This makes killing animals an economic necessity to supply a large amount of demand. That will only change with lab grown meat or indistinguishable-from-the-real-thing meat replacements.
Not throwing everything that’s been studied in nutrition by any means, but research areas like the gut micro biome are in their infancy, and we’ve yet to really study the effects food has on this complex system. We’ve had instances of saturated fats being painted as causing heart disease, red meat causing cancer, or sugar not being that bad for you. Each either having a perverse financial incentive to get specific results, or they used poor methodologies.
This also assumes a plant based diet is the most optimal diet for humans, which I’d disagree with, especially on the account that most plant-based diets lack nutrients that are only derived from meat based products. Yes you can supplement, but now the bioavailability is changed, and typically supplements target a single or few nutrients, and rarely has the full spectrum of what the particular food has for nutrient ratios.
For instance, what’s the effect on the gut microbiome when we use a supplement vs the nutrient “from the source”? We know there exists a difference in how our bodies react, just not the full picture of effects.
If your ethics supersedes what could (emphasis) be a more optimal life, or if plant based diet works better than meat based anecdotally, then have at it. But we shouldn’t be dictating policy or pushing for cultural changes on things we don’t have a full understanding on, especially when we don’t know the full implications of any one human diet.
Comparing meat eating to, if I’m reading between the lines correctly, hedonic pleasures of Netflix and alcohol, is fallacious, perverse, and dogmatic. I would go so far as to say restricting meat consumption on a policy level is unethical.
I have a very bleak view about humanity’s ability to overcome the senseless, mass slaughter and consumption of animals, even in spite of the existential risks of pandemic disease and environmental collapse that continuing to do so poses. But the idea that it’s a biological necessity (outside of a very small percentage of people with specific health conditions), seems easily disproven.
I'm personally down to eating meat once or twice per week. Mostly because it's delicious. I feel no different from when I ate meat every day, and I've lost some weight.
Most of the resistance to vegetarian diets in the Western world is for cultural reasons. There isn't widespread knowledge of how to feed oneself healthily on a vegetarian diet - people picture endless salads with no fat or protein or taste. And there's the perception of vegetarian sources of protein - beans, legumes, lentils, peanut butter, eggs, tofu, yogurt, paneer - as either foreign or "poverty" foods. There are also notions of masculinity tied up with meat consumption. I have no truck with any of that, but it's silly to try to use faulty nutrition science to defend cultural mores.
1. https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#life-expectancy-a...
You're missing my point. I'm not arguing for/against eating meat or whether its necessary, just observing that there is an economic demand for meat which is unlikely to change in the near future. To supply this demand you need to kill animals.
I'm arguing that current ethics on killing animals are that way because of otherwise we cannot get meat. Once we get clean meat and you don't need to kill animals to get meat, societal ethics will rapidly shift towards killing animals no longer being ok.