The Human Meat-Eating Obsession — Part 1
Aww, I love my pets! But holy cow, that grilled chicken on my plate looks so irresistible.
Globally, 80 billion animals are slaughtered each year for meat. The average will chomp down on 7,000 animals during their lives which breaks down to 11 cows, 27 pigs, 2,400 chickens, 80 turkeys, 30 sheep, and 4,500 fish. Such an interesting fact. You can keep track of live animal slaughter count here — https://thevegancalculator.com/animal-slaughter/
How did all this start? Why did human beings start eating animals? Let’s dig down this rabbit hole to analyze more on how homo sapiens acquired this immense taste for meat.
Why did our human ancestors eat meat?
The main reasons for the hominids to make meat the essential part of their diet is due to the following reasons —
1.Evolutionary Process
- Without the abundance of calories afforded by meat-eating, they maintain, the human brain simply could not have evolved to its current form.
- Meat and marrow are calorie-dense resources with essential amino acids and micronutrients (Milton 1999), and aquatic fauna offer resources rich in nutrients needed for brain growth (e.g., Broadhurst et al. 2002). Increasing the consumption of animal foods could have allowed hominids to increase their body size without losing mobility, agility, or sociality (Milton 1999).
2. Irreplaceable nutritional value
- In 2009, Claudio Tennie, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and his colleagues developed a hypothesis that offered a nutritional perspective on the group hunting they had observed in the chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, in Tanzania.
- According to this hypothesis, the micronutrients gained from meat are so important that even small scraps of meat are worth the very high energy expenditure that cooperative hunting entails. Important components of meat include not only vitamins A and K, calcium, sodium, and potassium, but also iron, zinc, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12; the latter, although necessary for a balanced primate diet, is present only in small quantities in plants.
3. Ease of consumption
- The pre-human diet majorly started with fruits and vegetables (not calorie-dense). A better alternative to this was so-called underground storage organs (OSU — root foods like beets, yam, and potatoes) which have better nutritional value. However, they are terrible in taste and hard to chew when it’s raw. This is where meat stepped — and ran and scurried — in to save the day. Prey that has been killed and then prepared either by slicing, pounding, or flaking provides a much more calorie-rich meal with much less chewing than root foods do, boosting nutrient levels overall.
- On average, they found that it required from 39% to 46% less force to chew and swallow processed meat than processed root foods.
Meat is what made us the most evolved form of homo sapiens.
According to Harvard University evolutionary biologists Katherine Zink and Daniel Lieberman, the authors of the Nature paper, concluded a diet that was 1/3rd animal protein and 2/3rd OSUs would have saved early humans about two million chews per year — a 13% reduction — meaning a commensurate saving in time and calorie-burning effort just to get dinner down. This is the real reason why our human ancestors “had no choice” but to make meat an essential part of their diet.
Why does the most evolved form of human beings continue meat consumption?
The meat was clearly pivotal in the evolution of the human brain, but that doesn’t mean that meat is still an irreplaceable part of the modern human diet. Marta Zaraska (Author of Meathooked) says any calorie-dense food would have had the same effect on our ancient evolving brains — “it could have been peanut butter” — but that meat happened to be available.
Humans continue to eat meat because we like it, not because we need it.
For the most part, people globally consume meat for the following reasons.
- Rich source of protein and nutrition
Meat is a complete, high-quality protein containing all of the amino acids required for your body. It provides 25 grams of proteins per 3 ounces than dairy (8 grams per cup), eggs (6 grams each), legumes (12 grams per ¾ cup), vegetables, or nuts (2 to 5 grams per serving). It is the natural source of Vitamin B12. It supports overall optimal health.
2. Ultimate Craving
The Mekeo tribe of New Guinea say that hunger for plant-foods comes from the abdomen, while hunger for meat starts in the throat. One thing common among all the animals such as roaches, minks, cats, and humans is the innate craving for protein.
According to the protein leverage hypothesis, proposed by Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer from the University of Sydney, Australia, animals strive to meet a fixed protein target. Basically, if the amount of calories from protein in the diet falls below about 15 %, we start to crave protein-dense foods.
3. The irresistible taste
Why exactly is meat so tasty? The answer, according to scientists, lies in meat’s unique mixture of fat and umami, spiced up in a process called the Maillard reaction — the browning that happens when we cook a piece of meat. “These are powerful stimuli to humans,” says Paul Breslin, a nutritional sciences professor at Rutgers University.
As much as 95 % of what we think of as meat’s taste is actually its aroma, according to a Barb Stuckey, author of “Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good.”
4. Acquired meat-eating behavior since childhood
Dietary quality is influenced by practices such as eating breakfast, family meals, and fast food consumption. Both dietary quality and meal practices are linked with sociodemographic characteristics. It is extremely likely that a kid who has been brought up by eating non-vegetarian food would continue to do so throughout his entire lifetime. Convincing people to make changes in their diet is not a simple task since they have been following different practices since their childhood. However, education plays a huge role in assisting the shift in dietary habits of people to prevent the animal killing.
What do the animals experience while human beings continue meat consumption?
Disclaimer: Graphic content consists of human cruelty and animal slaughtering
Guess the common emotion among the above images — “Pain”.
Yes, that’s 100% right! They are all in PAIN. However, let’s understand the techniques in which the animals are prepared to be our yummy dinner.
The most widely used technique of killing animals adopts the principle of the two-stage process of making the animals unconscious and then killing them for the non-ritual slaughter of animals —
- Electrical Stunning — Current is applied either across the brain or the heart to make the animal unconscious before they are killed. This is basically, electrocuting the animal.
- Asphyxiation — Animals are put in a chamber filled with 80% to 90% CO2 which helps in losing their consciousness.
- Captive Bolt Pistol Strike — Animals are forcefully struck with a captive bolt pistol on their forehead.
- Exsanguination — The animal’s throat is cut or a chest stick is inserted close to the heart so the main arteries and veins are cut and allowed to bleed.
Now, let’s all imagine the exact same situations described above happening to either human beings (any race, any ethnicity, any gender, any age group, anybody at all) or our beloved dogs, cats, or so-called “pets” at home; How do we feel? What images do we see? Do we have the courage to think about this? Would we all still continue leading our lives normally without any protests?
To be continued.
References
