Nope – NOT me.
While I was walking through downtown to work, a lady accosted me around 1st and University asking for help finding the overpass that leads to the ferry terminal. Now it’s quite a bit farther down than University, so I pointed her in the right direction and kept moving. (It’s at 1st and Marion for the curious)
She was one of those really chatty people, and trundled along with me in that direction and kept up a steady stream, apparently requiring only the most minimal of responses from me as an indication to continue.
The strangest thing she said, just before turning off down the ramp, involved turkeys – and eating them. “You know, we’re not meant to eat meat… Our bodies aren’t built for it. That’s why vegetarians are healthier”.
Now I’m the first to admit there are a lot of healthy vegetarians out there, and there are a lot of (I think) very good rationals behind eating vegetarian. But that argument is so spurious that it left me sort of stunned in that Im-not-quite-awake-enough-for-this sort of way. I mean, really – if that were the case, why don’t we have molars all around our mouths instead of cuspids and bicuspids. Why can we even digest meat if we weren’t built do to so.
I watched her walk down the overpass thingy to the ferry thinking “Wow, what we she smokin?” and looking forward to a little cooking, eating, and drinking frenzy tomorrow on the Day of the Bird. Probably won’t do the football watching – but I’m sure we’ll come up with something fun to do.
Rhonabwy 
If your interested in where her logic comes from it’s from a book called “The China Study” by T Collin Campbell. It comes down to the fact that eating meat is more carcinogenic then smoking, it leeches calcium from your bones when you ingest animal protein, and fills your arteries with cholesterol. Another resource for this information can be found at http://www.pcrm.org/ All of this data is peer reviewed, though of course you should always check citations.
Regarding how our mouths are built, they actually do look a lot more like an herbivore’s mouth then an omnivores mouth, as omnivores look generally more like carnivores. Our jaws move in a circular fashion vrs and up and down one, and I don’t know if you’ve tried to rip the through out of a deer lately while it was on the run, but your canines aren’t going to do much
As for why can we digest meat if we weren’t built to do so, you realize that cows in modern factory farms are fed chicken in order to bulk them up, and I don’t think anybody would argue that a cow is built to eat meat.
Don’t take my word for it, do the research, the two links I’ve given are obviously biased towards what I now believe, but they both have good solid research, where as I have not found a stick of honest research saying that meat is good for you.
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Thanks Chris – I’ll take a look!
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I’ve aged enough to have grown weary of debating the merits of any particular diet, but it so happens my family and I are vegetarian. Although eating vegetarian is often about eating ‘healthy’ for many people, I specialize in cooking vegetarian versions of the completely non-healthy, fat-soaked stuff one would expect in a typical American household. Our Thanksgiving feasts have always seemed to satisfy our non-vegetarian family and friends, though I think many people always miss the bird regardless. It is so firmly rooted in the tradition of the holiday that most people probably have a juicy, oven-baked bird carcass as the anchor for their Thanksgiving day expectations. š
We also are not big sports fans, so I think we will spend the day giving our new Nintendo Wii a workout. If you are looking for something to do and are in town feel free to come on over and enjoy some vegetarian left overs and quality time with the Wii.
— 23
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This chart lays out in a simple fashion:
http://www.tierversuchsgegner.org/Gesundheit/taxonomy.html
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my understanding is that we can digest meat because humans were once scavengers – getting meat off animal carcasses abandoned by predators, breaking open the bones and drinking the marrow, that sort of thing. so we really weren’t “meant to” eat the huge amounts of meat most americans do now. that doesn’t strike me as a very good argument for vegetarianism, tho. we weren’t “meant to” live in apartment buildings or fly to other countries either.
that doesn’t mean we should eat meat. the horrible cruelty done to the animals, the major environmental damage – meat is even a significant cause of global warming – and the damage to public health all argue for vegetarianism or veganism.
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