About Eating Animals

I just happened to make a post on a friend's FaceBook wall about being a vegan, and I was fascinated, as I always am, by the rationalizations and defensive postures people assume, as soon as it is suggested that it might be morally wrong to murder innocent animals for our food, when it is not really necessary.

My post stated that animals are individuals; that they are conscious of their surroundings, and they have feelings and emotions, just like we do, and that therefore, they should be respected as individuals. I won't write much about this here, because I don't have time. But I just wanted to post a note here, so that it would remind me to revisit this subject in depth later.

Diet is very important to all of us, since that is what helps to maintain our bodies, but the fact is, that few Americans have healthy diets. Beyond the moral choice of whether to kill animals for food or not, one should consider the decisions that they should be making everyday regarding their own personal diet.

Eating animals is NOT healthy. Animals absorb toxins from their environment throughout their life, and those toxins become trapped in their tissues. So when you eat an animal, you are eating a higher level of toxic substances than you are when you eat a plant. Furthermore, the diets of factory farm animals are nothing that you will enjoy learning about when you study up on it.

Remember when they figured out what was causing Mad Cow disease? At the time, it seemed like common sense that one shouldn't grind up diseased animals and feed the remains to other animals, and yet it was that very procedure that had given rise to the disease.

And then there are many other toxins that one gets from eating slaughtered animals. There is just so much wrong with eating animals as they are bred and raised for slaughter, that many books have already been written about it.

Check out some of the books and websites, and I feel certain that without even making a moral choice, you will realize that you should try to eliminate as much meat as possible in your diet. And with the mercury levels in today's seafood, you don't want to eat too much of that either.

We largely perpetuate the practices of our parents with regard to eating, and society largely gravitates towards unhealthy, but tasty, fat-laden foods. In as much as we all only have one body to get us through this life, we should all try to take the best care possible of that wonderful machine that is carrying us around our personal universe. The moral choice needn't even be considered initially. Just do it for your health.

After study, you may come to appreciate the prescience of "Soylent Green".