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

[spike]

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Ensel Sharon
...
> 
> 
> ...  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 ?  ...

Ah OK I understand the question now.  Well having recently spawned a larva
and observed insufficient mammary output by the mother, I can easily imagine
a survival advantage of one's genotype in maintaining a cow or a goat as a
milk supplement.  That doesn't get at the question of why we like meat I
realize. 

 
> Do you have more testosterone?  Are you more aggressive?...

This is an interesting question.  I went to a college that strongly
encouraged vegetarianism.  Meat was not served at the college cafeteria or
anywhere on a fairly isolated campus, so most of the approximately two
thousand students were full-time lacto-ovo vegetarians, probably over 85%.
This makes that campus an ideal laboratory for some insights that I will
share.  

We have been hearing a lot about athletes taking steroid precursors.  There
are known pharmaceuticals that are not testosterone themselves, but which
cause the body to make testosterone.  Likewise with estrogen, as my wife and
I learned about while taking the medications to create the afore-mentioned
larva.  At the time I was at the college, I always had the distinct
impression that the men there were under-aggressive and the women there were
over eager in the mating process.  Today I explain this two ways: the male
under-aggressiveness was a result of the absence of beef.  The female
over-eagerness was a result of eating soy-based meat substitutes, which are
thought to be estrogen precursors. 

Ensel, what do you think of that notion?

spike