It tastes so good you just got to eschew it 
This is why I don’t go around trying to convert people. I feel helpless against such selfishness and lack of caring. And as I said, my perception of human nature leads me to think that most people, as long as they are satisfied, don’t much care if animals are in pain, or people far away are starving, or a river is filling up with sh*t. Meat tastes good. Well, gee, what else is there to be said? :rolleyes:
Sorry, I don’t want to play the self-righteous vegetarian either. Sometimes that “fighting ignorance” thing is just too overwhelming.
No, I’m the kinda guy that lets people make up their own mind, but I’ll be Goddamned if I’m gonna let the “it’s immoral to kill and eat animals” crowd make up their minds for them. My son eats meat now, and if he chooses to quit, then good on him. That’s his business. But I’m not making him eat vegetarian out of some misguided morality trip, which is seemingly what vegetarians, and most especially vegans, want me to do.
History classes, high school.
Perhaps I got carried away, but the phrase “my children and grand children and so on will always eat meat” reminded me of very intolerant people. Sorry
Well if that is what you meant, then I apologize.
But then there is no way that you can know that, cite, "So long as there is air on this planet and animals to eat, me or one of my progeny will eat meat.
So, to paraphrase, your answer is “No, I pulled it out of my ass.”
Ok, that’s all you had to say. Thanks!
No, you misunderstood me. I did not pull it out my ass, but out of history classes.
You can get similar evidence
if you want mere cites, google for “early cannibalism”
Dung People, I am with you. I don’t really care whether people are vegetarians or not, except that it quite complicates my life that I am a part of a minorty. I also complicates the life of others because people don’t know what to cook for me when I am invited 
Apart from that, the only thing which pisses me off are phrases like
Morality is not related to comfort. It reminds me of the debate on slavery. Not so long ago, slavery was perfectly normal since slaves were not considered as humans.
“But our economy needs cheap labor!!!”
Wow. if we want it than I’d say it’s justified to do it.
That was inappropriate, I apologize to flonks and everyone else. Feeling a little snarky this morning.
Interesting reading. Thank you.
someday, someone will invent a microphone that can hear plants scream when they are chopped up for consumption by humans. then all you vegetarians will be sorry!
i, for one, am not above eating cute fuzzy animals despite the fact that they’re cute and fuzzy.
why do westerners not eat cats and dogs? because we keep them as pets and we like them more than cows and pigs, and because we don’t have to. some people like cows and pigs more than i do, and i have no problem accepting that they don’t want to eat them. but i’m personally not concerned with the plight of herd cattle.
as for health concerns, i have no reason to believe that there are more risks involved with eating meat than with eating vegetables. i suppose i could be convinced otherwise, but for the moment, i’m not.
And you’d be right, in the sense of it happening but not being the norm for a species. It does happen, but it’s not the usual pattern. Besides the evidence for human cannibalism as ever being a dietary norm, as opposed to either a ritual practice (however frequent) or a stress-induced (e.g. chronic famine) situation, is still iffy both paleontologically and historically.
From the link flonks provided: “However, physical evidence of human cannibalsm is scarce, and some archeologists dispute the conclusion”. And since recorded history begins 5K years ago, we’ve had precious little evidence of encountering it anywhere but among some isolated tribes. So if it ever was as widespread as omnivority, THAT died off well in the past.
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Speaking of which, random-rape-at-will doesn’t seem like a completely “natural” condition either – else why would so many animals have elaborate mating dances and mating fights. The subjugation of women is more likely an artifact of human social-cultural evolution. Even extremely primitive societies have rules about what is and isn’t rape, even if it’s heavily tilted against the woman they do seem to have SOME notion that something’s not right there.
</semi-hijack>
One element about meat-eating: although prevalent for most of humanity, once agricultural civilizations arose, the majority of their citizens have tended to have diets higher in veggie matter than in meat ANYWAY. And for whole periods of history the large-mammal “red” meats were luxury items for the common man. Which is why I can see meat-as-mass-commodity being eventually deemed eco(logically/nomically) inefficient. THAT, and consciousness of health risks and maybe an “ick factor” (about “eating something with a face” as the common phrase goes) as more societies become divorced from the nitty-gritty of the farm, will be the key. Not trying to render it immoral or “obscene”, as there are those of us whom nobody will ever possibly convince that eating as pork chop is an act of evil.
**
That would have been much better and less judgemental, yes.
This reminds me of a Dennis Leary stand-up routine on vegetarianism. He says something like, “That’s the problem with wanting to save the animals. We only want to save the cute animals. Otters? They do cute little ottery things. Don’t eat them. Cows? Ugly.”
It was much funnier than how I’m telling it. But if you think about it, it’s really an indictment of certain meat-eaters, not of vegetarians. Nevertheless, I had someone try to make fun of vegetarians using this routine; you know, at least think about what the comedian you get your social views from is saying. 
True, you can get all your nutrition from non-meat foods, but I don’t believe most people eat meat for the nutritional value. They eat it because it tastes good and people won’t give that up.
It would take an amazing change in the way people think about animals to get them not to eat them. Really you’d have to get everyone to think of all animals like they do their pets. I just don’t see that happening. Or maybe a world-wide religion where eating of meat is forbidden. In any case, I don’t see it happening.
