdered in the street during this part of the day. An English female missionary was badly beaten and left for dead in the street, she was saved by the intervention of a group of Indians who hid her from the mob in a nearby house. The infantry fired upon the crowd several times during the day, and between 8 and 20 people were killed. I would say that Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer and his 90 troops had little choice in the matter, and I doubt that many involved lost much sleep over it. They probably regarded themselves as fortunate to be alive. I suppose my view is coloured, as when I was young, I was told about a relative of mine who was a British officer in Palestine. An angry crowd of Jews were approaching over a bridge, he went forward to reason with them. They stoned him, he died. The family moral of the story is to be wary of mobs, which is why I sympathise with Israeli troops in Ghaza. Nobody told me what my relative’s troops did, but I should imagine they emptied their magazines into the mob. We should not judge things from our own context. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/35 "2007-01-23T13:57:27Z")
Can someone’s diet effect their behavior? I would say yes. Does that mean they will serve evil, I wouldn’t make that leap. House cats, which need meat, will naturally hunt if their owners deprive them of it, even if kitty never showed any interest in it. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/36 "2007-01-23T14:43:52Z")
Let’s hear it for that horrible vegan, Jeffrey Dahmer! ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/37 "2007-01-23T17:45:53Z")
Uh…some vegans adopt that diet because they want to do as little harm to others as possible. I’d say _that_ doesn’t meet the typical definition of evil. John Keegan, in his well-reviewed book [A History of Warfare](http://www.amazon.com/History-Warfare-Vintage-John-Keegan/dp/0679730826), makes an argument that the skill set that made nomadic herding societies (as opposed to farmers) successful contributed to the ferocity and effectiveness of the steppe nomads, from Attila’s Huns through Genghis’ Mongols and Tamerlane’s Tatars. Specifically, that unlike settled farmers, nomad herdsmen had to kill the young, agile animals every spring, swiftly, without alarming the herd into flight…had to learn to identify the natural leader in a large herd at a glance, and kill him/her to assume control…learned to drive crowd behavior through harrying tactics…learned to surround and split up a crowd to subdue it…and various other tactics that made them both ruthlessly immured to slaughter and devastatingly effective at dismantling the crowd-like, unprofessional armies they faced in the settled lands. And the nomads surged forth from the steppe over and over in the long course of history. So Keegan’s argument is perilously close to saying _meat-eating_ perfected, or contributed to, the most feared recurring sequence of mass slaughter and warfare in history’s cycles. Just to present an opposing viewpoint. 🙂 Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![mrklutz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ebca7d/32.png) [@mrklutz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrklutz)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/38 "2007-01-23T18:02:34Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] Hitler wore a moustache. Stalin wore a moustache. Saddam Hussein wore a moustache. Lip hair is the hair of EVIL. EVIL, I tell you! [/QUOTE] But only when it appears without chin hair, which as we all know is an emulation of the creator and His Noodly Goodness. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/39 "2007-01-25T17:14:31Z")
Veggies are evil. Their diet gives them extremely nasty flatulence. I have seen veggies empty rooms at work in a flash. Work productivity would increase if veggies were force fed a burger every now and then. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2007, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695/40 "2007-01-26T08:38:21Z")
[QUOTE=ITR champion] Incorrect. Human evolution produced people who can survive on either an omnirous diet or on an entirely plant-based diet (but not on an entirely meat-based diet) . . . . . . Actually it’s quite natural. A primitive person wandering through the forest would naturally prefer gathering plant food to animal food. Plant food is easier to find, safer to gather, more reliable than animal food (you don’t have to track a carrot across fifteen miles of rough terrain), and easier to prepare. Meat is inherently a luxury that people could only have once they had excess time and effort to expend on it. [/QUOTE] Not that I’m supporting this joker, but these two assertions are incorrect. From the Cecil: [Traditionally Eskimos ate only meat and fish.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010119.html) You can survive on nothing but animal parts—the actual dietary requirement of carbohydrates is close to zero—but you’ve got to eat organ meats and you have to eat some of them raw or you’ll destroy some essential vitamins. And your second statement isn’t true either. [Meat-eating was essential for human evolution . . .](http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html) Anthropologists posit that hunting gave access to more fat and protein, which gave support for larger brains, starting a positive feedback that eventually led to higher thinking abilities including abstract thought. Earlier hominids were more vegetarian than later ones, but meat eating became more common as time went on and had a significant affect on human societies. One of the main reasons we became better at making tools was to improve hunting weapons and tools for processing kills. “The evidence of this change in subsistence pattern can be seen especially at late Homo erectus sites such as Zhoukoudian. Literally tens of thousands of fragmentary food refuse bones were found there. They came from pigs, sheep, rhinoceros, buffalo, and especially deer. In addition, there were large numbers of bones from small animals including birds, turtles, rabbits, rodents, and fish as well as the shells of oysters, limpets, and mussels. Some of these bones ended up in the cave at Zhoukoudian as a result of large carnivorous animals rather than humans, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that by 1/2 million years ago, some Homo erectus were exploiting virtually every animal in their environment for food. They undoubtedly were harvesting vast amounts of wild plant foods as well. It would be a mistake to assume that Homo erectus had become an efficient specialized big game hunter. That development did not occur until more advanced Homo sapiens had evolved, several hundred thousand years later.” ([http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo\_3.htm](http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo_3.htm)) [Meat eating is an old human habit](http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/human-evolution/dn4122.html) Hunter-gathering populations tend to eat even more protein than any but the most affluent industrialized societies, and most of that protein is in the form of meat. Hunting for both small and large animals was considered to be a prestige activity for a good reason. In places where protein is scarce, the danger of protein starvation was high enough to foster habits that are pretty extreme. The incidence of cannibalism in New Guinea and New Zealand has been hypothesized to stem from the relative lack of other sources of protein. While those claims are subject to contention at times, it is true that traditional societies there were always on the lookout for protein, to the point of exploiting sources that other people mostly ignored, like insects and spiders. Farming is considered by quite a few anthropologists to be one of [“The Worst Mistake[s] in Human History”](http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf) (PDF). High-carbohydrate diets have been linked to tooth decay (most HG societies have around 1% incidence of cavities) and agricultural societies exhibited signs of dietary deficiencies for literally thousands of years after the adoption of that lifestyle. Even today, the only reason we don’t die at far higher rates than traditional societies is because of the extraordinary support of huge resources and technologically dependent medicine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-vegetarians-evil/388695.md?page=3)