There is no 'need' for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I eat meat, but no meat that isn't pastured is acceptable, and we probably need to eat a whole lot less.
Meat supplies a variety of nutrients - among them iron, zinc, and Vitamin B12 - that are not readily found in plants. We can survive without it; millions of vegetarians choose to do so, and billions of others have that choice imposed upon them by poverty.
In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either.
I think chicken and horse meat are ideal food because it's very easy to digest.
Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better.
The interesting thing is, while we die of diseases of affluence from eating all these fatty meats, our poor brethren in the developing world die of diseases of poverty, because the land is not used now to grow food grain for their families.
People need to eat whole food plant foods, primarily... whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. That diet supports our lives. We ought to live to be 90 or 100 without getting any diseases.
Basically, the reason I'm vegan is because when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I began to understand that we don't need to contribute to the killing and exploitation of animals to feed our bodies correctly.
The current health crisis, however, is a little more the work of the evil empire. We were told, we were assured, that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate, the healthier we'd be.
Without food, we cannot survive, and that is why issues that affect the food industry are so important.