It’s one of the major controversial topics of all time. Nearly half of the human population is crazy about having meat of non-vegetarian cuisine. While for others it’s a serious crime. Now the question, if it’s right or wrong, is a matter of debate which may include religious and cultural reasoning. Here, we will try to analyze the question on different aspects.
Many of the individuals who actually oppose having meat have one thing in common- their phobia and hatred for blood. The mere sight of blood would scare them and can’t tolerate it’s smell. For such people, thinking of having a non-vegetarian meal would be a phobia in itself.
There are even scientific explanations for not having meat. Dr. Richard Leakey, a renowned anthropologist says, “You can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand. Out anterior teeth are not suited for tearing flesh or hide. We don’t have large canine teeth and we wouldn’t have been able to deal with food sources that require those large canines”.
On the other hand, researches have also mentioned that our human digestive system is not designed for food like meat. We have got a long digestive system like the plant eaters and most of the carnivores have got a shorter one which allows the meat to easily pass through it.
It’s also been stated that high doses of meat especially red meat can cause cancer or severe heart diseases. According to the American Heart Association, the non-vegans have 32 percent higher risk of developing heart disease than vegans.
There is also an argument that most of our ancestors were vegans and relied mostly on plants, nuts, and other green substances and not on meat. It was only it’s scarcity which leads them to hunt or the mere habit of including meat in the meals.
A lot of other suggestions had been put forward to oppose these statements supporting the vegans. Many of them state that much of the statements about meat are nothing but myths.
For all the above-mentioned reasons to oppose the consumption of meat, we have the basic knowledge that we are omnivores, who can have both meat and green. We don’t comply with anyone of the category completely. Our gut system and the internal environment is quite similar to our similar relatives- monkeys and apes and our diet should be similar to them. For them, the meals are usually nuts, fruits, leaves, and occasionally flesh.
Hence there is not many risks in having meat unless taken care of the strict amounts to be taken. No matter what the product is it’s always important to take in the right quantity. As already mentioned, there some religious customs and practices also involved. So, a strict No-No would be hurting the cultural statements and beliefs.
REAL RESEARCH FINDINGS
In the EPIC-Oxford study, no statistically significant differences were found in the overall mortality rates for all the categories, though there was some concurrence with AH-2 in terms of lower death rates from CHD for the vegans.
A large-scale meta-analysis carried out in 2016 reported a significant protective effect of a vegetarian diet versus the incidence and/or mortality from ischemic heart disease (25%) and incidence from total cancer (8%). The vegan diet conferred a significantly reduced risk of incidence from total cancer.