The health issue of meat is a non-issue for most people. You have 300lb people slowly killing themselves Big Macs. Meat would have to be much, much, much more toxic for people to give it up. And meat doesn’t have to have such an impact on your health. It is possible to eat responsible portions of meat as part of a healthly diet. In fact, I wonder if it’s easier to have a healty diet with meat than without. If you are a vegetarian, you have to be aware of what you’re eating to make sure you have the right amount of amino acids and vitamins. But on a diet which includes meat, all you have to be concerned about is to limit the amount of meat so you don’t get too much fat and cholesterol.
So the fact that meat tastes good and that most people won’t do the work to eat a vegetarian diet, I don’t see meat ever becoming obsolete. Most people won’t limit the meat in their diet to lower their cholesterol. Most people won’t work out to stay healthy. Most people will do what they want and they want to eat meat.
I don’t know about that - I think most people already think of animals that way. I think most people don’t associate meat with killing an animal.
From my personal observations, I believe a lot of people would have trouble eating meat if they were present for the killing of the animal.
Beel, that’s a common argument. I have to admit that I think it’s completely bogus.
If it were true that people would be less likely to eat meat if they saw the animals up close, then logically we would expect people in such a situation to be more likely to be vegetarians. Children of farmers, for instance, or farmers themselves should, logically, be more likely to be vegetarians. We should also see an increase in vegetarianism in the past, when more and more people were likelier to have a hand in, or at least see, the slaughter of their food.
Yet neither of those things seems to be true. Vegetariansim in Western society is higher now that fewer and fewer people see the slaughter of animals firsthand. And I see no evidence that people who have actually seen farm animals or their slaughter are less likely to eat meat. There are innumerable cases throughout the world, in fact, where diners are presented with the live animal shortly before it is slain for their consumption; walk into a seafood restaurant with a tank of lobsters. Or go to Asia, where animals are often displayed right in the restaurant before you eat them. Is there evidence people flee Red Lobsters, newly converted to avoiding meat?
I know it certainly wouldn’t bother me. I would be quite angry to witness the slaughter of an animal if it were done in a cruel fashion, because that’s wrong, but that’s a different issue; there is no good reason why you cannot slaughter animals humanely. Just seeing a chicken get its head lopped off wouldn’t bother me in the least.
If you want me to behead this year’s Thanksgiving turkey, just hand me a cleaver. I am quite aware that my steak came out of a cow - I mean, I don’t think that red stuff is paint. My family jokes about Christmas turkeys - “Oh my God! It’s George!” That they were living animals once isn’t a surprise to anyone I know.
…and good for you too?
Beelzebubba - Hey…there’s a lot of things about food preparation that’s gross. Doesn’t make the food taste any worse.
Sorry, what do you mean? “What if ‘human meat tasted good and was good for you’?” is the only possible interpretation I can see, but I don’t know what you mean by that.
Of course they don’t – note the lack of horrified screams when you interrupt a group of hamburger-eating kids with a rousing chorus of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”. 
Sort of.
A majority has (I suspect) already confronted the arguments for moral vegetarianism, and are unconvinced by them. Non-vegetarians perceive qualitative differences between humans and animals, and those differences are used to justify killing animals for food.
Which is why analogies to slavery don’t really work. One can show that there are no differences between blacks and whites that are sufficient to justify chattel slavery. It is much more difficult (to say the least) to argue that a cow or a chicken is not qualitatively different from a person.
I can envision a future where meat is raised in gigantic cloning vats, instead of on farms, but that isn’t going to happen until the meat is indistinguishable from “normal” meat, and raising meat that way is more cost-effective than current ranches. Even then I would bet that steaks from a normally raised cow will persist as a luxury item. They would simply occupy the same niche as fresh-squeezed orange juice does vis-a-vis orange juice from concentrate.
Same would be true for non-meat substitutes. They aren’t going to take the world by storm until they are indistinguishable from regular meats, and less expensive.
In neither instance will moral arguments in favor of vegetarianism play a significant role in getting people to switch. People have strong emotional attachments to the foods they ate growing up.
And vegetarians often tend (no offense) to exaggerate their arguments. The latest example is how we are all going to die from mad cow disease. I just don’t believe that is going to happen. Tuberculosis in cattle did not bring an end to the dairy industry. Neither did bovine brucellosis, anymore than anthrax caused us to give up wearing wool altogether. And these were far more serious issues, in a time when the health and safety parts of our food delivery system were less able to handle them.
Of course over-consumption of anything can be bad for you. But I have not seen any evidence that the moderate consumption of meat and dairy products is any less healthy than veganism or vegetarianism.
Regards,
Shodan
meat wont be obsolete as long as I have a fishing pole! hhehehehe.
Ah, but the argument (as I know it; I’m not 100% on it) is that the practices that are leading to the spread of mad cow, which we KNOW are unsafe, are being knowingly done and may only be increased in the drive to save and make money, in which case the “health and safety parts” may either ignore them, or not have the capacity to fight it until it’s too late. Plus the fact that it has been proven to jump species, and could make its way into ALL kinds of meat, not just cattle. It’s interesting to think about what will happen if mad cow, outwardly undetectable in pigs and poultry, were to spread to those animals.
Anyway, personally, my only argument in regards to this topic is that it would take an event on the catastrophic level of what I described above to bring an end to meat eating. Granted, as you say, even that may not do it (and you are probably correct), but it would take something that severe to even make it possible. If morality and environmentalism haven’t done it by now (no matter how short sighted some may think it to be), it probably won’t until we’re actually faced with the immediate problems.