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Confessions of a Hungry Ape
The evolutionary advantages of eating meat
There are plenty of moral and environmental arguments for vegetarianism. On the moral side, we know that animals want to live, (as do plants, of course) and that killing them contradicts that desire. Even the best farms are inhumane on some level, because they end with killing, and there is no way to do that politely.
On the environmental front, making over vast tracts of land for our domesticates has been a death sentence to innumerable wild species. Even species we had not yet discovered. E.O. Wilson, perhaps the most eminent of biologists, has written that it is not a stretch to imagine a not-too-distant future in which the planet is host only to us and the five species we like to eat.
But what are we meant to eat? By “meant to,” I mean what did our bodies evolve to eat? For that, surely, must be Exhibit A in the what-to-eat debate. Anthropologists talk about the “mismatch theory,” which argues that we evolved for one environment and set of habits, yet live in a totally different one with totally different habits. Most of our current diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, to name just a few, are “mismatch diseases,” caused by this mismatch between evolutionary background and current circumstances.
