Spiderman Computer Desk

This is a big deal to people because Lions are endangered, and the fact that this wasn't just some ordinary Lion.

P.S: I love me some Chicken Soup.

Are you trying to draw a correlation between slaughtering livestock for consumption and trophy hunting for egotistical gratification...?

Because I'd rather stick to what humans were brought up to do, eat meat... We evolved from meat-eating animals. And I am a very stubborn person. I am NOT going to submit to another persons preference simply because you enjoy it. Veganism/Vegetarianism has been shoved in my face for the past few years. Same way you are right now; "You could eat plants! Animals deserve to live!" Life is a balance of give and take. If too much of one creature is alive, there is an imbalance. That's like someone FORCING you to accept Religion because its a "Preference of a certain group."

"Because I'd rather stick to what humans were brought up to do, eat meat..."
Key words: "brought up" (re: raised by cultural normatives)

"We evolved from meat-eating animals."
-The vast majority of primates are herbivores, if not frugivores. Cite exactly what we evolved from which ate meat as a central component of its diet?

Our entire physiology is geared toward eating plants:
1. Flat teeth. 2. Carbohydrate digesting-enzymes in our saliva. 3. Stomach acid pH of 4-5. 4. Intestines 10-11x the length of our bodies, 5. A long, sacculated colon, 6. A liver that cannot detoxify Vitamin A.

"That's like someone FORCING you to accept Religion because its a "Preference of a certain group.""
---You're the one forcing your personal choices on others; you kill animals needlessly and ignore YOUR victims for YOUR preference.

Meat eating is not a "personal choice" because you're forcing YOUR decisions down the throat of other sentient beings, and the result is their inhumane treatment and murder. You could not be more wrong if you tried.

I never said my diet is purely preferential; oppositely, it's purely ethical. I found it a big inconvenience at first because I did not know how to do it, but I learned, because I came to the conclusion that my convenience is not worth more than lives.

"The following is an adapted excerpt of Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory, by Vaclav Smil. Wiley-Blackwell, May 2013.

There is no doubt that human evolution has been linked to meat in many fundamental ways. Our digestive tract is not one of obligatory herbivores; our enzymes evolved to digest meat whose consumption aided higher encephalization and better physical growth. Cooperative hunting promoted the development of language and socialization; the evolution of Old World societies was, to a significant extent, based on domestication of animals-"

"You kill animals needlessly-" Well, the world is not what you think, Sunshine... It's a balance of life and death. And if that means me killing something living to feed myself, then I am happy to oblige. A wild carnivore is not going to convert to veganism because its "inhumane" to kill something.

Another point- It takes an entire acre of crops to feed a SINGLE PERSON for a year. Where as a cow or two can feed an ENTIRE FAMILY for a year. In the near future a single acre will have to feed 4 people... talk about a food shortage.

Do I feel that animals could be treated better on ranches/farms? Yes... But I am still going to eat meat. Hell, I even hunt for my own food from time-to-time.

"Our digestive tract is not one of obligatory herbivores; our enzymes evolved to digest meat whose consumption aided higher encephalization and better physical growth." (provides no evidence that the consumption of meat results in better physical growth)

"Cooperative hunting promoted the development of language and socialization..."
Translation: It wasn't the meat itself; it was the long-term activity of coordinating with other people and developing strategies--- things which have much better substitutes in the modern world.

"Another point- It takes an entire acre of crops to feed a SINGLE PERSON for a year. Where as a cow or two can feed an ENTIRE FAMILY for a year."
---Stupidest_thing_ever_said. You have to take into account how much acreage is necessary to feed the cow, on top of how much acreage is necessary to shelter the cow. It takes 10 lbs of water and10 lbs of produce to put 1 lb of meat on a large animal. Taking that into consideration, the raising of the cow is by far a grosser space user, also taking into account it takes years of feeding and watering the cow, which could have covered multiple harvests in the same time frame over that acreage.

"Our digestive tract is not one of obligatory herbivores."
-And yet, he doesn't mention what our digestive tract is: that of a frugivore.
An omnivore which predominantly eats fruits and vegetables, and can break down meat if necessary, often to the detriment of its own health. Look up "carnicene" and "TMAO" sometime.

By the way, your same author (never mind that he's 40% junk science in his convictions) even says that the raising of meat is unsustainable.

"We pour all this energy into growing corn and soybeans, and then we put all that into rearing animals while feeding them antibiotics. And then we throw away 40 percent of the food we produce.
Meat eaters don’t like me because I call for moderation..."

The advent of fire and strategic aspects of hunting lead to brain development, not the meat itself. If it was meat itself,

"Cooperative hunting promoted the development of language and socialization...was, to a significant extent, based on domestication of animals-"
-The domestication of animals required the advent of horticulture, which required more expertise and knowledge base (it required a calendar, a working knowledge of propagation methods such as cuttings and air layering, etc). I could easily therefore argue that the drive to domesticate animals required much more thought toward plants.

(cut this off by accident) The advent of fire and strategic aspects of hunting lead to brain development, not the meat itself. If it was meat itself, then big cats or any obligate carnivore would have had a MASSIVE head start on us, and we'd be nowhere near the most intelligent animal.

Fire/cooking food made it more digestible, and require less chewing and consumption: activities which don't require a lot of brain activity. Our ancestors spent the majority of their waking hours chewing, and once consumption and energy spent on chewing became less, it went elsewhere.

But, to paraphrase various sources: "A vegan diet results in 3-6 years more longevity, a decrease in the rates of various cancer, and more positive physical results in the individual."

Sources (mind you I had to paraphrase to fit them all in that statement): The World Health Organization, The British Medical Journal, The Medical Journal of Australia, The Oxford Study, The China Study, The American Diabetic Association