[extropy-chat] what is the upside / advantage of meat ?

[Ensel Sharon]

Hi,

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, spike wrote:

> Definitely.  Eat light, live long.


Right ... but there must be a flip side to that, right ?  That is the
point I am trying to get at.  Not that I necessarily want that flip side,
or that that flip side is anything more than an anachronism...


> > My own well being and positive results suggest I will continue to remove
> > meat, and animal products in general, from my diet, but I'd like to have a
> > better grasp of what I am giving up, and what, in most basic terms, meat
> > is good for.  All comments appreciated...
> 
> 
> I can assure you that you can be very healthy with little or no meat, and
> can show you maaany examples of people who do so.  They grew up big and
> strong eating no meat ever in their lives, and I do mean no beef, pork, fish
> nor foul, nothing that ever had a face.  


I totally agree.  But again, meat is expensive to produce and keep - even
if the 10/1 ratio of feed input to meat output is not exactly right, there
is still a negative ratio at work ... so why have people, historically,
wanted it ?  What short term benefits does it provide, and why was it
worth the cost ?

Do you have more testoterone ?  Are you more aggressive ?  Can you reach a
higher amount of anerobic exertion, like high power or strength
movements?  These all sound like short term expedients that have long term
negative side effects...

I don't think it was just an accident of history that all of these
primitive peoples worked and built themselves into a life of more meat
consumption ... and I don't think that our own modern meat diets are
purely the result of nostalgia, or the meat lobby.

If meat has long term detriments, what are its short term expedients?  Why
did chiefs measure their wealth with it ?  Why do people almost
instinctively crave it ?